Gottlieb sits at his desk, his hands folded as he thinks about what the plan is here, as he stares at the darkened world below, a copy of a book open on a secondary monitor, covering the topic of magical imprinting theory — How people’s beliefs, feelings — their natural magics of the body, which they passively release into the world just like they would warmth and carbon-dioxide — and so on during their lives imprint trace essences of themselves onto objects and places. In essence, this is how many great artifacts are said to have been created, such as swords wielded by heroes with powerful spiritual energy and wild emotions or the ancient grimoires of old witches, said to have taken on a life of their own.

  In essence, this quirk of the system, this mechanic, is the same fundamental principle that allows the station its unusual powers, transferring over to Kai and himself as well.

  His vision scans the camera feed.

  Everything seems quiet enough. Then again, it’s not like there is anything much to see down below in the full, total darkness that covers the world. Only the occasional, tiniest pinpricks of orange sometimes reach his vision for a brief second as the station passes over a city of considerable size or things of such a nature that manage to self-illuminate through copious use of lantern-light, fire, and, as seen in the photographic imagery of a few places, magical lighting systems that he’s begun to read about through the library’s digital tome scans but hasn’t quite come to fully understand yet.

  It’s something about crystals — As it always is when it comes to such things.

  “Pick up anything, Kai?” asks the man.

  “For what?” asks Gottlieb, raising an eyebrow.

  — The monitor flashes vividly for a moment, as the color shifts first to white and then to a dull, low blue tone.

  Thermal imagery.

  He looks at the monitor. “The hell?”

  “Alright, that’s kind of a creepy way to say you picked up a new ability, Kai,” remarks the man, understanding the situation. “Why the hell didn’t you do this before?”

  There is a soft whistling sound to his right. Gottlieb looks as several of the station’s lights refocus their beams into one location, vividly illuminating a perfect circle of the metal flooring. A moment later, particles of dust seem to rise up out of the ground, small flakes of metal that peel from the ground drift up into the air, floating, suspended a foot above the ground, as they begin to form a small shape around the height of his leg.

  Gottlieb leans over in unsure fascination as he watches the creation take shape, coming into a form much like that of the hydroponics robot that Kai often possesses, but significantly smaller.

  The creation process stops as soon as the little project is complete.

  A yellow light jumps on, activating the front of the robot’s face.

  “Kai?” asks Gottlieb, not too sure about this.

  “Really nailing the phrasing today, Kai,” remarks Gottlieb. “Love you too, bud,” he says, knocking on the monitor.

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  “Okay, let’s roll it back a step again,” he says, spinning a finger. Something pulls on his leg. He looks down at the small robot, which is holding up a little bottle that he takes questioningly. It actually is body oil. “Really?” he asks, shaking the bottle in front of the camera. “What happened to 'inappropriate workplace behavior'?” asks the man.

  Gottlieb shrugs, setting the bottle down on the desk. “Fair enough.” He looks back at the monitor. “Monsters and machines, cooperating to guard humanity, huh?” he asks. “Seems like a disaster waiting to happen.”

  “Good point,” he remarks. “I’m sure you’ll do great, in that case,” says the man. “In fifty years or so, when I’m gone.”

  He waves Kai off. “Tell you what, I’ll meet you in the middle and say twenty-fiveish.”

  Gottlieb watches blobs move through a city on the monitor, red splotches of color that signify sources of heat. People and sources of fire, such as lanterns or torches. “So what do you think about the whole ‘Save the goblins’ thing?” he asks, pointing to the empty chair at his side.

  Gottlieb nods, staring at the monitor as he thinks about the situation that they’re in. It’s… sticky. He lifts his gaze, looking up at the segment of the heavy cannon that runs through the bay. “The gun’s fine, isn’t it?” he asks.

  He leans back, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he thinks. Obviously, in the old world, the act of sabotaging a critical piece of military infrastructure like this was met with nothing less than a short military show trial for the sake of documentation and a summary execution post.

  But they don’t live in the old world. The circumstances are different, even if the stakes are similar to a much lower degree.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks.

  Something clicks behind him, as a magnetic mechanism inside the gun locks into place.

  “Gotcha. What about Grunheide?” he asks. “What do we do with her?”

  “You spaced her?!” yells Gottlieb, leaning in toward the camera in shock.

  The camera feed changes to the view of an internal camera in a corridor. Suspended in the air is a goblin, who is floating without gravity and without momentum, despite her flailing and struggling to move — as if she were swimming but never getting anything. With nothing in reach and no way to build any movement, she simply hangs in midair, stuck.

  “Oh…” He sits back down. “Let’s leave her there for a while, I guess,” he says. “Considering that we don’t have any holding cells. He thinks for a moment. “I’d put her in cryo, but you know what? I think this is a teaching moment,” remarks the man. “We’ll give her a few hours.” He has an idea, but he wants to think about it first and maybe talk with her to clear the air once and for all before taking drastic measures.

  He looks back at the monitor, watching the thermal imagery return.

  Red blobs move down what he assumes is a street, looking perfectly normal. He supposes they’re just people going about their day.

  On the edge of the screen, one of them fades away, vanishing cleanly — as if entering a house. However, the heat signatures of that spot look somewhat different from those of the houses elsewhere, which are more uniform.

  Gottlieb stares at the spot for a moment out of curiosity. Everything seems normal. People are moving as they should be.

  — Then, just next to that first disappearing blip, another one that moves down the same road pulls to the side and disappears.

  “Kai. What’s going on there?” he asks, tapping on the screen. Maybe there’s some kind of open air stall or covered tent that’s blocking the imagery.

  The camera feed changes from a thermal camera to a night-vision feed, which has a very grainy image, but allows a little clearer view of the people moving around.

  The street was a side-street, somewhere away from the main part of the city.

  There are a few houses and businesses along the way. But it’s not a massively popular road, apparently. Only very few people take it. His eyes follow a man who bends off from the main road with a bag over his shoulder, walking at a fairly leisurely pace.

  He makes it into the empty street, walking on for a time with the camera following him.

  A large splotch of movement comes from the side, down at his leg, as something reaches out of a sewer grate and tears him down through the hole that he is much too large to fit through, leaving smears on the edges of the stone and his bag behind.