The Flux

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  The Flux

  Ferrett Steinmetz

  For Mom, who taught me calmness

  * * *

  And for Dad, who taught me curiosity

  * * *

  I hope I didn’t put you through nearly this much trouble

  Part I

  Smart Patrol, Nowhere To Go

  One

  Not Rituals, But Love

  Before Paul Tsabo brewed up a batch of magical drugs, he would demand $400,000 in cash from his financier, to be delivered along with the rest of his drug-making paraphernalia. The cash arrived in a great pallet of crumpled twenties, a shrink-wrapped parcel so big it took two of Oscar’s drug runners to carry it into the abandoned auto repair shop Paul had designated as today’s laboratory.

  Paul checked the money off on the list.

  Paul liked lists. Of course he liked lists, or he wouldn’t have become a bureaucromancer. Lists were oases of sanity bobbing in Paul’s increasingly chaotic lifestyle – maybe the King of New York would phone in a tip to the NYPD Task Force again and they’d have to flee the cops, maybe Oscar would finally get tired of Paul’s inability to deliver Flex and quietly put a bullet in Paul’s skull, maybe the magical backlash from brewing Flex would kill everyone in this sleepy suburban neighborhood…

  …but by God, Paul could ensure this list was checked off.

  So Paul checked off each delivery as Oscar’s assistants, K-Dash and Quaysean, hauled them in. Paul ambled around the cracked, oil-stained floor unsteadily – years of physical therapy had gotten him almost used to walking on his artificial right foot. But when an insane ’mancer had lopped off the toes of his left foot two years ago, well, even a top-of-the-line orthotic boot hadn’t helped him regain his former balance.

  Still, he refused on principle to get a cane. The titanium rod that served as his right ankle drew enough stares; all of Paul’s crisp suits weren’t enough to hide the scrawny Greek man limping around on one metal prosthetic and one thick black boot. So Paul’s legs trembled with exhaustion as he double-checked to ensure all his drug-making accoutrements were in place:

  Fifty pounds of illegal hematite, the only substance on earth you could bind ’mancy into, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? Check.

  Valentine’s battered Pac-Man machine, an antique cabinet from the original 1980 production line, used to detect dangerously shifting probabilities? Check.

  Curling glass alembics and tubes to redirect the flow of ’mancy once Paul flooded the room with the power of paperwork? Check.

  A desk with five fresh Bic pens, arranged above an untouched legal pad? Check.

  $400,000 in cash?

  His pen paused over the paper. That cash heap, big enough that Paul could use it as a futon made of Andrew Jacksons, made Paul’s skin crawl. He owned that money now, a fragile stack of linen-cotton blend, to be loaded into a rented U-Haul upon completion.

  If the brew went wrong, as it had so many times before, then this money would burn. And he would not be able to pay Oscar back.

  Paul owed Oscar well over a million dollars for getting him all this hematite, and no amount of bureaucromancy could fill that gap. The universe disliked the way magic bent its rules, demanding the scales get balanced; if Paul rejiggered the paperwork to erase those funds from Oscar’s ledger, then a million dollars’ worth of bad luck would rain down upon Paul’s head.

  And if today went wrong – if the King somehow had informants seeded in this bankrupt rural town – then Paul would owe Oscar a million-four. Though Oscar was a patient businessman who played for the long game, Oscar was also a criminal. Paul’s special Flex was a drug that made empires run smoothly, but Paul had to actually deliver some or Oscar would make an example out of him.

  Paul’s paperwork magic couldn’t stop bullets.

  Yet that wasn’t what really worried him. There was no better ’mancer than he qualified to handle deadly loads of bad-luck flux. The NYPD Task Force was a threat – Paul wouldn’t have had it otherwise – but he had inside sources that would alert him if the King somehow tipped the cops off to this remote location. And Oscar was slow to anger, especially with such rare and delicious material on the hook.

  That $400,000, a terrifyingly large sum, was insurance against a much worse fate.

  Paul stared at the cash, hoping it would not burn today. Hoping his friend Valentine’s wards would hold.

  Hoping his daughter Aliyah would not show up.

  * * *

  As usual, Valentine played Pac-Man while Paul checked in the equipment. Paul knew Valentine played videogames whenever she got nervous – and though Valentine’s thrillseeking had gotten them in trouble before, even Valentine respected the danger of brewing Flex.

  A glittery red eyepatch covered the hole where a military SMASH team had shot Valentine’s eye out. She bobbed her head as she maneuvered Pac-Man along the maze, attempting to recreate stereo vision with a single eye, a strangely birdlike movement.

  Her black crinoline dress jiggled; she played the game with her whole body, a fishbelly-pale pudgy girl in fuck-me red pump heels leaning into the console. Her long brunette curls shook as she slammed the joystick around, an Xbox controller dangling from the bandolier wrapped around her curvy hips.

  “Some days,” she said, “I’m tempted to warp into Billy Mitchell’s home to show him who the real King of Kong is.”

  Paul flinched at the mention of the King before realizing Valentine was making small talk about someone else. “…who?”

  She waved a tattooed hand at the machine, which froze. Old-school arcade machines didn’t have pause buttons, but Valentine’s videogamemancy tweaked reality in odd ways.

  “Billy Mitchell?” she urged Paul, aghast. “The world champion Pac-Man player? First man to get a perfect score? Possessor of the world’s most impermeable mullet?”

  “…what’s that have to do with King Kong?”

  She spluttered. “Don’t you pay any attention to the Twin Galaxies scoreboards, Paul? Billy Mitchell was the high scorer on Donkey Kong, too! Smug little snake. Kind of a bully. I think about dropping a life-sized ape on his house and making him run up the ladders! I bet his score would–”

  She took in Paul’s blank expression, then shook her head, radiating a terrible disappointment.

  “Ah, Paul,” she lamented. “You know every line in the New York State tax code, and yet your education features these tragic gaps.”

  “Can you keep Aliyah out this time?”

  Paul hadn’t meant to ask the question. It just squirted out.

  Valentine blew a sigh through pursed lips. She noticed K-Dash and Quaysean, two leanly muscled Hispanic lovers who shifted nervously from foot to foot. Valentine jerked her thumb towards the garage’s back door.

  “Go look for the King of New York,” she told them. “We spent hours covering our trail. If he drops the dime on us this time, that means he’s followed us here somehow.”

  K-Dash frowned. “But we don’t know what the King looks like–”

  “Like we do? This neighborhood hasn’t seen a paying customer in years – so if you see anyone lurking about, assume they’re Kingish. But,” she added, “just report back. No…” She pulled an imaginary trigger.

  They nodded and headed out, happy to give two of New York’s most notorious ’mancers their privacy.

  Valentine crossed her arms and leaned against the cabinet. For a plump goth girl dressed in striped black-and-white stockings and a cocked hat, Valentine looked like she meant business.

  “Don’t know if I can stop Aliyah this time, Paul. I’ll try. But the kid plays by different rules.”

  “But you’re both videogamemancers.”

  “And Aliyah plays different games these days,” Valentine said. “I introduced her to gami
ng, but she’s developed her own tastes: Animal Crossing, Scribblenauts, Professor Layton. Which means her ’mancy’s got its own style. We used to be similar, but, you know… the kid’s gonna be nine in two months. She’s growing up.”

  “Can’t you just play her games?”

  Valentine looked like she’d swallowed a slug. “Me? Play Cooking Mama? Forgive me for having taste, Paul!”

  Paul let it drop. Every ’mancer had a worldview that made sense to them, and them only. Valentine had asked a hundred times why Paul couldn’t just conjure up a million dollars out of thin air, marshalling all sorts of arguments about how currency was an illusion perpetrated by society. Since the government printed money on demand all the time, why the hell couldn’t Paul just – and here, Valentine always waved her hands in the air and made a “whoosh” noise – manufacture some damn cash to pay off Oscar?

  But it didn’t work that way. Bureaucracy’s whole point was that it prevented fraud: without it, anyone could claim they had bought this car or this factory, and who was to say otherwise? Paperwork was what made the universe fair. Paul could launder money, hide its ownership, find the best investments for it – but taking stuff for free?

  Hell, he had enough moral quandaries manufacturing drugs for a gang leader.

  Valentine glanced over at the OfficeMax desk Paul would brew the drugs on, propped across what used to be a repair bay.

  “Look, I’m not saying this isn’t the most fucked-up version of ‘Take Your Daughter To Work’ Day ever… But maaaaaybe instead of having me construct wards to keep your kid out, we should invite her along.”

  Paul clenched his fists. “You remember what Aliyah did to the last batch of cops, right?”

  Valentine met his gaze evenly. “I do.”

  “And you remember what would have happened to her if I hadn’t been her legal guardian, right?”

  “Do not make this about ‘who loves her more,’ Paul,” Valentine snapped. “I adore Aliyah like I squeezed that kid out of my own cooter. But ’mancy’s a dangerous business.”

  “Which is why we hold classes,” Paul shot back. “That’s why we have Scouting Saturdays, and Sad Sundays. To educate her.”

  Valentine shrugged. “Not to suggest you have all the educational skills of a hungover substitute teacher, Paul, but… the kid’s into videogames. She only cuts loose when she’s challenged by real life. I don’t want her hurt, but this profession has no training wheels. This is magic. She might die.”

  Paul wanted to get mad. Yet Valentine’s reaction held the carefully chilled regret of all the nurses who’d told him, Your daughter has third-degree burns over sixty percent of her body, Mr Tsabo. She might not survive. They were not rejoicing in a child’s death, were not ceasing their struggle… but they had a flinty awareness that everything within their power might not be enough to save Paul’s daughter.

  And in truth, though Paul had managed to save her through his bureaucromancy, Aliyah’s scars had never truly healed.

  “She’ll be fine.” Paul gritted his teeth. “She just needs to manage her temper.”

  “And where is she now?”

  “With her mother, for the weekend. According to our divorce agreement, Imani has custody until seven pm Thursday night.”

  “So the kid’s stuck in a house with no videogames, with her douche politician of a stepdad and a mother who she has been instructed to lie to. She’s pretending hard to be a normal kid, told if she fucks up this masquerade just once, then the entire US government will come down upon her head and wipe her brain. And you think the kid’s not already managing her temper?”

  Paul limped away in disgust.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Come on,” Paul said. “Let’s brew.”

  * * *

  K-Dash and Quaysean arranged the Bic pens on the desk before stepping back, seeking Paul’s approval.

  Paul examined the pens, spaced perfectly parallel, then gave the boys a cheerful nod. They fist-bumped. Quaysean and K-Dash were nice, as criminals went: they held hands tenderly whenever they weren’t hauling in goods. They were reliable, and Paul valued reliability. They had even taken to bringing donuts to the brews, as if this was some Monday morning work gathering.

  Valentine tugged her cell phone out of her bra. “Eight pm, Paul,” she said through a mouthful of vanilla crème donut. “If we hustle, we can finish this in time for me to hit the swing clubs.”

  Paul picked up the pen.

  As his fingers brushed the legal pad, triggering a spark of bureaucromancy, the place’s history flowed through him in one administrative flash: this had once been Patziki’s Auto Repair Shop – a tiny two-bay garage founded in 2004 by one Samuel Patziki, age fifty-four.

  He saw the credit reports the bank had run on Samuel before they’d approved him for the loan, noted the W-4 tax records as Samuel had proudly hired his first employees, tallied the dwindling orders to auto part vendors as business lagged. Paul groaned as the first notifications from collection agencies trickled in.

  On May 14th, 2009, the bank foreclosed.

  Paul looked at the high ceiling crisscrossed with rusted beams, the holes in the concrete where the car lifts had once gone, the windows on the two wide garage bay doors boarded over. All the equipment had long been stripped out; all that was left were rows of empty lockers, and a flyspecked calendar displaying a May 2009 pinup girl.

  This place was a grave of ambitions, a bad location in a bankrupt town. That isolation made it perfect for avoiding the King – the King of New York’s phoned-in tips had driven Paul to find a place so dismal even the homeless had stayed away – but though Samuel’s failed business was convenient for Paul, Paul secretly hoped that Samuel Patziki was OK, wherever he was.

  He could have followed the paperwork trail back to check in on Samuel, but… Paul needed the illusion of happy endings today.

  Valentine spun a quarter between her fingers. “Ready to bring the thunder, Paul?”

  Paul looked over at Quaysean and K-Dash. “You don’t have to stay, you know,” he said. “This gets dangerous.”

  “You always say that, Mr Tsabo.” They interlaced fingers, kids eager to watch the fireworks.

  As Paul turned back to the desk, he allowed himself one tiny smile. He loved having an audience. Maybe one in a thousand people had even seen ’mancy, and most of them found magic terrifying. ’Mancy was illegal because it could rip holes in the seams of the universe, letting buzzsect-demons spill in through the gap to devour the laws of physics.

  But it also created unearthly beauty, for those with the eyes to see.

  Paul snap-pointed at Valentine. “Ready, player one?”

  She dropped the quarter into the Pac-Man machine. A jaunty eight-bit tune rang out. Paul glanced at the cash-pallet at the back of the garage, his insurance in case Aliyah showed up, then pushed all that out of his head.

  He picked up the pen and drew boxes on the legal pad.

  Do magic, Valentine had told him, back when she’d taught him to make Flex. ’Mancy isn’t rituals, Paul. It’s love. When you started, I’ll bet dimes to dollars you didn’t fire up ’mancy to do anything. You just… did it. And the ’mancy flowed from that love.

  Paul started making paperwork.

  He started where he always did, sketching out the Universal Unified Form – the single form so comprehensive, it contained every single thing you could ever request, file, or catalogue. It existed only in his daydreams, but Paul’s magic allowed him to open windows into his reveries and haul things back through.

  He wrote the opening fields, same as always: First Name. Middle Name. Last Name. Sex. Date of Birth…

  The tray of hematite rattled on the table, sending smoky green dust puffing into the air. The alembics rattled, their spiraled tubes swaying between them. Valentine played Pac-Man, glancing over at Paul between levels.

  When Paul finished the basic fields, he drew the first thing that came to mind: a Psychological Assessment Report, adding f
ields for Test Administrator, Referral Question, Behavioral Observations – and the fields filled up with words…

  Aliyah’s mother has stated she has no friends and never initiates social interactions with other children, preferring to play alone on her handheld video game or sit quietly by herself. Her teachers confirmed this behavior, noting that Aliyah’s classmates rarely approach her due to her aloof or aggressive reactions to their overtures…

  The alembics vibrated, ascending in tempo until they shattered.

  K-Dash and Quaysean ducked, looking fearful but not backing away. Paul touched his temple, pulled a shard out, blotted the blood away with a handkerchief.

  “That’s gonna make the brew harder, working without glassware.” Valentine shook the glass from her hair, not looking away from her freshly cracked screen lest she lost her perfect score. “Everything copacetic, Paul?”

  “You just concentrate on keeping Aliyah out.” He bridged away from the psychological areas of the Universal Unified Form, shifting to another style of medical paperwork: emergency-room admissions.

  The legal paper expanded to fill the desk, swelling as Paul added checkboxes, cross-references, signature fields, Paul’s neat handwriting condensing into crisp Times New Roman font. The form overflowed the desk’s edges in a vellum waterfall, crumpling as it unfolded across the concrete floor.

  Paul kept writing, making space for the lists of prescription drug allergies once the patient checked in, the standard tests run upon fresh admissions, the work release forms for someone injured on the job…

  “Pac-Man just went off the maze, Paul,” Valentine said warily. “He’s travelling through a hospital. Is that where he should be?”

  “Yes,” Paul confirmed. Pac-Man was their canary in a coal mine, telling them when the ’mancy got too dangerous. The raw ’mancy Paul summoned changed the odds, causing fantastic coincidences to happen around him. If the local odds got too wild, Paul couldn’t rein in the magic enough to stuff it inside the hematite… and once you had wild magic ricocheting around, then Very Bad Things happened.