by Scott Meyer
It also didn’t help that Brit the Elder again seemed delighted to see him. “Phillip,” she said, positively beaming, “I have someone I’d very much like you to meet. Phillip, chairman of the wizards of Camelot, this is me, approximately 182 years ago, from my point of view.”
Brit the Younger grudgingly made eye contact with Phillip while limply shaking his hand. Phillip said, “Good to meet you.”
Brit the Elder’s smile grew even brighter as she looked at Phillip and Brit the Younger, both of whom were radiating discomfort. “Yes, lovely. This brings back such memories. You two are going to get along famously, I just know it.” She turned to Goopta, glancing deftly at his nametag. “Come, Mr. Goopta, let’s give these two some time to get acquainted. I could introduce you to a servant who gives the best manicures.”
Phillip and Brit the Younger watched as Brit the Elder led the bewildered man away into the crowd.
Phillip thought, I could really begin to hate her.
Brit the Younger said, “God, I hate her.”
Martin worked his way through the crowd. He didn’t want to admit to himself that he was looking for Gwen. He was so focused on scanning the distant corners of the room that he nearly ran directly into the two hostile men in top hats.
“Oh, hey,” Martin said brightly. “I was hoping I’d bump into you two.”
“Oh, were you?” said the top-hatted man on the left. He was stocky, tall, and angry-looking. His moustache was straight, waxed, and angry-looking. Martin suspected that this effect had to do with the angle at which the two halves of his moustache met under his nose. His nametag said “Gilbert,” that he originally came from 2007, and that he currently resided in the year 1906.
“Yes,” Martin said. “I noticed you eyeballing me and my friend earlier. I figured the civilized thing to do would be to come over, introduce myself—”
The second top-hatted man, taller, with a thoroughly oiled Van Dyke, a monocle, and a nametag that said “Sid,” interrupted Martin, saying, “You’re Martin Banks, also known as Martin the Magnificent, The Great Martini, and that git who hangs around with Phillip.”
“Ah, we’ve met,” Martin said. “I assume we meet in the future.”
“Correct,” said Gilbert.
“So,” Martin said, determined to figure these two guys out, “you’re magicians.”
Sid said, “Yup.”
“And you do magic.”
“Yes, we are magicians. We do magic,” Gilbert explained, slowly.
“Well, obviously,” Martin said.
“You’re the one who asked,” Sid replied.
Martin said, “What I mean is, you two are like us. You can do real magic, as far as your audience is concerned.”
“Yes,” Sid agreed.
“But when you do magic, do you do magic? I mean, when you do your magic act, do you do fake magic tricks, or do you . . . you know, do real magic?”
Sid pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head.
Gilbert was aghast. “Are you suggesting that we would advertise ourselves as magicians, then get up on stage and do magic?”
“I was just asking,” Martin said.
“We would never dream of such a thing,” Gilbert sputtered.
“Why not?”
“It would be dishonest, that’s why, or does that not matter to you?”
Martin said, “You’re telling your audience that you’re going to do magic. Why would it be dishonest to go ahead and do magic?”
Sid said, “Because, mate, the audience expects us to fool them. They don’t think a magician can really do magic. They come to be entertained by a lie. We can’t get up there and show them something that’s not a lie. We’d have lured them in under false pretenses. Can’t you understand that?”
Martin’s mouth said that he could, but his face said that he couldn’t.
“When people walk out of a magic show,” Gilbert explained, “they say, ‘I wonder how he did that?’ They picture lots of mirrors and trap doors, strings that are too fine to see, that sort of thing. Imagine how unsatisfying it would be if they found out the answer was ‘he did it with magic.’ They’d be terribly disappointed.”
“So you have magic powers, but your act is made up of normal magician’s tricks.”
“Yes. It’s the only honest way to proceed.”
“Do you invent the tricks yourselves?”
“No, we go to the future and copy them from modern magicians.”
Martin said, “So you’re thieves.”
Sid smiled and said, “That’s what you say later, when you find out what we’re doing for the first time.”
Martin said, “It’s good to know I agree with me.”
“Gwen had never . . .”
Gwen had never been much for parties. Her usual plan was to find the quietest part of the room, go there, and try not to make it any louder. She had spent most of the evening getting caught in, then escaping from, conversations with men she’d never met and knew nothing about. It would have been nice if she could have latched onto either Phillip or Martin and spent the evening teamed up with one of them, but Brit the Elder had specifically asked her to leave Phillip to his own devices for the evening, and Martin was acting strange, which, sadly for Martin, wasn’t all that strange.
Along the wall, where Gwen could easily reach it, there was a door that led to a balcony. She might be able to get away from the crowd for a few minutes, but the whole point of this wing-ding was to meet new people. It would be bad form to spend the evening hiding from the very people she was supposed to meet. Instead of fleeing for the cool night air outside, Gwen stood there, alone in the crowd, looking and feeling tremendously uncomfortable.
Gwen didn’t see the tall, muscular guard who slowly approached her, looking furtively around, checking to see if anybody was watching. She didn’t see him close his eyes and take a deep breath, as if psyching himself up for something. She didn’t hear him mutter encouragement to himself. The guard opened his eyes and took two steps to his left so as to enter Gwen’s field of view.
Gwen saw the man approach, and at first she thought he was one of the typical city guards. Then she thought he was a guard who, for some reason, had a limp. Then she thought he was suffering a petit mal seizure. Finally, she realized he was just walking strangely. The men who were chosen to be the official guards were usually the very model of physical grace, but there was a jerky, forced uneasiness to this one’s gait.
The guard walked up to her. His smile was slightly goofy, and his eyes almost glowed with manic energy.
The guard said, “Hi!”
Gwen said, “Hello.”
There was a pause while the guard thought, then he said, “My name is Ampyx.”
Gwen squinted at the guard. “Have we met before?”
Again, the guard calculated his response carefully before saying, “Yes, you chose me to escort the visitors from your homeland. Thank you for that.”
“Oh,” Gwen said. “How did you like my friends?”
“I did not like them,” Ampyx said enthusiastically. “I found them distasteful.”
“Oh,” Gwen said.
“But I also realized that you made me endure them so that I, and only I, would see what it is you’ve been looking for in a servant all this time. No wonder you’ve rejected us. None of the men here were nearly weird, annoying, and uncoordinated enough to suit your particular tastes.”
“And you are?” Gwen asked, equal parts amused and horrified.
“No,” Ampyx said, his facade dropping for a moment to express his outrage at the very idea. Then, his forced goofy smile returned, and he said, “But if I concentrate, I can feign being this way, for you.”
“That’s . . . impressive.” Gwen said.
Again, a moment’s thought, then Ampyx said, “Thanks! Yeah, uh, of cou
rse, it would be a great shame to myself and my family if I acted like this in public. I’m only doing it now as a demonstration. Were you to choose me as your servant, I would put on this act for you only in our bed chamber.”
“I see. And in public?”
“I would act like a proper man.”
At some point while nobody was looking, tables and chairs had appeared around the periphery of the room. They were probably brought in by servants, but nobody had noticed it happening, so it seemed like magic.
Brit the Younger sat alone at one of the tables, trying to be invisible. Phillip approached with two large, overtly decorative beverages.
Phillip said, “I asked for whiskey, but all they had were piña coladas and mimosas, so I got one of each. Take whichever you like, and I’ll have the other,” as he set the two drinks down.
She said, “Thank you. That’s very sweet, but if you don’t particularly want one over the other, and they didn’t have what you asked for, why did you get them at all?”
Phillip thought about that as he settled into his seat. “Well, I didn’t want to come back empty-handed. I considered just conjuring up two glasses of Scotch, but it felt like to do that when there was an open bar would be, I don’t know, disrespectful to my host somehow.”
Brit the Younger said, “You have a point. I suppose it would be.” She lifted her hand in front of her face and swiped her finger through the air. The tip of her finger glowed and left a vapor trail as she moved it from her right to her left, then from the bottom of her field of vision to the top. To the uninitiated it probably seemed like she was casting some sort of spell, but to Phillip, or anyone else who had ever used a modern computer interface, she was clearly making selections from a computer menu that only she could see. Finally she jabbed her finger straight ahead twice, then traced a circle on the table top with her other hand. Two glasses of Scotch appeared. She handed one to Phillip, who took it happily. “Excellent,” he said. “Next round’s on me.”
Phillip held the glass to his nose, and lightly breathed in through his mouth, letting the fumes from the drink gently ascend into his nostrils. “Ooh, that’s nice,” he said, before taking a sip.
Brit swallowed her first sip, savored it for a moment, then said, “I can make anything I want. I don’t see any point in making crap.”
Phillip leaned back, looking first at the glass in his hand, then at the woman who had given it to him. He thought for a long moment, then said, “I’ve been thinking I should give . . .” Phillip paused. Calling Brit the Elder Brit while talking to Brit the Younger seemed wrong, somehow, “my host a thank-you gift. Do you think a bottle of good Scotch would be nice?”
“Yeah,” Brit said, “that’d be great. I’d love it if you gave her a bottle of Scotch. She hates the stuff.”
Phillip looked at her for a long moment, then said, “I’m sorry. I have to admit, I’m having a lot of trouble getting my head around this.”
Brit said, “Yeah, join the club.” She took another sip.
Phillip looked into his drink again, but nothing he saw there made the situation easier to understand. He looked at the woman across from him again, enjoying her drink and seemingly not much else. Finally, he thought, If we’re going to talk, let’s really talk.
“There are those who say that because nothing we do seems to change the future, it means that whatever we do now has to be what we did in the past. Essentially, they say that all of our decisions were made for us, and that all we can do is play our parts. They tell us that any effort we make to change the course of history, or our own destiny, is futile, and ultimately results in us becoming the very thing we struggled to keep from becoming.”
Brit peered at him over the rim of her glass, pulled the drink down from her mouth without actually taking a drink, then asked Phillip, “That’s what they say. What do you say?”
Phillip smiled. “Usually, something loud and insulting. I am my own man. I make my own decisions. If the universe expects me to do anything different, it should prepare for a fight. I reject the idea that just because we can see the future that we’re doomed to create it. I say free will and imagination are deeply linked, and if you don’t believe you have one it just means that you lack the other.” Phillip realized he was raising his voice. He took a deep breath.
“I get a little crazy when this topic comes up,” Phillip said. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop now.”
“No,” Brit said, “please, go on.”
The evening was wearing on, and Martin felt overwhelmed. He’d met too many people, made too much small talk, and found too little of it interesting. He was under-stimulated. He decided to retreat to the nearest balcony and get some air.
When he got outside he was surprised to find Gwen there, leaning forward on the railing with her back to the door. Martin walked up, quietly enough to not demand her attention, but loudly enough to avoid startling her. He leaned back onto the railing so that he and Gwen were next to one another, but facing opposite directions. She looked up at the city, a thousand flickering light boxes, heaped all around them. He looked through the door into the party they were both avoiding.
Martin asked, “Who’s that jerk who’s been hanging around with you and Phillip this afternoon?”
Gwen chuckled. “Oh, he’s just this guy I kind of almost had a thing with.”
“He seems kinda needy.”
Gwen turned to face Martin, but remained leaning casually on the rail. “He’s not so bad. He’s smart, and he’s cute, and he makes me smile, which counts for a lot. He just needs to learn to cool it sometimes.”
Martin turned to look at her. “Is that why you didn’t want me to come here?”
Gwen said, “For example, this would be a good time to cool it,” and turned her face back to the city, and away from Martin.
“Gwen, seriously, if you don’t want me around, I’ll keep my distance. I’m not interested in forcing my company on someone who doesn’t want it. I can avoid you for the next two weeks, if that’s what you want.”
Gwen asked, “Do you want to avoid me, Martin?”
“I want us both to be happy. Being around you makes me happy, so that’s one of us, but if it makes you unhappy, well, that’s a problem.”
“Having you around doesn’t make me unhappy.”
“Good.” Martin said. “Not the highest praise I’ve ever heard. Wouldn’t look good on a greeting card, but it’s a start.”
Gwen smiled. “Having you around makes me happy, Martin. Really. It’s just, we only knew each other for a couple of weeks, then I had to move here. I thought I might invite you out to visit and see how things went, but then I got here, and . . . you’ve seen this place. Would you invite a guy here?”
“No, I would not,” Martin admitted. “I have to admit, I was happy to hear that you haven’t claimed a servant yet. I had some ideas about what a female-led society would be like. None of them featured ‘scantily clad beefcake and sexual service provider’ as a viable career path.”
Gwen said, “Well, the sex-with-servants thing doesn’t happen as often as the men would have you believe.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“I mean, it does happen,” Gwen said, “often, just not quite as often as they say. It’s pretty bad, I agree, but don’t judge the girls too harshly. If you think about it, it’s the same arrangement as a wealthy old man and his trophy wife, only our way is more emotionally honest. Besides, a lot of the girls aren’t romantically involved with their servants. They just picked a man they enjoy hanging around with.
“By the way,” Gwen said, “One of the guards is acting weird. I think he’s trying to imitate you.”
“Oh, yeah, that would be Ampyx. How’s his impression?”
“Pretty insulting.”
Martin laughed. “Good. If we play this right, we could have him wearing silver sequins by the end of the
week.”
Inside the hall, the party was beginning to wind down. The conversation was getting quiet, and the crowd was getting sparse. Phillip had spent the better part of an hour telling Brit the Younger all of his theories that explained their apparent lack of impact on the future, while still allowing for free will. He had many possible explanations, but in the end, she shook her head and said that none of them really applied to her.
“See,” she explained, “I decided to come back here and see if there was an Atlantis, and about a second before I left I thought, if there isn’t one, I could just go back in time a little further and build Atlantis myself.”
“And what happened?” Phillip asked.
“Exactly that, I guess. I got here and found the city pretty much as you see it, only there was this huge welcoming ceremony all set up waiting for me. There was music and cheering, and some woman who looks exactly like me walks up and hugs me, and says that she’s me, and that there was no Atlantis before I came along, so I went back in time to build the city so it’d be here when I got here.”
Phillip’s face twisted in concentration. “That just makes no sense.”
“Yeah,” Brit said. “I noticed.”
“But, if she’s you, and she got here and found no Atlantis, then you’d have found no Atlantis when you got here.”
Brit said, “Yes, but she didn’t get here and find no Atlantis. She found Atlantis as you see it now, and another woman who looked just like her and claimed to be her, and to have built Atlantis. Then, fifty years later, she went back in time, built Atlantis, and waited for me to show up.”
Phillip said, “So her memories do match your memories.”
“No,” Brit said. “Her memories match my present. Everything I do, she’s done. Everything I think, she’s thought. If I do something right, she gets the credit. If I do something wrong, she’s the first to admit it, usually before or while I’m doing it. That’s why none of your theories work in my case. You’re explaining why we have no effect on the future. The future isn’t my problem. She isn’t in the future. She’s here now, and as long as she’s here, nothing I do affects the present.”