"They took you to Las Vegas and didn't give you time to gamble?"

Larry rolled his eyes at the chat window. "Yes, I know. The company said they were flying the corporate jet out there, and to get in so I could install a wall of TVs."

"Which they couldn't figure out themselves," sent his friend.

"I'm not complaining so long as they pay me. And the plane was nice. But yeah, I had to get right back north instead of spending the night."

Larry had enjoyed the break. Omniterra Corporate Solutions was not the most personal, friendly employer. Usually he sat at a help desk in a beige room, waiting for a demand to fix somebody's computer. Since getting back to the office he'd had several days of that.

But today, he had another request in his inbox tagged urgent. "Good work on the Vegas job," his boss said, like he'd been in a heist. "At noon today, report to Room 6 on Floor Zero for an urgent temporary assignment."

Larry blinked. He didn't even know what department was down there. He grumbled about having to delay lunch, but went to the elevator and held his employee badge to the scanner so it'd let him push the Zero button.

The door opened onto a chilly, misty hallway in near darkness. He took the cold and the tiny flickering lights for a server room, but those flashes didn't seem to get any closer when he walked ahead. Doors lined the corridor, each bearing a number and an LCD screen with a mark. A leaf, a shield, and on Six a stylized circuit. "Some kind of secret project?" he said as he tapped his badge on the scanner.

The door didn't open. Instead, he felt pulled directly through. He staggered and caught a handrail. Now *this* was a server room, towering over him, and drones hovered among the maze of aisles.

A quadrotor spoke in a musical voice. "Hey, humans aren't allowed in here! Alert!"

"Calm down," said another robot floating into view. "Human, you're from Omniterra?"

Larry said, "Uh, yes? Aren't we in the company basement?"

"This is Hokkaido, Japan."

"If you say so." The room was making him shiver, anyway.

"Anyway, some idiot brought us the wrong kind of cables. We need you to set up an interface rack. Follow me and don't touch anything!"

Larry got led through the dark maze of high-powered computers. "What are you running in here?"

"Secondary AI core and a couple of virtual worlds. Set up these, will you?" The drone gestured to an empty rack, a box of routers, and a rainbow waterfall of poorly organized cables. The robot's spindly limbs didn't look capable of plugging them in properly, compared to some of the more sleekly designed equipment in here.

Larry went to work, baffled. This brand was one he recognized, but the model number was much higher than the latest version. "Where did you get these?"

"Off the shelf. Still need to interface with the Old Net sometimes and maintain a proper firewall."

The cables were easy enough to handle with his training. Larry got it done in half an hour, and said, "So you say I'm in Japan. Is there a window?"

"Huh? Sure, this way." The quadrotors took off and led him to a big reinforced glass wall. It looked out on a riot of neon. The inside of a shopping mall, under a dome. A man with a mechanical tail walked past, a dude with armored skin and several built-in guns cruised by on a motorbike, and an Asian family with matching digital headsets looked into the server room and pointed at him.

Larry waved. "I'm not sure how I got here, but could I take a break outside?"

The drones conferred. One said, "Nah, we'd have to unseal the airlock and spend too long decontaminating. Looks like the equipment is running, so you're done here. Thanks! We'll leave a good review."

They shooed him through the maze again and before he knew it, he was back in the Floor Zero hallway. Mystified, he looked around and saw nobody else here. He went back to his help desk and sent a letter to the boss, saying he was done but also "What just happened?"

It took an hour and two easy client calls before the response came. "Just got word from the customer that you got it done. While you're at it, I'd like you to hit Room 4 before close of business. Shouldn't take long."

Larry threw up his hands. No explanation, but at least it was a chance to find out more. His stomach rumbled from hunger but he went right back to the basement and sought out the right room. This was the one with the leaf on its screen. He braced himself, scanned his badge, and got pulled through.

He wobbled, felt like something was already pulling him backward, and had to get steadied by some kind of glowing arm. He double-taked. *Everything* glowed here. The arm holding him had a vivid green robe with an odd black outline, and it ended in a grey paw with a thumb and claws.

The person who'd caught him had a rodent's muzzle, long ears, and a big bushy tail. The sight of it made Larry's spine twitch. He glanced back and discovered a cloud of grey-brown hair bobbing right behind him. It, too, had a dark outline to make it easier to see.

"Steady there!" said the rodent. "The company said anyone coming through the portal would be disoriented for a bit."

"You're a squirrel!"

"Your eyes are working, anyway. Now come along; the resonator is probably about to break after that inept newcomer whacked it."

Larry noticed that his nose was big and dark and stuck out in the middle of his vision, and that the hairy thing behind him was bouncing along at the base of his spine. His hands were the same fuzzy, leather-padded kind of paws as his host. Stranger yet, his clothes and hide had the same faint glow to them, as did the hallway of wood paneling and vines. Some of the light came from chunks of amber that glowed like torches in wall sconces, but that didn't explain the rest. It all looked like a cartoon.

More squirrels passed him by, most in robes of green and brown, carrying leather-bound books and in one case, a gnarled staff set with an emerald. Larry said, "Is that a wizard staff?"

"That? Old Maple hardly needs it, but wants to boast about how hard his latest projects are. If you're a new kid to sorcery you make a wand to prove you're a genuine spellcaster. Then you put it away because you think you're an expert and wands are for babies. Then you start using it again when you're *really* good. You know how it is." Larry's guide turned to him with a bucktoothed grin.

Larry scratched one of his ears and discovered it was just as big and fluffy as the rodent people's. "Ah ha. So you were having trouble with a... resonator?"

"Right in here. The company said it's different than your usual work but you can handle it." A door opened onto an auditorium with tiers of seating, and a fridge-sized flat chunk of amber hanging from vines like a projector screen. Its golden surface crackled and fuzzed.

Larry fell back on what training he had. "Have you made sure it's connected?"

The rodent chittered. "I'm sure the installers thought of that."

They had in fact not done so. Larry walked around the unfamiliar device and concluded it really was similar to a monitor, with several connection ports that nobody had bothered setting up despite the color coding. It took him only minutes to figure out how several living vines were meant to hook up to the wooden couplings on the back. The amber glowed a healthy, steady yellow now, more so than everything else. "Ready to test it?"

"Sure. Let me set it to give us an outdoor view." The man stood in front of the screen and began gesturing and chanting. Swirls of green light trailed from his claws. The amber lit up with a seemingly three-dimensional view of a city of treehouses. Squirrel people traveled along dirt roads and up ladders and rope bridges. "Looks good."

Larry had a lot of questions, but tried asking, "What was all that with the green swirly patterns just now?"

His host turned to look at him. "What, this?" He traced a claw through the air, making more glowing marks.

"That!"

"Huh, it was a pretty weak spell. Surprised you can see that. Family policy says I should test you for magic talent and maybe offer you a job."

"Magic."

"Yeah, though I don't know what kind of background you have in it already. The contract for your repair work said the rules are different somehow, where you live."

"You could say that."

"Have you got an hour free?"

"Come to think of it, I didn't have my lunch break yet."

"To the dining room, then! We've got acorn casserole today, and I'll test you while you eat. Bet we can pay better than Omni-Whatever."

Larry went along with it. Short-term special assignments for the company weren't so bad. And maybe he could get a whole new job!