It would be easy to think Jessie had stormed into my life yesterday and turned it even further upside down. That couldn't be further from the truth. We had always been friends. We grew up next to each other, friends since we were old enough to play outside. Frogs, snails, and a severe lack of puppy dog tails. To my everlasting shame, I even attended a tea party with sugar and spice and a couple of nice things. As study partners, we went through school together. I was the handsome, funny, heroic, modest one, and she was the smart one. We didn't drift too far apart as we grew up, but the distance since college had started was slightly alarming. For a couple weeks after school started this year, I was dreadfully homesick. Home seemed forever away even with weekend visits, and she was nowhere to be found. Always busy.

Oh, where is that distance now? I sure could use some.

"Are you paying attention?" She waves her hand and there is a little zap that makes me jump.

"I was paying attention!" I move my knight to take her bishop.

This was hour three in our marathon speed chess game. I had yet to even come close to a victory. I was, however, racking up time considering consequences of my actions, which was boosting my much-neglected wisdom. It didn't stop me from flicking a captured pawn at her head after she zapped me though. That led to another zap which just goes to show I still had a long ways to go. If only my danger sense would give me a little chance to dodge I might be able to turn the tables...

"You are not paying attention." No, I was not, but she couldn't know that absolutely.

"It's not my fault you have a hundred lifetimes of chess experience or whatever to draw on. I'm losing no matter what I do, so let me lose with a little dignity."

"Is that a new skill of yours? Dignity? I'll believe it when I see it."

"Hrmpf." The board changed when I wasn't paying attention and I could see how close to losing I was. Maybe..."Ha! Check!"

Her king takes my queen that I sacrificed for a one turn check, and I'm in checkmate two moves later. Is that pity I see? Nope. Exasperation.

"Fine. Let's change things up. We need you to whip you into shape for your interview at LucidTech on Monday. You are not allowed to screw this up."

"If you really want me focused, teach me the zappy thing."

"You think you are ready for the secrets of the arcane? The power of the Magus? The eldritch lore and fundamental forces of power?"

"No, but I think I could do the zappy thing."

"I doubt it. But we can move you towards the beginning of the beginning of where the 'zappy thing' starts. Hold still."

She's looking at me and not doing anything. It's getting weird. Do I have something on my face? Please tell me it's not food. Or sinuses. Or crusty eyes. Ok, now my face is itching. Is she doing that? Or is it just because I imagined the stuff on my face? I can't tell. Maybe I'm not ready for the zappy thing.

"Why are you staring at me?!"

"What? Oh, just looking at your aura. It's different than the last time I checked."

Wait...My aura? "Freaky. What does it look like?"

"Like a hundred thousand different Rubix cubes shifting and swirling about. It's very strange."

That doesn't sound like me. "Ok. Umm. What did it look like before?"

"Swirly and colorful. Standard normal human. People can have variation, especially people attuned to various magical fields, but mostly it's just a whirlpool of color. You and your power are weird."

"Thanks. Is this important? I want to zap...things."

She sighs. "It would be if your aura hadn't turned so weird. Now we'll just have to do it the hard way." She rolls her shoulders like she's getting ready for some big event. "We'll start with you meditating. Empty your mind and I'll put pressure on your aura. Focus on sensing it. Ready?"

"Yup."

"Go."

I focus myself on my mind just like the night before. Now I see a Rubix cube that breaks into a hundred different cubes, each breaking into a hundred more. Dammit. It's like telling myself not to think of the pink elephant. It always works better when you are too tired to care. This is at least half her fault for putting the image in my head.

I blink my eyes open for a moment to start with a different image. Just the living room. Push it out into the void. The chess set. Out it goes. The weights, the running, even the morning coffee. Gone. It's harder to push out my loved ones. But eventually, they go too. Even Jessie. Only a few bits and bobs left, I flick them away and find myself. I don't feel any pressure, but I'm still in here looking around, so out I go.

There's nothing left. I don't see light or dark. There isn't any gray. There isn't any sound.

I don't feel hot or cold. I don't feel. I am nothingness incarnate. Things are starting to get trippy when I notice something intruding on my peaceful state. There is no more nothingness, the void evaporates as the intruder takes center stage. There is only light and the intruder. There is no sense of scale. It could be the size of the universe, or smaller than an atom. I vaguely remember I am supposed to grab it. An orb appears around the intruder, getting smaller and smaller until the intruder is practically shrink wrapped. My shoulder hurts.

Skill 'Mana Manipulation' unlocked!

She just punched me! "What was that for!" Oh. I remember the void and the shrink wrapping. At the same time, a trickle of information comes and the bubble is gone. I make a new bubble. And another. And another. Ok enough bubbles.

"What was that for?! Your Rubix cube monster tried to eat me!" She looks a little shocked. Am I at fault? I don't think so, and she is the teacher here.

"Well if it was so dangerous you shouldn't have done that."

"It wasn't dangerous you idiot, it was supposed to take weeks before you could do something like that. I was surprised is all."

"Well, I got the skill. That was the point right?"

"I've never seen anyone get it right the first time. I'd say you have a natural talent but you aren't learning the regular way at all."

"Well, you told me to meditate, so I did. Then I found you and grabbed with a bubble."

"That's not what I saw. I saw all the Rubix cubes turn black and when I put pressure on, you tried to eat me. And on top of that, I never told you to grab, just sense!" I am never going to get the cubes out of my head now.

"I was kind of out of it...sense, grab, they are awfully similar." I've still got 3 bubbles. I'm surprised I'm aware I've still got 3 bubbles. I'm not meditating at all right now. "So uhh...what do I do with these bubbles?"

"Well first off, don't try to shrink wrap anything. Practice manipulating them. Make other shapes. Make some as small as you can. Then as big as you can. I'll tell you when to stop." She looks slightly annoyed. With me? With herself? Hard to tell.

I don't need to meditate anymore to make the bubbles. There's this space in my head that's not filled with thoughts, just bubble constructs. I blow a ton of bubbles in there. There are bubbles bouncing all over the place. I focus and shrink one down to a point, where I'm not sure if it is a bubble or just a speck of soap. Then I collapse all the bubbles into a group, and have them merge. It's huge. But not big enough. I feel like I'm pumping an air compressor when the bubble expands outrageously, far larger than the space in my head. It doesn't appear to matter that it outgrows the mental space. Bigger. Bigger. Bigg...and I pass out.

* * *

I wake up and now my other shoulder hurts. "Did you punch me again?!"

"Don't be a baby. This is the learning process." I'm a little distracted by a full greenish bar and an empty blueish bar that's blinking in my upper left-hand vision. I turn to get a better look at it, and it keeps moving to the upper left-hand corner. It's not blocking my vision. I can 'see' what's behind the bars. Maybe the bars aren't really there. I try to pull back and just sense the bars without moving at all.

Statistics Sheet Unlocked! Say Or Think 'Stats' To View Your Statistics.

"Ok, that did something. Why did I pass out? And why did you punch me?"

"You passed out because you ran out of energy. Making your 'bubbles' big enough right now will cause your energy to drop fast. What you are actually doing is moving energy around in very real constructs that can affect things. It's very inefficient and that's why we usually pre-shape it and use all different kinds of tricks to reduce the cost. Also known as spells."

"That's very interesting. You failed to address one point. Why did you punch me again!"

"Well, I wanted you to wake up. People usually sleep it off if they run out of energy and you have more training to do."

"Can't you just nudge my shoulder or call my name? Why do you have to be so punchy?"

"I could, but who knows if that would work. Punching works. One hundred percent of the time, every time."

"Sadist," I whisper.

Zap. "OW!"

* * *

The next few hours are spent teaching me to recharge my energy using the mental space, or 'the workshop' as I've come to call it. Bubbles are just the beginning, but still amusing to blow around. If I stick to simple and small shapes I can pretty much do what I want without any drain on my energy. Apparently, there is a faster way to recharge using a black-hole type technique while meditating, but my self-control while meditating is 'lacking', so I'm supposed to practice manipulating the workshop while meditating later. The blue bar fluctuates as I gain and lose mental energy, so, in true gamer fashion, I'm calling it mana from now on.

A lot of what comes next is theory. I feel like most of it is from a textbook aimed at young children, but I'm not really in a position to complain. Maybe there are actual textbooks I could get? I should ask later. Jessie goes over a bunch of different types of energy, chi, qi, chakra, mana, soul, life...if you can lay a firm foundation of belief you can mold your mental energy into that type. Some people can hold multiple energies and there are various benefits for doing so, but the dissonance of holding two usually conflicting beliefs is enough to make most people pick one and stick with it.

Jessie has been around the block more than a few times, so she has a handle on most of the energies she is aware of. A perk of her particular type of reincarnation, and very rare. She isn't a master of magic, but she has a fair understanding of everything. As she ages, she expects to gain mastery over virtually everything. After all, her past lives all agreed, they should diversify to maximize their potential at the youngest ages possible. She is something of a training freak when she isn't living her 'normal' life. I can't even imagine how much she has had to keep from everyone over the years. It's sad and I told her so.

"I've had a lot of experience compartmentalizing my lives. Each life should be lived in the moment, without the weight of the past holding you down. That goes for when you have ten years behind you, or ten thousand. One of the first things I teach myself is how to block out all the other lives safely. I can still reflexively draw on their experience in danger, but it takes effort to recall things outside of my current incarnation otherwise. I control how much my lives influence me."

"Handy."

"Yes you moron, the centerpiece of my sanity is handy."

"Hey, I didn't mean it badly. It sounds useful."

"The word you are looking for is indispensable. Never mind that. Are you topped off?"

We had been waiting for my blue mana bar to fill up. It was just about there. "Close enough for government work."

"Alright. Youtube time. If you zap my phone I will make you wish for death. Here." She hands over her phone with a playlist on the science behind static electricity.

"Is this going to be on the test?"

"Funny. The test will either blow your fingers off or produce a mild shock, so you decide." That seemed a little excessive, I don't think she would trust me not to blow my fingers off right now. I should probably pay attention anyway.

Interestingly, there were several videos in the same theme. Nearly all the videos showed examples of static electricity, but some went into the math. There was the difference between ionization and static electricity, and the differences in the amounts of energy. About an hour later I felt I had a solid grasp on static electricity and how it was caused. If only I had a balloon and a sweater...

Jessie and Mom were in the kitchen discussing the pros and cons of various apartment listings.

"What's up?"

"You are moving out of the dorms, but don't worry about it. We've got it covered." Great. They are planning my life for me now.

"Do I get a say in where I move?"

Jessie and Mom give each other a glance before simultaneously saying, "Nope."

"Well, you should know I want a view, the morning light, at least two bedrooms, a study, a living and dining room, and kitchen worthy of my talents."

"Duly noted," Mom responds in a very dry tone.

"Did you zap my phone?"

"No. I don't know why you were worried about it, you haven't shown me how to zap yet."

"Well, there isn't much left between theory and execution. You can visualize your understanding of the concepts in your mind space and push them out into reality."

Oh. I do have a balloon and a sweater. It takes a moment for me to form them in any kind of detail, throwing all the numbers and practical suffering, I mean...experience...into each object, and then shrinking them down. I push the tiny concept balls into my thumb and index finger and wait for a spark. No spark. I try rubbing my fingers together. Nothing. I am playing the world's tiniest violin.

"What am I doing wrong?" Jessie has been watching me with that far away look she used before when she said I was a Rubix cube monster.

"Not enough power."

I reform the concepts and make them bigger this time. Bigger than my actual fingers. I can see my mana dip slightly as I push them out of the workshop, through my arm, and to my fingers. I let go and there's an immediate spark. Ow.

Skill 'Mathemagics' Unlocked!

Skill 'Lightning Manipulation' Unlocked! Sub-Skill 'Static Electricity' Unlocked!

"Just so you know, if you try that on me, not only will it not work, I will make you regret it." She knew my plan all along!

"Ok, but, theoretically, if I wanted to shock something at a distance, how would I go about it?"

"There are two ways. You can push the ideas out fast enough and get them to the target, or form the ideas at the target. People tend to specialize in one or the other as either takes quite a bit of skill. Forming something like a fireball near yourself and pushing it away is much less taxing. Also, don't do that. You'll start a fire and probably burn the flesh off your hand."

"Message received loud and clear." This magic stuff was starting to sound risky without some regeneration or healing magic. Still worth it if I can return a few of those shocks.

"Don't play with fire in the house dear. Also, we have an apartment to go see before it gets dark. Go get your father so we can get moving."

Dad is in the back yard setting up tires in what looks like some kind of obstacle course. Where did he get so many tires? I don't think it's for today, it will be dark before we get back from apartment hunting. More to look forward to tomorrow I guess. I call him in, and we all pile into the car, off to see an apartment.

Jack Ambrose Webb's Statistics

Strength

33

Wisdom

22

Agility

38

Charisma

26

Dexterity

41

Luck

3

Vitality

31

Transcend

2

Intelligence

45