Off to Be the Wizard (12 page)

Martin sputtered, then said pepperoni. Gary took off his robe. Beneath it he was wearing torn jeans, gigantic loosely-laced white high-tops, and a black t-shirt that said
Dokken.
He opened his PowerBook to reveal a small black and white screen surrounded by a two-inch-thick bezel, a small keyboard and a marble-sized track ball. Gary typed a few words one-handed and disappeared. Less than a second later he reappeared holding three large brown boxes from Pizza Hut.

“I never get tired of the look on their face when I pick up the pizza and walk directly into the bathroom,” he said, chuckling.

“Aw, Gary, I told you not to take my food into the bathroom!” Jeff said.

“Relax! It’s just a private place to teleport.”

“Still, I don’t need my pizza seasoned with bathroom air from 1992!”

“Martin, what’s your favorite soda?”

“Diet Coke.”

Gary muttered, “Wrong answer,” as he typed a few more words and disappeared. Immediately he was back with two six packs of Diet Pepsi. The bottles were short and fat, like oversized hand grenades made of glass. The sight of the old font and logo briefly took Martin back to when he was a child. Gary put the drinks down. He said, “One more stop,” then disappeared, reappearing with a fat stack of board games, paper plates, and a roll of paper towels.

While eating the best bad pizza Martin had ever tasted, and playing one of the most enjoyable games of Risk Martin had ever played, the five of them talked about a great many things.

They talked about their choice of staff ornaments. Gary adorned his staff with large dolls of the band KISS, tied to the staff so they faced outward. If one of the locals asked what they were he would just say “The Demon, The Space Man, The Star Man, and the Peter Criss on drums!” Tyler’s staff was topped by the hood ornament from a Rolls Royce. He didn’t have a set explanation for its meaning, because a beautiful woman with wings speaks for itself. Jeff was the first wizard Martin ever met who opted for a wand instead of a staff. He said “It’s easier to carry around, and I love me some Harry Potter.”

They talked about where and when they were from. Gary was from Minneapolis, 1992. Tyler was from Montana, 2003. Jeff was from Delaware, and came from the year 2021. Martin was briefly delighted to meet someone from the future. He asked Jeff what happened in the years between Martin’s time and his.

“A couple of presidents you’ve never heard of. A bunch of bands and movies you’d think are stupid. You’d freak right out if you saw my television. You’d love it, but you’d hate everything I watch on it.”

Phillip saw that this answer didn’t please Martin, and explained, “We don’t discuss the future, not because it’ll damage reality, but because it’ll damage our friendships.”

“It just leads to a fight,” Tyler said. “Anyone from before your time looks like a time capsule. Anyone from after it looks like a privileged idiot. It’s better to keep it vague. We figure if Jeff here had access to a computer and found the file, the future can’t be too bad.”

Jeff said, “I promise, if there was anything too bad, I’d tell you everything my federally mandated cranial implant will allow me to say.”

“What? Federally mandated cranial implant?” Martin said. There was a moment of tension, then everyone laughed but Martin.

“That’s the other reason we don’t ask about the future. It’s too easy to be made to look like a fool.” Phillip said.

“Yeah,” Gary added, “nobody wants to go through life looking like Ralph Wiggum.” Everyone laughed but Phillip.

They discussed what they did with their spare time. Gary was a painter. Mostly he painted the kinds of images that would make great covers for heavy metal albums. Lots of bat wings and fire. Martin said that he bet living in the Middle Ages gave him lots of inspiration.

“Not nearly as much as I’d hoped,” he said. “Turns out life here is just as boring as it is in the future. If I wanted to paint subsistence farmers I could have stayed in Minnesota. Tyler’s getting a lot more inspiration out of this place than I am.”

Martin turned to Tyler. “What do you do?” he asked.

“I write novels.”

“Really?” Martin said. “Anything I’ve read?”

“Doubtful. I’ve only finished one, and it wasn’t published. There wasn’t really a market for a gothic horror.”

Gary broke in, “Especially one called
The Ghost of the Wolfman’s Mummy
.”

“It was called
The Curse
,” said Tyler.

“And what was the subtitle?” Gary prodded him.

Tyler said, “
Of the Ghost of the Wolfman’s Mummy
.”

“
The Curse of the Ghost of the Wolfman’s Mummy
,” Martin repeated, trying to get his head around it.

Jeff said, “
It answered the age-old question: what would happen if a werewolf bit a Pharaoh, who was then mummified, and whose tomb was defiled centuries later, causing him to come back to life and immediately get killed?”

“Turns out what happens is five hundred pages of confusion, gratuitous sex, and spooky growling noises.” Gary said.

Tyler said, “It was a great idea! To defeat the ghost of the wolfman’s mummy, you have to bring the ghost back to life.”

“With a ritual that involves naked priestesses,” Jeff interjected.

“Then gather all the funerary jars containing the mummy’s organs,” Tyler continued.

“By seducing them away from the beautiful, wealthy Countess who bought them,” Gary added.

“Then, once you’ve destroyed the jars,” Tyler pressed on.

“And had the sex to celebrate,” Jeff said.

“You still have a wolfman to deal with,” Tyler finally finished.

“As sexily as possible, one would presume,” Phillip said.

“Are you writing another horror book?” Martin asked.

“Nope. A fantasy novel. Living here’s been invaluable. I travel around the countryside and ask people to tell me stories, then I write them up and weave them into my narrative.”

“But Gary says it’s mostly farmers around here.”

“It is. I adapt their stories.”

Gary said, “Instead of farmer, he writes
warrior.
”

“And instead of carrot, he puts down
goblin
,” Jeff added.

“And instead of grew, he writes
bludgeoned,
” Gary finished.

“But the point is I’m inspired by their stories!” Tyler said, defensively.

“Inspired to lie,” Phillip said, not unkindly.

There was a long pause while Martin tried to decide how to phrase the question they all knew was coming next. Finally, Martin asked, “Do the farmers ever react badly to the fact that you’re …”

“A black man in Medieval England?” Tyler finished for him. “They ask about it, but I tell them that I’m Moorish. They assume either I’ve been converted to Christianity, so I’m harmless, or I’m dangerous enough to survive in this country as a heathen. Either way, it ends the conversation.”

Greg said, “The one here with the most interesting hobby is Jeff. He’s one of the shell’s most prolific contributors. Easily a third of the things we can do are directly thanks to him. What are you up to now?”

Jeff shrugged. “Still working on importation.”

Martin was lost. “Importation? What are you trying to import?”

“In theory, anything that was created digitally, but I’m specifically trying to bring in assets from videogames. If they exist in a computer construct, and we exist in a computer construct, there should be a way to have us exist in the
same
computer construct.”

“Yeah!” Gary said, pounding his fist on the table. “Then we’ll get some dragons up in here!”

Tyler looked at Phillip. “What I want to know is what
you
do with your spare time. More to the point, what it is you keep on the second floor of your shop. Has he let you up there, Martin?”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“Why not, Phillip? What do you have up there?”

“Nothing,” Phillip replied.

“Then what do you do up there?” Tyler asked.

“Nothing.”

“I see. You go up there to do nothing, with nothing. Do you expect us to believe that?”

“No.”

After a long pause, Tyler said, “Fair enough,” and they got back to their game of Risk.

“So,” Gary said, “I bet you’re anxious to get your own robes, eh, Martin?”

Martin answered, “Can’t wait.”

“We go back for the first fitting tomorrow,” Phillip said. “Until then he’s welcome to wear my old robe. I don’t really see the point myself. He’s not doing magic in public yet.”

“I dunno,” Martin said. “I just feel safer if the locals think I have full wizard powers.”

“Nonsense! You’ve lived your whole life up until now without people thinking you have powers, and you haven’t faced the constant threat of violence. I don’t see why it should be any different here.”

“
A,
you clearly didn’t go to my high school, and
B
, maybe I’m wrong, but I just get the feeling that there are some people around here who’d like to get their hands on a wizard who can’t fight back.”

Phillip shook his head. “Nonsense. You’re just being paranoid. But if it makes you feel better to wear my old robes, I see no harm in it.” The other three studied the game board in silence.

Time went by. Battle lines were drawn and redrawn. Tyler had a run of luck and wiped Phillip off of the map. Phillip congratulated Tyler and handed over his cards.

Tyler said, “Europe is the hardest continent to defend. Too many borders.”

“Perhaps,” Phillip said, rising from the table, “perhaps. Well, gents, I’m off to partake in the greatest pleasure the Middle Ages can afford a man.”

Martin was confused until Jeff explained “He’s gonna take a whiz outside.”

Phillip had explained earlier that bathrooms were a matter of personal taste for wizards. All of the wizards Martin had met so far were male, so they were comfortable urinating outdoors, but one’s chosen mode of defecation was largely determined by one’s comfort level. Phillip had facilities in his home similar to a modern bathroom. It was a small addition grafted crudely onto the back of his hut, and it resembled a classic latrine, except for three important factors: It had a modern toilet seat and lid, it had a roll of modern toilet paper, and it didn’t have the horrible odor one expects in such a place. When Martin mentioned this, Phillip used his staff to shine a light down the hole. It was a deep shaft that was bone-dry all the way to the bottom. Martin asked if it was brand new. Phillip laughed, wadded up a ball of the bathroom tissue and threw it into the shaft. The ball fell down the shaft, then vanished into thin air a foot before the bottom.

“Where’d it go?” he asked Phillip.

“Where I wanted it to.” Phillip answered.

After a moment’s thought, Martin asked, “How deep is it?”

“Thirty feet.”

“Why so deep?”

“To build up speed.”

Phillip changed the subject, telling Martin about another wizard he knew (Tyler, as it turned out) who still kept an apartment in his original time. There was nothing unusual about that, but Tyler’s apartment was basically a bathroom and a storage facility for bulk-purchased toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap, and garbage bags. He would commute back there every time he had to move his bowels. From his point of view, that meant every day or so, but if you were in his apartment you would see him appear, use the lavatory, wash his hands, dry them with paper towels (cloth towels wouldn’t have time to dry), and disappear. Then, less than a second later (but hours or days later for him), he would appear and do the whole thing over again. Then again, and again, and again. Tyler had been a wizard for four and a half years, so according to Phillip’s math, Tyler’s toilet had been in near constant use for something like five and a half days.

“His water bill is going to be astronomical!” Martin said.

“Yes, in something like twenty years,” Philip said.

Martin didn’t know how Gary handled number twos, but when it came to urine, the answer was the forest outside, and that was where Phillip was going. The instant he was gone, Jeff, Gary, and Tyler’s demeanor changed completely.

Tyler looked Martin straight in the eye and said, “You aren’t wrong, Martin. Don’t ever let the locals think you can’t defend yourself. Most of them don’t care about us one way or the other, but there are some who’d love to catch one of us unaware.”

Martin was both alarmed and relieved. He told them about the few seconds Phillip had left him alone on the street, and how close he came to getting attacked. They did not seem surprised.

“One time, I made the mistake of saying I’d broken my wand. A guy pulled a knife on me, like, immediately! Like he’d been waiting to make with the violence for years!” Jeff said.

“What did you do?”

“I showed him that I’d glued my wand back together, then I showed him that it still worked. Then I showed him my back, from a great distance.”