Arbiter's Word (Alchemist's Fire Book 1) Read online

  “It's the exact same cup.” she said, looking shocked. “Like, perfectly exactly the same.”

  “Yep. It's my favorite superhero coffee cup.” I said, conjuring a third from the tablet with a flash. “Believe me now?

  “What the fuck...” Grace muttered.

  “Still unsure? Because I think I can do at least one more.” I said.

  “Okay no, stop. I don't know what kind of radiation that thing is giving off.” Grace backed up as far as she could, still holding the cups.

  “Good, because every time I make it conjure something out of thin air, it hurts my head.” I reached up and rubbed my forehead with my right hand. Just then, Nancy the nurse came back in with a knock on the open door and her typical cheerful expression.

  “Hey there!” she beamed. “Everything okay? Ooh I see your friend brought your mug collection. That's so sweet.” Nancy came around to Grace's side of my hospital bed to remove the IV tubing that was still in my left hand. While she worked, Grace shoved her two mugs into her backpack and silently mouthed “We'll talk about this later.” before starting for the door.

  “Uh, Nancy,” I said, interrupting both her and Grace as they were leaving. “Can I get one of those forms that lets me out against medical advice?”

  “Sure, sweetie, but I'll have to bring Dr. Peters in to talk with you one more time before you can. Liability reasons and so on.” I nodded and Nancy left, but Grace had apparently changed her mind and decided to stay.

  “If you just gave me brain cancer with that rock thing, I'm never going to forgive you.” she said once the sound of Nancy's footsteps was far enough down the hall.

  “If anyone is going to get brain cancer, it's me. I've done this almost a dozen times now.”

  “You should stay here until they can check you out.”

  “I'm pretty certain they'd have been able to find a brain tumor in me if I've already been here four hours.” I said. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and reached for the drawer with my clothes.

  5

  After a quick chat with the doctor and a bunch of signatures, Grace walked me to her car and gave me a ride home. I was surprised to find that I wasn't dizzy anymore. My headache was still there, but it was faint, so I wasn't bothered by that either. Grace didn't say anything on the whole ride back to the building, but followed me all the way to my door once we arrived. She had that look she got when she was puzzling over a mental challenge she hadn't yet been able to overcome. She even followed me into my place.

  “Grace, I'm fine. I don't need a babysitter.”

  “Apparently you do,” she said, “because you gave yourself a concussion and nearly left video evidence of something that I'm pretty sure would be bad news for anyone who saw it.”

  “Maybe I did give you brain cancer because you're starting to sound crazy.” I joked.

  “Chance, you have a rock that lets you turn bottles, jars, and cups into air, and conjure identical copies of them later. We need to experiment on this, because even if you're willing to be glib and ignore the ramifications of something this bizarre, at least I need to figure out a way to reconcile this with how I understand the laws of physics, fuck, the laws of nature. And if you think I'm freaking out, just wait until anyone with a bit of power or influence gets wind of something this incredible.” Her voice simultaneously grew in pitch and fell in volume as she talked until her last few words were hissing whispers. I'd never seen her this worked up, and she had a point. So far I'd used it to only conjure beer and make trash vanish, but I was beginning to see that my attempt at recording this was probably a very, very bad idea.

  “Do you still have my phone?” I asked.

  “I already deleted the video and snapped the memory card.” she said.

  “Jeez, Grace, that chip was fifty bucks.”

  “Yeah, six years ago. You can get another one.” She set the tablet on my kitchen table and pulling out a spiral notebook.

  “I thought you said making evidence was a bad idea.”

  “Not if I write it in code.” she shot back. “Besides, I'll burn the notes once I have them memorized.”

  “You seem way too excited and prepared to be upset about this.”

  “I'm not upset, Chance, I'm terrified. If I let you kill yourself like this I'll never forgive myself.” Grace looked up at me over her notebook, and I could actually see it. I'd only ever seen Grace seem this scared worried in her life, and it was just after her mom died. It was like her world was turned upside down, and the control and confidence she'd trained herself to exert over her life was probably a way to cope with the grief she felt. If she was this worried about me, then it was clear she considered me important in her life, even if she had a hard time showing it in a recognizable way.

  But, I thought, was it really so hard to recognize? Grace was one of the few people to visit me. Sure, it was usually with another purpose in mind but Grace was a multitask er. She had to kill two birds with one stone with everything she did, and more if it was something she didn't want to do. She'd also been the first person to visit me in the hospital, been the one to drive me home, and taken measures she believed would protect me. Later, she told me that she'd been the one to clean up the spilled beer off my kitchen floor so it wouldn't reek like a brewery when I got home.

  “You're right, Grace, I'm sorry. If we're going to do this, we've gotta be careful. You're much smarter than I am, so I'll trust your judgment on how we should go about it.”

  “Thank you.” she said. After a moment, her expression turned back to a level of scientific professionalism that was both impressive and eerie to see in an eighteen-year old. “First, we need to rule out all the ways you can't activate the stone.”

  “Got it.” I nodded. We spent the next few hours experimenting with the stone tablet. Grace ran me through every scenario she could think of, taking her notes in a code of her own design as we went. We only stopped when I heard her stomach growl and I asked if she'd skipped dinner. She confessed she had, so I pulled some leftover pizza out of my fridge that I'd planned to have myself, but wasn't hungry. Grace tried to fight me on it, but relented once she saw it had pickles on it. It was a favorite we'd shared since we were kids.

  As she tore into the pizza with an excited hunger I imagined she only felt when she was on a quest for knowledge, I sat across my kitchen from her, leaning on my counter. I'd switched into new clothes since the ones I was wearing still stank from the spilled beer.

  “Okay, let's review.” I said, sipping a glass of water.

  “Wuh a muh” Grace said, holding up a stalling hand while she finished her bite of pizza. She swallowed and then washed it down with a sip of beer I'd conjured over the course of the evening. Then, she turned to the first page of her notes, and started to read off what we knew so far about the tablet.

  From what we could work with in my apartment, we discovered that the tablet could only be used by me, and could only influence matter that was touching the impression in the middle. Anything I conjured was limited in the same way, so on one occasion I had to catch a rolling pin before it topped onto the floor. It didn't have to fit in it, but it just had to touch the stone at the bottom of the circular indentation. I had to be touching the tablet anywhere within the outermost lines of the design for it to work, and I actually didn't have to speak out my desired result if I just concentrated on it hard enough. However, speaking out loud seemed to help the process go easier on me.

  Second, Grace had concluded that the tablet seemed to affect me one way when I used it to break down matter into less dense matter, and another when I made more dense matter. Further, the more of a difference in density, the stronger of an effect the process had on me. Changing from high to low density energized me but made me loopy if I did it too much It drained me and gave me headaches and made me twitchy if I drained myself too much either. So, turning a glass of water into a glass of vodka was pretty easy, but turning air into anything solid was much more taxing.

  Finally, w
e discovered that I could only conjure or work with substances I'd already introduced the tablet to. The tablet had to learn the 'recipe' of whatever matter I asked for before it could give it to me. So I couldn't conjure diamonds out of thin air, but once I'd put a glass in the tablet, I was able to ask for a piece of glass cut like a diamond. That led Grace to conclude that I could ask for slight alterations of things I'd converted before, like asking for a glass of warm water when I'd only introduced room temperature water before. The change in thermal energy seemed to raise the price of energy I spent on it a bit. Just before our pizza break, I'd put my phone in at seven percent battery and pulled it out at ninety percent battery, which had drained me almost dry.

  “So we know you can alter temperature, electrical energy, density, volume, mass, and even conjure multiple kinds of matter at once.” She said, tapping her encoded notes with a pencil. “I think the last thing I want to test tonight is to see if you can isolate a specific substance out of an object you introduced that had other stuff in it.”

  “So, like getting iron even though I'd put steel in?” I stroked my beard.

  “Exactly.”

  “Cool. I have an idea.” I said, reaching for my silverware drawer. I pulled out a butter knife and held it up. “What's in stainless steel?” I asked.

  “Iron, chromium, sometimes nickel or other stuff.”

  I stepped over to the tablet and touched its surface. “Ten grams of chromium.” I said, but nothing happened.

  “Got it,” said Grace, writing something down and then putting on a pair of sunglasses she'd started to wear after repeated flashes of light. “Proceed.”

  I touched the butter knife to the spot in the middle and turned it into air. After a moment, I cleared my throat and repeated my request for chromium. With a faint spark, a small cube of shiny metal appeared.

  “Well, damn.” I said. “It worked.”

  “One more discovery tonight.” Grace said while yawning. I looked at the clock on my wall, It was almost two in the morning.

  “Grace, you should probably get some sleep. Didn't you say you have a final exam coming up?” She waved me off stretched. “I'll be fine. I can keep going.”

  “Nope. If I'm not allowed to do anything you think is too risky, you're not allowed to put off important stuff. I already said I don't need a babysitter.”

  “Fine, but can I sleep on your couch? Grandma made her salmon burgers today and the whole place smells like burnt fish. She yawned again.

  “I'll grab you a blanket and pillows.” By the time I came back with my extra quilt and a pillow for Grace, she'd already fallen asleep on my couch. Trying not to wake her, draped the blanket over her and set the pillow on her stomach, figuring she'd move it to a more comfortable spot if she needed something other than one of the little throw pillows that came with the couch. As I turned off the kitchen light and headed for my bedroom, I heard Grace mumbling.

  “Huh?” I said

  “I said good night. Love you.”

  “You too, Grace.” I smiled and shut my bedroom door.

  6

  I slept like a rock that night, and woke up to the sound of my alarm clock. When I rolled over to hit the snooze button, my phone's alarm went off. I was a bit confused because my phone alarm was only supposed to go off on work days, and today should have been Sunday. I blearily looked at my phone's screen and it showed that it was, in fact, Monday morning.

  Wondering for just a moment again about my experience with the tablet being all a dream, I was assured once more by the sight of it still on my kitchen table that no, I wasn't coming out of some sort of dream. With that out of the way, I went through the motions of getting ready for work, except I didn't have the usual anxiety over the possibility of being late. Soon I was showered, dressed, and in my car on my way to work, and I was fine. Not excited to do my boring job, but okay otherwise.

  My stress level only started to rise when a traffic jam two miles from the exit I took to work brought me and my commute to a standstill. Glancing at the clock in my car, and factoring for the fact that it was always eleven minutes slow since I didn't know how to set the damned thing, I realized that even if traffic miraculously started moving right this second, I was going to be fifteen minutes late to work.

  Letting out a breath, I pulled out my phone and dialed my boss's desk phone. Pat was definitely going to be pissed I was late, but would be more pissed if I didn't call him to let him know. As the phone dialed, I mentally griped about how stupid it was for him to worry about me being on time. I worked at a computer all day, forwarding messages to other departments and filling out forms when someone sent them to me. He knew damn well I was able to catch up, so why did he care if I was a few minutes late?

  “You've reached Pat, how can I help you.”

  “Mr. Damonsen, it's Chance. I'm calling to let you know I'll be a few minutes late. Traffic on I-94 is at a standstill. I can send you live video if you want proof.”

  “That won't be necessary, Mr. Clarke. You're fired.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I received a voicemail this morning from a Dr. Peters saying that you suffered an accident, then left the hospital against medical advice. HR says our insurance won't cover you, and since it's company policy that all employees be on our insurance, as per your employment terms and conditions, we cannot safely keep you as an employee for liability reasons.” Pat sounded like he was reading the words back to me with the smug grin I just knew he had on his face.

  “Well okay then, kind of a shitty policy if you ask me. Can I at least come by and collect my personal belongings from my desk?”

  “Of course. You'll have fifteen minutes from the start of your shift at eight-thirty to collect your belongings, and anything else will be thrown in the trash and you'll be escorted out by security.” I could hear his grin getting wider. He knew if I was stuck on 94 that I'd be too late to get my stuff, and he'd probably take personal pleasure in tossing a box of my things into a dumpster.

  “Thanks for the info. It's been a pleasure, Pat. If I don't see you at the office, have a nice day.” It took a lot of effort to not scream into the mic, but I knew it pissed Pat off more if I was cordial and polite in the face of his abuse.

  “Don't expect a letter of recommendation from us.” he said, all mirth gone from his voice as he slammed his phone down. At least I knew I was killing him with kindness. Once the call ended, I started to make another call. It rang twice before Derek, my office neighbor answered. “Registration,” he said, “how may I help you?”

  “Derek, hey, I need a favor.”

  “Oh, Chase, buddy, how's it going?”

  “Not great, Derek. I'm going to be twenty minutes late and Pat's just told me I'm fired and by the time I get there, he's going to toss all my stuff in the trash.”

  “Sheesh, man, that sucks. What are you calling me for?”

  “Derek, could you please gather as much of my stuff as you can find and keep it at your desk?”

  “What's that supposed to do? You know Pat's going to have security lock you out the second your time's up. How are you going to get it?”

  “If that happens, I'll have lunch waiting for you at your car by ten-thirty.”

  “Where from?” Derek was on the hook, selfish bastard.

  “How about that barbecue place?”

  “Done. I'll grab what I can. Gonna miss you around here, Chase. I'm going to have trouble finding someone to cover for me.”

  “Sorry, Derek. I'll keep in touch.” Unfortunately, by the time traffic let up enough for me to reach my exit, I was a half-hour late when I got to the company parking lot. I sat in guest parking, since the parking attendant told me my parking permit was revoked as of fifteen minutes ago, and I took a breath to plan my next move. As selfish as he was, Derek was going to make an effort and get as much of my stuff as he could hide in the snack box he kept under his desk. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the stuff at my workstation wasn't stuff I'd miss
all that much. There was my custom mousepad, my nice pens, my extra notepads, and a few desk decorations that I'd picked up over the years. In the end, the only thing I really cared about was the framed picture of me and my now ex-girlfriend, and I was realizing that it was a lot of work to get a picture of a failed relationship.

  I called Derek back, but it went straight to voice mail. I knew he purposely only answered every other call he got, so I let it go to voice mail. “Derek, it's me. Keep the stuff. I don't need any of it. And for the last god-damned time, my name is Chance, not Chase.” Satisfied, I hung up and left the parking lot and headed back home.

  On the way, my phone chirped to let me know my final paycheck had been put through to my bank so I decided to get a donut or two to comfort myself for losing my job, even though I didn't really feel all that broken up about it. Honestly, I felt more pissed that I'd wasted my time bending over backwards to try to make friends than I was worried about my finances. Grace's Grandma would be lenient about my rent if I helped shovel the sidewalks and help out around the place a little, so I wasn't approaching homelessness just yet. But as I sat in the donut shop, alternating bites of the two donuts and sips of coffee, I kept thinking that maybe I could use the stone tablet to fix my money problems.

  I came up with an idea after I finished my second donut. Tossing my paper cup in the trash as I went out the door, I pulled up the address of the nearest supermarket that sells their stuff in bulk. I paid for a trial pass at the customer service counter, and grabbed a cart, making my way to the dry good section. My cart was one of those big flat ones that's more like a pallet with wheels than a shopping cart, which was fine with me for today's visit. I brought the cart to a halt when I found what I was looking for. 20-pound bags of rice for less than 20 bucks each. I piled on twenty bags, which was all they had. When I took my cart over to the checkout counter, the cashier gave me a funny look.