Free Views from the Tower by Jessica Grey

to speak to a supervisor, but with my luck the supervisor would be a troll too. There was only one thing worse than a troll: a troll with power.
    “I have a monitoring spell running as an add-on to a previous spell, and for some reason I’m getting error messages.”
    “And you’re running on a mirror interface?”
    “Yes.”
    The mirrors on my wall began to flicker. I could briefly see images of the interior of the tower, followed by the MSS center—definitely outsourced; the troll could claim localized support all he wanted, but that many flat noses and broad foreheads didn’t reassure me—followed by multicolored bands that indicated a dead feed.
    “What spell system are you currently working out of?”
    I closed my eyes in frustration, knowing what was coming next. “8.3.1”
    The troll made a tsking noise. “That grimoire is at least a decade out of date. You should be in 10.1 at least for the kind of power you’re trying to run.”
    “My spell is over fifty years old; the newer grimoire text isn’t compatible. I can’t make all of the appropriate modifications because I’m not the only contributor.”
    “Do you have the permission of the other contributor? If so, we could get you upgraded.”
    “Bill, try using some critical thinking skills. If I had the permission of the other contributor, don’t you think I would have upgraded at some point?”
    Bill didn’t say anything, just raised one ugly troll eyebrow higher on his ugly troll forehead.
    “So what are my options?” I finally prompted him, trying to hide the fact that I was impatiently taping my foot.
    “Let’s reboot the whole spell; you’ll need to power down, wait thirty seconds, and then power back up.”
    I almost passed out from frustration right then. Really I did. “I already tried that before I called you. This is not the first time I’ve had to deal with you people. Although last time you weren’t trolls.”
    “I understand, Ma’am; let’s go ahead and power it down one more time, just to see what it does.”
    That was the second time he’d called me “ma’am.” This day was getting crappier by the minute. I realize that I’d just admitted to being significantly over fifty years old, but for a fairy that was a mere nothing. It certainly didn’t put me in “ma’am” status.
    “Fine,” I snapped. Powering down the spell didn’t take much; a few muttered incantations and all of my mirrors, except the one with Bill’s flat, greenish-grey face swimming in the middle of it, went black. After the requisite thirty seconds, I chanted again and the mirrors slowly began to power up. Bill leaned forward, staring at something in front of him intently, as my spell flashed across the mirrors.
    “Hmm, eye of newt? No one uses eye of newt anymore. It’s all about fire salamanders; they’ve got a bit more pop, you get a few more jolts out of them.”
    “I can’t just go back and replace the eye of newt with fire salamander at this point.” I pointed out.
    “True, especially without upgrading your grimoire. I’ve just never seen such an archaic mirror system.”
    “Thank you, Bill.” The sarcasm was most likely lost on him. Trolls were a bit slow on the uptake when it came to sarcasm. They also always completely missed out on irony.
    “Wait,” Bill almost shouted. His eyes were still flicking back and forth as he watched the spell scroll. “You’re running the monitoring spell as a periphery?”
    I gritted my teeth as the mirrors came back online. Several were showing views of the interior of the tower, a few still had the rainbow reflection of death blinking on and off. “Yes, I believe I mentioned that at the beginning of this conversation.”
    “That’s really a misuse of the mirror interface; the original spell could be what’s causing such problems. I’ll just separate them out for you.”
    “No!” I yelled, jumping up from my chair. “You don’t understand, they’re linked—”
    But it was too late. I