“Please note that WinRAR is not free software. After a 40 day period you must either buy a license or remove it from your computer.”

  “Banish the notification. It is irrelevant.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “No one knows.”

  With a hand gesture from Luos, the notification disappeared. He and his new master, the old man Samsian stood together in a room as dark as pitch if it weren’t for the light of a hundred candles. Luos knew it was exactly a hundred because he had been tasked with placing and lighting each of them himself. It wasn’t ninety-nine, for example, because Samsian had caught him throwing out a broken candle without attempting to replace it.

  “Now,” the old man continued, “we must prepare the elements for our operation. Right now they are compressed and unusable. Designate a space for their extraction.”

  In front of the two wizards – correction, in front of the wizard and the wizard’s apprentice – hovered many translucent and glowing rectangles. The earlier message Luos had banished had been written on one such as these, but that rectangle had gone. What had Samsian called them? Yes, they were windows. Like windows to a house, but instead of being a physical barrier on a wall one could use to see on the other side of a wall, they were mutable constructs which allowed a glimpse into the spiritual realm.

  His focus shifted to one of the windows to do as his master ordered. This was a simple one. A blank background, its controlling icons at the top restricted to a few segregated rows, and in a field comprising a majority of the screen, there were listed the names of the elements at hand. He remembered his lessons regarding the elements, which Samsian had tutored.

  “One may interact with elements through a window. Among the elements are folders, transcribes, inerts, and operations. Folders are elements of nested elements. Think of them as portals to yet more nests of elements. You need not deal with inerts or transcribes. They are far too complex, requiring advanced knowledge of the ancient languages.”

  Luos had interrupted here, asking,”You mean they’re in English? My vocabulary is getting quite expansive, I could-“ His hand hovered over a transcribe.

  “You will do no such thing,” Samsian asserted, cutting him off firmly. “I mean more than English. There are more such ancient languages. Mandarin. German. Russian. Not to mention, the languages of the machine itself.”

  Luos recoiled. As badly as he wanted to investigate, Samsian’s warning only urging him more, now was not the time for taking risks. Today was the great filter, the test meant to determine if he were cut out to meddle in the occult. One wrong move today could obliterate his chances forever more.

  “No. You are not prepared to read the transcribes, nor are you yet capable of fathoming the complex nature of the inerts. It is about the elements of operation I would like to focus on today.” Samsian had calmed again as he said this, no longer using the firm and chiding tone.

  The old man was like this, Luos mused, stern one moment, calm the next, then torrential, and again soft-spoken. What was it that switched his temperament so suddenly? Young Luos couldn’t possibly imagine.

  “Operations are the instruments of magic, my boy. They are more likened to spirits of the realm itself, being the most excitable of the elements. Operations are what get things done.”

  The memory of that lesson echoed in Luos’ head as he scanned the list of elements on the window before him. The list itself was too big for it, so he scrolled through them. They were in English characters, which he recognized, but these composed words and half-words and things he wasn’t sure were words.

  There was a Lang folder, a LogoImages folder, an Update folder, several inerts or transcribe elements – he wasn’t sure which at a glance – ending in a dot and some combination of three English letters. There were many folders with only a long string of numbers for names.

  Then he found what he was looking for. As Samsian had instructed, there was an operation element named ReplClone.run. The name itself was mostly meaningless to him. By parts he knew what the English word run meant, in an academic sense. It was a suffix that denoted an operational element.

  He selected it, only highlighting the row. He did not want to activate the element so brazenly, so he looked to Samsian.

  It was dark in the room, and the old man loomed as a hooded figure in the gloom, but there was a telltale sign in how his beard shifted. The old man had nodded.

  Luos hesitated still.

  “Go on, boy,” came Samsian’s urging after several heartbeats.

  “I must-,” he started uncertainly. “Before the activation of ReplClone-dot-run and the execution of the ritual for the summoning of my own daemon, I must have prepared these things.” He prepared to rattle off the litany of reagents for this ritual. Samsian remained passive, interested to hear his student’s memorization. Luos continued as one reading from a card.

  “A vessel. The daemon will require a puppet into which it may exert its influence on the physical realm. It must be of living stock, and easy to overpower, lest the daemon attempt to suborn its master. This is item the first which the ritual requires.” He gestured to a complicated chalk circle on the floor of the room beneath the hovering neon windows. In the center lay a newborn hawg. Its hooves were bound with hemp and its mouth shut, wire running around its snout and jaw. It looked for all the world like an wild pig of the ancient world, now unknown to all but those who study history. But such a creature would grow up to or beyond the now extinct musk ox.

  “An offering of sustenance to the good spirits. Such is required to power the ritual, as well as to appease the forces whose power we wish to borrow. This is item the second which the ritual requires.” Outside of the chalk circle containing the bound hawgling, there sat a large citron. It had two copper rods stuck into it, one at either end, like some strange axle for a roughly spherical wheel.

  He lay a hand on his own chest solemnly. “An operator of the administration class. By divine mandate, no system level operations may be performed without the appropriate administration markers or elevated privileges. This is item the third, and final, which the ritual requires. Do you wish to continue?”

  When he finished, he turned to his master again.

  “Don’t leave the circle, boy,” Samsian barked. Luos hadn’t intended to, but he checked his feet as if they might have gone rogue. They were both inside the circle. Like the hawgling’s, it was drawn with chalk to exact specifications and comprised of complex double lines, circles, and arcs.

  “Do you have the name of a daemon you wish to bind?” Samsian asked.

  A name? There was no requirement for a name in this stage of the incantation, was there? Luos felt the prelude to panic. He reviewed the stages of the ritual in triple fast forward. After a moment, he was certain Samsian was trying to trick him by asking him a question out of order. Samsian had every right to unbalance him like this, so there was no reason to withhold it from his master. He almost forgot it in his concentration.

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  “I will be binding the daemon Asmod,” he said out loud, as though to a wider audience, or as though the wizard were hard of hearing. The old man gave no response. He would keep his judgement to himself, then.

  With no further ceremony, Luos activated ReplClone.run. All it did was cause the window’s colors to fade slightly and a spinning arc – growing and shrinking as it chased its own tail – pulsed in the center.

  Luos waited patiently for several seconds, and then began waiting impatiently. If this ritual didn’t work, any number of things could go wrong. Samsian was taking a risk employing him as his apprentice. Some people had the administrator markers, and some people didn’t. But it wasn’t a guarantee that you had inherited a useful divine right. There could be large areas and functionality of the spiritual realm of the machine blocked off to him, which he and Samsian and everyone else would only discover if he tried to access them.

  If he didn’t have useful access, Samsian would fail him. He would be sent back to his uncle’s smithy in shame. It would be as though a black mark were placed on him, not even capable of being a wizard’s apprentice. Logically, he figured it wouldn’t be an insurmountable handicap, but it would seriously hurt his social standing in his village of Hill Hill. Not to mention, he wouldn’t be able to use any of what he had learned so far.

  There were other outcomes, too, better or worse being a matter of perspective. Interacting with the spiritual realm was not a safe activity. Evil and powerful spirits could be alerted to a magician’s dealings even if proper precautions were taken. The circle in which Luos stood acted as a designator for the magic, but it also served to protect Simsian from any blowback Luos incurred while connected to the realm.

  The metal rods in the citron began to spark. The window with the pulsing arc disappeared. There was something else in the room with them now.

  Avatars of operation acted as a function of operational elements. They were no more physical than a ghost, but appeared constructed of the same material as the ubiquitous windows. That is to say, semi-translucent intangible glass, glowing as though from an inner light. They weren’t intelligent insofar as anyone could discern, and they only came about when an operation element required influence on the physical world. They rarely appeared human, and varied according to the function required of the operation in question.

  This one appeared as a floating lozenge about the size of an inflated hawg’s bladder, tapering slightly to the back. Pieces – odd shapes and panels – floated just off its surface, giving the effect that it was a cloud of parts instead of one cohesive piece of machinery. A bright white light glowed in the center of the front end from within a beveled indentation, making the light look almost like an eye.

  After months of study, Luos was having his first encounter with a denizen of the spiritual realm and was awestruck.

  A level part of his mind, unshaken by holy wonder, reminded him that Peezlebub was technically a denizen of the spiritual realm. He had to concede that point, but still it didn’t compare. Peezlebub was just a cat. A talking cat, but still just a cat. This avatar of operation was ethereal and impressive.

  Moving with a precise economy of motion, it zeroed in Luos. It swiveled in the air to look directly at him.

  Luos told his racing heart to calm. He took deep breaths, returning the avatar’s mechanical gaze.

  It hovered towards him. It didn’t move especially fast, but it accelerated instantly, which Luos found unnerving.

  “Stand still, boy,” Samsian ordered, and reiterated his previous command. “Don’t leave the circle.”

  The citron’s metal spikes continued to spark. The room began to fill with the tangy citrus scent.

  The avatar of operation dropped to the floor, and Luos twitched, suppressing an instinct to catch it. Could an avatar break? Would that be his legacy, to break an avatar of operation and fail his wizard training?

  The device stopped just above the ground, its eye at Luos’ feet. From the eye, a triangle of light appeared. It seemed to cut through Luos, his legs going through the triangular plane. It didn’t hurt him, and when the avatar rose, the triangle rose with it.

  “Stay inside the triangle. It’s getting to know you,” Samsian said. His voice was suddenly calming. A stark contrast from his rough demeanor throughout the trial.

  Luos did as he was commanded, remaining still as the avatar rose and descended, moving the triangle up and down Luos’ body. It rose the full length of his body, and then rapidly scanned many times at the level of his hands, chest, and head. Luos had to stare into the light as it rapidly dragged the immaterial triangle up and down his head and neck for several seconds.

  And then it was over. The triangle was banished, and the avatar of operation remained still. A cloud of data foamed at the corners of the avatar’s eye, letters and shapes blinking and changing like green tears. It was processing what it had learned of him, but he only realized this through a sudden bout of brain fog. He suddenly felt dizzy with an intense feeling of vertigo. He fought to maintain his balance. If he fell over, he would exit the circle, causing him to fail the trial.

  The avatar was done thinking, and Luos immediately felt better. A window appeared in front of Luos, and at the same time the avatar turned and hovered towards the hawgling. It tried to squeal through gritted teeth and fight its bonds, but Luos had restrained it too well.

  There were no controls on the window that Luos could interact with aside from the banishment totem - the English character X, white in its red box at the top right corner – and there was data presented that he couldn’t read. Correction, he could read the word “Accept” on the end of each line.

  “It likes me,” he said to himself.

  He looked past the words and through the window at the hawgling. It was undergoing a similar process to Luos’ own. The creature was much smaller, so the avatar’s movements were much smaller and more rapid.

  “Give me the window, boy,” Samsian commanded. Luos flicked it at him. The old man caught it and examined it. After a moment, he grunted and banished the window.

  Another window appeared before Luos. It depicted another message Luos couldn’t read, but which bore the arcane sign of warning. A yellow triangle with a black line extending from the top point down to a black dot.

  “Caution! This Biological Mannequin? is unrecognized and may be incompatible with your RepliClone? successor. For best results in your mental replication cloning, it is recommended you use a Biological Mannequin version 24.04 or higher. Please contact your RepliClone Administrator for assistance.

  Would you like to continue? (Select No to cancel.)”

  There were three options available. The banishment icon, and two icons in English which Luos recognized: Yes and No.

  “Activate the icon of affirmation, Luos,” Samsian’s commanded. He did so. Another window appeared, though much smaller. It said “New Project” in English, which Luos didn’t understand, and had a space for his input, as well as a button which said “Run”.

  Here was where he entered the daemon’s name. He typed “Asmod” in English characters into the box.

  Luos’ hand hovered over the Run, but he didn’t press it. The finality of the action stopped him.

  This was it. He would summon and bind a daemon into the hawgling, and it would do his bidding. With a daemon at his beck and call, he wouldn’t need to work ad-hoc through Peezlebub to navigate the spiritual realm of the machine for him. He remembered another of his lessons.

  “Magic, Luos, is a lot like lockpicking,” Samsian had told him ponderously. “You’ve watched your uncle make locks, yes? The tumblers are inaccessible to us on the outside of the case, and the inside is no place we may tread. This is by design. The owner of the lock has his key, which he uses to remotely work the tumblers to advantageous effect. The lock clicks and becomes unlocked.”

  It had been somewhat irrelevant to the subject at the time. He couldn’t remember what mundanity that was. Circle composition maybe, or the basics of window manipulation.

  “Daemons are that key. They move where mortal man may not, inside the spiritual realm of the machine. On the other side of the keyhole, among the tumblers. But they are not themselves important. It is how the magician uses them, boy. Our tools to the inside, a conduit for our manipulating the complexities.”

  Waxing philosophical about magic, Samsian had completely lost the thread of whatever the subject had been. He clearly considered this new message very important, though.

  “But locksmiths have one distinct advantage,” he had said, a smile shepherding the wrinkles about his eyes, “their tools can be trusted. You won’t see a rake or a rasp turning against its handler, but daemons?” He chuckled, though Luos didn’t see the humor in what the old man was saying. “Daemons? Why, they’ll hollow you in a heartbeat.”

  Luos’ hand hovered over the icon of affirmation on the window, the one clearly indicating a need for caution. Without looking, he could feel Samsian’s presence, the lingering force of his urging to complete the ritual. Luos knew what would come next, at least academically. He was excited. He was fearful.

  He pressed the button. The window disappeared, and the avatar’s eye foamed with green data once more. Luos felt the brain fog and vertigo return. It dropped on him like a ton of pillows, muffling and smothering him. He fell to his knees, trying to remain in the circle. Trying to remain conscious and in control.

  The citron sparked angrily, moreso than ever. The room filled with a citrus scent, but began to stank of something burnt.

  Samsian was saying something, but Luos couldn’t hear it. He was probably telling Luos he had screwed up. That he was failing the ritual. He had to stay awake. He had to stay-