An Unwelcome Quest (Magic 2.0 Book 3)

by Scott Meyer

  “It’s like he’s caught in a loop,” Phillip muttered.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy agreed. “I think he’s waiting for a response. Something he’ll recognize.”

  A rock only slightly smaller than a softball arced heavily through the air and bounced off the old man’s head. The rock fell to the ground with a dull thud, but the old man remained motionless, as if he had been hit with a Ping-Pong ball.

  The wizards all turned to Gary, who was massaging his throwing arm. He said, “I wanted to see if he’d recognize that as a response.”

  Phillip said, “Fair enough. All right, fellows, what say we get out of here? Put a hand in, everyone.” Phillip put his hand forward. Tyler, Jeff, and Gary placed their hands on Phillip’s, making physical contact so that his spell would transport them as well. They looked at Jimmy, as if irritated that he was making them wait. Jimmy placed his hand on the pile. Phillip and Tyler looked at him as if irritated that they were having to touch him.

  Phillip said, “Prenu min hejme,” which made him smile, not only because it was the spell that would get them out of there, but because it was Esperanto for “Take me home,” and was, as such, a Phil Collins reference.

  Phillip’s smile faded when they went nowhere. He tried his spell again; then the other wizards tried theirs. Attempts were made to fly and to create food or gold from thin air. Nothing worked. They were without their powers. Suddenly, the sheer cliffs that surrounded them looked more menacing; the narrow bridge leading to relative safety, more precarious; and the artificial old man standing silently, studying them, much more sinister.

  “I can see you are men of valor,” the old man said. “Which of you shall lead his fellows on this quest?”

  Gary looked to Phillip and asked, “What should we do?”

  The wizards all looked to Phillip, who thought for a moment, then said, “Well, we have two choices. We can be proactive, give him the input he wants, and see where this leads. Or, we can be passive. We don’t do anything that he might construe as input. We just wait here and see what happens. Maybe in the meantime we’ll think of something. You all know me. I think you’ll all know which way I’m leaning.”

  The wizards sat down and settled in to do some serious waiting.

  4.

  Gwen was busy at her sewing machine. Whenever she and Martin were fighting, she would try to distract herself with her work. Lately, she had been getting a lot of work done.

  She thought of designing and making clothes as her work, even though nobody paid her to do it. She didn’t need them to. She was a wizard, or, as they were called in her home in Atlantis, a sorceress. She had access to unlimited funds, so she didn’t need to earn money. She measured the success of her efforts in how many of her fellow sorceresses wanted her to make clothes for them, and by that measure she was quite successful indeed.

  She finished a seam, then held the fabric up to the light to examine her work. It was nice and straight, not that it mattered. The fabric she was sewing had such a busy pattern that any minor mistakes she made would have been hidden. She looked at the pattern and frowned. She always made bold, exuberant garments when she and Martin were fighting. It was a sign of depression. When she was in a good mood, her tastes ran a little more Goth.

  She reached for the next piece of fabric, and was about to start on the seam when the doorbell rang. Her frown deepened. It was nearly ten at night, and the only person who would show up at her door at this time of night would be Martin. That meant he probably wanted to make up, which was good, but they had only had their argument three hours ago. She wasn’t quite ready to make nice yet. She put down her sewing and walked to the door.

  When she opened it, she was not surprised to see Martin standing outside.

  Martin said, “Gwen, we gotta talk.”

  Gwen replied, “I don’t want to talk right now.” She looked puzzled when she noticed that Martin was not alone. “You’ve got Roy with you.”

  Roy stood in the darkness several feet behind Martin, holding his billiards bridge, wearing the tan trench coat that he used as a wizard robe and the long, pointed wizard hat that he’d modified with the brim of a gray fedora. He looked like a grim film-noir version of Wee Willie Winkie. He’d look out of place anywhere, but standing next to Martin in his shiny silver wizard hat and robe on a balmy tropical evening in the glowing, mythical city of Atlantis, he seemed even more incongruous.

  Martin said, “Yes. Roy is with me.”

  Gwen asked, “Why?”

  Roy said, “In order to explain that, the boy would have to talk.”

  Martin asked, “Can we come in?”

  She stood aside to let them enter.

  She knew Roy. He and Jeff seemed close to inseparable. Gwen’s relationship with Roy was awkward, which was an improvement; at first it had been downright uncomfortable. Part of it was probably generational. Sure, he looked much older than she did, but with time travelers that meant nothing. Mentally, she was much older than she looked, but they had been raised in very different times. Part of it was that he was military and she, very much, was not. Mostly, it was just that Roy always seemed to be on edge whenever Gwen was around. She couldn’t relax in the company of someone who couldn’t relax. The fact he often called her either “miss” or “young lady” hadn’t helped much either. Since she appeared to be in her early twenties, and had a petite build and a cute brown pixie haircut, he had difficulty getting it into his head that mentally she was close to his age.

  Martin stalked in silently. Roy removed his hat as he entered, exposing his thinning gray crew cut. He looked around the room, which looked more like the remnants section of a fabric store than a person’s home. He said, “Hello, miss. It’s good to see you again.”

  Gwen said, “Good to see you, Roy. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Roy thanked her, and continued to stand by the door, holding his hat. She turned her attention to Martin.

  “So,” she asked, “how was bad-movie night?”

  “The first movie was slow and plodding, and ended with a tremendous bummer.”

  Gwen said, “Par for the course, then.”

  “Better than usual, actually,” Martin said. “Then everyone vanished.”

  “Everyone in the movie disappeared?” Gwen asked.

  Martin said, “No, the movie was over. We were about to start the second one and everyone but Roy and me just disappeared.”

  “I see,” Gwen said. “Don’t you think they’re just messing with you?”

  Martin rolled his eyes. “Gwen, Gary’s involved. Of course we thought they were messing with us, but after half an hour of waiting around for the live skunk or whatever to materialize, we began to think something was up. Finally we went to my place and checked the file, and their coordinates make no sense. The longitude and latitude have been replaced with a line of code that calls out to some sort of secondary program.”

  “Did you try to pull them back?” Gwen asked.

  “Yeah, but the file wouldn’t let us. We couldn’t change anything, and while we were trying, we noticed something else. Their settings have been reset. Wherever they are, they don’t have their powers, and they can get hurt.”

  Martin could have predicted Gwen’s thought. It had been the first thing to cross his mind when he’d found all of this out.

  Gwen said, “Jimmy’s finally made his move.”

  Roy said, “Maybe.”

  Martin said, “I think so.”

  Jimmy, as well as Phillip and Gwen, was one of the first wizards to show up in this time period, and he had been a problem from day one. Like all the worst problems, he didn’t seem so bad at first. He was personable and always happy to help with whatever you were doing. Over time it became clear that he was also willing to take control of and credit for whatever you were doing, and that he was personable enough to make it stick. Eventually he wormed his way
into a position of some power, both over the wizards and the normal citizens of Medieval England. He went mad with power and ended up accidentally killing a great many people and deliberately harming plenty of others.

  As a punishment, the wizards cut off his access to the file that was the source of all their powers and exiled him to his own time, where he spent thirty years alone and destitute, struggling to make his way back. When he finally returned, he claimed to be remorseful and threw himself on the mercy of the other wizards, who let him stay, but on the condition that he submit to constant supervision. They did this partly because they wanted to believe that a person could redeem himself, but mostly because none of them trusted Jimmy, and they wanted to keep an eye on him. They hoped that if they kept him under surveillance, and controlled what powers he was allowed to use, they could prevent him from doing any real damage. Martin and Phillip in particular thought that eventually Jimmy would be a problem again.

  It seemed that eventually was today.

  “We pulled up Jimmy’s entry in the file,” Martin said. “Wherever the guys are, Jimmy’s there too.”

  Roy said, “And?”

  “And it looks like his settings have been reset too,” Martin said, “but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It means he’s just as vulnerable as the others,” Roy said.

  “Or so it seems,” Martin said. “But that might be what he wants us to think.”

  Roy frowned. “Kid, you’re giving Jimmy an awful lot of credit.”

  Gwen said, “Roy, you weren’t here when Jimmy tried to get rid of us. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

  “You’re right that I wasn’t here,” Roy said, “but I know full well what he’s capable of. I know he didn’t try to get rid of all of you. He tried to kill you. I know that if I had been there, he might not still be around to bother us today.”

  Martin started to object, but Roy stopped him with a raised finger and a change to a more conciliatory tone. “I’m not saying I’d have caught him any easier, just that if I’d been around when you were trying to decide what to do with him afterward, I would’ve argued against leaving him alive to stew in his own juices for thirty years.”

  “So you’d have killed him,” Gwen said.

  “Yes. I wouldn’t have been happy about it, and I wouldn’t have been in a hurry to do it myself, but yes. Sometimes you have a terrible situation, and you just have to deal with it. Right now, four of our friends, and maybe Jimmy, are in danger. We have to deal with that. Instead, we’re just doing a lot of talking.”

  Gwen said, “We don’t know for sure that they’re in danger.”

  “No, Gwen,” Martin said, gently. “Roy and I have been over this.”

  “At length,” Roy muttered.

  “Jimmy, or whoever did this, deliberately made it possible to hurt them. They didn’t do that for no reason.”

  Gwen thought a moment, then said, “Yeah, you’re right. We have to do something.”

  Martin said, “Agreed.”

  Roy said, “Finally.”

  Gwen said, “We should go talk to Brit.”

  “Good idea,” Martin said, brightly, as Roy groaned.

  5.

  An hour later, the wizards were getting restless. Not answering the same question every thirty seconds will do that. The sun had come up, and the wizards could see their surroundings better. They stood on a tall chunk of craggy granite that fell away to fatal drops in all directions but one. The horizon was a random jumble of jagged gray mountains with patches of snow toward their peaks. The space between them and the horizon was filled with smaller peaks that were less snowcapped but every bit as jagged. The idea of attempting to travel through this landscape on foot strengthened their resolve to stay exactly where they were.

  They also noticed that they were all uncomfortably cold. None of them had experienced that in quite some time. The modifications they had made to the file kept them comfortable regardless of the ambient temperature. If that modification had been rescinded, they couldn’t help wondering which of their other changes had been undone.

  As the sun rose, they were also able to get a better look at the old man. He remained motionless, except for slight head and mouth movements. He still held his lantern high, though now, in the light of day, its flame seemed weak and insubstantial. The man himself looked sickly and unnatural. His skin was a little too glossy, his movements a little too smooth.

  Yet again, the old man said, “I can see you are men of valor. Which of you shall lead his fellows on this quest?”

  Jeff said, “Look, guys, I think it’s just going to keep saying that until we either give it an answer or starve to death.”

  Jimmy said, “We’d die of thirst, not starvation.”

  Tyler said, “You’re right, ’cause I’d kill you and eat you first.”

  Jimmy smiled. “Tyler, that’s the closest thing to a compliment you’ve said to me in a very long time.”

  Tyler started to reply, but Jeff interrupted. “Okay, look, we can sit here waiting for him to tire out, which I’m pretty sure isn’t going to happen, or we can try something else, right?”

  “Like what?” Phillip asked.

  “How about if we start feeding him inputs he doesn’t expect. Maybe we can force an error.”

  They waited for the old man to ask his question again. It seemed to take longer now that they were wanting it to happen. They were so focused that a couple of them were startled when the old man said, “I can see you are men of valor. Which of you shall lead his fellows on this quest?”

  Phillip, speaking as clearly as he could, said, “Winston Churchill.”

  The old man froze for a moment, then said, “Can you please repeat that?”

  “Winston Churchill,” Phillip said.

  The old man froze again, then said, “Can you please repeat that?”

  Jimmy said, “James Kirk.”

  “Can you please repeat that?”

  “James Kirk.”

  “Can you please repeat that?”

  Tyler tried. “Jean-Luc Picard.”

  “Who’s that?” Phillip asked.

  “Can you please repeat that?” the old man asked.

  Tyler shook his head. “Seriously, Phil, sometimes you just make me sad.”

  “Fine,” a distant, hollow voice cried out, seemingly from all around them. “You bunch of jerks. You just aren’t gonna take this seriously, are you?”

  “Maybe we would,” Phillip yelled, “if we knew who we were dealing with.”

  The voice said, “Heh, I doubt it.”

  In the empty space above the old man, a point of light appeared, expanding from nothing and cascading downward and outward until it formed a rectangle about ten feet wide and six feet high. The rectangle had a gray border, thin on the bottom and sides but thick on top. The upper-right corner of the border held pictograms of a line, a box, and an X. Inside the border was a head-and-shoulders image of a man. The area behind the man’s right shoulder was dark. Behind his left shoulder, it was light. At first, Phillip thought this was meant to make some point, but then he realized that he was looking into someone’s home. The dark area was a wall with wood paneling. The light area was the entryway to what looked like a kitchen. The man in the center of the frame had aged since they last saw him and had changed his hair. He was well into his late thirties and was wearing glasses and a headset with a microphone, but they still all recognized him immediately.

  “Todd,” Jeff said. “What is this?”

  “Overdue,” Todd answered. “You had to know you’d be dealing with me again. You can’t really have thought you’d gotten rid of me.”

  “Yes,” Phillip said. “We did! Because we had! We were rid of you, and I’m sure we still would be if Jimmy here hadn’t sought you out.”

  Jimmy started to defend himself but w
as drowned out, surprisingly, by Todd defending him.

  “Now, now, don’t blame Jimmy. I’d have found a way out of prison eventually on my own; he just made it easier. Besides, it’s not like I got out and immediately decided to come after you all.”

  “It isn’t? Seems like it to me,” Gary asked.

  “No,” Todd said. “See, guys, in prison, I had time to think. I spent a lot of time planning revenge, but then I remembered something I’d heard a long time ago. ‘Living well is the best revenge.’ So that’s what I decided to do. I would get my revenge by ignoring you small-minded, backstabbing idiots and having a better life than any of you.”

  Phillip asked, “Then why are we here?”

  “Don’t jump ahead,” Todd scolded. “When I got access to the file again, I jumped back in time to the late sixties and set up a false identity. Then I jumped to the mideighties and enrolled in Stanford. While I was there I networked. I learned a lot more about computers than I already knew, and I cheated on exams. Lots of exams. I graduated just in time to get hired on at a string of gaming companies. I let myself age naturally to a nice, respectable thirty-nine years old, then stopped it again, just to keep up appearances. Turns out you can hover at thirty-nine for quite a while before anybody notices. Anyway, for the last twenty years I’ve worked in the gaming industry, creating video games and amassing quite a personal fortune, all on the up-and-up. I’ve gained wisdom. I’ve matured. Also, I’ve spent most of my off time playing around with the file. Seeing what I could do.”

  Jeff asked, “What games have you worked on?”

  Todd said, “Mostly shovel-ware and cheap games tied to superhero movies. I didn’t want to draw a lot of attention to myself.”

  “Well,” Phillip said, “I must say, this is all great news, Todd. You turned away from violence. You made something of yourself. Clearly, you’ve evaded detection. You should be very proud of yourself.”

  “I am,” Todd said.