The Magic Factory

by Morgan Rice

  Tongue-tied, Oliver looked up into his face. The boy frowned. He seemed perplexed by Oliver’s hesitation.

  “How about we tell each other our names first?” the boy said, kindly. He held out a hand to Oliver. “I’m Ralph Black.”

  Oliver looked at the hand, the extension of friendship. Though somewhat wary of this stranger who’d appeared out of nowhere, Oliver had never needed a friend so much in his life as he did right now. And Ralph certainly seemed trustworthy.

  After some deliberation, Oliver took the boy’s bony-fingered hand in his own and shook.

  “I’m Oliver,” he said. “Oliver Blue.”

  Ralph’s expression suddenly changed, from one of open friendliness to one of complete shock. His green eyes widened.

  “You’re Oliver?” he exclaimed. “Are you really? What a stroke of luck! I thought you’d be older! Taller, too.”

  The news seemed to be very welcome to Ralph but Oliver had no idea why. Ralph started circling him, suddenly enthused, commenting aloud on how Oliver just wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Oliver wanted to know exactly how Ralph had been expecting anything in the first place! How could there be a boy in 1944 who was waiting to meet him?

  “I really thought I was going to have to be waiting much longer to find you,” Ralph said.

  He pulled Oliver in for a hug, then let go and held Oliver by the shoulders at arm’s length.

  “What’s with the outfit?” he asked, frowning curiously. “You trying to go incognito? Good thing I spoke to you because I’d never have realized it was you in that garb. Could’ve completely missed you. I was expecting you to be in jeans and a shirt. That’s what kids from the third millennium wear, isn’t it?”

  Oliver looked down at his 1940s overalls. It was true that he blended right in with the era.

  “It’s a long story,” Oliver said, not really sure what was going on. “Wait. The third millennium? What do you mean by that?”

  The whole exchange was utterly baffling to Oliver. But at the same time he couldn’t help but get caught up in Ralph’s excitement. Even though he didn’t understand how or why, it was very evident to him now that he was supposed to be here. He was supposed to be in 1944, standing outside Illstrom’s Inventions with this boy, Ralph Black. It made him feel a lot less lost to know he was no longer floundering around helplessly in the past on his own.

  “Come on then,” Ralph said brightly, ignoring his question. “No point hanging around here. We’d better go.”

  “Go?” Oliver asked. “Go where?”

  Ralph stopped and looked at him, frowning. “School,” he stated. “Obviously.” When all Oliver did was raise his eyebrows in confusion, Ralph added, “I mean, that’s why you came here, isn’t it? Why you came back to 1944?”

  Oliver shook his head. “I… no, not really. I didn’t mean to come back in time. It was sort of an accident.”

  Ralph looked puzzled. But it lasted only briefly before he gave a nonchalant shrug. “Well, it’s not like history is fixed. And I guess I wouldn’t have been sent here to wait for you if there was no chance of you turning up early. This must be a timeline where you come back in time accidentally rather than after being told that you’re supposed to.” He shrugged again. “Anyway, we’d better go. We don’t want to miss dinner.”

  He went to walk away but Oliver wasn’t about to just follow. He stood his ground.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,” he said to Ralph’s back.

  Ralph stopped and turned to face him, blinking as if perplexed. “Don’t understand what?”

  “That I came back in time to go to school,” Oliver stammered. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

  “Of course it does,” Ralph said, pacing back to where Oliver was standing. “How else are you supposed to learn?”

  “How about at one of the million schools that exist in the third millennium!” Oliver told him, repeating his strange phraseology from earlier and throwing his arms wide with exasperation.

  Ralph looked even more confused. “What are you talking about? There’s only one school in the entirety of the universe that teaches Seers!”

  Oliver froze. Seers. He thought about Armando, about how he’d started to tell him about how he was a Seer before abruptly ending the conversation.

  “You mean to say…” Oliver began, his voice a stunned whisper.

  Ralph interrupted. “Yes. I’m taking you to the School for Seers. You are a Seer, aren’t you? Untrained and in need of study?”

  Oliver paced away, shaking his head with disbelief. This was what Armando had been keeping from him! This school in the past that he was supposed to attend!

  But then he remembered how Armando had told him he was the only living Seer in the world. Confused, he turned back to Ralph.

  “Are you a Seer too?”

  Ralph grinned. “Yup.”

  “But how?” Oliver asked. “I was told I was the only one in the world.”

  Ralph began to chuckle. “A trick of semantics,” he said. “Whoever told you that had a bit of a sense of humor.”

  Oliver frowned. There wasn’t anything funny about any of this as far as he was concerned.

  “Please,” he said to Ralph. “I’ve gone through a lot and my mind is jumbled. Can you please just explain things to me in a way I can understand?”

  Ralph took him by the shoulders. “I’m taking you to the School for Seers so you can train and learn to hone your powers. All the Seers from all the different dimensions come here to learn. So yes, you may have been the only Seer in your world, but there are many, many more of us, all from different timelines and parallel worlds. We all come here, to this exact time and place at some point in our lives, because it’s the only one where the School for Seers exists.”

  Oliver felt like he’d been winded. It took all his effort just to suck air into his lungs. Any second now, he felt like he might faint from shock. This was all too much to take in. If it hadn’t been for Ralph’s steady hand on his shoulder, he might just have fallen to his knees.

  Breathing deeply, he gazed up into Ralph’s trusting green eyes.

  “And you’re telling the truth?” Oliver challenged. It was as if part of his mind just couldn’t accept or believe this could be real. “There really are more Seers? A whole school of students?”

  If the boy was telling the truth then he wasn’t the only Seer alive. There were more like him. He wasn’t a weird loner freak.

  “There’s plenty more where I came from,” Ralph said with a nod. “Well, not where but when. You know what I mean.”

  Oliver didn’t, not fully, but it was starting to sink in. And the more it did, the crazier it seemed.

  He paced away from Ralph, running his trembling fingers through his sandy blond hair, and muttered aloud, “A school that trains Seers? In a precise moment in time and space?” He looked back at Ralph. “And you were told to come and collect me, from this exact point in time?”

  Ralph nodded. “Well, not a precise time as such. Like I said, history can change. But, yes, more or less, I was told to come and find you.”

  Oliver couldn’t wrap his head around it. The mere concept of parallel worlds was a paradox. Theoretically possible but impossible in practice. But right now Oliver had much more pressing questions than how such a thing was possible. What he really needed to know was…

  “Why?”

  Ralph frowned. “Why what?”

  “Why?” Oliver repeated. “Why is there a school for Seers? Why were you sent for me? Why am I supposed to go there?”

  Ralph paused for a long moment, twisting his mouth to the side as though in deep contemplation. Finally, he shrugged.

  “I don’t know exactly,” he explained. “Professor Amethyst—he’s the head teacher, by the way—told me that if you find out everything in one go your mind explodes. Literally. So you’ll get all the answers to your specific whys eventually. But in the meantime, the general gist is that you have a special role to play in protectin
g humanity. An important quest that you’ll need to train your powers for.”

  He said it with such a blasé tone that Oliver could almost accept that it was no big deal. Only it was a big deal. It was a very big deal indeed! Everything Ralph had told him bordered on lunacy. What if he’d just wandered into the path of a madman and fallen for his ramblings?

  But no. Time travel was real. He’d seen it with his own eyes. And Armando had told him he was a Seer. What were the chances of him crossing paths with a mad boy who just happened to know about Seers? It was far more likely that Ralph was exactly who he said he was, that Oliver himself really was destined to attend the School for Seers.

  But what if he didn’t want to? What if he just wanted a normal life?

  He thought of the alternative: Campbell Junior High. Other than Ms. Belfry’s science class, the place was awful. Would he really prefer to go back to his old life, to Chris’s bullying and Mr. Portendorfer calling him Tony to purposely annoy him? And what about Armando? Back in Oliver’s life, his hero and mentor was dead. But here, in 1944, Armando was alive. If he stayed and developed his powers, was there a chance he could change the course of history and save Armando’s life in the present day?

  “I can tell you’re not convinced,” Ralph said, interrupting his swirling thoughts. “There’s still time to turn around if you want to. A small window of time. But I wouldn’t if I were you. You might not get another chance to come back. It’s not like people can just walk in and out of the School for Seers whenever they want to. If you go now, you might never be able to come back to this point in time and space.”

  Oliver shook his head, grappling with his dilemma. “It’s just a big decision to make. I don’t even know you. You could be lying about everything.”

  “I can prove it to you,” Ralph said. “Although, Doctor Ziblatt called me the worst student the School for Seers has ever had. So you’ll have to bear with me.”

  He grinned, clearly unfazed by the moniker, then reached down and picked up a crisp leaf from the sidewalk. He placed it in his palm and turned his attention to it. Oliver watched on curiously.

  Ralph’s gaze became very soft and unfocused, like someone going into a state of hypnosis. For a long time nothing happened. Oliver started to feel even more like this was all some crazy hoax, or something he was imagining. But then, the leaf began to change. Very slowly, its sides began to curl inward. Oliver gasped as he realized it was starting to shrivel and die. Its orange color dulled to brown. Then suddenly it turned to powder in Ralph’s palm before blowing away on the gentle breeze.

  Oliver’s mouth fell open. He looked up at Ralph in shock and awe. He’d never seen anything like it. But here was the evidence. It was all real. It really was.

  “Phew,” Ralph said, wiping perspiration from his forehead. “I was worried that wasn’t going to work.”

  He smiled, quickly returning to his jovial self, to the kind, green-eyed boy who put Oliver at ease.

  “So?” he asked. “There’s still time to change your mind. You don’t have to find out about your quest if you don’t want to. But take it from me, you won’t find any answers back in your old life.” His tone took on a gentle cajoling. “Come to the School for Seers with me and find out what your destiny really is. Come on.”

  Oliver stood frozen to the spot. His mind repeated over and over the moment of magic Ralph had shown him, while the boy’s words echoed in his ears. It was a monumental choice to make.

  Except, what choice did he really have? The time machine that had brought him here had blown up. It didn’t exist anymore. He was stuck. Either he wandered around aimlessly in the past, or he took a chance and went to the school.

  With a gulp, Oliver made up his mind. “Okay. I’ll do it. I’m coming with you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ralph and Oliver headed along the street, which was familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time, with shorter buildings and not a single high-rise blotting the horizon. Strange old cars passed them, the men inside wearing fedora hats. Many of the lots weren’t even developed yet, though in Oliver’s time there were warehouses or apartments buildings there. They passed a school where children in old-fashioned gray clothing played with wooden hoops. It all felt so strange and eerie to Oliver. He could still not quite believe he was in 1944.

  They reached an old sign between two warehouses and Ralph stopped, then pointed up. Oliver drew up beside him and looked up. The sign was made of wood and iron, the type you’d see in a historic village outside the drinking tavern. Oliver noticed a symbol embossed into the rusted iron. It looked like a ring, or a hoop. At three evenly spaced intervals around the hoop was the same image of an eye.

  “What is that?” Oliver asked.

  “That is the symbol for the School for Seers,” Ralph said. “A loop to signify that time isn’t linear, and the eyes to signify seeing in all directions; present, future, and past. Only Seers can see the symbol. For the rest of the world, this is just an ordinary sign. Whenever you see the symbol, it will guide you back to the school. Right this way.”

  He bounded off. Oliver thought Ralph seemed far too nonchalant about everything. His laid-back attitude was in stark contrast to how Oliver felt. Oliver felt like the ground was barely solid beneath his feet, like his whole life had been tipped upside down and shaken around. He’d hardly had time to come to grips with his new status as a Seer before Armando’s death, his sudden propulsion back in time, and the meeting with Ralph. His head was still spinning from it all.

  Oliver followed Ralph into the shadowy back alley. He shivered. It was much colder in the darkness. He was only wearing his thin workman’s overalls. He felt very underprepared for whatever was about to happen.

  There were many other passageways coming off the alley, and Oliver followed Ralph down a very narrow one. It reminded him of the mazelike corridors of Armando’s factory, and the strangely narrow one that led to his secret room. The walls on either side of him were very high; there was only a sliver of sky above his head. At points the alleyway became so narrow his shoulders brushed the walls either side.

  At last they stopped and Ralph crouched down beside a shrub growing beneath another three-eyed hoop symbol. He parted the leaves and Oliver saw there was a switch hidden within it. Ralph pressed the switch. The wall suddenly disappeared, revealing instead a door-sized gap within the brickwork.

  Oliver gasped. It was just like his invisibility coat but in reverse. Instead of hiding something real, it was creating something not real.

  “It’s visual trickery,” Ralph explained, as he studied Oliver’s expression. “The illusion of something solid.”

  Oliver thought about the technology needed to make it work. There were no lights to project an image. It wasn’t a holograph. Though his invisibility coat had been a theoretical possibility before he’d made it a reality, there was no theory to explain this.

  “Amazing,” Oliver said. “I’d love to study the mechanisms. I’m something of an inventor myself, you see.”

  He looked away from the shrub to discover Ralph had already gone. He was halfway up the alleyway ahead of them. “Turn it back on once you’re in, won’t you?” he called back over his shoulder. “Don’t want any non-Seers wandering through by accident!”

  Oliver got the distinct impression that they were in something of a hurry. Ralph certainly didn’t seem to be dawdling.

  Quickly, he stepped through the gap and pressed the light switch on the other side. The brick illusion reappeared, giving him the unnerving feeling of having been bricked in. He hurried after Ralph.

  The alleyway they now followed was not only narrow, but there was no daylight coming from above at all. It occurred to Oliver that they were now inside some kind of building. But inside where was a mystery.

  Up ahead, Ralph strode purposefully onward. Oliver noticed he was now stooping. The ceiling had become visible above them, and it sloped closer and closer as they progressed along the corridor, making the space become sho
rter. Oliver bent his head as the ceiling came ever closer, then his knees, until there wasn’t enough space to even stand. Just as Ralph was doing ahead of him, Oliver had no choice but to crawl on his hands and knees. They weren’t in a corridor anymore at all, but a tunnel. Oliver fought his feelings of claustrophobia.

  Suddenly, Oliver slammed into Ralph’s backside. He’d stopped crawling and was positioning himself so he was sitting on his backside.

  “This is the fun part,” Ralph told him. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?” Oliver asked.

  But it was too late. Suddenly, Ralph tumbled forward and disappeared.

  With a shocked gasp, Oliver scrambled to the place he’d last been. He saw a square opening, no bigger than the end of an air vent. It was covered in a sort of net, like thick spider web. Inside the vent it was pitch-black.

  “Ralph!” Oliver yelled, panicking. “Ralph, where are you? Are you okay? Ralph! Answer me!”

  There was a moment of silence before Ralph’s disembodied reply came from somewhere in the darkness. “Come on!” He sounded as if he was calling from somewhere very far away.

  Oliver let out a breath of relief. At least Ralph was okay; he hadn’t just plunged into oblivion.

  “Where are you?” Oliver called back. “I can’t see anything.”

  “It’s a slide,” Ralph’s voice called, weaker from being even farther away.

  A slide?

  “There’s a net in the way,” Oliver shouted into the abyss.

  He heard Ralph’s faint reply. “It’s just another illusion...”

  Then there was silence.

  Tentatively, Oliver reached his hand forward, expecting to feel the sensation of thread against his skin. But sure enough, he felt nothing. His hand passed straight through the “net” without resistance. It really was another illusion.

  Oliver knew there was only one option. He had to follow Ralph. But leaping into the unknown was easier said than done.

  He took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. He had done harder things in his life, after all, like walking into classrooms as the new boy, under the prying eyes of kids who judged him. This was nothing in comparison.