Genny nodded her head as the next floor went by. “After the Dean’s is yellow,” Genny explained. “White is two more down.”

“So yellow is the Law College, right?” I asked. “What kind of magic do they study there?”

Genny laughed. “No, it’s just law. As in lawyers.”

“Lawyers attend a magic university?”

Genny shrugged. “OU used to be a law school a long time ago. All the magic stuff came later, but they never got rid of the college. It’s really exclusive. You basically can’t get in without a recommendation from someone important, which means you can’t get in. They used to train ministers there for the church, but that stopped when they pulled their funding. The rumor is they’ve started taking in the sons of Ardyllan pirate lords since then, but I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Okay, wait,” I said. “If you guys actually have pirates, that’s kind of cool.”

“I know, right?” Genny pointed to the next floor going by. “Next is green,” she said. “I thought I’d stop by and see my professor during his office hours, but I don’t mind taking the stairs up one flight. I brought you all this way. I might as well take you to Lightglow’s office.”

“Hey, thanks so much, I really appreciate it,” I said.

We descended past a floor with a mix of red and green paint on the walls. There just seemed to be random splotches of both colors mixed together with no intention or purpose. These rissians really couldn’t see the difference. After that, came a floor as white as fresh snowfall. Genny let go of the handle in the middle of the stairs and approached the edge. “Follow just like this,” she said. “And be careful to grab the railing when you land or you can fall backwards.” I watched her stick her foot out the side of the stairs as the ground approached. Every floor had handles all around the stairs at regular intervals to grab onto. I copied Genny and land gently landed on the floor, grabbing the handle to pull myself forward. It really wasn’t any more jarring than using an escalator.

“As cool as that was,” I said, “I don’t think it would pass safety standards in the US.”

“Well, if you fall off, there’s no better place to do it than here!” Genny said cheerily. “Come on, I know where Lightglow’s office is.” She led me down a hall with names listed at every intersection with arrows pointing in the direction those people could be found. We took our first right, then found the office a few doors down. He was near the perimeter of the building, likely so he could have a nice view.

“Lightglow guest lectured in one of my classes sophomore year,” Genny said before going inside. “He’s really nice.”

We entered the office to find a waiting room overseen by a woman sitting behind a white desk. She had curly, shoulder-length hair that was divided down the center: natural black on one side, white on the other. She looked up from a book when we came in. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Vince here needs to see Professor Lightglow,” Genny said.

“I don’t know a Vince. Does he have an appointment?” the woman asked.

Genny looked at me expectantly. “I have this,” I said and slid the letter Clarice had given me across the woman’s desk. She cut the letter open with a long fingernail and started reading. She frowned. “One minute,” she said. “I’ll get the professor.” She popped out of her chair and disappeared into the door behind her.

“This for some kind of scholarship?” Genny asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing like that. I just have a problem I was told Professor Lightglow could solve.”

“An uncurable?” Genny guessed.

“Is it that obvious?” I asked.

“Well, you seem kind of sickly. Plus, whatever you got clearly stunted your growth.”

I sighed. “I’d rather not talk about my condition.”

“I have a healing Skill,” Genny offered. “I could try to heal you. I don’t mind.”

“Thanks for the offer, but a priest told me most healing magic would just make me worse.”

“Oh,” Genny said. “Well mine doesn’t work like most healing Skills. I can even use it to repair objects. That’s why I transferred majors.”

“Repair… objects?” I repeated. I dug into my pocket and pulled out my broken phone. “Objects like this?” I asked.

Genny’s face scrunched up. “What… is that?”

“It’s called a phone,” I said. “Can you fix it?”

“Maybe,” Genny said. She took the phone, placed it on the secretary’s desk, then laid her hand on it. The phone started to vibrate under her hand. I heard a cracking sound, kind of like glass breaking. When she pulled her hand away the phone looked brand new. Her eyes went wide. “Cool! It worked!” She handed the phone back to me, grinning from ear-to-ear.

“Holy cow!” I said. “You actually did it. I didn’t know what I was going to do with this broken thing. Thank you so much!”

“Oh, noooo. It was nothing,” Genny said, but she couldn’t keep the smile from her face.

“Why did you seem so surprised?” I asked as I took the phone back.

“Just that it helps when I know what the thing I’m fixing is supposed to look like, and I’ve never seen anything like that before. I figured the broken glass wasn’t supposed to be all cracked, and well, it worked!”

I pressed the power button on my phone and it began its boot sequence. The screen lit up.

“Oh,” Genny said, looking over my shoulder. “It’s some kind of Lightstick?”

“No, it’s way more than that,” I said. “In simple terms, it kind of has a brain of its own that can record information for later, do math. More things than I could really describe to you unless we had a few hours to talk.”

Once my phone finished turning on I saw the battery was at 13%. It wasn’t like I could drive down to the store to buy a new charger, so I’d have to get creative. In the meantime, I wanted to use the last bit of juice to check some things. I went to my gallery so see if that picture I took of the harpy was still on there. It wasn’t. My whole gallery was empty. I opened up my text messages. The last message was sent to Katie and read:

Not feeling well. Think I’m going to stay in tonight. Have fun without me. XOXO

That message was from almost a year ago, right after I got the phone. What’s more, I was sure I’d deleted all my old conversations with Katie after we broke up. Information that was supposed to be on it was gone, and some that was supposed to be deleted was back. It was like… she’d sent my phone back in time to when it didn’t used to be broken.

Genny was hovering next to my shoulder, staring at my screen with wide-eyed wonder. “What are all those colors and pictures?” she asked. “It looks like some foreign language.”

“That’s just how a phone works,” I told her. “It shows you stuff.” I went into the settings and turned on both Airplane Mode and Power Save mode. I wasn’t sure what else I could do with it for now. Almost all its memory had been wiped.

“But what was that language?” Genny asked. “I’ve never seen characters like that. All the lines were so straight.”

“It’s called English,” I said. “It’s what we speak where I’m from. I’m glad you fixed it, but I need to get some of that electricity I was telling you about or it’s going to die soon.”

“It’s… alive?”

“Uh. Kind of, but not really. It can think, but it doesn’t have consciousness.”

“Like an animal?” Genny asked. “An animal that eats electricity?”

“I’m not really sure that’s—”

The door to the back office swung open, interrupting my conversation with Genny. A rissian that would have been considered tall even by their freakish standards strode into the waiting room. Beyond being tall, the man was also wide—both at the chest and at the face. He had a streak of white dyed into his short hair at either temple. Between that, his black suit, and his mustache, he reminded me of those old-timey, distinguished English gentlemen that don’t really exist anymore. His face had a sort of upward tilt to the eyes and mouth that I could only describe as “friendly”.

“Miss Regina!” he said in a gravely voice. “I hope you’re here because you’ve reconsidered your major. I can get you into an accelerated program to cover everything you’ve missed. You won’t even have to graduate late.”

“No, sir,” Genny said. “I’m happy with Professor Endiss. I was just helping a new student find your office.”