Fix

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Aliyah thought they might overflow – but Ruth stepped in to take the last of it, her eyes burning black, thousands of ’mancers straining to contain the unthinkable.

  Aliyah we can’t hold this forever

  We can’t redirect flux that’s what your father does

  What are we supposed to do?

  Aliyah blinked away blood. She took in the Thing as it roared disapproval, scratched open sundered broaches to make room to step through.

  Her gaze was clear and unafraid.

  I want you to listen to me.

  Fifty-Six

  What Aliyah Said

  It’s not fair.

  I burned in an apartment. My skin blistered to the bone. My dad’s magic couldn’t save me.

  It’s not fair.

  A terrorist turned me into a ’mancer, and the first thing I did with my magic was murder her.

  It’s not fair.

  I found friends who loved my magic, and a maniac pyromancer killed them to teach me a lesson.

  It’s not fair.

  I can’t live in Morehead. I can’t live in Bastogne. I can’t heal my scars. I can’t ever be normal again; the best I can do is to give my life to keep someone else safe.

  It’s not fair.

  But none of you had a good life. I know that because you’re ’mancers. We only became obsessed with videogames or rock-balancing or statistics because we lost everything else we loved.

  We retreated into a fantasy world so we could be happy somewhere – and believed in that fantasy so much, it became true.

  We’ve done magic because we believe the impossible. And today, I have one impossible lie we must believe, or we will fail:

  I want you to believe we can make this fair.

  The Unimancers froze at the audacity of Aliyah’s words.

  We’ve suffered. We’ve sacrificed. We’ve been silenced. And I want you to believe the insane idea that every bad thing we have ever endured occurred to put us here, with these strengths, on this day, to stop that Thing.

  And if we drive that Thing back, then our suffering had a purpose. We weren’t abandoned freaks – we were the world’s secret plan to save itself.

  Magic is an argument. My daddy taught me that. Magic’s just how we convince the universe there’s a better way to do things. The stronger your belief, the less flux there is – and if you believe with all your heart, there is no flux.

  If we believe the Universe meant for us to be here to stop that Thing, then that will be true.

  Her words struck home. But the flux still vibrated through them, seeking doubt, a continent-obliterating storm ready to destroy them.

  But what about the flux? Ruth asked. Do you want us to will it away?

  No, Aliyah thought.

  She raised one finger, aimed it squarely at the Thing as It tore the last of the broaches open.

  I want you to aim it.

  Fifty-Seven

  For One Last Time, I Need Y’all to Roar

  The hivemind erupted into a ferocious argument – the greatest debate the collective had ever experienced. Aliyah asked the hivemind to cherish the things that had hurt them – which was absurd.

  But Aliyah had told them it was an absurd idea, had told them it was a lie, and the philosophomancers pointed out that technically everything they’d ever done with ’mancy was a lie.

  Lies, they realized, had been potent tools for good when the right people had believed them in the right way.

  Like the idea of justice.

  Like the idea of fairness.

  Like the idea of love triumphing over all.

  I know it’s not true, Aliyah said. They felt her burns, her grief over her dead friends, her howling loneliness before she’d found the Unimancers. But wouldn’t it be nice?

  Paul had let Aliyah grow in her own way. He’d never once tried to extinguish that spark of rebellion within her.

  In keeping that intact, he’d kept alive one strong flicker of childish hope. A hope so strong the Unimancers clung to Aliyah’s tranquility when the flux threatened to erupt, a soothing calmness promising this will be all right.

  They could not believe this forever. But for one moment they could believe every torment they’d suffered had been preparation to pierce this black beast’s heart.

  They could believe their lives had meaning.

  Which, of course, was the greatest lie of all.

  And in a ’mancer’s hands, lies became magnificent truths.

  The flux boiled within them, transforming from something furious at them to something furious at this intruder.

  And as the last of the counterarguments fell, one word swept through the hivemind – a word that meant more than it ever had before in their history, because for the first time it had been arrived at without magical assistance to force them into it:

  Consensus.

  Fifty-Eight

  After Me, There Will Be No More

  Pure white magic erupted from Aliyah’s fingertip.

  It punched a hole through the Thing’s mountainous torso, hurling Its continent-sized body miles backwards into the demon dimensions.

  Fifty-Nine

  Which Can Eternal Lie

  The Thing laid sprawling on the far side of the demon dimensions.

  It twitched.

  It was like watching a mountain range give birth as the cavern Aliyah had punched through It closed up, pseudopods rising, Its body reforming into something more hideous.

  We didn’t kill It, Ruth thought, horrified. All that power, and we only drove it back–

  I don’t know if it can be killed, Aliyah thought.

  Then how do we…?

  We hope Daddy seals the broach.

  Sixty

  Do I Dare Repair the Universe?

  The Thing had ripped the broach open from horizon to horizon. Paul reached out with his ’mancy, feeling the tattered threads of our universe floating across the gap.

  He picked through floating buzzsect corpses until he found a scrap of gravity. He found the concept of light piled up behind the atmosphere, the sun’s energy trying desperately to push its way through the wreckage. He found what was the idea of mass bouncing around the broach’s edges.

  He reshaped the tatters into something resembling our universe.

  The Unimancers lined up behind him, ready to assist. But as he mapped the places where things were too ruined to patch together, Paul realized:

  They could never remake the world.

  They’d been so desperate to return to what had once been that they’d sacrificed stability for nostalgia. Their belief could strong arm the local laws into limping along in a mockery of “normal” physics for a time…

  …but eventually, the disjunct between how they wanted things to work and how things needed to work in the aftermath caused things to fly apart.

  Just like he could never restore Aliyah back to the girl she’d been before the fire.

  Yet he might nurture her scars into strengths.

  So instead of pouring his willpower into the broken lands, Paul called upon the physicists and mathematicians and artists in the collective to ask a different question:

  What do these new rules need to flourish?

  If the Bohr radius was rounded down, what other laws needed to change to accommodate that? If something had erased the concept of light in this swatch of sky, what energies would grow to replace it?

  Some of these changes would make it impossible for human life to exist there. And that, too, was fine; Paul could never have thrived in the Unimancers’ rough-and-tumble arguments.

  But Aliyah was happy there.

  So Paul asked what the universe needed to be stable instead of wrestling it into what he needed.

  Which required near-limitless imagination – the physicists envisioning alternate dimensions to exacting perfection, the mathematicians spinning off subgroups to handle the complex math required to create alien logics.

  But wasn’t creation always more challeng
ing than recreation?

  The rip in the sky sealed over, inch by inch, as the hivemind’s combined brainpower determined the complex rules needed to create exquisite microuniverses ready to weather any challenge, a thousand interlocking bureaucracies holding hands across the sky. Instead of eradicating these mutant strains of Earth, Paul and the Unimancers encouraged their resiliency.

  They’re stronger, Aliyah thought in wonder. It was true; these new rules were interlocked tighter than ever – so perfectly fit, there simply wasn’t room for magic to exist within them.

  The Thing roared, shoving spiked claws through in an attempt to tear the new physics apart – but they had, unwittingly, built the perfect jail to hold It.

  The hivemind staved off mental exhaustion – they’d built a thousand different universes in minutes, found ways to smooth over the transitions so these microverses wouldn’t tear each other asunder, meshed them into the existing universe without too much damage. Some of their wisest physicists passed out from the strain.

  But the remainder picked up the slack, cemented off gaps into the demon dimensions.

  The Thing bellowed, ramming tentacles into dwindling holes–

  And disappeared.

  “My God, Paul.” Robert dropped the smoking ruins of Valentine’s Nintendo. “Did… we win? Did we seal the broach?”

  “We sealed this broach.” He collapsed onto the stump, hands on his ribs, breathing heavily. “That’s… three miles fixed.”

  When he looked at the sky, it was with the radiant expression of a man who’d found a lifetime of satisfying work.

  “Europe, however…” His gratified chuckle was deep and hearty. “There’s thousands of miles of reality fractures here. And we can’t shut SMASH down whenever we fix a broach; we’ll have to use smaller teams, figure out which areas will do the most good once repaired. This will take decades to stabilize.”

  “My God.” Robert sat down next to him on the stump. “But you went nuts when I told you how long it’d take to change America’s ’mancer laws – why’s this slog any different?”

  “Good question.” Paul dabbed blood from his eyes. “It isn’t. I’m different. And I wish I had time to explain, but your girlfriend’s about to hit the ground.”

  Sixty-One

  Got Me Hoping You’ll Save Me Right Now

  “She’s gonna splatter!” Robert screamed. Valentine dropped towards the ground, her black dress trailing behind her like a goth comet.

  Paul knew how much time they had left before impact. That had been part of their calculations. She’d been high up in the stratosphere, giving her precious minutes before impact – though defeating the Thing and sealing the broaches had eaten up precious time.

  He had exactly fifty-five seconds to convince Robert.

  “You know why she didn’t marry you?” he asked.

  “Jesus, Paul! Could you have better timing?”

  “She thought you stopped being crazy! You gave up ’mancy, she didn’t. She thought you’d never stay without–”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “I’m her best friend I know her shut up!” Paul yelled, as Valentine plummeted closer. “The point is, she thinks you’re not a ’mancer because you gave up being Tyler Durden! You think you’re not a ’mancer! But dammit, Robert, nobody masters all the skills you have that quickly without a little magic. You’re so subtle even you don’t realize you’re doing it.”

  Robert flailed. “How does that help us?”

  “She thinks you’re not crazy about her. You used to be a goddamned Fight-Club-’mancer. Cartoonish violence was your forte. If anyone can catch Valentine… it’s you.”

  Robert looked stricken. “Paul… I’m not Tyler Durden anymore.”

  They heard the whistle as she approached the ground. “How crazy is your love?”

  It wasn’t a good plan, Paul thought. It was an improvised scheme that required Robert to love Valentine to a level of literal insanity.

  Then again, Paul thought, if he wasn’t that in love with her, maybe it would be a mercy if Valentine splattered.

  Robert ran, panicked, as Valentine plunged downward, holding his massive arms wide…

  “You stole a plane!” Paul yelled. “You learned to ride a horse! You can catch her!”

  Robert cracked his neck as Valentine dropped towards him like a high fly ball.

  Then he squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his massive hands into beefy fists, quivering as his muscles locked into place. He let loose a low moan, which rose to an anguished shriek as he screamed loss at the heavens.

  Paul almost yelled at Robert not to give up, but then he realized: Robert’s imagining what life would be like if Valentine died.

  Robert Paulson squared his shoulders.

  He refused to believe the world could exist without Valentine.

  With a ripple of long-buried magic, Valentine dropped safely into his arms.

  She clambered out.

  “Sweetie!” Robert grasped at her. Valentine squirmed away. “Sweetie, you…”

  Her hair had gone white. Her fingers twitched.

  “Sweetie, you look like hell,” he finished.

  “I got about two minutes left before I collapse,” she huffed, staggering towards Paul like a broken jalopy.

  “Tsabo!” she yelled. “Tell me you have the fucking thing!”

  “…what thing?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t you fucking tell me you don’t have it. You file everything away. You’re a… a magical hoarder. ’Mancer. A hoardomancer. And I saw you pick it up, so you give it to me right the fuck now or I will knock your ass into the demon dimensions.”

  Paul patted his pockets, confused. “Valentine, I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

  His palm pressed against a long-forgotten metal circle in his suit pocket.

  Paul huffed in relief, and took out Robert’s engagement ring.

  She flumfed down on him so hard that he thought she’d collapsed – but no, it was a weary hug. She kissed him on his cheek, leaving behind a heart-shaped smear of lipstick.

  “You don’t need me anymore, do you?” she whispered. He heard her terror that he might ask her to stay with him…

  “I need you happy.” He gave her a push. “Go.”

  She staggered woozily to Robert, who looked around as though he hoped one of the celebrating Unimancers would tell him what to do.

  Valentine grabbed his hand, falling to one knee.

  “Robert Paulson,” she said, her voice taking on an absurdly solemn overtone. “You… hey, is that your real name?”

  He smiled. “It is now.”

  “Fine. Robert Paulson – I fucking cleaved the heavens asunder in a TPK to get back to your finely muscular ass, and you’d think that would be fucking enough of a proposal to satisfy you. But no. You’re a romantic.

  “Goddammit, I’ve beat up a lot of pretty boys in my time, and you’re the prettiest. You’re my fuckin’ anchor. You’re the one who gives me the advice I inevitably regret when I just as inevitably ignore it. And…”

  She scrubbed away tears.

  “Goddammit, Robert…”

  Her voice dropped to a low whisper.

  “I need you.”

  She slipped the ring onto his finger, then leapt up to stomp around in an angry circle.

  “Godfuckahorse, you mothersucking…!” She stomped her foot. “Consent, Valentine, consent. You gotta check he says yes before you put the goddamned marriage-manacle on those suckable fat fingers, and…”

  “Yes.”

  She froze, clasping her hands against her breastbone. “…you sure?”

  He nodded shyly.

  She bent him backwards, kissing him deeply.

  She broke the kiss. “I might fuck other guys, you know. I reserve that right.”

  “Will you come back to me afterwards?”

  She jerked her thumb towards the heavens. “Ask that Lovecraftian Xerox what I do to anyone who gets between us.”


  The Unimancers cheered. General Kanakia had retreated to report their triumph before some nervous government fired off a nuke.

  Ruth had already snuck Aliyah into the bushes for a discreet kiss. Which might have been more discreet if when they’d kissed, they a) hadn’t blazed with Unimancy, and b) the flowers around them hadn’t swelled from desiccated remnants back into vibrant blossoms, popping open across the field in perfumed bursts.

  Imani kissed Paul hard enough to draw his attention. And for a moment, everything was all right. His wife was safe, Valentine was safe, the world was safe.

  His daughter was safe.

  For now.

  Imani pulled him tight, following his gaze to Aliyah. “You can’t keep her forever,” she told him.

  “I know.”

  “I’m proud of her.” Imani spoke cautiously, as if probing a fresh wound. “Are you proud of her?”

  He looked at his daughter’s protective black Kevlar, the way she high-fived the other Unimancers, the way her squadron thronged around her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

  He wanted to drag her away from the military and back to someplace she wouldn’t get hurt. She was still in danger; she would always be in danger. That fear would never subside.

  But then he focused on her triumphant smile as she hugged her friends: “We saved the world! We saved the goddamned world!”

  YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DAUGHTER IN WAYS YOU NEVER IMAGINED

  He had lost her.

  But she’d found herself.

  “Couldn’t be prouder,” he said.

  Epilogue

  Welcome to Morehead

  Eight Months Later

  * * *

  The people of Morehead came out to watch their broach get sealed – even though the government had warned them about the risk.