Broken Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  I manage to flip back over the table, land on the floor, and start in a belly crawl across the floor toward the door, steadfastly refusing to look behind me.

  Tabitha’s screams follow me out the door.

  TWENTY DEEPLY TRAUMATIC MINUTES LATER

  When she finally enters the conference room, Tabitha looks remarkably together. Her hair is even gelled into its two devil horns. The eyeliner is applied as thickly and neatly as ever. Every earring is in place. Even her scowl seems no different from the one she wears to the meeting room every day.

  Clyde rather ruins the impression.

  While not exactly neat at the best of times—Clyde has somehow managed to make it to thirty without learning how to use an iron—today’s look is a study in post-coital dishevelment. His shirt is buttoned wrong, pale white skin showing through the gaps. His tie hangs loose, on top of one half of his collar. One sleeve of his tweed jacket is rolled up to his elbow, though I have no idea how that could have happened. And somehow his trousers are on backwards.

  Felicity stares at them. “What the hell kept you?” she asks.

  I decided to not go into the details. I just told her Clyde had said they’d be twenty minutes, and then tried desperately to not think about why. I wish I knew which bit of my frontal cortex to jab the screwdriver into.

  I wait for Tabitha and Clyde’s answer with a sick sort of anticipation. It is like the train wreck you cannot help but stare at.

  “Accidental spill in the lab,” Tabitha says, channeling the rage of coitus interruptus into the words. “Took forever to clean it up.”

  “Caustic fluids lab, again,” Clyde says with an apologetic shrug. “Lost quite a bit of clothing to the accident. Which is why I had to get dressed again.”

  That last bit seems like a rather unnecessary detail, but the story is well rehearsed at least. I can almost convince myself that Tabitha was just helping him clean up… caustic fluid.

  I flashback again. No, I cannot quite believe that story. No matter how hard I try. I just cannot.

  Felicity shakes her head. “Seriously, Clyde? Again? I think I’m just not going to let you go in that closet ever again.”

  “Good idea,” I say before I can stop myself. Felicity stares at me, confused. “I totally agree,” I trail off.

  “Well, erm…” Felicity is still staring at me. “Thank you for the support on that one.” Her eyes flick to Hannah, who seems to have a far better idea of what I walked in on, and who is smirking deeply.

  “Maybe we can finally get down to it?” Felicity says.

  “The presentation,” I snap out. Oh God, I need to get more control over my tongue.

  Felicity is staring at me again. “Maybe a little less caffeine tomorrow morning,” she suggests.

  “Yes,” I say. “Of course. Just thought we should be specific about what it was. When you said…” I stop talking again. That would probably be best.

  Hannah’s smirk deepens.

  “The presentation, totally, of course.” Clyde seems to realize halfway to the front of the table that his trousers are on backwards. “Oh bugger,” I hear him whisper.

  He navigates his pocket awkwardly, reaching back around his thigh. “Is that a desk ornament in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?” He titters, high-pitched, looking wildly around the room, before retrieving the item and tugging it out.

  I reconsider whether the decision to not claw out my eyes was really such a good one.

  From the way Felicity is looking at me, I think she’s started to realize that something is a little off here.

  “OK.” Clyde sets the ornament down on the table, smooths his hair down three times in a row. It springs back up, ignoring him. “So the desk ornament. Did a little digging, dated the thing to the 1930s, so contemporaneous with Lang. In fact we have reason to think he might have been the designer. Mostly, I do have to admit, because he initialed it at the bottom. Not exactly Sherlock Holmes levels of detective work. Though to be honest, I think expecting that of anyone is a little absurd. I mean that’s only really workable in fiction where someone knows the results and is backward engineering everything. It assumes omniscience really. Which, actually, makes me think of a number of experiments I’d love to run. I need to remember to write a proposal up for them, because I really do think even limited omniscience could have some very interesting combat implications. Not just violent and strategic, but also empathic. Maybe get us to some more peaceful solutions. Not that any of that is relevant of course, but if I tell you, then perhaps one of you will remind me.” He looks around hopefully.

  “The ornament,” Felicity prompts.

  “Oh yes. Well, ran some initial tests on it. Metal. Quite an interesting alloy actually. Poor conductivity, which generally suggests it’s not a magical object.”

  “Wait,” Hannah holds up a hand, “is this all a long build-up to this being a desk ornament, or is there a good bit?”

  Tabitha’s eyes lock onto Hannah and look ready to deploy surface-to-air missiles.

  “He’s fucking explaining.”

  Ah, young love.

  “Well, to be fair,” Clyde says, “and I do think fairness is an important place for us to start from. Not that that’s really a revolutionary idea. Fundamental starting point of at least a few major world religions that I can think of, anyway. But, to Hannah’s point, I could probably cut…” He pulls a notebook out of his pocket, flicks it open, and scans a page. “Well, about the first twenty minutes of this if you just want to cut to what it does?”

  “God, yes.” Felicity echoes the sentiment of the room. Well, the sentiment of everyone except possibly Tabitha.

  “Well, it’s interesting actually. Totally Tabby’s idea. Moment of utter brilliance on her part. You see it’s all to do with the asymmetrical grooves on the sides.” He indicates the lines that stutter back and forth down the long sides of the ornament. “You have to line them up, you see. But there’s no way to actually do that. The way the thing pivots you can’t do it.”

  He starts to wrench at it. With a series of grinding clicks, he transforms the ornament into a twisted polyhedron that vaguely resembles a drunk tower of Pisa. He waves it at us. “Useless, see?”

  Hannah’s eyes narrow. “This is the bit where it does something, right?”

  “Trust me,” I say, “this is the short version.”

  “Giving context,” Tabitha snaps. “Important to understanding.” She makes it sound like the last term is going to be a bit of a reach for Hannah and myself. I’m not entirely sure I deserve to be painted with the same brush here.

  “Oh, yes,” Clyde says, “got a little sidetracked, but I really do want you to understand how brilliant Tabby was here. Would never have got here in a hundred years. Well…” He considers, “Actually a hundred years is probably a viable time frame. Terribly long time, actually, a hundred years. I mean if you consider the twentieth century as a whole for example. We hadn’t even hit the World Wars going into it, and we were in the digital age at the end. Plenty of unthinkable things had been thought. Mind-boggling actually. So, yes, probably would have thought of it in a hundred years. Just trial-and-error by that point. Fifty years… Erm, ten, well, erm, maybe… probably would have taken me a week or so. That’s probably accurate. But, well, world on the line and all that, speed being of the essence probably. At least, I assume it is. It does tend to be in these situations. World-ending threats do always seem to be on a tight timeline. Maybe that’s why they fail so often. If they just gave themselves more time to plan it all out. I don’t know… Anyway, Tabby really cut the time down, that’s what I’m trying to communicate.”

  “How?” Felicity’s one word is a gong ringing out loud against the background babble.

  “Oh, hadn’t I got there yet?” Clyde looks genuinely surprised. “Sorry. Gives you a sense of how overwhelming Tabby’s brilliance was, really. Totally leading me—”

  “How?” Felicity’s voice rings out again.

  “Oh ye
s,” Clyde says. “There I go again.”

  “HOW?”

  Clyde blanches. “You have to twist it through realities,” he says in a rush. “The physics of it don’t work out in our reality, but with a little…” He pops a silver-cadmium battery into his mouth in a surprisingly smooth motion, and then twists at the ornament again.

  There is no grinding this time. Instead there is a crackle and the sound of things sliding smoothly. In Clyde’s hands the ornament seems to… fold, somehow. It is shorter, longer, sections glide through each other as if suddenly insubstantial. It spits blue sparks.

  And then Clyde spits the battery out, and is holding a simple rectangle again. In fact it looks exactly like it did before. Except now the grooves along the long sides are perfectly aligned.

  “Sooo…” Hannah drags the word out. “Basically it’s a magical Rubik’s Cube?” As much as I think Hannah could be giving out a slightly more positive vibe this morning, I am also wallowing in a similar amount of underwhelm-ment.

  Tabitha grins. “Not exactly.”

  Clyde sets the ornament gingerly down on the table. Suddenly the base of it is suffused with blue light. It spreads up the grooves, growing brighter as it goes, almost white at the tip. Slowly the four corner sections seem to almost ripple. And then it blooms, a flower opening steel petals, spreading back with a series of mechanical clicks to reveal a column of blue light within, that shines brighter, brighter, a tiny newborn sun in the heart of the room, flooding it with cold light.

  My vision burns, whites out, something deep in the base of my skull seems to click, and I wince, bracing for pain that doesn’t come—

  And then it’s over. Then we’re standing in conference room B, staring at Clyde who’s standing in front of a rectangular desk ornament with a series of stagger-stepped grooves running up its four long sides.

  “Neat, right?” says Clyde.

  There is a long pause. Hannah breaks the silence. “Is this one of those things that’s much cooler when you’re high?”

  “It’s a key!” Clyde stares at us as if he can’t believe we didn’t get it.

  “Maybe,” I venture, “this is where that context might have been useful.”

  “Told you.” Tabitha shakes her head.

  “Huzzah!” says Clyde, pulling his notebook back out of his pocket. “I mean, yes, of course. You see a lot of this stuff is years ahead of its time. The whole folding the column through space to align the grooves. There wasn’t a working theory on that until the late sixties. Theory. I think the first documented case of someone successfully doing it isn’t until the late seventies. And Lang was doing this back in the thirties. It’s incredible!”

  “The light,” Tabitha cuts in. “Not actually the important bit. Side effect of putting out strong thaumatic frequency.”

  “Thaumatic what?” Hannah is fighting the cross-eyed look.

  “Just go with it,” I say. “Even after they explain it, it won’t make any sense.”

  “Well,” says Clyde, utterly oblivious to my snark, “each reality has its own thaumatic frequency. I mean, that’s the theory, about how we’re reaching through realities. It’s all to do with aligning the frequencies of the thaumatospheres, creating a junction. That’s how the composite reality works, pretty much. It’s this massive symphony of thaumatic resonance. All the frequencies meshing together to make one whole.”

  Hannah is definitely looking a little askance at the world right now.

  “Told you,” I say.

  “And Lang, well he must have been a master at manipulating those frequencies. I mean this thing is quite ingenious.”

  “Tabitha,” Felicity cuts in, “maybe we can cut to layman’s terms.”

  Tabby tears her eyes away from Clyde, glowering. “Fine,” she says. “Luddites. To do with pocket realities. Lang made one. Little section of some other-where, tucked off from the mainstream composite reality. This is the key. Unlocks it. Lets you in.”

  Pocket reality. My job is full of things that sound awesome right up until you have to actually deal with them.

  “So,” I say, “that thing opens a door into another reality?”

  Clyde nods enthusiastically. “I know! It’s brilliant.” Then his brow creases. “Again with all the caveats about Lang being an absolute arsehole of the highest magnitude. It really is a shame.”

  “And what’s in this reality?”

  Tabitha looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Don’t know. Haven’t been there. But what would you put in a secret reality only you can access?”

  Hannah leans forward, both elbows on the table. “Secrets,” she says, her grin broad.

  And yes, that does make sense. A hidden key for a hidden pocket of reality. It’s not exactly going to be something he created to deal with his lack of closet space.

  Which leads to the next question.

  “OK,” I say, “so now we have a door to kick down, how exactly do we find it?”

  21

  Tabitha looks from me to Clyde. “Fucked system,” she says very deliberately.

  I realize that it would be very hard to tell if Tabitha ever spontaneously developed Tourette’s.

  Still, Clyde reaching across the table and high-fiving her is probably a fair sign that didn’t just happen.

  “The what?” I manage.

  Tabitha rolls her eyes at my ineptitude. “Functional Userface for Counter-Thaumaturgy. F.U.C.T. FUCT system.”

  I glance at Felicity. She shrugs apologetically. “Unfortunate acronym.”

  Hannah is laughing silently to herself, shoulders shaking. “God,” she manages, “I can’t bloody tell if this is the worst military intelligence division or the best. I really can’t.”

  Felicity’s face hardens. Tension knots around the corners of her eyes. And something is going on. Something more than just her desire to make Hannah feel at home. I should have asked her about it on the way home from the club last night, but it’s hard to launch into what you know will be an exhausting conversation when you’re already exhausted.

  “Best.” Tabitha stabs the word across the table. “Fucking obviously.”

  Kayla shrugs. “Meh.”

  I resist the urge to bounce my forehead off the table’s surface. Instead I say, “I realize that getting us back on track is a perilous and likely fruitless thing for me to try, but what exactly is the F.U.C.T. System—” I am careful to simply spell out the acronym, “—and how do we use it?”

  “Database,” Tabitha says, flipping her laptop open. “Created in the early eighties, during magical arms race. Government got paranoid. Worried about thaumaturgical bombs. Dirty magic. Wanted an early-warning system. Created the FUCT system.” She doesn’t spell it out.

  “In case we were ever fecked,” Kayla contributes. Hannah snorts. Tabitha rolls her eyes.

  “It was a huge undertaking, actually,” Clyde cuts in. “Really quite impressive. I mean, assuming you’re the sort of person who is impressed by the scale of government-sponsored undertakings. You might not be of course. In fact, it might be fair to assume that you’re not. Can’t really see it being everyone’s cup of tea. Might have been poor word choice on my part. Maybe I should have gone with ‘noteworthy,’ or possibly even ‘surprising,’ though that also makes some assumptions about your expectations from the government. Very tricky thing this whole language nonsense.”

  “Focus,” I suggest.

  “Oh yes,” Clyde says. “Well, essentially they mapped the thaumaturgical frequencies of the United Kingdom. Went around, took a lot of measurements. Not an easy thing to do by any means, because, well, what they discovered was that it fluctuates. The thaumaturgic resonance of any one place has a certain amount of wobble. And thaumaturgic activity in an area can throw the wobble even further out of whack. I mean, our own activities… we’re changing that map ourselves. That’s why I try to log all magical activity at the end of every month. The system has an algorithm built in to try to grow over time, but it’s very tricky. Still, at a la
rge scale it’s still pretty accurate. Best thing we have. London, for example, has a pretty constant background resonance of forty-seven to fifty-two Woltz.”

  “Waltz?” asks Hannah. “You have to dance to measure magic?”

  “Oh no,” Clyde says with a guileless shake of his head. “Spelled with an ‘O’ instead of an ‘A.’ Named after Eugene Woltz. Estonian chap who developed the whole system. Defector from the USSR. Probably explains why the FUCT acronym is what it is. English as a second language and all that. Probably someone should have mentioned it to him. But, ah well. Anyway, a nice chap, though unfortunately rather violently dead. Tends to be a habit with pioneering thaumaturgists. That’s why I stick to the tried and true. Too much respect for keeping my spine within my body to be a real pioneer, unfortunately.”

  I’m not sure that last sentence really deserves an “unfortunately.”

  “But,” I say, “if the system is so inaccurate, can it really help us?”

  “Yes,” Tabitha cuts in. “Obviously. Why I mentioned it.” She shakes her head, momentarily overcome by the sadness caused by my mental inadequacies. “Pocket reality. Stable anomaly. Shows up.”

  Hannah and I both say, “Erm,” at the same time.

  “Oh,” Clyde cuts in. “So yes, the wobble. It makes picking up fine fluctuations difficult. Actually buggered the whole system from being able to do what it was meant to be able to do. The system has a very bad name because of it.”

  “Worse than FUCT?” I ask, slightly dubious.

  “Well, that is the bad name,” Clyde says.

  That makes about as much sense as anything.

  “But, what it is good for is spotting large scale patterns and anything stable. London is a large scale pattern. We get the consistent Woltz reading for it. Anything big like that isn’t going to change much. Except Sheffield. Sheffield’s just weird. But, also anything that’s going to be stable for a very long time is going to be easy to detect. Like a pocket reality that’s going to exist indefinitely. Going to be, by definition, incredibly stable. Needs to be so the key can get into it.”