Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard (6 page)

“You could make me into a wizard?” Paul asked hesitantly,
and this time, his voice did squeak quite a bit.

The wizard/genie nodded. “Think of all the people you could
help then, Paul. You could travel the world, seeking out the neediest of
people. You could cure the deadliest of sicknesses, end droughts, floods, and
famines, and bring true relief to the suffering.” He leaned back in his chair
and gave Paul a huge grin. “Of course, you’d have to give up the menial
existence that you have now, leave that terribly stressful job you have, the
one that is slowly killing you. That’s the unfortunate part of my offer, of
course. But necessary. For the good of many other people. You must think of them,
Paul. Don’t be selfish. Think of them.”

Paul’s body physically froze in place; he was totally unable
to move a muscle. Instead, his mind was aflame, filled with ideas and images.
He could see himself bringing rain to the deserts, dropping manna from heaven
to whole populations of starving people, rescuing potential victims from floods
and earthquakes, diverting hurricanes away from populated islands, stopping
battles and wars before they happened, as well as a whole host of other
possibilities.

Saving lives. Helping other people. Giving them a real
chance to succeed when there would otherwise be none.

The idea was overwhelming. Mind-blowing. Paul was filled
with awe at the scope of it, at the audacity and daring of it. His body pulsed
with excitement, his heart pounding loudly in his ears. In the back of his
mind, a whole cheerleading team was dancing wildly, shouting rousing slogans,
and tossing pom-poms high in the air.

One lone voice, far off in the distance, was shouting at him
to wait, to carefully examine this offer in detail, to do a top-to-bottom
cost/benefit study and an environmental impact assessment. With icy contempt
for that voice, Paul ignored it.

Instead, he again jumped to his feet, rubbing suddenly
sweaty palms on the sides of his pants and pacing anew, this time much faster
than before. And too, he made himself focus on the wizard/genie, who was
grinning at him in delight.

“Please, correct me if I am mistaken, but I sense a certain
interest in the idea,” the wizard/genie observed unflappably. “However, there
is a condition to my offer.”

Paul’s heart skipped a beat, and all his visions of himself
playing a superhero came crashing to the ground.

“A condition?” he asked, his pacing coming to a dead halt,
as if he had run into a brick wall.

The ex-genie nodded and casually waved a hand. “In my case,
I have endured great hardship for centuries. I feel confident that I will not
misuse my new powers. But what about you? Great powers present great
temptations. You would have to swear that you would not use your powers in an
evil manner and that you would never use your powers to kill anyone.”

An episode of the original
Star Trek
series came to
Paul’s mind, the one with Gary Mitchell in which his mental powers nearly
turned him into a god—a very arrogant and revenge-minded one, at that.

Paul mulled the wizard/genie’s condition over in his mind
for a few seconds before replying. “I wish I could guarantee that I would not misuse
such powers. But you’ve seen my life. It has also been far from ideal. I know
so many other people who have suffered too. I freely admit it. Your offer is
extremely tempting. Are you seriously offering me the chance to be a wizard?”

“Do you swear not to misuse your powers? Do you swear not to
kill anyone?” the wizard earnestly asked Paul in return.

The tingle returned, coursing back and forth through Paul’s
body, like a series of waves in a tube. The other man really was serious. The
offer really was on the table. Paul sensed a vast gulf open in front of him, an
endless sea of possibilities ahead. The power to make a difference, to reach
out and touch so many other lives. He was suddenly hit with the realization
that this was probably the greatest watershed moment of his whole life. His
knees threatened to collapse under him.

Paul nodded quickly, but firmly and with great
determination. “I so swear.”

The bearded man seemed satisfied, even a bit smug. “Then, I
can grant you your wish to be a wizard, one with considerable power, but let me
make one point clear: I cannot make you into a god. There will be limits to the
magic you can perform. Do you understand? And do you still want to be a
wizard?”

Paul contemplated the question and made his final decision.
“I think I understand. And yes, I want to be a wizard.” After a short pause, he
continued, looking a bit sheepish. “But what about my job?”

The wizard/genie stood, gently shaking his head. “You can’t
go back, Paul. Especially not as a wizard. Trust me on this. And in truth, they
probably won’t even miss you very much.”

Paul blinked in surprise, then cast a downward look before
giving the genie a wintery smile. “You’re probably right. In my career, I’ve
seen lots of people retire, and everything went right on, same as before. I
just...all those years....”

“Let it go, Paul. In your heart of hearts, you know it was a
horrid existence. No one would treat a dog the way your bosses treated you.”
With a smile, he continued, “And in your new life, you will be too busy to miss
them very much either!”

With a grim smile of his own, Paul nodded. “Good point. A
very good point. Fine. Please, proceed.”

The wizard/genie waved his arm. The bed reappeared a few yards
away. “There is one more thing you should know before I grant you your powers.
I won’t be here when you wake up. There are other matters I must attend to. But
you won’t need me. Once you have your powers, you will have everything you need
available to you.” He paused. “You and I will meet again. I somehow feel it in
my bones. May Allah be with you and bless you.”

Paul smiled weakly back at him. “Thank you for this. And may
He bless you too.”

“Please, lie down,” the ex-genie said, “and close your
eyes.”

Weak-kneed, Paul somehow managed to walk to the bed without
tripping over his suddenly too-large feet. As he lay down, a sudden thought
came to him.

“Uh, just how long is this going to take?” he asked as
images of people in suspended animation popped into his head, from films such
as
2001: A Space Odyssey
,
Buck Rogers
,
Avatar
,
Forbidden
Planet
,
Star Trek
, and a host of others.

The wizard/genie smiled and shook his head. “Only a day or
so. Now, relax and clear your mind. Very good. Shortly, you will fall asleep.
When you awaken, you will have the powers of a wizard, and you will find ways
to use those powers. This is your last chance to change your mind and go back
to a normal, if miserable life. What do you say?”

“Please, proceed,” Paul said firmly. His heart raced, his
blood pounding in his veins. He was about to become a real-life wizard!

Paul heard the wizard/genie softly chuckle. “Very well. May
you henceforth have the ability to shape reality to your will. May you be a master
of space and all the elements and have the power to bend the laws of nature to
suit your needs. So it is said; so let it be!”

Unknown location

December

Saturday, 10:05 p.m. (by Paul’s watch)

P
aul
stirred slowly, gradually awakening for the second time on the soft bed. The
plateau was still there and the vista too, but this time, there was no wizard/genie.
No matter. Paul silently wished him bon voyage and jumped to his feet.

The position of the sun had not changed much, not far from
its zenith in the sky. According to his watch, he had been asleep for an entire
day. Moreover, he felt a great deal better—far more rested than he had been in
the last month.

He also felt distinctly odd. Internally, he felt light, a
warmth radiating though his whole body, and he was filled with a sense of
anticipation. Also, he felt a...well, there was no decent way to describe it
other than as a power coursing through his body, ready to leap forth and
perform great feats of magic. It was hard to put into words exactly, but there
was no denying the differences he felt.

“Ah, but how is it done?” Paul softly asked himself as he
pushed his glasses up on his nose. “And what should be my first act of magic?”

His stomach chose that moment to rumble in hunger. But of
course. The answer was obvious. Paul needed to cast a spell for some food.

He snapped his fingers and paused expectantly. But nothing
happened.

Huh? Where was the food?

Anxiously, Paul snapped his fingers again. “Hey, let’s have
some food here! I’m hungry!”

Nothing.

Maybe a spell needed more concentration?

He closed his eyes and concentrated hard, visually creating
the image of a huge steak dinner on an oversized plate, the meat turned to a
perfect medium-rare. He visualized the onion rings, the baked potato with sour
cream and bacon bits, and the side helping of broccoli smothered in melted
butter. He threw in the steak knives and other utensils and included a tall,
frosted mug of root beer. Oh, and a table to hold it all too.

Then Paul snapped his fingers again, hard. “Engage!” he
yelled anxiously.

He cracked open an eye and peeked around. Nothing.

For a couple of seconds, Paul felt a surge of panic. It
should have worked! His brand-new magical powers should have worked! Why hadn’t
they?

He wrung his hands silently as he began to pace back and
forth, his brow furrowed in concentration. Suddenly, he realized that being a
wizard just might be a shade more difficult than he had first anticipated. The genie...ah,
wizard, had made the casting of spells look incredibly easy. And unless Paul
started casting his own spells...well, without the other wizard’s help, he might
end up stuck here on this rocky summit, where there was no food to eat or even
water to drink. He had already gone more than a day without water while he was
asleep. Therefore, he needed to solve this problem quickly.

Paul forced himself to put aside his emotional reactions,
focusing on his predicament as if it were an engineering problem, one to be
solved with logical thinking. He could feel the power inside him; ergo, he must
be doing something wrong, possibly multitudes of things, in trying to use his
new abilities.

The wizard/genie had told Paul that he had everything he
needed to be a fully functional wizard of his own. The implied assumption was that
Paul could work his magical powers without difficulty, that he would know how
to do so or that the processes involved were intuitively obvious.

As Paul began pacing again, he realized that such was
probably the case. Sure, the wizard/genie had been regularly using magic for
centuries. Moreover, he had come from an age when people commonly believed in
magical powers. So it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination at all for the wizard
to assume that Paul would know how to implement his newly acquired abilities, employing
methods that were widely known by the general public, promulgated through
legends and myths.

But Paul wasn’t a product of such an era. In the modern day,
a belief in magical powers was scoffed at and ridiculed. Yes, the concept of magic
was sometimes used for entertainment purposes, perhaps as the basis of a movie
or for a magician to use in front of an audience. But no one took it seriously.

Not only that, but Paul was less informed about magical
powers (i.e., stories of sorcerers, wizards, genies, etc. and their spells and
methods) than even the general population. He wasn’t an aficionado of fantasy
at all. Science fiction, yes, but he had never really been enamored with
fantasy. Magic, knights, damsels in distress, and all of that seemed a little
bland in comparison to starships, time travel, and black holes. But given his
current situation, it might have helped him a bit more if he had read a few fantasy
stories and seen a couple of movies. What could that have hurt? Maybe, if he
lived long enough, Paul could redeem that mistake.

However, he needed to focus on the here and now. The
question before him at this moment, assuming that he wasn’t using his magical
powers properly, was how to figure out how it should actually be done.

Continuing his pacing back and forth on the plateau, Paul
considered how to acquire the knowledge he needed. And after serious
deliberation, he came up with three possible avenues of approach.

The first and most effective option was to have someone
teach him how to cast magical spells. The second was to somehow acquire the
necessary reference materials (books, operational manuals, YouTube videos,
websites, etc.) that he could study and learn from what he needed to know. The
third avenue, and without a doubt the least efficient one of all, was to
experiment, to try a variety of different methods and learn through the process
of trial and error how it should be done.

Obviously, the best person to teach him was the
wizard/genie. But he had said that he had places to be and things to do, so getting
his help...well, that idea was busted. And to call on anyone else—or to access
any textbooks, manuals, or the Internet—also required the use of magical
spells. It was a classic case of a catch-22. Paul needed to cast magical spells
to obtain the information he needed in order to cast the spells in the first
place. It was quite the conundrum, indeed.

He mulled the possible options over in his mind. Perhaps if
he just
tried
casting a few spells to call on a knowledgeable individual,
one of them might work. It was worth a shot. But who should he call on?

A wizard would be the best choice, but Paul didn’t know of
any other real-life wizards. So perhaps he could call on a magician instead.

Ceasing his pacing, Paul narrowed his eyes in concentration,
bringing both of his hands up high and waving them around in a frantic motion, and
said, “I need a magician here to help me. David Copperfield!”

And yet again, nothing happened.

“Okay, any knowledgeable magician will do. Pronto!”

Nothing.

“Perhaps the Guardian of Forever from
Star Trek
? As a
personal favor? Please?”

Nothing.

“Mr. Peabody?”

No response.

Paul sat down on the edge of the bed with his head in his
hands. The reality of his situation was that any fifth-grader could probably have
easily figured out how to start casting magical spells.

“I’ll take a fifth-grader,” Paul muttered. “Or even a five-year-old!”

Still, nothing happened.

“‘I’m not even supposed to be here,’” Paul bellyached,
quoting Guy Fleegman from
Galaxy Quest
. “‘I’m just Crewman Number Six.
I’m expendable. I’m the guy in the episode who dies to prove how serious the
situation is.’”

Oy vey
!

So, what was he going to do now?

• • • •

Not knowing what else to try and feeling a little more
desperate with the passage of time, Paul began experimenting with
determination, though in a more or less aimless fashion. For nearly two hours,
he tried everything that came to mind. He tried calling forth every personality—real,
historical, or fictional—that might possibly help him. This ranged from all his
favorite sci-fi characters to a number of scientists going all the way back to
Leonardo da Vinci. He tried calling forth textbooks, Internet connections, and manuals
of any kind dealing with magic. He went back to trying to conjure forth food,
this time simplifying his spells. Instead of steak dinners, he tried simpler
fare, such as apples and various other fruits, bread, cheese, a variety of
drinks, and so forth. He even tried to distill water out of the air, and then he
tried tapping into the snowbanks that were clearly visible on some of the
surrounding mountains.

The result was always the same. Nothing came from any of his
attempted magic.

Depressed, he plopped back down on the edge of the bed, mulling
over his situation and what to do about it. For a few minutes, he even fell
into self-pity, blaming his own greedy nature for allowing himself to get into
such a quandary in the first place. If he hadn’t been so fixated on becoming
some sort of superhero, then none of this would have ever happened! He could,
right this very minute, be back in his home in Mojave, watching another one of
his favorite sci-fi movies and scarfing down a TV dinner!

He sighed and got back up to pace again. He needed to focus,
to use his training as an engineer, to approach this problem from a scientific
point of view and in a much more deliberate manner, not to experiment wildly in
the dark like he had been. As he considered the problem, he realized that he
had been too ambitious with his first spells. Every one of them had been
complex, requiring a fairly sophisticated use of magic. After all, he was
trying to conjure up people and material objects. What he needed to learn and
master first were the basics involved.

For a couple of minutes, he pondered that idea. Sure, something
fundamental. As basic and as simple as he could make it.

Looking around the plateau, the flower beds gave him an
idea. A quick few steps took him over to the nearest one. Leaning down between
a rosebush and a stand of forget-me-nots, Paul scraped together a handful of
dirt and then returned to the four-poster bed. There, he opened his hand, and
with the other one, he brushed away most of the dirt until he had a small number
of tiny specks of sand scattered in his palm.

Narrowing his eyes in concentration, he visualized one of
the particles moving, willing it to levitate off his hand and to hover in the
air.

It didn’t so much as twitch, let alone levitate.

Paul grunted in annoyance. It was no wonder he couldn’t get
the more complicated spells to work, not if he couldn’t even make the smallest
grain of dirt budge.

He tried several more times, but all attempts were without
result.

With a huge sigh, Paul lay back on the bed. He was still
missing something, a very basic and crucial step in the casting of spells. But
what was it?

Closing his eyes, he lay still, thinking of all the sci-fi
movies and TV episodes in his library. He tried to think of anything that
touched on magic and how it was used.

One of the first examples he remembered was Galen of first
Babylon
5
and then
Crusade
. One of the techno-mages. But they used
technology, not magic, for their spells.

Then there was another original
Star Trek
episode he
remembered, “Catspaw,” in which fake witches in a bank of fog had used an
incantation to cast a spell for Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Spock had called it
extremely bad poetry, but the spell had called forth both wind and fog.

Paul rubbed his chin in thought. Yes, it seemed to him that
in order to cast a proper spell, there should be an incantation. When he
thought about it, the wizard/genie had used an incantation too, when he gave
Paul his magical powers, and then he’d concluded by using the phrase, “So it is
said; so let it be!” However, that seemed much too quaint to suit Paul’s tastes.
What did that character say on his stepson’s favorite cartoon so long ago? “In
the name of Greystroke?” No, that wasn’t quite right. But it really didn’t
matter; the form was what counted.

He got off the bed and collected more dirt from the flower
bed in the palm of his hand, isolating another grain of sand.

“In the name of the warp drive, hyperspace, and the Holtzman
drive, may this grain of sand in the palm of my hand move and levitate.”

And just like that, the grain of sand disappeared.

Paul blinked several times. He studied the palm of his hand
closely. No, that particular grain of sand was definitely gone. He studied the
air above his hand, looking for a hovering speck of dirt. But no, nothing.

He tried again, using the same exact spell on another grain
of sand. And the same identical result occurred. The speck of dirt disappeared
instantly. Where it went, Paul didn’t know. It was very mysterious. But also
very encouraging. He began to take heart. So, as it turned out, it took a
properly worded spell, as well as a certain degree of mental concentration, to
employ his magic. Why words were necessary was a mystery to him. It practically
offended his engineering sensibilities. Magic should work without words. Paul
distinctly remembered several spells from the wizard/genie without the use of
words. Well, without any words that were spoken out loud, at least.

He tried again, this time using tiny pieces of rock the size
of BBs. Employing his spell on one of them produced the same outcome. It simply
disappeared from his hand. So did the next three that he tried.

Then he gathered a few pea-sized pebbles and tried again.

With the invocation of his spell, there was a sharp
crack
,
and the stone disappeared. The noise startled Paul, and he blinked several
times in bewilderment. The mystery of where the targets of his spells were
going was really starting....