The next day, when Emmet walked into the same building at 7 PM, there were only about ten first-years sitting in the room in wait. Only a quarter of the people who had applied had showed up.

“Alright!” Maisy’s bright voice rang out as she stepped in through the doorway. “Thank you all for coming.” She scanned over the group, identifying each person there. Seeing Emmet, she once again let out a slight smile.

“From now on, you are all employees of Maisy’s Debugging Depot! Since you’re now official employees, I want to give you all some brief basic training. For those who don’t know the technique, I’ll first show some proper procedure for wiring and soldering. Then, I’ll give you all some practical advice on the way to go about debugging, and a list of some common bugs you might see. I’ve been working in this business for over six years, so I’ve developed quite a bit of experience.”

Maisy first brought out a random demonstration formation and brought it to a workstation. Taking out some tools from the side compartments, she showed everyone the proper way to use the tools and how to handle the circuits and formation parts. Although everyone else seemed to already know the technique, Emmet was enlightened, and inwardly adjusted some of his habits. He suspected that this part of the training might be aimed toward him.

Then, for the next hour, Maisy gave a light-hearted lecture on some common practices for debugging formations, and gave a long list of common errors in each formation type. There were countless types of formations defined by the collective society of formations experts, so Maisy only gave some basic categories. This included arrays, wards, locomotives, etc. In general, formations encompassed a nearly infinite array of applications, so Maisy covered a few basic types that first or second year students would commonly build.

After that, the same green-haired girl from the day prior, introduced by Maisy as Janine (who was also an experienced debugger, in her third year), produced another large container floating on a baggage carrier formation. Maisy opened it, revealing tens of different malfunctioning formations stacked inside. Unlike the uniform quality of the arrays from yesterday, there all different shapes and types this time, including multilayered disks, cubes, spheres, and other interesting designs.

“Even though it’s only the beginning of the year, since we’re one of the biggest businesses around, the orders have already started to pile up. In the pile to the left are some of the more basic formations sent in by some first and second years, in the middle pile are some intermediate level formations sent in by third and fourth years, and in the smaller pile to the right are some more advanced ones send in by some fifth, sixth, and seventh year students. For today, I’d suggest that you all work on the ones in the left pile. However, if you passed the test yesterday, I wouldn’t be opposed to you tackling some in the middle pile - the commission for those will surely be higher,” Maisy gave a brief explanation. “If you have any problems or any more questions, come find me! The days will be very freeform like today, just make sure to come in at least three times a week, at least two hours each time. I’ll expect you to debug at least a formation a week.”

“Oh!” Maisy seemed to remember something. “We also have about ten other upperclassman employees that come in and out. If you see any of them, make sure to introduce yourself. We’re one big family here!”

Everyone nodded in understanding.

Having been oriented, everyone thanked Maisy and then lined up in front of the three piles of formations. Each spent some time selecting a formation and then spread out throughout the space’s workstations to stare down at their formation and focus.

After Emmet had selected his, taking from the pile on the very left, Maisy came over to greet him.

“Emmet! My little cute squire, you’re here!” Maisy’s face was bright. “I didn’t know you had so much talent! When you debugged that formation from yesterday so perfectly, I was awestruck. For a squire, that ain’t too bad!”

“Hehe…” Emmet couldn’t help but giggle sheepishly, his face turning red. “Thank you senior Maisy.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Maisy patted Emmet on his head. Since Emmet was short, she didn’t have to extend her hand far. “Just call me big sis Maisy. If you have any questions, just ask me, ok? I’m here to help. I think you have real potential!” She glanced down at Emmet’s cute face, a warm feeling rising in her heart. It wasn’t often that there was such a pure young fellow who attended this school.

Emmet nodded profusely. “Yes, big sis Maisy! Thanks so much!”

Clutching his formation, he scurried his way over to a workstation and began inspecting what the problem was.

-------------------

In the next week, Emmet made over 100 points from his new debugging job. On top of working the full hours, he also earned considerable compensation from commissions. The more he worked, the more he couldn’t help but become obsessed with the job. It really was like solving puzzles!

Each day, he would debug another basic formation. The more he did, the faster he became, and the greater skill he developed. Now that he had the proper technique for soldering the circuits, he worked quickly, fixing them at once when he identified the problem.

However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Emmet had pitiful experience with the variety of formations that needed debugging, and would frequently find himself completely lost when seeing something new. That first day during the trial he had gotten lucky and gotten a sun empowered array (sun beam), something he was familiar with, having built his own version in the past. However, when other types of formations entered his vision, he was clueless. What were they supposed to do?

However, with Maisy’s help, he learned quickly. Within a few days, he had learned how to accurately read how the jade threading worked, accounting for its differences with quartz threading, which allowed him to identify the structure of the formations much more easily. With that barrier out of the way, he grew more and more familiar with the various types of formations and their unique properties, linking them up mentally with what he saw in his picture puzzle book. The formations would often be formatted a bit differently or superfluously, with extra junk lying around, confusing Emmet at first, but in the end, would match something in his puzzle book. He couldn’t help but be amazed. So the puzzle book really had everything! Now, it was only a matter of linking up the physical to the theoretical.

In the other aspects of his life, classes were going alright. Without a personal teacher, Emmet still found it virtually impossible to identify what the terms the professors were spurting out meant, even when they were repeated multiple times, and thus, he still struggled to follow along. However, he was slowly but surely understanding more and more, if only just a few words. He enjoyed Fundamentals of Debugging the most, since it was most applicable to his job and the most visual-oriented. Some situations explored in the class would come up directly in some of the formations he would debug, so it was greatly helpful.

The only other notable thing that happened in the past week was that one night, Emmet had overheard the four students of 427 gossip that there was apparently a lucky 3C first year student who had gotten a ride in an amazing flying car from a seventh year student. It must have been true, because many other first years had testified about seeing it with their own eyes. What had the first year done to receive such favor? Who was he? The four could only grumble in jealousy. They didn’t yet have the funds or skills to build their own transportation devices, and still had to walk from place to place. If they could have an amazing upperclassman help them, especially a seventh year, it would be amazing.

Emmet could only shake his head. They had the complete wrong idea.

As for the four students themselves, just like Emmet, they had also gotten jobs, although all low-paying ones. However, unlike Emmet, they barely had enough income to keep themselves afloat. This was due to the fact that they had to purchase their own materials for the construction assignments in their classes! Emmet suspected that given a few months time, he might actually become the richest out of all them, not due to his income (which was actually rather high even for a first year student), but because he didn’t need to spend so much.

Somehow, the four students had also discovered that Emmet had gotten a job as a debugger, and would sometimes slide him disparaging looks. As expected, a squire would do grunt work! Emmet was too naive to know, but debugging as a primary profession was stigmatized in the formations world. What proud formations expert would base their entire job around correcting other people’s malfunctioning formations? Many also felt that it was largely menial work.