Off to Be the Wizard - 2 - Spell or High Water

by Scott Meyer

  “Yeah. We, uh, we mainly did top secret work for the government.”

  “I know!”

  “High-speed, high-altitude stuff.”

  “I know!”

  “Top-secret projects.”

  “I know!”

  “Look, kid,” Roy snapped. “Do you want me to tell you the story, or do you already know it?”

  Martin put his hands up. “Sorry. Please, go on.”

  “Okay. So, back in ’65 we got ourselves a computer. An IBM 360. We didn’t know what the heck we were gonna do with it, but everyone figured those things were the future, so they ordered me to learn how to run the thing. I studied and experimented for a while. The company had a few more of them sitting around in other divisions. All of the magnetic tapes for the whole company were stored in one room. One day, I decide to see what other divisions are using the stupid thing for, so I just start loading up all the tapes in there, one by one. One of the tapes has a file on it that appears to be larger than the tape could hold. That got my attention.”

  “Understandably,” Martin said. “How much could one of those tapes hold?”

  “A hundred and seventy megabytes,” Roy answered. “What’s so funny?”

  Martin said, “Nothing. Please, go on.”

  “Okay, so I load up the file, and I get a print of the first few thousand characters. It looks like a database.”

  “And eventually, you realized what you were looking at.”

  “Yes,” Roy said, “proof that the world, and everyone and everything in it, is just a program controlled by a computer.”

  “And you had a file that could control the computer that controlled the world.” Martin leaned forward and asked, “What did you do next?”

  “I thought about giving myself a bunch of money, but I thought that was probably the fastest way to get caught.”

  Martin decided to never tell Roy how he had gotten caught.

  Roy continued, “I decided to use the database to give myself an advantage at work. Make my prototypes stronger. Boost the output of my team’s engine designs. I told everyone my secret was advanced computer modeling.”

  “Smart. Did it work?”

  “For a while. There was one project I’d really put my heart into. The A-12. It was a spy plane. It needed to fly very high and very fast. Later they added a seat and called it the SR-71.”

  “You worked on the Blackbird?” Martin blurted, in spite of himself.

  Roy smiled. “Is that what they call it?”

  “Yeah, eventually, I guess. It went, like, Mach three, didn’t it?”

  “Officially. It could go a bit faster if it had to.”

  Martin leaned back heavily into his seat. “Wow. The SR-71. I had a poster of it in my bedroom. I always wondered how they managed to make something like that clear back in the sixties.”

  There was a long, awkward pause, as Martin’s smile faded.

  “And now you know,” Roy said. “The damned Russians were just so much better with titanium then we were. I thought having good intelligence would prevent wars in the long run, so I found ways to make the plane work. Then I found ways to make it work better. I just got carried away.”

  “And that’s how you got caught?” Martin asked.

  Roy grimaced and said, “I moved to a different project, then they tried to build more SR-71s. It was top secret, and I wasn’t on the team anymore, so I didn’t know it was happening. They couldn’t get the titanium parts to bond. Eventually they started asking questions.”

  “And you pictured yourself having a long talk with the CIA, so you decided to get lost.”

  “Bingo. I’d read a book that had just come out. The Best Years to Live in Medieval England, by some guy named Cox. It was a gift. Anyway, I snuck into the chart room and grabbed the coordinates for the Cliffs of Dover, made a side trip to the computer room, entered the coordinates, picked a date, and that’s how I got here.”

  Martin considered this for a moment, then asked, “So where’s your computer?”

  Roy squinted. “I don’t own a computer. I’m just a guy.”

  “What about the computer you used to get here?”

  Roy kept squinting. “That’s Lockheed’s computer.”

  “Whatever,” Martin said. “Where is it?”

  “Where I left it, at the Skunk Works.”

  Martin had difficulty absorbing what he was hearing. “You didn’t bring it with you? Roy? Oh man, it was a one-way trip for you!”

  “Like I said, kid, I panicked.”

  “Without a computer here, how’d you plan to pass yourself off as a wizard?”

  “I didn’t,” Roy said, chuckling. “I figured I’d use my engineering background to make a living. I walked into that bar, they took one look at me, and assumed I was a wizard.”

  “Yeah,” Martin agreed, “I bet they did.”

  Martin spent the next hour laying out the situation for Roy in much the same way Phillip had done for him. He explained that there were communities of wizards all over Europe in this time, and in various other places, at other points in history. He told Roy that all of the wizards were guys like them, who had stumbled across the file in one of its many forms, gotten into trouble using it, and come back in time as a means of hiding.

  They spent some time puzzling over the fact that while everyone else had found the file on some corporate mainframe, Roy had found it on a magnetic memory tape, but Martin eventually dismissed the topic as just one of the many things about the file, and the universe itself, that seemed counterintuitive.

  Martin explained that women who found the file all ended up going to Atlantis, as life everywhere else wasn’t particularly hospitable for women with magic powers. Martin was just explaining about chronological pollution, and how nothing they did to the past seemed to have any effect on the future, when Roy interrupted him by snoring.

  Martin roused Roy just long enough to get him set up to sleep on the couch. As he tucked a sheet set into the cushions, Roy asked, “When do I get to meet the guy in charge?”

  They guy in charge, Martin thought. There’s a thorny issue. For a moment, Martin considered telling Roy about how the current chairman had only held that position for a short time, and how the chairman before had changed his name from Jimmy to Merlin, and then tried to reshape the entire country according to his whims, which included trying to kill all of the other wizards.

  Nah, Martin thought, that’s a little too heavy to drop on him on the first night. I’ll explain the whole thing later, when we talk about banishment.

  Martin answered, “I don’t know when you’ll meet the chairman. It’ll happen at some point, but it’s hard to say when. He’s a busy guy.”

  4.

  Some would think that Phillip enjoyed being the chairman of the wizards in spite of the busy schedule that came with the job. Phillip would tell you that he enjoyed being chairman because of the busy schedule. Many people found this hard to understand, but those people hadn’t actually seen the schedule.

  Phillip rolled out of bed at his official residence, the same hut he’d lived in for the last ten years. He stretched his back and regretted for the thousandth time that he hadn’t gained the ability to freeze the aging process until he was in his forties, and predictably thick around the middle. He pulled some breakfast out of his hat and ate it in a bleary haze. When breakfast was done and he was mostly awake, Phillip grabbed his wizard staff, put on his pointy hat and light blue robe, and commuted to work. Some days he’d make a show of flying to his shop in public, but today he simply teleported there. He had a full agenda, and he wanted to get to it.

  He appeared in front of his building, entered right away, and walked through the storefront that was just there for show. He went straight through the séance room, with its fake crystal ball. He climbed the staircase at the back of the building,
and reached his goal, the second story, which was decorated with the finest furnishings and entertainment devices that 1984 had to offer.

  He pushed a button on the massive Sony stereo, and the room quietly filled with the resonant sounds of The Alan Parsons Project. He walked to the chrome and white plastic bar and looked at his official schedule.

  Item one: get up. Done!

  Item two: eat breakfast. Done!

  Item three: think up some busy work and delegate it to a wizard who’ll make a lot of noise about it.

  Phillip thought for a moment about the busy work, and about whom to make busy with it. His eyes drifted around the room, past his Commodore 64 computer, past the mint-condition Pontiac Fiero he kept inside as if it were a work of art. His gaze lingered on his original stand-up arcade GORF cabinet. He remembered how he had carefully dismantled it and transported it back in time one piece at a time. He saw the scratches around the cabinet’s coin box, and remembered seeing Magnus, the younger of the two wizards who resided in Norway, trying to pry it open. That answered the question of who, but he still needed to think of a what.

  After a few moments he called Magnus on what the wizards euphemistically called the hand phone. He raised his right hand in front of his face, as if imitating a Shakespearian actor reciting the “Alas, poor Yorick” speech. Phillip said, “Komuniki kun Magnus two.” Almost instantly, Phillip’s raised hand was filled with Magnus’ place-holder icon, a flickering, semi-transparent image of the devil sticking out his tongue. The demon’s left hand held the neck of a white, V-shaped guitar. The other hand was making a devil-horns gesture.

  It’s redundant for the devil to make devil horns, Phillip thought. He could just point at his horns and send the same message.

  Finally, the image of the devil was replaced with a bleary-eyed Magnus. Clearly Phillip had woken him.

  The image of Magnus’ head said, “Hey, Phillip.”

  “Good morning, Magnus. How’s Magnus?” Phillip replied. Magnus’ best friend was also a wizard who lived in Norway, who was also named Magnus.

  “He’s Magnus,” Magnus answered, “you know what I mean?”

  “I think I do.”

  “What’s up?”

  Phillip said, “Official business, I’m afraid. As you know, I am now the chairman of the wizards.”

  “Well, yeah. I voted for you. It was only two months ago.”

  Phillip smiled. “Right. Well, I’ve decided that we need to take a census.”

  “A census,” Magnus said, clearly thinking he’d misunderstood.

  “Yes. We need to count and list every wizard in Europe,” Phillip explained patiently.

  Magnus squinted, and said, “But, Phil, you know every wizard in Europe.”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Phillip said, “I think I do. We both think we do, but we can’t be sure. For all we know, David, out in Russia, might know another wizard who he never mentioned because he assumed we already knew about him.”

  Magnus kept on squinting. “I guess that’s true. Why are you calling me?”

  Here we go, Phillip thought. “Magnus, I’d like for you to make a list of all the wizards in Europe that you know of.”

  Magnus nodded and said, “Okay, I can do that.”

  “Good,” Phillip said. “Then I want you to call every wizard on that list, and ask them to make the same list.”

  Magnus’ eyes widened. “You want me to call everyone?”

  “Yeah,” Phillip said, brightly. “It’s not like I’m asking you to go see them in person.”

  “Yeah, I suppose not,” Magnus agreed, grudgingly.

  “Unless someone comes up with a wizard you’ve never heard of. Then I want you to go track them down and get their information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “You know. Who they are. Where they’re from. Where they found the file. The basics.”

  “How soon do you need this, Phillip?”

  “Oh, there’s no particular rush. A couple of days, I guess.”

  Magnus sucked his teeth, then said, “That’s fine if there are no new wizards. If I do have to hunt someone down I’ll need more time. Can I have a week?”

  Phillip looked disappointed, but said, “Of course, Magnus. If that’s how long it takes.”

  They said their goodbyes and Phillip turned his attention back to the list.

  Item three: think up some busywork and delegate it to a wizard who’ll make a lot of noise about it. Done for the week! On to item four.

  Item four: Do whatever you like for the rest of the day.

  Phillip played some GORF, then settled in to his most comfortable chair to read his dog-eared copy of Catch-22.

  He had been reading for about an hour when he heard the noise. It wasn’t an inherently alarming noise. It sounded like someone at the foot of his staircase had rung a crystal bell. The sound shook Phillip down to his bones, since he didn’t own a crystal bell, and due to his magical security measures, it shouldn’t have been possible for anyone to be at the foot of his stairs.

  Phillip put down his book, grabbed his staff, and carefully crept to the head of the staircase. Carefully, he peered down into the distance below and was thoroughly confused by what he saw there.

  5.

  Martin didn’t know what his next move would be, but he knew he’d have to make it in the next five seconds. He was flying as fast as he dared, at an altitude of seven feet above the forest floor, high enough to not get caught in the undergrowth, but low enough to avoid getting hung up in the canopy. He held his staff in front of him, tilted so as to be parallel to his body. The last thing he needed was his staff slamming into a tree trunk sending him falling in a heap to the ground. He couldn’t slow down because one of his pursuers was flying right behind him. Martin was sure he was losing ground, since he had to find his way through the trees, while all his attacker had to do was follow him and fly through the Martin-shaped hole. Martin would have just flown straight up, punching through the canopy and emerging into the clear blue sky above, except that he knew there was a second pursuer lurking up there, waiting for Martin to emerge into the open, presenting a clear target.

  Martin glanced upward and saw a black shape moving fast above the treetops. He lowered his gaze just in time to see and almost dodge a dead limb hanging limply from the live branches that supported its weight. He tried to swoop under it, but wasn’t quite fast enough. It grazed painfully across his back, then fell to the forest floor. In an act of hopefulness Martin glanced behind him, and cursed when he saw the purple blur that was gaining on him zip right over the top of the fallen branch without having to alter course, or even decelerate.

  He knew from memory that a river cut through the woods, and that he’d be reaching it soon. He would lose his cover and be a sitting duck for the bogey above the trees. If, on the other hand, he slowed enough to turn away from the river, the purple blur behind him would overtake him and knock him out of the air. To make matters worse, there was a third attacker out there somewhere who had been delayed at the start of the chase, but would certainly be back into the fray by now.

  Martin only had himself to blame. He had gotten so caught up in the excitement of having a trainee that he’d forgotten that there were people who would attack him on sight.

  The day had started on such a positive note. Martin awoke to find that Roy was already up. Martin produced breakfast for them, and while Roy was amusingly disturbed to eat food that had been pulled out of a wizard’s hat, he was clearly equally disturbed that the breakfast consisted of a McDonald’s bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit and a solid slab of hash browns.

  Once breakfast was done, Martin set about getting Roy up to speed.

  Martin showed Roy his top-of-the-line 2012 laptop, which, since Roy was from 1973, was as astonishing to him as any magic trick Martin had done. Martin explained that until
recently the wizards from farther in the future had tried to keep later technology from the earlier wizards in the interest of not messing up the timeline more than they had to, but that recent events had shown that this put earlier wizards at an unfair disadvantage, and that the timeline didn’t seem to care what they did.

  Roy asked Martin to explain that last part, and Martin explained that most wizards went back to their original time on a regular basis, and that nobody had found a single change, no matter what the wizards did in the past. He briefly explained the two predominant theories: that they existed in a separate timeline created by whatever program used the file, or that at some point in the future something would happen to clean up the mess they were currently making. Martin trailed off when it became clear that Roy had lost interest in the philosophical discussion and just wanted to play with Martin’s computer.

  Maybe we’ll get along after all, Martin thought.

  Once Roy was done boggling over Martin’s laptop, Martin explained about the shell program, the interface that Phillip and the former chairman, Jimmy, had developed to make it easy to utilize the file that brought them all here. He explained to Roy the powers that the shell could bestow upon anyone who knew that it existed and took the time to learn how to use it. He told Roy that he need not age. He’d never be too cold or too hot again. He could speak any language fluently. Most important, he explained that while he still needed food, water, and air, he was impervious to physical damage.

  If Roy wore a robe and hat that met certain measurements exactly, the shell would recognize him as a wizard and he’d have the powers of flight and teleportation, and the ability to create food, money, and almost anything else out of thin air. Martin also promised Roy that when his training was complete, and he’d passed his trials, that Martin would set him up with a laptop, so that he could go back to his own time at will, if he wanted.

  “That’s if you accept the training. If you choose not to, I’ll just assume you’re up to no good and send you back home so the CIA can pick you up. So, Roy, do you accept the training?”