Zorko’s Arcane Appraisals
Memory Engine at the Kelpie Academy
"Welcome," Zorko declared, his voice lifting like a curtain call. Gulls wheeled overhead, screeching as if they’d read the syllabus and disapproved. "To a school where enchantments hold tenure, leyline storms nap beneath the floorboards, and at least one statue outside may legally qualify as faculty."
He swept into the courtyard of Kelpie Academy, his red-orange robes snapping in the salt wind like offended scrolls. Behind him, the orb hovered low, humming faintly as it recorded the fog-drenched spires piercing the mist like enchanted spears.
Damp cobblestones shimmered with residual spellglow. A fountain whispered riddles in bioluminescent runes. A statue of a horse with human eyes watched him pass.
"I was told this was urgent," Zorko muttered, half to himself, half to the orb.
It chirped a questioning trill.
"No, not dangerous. Urgent," he clarified. "There’s a difference. Usually."
He stopped at a door so ancient and oaken it might once have taught ethics to younger trees. He knocked once. It opened.
Archmagus Udor of the Marsh filled the threshold: hair windblown, robe cuffs scorched, face too focused to be calm. He looked like he’d just won an argument with a fireball.
"You’re early," Udor said.
"I am never early," Zorko replied, stepping inside. "Only precisely prophetic."
The orb followed, dimming slightly as it entered the Kelpie Laboratory.
The room breathed magic. Runes on the chalkboard shifted mid-thought, as if rewriting their own logic. A levitating spine diagram rotated with clinical menace. A training dummy flinched as they approached.
Across the lab, Hadrien and Xiaobo were already deep in their own resonance study, notes and equipment spread across two benches. They looked up briefly as Zorko entered.
"Here," Udor said, gesturing toward a workbench.
Upon it sat a broken HAM radio.
Zorko tilted his head. "You summoned me for… rustic noise boxes?"
"Keep watching," Udor replied, already walking. "That gave me the idea. The real artifact’s this way."
Zorko followed, passing jars labeled DO NOT TEACH and a shelf of vials vibrating to their own tempo. The air thickened as they entered an alcove.
There, on a stone table, sat a mason jar. Inside: light. Not glowing, but shivering. Colorless, yet quivering with intent.
Zorko slowed. Something in his chest misfired. Not fear. Not awe. Recognition.
Udor gestured. "I call it… the Forgotten Frequency."
Zorko crouched, his robes rustling like parchment unsure of what was about to be written. The orb zoomed closer.
"It’s not magical," he said.
"It is," Udor corrected. "Just not the kind we usually trap."
He tapped the jar’s lid, reinforced with basilisk-ink filigree, layered glyphs, and sealing wax used by cautious necromancers and nervous botanists.
Zorko stared. "And you captured it how?"
"Turned the HAM radio past the known spectrum. Layered an old containment charm. The Frequency came to us."
Zorko swallowed. "Us?"
"It’s cooperative," Udor said, flipping open a leather-bound logbook with six bookmarks and a burnt corner. "That’s what worries me."
Zorko turned back to the jar. Inside, the Frequency shimmered. Not brighter. Not louder. But aware.
He reached toward it. His hand paused. His feather flickered with faint firelight, then dimmed.
"Viewers," he said to the orb, barely above a whisper. "We are not appraising a relic."
The Frequency pulsed. Soft, deliberate, unsettling in its awareness.
"We are standing," Zorko said, "at the edge of a story no one told."
He circled the jar slowly.
"At first glance," he continued, "it appears contained. Dormant. Like a captured spell or a punished echo."
The orb flickered, uncertain.
Udor scribbled quickly into his notebook. "It’s not dormant. It’s syncing."
"Syncing to what?" Zorko asked.
"Me. Us. The room. Yesterday I recited a sequence, and it mirrored my breath."
Zorko blinked. "It listens?"
Udor tapped the seal. Basilisk-ink runes glinted. Inside, the light twisted gently, like a thought folding in on itself.
"It doesn’t act unless watched," Udor said. "It calibrates when addressed. I don’t think it knows language. I think it’s learning pattern."
Zorko straightened. "So it’s not magical?"
"It is. But it reacts to cognition, not command."
The Frequency pulsed again. Sharp and singular.
Zorko’s spine snapped upright. "That wasn’t reflex."
"No," Udor said. "That was curiosity."
The orb flickered.
Zorko stepped back. "Then this is no relic. It’s an interface."
He turned to the orb. "Viewers, the jar is not simply a prison for wild energy. It’s a framework for reception. A design with intent."
Udor adjusted the HAM radio’s crystal spindle suspended above the jar. "I’ve run seventeen resonance traces. It doesn’t store spells. It translates them."
Zorko gestured toward the Frequency, which pulsed in reply. "Then what are we transmitting?"
"Ourselves," Udor answered.
He sealed the jar in a copper cradle. The modified radio sat beside it, wired with obsidian nodes and a floating filament.
"Stand back," he said, not unkindly.
Zorko obeyed. This wasn’t theatrical magic. It was focused. Controlled. The orb hovered behind him with a low hum.
The Frequency reacted. Its glow narrowed into a seam, then unfolded into a shape. It wasn’t light or sound, but something that pressed softly against thought.
The radio chimed once.
Zorko leaned in. "It responded."
"To the link," Udor said. "Or to being acknowledged."
The Frequency pulsed. A shimmer moved across the jar like memory. A brass lens rotated toward it. A rack of tools shifted. Tuning forks rang in quiet harmony.
Zorko whispered, "It’s drawing attention."
"Not drawing," Udor said. "Aligning."
A notebook flipped open. A silver quill began to write on its own. CONDITION: LISTENING
Zorko gripped his feather. The orb pulsed with him. The radio hissed.
Then it spoke. "Try again."
Zorko snapped upright. "It spoke."
Udor nodded. "That’s from line five of the draft I read yesterday."
"It’s quoting you?"
"The page."
The Frequency pulsed again, like a nod.
Uvlius appeared. His expression hovered just to the left of disapproval.
"I heard the shift," he said. "The signal is stable. Or pretending to be."
"It’s not repeating spells," Zorko said. "It’s... aware."
"No," Uvlius replied. "It’s responsive. Not sentient. But present."
"It’s interpreting stimuli," Udor said.
"It’s not broadcasting," Zorko added. "It’s acknowledging."
The radio clicked. The filament glowed softly white. Udor adjusted the dial a fraction.
The Frequency pulsed again.
"This isn’t a signal trying to be heard," Udor said. "It’s a listener trying to be understood."
The orb flickered. Zorko said nothing.
The spiral held steady. No gust. No rattle. Just light. Fixed and listening. The jar hovered at the center, glowing somewhere between memory and motion. The Frequency spun gently, threading thought into form.
Zorko stepped forward.
"Viewers... that voice did not come from this room."
The radio clicked again. A second voice followed. Fainter, faster. "Testing... Frequency link... This is Monday Magic Tower. Come in..."
Static.
Zorko turned to Udor. "That wasn’t from a journal entry."
"No," Udor replied. "That was live."
The Frequency flared. The pulse rippled across the lab. Shelves vibrated. A book fell.
Zorko reached for his feather. It was already on the floor.
"Signal confirmed," Hadrien said. "This is more than a recording."
Xiaobo watched the jar. "It’s a loop. But it’s learning. It’s hearing itself for the first time."
"It isn’t a spell," Udor murmured. "It’s not magic. Not the way we define it."
"Then what is it?" Zorko asked.
"A structure. A message encoded in awareness."
The lab dimmed. Not from loss of light, but from focus. Every enchanted object had gone still. The radio glowed.
"Hello...? Anyone... still listening?"
"That loop could be years old," Zorko whispered.
"Or centuries," Hadrien replied.
Zorko stepped toward the jar. The Frequency shifted. Slow. Deliberate. Content.
"It was never meant to last," Udor said. "It was meant to wait."
Zorko turned to the orb.
"We end tonight not with an object, but with a question. One that answered itself."
He lowered his voice.
"This is not a relic. This is a receiver. A memory that built itself a body and waited to be noticed."
He looked around. At Udor. At the spiral. At the silent others.
"Final appraisal," Zorko said. "Zero gold in resale. No buyer exists for a voice that outlived its origin."
His voice softened.
"But its worth... lies in what it heard. And who now knows we were listening."
The jar pulsed. Then again. The orb flickered. Soft. Steady. Complete.
Entered by: 0x6424…79B4
Zorko’s Arcane Appraisals
The Save State of Devon
"Welcome," Zorko said softly, as though the orb might awaken if startled.
He stood at the center of a room strewn with cracked crystal screens and defunct spell interfaces, where forgotten relics blinked in sporadic color. The light came from nowhere and everywhere at once, casting long shadows shaped like menu options.
He turned toward the pedestal. A low hum buzzed beneath the silence, like an idea trying to load.
"Today," Zorko whispered, lifting his feather with both hands, "we confront the greatest illusion of all. Not death. Not taxes. Not affection in a dungeon."
He circled the pedestal like a priest at a rewritable altar.
"A choice made. A life lived. And then... rewind. The gods call this hubris. Gamers call it strategy."
The orb flickered once. A green light tried to escape its edge and failed.
Zorko did not blink.
"What is memory, if not a story we keep overwriting with better dialogue?"
He pointed his feather at the humming glow.
"What is fate, if not a quicksave you forgot to make before the boss fight?"
Dust floated in the air. The pedestal vibrated. Somewhere deep in the orb, a tiny noise chirped. It sounded like the beginning of a thought.
"She carries it," Zorko said. "The relic. The echo. The cartridge."
His hood turned slightly, glowing eyes locking on the room’s edge.
"The one who came back holding the wrong memory."
There was a pause.
Then a soft blink. Green. Quiet. Familiar.
"She approaches."
The curtain of static at the threshold parted.
Magus Devon of the Quantum Downs stepped in with the stillness of someone who had forgotten how to make noise. Her robes trailed spores from a dozen realms. Her boots made no sound on the floor. Spinor, draped over her shoulders like a knowing scarf, blinked once. His eyes were pale and endless.
Zorko’s posture lifted by instinct. His voice followed.
"Ah. The dream diver. The quantum sommelier. The one who mapped the mycelium of her own regret."
Devon did not speak at first. She approached the pedestal like one nearing an altar built from half-remembered sleep. From a satchel stitched with sigils, she withdrew the object.
It was green. Plastic. Familiar in a way that felt like a dare.
Zorko inhaled sharply.
"A relic from the Age of Input. I know this design. Four sacred buttons. An arrow of fate. And a screen that shows you everything you never got to live."
She placed the Game Buddy on the pedestal. It did not bounce. It landed like a thought hitting the bottom of a well.
The orb flickered.
Then pulsed.
Green.
Once.
Zorko took a reverent step back. His feather twitched.
"It reacts to context," he whispered. "It knows we are watching."
Devon spoke at last. Her voice was calm but distant.
"It came from ACE Town. I don’t remember going there. But when I look into it, I miss it. I remember a life. I remember bread. I remember reloading."
Zorko gasped.
"A soul emulator! You were living inside a branching timeline. You were a digital ghost. You kissed a vendor. You dropped the wrong fish!"
Devon blinked slowly.
"I dropped two fish."
Spinor hissed. The sound had edges.
Zorko clapped once, dramatically.
"The artifact has chosen her. She is the protagonist. She has been downloaded."
The orb screeched briefly, then fell silent.
Nearby, a loading bar began to flicker behind reality. It said nothing. It was nearly halfway full.
Zorko did not notice.
"The appraisal," he said, eyes glowing brighter, "has truly begun."
He circled the Game Buddy like a philosopher with a grudge against rectangles. His phoenix feather hovered above the artifact but never touched it. The screen remained dark. Occasionally, it blinked.
"Observe," he said to no one in particular, "the sacred device of emotional recursion. A relic forged not by metal, but by memory. A portable reliquary of every decision you didn’t make, every lover you didn’t choose, every dialogue option you were too afraid to select."
He leaned closer.
Devon watched silently. Spinor coiled tighter around her shoulders.
"Clearly a training device for demiurges. An empathy emulator. A heartbreak rehearsal engine. What looks like a child’s game is, in fact, a divine exam."
The Game Buddy beeped once. It was not a happy sound.
Zorko’s feather hovered above the buttons.
"A. B. Start. Three letters. Three paths. Three souls."
He pointed to the D-pad.
"And the arrow of regret."
The screen blinked again. This time it showed a single frame: a pixelated loaf of bread. Then static.
Zorko staggered back.
"She did kiss the vendor."
Devon closed her eyes.
"I don’t think I did."
"You meant to."
Spinor hissed again, quieter.
Zorko turned toward the orb, now emitting the faint music of a title screen looped too long.
"This device contains romance," he declared. "Tragedy. A silent horror named Horace, who walks across corrupted tiles, bringing with him the Death Cloud and expired tuna."
Devon’s fingers twitched.
Zorko leaned in once more.
"I must warn you," he said softly. "If you press Start now, you may resume a life you are not ready to remember."
He paused. Looked into the screen. Saw only green.
And smiled.
"How poetic."
He pressed nothing.
But the screen blinked again.
This time, it whispered a line of static that sounded like a question.
Zorko stepped back.
"The narrative is alive," he said.
Then turned slowly.
"To the orb."
The orb began to shudder. Not dramatically. Not violently. Just enough to suggest reality had developed a cough.
A line of text blinked across its surface:
Continue? > Y/N
The screen flickered.
Zorko drew a circle in the air with his feather.
"We have entered the choice state," he whispered. "Soon, we may all be overwritten."
A ripple passed through the room. The temperature dropped by several truths. The loading bar in the corner of reality froze at 87 percent.
And Uvlius stepped into view.
He did not step from shadow. He stepped from logic. His robes were still crisp from wherever they were last folded. His eyes took one glance at the artifact and narrowed, almost imperceptibly.
Zorko spread his arms like a welcoming bug.
"Behold. The spectral guide. The debuffer of dreams. The librarian of the multithreaded."
Uvlius ignored him. He walked to the pedestal. Stopped. Looked at the Game Buddy with all the awe of someone inspecting an overdue library book.
"Where did you get this?" he asked.
Devon answered without hesitation.
"ACE Town."
Uvlius nodded once.
"That’s not a town. It’s a memory construct. A ritual echo. A branch in search of a root."
Zorko blinked.
"So I was right?"
"No."
The Game Buddy pulsed faintly. It tried to restart but failed. A low whir began behind its screen, like a thought about to crash.
"It was a Treat," Uvlius said. "Meant to amuse. Harmless. Mostly."
Spinor hissed.
Uvlius continued.
"Only thirteen were ever made. Most stayed dormant. Yours did not."
He turned slightly. Not to Zorko. To Devon.
"You didn’t use it. You didn’t play it. You remembered it. And that was enough."
Devon nodded slowly.
"I didn’t know if I missed it because it was real, or if it became real because I missed it."
Uvlius paused.
"Same difference."
The orb dimmed slightly. Somewhere in the air, the title music stopped.
Uvlius turned to go.
"Do not press Start," he said—not a warning, merely a note for the record.
Then he vanished, like a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence already read.
Silence settled like dust.
The orb no longer flickered. It pulsed once more, then went still, as if accepting a truth it had not wanted to know.
Devon stood before the Game Buddy. She did not reach for it. She simply looked.
Spinor uncoiled from her shoulders and lowered his head beside the artifact. He did not hiss this time. He listened.
Zorko moved slowly around the pedestal. Every step was measured, every flourish muted. His feather dipped once in front of the screen. The glow did not return.
"This item," he said softly, "is not a relic. It is not cursed. It is not even confused."
He turned to Devon.
"It is homesick."
Devon met his gaze.
"So am I."
Zorko gave a solemn nod, as if officiating a funeral for a thought that would not stay buried.
He turned to the orb.
"Final appraisal: zero in combat, eighty in resale, and one persistent ache in the shape of a Start button."
The orb responded with a faint sound. Not a beep. Not a chime.
Just the soft, familiar click of a Start button.
Devon reached forward and picked up the Game Buddy with both hands.
The screen did not light.
She smiled anyway.
"I think I’ll hold onto this one."
Spinor curled gently around her wrist.
Zorko bowed.
"May your save files always survive the reboot."
Devon walked toward the exit. She paused at the edge of the room.
"I think I’ll go back," she said.
Zorko tilted his head.
"To where?"
She shrugged.
"Wherever I last left myself."
She left.
The orb gave one final flicker. A single pixel blinked green, then faded.
Zorko stood alone, feather at his side.
He looked into the distance, voice low.
"And thus concludes today’s appraisal."
He paused.
Then brightened.
"Tomorrow, perhaps, a haunted spoon."!
Entered by: 0x6424…79B4
