by Paul Edwards
Chapter twelve
"Hey Miss... I don't think you should be bringing your dog in here."
I was back in the students pub in the City of Magic. I stared at the short thin man, he was the person I suspected was the pub's manager during my first visit, he had a cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
"Ya... well I don't think you should be smoking around me, I'm pregnant."
"What's that got to do with anything?" He had an incredulous expression on his face.
"Cigarette's cause cancer," I said.
"Really... well, regardless the dog still has to go."
"You despise me... don't you Rick."
His expression changed into one of profound perturbation.
"Why... why does every one keep asking me that!"
Then he stomped away, I heard him cursing his agent.
I looked at Ammit, she was busy lapping up water from a bowl, she had already eaten her food.
I went back to my meal of vegetables and a large portion of fish. I was still starving all the time, my constant heartburn had completely disappeared for some reason.
I missed my usual cup of wine or beer. My physician had said it would be fine but I still had felt guilty the few times I had drank alcohol.
Archimedes suddenly appeared, he sat down across from me. He looked completely different, his hair had been cut, his beard trimmed and he was wearing modern suit.
"Gods... what happened to you?"
"Thought I'd help out with lecturing... just the basic stuff, spell fundamentals etcetera. Things have sure changed... I love that projector device, make a few slides and it almost does the lecture for you."
"Till all your students fall asleep," I said wryly.
"As long as they don't snore, been doing some research in the side too, gear theory has jumped leaps and bounds during the aeon's, universal machines, binary switches, computational irreducibility. I might even have a chat with this Turing guy."
"There's more to life than gears."
"There's so much to see and learn, too much, so I decided to see something I was part of all the way through."
A young woman came by and put a large glass of white wine in front of Archimedes. The students had augmented the normal magical food and beverage service with the occasional server.
I looked at the server as she walked away, she had a startling resemblance to a famous actress. I realized that even in the mundane the students had put in a magical twist.
Actors and Actresses would be easy to incorporate into this type of spell, the vast majority had started their careers in the food service industry.
I looked at Archimedes, then decided to explain the predicament I was in, even though I doubted he would be of much help.
"Conquer the world huh? That only comes up once every fifty years," he said unimpressed.
"Really, what did the City do about it?"
"Whatever it took, the thing is someone like that, they have this enormous weakness, this lust for power, it makes them very predictable."
"What about you did you ever have to stop anyone?"
"No... well just the fucking Romans, couldn't do much anyway about them anyway... City would have stopped me if I went too far. There are many other examples though, well documented too."
"Not in the library?" I said, anxiety welling up in me.
"Oh no, the records are in The Institute for the Prevention of World Domination, here I'll draw you a map of its location in the City."
"There's an institute?"
"Like I said... it happened all the time."
