Runelords 00.1 - Immortal Graduate Student

The music was loud and the bar was crowded; three young women sat talking animatedly to each other. Suddenly the bartender leaned over and handed one of them a drink. The recipient, a woman with wavy hair and freckles, looked between the drink and the waiter with mild confusion. “Compliments of the gentleman over there,” he said, gesturing to a brown-haired man sitting a ways away. He was about their age, with a distinctive nose and a sardonic sort of grin that they could see from a distance. He raised his glass, and she did the same to him with an awkward sort of smile, the kind that suggested she wasn’t usually the object of strangers’ attentions. The two friends tittered, and they returned to their conversation.
----
“Mind if I join you?” the man’s voice caused her to start slightly: it was the same man from earlier, with the dark hair and the grin. They had both moved out onto the dance floor, but even from the briefest of glances it was apparent that he was more skilled, more confident, or both.
“Uhm, sure, I guess?” she replied, embarrassed. She was silent for a few beats, then added quickly, “I don’t want to get your hopes up or anything; I’m not going to sleep with you.”
“Thank gods,” he said, seemingly serious. “The last two girls I tried talking to seemed damned determined to have sex with me, so this is a refreshing change of pace.”
This seemed to confuse her slightly, prompting her to ask, “...If you aren’t trying to get in bed with me, why buy me a drink?”
He seemed non-plussed, “Because I come here alone, and I find people are more likely to be open to conversation if I buy them something first.”
“I...guess that makes sense? I don’t usually talk to people in bars.” After being quiet for another few beats, she continued, “You do get that most people probably think you’re trying to sleep with them, though, right?”
He shrugged, “Well, I’m not, so really they’re the ones going to be disappointed, not me. I got what I wanted out of the deal.”
“Which is…?”
“Conversation, and possibly a dance partner.”
“...Huh.” She shrugged, “Well, I guess I can do the first, but you can probably see I’m not the best dancer.”
“Yes, you’re pretty terrible,” he said bluntly. She huffed, looking more embarrassed than before. “If I show you how, will you actually dance instead of shuffling back and forth?”
She huffed again, then sighed, “I’ll try not to step on you.”
“I’d say I’d try to not be patronizing, but I will be.”
Giving a snort of laughter, she said, “Really? If you can’t keep from being a jerk that long, no wonder you come and go alone.”
He smiled, “I know it.”
“I’m Luna, by the way,” she said.
“You can call me Mal.”
----
“So, yeah, I’ve been waiting to try and get a graduate position for 6 years now. This one that opened is the first one in three years. If the professors would just take more students, than there wouldn’t be this huge backlog, and maybe the project would go faster.”
“Or!” Mal interjected, “There would be a glut of idiots getting in each other’s way, and the positive results would be lost in the bureaucracy of handling more students and professors.”
She rolled her eyes, “Are you seriously this pessimistic about everything? I don’t think you’ve been positive about anything once this whole evening.” He shrugged sarcastically. Rolling her eyes, she continued, “Anyway, I’m not the only one who’s been waiting this long. Some people have been waiting way longer. So we’re almost a month into the recruiting process, after we’ve all had our resumes short-listed; we’ve had to submit essays, projects, references, reports, and I’ve already had three interviews. I’m in the top twenty, and there’s still a long way to go. We’ve got to give presentations tomorrow to the professor, his staff and the other applicants on our current research.”
“You’re out drinking the night before a presentation?”
“Well, why not, right?” she said. “I’ve prepared as much as I’m going to, I’ve had the presentation ready for weeks. Long as I don’t get a hangover or stay out too late, I’m fine, and I know my limits. Besides, you saw the deal for students. I’m not passing up drinks this cheap because of a presentation. My research merit alone is better than at least six of the other applicants; I’m not in for serious competition until the top ten.”
“Pretty confident, aren’t you?”
She blushed a bit, “Heh. I talk big, but I’m actually a nervous wreck. I really do think I’ve got a good chance of making it, but if I stayed at home, I’d just be panicking. Better drunk than anxious, and it’s good to get out, right?”
“I’ll toast to that,” he said, lifting his glass. “I go mad staying in studying too long. Besides, if you don’t get out, how do you know that you aren’t missing something important?”
----
“Well, why keep people around?” He grinned sardonically as he spoke, “Most people are terribly obnoxious if you know them for more than a few hours. It’s a steep negative regression.”
“I think it’s more of a curve really:” she said, sounding at least a little tipsy, “they’re good on the surface, then you learn all of their annoying traits and the curve drops right off. Then, if you stick it out, you start to see all of their hidden good qualities, and it picks back up. It’ll go up and down, but eventually, either you’ll get bored of them and drift apart, or you’ll just know them for so long it doesn’t really even matter if you hate them or like them anymore. You know?”
At this response, he seemed to actually smile.
----
“I love the Human Augmentation Project. Like, I have to, right, or why would I be trying to get into the research program? That would be stupid. But, like, as much as I like the project, you know what I reeeeeeally like about alchemy?” she grinned conspiratorially.
“Oh, this should be interesting,” Mal grinned, taking a drink.
“I really, really like guns,” she said, almost quietly, as though it was a secret. “There’s just something about explosions that’s just…” she grinned. “I don’t know, it’s just great.”
Mal raised an eyebrow, looking legitimately confused, “I thought guns were illegal…?”
“Ugh, yes, they are,” she rolled her eyes. "I don’t have a permit. Don’t have a gun either. Well, obviously, if I don’t have a permit.”
He gave a sigh of relief, “Oh good. I worried that maybe they changed the law and I wasn’t paying attention.”
“It sucks that they’re so regulated. I’ve tried like, six times to get clearance, but I apparently ‘can’t present a valid reason to own a firearm’,” she made exaggerated quotation motions in the air, rolling her eyes and her voice dripping sarcasm, eliciting a grin from her conversational partner. She leaned in and said, “I’ve actually tried to build one. A couple times. One of them almost worked.”
“Almost?” he chuckled.
She gave a snort of laughter and said, “It kind of exploded. Blew things up though!”
“Heh. Yes, that would be an ‘almost’ for a gun.” He took another drink, “Isn’t that slightly illegal, developing basement firearms?”
She made a look of mock sheepishness, “Not if I don’t get caught…” She smiled, “Don’t turn me in, ok?”
He laughed, “That would be uncalled for, especially for an ‘almost’. I’d least let you get to ‘functional’ before ratting you to the police.”
“Police nothing,” she said, “I could get expelled. It’s the academic board who can’t find out.”
“Heh. Priorities,” he said.
----
“Well, it’s getting late. I have to get going. It was nice meeting you, Mal.”
“You as well. Safe trip home,” he said, lifting his glass and turning back to the bar.
Taking a few steps backwards, she asked, “Not going to wish me luck for tomorrow?”
“Oh, those things are never about luck,” he said, glancing back towards her and grinning, “It’s about who you know.”
She shrugged, “See you around then.”
“Undoubtedly. I’m certainly around.”
----
Luna sat in the auditorium with the other applicants, as well as the professor, his staff and more than a few interested observers. He was hiring for the coveted position of graduate student: as one, a student of the hospital’s academic division would be allowed access to greater resources, higher teaching, and the ability to conduct projects related to the Augmented Human Project while supervised by one of the professors. The Augmented Human Project was a cornerstone of life in the tiny independent country: there were almost no citizens who weren’t of one of the advanced strains of Materian created by the research of the Doctor and his team of professors and physicians, alchemists all. Through their genetic engineering, the Augmented had longer lifespans, fewer health troubles, and a wide variety of supernatural abilities usually only seen in extraplanars. The hospital was not only a place of medicine, but also higher learning: teaching sciences, medicine and alchemy. However, spots for researchers were coveted and highly limited, leading to fierce competition like the one Luna was involved in today.
As one of the applicants was in the middle of delivering his presentation, the door opened. The presenter’s eyes flicked instinctively towards the door, and his sentence slowly died as he looked at the man who had entered. He was an aged man, wearing a brown suit and eating an apple, with a rather detached look on his face, as though he was thinking of several other things. As everyone looked over to him one by one, there was no one who didn’t recognize the man who stood there, and many of the students leaned over to one another, whispering. The professor coughed a bit self-consciously and asked, “Can I help you, Doctor?
Cohen swallowed, putting the back of his hand to his mouth, before saying, “Yes, I was walking down the hall and saw the room booking, and remembered that I wanted to tell you something but completely forgot to send you a note.” He pointed towards Luna, “You’re hiring her.”
A wave of murmurs and shocked looks spread through the crowd. The professor frowned, “Sir, there’s a process, and I reserve the right to hire whomever I decide best suits the role of…”
“You reserve the right to do what I tell you, or be fired,” Cohen said, interrupting him bluntly, though his tone was still conversational, rather than aggressive. “I interviewed all of them,” he said while waving his hand broadly across the room, “and she is the least unbearable applicant. Considering you already top-twentied them, I’m sure they all meet the academic requirement, so, really I’m more concerned with the hire not being insufferable, seeing as how I’m the one who’s going to have to spend eternity with them on staff, not you.”
These statements did nothing to quell the whispering in the hall, though Luna herself still sat with a wide-eyed shock. Most people muttered about the fact that they had certainly never spoke with, let alone been interviewed by, the Doctor himself, but one particularly brave individual rose his hand and asked, “Sir...what do you mean by eternity?”
Cohen stopped chewing, and swallowed slowly. Looking at the professor, he asked almost incredulously, “Did...you...not tell them the purpose of this position?”
He sighed tormentedly, “No sir, I was waiting until I narrowed it to the final five, so as not to make a production of it.”
“Ah.” He took another bite of apple before saying brightly, “Well, who doesn’t like a good production?” He waved his hand broadly, “The good Professor Warrick here has a current project looking into the feasibility of assimilating qualities of the undead into the Augmented Human Project. Unfortunately for him, he has been having a hell of a time actually getting research material. He has had no success in finding any volunteers in the Undead Nation to assist him, because the vast majority of them have a pretty justifiable distaste for vivans, and even more worries about becoming test subjects, slaves, yadda yadda. However, he has managed to forge a partnership with one of the Nationalists, who has agreed to make him a volunteer to assist with his research. In what I find to be a personally hilarious turn of events though, neither he nor any of his current staff actually want to be the volunteer. He’s hiring to find someone for that role: to be a graduate student, yes, and all of the tasks and responsibilities that go with it, but more particularly, to become undead, so that they can give otherwise impossible and likely valuable insight into the intricacies of undeath, to advance the AHP.” He took a bite of apple as his audience looked between him and each other with wide-eyed shock. “Kind of important to know in advance, isn’t it?” he said sarcastically, as the professor rubbed his eyes in frustration. Cohen looked towards Luna and addressed her personally, “So, since undead are functionally immortal, and you would ostensibly stay on staff for a loooooong time, I’m much more concerned with not loathing you entirely. You seem like a reasonable, not-cripplingly-boring or self-absorbed person, and you actually leave your house, unlike seven of your peers who failed by default, so hurray, you pass,” he waved his hands sarcastically. He grinned, “I’m sure I can tolerate you long enough until it no longer matters whether I like you or not.”
After a second’s beat, her eyes widened in recognition at his odd statement. “You...you were the guy at the bar!” she couldn’t help but exclaim. “You’re Mal!” This caused yet another stir in the crowd.
“Please,” he said, still grinning. “Doctor, while we’re in a professional setting.”
“This isn’t fair!” someone shouted from the attendance, standing up. “You can’t possibly say that you disguised yourself, conducted interviews in secret, in a bar, without anyone’s knowledge!! Sir, with all due respect, that’s ridiculous!”
“Oooh, life’s not fair and neither am I,” Cohen said, his tone mocking. “You’re arrogant and annoying and I’m not spending hundreds of years listening to your self-aggrandization. Feel free to try for the next opening though.” He turned back to Luna, “Take the position, become undead. You will no longer age, eat, sleep, or feel pain. You will not fall sick, and unless someone murders you, you will not die. You will outlive your family, your peers, and basically everyone around you. It is not something for the faint of heart. Take some time to consider, and give your response to Professor Warrick. If you choose not to take this position, there will be no consequences; it will be offered to the next person I have pre-selected, with the same stipulations, so on and so forth, until one of you takes it. Should you accept, you will be granted a graduate student position, which you can use to your fullest extent for as long as you’d like, and I’m certain higher positions will open to you as well in the future should you chose to pursue them. You will be turned, and as such, used as a focal point for the research being conducted by Warrick and his team. You asked to comply with his research, which may involve various tests, including written, spoken, skill-based or physical examinations, samples, etc., in addition to conducting your own projects as normal. I will state clearly for the record, that you are a person, a researcher, not a lab animal, and you will always be treated as one. You will not have your freedom impinged upon, nor have anything done to, for or against you without your express consent. As an additional note, you will also be given citizenship in the Undead Nation, for the benefits that entails, which frankly you’ll have to speak to someone else about because I don’t really know. This is a valuable experiment, and just the knowledge gained from your physical experience as an undead may well be an integral step forward for the AHP, in addition to any other discoveries you may make in your career. Do you have questions?”
Luna sat stunned for a few seconds, before eventually saying, “...Yes...but none that I can think of right now, and even if I could, I probably wouldn’t want to bother you with them...”
“Good answer!” he said. “But feel free to come ask anyways. I’m only slightly busy at the moment. Keep me updated, Professor!” he said brightly as he turned away and left the room, leaving behind him a crowd of unsettled, off-put, confused, disappointed and angry onlookers.
----
“I...I gave it some thought, Professor. A lot of thought actually...and I decided that yes. I will take the position.”
----
“Luna Flor DeCereza Estaban,” the man said, repeating the name thoughtfully. Eventually he nodded, “I like it. Old-fashioned. Good name. It will keep.” Luna stood uncertainly, meeting this man for the first time: an undead. The person who was going to make her like him. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m sure you have questions for me, so let’s go somewhere where you can sit comfortably, and we can discuss your thoughts.” She nodded somewhat timidly, and followed him into his house. Normally she’d have a lot more misgivings about going into a wight’s house, but she thought to herself, What’s the worst that could happen? He’s already going to kill me…
----
“...After which point, you’ll be buried, so when you wake up, you’re going to have to dig yourself out. It’s not actually as bad as it sounds, but really, you won’t know that until you’re there. Rather peaceful, being buried, honestly. So...yes, that’s about it. Whenever you’re prepared.” She nodded slowly.
----
Her eyes flung open. She was in a box. Her whole body was tense as she tried to collect herself and her thoughts, to keep from panicking. She took a breath, and then another: something about it seemed strange. The lack of necessity. She stopped breathing, and considered this as well. Thank the gods she wasn’t claustrophobic.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the small notepad she had brought, and a pen. Holding it above her face against the lid of the box, she went through each of her senses, one by one, noting everything that was different. This was important: anything she noticed might eventually be useful, and she would only be a newborn once. Her vision was unimpeded by the complete lack of light, and she could feel the stark difference of the teeth in her mouth: her omnivorous teeth had been replaced by the fangs of an obligate carnivore. She was hungry: that was probably the most pressing sense, she noted. Not in the way a starving person wants food, but in the way an addict craves a hit; she had had cravings before, for sugar or certain foods, but nothing like this, and from what she had heard, this was nothing close to the worst it could be.
Eventually, she felt she had noted everything she could tell in the confines of the silent box. Tucking her notepad away, she stared at the wooden lid. She pressed against it, and could feel the weight of the earth pushing down on it. Frowning, she tried to gauge the best way to break out; no matter what she did, she knew this was going to take some time.
----
Cohen heard a knock on his door, some distance away. His single-room lab/office/apartment was expansive, a significant part of the hospital’s penthouse floor, which allowed him not only to centralize much of his possessions and research, but kept him rather comfortable when he forgot to visit the outside world. “Come in!” he shouted. Luna entered timidly, looking around for a sign of the doctor. “I’m over here!” he shouted from around several bookcases. She walked through the maze of shelves, tables, experiments and screens, all of which Cohen routinely shifted around, making his house an eternally-changing organized mess. Eventually, she found him pouring over a series of notes, writing something himself. He glanced up for a second to see who was there before returning to his work. “What would you like?”
“I…” she faltered, frowning. Eventually, she mustered up her courage and blurted out, “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s like nothing really matters, and I’m just sitting and staring at walls. I’m basically running four projects, and they’re going well, but...there’s just so much time! I can’t fill it! I can’t just keep working, I’m going to go insane if I just work twenty-four hours a day, but I can’t sleep or eat, you never really know how much time goes into that, I don’t have anything to do, and…” her voice dropped and she held her elbow as she said, “and no one’s comfortable around me, anymore, so I can’t even go out. The other grad students treat me like a subject, and people who used to be my friends just...stopped coming around.”
Cohen sat up and looked towards his door, muttering, “Did someone put up a sign that says ‘Therapist’ on my door?”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I have a question, I promise, a legitimate question.” She took a breath, “...You’re immortal, aren’t you? I just...wanted to know, how you deal with the time. People talk about the time, but I don’t think you can really get it, until you’re faced with it.”
“Honestly,” he said, still looking at his notes, “I’m not undead. I don’t have to eat or sleep, but I can choose to if I’d like. I don’t have your problem; you’d be better off talking to Ryuji, he likes talking about melodramatic things.”
“Ryuji…” she frowned, before her eyes widened in recognition, “Ryuji Komatsu? The Nationalist governor?” She looked uncomfortable again, “I wouldn’t bother him with this…”
“And yet, here you are bugging me,” Cohen said dryly.
Luna’s face was a portrait of embarrassment as she stammered as she took a few steps backward towards the exit, “I...I’m sorry. I shouldn’t...it’s not my place to...I’m sorry, I’ll…”
“Ugh, sarcasm,” Cohen chided, looking up and resting his chin on his folded hands, elbows on the desk. “Look. Do you have regrets?”
She thought about that for a moment, before eventually replying, “...No. No, I’m doing good work. I have a great opportunity, to learn, to help the project. I can do so much like this, I just…”
“No, good, that’s fine,” he cut her off. “If you aren’t actually regretting anything, if you still have your eyes on the goal, then really the problem is that you’re bored. I can’t work twenty-four hours either. You need more hobbies, and you need to get out more. Get a disguise, get better at talking to strangers, go travelling and meet other immortals your own age. I don’t know what else to tell you there.” He looked about and added, “Meanwhile...something to do between experiments...hmm…” Pointing at a particular drawer of a cupboard some ways away, he said, “There, that one. Go through it, take what you want. There’s nothing in it that I care about: I keep the good ones elsewhere.” As she went towards it, he pulled open a desk drawer and pulled out more paper and an envelope. Luna opened the drawer and blinked in surprise: there were a series of various firearms, of different makes and styles, showing a development of technology and craftsmanship.
“You...did you…?”
“I don’t make them, if that’s what you mean. I just buy new ones when I think they look better than the one I’m carrying,” he explained as she picked up the guns one by one. “A couple of countries make them now, and you can see they aren’t all moving in the same direction. So go ahead, take them. I’m just throwing them in a drawer. Modify them, make new ones, do whatever you’d like.” He grinned, “Move from ‘almost’ to ‘functional’, then see where you can go from there. That’s the best thing about the time, honestly: if you use it, you can be a master of so many different things. I’m a championship dancer, and a non-practicing druid, among other things. You don’t have to be just a student of alchemy; broaden your horizons.”
She smiled, “Thank you. I mean, this is...”
“No trouble,” He cut her off and held out the envelope towards her. “Here. Take this to the registration office. This should be reason enough to license you.” She looked through the guns almost reverently, but still with extreme excitement, eventually selecting two; any more and she couldn’t easily carry them. Taking the envelope, she thanked him again. “Think you can keep yourself occupied for a while?” he asked sarcastically.
She chuckled and nodded her head. As she moved to leave, she said, “I’m sorry again, for bothering you. I can handle this, I swear.”
“No doubt,” he said, having returned to his work. “I expect some interesting work from you.”
“I’m doing everything I can to further the AHP, I promise.”
He grinned, “I meant more in terms of effective ways to blow things up, but that’s good too.” She returned the smile, and left his office with her new project.
Category:Rise of the Runelords