The SA agent led everyone off the bus and out into the field, where numbers and cryptic abbreviations were freshly painted in white on the ankle-high grass. He pulled out a pocket data pad and consulted it for a diagram, then headed to an otherwise arbitrary part of the field where he found a label reading “5:F(TK8).” There, he had everyone line up in alphabetical order by last name. Elsewhere, other agents were doing the same thing with other bus groups. Another bus pulled in every few minutes, surprisingly evenly spaced. Danielle wondered if they were deliberately putting just one bus through the gate at a time – for dramatic reasons? Ceremonial? Traditional? Somehow, she suspected the experience might be different for people who actually knew and sang the Farewell to the Past song. Maybe they were trying to give more people that awareness of lines crossed and changes made.

  The workers in brown – more Rangers, presumably – brought out a platform with speakers and set it up on the dome side of the field. If the location of the platform was a good guide to where the beginning of the audience would be, then Danielle wasn’t too terribly far from the front. She was at least halfway from the dome to the parking lot, but the folding tables were just a bit behind the platform; it must be two lines then? One to the tables, then a second from there to the dome?

  The parking lot filled up, and the field in turn filled in with fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds in denim uniforms. The noise level rose as people talked to neighbors, killing time while each block of the diagram filled in. A man in a fancier version of the green Sending Authority uniform arrived in a green van and went to loiter around the stage. Danielle tried to study the boxes at the tables (yep, those sure were cardboard boxes), or the dome (she could just see a second archway now, pointing south; if the pattern continued it would be one in each cardinal direction). She tried to see Sadie and Heather, or for that matter, Akari. At first, they didn’t seem to be on the field; then it grew too crowded to see from where she was to where they should be.

  The noise level dropped when the commissioner in green stood up and started talking, but he was just a thousand times too cheerful to take seriously. “Welcome, new Sent, to the adventure of your lives!” What did he think this was, a summer camp? Danielle couldn’t make herself focus on his blather, her eyes instead returning to the dome like iron to magnets. She couldn’t hear all of it anyway, because all too many of her fellow Sent were ignoring him to the extent of continuing their conversations.

  He continued on, ignoring the crowd’s lack of focus: act with honor, grow strong, something provide mana something, something something glory, something something Return - wait, that sounded important. The crowd noise spiked for a moment as hundreds of people shushed their neighbors, then dropped almost to nothing. The commissioner, fortunately, repeated himself: “As I was saying, when you have reached base level 10 and are ready to Return to the shelter of our glorious state and its sanctuaries, you may come here to the gate at the Dome of Decision (and the nearby offices of the Rangers and Sending Authority Out-Station One) to begin that process by creating an Advancement token like the one we are about to give to you.

  “By returning a copy of the token to us, you ensure that future generations of Sent enjoy the same strong beginning we are providing to you. In return, we will provide you with instruction and/or a Skill token to allow you to unlock the most critical System ability of a Return: Aura Control. This tier-10 Skill is required for all Sent who wish to Return, but fear not! Once you have base level 10, the Skill is easy to acquire!”

  The Sending Authority agent standing next to Danielle snorted. “It’s not just easy, it’s all but automatic. Skill token indeed! Only an Insider would talk about making a token for a universal unlock. Besides, it’s better as a Trait.”

  Behind them, another agent replied, “That’s the kind of fool mistake a person makes when he insists on making political speeches without a script. That, and he can’t stick to a schedule to save lives. Uh, not that he’s actually endangering lives here! It’s just going to be a very long day.”

  That was the last piece of useful information Danielle managed to pick out of the speech, though she tried a little harder to listen after that. Eventually, the commissioner took a hint from a man in brown who was standing off to the side, tapping his wristwatch and edging closer and closer to the platform. He concluded his remarks, a bit abruptly, and stepped down to anemic applause. The Ranger immediately took his place and began calling groups forward to, as he put it, “receive your gear and make your decisions.”

  The folding tables were now manned by a line of sending authority agents. Ten at a time, row by row, the new Sent filed forward to line up and walk down the row, pausing at each station. Then they moved forward to the other half of the field, where Rangers got them into a line, which rapidly became a snaking queue rolling back and forth across the field.

  Danielle kept loose track of how many groups were called before her. It was at least twenty-two – and at most twenty-six; she had other things on her mind! For one thing, she still didn’t know what she was going to be choosing in her three minutes in the dome, besides “whatever will keep me alive.”

  It felt like an eternity just waiting to be called to the first line, but eventually she was the one walking past the tables, speaking to each agent. There were ten stations, and each one was a question:

  The first agent asked, “Do you want an extra satchel?” The bag on offer had to be the sturdy bag the agent in the store had advised her to “save room” for. It was similar in design to the school satchels that Tree of Knowledge passed out for book bags, and the nearly identical canvas satchel passed out with the Sending uniform. The obvious differences were that it was made of leather, that it had a prominent clear crystal set into the buckle that would hold down the main flap, and that it had two squared-off pockets with their own depth on the front, instead of one pocket that went the full width and lay flat against the front when empty. Danielle said, “Yes please,” and the agent handed it across to her with what felt like excessive formality.

  Danielle took off her backpack so she could put the satchel on immediately, settling the strap across her back, then get the backpack settled over it. She discovered a metal ring in the bottom of the back panel, and in response to a questioning glance, the agent helpfully explained, “If you run the main strap through the ring, you can configure it to wear like a backpack. The rings on the bottom are to suspend the tent, or other bulky items you want to carry outside the main compartment.”

  “The tent?” Danielle asked, but she simply gestured to the next station. “Right. Time marches on.”

  The next station’s question was, “Do you want rough weather gear?” That answer was obviously “Yes!” It turned out to be yes twice; the gear was two bundles, rain gear and cold weather gear, each tied with waxed twine, and they could be accepted or refused separately. The rain gear was a rubberized canvas poncho with hood, and rubber boot covers designed to work with their provided hiking boots. The cold weather gear was the promised fur-lined cape and mittens mentioned by most of the agents that had been answering questions outside the necessities stores. Sliding them into the satchel, she found that they’d been folded just right to fit neatly inside; the satchel also turned out to be lined with something that felt nice to the hand and allowed things to slide easily. “System silk,” the agent at that station commented with a grin. “Incredible strength to weight ratio; you’ll grow to love it.”

  Danielle thought the first agent was just prodding her to keep moving when she gestured down the line instead of talking about “the tent,” but a few paces down the line, she found that the question at the next station was, “Do you want a tent?”

  “Oh! Uh, probably,” Danielle said, eyeing the surprisingly small cloth tubes she was being offered. “Well, yes, definitely. Does it have instructions, though?”

  The agent, a man this time, smiled. “It does. It’s a system-silk backpacker’s tent, small sized, suitable for one person with gear or two people crowding. All the parts are included – ground cloth, tent, rain fly, tent pegs and system-silk cord, and of course the pack-away bag with rings to attach to your new satchel. You can actually choose any of these four colors – sky blue, stone gray, forest green, or woodbark brown.”

  Danielle hesitated a long moment. “I want blue, but I think I probably should take green,” she said. “I won’t be pitching a lot of tents in the sky.”

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  The agent chuckled and handed her a forest green tent. “A sensible decision,” he said. “Go ahead and attach it to the bottom of your satchel, and unpack it later – they’ve all been thoroughly checked, and if you’re somehow missing anything in spite of that, you can complain to the Rangers and they’ll get your missing part to you.”

  Danielle nodded, clipped the tent onto the rings designed for it, and moved on. The question at the fourth station was, “Do you want a water distiller and canteen?” She examined them curiously; neither looked like she expected them to look, given those names. The “distiller” was a straight-sided steel pitcher with a specially shaped lid to collect water and drip it down at a point just beyond the spout. The canteen was also straight-sided, about the size and shape of a half-liter water bottle. “If you’re wondering about the canteen,” the agent hinted, “it’s a double-walled stainless steel bottle, solid construction, and well enough insulated to keep things hot or cold for at least four hours in most weather.”

  “Yes, I want them,” Danielle said. “Like the man said, if you haven’t got water, you haven’t got anything. I was just surprised by the design.”

  The agent nodded. “The canteen fits well in the end pouches of your new satchel. I recommend putting the distiller pot on the same end, inside.”

  Danielle was starting to catch on that everything had a place in the kit she was assembling, so she followed his advice and moved on to the next station, wondering vaguely what would go in the other end.

  The next question was, “Do you want an oil lamp and tinder box?” The lamp looked like something out of a story book – Arabian Nights perhaps. Danielle admitted, “I don’t know how to use a lamp like that. I definitely need the tinder box, though.”

  “It comes as a set,” the agent said, sliding a lamp towards her along with a metal flask about the same size as the canteen, and a metal box just a bit on the large side of palm sized. “The oil flask fits your end pocket there, and the tinder box is the right size for one of your front pockets. There will be a book in your room that explains how to use the lamp.”

  Danielle opened the tinder box briefly. She recognized a watertight seal with approval, and a flint and steel sparker shaped almost like an oversized safety pin; she’d used its like in school, learning to handle chemistry lab equipment! She silently thanked her science teacher for letting middle school students practice with real lab tools as she scanned her eyes across a larger, loose piece of flint and a matching piece of steel, a puffy mass of unidentifiable fiber, and a roll of some kind of string. “String?”

  “It’s the wick for the lamp. Please move along, you can study it when you get to your room,” the agent said politely.

  Danielle nodded, though the line already forming ahead of her between the dome and the equipment table told her that she wasn’t in any danger of holding up the main event. Predictably, by that point anyway, the tinder box fit the front pockets exactly. Danielle supposed they were literally made for each other.

  The next agent asked her, “Do you want an emergency radio?” Danielle nodded, and received a very small device, thicker than a pocket data pad, and a bit wider, but no taller. In fact, it was a very close match for the tinder box. It came with a water-resistant pouch and a booklet – operating instructions, presumably.

  “Goes in the front pocket?” she asked, and the agent nodded and handed her its instruction booklet. She slid that in behind the radio itself with no difficulty.

  “Just remember, any time it’s on, it’s a beacon to your location,” the agent said. “Most of the time, it doesn’t matter because nobody’s looking, but it’s still good practice to keep it off unless you’re actively using it, or listening for others from a safe location. It’s also easier on the power system.”

  Danielle blinked in surprise and asked, “Wait, speaking of power – no extra batteries?”

  The agent shook his head. “Nope. Enhancement-powered. If it’s outside, it’ll work. It’s possible to run it down, but it’ll power itself back up from the ambient mana in a few hours. Read the user manual, you’ll learn a lot from it!”

  Danielle moved along, but she couldn’t help suddenly wondering exactly how valuable her bag was now that the enhanced item was inside it. It almost defied belief that they were passing out enhancements by the hundreds like this! Yet – hadn’t she also been promised another enhanced item? Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure the Sending Authority’s way of outfitting Sent was actually cheap.

  The next question seemed a bit disingenuous; the agent asked, “Do you want a walking stick?” Danielle said, “Absolutely,” and was ceremoniously handed what was clearly a staff. It was the same length and diameter as the staves they trained with in gym class. It even had similar rubber safety caps over both ends – but unlike the training staves in the school gym, these had metal shoes under the rubber. The metal was several inches long, and bright gold – like the aluminum bronze jewelry at the necessities store. Did that mean it was bronze? A lanyard was press-fit under one cap, but Danielle wondered if they actually thought they were fooling anyone, or if it was a trick question somehow.

  She held the staff across both hands for a long moment, giving the agent a measuring look, but he just raised his eyebrows and showed her a studied look of innocence. Danielle finally shrugged, and slipped the lanyard over one wrist. “Nicest walking stick I’ve ever seen,” she said, striving for a bland tone of voice, and moved to the next station.

  She narrowly resisted the temptation to comment that her “introductory System combat skills” teacher would have loved it. When she saw what was at the next station, the urge got even stronger. There was no beating around the bush here. The man at the eighth station asked, “Do you want a sword?”

  “Well, I certainly don’t want to be the only one without a sword,” Danielle replied. “Are these going to be suspiciously like the ones from the System combat skills unit in gym class, too?”

  “Naturally,” the agent said, handing her a sheathed sword, complete with leather belt. Again, it looked like gold but wasn’t as ludicrously heavy as that would make it. It could easily be a replica of the gym-class swords – or more likely the reverse. Either way, though, there was no getting around the fact that this was a weapon. It had more of the clear stones she’d first noticed on the satchel, too; one on the sword hilt, and another on the metal fitting at the top of the scabbard. “Don’t get too excited about the quartzes,” the agent said. “They’re enhanceable, but they’re not very strong contenders to attract wild enhancements unless you actually use the sword for hunting – and it’s not the best tool for that job unless you’re going for big game. The stone you’ll use most is probably the whetstone, for sharpening – it's in that little pouch attached to the belt.”

  Danielle looked, and found a small pouch with a snap keeping it closed. “All right, thanks,” she said, and moved on. She could already tell, both by looking and by logic, that the next station would be bows; it stood to reason, being the third weapon they’d been taught to use in gym class. Danielle considered all the people who had complained about being taught to use ‘stupid outdated arrows’ instead of, say, guns; until now, she’d assumed it was one part about school safety and one part about convincing parents they were teaching historical skills and sporting hobbies, not fighting. Now, she wondered if the Sending Authority was giving out bows because they knew how to use them – or if they’d been taught to use them, because that’s what the Sending Authority preferred to hand out?

  “Do you want a bow?” the agent asked.

  Danielle bit back the urge to inform him that she wanted some explanations please and thank you, and simply said, “Yes, that seems like the most useful hunting tool I’ve been offered so far, and I understand I’m going to need to do some hunting.”

  “That you are,” the agent agreed, handing over a strung bow. “Let me see you draw that.”

  Danielle tried, but it was too much for her. “Wow. That’s got a lot heavier draw than the ones at school.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good compound bow. Here’s the next lighter one, see if you can manage that.”

  Danielle drew that one, though still with some difficulty. “Um, it’s a bit of a challenge, but I’m only going to get stronger out here, not weaker, right?”

  “Right you are, miss. Hand back the test model, and let me give you your own set in that weight.”

  Danielle traded the strung bow for an unstrung bowstave and a quiver. The test bow had a central grip of some dull gray metal, but the one he gave her had a grip of the same gold-tone metal as the other weapons, and it featured another embedded quartz. The quiver also had a quartz on its clasp. Looking inside, she found ten primitive-looking flint-headed arrows, and a smaller internal pocket held two strings. Danielle paused between stations to get the quiver slung over a shoulder between the backpack and the leather satchel; as for the bow staff, she held it in the same hand as the walking-stick staff, and prayed that she wouldn’t need to use either of them as weapons before she got to the room to put some things down.

  Finally, she came to the last station, where the question was, “Do you want a survival knife and hatchet?”

  “Yes! Oh, what a relief – my assigned necessities store didn’t have any decent knives, and every stream-show I ever saw on survival or traditional skills or anything said a knife was the most necessary necessity a survivor has to have!”

  The agent chuckled and handed her the station’s kit – a 6” knife with a steel blade, no fancy not-gold metal there, was paired with a hand-sized hatchet of similar construction. Their handles were wood, and they each had a bit of quartz set out of the way of the business end – for the hatchet, it was inset on the back of the blade, behind the eye for the handle, out of the way of the business surfaces; for the knife, on the very end of the full tang, where it was just visible between the wood parts of the handle. Like the sword, they were both sheathed and already strung on a belt, complete with whetstone in its pouch. “If you’ll forgive some odd-sounding advice, I recommend you put the belts on – both of them. It’s by far the easiest way to carry everything to your room. Oh, and your bowstaff clips to the quiver by its grip.”

  Danielle chuckled. “It sounds like it’ll look silly, but then, I’m already wearing a backpack with three things hanging from the top handle, and a school satchel next to a sword and bow, so why not? Whatever gets everything to the destination isn’t silly, right?”

  With that, Danielle was free to move off to get in line for the dome.

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