by Scott Meyer
Brit said, “We are. You aren’t.”
Phillip turned to look at her, and saw that everyone was headed for the exit but him and the future version of him, who was standing in his invisible prison, still looking at Phillip, shaking his head.
24.
Brit the Younger stood by Brit the Elder’s front door, ushering everybody else out. At the back of the pack, Brit the Much Elder exited, levitating the frozen and error-riddled Brit the Elder out of the house she herself had damaged.
The only ones left in the house were Brit the Younger, Martin, and Future Phillip.
“Come on,” Martin shouted. “We’ve gotta get out of here!”
Future Phillip knocked on the invisible wall of his cell.
Martin said, “I’ll make it move with you. Come on!”
Future Phillip mimed a man walking with his fingers, then used the other hand to lift the little imaginary man he’d made and carry it.
“I’m not going to carry you,” Martin said.
Future Phillip shrugged, crossed his arms, and held his ground.
“Fine!” Martin poked at his smartphone’s screen, pointed his staff at Future Phillip’s transparent prison, and swept the staff’s head toward the door. As his cell moved, it shoved Phillip along, forcing him to stumble his way out of the house.
It was easy to see how the citizens of Atlantis had noticed the problem. Three-quarters of Brit the Elder’s home was glitching out, the frequency and duration of the low-res periods both increasing, and with every transition, more of the house was affected. In the time it took the wizards to clear out of the building and hustle across the patio to the park beyond, the house was almost totally involved, as was a perfect circle of ground radiating from the rear of the structure and growing with every second.
The error started working its way across the stone patio. The two guards posted there did not move a muscle until Brit the Younger told them, “You’re dismissed,” at which point they took off, running at top speed.
Martin pried his attention away from the spectacle of Brit the Elder’s house and looked up at the rest of Atlantis. Brit the Elder’s home was located at the very bottom of the bowl. All of the terraces, all the way to the very rim, had unobstructed views of the house, and Martin could see that every one of them was lined with people looking down at the problem, watching to see what the wizards and sorceresses were going to do about it.
Martin turned to the others. “What are we going to do about this?”
Nobody spoke up. After a few seconds of furtive glances and noncommittal mumbling, all of their eyes converged on the two functioning Brits: Brit the Younger and Brit the Much Elder. One of them had built Atlantis long, long ago, and the other would build it herself someday, so they naturally had some jurisdiction over how to handle the problem that threatened the city.
Brit the Much Elder looked around, thought for a moment, then looked at Brit the Younger and said, “Uh, I got nothing. You?”
Brit the Younger shouted, “What?! No! I don’t know what to do! It’s not like I’ve ever dealt with this before! I mean, I have something I’ve been working on, but I don’t think it’s quite ready for this big a problem.”
Gwen said, “What is it? I say we give it a try.”
Brit the Younger said, “Another me comes back from the future and handles the problem while I take notes on what she does so I can come back and do it later.”
Gary asked, “Would that work?”
Another copy of Brit the Younger appeared. “Yes, it will. I’m from an hour from now. It’s all handled. Now, here’s what we did . . . what you’re going to do. Brit the Younger, you follow me and take careful notes of everything I do. Here’s a pen and paper.”
The new Brit held out a plain composition book and a cheap disposable pen. Brit the Younger took them, opened the notebook, and started writing.
The Brit from an hour into the future opened another composition book, identical to the first, except that it looked well used: the pages filled, the cover bent and creased, and several of the pages dog-eared. She opened the notebook and scanned the pages as she spoke.
“Brit the Much Elder, you take Brit the Elder and Hobo Phillip to Gary’s. She’ll be isolated out in the woods there and we can meet up after all of this and figure out our next move. As a bonus, the sight of her glitching out and Phillip’s unwashed beard and hair might scare off some of Gary’s unwanted apprentices. Is that all right with you, Gary?”
Gary said, “Yeah, sounds good. If you want any food or anything, Hubert will take care of you.”
Brit the One Hour Elder said, “He’ll offer, and you don’t want anything. Now for the rest of us. First, I suggest we all levitate. The glitch is moving fast, and it’s almost on us. We don’t know what’ll happen if we’re standing on the ground when it starts going wiggy, and I don’t want to find out.”
All of the wizards lifted off of the ground except Gary, who stayed on the ground, smiling smugly. “Wait a second. If you don’t know what happens if the error reaches us, that must mean that it won’t get to any of us.”
The new Brit said, “That’s right, Gary, which also means that you must lift off before it gets to you, which it will in less than five seconds.”
Gary looked down, saw that the error was only a few feet away and moving fast, and leapt into the air with an undignified yelp.
Brit the One Hour Elder said, “We need to evacuate the city. Martin, Phillip, you go up to the rim and commandeer as many boats as you can.”
Tyler raised his hand. The new Brit pointed at him, but instead of asking what his question was, she glanced at her notebook. “Yes, Tyler, we could just use our powers to fly everybody out of here, but a major part of running a successful evacuation is keeping people calm. Boats calm people down. Flying through the sky completely under someone else’s control does not.”
Tyler lowered his hand. “Makes sense.”
“Good. While Martin and Phillip get the transportation ready, the rest of us are going to start directing people up to the rim. We do everything we can to help them get up there, but we don’t carry them. Understood? They need to get out under their own power. It’ll seem less urgent that way, and keep them from panicking. Everybody got it? Good. Let’s go.”
Brit the Much Elder disappeared, taking the stricken Brit the Elder and the disheveled Future Phillip with her. The other wizards took off in every conceivable direction, leaving Brit the Younger scribbling furiously, Brit the One Hour Elder watching the wizards with deep satisfaction, and Gwen looking at the two of them skeptically.
“So, this is a system you’ve been working on?” Gwen asked.
Brit the One Hour Elder said, “Yes.”
Gwen turned to Brit the Younger. “And you’re taking notes of everything she does?”
Brit the One Hour Elder said, “You keep writing. I’ll answer. Yes, she is.”
“And you know what to do because you read her notes.”
“That’s right.”
“So, if the notes come from watching what you do, and what you do comes from reading the notes, who came up with the actual plan in the first place?”
“Both of us. Neither of us. In general, the system’s meant for emergencies, so it’s sort of a given that we have more important things to worry about than who gets the credit. That said, I’m having to work harder than I should, since the notes are kinda sketchy.”
Brit the Younger looked up from her notepad. “Well, what do you want? I’m under a lot of stress here!”
Brit the One Hour Elder said, “That’s a really good note. Please write that down.”
Brit the Younger went back to writing, but said, “When we tried this out on Phillip, we used the video camera. That was to watch how the experiment went, but I think it’d be good for just documenti
ng the action.”
“Yeah, and maybe instead of asking you to take notes while you’re in the emergency, we should bring in another Brit to document everything after the fact.”
Brit the Younger shook her head. “Another Brit. That’s your answer for everything.”
* * *
Martin and Phillip slowed to a hover as they rose just above sea level. Looking at the city from this angle always made Martin uncomfortable. When he saw Atlantis from a distance, all he could see was the wall-like rim and some building tops poking up above the surface of the ocean. It looked like an unusually well-built-up island. When he was down in the bowl, all he could see was the city around him and the sky above. Only when he hovered just above the rim, as he was doing now, could he sense the millions of tons of seawater pressing in, and the enormous hollow, a perfect hemispherical hole in the surface of the ocean, in which the city sat. The distance to the bottom of the city gave him vertigo, the motion of the waves made him queasy, and the precariousness of the entire arrangement made him nervous.
Looking down around the city’s marina, he saw ships moored to docks that sprouted from the rim like a bird’s plumage. Sailors and traders milled around, going about their business, unaware of the events at the bottom of the bowl.
Martin said, “Ĉi tiu iras al la dek unu,” triggering a macro that amplified his voice to a volume that would make the sound technician for a monster-truck rally suggest that he tone it down. He cleared his throat, frightening away every bird in the ships’ riggings and drawing the attention of every living thing within the sound of his voice.
“Hello. Look, every person in Atlantis is in great danger. We’re evacuating. It’s imperative that everybody gets as far from the city as they can, as quickly as possible.”
One of the sailors shouted, “Thanks for telling us!” He was barely audible over the sudden cacophony of all the ship’s captains issuing orders to cast off immediately.
Phillip said, “Maybe you should’ve asked for their help, then warned them about the danger.”
Martin shouted. “Wait! Don’t cast off yet! We need your help! Come on! Stick around long enough for us to load some people onto your boats.”
Someone shouted, “No thanks!”
Ropes thudded on decks and oars splashed as every vessel started pulling away.
“Hold on, guys,” Martin shouted. “You’re not in any danger. There’s no need to rush off like this!”
“Good,” a sailor shouted. “Then the people still in the city don’t need to leave.”
“Shut up!” Martin pointed at a particular sailor, the captain of a big flat barge meant for hauling supplies back and forth from the mainland. “Hey, you, hold up a second.”
The captain and one of his three deckhands used long poles to shove off from the dock, then ran forward to unfurl the barge’s square-rigged sail. As the captain fumbled with the ropes, he glanced up at Martin and said, “Sorry. Can’t. I have a strict policy of obeying any order to evacuate.”
Martin flew out to follow the barge. “Hey, you, how many people can this boat carry?”
“Four. Me and my crew. The rest of the space is set aside for paid cargo.”
“Well how about you come back and let us load it up with people?”
“What does that kind of thing pay?”
“Couldn’t you just do it for the joy of helping someone else?”
“Couldn’t you just pay me for the same reason?”
For a moment, Martin seemed on the verge of losing his temper, but he stopped himself and hung in the air, not moving. Phillip flew up and watched his friend for a moment before quietly asking, “What are you doing, Martin?”
“I’m thinking. Before I do something rash, I’m taking a second to think about what the smart thing to do would be.”
“And what have you come up with?”
“This.” Martin flew forward, pulling the silver box that held his smartphone out of an interior pocket. He hovered above the barge, swiping through menus on his phone, then pointed his staff at the vessel, bathing it in an eerie green glow.
“Hey,” the captain shouted. “What are you doing to my ship?”
The glow subsided, and Martin closed the box.
“Nothing now. I’m done.” Martin turned to Phillip. “I’ll be back in a second.”
Martin disappeared.
Phillip shrugged at the captain.
Martin reappeared, nodded at Phillip, then turned to face Atlantis and raised his staff in the air.
The captain, standing at the stern of his ship as it pulled away, shouted, “What are you going to do?”
Martin looked back over his shoulder. “Oh, are you still here? Don’t worry about it. You can go.”
“Maybe I don’t wanna.”
“Oh, you wanna. It’s about to get real crowded.”
Martin quickly pulled his smartphone out of his pocket, and flipped open the silver box he used as a case. He pressed his thumb to the screen, turned his attention back to the city, and swept his staff through the air.
The sea between Martin and the rim of Atlantis filled with exact copies of the barge, occupying all the empty space, packed so close together that one could walk from the edge of the city to the far end of the flotilla without getting their feet wet. That was fortunate, since the instant the barges appeared, people started streaming over the rim, down the docks, and onto the ships.
The captain of the barge, his voice distant and faint, shouted, “Those are copies of my ship! They’re rightfully mine!”
Phillip pointed his staff and created a force field that pushed the barge away at an unnaturally high speed. When the captain was no longer audible, just an angry, fist-shaking speck in the distance, Phillip said, “Well done, Martin!”
“Thanks.
“Who’s going to man them?”
“They’re self-driving. As each one fills up, they’ll automatically break free from the pack and head for the mainland.”
“Thinking before you act suits you, Martin.”
“Yeah. The problem is, I usually don’t think to do it.”
* * *
Brit the Younger, Brit the One Hour Elder, and Gwen floated up through the center of the city, monitoring the progress of the error, which had engulfed Brit the Elder’s house, the park that surrounded it, and the governmental buildings all clustered at the very bottom of the bowl. The glitch was still expanding, engulfing a roughly circular footprint that constantly grew, and accelerated at a steady rate.
Well above the ever-increasing error, the crowd of people fleeing from the glitch progressed at an even faster rate. The citizens of Atlantis made their way to the rim of the city, clogging the walkways and staircases, packed so tightly that one could crowd surf on them, if that person was under the mistaken impression that it was 1994.
Louiza, Tyler, Jeff, Roy, Gary, and all of the sorceresses of Atlantis flew around the interior of the bowl, shouting instructions and encouragement to the people, urging them to remain calm, but to leave as quickly as possible as they could.
Brit the Younger looked up from her notebook. “I’m surprised there hasn’t been a stampede or a riot or something. Nobody’s panicking.”
Gwen said, “They’re leaving because we’re telling them to, but we’ve coddled these people so much, they think nothing really bad can happen to them as long as we’re all here to save them.”
Brit the One Hour Elder said, “It’s kinda the opposite of the problem we had in Leadchurch, with the dragons. There they thought they’d all be killed by our mistakes. Here, they think our mistakes can’t hurt them.”
“I can’t help noticing that the common denominator is us making mistakes.”
“On that note . . .” Brit the One Hour Elder held up a finger to pause the
conversation, snapped her copy of the notebook shut, and projected a glowing blue force field that shot toward a small boy who had slipped off of a walkway and was now falling to the next path, four stories below. The force field rocketed forward and intersected with the boy’s trajectory right after he had passed.
Tyler streaked into view and caught the boy by the arm. As he flew the child back to his grateful parents, Tyler took a second to glance at Brit the One Hour Elder, his expression clearly asking, What’s your problem?
Brit the One Hour Elder said, “That’s exactly how it went down before. It just underscores the need for a way to time our response to events down to the split second if this system’s going to work.”
Gwen asked, “How are you going to do that?”
Brit the Younger, still writing notes at a furious pace, said, “We have an idea. It’d probably work, but it’s kinda . . . I dunno, dorky.”
“Yeah,” Brit the One Hour Elder said. “But I haven’t come up with a better idea in the last hour.”
The three of them gained altitude, rising above the rim of the city and drifting out over the marina. Gwen pointed into the distance. “What’s the story there?”
Martin and Phillip hovered motionless above the waves, arguing with a man standing on a barge that was identical to all of the others, except that it only had a few people on it and it was anchored in place.
Brit the One Hour Elder smiled and placed a call to Phillip, who answered instantly.
“Yes? Brit? I’m so glad you called!”
Brit the One Hour Elder said, “Be quiet a second. We want to hear what’s going on over there.”
In the background, Gwen and the two Brits heard Martin say, “I made them. I own them. I can do what I want with them.”
The man on the barge said, “But you made them by copying my ship. They’re copies of my property, therefore, they are my property.”
