Off to Be the Wizard (30 page)

Phillip said, “Ghostbusters.” He smiled, part out of admiration, part because he was delighted to get a pop culture reference for once.

Martin pressed the screen of his phone and disappeared. He reappeared standing roughly where Jimmy had stood when he turned the Orcs on them. He was on the other side of the barrier. The wizards watched as Martin flew into the air, then swung around and accelerated toward the castle.

“Do you think he can do it?” Gwen asked.

Phillip smiled. “His job is to draw attention to himself and get into trouble. I don’t think he’s capable of
not
doing it.”

Chapter 27.

Before Martin flew to the castle, he wheeled around to get a look at the wizards. They were a small clump of people, surrounded by a chaotic mass of enraged two-dimensional demons. He noted that Phillip and Gwen were both watching him.

Martin turned toward the castle and accelerated. He had full shell access, and the use of all of the macros in the system. As he flew low over the rooftops, he muttered, “
Ĉ
i tiu iras al la dek unu,” the trigger phrase for a macro he’d found while researching his salutation. It was a bit of Gary’s handiwork. Anything he said now would be amplified to the approximate volume of a speed-metal concert.

Martin shouted, “MEEERRRLINN!” in the angriest sounding voice he could muster, and repeated it every few seconds, almost like a siren. He wanted Jimmy to feel the same feeling in the pit of his stomach Martin felt when he was being chased by the federal agents, what felt like years ago. He streaked across the medieval skyline, a silver blur, shrieking Merlin’s name with eardrum-shattering intensity. Not a single living thing was unaware of him. Countless items were dropped as people put their hands to their ears and looked to the sky, just a moment too late. He was moving too quickly to easily track. All eyes turned to where Martin had just been.

Martin slowed as he approached the castle, then stopped so suddenly that he nearly lost his grip on his staff. He swung for a moment as his body’s momentum spent itself. Finally, he settled to a standing position, hovering fifty feet in the air above the front courtyard. The guards stood their ground, but they didn’t look happy about it. Martin let out another ear splitting “MEEERRRLINN!”

The guards seemed to hear a sound too faint and distant for Martin to pick up. They looked behind themselves, then parted. Jimmy, looking very small, slid into view, covering a space of several yards in a single step. With a second step he glided through the arch and stopped in front of the castle entrance. He cleared his throat, then in a voice much calmer, but every bit as loud, said, “MAAARRTINN! Good to see you. Do come in!”

Martin had designed his salutation to be modular. In this situation, the parts where he transported himself to the stage area, transported himself away unseen, and watched the statue break dance autonomously would not be needed.

A good key phrase for a macro should be something that is memorable in times of stress, but that you’re unlikely to say in normal conversation. Martin said, “Groovy.” Immediately, lines delineating the rectangular shapes of boxes started tracing the contours of his form. As he fell from the sky, his body divided into hundreds of silver boxes which dispersed, swirled, multiplied, and reformed into a thirty foot tall version of Martin, which landed heavily in a three point crouch, holding its staff above and behind it with its right arm.

Only the boxes that made up the hands, feet, and staff had any mass. The rest looked solid, but were without substance. Suspended at the point of center mass, Martin floated, mimicking the three point crouch. Any motion Martin made, the statue made. Martin had tested it with a doll-sized test version of the statue, but he’d never tried it at scale, and was nervous about his ability to walk. He avoided the problem by flying. He launched himself straight at the entrance, and Jimmy. He barreled forward, the statue skimming only a few feet above the cobblestones. His massive right hand grasped Jimmy and lifted him roughly. Since he was entering with Merlin, the shell didn’t stop him as he streaked through the arch, and tumbled gracelessly through the antechamber. He ground to a stop in the great hall, his massive feet sliding on the marble floor. As he stopped, he flung Jimmy with great force toward that far wall. He knew that with the shell enabled Jimmy would not be damaged. It would hurt, but Jimmy had earned some hurt. As he let go, he heard Jimmy say something. It sounded like
groovier
, which made no sense.

As Jimmy hurtled forward, his body glowed blue and shattered into hundreds of glowing blue plasma balls. The spheres swirled and multiplied before reforming into a forty foot tall statue of Jimmy. Giant Jimmy hit the far wall, but with most of the force dissipated. He came to a rest standing with his massive feet on either side of the throne.

“How do you like my new macro?” Merlin asked. “I made it myself from parts I found in the shell. Oh, and I want you to know that I appreciate you calling me Merlin.”

“Yeah, I was being sarcastic,” Martin groaned.

Back in the center of the writhing mass of silent demons, the wizards were making slow progress. Gwen, Jeff, and Felix were transporting wizards to Phillip’s shop as fast as they could, but with text editors and access to the raw file, it was a slow process. They had to work with each individual wizard to find their entry, then manually enter the coordinates for Phillip’s shop. It would have been difficult work in a quiet study. Standing in a field being silently attacked by ineffectual demons and working on tiny smartphone screens made it much harder. Hearing Martin’s shouting, followed by silence had made it nearly impossible.

Phillip did some quick math. Assuming twenty-two wizards, taking at least thirty seconds to transport each, then using his computer to dig up safe transport coordinates (it wouldn’t help Martin if his rescue brigade materialized in the middle of a wall), he figured it would be well over five minutes before they got him any help. Phillip listened for a moment. In the distance he heard crashing noises and amplified grunts.

They had to get help to Martin faster.

“How many have we transported so far?” he asked.

Gwen was peering at the phone’s screen. One of the Parisian wizards was standing closer than he really needed to, looking over her shoulder to help isolate his file entry. She answered, “Four,” without looking up.

“Okay, change of plan. Jeff, Felix, keep sending people to my shop. Gwen, you’re going to send me to the shop, then you’ll follow. I have a plan.”

Martin could see Jimmy suspended in the torso of Giant Jimmy. Martin had to admit that the matrix of glowing blue plasma balls made for an impressive statue, especially when it was sprinting across the massive gold and marble expanse of the great hall of the castle Camelot, intent on doing him harm. Martin barely managed to get Giant Martin up on one foot and one knee before Giant Jimmy was on top of him. Martin put up his hands, catching Jimmy’s as they came down with tremendous force. Martin held Jimmy at bay, the two massive forms held in stalemate. Within their giant effigies, Martin and Jimmy could see each other, one looking through a screen of floating plasma balls, the other through a field of silver boxes.

“You didn’t create that!” Martin said, straining to hold Jimmy at bay. “All you did was take something I created and change it!”

“Yes! I changed it into something new,” Jimmy said, bearing down with all of his strength. “Something better, that I made.”

“I created this macro! I came up with the idea! I invented the control scheme. I animated the transition!”

“Yes, and I thank you for your assistance,” Jimmy said, with an innocent expression that Martin thought just might be genuine.

Martin shifted his weight to the right and let all of the strength go out of his arms. Jimmy fell forward and rolled to the side and away from Martin. As he clumsily got Giant Martin up on his feet, he hissed, “You have no originality!”

“That’s ridiculous!” Jimmy said, as he rolled on the ground.

Martin stood over him brandishing his staff and shouted, “This castle. The Hobbits. The Orcs. My macro. Even your name! Everything you do is a copy.”

Jimmy sprawled on the ground, flailing wildly for a moment before managing to maneuver Giant Jimmy into a low crouch. “And I was the first person to put it all together!”

Martin thought
, I gotta keep him occupied, and get him out in public if I can.
He glanced around the hall. People were starting to gather in the doorways and outside the gigantic windows that lined the walls. He took a clumsy step backward with his right foot to adjust his stance and said, “There’s more to innovation than just putting other people’s ideas together like LEGO bricks.” He adjusted his grip on his staff, holding it near its base with both hands. He swung it like a baseball bat with all of his force, aimed squarely for the real Jimmy at the core of Giant-Jimmy. Jimmy saw it coming and took a single step backward. Being Jimmy, that single step took Giant Jimmy all the way to the back of the hall, leaving Giant Martin to cope with the momentum of the swing. Martin spun clumsily, lost his footing, and fell to the marble floor.

“You make a valid point,” Jimmy said. “My innovation wasn’t to do what everyone else did. My innovation was to do it better.”

Phillip appeared in the secret upstairs annex of his shop and was immediately horrified. Four wizards were sent there before him with the instructions to use his Commodore 64 to try to find a safe teleportation point into Camelot. The first wizard to be transferred, David the Russian ladykiller, had made a beeline for the computer and was hard at work. The next three wizards, the two Magnuses and Sergio from Italy, had clearly decided that David had matters well in hand, and that the best thing they could do was make themselves at home. One Magnus was trying to pry the coin box of Phillip’s GORF machine open to see if there were any quarters. The other was draped over Phillip’s white couch like a slab of melted cheese, his boots kicked up on the armrest. Sergio was sitting in the driver’s seat of the Fiero, inspecting the interior with an amused scowl on his face.

“You! Feet off of my couch!” Phillip shouted. “You! Out of my car!”

Sergio muttered, “Gladly,” but didn’t seem to be hurrying to comply.

Phillip turned his attention to the GORF machine. “Magnus, you can make all the gold you could ever need! Why would you even bother trying to steal from me?”

Magnus looked at Phillip and said, “I dunno. It’s what’cha do, isn’t it?” He turned his attention back to trying to jimmy open the coin box.

Gwen appeared. Phillip spun around and said, “See why I tried to keep this a secret?”

Gwen held up her hands and said, “You’re preaching to the choir.”

Jeff and Felix were still sending wizards over, so it was no surprise when Kirk appeared. He spun slowly in awe, then said, “Wow! It’s like I’m watching an episode of
Miami Vice
!”

Couch Magnus said, “Really? I think it’s kinda dated and sad.”

“That’s what I meant,” Kirk replied.

“Okay, Gwen,” Phillip said, “now we have to get to my hut.”

“Do you know the coordinates?”

“Not off the top of my head,” Phillip said as he ran to the roll-away garage door built into the wall. “If I did, we’d have just gone straight there. We have to get there as soon as possible, and we can’t get the coordinates because my computer is occupied.” He hefted the door up on its rollers. It slid smoothly along tracks on the ceiling, exposing a mass of sturdy looking oak planks. He backed up, took a moment to gather his strength, then ran into the planks with his shoulder, causing them to break free of the door frame and tip forward at hinges built into their base. The planks stopped with a dull
whump
, forming a ramp between the second floor of Phillip’s shop and the crest of the steep hill behind it. Phillip opened the passenger door of the Fiero and made an inviting motion with his other hand toward Gwen, like a doorman helping a lady into a cab.

“Can I offer you a ride in my car?” Phillip asked.

Sergio, still in the driver’s seat, said, “Cool. Where are you going to sit, Phil?”

Martin had to admit, Jimmy had improved on his macro. Not only was Giant Jimmy larger, stronger, and flashier than Giant Martin, but Jimmy’s signature glide-step was a superior means of locomotion when compared to Martin’s technique of flailing his arms while struggling to maintain his balance. Jimmy was playing with him. He would drift effortlessly from one corner of the great hall to another and Martin, standing in the center of the room, would laboriously turn to face him. A few times Jimmy cut diagonally across the room, forcing Martin to defensively leap out of his way, then clamber back to his feet. It was all the more embarrassing for Martin because of the spectators. Looking at the windows and doors, it seemed to Martin that the castle’s entire staff was watching Jimmy make a monkey of him.
Not bad
, he thought,
but if we’re ever going to draw a proper crowd, I need to get him outside
.

Giant Jimmy was bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. Martin could just pick out Jimmy’s face peering out from between the glowing blue orbs. Since he wrote the macro to begin with, he knew that the spheres that made up Giant Jimmy were transparent from Jimmy’s point of view, much like the boxes that made up Giant Martin were to him.

“You should’ve joined me, Martin,” Jimmy said, moving gracefully across the far end of the great hall. “I really could’ve used someone with your skills.” Jimmy launched Giant Jimmy at Giant Martin with surprising speed. Martin ducked, barely evading Giant Jimmy’s arm as Jimmy attempted to clothesline Giant Martin on his way across the room.

Martin smiled bitterly and turned toward Jimmy while remaining in his crouch. He made a show of looking over Giant Jimmy from head to toe, then said, “Seems to me you already did.”

“Why is everyone so hung up on who came up with an idea? In the end, nothing could be less important! It’s who utilizes an idea that matters. Inventing isn’t nearly as important as using.”