Chương 13: Incident Sprite

Wes and Mark passed a shop whose front window displayed dimensional pouches in every shape and size, each resting on a velvet cushion like jewelry. A placard stood among them: DIMENSIONAL POUCH THE PERFECT ENVIRONMENT FOR ANY FAMILIAR CERTIFIED 56-HOUR FAILSAFE Safety First! Full Compliance with the Forgotten Familiar Act!

"Fifty-six hours? That's a rather random amount of time." Wes's face brightened!

"You can read Common! That's great! But what's so random about fifty-six hours? That's exactly two days." Mark must have looked confused, because Wes quickly added, "Is that different from your memories? Your days weren't twenty-eight hours long?" I guess there is no reason this planet would rotate on its axis in twenty-four hours like Earth.

Mark clarified to Wes how twenty-four hours made up one day in the world he remembered, and then questioned Wes about what the placard meant when it said failsafe and the Forgotten Familiar Act.

"A failsafe automatically ejects a familiar after fifty-six subjective hours. They became mandatory about twenty years ago. Before that, a familiar remained inside until their master released them." They resumed walking toward the Academy.

"The law changed because a wizard placed a newly created sprite familiar inside his pouch and then died unexpectedly. She had not been registered, so the local Board didn't even know she existed."

"What happened to the sprite?"

"The wizard's nephew inherited the estate. He wasn't a wizard and did not know how to open it. So it remained packed away with the possessions no one wanted until another wizard recognized it more than five years later." Wes looked down at Mark.

"It had been running at four-to-one dilation. She had experienced more than twenty years." Twenty years? In the uncanny valley of a dimensional pouch? I barely survived what felt like forty-five hours.

"I thought after a wizard died construct familiars would dissolve in around a day. That's what you told me." Wes looked at him.

"A construct's magical matrix requires a continuous source. Usually that source is the wizard sustaining its bond, but while a construct is inside a dimensional pouch, the pouch supplies the necessary magic."

"So she experienced twenty years of time in the pouch? As traumatic as it was for me for such a much shorter time there is no way anyone's mind could handle that."

"You're right. They bonded her to a volunteer from the local Familiar Registry Board who tried everything to help her, healing magic and memory alterations especially, but nothing worked. She just couldn't come back from the experience. Eventually, they dissolved her."

"So they killed her? Couldn't they have just provided the best conditions to live in? Any trauma takes time to recover from. Maybe provide her with thera… well i guess you don't have therapy here. It just seems rather rash to kill her without giving her any chance to actually experience reality. Please tell me they tried to help her for years before they took such drastic measures.

"They considered it a mercy dissolution. It had been three weeks and she had shown no real improvement."

"Three weeks! She was dissolved after three weeks! How is that sufficient enough time to see if she can recover? That is absolutely barbaric. Are sprites sapient?" Wes looked over at Mark.

"Yes of course, sprites are a non-citizen sapient creature just like a kobold. She was suffering…"

"And she was treated like a pet! Did they even ask her what she wanted? Heck, do they even know what her name was?" Wes blinked.

"I don't know. None of that was in my readings. She's just referred to as the Incident Sprite. I'm not sure if anyone recorded her actual name or gave her one if she wasn't given one."

"Of course not." Mark heard his own voice go higher in pitch and his s's were hissing more pronounced than before.

"She's just 'the Incident Sprite.' A cautionary tale about storage protocols. Who cares that she was a traumatized person. Let's just put her down before she can even experience reality." You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"The Forgotten Familiar Act was created because of her. Seventeen new protections were created to prevent anything like this happening again including the failsafe, limited time dilation to no more than three subjective hours per outside hour, new registration requirements..." Wes trailed off, then added, "I never thought about it, but you're right. We should know her name and three weeks is an awfully quick amount of time to decide something so drastic."

Mark felt a bit guilty for again arguing and taking out his frustrations on Wes.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you Wes. You're just trying to tell me about the world and while I don't like what you're saying that doesn't mean I should take it out on you." While they continued to walk Mark's mind just could not stop thinking about the incident sprite. The torture that poor sprite had lived through for twenty years in a simulated reality was unimaginable. However while he was thinking another scenario occurred to him. The sprite had entered the pouch on the day she was created.

Unless her ritual had given her memories like Mark had, the dimensional pouch had been the only world she knew. Its artificial sprites had been her first companions. Their canned phrases were what she may have considered normal. Their repetitive behaviors may not have been uncanny to her because she had never known anything else. The false world had essentially raised her. Perhaps she had not emerged broken at all.

Perhaps the Board had torn her out of the only reality she understood, surrounded her with beings whose behavior made no sense to her, and then judged her defective because she continued acting like the constructs that had shaped her entire existence. They had given her three weeks to unlearn twenty years of programming and then killed her when she could not. Poor sprite. This world was unimaginably cruel to you in every way.

They walked in silence for a time, the sprite's story still weighing heavily on Mark's mind. Then something on the ground caught the light and by doing so Mark's attention. It was a copper coin. One moment Mark was walking beside Wes, the next his hand closed around the coin, plucking it from the cobblestones. The satisfaction landed before the shame did.

A second ago he'd been mourning a dead sprite no one bothered to name, and now his entire body was lit up over a coin worth probably next to nothing, with no real transition between the two states at all. This was the second time in the walk where the lure of a shiny object just completely took over his rational mind. He straightened and stared at the coin in his clawed hand. He knew this was nothing like pennies in his world that were copper-plated zinc. This was pure copper made into a coin.

While he knew rationally that copper is a cheap metal and likely even in this world lacked much value, the emotions he had from holding the coin were all about this being his treasure and how proud he felt finding it. His tail, flat on the ground with grief moments ago, was back in the air and even wagging slightly since he had grabbed the coin. It apparently had the emotional range of a golden retriever and the memory of a goldfish. Suddenly text again showed up in his vision.

Metal Magic +1 Current Status: Metal Magic 2/100 Novice No commentary was provided. He was slightly disappointed to not see anything, but increasing an ability due to picking up a coin and knowing it was pure copper evidently did not merit special notice from the deity.

"Ugh, I hate these instincts."

"You're a kobold," Wes said, amused.

"Finding shiny things is supposed to make you happy. As long as you don't steal from people there's nothing wrong with getting excited about finding a coin." Mark looked at the coin, then his hand, then back at Wes.

"It's infuriating how much they take over. I was thinking about the unnamed sprite, and then before my brain could register what I was doing I had the coin in my hand."

"Don't be ashamed. It would be odd if you weren't wanting to run up to every shiny object and wanting to claim it. Since you have human memories it may be a bit strange to want to do these things but just remember it's an important job you're doing." An important job… What the heck are you blabbing about Wes? Grabbing shiny objects off the ground is not important nor is it a job.

"Kobolds and other creatures who hoard do our city a great service by keeping our streets clean. Why do you think that was the first coin you've come by today? It's because all the rest were already claimed." It was such a ridiculous reason to call grabbing shiny things off the ground important that it actually caused Mark to let out his yipping laugh. Mark really wanted to throw the coin away, to prove he wasn't controlled by kobold instincts, but his hand wouldn't let go.

Just the thought of dropping the coin provoked nausea. After his laugh had died down his fingers still curled protectively around the metal.

"I can't let go of it, Wes. I want to, but I can't. The thought of dropping it makes me feel sick." His tail kept wagging, clearly on the coin's side of this argument. Wes's expression softened slightly.

"You don't have to let go. It's your treasure." He pulled a small pouch from his robes, and held it out. It was not a dimensional pouch but just a regular coin pouch.

"Keep whatever you find in this. Store it until we get back and you can add it to your hoard. I bought that for you this morning when I got your clothes. I ran into Sannic, my friend with the goblin I told you about and he told me if you were a kobold I better be prepared for you needing something to store any shiny objects you may see lying on the ground. So this is yours." Mark took the pouch. Again yet another decent gesture from Wes. Maybe he had misjudged him yesterday.

The pouch had an attached strap that was near the drawstring which may have been meant to hold around a human shoulder. With some awkward maneuvering, Mark managed to get it past his snout and over his head so he could wear it like a necklace. The hardest part was fitting it over the small horns on his head. As Mark slipped his new coin into his new pouch, he felt a bit of relief settle over him. About that same time Wes and him had turned the last corner and the Academy revealed itself.