I wander around Charlie’s cabin, studying the instruments of his craft. He is in the engine car, but he told me to wait here for his return and tucked the key into my hand.

  I’ve been in this cabin many times, but I’m just as fascinated by the various accoutrements for magic it contains as I was on my first visit.

  The long cabin is laid out in sections, with a cozy parlor area in the front, followed by a kitchen area, then what I think of as the mystical section because it’s full of mystical implements, before ending in a luxurious lavatory enclosed in semi-opaque glass.

  The mystic section, according to Charlie, was designed for research and the crafting of various elements for mods and meds. He will never elaborate beyond that. Committee protocol and civilians and what have you.

  “No offense but last time a few of you got your hands on magic, it kind of broke the world,” he said once when I got a little too curious. He was right of course—that’s why we have a Custodian—but that doesn’t make it any less interesting.

  I take full advantage of the rare opportunity provided by Charlie’s absence to examine the implements. On the high countertops that line the walls sits a collection of bowls and vials and carafes, all made of the same brushed metal and engraved with complicated sigils. The walls themselves are made of glass, behind which a system of pipes made of the same stuff is arranged in complex patterns and apparently connected to valves set into the glass at various heights.

  For one mad second I consider turning one of the valves to see what happens but rational Tali makes one of her unusual appearances and I think better of it. Instead I extract a tiny spoon from a cup of tiny spoons and examine it more closely. Like everything else, it is a dark, burnished silver and it’s covered in delicate, spidery engravings.

  “That one explodes if you look at it too closely,” says Charlie and I just manage to avoid dropping the spoon in my surprise.

  I turn to him a little guiltily but he’s grinning and holding out a tumbler of something rich and brown.

  “It’s still a little early for that isn’t it?” I undermine my own objection slightly by accepting the drink.

  “We need it, I think,” the Conductor replies.

  We spent a good chunk of the morning trying to usher a herd of sickly cows off the train track in the bitter cold. By the time we re-boarded the train, I hadn’t been able to feel my fingers or toes for a long time so the spicy liquor Charlie hands me now offers a welcome warmth.

  While I waited for him in the cabin, Charlie made sure the train was ready to resume its inexorable course around what is left of the world. Now he flops down on the couch in an undignified sprawl and sighs deeply. I sit next to him and we drink in comfortable silence and warm our hands over the faux fireplace that, despite containing only the illusion of flame, issues heat all the same.

  I watch it, wondering how to broach the subject I came here to broach. I need to warn him about Nevalya but I don’t know what to say that won’t sound like paranoia… or worse, jealousy.

  “What are you frowning about?” Charlie breaks the silence.

  I glance up, startled. “What? Nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing. You’ve got something on your mind. You’ve been weird for like a week.”

  He’s giving me the opening I was looking for but I can’t seem to bring myself to take it. Starting the conversation with the pretext that I’ve been ‘weird’ isn’t going to make him take my concern seriously.

  “When we stopped in Red Hollows,” I say instead.

  “Why didn’t we just give money to that woman?” Charlie guesses.

  “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  He grins. “I know you, Tali. I was expecting you to ask the question weeks ago to be honest.”

  “Well… surely the train has enough credits to spare for one old woman. She was terrified, Charlie. And giving blood might have killed her.”

  Charlie’s smile fades. “I know. I had the same thought. The problem is, nearly everyone in Red Hollows has the Pall. Some are worse than others, but they are all headed down the same path. If I could help all of them, I would, but it’s just not possible.”

  I frown. “All of them?”

  I greeted nearly every citizen who contributed blood and I don’t remember seeing signs of the Pall in the majority of them.

  “The blood tests can detect it before the symptoms appear,” Charlie explains. “We ran the tests not long after we left the station. Pall was detected in 75% of the samples.”

  I feel a terrible sinking feeling in my gut. If Red Hollows is as saturated as that, it won’t be long—maybe a few years at best—before the train stops delivering supplies there at all. They won’t be needed.

  It’s been more than two centuries since the Pall began to ravage Salus and there’s still no cure. That’s why everyone contributes blood. In exchange for stipends and supplies from the Citadel, every citizen contributes to the research effort.

  “Okay, but she was the only one I saw so advanced. We could have afforded to help her, and then maybe help the others when the time comes.”

  “It would only have prolonged her suffering. She deserved the dignity of a choice in her own death.”

  “Slow death by starvation, or hastened death by Pall is hardly a choice.”

  “It’s a shit choice, but it was hers.” He says it so firmly that I think he must have had this same talk with himself a number of times. It’s my turn to sigh.

  “What are the chances we find a cure before we take Red Hollows off the route?”

  Charlie looks at me, his expression sympathetic. “It’s the disease that broke the world, Tal. Curing it was never going to be easy, or quick.”

  “I’d say a few hundred years is slow enough though, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’ll send you over to the science lab if you like, they could use your enthusiasm.”

  The world doesn’t often feel as heavy as it does today. It is so easy to slip into the rhythms of life on the train, and difficult to hold the world’s suffering in my head. But today was a bad day. I scowl at him.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Might as well, maybe I can be some use there.”

  Charlie laughs. “Sorry, Tal, I’m not letting you go that easily. You’re the glue that holds this train together.”

  I roll my eyes, but find myself smiling. It is a phrase he employs often, though not one I think I deserve.

  “I don’t know why you always say that. I can’t even draw blood.”

  “Ah, but without your… ahem… commercial endeavors, how would we maintain peace between the cars?”

  I give him a sharp look, finding only amusement in his face. “My what now?”

  He only smiles in response.

  I have at times suspected he is aware of the mini black market I operate on the train, but am surprised to hear him acknowledge it so openly. I decide it’s time to change the subject before it proceeds any further down this path. Charlie might be my best friend, but he is the Conductor and a Committee-member all the same.

  “I hear you’ve been out and about quite a bit these days yourself.” I hold out my tumbler and Charlie refills it, then his own.

  “Not any more than usual I don’t think.”

  “No? Rumor has it that a certain dark-haired beauty has been seen on your arm more than once of late.”

  The confusion leaves his face, replaced by a knowing smile. “I take it you don’t approve of the lovely Nevalya?”

  “Not my place to approve or disapprove.” I say with a shrug that I’m sure doesn’t come across as casual as I meant it to. “I’m just a little surprised. I didn’t take you for one who liked the giggly, whispery type.” I lean closer as I say this last part, mimicking the way Nevalya was speaking into his ear earlier this morning.

  “Oh please.” He shoves me away with a laugh. “It’s just a little harmless flirting.”

  I shrug again—it goes better this time—and toss back the rest of my drink.

  Flirting it certainly is. I am less sure about the harmless part. There is something a little too cunning about that woman.

  “All I’m saying is that you should be careful.”

  “Careful of what?” he laughs. “What’s she going to do, stab me? I’m a powerful mage. I can handle her.”

  “Yeah that’s the thing,” I press on, knowing all the while this isn’t going to go well. “I get the feeling she’s a little too interested in the… mage thing.”

  Charlie arcs an eyebrow. “The mage thing? What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I overheard her talking about your magic a while back and it sounded… scheme-y.”

  “Scheme-y?” he repeats. “Is that a word?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point, Tali? You’re being super weird. Everyone is curious about the magic, you know that. You were literally studying my magic tools when I walked in.”

  “That’s different,” I protest.

  “Different because….” he trails off, waiting for me to elaborate.

  “Ugh. Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

  By the time I leave Charlie’s cabin I’m feeling a bit silly, as if I have blown the whole topic wildly out of proportion. Maybe I have. Maybe I just really don’t like a smug, annoying woman setting her cap at my friend.

  Year 4650—Just After the Siphoning

  3rd Meeting of the Emergency Commission of Academics, Scientists, and Governors

  Presenter: Doctor Alfred J. Smithson, President of Geology at the University of Koltar

  Transcript:

  Esteemed colleagues and guests. As you all know, six months ago an event occurred for which we had no context and lack even the proper vocabulary to describe. This event has come to be known by many in the intervening months as The Siphoning. For the sake of expediency and clear understanding, I will adopt that moniker in referring to the event during today’s proceedings.

  The Siphoning was so devastating that it will be decades—centuries perhaps—before we fully understand its consequences. Within the span of 24 hours, the majority of our planet’s natural resources ceased to exist. Natural water sources dried up. Plants withered. The ground became inhospitable to life. Temperatures became extreme to the point that city roads began to boil. Many of us lost beloved friends and family members in the never-before-seen weather events that occurred as a result.

  Most of you—scholars, scientists, government leaders, religious leaders, doctors, and other experts in your field—were assembled to form this Committee shortly thereafter. As a body we were tasked with investigating the cause of The Siphoning, as well as developing a worldwide plan to move forward. This was a monumental—dare I say impossible—task, to which you each rose admirably.

  It is my distinct honor to present here today a summary of this Committee’s findings, along with recommendations for sustaining the future life of our planet. This report has been constructed in three parts: the cause, the current situation, and recommendations for the future.

  Let’s begin with the cause.

  In order to understand the cause of this unprecedented event, we must first accept and agree on a number of propositions which, despite being widely understood for some time, I will articulate here for clarity and posterity.

  First, that among the population of our world a small number of people—no more than one percent according to most estimations—possess innate abilities to manipulate the world in a manner that most of us cannot without the help of technology and tools. Despite its fantastical connotation, for lack of a better word, we call this ability magic, and its possessors mages.

  Second, that science and technology have facilitated the development of a number of tools designed to enhance and channel this magic, making it both more powerful and more useful.

  Third, that there has been much debate surrounding the ethics of magic-use and associated factors. Namely whether the mages are obligated to perform magic in service of those who do not possess it, whether it is acceptable to charge for the service or for mods produced, or to deny it for any reason, and where the line between the greater good and the mage’s autonomy must be drawn.

  Some have proposed that mages be required to provide their services to those in need at no cost, while others have argued this would amount to modern slavery. Some have suggested a price cap on magical services to avoid exorbitant or impossible fees, while others have argued the mages have the right to use or withhold their gifts as they please. Compelling arguments have been made by all sides and no consensus has ever been reached.

  Assuming we all accept these propositions, allow me to move on to the findings of our investigation.

  Some months ago, a number of non-magical citizens, frustrated with what they saw as inequity caused by the uneven natural distribution of magical abilities, set out to research the source of these abilities with the goal of finding a way to eventually acquire them themselves.

  That group included one or two of my own friends and colleagues, I am ashamed to say. While the ends they sought were understandable, their methods were not. These citizens kidnapped a number of mages and kept them captive for some time, subjecting them to a series of inhumane tests which can only be rightly described as torture.

  Eventually they found, or believed they found, the source of the mages’ abilities: a particularly rare gene, most often passed on to a child by their mother, which causes the body to produce a unique protein called Medeithryn. The way this protein interacts with its environment causes a reaction that the researchers believed to be the initial spark of magical ability. After careful study of their research, my colleagues and I have concluded they were correct.

  It is at this point that things become less clear. What we do know, is that the researchers attempted to isolate and extract large amounts of Medeithryn from the bodies of the subjects. The exact details of what happened next we can only guess as the destruction of the lab in which the experiments took place was total.

  We believe that, having successfully extracted the protein, the researchers either tried to inject it into their own bodies, or tragically miscalculated the environment and conditions under which the extracted substance should have been stored. The resulting explosion demolished the lab, killing the researchers and mages who were present at the time.

  This would have been a terrible tragedy, even if it had stopped at that. But it did not. In what may have been an attempt to shield themselves from the blast, or may have been a physical reaction outside their control, the mages released an enormous amount of unfocused magical power into the air with the explosion. With no purpose and nothing to target, the magic reacted with the dust, debris, electrical charges, and chemical elements of the blast in an unstable fashion. To put it in layman’s terms, this power began to absorb elements of the earth’s environment, causing a rapid decrease in oxygen and carbon dioxide and essentially feeding on the elements that are so crucial to life on this planet.

  With nearly unlimited fuel, the cloud of power grew exponentially in almost no time. We still don’t fully understand what eventually slowed its progress, but thankfully it did slow, and finally peter out, leaving the world around us decimated, but not destroyed.

  I understand the results of this investigation leave much to be desired in in terms of explanation. In many ways, they leave us with more questions than answers. What we have done, however, is provide critical context to the situation in which we now find ourselves.

  Before we continue, we will take a 20-minute break. Please join us back in this room at 1:00 for an overview of the situation as it currently stands.

  END TRANSCRIPT