Spell Robbers

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “So is that why you moved here?” Peter asked. “Your mom’s degree?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where did you move from?”

  “Massachusetts.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “No. We’ve lived in lots of places. My mom … has a lot going on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just stuff.”

  “Like what?” Peter ate another chip.

  “She just — she has a hard time sticking with anything. This is her second … no, I guess it’s her third master’s. She didn’t finish the first one.” Ben couldn’t even remember the last time he had talked with anyone about this stuff. It felt a little uncomfortable, but there was something about Peter that made Ben feel like he could trust him, so he kept going. “She’s had a million different jobs. It doesn’t matter what it is. When she starts something new, I know sooner or later she’s going to get bored. So we just keep moving.”

  “Sorry. Sounds rough.”

  Ben swallowed. It was rough. He just never let himself admit it. “Yeah.”

  “I actually wish my dad could be more like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he has the opposite problem. He can’t let anything go. He has to pin everything down and dissect it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like me.” Peter put down the bag of chips. “I’m a genius.”

  Wow. Ben hadn’t ever heard anyone just come out and say that before. “Okay. Good for you.”

  “No, really. My dad has had my IQ tested every year since I was six years old.”

  “Why?”

  Peter pushed the bag of chips aside and pointed at the table. “Because he wants to see if it’s going up. I’m smart, but he wants me to be smarter. He has me doing all these exercises. The psychologists told him it wouldn’t make much of a difference, but he doesn’t believe them.”

  Ben didn’t know what to say. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right.” Peter grabbed the edge of the table with both hands and pushed back, balancing on the rear legs of his chair. “He hasn’t tested me in a while. I think he’s given up on me.”

  Ben knew his mom had her problems, but one thing she hadn’t ever done was make him feel like he wasn’t good enough or didn’t measure up.

  “So, you looking forward to this afternoon?” Peter asked.

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “But you gotta tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Did you have anything to do with that cafeteria table?”

  Peter paused. “Yes.”

  “But Dr. Hughes said we can’t actuate outside the lab.”

  Peter smirked. “That’s what she told me, too.”

  “So … how did you do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter said.

  But Ben wondered if that were really true.

  That afternoon, Ben actuated a fireball of his own, stoking flame from nothing but the air, and once again, his performance impressed and scared nearly everyone in the room. The ability to do this kind of stuff still bewildered him, but it thrilled him, too. If it were somehow possible to do it outside the lab, in the real world … that would be even more incredible.

  After his work with Dr. Hughes that day, Ben met his mom at her office. He had to wait for her to finish grading some papers, and by the time she’d finished, the lowering sun had turned everything orange. Their campus apartment wasn’t too far, so they decided to walk, but they’d only gone a few paces before someone called to them from behind.

  “Heather!”

  Ben’s mom grimaced. “Oh no.” Then she turned around. “Marshall! We have got to stop running into each other like this!”

  Marshall came trotting up to them. Definitely the same guy as before. But now he had a bit of a gut. “Well, I admit I was hoping to catch you,” he said.

  His mom smiled with more teeth than usual. “You remember my son, Ben?”

  Marshall shook Ben’s hand. “Of course. Good to see you again. What was that game you were into? Viral 3?”

  “Virus 7,” Ben said.

  “Oh, right, right.” Marshall bobbed his head enthusiastically, like he was nodding along with a party of people who weren’t there. “So, where are you both off to?”

  Ben gritted his teeth. None of your business.

  “Oh, you know.” Ben’s mom looked away down the sidewalk, their path of escape. “Just heading home. Long day.”

  “Have you had dinner? Could I take you both out for some pizza? There’s a great place just off campus. My treat. Consider it a welcome to the university.”

  Ben wanted very badly to answer for his mom. But he kept his mouth shut.

  “Oh, that’s sweet of you, Marshall, but tonight really isn’t a good night.”

  Marshall nodded again, but it had the look of a toy winding down. “Oh. Okay. Some other time, then.”

  Ben’s mom started walking. “But really, thank you for the offer.”

  “Bye, Heather.”

  Ben’s mom waited until they were well out of earshot. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to say no politely. I don’t want to hurt the man’s feelings. He’s not a bad guy.”

  But that didn’t mean he was good for Ben’s mom.

  She sighed. “What do you want to do for dinner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about Breakfast Dinner?”

  “Sounds good.”

  They went home and mixed up the pancake batter, fried some eggs and bacon, and then sat down to eat. Ben drenched it all in maple syrup, the real kind he’d gotten used to eating back east. But it got everything sticky, and after they were done eating, he wiped up the table, scouring all the familiar nicks and scratches.

  Later that night, as he lay in bed, he thought back to the rain cloud he’d made. And he thought about Dr. Hughes’s warning about things getting away from him. A runaway train. He pictured himself back in the basement of the Castle, only this time, the cloud in front of him kept growing and growing, shooting off lightning bolts and booming with thunder. He tried to break it up, to smash the atoms apart with his thoughts. But he couldn’t stop its fury.

  It took a while to fall asleep after that.

  TWO weeks went by. Two weeks of work in Dr. Hughes’s lab, where Ben was able to create rain clouds, ignite fires, and move heavy objects, like filing cabinets. Even though Peter didn’t make a big deal out of it, Ben knew his friend was secretly bugged that Ben could do stuff Peter couldn’t. But Dr. Hughes and the other students continued to be impressed by what Ben could actuate in the lab.

  Today, like all the other days, started with a brief lecture on quantum mechanics.

  “At the atomic level,” Dr. Hughes said, “reality is dependent on our observation of it. As the Nobel-winning physicist Eugene Wigner put it, reality is created when our consciousness ‘reaches out.’ When you actuate, you are reaching out to create a potential reality.”

  Ben shifted in his chair. Then let’s actuate something, already.

  “At the atomic level, the world is made of nothing more than possibilities and potentialities. As Actuators, your thoughts guide the world toward a possibility by tipping the scale of probability in one direction or another. So now, let’s begin.”

  Finally!

  They worked on ice that day. Snow. Forming it, shaping it, melting it. As he always did, Ben actuated the pants off everyone else, including Peter. And even though that made Dr. Hughes very happy with all the data she was collecting, it left Ben that much more frustrated that he couldn’t do something — anything — outside the lab.

  As they were wrapping up, and the others were sliding into their backpacks and heading out the door, Dr. Hughes called to Ben.

  “Would you mind staying for a moment?”

  Ben’s mom was studying late that evening, so she wouldn’t be expecting him. He looked at Peter, who wore a slight frown. But a moment later, his friend shrugged and left.
Ben turned to Dr. Hughes. “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if you might assist me with something.”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  From a drawer in her desk, she produced what looked like some kind of gun. As she brought it closer to him, Ben saw that it was a gun. A modified laser-tag gun, with a bunch of wires and extra pieces attached to it, including a metal ring almost a foot across mounted at the end of the barrel.

  “What’s that?” Ben asked.

  “The goal of my technology has always been portability. That’s where the real excitement will be when I’m ready to share it with the world. This” — she held up the laser-tag gun — “will do the same thing that the augmenting devices have been doing here in the lab. But instead of being confined to a lab, you can take it anywhere. It works directionally. For lack of a better word, you aim your thoughts through here” — she pointed at the ring — “and the device will project that thought a certain range.”

  It wasn’t the same as being able to actuate without the technology, like Peter could do, but Ben was still thrilled with the idea of being mobile. “What is the range?”

  “Right now, I estimate no more than thirty feet. But it needs to be tested. Which is why you —”

  “I’ll do it.” Ben hadn’t meant to sound so eager.

  Dr. Hughes grinned. “I thought you might be willing. I’ve set up a range over here.” She led him to a long, narrow stretch of the room she’d cleared of all wires and computers. Little pieces of blue tape marked the distance stretching away from him. “Let’s keep doing ice,” she said, “since your mind is primed for it.”

  “Okay.”

  She handed him the gun. It was heavier than Ben expected, much heavier than the plastic toy it had started out as. He aimed it, looking down the barrel, through the metal ring.

  “Let’s see the base range without any attempt on your part to control it. Just look through the ring, and actuate a few snowflakes.”

  “Okay.” Ben closed his eyes and, as with rain clouds, he imagined the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the air coming together. But then he imagined the temperature around the water molecules dropping. That’s all he had to do. Lower and lower, to the point of freezing. The water molecules grew very still, and quietly began building themselves into crystalline spears, daggers, arches, petals, and planes. The architecture of ice.

  Beside him, Dr. Hughes whispered, “It works.”

  He opened his eyes. A few feet in front of them, a little pocket of snowflakes floated in the air. Dr. Hughes walked toward it with a clipboard, took some measurements on the floor, and then came back to him.

  “Okay, go ahead and melt those. Let’s repeat the experiment and see what we get.”

  Ben was always a little sad about this part. He imagined the temperature rising, and the delicate structure of the snowflakes shattered and collapsed. But then he closed his eyes and actuated the conditions for them to rebuild themselves, which they did. Dr. Hughes took some more measurements, and then he melted them again. They repeated this several times.

  “This was an excellent neutral test.” Dr. Hughes scanned her notes. “But just for fun, let’s try the range on it.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “You’ll try to project through the ring, aiming for a distant point. Like raising your voice.”

  Project.

  “Okay. Let me try that.”

  So he did. He looked through the ring, formed the same thoughts that had been actuating snow for the last thirty minutes, and tried to shout them down the range. Nothing happened. Dr. Hughes offered an encouraging bob of her head, and Ben tried again. He raised his inner voice, yelling his thoughts. His eyes started to water. A quivering started in his shoulders and moved up his neck. Again, nothing.

  He lowered the gun, frustrated. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I can’t get it to work.”

  “No need to apologize. I only wish I knew how to give you directions.”

  “I’m making my thoughts as loud as I can.”

  Dr. Hughes clicked her pen. “Perhaps it’s not about volume,” she finally said. “Perhaps it’s about tone. And clarity.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Imagine you’re in a stadium. A football game. The roar of the crowd is deafening, and it’s impossible to hear a single voice through it all. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s the entanglement all around us, filling the universe. There is so much noise, it’s impossible for a single voice to be heard. That’s the reason actuation isn’t happening all the time, with everyone. My technology works by shutting out that noise, isolating and magnifying your individual thoughts.”

  “So how do I make my thoughts louder than the rest?”

  “Not louder. Different. The way a referee’s whistle can be heard above the stadium noise.”

  Ben gripped the gun handle. Not louder. Different. “Let me try again.”

  He raised the barrel, and aimed through the ring, down to the last strip of tape on the floor. He closed his eyes and went through the thoughts to actuate snow. But he stopped screaming them in his head. Instead, he tried to make his thoughts more focused. More clear. Honed like a knife, able to slice through the roaring stadium of entanglement all around him. But he held his thoughts in, like the referee taking a breath before he blew on his whistle.

  Then, when he felt ready, Ben opened his eyes and released the actuation.

  A jagged shard of ice the size of a football exploded from the air in front of him. It shot down the range, past the last tape marker, and shattered against the wall.

  Ben was stunned.

  Dr. Hughes stared.

  “What was that?” Ben asked with an excited laugh.

  She blinked. “I have no idea. Is that what you meant to actuate?”

  “No. I was still going for snow. But I was also thinking about what you said, and I was trying to focus my thoughts.”

  “You’re certain that is not what you intended?”

  “I swear.”

  “Nothing in my calculations predicted something like this. That could have been dangerous. I —” She paused. “In the interest of safety, I need to revisit the data before we use the portable augmenter again.” She held out her hand.

  Ben gave her the gun, a little reluctant to let it go.

  “Thank you for your work today,” she said. “See you tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Sorry,” Ben said, even though he didn’t feel sorry. He wanted to try the gun again. “See you tomorrow, Dr. Hughes.”

  On his way home, Ben kept his hands in his pockets, watching the sidewalk seams pass underfoot. How had he done that? Made a missile of ice. What else could he do? What were the limits of his power?

  He looked up at the sky, wondering whether he should tell Peter what he had done. Probably not. Dr. Hughes hadn’t specifically asked him to keep it a secret, but Ben figured she wouldn’t want him going around telling everyone else about the augmenter gun that let you shoot ice cannonballs. The gray clouds overhead looked like they might rain. They reminded Ben of his first actuation.

  He stopped.

  Could he do it without the lab equipment? Now that he had figured out how to project his thoughts, how to rise above the noise, maybe he could do what Peter had done that day in the cafeteria. Maybe Ben could make things happen outside the lab.

  He studied the cloud. He thought about where it would rain, and how it would rain, and how the water would patter the trees, and flow down the gutters. He thought about the smell, and the way the grass would get slick. He imagined a warm updraft lifting humid air into the heart of the cloud, where the molecules in the water vapor bumped and gathered together, forming droplets. And then he imagined these droplets getting big enough that gravity got ahold of them and brought them falling down.

  This was a lot bigger than flipping a penny or closing a cafeteria table. But he sent this thought out, an actuation, just as he had with the augmenter gun.

&nbs
p; Then he watched and waited. It seemed like it maybe got a little more windy. But no rain fell. Nothing happened.

  “I thought he stopped having you tested.” Ben sat next to Peter on the bus, heading up to the university.

  Peter’s expression and voice came out flat. “I did, too.”

  Ben watched the wavering threads of water stretching across the bus window. The storm had eventually started up this morning. Un-actuated. “So. When do you go in?”

  Peter shrugged with one shoulder. “This Saturday. I’m considering bombing this one on purpose. Maybe the man just needs a sign to give up hope.”

  “Don’t bomb it.”

  “Why not? It’s up to me.”

  “Yeah, but … what your dad does isn’t up to you.”

  Peter fell silent. The bus chugged along and soon arrived at the campus. By the time they reached the basement of the Castle, they were both drenched. But so were the other students, who were all dripping outside in the hallway. The classroom door was closed and locked.

  “Where is Dr. Hughes?” Ben asked.

  “Dunno.” Dylan handed Ben a piece of paper. “This was taped to the door.”

  Ben read the note: Class, I will be late for our session today. Please feel free to take the afternoon off, if you do not want to wait for me. If you do wait, I hope I won’t be long.

  “So she’s coming,” Ben said.

  Abbie shrugged. “Guess so.”

  “I think I’m gonna go,” Julie said. “Bye, guys.” And she left.

  Ten minutes later, Dylan and Abbie left, too. Ben sat down on the floor, his back against the wall, legs outstretched. Peter sat against the wall opposite him, his legs crossed. He kept looking at his watch, and Ben figured he probably wanted to leave, but he wasn’t going to if Ben was staying. And Ben planned to wait. It was either here for Dr. Hughes, or somewhere else for his mom.

  A short while later, Dr. Hughes strode down the hallway, pumping the water off a blue umbrella, a slim package tucked under her arm.