One Man's Treasure is Another Man's Back Sponge

--Ch1--
Mark opened his eyes. He saw sky; nothing but sky. He hadn't been seeing sky before, but now he definitely was. This was surprising; but somewhat less so than how solid the ground beneath him was. He had been working in the soft muck that made up most of the Shining Hope's ground. Instead it was hard; like rocks or pavement. But there wasn't any pavement in Shining Hope. Anyway, the explosion had been quite something, or at least as much as Mark could recall of it anyway; but that didn't really explain the hard landing.
Mark sat up to see what he was sitting on and came to a much more surprising realization that a cart was about to run him over. The beast pulling it reared and Mark sprang up and out of the way to escape the impending crushing by hooves.
"Watch where you're lying you bum!" the man in the cart said getting his cart back under control and taming - well - whatever that beast was. Mark sat up and looked at the beast; was it two heads or three? He couldn't quite tell as the whole animal seemed to blur in and out of focus as the beast stood there impatiently. Mark concluded that he must have gotten a concussion when whatever happened.
"Sorry," Mark said looking at the man, "I didn't mean to be lying in the..." he looked down, yup, apparently it was paved, "lying in the middle of the road."
"Well, get stay out of the road." The angry driver said before making a whooping noise getting the whole cart back in motion. Mark looked back at the road and decided that he must have ended up somewhere else. There were streets in the areas around Shining Hope, but none of them had any traffic.
Wait, traffic? There was traffic where he was. Wherever he was must have not suffered as badly from the zombie attacks as Shining Hope and the Denver area must have. Shining Hope struggled with just the basics and having beasts of burden and paved roads was definitely out of the question.
Regardless he brushed himself off; trying to get the filth from the explosion and the road off his now somewhat tattered grey t-shirt and blue jeans. Looking around he could see a variety of houses and the occasional cart but nothing here really looked all that familiar.
Mark decided that it was time to figure out where he was. Maybe he could find someone who could tell him or could at least he might find a sign. Walking down the street he continued till he reached an arch at an intersection. Walking to the far side he read the lettering on the arch. "Shining Hope Historic District".
Must be a coincidence Mark figured. Outside of the arch though there was a lot more traffic. Mark waved down a passing cart. "Where am I?" he asked the driver as he pulled over.
"About 4th and Ives." The driver replied.
"No, I mean more generally, where is this?"
"About a mile north of the capital"
"No... Which capital? Which city?"
The driver looked at him confused, "Shining Hope sir, surely you knew that?"
"Shining Hope," Mark asked, "The survivor camp Shining Hope?"
"Uh, no, Shining Hope the city; look sir, I must apologize but I really must be going."
"Oh, okay, well thanks a lot for your time," Mark said, "Have a good afternoon."
"Right," the driver said with a raised eyebrow, "Same to you."
"Thanks" Mark said waving to the driver as he rolled away. Well, this was at least a Shining Hope. It was pretty hard to believe that it was the camp he was in just a few minutes ago but at this point he felt pretty confident that he was in a place of the same name or was in a head trauma induced hallucination. Either way he probably was going to need help.
Recalling the drivers comment he stopped to decide which way was south so that he could find the capital building he mentioned. Looking around he found the mountains and the red tinted sun from the post apocalypse sky. He didn't know what time it was but between the two he figured he could work out which was most likely south. Looking down the street he started walking for a little bit before realizing that the mountains could be any mountains; there was no way to know if they were the same mountains that had always been to the west of the camp.
Flailing wildly again he tried waving down another cart. Squinting to see the beast pulling it he wondered why were all the beasts were so hard to see and concluded that he must really have been hit hard.
"Could you tell me which way those mountains are from here and what time it is?"
"Oh, West, and it's sometime in the afternoon," the driver said matter of factly.
"Oh, thanks. Is this the way to the capital then?" Mark said pointing in the direction that he had been walking.
"Ya, that's the way."
"Ah, thanks a lot then," Mark said and started walking again.
Mark walked on, taking note that the buildings all seemed to be primitive wood construction similar to the type that were just starting to be erected at the camp last week. Well, not exactly what were being erected; they were missing the power line connecting point that he had instructed the carpenters to put in for the generator he was working on installing.
The fact was that Mark was an engineer. Well, really he was an electrical engineer before the zombie apocalypse. But after the sky turned red and everyone and their mother's uncle had picked up a taste for brains he had struggled for survival until he and a few friends had found their way to Shining Hope. Now he was just an engineer; the skills seemed rather adept at doing all kinds of engineering and as the only one in camp, he got drafted into everything from building design to soap making.
He had been at the camp for about 6 months now, trying to get some basic equipment and facilities put together; generators, factories, that kind of thing. In the meantime though his friends had been spending some time with the newly discovered art/science of magic. Whatever had caused the zombie apocalypse had also caused the survivors to suddenly be able to access magic. Most of them anyway; a few didn't seem to have any magical attunement. Mark had been one of these. Sometimes he wished he could cast spells, but most of them were pretty primitive anyway and once he had gotten the generator up and running he figured that he could get to the same level that all of the magic users had been up to; warming hands, lighting houses, that kind of thing.
As he walked he noticed that none of the buildings seemed to have any kind of power connections or antennas. The buildings though were surprisingly western in design. Maybe he had been moved into one of the remote towns where they hadn't put power in.
But that didn't jive well with the whole zombie apocalypse things. How could this city be in this condition with the zombies just at the border? It didn't really matter Mark decided. He just needed to find some authorities so that he could find his way back to his Shining Hope camp and get back to work.
As he walked he could see a large 5 story building ahead of him that was quite a bit more ornate than the buildings that he had been passing. Must be the capital building Mark reasoned. As he approached it he saw several strangely dressed guards watching the door. One of them spotted him and started to walk over to him. That's never good, Mark thought to himself. Mark considered that he was in a strange city with strange customs and now there was someone who moved with authority, wore a uniform, and was now apparently very interested in him for just walking down the street. Mark decided that wherever he was he probably wasn't in a very friendly environment.
"Hey! You! Stop!" The guard looking guy shouted.
Mark froze and raised his hands, "I'm not armed!" he shouted.
The guard came up to him at a brisk step and stopped just before him, "Are you Mark Cactuar?"
"Uh, yes?" Mark said confused by the knowledge of the guard.
"Perfect, we've been waiting for you. Please, follow me."
Mark noticed the billy club on the man's belt and decided that compliance was the better choice. "Okay?" Mark replied falling in step behind the guard.

-- CH2 --
The guard lead Mark into the building. The white marble walls and floors were all very structured and clean; giving the room a very sterile appearance. The guard led Mark to a spot that was marked with a strange circle on the floor. "The magister told me to let you know that this will move."
"Really?" Mark said just before hitting the floor as the platform he stood on rose up to the fifth floor. As the platform settled into position he stood back up and brushed himself off, "Wasn't expecting it to be a lift," he said non-chalantly to the guard who replied by giving him an amused but gruff stare.
They walked down a hallway before a second guard stopped them mid hallway, "I'll take him from here," he said to the first guard.
"I'm sorry, but I'm under strict orders to take him directly to the Magister," the first guard responded firmly.
"You know the Prime Minister is not going to be happy about this"
"Sorry Frank but those are my orders. Tell the prime minister to take any concerns up with the Magister."
The second guard stormed away in a huff. "Come," the first guard said motioning to Mark to follow. Mark pondered what exactly was happening for a bit before they arrived at the end of the hallway. "In here," the guard said pointing at an ornate red door that stood out against the sterile brown wooden doors that marked every other door in the hallway.
A large plaque on the front said Charles Grumman. Mark marveled at how many things seemed obviously coincidental the name was; Charles had been his friend since before the zombie outbreak, and had been one of the first he knew to really grasp the principles of magic. It was like someone cloned every name of the people and places he knew and then placed them about in this obviously different place. He started to really wonder about the chances and wondered how elaborate of a scheme would have been necessary to do this and who might have the resources necessary for this kind of ruse given the current state of things in the world.
Nevertheless he pulled open the large door and stepped inside. The room was full of whistling gizmos and whirring gadgets and tidbits of all types and sorts. Mark looked around in amazement at the array of various instruments that lined the room until he came across a desk; buried in papers with an aging man sitting behind it, trying desperately to dig himself out of the mountain of work he'd obviously been doing.
"Come in! Come in!" the familiar voice said. "Take a seat! I think I have a chair around here somewhere."
"Charles?" Mark queried, "Is that you?"
"Of course it is, of course... Oh. Right... I probably should explain this whole lot a bit. Either way, take a seat!"
Mark looked about and found a chair pushed off into a corner; discarded like it had simply been a rock in the road that kept getting into the way. Mark found his way over to it just as the codger managed a "Aw, heck with this!" and pushed everything off the desk and onto the floor next to him. "There! Clean as a whistle!"
Mark just shook his head. This man couldn't be anybody but Charles; an imposter wouldn't have been nearly this entertaining. He had a lot less hair, though it was the same deep brown color, and a beard that would make a dwarf jealous, or at least desperate for a brush to untangle the rats nest that was stuck to his chin.
"So you said you were going to explain?" Mark said, puzzling over an artifact sitting on the bookshelf next to him.
"Ah, yes. Well, I'm guessing I should start off with where you are. Or more precisely, when."
Mark raised an eyebrow.
"The year is 2032 and you haven't gone anywhere. Spatially at least."
"So this is shining hope twenty years in the future?"
"In or abouts yes. A lot has changed since you've been gone; as I'm sure you've noticed."
"But where did I go? In the meantime, that is."
"That's a really good question. Do you want the completely accurate answer, or the sufficiently accurate one?"
"I've heard your complete answers; let's stick to the sufficiently accurate one so both of us get out of here before the week is done."
"Have it your way then," he pouted, "what was this all caused by again. Oh, yes. Remember how we were working on the mana powered shield generator? To keep the zombies out?"
"Ya, it exploded and when I woke up I was here."
"That's the one. See the thing is that what we found out was that the shield generator tended to pull several orders of magnitude more mana than it was supposed to."
"So that's what caused the explosion?"
"No; that's what made the explosion possible. Turns out that the spell instantiator malfunctioned and caused the whole system to catastrophically detonate the shield; which you'll recall worked by building a stasis barrier."
"Oh, so I was caught up in the stasis bubble itself?" Mark said picking up one of the bobbles off the shelf and playing around with its dangly bit.
"Indeed. However, something we've learned in the meantime is that matter in the space of a stasis wall is squinched into a pocket dimension. It caus..."
"Squinched?"
"Squinched. It's the term that was developed for describing material that has been 'displaced' by the action of a spell into a pocket dimension. I'm rather proud of that one," Charles said beaming a smile of pure satisfaction.
"So you're telling me I was 'squinched' into a pocket dimension and popped out over twenty years later?"
"That's the gist of it. Squinched matter comes out in a predictable manner based on the power of the field and a few other factors, but solving it takes a few dozen sheets of paper."
"What? You guys still haven't gotte..."
"SHHHHH!!!! They'll hear you!"
"What? Who's they? What will they hear?"
"Those that are in power here; well, those who aren't myself anyway; are believers in the Resident Evil school of thought about the zombie apocalypse. They feel that the cause of all of this was that man got too greedy with his technology and created his own demise. Research over the past two decades have shown that the awakening was what caused the zombies to sprout up."
"Why do they blame the tech then?"
"That's the crux of it isn't it Mark?" Charles asked rhetorically, "The fact is that almost all of the people who think analytically became zombies. I don't have the tools or experience to do the research myself but I suspect that the genetic anomaly that allowed for the zombification of someone was also related to analytical thinking. What's left is all of the superstitious people; scientists, mathematicians, engineers, turns out that basically all of them became zombies."
"So no other engineers or scientists turned up at New Hope?"
"A few did, but not really. And by then Nate had taken over the camp and the 'I feel it in my bones' people became the main authorities and decision makers in the camp. Helen could only sit by and watch."
"So Nate's running the place then?"
Charles bowed his head, "No, Nate died last year serving with the hoppitus. A man named Xavier is currently in charge. Same methods, but none of the survivalist idealism."
"Owch!"
"You're telling me. I'm too prominent and too useful to dispose of, but it doesn't stop him from interfering with my underlings. You know the rules of Shining Hope; 'Everyone must have a job', but Xavier will assign anyone who shows signs of being analytic to the Order of the Bloody Hoppitus so that their chances of doing research are nearly zero and their chances of ending up dead are quite the opposite. I work my hardest to stay ahead of this game and take these students under my wing as soon as I can so I can claim administrative right as magister to choose their job."
"Let me guess; he calls himself the 'prime minister'?"
"Yes," Charles said, narrowing his eyes, "How did you know?"
"I had a guard stop me and my escort on the way in trying to take me to the 'prime minister'. Seems like he was trying to intercept one of your trustees."
"So it seems," Charles said, stroking his scruffy beard, "As you can see he's ruthless."
"Ya, but the guard was put away by your title. 'Magister' must be some serious juju," Charles said with a grin.
"Bah! It's just letters on the plaque on the door. A title to keep a pompous old windbag happy," Charles said with a grin, "I head up all magical affairs, including research into magic and its uses, which is why I can get away with claiming students. Xavier would love nothing more than to see that all stop; it's technology to him and he hates it. He'd have me thrown out today; but there'd be over twenty thousand angry citizens left without their Self Bubbling Bubbly Soap and Brightly Room Brighteners so he's trying to subvert me other ways."
"So it seems. Anyway I've got to ask, what's next for me? Right now I'm an immigrant from twenty years into the past with no home and an enemy in someone I've never met."
"That is the million dollar question now isn't it? The truth is that it's up to you. There are three offers I have for you. The first is that you apply for employment at the employee bureau, get assigned a job with the Hoppitus (the armed forces) and die an early death at the hands of bunny controlled zombies."
"Bunny controlled zombies?"
"We'll talk about that sometime later when I can show you. The second option is that I take you under my wing as a magical researcher until they realize that you can't do magic. Then they transfer you into Hoppitus and you die and honorable death serving your country."
"And the third option?"
Charles reached into his drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. Written on it was "there is a trap door behind the arch for old Shining Hope. Go down the rabbit hole and see the Magicus Metallus. I'll meet you there."
"The last option is to become my clerical assistant and you can keep my files in order and take down notes for me when I'm absent. I'll have you stay at my house in old Shining Hope. Which would you prefer?"
"Hmm... I think I'll take the third option. I'm not much of one for misrepresenting my abysmal skills as a fighter."
"I thought you would. I'll expect you at 8:00 sharp tomorrow morning. I'll see you when I'm done with my work here. Tell the attendant that you're my newest charge and they'll let you in." Charles winked.
"Sounds good then. I'll see you later," Mark said standing up and putting the bobble back on its shelf.
"Have a great evening!" Charles said as Mark closed the door.
Mark looked at the paper again, "Position: Clerk; Hours: 8:00-4:00" was all that was written on it, the last remnants of the original message were now fading away completely. The sly old dog.

CH3
Mark wandered back up the path he had taken. He reasoned to himself that this kind of thing happened to all kinds of people, not just him; that somewhere out there someone else had just kind of 'popped' out of a pocket dimension into a strange place that was as foreign as anything but at the same time was full of everything familiar. Seeing as his directions to get here were simply turn right, walk a mile Mark figured he'd have relatively no trouble finding his way back.
It was starting to get dark when he came across the arch again. He looked around it over and over again. He simply couldn't find the trap door that Charles' message had spoken of. After looking for nearly 15 minutes Mark was stumped. He pulled out the piece of paper. What was he supposed to do now? Looking over the paper's contents again he couldn't make out any different clues that he could use. Then he noticed a slight trace of a rectangular spiral woven into the paper. It couldn't be he thought to himself. He looked on the arch and sure enough, there was a little square etched into the arch on the back side.
He took the letter and held the rectangular spiral up to the square on the arch. Sure enough he heard a click and a trap door swung open to the left of him, as he moved towards it several small orbs began to glow, lighting a latter descending down to a hallway. He went down the latter and latched the trap door closed again. With a slight click the door locked shut drawing marks attention to the mechanism. Looking closely mark could see a solenoid latch holding the door shut, "Tech is banned my ass!" Mark said to himself before making his way down to the hallway below.
Once there he found himself at the beginning of a large hallway that seemed to go up on his left and down on his right. Guessing secret rooms aren't generally on ground level Mark made his way down. After a short distance Mark found himself at what looked like an early 20th century freight elevator. The stairs seemed like a remarkably better idea given his options so he went looking around for a set of stairs. His search was soon rewarded and he began moving down the staircase.

After what seemed like an hour he stopped to observe exactly how far down he had left to go. Looking down the center of the staircase he saw what seemed like an endless sea of stairs. Looking up though it looked as though he had gone only one floor down. Security's tight here he observed and went back up a flight taking him back to the top of the stairs. He then left the stairwell and called the elevator.
The sound of an enormous lift powering up emanated from the chasm below and slowly began to rise to the top. A giant lift cage appeared and the accordion style door opened up to reveal a bellhop standing at attention. Mark stepped in cautiously.
"Where you headin'?" the bellhop asked cheerfully.
"Um, Magicus Metallus" Mark replied, trying to remember the name from the paper.
"OH!" The bellhop exclaimed, "You must be one of Charles' men!"
"You know him?"
"Do I know Charles Grumman?" The bellhop laughed a rather disturbing laugh, "EVERYONE knows Charles Grumman. He's the stinking MAGISTER! Not to mention the one who signs all of my paychecks."
The bellhop winked, "Anyway I take it you're new then. I'll take you to the visitor's center."
"Um, Thank you very much," Mark replied as the elevator lurched downward creaking as the motor sprang to life. The elevator began descending several floors, "So where're you from?" the bellhop asked with that kind of overly chipper tone of voice that makes birds sing, flowers bloom, and bellhops loose a few unnecessary teeth.
"Broomfield."
"Broomfield?! You mean out past the Lerorian line?"
"Uh, Lerorian line?"
"You don't know about the Lerorian line?" The bellhop stepped back aghast. "Wait, you wouldn't happen to be named Mark would you?"
"Uh, ya? How'd you know?"
"What's your last name?"
"Cactuar. But why is that important?"
The bellhop jumped up and down giddily, making the elevator cart shake in several disturbing directions, a few non disturbing ones, and one especially terrifying one that had Mark eaten recently would have caused him to un-eat.
"You get a special treat," the bellhop said, "Hold on to something, we're gonna take a little detour." Mark didn't let go of the pole he had grabbed during the jumping and instead just simply tightened his grip. The bellhop grabbed the elevator control lever and rather than moving it forward or backwards to control the descent, he simply twisted the handle about its center. The elevator stopped and then lurched in a direction that Mark couldn't describe and definitely was none of the normal 3 ways of moving.
When the car stopped the whole thing seemed to simply be sitting on the end of a rock platform. "This is your stop," the bellhop announced, "the Director should be waiting for you." As soon as Mark stepped off the car the bellhop turned the knob again and with a sharp crack the car simply vanished. At times like this Mark wished that when the zombie outbreak had happened he would have been one of the people who were awakened. He suspected some variety of short range teleportation magic but without any sense for the flow of mana there was no way for him to tell. Oh well; door to the front, chasm to the rear. It made the choice fairly easy one way or another.
Mark stepped forward and entered the door. As he did he noticed that the lights were on. Classic, fluorescent lights. He hadn't seen a fluorescent light for at least 9 months; well, since the zombie outbreak. And in the timeline he was in that would be over twenty years ago. To be honest this was closer to what he had expected of Shining Hope after twenty years of recovery. There was really no reason they couldn't have gotten the power system back online in twenty years if the zombies didn't overtake them.
Mark walked down the hallway taking in all of the artificial light and basking in its welcomingly sterile white glow. Along the hallway were several doors. Each labeled with a plaque of its own.  Power Generation Research, Water Purification Research, Radio Frequency Communications Research, Chemical Laboratory 4 - Hazardous Materials - Proper protection required. There seemed to be a laboratory for every type of research. Nearing the end of the hallway he ran across a door labeled, "LTC Josephine Wyatt, Director". Given the information he'd received so far this seemed the most likely place he was supposed to be. He knocked gently on the door. "Come in" came a distracted sounding voice from behind the door.
Mark opened the door to find a neatly arranged - if not a tad tiny - office. Placed along the walls were filing cabinets and assorted binders stacked neatly into book cases. In the center was an impressive oak desk with a very serious looking woman sitting behind it nose buried into a pile of calculations on what seemed like 10 pages of paper. Pulling out a slide rule she began working out one of the equations on the paper. "Take a seat, I'll be with you in a second."
Mark found himself a nice chair to sit in. Once seated in the rather comfortable chair Mark took special interest in the slide rule. Not last week - well, last week his time - he was using a solar powered calculator to derive the number of turns he needed to put on the generator to get the voltage he wanted. He waited patiently for her to finish solving the equation.
Time seemed to drag on. Looking at her over the desk Mark guessed her to be of slightly below average height with an otherwise normal build. Her raven colored hair was tied into a bun and held with a pair of needles; however some stray hairs belied that she likely put it together in a hurry or wasn't particularly concerned with its neatness. She was wearing a beige suitcoat and white blouse which contrasted fairly strongly against the tattered t-shirt that mark had been wearing; though you could hardly blame him for having been living in a survivor camp. 
"Okay, What can I do for you?" she said looking up, "OH! Um, who are you?"
"Mark, Mark Cactuar, Charles told me to come here and the bellhop told me to see you."
"Ah, Mr. Cactuar. I've heard quite a bit about you. You have quite a reputation around these parts."
"Really? Should I be proud or make sure to keep my head down as I move about."
The lady behind the desk laughed. "A little of both. You're known for being one of the first to tinker with magi-tech and are also known as the one who killed research in the field and effectively yourself."
"What, you mean that explosion on the shield generator?" Mark enquired, "That was just a minor accident."
"You may see it as such, but as I heard it when I moved in the colony took it as a sign that anyone trying to make magic and technology work together was basically a risk to anyone in the camp. So they immediately cancelled any research along that avenue. Charles has been a huge opponent of that the whole way through, but the majority opinion has it that it was a good idea so the question has remained closed. For that matter they took that one step further with time and ultimately wiped out all tech."
"So I've heard," Mark replied, "Charles told me about the near religious belief that tech was responsible for the zombification."
"Indeed. Oh look at me, I haven't introduced myself. My name is Josephine Wyatt; director of the Helen Wright Foundation for Adept Research's Magicus Metallus division. I must admit that I tell you this in confidence based on the trust placed in you by Charles; our division doesn't - and couldn't - officially exist."
"One of Helen's dying wishes was"
"Wait, Helen's dead?!" Mark exclaimed.
"Yes, she died earlier this year of natural causes."
Mark hung his head. So far everyone he knew had simply gotten older in the missing twenty years. But one doesn't really grasp how long that is until one of your close friends is gone in what was the blink of an eye.
Mark wiped a tear from his eye, "What was this of her dying wishes?"
"I'm sorry Mark," Josephine said looking solemnly across the table. "In her last days she made it a point that there would be a foundation established for the research of magic and it's applications for the public good. However she also made a personal request to Charles to establish an institution for the sciences. Charles had already been running a covert project by the name of Mechanicus Metallus out of the public eye to keep the spark of invention alive and to give the non-mages a refuge against being eugenically cleansed by being assigned to hazardous duties in with the Hoppitus. That project, currently called Magicus Metallus is my responsibility, including the hiring of new staff and the acquisition of new tools and facilities as needed. Right now I'm working on an operational analysis to try and ascertain how we can trim our budget to get more science for the same money."
Mark looked at the pages of paperwork and couldn't help but ask, "Why no calculator or computer? I see you have electricity here."
"Indeed. You really must be the man Charles spoke of," the lady said standing up and stepping out from behind the desk. "Come, let me show you around." Josephine walked up to the door and held it open, "After you."
Mark took a step out into the hallway and Josephine stepped out locking the door behind her. She began to walk with a determined step down the hall. "A great many things have happened while you were squinched Mr. Cactuar. I expect that between what I've said and what Charles told you that you already are aware that most technologies from before the awakening are dead or the subject of ruins. But there was a lot more that happened in the meantime."
Josephine stopped mid-stride and placed a hand on her chin, stroking it thoughtfully. "If I remember my history correctly you should have been squinched before the first rabbit packs were discovered."
"Rabbit packs?"
"Indeed. The awakening had many effects on the plants and animals of earth; though by far the most interesting seems to have been the effect of rabbits."
Mark just gave a glassy eyed stare. Rabbits? "Oh ya," Mark replied, "Charles had said something about that."
"See, after the awakening the rabbits - which seemed to be otherwise fairly the same physically - started behaving differently. At first it was fairly subtle; instead of just simply wandering and eating, they started making more deliberate efforts to be in places where the grass grew best even if that meant moving significant distances. Then they started organizing into groups to provide protection from predators. But not in the way they had in the past; it was more like a deliberate effort to organize defenses. Soon one could readily expect to find rabbits who could be described as nothing less than sentries. Then eventually came the attacks. Usually they involved a human who unknowingly stepped into one of their domains but the rabbits would take them down in much the same way that wolves take down animals several times their size."
"That's crazy!" Mark replied, "Rabbits taking on a human?"
"Taking on a human and winning. Even armed humans didn't tend to have a very good chance at surviving one of these attacks. For a while this was the status quo. Humans steered clear of rabbits as anyone foolish enough to get too close could expect to be mauled by a hundred angry rudiments working as a team.
"In this period," she continued, "we believe that the organizations of bunnies actually went through a period of heavy war. For a period of about 2 years our observations suggest that the bunnies, at least in the area actually had several protracted battles with each other as each collective fought for supremacy. In the end though one of the collectives won out. That was a bad thing for humanity. Come, follow me."
She walked a bit further down and opened a door labeled "Collective Consciousness Studies." Mark took a few steps in and found a room full of rabbits. "Let me warn you; do not interact with the rabbits. Don't ask me how but they manage to be fairly tricky."
One of the rabbits began making a horrible coughing sound and flopped over. Mark started to act but Josephine cut in "Just ignore it," she said "It's trying to play dead."
Mark stopped and began to go back and the bunny stood back up and made an adorable yet furious grumbling sound. "As you can see," she said turning to bunny in a box into which she placed a carrot and some blocks, "they act on a level of intelligence that easily rivals that of humanity." The bunny began working to assemble a ladder to escape the box while she spoke, "The reality of the matter though is much more complicated."
Pressing a button on the side of the lab one of the cages receded into the wall and vanished from view. In the meantime the bunny; which had been rather effectively putting the necessary tools together to wedge the box open suddenly stopped and jumped down to eat the carrot.
"Why'd he stop?" Mark said, confused by the sudden change in behavior.
"I took away the link bunny," she said matter of factly.
"Huh?"
"Like I said, it's more complicated. The bunnies started becoming increasingly advanced, and so too did the zombies. In 2014 the very first organized zombie attack happened. It caught everyone off guard as the zombies completely ignored the traps and started attacking in units. They killed 100 of the colonists and injured a great many more. Eventually the zombies were dispatched, but it had become apparent that humanity had to face a different threat now from the zombies. Teams of guards sought out the zombies to try and purge them from the area, but having done that they still would come from great distances to attack the colony. In 2019, a researcher at Fate's Consequence..."
"Fate's consequence?"
"Yes, a colony in central europe. One of the three we know of. Anyway the research at Fate's Consequence realized that all of the attacks seemed to be correlated to a swelling in the ranks of the rabbits in the area. This was a useful bit of information as it meant that the attacks could be predicted, and furthermore it showed that the rabbits were somehow related to the attacks."
"That's very strange." Mark said looking at the bunnies in the room who at this point looked as innocent as all of the rabbits he remembered from his childhood.
"To you it may seem so, but to someone who had been living in a world where resource parties were being attacked as regularly by rabbits as they were by the 'killer zombies' it was something that merited further research. In any case about 10 years ago a few people reported having been contacted by something calling itself the burrow-mind. All of them reported being told that their end was near and that rabbits would soon rule their earth as they rightly should."
"How did they talk with it? Did they wiggle their noses?"
"Something like that, they all received a mat of human skin etched with the message in blood. Apparently the rabbits had cut it out of someone with their teeth, let it cure out in the sun, and then wrote it using their claws."
The jovial look on Mark's face from all of this discussion of killer rabbits faded. "Are you sure it wasn't a big hoax?"
"At the time we weren't but given the severity of the claims we started looking into it. We started working as teams to capture stray rabbits and see if we could reproduce the effect. However one thing that became apparent early on was that any time we caught a bunny and brought it back for testing it seemed to revert to the fuzzy adorable creature that we remember from our pasts. This trend became infuriating to the scientists who captured rabbit after rabbit hoping to find an answer. Inadvertently though they succeeded."
"What happened?" Mark asked.
"What they found was that as the number of rabbits they kept increased, the overall intelligence of them increased as well. One rabbit was dumb, ten rabbits was childlike, and a hundred rabbits were dangerously wolfish, though not as intelligent as the rabbits observed in the wild; not by a long shot. It was suspected then that there was some kind of collective intelligence between the rabbits; the more of them there were, the more brainpower there was to throw at various problems. What was confusing then was how 10 wild rabbits could be more intelligent than 100 captured rabbits."
"Huh." Mark replied
"So they set out to capture an entire pack of rabbits. Though several researchers lost their lives they were able to come back with an entire pack. This pack, even in captivity remained impressively intelligent and proved to be an exceptional challenge for the researchers to keep around as you learned with the little feign earlier. They began testing the intelligence of each rabbit to try and ascertain how that was possible. What they found was that individually almost all the rabbits were just barely above beast level intelligence. However, one rabbit remained exceptionally intelligent even when the remaining rabbits were removed. Essentially there was a rabbit in the group who was adding the collective intelligence of a billion rabbits to the group's local pool."

"A billion rabbits?! That's more than a few and a lot more than I'd expect from one of these fuzzy guys."
"Indeed. But they wondered what made that rabbit special. Analysis showed that there was magic involved. That rabbit seemed to have a standing spell like link to several places far away from himself. As such it was hypothesized that in actuality this rabbit was magically linked to other rabbits, who were linked, etc until there were enough rabbits linked to create a collective brain consuming almost every rabbit on the planet."
"That's insane!"
"Agreed. Some less than charitable testing suggested that this was not a bad conclusion to reach either; eliminating this link rabbit had the effect of temporarily lowering the intelligence of the collective others. But eventually a new rabbit would become this link node and they would come back up to speed. We believe that what ultimately happened was that eventually a single group of rabbits got together that was large enough to work out how to use some rudimentary magic; maybe it realized that it had strength in numbers; anyway once it did so it realized that it could link to ever more rabbits by magical links and then just create a massive intelligence with minimal effort. So occasionally this collective intelligence scans for un-connected rabbits and will reconnect to them to increase the mind size and also increase its scope of physical influence by having more bodies in more places."
"So how does this all relate to the zombie attacks?" Mark asked now thoroughly curious.
"That's actually a very good question. The answer is that the zombies are somehow being controlled by the rabbits. When rabbits are in close proximity to the zombies and the link bunny is present the zombies behave like trained soldiers. They'll move from cover to cover, take up arms and return fire, run a decoy unit while the main unit attacks from the rear, etc. Initially our guards weren't trained to fight these tactics, but after that incident in 2014 started becoming the status quo, it became very apparent that that needed to change. The guards today, now an organized armed force going by the name of the Order of the Bloody Hoppitus stand as the last line of defense against legions of organized zombie soldiers and the rabbit commanders."
"So, at the beginning of this you said this would explain why there were no calculators or computers."
"Indeed I did Mr. Cactuar. The fact of the matter is that you'll find we have a distinct lack of microelectronics or anything else that requires advanced ores and exotic materials smelting. The reason for this is the rabbits. Although we hold the city and everything behind the Lerorian line the fact is that that is not a global stranglehold on the mineral resources. For that matter the bunnies hold everything but a few coal and iron mines and a few other exotic metals. At the moment you'll actually find that simple table salt is a precious resource that we currently only have in quantity because of the newly established trade route with Hell's Gate who has access to the ocean in their territory."
"Wow, so I guess you guys have exhausted the supplies from the old world then right?"
"Actually no," Josephine said removing all of the items from the box with the bunny and sealing it's cage. "Help me out here; press and hold that button down over there." Mark went and held the button while Josephine did the same on her side and the extra bunny returned bringing the collection of bunnies in the room from sniffing around curiously to watching the movements of Mark and Josephine intently for an opportunity. "Follow me," she said moving for the door.
Mark took one last look at the bunny from the box. He was fairly certain that it was just waiting for them to leave before going back to some evil plan. Shuddering at the sight he hurried up and shuffled through the door. "So if the old world still has stuff to gather, why can't you just simply go get a solar calculator or something?"
"Sadly the issue is twofold," Josephine began walking down the hallway again, "First, the Lerorian line only protects rural farmland. As badly as we need the advanced goods from the old world we need basic crops far more. In the battle for survival food comes over advanced goods and since we're able to make some moderate scale things we're working on building up our strength and arms before we return to making excursions to the old world."
"Makes sense," Mark reasoned, "But what was the second reason?"
"The second reason is political. Remember that issue about technology being evil and the cause of the zombie apocalypse; some rhetoric about being punishment for or the consequence of our technology? The few raiding parties that were going out after the attacks were ultimately stopped because they were bringing evil into the camp. The Magicus Metallus would run such excursions ourselves but our resources are too limited to take on an organized bunny/zombie attack and there are checkpoints all through the bunny controlled territory; it would basically be a suicide mission to try."
"Geez. Hay wait?! One last question, what happened to the shield generator I was working on? In theory that could be made portable without too much effort and it would allow for a raid under a protective screen."
"Actually," Josephine said with a bit of a giggle, "That's already in use and we can't spare it."
"What's it doing?" Mark asked.
"Here," she said, opening a door labeled defense systems research, "See for yourself."
Mark peered through the door. Inside was his shield machine, his prototype biofuel power generator, and several others he didn't quite recognize, all buzzing away under the careful eye of nearly ten maintenance crew and a half a dozen researchers; all poking around at the various bits and bobbles, furiously scribbling on makeshift clipboards.
Mark walked up to the machine and looked over the display, displacing a researcher in the process; "Hmm... Seems you have it set to protect an area just about 500 yards across; not even close to the machine's limits but enough to be a power hog for sure."
"About 10 kilowatts actually," one of the maintenance crew members said. Seemed to be a man in his early twenties or so Mark decided looking the man over. Working the math he wagered that the maintenance man would have been born sometime around the time he was squinched.
"Ya, sounds about right." Mark said crunching things over. Then, turning to Josephine he asked, "So why the heck aren't you guys protecting anything but yourselves? This machine was intended to protect nearly 100 thousand people and handle a shield strength of around a megaakki total."
"This may be true, but it wasn't designed to explode yet it did," the mechanic retorted causing Mark to whirl around again, "beyond the politics of it, this is just about all we can muster before it begins destabilizing."
"It's true," Josephine said causing Mark to take a few steps back so he could see both at once, "If we could stabilize it so that the zombies couldn't break through on a large enough scale to protect everyone we'd probably garner a lot of support for technology. But unless we can do that, it will come across as some kind of elitism or cover for an arms build-up, neither of which will garner any public support and will probably just end at lynchings. So we've kept things where they are."
"That's all well and good," Mark said, "but that doesn't really answer the question. WHY does it become unstable? Like I said, it should do a megaakki shield; if it isn't that doesn't mean we can't save the world; it just means we can't do it yet because there's a bug."
The two just looked at each other. Mark looked at the two of them as well, but was confused. What he had just said seemed pretty darn obvious to him; he knew it was made for a megaakki so as long as it's not doing so then something's wrong; either in design principle or in implementation. Given that magic had only existed for about 8 months - well, 8 months up to this morning from his point of view - it should be expected that his model of mana and mana's behavior wasn't complete but with 20 years to work on it surely they had to of made some improvements. Right?.... Right?
"We've been working on it for over twenty years and we're just barely starting to grasp how it worked in the first place," Josephine said dejectedly.
Mark just stood there, the little hamster in his brain clutching his tiny furry chest as his heart froze and went into fibrillation. Eventually the paramedics arrived and resuscitated him but his recovery was slow and required lots of therapy. Eventually he could walk again and returned to his post; slowly bringing the gears in Marks brain back into action. "Seriously?!" He said looking at them with his jaw open.
"Yes," the mechanic said lowering his head.
Mark sighed. At least he had figured out why everyone in the Magicus Metallus was so interested in him and why his story was so well known. He had been wondering about it for some time; something seemed to nag at him. With Charles it had been shrugged off as being related to them being friends; but with the strangers it just didn't sit right. Now he knew; they had worked out when he would un-squinch - with their slide rules no less - and had been waiting for him like some kind of technology messiah. The real question now was what happened to him once he explained how it worked; a task that he worried would be an afternoon lunch-and-learn if they had been keeping up on the other fields of science in the middle.
 "So, you say it gets unstable; what happens and at what threshold?" Mark asked, poking at some other device they had unceremoniously jiggered on to the shield generator.
"Well, at about 12 kiloakkis the output of the shield generator begins to fluctuate."
"Hmm... Really," Mark said looking over the machine, "What happens to the spell instantiator?"
"The instator?" The tech said confused.
"The spell instantiator? The part that makes the spell actually happen?"
The tech just gave him the look of a confused puppy. Admittedly the tilted head look was adorable; but it was also just as aggravating.
"What about the accumulator matrix? What are the readings coming off that?"
"Are you interested in seeing if you can get it repaired Mr. Cactuar?" Josephine jumped in before the tech could answer.
"Well, ya; I was working on getting it worked out when I ended up here. By my recollection that was a couple of hours ago. Though knowing that last time I found myself thrown 20 years into the future I'd kinda like to know what was wrong so I don't end up skipping past the lives of the few remaining friends I do have."
"Well," the technician said, "when we found the unit it was in the condition you see here basically. The rest of the equipment you see in here is watching it and sets off alarms when something starts behaving strangely. Well; all except the stabilizer we found elsewhere and added to the unit. When we did the fluctuations didn't start till the 12K they're at now. Before they happened at 8K."
"Ah," Mark said scratching his head. "When I did my test I did it at full power so something must be happening before that power level and it's just operating correctly at this level. Maybe there's a loading effect somewhere in the power regulation circuitry or an impurity in the quad crystal accumulator."
Mark stepped away from the machine taking one last glance. "It's going to take some time to look it over. In the meantime though I was hoping I could get something to eat and maybe sleep. It's been a long two days."
"Oh, sure Mr. Cactuar! Do you want to me to escort you to your quarters?"
"That won't be necessary," came a familiar voice from behind. "He's staying with me tonight. You can get him settled in tomorrow."
"Oh! Yes sir Mr. Magister!" Josephine said eagerly. Mark raised an eyebrow.
"So, how does stakes at my place sound Mark?" Charles said putting an arm around Mark.
Mark's tummy gave an excited rumble, "Well, I think the old tummy says yes so I'll have to accept your invitation," he said with a grin.
"Well then, if you don't mind Mrs. Wyatt I think I'll take him for a while."
"Go right ahead sir," Josephine said turning to Mark, "Please be sure to come see me tomorrow morning so we can get you settled in and placed."
"I will," Mark replied and began to follow Charles out into the hallway.

--CH4--
"So what do you think?" Charles said.
"Something's bothering me. Why is it that the tech can't even locate basic items on the generator? You guys have had it for twenty years. To contrast, magic had only been in existence six months when I created the shield generator; the first prototype - which I would note is largely unmodified - is sitting in that lab back there."
"That's a bit of a story but the gist of it is that tech is banned. This facility is actually very new. We put it together shortly after the death of Helen. The generator itself is considered a relic of hell by the masses so it wasn't even touched pretty much after it unsquinched about 5 years ago."
"Wait," Mark said rubbing his temples, "The generator was squinched too?"
"Does that really surprise you?" Charles said pushing the call button on the elevator, "You had an unregulated discharge of blue mana strong enough to cause at least the catastrophic squinching of yourself. Does the idea that the generator squinched itself in the process seem all that unreasonable then?"
"No, No it doesn't. Also given that the projector was configured to project a sphere around the generator it doesn't surprise me then that it unsquinched faster as the stasis field would have been stronger on the edges than in the center." The a bell dinged as the elevator materialized on the platform from thin air making Mark jump.
Charles laughed, "Oh ya, that's not normal for you is it," he said putting a hand on Mark's shoulder, "Shall we go?"
Mark and Charles got on the elevator which lurched again in that awkward direction, landing them in a dark chasm before springing to life and whirring up. Arriving at the top of the chasm they came to the familiar floor with the trick staircase. Charles led them to a part of the wall and knocked twice. The wall opened up and showed a path to a stairway. "One of my secrets," Charles said grinning and started up the staircase. When they reached the top Charles opened up a trap door and they stepped out into a lavish living room. "Ah home sweet home!" he said throwing himself onto the couch.
Mark stood staring at the sheer scale of the room. Yesterday he hadn't even thought of the possibility that he would be standing in a heated building in any less than 3 months and here he was in the mansion that the post apocalypse had built.
"You gonna stand there with the door open or you gonna come inside?" Chares said grabbing some peanuts from a dish on the coffee table. Mark looked back and noticed that he was still standing there with the trap door open. Closing the door he moved in and found a comfortable chair.
"Wow!" Mark said sitting down in the chair finding it to be ridiculously comfortable. "You get it pretty good in your position. Does everyone get this nice of a house?"
"Well, it is one of the perks of being the magister."
Mark frowned, "That wasn't how it was supposed to be. Everyone pulls their weight and contributes equally and is rewarded equally. Remember?"
"Some contributed more than others and rewarded with a little extra," Charles said shrugging.
"And what about the craftsmen and janitors who are especially effective at their jobs?"
"Oh them?" Charles said scoffing, "They get enough."
Mark twitched. He had argued against the commune approach as the odds of holding to it were basically zero. As horrible as it seemed humanity had gone through several periods of apocalypse in the past and nothing then had stopped the creation of a wealthy class and a poor class. Heck, communism was a direct attempt to subvert that. Yet it almost always was subverted by an underlying group of effective and socially powerful people who created new class strata.
But that his friend would be one of those people who could just scoff at the backs who literally made and metaphorically carried the community was rough. He had expected better.
"I wouldn't dismiss them so easily; how many did it take to make this building and how many does it take to keep it in good working order?"
"Oh, I don't know, several I guess," Charles said.
"The master's estate is kept in fine working order by 15 carefully chosen servants of the highest caliber," came a voice from behind the chair.
"AH! Taylor! You here to tell us that dinner's ready?"
"Indeed sir. Please step this way," he said making his way towards an adjoining dining room. Helping Mark into his seat he remarked "I hope that you will enjoy tonight's meal sir. A fine steak in a light gravy, with fresh corn and roll with a soup and salad and a custard for dessert."
"That sounds delicious, thank you very much."
Charles snapped his fingers, "Quit talking about it and bring it out, I'm starving."
"Right away sir," Taylor said bowing before leaving the room.
"He always spends his time talking about things rather than just doing it," Charles said fiddling with the silverware at his space. "So, do you think you can fix it?"
"To be honest I don't know. What happened last time was unexpected so I can't say with any confidence that it was just a fluke. From what I understand you guys haven't worked out much of it either so spare parts may be impossible to find; what with the raids currently under moratorium."
Charles paused a bit, like he had seized; then he pulled a pen out of thin air and started scribbling furiously on his napkin. After a few minutes he stopped and held up a napkin full of random looking scribbles like a kid showing his mother his latest bit of fridge work.
"Um... What is it?" Mark asked, looking at the contents of the napkin as if it were a foreign language or a lewd drawing.
"It's the solution to the gateway stability problem!" he said triumphantly. Mark just kept his blank stare on. "Oh. I forgot; you haven't been around lately."
"No. No I haven't." Mark replied scarcastically.
"Well, we've recently established a connection between us and the Fate's End and Hell's gate colonies via the Lei Lines. Apparently there are several criss-crossing channels that go to several nodes throughout the world. We've been able to create channels between them and send goods back and forth through these tunnels but we've been having trouble with the tunnels collapsing randomly. It's why there aren't any foreigners here; we haven't been able to get them stable enough to make an attempt at human transportation safe enough to justify. We've had more than a few shipments of salt and other goods literally get cut in half by having a portal collapse with only half of the stuff on our side of the tunnel."
"Owch!"
"You're telling me", he continued, "But I believe by adjusting the spell just a little bit we can stabilize the portal into a permanent fixture at the node if we can entangle it's stability with another spell that's stable enough to take some stress from the portal spell."
"Not a bad idea. But if you don't mind me asking, what the heck is that on the paper?" Mark said cocking his head over to try and make heads or tails of what he was seeing.
"Oh, there hermetic formulae," Charles said, "While you were out we decided to formalize magic enough that we could communicate the nature of a spell."
"Oh, that's pretty neat! You should teach me sometime."
"Sounds like a plan," Charles replied with a smile, "But you've got to promise to explain how that machine of yours works in exchange."
Mark thought quick about his situation, "Sounds good to me. But let me get it working first. Right now they've got it jerry-rigged like you wouldn't believe."
"Will do then. Oh, and on the parts thing, just let me know and I'll see if I can't get you what you need. I've got some pull so I might be able to get at least some of the more exotic things."
"Sirs?" Taylor said holding two plates.
"Oh ya! Dinner! Let's have it Taylor."
"As you wish," Taylor responded.
"Thank you very much," Mark said looking desperately at the food he urgently needed. Taylor placed a plate of salad on the table for each. Mark looked down at the plate of greens. There were some carrots, lettuce, tomato slices, and onions. "Is there any ranch dressing?" 
Charles deflated a little, "Sorry; no. The awakening changed chickens in a way that made their eggs poisonous. So when the ranch dressing from the old world ran out and we couldn't fetch any more it ended ranch. There are some substitutes that we have but none of them are really the same so I don't keep them. Instead I prefer to keep some of the new flavors that have been invented since the apocalypse. To be honest I'd recommend the stuff in the red bottle.
Mark looked at the table and saw an array of bottles in a variety of colors. There was the red; which Charles dove for himself. Then there was a green bottle and lastly a brown bottle. "What's in the brown bottle?" Mark asked picking it up and looking it over intently.
"It's a vegetable dressing made with oil and various herbs and spices. Luckily most of the of the vegetables are the same since the awakening but there were a few changes and I think that really captures some of the new flavors that came about from the awakening."
Mark put a drop on his finger and took a taste. The flavors were new. He wasn't sure if it was possible to describe the precise flavor of the blend. It was kind of woody but sweet. Whatever it was though it was suitably good.
Mark dribbled some on his salad and started to take a bite. The savory food was like nectar to his starved palette. Throwing courtesy to the wind he began shoveling the food trying to sate his near day old hunger.
"So," Charles said, "what do you think of the fuuuture ture er er er ?" Charles fingers wiggled in the fake magician style.
"Mhreh" Mark said munching away, "Ithcs nof fhah bhaf." He swallowed and continued, "I was expecting a lot more infrastructure to be built up. What I've seen so far is just roads and some cookie-cutter houses; and moreover, houses in the design that we were coming up with twenty years ago. Magic, however, seems to have advanced quite significantly but the number of commoners who know it seems to be fairly small." He took another heaping bite.
"Well, I'll admit that we haven't put as much into infrastructure since Helen retired as the colony leader. But between you and me it was getting pretty obvious that the faction that shared her way of thinking. So when she retired it was mostly due to the external pressure."
"That's unfortunate. There's no reason why you guys shouldn't have at least a few factories up and running around here and some organized magical schools." Mark waved his fork at Charles, "It's not that hard and you know it. So the fact that people don't know some basic spells is just wrong."
"Well, you now there aren't that many resources. We don't have enough to spare to put together a school."
"Wait," Mark said, putting the fork down. "No schools? Of any kind?"
"Well, we have a few basic skills courses that everyone goes through and then people with special needs jobs get on the job training in things like math and managing the crops."
"So you're telling me that the only people who have a basic education are the people leftover from the old world like you and me?"
"Well... Um... Ya."
"You know that wasn't what Helen wanted. When she made the camp she built a wall and built a school; first thing."
"Well, when she stepped down Nathan took over and reallocated those resources to essential functions."
"What kind of essential functions? What could be more essential than teaching children and training laborers?"
"Hunting and guarding mostly."
"You're kidding? You went along with this?"
"Well we needed hunters."
"Of course you do, but what will happen when the hunters get old and die or become injured and invalid?"
"Um..."
"Gah!" Mark said slamming his hands down on the table, "I thought you understood why Helen did these things! You should know why teaching the children is so important and why Helen put so much effort into making things like clean water and sewage control. Let me guess, you get your water from a well and don't treat it."
"Well, since the excursions to the old world ended..."
"Damn it Charles," Mark shouted furiously, "You fuckin' know that this is critical. Survival as a species means surviving tomorrow as much as it does today. Let me guess; you have a shortage of most essential goods and basically no services whatsoever. Your crops are often dying to blight and fields that once did well aren't."
"Well there's been a drought and..."
"No, Charles. It's because you don't have any damn farmers. You have random people; probably bankers, salesmen, technicians plowing fields with instructions like 'here's seeds, make stuff grow.'"
"Well we needed farmers..."
"You did; and still do. All you have now are random strangers being asked to work the fields with basic implements."
"That's not true," Charles retorted, hurt, "We have several farmers, we've just assigned other people too."
"Probably all the people Helen put into the roll. I wouldn't be surprised if the average age was," he paused to run some quick numbers in his head, "about 50. And given what you've said so far I'm guessing that's pretty close to the life expectancy of someone here if you remove your soldiers."
"To be honest we don't know."
"FUCK Charles," Mark said standing up, "What the hell do you even do? You go by the title of Magister, which I just assumed put you in charge of magic; what with that being what the name means and all."
"I am responsible for all magic use in Shining Hope," Charles pouted, "anyone who wants to use magic has to have their spell use approved by my office."
Mark laughed manically. "Okay, and what kind of spells need approval?"
"Well, all of them," Charles said looking confused.
"So if I were the kind of person who could cast magic; like just about everyone here; and I wanted to cast a spell to make my pants stiff temporarily - you remember that spell - I would have to come speak with your office?"
"Well of course. All magic use of any kind has to be authorized and supervised by the office of the Magister."
"You're serious?"
"Well of course. Without it people could go using magic all higglety pigglety. There'd be spells everywhere. It'd be chaos."
"That chaos is called freedom Charles. That freedom is why I was able to work on the spellcrafted shield generator in the first place. I have a question then. How many permits do you process each day?'
"Well, anymore it's basically none. The number of applicants fell off after a while."
"Any guesses as to why?"
"Huh?"
"Did it ever occur to you to ask why nobody wanted to use magic?"
"Well, no; we just assumed that people were happy with things the way they were."
"Based on the way your underling at the institute reacted I get the impression that they're not happy. What's the punishment for violating that law?"
"Death."
Mark twitched, "Death? Using magic without a permit is a capital offense?"
"Well of course, a badly cast spell could potentially doom the colony."
"So could a flu or a zombie attack. But we live with them."
"But those are beyond our control."
"NO THEY AREN'T" Mark said. "The flu can be prevented with good hygiene, and the zombies can be kept at bay with shield magic. Oh but wait; MAGIC is banned. I'd cast a random spell right now out of civil disobedience if I wasn't a mute. But believe me; I'm going to do everything in my power to fix this."
"You can't do that Mark," Charles said, "If you do anything rash, I'll have to come down on you just as hard as I will everyone else."
"No, not like that," Mark said, "Oooooohhh no. I will make things right by doing exactly what you asked. The first step to a prosperous colony is to solve the 'survivalist' complex and the easiest way to do that is with a basic sense of safety. My first goal will be to fix the shield generator. Can I presume that the paperwork for that thing has already been filed or should I go to your office tomorrow morning and get working on the salmon colored form?"
"The paperwork was filed pre-emptively before you unsquinched. Your permit administrator is Josephine. Just remember though you're already working on a project with limited approval in the first place. The shield generator is just a figment of the public's imagination. Do you understand?"
Totalitarian governments rules tend to be too strict even for the government themselves and Mark realized this was no exception. "I understand," he replied. In all likelihood the generator would be used as a weapon against the people and Mark knew it. But Mark also actually knew how the thing worked and knew that there was quite a bit of flexibility that it offered.
"So," Mark said sitting back down and lowering his tone of voice, "when's that steak coming?"
"Good question, Taylor?! When's that steak coming?"
--CH4--
When Mark finished his dinner he bid Charles a fairwell and after getting more specific instructions about how to get to the facility rather than having to guess he returned to the Institute. There he met Josephine in the hall.
"So, I was supposed to meet you about being assigned quarters."
"Oh! That's right. If you could, please go wait outside my office and I'll return briefly and we'll get you a spot picked out."
"Thanks very much." Mark said giving a quick wave as they parted ways and he headed to sit outside her office on the floor.
It had been a long day and he was looking forward to getting a good night's sleep. He didn't expect to sleep very well though; basically Helen had been forced out and Nathan's strategy had been accepted by everyone just out of the blue. Mark pondered what kind of event allowed for that as most everyone was fairly comfortable with her strategy of leadership; and given all of the "What if" zombie roleplay he had done with his friends before the actual apocalypse happened he had thoroughly agreed with her.
As a result though, there was work to be done. He needed to work on a way where the bourgeois that had come to exist in Shining Hope could be brought back into line and start giving everyone the training and resources they'd need to get the camp made into a thriving city.
"Sorry for the wait Mr. Cactuar,"
"Please, call me Mark. I'm not anyone special and don't need any special titles."
"Okay Mark, I understand," she replied using her key on the door. "Anyway, let's see what room we can put you in."
The two stepped into the office. Josephine stepped over to one of the filing cabinets and pulled out a file folder and laid it out on her desk. "Hmm... Let's see here. Looks like room 6 in the alpha wing is open. I'll send someone to storage and have them pull out your things. Charles had all of your things put in storage when you were squinched. He was the only one who didn't think you died in the explosion. Looks like we know who was right there. He's changed a lot since then but given how much everything in the world changed it's no surprise that everyone ended up a little different for it."
Mark gave a deep sigh, "This is quite true. Some things are for the better and some are for the worse. It is my hope that the shield generator will give us the first step for fixing those that went for the worse." Mark paused thinking and then continued, asking "Do you have any children?"
"That's a rather inappropriate personal question Mark!" Josephine responded, obviously offended.
"I'll take that to mean not yet or not anymore then," Mark said speaking gently and apologetically, "I apologize for asking though; I was curious if anyone had any personal experience with the educational system here in the last few years at Shining Hope and if you had any kids than you would know what it is like."
"Well there isn't a system here Mark. We're just trying to get by."
"After twenty years? Really? Who's gonna take over for your when you decide to retire or one of your experiments here get sufficiently out of hand and you find yourself unable to continue working for some reason or another?"
"That issue will be addressed at that time." Josephine said after a brief pause.
"Anyone you could think of off hand? Just for argument's sake?"
"Hmm... I don't think anyone else knows how to do the budgeting or filing."
"Fascinating. I'll be up front with you right now; it is my plan to change that way of thinking at a fundamental level and also to address the more direct problem of not having anyone who could fill that, or any position. I'll admit though that a city wide shield is the first step in that process so it's my top priority. However, I'd like to have that tech we saw today with me anytime I'm working on the generator. I'll need him as a second pair of hands and eyes."
"I can't promise him." Josepine said, "He has several duties that he must attend to."
"Then him and I will be a team for those duties. I can't work without him so if I help we can get his work done faster so I can get his help on the generator."
"But you won't know how to do his tasks," she protested.
"I'll pick it up. I may not look like it since I'm only in my mid-twenties but I've got an advanced education from the old world. I should be able to pick up anything from scooping specimen poop up to recording results and designing experiments in just a few days and any analysis you're doing I should be able to pick up in a few weeks."
Josephine sighed, "Alright. I'll change his assignment to include spending the majority of his time with you. He'll report to you now. I'll get you a list of the other tasks he was doing so you two can get that squared away."
"When does he normally get started?"
"We go roughly by sunrise here."
"Okay then," Make clocks went on the checklist, "I'll meet him in the lab some time somewhat after dawn. If you have that list for me by then, or at least make sure to drop by earlyish we'll make sure he gets his tasks done for the day."
"Sounds good then," Josephine replied grabbing some papers, "Let's get you moved in. You can find the residential/offices section at the far end of the laboratories and then down the hall on the right. You'll be in room number 6. I'll get them to move your stuff in and you should have all of your things by tomorrow morning."
"Thank you very much Josephine."
"You're welcome," she said handing Mark a key, "Have a great evening and I'll see you tomorrow morning."
"Night," Mark replied making his way out the door. Going to the end of the hall and turning right he went through a set of double doors and found his room relatively close to the front. Putting the key in the door he opened it and looked inside. The room actually seemed to be two rooms. From the look of it he guessed that the room was intended to be an office with living quarters behind it. This would do; it would SO do. A front room with a desk and chairs in front and behind and then behind that was another room, also behind a locked door with a bed and an armoire. Neither room had a window though and this concerned him somewhat since the schedule was based on "sunrise".
He was tired; it had been a LONG day. The bed already had sheets so he just threw himself on it and immediately curled up. In that moment it became very apparent that his worries about not being able to sleep were unfounded. In minutes he found himself off in slumberland.
--CH5--
Getting up at the right time in the morning turned out to be a non-issue. Sometime before dawn a man came walking down the hall shouting "Morning Hour! Time to get up!"
Mark got up and stretched out. Looking out into the office he saw two boxes of stuff on the back of a red wagon. No; not just a red wagon, HIS red wagon. Charles had done a very good job of preserving his stuff. He went out and started digging though the equipment. He found his electronic parts bin, including the exotic components (namely the microcontrollers and other loose elaborate parts,) the three changes of clothes he owned, a few books, his electronic test equipment, and then some random sundries; a few of which are probably one of kind given the circumstances. What was concerningly missing was his computer. The calculator was there, now also probably a one of kind thing, so there was something; but without the computer, he was going to have a hell of a time working on the generator. The generator used a few microcontrollers to get things up and working. As a result, he was likely going to have to get creative and make up some kind of machine to program the firmware, and he was pretty much going to be starting from scratch on it as the files for it were on the computer. 
Mark cursed his luck and the circumstances. Charles wouldn't have missed something like that - he knew better - so something must have happened to it. Mark's brain shoot a few cobwebs and realized that he had the laptop with him when he was working on the generator; so it's possible that it was either squinched still, destroyed, or looted by the survivalists when the batteries on their previous ones had been used.
Mark hoped for the squinching; he really wasn't looking forward to having to rewrite that firmware. The firmware itself represented about half of the design work he had done. Not that that was very atypical of such things, but given the resources he had now having to rewrite the firmware was pretty much a guarantee that he couldn't update the thing for quite some time. Weeks or more depending.
Mark threw on some clothes and went out into the hallway looking for someone he could ask about a bathroom. Flagging down the nearest passerby he asked the question about the basics.
"You must be the new guy from the past. I presume you mean the bathroom," the man said, "You should have one in your room."
"Eh?" Mark said looking confused.
"Ya, in your room there should be a kind of metal can. Body wastes and other organics go in there. It's got a magic spell on it that pushes it into pocket dimension where it's processed into fuel for the generator that powers the building."
Mark was stunned, "Who came up with that?" he asked.
"I hear the magister did, actually. About 15 years ago as I understand it, but I've been using it for as long as I can remember."
"Hmm, seems the old bag hasn't completely lost it. How common are those things? Does everyone in Shining Hope have one or just the people here?"
"Everyone has them. They're part of the house and someone caught doing their business elsewhere is strictly punished."
Mark laughed; there was a brilliant man in there somewhere, hidden behind the iron fisted authoritarian. "Ah. Thanks for the warning and the information."
"No problem. You can get breakfast at the cafeteria at the end of the hall if you didn't already know."
"No I didn't. Thanks."
"Great meeting you. See you around," the man said heading down the hall to the labs.
Mark waved briefly before running madly into his room and relieving himself into the can. Having addressed this detail he was ready for breakfast. Bacon, eggs, maybe some pancakes. All of them sounded yummy. Which was unfortunate for him as when he arrived he found that his choices were some kind of mutant potato hash brown and wheat porridge.
Mark made a note to make himself a griddle somewhere along the way. Eating as much of the potatoes as he could stomach and then filling the rest in with porridge he then made his way over to the director's office. Knocking on her door he waited for an answer. However, none came. So instead he made his way to the lab with the generator in it.
Pushing the door open he found the tech and Josephine talking amongst themselves. "Hello there! I tried stopping by your office but you apparently were here. I had some questions for you about my tools."
"Ah, we'll talk about that in a second," she said, "Vince, you remember Mark from yesterday right."
"Yes mam'" he replied.
"Good. As I was explaining to you earlier this is Mark. He will be responsible for ensuring that the shield generator is brought up to full output and is in proper working order. I want your full cooperation with his efforts on this endeavor. You will remain responsible for your other tasks and Mark will be managing you in those activities."
She pulled out a sheet of crudely made paper, "This is his list of tasks. Mark, you're responsible for making sure he gets each of these done. These are essential tasks and hold a higher priority of completion than the generator. Do you understand?"
"Yes mam," the two  said in unison.
"Good. Now Mark, what were the additional questions you had?"
"Yes," Mark said, "Specifically I have two questions. I noticed that my stuff was brought in overnight and I thank you for that. However, something was missing and I don't know if it was squinched or if it was lost in the turmoil or even the explosion. Specifically I'm looking for my computer. It has the firmware that runs the controller in the generator." 
Vince and Josephine both flinched at the mention of the computer, but Vince's curiosity got the better of him. "Firmware?" he asked with a puzzled expression.
Mark noticed the disturbance and took note. "Firmware was the list of instructions that was given to simple computers to make them do the particular task that they were needed for."
"What? Then why don't you simply tell it 'make a big shield'?" 
"Well," Mark explained, "it's really not that simple. The language that the microcontroller understands is very simple and really only works on a few very basic primitives like 'subtract two numbers' and 'do something else if the difference of the last math operation was zero."
"Oh, so it's like talking to a child then?"
"Kinda, if your child is a super logical, superfast wonder child with no sense of humor," Mark said with a laugh. "Anyway, any idea what could have happened?"
Josephine paused. Then sighing she started out bluntly, "The fact is Mark that all computers are contraband. Calculators were allowed in this facility only but nowhere else. And to be honest you're the only person here with one. They're considered taboo. Your computer was squinched, but when it unsquinched about two years ago it was confiscated."
"Well," Mark said, "that's rather inconvenient. Well, I know my second task then."
"Second?" Josephine asked.
"First is getting Vince here on task and getting up to speed on what he needs to do and how I can maximize the time I can get from him," Mark said grinning.
"Indeed." Josephine said, looking far less amused than he had expected. "I'll let you get to your work then." She turned and left the room with a decided haste.
"What's her issue?" Mark said to Vince. Vince just shrugged.
"Anyway let's have a look at that list." Mark pulled out the paper and started looking it over. Most of the tasks involved basic maintenance tasks for the building's electric infrastructure. The last few had to do with monitoring and maintaining the generator and a few other devices that were probably the other machines in the room.
"How long does this normally take?" Mark asked estimating that all of these tasks could be done in just about an hour in total.
"About 6 hours. I use the rest of the time to work on studying the generator to try and figure out what makes it tick."
"Geez boy! What are you doing with that time? Hand checking each connection?"
"No sir; I'm checking all of the wires to make sure that they're good, checking all of the bulbs to make sure they're socketed properly, etc. Just like the book said," he said proudly.
"Let me see that book," Mark said amused by the unnecessary thoroughness of the inspection. Vince started shuffling though the books in the room and pulled out a text. Handing it over to Mark he looked it over. "Do it yourself home wiring repair," Mark read aloud, "Vince, you do know this book is about what to do when it doesn't work right?"
"So?" Vince said indignantly.
"So? What it means is that this is only for troubleshooting. This kind of testing is intended to help find out why the light won't come on once it doesn't. You don't have to do this kind of thing every day. For that matter half of these tests are subsumed by 'is the light on?'"
Mark took a quick walk to the other side of the room. And put his hand on Vince's shoulder, "Do you know how electricity works?"
"Um, when the generator has fuel, if you plug it into the wall and then plug other things into the wall and this casts a spell on them to make the lights come on."
"Um, not even clos... Wait," Mark walked over to the generator. Sure enough they had kludged together a power cord with a plug on both ends. Mark just shook his head. "You're a lucky man you know. I wouldn't be surprised that if you plugged an iron in you'd pop the breaker in the distribution box." Mark noted to himself; rewire the generator. So many tasks he moaned.
"Actually we have, a lot. Checking the breakers is one of my tasks." Mark checked the list; sure enough it was.
"Anyway, let's get this over with and get started on out first task; getting you up to speed on the basics of electricity."
They spent the morning going room to room doing the checks that were needed. It took them about 3 hours  to go over all of the steps, but this was mostly because they spent a substantial amount of time going over the basics of what wires did, how they made light, and a few related tasks.
At the end of his chores Mark sent him into the storage facility and had him get some big heavy wire and then they strung some proper wiring from the generator over to the main power distribution box. After a brief deliberate "breaker failure" Mark bolted the whole system to the bus bars on the generator.
"There!" Mark said, "No more popped breakers for having all the lights on."
"Amazing!" Vince said, "How did you do that?"
"We'll talk about that tomorrow. I've given you a lot today. Can you tell me how electricity works?"
"Um. Roughly electricity is made at the generator, that electricity then flows from the generator to the lights through the wires and the lights then get really hot and make light."
"Excellent! Now remember I'm simplifying the details for now. Many of the things you just said are wrong, but close enough. We'll go into it in more detail tomorrow." Mark wiped the sweat from his brow put there by all of the lifting and bolting, "So what do you say we call it a day?"
"Normally I'm here till just before dark," Vince said sheepishly, "Won't Josephine be mad at me?"
"You're my employee now remember. If she gets mad it will be at me. And seeing as we did more today than you normally can get done on your own I'd say you've done plenty." Mark paused one moment, "Actually, there's two more things I need your help with."
Vince looked on like an eager puppy; which somewhat surprised Mark as he wasn't in the mood to do any more work like what they had been doing. "I need you to show me where I can get some office supplies: pencils, paper, straight edges and the light and I need to know where the library is."
"Well," Vince replied thinking deeply, "Josephine is in charge of all office supplies, and the library is in the Magister's office."
"Figures, I suspect people don't use a lot of paper around here."
"No, sir. Some people do, but I'm not one of them."
"Sounds  good. Oh, and don't call me sir. Either call me Mark or Sempai; I ain't old enough yet for this sir thing. For your information yesterday was April 20th 2010 as far as I'm concerned. The date may have jumped a bit but I sure didn't get any older in the middle," Mark said laughing.
"Sempai?" Vince said cocking his head.
Mark just laughed harder, "It's a carry-over from the old Japanese culture and means 'someone who is further along the path'"
"Oh. Sounds good then." Vince said, "Well, I'm going to head to my room sempai." He seemed to roll the word around on his tongue, tasting it to see if he liked it. "If Josephine comes looking I'll tell her it was at your command."
"Just send her my way. Besides, I'll be looking for her anyway," Mark said.
The parted ways and Mark made his way to the elevator shaft. It looked like he was going to have to make another visit to the sterile white building; and possibly to see the Magister himself as he suspected the book he needed wasn't going to be on the shelf.
--CH6--
Mark strolled down the road, looking at the carriages that strolled by. Now a full day into things he had decided that it wasn't a fluke of a concussion. Whatever beast it was that was pulling the stupid things was shifty; like it existed as a multidimensional critter and he was only seeing a cross-section of it that was always bending and shifting.
Arriving at the government building he asked the guards there if the library was open to the public and also who he needed to talk to to get an appointment with the magister. The explained that the library was indeed open, though checking out books required a special permit. As for seeing the magister he would need to fill out a goldenrod form type A-7 and submit that to his assistant, who would then look at things and pencil him in; typically a few weeks later.
Thanking the guards for the information he made his way in to the library. Once there he started rummaging through the shelves; though several minutes of checking didn't turn up much of anything. For that matter most of his checking didn't even turn up any books he recognized. All of the ones here seemed to be hand bound and hand written.
"Is there something specific you're looking for?" A young man asked from behind; startling Mark.
"Um, yes. I'm looking for a book on algebra."
"Hmm..." the man said, pondering the request, "Can you be more specific?"
Mark was a little surprised as algebra was a pretty specific thing. It occurred to him however that given the education these guys were getting, there was a chance he just simply wouldn't know what it was if he was young enough.
"It's a book about math. If you have a section covering math I can just look there."
"Oh, we keep those in a section in the back. You can read them but you cannot check them out."
"That's fine; I don't have a checkout permit anyway."
Mark followed the man into the back. The library in the back was actually a lot larger than the main library. In here he found all kinds of books that he recognized: books by Mark Twain, books by Einstein, books about religion, and books about politics. "Thank you very much", Mark said to the librarian.
He went to the math section and found a few books on algebra. One of them was a good college text with sufficient coverage of the topics and a good prestudy section he could use to get Vince up to snuff if he was too far back even to get that.
He took a mental note of the text and then made his way back to the complex. By this time it was getting quite dark. He went to the cafeteria and grabbed himself some of, well, he wasn't sure what the vegetable was, but he definitely recognized the chicken. Regardless of what all of it was, it turned out to be pretty good.
"May I join you?" It was Josephine's voice coming from over his shoulder.
"Oh, sure. Grab a seat."
Josephine plopped her tray down on the table and grabbed the seat across from him at the circular table.
"So," she said, grabbing a fork full of mystery veggie, "what did you think of your first day?"
"Do you want the honest answer or the answer I should be giving a manager and the person responsible for running the place?"
"Well," she said swallowing, "I would like to hear your honest answer, but I would expect it wise to cast it through the lens of an employee."
"Ah. In that case then it was pretty good," Mark said grabbing a bit of chicken, "We optimized Vince's duty list by reducing the testing of the facility resources to more basic tests and only resorting to elaborate tests if the basic ones fail, we covered the basics of circuits, though he has a VERY large gap to cover, and we re-wired the generator that powers the facility so that the facility shouldn't pop any more breakers during normal operation of things like lights. To that end I'm sorry for the power glitch earlier; it was caused by shutting down the connection to the building circuit long enough to safely redo that wiring." Mark popped the chicken bit in his mouth and began masticating it; savoring the juices.
"Oh, so it wasn't another breaker malfunction? That's a relief. We get those very often and Vince has gotten very good about finding his way to the box in the dark to reset it."
"Like I said," Mark said swallowing, "we've rewired it now so that you shouldn't see any broken breakers; unless you overload the new wiring at which point the breaker is less important than the fact that the generator can't handle that load and the shield at the same time."
"So, I'd like to talk to you about Vince getting off early."
"Oh that, ya we were done with all that could reasonably be done in one day. I sent him off because I didn't have any more tasks and had a few things that needed to be done before I could move forward."
"That's beside the point. When he's done with his work he needs to be studying the shield generator."
"Oh, I agree completely that he needs to study it. To that end it's part of why I wanted to have him with me. But the reality of it is that he doesn't have enough basics to understand how it works. And we're not talking a lack of a few advanced technology things; we're talking a basic lack of math and science skills. He simply is incapable of learning how it works. He could prod that thing for the next millennia and still not know the first thing about its basic function."
Josephine scowled. "The kid's a sharp boy. I'm sure he'd figure it out."
"I won't deny that he's a smart boy," Mark replied nibbling on the mystery veggie, "But he hasn't been given the knowledge he needs. He'll pick it up if someone teaches him, but he doesn't have it yet since no one taught it to him."
Josephine just looked at her plate, "It's the educational system that failed him. Namely we don't have one. All of this 'We must do what it takes to survive mumbo jumbo'"
"Indeed," Mark said. "But I don't plan to let that problem continue. I've spent the hours since I let him go at the library in the government hall. Turns out that they do have the books I'll need to teach him, but it's going to mean a lot of field trips since you can't check them out."
"You're going to teach him math?" Josephine asked.
"Yes. It is impossible to understand the operation of the generator without it and some basic electronics skills; so I'm going to teach him math, physics, and electronics. To that end, if you have anybody who has a similar task like 'figure out how the lights work' who isn't from the old world I'd like to ask that they be given leave to tag along for these lessons. I'm sure you know why this will benefit them."
"I understand, but I'm warning you that there will be some challenges in dealing with the government building staffers with a class."
"I'm fine with that," Mark said finishing off the chicken, "But I did have one additional question that will actually relate in a more direct sense to the shield generator; can I get a notebook; or at least several sheets of paper, a few pencils, and a straight edge?"
"There I go thinking that you'd be asking for something serious and hard to acquire," Josephine said making a slight laugh, "And sure. I'll have a notebook delivered to your lab tomorrow morning."
"Don't think you're getting off easy; I need the paper so I can design a replacement device to fill in for what the computer was doing. Also, can you have it sent to my room instead? I plan to use the front area as an office."
"Hmm..." Josephine said, "I think I can do that. I hadn't thought of that area as an office but that's not a terribly bad idea."
"Really?" Mark said, "What is that room usually used for?"
"A living room," she responded matter-of-factly. "Most people use it for entertaining guests and holding the occasional party."
"Oh, I plan to use it that way too," Mark said with a grin, "but by day I think it will make for a fairly decent workspace."
"Indeed," Josephine said, "I'll have them delivered to your room. If you need any additional supplies; please let me know and I'll be happy to help."
"Thank you very much," Mark replied, "I'll need them for working up some plans to make up the tools I no longer have."
"Ah, understood," she said. He hoped she didn't as a full comprehension of his actions would ruin his plans completely.
Mark looked down at his empty plate and stood up, "Well, I think I'm done here. I'll leave you to finish up and I'll look forward to the supplies so we can get started. Once I discern what other things I'm going to need I'll get you a list."
"Enjoy your evening then Mark," Josephine said digging back into her dinner.
"Same to you," Mark said over his shoulder as he was walking away. Things seemed to be going fairly decently so long as he was compliant. However, he knew there would come a time when this false sense of security would show its true colors and he'd need a plan to keep himself from landing in some kind of prison or worse. The immediate plan however called for him getting the generator up and running and that depended on getting some kind of firmware programming device up and running. It wasn't going to be easy; last time he was riding on the shoulders of nearly 60 years advances where computers were made with the help of computers. He was going to have to do it old school style.
He spent a lot of time considering several different ways that it could be done. By bedtime he had the starting ideas for a solution to his immediate problem. He resolved that he still needed to solve his long range problem as well as the colony's long range problem but that was weeks away. He got ready for bed and settled in for a well deserved sleep.
--CH7--
He was awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of a bell being rang frantically. He got up and put on some basic clothes. A zombie attack bell? Couldn't be, must be something else he told himself. Stepping groggily out into the hallway he stopped a staffer moving swiftly down the hall, "What's happening?"
"Zombie attack!"
"Here?! In the heart of Shining Hope?"
"Yes, but no time to talk about it."
Mark let the man go to whatever task he had been given for this kind of event. Gathering his wits he decided that since he didn't have any assigned role, he'd go check the generator to see how the zombie attack was affecting it.
Striding down the hall confidently he came to the shield generator room and opened the door. Looking over the panel he noted that the shield generator wasn't being strained at all. No load was being presented. Whatever was happening they weren't trying to get in through the shield. In practice the shield should have a standing front of protective magic, but as it was consumed by something attacking the shield the generator had to replenish the magic so there was an obvious surge of power every time anything happened. But it was quiet here. He wondered what was happening.
Grabbing a mop from nearby he went out to see what was happening that had the facility in a tizzy. Following the horde along the hallway he found himself at the end of the hallway where a tunnel in the earth seemed to have been carved out by the zombies. The blue shimmer of the shield could be seen a short way into the tunnel. However, there was a hole in it and the zombies were stepping through it.
The zombies were strange though. Last he saw a zombie (two days ago really, zombie attacks happened every day all day at Shining Hope in 2009) they were mindless amblers. A drunken guard could easily prevent them from getting past the gate with a poorly placed shot.
These zombies were decidedly different. The moved in units and worked to flank their opponents. For that matter there really weren't that many of them; just 4. Mark watched as the zombies tore through the few initial guards and started making their way down the hall. Jumping behind a corner he waited for the zombies to go past and then he pounded the zombie covering the rear with the mop handle as hard as he could. The mop handle broke over the zombie's head and knocked it clean out. The remaining three zombies turned and looked at him. 
Without blinking Mark then rammed the broken end of the mop handle he still had into the second zombie's abdomen going from bottom to top; puncturing the right lung through the diaphragm and sending it to the floor gasping for breath. The remaining two zombies the split up and one flanked him from the rear. Their magical claws glistening in the florescent light reminding Mark that one false move would simply end him as mere contact could disembowel him.
Mark dove out the side, making a tight roll and then bolted down the hallway. He ran past a pair of sword armed guards who efficiently took out the remaining two zombies. Hearing the sound of steel and flesh Mark looked back to see what had happened and noticed that both swordsman had cut deeply through the neck flesh of the zombies who were now bleeding profusely from their exposed carotid artery. The zombies rapidly lost consciousness and fell to the floor.
"Whew!" Mark gasped looking at the carnage. "I don't know how much I can thank you."
"T'weren't nothing to it," the one man said, "We's just doin' our duty." He puffed up his chest to show off his tabard. On it was a Teutonic cross with a red rabbit's head over two crossed swords.  "That's an interesting symbol," Mark said looking it over the tabard, "what does it represent?"
The man deflated and just stared at him blankly for a period, as if there's no way he couldn't know. Taking a swift guess Mark came back with the only name he'd heard associated with combatants so far, "Oh! You're from the Hoppitus."
The man beamed at the name and stuck his chest back out. "Yessir! I'm William-Roberts Jones, knight of the Order of the Bloody Hoppitus at your service. You can call me Billy-Bob though." He bowed courteously and looked up at Mark in this gesture.
Not meaning to make any offense Mark bowed in return. "Is there a lot of people from the Order here in the facility?"
"Not really," Billy-Bob said, "Norm'ly dis place is right quiet like so we's usually only keep a few o' us around; jus' in case one o' the 'speriments goes wrong."
"Oh, like one of the rabbits getting loose."
"'xactly." Billy-Bob replied with a strong nod.
"Well, it's been a pleasure to make your acquaintance Billy-Bob. I hope to see you again some time when there's not any zombies running around and I'm not short on sleep."
"Pleasure makin' ya' aqua... atquean... acquaintance too. Sleep well."
"You too Billy-Bob."
Billy-Bob turned and walked away, but Mark stayed planted; there was something desperately wrong and he needed to check. Walking back to the new hole in the wall he peered into the dark hallway. In the distance he could just see a flash of white from a rabbit's tail hopping off into the distance. The hole in the shield also had filled in.
Hmm... He would need to consider this issue and devise a way around it. The shield generator's logs would tell him a lot, but by his estimates they'd only be good for another 24 hours and he didn't take it as terribly likely that he'd be able to communicate with the onboard computer within the week; let alone a day.
As much as he hated to admit it; it meant that he was going to need another zombie attack - no, another rabbit attack - before he would be able to ascertain what precisely had allowed that to happen and thus determine what he could do to fix it. In the meantime he was going to have to explain why the mop from the shield room was now in two pieces and tightly lodged into the chest cavity of a zombie.
In practice though it turned out that the mop was the least of his troubles, Josephine spent the next hour explaining that the reason the Hoppitus existed was that people like him weren't trained combatants and were likely to die at the hands of the organized zombie raids. Mark, however largely tuned her out. During the initial months of the awakening he had spent his entire time trying to both do research and not get eaten by zombies that seemed supernaturally attracted to him. This seemed much less magical once he determined that they tracked CO2; but the fighting skills remained useful.
To that end he actually had learned several martial art forms, along with all of the other residents, during his first few months at Shining Hope. Though she was a strict member of the "Infrastructure means survival" camp, Helen also believed that there would come a time when the zombies would overwhelm the camp's static defenses: traps, guards, walls, and the like; so she made it a major point to teach every man, woman, and child how to fight and also anyone with the talent she showed how to use offensive and defensive magic.
Once Josephine's lecture was concluded and Mark's neck was sore from all of the nodding, Mark returned to his room to get the remainder of his much needed beauty sleep and strip off the blood soaked clothes that were becoming increasingly uncomfortable. He had a lot of work to do tomorrow and he was going to need the sleep.
--CH8--
As mornings typically do this one came too soon. After the busy night the last thing Mark wanted to hear was the call for "Morning Hour" but indeed it came and it meant that he had to get moving on his daily chores; involved and not very chorey though they may be. 
Starting with the basics he did his daily business into the magic can - as he had come to call it - and then made his way over to the cafeteria. This time his choices looked a lot more palatable; slices of meat were offered with buttered toast and something that looked decidedly like an apple, but had the flavor of spiced apple tea. Asking the stranger beside him, and they verified that it was indeed an apple, and that in fact that was how it was supposed to taste. Not one to complain about mutant food that was actually edible, even if a bit different Mark happily ate his breakfast and then made his way to the lab. 
For the second day in a row he found Vince and Josephine talking quietly in the lab when he arrived. "The supplies you requested should be arriving at your room within the hour," she said. Turning, she strode quickly to the door "Have a good day gentlemen," and like that she was gone.
"Wow. Not even a 'How're you doing?'," Mark said said disapprovingly.
"I don't think she's overly happy that you're working with me," Vince said shrugging, "Thinks you'll be a bad influence on me."
"Why would I be a bad influence? Hum, no matter; we have chores to do don't we? Shall we get started?"
"Yes sir," Vince said grabbing his tool belt and following Mark out the door.
This time the chores went much faster. Since Mark planned to do a formal physics lesson later in the day, he decided that he'd skip over the running tutorial while they did their work and save it all for later. That said their work didn't go without any problems; the incursion from the night before had severed the link between two of the classrooms around the site of the tunnel; so repairs to the facility's wiring had to be done. The disruption to power today though was much smaller since they weren't rewiring the core connection and also had the main breaker box at their disposal now.
Finishing up the last of the maintenance tasks he then sat down with Vince. His original plan was to try and teach a class on algebra today but it quickly occurred to him that he needed to rally more people and also that he needed to know more about where the people he was working with were already at.
"So Vince, are you familiar with mathematics?"
Vince noded, "Yes sir. My mother taught me the addition and multiplication tables up to 10."
Mark gagged slightly, "Okay then, did she also teach you how to add and multiply numbers that were bigger than that?"
Vince nodded again, "Yes sir. She also taught me how to work with decimal numbers."
Holding his breath Mark asked the final question, "How many of your colleagues would you guess have that much math skill?"
"Not many," Vince replied, "I think everyone got their tables, but I don't think many people got to decimals."
Mark sighed deeply. As much as he hated to admit it that actually was pretty much where most of the people he had known growing up actually got to; very few people could do fractions or anything higher. However, most of them weren't playing at being a scientist or engineer either.
"Okay then," Mark said looking Vince over weakly, "I think we're going to have a long way to go before we're ready to talk about what the generator is doing. However, in the meantime that's not going to stop us from working on it."  
Vince looked at Mark confused. Mark looked at him with a glint in his eye, "Vince," he said, "There are several ways to 'understand' something. The first is to understand academically. This is a useful form of understanding and I fully intend to give it to you, but we have a long way to go. The second way is intrinsically. This is the kind of understanding one gets from simply 'getting ' it and usually is earned through years of just simply being a part of the system. The last is intuitively. This one is both the easiest and the hardest way to learn something, and until you get the math and science background you need, this will be your and my method of choice for learning how the generator works."
He stepped back and started pacing back and forth across the room. "You see m'boy," he started; despite being basically the same age, "I can't teach you 'why' it works, or 'how' it works - not yet anyway. But what I can teach you is that it works, and what works with it and give you some 'engineering intuition' as my professors taught it that you can use to understand what's going on without knowing the precise details or even being able to read the formula that would affect it."
Mark paused briefly and then promptly instructed Victor to follow him. "Come! We shall start where every good mad engineer starts; in the lab!"
Mark rushed out the door with his charge close behind. They zipped past the people in the hallway and soon arrived at Mark's "office". Conveniently a few notebooks and pencils were waiting for him by this point, "Yes! There here," and he quickly scooped one up and plopped it on the desk. Then, digging though his boxes he quickly came up with a battery, some wires, and a light bulb. "Here are the primitives of our discussion from yesterday. Your assignment for today is to make that bulb light."
Mark and Vince worked for several hours going over how electricity went in circles and how the heat was what really mattered. They went through several different examples and learned quite a bit about the nature of the stuff that was in the lab. When everything was said and dome Vince really was just starting to get the basics; but it was a hell of a lot better than having to teach him everything from algebra through quantum physics to get the basic point across.
"Now that you can make the bulb light and know why, I think you're ready to start helping me with the first step of fixing the generator."
"Oh! What are we doing?"
"We're going to build a tickertape reader."
"A what?" Vince said looking confused.
"A tickertape reader. The fact of the matter is that we need a computer to work on the computer that's in the shield generator," Vince flinched, "Stop that. I don't care what these people keep telling you but the fact of the matter is that computers had nothing more to do with the zombie outbreak than the price of tea in China."
"What?"
"Nevermind; the thing is that computers didn't make zombies. Zombies happened due to other factors. The fact that zombies exist is a function of magic and the fact that I got squinched is a function of my own stupidity and pride. The computer is a tool as much as a sword is. Yes the sword can kill but the fact is that someone has to wield it for that purpose or not give it the respect that it needs to be used safely."
Vince looked a little calmer about the matter, but not by enough to matter. "Regardless we need a computer, even if it's a simple one, so that we can work on the more elaborate computer in the shield generator. Computers, however, need programs and in order to make this all work we'll need way of loading the program into the computer.  I already have a computer on hand but it's the simplest form of a computer; so we'll need to get creative to talk with it."
Vince nodded.
"However, I'll need some time to design this thing and get ready to make it. I figure I should have something that will be workable by tomorrow morning. So what I need you to do for me is see if you can scrounge up the remains of an old pocket radio or walkman or something. To make this all work we'll need several of the parts that are in them. Do you think you could check the junk heap for that?"
"I think so," Vince said, "But to be honest I don't know what a 'Radio' or a 'Walkman' is."
Mark took a quick breath to still his mind. "Of course you wouldn't. Okay, I'll need you to find someone over 40 and ask them to help you find a walkman or a pocket radio. Anything that was electronic and played music would probably have what I need."
"Okay, understood," Vince said briefly before dashing out the door to look for someone who could help him.
"Well, he's off boiling water," Mark mumbled to himself knowing that he had the amplifier he needed as part of his spare parts. Pulling out the notebook he grabbed and the pencil, he began drafting the machine he would use to program the microcomputer.
A simple device, he figured, would be best. Since he was far more likely to find mechanical parts than electrical he decided that a mechanical based system would be easier, if a bit slow. He drew and drew and after about two hours he had a quick design for his tickertape reader and the puncher that he'd need to go with it.
The principle was simple; two columns of holes would be punched into a long strip of paper tape. The first would be the programming clock and would have a hole, then a space, then a hole, etc. The second would have the actual programming information. He didn't have very big plans though for the moment. Since each hole was a quarter of an inch wide he had to carefully weigh the cost of the paper needed. A simple 256 byte program, infinitesimal by any standard, was going to cost him nearly 11 feet of tape and was going to take probably a full day to punch out, even with the hole puncher he had planned to make.
But it would be worth it. His goal was to get enough of a boot loader in place that he could then support a more elaborate input/output device. He could then use THAT input output device to program a more powerful IO device - depending on what he could scrounge up - that he could then use to write a compiler and start working on getting at the firmware on the shield generator.
Eventually Vince returned holding the remains of an old cell phone. "Will this do?" he asked like a child who'd never seen such a machine. Mark laughed, "You must have picked one of the younger guys. The fact is that it could work, but we'll have to see. Remember where you found that since I might have to send you for something a little less complex."
"But it's so tiny!" Vince said, "How could something this small be so complex?"
"Ah, but that's the beauty of that device my friend; that machine actually was pretty much the pinnacle of miniaturization in 2009. It's a communication device, a computer, a screen, a keyboard, a position locator, an address book, a calendar and more."
"This thing?" He said holding it up by the antenna looking it over.
"Here," Mark said grabbing a screw driver and a mallet from his tools, "Let me show you."
Mark carefully placed the screw driver along the seam of the device and have it a solid whack with the mallet. The case made a quick cracking sound and split into two halves. Inside was a set of neatly arranged boards, one with a bright silvery screen, the other with innumerable chips and other nearly infinitesimal components. Vince's eyes grew wide at this display.
"Wow!" he remarked looking inside, "There's so many parts!"
"Indeed there are. And if you look very closely you should see dozens of little green things snaking around the board. These are the wires that connect everything together and we're only really looking at about a third of them. The rest are buried inside the board itself."
"The parts are TINY too," he pointed at one of the small black bits; barely bigger than a speck of dust, "What is it?"
"Oh that? That's one of the bigger 'simple' parts on the board. That's a resistor. The really tiny stuff is actually being protected by these black plastic things." Mark remarked, reveling lightly in the power he seemed to hold over Vince's enthusiasm.
"Really?"
"Indeed. Inside each one of those black packages is literally millions of tiny parts; each carved in there by beams of light." To be honest, it wasn't justice to describe the process of photolithography as 'etching with beams of light' but it got the rough point across and sounded cool, "In practice though designers from before the apocalypse would usually consider the whole plastic device as a single part. For example that one there held information, and that one there was the computer, and those few over there were the radio for the communication part of things."
"That..." Vince choked for the right work, "That's beautiful!"
"Ah, so I agree my friend. It was why I got into electrical engineering as a student and why I went to learn how to make this kind of thing. Sadly, very few people at the time really appreciated what these devices were and how much really went into them."
"But look at it? There so many tiny bits! Weren't you afraid of breaking them?"
"Yes, but the reality was that many of the things we used day to day were less durable and in practice these little machines usually saw quite a bit of roughing up before they reached the end of their useful lives. Really their one true bane was water and even that was not much of an issue if you did things right."
"Impressive! Will you teach me how to make something like this?"
"Maybe one day the infrastructure will be in place for me to do that, but right now I can only work with the extremely limited resources available here in the camp; so I don't think we'll be in a place where we can build this kind of thing for at least a decade or two; more if there aren't any people left who know about manufacturing semiconductors."
Vince looked down at the floor dejected. Mark followed him down to the floor, his eyes fixing on the seams in the flooring elements.
"You know," Mark said, looking back up at Vince, "We can't really make something this complicated right now; but I have the parts to make several much simpler things that are still pretty amazing." Vince looked up somberly. Mark pulled out his sheet of paper with the tickertape reader, "See this; this here is the first stage in a bigger project. We need to talk with the computer in the generator and find out what's going on with it. Without my computer then we'll have to go about it the hard way. It will be slow going, but as any project worth doing has shown me; you have to work for the best stuff."
"I guess," Vince replied still somewhat downtrodden.
"Once we get the shield generator online we can start down the road towards getting the scavenger teams moving. With their help we may not be able to make something as delicate as this; but we will be able to make something useful and powerful all the same. The goal is to teach you how so you can share the knowledge with everyone in hopes that eventually we'll be able to bring back the wonderment you just had, but in everyone."
"In any case", Mark continued, "We'll continue this tomorrow. I've got the blueprint of the mechanical bits so we'll need to start gathering the parts. In the meantime though I need you to do this for me; find every scientist, maintenance worker, and tech here and make sure they know to come with us tomorrow right around midday. Like I said earlier today I plan to teach you guys math and I have no intention of doing it more than once. I'm rather lazy you see."
Vince laughed. "Sounds like a plan then, I'll let everyone know."
"I have still got a lot of work to do before dinner so how about we meet up and talk then?"
"Okay. I'll see you then."
Vince wandered off to go tell everyone about the class. Mark watched him go and wondered if he was really getting that old. The boy was only 8 years younger than him. Mark gagged. Eight years really was a long time. But at least he knew that he was still a youngin' compared to many of the people here. Heck Josephine had to be in her early 40s, and he knew Charles was going to be turning 45 this year if he was getting his years right.  Made 26 seem like he was still in the prime of his life.
Mark smiled at the result of his rationalization and went back to work. He still had to come up with the circuit that he was going to use to make the new programming platform. It all seemed like so much work given that all he needed was a simple IBM PC and the files on the CDs in his books.
--CH9--
Mark had been working for what seemed like just a few minutes when he got the call for dinner from the crier in the hallway. Make clock got a new checkmark in his mind. He put his pencil down and headed over to the cafeteria to grab some grub and - if everything went to plan - make a fool of himself.
Arriving in the cafeteria he found Vince sitting at a table with a whole bunch of gawkers sitting around him. Mark correctly guessed that he had the guts of the cellphone out on the table and was showing off his newfound knowledge to his friends. It might be garnering the wrong kind of attention but he was glad to see that Vince was showing an interest in the technology and that it was enough to interest the bystanders.
Mark decided to let him have the glory for a bit and wandered over to the cafeteria's serving bar. Today's meal consisted of some kind of wiggly spaghetti (really! It was still moving,) some meatballs and a salad much like the one he got from Charles. No steak though. Mark was somewhat disappointed but he considered that he was in a top secret government facility for the intellectual elite, or at least as much as they could be called that given where 20 years of mental decay had left them.
Mark gathered together a tray full of food and began making his way over to the table with the horde of people in front of it. Vince saw him coming and called out to him. "Hey! Mark! Over here!"
Mark laughed, "I'm gonna be honest; I don't think I need directions to find the pile of people sitting in the middle of the room."
Vince laughed a little bit, "Okay, I'll give you that. Anyway, come sit with us! The guys and I are trying to figure out what all of this does."
Mark lifted an eyebrow, there's no way that with the information that he gave them he would be able to tell a port apart from a resistor. Setting his tray down and taking a quick bite of the salad before stepping over to take a quick look.
"Hey!" Vince said as he approached, "So, what is it that this does?" he said pointing to a squiggly set of exposed copper colored metal on the front of the circuit board.
"Oh, that's a button pad. Do you still have the rubbery bit that was on top of it when we took apart the phone?"
"Ya," one of the bystanders said handing him the membrane.
"Okay, so that squiggly bit there is actually two wires. You'll recall that we discussed how electricity always moves in a circle. Well, normally these two wires are disconnected and no electricity flows. However, on the bottom of each of the buttons on the membrane - the rubbery bit that makes up the keypad - has a conductive rubber stopper on it. When you push that rubbery bit down onto the squiggly pad it connects the two wires and the circuit is completed and electricity flows. The computer in the cellphone then detects the key press and takes some kind of action based on which one is connected."
Mark waited for the characteristic gasp that had accompanied every time he mentioned computers but he didn't get that. This time the communal response seemed to be immediate and without the normal gasp. 
"Dude! That's awesome!", "Amazing!", "Electricity runs in circles? None of my spells do that.", "Brilliant!"
Mark made a point to investigate the absence of a delay in the other people but something more immediately pressing had just presented itself. "You!" he said pointing at a young man in coveralls. "You just said that your spells don't do that. Do your spells make electricity?"
The man looked surprised for being singled out with such intensity. "Um, yes?" he replied sheepishly.
"Can you make lightning bolts or anything similar?"
"Well, ya," he said looking confused, "We've been doing that for forever. We don't use it for much since it's usually destructive and you have to put a lot of mana in before anything interesting happens."
Marks eyes lit up with power. "Between what two points does the lightning go?"
"Oh," the man said looking a bit more proud, "That's what I've been working on. Normally it seems to originate at some random point near the caster. But sometimes it comes from somewhere else."
"Really?" Mark said, "Are you making any headway on where it's coming from?"
"No."
"What color mana?"
"Um, goldenrod or Salmon."
"Wait, goldenrod OR salmon? Both work?"
"Yes, neither of them really seem to differ in any and you end up with both types of mana anyway and when the spell goes off they decompose one step back to blue chai mana with red and blue precipitates."
"Really?" Mark said raising an eyebrow. Could the laws of physics really be that stringent? Even with magic? Naw; either way it was a violation of the second law, but he had a hunch that he might have just fixed an issue he had been worried about but he needed to test. "When we're done with dinner do you think we could spend a few minutes. I want you to show me this spell."
"Um, sure," the young man replied.
"Oh, and I'm sorry, I apologize for my manners everyone. My name's Mark."
The man in the jumper replied, "I'm Grant, this is Biggs, Peter, and Bart." Each of the young men waved in turn.
"It's nice to meet all of you," Mark said nodding at each. "Do you guys mind if I sit with you?"
"Sure," Peter said pulling out a seat. Mark moved his tray over and sat down.
The motley crew sat around the table and talked about life, the universe, and everything. After about an hour they decided to break up. Mark grabbed Grant and Vince and they all went to his "Office". Once there he dug out a handheld meter and found himself a few pieces of metal.
"Okay Grant, I have an idea I'd really like your help in testing. Since I can't cast magic myself you'll have to work with me."
"Okay," Grant said, waiting for direction.
"What I want you to do is make a very small amount of goldenrod and salmon mana. I want you to imbue the metal plate over here with the golden rod and the metal plate over there with salmon. Let me emphasize that I want a SMALL amount. If you imagine the amount of mana it takes to make a one foot lightning bolt as being one amount, the amount of mana I want you to use is zero point zero zero zero zero one of that much."
"Got it. Basically no mana goldenrod and salmon in opposite bits of metal. Sounds simple enough," He spent a few seconds running through the formula and generating the necessary blend of mana. Then pushing the mana into the two plates and concentrating on keeping it there he reported that he was ready.
Mark turned the meter over to it's voltage mode. Sure enough there was a non negligible voltage there; about 10 volts or so. "Keep holding it but don't make any more!" Mark said and then  pulling the leads out of his meter he shorted them together.
"It's gone," Grant reported, "The mana decomposed into blue chai, blue and red."
Mark put his leads back into the meter and measured roughly zero volts. "Excellent!" he exclaimed. "That's perfect! If you want I think I can explain where the lightning bolts are coming from and why."
"Really?" Grant said curious, "Could you explain?"
"Well, electricity is actually the consequence of energy moving from regions of high negative potential to regions of high positive potential, at least comparatively speaking. In this case - given what the meter was reporting - the goldenrod creates a region of strong positive polarization and the salmon creates a region of negative polarization. Basically the bolt goes from the salmon to the goldenrod; though for all useful purposes the direction of electron flow in a lightning bolt doesn't usually matter; it still fries anyone involved."
Grant thought carefully about what he said, "Well, I think tomorrow I'll see if I can get Bart to work with me to test that. I have to admit that I'm not good enough to concentrate on moving two high energy mana balls at the same time."
Mark looked eager at the prospect, "Let me know what if that works for you. It will have a lot of impact on my work as well."
"I can do that," Grant replied. "Thanks a lot for the research avenue."
"Oh, it's no problem. I heard what you said about it and it struck me as being important in the context of the way electricity worked. Once I heard your explanation of the process it made pretty good sense what was happening."
"Well, I'm grateful for the second set of eyes. I'll let you know how it goes."
"Please do. Also, I'll be teaching some basic math and science classes where I plan to go over some of these topics. Do you think these would be useful to you?"
"Well," Grant said laughing just a bit, "I think so. If learning what you just use is part of the class I'm definitely in for it."
"That was the plan," Mark said, "If you can, ask your boss for time to come with me and Vince and we'll cover it. I was planning on about two hours just before dinner. Tell your friends."
"I'll do that. See you tomorrow then! Talk to you later this evening Vince."
"See ya Grant," Vince said waving goodbye. "So, you think you might be able to use that to power things?"
"Maybe, but in the short term I'm going to need to assume that it won't work. The fact is that I come from a time without magic and the idea of a "free lunch" doesn't sit well with me. I get the impression that the laws of physics are going to get in the way. I mean consider, even at 10 kiloakkis the shield generator is pulling several kilowatts of power."
Vince sighed, "You're right."
"Don't frown," Mark said, "this is actually still a great discovery. Once you've had some more time with me this will make some sense, but the reality is that changing voltages around is very inefficient using early 21st century technologies. Usually the best designs could make only 90% efficiency. If this works the way I hope, we may be able to move that up to closer to 99%. Similarly battery technologies were very inefficient and this might - depending on what you guys have worked out in the meantime for keeping mana in things - be able to greatly reduce the weight and extend the life of batteries."
Mark marveled at the different possibilities for mana powered electronics, but Vince was only slightly consoled. "Don't worry. It will all make sense in time and when that time comes there will be great things done with what we've just learned." Mark patted Vince on the back, "It's been a long day. Go have a fun evening and make sure to get as many people as you can to come join us tomorrow."
"Will do I guess," Vince said, "Have a good evening."
"You too!" Mark said as Vince left. "You too," he mumbled to himself as he lost himself in the possibilities and headed back to the desk to draft up some prototypes and also continue his work on the programmer.
--CH10--
The morning came too early due to the late night he had working up the plans for the programmer. Groggily, Mark did his now daily ritual of relieving himself of the last night's liquids and then heading to the mystery buffet for a quick breakfast. Today didn't disappoint: pancakes with honey, mutant fruit, and a healthy dollop of whip cream.  Mark munched happily through his breakfast and with the energy he was worried about not having due to not getting to sleep on time he headed over to the lab.
Unfortunately the lab changed the tone of his morning. When he arrived he found Josephine like he had for the last several days. However Vince was nowhere to be seen. As if preempting the obvious question Josephine spoke first.
"Vince will no longer be working with you," She said sternly.
"Huh?" Mark said, "I've only just started working with him, we've got a long way till we can get the generator running at full capacity."
"I simply won't allow it. You can use any of the other people here but he's been permanently reassigned."
"Wait? Why?"
Josephine walked up to Mark, her small stature not seeming very imposing against Mark's full height but the fact that she was simply oozing with a sense of authority Mark was feeling rather intimidated. "Do you know what he brought home with him?"
"Probably the cellphone guts I was showing him yesterday," Mark replied casually. "Wait; 'brought home'? What gave you the right to search his place?"
"I'm his mother! I have that right with my child and my house!" she said flustered before putting both her hands over her mouth.
A few of Vince's quirks suddenly clicked for Mark. It explained that initial conversation. Mark had insisted on using Vince as his apprentice and Josephine had put up a lot of resistance to that before finally relenting. It also explained why they were always talking every morning. Mark had always just attributed it to management trying to be out and amongst the masses. But this made a lot more sense.
"Well, I must say that explains a lot," he said eventually, "So I have one more question then, what are your thoughts on the origin of the zombie apocalypse?"
"What!? Why would you ask me that question? You have no right!" She said angrily.
"Nevermind me asking, I know the answer. Let me ask a less personal and more relevant question; why do you care about the generator?"
"What?" she replied looking disarmed by the question. Ironically this also disarmed Mark. "The generator is just a transducer to make a technologic device cause a magical effect; if you haven't noticed this thing burns through blue mana like a wildfire when it kicks up or something disrupts the mana in the shield bubble," he said walking over to pat the machine."It's just a basic shield spell but on a very large scale that a person would have trouble maintaining continuously."
"My interest in the generator is of no concern to you. All you need to do is get the generator running; you do not need to know anything more." She said with a stern, authoritarian tone.
Mark was surprised by this. The mother/son thing he could explain. He could also explain why she was upset about the cellphone; from her reactions to his use of the word computer and the utter lack of such behavior with the remaining staff he had concluded that the 'computers are evil' stigma wasn't universal. But something was missing from this picture. Why would she need the generator? Why would she even tolerate its existence? Why was she the director of an organization intended to revive old world research techniques and technologies?
There was something missing; a piece of the puzzle was hiding just out of sight. Something in the back of his mind told him that he needed to figure this out quickly. At the very least before he finished repairing the generator and before he explained to anyone exactly how it worked.
"So I see," Mark said. "Well then, who would you assign to have me 'corrupt'? My original intent of teaching someone how this works hasn't changed and I intend to continue my efforts to raise the education bar, at least here in the facility."
"In the short term you are not to teach anyone anything without my explicit concent."
"Does this mean this afternoon's math class is off?"
Josephine looked him in the eye, "No. But I plan to attend and I'll be watching you."
"Watching me do what? I'm teaching people how to do math and if we have some time I might squeeze in a little bit of physics."
"I will NOT tolerate you telling tales that glorify this," she stuttered; searching for the word to express her disdain, "this filth!"
"I'm not sure how explaining what it was, what was in it, and what it was used for counts as glorification. But I'll remember to refrain from it in the future."
"Indeed you will. As a side note, you are now responsible for Vince's tasks given his reassignment. You have not been assigned a new assistant and may not be for some time, but you remain expected to get the generator up to full operating potential.
"If you're going to do that then I demand you return my computer."
"What?!" She snapped.
"Given what I know now, and also given what you returned to me I know that you or one of your agents are the ones who took it from my supplies." It was all clicking into place and Mark was becoming somewhat smug in his growing understanding of the whole picture.
"What makes you think you're in a position to negotiate such things?"
"The fact that you need me to get the generator done. I can tell you now that it is going to take me close to three weeks to get to the point that I can put my hand on the generator without that computer. And the reason is that I'll be spending that time making a primitive equivalent to it using the spare parts at my disposal," Mark paused to consider the form with the most dramatic effect, "One way or another a computer is needed to work on the generator so it's up to you as to whether I start working today with a computer, or If I work for several weeks to make a different one for the same purpose. Either way you end up with a computer in the building."
Josephine looked angrily at him and after a few seconds she replied, "Fine! You can have your computer. However, you will check it out from my office every morning and you will return it every evening. Should I find that even a single person besides yourself has so much as SEEN the machine we'll let the courts deal with you."
Mark remained confused. The courts? Why would someone running an illegal facility be willing to use the legal system as a punishment. All of these unanswered questions and the strange behavior where conflicting idioms seem to try to coexist - no matter how badly - were leaving Mark with a very bad feeling about things.
Josephine stormed out and after a few minutes returned with Mark's laptop. "You will have this returned to me at dinner's call. I will come for it; so do not leave for dinner until I have this in my hands. Do you understand."
"Yes mam'" Mark replied, trying to stomach the reality of what had just happened. "I'll return it to you at that very time. In the meantime, since you were the limiting factor as to who could attend and when what time would you like me to run my class?"
"I will come get you when it is time for that. In the meantime you'd better be getting that generator online."
"Understood," Mark said subserviently, pondering the whole scope of the matter. Josephine left the room and Mark was left holding the computer. He quickly went back to his room and gathered up a power strip and the programming cable from his box. Fervently he put plugged the laptop into the generator via a surge strip and brought it up. The computer booted up nicely and in just a few minutes he had the generator up in debug mode.
Reading through the debug parameters he quickly found that almost every important specification was out of tolerance. Based on what he was reading, the machine would be lucky if it could keep a gnat out of the denial zone, let alone an active zombie horde. Going back to his room he grabbed the diagnostic tools out of his kit: the volt meter, the oscilloscope, and the magic meter. Returning he started probing over the entirety of the control circuit. Starting from the power converters and going to the instantiator and accumulator matrix everything was out of whack. Looking over the machine he found several external connections going to the stabilizer box that had been unceremoniously attached.

Mark looked at the "stabilizer", pondering what it was that they could possibly mean by that. Killing the power to the generator  (reasoning that it wasn't keeping the zombies out and the output was useless anyway,) he started to rummage through the so called stabilizer. Inside it he didn't find anything he expected. 
Inside it was a dizzying array of electronics. Microchips adorned several boards which all appeared to be wave soldered. Along the boards he could see several zig-zagging traces giving the telltale signs of a high speed design. In practice this wasn't just some toy that had been glued on, it was a full scale bit of electronics; the kind of thing you expected to find in a PC or as a subsystem on an aircraft. Digging further into the box he found something concerning; there appeared to be something resembling his accumulator matrix and instantiator in there. Mark pulled out his measurement tools and started monitoring the signals going too and from the transducer. A quick look over the results and he was fairly certain that the spell being cast was both complex in it's consumption and use of mana, and similarly in its control of coordinates. The device seemed to whisk mana every which way in a pattern that Mark couldn't even begin to guess.
Mark sat down and started transcribing the mana pattern that was being consumed, mixed, and emitted. He cursed Charles for not having already taught him their style of hermetic writing as he knew he was going to have to show this to someone who could look it up or at least try to guess what kind of activity was happening.
The one thing that worried him was how badly this device stood out. What would happen if he disconnect it from the shield generator? Was it really stabilizing the field to prevent a further explosion? Did it have another purpose? And lastly - if not most importantly - who made it?
Mark sat down and thought through his choices. The most obvious thing for him to do was to simply remove the power to the whole system, remove the "stabilizer", and then power up the generator in tiny steps.
Thinking the whole thing over he decided that he'd do a few things. The first was to look over the generator and the firmware to see why the thing exploded in the first place. Since he had been reunited with his laptop he now had the full schematics - and the simulations that proved that they worked - as well as the firmware files.
Shutting down the power to the generator and stabilizer, Mark got to the arduous task of checking the circuit. Resistor by resistor, trace by trace Mark probed every aspect of the circuit. After some time he came to discover that a wire had been chewed through, probably by a field mouse or something. Specifically the wire was the negative feedback from the mana sensor to the accumulator matrix. Without it the whole system was open loop and would basically gather mana without limit. Add feedback loop selftest he reminded himself.
This would easily explain the explosion and subsequent squinching. Fixing the wire he then retested the circuit from beginning to end. This time the system checked out. Pulling out the laptop then he started rummaging through the firmware. All in all it looked okay so he added the feedback loop selftest, as well as a fail-safe limiter and then powered up the shield's microprocessor to program it. Plugging in the cable and loading the firmware he reached a point where he was ready to give it a go. The day was growing long by this point and he wanted to get a test in before the warden (his new nickname for Josephine) came to take him to the class.
He disconnected the stabilizer and fired the thing up at minimum power. All of the metrics on the display screen - as well as the diagnostics on the computer - came back A.OK. Having a green light from the low power test he then ramped it up until he was at the previous operating level. At this point all of the readings were nominal and all of the odd misbehavior was gone. Similarly at this level the power consumption was quite a bit less than before. Probably the effect of the stabilizers draw he decided.
Then he started to bring up the power, pushing it up over 12 kiloakkis where Vince had said it went unstable. Continuing the progression he reached 100 kiloakkis. At this point everything was looking pretty good, except that the power generator was starting to sound sluggish. Switching his attention to the generator he checked out the gauges. Sure enough the generator was just reaching its limit.
Looking back at the shield generator he checked out the power consumption. It was drawing about 100 kilowatts. This concerned him. The generator's main power draw was a result of building/maintaining the field and rebuilding it after it is damaged. Since there wasn't anything nearby he didn't expect the need for any power really. His honest expectation was about 15 kilowatts.
He turned the power down somewhat until he was back at the 12 kiloakki output level. Here the power consumption was much more modes, a mere 5 kilowatts. What was creating the anomaly? He pulled up the PC and started looking at the metric numbers. At 30 kiloakkis everything looked pretty good. At 50 he was still in the green. But at 70 his power demand jumped dramatically. The maintenance energy rate had gone from 100 akkis per second to nearly 1000. Something was consuming a LOT of the mana in the shield bubble.
Mark turned it down to 10 kiloakkis to save on fuel. Given that he was now generating a field density of 1 akki per square meter he estimated that since the anomaly was at 70 kiloakkis, he would be looking for something about 75 meters away. He wandered out of the room, picked one of the two possible directions and started counting paces down the hallway. When he got to 70 he stopped and looked at what rooms were there. The only room he saw was the room labeled "Collective Consciousness Research".
He remembered this room from earlier. It was here that he had seen the very vivid demonstration of the cunning and hostility of the rabbits. Walking up to the door he started to smell something funny. Not like rabbit poo funny either. This was more along the lines of smoke and fire funny. Opening the door he watched as a cloud of smoke burst out. Inside he could see flames shooting up from a metal pole in the corner.
As he turned to go try and get somebody a lab technician came speeding down the hallway with a fire extinguisher. Brushing Mark aside he charged into the room and doused the pole with the foam flame suppressor. After a few minutes the fire was out and although the room was now scarred and covered in smoke and foam, things seemed to be quieting down.
At least they seemed to be until an army of hoppitus soldiers arrived. Storming into the room they immediately skewered each rabbit in its cage without even hesitating.
"JESUS! WHAT THE HELL!" Mark shouted as this spectacle went on. "What'd you do that for?"
"I asked them to," the lab tech replied, "for the safety of everyone in the compound."
"What?" Mark asked.
"The mana suppressor had some kind of failure. Admittedly I don't think I've ever seen a magical item just spontaneously catch fire, but I'll be the first to admit that when it comes to magic I'm still fairly novice at things."
Mark began blushing, "I think I may know both why the suppressor failed and also why it caught fire."
"What?" The lab tech said starting to look angry.
"Per my instructions I was working on getting the shield generator up and running. In the process I fired it up to about 100 kiloakkis of field strength. Since the generator works to maintain the shield even in the presence of something degenerating the shield it started consuming a large quantity of energy; much of which I believe went to your suppressor."
"So how did you know to come here?" the man said with a quizzical look.
"Well, when I realized that something was chewing up a lot of energy I shut down the shield and started ramping it back up. Since the field density is fairly constant, I was able to make a guess at how far away the mana sink had to be. Since 70 kiloakkis brought suggested about 75 meters, I counted paces down the hall until I came here." Mark tried hard to look sorry. He really was, but that hardly explains the massacre of important and difficult to acquire test subjects. Then something struck him, "Wait; why did you need a mana suppressor here? The fact you killed the rabbits suggests that they're hazardous in the presence of mana, but I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe they're overt spellcasters."
"They aren't," the tech said walking over to the cages to try and contain the pools of blood that were making their way across the floor. "But they are covert ones. We've never quite figured out why, but although the bunnies are very competent spellcasters, they seem to limit their use of magic to mind control. That said though it makes them very dangerous in the presence of mana. Most humans are naturally resistant to mind control so they can't simply dominate us, but they have just enough power to make a human who was already weak willed succumb to their plots and schemes. As a result we suppress the mana in their holding area so that they cannot cast any spells of significant power." The tech continued wiping blood for a moment before pausing, "Wait; you couldn't sense the mana depression in here?"
"No," Mark said flatly, "To that end I actually cannot sense mana at all. To be honest if I need to know that kind of information I have to go out of my way to use detectors and other sensors to know the condition of the mana field in any given area."
"Really?" The tech said wringing the rag out over the magic can. "How did you get into working on a magic shield generator then?"
"Actually it's exactly why. When it became apparent that I was among the few who had no sense of mana whatsoever I was really upset. However, as time wore on it became obvious that there was a tie between magic and the world at large, and that there were physical influences that generated little bits of magic. I researched these effects and influences and started working out exactly how it all behaved. The fruits of that research were the Accumulator Matrix and the Instantiator."
"So since you couldn't cast spells naturally you attacked the problem through engineering?" The tech summarized.
"Exactly. Man couldn't fly so he made airplanes. Man couldn't breathe underwater so he made scuba gear. I couldn't cast spells so I made the electric caster." Mark shrugged. "In any case I'm especially sorry that I ruined your experiment; it wasn't my intention to offline your research and more accurately to indirectly kill all of your test subjects."
The lab tech just shrugged, "I'm not the one to apologize to, the main researcher for this lab is currently out. I was just tending to the rabbits in the meantime; hive mind or not the individual bodies need nourishment or they die; similarly they need clean cages and water." Looking over his shoulder he leaned in and whispered to Mark, "That said you're going to want to keep your involvement to yourself. She's not known to be especially patient when her research is disrupted."
"I'll take your word for it," Mark replied taken aback. "Well, now that I've figured out what the source of the overload was I think I'll have to coordinate my efforts more directly to avoid future accidents. Thanks a lot."
"No problem. If they come looking for blood I'll send them your way, otherwise I'd recommend laying low." The tech replied finishing wiping up the rabbit bits that had escaped the cages in the incident.
"Will do and thanks for the warning." Mark turned and left the lab. It should have been obvious to him that a 1 akki/meter^2 field would also have other effects to people not ready to handle that kind of stimulus. Common sense suggested that he had likely disrupted several other experiments; though probably not so obviously and so violently; or at least he hoped. There hadn't been any other screaming and fire so he figured that the other impacts were more subtle.
Walking back to his lab he made a note that he needed to make a mana map based on his sensor results. Knowing the mana availability would be useful. Arriving back at the lab he ran into Josephine and what looked like a trail of goslings. "Ah there you are," she said in an irritated tone, "Your class was supposed to start some time ago."
Mark blushed, "I'm sorry; there was an incident in the lab that needed to be resolved. Speaking of which, do you know where you got the stabilizer from? I have some questions about the precise function of it in the overall scope of things."
"The only one who knows about that is Vince. I'll find out from him and get back with you."
"No contact, I know. Anyway, is everyone ready? We're going to be going to the library to run this class."
Thinking carefully about the next steps Mark quickly jumped into the room and programmed a time delay power up of the shield generator; setting a field strength of 10 akkis/meter^2 but over just enough space to keep everyone out of the lab for at least the next 16 hours. Then Mark led the class over to the library.
Once there and after a slight altercation with the librarian about large groups that was dispelled by some legal wand-waving and a discussion of the value of education, Mark pulled out the algebra book and began explaining the basics of mathematics as a tool for problem solving. After about two hours the class adjourned and they all hiked back to the lab complex.
Mark was fairly certain that he would lose about half of his class by the end of the week but he scheduled the next class for two days later to give everyone time to absorb the content. Mark resolved that the next week he'd assign some homework.
When they arrived it was already dinner time so everyone went to the cafeteria to grab some dinner. At this point though Mark was now out of friends. Everyone he knew was friends with Vince and he was now his own little no-fly zone thanks to Josephine. Thinking carefully then he decided that his best approach was to annoy the enemy and possibly get some additional information; so he went to go sit with Josephine.
"Mind if I sit here?" Mark said sitting down at the table before she could answer. "So, did you hear about today's little altercation?"
"What, you mean the part where the Collective Consciousness lab had their mana suppressor artifact catch fire and they had to put down all of the subjects?"
"Ya, that one!"
"I believe I've heard more than enough about it. You shouldn't be poking your nose into the gossip around the lab."
"Oh, I'm not; I was rather aware of it first hand, seeing as I caused it. But it's good to know that news spreads fast here; I wouldn't want to be out of the loop."
"WHAT!?" She said looking carefully at Mark.
Mark put a finger in his ear to try and stop the ringing, "Ya, you see I was doing the work you assigned me too and found out that you have a mana suppressor by way of a power generator overload. Is there a particular reason that you didn't feel the need to tell me that there was a mana suppressor? The lab tech had an excuse; he didn't know I wasn't mana sensitive. You - on the other hand - have known that since before I unsquinched."
"I, uh, well, I assumed that it would take you longer to get any kind of significant results." She said looking away.
"Really? What would lead you to believe that? I mean I was able to get the thing up and running from not even knowing the science that went with it in 6 months. Not 5 days and 20 years ago I was working on debugging the machine with the expectation that it should turn on and just work. Admittedly I was wrong and that's why I'm here now not here then."
"I... Well, I don't know why I expected that," She paused, seeming to consider something and then gaining some of her composure back she continued, "If you're far enough that you're generating meaningful fields that can affect more than just your lab, we'll need to make sure that you follow established procedure for laboratory experimentation."
Mark rolled his eyes, wait for it... wait for it... She continued, "You'll need to file a large scale spellcraft plan and schedule with me and we'll have to coordinate your experiments with the other labs."
Giving a big sigh Mark replied, "Fine. How long will it take before I can do a proper full-on megaakki test?"
"Given the scale of that test it will probably be about a week before I can let you test it."
"A week?" he said, looking at her squarely. "Fine. What do you want me to do in the meantime?"
"How about you focus on teaching your classes?" she suggested.
"That will do. I have a few other projects that will need my attending to so I'll work on those as well."
"Well," she said standing up; her dinner barely touched, "I think I'm full. I'm going to go turn in for the night."
"Okay then," Mark said and watched as she walked out the door.  Assuming he had his head screwed on tight he expected that right about now Josephine was either in the process of contacting Charles, trying to break into the lab to sabotage the generator, or both; though the motivation behind the last possibility escaped him. He knew the shield was up and programmed to a level that could keep the blast wave from a near miss nuke from even making a slight breeze but he was curious to see if Josephine would try it.
He took a big bite of his dinner and then counting to ten for dramatic effect he grabbed his dinner roll and took a few steps down the hallway till he could see the door to the lab. Sure enough there was Josephine pounding on the shield bubble just inside the lab's doorway. Mark strolled up casually, still eating the roll.
"Anyfhing I can help you wif?" He said spewing breadroll crumbs everywhere.
Josephine nearly jumped out of her shoes. Mark swallowed and continued, "Why your sudden interest in getting into the lab? All that's in there is the same machines that have been there for the last few years if what you've been telling me is accurate."
"WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS!?" She exclaimed.
Mark responded with a light shrug, "Because I figured you'd do this. I hadn't suspected anything other than raw incompetence as the source of the odd behavior I've seen all over this camp. However, when I encountered whatever it was that was inside the stabilizer, I knew there had to be more to the picture. I have to admit that I don't have any idea how it is that you fit into this picture, but when I encountered tech beyond what I was capable of manufacturing with the resources you say exist right now that also depended on technologies that I was the only person who even seemed capable of understanding, it seemed rather prudent to make sure the generator could protect itself when I wasn't there to watch it."
Mark looked at Josephine. While he had been talking she had stopped and gone into a trance like state. He watched as the shield flickered occasionally.
"It's programmed for a 10 akki/meter^2 field density. Costs as much electricity as a field several times larger but makes it basically impregnable to anything that can be cast by hand. Also I know that typically your mana suppressors can't handle the field recharge rate that the generator produces at a tenth of that output so I wouldn't suggest trying it unless you want more fire."
Josephine at this point was panting and generally looking worn down. Apparently she had exhausted quite a bit of energy trying to tear down the field. He wasn't surprised; most people only ever worked with small quantities of mana - less than an akki typically - and the field itself was currently made of ten akkis of mana per square meter and the generator had enough power to replenish several akkis of wear per second. Basically no person could reasonably expect to break through it. Mark just continued on.
"So, you done playing with my toy yet? Wanna come back to the cafeteria tell me what's going on and why you're even concerned with the fact that I shielded the shield? Unless I'm misreading things you're not the brains behind this."
"MAKE IT GO AWAY!" Josephine shouted.
"To be honest I can't," Mark replied with a shrug, "The generator's shield will be online for a fixed amount of time."
"WHEN WILL IT TURN OFF?!"
"To be honest I have no compulsion to tell you that. Besides you guys here don't have any clocks; let's imagine I told you when it would; how would you know when that is?"
Josephine sat fuming for a few moments. Mark decided that he was very sure that something undesirable was churning through her brain but her expression didn't let on to it.
"Look, I'm here to make the world a better place; that was the reason I started work on the generator and remains the reason that I made it function. To that end your reaction suggests that keeping the bunnies out was only half of the battle. All I'd like to know is why it's so important for you to gain access to the generator and why you were so expectant of me to fail so I can help get things squared away in my head and start getting the bigger picture on track."
Josephine simply stormed off in a huff to the main access point for the complex. Mark reasoned that she was currently en-route to talk with Charles. One thing that was true though was that for the next several hours he wouldn't be able to access the lab. The 16 hour clock was still ticking down. Reading the clock on the computer through the shield he estimated that he would have about 10 hours before the shield went down. In the meantime though he had a problem; though the generator was safe he wasn't. 
Depending on how the order of things worked around here he guessed that either a secret police of some kind or simply the standing Hoppitus army could be expected to make an appearance in the next few hours to wisk him off to some terrible place to interrogate him about how to get in the shield. That meant he had probably 45 minutes to get something put together to defend himself with. Normally he'd use tech and simply make a personal shield generator or just simply rig a gun, but 45 minutes wasn't enough time to do anything like that with. So he'd have to come up with something more ingenious.
The answer came to him as he noticed that one of the people from the facility had stopped in front of the exposed bubble and was tapping on it. He just simply needed to make sure that enough people were around and interested, and he knew just the group.
Walking back into the Cafeteria he walked over to Vince's table of friends. "Hey Vince," Mark said trying to stay casual.
"I'm not supposed to be talking with you."
"That's fine. I'm sorry you mom thinks you shouldn't be hanging around with me. I was just coming by to say that I got the shield generator up and running and that you might be interested in seeing what it can do."
Vince hesitated strongly at this. A clear battle between his curiosity and reverence was waging across his face. But as Mark expected curiosity won. "Okay. You guys want to come?" he said to his retinue who unanimously agreed to tag along.
Walking down the hallway Matt explained that the combination of the stabilizer and the broken feedback loop was what was causing the generator to malfunction and that he didn't need to do much. Taking them over to the lab he showed them the shimmering blue bubble that was filling the room.
Knocking on it he explained that it was impregnable. Challenging each of Vince's friends he asked each of them to try and break through the bubble. One of them was able to muster a spell that actually caused the shield to shimmer slightly before giving up. He noted that Josephine's attacks on the bubble had been substantially more effective; even if not effective enough to be useful. Mark started talking about the mana regeneration; field strength; and a very broad explanation of the principles of the laws of physics as they applied to the special case of the field generator.
Most of the club noded knowingly but Vince seemed in the dark on most of what Mark explained regarding the nature of casting. Given what he knew this wasn't surprising as he was working as a tech in a magic research facility doing the work of an electrician. Best guess was that he was also a mute.
"So, any of you know where the stabilizer came from?"
"Oh, that? That came from the magister. He explained that it was a tool that could be used to stabilize the magic field of the shield."
"Really?" Mark said wondering what was going on, "I'll give you that it was magic; but it wasn't a classic magic item like the suppressor I caught on fire today."
"That was you?" Peter said laughing.
"Sadly ya; I expanded the shield out enough the affect the Collective Consciousness lab and didn't know that they had a mana suppressor there. So when I expanded the field it overloaded the suppressor."
"That's a riot!" Peter replied, "Bet you Tara was furious."
"Tara?"
"The researcher in charge of the CC lab. You haven't seen her yet?"
"No," Mark said looking back and forth, "I'm supposed to be keeping my head down in case she finds me but no one ever told me who she was."
"Feisty little thing," Grant replied, "Shortish with red hair and freckles. Temper like a wolverine. Can't miss her."
"Hmm... I don't think I've met her yet," Mark replied rubbing his chin.
"Given that you ruined her lab I suspect that you'll do best that way," Grant replied sternly.
"So anyway," Vince replied, "When can you show me the shield generator components properly?"
Mark flinched a bit, "Well, as you can see the controls are on the inside and we're outside but there's a timeout on this test so it will turn itself off eventually but that might be sometime tomorrow."
"Aww. By then mom will be back and I won't be allowed anywhere near this place."
"Given by what's been going on since I got it working I don't think that will be changing anytime soon," Mark replied with a sigh.
"Huh?" Vince said looking thoroughly confused.
"Well, when I told your mother that I had been the cause of the fire in the CC lab she surprised me; rather than being mad at me for the fire, she was made at me for making the shield work. Then when she couldn't get into the lab to get to the generator she was furious."
"Well," Vince said thinking back, "she did say that she didn't expect you to figure out what was wrong for at least a few weeks."
"So I've heard; but I would expect most people to be excited about finding a way to keep the zombies out; especially after such a recent and coordinated attack," Mark said shrugging.
"That is really strange," Vince said, "She was always so excited about the possibility of me getting the generator up and running so I can't imagine why actually doing that would make her mad."
"I agree," Mark said resting with his back on the wall. "Oh; I have one more, much more 'solvable' mystery for you guys. Grant especially but any of you might know the answer." Mark produced a sheet of paper with a series of equations written on it.
"What is this?" Grant said looking it over with a confused expression.
"It's a magic formula," Mark replied. "I'm sorry it's not in the standard notation; it was developed after I was squinched and I haven't been taught formulaic magic yet."
Mark explained the basic notation he used and how the formulas all came together. "One sec," Grant said running out to grab a pencil and paper. Then with Mark's help he transferred it over to a new sheet of paper in proper hermetic format.
"Hmm," Grant said looking over the formula. "I'm not sure what this would do." 
"Neither do I. But what I do know is that it interfered with the shield and is what the 'stabilizer' was doing. I'm trying to figure out exactly what the stabilizer was for since it mostly just seemed to limit the amount of mana that could be handled by the generator."
He passed the paper to Bart; who up to this point had been simply watching quietly. "What do you make of this?"
Bart looked it over carefully, after several minutes of analysis he looked up and responded plainly "Complex. Needs research. One week."
What was it about one week? What happened then? The questions were driving Mark mad, but that was the least of his worries. The Magister himself and a few elite soldiers had just turned the corner and he was getting a serious vibe.
"Well, hello Charles. What can I do for you..."
"Restrain him!" Charles barked before Mark could even finish his sentence.
"Woah! Is there something I can help you with? Is there anything I've done wrong?" Mark replied as the guards handcuffed him.
"Take him in and book him for casting a spell without a permit," Charles said.
"Hey; I was told that I had the necessary permits!"
"You did. I just revoked them." Charles said.
"But I'm not doing any casting." Mark replied.
"Oh? Then dispel the shield."
"I can't, it's on a timer."
"Then you're still casting a spell as we speak."
"That's a distortion of the intent of that rule and you know it. I've done what you guys wanted so why are you suddenly so excited that I proved that it works?"
Charles didn't respond immediately. After a few seconds he saw a fairly substantial ripple in the shield and heard the generator rev for a brief moment. Charles knelt down, exhausted.
"Impressive Charles; if I'm reading the RPM of the generator you probably pulled 10 akkis a second there. Josephine couldn't even get up to 1 akki and no offense Grant but she was still about an order of magnitude better than you."
"I was just playing with it to see how tough it was," Grant replied defensively.
"And you did better than I had expected to be honest. Josephine and Charles here are very special examples. But one is the head of a research institute for magic and the other is the man in charge of all magic in the colony."
"BE QUIET!" Charles said abruptly, "The accused shall not speak any further!"
"Or what? You'll just skip the kangaroo court and kill me on the spot?" Mark remarked snidely.
One of the guards beat him with the pummel of his sword. "You will show some respect!"
"Why? Or you'll pummel me more? Remember win loose or draw I die here. It's just an issue of postponing the inevitable."
Charles walked up and punched Mark in the face, "You impudent idiot! You think I take charging my best friend with this lightly?!"
Mark looked up with blood dripping down from his now split lip, "Apparently so. You haven't even told me what I've done wrong, though" he said spitting some blood on the floor, "I've been doing some guessing of my own. Check in my top left pocket."
Charles pulled out the folded up piece of paper that described the magic formulae of the 'stabilizer'. Unfolding it he started reading through it, "What's this?"
Bart started to speak up but Mark just shook his head no. Instead he started to recite the meaning of the formulae as he had come to understand it when working through it with Bart. As he spoke Charles started to turn white. He snapped quickly turning to the four mouseketeers barking to the guards to get them out of here. The guards quickly snapped up the now indignant young men and escorted them to their rooms.
Mark waited for this spectacle to play out and - now alone with Charles - picked up where he left off. "I don't know what it does yet; but whatever it was, it was indirectly responsible for the shield's malfunction and low power output."
Charles just stood there quietly; struck and looking for words, Mark just went on, "Did you know there was a zombie attack a few days ago? Did you know that the shield was supposedly 'operating' like it had always been? Did you also know that the zombies walked through a hole in the shield? I don't recall designing selective mana distribution into the instantiator's control circuit. For that matter it would require a total redesign of the generator's firmware to make that work?"
"The attack was just a fluke! And the rabbit's magic is very powerful! They could easily have gotten through your shield."
"Are you a match one on one for a rabbit?"
"Well, I've got 20 years of experience fighting them. Of course I would."
"And yet you were no match for my shield bubble just now. Why could the bunny get through?"
"Maybe the bunnies have developed a new technique that we haven't encountered before," Charles said looking down at his feet.
"I don't think so. Did you know that your previous shield generator 'prodigy' was only able to get the generator to work with a 'magic' device that you gave him?"
"Indeed. I provided a stabilizer that could keep the thing under control."
"Oh, I'll give you that. But what was inside it?"
"Huh?"
"How did you make it?"
"I just enchanted an old piece of scrap."
"That's bullshit and you know it!" Mark shouted.
The guards reappeared at this outburst, coming back from their duty with the mouseketeers.
"Take him away!" Charles said. Then turning to Mark he spoke calmly, "The stabilizer served its function, just not long enough. I think we'll drop the charges in, oh... Ten days. I believe then we'll need the shield up and running." 

--CH11--
It had already been several days. Mark had been taken to the central administration building and placed in a cell there. In the basement. He didn't even know the place had a basement. Last time the lift had seemed pretty obviously up only. But this was the basement, and the lift had definitely taken him here. The incarceration itself had been remarkably pleasant. Generally speaking the city's population was well behaved or was executed. It kinda took the need for long term criminal storage out of the picture.
That said he was not without his company. There was the man he had taken to calling pepe in the cell on his left who spent most of his time rambling inanely in arcane formulas. Then there was Brian in the cell to his right. Brian didn't like talking. It was best to leave him alone. Across from him in the 4 cell ring that made up his particular cell block was quite a bit more interesting. He looked to be in his 50s but seemed in good shape otherwise.
Every day he would spend about an hour - or at least about 3600 counts worth of time - doing what Mark could only describe as Tai-Chi. The rest of his time he spent scribing on the dust on the floor and arguing with Pepe about the formulae he spouted in a hobo-meets-professor kind of way. The old man would be drawing on the floor and then Pepe would spout a formula. The old man would just respond with a quick correction; to which Pepe would get very excited and then go back to spouting formulas.
On the second day Mark thought to ask; "Why does he just ramble?"
The old man simply paused before looking up to answer flatly, "Because he hasn't found the answer yet."
"The answer to what?"
"Don't know," he said shrugging, "But whatever it is it's beyond anything I can comprehend. All I do is syntax checking."
"Oh," Mark said before clamming up.
On the third day he got over his distain for doing the clich‚ but he had to ask, "So, what are you guys in for?"
Pepe just laughed maniacally before going back to his business. Brian stayed quiet as well.
The old man, whom he now knew as Lerorian responded, "I got in the way."
"Hmm..." Mark said, "I think my predicament could be explained that way too. But why are they keeping us in prison rather than executing us?"
"You didn't work much of the puzzle out before they threw you in here did you sonny? How many people did you hear about getting executed?"
"None. But to be honest I've only been in this time for about..." Mark paused to count on his fingers, "About seven days, three of which were spent in here. I just kinda assumed that there weren't enough people to cause daily executions."
"This time?"
Mark went through the story of the generator and the squinching. "Amazing; I didn't think that was even possible. The fact is though that there aren't any executions, nor is there any real dissidence or discord to give them cause to bother. However, Given that you're in here already I'd wager that you were pretty disruptive for the four days you were out in the wild."
"Well, I taught a class, made the shield generator work, and uncovered that there is something unexplained going on here."
"Wow boy, you know how to pick your battles don't you? I don't think you could have done much more to piss them off."
"Well, I did kill all of the rabbits in the lab indirectly while fixing the generator. I hear there's a researcher who's going to want my head over that little snafu."
Lerorian just laughed, "I'm sure they would; but Charles will be furious. I bet you he totally lost it when he found out."
"I don't know if he did but I'm very sure that Josephine, the lab manager, did. The only thing that made her more mad was that the shield generator couldn't be turned off."
"Huh." Lerorian said with a quizzical tone to his voice; like something about that surprised him. 
"So," Mark said trying to break the silence, "What is it that I'm missing that you think I should know?"
"Oh, yes. The big picture is that they're controlling the minds of the people in the city. Everyone is under some kind of spell. The four of us here are all people who uncovered this, or at least some aspect of the plot but still have a useful role to play." Lerorian sat back and leaned against the cell wall taking a big breath. "Mr babbles over there every once in a while leaks a bit of sense and has explained that he discovered the traces of the spell on everyone's mind. Brian over there was Helen's right hand man just before she died. When she died he went out to try and find out why and unfortunately found out."
"She was murdered?" Mark said with a tone of surprise.
"Yes," Lerorian replied, "She too got in the way of this little plot but unlike us, she refused to go quietly."
Mark sat there fuming for several minutes. Eventually he regained his composure enough to ask, "So, what about you?"
"Me? They tried to include me in their plans. Apparently they needed someone they could count on to weaken the will of the people and why the hell not use the war hero. When I wouldn't go along with their plan they made a magical clone of me and threw my real body into this cell. Only reason I didn't end up like Helen is that apparently their clone spell needs the source body alive."
"Oh," Mark said grasping the scale of the situation, "So when they're serious they really take it where they need to. It's a bit of an irony given that they threaten to do so but don't and then for people who don't break the rules but figure stuff out they do."
"Indeed. It's pretty much the way things go around here. And now that Helen's gone they've been running pretty much without any restraint."
"They? I know Charles and his henchmen are in on things. But who else?"
Lerorian gave him a funny look, "You really didn't get much. Xavier and Charles have been playing good cop, bad cop through this whole process."
"Seriously?" Mark said finally getting the bigger picture.
"So, now that I've shared what I know, what did you find out?"
"Oh, I think I ran across some device that was a major part of their plot."
"Really?"
"Ya. See there is a shield generator in the Helen Institute."
"Stupid husk of an institution. Once Helen was dead they immediately gutted anyone with expertise."
"This is true, but anyway, attached to it was a device they were calling a 'stabilizer'. They assigned me to figure out how to make the shield work; which made decent sense given that I built it in the first place. However, when I started to investigate this 'stabilizer' that they had glued on and plugged in. However, what was in it was something that nobody here was supposed to be able to make, but moreover was based on some hardware I pioneered twenty years ago but nobody today supposedly knew how it worked."
"So you got suspicious?" Lerorian said.
"Yes," Mark replied, "I couldn't derive what it did exactly but as a result I used the shield generator to up the security. When I did this I really ticked them off good; which is how I ended up here. What sealed the deal for me landing here though was the formula of the spell the device was casting."
"Wait, like a machine that casted spells?"
"Yes. That was the bit of technology I invented 20 years ago that sent me to now by accident."
"Crazy! What was the formula?"
"Unfortunately when I squinched myself hermetic magic hadn't been invented yet so I don't know what it does, and I don't know exactly what all of the formulas were, but I have some of the big parts memorized." Mark started to recite the parts that he was able to memorize in the last two recitals of the formula.
When he started Pepe stopped and started listening intently. After he got to the end Pepe blurted out, "Hmm... Bunny formula. Complex inputs. Ahh! The mind control spell! With all the better details! Yesss! This, this I can use!"
Pepe then began babbling magical formulas very energetically. Lerorian looked over at Mark with some wide eyes, "Really. Well, sounds like you found how they were doing the mind control. We had always kind of assumed that it was being cast by the bunnies somehow."
"Hmm. We have a problem then." Mark said.
"What do you mean?" Lerorian said with a confused tone.
"The device was put there by a human, not a bunny."
"So one of the minions at the institute put it there?"
"No. One of the morons that was left over put it there, but the moron got it directly from Charles; to 'fix' the shield despite it actually working pretty strongly to do the opposite."
"Wait; so Charles gave them a device based on bunny spells?"
"So it seems if we're to believe Pepe," Mark said, "The part that's most confusing is the fact that they put me right to work on the generator with this thing still attached and then were surprised that I took it off so quickly and just simply made the shield work."
"That's a good question." Lerorian replied. Mark and Lerorian fell in to an extended silence while they thought it over.
"Well, that explains why they were pissed off about the self protecting shield generator." Mark said eventually. "They couldn't care less about the shield; but they cared pretty deeply about the mind control device that I had disconnected and moreover had locked them out of." Mark sighed, "I should have made it run longer."
"You probably should have," Lerorian said, "How long did you lock them out for?"
"About 16 hours," Mark said shrugging, "So I guess that means they had to put up with about 18 hours of no mind control."
"Hmm... 18 hours in the absence of the mind control spell. I bet that caused quite a bit of havoc with anyone who had any reason to doubt the nature of things. Was there anyone who you tipped off to there being something wrong?"
"Well," Mark began but before he could get any further there was a pretty substantial sound of explosions and fighting.
"Well, that's new," Lerorian said looking up, "I don't think I've ever heard of them up there having a big party."
Eventually the sounds went away and the platform started going down into the cell block. Riding on the platform were the rather bedraggled forms of the four mouseketeers. Peter stepped off first and came running over to Mark.
"Mark! We figured out what that formula was; apparently it's a..."
"...A mind control spell characteristic of the rabbits," Mark said finishing the sentence. 
"Um... Yes," Peter replied a bit surprised, "How did you know."
"Pepe over here told us," Mark said shrugging towards the man in the corner babbling on.
"Anyway, after you were arrested the four of us sat together working to decode the formula that you gave us and it became apparent that there was something going on with things. So after your shield thing turned off we went in and looked it over."
"When I looked inside I found a whole bunch of stuff that looked like the phone thing," Vince said, "And moreover it was casting spells like the shield generator did. For that matter one of the spells it was casting was the spell formula that you had shown us that we discovered was the mind control spell."
"That's actually where I got the spell information from," Mark said, "I probed out the device in the stabilizer to find that spell formula."
"Well, anyway it looked like it was being cast over a very large area. We suspect that they're controlling the entire city."
"Indeed they are," Lerorian said.
"You!" Grant said pointing strongly, "You look familiar."
"Possibly, I've heard that I look like a lot of people," Lerorian said.
"No," Grant said, "I'd have a lot of trouble believing that you just looked like someone"
"It's just your imagination," Lerorian with a dismissive shrug.
"Hmm..." Grant said placing his hand on his chin. "No. Now that's I've thought about it I'm damn sure that you're Lerorian. But just a quick check, what is your favorite flavor of icecream?"
"Mint Chocolate?" Lerorian said back to being confused.
"Crazy!" Grant said, "You're just like they said you are. How'd you end up in a place like this?"
"I wasn't terribly fond of the idea of being involved in a scheme to control the behavior of every person in the city and apparently they actually managed to get it working."
"Really. Guys! This guy here is Lerorian! He's the general from the war a few years back with the bunnies!"

"Really?" Vince said, "You've my favorite hero! Will you sign my shirt?
"I'll be happy to once I get a chance to get out of this cage," Lerorian said snarkily.
"Oh! Hey Bart, go unlock Lerorian after you get Mark out of there."
Bart came over smoothly and simply deactivated the lock on Mark's cell with a quick twist and some brushing on the tumblers with a lockpick. The door swang open and mark stepped clear of the cell.
"Lockpicking?" Mark said with a quizzical tone.
Bart quietly walked over to the cell holding Lerorian and unlocked his cell as well.
"Bart is a bit older than he looks. He was actually one of the runners during the period where they were still making raids on the old world," Peter said, "We'd just bust the locks but they keep a mana suppressor in this room so we're stuck doing this the old fashion way."
"Ah, I suspected that but since I don't have any mana sense it's kinda moot anyway." Mark said with an understanding nod.
"What?" Lerorian said stepping out of the cell, "You're a mute?"
"Ya?" Mark said confused.
Lerorian pointed at the other two cages, "Get them out too. They may not look like much, but both of these are great men in the cause for the freedom of Shining Hope."
"Yessir!" Vince said, "You heard him Bart!"
Turning back to Mark Lerorian he resumed his query with Mark, "You said you were a mute. How did you develop a way to cast spells then?"
"I had help. I'm an electrical engineer by training but once it became apparent that magic was both available and at the heart of the zombie problem I sat down and spent a lot of time with Charles working out what things reacted with mana and in what way. From that point it was pretty easy to start down a road of getting a grasp on how conventional physics worked together with mana and everything else came from that." Mark said as Bart freed the two remaining prisoners in the block. After freeing Brian the two spent quite a bit of time staring at each other - sizing each one up - before the two broke down and hugged each other.
They sat there not saying a word but one could see they were connected; catching up on old times, remising their presumed losses, reveling in the shared company.
"What's up with them?" Peter said.
Lerorian looked at the two of them, and after a few seconds he spoke up, "Oh! Right, I forgot you had a son Brian."
"Wait," Peter said cocking his head like a confused dog, "You two are related?"
The two released their embrace and looked at Peter, nodding in unison.
"Well, looks like we know where Bart his 'man of few words' persona from," Vince said with a chuckle.
Lerorian walked over to lift pad, "I hate to break up the reunion and this bit of exposition but we need to get the heck out of here before they have a chance to mobilize more defenders. They don't keep many Hoppitus at the capitol building since it's in the heart of the city but that doesn't mean they can't get a lot of them here on short notice."
"Agreed," Mark said making his way to the lift, "Going up!"
--CH12--
The lift rose quietly up out of the basement and up into the light of the main hall. The four captives all shielded their eyes, even against the indoor light. "Wow! Been a while hasn't it?" Lerorian said trying to get adjusted. Once they were all ready they piled out towards the exit.
However, waiting for them was Charles. "Hello again Mark," he said with a smile, "I see you've become unfond of my hospitality."
"Interesting choice of words," Lerorian replied.
"Ah! The Lerorian impostor," Charles said walking up and placing a hand on Lerorian's shoulder, "Did you convince them to let you out too?"
"To be honest Charles, I'm pretty confident that this man is indeed the original," Mark said, "Consider that you put me in there for doing what you asked. Okay; not really, but that was your excuse. Makes more sense to me that he's on the up and up and you're just full of shit."
"You hurt me Mark, we're friends' how can you say something so hurtful?" Charles said sarcastically.
"You can't claim friendship after throwing me in prison for accidentally disrupting your little plan," Mark said with a strong tone of disdain.
"It wouldn't have been an issue if you hadn't gone and started fiddling with things you weren't assigned to."
"I don't see how running math and physics classes could be at fault here."
"Oh, your futile efforts to turn these pedestrian mooks into something meaningful is hilarious, but not really an issue. No; it's your efforts to unravel their tangle of an electrical system that messed this up. The mind control spell takes a bit of time to set in and has to be under constant pressure to make it work. You weren't even supposed to think about the 'stabilizer'; but each time you offlined the generator to rerun wiring and do further tests you reset the training the device was supposed to be applying as well as the numbing of your reason."
"Numbing of reason?"
"Why do you think we put all of the people with a sense of discovery and a scientific mindset in the institute? It would put them closer to the numbing device and increase its effect."
"That's evil!" Lerorian said, "I knew that the institute was just a husk, but to think you were actually working to subvert it directly? That spits on Helen's memory! Not that you'd care."
"Oh, I care quite a bit. The other you likes to use her as an example all the time. She's quite a powerful meme amongst the people here."
Lerorian was obviously having trouble containing his rage, but it was actually Pepe who reacted first. An enormous ball of goldenrod colored light formed above Charles. A glow of salmon colored light started to emanate from Charles briefly before - with a flick of his hand - the salmon light dissipated and a large coronal discharge surrounded him.
"You forget old fool," Charles said walking up to Pepe, "I'm the one who put you there. You're not strong enough to defeat me!" Charles simply punched Pepe and sent him to the floor. "Don't forget, I studied under her too."
Charles turned to the remaining group, "Now, what to do with you lot? Your little 16 hour disruption in the stabilizer, no, the neutralizer has caused a significant disruption in our quiet little community. Most people just went about their happy little lives. But others, like these four," he said pointing to the four mousketeers, "were able to break the spell. Most of them are just simply a bit more aware of their surroundings and simply were a little less likely to do some of the things we need. But a few were able to see through what was happening. And that has created me a world of problems."
Charles turned to his elite guards and ordered, "Recapture the clones, kill the rest," before walking out the door. The Hoppitus elite guards drew their weapons before moving in.
Lerorian called out, "Spread out! Brian! Augment the mute! Converge left!"
Mark ran off to the left of the room and pulled a short segment of banister off the wall and started to approach the enemy that Lerorian was moving to engage when he felt a sudden burst of strength and speed. It was surreal; he felt like he could run a marathon, and moreover do it in only a few minutes. Mark was familiar with the strengthening and invigoration spells from the discussions he had had with Charles but he had never actually been the target of those spells. He had always depended on his natural skills when he fought and it had been enough for him to take the zombies.
However, it quickly became apparent why he had been augmented. Before he could even get a handle on his newfound speed he found himself face to face with the guard. His foes this time were similarly augmented and trained so he was just on equal footing.
Sliding off to the left he just barely dodged the guard's first strike. He countered with a quick retort from the base of his staff but the guard was wary of this and did a quick pivot to get clear of the strike and followed with a rising pummel from the sword that was now beneath Mark.
Mark jumped back to try and dissipate the blow but it still connected solidly putting him off his footing. The guard continued from the pummel strike with a following left hook. Mark was able to get under this but was still staggering back.
Taking a rear falling roll Mark swept with the banister and came up on solid footing. The guard had jumped the sweep but it had bought Mark just enough time to finish the maneuver. Springing from his new footing he came forward with a short strike from his staff to the guard's head.
The guard was able to get under the swing but missed the followup cross strike on his inside knee. Connecting solidly the guard's left leg gave out as the knee cap migrated from its normal place over to the left of his leg. Mark then finished with a solid strike across the back of his neck as the guard went down howling.
Lerorian had grabbed a section of tapestry from the wall and was arriving just as Make made the final blow. "Good! Move right!"
Lerorian and Mark moved together to engage the next guard who had caught Vince in the process of getting a weapon. The guard had already downed Vince and was winding up to issue the coup de grace to him when Lerorain's tapestry whipped around the sword and quickly pulled it from the guard's hand and Mark's banister segment came down hard on his head. "You okay?" Mark said.
"It hurts, but I'll live," Vince said pressing his pant leg down on the sword wound he had on his right leg. Mark and Lerorian moved to assist the remaining members but found that between them they had dispatched the remaining few guards with a few potent spells.
"Woah!" Mark said looking upon the carnage, "You guys don't play around."
Peter, Grant, and Bart were just standing there staring blankly. Peter was the first to speak, "We didn't do any of this. The big guy and the old man did this."
"Good job. Glad to have you guys on the team. 'Pepe', we've got a wounded one. I need you to look at it."
Pepe just nodded. He had stopped babbling as Charles had made his appearance but was now back at it which thoroughly unsettled Vince. "Does it have to be him? Can someone else do this?" Vince said, pleading.
"No," Lerorian said matter of factly, "He's the most qualified and you should be grateful to have the master's attention."
Vince just looked at Mark who shrugged, "If he says so."
Pepe got to work on Vince. Still babbling all the while Pepe began casting some kind of magic that caused the wound to close. Vince watched as the muscle knitted, the wound closed, and the skin healed over. "Crude, but no time." Pepe said interrupting his babbling only briefly.
"Let's move!" Lerorian said.
Mark helped Vince up and the motley crew made its way out of the building. "So," Mark said, turning to Lerorian, "You seem to have taken up the torch of running this show. What do we do next?"
"Well," Lerorian said, combing his fingers through his beard, "First I think we get some lunch. Then we spend some time planning about the logistics of how we get things out from under the control of Charles."
"Good framework," Mark replied, "But we'll need to look at the logistics on that first one. Where can we get some food?"
"I'm glad you asked that friend. I have someone I haven't seen in about five years that I would like to go bother," Lerorian said with a devilish grin.
--CH?--
Lerorian guided the team through several back alley pathways, over the river and through the woods, and ultimately to a house that looked just like all the other houses in this city; a fact that continued to bother Mark.
Lerorian knocked loudly, "Open up you old fool! I know you're in there!"
"No I'm not!" came a weasely voice from a nearby window. "Go away! Nobody's home!"
"I'll just let myself in then," Lerorian said opening the door and stepping inside. Mark and the gang followed along into a house that seemed to be decorated with piles of old junk from the old world. Lamps, hubcaps, bookshelves covered with little glass owls and unicorns all littered every nook and cranny of the building.
The whole arrangement seemed vaguely familiar to Mark; like running across a smell you can't quite place but you're sure you know. Before he could pursue that thought any further a bedraggled man in his mid 50's burst around the corner. "Get out of my house you! They'll come looking for you and they'll find you and they'll come here and they'll take you away and they'll take me away too because I was helping and we'll all be in prison forever and ever and they won't feed me right or let me have my owls and I'll be stuck in the dark and it will be smelly and,"
"Stop! Greg! Get a hold of yourself!" Lerorian said, "You ratted us out once, we kind of assume that you'll do it again and I suspect that Charles will be just as happy as he was before."
"Wait!" Mark said, jumping in, "Greg Burns?"
"YOU!" Greg said in a surprised voice, "You... Aren't you supposed to be dead? That's it! You're a ghost! My house is haunted!"
"Greg! Calm down! He's not a ghost. But that said I am a bit curious; how is it that you know Greg?" Lerorian asked.
"Oh, that's easy," Mark explained, "like I said, I was squinched nearly twenty years ago; though that's probably news to you Greg. I knew Greg when he was in his late 20's. He was one of the Raiders and I regularly gave him a shopping list of things I needed so I could break them down for parts."
"Really. Hmm... Well, I know him from his work with our little conspiracy group. He was originally one of the members in Helen's cabinet like most of us before things started going south. However, when Helen was removed from office by Xavier they came to remove us from the picture more completely and we went into hiding. However, to save his bacon Greg promised to cooperate with them in locating us."
"Really Greg?", Mark asked with a disappointed tone, "You sold out your friends?"
"What if I didn't? They'd still be caught but I'd be in prison too. Didn't make no sense to be 'protecting' them," Greg said turning his back to him and folding his arms.
"No, no," Lerorian said, "It's fine. We made our piece with him being a slimeball many moons ago. But that said Greg we're here to raid your pantry. We're stealing your food from you, but if you have the time we'd like to steal your food over tea. Then we'll leave and you can tell them what happened."
Greg turned back to look at Lerorian and thought for a moment. "Fine. You can steal lunch, but only if I get to chase you with a broom when you leave."
"Sounds amicable," Lerorian replied chuckling. "So, where do you keep the luncheon meat?"
After sandwiches and tea had been made and served to the 8 guests present - in just about every container in the house no less - Lerorain got down to business. "A lot has changed in the last few years Greg, but I'm going to be honest; I don't know what. You like to keep an ear to the ground so I'd like to hear what's really going on."
"Well," he began, his eyes rolling off to find some information somewhere, "For the most part things have stayed pretty constant around here. The mind control isn't complete but doesn't have to be; people generally are happy to go along with the voice in their head. Technology, commerce, trade; they're all pretty much at a standstill. However, much more interestingly so are zombie attacks."
"Really?" Mark said with a strong tone of surprise.
"Yes. Over the last few months there've only been a handful of attacks, and always just a few mindless drones; nothing with any real power or strength."
"Curious, but also consistent with what Mark was telling me; the mind control device seems to be based on a bunny formula so it logically follows that the bunnies are ultimately behind all of this."
"Device?" Greg said questioningly.
"Yes," Mark replied, "The mind control itself is being done with a rather advanced casting computer down in the heart of the Helen Wright Institute. Or at least it was. Given why it was there I feel confident that it hasn't moved far; the power generator is impractically large to move quickly."
"Wasn't the casting computer that thing you were working on all those years ago?" Greg asked.
"Yes. In theory the only person who should have known what it was was me. Nobody else was ever filled in on how it worked; mostly because there wasn't anybody who was skilled enough to learn it."
"Wait, so if you're the only one who knew how to make it then why was there one you didn't make in there? Who put it there? Is there a conspiracy? That's it! It's a conspiracy to keep perfectly good things out of everyday hands! They start by reverse engineering the shield and then they develop a mind control device and then they control all of the people and then when the aliens come they can probe our anus' and take us into their ship without asking and "
"Stop it Greg!" Lerorian said authoritatively. Greg clammed up and went back to his tea.
"No," Mark said rubbing his chin, "I think he may be right."
"See? He believes in the aliens!" Greg said sticking out his tongue.
"No... No I don't," Mark replied, "But I think you're on the right track of thinking. When I was working on the generator they wanted me to stall whatever I was doing until at least next week. My guess, given the nature of the spells that the machine was generating is that it is indeed a conspiracy, and furthermore that the invaders - the bunnies in our very real situation - will be arriving sometime in that period; after which interfering with the nullifier will be moot; though I don't have a clue as to precisely why."
"Hmmm..." Lerorian said "It sounds crazy, but to be honest it's not anywhere near the 'too crazy to be plausible' boundary so at the very least there's a chance it's related."
"Wait," Vince said, "There's supposed to be an invasion by the bunnies sometime in the next week?"
"That seems to be what the evidence suggests," Mark replied with a shrug.
"Huh. Mom said she and Charles were meeting an important emissary about 4 days from now. Do you think that could be related?"
"Josephine? I hate to break it to you Vince but she was the one who called Charles to throw me in prison, so her involvement in the plot seems rather plausible."
"Mom would never do that!" Vince said angrily.
"I don't suspect she would. But next to you she spent more time in the immediate vicinity of the nullifier than anyone else. In all likelihood your mother isn't in her right mind even with a strong will. I don't hold her personally responsible," Mark said, patting Vince on the shoulder firmly.
"It's just the facts of our scenario son," Lerorian said to Vince, "But that said you may have a clue as to what's actually going to happen. Do you know anything about the emissary?"
"Not really," Vince said scratching his head, "All she told me was that I needed to be on my best behavior between now and then."
"Kinda failing at being your typical mama's boy aren't you Vince," Peter said ribbing him, "Does being a good boy include breaking several wanted criminals out of prison?"
Vince blushed, "That's different! Mark didn't deserve to be in there and you know it!"
"This is quite true," Peter said laughing.
"So," Lerorian interrupted, "Do you at least know where the meeting is going to take place?"
"That I do know. They're going to meet at Charles' house for supper," Vince replied confidently.
"Really?" Lerorian said, "That's a bit of a surprise."
"I don't think so," Mark interjected, "Charles probably has the nicest house in all of Shining Hope, and if what I saw of it was any indicator it's likely that he has a lot of guards; the place is a mansion compared to everything else around here."
"Indeed. He's been busy since I was thrown in there," Lerorian said, "Regardless I think this expands the scope of our plans somewhat. We either need to address this meeting or we need to address the mind control such that the meeting can't take place."
"If we don't do something about the mind control it's a good bet that we'll end up back under it's spell," Peter suggested.
"I disagree. The mind control is a form of illusion; it helps keep some things out of the mind of the person so that the small pieces of this plan go unnoticed until the big stuff no longer is big," Grant said.
"The mind control is less concerning to me than the nullifier. If people have their basic wits about them they'll catch a lot of things anyway; but with the nullifier in play the few people with any kind of brainpower are essentially out of the game."
Pepe interrupted his babbling, "Nulling the nullifier is easy. Mind control cannot be undone on mass scale, each needs to voluntarily dispel mind control. The meeting will happen anyway; yes, yes it will."
"How do you plan to dispel the nullifier?" Lerorian asked.
"With switch and hands. Indeeeeed, switch and hands. Just need to get Jose access."
"Jose?" Peter queried with a lifted eyebrow.
"Jose who call me Pepe, Pepe who is Jose." Pepe said.
"Oh! You mean Mark," Lerorian said, "Ya, I guess he does kinda deserve that."
"So how do you propose we get me in to disable the nullifier?" Mark said.
"Just walk in," Pepe replied. "Yes... Walk right in. Mute have no mana signature, not show up unless seen. Go in at night, stay in darkness."
"Sounds good so far, but one question; what happens when the nullifier goes offline and Charles senses the lack of the spell?"
"Charles? I'll handle Charles, handle him good emmmm?" came the reply.
Lerorian gave a disapproving look, "I know you want to maim him as much as I do, but we both know how that fight goes."
"Not fight Charles, mislead. Yes, show him what he wants to see. Not suspect anything till it's too late."
"AH!" said Grant, "So basically we personally cast the spell in the area around Charles."
"The kid thinks! Is nullifier already down? Ha ha!" Pepe said, "We do plan tonight."
"Roger that," Mark said finishing off his tea, "Any idea what to do between now and then?"
"You need to prep for the intrusion Mark. The rest of us need to track down Charles to be ready for our little part in the plan. I only intend to sustain the illusion long enough for you to make your escape."
"So when do we plan to start this little game and where should I meet you when I'm done?"
"Ahhh!" Lerorian said finishing his tea. "Do it 'Pepe'. Mark we'll talk as we move."
Pepe, who had gone back to blabbering raised his hands and just as Greg started to scream, Pepe clenched and Greg went quiet and slumped over his table.
Lerorian turned to the four mousekateers and explained, "Memory erasure spell. Rather thorough but also rather taxing on the subject; leaves them out for about 30 minutes."
Vince spoke up, "Looks painful."
"Not normally but I guess 'Pepe' hadn't entirely gotten over him ratting us out. Anyway, let's get moving. We'll talk about time and place as we move."
The party left the unconscious man lying on the floor as they made their way out. "Mark, I need you, Brian, and Bart to follow me," Lerorian said, "The rest of you need to start combing the city for Charles and keep a tail on him." Lerorian turned to Pepe, "Make a link between everyone but Mark. We need him to have as little a mana signature as we can get away with."
Mark was a bit disappointed that he wouldn't get to be part of the 'link', which sounded rather cool but he liked the idea that he'd have a decent chance to get through the facility unchecked. The party split and Lerorian walked on as a man with a purpose. "Okay, we need to get Mark some clothes. Bart, do you have any money on hand?"
Bart reached into his pocket and gave an acknowledging nod. "Good," Lerorian continued. I want you to take Mark to the tailors at the end of this block. Go nowhere else! Buy him some white robes and leather shoes with Velcro laces. When you're done meet me at this intersection. I'm going to grab some things from a stash. Brian; you watch them, make sure there's no trouble."
Brian nodded and followed the two younger men to the tailors. Once inside they walked up to the counter and asked for one set of 'white robes and leather shoes with Velcro laces'. The tailor went into the back and returned with a set of white robes that matched the uniform of the Bloody Hoppitus and a pair of fine leather boots (with laces in the eyelets). Mark looked at Brian when the lady returned with the boots. He just gave an approving nod before Bart paid for the garments.
They left with some casual goodbyes and made their way back to the intersections. Waiting for them there was Lerorian. In his arms was a white tabard and a shiny sword. "Where'd you get those?" Mark said looking over the tabard. On it was the insignia of the Order of the Bloody Hoppitus.
Lerorian responded with a bit of pride, "These are my tabard and sword. Every inductee into the Hoppitus is issued these as part of their graduation. They are to be respected and cared for as if they were your kin. When it became clear that I was at risk of being captured by Charles' agents I hid these so that they couldn't be used to deceive my men."
"What makes them so special?" Mark asked looking them over.
"Nothing," Lerorian said with a wide smile, "Nothing at all. They're the exact same vestments that are worn by every Hoppitus member in the whole order. But that is why they are special; they weren't sewn special, but through each member's courage and conviction they imbue their pride and honor into them. They signify our brotherhood of trials and our common conviction. These particular ones are the testament of my honor and my conviction and I didn't want some copycat to walk around in them without any sense of their meaning."
Mark looked at them reverently. The tabard was faded and worn, with several sections repaired with patches. The sword was aged, the wood faded and the grip bare, but the edge shone brightly; a sign that great care had been given to its maintenance.
"Let's duck into the alley and get you dressed up and give you some quick drills."
The team moved into the space between the buildings and got Mark changed into the new clothes. The uniform was well fitted, even for being an eyeballing of the measurements. With the tabard and the shield he looked like a rather respectable military man.
"Well, you look the part," Lerorian said rubbing his beard, "But there's a few things missing. First, stand up straight! Chest out! Chin up!"
Mark tried to comply as best he could. "Look like someone your dad would be proud of!" Mark shifted a little; trying to emphasize everything just a little more.
"Not good, but you'll get there. Okay now, show me how you hold your sword."
Mark drew his sword, and took a defensive stance. The blade was a fairly conventional European longsword and sadly mark wasn't trained like that. In his training under Helen she had taught him a form of Chinese fencing. The weight and balance of the blade was a bit off for it, but with how it felt he figured he could make it work.
"Interesting..." Lerorian replied looking at the stance, "You're a student who trained directly under Helen aren't you?"
"Yes sir," Mark said, holding the pose.
"Sadly, when the Hoppitus was formed we decided to standardize on the European sword design as it took less effort to manufacture. If you're ever caught in combat use what you know; but if you're ever asked to present arms let me show you what I want you to do."
Mark rose from his pose and formally presented the sword, "She was a stickler for tradition wasn't she?" Lerorian said with a smirk before properly receiving the blade.
"She and I agreed that as long as there were people who remembered the old ways the spark of civilization would never completely die." Mark replied firmly.
"It's relieving to know that there are those who still think so," Lerorian said.
"I'm not sure if I count sir, Helen taught me that form about a month ago."
"Time sure does fly doesn't it?" Lerorian said cracking a grin, "Seems the same way to me too."
Mark smiled in return and watched carefully as Lerorian raised his sword in presentation and also demonstrated the proper stance for defensive combat with the longsword before receiving the sword and demonstrating the same stances and forms.
"Lastly," Lerorian said, "I want you to recite the code of the Hoppitus."
"I cannot sir," Mark said sheepishly, "I've never heard it before."
Lerorian paused briefly before the logistics set in, "That's right; the order was formed only 10 years ago. You're kinda missing a spot in the middle of that."
Bart spoke up, "We - the Order of the Bloody Hoppitus - stand to maintain peace and order for all citizens. We will protect what is right and uphold our honor and tradition. We shall know no fear, nor shall we be tempted by the throngs of those that would seek to destroy our way of life. We are one in mind, body, and purpose. That is our solemn vow."
"Very good boy," Lerorian said, "Were you a member of the Hoppitus?"
"Yes sir," Bart replied, "Sergeant Bartholomew Stockton, reassigned to the Helen Wright Institute for Magical Research - Magicus Metallus Facility as staff researcher."
"Very proper address; I'm glad to see you've not been tainted by Charles' meddling."
"Thank you sir," Bart replied.
"So did you catch that?" Lerorian asked turning to Mark.
"That was beautiful; however I doubt I could repeat it word for word. The core was a commitment to the peace for the citizens, honor, tradition, and unity of the order."
"Do you accept those tenants as your own?"
"Indeed I do sir, but I worry about the moral implications of the last one; aren't I going in disguise as a member to undermine the primary command of the order?"
"Uh... Well..." Lerorian balked, "We're going to take it as a loose interpretation of the oath for the long term benefit of the order."
"We'll have to have a talk about long and short term morality sometime, but in principle I accept this oath as my own."
"Then as general over the first division of the Order of the Bloody Hoppitus I hereby acknowledge you as one of our order."
"I am honored," Mark said bowing, "Though I do hope you realize I'm only trained in enough combat to defend against zombies and the early apocalypse looters right?"
"From what I've seen you've got the right stuff; it just needs refinement and the support of a battlemage," Lerorian replied.
"I'm glad you think so but I'd rather stick to helping from the backlines," Mark said laughing, "So, what's next?"
"Now we wait until dark. We don't want any of the researchers involved so we'll wait until they go to bed and the Hoppitus are the only people in the halls. Then we'll sneak you in and you can disable the neutralizer."
"Sounds simple enough. It won't be, but we'll play it cool and see what happens."
"Well then what say we find ourselves a caf‚ and have some snacks?"
"That sounds like a splendid idea. Are you guys in?" Mark said turning to Bart and Brian. Both nodded soundly, "That settles it. Any recommendations?"
"I know just the place," Lerorian said leading off and down the street.
--CH?--
Night was beginning to fall when Lerorian got the word, "They've found Charles; a steakout of his house proved rather fruitful."
"Sounds good," Mark replied. Looking out into the darkening sky he contemplated the scale of the task ahead of him, "Almost time."
"Getting nervous?" Lerorian said taking a sip of a freshly poured cup of tea.
"A little, but that's to be expected. If I get caught I can pretty much assume they'll kill me on the spot. And if they don't, when Charles gets to me he'll do it himself."
"Naw, if I know him he'll torture you to find me and 'Pepe' and then will kill you. To be honest if you get caught that way I recommend you just tell him; he'll just kill you on the spot and save you a lot of unnecessary torture."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence sir," Mark said taking a drink himself. "Oh; this has been bugging me for some time. Vince asked you earlier what your favorite ice cream was and seemed pretty confident it was you based on your answer. Why?"
"Oh," Lerorian said laughing, "That's because my copy is based on somebody who wasn't born until after the apocalypse and chocolate hasn't been accessible since 2020. However, it's a little known fact that I like Chocolate Mint ice cream and since the clone is based on everyone else's impressions of me I wouldn't be surprised if he's never gotten that one right before."
"So why would Vince know?"
"Well, that's a long story but his Mom and I go a long way back."
"What? Really?"
"Didn't you hear Bart earlier? That facility is a Bloody Hoppitus research lab. She and I were coworkers for a long time. Her full title is Lieutenant Colonel Josephine Wyatt, Director of the Helen Wright Institute of Magical Research's Magicus Metallus facility."
"Oh; I didn't realize," Mark said taken aback by the obvious facts before starting to laugh, "That's funny..."
Lerorian looked at him with a confused look, "What do you mean?"
"Well," Mark said, "When I first unsquinched and made my way to Charles' office, he told me that working for Josephine was probably the safest option at my disposal since it would keep me out of the Hoppitus."
Lerorian roared with laughter, "That's rich! It's a military research facility!"
Mark just shrugged, "He did have everything planned out. Well, except for me tampering with the neutralizer."
"So it does seem," Lerorian said looking dramatically less chipper, "Anyway it's getting time to get into position. Let's get rolling." Lerorian produced a pouch and gave the waiter several coins as well as giving Bart some. "For what I owe you. You'll need to get me back for the uniform Mark; it's usually the responsibility of the individual to buy and maintain it though it's very reasonable relative to the Hoppitus' salary."
The team made its way over to the entry point for the Magicus Metallus. Arriving on the scene, Lerorian gave him a few final pointers, "Remember, you just need to get in, disable the neutralizer, and get out. Walk casually, but like you have somewhere to be; go straight to the neutralizer and then straight back. No dallying."
"Understood sir," Mark said making his way into the complex.
Inside it was dark. This struck Mark as odd. Hadn't the lights been on basically always? When he fought off the zombies in the middle of the night the lights had been on. Cautiously he made his way down the hallway and to the defense systems research lab.
The defense systems lab was noisy as ever. Mark concluded that the generator must have blown a fuse. Walking into the room he saw the generator happily spinning away. The shield generator was offline, which in no way surprised Mark given that turning it on had caused a world of trouble for them. However, the 'stabilizer' was different.
Normally it just sat there and didn't do anything noticeable. However, now it was concentrating enough mana that Mark could actually see it. The constructs that he had detected when working with his test equipment now were happening on such a scale that they were actually visible.
Mark cursed his luck. If he were to pull the plug on the neutralizer right now the collapse of the accumulator matrix's field would release all of this mana rather spontaneously; causing mass hysteria in the facility at the least and possibly putting people in a permanent coma. Mark started to think about his options. 
Eventually it hit him; he could program the shield generator to contain the explosion. His laptop had been left right where it was during his incarceration; a sign that Josephine hadn't spent any time in the lab. Mark quickly made the necessary Tweaks to the shield generator's firmware to give it a time delay on and then thinking back to the day they put him in jail he programmed a voice activated off. Last but not least he added one quick combat spell to the mix; a quick cutting spell that would sever the power to the neutralizer like det. cord.
Compiling and uploading the new firmware he started to leave when a familiar face turned the corner at the end of the hall. Billy Bob strolled down the corridor checking in each room one by one. He was blocking the exit and the timer was ticking on the shield generator.
Mark waited for what seemed like an eternity. He had only given himself 5 minutes to escape and now there was only 3 minutes left. Thinking fast Mark pulled his hood up and walked down the hall, checking each door as he went by like Billy Bob was.
Eventually Billy Bob noticed him. Mark tried to remain calm while Billy Bob walked up to him. "Yous don't need ta' check dat' one. I already dun checked it," Billy Bob said with his usual drawl.
"Oh; okay then. I'll go check the entrance then and see if it's secure," Mark replied.
"Good idea," Billy Bob replied, "Oh, did yas transfer from a differ'nt unit? Ya look famil'r but I don't remember yas at the briefing."
"I was hiding in the back trying to keep the light down; I was a little hungover from last night," Mark said.
"Oh! Ya, I been there a'fore. Well, I guess' we gotta keep goin' or da boss will catch us slackin', see you on da next round," Billy Bob said,
"Same to you," Mark replied.
The two split company and Mark made his way to the entrance. Calmly walking out the door he then made his way to the rendezvous point. About halfway there he felt the ground shake briefly and then heard a large crack. Mark wondered if he had underestimated the field strength that the generator would have to build up to tolerate the initial detonation; the maintenance level was set to only 10 akkis/m^2 but the initial charge was set to 100 akkis/m^2.
Deciding that if the shield had or hadn't survived the explosion it was kind of moot now he continued on his way to meet up with the others.
When Lerorian was just in sight he came running up, "What the hell did you do son! I told you to keep it simple; no detours or distractions."
"There weren't any sir, but the circumstances had changed from when I last saw them. The neutralizer was moving so much mana I could outright see it."
"Really?!" Lerorian replied, shocked.
"Yes sir. I rigged the shield generator to contain the blast of when the gathered mana was released by the neutralizer; but I couldn't keep that from happening violently. That said I did take the liberty of making the shield generator go on continuously around the neutralizer so the stray mana won't leak and create a hazard as well as keeping anybody who might try and put the neutralizer back online out of the picture by locking them out of the room."
Mark looked back at the scene of the crime, "That said however, I doubt the 'keep Charles fooled' plan had much success.
"From what I'm hearing it went off with flying colors. They were only supposed to keep Charles fooled for long enough for you to get in, out and away. You're here, so whatever Charles plans to do about it is no longer our concern and given your actions he's probably madder than a hornet but especially out of tools."
"That's the hope sir," Mark said with a wide grin.
Turning they all left and headed for their rendezvous with Pepe and his team. As they arrived Peter came running up. "What the heck did you guys do? We could feel the explosion from nearly half a mile away?"
"There was a complication," Mark said wiping some sweat from his brow, "Seems they had changed what the stabilizer was doing. There was enough mana moving around that you could see the color. A LOT of color."
"Wait," Grant interjected hearing this, "You just - stopped - something that was handling probably a kiloakki or more?"
"You felt the explosion, do you need to ask?" Mark said.
"But what about the mana fallout? " Peter said. The immediate area should be contaminated like you wouldn't believe."
"This is true. What I did was setup a 100 akki per meter squared shield with a 10 akki per meter squared hold level. Basically the idea was to hold the mana in the room. I didn't want anyone tampering with things and any mana escaping and causing problems with other formulas."
Peter just stood there blinking before coming back with a big slap on Mark's back, "That's using your noggin! Good work!" 
Mark blushed a bit while the rest of the group came to join in, "I'm glad you think so. Anyway, how did your mission go? Were you seen?"
"Flying colors. We weren't prepared to mask an explosion but when everything was said and done Pepe took care of everything. We basically we just lookout."
"Well, it's not like Vince was going to help with the casting," Mark said laughing.
Vince looked embarrassed, "When you put it that way you make it seem like I couldn't help."
"No!" Mark said, "Consider, I can't either. The one spell I can cast is only useful with a multi-ton power generator and something to do the casting for me." Mark laughed and put his arm around Vince, "It may not seem that important because this time you didn't see anything; but a lookout is critical. When someone starts to wander into a plan they make sure everything stays smooth. Consider it like a guard. 99.5% standing around and posturing for the sake of it and .5% kicking ass and taking names. If they aren't there that one time they're needed then they're useless and no one warns them when that's going to happen. You did good."
"Oh. Okay then." Vince said looking up at Mark. 
"So what now sir?" Mark asked turning to Lerorian.
"To be honest I don't know. We need to know more about this meeting what are the rabbits going to do." Lerorian said scratching his head.
"The mother knows." Pepe said out of the blue. "Ask her."
"Josephine?" Lerorian said, "We could do that. We know she's part of the process. But she's going to be even tougher to access than the generator."
"Tell me about it," Mark replied, "Of the people who attempted to break the shield she was only second to Charles with how much oopfh she could muster and she had quite a bit more endurance than he did. She's probably a beast of a spell caster."
"Oh she's a beast alright," Lerorian said, "and the only way we're going to get to her is with a mana suppressor or a clean sucker punch and someone willing to bear her anger when she wakes up."
"I've seen that," Vince said, "You don't want to be anywhere near her when she truly loses her cool. Her tirades could easily kill several people if they were foolish enough to get close."
"Mana suppressor it is then," Lerorain said, "Any guesses where we can get one or at least be in its area of effect?"
"Well, there WAS one in the Magicus Metallus facility but I kinda overloaded it," Mark said rubbing the back of his neck.
"Overloaded a mana suppressor?" Lerorian said raising an eyebrow.
"It's a long story. But suffice it to say the mana suppressor caught fire and they killed a lot of specimens because of it," Mark replied.
 "Owch," Lerorian said, "Okay then; other options?"
"How about I just ask her?" Vince said.
"Hmm..." Lerorian said pondering with his beard again, "Why would she tell you? She knows you're rouge relative to Charles' plans."
"Well, it helps that I'm her son, but you guys took down the neutralizer right? All we've got to do is show her the illusion and she can break it really easily right?"
"In theory ya," Lerorian said.
"So why don't we just go have a chat with her. She should be easy to convince of the illusion and then it will just be a matter of asking what we need."
Something didn't jive in Marks head. What was it? It should be pretty obvious that this was a simple plan but there was something shining in his head that told him there was more to this puzzle than he could see. But since he couldn't put his finger on it he let it slide. He knew it was going to be trouble but everything's trouble. Unless he could put a finger on what it was he might as well suggest that she needed to breathe.
Nevertheless a plan was scripted to wait till morning and see if Vince could intercept her by simply walking in in broad daylight. In the meantime they would crash in the basement of one of the currently unoccupied houses.
--CH?--
When dawn came Mark's back was sore. He sat up and stretched out, feeling the knots pull themselves loose with each movement. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes he realized that the only one still asleep was Pepe. Getting up and stepping outside he ran into the team talking over the plan,
"So, you and Mark go in and talk with her in her office. If something goes wrong, Pepe, Peter, Grant and I will move in to assist in the escape. Brian and Bart; you two will hold the entrance. Make sure no one goes in or out," Lerorian looked up from his huddle, "Perfect timing Mark, we were just talking about how we were going to do this thing."
"So I've heard. What makes you think it's a good idea to send me back in?"
"Bargaining chip. I presume that you made a way to turn off the shield?"
"This time I did," Mark shrugged.
"'This time'? That's somewhat concerning," Lerorian replied, "But regardless it means that if pressured you can be made to unlock the room. If she fights too hard then you can just simply promise to remove the barrier in exchange for information."
"Doesn't that kinda go against the whole point of this process?" Mark replied.
"Yes. So don't make her use that," Lerorian replied.
"Understood sir,"
"Okay, you all have your orders, let's go ahead and move out."
The ragtag team of elite soldiers, loonatics, and Pepe set out to return to the scene from their crime the previous night. They arrived at the facility and everyone moved into position. On the signal from Lerorian Mark and Vince made their way into the facility. Walking quickly but firmly they made their way to Josephine's office.
Once they arrived they found a frazzled and nearly out of it Josephine holding the desk to the floor with a giant cup of coffee. When they opened the door she looked up briefly before going back to her groggy state. Mark locked the door to prevent any interruptions. Hearing the click she looked up again and this time her circumstances registered.
"What are you doing here!?" She said starting at almost a scream and then dropping down to a whisper upon seeing her son.
"We're here to ask some questions mom," Vince said.
"You shouldn't be the one asking questions here. I have a missing guard and a ball of mana sitting behind a shield that only one of the two of you would even be halfway capable of creating."
The ramifications of his actions seemed apparent; Billy Bob probably was checking the room when the shield came online. 100 akkis per meter wasn't anywhere near the discharge that he had seen, but if a million akkis could push you out of the timestream for 20 years, 100 akkis would still displace you for several hours; so given that it had been about 10 hours since his last bit of mischief he wouldn't be surprised if his little time traveler popped out here in the next few hours.
"I can explain that," Mark said, "There was a mind control casting engine parasitically running off the power generator for the..."
"I know." Josephine said with a stern face.
That's when it hit him; she probably hadn't been under the control of the neutralizer for some time. When Charles had come to visit she hadn't been terribly happy to talk with him and had generally resisted interacting with him. She probably was trying to hide that she wasn't under direct control.
"So why didn't you do anything?" Vince said.
"I'm sure you saw it yourself; Charles is a very powerful mage. I can't afford to have him believe that I'm not under his control. Imagine what he'd do to me or you?" Josephine said, "But that's all moot now; under my watch the neutralizer has been disabled and is being protected by a shield that either you or Mark here could have put up. He'll have my head and yours too."
"So why are you still here? Why didn't you run away?" Mark asked.
"To what end. He'll find me, and eventually I'll get my comeuppance. But with you here," Josephine's eyes sparkled with evil intent, "With you here I can give you to him as an offering. You screwed things up and if I give him you we'll all be spared."
Josephine quickly twisted her hands into clenched fist and Mark felt his body become rigid. "You won't be able to escape this; I know you're a mute so there's nothing you can do about this."
Mark tried to struggle but it was useless. Every muscle in his body was locked solid. His hands clenched into a wicked shape and his face felt like someone was pulling it back like stretching fabric across a bowling ball.
"Don't do this!" Vince said, "You don't have to do this!"
"And why not?" Josephine replied, "If I had him to Charles both you and I will be safe. If I don't none of the three of us will be safe. It seems so obvious!"
"But what about the bunnies!" Vince said, "Charles is meeting with them!"
"What?" Josephine said throwing a surprised look at Vince. "He's meeting with the people who gave him the neutralizer, not the bunnies."
"But the neutralizer was made by the bunnies," Vince pleaded.
Mark tried to speak but all he got out was some blarts and some drooling. Josephine loosened her grip slightly so that Mark could articulate somewhat. "The neutralizer was built on advanced electronics and the Accumulator Matrix/Instantiator hardware I developed," he said, straining against his contracting face muscles, "The formula was a rabbit formula. I suspect they have several old world plants under their control."
"WHAT!" Josephine said restoring her grip like a whip, "The neutralizer was a magic item!"
"Then why did it have to be wired into the generator?" Vince replied, "Magic doesn't need electricity to work. But you had me wire it into the generator."
The continuous cramping from the holding spell Josephine was using was really starting to hurt. Mark longed to stretch out and then relax, but the best he could do wiggle his pinky just a little. But at least it didn't hurt as bad as everything else.
Vince continued, "The way Mark disabled the neutralizer was by cutting the power to it. At the time it had been concentrating enough mana that Mark could outright see it. When the power was removed all that mana was released and that's why the thing exploded yesterday. No one was killed because Mark put up the shield to contain the mana explosion."
Josephine turned to Mark, "Is this true?"
Mark blurted some more. Realizing that Mark was still completely trapped she loosened her grip slightly. "It's true. I rigged the shield to come up just before a second spell cut the power but as I was leaving I ran into a guard; Billy Bob specifically. If he had the misfortune of being there when the computer fired up the shield he would have been squinched with a hundred akki shield."
"100 akki?" Josephine kept concentrating on her grip and pulled out her slide rule. Running through the numbers she came back, "He'll be out for at least another quarter of a day."
"I swear it's all true," Mark said straining with each word. The cramp was getting to be unbearable and Mark was struggling to keep his pained whimpers to a minimum. Mark figured that if he really yelled she'd just tense him up completely again. "I can show you if you have a way of clearing the mana contamination from the room."
Josephine pondered for a second. Looking over at Vince her eyes began to soften. "Fine" she said releasing Mark from her hold. Mark fell to the floor, exhausted. Vince ran over to help Mark stand back up. "Show me," she said.
Mark staggered over to the door and made his way over to the generator room. "Okay, are you ready to contain the leak? There should be a ton of mana in there and my generator's shutdown algorithm is only designed to disperse the mana in the shield itself."
"I'm ready," Josephine replied, "Just do it."
"Jennifer?" Mark said.
A subtle beep returned from the computer in the generator.
"Shutdown the shield."
A series of beeps came back. One beep, then four beeps, then two more beeps.
Mark paused briefly to think, "Override code Alpha Echo Golf Juliet Tango Charlie."
The computer gave one long beep. Then the glowing blue ball that represented the shield began to disperse. After a few seconds the shield was completely down and the purple mana began to ooze out of the room.  Josephine took on a strained look and slowly the mana began to thin out.
Once the mana was cleared she pointed into the room, "In." She commanded, "And don't go anywhere near the generator or the shield."
Mark walked in and took up a spot in the room next to the far wall. It wasn't the safest place, but he needed her confidence. Josephine strode into the room after him and walked over to the neutralizer. Pulling the cover off she exposed the complex surface mount design and the tightly packed accumulator matrix crystal array and the instantiator.
"For fucks' sake!" came her response as she looked over the complex hardware contained in the chassis. "This is definitely not a magic item."
"No," Mark said, "it isn't. For that matter you'll see that it's built using a wave soldered surface mount process. The equipment for doing that kind of work is substantial and requires several trained operators. Moreover you can see that they've integrated the design that I used on the shield generator for bridging the electronics/magic barrier. It's possible that it was a case of independent invention; but all things considered it's more likely that the design was reverse engineered from my original prototype during the years while I was still squinched."
"But it's been kept as a historic relic up to this point," Josephine replied, "How would someone get access to it?"
"To be honest I can't say for certain, but I think the bunnies have been controlling some of the more weak minded citizens to do their spying. One thing you hadn't told me when you gave me the tour is that the bunnies have mind control in their repertoire of tricks. I found out about it when I made the mana suppressor overload as I got the generator working."
"This, this is... Wow." Josephine said, otherwise at a loss for words. "We need to stop the meeting."
"So we know. But that's not actually why we're here. What we need to know is what they're meeting about," Mark replied.
"They're here to talk about the Ley Line network."
"What?!" Vince said, "That would give them access to Fate's Consequence!"
"Hmm..." Josephine said, "That would make sense. I hear that the rabbits have been on a major offensive in the area and have been trying to take down the colony. If they could get access to our Ley Line gate they could both attack the colony from the rear and also cut off their escape route."
"Indeed," Mark said stretching some of his very sore muscles, "How do we stop it?"
"You don't" Charles said appearing in the doorway.
--CH?--
"Charles!" Josephine said turning to face him, "Explain this!" she said pointing to the neutralizer. "You said that it was just a magic item to keep things under control!"
"Oh that?" Charles said, "It was. If it was left alone it would have kept people from asking too many questions about the coming bunny invasion and when Fate's Consequence was destroyed some select people would be brought back here to join you all as slaves. Really it was the least violent way to resolve this all. Because of the outage that fool over there caused I had to up its power to be sure that the effect would be strong enough by the time they arrived. It's unfortunate that you didn't learn your lesson in prison and that my guards didn't end your life there. You might have prolonged the lives of everyone here in the camp. Now they just take the portal by force and raz the camp."
"You bastard! Why the hell are you working with them?!" Mark said, "You were my bro and part of this camp! How could you do this?"
"I did it for the good of the camp. But to be precise I'm not your 'bro'. That babbling fool in the cage was your dear friend. I am just a golem serving the interests of the people."
"Huh?" Mark thought back to the people in the prison. "Wait, Pepe? Pepe is Charles? He doesn't look anything like the Charles I remember."
"Of course not," the golem replied, "we stole his life energy and looks. He currently looks like the poor soul whose body was sacrificed to make this golem."
"That's SICK!" Mark said.
"If it saves the people in the colony it was worth it. But you've undone years of work in just a few short days. You should be proud of your accomplishments."
Mark looked around. He had hoped that the rest of the team had detected the disturbance through the link to Vince but they were nowhere to be seen,
"Are you looking for your friends? I dispatched them on my way in here. They provided little resistance."
Vince took on an angry look and charged screaming at the golem. "NO!" Josephine shouted but she was too late; Charles merely flicked his hand and a concussion wave sent Vince flying to the other side of the room.
"I will not tolerate your insolence on this matter boy," the golem said walking over to Vince's immobile and moaning body, "You will stay out of the way and we will treat this like gentleman."
Mark was slowly beginning to form a plan. He needed some time, maybe five minutes with the computer and the shield generator to make it work though. He just needed to broaden...
"What are you plotting over there Mark," the golem said turning to face him, "I can see it in your eyes, there's something coming together. You can't cast magic and couldn't hope to defeat me in combat. It's useless to try and resist."
"Really?" Mark said, "What happens if I don't resist?"
"I plead your case to the rabbits as they and their zombie hordes swarm the city and if you're lucky they'll simply enslave you rather than killing you on the spot."
"Really," Mark said looking at the golem trying to read the bluff, "And when would this happen?"
"In about an hour," the golem said, "At this point it's useless to resist. If you promise to go quietly I might give you that time to make peace with your loss of free will."
Mark stood there frozen. There really weren't any options but an hour would buy him some desperately needed time.
"You win," Mark said slumping over, "there's no way I can beat you. Heck, your lackey over here was able to defeat me and from what I've seen so far you're an order of magnitude more powerful than her. Death in an hour is better than death now."
"You're a trixy one you know that Mark?" the golem said applying that same excruciating full body clench spell on Mark who screamed in shear agony from the force of the spell. "I know your plan needs time, so I think I'll leave you like this. Enjoy your free will; whatever you can muster of it through the pain anyway. I'm off to meet my master to celebrate the coming to fruition of our plan. But I have one last trick for you Mark; I think you'll enjoy this."
The golem pulled a box out of his pocket and put it on the floor. Pressing a button on it, it briefly levitated off the ground and then a blue bubble enveloped it. Shortly afterwards he felt a shock of his muscles from the box and then the golem released his grip, leaving him held in the control of the box.
"It's a miniaturized version of your casting system. The rabbits were able to devise a smaller version of the accumulator matrix a few months ago and this is one of their initial prototypes; very effective in my experience. Anyway, Tata; I have places to be, Charles is a busy man you know."
The golem in Charles' clothing walked out the door leaving Vince incapacitated, Josephine doting over him, and Mark trapped.
Mark couldn't do much more than blart like he could before when Josephine did before; but this time he was in the clutches of a machine, not a person so he didn't hesitate to blart and blart often from the pain. Eventually Vince started to come too and after some motherly attention Josephine turned to look at Mark and the box.
She tried a few attempts to move the box but found that whatever was keeping it in place was very strong.
"Mark?" Josephine said, "You designed this thing, how do we get you free?"
Mark blarted, doing his best to articulate without his lips. It didn't do much.
"Dispel the contraction mana around Mark's mouth," Vince suggested.
Josephine dispelled the mana and for a brief instant Mark's lips were freed but the box simply restored the mana in the same way the shield recharged the mana barrier. Josephine began continually dispelling the mana. Mark spoke quickly to keep her from wearing out.
"The box has a finite power. Dispel as much of the mana it's emitting at once and see if you can't get it to reboot from a surge draw."
"What?" Josephine said pausing in her effort to dispel the mana causing Mark to blart loudly in pain. Jumping back to draining the mana Mark tried to make it more clear.
"Suck as much mana from this thing at once as you can!"
Josephine relaxed her effort to let Mark speak and began to concentrate on the mana coming from the box. Gathering as much of it under her control as she could she strained to pull it all away from the boxes control. The shield, the levitator, and the contraction spell all flickered at once briefly and then slowly the spells began to fade away. 
The release was very uncomfortable for Mark as he wasn't let go. Instead the gradual fade gave him ever more control over his muscles until eventually he finally was able to walk, if very poorly. Josephine however was exhausted. She had pulled as much mana away from it as she could and had spent all of her energy doing it.
As he was capable Mark walked over to Josephine and hugged her. "Thank you very much," he said gasping.
"You're welcome," she responded between gasps for air.
"Now, to make the golem rue the day he decided to juggle villain balls and leave me alive."
Mark walked over to the computer console and began to rigidly type. He normally would have only needed 5 minutes to make the changes he needed but with his fingers largely unresponsive the going was slow. He knew he had probably 45 minutes before the bunny invasion came. Working faster with each passing second he worked to hack together the needed changes in his firmware. After about twenty minutes he put the finishing touches on, his hands finally coming completely under his control.
"Here's hoping that this works," Mark said, looking to the two of them as he pushed the compile button.
The computer churned for a minute or two and eventually it began downloading. The computer on the shield generator sprang to life and the boot sequence played across its display. Eventually it came online and the shield generator began glowing blue.
"What did you do?" Vince asked.
"I just made it do what it's supposed to. It's currently preparing to make a .1 akki/meter^2 field at a megaakki total field strength."
"What?" Josephine said with a note of surprise.
"It should make a moderate strength shield about two kilometers wide. It should be enough to protect a major section of the city."
"That's immense!" Vince said.
"But I also did one other thing; which is probably going to make a few people rather angry."
"What's that?"
"Well, I also programmed it to use the accumulator matrix to sweep the mana in a sphere 10 miles wide. Basically it's a mana suppression field bigger than the city and everything around it."
"WHAT!" Josephine said.
"I told you it would make people angry, but the fact is that it will also break any magical spell in that area. This includes the linking spell that the bunnies use I suspect."
"That's both crazy and brilliant. But when the invasion comes how will we tend to the wounded?" Vince asked.
"That's a good question, I had forgotten that there was magical healing." Mark pondered for a second, "What's the formula for a healing spell?"
"Healing?" Josephine said digging into the back of her mind. "I don't know, I don't think I was ever taught a healing spell. To be honest I don't know if there is a healing spell."
"I know there is one mom," Vince said lifting a pant leg, "Pepe; I mean Charles used it on me when we were escaping the prison."
"Amazing! When did he develop it?" Josephine said.
"From the sound of it I think he did it in prison. All he's done since I've met him is babble formulas," Mark said, "To be honest he sounds decidedly crazy."
"Must have been how he got through the incarceration," Josephine said with a tone of remorse, "It's terrible that I couldn't even tell that the Charles who I'd been working with for the last year or two wasn't Charles."
"It was a convincing ruse," Mark said, "I was fooled as well and I've known him for years."
"It's the same with me. I knew him for nearly twenty years and never knew that he had been replaced halfway through," she said, looking distracted.
"Anyway, if we can find him we might be able to empower the shield generator to handle the healing spell."
Mark was startled somewhat when the generator suddenly sprung to life and formed a self barrier and simultaneously shot blue mana away from it with immense speed.
Vince started to stand up. "I'll see if I can find him." Vince hobbled out of the room.
"Well, at least we know what's going on and where Charles is. The real question for me is whether or not the invasion will get through the shield. Point one akkis per meter is enough to keep any normal person out; but to be honest the shield generator only has enough juice to maintain the shield and recharge at a rate of 10 akkis per second. As long as the bunnies don't have many more of those little boxes then we should be good. But if they do they'll likely punch a hole in the shield. Especially if they fix the bug."
"Bug?" Josephine asked.
"When I asked you to free me I told you to suck as much mana as you could from it, right?"
"Right"
"Well the hope, and it was a desperate one, was that the box would try and charge back up the field as fast as it could. In doing so it would over draw its battery and cause the voltage on the box to drop below the brownout level for the processor and cause the processor to reboot."
"Right... Wait; what?"
"Basically I asked you to overload the box briefly and hoped that it would kill it," Mark said realizing that he was a little out of range for the average joe. "The hope would be that it would make it not work. It shouldn't if it's designed right but it looks like the bunnies are still coming up to speed on how all this works."
"Oh. That makes sense. So we know they don't have what they need to pierce the shield."
"Not true sadly. Remember what the golem said? That was a prototype. It's possible that they didn't give him the final version in case he got captured and the box was taken from him.  In any case we need to get in touch with the Hoppitus ASAP, my little game with the shield generator should be starting to take its toll here pretty soon. The shield should already have consumed all of the blue mana in the area and has probably consumed all of the mana period in this room. The mana suppression effect - though limited on a global scale initially - will start to build up as time goes on. I suspect in an hour's time we should be looking at half, maybe less of the total available mana in that region. As such I suspect they'd like to know that the rules of engagement have changed."
Mark and Josephine stared making their way out of the facility when they ran into a sobbing Vince and what Mark suspected might be the bodies of some of his new friends and some Hoppitus guards.
"How could he do this?!" Vince said, "Why would he do this? What did Peter and Grant do to deserve this?"
Mark looked over the bodies. Both of them were charred beyond immediate recognition. Both of their faces were twisted in a warped agony. Josephine looked away, apparently trying to avoid the sheer grotesqueness of the scene. The smell of burnt flesh and clothing made it difficult to breathe, let alone keep his lunch.
"This is the nature of our enemy Vince; this is why we're fighting," Mark explained trying to console his friend, placing a hand gently on his shoulder, "If we fail here, and it's possible that we will, they will be the lucky ones. Everyone else will be forced to endure a life dictated by those that did this. Grant and Peter did their best to help keep that from becoming our fate and have made the ultimate sacrifice for that goal. I need you to stay with me so that their loss won't have been in vain."
Vince looked up at Mark, eyes red with tears, "Why?" he said, "Why didn't he end us?"
"I'm going to be honest I don't know. I can actually somewhat explain my own survival given the condition of their tech and the fact that they based it on my designs, but you and Josephine... I don't know. It's almost like an act of pity; not really consistent with the nature of the rabbits."
Josephine's shoulders shook and Mark noticed several small drops land on the floor. It clicked. "I've never asked this before Vince but..." Mark took a big breath, "Who was your father?"
Josephine answered before Vince could, "Vince was born out of wedlock and I've always raised him on my own. But he was Charles' son. Charles and I were close but he was never really made any commitments to each other so we agreed to keep things simple and separate. When I got pregnant he was there for me as a friend, but he never really was the father; just a good friend. Then a few years ago when he got really distant I didn't really think too much of it; it was no-strings-attached. It hurt a little but life had to go on. Some of those feelings must have lingered through to the simulacrum," she finished before breaking down completely. Vince went to hug her and share in some of her tears.
Mark could only look on. His own experience had been rather limited. He had a girlfriend prior to the apocalypse but that had ended with two clean rounds from a .358 special. It had hurt a lot, but he had watched everyone he knew turn; basically his slate had been wiped clean. He had nothing but similarly nothing to lose. He had made two real friends from after the awakening, but now one was a lunatic and one was dead; a memory like his family and girlfriend. Mark wiped a single tear from his eye and pulled himself back to the very urgent present.
"Come on guys. It's hard I know, but we have work to do," Mark walked over to Vince and asked him gently, "Did you find Charles or Lerorian?"
Vince sniffed a large booger and tried to wipe enough tears from his eyes to see. "No. No bodies but from the marks it looks like they didn't get away without a fight."
Mark quickly gave the scenario a scan. The bodies were burnt and around them was a scorch mark. However there were several more scorch marks. Mark went to a few of the places and looked back in the direction of the bodies. Just past them he saw several little circles on the ground. Walking over to them he saw several areas where the ground had been fused and a hollow space carved out.
Reasoning through it he decided that it was the leftovers of a very potent lightning strike. Charles had used something similar against the golem back at the fight in the capitol building. Walking back to where the char was he started searching for footprints. Initially he found his own but a little more searching showed a trail that made a quick retreat. The sole had no tread so it had to be either Charles or Lerorian. Following them a little further a second pair joined them and continued on.
"Come on!" Mark shouted, "They went this way!"
Josephine and Vince gathered themselves  up and chased after Mark who was rapidly moving away along the fresh trail of dripping blood and ashen footprints.

--CH?--
Mark followed the trail for a period, the ash fading away and the blood drips becoming more frequent. He paused briefly to look up at the blue bubble that now encompassed them. Occasionally he could see it ripple with color. They're here. Mark hoped that he'd be able to get to them before it was too late. Each step screamed through his aching muscles but he pressed through as best he could. Eventually they came to the end of the trail. Both pairs of footprints made a sudden skid and then there weren't any more. Mark ran in the direction of the skid and found the body of Lerorian slumped against the wall of a nearby house.
Mark ran up to the old soldier who, upon seeing them gave a strained grin. The pool of blood around him suggested that Lerorian had spent much of the time it took them to escape the hold and get the shield up in this spot. "How are you holding up old man?" Mark said kneeling to speak with him.
"To be honest? Not too well. I think I've got few major organs that aren't doing too well." Lerorian gasped hard for breath before continuing, "I think I've got a rib splinter through my left lung. Another splinter is probably sticking out of back given the amount of blood I've lost and what I can feel of my back."
Mark checked and Lerorian knew what he was talking about. The blood stained bone was poking out though the back of his shirt; the marrow core showing cleanly from the break.
"You're good at this? Have you done this before?" Mark said joking.
Lerorian made a few wheezy chuckles, "Don't make me laugh boy, that hurts something like you wouldn't believe."
"I'm going to be honest, you need medical attention, and probably about 30 minutes ago. I'm here less than a week so I have no idea where the hospital is."
Lerorian chuckled, "You missed something important here Mark, there aren't any hospitals. If your wounds get bad enough that you need hospitalization, or if you get too sick to continue working, they simply put you out of your misery."
Mark looked back aghast. "You can't be serious!"
"Mostly I am," Lerorian said, "The Hoppitus wouldn't stand for it so we have been running a few hospitals on the grounds that the Hoppitus training is time consuming and we wanted to keep what resources we had, but from what we've seen they'll be overwhelmed with people who really might get back..." Lerorian gasped and grunted with the pain throwing Mark into a panic but leaving him helpless to assist, "... back into the fight."
"Well, hopefully we've given them a fighting chance," Mark said, "I've created a mana depletion zone for 10 miles around the city and established a .1 akki force screen over the inner 2 kilometers of it. If we're lucky that should break the hold the rabbits have over the zombies and keep the zombies from being too potent."
"That explains the big blue bubble in the sky; good thinking kid. Most of the members of the order aren't magicians so that should help them play to their strengths against the rabbits. But sadly the link between the bunnies and the zombies isn't mana based. So they won't have any artillery but they're not neutered."
"Well, then we need to get to them and make sure they know. Who should we contact?"
"Probably Prior Davis. He'll be in the guard post on the northern border of town."
"Vince, Josephine, go there and explain what the shield generator's doing. I'm going to stay here."
"Right!" Vince said and the two ran off.
"You should go too," Lerorian said coughing up blood on his prisoner's tunic. 
"I'm not going to leave you here by yourself," Mark said diverting some of the blood away and taking up a seat next to Lerorian.
Lerorian smiled, "You're a fine man Mark," he said visibly straining to look over at Mark. "Helen was very proud of you you know."
"Really?" Mark said, "How do you know that?"
"I came to the camp shortly after you were squinched. Most people were happy to be rid of you and your eclectic behavior and strange machinery. There were a few who saw it as proof that technology was the cause of all of the problems in the world."
Mark chuckled lightly, "So I've heard. Josephine and Vince are part of that school."
"So they are, are they?" Lerorian laughed before coughing, "Well, Helen didn't see things that way. She said you were a kindred spirit to her; in a world where people daily proved that Hobbes was right you fought to take humanity forward without even looking back. She told me regularly that you helped set an example for her. Whenever someone would ask why she was building a school or trying to get people to install roads she would simply explain that we needed to live our lives as though this wasn't 'after the end' but was just 'another step along the long road of human existence.'"
Mark sighed, "She was a great woman Lerorain. Even Nathan saw that in her."
"Indeed she was Mark," Lerorian said, "She was aging, had she not been done in by Xavier's treachery she probably wouldn't have made it much more than a year or two more. But when I think what that woman..." Lerorian weakly coughed up some more blood, pausing to regain his composure, "what that woman could do in those last few years compared to what most could do with a lifetime, I just can't accept what happened."
Lerorian finished his sentence with great effort and then started to try to cough but couldn't muster the energy to push it out. Weakly making strangled sounds he struggled only briefly before Mark watched helplessly as he asphyxiated on the blood that was seeping into his lungs.
Mark had hoped for a death by blood loss; a gradual fading of consciousness before a final lapse of consciousness; asphyxiation was comparably less pleasant in that your last few moments of consciousness were "FUCK I'm drowning!" before hypoxia takes over and you pass out.
--CH?-- 
Mark took a final look at the graying corpse of his newfound friend. He needed to end this. For Lerorian's sake, for Peter and Grant, for Helen and her dream. No matter what it had to end. He had a problem though. How?
Mark thought through what he knew; the bunnies were attacking, Pepe was Charles and Charles was an imposter. The golem was off to see his master and the colony was doomed if the rabbits got through the shield. Wait, master? What master? Who was controlling the golem?
Up to this point Mark has generally assumed that the bunnies were controlling the golem. Given the overall path of what was happening that made the most logical sense. However, the golem had said that he was going to see his master to celebrate. Mark though back on the little bit of history he had been given and one name came up as important but without any knowledge about his part in the conspiracy; Xavier.
Mark started hauling ass to the capitol building. If he remembered correctly, Xavier's office was just across from Charles' and there was a really good chance that this 'party' that the golem had spoken about was quite likely to be occurring either in Xavier's office or Charles' house.
Moving at a light jog; his muscles aching the whole way he rushed to the capitol building. Hitting the building he stood on the lift. It quickly wobbled but didn't lift causing Mark to curse the lack of mana. Heading for the nearest door he started looking for stairs and eventually found his way up to the floor Charles' office was on.
Bursting out the door from the stairs he made his way over to where the guard had stopped him last week when he was trying to get to Charles' office. Making a quick turn he sped towards the end of the hall where a large door with a plaque labeled "Mayor's Office, Xavier Preston" stood prominently. Inside he could hear the sounds of a scuffle.
Bursting through the door he found the golem lying on the floor immobile with the real Charles and a man Mark didn't recognize currently engaging in a dual of magic in the middle of the large posh office.
"You still aren't strong enough!" The strange man said.
"Say what you will Xavier but there's more than just mana concentrating ability to magic!"
Charles' fired a quick bolt of flame towards the man who grabbed the bolt remotely and turned it back at Charles who dodged out of the way as flames spread out across the far wall of the room.
"Very quick Xavier, have you been practicing with the golem?"
"Indeed I have old man," Xavier retorted before causing Charles' prisoner's shoes to glow blue.
Charles fought against the adherence of his shoes and the floor and simply jumped out of the shoes as he gathered the blue glow into a ball next to his head. "Your tricks need an upgrade you fool. I taught you that one myself!"
Mark moved to attack Xavier, sword drawn. Xavier, seeing this out of the corner of his eye turned to face Mark and fired a quick blast of lightning toward Mark. Charles screamed and replied with his own bolt of lightning which connected very squarely on Xavier's chest.
Mark was hit by the bolt and when he next could tell where he was he was lying on the floor a few feet away with a searing pain on his torso and the feeling of an elephant staning on his chest. Looking down he could see several burn marks on his chest; the clothing burned away and the wounds were the lightning hit him still smouldering.
His ears rang with a high pitched tweet. Charles came running over and was trying to talk to him but he couldn't make out the words. "Om moa lat" he tried to make out from the moving lips but he never tried to learn before so nothing meaningful came out.
Charles bent over and put his hand on Mark's neck pausing for a second before stepping back and placing his hands on Mark's chest. A moment later Mark felt a sharp pain half saw himself jump. Things were starting to get fuzzy and Mark was having more and more trouble seeing what was happening. Another pain and a jump. Charles was starting to look desperate Mark suspected but the flickering lights on the corner of his eyes made it really hard to tell.
Another jump; didn't hurt this time. Just the sensation of convulsing and then relaxing. The ringing was fading and the flickering was settling more towards a simple blackness. Mark suspected he jumped again but the sensation was faint.
It occurred to Mark that he was alone now. The darkness all around him had cut him off completely. He thought to himself about death and dying. He thought about all the people who would miss him when he was gone. Slowly he felt himself being lifted as though by the wings of angles but suddenly he was weighed down. A rhythmic thump, thump sound dominated his hearing. The ringing returned and the blackness that had surrounded him began to peel away. He could see Charles' leaning over him, his mouth pressed to his; inflating his lungs. Mark gagged at the though.
Responding to the gag Charles moved away and Mark gasped for air. He could see the smoldering clothing had been removed and the wounds stood prominently on his bare chest. The pain through his torso was severe.
Slowly as the ring began to fade and the sounds of the world around him became more prominent he could hear laughing. Charles had begun to laugh the kind of laugh that someone who had given up hope makes when their lack of faith is disproven. Mark looked to see what had happened. Xavior was still laying on the ground as was the golem.
"Can you hear me Mark?!" Charles said when he noticed Marks eyes wandering.
Mark tried his best but all he could do was squeak. Instead he nodded. 
"Dear god I was sure I had lost you. The shock had stopped your heart and I feared that as going to be the end of it."
Mark tried again to speak and his voice came back, weakly to him, "What about the rabbits?"
"Oh the rabbits?" Charles said, "All we can do with them is hope that the Hoppitus can repel them. They have in the past without a shield and low mana to help them so I suspect with those advantages they will be able to. But what about Lerorian, him and I were fleeing the golem and we got separated."
Mark looked away and Charles saw all that he needed. "I see," Charles replied, 'He was a good man. I will miss him deeply."
"As will I," Mark whispered.
"Rest, but stay awake with me here. You should know that stopping your heart is only a part of why a lightning strike is lethal so I don't want you to overstress yourself until we can get you to a Hoppitus medical facility."
"I wish I could have done so for Lerorian," Mark replied, "But I couldn't move him and he was bleeding out badly through a punctured lung. There was nothing I could do."
"There there now," Charles said patting Mark's head softly, "You did more than I could; I left him there to die alone."
"I'm glad to have helped," Mark said smiling and his head clearing a bit more with each second. "Oh, you've stopped babbling."
Charles stopped a second and listened, "So it seems I have!" he said with a proud tone, "I was so bent on getting back at the golem and Xavier that I spent the several years I had in prison thinking about all the different possible spells that could be used to get past that damn golem. Ironically after all that time I couldn't but you succeeded where I failed. The golem needed a lot of mana to run and your machine just pulled it clean out of him. I was surely going to fail in my assault of Xavier with his golem's help but you gave me a leg up by depleting the mana. All of our spells were especially weak because of it but as I believe you've found that wasn't a limiter in our chances of killing each other."
"Indeed," Mark said. Looking about the room he noticed it was getting darker than he expected. He remembered the fireball from a moment ago and realized that it was probably smoke. "Charles? I think the building is on fire."
Charles spun around and noticed the smoke. "SHIT!" he said; "There's not enough mana here to put it out. We've gotta move!"
Mark started to try and get up but his overstretched muscles wouldn't respond and he fell over. Charles laughed a bit, "WE'll get out of here. Can you get on your hands and knees?"
Mark crawled to his knees and Charles stooped down and put Mark's arms over his shoulders before standing up with Mark on his back. "Hold on tight!" Charles said making his way over to the stairs.
--CH?--
The going was slow on the stairs. Mark could hear Charles struggle against the weight but he pressed on. Eventually he made it to the door on the ground floor. "Do you think you can bear at least some weight?"
Mark nodded and Charles let Mark down and kept one of his arms around his neck. "Okay let's go. We'll lead with the left! Ready?! Left, Right, Left, Right!"
Mark and Charles moved together and made their way out the door and into the cobbled street. From the outside they could see that the fire in the building was raging. The roof spewed flames and smoke billowed out of the windows. Other staff could be seen evacuating the building as the fire spread. 
"THE BOOKS!" Mark shouted realizing that the building was also the library.
"Relax Mark! It's not worth it! We'll get more!"
"But the knowledge!"
"It's not all of the books. This is just the few that we have brought back from the old world. There are more; we'll get more copies when we get more raiding parties moving."
"But there aren't any raiding parties!"
Charles just laughed. "Only by Xavier's rules and I don't think he's really in any kind of position to be making too many rules anymore."
Mark gave a solemn look, "It's unfortunate that he had to die."
"What?" Charles said questioningly.
"I may have disagreed with his methods and motives, and he may have been a murderer, but he was still a human being. I'll admit; I didn't spend several years in prison because of his approach to things, and I wasn't there to see what he did to Helen. But he had a plan, an idea of how to help even if deranged."
Charles just stood there looking aghast.
"Don't think I believe he should have been left free; he deserved prison as much as anyone I know. But I would like to have heard his side of things. It may have been psychotic but he had an idea. Maybe there was something we could have learned from it."
"I think you and I will have to agree to disagree on this one Mark. I don't like that I was forced to kill someone but I don't believe for a moment I should have spared him. The man was a threat to everyone and didn't think twice about killing those that were in his way."
"Well, at this point it's moot; even if we could save him from the lightning bolt I don't think we'll save him from the fire," Mark said as he watched the capitol building slowly burn into ash.
"Well," Charles said looking over at Mark struggling to keep standing, "What do you say we start making our way over to one of the hospitals inside the shield bubble."
Mark and Charles hobbled away, the flickering bubble in the sky shimmering gracefully under the ensuing attack.
--CH Final--
Several days had passed since the bunny invasion had happened. The shield had held and the lack of magic; though not as crippling as Mark had hoped had still given the largely physical Hoppitus defenders a strong advantage. Mark had spent three days of the invasion in the hospital recovering from the severe burns that he had taken from the lightning bolts. He was visited by Brian and Bart, who had both escaped to safety when the golem made his way out of the building and had met up with Vince and Josephine on their trek to the guard station. He was glad to see that they were safe and that the message had made it through
Once he was better he returned to the shield generator to work for the allied forced in modulating the behavior of the shield in their favor. Working with the link had been rather invigorating initially as it was very much like he was at the place the soldiers were. It had taken a bit of tweaking but by making the generator maintain the link between the soldiers they could keep the mana out and still keep the bunnies at bay. Later on in the fight the Bunnies hard started to field a number of modified mana boxes like the one Mark had encountered in the shield generator room but by this time the software in the generator had seen several more iterations and he was far more prepared to handle the sudden power surges.
Admittedly they had run into a problem when on the 6th day the poop fuel began to run low; a consequence of the magic cans outside the field being isolated from the generator and the lack of mana causing them to not function correctly. But they had switched over to burning wood to fuel the shield generator and keep things rolling.
Eventually, with their forces decimated and their resources becoming scarce the bunnies bid a retreat. The hoppitus forces pushed them out past the Lerorian line and fortified at those positions.
Eventually the shield was turned off and the mana field was forced back to normal by the accumulator matrix . Mark took a break for about a week to try and finish recovering. The whole ordeal had been especially tiring and had it not been for Vince's assistance he probably would have lapsed into a coma from all of the work. In this time he caught up with Billy Bob who had actually been out for a lot longer than expected. Instead of losing a few hours he lost a few days; re-emerging in the shield chamber during the days that Mark was in the hospital.
When the fighting ended a funeral was held for Lerorian. The casket was kept closed as Lerorian was buried since they didn't want to show that the man they were burying didn't look at all like the man from the stories. For that matter, the man from the stories had slumped over like the golem of Charles when the mana suppression field had been activated who was buried in an adjacent grave to Lerorian's in honor of the unnecessary sacrifice that the owner of the body Lerorian himself had used to the very end.
Mark was asked to speak at the eulogy for his new found and newly deceased friend. He spoke of peace, honor, tradition, and the unity of the Hoppitus. He begged for a focus on the teachings of Helen and an emphasis on the study and development of magic. After the funeral he met up with Charles on the lawn in front of the cemetery.
"It's a great shame to see him go," Mark said, "He was a great man."
"Indeed he was Mark," Charles said. Mark was still getting used to the idea that this very different body was infact the Charles that he knew from a few weeks ago. Charles continued, "But he didn't die in vain. We were able to defeat the golem because he lured it away and gave me time to head towards Xavier's office."
"This is true. That little change may have had all the difference in the world," Mark replied, "The great victories in life are won by large sacrafices and posturing; they're earned by the day to day suffering of individuals with a sense of justice and the willpower to do what needs to be done."
Charles sighed, "Right. Sometimes it's easy to get lost in the fairy tale frame of mind and forget what it really takes to make a community great." Charles looked around at the dispersing crowd from the funeral, "So, what do you plan to do now? The shield generator works, the most imminent fire has been put out, and you're stuck 20 years in the future."
Mark pondered for a moment. "I don't know. Without manufacturing facilities I don't think we'll be able to build up the electrical infrastructure of the city. However, the city needs math and science teaching. Knowing that the nullifier was in play for several years I suspect that there are a lot of people out there - especially teenagers - who are in desperate need of teaching."
Mark put his hands behind his head and looked up at the sky. "I don't know. I think I'll probably settle down and try to keep a low profile; teaching teachers, helping where I can. As long as I live in the city I'll be a liability because the rabbits know I have knowledge they need, and I suspect that there will come a time where they'll come for me. But in the meantime I think I'll work on what I was working on when I ended up here; applying technology and magic for the betterment of mankind."
"Sounds nobel," Charles said with a grin, "You sure it isn't to try and impress that young girl you met in the camp all those years ago but couldn't bring yourself to talk to?"
Mark just laughed, "Nope. I hear you got to her first."
Charles laughed and the two of them made their way to the Magicus Metallus facility. There were classes to teach and their boss was particularly strict about proper attendance.