by Scott Meyer
“Go look under your front door,” Phillip’s head said. “I’ll wait.”
An envelope was waiting on the floor just inside Martin’s warehouse, as if it had been slid under the door.
Martin reached down and picked up the envelope. He tried to open it, but found it awkward with Phillip’s miniature floating head hovering in his hand. “Um, sorry,” Martin said, “I’m going to have to hang up on you to see what it says.”
Phillip said, “Don’t bother. If it’s like mine, it says that they’re giving your former apprentice Roy his dinner and trials tonight at the castle.”
“Huh, that’s convenient.”
“Yeah,” Phillip said. “They probably held it for us. They knew we’d be back today.”
Martin said, “True. Waiting for us gave them time to plan something special.”
36.
The ability to teleport made distance irrelevant, so it was not a surprise that Phillip got to the castle before Martin, even though Phillip lived very far away, while Martin could see the castle from his front door.
As Martin walked across the cavernous grand hall of the castle Camelot, with its gold trim, gold statues, and marble floors with gold inlay, he was struck by how cheap it looked compared to even the simplest dwelling in Atlantis. The reason for this, of course, was that the castle was designed by Jimmy, specifically for the purpose of looking expensive, and just like a truly powerful person never needs to tell people that they are powerful, a truly rich person doesn’t need to demonstrate that they are rich.
The wizards were already seated at the banquet table. Just as they had been at the last trials banquet, which, as it happened, had been Martin’s. That evening Martin, as the guest of honor, had sat at the head of the table, next to the chairman, Jimmy at the time. Phillip had sat at the far end with Jeff, Gary, and the Magnuses, and the rest of the wizards had worked out a sort of self-created seating chart, sorting themselves in order of their own obsequiousness.
Now things were different. Roy, the guest of honor, sat at the head of the table. Phillip was the chairman, and was already setting to Roy’s right. Jeff, Roy’s trainer, sat across from Phillip, and the rest of the wizards were seated around the table, almost randomly, except for the Magnuses, who still sat at the far end of the table, because that’s what they were used to.
Everyone wanted to hear about Martin and Phillip’s trip to Atlantis. Phillip said that he would write up an official report of all the business that got done, which he would distribute as soon as it was done.
Good, Martin thought, we don’t want to turn this into a debate about locking down the file. That’s not what tonight’s about. This is Roy’s initiation. It struck Martin that it would also be the last initiation. All the more reason to let everyone enjoy it, he thought.
Phillip and Martin took turns describing the city and its architecture, and ignoring questions about the sorceresses and their architecture. After a few minutes of this, Phillip said that all of the details would be in his report, and shifted the focus back to Roy, who entertained the wizards with tales of what it was like to work at the Lockheed Skunk Works, which might not sound interesting to many people, but to this crowd it was endlessly fascinating.
Eventually dinner was over and Phillip proclaimed that it was time to see Roy demonstrate his macro. It was how the trainee demonstrated his mastery over the shell program, and gave the other wizards an idea of what kind of behavior they could expect from the new guy. Fireballs, whirlwinds, and explosions were par for the course, but if the trainee did anything genuinely dangerous in an attempt to impress them, it would give the wizards something to think about.
Before Roy could respond, Gary raised his hand and cleared his throat. Something about it unnerved Martin. I don’t know why, Martin thought. He’s being perfectly polite. Then Martin realized, that’s why it seems odd. Gary’s being polite.
Gary said, “Guys, before we get to Roy’s macro, Eddie and I have a surprise for you.”
Everybody looked to Phillip, and Phillip looked weary. Gary enjoyed surprising people, but he favored the kind of surprise that you announced afterwards by laughing, pointing, and yelling “Gotcha.” The fact that he was announcing a surprise in advance was out of character, and that led Phillip to believe that Gary’s surprise probably wouldn’t be anything too bad. After all, he was already announcing the surprise in a manner that was out of character. The surprise would likely be out of character as well, meaning it might be something pleasant.
Eddie wasn’t a natural leader, but he was a born organizer. Nobody would ever follow him into battle, but at his word, they’d happily form a single file line once they were there. When Eddie asked the wizards to step into the vast, empty portion of the room and form a circle, they did so with little hesitation. “Oh,” Eddie added as an afterthought, “and leave your staffs at the table. You’ll need your hands free.”
There were only twenty-four of them, so the circle was not particularly large. Martin was reminded of P.E. class in elementary school, when they’d play with the parachute.
Once the circle was formed, Gary said, “Okay, now everybody join hands.” Nobody moved. Phillip turned to Eddie and asked, “Do we have to?”
Eddie said, “Yes.” With some grumbling, they all joined hands.
Martin’s left hand held Tyler’s. His right held Gary’s hand who also held hands with Phillip, who also held hands with Eddie, who craned his neck around to look at everybody’s hands.
“Okay,” Eddie said. “Looks like we’re ready to go.” He and Gary made eye contact, nodded, then in unison said, “All is prepared.”
There was a modest-sized flash of light, a small cloud of black smoke, and then Jimmy was standing in the middle of the circle with his hands clasped behind his back. With his green and gold wizard hat covering most of his gray hair, and his old wizard robe obscuring his gaunt, wiry frame, he was instantly recognizable.
Phillip spoke for everybody, or rather, he shouted random noises in inarticulate alarm and rage for everyone. He struggled to get his hands free so that he could attack his nemesis, but he could not, as Gary and Eddie had a firm grip on them. As the three men struggled against each other, Gary grunted, “This is why we needed to hold hands.”
All of the wizards, save for Jeff and Eddie, were shocked. The air was full of questions, obscenities, and obscenities stated in the form of questions. “How?!” Martin shouted, as he tried desperately to pry his other hand out of Gary’s grip. He tried letting go of Tyler so he could use his left hand to help free his right, but found that he couldn’t release his grip. Martin repeated, “How?!” At the moment, that was the best his mind could come up with.
Gary, struggling with both hands, said, “Come on, guys, settle down. Let us explain!”
Martin yelled, “How?!” again.
Jimmy smiled. “How what, Martin? How am I back here? How can they possibly explain themselves? How are your hands stuck together? Which how do you want answered?”
“All of them,” Tyler spat, “and make it fast, so we can get to killing you.”
Jimmy turned to face Tyler. “Tyler, I know you’re angry, and with good reason, but don’t exaggerate. We all know you aren’t murderers. You’re better than that. And even if you were killers, you couldn’t kill me with your hands all joined together like this. You can’t attack me physically, and without your staffs you can’t do magic. The worst you can do is give me a particularly aggressive group hug.”
Martin asked, “How are you doing this? I don’t see a staff in your hand!”
Jimmy said, “I have a wand in my pocket.” He reached his robe’s deep side pocket and produced a wand. He turned to Phillip and said, “And no, I’m not going to make the obvious joke.”
“Go ahead,” Phillip cried. “It can’t make me like you any less.”
“Wait,” Jeff said. “I got my wand in
my pocket too! Transporto hejmo!”
Nothing happened. Jeff wasn’t transported home. Jimmy’s plan wasn’t foiled. Gary and Eddie didn’t look surprised.
Gary said, “Okay, be cool! Be cool, everybody. We’ll explain. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Eddie added, “Yeah, Gary and I have the situation under control. You all don’t have your powers right now, but Gary and I do. Jimmy has some powers, but they’re limited, and there’s nothing he can do that Gary and I can’t stop, okay? Jimmy just wants to say something, then you’ll all be released.”
“What can he possibly have to say that’ll make any difference?” Phillip asked. “He played God with people’s lives, ghosted Tyler, accidentally killed an entire town, then tried to kill all of us!”
“That’s the thing, ” Eddie said. “He wants to apologize.”
Phillip couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “He told you he wants to apologize?”
“Yes,” Jimmy said, “I told them that I want to apologize. I also told them that if I came before you all without powers, you’d never believe that my apology was genuine. You would just think that I was trying to manipulate you into letting me be a wizard again. I told them that in order for you to see that I was genuinely sorry, I would have to have the upper hand when I apologized, and that meant that Gary and Eddie would have to give me some of my powers back so that I could trap all of you, so that I could demonstrate how sorry I am.”
“That makes no sense,” Martin said. “The logic doesn’t hold up. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the rest of us in check, if Gary and Eddie are still more powerful than you and can stop you from harming us, then you don’t have the upper hand and your whole argument falls apart.”
Jimmy nodded appreciatively. “That’s a very good point, Martin. I guess it’s a good thing I stripped Gary and Eddie of their powers, too.”
At the same moment, as if they had rehearsed it, Eddie and Gary looked stricken, attempted to teleport away, and failed to go anywhere.
Jimmy said, “Problem, guys? The wands in your pockets aren’t working like they used to?” He turned to Phillip. “Sorry about that. Sometimes the obvious joke makes itself.”
“This isn’t possible,” Gary shouted. “I would have seen it if he’d taken my powers too! I stood behind him and watched over his shoulder while he wrote every line of this macro.”
“Not every line,” Jimmy said. “You may remember there was a brief moment when you were distracted.”
“No.”
“I distracted you,” Jimmy assured him.
“Not a chance.”
“By breaking wind,” Jimmy reminded him.
“Oh yeah,” Gary groaned. “It was foul. Really, guys. You should’ve been there.”
Jimmy shrugged. “Garlic. It has that effect on me.”
Martin shook his head at Gary, “And what, you left to open a window?”
“No,” Gary said. “I was doubled over laughing. I was standing right behind him. It was classic!”
Jimmy said, “I knew Gary’s fatal weakness. Scat humor. While he was distracted, I wrote a small bit of code that called out to a much larger chunk of code I’d written before I came back in time. It’s housed on a server I set up, and when triggered, it relieved Eddie and Gary of their powers, among other things.”
“Other things?” Phillip snarled.
“Yes, it reinstated all of my powers, not just the limited range Eddie and Gary granted me, and it has surrounded me with a circular force field, in case any of you tries to kick me. Go ahead,” Jimmy urged them, “give it a try.”
After a long moment in which nobody moved, Jimmy said, “Pity. I always enjoyed the Rockettes.”
Jimmy got face to face with Phillip. “So you see,” he said, “you are completely helpless. I have all of my powers. You have none of yours.” Jimmy tapped Phillip on the forehead with his wand, just to drive the point home.
“I can do anything I like with you.” Jimmy flicked his wand upward, and the circle of wizards rose into the air as one unit. They stopped gaining altitude at about forty feet, well below the height of the great hall’s ceiling, but more than high enough to get their attention. They hovered there, stationary. It would have been almost majestic if they hadn’t all been yelling threats and profanities.
Jimmy called for silence, and was ignored. He tried again, with no more success. Jimmy sighed, then flicked his wand again, causing the ring of wizards to spin.
Jimmy shouted, “The spinning will stop when the yelling stops.”
After a moment, the room went quiet. Jimmy jerked back on the wand and the rotation stopped abruptly. Sadly, I’ve just traded yelling for moaning, Jimmy thought. As long as it doesn’t escalate further, that’ll be fine, and if it does escalate to throwing up, well, I have my force field.
Jimmy drifted into the air until he was floating in the center of the circle.
“So,” Jimmy said. “You are all helpless, I am in control, and you will listen to me. I had a lot of time to think about what you all did to me. You foiled my plans, passed judgment on me, then sent me away to live the rest of my life in poverty and squalor, if I was lucky. If I was unlucky, you knew there was a chance I’d be beaten to death by Argentinean soccer fans. Well, I was lucky. After they got tired of using me as a hacky sack, they turned me over to the police. It took me months to talk my way out of prison, years to get out of South America, and decades to finally get back here.”
Jimmy started slowly lowering himself and the wizards to the floor, but he kept talking as they went.
Jimmy continued. “Every step I took, slogging through the middle of nowhere on foot, pedaling a broken bicycle someone else had thrown out as trash. Begging for coins on muddy foreign streets. Wherever I was, I always remembered where I had been, and how I’d gotten from the one place to the other.” He faced Phillip. “I’ve pictured your face a million times. Imagined what I’d do if we ever met again.”
The ring of wizards touched down on the solid marble floor, but it did little to make them feel more secure. Jimmy had demonstrated that he could do whatever he wanted with them. The idea that it might involve the floor was not reassuring.
“So here we are,” Jimmy continued. He spoke to the entire group, but he seemed to face Phillip, Martin, and Tyler more than the others as he did so. “I’ve survived your punishment, and using my own resources, I have regained access to the file and the shell. I have undone all that you have done to me. Now that I am powerful and you are powerless, I can do what I came here to do.”
“Just get it over with,” Phillip spat.
“Okay,” Jimmy said. “I will.”
Jimmy centered himself within the circle of terrified wizards, spun around once, savoring the moment, then fell to his knees, raised his hands above his head, and in a voice drenched in emotion, he cried out, “I am sorry! I apologize! I was wrong, so terribly wrong! I was wrong to play God. I was wrong to cover it up, and I was certainly wrong to try to kill all of you.”
“What the hell is this?” Tyler asked in disbelief.
“It’s me apologizing,” Jimmy said. “I don’t blame you for being confused. You’ve never seen it before.”
“You’re not here for revenge?” Phillip asked.
“I don’t deserve any. It’s not like any of you wronged me. I deserved the punishment you gave me for what I did to Tyler alone. I deserved far worse if you throw in my attempt to have you all beaten to death by orcs, making the orcs in the first place, and what happened to Rickard’s Bend, which was an accident, but that doesn’t make those people less dead, does it?”
“No,” Martin agreed. “As a matter of fact, it doesn’t.”
Jimmy turned to Martin. “I know, I can never truly make up for any of it, even that awful, humiliating beating I gave you in this very room. The shame and anger must be terrible. The e
mbarrassment must still feel for fresh for you. Can you ever forgive me, for humiliating you with your own macro like that?”
“It wasn’t that humiliating,” Martin said. “I mean, I held my own pretty good.”
Jimmy smiled. “That’s very gracious of you, Martin, but please, don’t sugarcoat it. I attacked you brutally with a macro you yourself designed, making you look pathetic and inept in front of a large crowd of spectators. Can you ever forgive me?”
Martin said, “I doubt it.”
“I don’t blame you. I don’t blame any of you. Not one bit. I am asking you to forgive me, though. I have returned to ask you all to please forgive me for what I’ve done, not because I deserve your forgiveness, but because you deserve the opportunity to forgive.”
Gary said, “So you were telling me the truth.”
“Yes,” Jimmy said. “The easiest way to manipulate someone is to tell them the truth.”
“After you’ve twisted the truth to fit your needs,” Phillip spat.
“I prefer to think that I pruned the truth like a banzai tree. I removed some of the ugly bits, and made it more elegant. Gary, Eddie, you wanted to believe that I was here to apologize, and the truth is I was here to apologize, but for the apology to be believed I needed everyone to be helpless. I told you that. I just glossed over the fact that you are part of everyone. Most people forget that they are part of everyone. You say everyone, and everyone hears everyone else.”
Phillip said, “Does this really seem like the best way to apologize to us? Manipulating us like this?”
“I see your point,” Jimmy said, “but what can I do? It’s what I’m good at. It’s part of my nature. I can’t help manipulating people any more than you can help being sarcastic.”
“Oh, that’s brilliant,” Phillip said.
“Well, here’s some more truth,” Tyler said. “Your apology is a load of crap. You say your apology wouldn’t hold water unless we saw you as a threat. Well, if we accept it, that won’t hold any water either, for the same reason. Saying ‘forgive me, or else’ doesn’t show a lot of remorse.”
