literature

The First Mistake

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Several years before the events of Transcendence...




"Look, I'm sorry! I'm going to fix this, don't worry," I pleaded, backing down the hallway with my hands before me.
"That is really easy for you to say", She snarled.
"Doesn't make it wrong! Look, it's not that bad, okay? At least you can talk!"
"To you! I ought to bite your damn head off!"
"That"...is something you may be entirely capable of... "wouldn't solve anything."
"It would be revenge," she grumbled.
"It wouldn't accomplish anything."
"No, but it would feel good."
"And then you'd be stuck," I argued.
"What do I look like right now?" She took another step forwards.
"I can fix this!" I assured, holding my hands up to calm her down as I retreated another foot backwards.
In a blink, I was sprawled out on my back, with her pinning me to the ground.
"Will you?" Her voice held a certain cold tone to it.
"Yes!" I screamed. She stood down, and I pushed myself to my feet.
With a huff, she walked down the hall.
"Crazy bitch..." I muttered. Wait... she heard that, didn't she?
As soon as the stupidity of my almost silent outburst had even occurred to me, I tensed for the hit. Before I could blink, I was on the ground again. This time there was blood involved.
I closed my eyes and waited for her to kill me. I could hear her heavy breaths right above my face.
Man, what a way to go.
A sharp pain in my chest prompted me to open my eyes with a gasp. She was glaring right at me.
"You're going to fix this."
Well that beats dying. I nodded vigorously, trying to avoid her gaze.
The pain in my chest exploded, prompting me to writhe and yell.
"Look at me."
Crazy bitch. I locked eyes with her, sucking in air in ragged gasps.
"You're going to fix this."
"Y- yes."
In a flash of movement, a line of red appeared across my cheek.
"Don't mess up."
And with that, she stormed off.
I waited for a few seconds, making sure she was truly gone, before crying out in pain. There was a small cut in my chest, not too deep, and a rather jagged slash in my left cheek. Both stung immensely.
Shaking, I got to my feet. Applying pressure as well as I could, I stumbled down the hall and into the washroom.
I stepped into the room, and grabbed the first cabinet I saw.
"Where's that damn first aid kit..... Pisser." The empty shelf stared back at me. Giving up for the moment, I spooled off a few squares of toilet paper and held them to my chest before grabbing more and pinching it between my shoulder and cheek.
I sat down on the toilet to try to get my breathing back under control. Everything started to feel cold.
Am I in shock? I tilted my head to see myself in the mirror. Wow, that's a lot of blood. Man these cuts hurt. I stood to sit back down on the floor and keep my head closer to the ground.

I could only claim a qualified success.
That's a solid yes on the "in shock"
When I regained consciousness, my head was much closer to the ground, but much more so than I had intended. With a grunt, I crawled over to the next set of cabinets.
Bandages... where.... there we go. With box in hand, I pushed myself to the height of the sink. After fumbling with the tap, I managed to splash some water on the bloody side of my face.
"She doesn't half ass these things, does she?" I asked myself aloud while surveying the damage.
I tied the bandage fairly tight around my chin, my cheeks, and the back of my head. With that sorted, the chest wound proved to be a simple matter of slapping a large adhesive bandage on it.
After popping an ibuprofen for good measure, I stumbled out of the bathroom and collapsed into a chair.
Today could definitely be going better.


--Earlier that day--


Okay... slowly... com'on, ya' bastard...
"Richard, I'm going to take Maya for a walk!", Céline called from inside the house. I jumped, sending a vial full of ink crashing to the ground.
Pisser!
"Okay Céline. Thanks for letting me know." I sighed, reaching down to pick up the fragments. Paper towels... A good chunk of the roll was spent mopping up the mess. After washing my hands, I picked up the page of glyphs and gave it a good look.
Seems alright to me. And damned if I was going to rewrite it unless I was certain I had ruined it. A few little speckles of ink were on the periphery of the page, but nothing seemed to have landed inside the actual symbols.
In theory, this spell would combine the two energy stores that I owned, getting the best features of both of them. This was a fairly generic exercise; if it were software, as a colleague of mine loved to compare, it would be a 20-line Python hack. Appropriately enough, it was just going on a sheet of paper for immediate use and destruction. The simplicity of the spell made it a hazard to leave lying around, as, though I wanted to fuse the energy stores, I really had no intention of fusing, say, my car and lawnmower, or any other two objects to cross my mind that magic "decided" were similar enough.
And when one has a curious pet and a curious fiancée, a certain degree of caution is advisable.
This seems like a good point to take a break.
I dropped the sheet down on the benchtop and walked inside to get a beer, grabbing my notebook on the way.

With a Molson procured, I sat at the kitchen table, reviewing my notes for how to continue the spell.
Five minutes of mumbling later, I was down to the final trace.
"That pipes there...." I said to myself as I traced out the line, before circling the description of the last glyph. "And that's it?"
I stood, beer and notebook in hand. "All right!"

A few minutes later, I set down my pen and ruler to behold the creation before me. Victory. I double checked all the traces - thin, precise lines that told magic what to do things with. None of them were the cleanest I had ever made, but none were particularly awful, and all seemed to go where they had to.
That left only the invocation - the portion that makes everything else occur. This was a simple pattern that I had long ago committed to memory. A squiggle here... a squiggle there... close enough... need a symbol for that... it'll work.

With that finished, I took the page and looked it over one last time for errors, being careful not to activate it. This part had always been difficult to me; my magic seemed to be on a hair trigger, for better or worse. It made some things amazingly easy, but sometimes a little too easy.

My mother had always been envious, and a little frightened, by this talent. It had bit me in the ass about once per year, and I had a suspicion that I was about due for this annual installment of bother.

Pushing past my doubts, I grabbed the box containing my power stores. Inside were a handful of metal devices of various descriptions. All of them were magical energy stores, some filled to the brim and others gathering dust.
In the grand tradition of inventors and magicians alike, I decided to keep the stakes low on the test run, using two of the cheapest parts I had. These were pieces of stamped sheet metal with plastic dividers in between, originally sold as paperweights at the local stationery store. They had paltry draw and charge characteristics, but they were cheap, durable, and I already owned them. The family heirloom units were stored a bit more carefully. Handmade leather pouches bearing the history of their almost-century of service. In the next box over was what was to be the main event: A really big store. Roughly football (real football) sized, it could store enough energy to do some serious work in one fell swoop. However, due to a design oversight, it was incapable of providing enough power to boil a kettle in less than five minutes. It probably stored enough energy to boil a small lake, but being unable to use that in under a week hampered its convenience. The idea was that I could combine it, through this spell, with the other store in the box, which was more in the teacup-firehose range. The result of the merger was to be a large store that could be drained quickly.

The spell worked, or, at least, was intended to work, by merging the attributes of the two items in the greatest possible way, and blend the two together to meet those specifications. Immeasurable characteristics, like appearance and form, would be merged a bit more holistically; magic always seemed to play nice with that sorts of thing. My mother had said that the world worked in mysterious, convenient ways, like how we could boss it around with lines drawn on paper.

I set the two pieces of metal down, one atop another, on the workbench. The spell was set down next to them.
"Alright, lets kick the tires and light the fires!" I exclaimed, peering at the sheet of paper.
The invocation fired off in my mind. I concentrated on the two objects.
"Kachunk!" The two became one instantly.
"Yes!" I picked up the new item. About the same size as the previous items, but heavier and thicker. "That worked!"
With the newly created store in hand, I walked inside, hmm-ing and hawing over how to test it. And then it dawned on me.
I could do with a cup of tea.
And so the cup came out, and I heated it magically with just the phone-sized brick to power the process.
Once the bag had steeped, I had grown confident enough to try again.


And so I wound up before the workbench, readying the next round of the spell.
This might be worth doing properly in the future, I mused, maybe make it properly in CAD.
Setup was minimal. Within seconds, I had it all set up. With the two stores set in front of me, I focused on the spell. Then on the chunks of metal. Then on -
"Richard! We're back!"
- Céline and Maya.
My vision blurred as all the energy within the room was pulled into action, including my own. The block on the table before me rose into the air, and gave off the ethereal of magic. But this glow cast shadows on the far walls of the workshop.
I fell to my knees, trying to think of anything but the mistake I was still making.
Within a few seconds, calm returned to the shop for all but myself. I knelt, gasping for breath.
"Oh, crap."
The second invocation would have fizzled out because of the power requirements, perhaps exploding my other new power source in the process, had I not just created the new, bigger, power source. However, after half a second, the large energy store had been assembled, presenting enough energy and power to cause some harm. The thing with more powerful tools is that they let you make mistakes at an unprecedented speed.    

This one was at an unprecedented scale, too.

Crap, crap, crap...
I called out as I sprinted out of the garage and into the house.
"Céline! Are you okay?"
She screamed. It did not sound right.
I came to the front hall, where I found Maya strewn out on the ground. "Céline, where are... Oh..."
Oh...
Maya rolled onto her side. Or maybe it was Céline. Or maybe my mind was playing tricks on me.
Oh, I really screwed up.
"Céline? Are you okay?" I bent down, putting my hand on her back.
She was crying. And could I blame her?
Her body was in disarray. Any given spot was a firm reminder of the woman I love, while at the same time a strong indication of my golden retriever shone through.
I had just transformed my wife into a dog-woman.
She was going to kill me.
'"Honey..."
"You...", she sniffled, "you did this...." She rolled over, craning her neck to look at me.
"I'm sorry, Céline. I'm so, so sorry. This... this wasn't supposed to happen! It was supposed to be just a test, but then you and Maya distracted me..."
"So now it's my fault?!" She yelled, jumping up to her feet.
"No, that's not-"
"Then what did you mean?! My walking into the house was enough for you to almost kill me?!"
I began to back down the hall,
"I... Look, I'm sorry! I'm going to fix this, don't worry."


--Minutes later--


After ruminating for a while, I picked up the phone and called an old friend. The cheek wound firmly objected to this motion, but I carried on.
Yes, this day could certainly be going better.
"Hello?"
"Hi Kevin, this is Richard."
"Oh, hi, how are you? It's been a while!"
"Things are not going well. You?"
"Oh, can't complain. You've been better? So what went pear shaped?"
"Do you have any idea how to safely undo a combination spell?"
"I think I've read some literature on the matter, yes. Why? What did you accidentally combine?"
"Do you think you could find that literature? I'm kinda in a pinch."
"Probably, yes."
"Man, you're a lifesaver."
"But now I'm very curious..."
"Does it matter?"
"Knowing you? Yes."
"Okay, fine, Céline and Maya." I admitted with a sigh, bracing myself.
He exploded.
"You idiot! Have you no sense at all? You utter buffoon!"
"Yes, I-"
"I ought to come over there and give you a piece of my mind!" He shouted, voice crackling over the phone line.
"Look, are you-"
"How could you have been so stupid?"
"Are you going to help me or not?"
"I'm going to help her. You're going to do everything you can." He sighed, mumbling something with short words in it. "I'll be over tomorrow."
"Uh... Why not tonight?"
"I'd probably die driving, what with how enraged I am." Then he hung up.
"...okay then." I sighed.
Careful not to cross paths with Céline, I walked from the living room to the garage. The now entirely drained magic store was sitting on the workbench. It was hot to the touch from having been run rather hard when I made The Mistake.
"Okay, so the spell worked..." I mumbled to myself, "now how do I undo it?"
I grabbed a marker and a whiteboard, and began slapping down notes.
Céline's transformation had ended in her becoming about 50% Golden Retriever by my estimate - I was unlikely to be able to do much more research until she calmed down a little. Magic is convenient, so she would remain alive until further action is taken, which is a good start.
The spell had performed exactly as it was supposed to on the two energy stores, before firing again, god-dammit, when I became distracted.
The initial firing had used a drop of the energy from the test piece. The subsequent firing had then drained practically all of the newly made super-store. This disparity in energy use made sense; power draw for this spell was dependent on, according to the reference book, complexity and mass. Maya, last I checked, weighed a lot. Céline was the lighter of the two. So combining 200 pounds of dog, and an I-would-never-ask amount of woman, drained that store, many of the others in the room, and some of my energy - not that I had much in the first place. Furthermore, a human is much more complicated than a chunk of aluminum, but that goes without saying.
Since magic had a tenuous but nonetheless existent relationship with the laws of thermodynamics, taking things apart carefully takes more energy than taking them apart carelessly, and less than putting them together. Luckily, the reference book had a table of estimates. For this, the reverse rate was labelled as something like 90%, so I'd need to recharge the energy store, or mooch one off of Kevin.

With these notes written down, I picked the spell back up and checked it again. In the notes I had made about this spell, there was a comment about the limitations of it as it was designed.
In red pen, beneath this section, "This should have a filtering element on it to prevent collateral damage." You idiot.
So that was my first mistake.
For the sake of certainty, I flicked through the reference book to the page I had written in the margin of my notes.
As I scanned the page, my eyes progressively grew wider. I stopped at the bottom, and re-read the entire page.
The glyph at the root of matters, which is to say, the one that did the actual merging, was not intended to work on living beings. In fact, the reference book was quite clear: "For combination of living beings, see page 851. Glyph#247-A, general purpose combination, should NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, BE USED FOR THE COMBINATION OF LIVING BEINGS [7]."
Trying not to panic quite yet, I assumed the best.
That could mean a lot of things.
Footnote seven, however, did resolve this confusion.
"This glyph does not make accommodations for its inversion. While this does not preclude the separation of the two targets, it does dramatically increase the power required to perform the task. Factors of 100 to 900 have been measured, making this very impractical for circumstances where the result is not intended to be permanent."
"One hundred?" I whimpered. This was beyond what I could achieve. Not just by a little bit. Not by a factor of two. By several orders of magnitude. "God damn."
This ruled out all but the more esoteric methods of getting power. Certain creatures could be harnessed to do this, maybe, along with "soul crystals", which were much further into the realm of ethically dubious than I generally cared to venture. Desperate times, however...
I marked these down on my whiteboard. "Soul crystals & creatures for power?"
With these thoughts in mind, I ducked out of the garage and into the study in search of the Black Book.
Generally, I stayed out of the Black Book.



The whiteboard was starting to get a little crowded when the clock chimed once. The Black Book, however, had remained untouched.
For the second time that night, I opened up my notebook and copied down everything I could from the whiteboard. The spaces for headings and dates were paid no heed.
A few methods of generating power had been identified, but most, if not all, were impractical. And this was with a rather broad definition of "practical". The scales involved were too immense to evade outside detection - where could I get access to the tools to create a multiple-ton piece of metal with no obvious purpose? Unless I could hammer my car into an accumulator - "Maybe?", I had written in the notes - I had no way of creating a big enough source, bar the use of something, or someone, who had access to one. And I knew of no such people.

With a sigh, I reached for the Black Book.
On the inside cover there was a handwritten note.
"Richard,
I hope you never need to know any of this. But on the off chance you do, you'll thank me for having given it to you, I'm sure.
Don't do anything stupid, son.
Love,
Mary"
Thank you, mom.
So, for the first time since my eighteenth birthday, I opened the book past that first page.

The book was fascinating. The table of contents showed that "Creatures" took up significant space in the book, while "Methods of last resort" was perhaps the second most spacious section. An appendix of "Emergency spells", along with one of "Defensive spells" were perhaps half an inch at the back of the tome. All of these sections seemed like they could be useful. I immediately jumped to the last resort section.
"Power... power... 'Emergency power generation.' That'll do it."
I flipped to the associated page.
"Liquidation:
Converts a portion of soul or body into significant amounts of magical energy for immediate use. Matches extent of consumption to needs."
This made sense. In a spell, glyphs could be connected so as to channel energy between them. So I'd just need to add three or so glyphs to the inverse spell, and everything would be good to go.
Sounds about right.
With a yawn, I wrote the page number on the whiteboard. Good enough for now.
I stood up from the chair, turned off the desk lamp, and left the room. It had been a long day. And my chest was still bleeding.

The bedroom door was open, as I would normally expect. What I had not expected was walking in to find Céline waiting for me in bed, silent and watching.
I was rifling through a drawer, trying to find my pyjamas, when she spoke up.
"Any luck?"
My breath caught in my throat. Please don't kill me...
"Anything?"
"Not much," I admitted hesitantly. "A few things that might possibly work, but..."
I took off my pants and started pulling on my pyjamas.
"I'm, uh, sorry about your cheek." She muttered, head down and looking apologetic. And cute.
I coughed. "Don't worry about it." I pulled my shirt off, revealing where the other bandage was soaking up the evidence of our disagreement.
She gasped hard. "Oh, mon dieu!" She jumped out of the bed, running over to me, "I'm so sorry!" She wrapped her arms around me, licking my other cheek to show her support.
Having gotten over the feeling of imminent doom, I hugged her back. "It's alright...."
As if I hadn't felt bad enough already... and all I wanted to do was wallow in guilt...
I pulled the two of us over to the bed, just so I could sit down.
"So how have you been holding up?"
She sighed. "Pretty good, I guess?"
"How are you feeling?"
"It's so strange. Everything feels as though it's right, but I know it's wrong. The part of me that is Maya is confused but excited. The part of me that is Céline is scared, confused, and wanting this to be over." She giggled, "That must sound strange, non?"
I paused. "Yes, that's one way of putting it."
"It's funny. I'm the same woman as J'ai été hier."
"But with cuter ears?" I hazarded, reaching a hand up behind her to rub one. She convulsed with a squeal as soon as I managed to touch it. The giggling began anew. "And more ticklish?" She practically jumped backwards, carrying me down with her. I tried to keep up the tickling.
This, sadly, was for naught, as she had always been slightly stronger than me, and that had not undone by having been merged with the strongest creature in the house, Maya.
So, after a few seconds of her giggling and me grinning like a moron, I realized that I was on my back, hands pinned to the bed, and she was giving me a devilish look, panting through a wide smile while her tail wagged furiously behind her.
"Oh no." This is gonna suck.
Slowly, she brought her head towards my neck. Then, in a quick motion, she licked the underside of my chin.
And I'd thought her ears were ticklish!



A while later, I returned to bed after having managed to brush my teeth and get my pyjamas on after our little "fight".
She had seemed far more relaxed about the whole situation than she had earlier today, playful even.
But, as I left the bathroom, I heard a quiet sobbing.
Oh. Crap.
"Honey? Céline?"
I sat down on her side of the bed. She had buried her head in the pillows. I put my hand on her back.
"Don't touch me." She whimpered. And that's how I wind up sleeping on the couch.
"What's wrong?"
"Care to guess?" she snapped
"You can tell me."
"I'm just so confused, Richard" She looked up at me, eyes full of tears "I don't know why I did what I did earlier. That wasn't... wasn't Céline, it was Maya." She sniffled again "I don't know what I am, who I am. Just back then, I was having fun. But then I remembered being... being a person, and..."
"I know it's hard. This time tomorrow, it'll all be back to normal."
"It won't be." She told me, shaking her head.
"It will be! I can fix this!"
"Only the parts you can see, though."
"What do you mean?"
"I'll never be the same after this. Céline and Maya; we've shared too much." She sighed and pulled herself higher onto her pillows. "I'll be back to normal, with regular ears, no god-damn tail...  but the memories won't go."
"You don't know that."
She harrumphed, and rolled to face the other side of the bed.
I was a little tired at this point, and gave up on trying to reassure her, opting instead to walk to that other side of the bed.
"Goodnight, honey."
"Dormez bien."
"Toi aussi."


I did not sleep well that night. Needless to say, I do not think she didn't either. Much tossing and turning. I did not feel up to breaking the silence while we sat there for hours on end. Sometime around four o'clock, I managed to close my eyes for the last time.

I awoke, eight hours later, to an empty bed. Which I greeted with less-than mixed feelings.
Oh crap...
Walking into the kitchen in my skivvies, I found Céline sitting at the table, contemplating life.
"Bonsoir!", I proclaimed as I stepped in.
She looked at me, raising one eyebrow.
"Good evening?"
"Crap. Oops."
She chuckled, shook her head, and went back to eating her bacon and eggs.
"How are you doing today?" I asked, trying to bury my très-crappy Français.
"Well, I'm really hoping you'll fix this all."
"I will," I assured.
"I know. That doesn't make me any less antsy about it."
"When have I ever let you down?"
"Other than yesterday, Richard?"
"Other than yesterday, yeah?"
She paused. "Nothing more recent than in Mexico comes to mind."
"That wasn't that bad!"
"It wasn't this bad. And you could not have got us stranded in a nicer piece of wilderness."
"I could if I tried," I remarked, grinning.
"Don't," she warned, brandishing the spatula.
"I'll make this one up to you; get us stuck in the Bahamas next time," I continued.
She laughed - the same warm laugh that I had fell in love with when we had first met.
Before either of us could continue, the doorbell rang.

We exchanged a glance.
"Merde," she proclaimed
"I'm going to get that. It's alright, should be Kevin."
"I'll just stay here for now."
"Okay."
The bell rang again. "Yeah, I'm coming," I shouted.
I pulled the door open, looked up, got slapped in the face, looked up again, and found, just in time for him to slap in the bandaged cheek, that it was, in fact, Kevin standing at my door assaulting me. 
"What the hell, man?"
The short, burly man stormed past me, closing the door behind him, "are you insane?"
"Perhaps. Look, we've been over this!"
"You have no idea how- Why are you not wearing any pants? You have no idea how angry I am over this!" No, actually, I think I've got the gist.
"Do you want to help her or not?"
"Jackass." He turned away and headed for the kitchen. "Céline? Are you okay?"
"I've had better days."
"Lemme have a look a'cha."
She giggled.
I don't get it.
"Richard, you go be useful, get me what you were using when you did this." He waved me off, then shot over his shoulder, "And for Christ's sake, put some pants on."
I scampered off towards the study, to find it in a state of mild disarray. Just how tired was I?
I found the spell and my notebook, both entirely out of place. I also pocketed a couple pencils and a notepad - the book was mine, dammit!
With these in hand, I headed back to the kitchen, where I dumped them on the counter while trying to ignore the borderline slanderous discussion of me taking place.


After I had returned from the workshop with the evidence, Kevin seemed to have concluded his preliminary investigation.
"Alright, I see what you've gone an' done. You've goofed, good and proper."
"That your considered professional opinion?" I had to ask.
"Yes. It should be easy enough to fix, provided you didn't do anything too unusual."
I avoided his gaze.
"Oh hell." He rubbed his eyes. "The hell'd you do?"
"Here's the spell that was used. Notes are a few pages back from the split in the book here." I handed the book over to him, already open to the correct page.
He reached for the notebook, skimming over the pages for a few seconds.
"Hmm. Okay. Makes sense. Fairly generic. And you forgot the target restrictions?"
"Yeah, that's how we got into this mess." I absentmindedly looked around, finding Céline had gone back to- what was she eating? That is not bacon.
"Alright. Well, Céline and I had a nice chat about matters behind the scenes with her mind. Quite fascinating, I must say. 'Learn from your own mistakes, but it's safer and far more entertaining to learn from someone else's', yeah? Knowing you has just been a lifelong class in all kinds of things."
"Yeah, alright, can we get down to business?"
"This is business. Can you grab the reference book that this sigil was in?"
"Yeah, it's on the counter right there. Already have the bookmark in place."
"Oh, so you do. Alright, what do we have here... Combination spell. Semi-permanent. Okay, that's not good. Uh... Oh boy. Right. So, we..."
"Can't undo it without a ludicrous energy expenditure, yeah," I finished.
"I was getting to that, but there's more to it. We can explicitly work around that. And if that doesn't work,"
When that doesn't work...
"
There are ways of getting that much energy. I must confess that-"
"I'm not sure I like the idea of selling my soul." Céline piped in.
"Not yours, honey," I clarified. "You read ahead this morning, I take it?"
"You would, no?" Kevin asked.
"You're damn right I would've," I clarified.
"So, yeah, that is an option. But I think we'll leave that firmly in the category of 'methods of last resort'. That's the cephalosporin of magic."
Céline and I both gave looks of confusion: She rolled her head about thirty degrees, and I raised an eyebrow.
"It's a really strong antibiotic."
A duet of "oh"s filled the kitchen.
"So, yes, it should be possible to undo the primary issue, and get Céline back to being Céline. Fix the composition of minds."
"That's the primary issue?" She balked, glaring at him.
"Yes. Forms are very easy to change. Almost rudimentary in this sort of case. The problem would really be getting you to look exactly like Céline the Human, since she's no longer here for reference," he said, continuing to look over the document.
"And what happens to Maya in that case?" She asked nervously.
"I don't know. Frankly, I don't give a rat's-" he began.
"Uh..." I began, trying to stop him.
Céline broke down in tears, burying her face in her hands.
Crap.
I grabbed Kevin's shoulder and dragged him into the workshop, slamming the door behind me.
"Kevin, it's not that friggin' easy!"
"Well excuse me for not really prioritizing your dog over you girlfriend!"
"Maya and Céline are the same person right now. You can't say things like that. You need to commit to saving them both. Otherwise, she'd rather stay as she is."
He coughed. "What?"
"Yeah. So we need to figure this out, and I'm willing to put everything into it, you understand?"
"Even se-"
"Yes, even selling a little chunk of my soul."
"I think you vastly underestimate the risk there." He held his hands up, begging a pause for thought.
"I think you vastly underestimate the severity of the problem."
"I don't. But we shouldn't even consider that option."
"Got a better plan?"
"I'll need to get in touch with some people, see what I can figure out."
"But how long might that take?"
"Once I can line up a large enough energy store? Three days. There's a guy we use for all these shipments. Air courier. He doesn't mess around."
"Look, you don't get it. She's hurting. They're hurting. This is torture for them - can you imagine? Being stuck in a body that isn't yours?"
He stood silent for a few seconds, eyes glassed over.
"Kevin?"
He gave his head a shake.
"Yes, I reckon it's awful." He muttered coldly, then sighed. "But she'll survive." 
"I want this over as soon as possible, and I'll do anything to make it happen."
"Yeah, I get that. But you need to remember to help her through, not just make promises you can't keep."
"And what do you mean by that?" I asked, a hint of anger creeping in.
"I mean-"
The door to the kitchen popped open. "Kevin," she called.
So that's what clenching sounds like.
"...back to the task at hand, perhaps?" she asked, sounding disingenuously patient.
"Sorry." Kevin muttered, walking back into the house.
"You alright?" I asked on my way in the door.
"Yes." She reached up and kissed me on the cheek. Which is not a thing that dogs are entirely capable of, and her brief struggles ended with a lick instead. I smiled, returned the kiss, and then stepped inside.



"Okay, let's recap, then take a breather. What are our options for undoing the spell?" I asked.
A few hours had passed, and everyone was sick of poring over the pages.
"Spells. Okay. We can use a generic disenchantment or a separation spell." Kevin looked over the notes.
"Hiding the damage?" I inquired, looking at the next line of the whiteboard.
"Self driven transformation, probably temporary."
"Other routes?"
"Desperate times, desperate measures, anything we can get our hands on."
"I still don't get that one." said Céline.
"It's... almost the easiest option. If you throw enough magical energy at a sentient being, it's problems just tend to solve themselves." Kevin clarified
"There's no way that should work," she stated flatly.
"It pretty much always does," He replied with a shrug.
"Okay, great, four options. Power sources?" she continued, looking at the next line item.
"Stealing something expensive, slaying a dragon, and, uh... selling Richard's body and or soul." He pretty well spat out that final option.
I rolled my eyes. "Is that all?"
"Actually, in the 'Really, truly, last resort with no repercussions' column, we have... crap, wait, sorry, there's nothing there." He shrugged. "Yeah, that's it."
Smug bastard.
"Well, I say that... but..." He sighed, "Unless we can get our hands on tens of thousands of dollars of cash to spend on soul crystals." The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention.
"Just risks screwing things up more, no?" 
“So long as you keep your clumsy fingers off of it, it should be fine.” he assured me.
“Uh, what is a soul crystal?”, She inquired after a brief pause.
I shot a look over to Kevin. He raised his eyebrows, giving me a look. "All yours," he seemed to say.
I started with a sigh. "It's a little gem that contains the soul of a being. They store a whole crapload of power, more or less. If they break, bad things happen. If you draw too much energy, bad things happen. If you look at them the wrong way-"
"Blowin' it a touch our of proportion..." Kevin mumbled.
"-bad things happen." I confirmed.
"What bad things?" She asked while looking between us with an ear raised and head cocked.
"The soul jumps out and you become it." He explained.
"Oh." She contemplated this. "That does sound like it would be bad."
"Yes," we agreed.
"Alright, so I have get to work on Tuesday. It's Sunday today. What can we do immediately?"
"As Kevin said in his list there, we can literally transform you into a different creature, namely, 
Céline, and give you some way to change between Céline and Maya on demand."
"That's not really a fix, though, is it?" She said, "It only lets me pretend to be one or the other half, leaving the other on hiatus."
"It does keep you as one person, yes, but it does let Céline be Céline, so there is that." She raised an eyebrow at that.
"How quickly could you get that working, and how would it work? Could I switch between being ready to be in the office and ready to play frisbee in a matter of seconds?" She was literally waggling her tail in anticipation of this idea.
"I could probably get something that worked in a day, something that looks nice and is easily hidden in under a week." I ventured.
"Richard, you've done enough. I'll use your workshop, you try to iron things out with Céline." Before I could get a word in, he turned and walked out the door with notes in hand.
"Wait, what's the plan?" Céline asked.
"He's going to figure out a solution, supposedly. Claims he can have something that will let you get to work, at very least."
"What is he planning?"
"He's going to get a small thing made that should let you transform between three forms."
She was glancing about the room as I spoke, as though looking for something. After a few seconds, she spoke up. "We should go to the park."

It took a moment for the gears in my mind to synchronize and get back up to speed.
"Who should go where, now?" I stammered.
"We should go to the park. I haven't been getting any exercise today, I'm getting all jittery."
My mouth hung agape for several seconds.
"So, yes?" She ran off to the front hall as I stood confused.
"Wait, um..." I turned to followed her, trying to put words to my apprehension.
She came back almost instantly, carrying Maya's leash in her hands, and looking excited. She thrust it into my arms, shaking excitedly. Her tail was swishing back and forth.
"Uh... Céline?"
She looked back up to me expectantly. My look of confusion was mirrored by her briefly. Then her expression shifted to one of realization.
With a yelp, she bolted back into the hall.
I began to relax, grateful that I wouldn't need to defuse that situation. I turned back to the pile of notes on the kitchen counter.

My relief was short-lived, however.
Céline returned almost immediately with Maya's collar wrapped about her neck, both paw-like hands trying to fasten the clasp.
I was dumbfounded.
"Help, please?" she asked, spinning around so I could get a good look at the problem.
Too confused to not attempt to aid, I reached over and did up the clasp carefully, trying to come up with words to explain the situation.
She turned around, smiled, and darted over to the front door.
"Oh, that's... no..." I shook my head, and started to follow her to the front.
With a loud clack, the deadbolt came unlatched. "Wait, no!" I ran to the door, finding her holding the door half open, looking back over her shoulder at me. I gingerly pushed the door closed before she could slip outside. "We... uh... we can go into the backyard instead, okay?"
Without a further word, she bounded for the back door.
I let out a sigh of relief. The backyard was fenced; my neighbours would not be able to see her running about, she could go wear herself out, snap out of being Maya, and come back to whine and cry for a while as Céline.
Not ideal, but an improvement.

Praying that was sorted, I walked into the workshop.
"Kevin, how's it going?"
"You've been out of my hair for all of five minutes, how do you think it's going?"
"Nothing, then?"
"No luck, no."
I sighed. "Céline went outside. Said she was getting a little too cooped up."
He took this in, then glanced at me with a raised eyebrow "And you're not out there with her?"
"Uh... no?"
"Are you an idiot?"
"I think we've covered that already today," I replied as I walked back into the kitchen.
I grabbed a pair of shoes from the front door and threw them on, before running to the back door.
After stepping outside, I realized, with a degree of embarrassment, that my routine had kicked in, and I had grabbed a frisbee and Maya's leash on the way to the door. I dropped both on the porch, and looked about for Céline.

"Maya?" I called out, before internally chastising myself for the whole situation again. Not knowing whether to use my dog's or my fiancee's was not something I had ever considered, or prepared myself for.
Within moments, I found her sprinting around the corner of the building on all fours, before she bounded over the edge of the deck and jumped on me.
I managed to keep my footing for a fraction of a second, before I was lying on my back on the patio with her on top of me. She gave me a playful lick on my non-injured cheek.
"Nice to see you too," I mumbled, trying to push myself up from beneath her.
Since I was a weak, small man, and she outweighed me by a fair amount, I failed miserably. She had me pinned, my wrists pinned to the deck after a brief struggle.
"You going to let me up?" I asked resignedly. She started panting hard, not seeming to hear me. "Céline? Maya?"
She ducked her head back in, playfully nipping my ear. I giggled a little at the cute gesture, assured that this was just Maya coming to the surface again.
She continued slowly licking down the side of my face and onto my neck. A shiver ran down my spine.
An inkling of what was going on came to mind as I felt her start to lower herself onto me.
My eyes were closed, as she was still slobbering all over my face, but shot open when I felt her leaning on my now rather tented pants.
With a previously unseen show of force, I rolled out from under her.
"No!" I shouted, "Christ, no, none of that" I scrambled to my feet, wiping my face in my shirt sleeve. "What the hell, Céline?"
She rolled to her feet. jumped up with a start, and clambered back to two feet. She began to say something, then turned and walked inside with her tail tucked between her legs, leaving the sliding door open behind her.
"What the hell?" I wondered aloud, looking around quickly to make sure nobody had seen that. I could not see anywhere that would afford a good view, but my cheeks were still red, and I very much hoped that, if anything were to be seen by my neighbours, it would not have been that.

With a sigh, I dusted the dirt from my clothes and stepped inside. I was entirely perplexed by her behaviour; Maya had never done anything like that, Céline slightly less so.
The kitchen revealed neither hide nor hair of her, which came as little relief.
Conveniently, the sound of frightened, confused sobbing from our bedroom guided me right to Céline, who was curled up in a ball, crying into her pillow. Her ears were drooped down, her tail flat on the bed next to her.
Needless to say, I did not know how to proceed.
I'm crap at dealing with crying women.
"I'm sorry," She whispered, "I'm so, so sorry."
"It's not your fault," I insisted, setting myself down beside her.
"It is."
"We don't need to talk about it. I know you're in a strange situation."
"I would sure hope you do," she whined.
I sighed.
We sat there for a few minutes, both at a loss for words.

A distant shout broke the awkward silence.
"Yes! I got it, ya' daft twat! Richard, where are ya?"
She snapped to her feet and ran off in the direction of Kevin's outburst. I slowly pushed myself from the bed, wondering what Kevin had uncovered.
I found the two in the kitchen. Céline was wagging madly, and Kevin was leaned over a book that was opened on the table.
"What's up?" I asked, peering over the table. He had a rather complicated spell sketched out on the paper in front of him. I started poring over it, trying to make sense of the steps of the transformation he was to set about.
"I've got the spell worked out. Céline, Maya, hold still."
"Woah, hold your horses!" I said, holding up a hand to have him stop, "Lemme read through this first."
"Like that would help..." he muttered.
I looked it over. He did have a certain style to the way he created these thing; his work was clean, simple to understand, and alarmingly easy to visualize and trigger.
I'd like to think that my sloppiness was compensation for having such a hair trigger on my magic, but I'm pretty sure I was just lazy.

It took me about a minute to parse the grid of lines and symbols, but I could not see any flaws therein. Everything seemed entirely foolproof. It should transform her, on a permanent basis, into Céline on the first invocation, Maya on the second, and back to Cél-aya on the third, looping back for all invocations thereafter. Which was quite the impressive result, for twenty minutes of effort.
I sighed, reluctant to admit the old man was far better at this than I. "It looks alright. How much power will we need?"
"I've got enough right here," Kevin explained, pulling a small pouch from his pocket. "Céline, you all ready?"
She whimpered.
Kevin shot me a glance. I shrugged.
"Uh, Céline, do you want to transform into, uh, human?" I asked hesitantly.
She shook her head lightly, and cowered back a little, face tipped down.
Because nothing can ever be easy.
Kevin and I exchanged worried looks.
"Céline, you know you need to do this right?"
She bounded from the room, tail tucked between her legs.
"Apparently not..." I grumbled.
Kevin put a hand on my shoulder. I spun to find him gesturing towards the garage, and glaring intently.
We walked soundlessly from the kitchen.
After he had set the spellbook down, he turned and sighed.
"Richard, I think we need to lie."
"No, Kevin...."
"They cannot continue to exist like that, okay? This is on you to fix. And we both know that that transformation would not work. She would go in to work on Tuesday, and, if she didn't kill herself on the drive, she might hold her appearances for... five minutes? Tops?"
"I don't see any good options. We can't go back to two creatures unless I sell my damn soul."
"Yeah. But I see two ways we can do this. Either we kill Maya, just like that, and pray that Céline doesn't immediately go insane for having lost half her mind,"
"Hell of a proposition, Kevin," I muttered.
"Would you just shut up and listen? Or, we find some way to let them... like, switch? If we change their form, their mind should conform to their body somewhat if we use the right method. Like, we could... hell, uh... Maya's pretty active... maybe some charm that lets them switch forms and minds?"
"But that relies on both Maya and Céline being ready to abandon... themselves, only counting on the whims of the other to let them come back. Forever."
"Yeah. But the presence of the other will slowly bring them to a parity where sanity and a plan can override things."
"That's a whole lot of assumptions in one sentence," I warned.
"Yeah, but it will work," Kevin stated with words that implied confidence and a voice that suggested otherwise.
"So, what, we curse her with lycanthropy?"
"It sounds bad when you phrase it that way. And she'd have control over it. But... yes?."
"Jesus," I muttered. "And what if one of them is too reluctant to relinquish their form? Their mind would just meet in the middle, with their body stuck at one side."
He pondered this briefly. "We could also not have them have any control over it."
"That sounds so, so much worse," I balked. "That is literally lycanthropy. What, you want it triggered by the phase of the moon while we're at it?"
"Lycanthropy is a problem that people have been known to be capable of dealing with. Céline's a strong woman, she can handle it," he explained, shrugging.
Ever the damn historian...
"Would one night a month be enough to keep Maya to a dull roar, though? I'd hate for her to have to spend half of her waking hours driven mad by the presence of the dog."
"We would have to tune it as we go."
"She would kill me if she figured out we were experimenting live," I pointed out.
He gestured to the bandage on my cheek. "At least then the two of you would be even."
"You're not wrong. Okay, how long would it take you to do this? And what do you suppose would happen immediately after we activate it? What duty cycle do we need, what frequency?"
"One day, once a week, and we should be back to one-hundred-percent very angry Céline very quickly."
I scrunched up my eyebrows as I struggled to follow the logic.
"She would approach fifty-fifty Maya, and we'd want to trigger the change well before then. I could get that working pretty damn fast, really."
"How the hell are we going to explain this plan to he- them?"
"Don't. You just go back and keep them occupied, I'll get it ready to go." He grabbed the notebook from where he'd set it on the workbench, and beckoned me back to reenter my house. "I'll get this all sorted. Give me ten minutes for the first test, and thirty for the recurrent portion."
With a nod, I walked back through the door into the kitchen.

Not knowing where she had gone, I called out. "Céline?"
"Bedroom." She called back.
I walked down the hall, and nudged the door open. "You alright?"
"Just fine, how'd you think?" She grumbled. "Can we make some food?"
"Sure, yeah. Need anything else?" I pushed the door the rest of the way open, and found her sitting on the bedside struggling to remove her collar.
"How do I take this off? It feels weird."
"Here, I'll help. Hang on." I carefully inched closer, and reached out to where her malformed hands were failing to get a purchase on the small buckle.
As I pulled it away from her throat, she began scratching furiously. "Thanks," she said in a brief lull in her mad scraping.
"Don't mention it." I slumped down beside her on the bed. She wrapped an arm over my shoulder and leaned backwards, tugging me to lie on my back. I obliged.
Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. I wallowed in my guilt for a while as she sat silent.
Eventually, she broke the silence. "Richard," she quietly began.
"Yes?"
"Could you scratch behind my ears?"
Every ounce of guilt in my mind jumped to the surface.
Sniffing back a tear, I reached out my hand to her head. "I'm so sorry, Céline, Maya. I never knew this could happen, but I should have tried harder. I should have..."
She didn't reply.
"You know I'd never hurt you, and I try to do what's best, and it doesn't always work, but I try. I'm sorry I hurt you. I love you, Céline, and I hope you know that."
She rolled over a little, bringing her other ear closer to me. I sighed, and continued my scratching.
After a few more moments, she let out a breath and spoke up.
"I don't know what to think. Kevin is helping, but I don't know that he can save me. His last plan was to kill half of me. I don't know what I'd do. I'm not Céline, I'm not Maya. How could I live with only half of me? I don't know what to do. You keep imploring me to become Céline, but I want to be outside, and run around, and... I don't want to be human, I don't want to be a dog, what do I do? I just want everything to be like it was, in two irreconcilable ways. Screw your magical crap Richard. When has this damn hobby of yours solved more problems than it created? It never did. Even Maya knew that. Céline sure did."
My jaw dropped, and I stopped scratching.
"Keep that up, it feels good, and I think it's all that's keeping me from going for your throat right now."
I hastily resume the effort. "What do you want?"
She paused for a moment. "I want Céline to be Céline, Maya to be Maya, and you to go pound salt."
Several uneasy seconds of ear scratching elapsed, but it felt like an hour.
One thing was for sure: If Kevin was right about her mental state between switches, then a curse would be necessary.
"Let's go make lunch," she suggested.
"Sure, okay."

She followed me back to the kitchen.
Kevin was nowhere to be seen as I opened the fridge and pulled out some sandwich supplies. Céline slunk down in one of the chairs at the kitchen island.
As I grabbed a knife for spreading mayonnaise, the faint sound of him cursing at something drifted through the walls. I stopped and listened intently. When another single swear word rose from the garage, I knew he was okay.
With that concern behind me, I continued making lunch.
"Ham or turkey?" I asked, looking over my shoulder.
"Both," she immediately replied, running her tongue over the razor sharp teeth that had last tasted my face.
"Okay." I doled out the meats, being sure to load one plate more than the other, and turned to find her grinning and licking her chops. "Mustard?"
"Nope."
The door from the garage burst open, and Kevin stomped in.
"Any luck," she asked.
"Tons," He replied cryptically.
"Finish that thing yet?" I thought to ask.
He gave me a quick nod, sighed, and turned to Céline. "Sorry about this."
"It's not your fault," she started.
No, but it was about to be.
The two locked eyes for a moment.
Immediately, the change in the air was clear. I could feel the atmosphere thicken with magic. I tried to take a step backwards, but hit the countertop.
I did not know what to do but watch. So I did.
Céline clenched inward, toppling her chair in the process. On the floor, she clutched at her hands as the claws pulled back into her fingers. Her muzzle pulled back into her face with an eerie crackling, bits of fur and hair either disappearing or falling off in waves.
Her ears popped back inwards in a quick motion as she rolled back and forth. She pushed herself off of the fallen chair and to her feet as her tail started to shrivel inwards. The last vestiges of Maya faded from view as she leaned against the counter, face pressed into her hands. She sank down a few inches as her heels hit the ground.
There was a tense silence as the magic faded from the air.
Much to my elation, Céline broke the silence first.
"You could have asked first."



"So how did it all feel?" Kevin asked. 
"I still can't put words to it", she replied, sipping hot chocolate from a mug.
The two were sitting in the living room, her draped under a blanket on the sofa, Kevin immediately beside her. I looked on from the kitchen, not knowing how to feel.
"Where's Maya?"
"Like I said before, she's in you. Céline is just... at the top for now, okay?"
She nodded slowly, taking this in for the third time. "How long will that last? I feel like part of me is missing."
"A week. Probably."
She glanced back over at me, and took in the bandages on my face again. She slowly shook her head. "I was so angry, Richard. You have to understand. I'm sorry."
This I deemed worthy of a response. "Don't be. It was my fault."
"You and your damn magic, god. And I liked that shirt of yours, too."
Somehow, my perforated shirt had been far from the front of my mind as of late. I just shrugged.
"Dammit, I feel so... tired. Can you give me back just, like, a little bit of Maya?"
"Don't worry, she'll come back. Just be glad you're you for now."
"Being me kinda sucks right now," she mumbled.
"It'll get better. Don't worry. You should rest right now, though. We'll worry about that tomorrow, okay?" Kevin insisted, tugging the blanked over her.
She muttered some degree of confirmation, and sniffed back a tear.



"She's never going to forgive you, you know."
"I'm just glad you sorted this out, Kevin," I admitted as I rubbed my hands through my hair. 
"I trust you do the same for me," he said, bearing a kind yet haggard smile.
"And were you in need, I would. You look like you could use a rest yourself."
"And you look like you should change those bandages. I'll see myself out, Richard." He started to walk away.
"Kevin. Thank you. I mean it."
He walked out the door, leaving me alone in my garage with my thoughts.

As the door fell closed, a glint of light from the workbench caught my eye.
There sat the metal ball, shimmering in my mind's eye just like everything else in this shop. I walked over, finding it mostly empty, but still working fine.
It had worked handsomely - perhaps the only bright side to this madness.
The amount of power I had pulled from it to bring this about was mind boggling, I considered with a frown. It was the pinnacle of magical items that I had ever created. In a league of its own. With this much power on tap, there was nothing I couldn't do for myself. I could bend the will of any man. I could fly. I could forestall death.

Was it worth it?

Not a chance.
A prequel to the Transcendence series, answering the question: Why is Richard such an ass?

I hope you all enjoy! Leave a comment if anything comes to mind!

Shoutout to the #tf-stories Discord channel!


Transcendence:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
More coming!
-------
Prequel
© 2018 - 2024 WhiTanFox
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K9-Lupus's avatar
Quite an interesting setup here with the rapid dialogue exchanges. I appreciated the deviation from a typical story pattern and liked Richard's tough choice he had to make seeing Celine/Maya happy in their individual ways. Having the dialogue chunks all together in a single-spaced format was a little tough to follow, but I know dA formatting is quite limited in their spacing so I can forgive that. I liked your introduction of magic being operated within a network of knowledgeable individuals and makes me think a lot of a show I really enjoy called "Being Human" that follows a kind of similar pattern with vampirism being "hidden", but still among the regular world.