He didn't open the Ledger until he was on the train, and only then because he'd spent forty minutes trying to talk himself out of it.
The car was mostly empty at that hour, the rush having thinned to the stragglers: a nurse in scrubs asleep against the window, two boys sharing earbuds, a man in a suit reading a paperback with a cover he couldn't see. Dev took a seat near the end, facing the door, and put his hands on his knees.
All right, he thought. Let's see it.
Nothing happened.
He waited. The train rocked. The lights flickered as it passed a signal box. He tried, feeling foolish, to think at it. Ledger. Open. Show me. He tried it again with more authority, the way you address a printer.
Still nothing.
He let out a breath. "Great. Broken on the first day. Customer support is going to love me."
The gold line drew itself across his vision. It was quicker this time, and level with his eyes, and the letters that formed beneath it were very slightly amused.
REQUEST RECEIVED.
PLEASE STATE FORM.
"State form?" he whispered.
PLEASE SPECIFY: (A) BALANCE, (B) TERMS, (C) INVENTORY, (D) NOTICES.
He stared. It was as if a very polite automatic teller had come alive inside his skull. A bemused, slightly hysterical laugh caught in his chest.
"Terms," he said, low. "B."
The gold line unspooled into a page.
It was a page, not a screen. It looked like paper, ruled and cream-colored, and it filled the left half of his vision without blocking the world behind it. The type was small and dense. It ran on for what looked like fifty sections.
THE LEDGER: TERMS OF ENROLLMENT.
PART I: DEFINITIONS.
1.1 "Claimant" means the person enrolled herein.
1.2 "Merit" means credit awarded for verified beneficial acts.
1.3 "Draw" means an exchange of Merit for an Endowment.
1.4 "Endowment" means a capability, technique, or property drawn from the Catalogue.
He grinned. He couldn't help it. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever read. Definitions section. Somebody, somewhere, had understood that the first thing to do with a power was to define your terms.
He read on.
The Terms were exhaustive, and the more he read, the more the giddiness settled into something steadier. Merit, he learned, was awarded for good deeds, but not all good deeds. The Ledger weighed harm prevented, cost to Claimant, motive, and verification. There was a section on Diminishing Returns: the same type of deed repeated within a single day would yield less each time. There was a section on Consent: help forced on someone against their wishes could reduce or void the award.
And there was a section on Motive.
4.4 Deeds performed chiefly for the purpose of obtaining Merit shall be subject to Motive Adjustment. Adjustments may reduce the award to zero. The Ledger's determination of motive is final.
Dev read that twice. His grin faded a little.
"So I can't farm it," he said quietly. "I can't do the good thing because it's the good thing to farm."
The line beneath the paragraph pulsed, once.
CORRECT.
"It can hear me."
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
THE LEDGER RESPONDS TO CLAIMANT INQUIRIES.
"That's a terrible answer."
THE LEDGER REGRETS THE INCONVENIENCE.
He felt a small, disorienting flash of kinship with the thing. It had the exact tone of every automated support message he'd ever written a bug report against.
He skipped ahead to what he wanted, and then forced himself to slow down.
PART III: THE DRAW.
3.1 One hundred (100) Merit converts to one (1) Draw Ticket.
3.2 A Draw selects an Endowment at random from the Catalogue.
3.3 The Catalogue includes all capabilities, techniques, and properties recorded in imaginative works with sufficient conviction, including but not limited to works originating in the Claimant's world and in other worlds.
3.4 The Claimant may not select, influence, or request a specific Endowment.
3.5 The Ledger does not weigh the Claimant's present needs.
3.6 Endowments arrive in base form.
3.7 Every Endowment carries a Rider.
3.8 A Rider is a limitation, cost, or condition inherent to the Endowment's origin. Failure to observe a Rider is the Claimant's responsibility.
3.9 There are no refunds.
Dev stopped there for a moment and looked out the window. The train had crossed above Woodside; the sky was going orange behind the low, jumbled skyline of the borough.
Random, he thought. Not matched to need. Base form. With fine print.
It was so comprehensively unhelpful that he almost admired it. In every story he'd ever loved, the hero got the right power at the right time, or at least a power with a good aesthetic. This was a claim form that paid out in mismatched inventory.
"So if I pull something incredible," he said, "it's going to be at the level of a beginner."
AFFIRMATIVE.
"And if I pull something ridiculous?"
THE LEDGER DOES NOT CHARACTERIZE ENDOWMENTS.
"That's a yes."
THE LEDGER DOES NOT CHARACTERIZE ENDOWMENTS.
He laughed out loud. The nurse asleep against the window stirred and did not wake.
Alright. Fine.
He flipped to the section that mattered most.
PART V: STARTER FILING.
5.1 Upon intake, the Claimant receives:
(a) One (1) Draw Ticket, designated Courtesy Filing.
(b) One (1) passive capability, designated Notice.
(c) Access to the Terms.
5.2 The Claimant receives no sign-on bonus.
5.3 The Courtesy Filing may be redeemed at any time. The Ledger recommends the Claimant understand the Terms before doing so.
He read the last line a second time.
"You recommend," Dev said. "You actually recommend. That's... oddly considerate."
THE LEDGER PREFERS INFORMED CLAIMANTS.
"Is that a threat?"
IT IS A PREFERENCE.
He sat back. So there was a ticket. One free ticket, waiting. He could feel it the way you feel a coin in a pocket, a small presence in his awareness, patient and faintly warm. He could use it right now. He could sit here, on the 7 train, and pull a power out of the whole sprawl of human imagination.
Not yet, he thought.
It was the tester in him. When you have one shot at a test environment, you don't run the experiment before you understand the instrumentation. He wanted to know what "base form" meant. He wanted to know how a Rider worked. He wanted a rollback plan, and the Terms had already told him there wasn't one.
3.9. No refunds.
"Inventory," he said quietly.
The page rolled itself up, and another unspooled: a plain, ruled sheet.
INVENTORY.
DRAW TICKETS: 1 (COURTESY FILING).
ENDOWMENTS: NONE.
PASSIVE: NOTICE (ACTIVE).
MERIT: 0 / 100.
He looked at that last line for a long moment. Zero. Naturally.
"What's Notice?" he asked.
The sheet didn't answer. Instead, a small gold ruled box appeared beneath it and filled itself in, line by line, in that neat institutional hand.
NOTICE: A PASSIVE PERCEPTION INDICATING GENUINE, UNMET NEED WITHIN APPROXIMATELY FIFTY METERS.
NOTICE PROVIDES DIRECTION AND URGENCY. IT DOES NOT PROVIDE DETAIL.
NOTICE DOES NOT COMPEL ACTION.
"Does not compel action," Dev said.
ACTION IS A CHOICE.
He looked out at the empty car. The boys with the earbuds had stopped at Junction Boulevard. The man with the paperback had gone. The train slid past a slate-gray water tower and into the mouth of the next station, brakes sighing.
"That last one," he said. "It seems like something you'd say to a lot of people."
THE LEDGER HAS NOT SPOKEN TO ANOTHER CLAIMANT.
He stared at the text.
"Have there been other claimants?"
There was a pause. It was the first true pause the Ledger had taken. When the gold line moved again, it seemed to have been chosen carefully.
THAT INFORMATION IS NOT IN THE CLAIMANT'S FILE.
Dev sat very still.
Not in my file, he thought. Which means it's in someone's.
He opened his mouth to ask a follow-up. He got as far as the first word.
Then the world pulled.
It wasn't a sound, and it wasn't a sight. It was more like a tug on the inside of his chest, sharp and precise, as if a thin gold thread had been looped around his sternum and yanked. He gasped. The Terms and the inventory vanished. The train went on rattling. At the end of the car, the nurse slept, unbothered.
But the pull came again, insistent. And he understood that it had direction. It was pointing out the window, toward the station ahead, toward the platform, to something about forty meters away and slightly above.
A single line of gold hung in his vision.
FIRST NOTICE.
URGENCY: HIGH.
DISTANCE: 38 M.
The train hissed to a stop. The doors opened. The platform lights flickered on, one by one.
Dev stood. His heart was pounding. Every instinct Owen had taught him whispered don't get involved, and every instinct that was his own whispered something else.
Action is a choice, he thought.
He stepped onto the platform.