Danielle was already starting to worry about what people (especially people like Vanessa) would think if the details of her Advancement got out. Meanwhile, however, she was learning a lot. For example, she learned that most people got only three or four class options, not eight; but there were clearly more than eight options altogether. The most common options by far were Basic Academic, which was apparently open to everyone (perhaps because they all had the Academy Student Career before their Advancement), and Basic Weapon Fighter (presumably because of the weapon training in gym class, same as the three related Skill trees). Next most common were Basic Artist, Basic Clerk, Basic Craftsman, Basic Hand Fighter, Basic Sneak, and Basic Socialite, none of which had any warnings. Most people had been offered at least one of those.
People who had seen Basic Element Shaper and/or Basic Healer were less common, but well represented nonetheless, and there were plenty of people who had taken one of them in spite of the mana cost warning. Basic Element Shaper in particular was an obvious favorite of Systemists, since the elements were objects of worship in their religion. Basic Body Enhancer was common enough for there to be a few people who had seen it on the waiting field at any given time, but it came with its own warning, and was considerably less commonly chosen than the Element Shaper and Healer Classes. At least one person was known to have taken Basic Mana Caster, but that person had moved on to the Rooms already.
Eventually, Heather arrived and joined the conversation. She chatted freely with everyone around them, happy and relieved at having gotten what she wanted most – Class: Basic Healer. Her Career was Camper, which she attributed to camping with her older siblings over the years. Whether that was really the origin of the Career was a point of some debate; it certainly couldn’t be the only source, since some of the people who had it had done very little camping “before this.” Danielle privately thought that thinking of what they were doing there as ‘camping’ was a mistake – possibly even a dangerous one, considering they were Outside, in the mana wilds; there was no protected campground in their near future. There didn’t seem to be any ‘protected’ anything in their near future.
Sadie arrived not too much longer after Heather; she was now a Career Survivor with Class: Basic Craftsman. Danielle congratulated her without a trace of surprise, although she hoped Sadie had some more directly hunting-related Skills as well. She wanted to ask for more details, but since that would probably inspire them to ask for her details, she decided to wait until they could discuss it in private.
To direct them away from those awkward personal details, Danielle got a conversation going with several squares about what they had and had not known in advance. It was surprisingly variable. A couple of fifteen-year-old Systemists bragged that they knew all there was to know about level 1, whether base level or Class. One of the fourteen-year-olds in the next square north claimed that his parents had told him “not to worry about any of that religious stuff until you’re fifteen,” and claimed he didn’t even know the difference between a Class and a Career.
Danielle was skeptical, because they were taught the difference in Awakening school, about the time they were given their Youth Careers (at most Awakening schools, everyone got Career: Academy Student). Granted, as Youths, the Career was applied by their parents or “authorized educators,” but the school taught a whole unit on Awakening and Careers and Academy Student in particular – it was part of the ‘Health, Hygiene, and Humanity’ curriculum.
Still, the explanation one of the older girls gave was easier to understand and remember than anything she’d ever heard in the System unit of health class. She said, “OK, so, Careers are like Traits and Classes are like Skills. You know how Traits are always on, and they don’t take any more resources or control after they’re added to your personal System? Skills only do something if you activate them, and you have to spend mana from your mana pool to make them go. Don’t interrupt, I’m getting to the point!
“Careers are like Traits because they’re always on in the background, and you don’t spend anything you can control to get Skills from them, but you also don’t have any direct control over what Skills they drop. It’s all about the System reacting to whatever you do a lot of, or seem to need, that has some connection to the Career. Classes are like Skills because you’re more in control; you don’t get a Class unless you take it on purpose, and it gives you a choice of Skills and Traits at each level, and then it doesn’t do anything unless you level it again. You can put main absorption mana into it, if you choose, or you can wait for it to level from being used, but it’ll never give you a System ability without a choice.”
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“Classes are one of the ways our Systems are different from animal Systems,” Sadie added. “Animals get something like Careers, but they don’t have anything like Classes.”
That tidbit from Sadie’s father was something even the braggart Systemists hadn’t known, and triggered a tangent about where people learned things. Awakening school health class had covered the basics of Youth Systems, for those who remembered what they’d been taught. Systemists learned a lot of general stuff at their temples of the elements. Some people’s parents had apparently been fountains of random System trivia; others had discouraged System-related questions. Even some Systemist parents felt that Youths shouldn’t ask too many questions about matters “above your threshold,” and nobody thought fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds were in any danger of needing to know about Advancing. People with older siblings tended to know more; people who were oldest siblings, like Danielle and Sadie, tended to have more gaps in their information about the System.
Even though Sadie Weaver was near the end of the alphabet for their school and grade level, their fourth roommate didn’t appear until evening. That gave them plenty of time to talk and listen, take note of a couple more people claiming to have the Basic Mana Caster Class (but only a couple), and get hungry again. Danielle quietly ate her leftover breakfast, and she and Sadie shared their nuts with Heather. The Rangers brought out a water tank in a truck, and invited the new Sent to fill canteens; Danielle volunteered to take Sadie and Heather’s canteens while they guarded her bags, and filled up all six of them. By the time Danielle saw Akari come through the gate, they’d each emptied at least one, and visited the port-a-potties.
Akari looked more than a little down, coming through the gate, and increasingly nervous as she scanned the field. The number of people waiting had ebbed low a couple hours before, but was rising again, so the field of numbered boxes was again noisy and chaotic. Danielle could see Akari working out the pattern in the numbers, like she had, then move toward the 6000s block. The moment when she looked to square 6024 and recognized Danielle was glorious; for a moment, she looked comically shocked, then her face melted into a look of pure relief, and she moved in to join them with a grin.
“Hi! It is such a relief to see you!” Akari said.
“Likewise!” Danielle said, standing up to greet her. “You are our fourth roommate, right? 6024?”
“Yep! Hi, uh, Ssssadie?” Akari said uncertainly.
Danielle grinned. “Akari Lang, meet Sadie Weaver and Heather Orellana; Sadie and Heather, my long-time friend Akari!”
Sadie nodded. “We’ve met once. Hope you’re OK with having younger roommates.”
“I am so very OK with this,” Akari said. “I didn’t know who to ask for – I’ve only really got two close friends in my year, and one of them is – she’s a good friend, but we make terrible roommates for each other. Too many differences as far as how we wanted to keep the room and stuff. The other one already had a group of four, and wasn’t willing to risk breaking a pretty secure request-group like that so, yeah, I had no idea who I was going to end up with. You must have requested me?” She looked to Danielle, who nodded.
“We were trying to think of other people that wouldn’t take offense if we successfully got the SA to plug them in as our fourth, and we were having trouble coming up with people in our year that definitely wouldn’t be upset about being pulled away from someone else specific. We couldn’t exactly ask you in advance, but I didn’t think you were that close with your pod-mates, and we figured if we got you, at least you’d definitely have a friend in the room, instead of just a kinda-decent acquaintance like it would be with the other options.” Danielle shrugged. “Heather hadn’t met you before, and Sadie doesn’t know you well, but they both agreed to request you on grounds that my older friend was still a better choice than our mutual kinda-decent acquaintances.”
Akari laughed. “Well, I’ll try to live up to it! Seriously, though, thanks for requesting me. You did me a huge favor, here.”
Heather immediately started asking Akari about what she’d gotten in the Dome of Decision. The basics were Career: Survivor and Class: Basic Weapons Fighter. Everyone else shared their Class and Career, and Heather and Akari were starting to get into trading Body and Mind numbers and edging toward some of the areas Danielle preferred not to discuss until they had some more privacy. Fortunately, a guide came over and called them for the trip to the Rooms before she was forced to say that out loud.
