find gainful employment

[mrmage]

The following day, Sadde goes to town at a reasonable time to buy a tiny cactus with some of the proceeds from his terribly tedious job, and sneaks it into the bag with his clothing he brings to Isabella's room. It is inside a cute little box, which he offers Isabella the following morning when she wakes up, saying, "Happy three-month anniversary!"

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"Oh, you could probably learn to do it for other people in fairly short order if you've already got it down for yourself!" exclaims the booth attendant, pushing a flyer into Sadde's hand.

[mrmage]

Sadde returns to his preferred shape for the day and accepts the flyer, peering at it with interest.

[alicornucopia]

Apparently their primary facility is in New York but they have a relationship with several others in other cities. It's customary for full-fledged magical employees to work on commission, but they have a training and certification program to sponsor promisingly-specialized mages early in their self-study with a modest stipend and, if they want some extra money, assistant or clerical positions in the company. There is reimbursed business travel to go to clients who aren't convenient to the offices and the job comes with malpractice insurance.

[mrmage]

That's pretty impressive, actually. He thanks the booth attendant and goes look for another interesting-looking one.

[alicornucopia]

Here's one that does mostly terminal illnesses; judging from the booth decoration it's mostly of photogenic-after-picture young children. They seem to be trying to compete with the Make-A-Wish Foundation for glurge, but at least their kids are alive. The printed material indicates that they're associated with certain insurance plans and are working on a deal with some teachers' unions (reading between the lines, this is because they will then be able to advertise with pictures of adorable children who are glad they didn't have to have a mean old sub instead of beloved Miss K).

[mrmage]

...do they work on actually curing the terminal illnesses?

[alicornucopia]

Just healing them, although there's a footnote that sometimes their subjects wind up being a sort of control group in research studies and they have a quote from a guy who's trying to find antibody information in mage-healed patients for scaling up.

[mrmage]

Well that's better than the Make-A-Wish foundation, for sure, and definitely closer to his specialty than sex-change (though the way his magic seems to work he's not so sure they're that different). Flyers?

[alicornucopia]

They have them! And he is welcome to take a pen with the company's name on it.

[mrmage]

Oh well why not.

Next?

[alicornucopia]

This one's a little more upstream: modifying nonhumans to produce useful drugs, human-transfusable blood and transplantable organs. Well outside his current specialization.

[mrmage]

Yes, indeed, and might be an option for the far future but definitely not right now.

Next?

[alicornucopia]

Generalized healing for rich people over a wide variety of ailments. Doctors Without Borders. A place that is sort of cagey about what it actually does but may or may not be in the genetic designer baby business.

[mrmage]

Generalized healing for rich people looks fairly interesting, actually. Sadde can volunteer at various hospitals when he's older, but Doctor Without Borders - especially given his psychology - is probably not the best way for him to help people. He goes check that booth out.

[alicornucopia]

The generalized healing for rich people are pretty straightforward that the reason you might work for them is to make utterly spectacular amounts of money, depending on what variety of things you are capable of treating. If you learn to get around faster than an airplane can, you can get a substantial raise for being on-call for emergencies. There is some very delicate language that they encourage their employees to try out unfamiliar skills on non-rich people who aren't paying through the nose to avoid this sort of risk.

[mrmage]

Hmm. Not altogether terrible.

Internship opportunities or anything like that, for people who are in the process of figuring this stuff out?

[alicornucopia]

If you'll sign a long-term and toothy contract you can be considered in breach of if you don't have usable healing abilities by the end of it, they'll give you a pretty generous stipend and some token supervision to discourage procrastinating in the meantime.

[mrmage]

Well. That... looks pretty interesting. Any more relevant info on the flyer?

[alicornucopia]

It's an ad, basically, heavy on the "make lots of money!" and "help sick people!" and lower on anything else. There's contact information, though.

[mrmage]

Well. He goes up to Isabella. "What d'you think, ma'am?"

[eclipsi]

"Well, it really depends on what you're aiming for, but I'd be sort of nervous about the terms on which any of these people are offering to sponsor your further magical development. It's not all on the 'generous alumni' model, and a lot can change over time."

[mrmage]

"Change enough for me to not want to be a healer anymore?"

[eclipsi]

Shrug. "Someone discovers they can do time travel and you get excited about that instead. The company you signed on with is revealed to have abhorrent practices or workplace conditions of some kind or you just can't get along with your boss. You try healing and the first time you have to look at a severe prolapse you want to go hide under a table."

[mrmage]

"I'm pretty sure I'm immune to body horror by now," he protests weakly.

[eclipsi]

"Bodies can get really horrifying, pet, I don't think you've seen everything, but maybe that wouldn't faze you, I don't know. I still wouldn't lock in the next twenty years of your life the minute you're legally able to sign a contract."