The abbot entered the room, followed closely by an annoyed looking Barbara.

  Gregor leaned over to Amy and mouthed, ‘Talk later.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’ asked the Abbot.

  Gregor spoke up, ‘I explained their situation, they want to accept our offer of asylum.’

  Amy repressed her WTF face.

  ‘Did they?’ said Barbra, ‘Do they think we’re offering them a choice? They’ve seen too much here, and they are as good as dead if they leave. It’s not an offer, it’s an order. They are lucky we’re even letting them live.’

  “Good grief Barbara,’ said the abbot, ‘so bloodthirsty. We were never going to kill them. Where do you get this stuff? But otherwise she is essentially right. We don’t want this any more than they do, but they are here to stay. The only question is how long it takes them to accept it.’

  ‘We’re right here, you can talk directly to us.’ Jaink said.

  ‘Well they get it,’ responded Gregor, ‘They know.’

  The abbot frowned, ‘I want to hear it from them.’

  Gregor turned his head away from the Abbot and Barbara. He gave the hostages a pleading look. Thomas was the first to pick it up.

  ‘We don’t like it, but we get it. We accept it,’ he said.

  Baron nodded, not trusting himself to lie as confidently as Thomas or Amy.

  All eyes were on Amy. Thomas’ stomach churned. He could not tell which way Amy would go.

  ‘Fine,’ Amy muttered, ‘We get it, we get it. It sucks but we get it. How is this thing going to work?’

  Thomas suppressed a sigh of relief. For once Amy had managed to resist letting a gentle lie snowball into full fable.

  ‘That’s sensible,’ said the Abbot, who nonetheless still looked suspicious. ‘I know it’s not what you wanted as a life, but you will see that this is a good place. We have purpose, you can contribute to that. You should treat it as an honour.’

  ‘Lucky us.’ said Amy.

  With shocking ease, the next few weeks settled into a routine. As Amy had guessed, there were very few small jobs to be done in the monastery. Magic took care of most mundane tasks. The monks ability to store magic meant cooking, cleaning, laundry, and most other domestics were magically automated. They were not assigned to the kitchen, or to cleaning out goat excrement. Once they left the infirmary they were moved to a shared room with a large window looking out across the sea to the other towers. It was equipped with comfortable beds arranged along the walls, a separate bathroom, and even a collection of mismatched couches and chairs arranged around the window. There was a brief standoff between Barbara and Amy over the concept of mixed gender cohabitation, which Amy won through shouting. A corner of the room was converted to a small sleeping cubby through a process Amy described as ‘magical bullshit’.

  There was another stand off when the remaining hostages (as they referred to themselves) also demanded separate cubbies, but the second round went to Barbara, who was almost as good at shouting as Amy. At some point during this chaos, Bradon and Thomas broke away from private cubby negotiations and embarked on a side quest to demand bunk beds, but were denied on the grounds that they were adults.

  On the first morning they had hoped to talk to Gregor again, but got Barbara instead, who had been sent to take them to their work assignment. She led them to a small dock in the side of their tower, a circular opening linking the dock inside to the sea outside. Tied up at the dock were a number of small, wooden boats, each painted a different, aggressively cheerful, primary colour.

  ‘Well, aren’t these charming,’ said Amy.

  Barbara rolled her eyes, ‘Gregor painted them. Aliens are always trying homely crap like that.’

  ‘Gregor’s an alien?’ said Thomas incredulously, but also, possibly, somewhat hopefully.

  ‘Not the kind of alien you’re thinking of. Alien to us. He wasn’t born here, and he wasn’t rescued as a baby. He came here fully formed, his head full of weird ideas from the outside world.’

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  ‘Rescued?!’ spluttered Amy.

  ‘You don’t like that?’ said Barbara, ‘It’s the way it is. I’m a rescue. I would be dead if the monks hadn’t found me.’

  ‘I’m not judging you,’ said Amy, who was in fact judging her, ‘but "rescued"? it's gross, can’t you see how wrong it is? And leaving a phantom? That’s so messed up!’

  ‘Gregor told you about that? He’s such a blabbermouth. This is why we should kill you.’

  ‘Good grief Barbara,’ said Amy, in a passable imitation of the abbot, ‘For all the monastery's faults I’m pretty sure you’re the only one here who is so horny for killing people.’

  Barbara clambered into a boat and motioned for them to follow her. Somehow, all four of the new monastery residents squeezed into the boat alongside the murder minded monk, and with no obvious means of propulsion, it smoothly drifted out the circular door, picked up speed, and headed out towards the other towers. The boat cut through the unnatural stillness of the water with barely a ripple. There was no wind, no sounds of birds or waves. If it wasn’t for the small wake left behind them, quickly closing in on itself and returning the water to a perfect piece of silk, there would be no indication at all that they were in water and not on a giant blue mirror.

  ‘I do not like ’ said Amy, gazing down at the unnatural water.

  ‘I agree,’ said Janik, ‘It’s … unsettling. The power they must have to create and hide all this.’

  Janik leaned in closer to Amy and whispered, ‘And where is Gregor?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Amy whispered back, ‘I’m sure he’ll find us soon. Just play along, alright?’

  But she wasn’t sure. She was worried that play acting settling into life as a resident of the monastery would too quickly turn into reality. Again, she was dependent on the whims of someone else’s plan. But at least this time the agenda was theirs. They travelled between two towers, then the boat started to slow down and head towards another circular opening in a tower at the edge of the cluster. They drifted inside the opening and found themselves in a dock attached to an enormous empty space with a dim light in the middle. They climbed out of the cheerful little boot and followed Barbara, trudging into the darkness towards the light. As they got closer they could see cables trailing from the edge of the space towards a cluster of objects underneath the light.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Thomas, straining to try and make out the shapes under the gloomy light.

  There was something moving.

  ‘Do you see that?’ Thomas asked?

  They all strained their eyes into the gloom.

  ‘See what?’ asked Baron.

  ‘Something moving …’ Thomas said.

  Baron shook his head.

  ‘I can’t see anything.’ said Janik.

  As they neared the details started to reveal themselves. There were desks, six of them arranged in a line, making a kind of long table. On the desks were bulky old fashioned monitors, and large beige boxes. The cables they had seen previously were ordinary extension cords, snaking in mysteriously from the edges of the room and terminating in the boxes. It was too dark to see what they were plugged into on the other side. The idea of ordinary power points in this environment seemed impossible. Again, Thomas saw something move, scurrying behind the desk.

  ‘There!’ he said.

  ‘I see it!’ said Amy, ‘What is that?’

  stood up and waved. ‘Hey!’ it shouted to them cheerfully. ‘Welcome! Sorry I didn’t see you there.’ It was a young monk with a shaved head. She had a green cardigan over her robes, and a badge on the cardigan that read ‘’.

  ‘Must be an alien,’ whispered Janik.

  ‘What? No!’ protested the little monk, ‘I was born here. I’m just weird.’

  Thomas had a closer look at the computers, ‘These are the oldest working computers I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Ha! No they aren’t, because none of them work!’ said the new monk, looking very pleased with herself. ‘I’ve asked for new ones but the abbots here do not get computers at all! Some of them won’t even use phones.’

  Barbara motioned towards the hostages, ‘Nell, these are our … new people I told you about. They are going to help you get all this working.’

  ‘So good,’ said Nell, ‘So exciting, I’ve been saying for ages we need to get some norms to help us out, I’ve made a lot of progress, but man, computers are hard it turns out! I really need some help. They won’t let me go to the mainland to get some modern gear so this is what we have to work with. Getting a modern operating system to work on them is a mission.’

  ‘What do you need them for?’ asked Baron.

  ‘Computing man! Internet, PDFs, googling things, all that good stuff. We need to know what’s going on in the outside world, and waiting for agents to get back is a real slow way to work. We have phones, but the abbots cut the internet after everyone got addicted to Tiktok, man, it was hilarious.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not an ….. Alien?’ asked Baron.

  Barbara butted in, ‘No, she’s not an alien. She was born here. She’s just weird like she said. They gave her a phone when she was ten and she never recovered’.

  ‘Barbara, you need to get with it man!’ she turned to Baron, ‘She has a real flash Samsung but only uses it to take lame photos of the towers at sunset. All these monk’s phones are filled with tower sunset photos! It’s hilarious. They are so pleased with their sunset photos. They even held an exhibition, but they had all taken the same photo. And they had no idea why it was so funny! They thought it was great!’

  Barbara made a pained breathing out sound.

  ‘These … people … are here to help you. They can’t do magic but presumably they know about computers and phones and whatnot.’

  Amy looked at Baron. Thomas looked at Baron.

  ‘No, for the thousandth time, I’m in charge of social media. That doesn't mean I know about computers.’

  ‘Don't listen to him,’ Amy said quickly, ‘We’re all over computers and stuff. This will be great.’

  ‘Actually I can do magic,’ said Janik, ‘It’s annoying that you seem to keep forgetting that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barbara, ‘You're a powerful wizard and we're all terrified of you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter! You’re here now! This is going to be great! You can fuck of now Barbara!’ said Jenn, brightly.

  ‘With pleasure,’ said Barbara.

  She spun on her heels and made off towards the dock.

  ‘Great,’ said Amy, ‘We’re tech support.’