Eileen leaned over her desk and activated her display with a practiced gesture. The interface flickered to life slowly, as if mana also needed a jolt of caffeine to come alive.
"Biometric match not confirmed," appeared on the display. Eileen dropped into her chair with a sigh and rolled her eyes.
"Identity confirmed--good morning, Eileen." The interface welcomed her to her shift monitoring the dimensional portals. Of course it needed the eye roll to recognize her. Eileen pushed back her chair and wandered off to the break room to find a cup of coffee while her console updated the sensor logs collected overnight.
She mumbled the obligatory responses when her colleagues asked how she was doing. This approach tended to deflect everyone except Dale. Like Eileen, Dale hated empty interactions. Eileen didn't have the energy this morning to reflect on how she was feeling, which meant avoiding them.
Thankfully, Dale was already fully engrossed in sensor analysis, and Eileen was able to avoid being social. She wrapped her hands around her mug and absently blew at the coffee while initiating the diagnostics that would verify the sensor data on which MAGINT relies.
When Eileen took this job she was assured she would be protecting this dimension from extra dimensional abominations. In reality, she spent her days confirming that the sensors continued to produce static. Not a glamorous role, but one that was paying for grad school--as long as she could keep her clearance.
Eileen cleared her mind and allowed the stream of sensor data to flow through the filters she had invoked from the astral fabric. The portal provided the inputs, the astral provided the templates, and her console drew mana from the building generator. She was hired to orchestrate all three to scan for anomalies. Anomalies that might forewarn of an invasion. In the advance of any anomalies, though, her job was dangerously boring.
It was no wonder that after finishing work and school, Eileen would turn to hallucinogens. Combined with her innate magical talents, the drugs allowed her to construct elaborate fantasy worlds in her mind.
Once Eileen had all of the pieces in place, she dropped into a meditative trance waiting to observe an anomaly that she doubted would happen in her lifetime. From this meditative space, she reflected back on last night's fantasy.
In the world she had constructed, mediums and elementals could safely interact. Normally a human would be obliterated by the furious power of an elemental. A medium could absorb enough elemental energy to survive for a short time. In Eileen's fantasy, she was a medium and as such, she could converse with, and learn from, the elementals in her home.
Each elemental created a unique sensation. Her skin would tingle with the excitement of an electric elemental. Her blood would rage with the fury of the fire elemental that powered her stove. Her muscles would twitch rhythmic to the air elemental that carried messages to her receiver.
Her favorite was the water elemental that coursed in her shower. EIleen had decided to call the elemental Tess. Tess caressed Eileen's skin in waves, pulsing with sensation that was soothing and arousing. Awash with serotonin from the drugs, Eileen coaxed Tess into producing cilia that tickled her thighs and teased her clitoris.
Tess bifurcated and began gently pulling Eileen's labia apart while increasing pressure on her clitoris. Eileen braced against the back of the chair to give Tess better access to squirm inside.
BOOP.
Eileen encouraged Tess to coalesce into a strong jet of water, pulsing against her clitoris and driving deeper into her pussy. Her muscles relaxed, hoping that would let Tess reach her G spot. Yes, so close. Just a little--
BEEP. BOOP.
--What the fuck, Eileen thought, jolting herself out of reminiscence. Something must be wrong with the filters. They think there is a signal from the portal. No, she reminded herself, filters aren't sentient. The filter is misconfigured, and it's my job to configure it properly.
BEEP.
Eileen pressed down on her thighs as a quick grounding exercise and named four things she could see: the clock on the wall, Dale in their own meditative trance, the office rug, and the holographic display--alerting her to an anomaly. Eileen reached into the hologram and acknowledged the alert, giving her a chance to recover some composure.
After refilling her cup, Eileen turned her attention to sensor processing. She had never encountered a misconfiguration this egregious. She tried recalibrating the feeds three times. When that didn't work, she tried the standard Fourier transforms. No matter what, the sensor stream continued to report anomalies.
"Hey Dale," Eileen waved her colleague over. "What do you make of this?" Dale kicked their chair back and scooted over to join Eileen. Dale began perusing the results.
"I've already tried..." Eileen continued, until Dale cut her off with a wave. When Dale was hyper-focused on a problem, they couldn't process interruptions.
Eileen realized that her anxiety was in overdrive watching Dale recreate the same diagnostic steps. She took a quick walk, and when she had returned Dale was weaving a new spell. "I think we're seeing a storm system passing near the portal. See how the signal started building earlier this morning? I bet it passes by lunch."
"Thanks, Dale, I'll check into that." Eilleen accepted control of Dale's weather control spell. She compressed the magic into a hardened kernel and attuned it with the portal's defenses. After a few minutes of incantation, she was ready to deliver the spell through the portal. "Bon voyage" she whispered as the kernel slid out of existence.
