New character name meanings

Luz: Light in Spanish

Manzi: Water in Zulu

Bǎo: Treasure in Chinese 宝 or Bāo: Bud in Chinese 苞

When Storm Works for Constellation

Two thousand years later.

It was Rain Day. The one day a year when weather modification spells were altered to allow a thunderstorm downtown. Storm's favorite day of the year, actually, since aeh worked in Constellation's downtown headquarters. Aeh tapped aer foot with anxious energy, sitting by the window waiting outside Song's office for their fourth meeting. Gray rain from a gray sky spattered the windows like rapid starfire artillery, and every once in a while the wind would pick up and moan so loud the whole office would stop to listen.

What Storm hated was to stop. To stop moving, to wait, to be stuck wasting time, like aeh was now. Even if aeh had a good thunderstorm to watch in the meantime.

Glancing around the open concept 72nd floor of the levitating Alcyone skyscraper, aeh saw that everyone else was hard at it, heads bent over stellar tablets. More than one magician tampered with getting a new spell correct, right at aer desk. Managers stormed the conference rooms as if leading teams into battle. Secretary magicians hovered legions of coffee and cha cups in front of their gnomons, directing the flying cups (full of scalding hot liquid) to the worker bees at their desks.

Even Exequi Song's secretary Luz had to look up from an important-looking call to tell Storm, "Please wait here and take a seat. Exequi Song will be with you shortly," and then needed to get back to her important commlink conversation. Here was Storm sitting outside a closed door doing nothing at hora septa on a dies Lunes. It was infuriating.

How dare Exequi Song be late. No idea whether she was inside the office or out, prioritizing other work or off on a long, luxurious lunch date with her wife. Seated close to Luz's desk, Storm's black airweave heels occasionally kicked Luz's ankle under her rosy Azaleawood desk, the table top of which floated without the support of legs.

The floating desktops only further inflamed Storm's outrage at the company aeh worked for today. Now, the cost of an airweave spell to encase aer feet with inky undulating shadow clouds and great arch support was worth every solidae per minute. One truly had to wonder, particularly if one took a moment to extrapolate the magic for one frivolous fashion spell — what was the price per minute of every levitating desktop on Alcyone's penthouse floor? Not to mention the cost of levitating Alcyone tower itself round the clock for several millennia.

Stars. If magic could run out, Julia Mars would never waste it on such trivial luxuries as every fucking thing constantly and eternally levitating. This company was full of stars damn shit.

Finally along came Song. And with her came two cups of hot cha wrapped in invisible airweave to-go spell cups. Surprisingly, they weren't held aloft by the power of the stars, but by Song's two hands.

"Peace offering," said Song, battling a wayward coil of her hair with her shoulder, since her hands were full. "It's from Bay's cafe. Rosemary cha or buttercream?"

"How frugal of you to carry a mano." Most licensed magicians would have a gnomon out, directing their cups to fly through the office, leaving hands free. Storm took the green liquid in its transparent mug, predicting correctly that it was rosemary, and inhaled its evergreen and soil scent.

"We're deep in debt, making a few little sacrifices," Song confided. Her office door still opened itself at her unspoken will.

Of course her family was in debt. Two children, two in vivo fertilization starborns, four immortality subscriptions, magicians college tuition to save for, color spell subscriptions, unlimited link subscriptions on a family plan, a levitating penthouse, and the latest motos, entirely for show, since the entire family could get anywhere they wanted instantaneously with unlimited link portals. That sure would add up to some debt.

Not to mention, Song's wife ran a flying cafe that must be running them into the ground for the operating and levitating costs alone. In this economy, Bay's cafe, Bar Volo, had to be keeling its death throes.

"Doesn't it seem a bit silly to live magicless rather than cancel a few subscriptions? Or sell the levitating home, or your moto? Or Bar Volo, for that matter."

"Doesn't it seem silly to cast beverages into the air with starlight when you have two functioning hands?"

"You're not wrong. In conclusion we're an entirely ridiculous society." Storm sat down facing the window ten thousand feet above the capital. The Alcyone flew a little higher every year, and now Song's view was mainly cloud, cumulonimbus and nimbostratus, or cumulus and altostratus depending on the day.

Lightning cracked, lighting the sky with blinding power, branch by branch through the severe gray towering wash of cloud, beyond which the skyline and its thousands of floating skyscrapers restaurants, attractions and businesses couldn't be seen, as they were hidden behind all that cloud, and most of it went on a thousand feet below. Storm loved to look up from a focused work session to see the bars and coffee shops float by, to watch aer favorite Lillywoods grow ever higher until their branches chased the bottom of the Central Library building orb, to witness the adolescents with learning permits almost crash motos that lit on the wind, cruising slowly with amazed panic on their faces.

Even to see a caravan of Lower Stratus protestors sail by, shouting and chanting with magic amplified criticisms of the corporation.

A decade ago, Song could have actually watched the life of the city orbit her office, which proved just one more reason not to get promoted at the company. 

"You've been promoted," said Song, taking her seat.

Just as predicted. "No. Nope. That's not what I asked you for, Exequi. I don't need a promotion, and you know that."

"The company has needs too. For example, we need a new head of gnomon R+D since Exequi Manzi has filed for retirement. You can have her office, it's just one floor below—"

"Don't do this to me. Don't promote me and call that my reward for hard work and loyalty."

"The party in your honor is tomorrow. It'll be unforgettable. It's at the new rooftop fountain; we'll be able to breathe up top since the oxygenation spells have been fully tested."

"Cancel it. Don't waste the stellar energy on me. I don't need it."

"What about the salary bump? You deserve it."

"What am I going to do with more solidae, buy a penthouse? I already have one. Give it to the poor? There aren't any more. I don't need more salary, Exequi Song. You know that, because I paid the downpayment for a starborn thirty years ago. That's what I want. If you're going to reward my work, get me off the waitlist."

"That's not going to be possible today, Storm. I'm afraid you're number 99 in line."

"I've been number 99 for six months."

"No one has died."

"In six months?"

Song shrugged. She took a sip of her buttercream cha. "The purpose of this company is to improve society in every way possible. We're at the pinnacle of that work. No one starves anymore, no one goes hungry. Safety and security is unparalleled in Solari history. There's little crime, and unprecedented security to prevent homicide. Disease has been eradicated, and all unintended consequences of magic have been ironed out."

"Accidents?"

"Happen. But rarely with fatalities. We've reached the end of mortality, my friend. The end of death. I'm sorry you have been unable to start a family, but you and every citizen of Soliara benefit from the most prosperous, healthy and safe time in all of history. And now our population of immortals is at absolute max capacity. The stars won't allow any more."

"So there aren't any animae to go around?"

"I'm afraid not."

"There's no stockpile of immortal souls somewhere?"

"No."

"You're saying the collective animae pool has run dry."

"That's what I'm saying."

"No secret store for the Upper Strata?"

"None."

"So you're saying, if Julia Mars decides tomorrow that aeh wants a starborn bundle of joy, aeh can't have one? If Mars really wanted couldn't aeh jump the line, then hide for the duration of the pregnancy and raise aer daughter in secrecy?" All of this level of detail was added in response to an expected and unspoken accusation of an improbable and inconvenient conspiracy theory. "Or someone with a slightly lower profile, perhaps? Rich people hide from the public all the time, for all sorts of reasons."

The voices of a few friends entered aer mind to remind aer of the irony of a Gloriam, the descendent of the founders of Constellation, calling others "rich people," but the point stood. In aer mind, Storm reminded the voices of Amafu, Mingxia and Inyanga that the Upper Strata was a whole other class above that old money.

"I'm sorry," said Exequi Song. "But this meeting is going the same way it always does, except that this time you're being offered a bigger office and a raise of millions of solidae. I can never understand why some of you people get so desperate to reproduce."

"Some of us parens? It's the hormones. You haven't felt the biological clock ticking. Switch your reproductive functions back on and you'll understand. Or you could ask your wife about it."

"Perhaps you should turn them back off if they're making you this insane."

"A logical solution. But since I'm insane, I think I'll ignore that suggestion. You're only offering me the raise to shut me up."

The meeting ended the same way it always did, except this time Storm left the office feeling downright murderous.

#

"If I want to have a starborn, all I have to do is kill 99 people," Storm told Inyanga. They were at Storm's favorite bar in the Shade, a landed dive called 4A — for its location at Fourth and Aries.

Aeh threw back some fortified nero made by Bao in the back room. If you knew that Bao's conjuring was illicit, you could haggle the price down from cheap as dirt to basically free. If aeh did get aer starborn, Storm would have to give up the drink for a little while.

It burned so good.

Inyanga stared down the glass of freshly conjured libations that tasted as if they had been aging in a cellar for decades — velvety oak on the palate and cherry on the nose, but burning like moonshine — and said, as if to the wine, "What if you could do it with just one?"

"One? One what. One murder? Starsfire, I was kidding, not brainstorming."

"Me too." Inyanga's chin reached inches from the table, head drooping with drowsiness. Girl worked at a food production firm that tried to link sustenance to all of the impoverished that still existed outside the Solari empire, innovating spells from prima lux to prima notte. The poor didn't even exist in Soliara anymore, but of course if any licensed magician was going to solve world hunger, it would be Inyanga.

"Kidding,"  Inyanga insisted. "Wouldn't it be funny if you could just directly steal the animus of someone you don't like, to fuel your own immortality and that of your child?"

Storm had rarely seen this dark side of aer friend. "Hilarious." But then, certain injustices had been cooking under pressure for . . . thousands of years.

"Like our Constellation liaison, Echo. I can't take her. I'd steal her eternal soul like that." Inyanga snapped ringed fingers. "What if you could steal animae from the Strata and give it to the . . . us?"

It was kind of funny. Storm surprised aerself with laughing.

"You're on to something."

"Whose would you steal. Julia Mars's?"

"I can't stand the head of the Security Systems department?" Storm suggested.

Inyanga flicked the glass and watched plasma liquid vibrate. "Honestly . . . I think it could be possible to develop such a spell. We're not held back so much by possibility as legality . . . and honestly . . . it might be a more human option."

"More humane than what?"

A nod up over Storm's shoulder indicated that aeh should look. Behind aer, a news display link cut from a newscaster to a scene the magician replayed with a form of time travel magic. A crime scene. The black night lit up by stellar spotlights on the sprawled body in bloodstained cloudy blue denim.

"Do you think it was the Lower Strata? Fulfilling a longstanding threat to terrorize the populace if Constellation doesn't solve the animae shortage?"

Storm gulped down more contraband vinum. "One down, ninety-eight to go."

Thank you for reading Storm and Inyanga's star in Constellations, please give a star if you enjoyed reading.