Chapter Text
The week before August would turn five, she walked with her mom and brothers to the beach. She yelled out in the echo tunnel with her brothers, as she always did, listening to how the words vibrated back.
When they reached the park, August and Luke ran to the lake and ran in immediately, while their mom sat on a towel in the sand and Sammy dug a hole.
After August got bored of the lake she went to play on the playground,. While she was going down a slide, pretending in her head that her body was being stretched like a superhero’s, the ice cream truck arrived. August had always wondered what one of the shaped popsicles tasted like. She figured she probably wouldn’t ever know, Her family didn’t buy things like that, and so she wasn’t even going to ask.
Whenever someone asked August how she got interested in bridges, she would freeze. It would happen on occasion when chatting with someone about a bridge, and naturally it happened in her interview for a research assistant on bridges.
August didn’t remember anything about the day her dad died, but she had overheard her mom tell the story often enough. They were at Lake Johanna, swimming. The lifeguard, or someone made an announcement that the I-35 bridge had collapsed. And that the ice cream truck was in the parking lot. They hurried home. Her mom had left her cell phone behind wanting a distraction-free beach trip. Her dad didn’t answer. His last known location was very near the bridge. The next day, Skiff came from Chicago and recovered his body.
August didn’t bring up her dad when people asked why she was so obsessed with bridges. It would turn the conversation awkward. And she had other reasons to be interested in bridges, anyway. After her mom remarried when she was in middle school, they lived near enough the Mississippi that she would bike over it, and that required bridges. August had decided the Third Avenue Bridge was her favorite. She liked the barrier between the cars and the bikes and pedestrians. But really, she loved the little spots sticking out where you could exercise, pray, or just stand and look out on the river. On the falls, or onto the Stone Arch Bridge. She liked that one as well, but so did everyone. There was a basswood tree that she had picked flowers from for tea that she could reach from the Third Avenue Bridge, the Stone Arch only had cottonwood.
But you couldn’t talk about how you liked to bike across bridges in an interview. And so in her interview, she talked about her interest in how all the different factors influence a bridge’s strength, weather, temperature changes, traffic, rust, especially because so many would wear their influence over so many years. She talked about the balsa bridges she built in Science Olympiad, the challenge in ensuring the weakest link was strong enough.
August didn’t quite answer how she became interested in bridges, but the professor didn’t seem to mind. He went on to talk about the two projects August would help with, should she get the job. One was classifying different bridges by their condition, mostly from photographs. The other was analyzing data from sensors on the new I-35W bridge. The professor asked August which project she’d be more interested in.
“Well, they’re both really interesting and basically the exact type of thing I want to do. Because we build bridges to be around for a while, we need to know about the factors that affect it and having a systematic approach to monitoring bridges would be great. We can’t rely on some Avowed with boosted sight noticing a bent gusset plate. I’d probably prefer the one that categorizes the condition of the variety of different bridges, I don’t know how helpful I’d be at analyzing data; I haven’t taken any statistics classes.”
August didn’t say it was because she didn’t like the bridge, that she would be afraid of missing something vital and it would collapse.
The professor chuckled. “I didn’t expect you to know that story. That would be, what ten years before you born? Fifteen? I helped out on the calculations after Eagle made a pointed it out. I think we made the right choice then, they planned to leave the bridge open while doing construction on it later that summer, did you know? If the bridge had rush hour traffic, plus the heavier construction vehicles, the calculations didn’t give it a lot of margin of error. The issue was that they fixed up the bridge too good that it delayed the planned reconstruction another ten years, and that bridge just was too old for what it was.”
August nodded.
“Well, it was great to meet you, August. I’ll email you probably next week if you’ve gotten the position. It’ll start as a summer position, and then we’ll see about extending it, if you get accepted for PSEO this year.”
August shook the professor’s hand, and left his office. She felt good about the interview. Even if she didn’t get the position, she got to meet the professor doing the research she was interested in.
On the way up the stairwell, she felt a jolt and reached out to grab the railing.
A voice spoke in her ear. “Hello August. In 1963, the peoples of Earth accepted an infusion of magic and technology, as well as a promise of future protection, as part of an agreement with the Artonan Triplanetary Government. In doing so, Earth became an Artonan resource world, with all the accompanying rights, privileges, and responsibilities afforded by that designation..”
August stood in the stairway between the sixth and fourth floors, as the System read out its whole speech. Then words appeared in front of her.
[Pre-affixed Selectee: August Maria Fischer Olson
Divergence Rank: S
Assigned Class: Agility Brute]
…
[August Maria Fischer Olson do you willingly accept your duties as one of Earth’s Avowed, thereby satisfying a portion of your world's debt to the Triplanets?]
YES/NO
2159 h: 58 m: 48 s
August swiped away the display, she had seen enough movies to know to do that, at least. She noticed someone else was standing in the stairwell, staring at her from the opposite side of the spiral staircase, and slightly above. August waved.
“Did you just get selected?” the girl called out.
August nodded.
“Wait, really? How old are you?”
“Fifteen. I’m applying for PSEO here next year.”
By this time the other girl had run down to where August was on the stairs.
“Huh. Never thought I’d see someone get selected in front of me. What rank did you get? Is it a class you want, or will you trade?”
“It’s an agility brute. Which isn’t bad, I guess. I don’t really know what I want. Shaper, probably. S-rank.” August talked before processing.
“You probably won’t be able to trade into Shaper from Brute, not at S, not unless you’re super rich.”
“Oh,” August said. “I should probably figure out how to trade. There’s a lot I need to figure out. I should call Smith. Nice to meet you.”
August continued up the stairs until the next floor, where she stepped out and pulled out her phone.
“Hey Smith.”
“August! You have your interview today, right? How was it? Or has it not happened yet?”
“It was fine. A little awkward, but the job seems really good, it would be amazing if I could get it,” August said. “I guess I won’t get it now, though. Just after leaving the interview, I was selected, Smith. Like Avowed selected.”
“You’re breaking up, I can hardly hear you. Did you say you were selected?” Smith said.
“Yeah.”
“Wait. Really? That’s great, I suppose. I’ll visit you in the Avowed Zone. Maybe you can still come to the U with me, in a few years. I’ve heard some universities are doing that. Unless you’re too cool for it now, I suppose. A math genius with magical powers can probably go someplace better.”
August rolled her eyes. “You know you’re in no position to be accusing me of being a math genius. But I really don’t know what I’m going to do now–”
August’s phone beeped. She looked down at it, the call was dropped. She sighed, and headed to the staircase to go up to the first floor, but thought better of it while her hand was on the door handle.
“System, call Artona Smith.” August didn’t know exactly how this worked. She figured it might need a full name. Smith was a common last name, after all.
“Voice or video?” the System replied.
“Um, video? That would be cool.”
Smith picked up immediately. The video had the poor quality August had learned to expect from Smith’s phone.
“Hey Smith,” August said. “I’m calling you using the System, I figured it might have a stronger signal then my cell phone. I can see see your video, can you see me?”
“Yeah, I can. Where are you, August? There’s just sketchy concrete wall behind you.”
“In the Civil Engineering building. I stepped off on a random floor to make this call. From what I can tell, it’s just this area and a locked door here. This building is weird.”
Smith rolled his eyes. “The building shouldn’t be your main concern now. You’re an Avowed. You’ll be leaving this life behind you. Man, what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I want to be a superhero. How am I going to tell my mom?”
“You want me to head over? I’m done with my homework for the night.”
“Yeah. Let’s meet in the Rapson courtyard. See you soon.” August said.
Smith hung up.
August went upstairs and took the tunnel over to Rapson. She found a nice table, and pulled out her phone.
She searched up “What to do if I get selected?”
After looking around a bit, she found out she could register at an office attached to the House of Healing in St. Paul.
She called the number listed.
“Hi! Thank you for calling St. Paul’s Contract office. I’m away for now, if you leave a message I’ll get back to you once I return.”
August hung up. She was already feeling nervous enough, and didn’t know what she’d say in a message.
Smith came over.
“So, you got selected? I realize I didn’t ask you what you got.”
“Is that going to be the first question everyone asks me from here on out? I got S-ranked Agility brute.”
Smith frowned, but then quickly covered it up with a smile. “I guess you’ll be living on Anesidora, then. Agility is cool, you could definitely use it.”
“I want to see if I can trade it. I know I shouldn’t count on getting anything good from trading, but it’s worth a shot, right? Maybe I’ll be able to get something that fits me better. But the office here is closed. And I want to do it sooner rather than later. My mom would worry less if I had a well-reasoned out plan.”
Smith shot August a skeptical look. “I don’t know that that’s true. She worries plenty about your plan of studying bridges.”
“That’s just because she thinks I’m only studying bridges so I’m not scared of them. I also just don’t know what to tell her. But how am I supposed to go trade now? I can’t go all the way to Chicago for this. Is there a different one nearer? I don’t know how I’d get there, St. Paul was already stretching my biking distance.”
“The Dakota Avowed Zone is also nearby-ish, you could do it there,” Smith said. “I’ll drive you! It’ll be great. My mom’s always saying I need to get there and have more adventures.”
“Really? Yeah, that could work out. My mom won’t wonder where I am until midnight, do you think we can get to the Avowed Zone by then? I think it’ll be easier to tell her then.”
“Maybe by midnight. It’ll be close. Are you sure you don’t want to go with your family? That’s usually how people do it. Often they do it as a whole party and go on the news.”
“I know. But my mom wouldn’t leave my siblings at home, and there’s school tomorrow. Grady is off at a conference. I want to do this as soon as possible. I know it’s not the best decision probably, but any consequences should just be minor in comparison to everything that will already happen.”
Smith nodded. “Alright. We can go tonight. We should be able to get there by midnight if we leave now.”
August nodded, and gathered up her things.