Whatever happened to Sagan Snow?

EYE IN THE SKY - THE MAGAZINE OF RECORD IN MAGIMUNDI BUSINESS
June 2021, pg 11.

SNOW IN THE SUNSHINE

by Rookery DeCarabas

There is a pylon in the woods of the cascade mountains of Thunderbird, well off the beaten path.  Mundanes don't go that way.  And unless any mage or wizard has a particular way with the clans of Chupacabra that live in the area, it remains a more pristine example of the pacific northwest.  The pylon stretches 15 stories skyward from a clearing just above the tree line on an undisclosed mountainside.  It stretches several more floors below the ground.  It would appear its resident wizard built it from a retrofitted subterranean mundane weapon complex.

The pylon itself is a featureless cylinder of windowless brushed silver that does not tarnish.  Not even in the cool rains of the region.  It dominates the scene.  Surrounding it is a plain of solar panels so dark that it feels as though you could step off the path and fall into their inky black forever and ever.  And before you think this seemingly austere imposition of the countryside is more unnatural than it should be, think again.  Because every other available inch of the landscaped space at Snow Tower is ringed with richly colored roses and hyacinth.

I was escorted up here to see the place's single occupant by a local who just attended her second year at Lewis and Clark.  You understand, hearing my own voice coming from her mouth as she spoke was a little unnerving.  She mentioned to me that a newer innovation being worked on for the next model of the universal translator is one where the listener hears translation in another voice.  In this case, in the gender or voice of the person the listener's subconscious might assign based on gleaned impressions of the speaker.  Presently, the newer 'teck' tends to shift voices as the listener's opinions of the speaker change.  And while investors are asking for specific voices that can be chosen, the device's artficer has thus far refused to accomodate them.

After we reached the main gate, my chupacabra guide thanked me for not being afraid, and gave me a little warning.  "Be careful around Winter.  She's very protective of Mr. Snow."  And with a flip of her tail, she apparated back to Seattle's new enclave.  Thinking again of how well spoken my guide had been, I turned back to the pylon and was met by the faceless gaze of a cybergolem.  Its form was lithe, athletic, female, and as black as deep space.  It did not speak, but guided me to the pillar itself.  And while there  were no visible doors, we walked through the wall itself as easily as one might stick their hand into a pool of water.

The inside was a surprising mix of organic wood, alloys and utilitarian design.  The floors above were all visible, as they were comprised of great ringed balconies with a great central well.  That went all the way to the roof, as well as deep into the 'silo' below.  Stepping out into the empty air in the center of the room, we rose upward by looking that way until we reached the top.  Stepping back out of the well onto the deep purple carpets, I finally got my first good look at Sagan Snow. 

The fellow was in faded jeans and a black tee shirt.  The shirt was printed with a head on fire design.  And in a skitchy metal font read the words, 'Hail Sagan'.  He didn't look up from the Iktus Engine he was currently typing away at, but said in a bemused tone, "Get yourself something from the icebox.  I've got less than a page left to type here and honestly, that's a whole page more than this person deserves."  There was unsweetened raspberry tea, a grocery store-branded cola supply, and blackberry juice within.  I went for the juice.  Again, without looking up, I heard him say, "Good choice."

You had the idea that he was considering what you might need before you knew you needed it.  He assured me later, there were no mind charms in the room for that.  Anticipating what people might need is how Mr. Snow has made his fortune.

'The Man Who Blew Up the Market' back in 2016 isn't what most expect.  Sagan, as I was later invited to call him, seems to have a sort of ever-present demeanor of a man who is either bemused or impatient with any given situation.  But this is also tempered with a fierce benevolence and protective side beneath my own feeling that I might be wasting his time.  He has that effect. 

"Go ahead and print this if you want to.  If he wants to be a fool, let him be one publicly.", he told me, finally sending off a mailing to a grudging professor in Destiny.  It would seem the professor in question was entirely unwilling to subject some of his more valuable volumes on elemental magic to the 'Forsythe Shredder'.  "I tell the man that there's not a problem here.  The books go in, they get shredded, then scanned and reassembled digitally.  Then they reverse back up the chute they came down and are re-assembled physically in a reverse temporal field.  But this guy's not going to hear that.  All he can think of is his precious books, and he won't take the wards off them.  His precious one-percenter school can do without its donation if he's not going to play ball.  My terms were ALL of the library or they can go screw."

EitS:  "And this is a professor from Imperial Magischola?"

Sagan snorted disgustedly.  And with a smile that did not touch his eyes, toasted me with a coffee cup with a blue box on it. "He professes to be."

This has been Sagan's iconoclastic style with the entire of the business world that won't 'play ball'.  The Snow Foundation has been entirely ruthless in its pursuit to drag the Magimundi kicking and screaming into the 21st century and beyond.  And those who kick and scream too loudly are unceremoniously left to rot by the wayside.  "I'm very much a Darwinist when it comes to whether people want to do right or not.  If people want to be ignorant or stupid, I don't have time for them.  I have things to do, and a better world to make."

The iktus engine turned itself off.  Sagan looked at it with a species of disappointment.  "Ah well... fair enough.  It won't come back on for me for at least 4 hours.  None of them in the tower will if I come at them with the intention of working.  It's play and relax or nothing for a while.  Even the workshops downstairs are locked."

EitS:  "I can't imagine that's something you put up with gladly."

Sagan closed his eyes and shook his head.  "I programmed it to deal with me like that.  I made a promise.  And I mean to keep it."

Now for the part I have to write about.  Sagan Snow is the CEO and chief research artficier for The Snow Foundation for Technology Research.  The son of public servants, he attended Lewis and Clark, and later New World Magischola in 2014.  Graduating in a rather tumultuous (or shall we say, infamous) 2016, he took the world by storm by inventing the universal translator.  An artifact that allows any sentient species to communicate and be understood when worn.  The original prototype in a shadow box on his wall is far from the slick manufactured earpieces we have today.  "Yeah... this is the telemarketer version." he told me, without letting me know what a telemarketer was.  Somehow I feel I'm better off not knowing.

He waved a hand away when it came to the rumors that he was able to start production and accquire the means to refine orichalcum in the quantities his 'teck' needs by underhanded means.  Popular gossip always points to how Foresight Industries divested from several markets that specialized in Chupacabra breeding and use.  The resulting panic in the market as well as the shockwave that went through our world when Chupacabra were demonstrated to be thinking and feeling beings destabilized the business world.  At least enough to allow Sagan to get a foothold without opposition from what were then, companies that would have had a vested interest in stopping him at any cost.

The rumors appeared to amuse him when I mentioned them.  "I did the translator as a side project for the Sentience Advocates back at NWM.  I was actually working on the Euryale process for solar power back then.  This business about me tipping off people like Medard never happened.  Honestly, we didn't even run in the same circles.  Give me some Veritas and I'll tell you the very same thing.  I hardly said two words to anyone about the headset and what it did.  Given the interests in Avernus prison as well as the Chupa farming industry and all the OTHER industries that used them as slaves?  I was pretty paranoid.  My house presidents didn't know whether that paranoia was my best feature or quality back then.  I called it a feature, not a bug."

EitS:  "So you kept it a secret?"

Sagan:  "Oh let's be clear.  After testing the device successfully with the other members of the Advocates, I knew the kind of tiger I had by the tail here.  My very first thought was that there had to be at least 10 corporations out there that would have me quietly murdered for that thing.  So no one could know.  And while we planned to make our big statement, the only thing I did was arrange matters so that we could make a demonstration to the student body without getting exploded or something.  I let the professors know that I'd be doing something big.  Something safe.  And something world changing.  And we could use their help if things got out of hand."

EitS:  "Did they?"

He ran a hand through his hair embarassedly.  "I'll say it now... I had my doubts.  I'd gone to have a nap a few hours before the demonstration.  And I didn't sleep.  All I could think about was what I had to say and how I had to say it so as not to cause a panic when Ss'siah came into the dining hall with Delilah.  Finally I just got up and sent myself a typed letter of the points I wanted to hit."

EitS:  "So that quote attributed to you.  "Is that complex enough for you?"  Was that scripted?"

He lets out a self-effacing laugh there.  "Hardly.  That was just nicely historic."

Using the profits made through funding he'd arranged with his solar technology, Sagan accquired and designed the undercomplex that would eventually sprout Snow Tower.  The place is one of several production facilities for different artifact lines.  It was from here that he first started donating 'U-Tees' to the Chupacabra for every one he sold in the Magimundi.  Then started his real masterplan.
Sagan:  "I can't really say that I had some great masterplan to change the world back then.  Just a loose association of good ideas I was working on.  I lived on caffeine and chocolate.  I think I even ate a jackalope's adrenal gland once to see if that would help.  I slept about 3 or 4 hours for every 30."

EitS:  "By the beard, what did THAT taste like?"

Sagan:  "Cherry candy, strangely enough.  I just had too much to do."

EitS:  "Didn't you get invited to try for The Explorers of the Unknown?"

Sagan looked embarassed at that.  "I did.  And I did do a little bit of the codebreaking for that.  In the end, I didn't have the time for the society's little game.  Too much to do.  Too much homework and things to finish.  I had no time.  No patience.  I was a prick."

EitS:  "But you did have a plan?"

Sagan:  "I...  I did.  But it wasn't this one.  I was in a bad place back then.  My family had been taken 3 years before, and I hadn't seen them since.  I was angry, lost and vengeful.  And any masterplan I had then probably needed a cat for me to stroke like a bond villain."

EitS:  "A what?"

Sagan seemed to catch himself.  "Nothing.  The original plan was to mass produce the Winter series.  You've met Winter."

I had.

Sagan:  "I'd been burning my nights and most of my days with the design of the CyberGolem as a personal guardian.  Maybe as a means to help me track down who I thought the creatures or persons were that had taken my family.  I wanted revenge and justice at the same time.  And honestly if you'd asked me when I arrived at Magischola in 2016, I couldn't have told you which way I might have jumped.  Back then, I could have become another Akeldama or Slager with the kind of war I was contemplating.  By the way.  Hi Jason!  You continue to make us all proud up here."

EitS:  "You'd have gone that far?"

Sagan:  "I'd hoped not to have to.  But if it had turned out that my Family had been murdered, or that the lodge up here in Thunderbird had helped to cover that up?  The intention was to use my solar funding to get established, then make an Army of Winters to go to war with.  It would have been...  horrific."

EitS:  "And then you got involved with Sentience Advocates?"

Sagan:  "I'd actually been a member a year already.  I'd joined because I wanted to see the rights of sentient golem respected.  I never went in with the idea of freeing the slaves.  I'm not Abraham Lincoln, up here.  When the headset came about, I just got that much closer to the horrible plan.  If I could drop the bottom of the Chupa market out, then Avernus would need replacements for their Chupa army guarding the place.  I was in a good position to propose the Winter series as a humane replacement and get them mass produced.  You don't know how close it came.  Sometimes it will still wake me out of a dead sleep.  I'll hear the nightmare moans of my roommate from back then as she dreamed of what might happen.  And she was hardly ever wrong with her dreams."

EitS:  "But this time she was."

He gestured around us.  "I think we can all be glad she was."

EitS:  "What changed your mind?"

Sagan became quiet then.  "Let's go up to the roof."

Ominous as that sounded, I went with him.  The Winter followed us out over the central well; a silent metal shadow.  In the breeze outside, we looked over the edge.  Black and purple butterflies fluttered over the trees.  "Hold out your hand." he told me.  I did and one of them landed on it.  The insect was mechanical. 

Sagan:  "One of my monitoring systems.  I made it black and purple to honor both a literary reference and someone dear to me.  Someone who influenced me quite a lot that year.  With her words, as well as Kat's influence, and McCoy's and Delilah's...  I came to something of a realization.  Especially on the 'night of the storms' after our sorting and house initiations.  I found that in the end..."

He trailed off and looked out over the trees and was lost in thought.  I almost prompted him, but he continued after a time.  "I found that all this time... I'd been planning to avenge the family I'd lost.  But hadn't realized or acknowledged the family I'd gained.  The moment of clarity... if you can call it such, came afterward.  In the room Delilah and Ss'siah and the rest of us went to after the demonstration... I still wasn't in the headspace that it had actually worked yet.  Not until I saw Ss'siah gratefully weeping in Delilah's arms.  Then I knew.  And I couldn't do it."

EitS:  "Couldn't do what?"

Sagan:  "I couldn't bring myself to kill anyone.  I mean don't get me wrong.  If a gorecaster came at me with the intention of ending my life, he'd be DRT (Dead Right There) before he saw me draw on him.  Then I'd kill him again for good measure because I've seen too many mundane movies where people don't take that often-necessary extra step.  But what I had in mind before then wasn't justice.  I was on the prod for a massacre."

EitS:  "That seems a little simple for you."

Now Sagan seemed impressed with me, which made my entire week.  "You get that impression, do you?  Well, it wasn't just that.  A person whom I will not name here in order to maintain her privacy asked me.  "If you could go back and eliminate the one who took your family and change it all before it ever happened, would you do it?  Could you do it?"

He stopped again, and wiped a tear from his eyes.  Then continuing, "In that moment, I thought of all the people I'd never meet if I somehow could change the timeline.  All the people that had become important to me without my realizing it.  Including her.  And I told her no.  I had to, because I knew she was utterly serious.  She wasn't just postulating a hypothetical.  She meant it.  That woman never said an unserious thing to me in her life.  And if she sees this... wherever she went, I am always available for tea, should she provide the time and place."

He sniffed and composed himself.  "So I knew I couldn't go through with it.  I couldn't kill.  I couldn't pre-empt the 'incident'.  But I could go forward.  I had the means.  And the path to do it.  And if the translator worked, which it very happily did, I could change the world for the better and not lose any of them.  Not any of my fellow Laveau alligators.  None of my classmates.  And certainly none of the small circle I'd come to care for as my close family without realizing it.  And maybe when I come to the path at the end of the clearing...  Maybe my family will forgive me for not having found their killer yet.  I hope all the things I've done...  I hope they'll be proud of me when I see them again."

EitC:  "You can't think that they wouldn't be."

Sagan:  "No.  Not really.  When your family does good, you feel pride for them.  So yeah.  I don't think I've done anything they'd be ashamed of.  I merely considered it.  Seriously.  For a long time.  And I hold myself accountable for that all the same, however irrationally.  None of us are perfect."

He took me down to the ground floor then and walked me to the gate.  We exchanged pleasantries and he gave me a packet filled with this year's business prospectus for The Snow Foundation.  One thing I noted was the scholarship and internship programs for Artficers as well as donations for schools that demonstrably show excellence in tolerance and innovation.  There was rather a large grant to the national chapter of the collegiate Artficier's Society.  I looked askance at the Winter beside him.  He anticipated my question before I asked it.

((Author's note:  When reading this aloud to myself, I started the video below the post to have the music play in the background.  It was so satisfying I about cried my damn eyes out.  ^_^;;;  ))

"There will only ever be this one prototype of the Winter Series.  My biggest and best innovations are coming.  Spellware activated computers will allow us to democratize research and magical innovation.  The research I was doing was an emotional cul-de-sac.  And rightfully abandoned."

"But Winter here will guard me for the rest of my days.  And on down the line for everyone I care for.  And if my parents' killer is ever found, and for its sake, I hope it's dead already, Winter here will help me bring it to justice.  Maybe then I can abandon my paranoia completely.  It'd be nice." 
He turned to go, then turned back to me, holding out his arms.  "I can dream, can't I?"

Winter then extended four spiderlike armatures from its back and fired a teleport spell from all four of them at once.  And then I was back here in my office here in Yorke, Destiny.  There was one of his Iktus Engines on my desk, which I have just found delivered today.  The index of magical knowledge recorded in its memory...  No hermetic library is this large.  Not a chance.

And that's how I knew that this is a thing that will happen.  Because if he can just gift me with a machine that can store all the amassed libraries he's been able to 'scan'.  He can do this for anyone.  He's still the man with the plan.  And the world will either play ball, or get left by the wayside.  I hope we'll all take it as a learning experience.
 
-Edward WinterRose
6-20-2016, 3:23 AM