“So you did have something to do with that?” Sam asked Farris, just as his mentor’s smirking face materialized in front of him and Sarah.

  Farris upturned his hand and straightened in his chair. “Good day to you too, Sam. Please, do sit down. It doesn’t help my self-doubts and feelings of inadequacy to have you towering over me like you do.”

  “Ah.” Sarah nodded to Sam. “I get what you meant now. So this is the fourth?”

  “Yep.” Sam sighed as they both sat down. “He’s got a streak, and he’s not going to let it go.”

  “What are you two whispering about?” Farris asked, exaggeratedly stretching forward on the table by leaning his chin on his hands.

  “Like you didn’t hear,” Sam said.

  “You’re too far away from me to hear you when you’re speaking in such low volume. Come closer or talk louder if you want to be heard.”

  “So does this count as the fifth?” Sarah asked.

  “Nah.” Sam shrugged. “It’s still a part of the fourth. It’s per stupid joke at the beginning of the meeting, not per every stupid joke throughout the meeting.”

  “Wait, at the beginning of the meeting, or literally the first thing he said?”

  “The latter.”

  “And they all made sense? At least so far as his joke today made sense?”

  “Yeah, they were all relevant enough to the conversation to feel natural, if moronic.”

  “Wow, that’s gotta take a ton of preparation—”

  “Alright!” Farris frowned at them. “Enough of you two. Can we get down to business already?”

  “Can stop you opening these meetings by making the same old tired joke about you not knowing that I already know the basics of how this inter-worlds communication works?” Sam asked.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. If I happen to make a statement, and you find it to be incorrect, then, please, reveal to me my faults so that I could rectify them. And if I happen to make a joke that you don’t find funny, that’s no reason to jump to any conclusions about what I do, or do not, know. Besides, I think you’ll find yourself to be the biggest fool here, right now. Because the streak is only at three, including today. Your counting is faulty, for when I got the idea three weeks ago, the joke came to me naturally after we had already been talking for two whole minutes.”

  “Ah.” Sam rolled his eyes. “Of course. How could I have been so foolish? Well, are you going to answer my question or not?”

  “Which question would that be? The one you just asked about answering your question? The one right before that? A different question that I can’t remember anymore? Maybe one that I never managed to hear?”

  “Are you the reason why our meeting with George Hatta and Alia Crane ended relatively quickly?” Sarah asked.

  “Ah. That question. Hm… Yes, yes, I am. No need to thank me.”

  “Well, I am grateful, nonetheless. How’d you do it?”

  “And why’d you do it?” Sam asked.

  “Because it’s funny?” Farris shrugged. “Because it made me feel good? A power display? To help you out? As for how… There isn’t all that much to it. I have a plethora of different topics to discuses with the Terran General Staff at any given time; actions that I want them to take, changes to make, questions to raise. Topics high enough in profile to require direct involvement of the top brass, but not urgent enough for me to act upon just yet. You get the idea. So it just makes sense to keep some of those in reserve for when I want to get out of an obligation, or to force someone else into one.”

  “Like calling an all important summit and using that as an excuse to come and meet me,” Sam said.

  “Well… I suppose that it does, sort of, fall under that same category. But there are major differences in scale, intentions, and people involved, between that and something like today. The business with you and the summit might sound similar enough to my regular garden variety misuse of bureaucracy, insofar as they both build on the same organizational foundations. But it’d be like comparing between composing a few lines of original music and writing a critically acclaimed symphony.”

  “A symphony? Really?”

  “My magnum opus, if you will.”

  “I won’t.”

  “So what exactly did you do today that was just ‘regular?’” Sarah asked Farris.

  Farris shrugged. “The Imperials got this bright new idea—Imbasrad’s, of course—to standardize the management of home front portals. Using the latest in dwarven engineering to monitor portal drift, maintain size, distance in-world, and so on. While at the same time, streamlining the bureaucratic apparatus that’s charged with taking care of the portals by creating a new, more efficient and just as secure, operating procedure, to be adopted Webwide. All for the marginal gain in more efficient inter-world transportation, and a bit of surplus budget… eventually. If all goes to plan and the planning doesn’t take too long. And of course, reducing the danger an enemy breakthrough poses, even if by the slimmest amounts.”

  “You don’t sound too enthused with the idea,” Sam said.

  “On the contrary. I think it’s wonderful. If executed correctly. Even the most minor of improvements to our second, and especially third, line of defense is very welcome.”

  “We don’t have a third line of defense,” Sarah said.

  “That’s why the ability to slow down the Epiraks’ spill into a second-line world, even if only by a few minutes, is incredibly worthwhile to pursue. But, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. Pyllan itself still hasn’t fully implemented Imbasrad’s initial proposal, which is only half the battle. See, there’s not a whole lot of political will for a Webwide change to something as seemingly minor as portal management, due to all the planning and bickering that goes along with any change that must involve multilateral negotiation.”

  “So what does that have to do with you forcing our meeting to end sooner than it was supposed to?” Sam asked.

  “It’s simple. Just because a proposal isn’t going to be decided on anytime soon, doesn’t mean that the people in charge can simply ignore its existence, its nascent possibility. A preliminary discussion has to be held on the subject, acknowledging the responsible body’s—in this case, the convoluted mess that is your Portal Administration—recognition of the proposal and its existence. An exploratory risks and gains assessment has to be prepared. Constraints and barriers have to be pointed out. Otherwise, ten years down the road when the whole Web is getting on the wagon of standardizing the portal system, the Terran Republic is going to be found with its pants down and with no preliminary findings and conclusion to guide it in presenting their point of view when the negotiation starts.”

  “Due note that you’re the one who started talking about politics. Again.”

  “You prompted me by asking questions. This doesn’t count. Anyway, since the topic at hand has to do with portals, it requires Rulers’ input. The Terran General Staff currently only has two Rulers available to it with which to carry out the aforementioned preliminary discussion. So since I only asked it this morning to have, by Monday morning if possible, a brief that details the Terran response to the Imperial suggestion. That didn’t leave a lot of free time for those two Rulers in which to conduct their own personal business.”

  “As opposed to your free time a couple of months ago, when you came to New Terra in order to discuss much wider-ranging reforms?”

  “I have so many comebacks to that. Which one do you want first?”

  “Nevermind that,” Sarah said, “so George and Alia left because you made an impromptu demand of the General Staff with a short deadline?”

  “Not a demand. I simply requested the Terran military’s initial opinion on the matter so that we could better consider their point of view and take into account their thoughts while we were conducting our own preliminary discussion on the matter. Which is set to start on Monday afternoon. If the Terran General Staff does not wish, or is unable to comply with my request, then no harm done. We will simply have to come to an initial opinion that does not include the direct opinion of our erstwhile Terran allies on the matter. Nothing wrong with that. There’ll be plenty of time to change course and rethink our position if and when the proper negotiations officially start; if we find out that our initial position does not best reflect the interest of the Terran Republic. Of course, by then, we would also have to give more considerations to the interests of our other allies in the Web, as well as our own, already established interests. But still, if their argument is convincing enough, we will be the first in line to agree with whatever qualms or suggestions the Terran delegation raises.”

  “Hmm…” Sam nodded in understanding. “I see. So it’s not that the Terran General Staff is inept, and you forced them to do something that they should have already done long ago—”

  “Of course not! That’s ridiculous.”

  “But that it’s such a non-concern that probably no one but the Imperials has started their… preliminary work on the subject, and you’re just using your own nonsensical decision to discuss the topic so soon in order to drive the Terran military to do the same.”

  “Exactly. It’s high profile enough to require both Rulers attendance. It’s not urgent in the slightest, so there’s nothing that prevented me from holding it in reserve until I wanted to use it. And by creating a deadline for myself, I created a deadline for another player if that other player wants to affect my own decision-making.”

  “And will the Terrans actually have an effect on your own decision-making?” Sarah asked. “If they manage to finish their discussion before yours starts?”

  “I don’t know.” Farris shrugged. “These discussions are too low level for me to actively participate in them. But, in the likely case that we don’t end up accommodating our preliminary findings to best fit the republic’s interest, it’s not as though that’s the sort of effect your General Staff is after. As the nation with the most… unique system of portal management, they just want their point of view to be considered, and thus represented by more than just themselves. Which they’ll definitely get if the Sarechi discussion on Monday starts by going over the Terran reports, and includes a thoroughly debriefed Terran Ruler in attendance.”

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  “So everybody wins.”

  “You most of all. You got to get out early of a meeting that you didn’t want to be in, and without any ramifications due to that, besides hearing my lecture, that is. Well, I suppose there could be some losers as well. Imbasrad, who might have to get involved in the political aspects of his plan sooner than he was prepared to. But he’s a big boy. I’ll send him a basket of sweets. Dwarves love Terran candy. OK, I know how it came out, but he really does love Terran candy. And Hatta and Crane, who got their interview time cut short, and for a reason they’re probably not too happy with.”

  Sam shrugged. “Well, I don’t care about them, so it’s alright with me. Although… I don’t know who this Imbasrad guy is, so maybe I should feel bad for him?”

  “Nah, he’ll be fine. Like I said, I’ll send him some sweets. I’m only helping bring forward his own vision, after all.”

  “So who is he?” Sarah asked, leaning back on her hands. “A dwarven magical engineer? Oh, right, he’s dealing with portals, so he must be a Ruler, yeah?”

  “He’s both,” Farris said. “And I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him.”

  “Well I haven’t. Just because the dwarves have four Rulers less than us doesn’t mean that I know each of them by name.”

  “Do you know any dwarven Ruler by name?”

  “…Only Caltrass,” she admitted sheepishly.

  “Yeah, I figured as much. But still. You studied dwarven patterns, have you not? Poor Gowell Imbasrad’s name never came up?”

  “The most recent person we discussed died more than fifty years ago.”

  “Let me guess: Seba Narog?” Sarah nodded and so Farris “leaned in” to “whisper” to Sam. “She brought Terran scientific knowledge and methodology to the dwarven magical academia.”

  “So who is this Imbasrad?” Sam asked with a bored sigh.

  “He’s a rising star in the world of dwarven magical engineering, formations, patterns, artifice, most aspects of dwarven-unique magic, really. And he’s not so much a rising star, as he is one that’s already risen. If any of you go the route of studying non-individual-based warfare magic, you’ll probably encounter his writings and innovations. But I don’t know why you would be studying that.”

  “Me neither.”

  They both looked at Sarah in question. She crossed her hands. “I only studied dwarven patterns for their individual, or per-individual, aspects. I have no interest in going into battlefield support.”

  “Neither Imbasrad, nor dwarven magical engineering, is solely occupied with battlefield support, as evident by the fact that we started on this tangent from portals, but your point stands. Shall we move on? I’m sure Sam is just dying to chastise me for not talking about anything ‘pertinent’ to my mentorship of him and thus claim that this meeting serves no purpose, and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything,” Sam said.

  “Sure you weren’t. So are we moving on? Or are we staying on the multifaceted topic that is of joint military command? Or the different players in the field of doctrine development?”

  “Up to you. You’re the one who decides whether to utilize this space and time for immediate educational purposes or whether to just utilize it in order to hear your own voice.”

  “Fine, I get it. Ha, ha. But just for the record, you ought to sit down and think sometime about your own, much longer streak of repeating the same joke in all of our meetings.”

  “Alright, sure. First thing I’ll do is decide whether those are jokes or not.”

  “Shove off.” Farris chuckled. Turning to Sarah, he said, “So, are you just here to thank me for freeing up your morning, or is there something else?”

  “The first, I guess,” Sarah said. “Sam claimed that you were one behind that, and I just wanted to see if that was true and find out what you did if it was. I’m too tired to get anything else done right now, so I had nothing better to do than join Sam. Plus”—she stretched upwards—“this has been very entertaining so far. A great use of my free time.”

  “Happy to entertain. And speaking of free time, what about yours, Sam?”

  “What about it?”

  “Any changes?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  Farris rolled his eyes. “And in the future?”

  “Oh… that. Yeah, me and Dan decided to go back to our full lessons after next week. But besides that, everything’s the same.”

  “Way to bury the lede. A little more obfuscation and I wouldn’t have been able to say ‘I told you so.’ Well, at least not today.”

  “What’s this about?” Sarah asked.

  “I told him that he was going to go back to his old schedule with Dan before the first month of the new trimester was over.”

  “And you’re happy about that?”

  “About being right? Yes.”

  “And about Sam going back to his old schedule?”

  “Old schedule with Dan,” Sam corrected, but for some reason, the other two didn’t think the correction was critical enough to be acknowledged.

  “Hmm…” Farris mused. “Well, as a general, I am, of course, happy that Sam is back to going full steam ahead—”

  “Again, not full steam. Just the lessons with Dan.”

  “As his friend, I am, of course, worried about the added pressure that said change will bring. And as his mentor, I am forced to reconcile the two views and realize that as long as Sam himself wants to do so, then there’s no reason for me to step in unless it’s obvious that he’s harming himself and that he’s not going to back down on his own. But I don’t think either option is likely. So at worst, I am ambivalent plus.”

  “Thank you for that.” Sam rolled his eyes. “But I assure the both of you, I am more than capable of returning to my regular schedule with Dan, as I am right now, not to speak of next week. And if it turns out too hard, I’ll just go to my current lighter schedule.”

  Sarah sighed. “I just think that you can afford to take it easy for a little while longer.”

  “Maybe so. But why should I? I feel… good enough to go back to my full lessons with Dan, and I still have that extra free time on odd days compared to before.”

  “Except Sunday.”

  “Sunday doesn’t count, it doesn’t fit the symmetry, so it has to have its own schedule. Like Saturday. Which is still less work than what your original schedule for my Saturday was.”

  “Just barely.”

  “Look, at some point I got to go back to how I was doing things. For no other reason than that, when I wasn’t feeling so down, that’s what I decided would be optimal for me and my goals. If I never go back to that old schedule, then that must mean that either me myself, or my goals, have changed, or that I’m still not feeling much better. Since I haven’t changed and neither have my goals, you saying that I should stay with this current schedule is tantamount to saying that I haven’t improved enough to go back to the old one. And you know what? Maybe that’s true. But we won’t know unless I try, right? And I can’t get better by staying in stasis forever.”

  “Hardly stasis… But you’re right. It’s up to you, and we’ve already talked about this. Sorry for bringing it up.”

  “It’s fine,” Sam said with a smile and squeezed her shoulder, “nothing to be sorry about.”

  “Besides,” Farris said, “I’m the one who brought it up. And I still want to talk about that.”

  “I thought you didn’t have a problem with me going to back to the full lesson schedule.”

  “I don’t. At least not currently. But it’s a major development and as your mentor I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it and bring it up for discussion.”

  “A lot of stuff being brought up for discussion today in New Terra.”

  “Don’t be glib. Besides, you should be happy at the particular direction that I wanted this discussion to head in, if you would actually let me start it…”

  Sam rolled his eyes and motioned to Farris. “Go ahead.”

  “Very good. So, in my opinion, just like you said, your plan to go back to your old lessons schedule is a clear signifier that your mental state has improved. As such, and if that is indeed the case, I think you’ll agree with me that one facet of our relationship, which came as a result of your change in mental state, that is no longer necessary, is our weekly meetings.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am, as much as it pains me to say so. But, and I say this with even greater pain, you might’ve noticed that in some of our latest meetings, we sometimes spoke of things that had, directly, little to do with my mentoring of you. That is because there is only so much knowledge and wisdom that I can impart to you from so far away and at this point in your education.”

  Sam chuckled. “That’s big of you to admit that.”

  “Oh come off it, I’m trying to be funny. Don’t ruin this for me.”

  “I’m sorry, continue.”

  “So... I decided that we can cut back on the frequency of our meetings to once every two weeks. It will, unfortunately, hurt that much more enjoyable, and mentally invigorating, aspect of our meetings. As less time would be available for them overall. Fear not though, I am a brilliant mentor, so I’m sure that I’ll be able to, on more than one occasion, dispense with the pedagogic duties so that we’ll have enough time left to discuss a more enjoyable topic.”

  “Ah ah… So once every two weeks, yeah?”

  “Yes. Starting after your change in schedule will take place.”

  “So we’ll still be meeting on the Saturday of that week, I assume?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course.” Sam exhaled a laugh and turned to Sarah. “Well, there you have it, more free time on Saturdays.”

  “Are you going to actually use it as free time?” she asked.

  “Probably. Definitely for the first few weeks of the change. Any chance that those bi-weekly meetings will always be held at the same time?” he asked Farris.

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “Are you doing that on purpose?”

  “No. I am simply not working on rectifying that. So you could say that I’m not trying to meet your request on purpose, I suppose.”

  “OK, but let’s say that on the day where you have both the morning and noon open, and the week prior we met in the morning, are you on purpose going to pick us to meet at around lunch?”

  “No. I’ll pick lunch either by random chance because I don’t care between the two, or pick it because I want it then more.”

  “Any way I can convince you to pick one lane and stick with it?”

  “No, learn to live with some asymmetry on your weekends. It’ll only do you good in the long run.” Sam gave him a middle finger. “Alright, let’s move on to actually discussing your new schedule—Oh, before I forgot, how was your meeting anyway? Everything alright?”

  Sam exchanged looks with Sarah. “Yeah, I’d say. They basically just asked us a bunch of stuff. A lot of dancing around. Nothing too deep. Seemed to part on amicable terms.”

  “Sam did bring up the Nazis at one point, though,” Sarah said.

  “Oh?” Farris widened his eyes.

  “It was nothing like that,” Sam said. “And it wasn’t even aimed at them or anything. At least I don’t think it was. Just a random thought, a socio-political question, that popped into my head. But you were saying about my new schedule?”

  “Well I just wanted to ask about your insistence on spending more time cultivating. What’s up with that? You’re worried about not hitting level 1?”

  “No… and it’s just another hour or two. I just wanted to make sure that I’ll be ready to move on to the more advanced techniques once my core gets to fragmented.”

  “And reach level 1. They’re both required.”

  “Yeah, but I’m assuming I’ll reach level 1 before that. And once I reach level 1, we know that a fragmented core is not far behind, so there’s no reason for Dan not to start me on at least the theory of more advanced gathering. So by spending more time practicing cultivating with Dan, I’m just trying to make sure to be as time efficient as possible. I’m not losing that much by giving up that extra hour. Nothing that I can’t make up by studying on my own time. Which is still going to remain the same for the time being,” he hurriedly said to Sarah.

  “I wasn’t about to comment on that,” she said. “Besides, I told you already. I agree with your decision. I think that at this point, you’re knowledgeable enough to have your own opinion on how to best allocate your own time. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your proposed allocation.”

  “Are you sure that you’re not just forcing yourself to agree with Sam because of your own decisions regarding your own allocation of time?” Farris asked with a smirk.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Hmm… Well, for what my opinion’s worth—all the gold in Millas, probably—I don’t have any objection to your decision. Sure, it’ll take you much longer than a couple of months to run out of everything Dan could teach you about bettering your fundamental gathering techniques, but most of that has to do with skill rather than knowledge. Skill that can be taught with almost any technique out there. So if you want to make sure you’re as practiced with cultivating as possible before your foray into the new techniques becomes possible, I don’t see any problem with that. And I’m sure that Dan will see to it that your other subjects won’t suffer too greatly, if at all, due to the extra time allocated to cultivating. Not to mention that I, myself, would be very happy to see you reach level 1 as soon as possible. Might I make one suggestion, though?”

  “Sure.” Sam nodded.

  “Because you have that extra time. When you do end up adding more obligations to your Saturday schedule, hold off on any more cultivating. At least so that it would be no more than what it was originally. You’re already on course to reach level 1 before too long. So the cultivating itself doesn’t matter as much as your improvement with the practice, which is best served by cultivating under Dan’s eye. So the most efficient use of that time is to use it to study, or practice tracing or combat.”

  “Hmm, yeah, that makes sense. Will do. But I still think that changing my Saturday schedule any more is not going to happen anytime soon.”

  “Need I make another prediction?”

  “Don’t,” Sam and Sarah said in unison.