Off to Be the Wizard (10 page)

“But the whole reason we’re here is that we’ve proved that we’re algorithms in a computer program.”

“That may be, but I’m an algorithm with free will! Any time someone claims I don’t have free will I shout
shut up
at the top of my lungs, because it’s totally out of character for me, and it proves I have free will.”

Martin thought about this for a moment. “You shout
shut up
every time?”

“Yes.”

“That proves nothing. If you do it every time, then yelling
shut up
is a pre-programmed response.”

Phillip thought about that for a moment, then replied, “SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!”

Martin smiled while Phillip caught his breath. “Got it out of your system?”

“For now. So, that’s one explanation, which I don’t buy. The other explanation is that when we go back in time past a certain point, the program, whatever it is, creates a parallel instance of the past for us to go to.”

“So, this is an alternate reality.”

“I think so.”

“Wouldn’t we be able to go to the future then?”

“Not beyond our own source time. The idea has its problems, and there’s a lot we don’t know, but it does explain why we all seem to go to a few specific points in history. The program already has this place set up, so it sort of influences us to come here instead of some other place.”

“But doesn’t that suggest that we don’t have free will?”

Phillip gave Martin an icy stare. Martin put up his hand. “Sorry, I’ll shut up.”

Phillip stood up and stretched. “Top man. In retrospect, a certain amount of chronological pollution was inevitable, really. I first noticed it when one of the locals told me the weather sucked. I didn’t even notice at first, then I freaked right out for a while.”

“But just for a while.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t seem to hurt anything. Quite the opposite. As I told you, there are wizards like us living in Baghdad in the seven hundreds. Well, when you look around you, this all looks as you expected Medieval England to look, but I can tell you that we aren’t supposed to have glass windows until centuries later, yet here they are, and I’m mighty glad of it.”

“But, don’t you see how wrong that is?” Martin said. “You’ve made the past …” Martin couldn’t find the word he wanted. He eventually settled on, “Inauthentic.”

“I’m not going to pretend you don’t have a point, Martin, but like I said, a certain amount of chronological pollution was inevitable. We try not to deliberately change the past, most of us at least, and when there is a change we can’t smooth over, it’s not really the end of the world, because while we may have irrevocably changed this time, the fact is that it’s had no effect whatsoever on the future.”

Martin shook his head. “I still don’t buy the idea that we aren’t changing the future.”

“If you don’t believe me, look for yourself. You’ve got that fancy pocket computer of yours. Pop back to your time and see if anything has changed.”

Walter and Margarita Banks watched as their son rooted frantically through the kitchen before finding a package of cling film.

Margarita asked him what was going on. Instead of answering he asked, “Do you have any heavy duty? This stuff’s a little flimsy.”

“In the cupboard under the sink,” she replied. “Why are you wearing your Snape costume?”

Martin muttered, “It’s Malfoy. You always get that wrong,” but his parents did not hear him, partly because of the sound of many sirens coming from the front lawn. Martin grabbed two boxes of heavy duty cling film and sprinted back to his room, shouting, “Thanks Mom!” as he slammed the door. Walter and Margarita looked down the hallway at their son’s bedroom door. They turned their heads when they heard an insistent knock on the front door.

They turned their heads again when Martin opened his bedroom door. He peeked his head out into the hall, looked at them and said, “Hi. Just checking, what’s the capital of England?”

Margarita answered, “London.” Martin retreated into the room again, slamming the door shut behind him.

Martin quickly scanned his childhood belongings. There were Star Wars toys, a few Power Rangers, nothing all that impressive. The one thing that stood out was a small painted plaster bust he had bought when he was twelve and his family went to Mexico to visit his mom’s relatives.

Martin rematerialized in the meadow.

“Everything the way you left it?” Phillip asked.

“Yes, and I found what I’m going to put on the head of my staff!” Martin proudly held aloft the small painted plaster bust of El Santo, King of the Luchadores.

Chapter 14.

They returned to Phillip’s shop. Phillip gave Martin instructions on how to properly sand and varnish his staff (Step one: don’t make the obvious joke) and left Martin in the front room while he sat down at the crystal ball, typing furiously and mumbling to himself. Martin objected to using varnish in such an enclosed space, but Phillip said he couldn’t very well do it on the street, and besides, the horrible odor of the varnish would add to the ambiance. Martin found that with a little effort the head of the staff fit nicely into the bottom of the hollow bust of Santo. The fit was snug enough that the bust would probably stay on the staff all by itself, but Martin threw some glue in for good measure. Martin also sawed off the bottom end of the staff, partly to make a flat base and partly because Phillip was adamant that the staff had to be five feet tall, not including the ornamentation at the top.

Phillip was still staring into the crystal ball, muttering things and sporadically typing on the Commodore 64’s concealed keyboard, when Martin entered an hour later. “My new staff is drying. What next?”

Phillip didn’t look up from the crystal ball. “Have a seat. We’re ready for the good part. How’s the temperature in here, Martin? Comfortable?”

“Eh, it’s a little hot and stuffy, but not bad.”

“Where do usually put the thermostat in your home?”

“About seventy-eight degrees.”

Phillip tapped a few keys, looked up at Martin and theatrically hit enter. Instantly Martin was cool and comfortable. “Wow!” he said, instinctively looking for a hidden air conditioning vent, though he suspected he wouldn’t find one.

Phillip leaned back in his chair. “We’ve known about the file for a decade and we’ve been developing the shell program nearly as long. All wizards are free to explore the file and develop new shell functions as long as we share what we’ve found. I believe it’s similar to what you’d call open source development.”

Martin heard him, but he was still trying to get his head around the implications. “So, now it’ll always be a comfortable temperature for me in this room?”

“Close. From now on you will always be a comfortable temperature everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you go to Antarctica or Panama, your body will react like it’s seventy-eight degrees with low humidity.”

“Well, that’s about the best thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Isn’t it? Of course, you can still get burned if you touch something hot, and you’re still subject to sunburns, but in general, your sweating days are over. How many languages do you speak?”

“Two-ish. I speak English and I can get by in Spanish.”

“Well now you speak all of them. Turns out that what languages you speak is just another variable in the file. Near as we can tell the program hears the words you intend to say and puts out the words your audience needs to hear.”

Martin thought about this. “So, really there’s only one language?”

“As far as the file is concerned.”

“But … ‘open’ and ‘abierto’ are two different words.”

“Yes, and if you actively choose to say ‘abierto,’ only those slated by the file to speak Spanish will understand it, but the file knows that you were saying ‘open’.”

“So, if we went over to France, everybody would think I was speaking French?”

“Yes, and you’d hear them in English. Have you noticed that everyone’s accent was thicker last night? That’s why.”

“You monkeyed with my file while I was asleep?”

“Just a little, to make today easier for you. Next question: how old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“I’d ask you if you like being twenty-three, but you wouldn’t know. You’ve never been older than twenty-three. I have, and I’ll tell you, physically speaking, it’s not going to get any better. It certainly beats being in your late thirties for all eternity.” Phillip went back to hammering on his keyboard, then again, hit enter with a flourish.

“Are you telling me that I’m going to be twenty-three forever?”

“Physically, if that’s what you want. You’ll still develop mentally. If you exercise, you’ll get stronger. If you don’t, you’ll get weaker. You can still get fat or go on a diet, but unless you go back in and edit the file, whatever you become, you’ll be a twenty-three-year-old version of it.”

Martin opened and closed his mouth a few times before words actually came out. “Are you saying that I’m immortal?”

Phillip let out a long breath. “Maybe. You still need food, water and air. We found a way to make you not need those, but we don’t suggest using it, even in an emergency, because you still feel like you need food water and air. If the only way to survive is to spend even an hour feeling like you’re suffocating, I’m not sure death wouldn’t be preferable. There was a person, I hesitate to call him a man, who did many things we didn’t like and we had to send him back to his own time.”

Martin asked, “That was Todd, right?”

“Yes. Todd.” Phillip said it like the name was the vilest insult imaginable. “Anyway,” Phillip continued, “one of the things he did was create a series of alterations he could make to somebody’s file entry that would effectively make them a ghost. You’d be all but invisible, unable to touch anything, and unable to talk. All you could feel was hunger, thirst, and panic, because you thought you were suffocating. The only thing you could do, and this is the evil bit, was make spooky noises. We still don’t know how he did it. You couldn’t say a word, but you could go
Oooooooooo
all day. The idea was that the person who was ‘ghosted’ would psychologically torture his friends and family trying to ask them for help.”

Martin tried to imagine what that would be like, and then he tried desperately to stop.

“You need to eat, you need to drink, you need to breathe,” Phillip continued. “You can still be injured. You can still be killed, but not through violence. If you’re not killed though, yes, you will, in theory, live as long as you want. That’s partly why I’m not bothered that I can’t travel to the future. If I hang around long enough I’ll get there anyway.”

“You were able to make your Fiero indestructible, and they were pretty much made of Styrofoam. Does that mean … us?”

“Don’t badmouth my Fiero. You’re right though, as long as you have full shell access, it will constantly monitor and update your file, meaning that you can’t really be injured by conventional means. The meanest guy in town can pound on you all day and you won’t get a bruise. It’ll hurt the whole time, but you won’t be permanently injured.”

“Cool!”

“Yes. It is! Took us years to figure it out, and a lot of mistakes were made along the way. At first we tried just stopping the decay rate, like on my car. The results were … sub-optimal. The body just keeps building on itself. Picture The Thing from the Fantastic Four, but instead of having the power of super strength, you have the power to experience constant pain. That brings us to an important point. When exploring the file, we wizards only experiment on inanimate objects and ourselves. We do not experiment on non-wizards, we only experiment on wizards who know what we’re doing and give consent, and we never change a person’s physical structure. “

“But I only discovered the file by accidentally making myself taller.”

Phillip’s eyes widened. “How much taller?”

“Two and a half inches.”

“Well, you lucked out, my friend. Much taller and your spine might have stopped functioning.”

“But you said we can’t change our physical structure, and I’ve proved that we can.”

“I didn’t say that we can’t, I said that we don’t. I didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. I meant that if you do we’ll reset you to your original parameters, cut off your access to the file, and send you back to your time. We don’t have a lot of rules, Martin, but we take the ones we do have very seriously. What were they again?”

“Experiment only on ourselves or another wizard, and only if that wizard knows what we’re doing, and we don’t alter any person’s physical structure, ever.”

“Well done. Okay Martin, I think you’re ready to say the incantation and start learning to use your powers.”

“Incantation?” Martin sneered. “You realize we aren’t really doing magic, right? All this smoke and mirrors is great for the locals, but we don’t really have to keep it up when we’re in private, do we?”

“Yes, we do. Martin, if being a wizard is a mask you remove sometimes, it’s only a matter of time before you forget to put it back on. You’ve got to live it all the time. Think of it as going undercover, if that helps. Also, more importantly, some of these bits of smoke and mirrors, as you put it, serve important functions. The shell we’ve written is always running in the background, monitoring the conditions of those we’ve authorized to use it.”

“So it’ll be spying on me?”

“You could look at it that way. You could also say that your television remote control is spying on your viewing habits. The shell watches, but it doesn’t record. It just waits for certain signals, then it makes adjustments to your portion of the file based on those signals.”

“Ah, and those signals are designed to look like spells and incantations.”

“This thinking thing is slowly becoming a habit. So, if you’re fully satisfied, may I please give you magical powers?”

“Of course,” Martin said, chagrined. “I’m sorry I interrupted. Please, tell me what to say.”

Phillip smiled and rose from his seat. “Splendid. Let’s get you kitted out.” He moved one of the loose folds of fabric that lined the walls. Behind it there was a small set of shelves. From them, Phillip grabbed a folded bundle of blood-red fabric, which he tossed to Martin. “Here, put these on. It’s an old robe and hat of mine. They’ll do until Gwen has finished yours.”

Martin pulled on the robe. Thanks to Phillip’s more generous proportions, the robe fit loosely, and pooled on the ground around his feet. The hat, which, like the robe, was blood-red with black trim, was also too large, and rested on his ears and eyebrows. The overall effect made Martin look like a small druid child, dressing in his father’s clothes and pretending he was going to a sacrifice just like daddy. Phillip took a second to admire Martin in his new ensemble. “Marvelous!”

“Really? I thought I looked ridiculous.”

“Oh, you do. Marvelously ridiculous!” Phillip handed Martin his staff. “Now, hold my staff, and this is very important,
do not make the obvious joke
.” Martin took the staff and said nothing.

“Good. Are you ready, Martin?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Repeat after me. Supren supren.”

“Supren supren.”

“Malsupren suben.”

“Malsupren suben.”

“Lasis dekstra lasis dekstra.”

“Lasis dekstra lasis … dekstra?”

“Bee aye komenco.”

“Bee aye komenco.”

Phillip clapped. “It is done!”

“What was that?” Martin asked.

“I’m told it’s a cheat code from a videogame called
Contra
that’s a bit after my time, I’m afraid.”

Martin thought for a moment. “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left right, B, … A. Yeah, start. Yup, that’s totally the Konami code. What language was that, Latin?”

“No, these are the Middle Ages. There are people you’ve met here who actually speak Latin. All of our spells are in Esperanto. It’s a universal language that was invented early in the twentieth century to foster international peace and understanding. It’s perfect for our purposes because there are many resources to translate things into it and absolutely nobody speaks it.”

“Nobody in this time.”

“Nobody in any time. Seriously, William Shatner, and that’s about it. Anyway, you’ve said the incantation. The shell is now active for you. To test it, try to move your head so your hat falls off.”

Martin tried, but no matter how he whipped his head, the hat stayed on, despite being too large for his head. “Good,” Phillip said. “Now reach up and take it off.” Martin did, and the hat came off easily.

“So the shell is keeping my hat on?”

“Yes. Wind can’t blow you hat off. Enemies can’t knock it off. If you put your hat on, the only thing that can remove it is you.”

Martin was puzzled. “That’s a nice demo, I guess.”

“Doesn’t seem practical though, eh. Give me my staff back. I’ll show you something.” Phillip took his staff back. He reached into his pocket and produced a gold coin, which he sat on the table next to the crystal ball. He held his staff in his left hand. With his right, he pointed at the coin and said, “Levi objekto.” While still pointing, he raised his hand, and the coin floated in the air, staying perfectly aligned with his hand. He lowered the coin back to the table. He motioned to Martin. “Now you try.”

Martin pointed at the coin, searched his memory, and said, “Levi objekto.” He raised his hand. The coin didn’t budge. “Did I get the words wrong?” he asked.

“No, you remembered the words just fine,” Phillip said. He handed the staff back to Martin. “Hold this, put your hat back on, and try again.”

Martin put the oversized hat back on his undersized head, held the staff in his left hand and pointed at the coin with his right, and said, “Levi objekto.” He raised his hand, and the coin smoothly lifted into the air. Martin just looked at it for a moment. He raised and lowered his hand, and the coin moved with it. He had seen Phillip do the same trick, both with the coin and with that cursed goat, but it hadn’t prepared him for the experience of doing it himself.