by Paul Edwards
We were back at the City of Magic, in the same pub that I had left Archimedes at. Widdle and Peter sat with glasses of beer in front of them. I had ordered a large sandwich which had just appeared in the center of the table.
Geez I was starving all the time now.
Widdle looked around at the small number of people in the pub, most were reading, everything from clay tablets and papyri to modern books and computer tablets.
"Wow... you guys are really going to town... lost many students?" Widdle said.
"We've cordoned off the most of the city, we have archaeologists cataloguing the empty parts," I said.
"How did you find this place and why did you leave?" Peter asked.
"Didn't find it... it's been occupied in some form or another since it was built, I still have some stuff here, been a few years since I've been back."
"Just you?"
"I'm the last one alive... or was," Widdle looked around again.
"Why didn't you train someone else?" I asked.
"I was too busy... with our... um... plan... I was going to find someone... eventually."
"Plan?"
Widdle sighed, "it's a long story."
"We have time," I said between bites of my sandwich.
"Things started to fall apart after the mathematician Riemann appeared, he figured out the geometry needed to deduce the actuator symbols, started writing spells on his own."
"Wait... the symbols can be deduced?" I asked, amazed.
"Oh yes... it is very difficult though, thing is Riemann wanted to write a paper... publish it... for such a smart man... so stupid... wouldn't listen to reason, sadly but fortunately he died before he could write it. I suspect sorcery may have been involved in his death."
"Things were fine for a few decades... then Cantor appeared... figured out the symbols again, ironically it drove him mad... thought he had discovered god, thankfully he abandoned work on it.
"Then things became very bad... all these brilliant physicists and mathematicians started appearing, computers were invented, it was only a matter of time before they would discover the principles again. Godel almost got it... he was so close, just a matter of time... they had to have a chat with him... told him they were watching him... he better be careful...
This couldn't go on, they couldn't watch everyone.
Mannston was the one who came up with the plan... it was crazy... he used Newfellows algorithms... expanded them, they spent months creating it."
"Created what?" Peter and I said in chorus.
"A real artificial intelligence... not the faux sort you get using people as virtual neurons... but a real one completely magic, an exponential intelligence not burdened by emotion."
"Why?"
"To come up with a solution to the problem they couldn't solve... they finished it in the sixties... when they activated it learned English in four minutes, math was innate to it, you could show it any equation, did a one line solution of the P vs NP problem.
Thing was insane... would babble incoherently for hours... then scream... it would be lucid only for a few minutes at a time, that's when they were able to get the answer to their problem... blew up after eight days... disintegrated into a flash of gamma ray's... Mannston was in the next room."
"That's how he got his radiation poisoning," Peter exclaimed.
"What was the solution?" I asked.
"Three equations... so subtle so devious, leading into a theory, a theory that's like a beautiful evil seductress, you calculate and calculate, and it always seems like you are making great strides, but you go nowhere... then when you decide to give up... the seductress shows you a quick glance of her bosom or gives you a subtle stare and you are hooked again.
The Z-matrix subtly introduced at a drunken university faculty party in the sixties, the Oiler function, put into a dusty paper carelessly left on the floor of an Ivy league college library in the seventies, and finally the W-theory equation, introduced by me at the first Twine theory conference.
Mannston gave it to me before he died, I was his last apprentice."
"That was your masterpiece... why you became famous," Peter said.
"It's all a sham then... twine theory," I said.
"Yes... it worked flawlessly, the more brilliant the theorist or mathematician the likelier they would be drawn to work on the theory. Thousands of meaningless paper's have been published, work on anything else has stopped. There has been only one minor hiccup."
"That reporter... Morgan," I said.
"Yes... his stupid book, Chronic Science the problem with Twine theory, it became a minor bestseller, people are starting to talk about cutting funding to Twine theorists, important people, they'll be forced to work on something else."
"How come he didn't get caught by the theory," I asked.
"Cause Morgan's not a mathematician, he would have a tough time figuring out simple arithmetic," Widdle snorted derisively.
"Well we have bigger problems, there's a sorceress from the past... she's in the present, I think she wants to conquer the world," I said.
"Who?"
"Semiramis she's Assyrian from around twenty six hundred BC."
"Hmm... did you try and talk to her?"
"I tried that once, in another reality, she is not a reasonable woman," I said.
"She's in control of Hoving Aerospace, and spending a fortune on Quantum computer research," Peter said.
"Odd combination... computers and ICBM's... you'd think it would be one or the other," Widdle said.
I too thought this was odd, any competent sorcerer could conquer the world, the only thing that one would have to worry about was other sorcerers.
Even that didn't make any sense, if you wanted to live life as a megalomaniac you could create any number of bubble realities, specially designed to stroke even the largest ego.
The thing was unless you were mentally unbalanced, ruling the world would seem to become unbearably boring after a few weeks, if you are able to conjure everything you want up, why do you need an empire?
I had spent most of my time as a sorcerer exploring lost corners of the world, flying over exotic lands, investigating intriguing mysteries.
I thought about an adventure I had had before my pregnancy, I had been a crew member on the Mary Celeste.
Gods that had been exciting... the secret cargo hidden in the specially marked barrels... the mysterious rendezvous... the vortex of Atlantis.
A thought suddenly occurred to me, Semiramis thought she was anonymous. The reason she was using a roundabout way to conquer the world was so she wouldn't arouse the suspicions of any existing sorcerers. It had been blind luck that we had discovered her.
"We have to confront her," I blurted out.
Widdle and Peter stared at me.
I my theory explained to them that I thought that once she knew that she was not anonymous anymore and sorcerers still existed she would stop her nefarious plan.
