by Scott Meyer
A hollow, distant voice emanated from the flat flaming skull. “WHO HAS SOUGHT ME? I, WHO HOLD THE FATES OF … oh, hey, Phil. You still coming over?”
“Yeah, just wanted to let you know we’re on our way now.”
“Cool. See you then. The location code is Gary la antaŭa korto, got it?”
Phillip said, “Yeah, see you in a sec,” and made a fist, causing the flaming skull to disappear.
Moments later Phillip and Martin materialized in a small, dark clearing in a forest, near the side of a hill. The sun had not quite set, and the countryside beyond the forest was bathed in a golden glow. This chunk of forest, however, was dark and foreboding. What little light filtered in revealed twisted trees with gray bark and brown leaves. The underbrush was damp, and smelled of decay. On one side of the clearing, a barely discernible path led into the woods. Trees hung menacingly over the trail, giving the impression of a claustrophobic tunnel. At the other end of the treeless area, the path widened, and the bordering trees provided less cover, as they all seemed to be dead or dying. Three wizards were already there. They seemed very happy to see Phillip.
“Gentlemen,” Phillip said, “Good to see you!”
Phillip introduced everyone. Gary was tall and thin with a short beard and large, mischievous eyes, wearing a black robe and hat. Jeff was small but muscular, with a narrow head, prominent nose, and small eyes. His robe appeared to be some sort of gray wool. Tyler was heavier, but by no means fat, with dark skin, short, black, curly hair, a friendly demeanor, and a striped purple and red robe. All three of them were smiling a little too broadly, almost to the point of laughing. Phillip frowned and looked down. He was standing ankle-deep in a puddle.
“GARY!” Phillip yelled.
“You shouldn’t have let Gary know where you would be teleporting,” Jeff offered. “Never smart.”
“I used the location code he gave me,” Phillip said, looking at his soggy boots.
“Like I said. Not smart.”
There were spells that could be used to clean items, but nobody had come up with a better means of drying things than time and air, so Phillip was doomed to spend the rest of the evening barefoot, prolonging Gary’s victory.
Tyler looked at Martin’s robes. “Wow, Gwen’s work is really slipping.”
“Oh, you’ve all met Gwen?”
“Met, asked out, and got rejected by,” Gary said.
“Yeah, that Gwen,” Jeff said. “She don’t like the wizards.”
“She likes me fine,” Phillip said, removing his waterlogged boots and socks.
“But you’ve never asked her out,” Gary said.
“There might be a lesson in that,” Phillip said, looking at Martin.
“I don’t see the point in having a woman like you if you’re not going to go out with her.”
“No, Gary, you wouldn’t,” Phillip said.
“Anyway,” Martin explained, “Gwen’s still working on my robe. This is a loaner from Phillip.”
Tyler looked at the robe again, then cocked an eyebrow at Phillip. “Blood-red with black trim? That’s not your style.”
Phillip shrugged. “I was in my necromancer phase.”
Tyler nodded. “We all go through it.”
“If you’re lucky, you grow out of it,” Jeff said looking at Gary, who was resplendent in his black robe.
When Phillip was convinced that his boots were clean, they proceeded into Gary’s home. They had walked past the dead trees, around the corner of a steep hill, which blocked their view of what was ahead. They didn’t walk far, maybe a hundred feet, before a carefully calculated vista opened before Martin, revealing Gary’s home. There was a small, perfectly round clearing at the base of a cliff. At the center of the clearing there was a stone plinth. On the plinth burned a fire so dark blue it was essentially black. The fire cast eerie shadows upward. Martin’s eyes were naturally drawn to a twisting path cut into the rock. It switched back on itself twice before terminating about three stories up the cliff at a cave opening that formed the mouth of a ghastly skull. The hollows that formed the eyes of the skull glowed faintly red.
“Home sweet home,” Gary said as he and Tyler lifted their staffs and flew to the skull’s mouth. Jeff produced a wand and followed them, soaring gracefully through the air. Phillip left his boots and socks at the foot of the trail, put a hand on Martin’s shoulder, and flew the two of them to the skull as well. The mouth of the cave was large enough for all five of them to stand comfortably.
“Welcome to Skull Gullet Cave, Martin. Come on in,” Gary said, walking deeper into the cave. The cave entrance narrowed, then widened again into a chamber about thirty feet around, lit by torches set low on the walls that burned with a smokeless green flame. At the far end there was a massive throne made entirely out of antlers. Hundreds of sharp points jutted out at chaotic angles. It was the least comfortable looking chair Martin had ever seen. Next to it on a pedestal there was a massive, ancient-looking leather bound book, held at an angle, waiting to be studied.
“I just need to grab something really quick,” Gary said as he hoisted the cover of the book open. Martin was surprised to see light emanate from the pages, illuminating Gary’s face with a bluish light. Martin was less surprised a moment later to hear the book make the classic synthesized bong of a Macintosh computer booting up. Gary lifted a dark gray, first generation Apple PowerBook out of a hollow that was cut into the pages of the book. Gary held his staff in front of him and said, “Mother Love Bone.” Lines of fire formed a rectangle on the cave wall. The stone inside the rectangle disappeared as the fire died out, revealing a room beyond. Gary led the others into the next room.
When compared to the cave’s exterior and the first room, this room was shockingly normal by comparison. In one corner there was a roaring fire in a large fireplace, providing heat. There was a table with benches along both sides. There were three cushions on each bench to suggest where people should sit and help those people forget that they were sitting on a wooden bench. Light was provided by white balls of light that just hovered in the four corners of the room.
“I love what you’ve done with the place, but when people see this room, isn’t the effect kind of ruined?” Martin asked.
“Nobody but other wizards ever see this room,” Tyler answered.
“If a lady wants to come home with me, I transport her directly to the bedroom,” Gary said, motioning to a door in the back corner.
“And no wizard wants go in there,” Jeff added quickly.
Gary gave Martin the grand tour of the main room, but there wasn’t really much to show. Martin was beginning to worry about the spartan nature of the lives the wizards seemed to be living. He didn’t like the idea of spending the rest of his life living in barely furnished rooms and eating stew and porridge. As if reading his mind, Gary said, “So, who’s hungry?” The answer was everyone. Martin was bracing himself for more stew when Gary said, “Martin, you’re the new guy. What do you like, pepperoni, combo, or plain cheese?”
Martin sputtered, then said pepperoni. Gary took off his robe. Beneath it he was wearing torn jeans, gigantic loosely-laced white high-tops, and a black t-shirt that said Dokken. He opened his PowerBook to reveal a small black and white screen surrounded by a two-inch-thick bezel, a small keyboard and a marble-sized track ball. Gary typed a few words one-handed and disappeared. Less than a second later he reappeared holding three large brown boxes from Pizza Hut.
“I never get tired of the look on their face when I pick up the pizza and walk directly into the bathroom,” he said, chuckling.
“Aw, Gary, I told you not to take my food into the bathroom!” Jeff said.
“Relax! It’s just a private place to teleport.”
“Still, I don’t need my pizza seasoned with bathroom air from 1992!”
“Martin, what�
�s your favorite soda?”
“Diet Coke.”
Gary muttered, “Wrong answer,” as he typed a few more words and disappeared. Immediately he was back with two six packs of Diet Pepsi. The bottles were short and fat, like oversized hand grenades made of glass. The sight of the old font and logo briefly took Martin back to when he was a child. Gary put the drinks down. He said, “One more stop,” then disappeared, reappearing with a fat stack of board games, paper plates, and a roll of paper towels.
While eating the best bad pizza Martin had ever tasted, and playing one of the most enjoyable games of Risk Martin had ever played, the five of them talked about a great many things.
They talked about their choice of staff ornaments. Gary adorned his staff with large dolls of the band KISS, tied to the staff so they faced outward. If one of the locals asked what they were he would just say “The Demon, The Space Man, The Star Man, and the Peter Criss on drums!” Tyler’s staff was topped by the hood ornament from a Rolls Royce. He didn’t have a set explanation for its meaning, because a beautiful woman with wings speaks for itself. Jeff was the first wizard Martin ever met who opted for a wand instead of a staff. He said “It’s easier to carry around, and I love me some Harry Potter.”
They talked about where and when they were from. Gary was from Minneapolis, 1992. Tyler was from Montana, 2003. Jeff was from Delaware, and came from the year 2021. Martin was briefly delighted to meet someone from the future. He asked Jeff what happened in the years between Martin’s time and his.
“A couple of presidents you’ve never heard of. A bunch of bands and movies you’d think are stupid. You’d freak right out if you saw my television. You’d love it, but you’d hate everything I watch on it.”
Phillip saw that this answer didn’t please Martin, and explained, “We don’t discuss the future, not because it’ll damage reality, but because it’ll damage our friendships.”
“It just leads to a fight,” Tyler said. “Anyone from before your time looks like a time capsule. Anyone from after it looks like a privileged idiot. It’s better to keep it vague. We figure if Jeff here had access to a computer and found the file, the future can’t be too bad.”
Jeff said, “I promise, if there was anything too bad, I’d tell you everything my federally mandated cranial implant will allow me to say.”
“What? Federally mandated cranial implant?” Martin said. There was a moment of tension, then everyone laughed but Martin.
“That’s the other reason we don’t ask about the future. It’s too easy to be made to look like a fool.” Phillip said.
“Yeah,” Gary added, “nobody wants to go through life looking like Ralph Wiggum.” Everyone laughed but Phillip.
They discussed what they did with their spare time. Gary was a painter. Mostly he painted the kinds of images that would make great covers for heavy metal albums. Lots of bat wings and fire. Martin said that he bet living in the Middle Ages gave him lots of inspiration.
“Not nearly as much as I’d hoped,” he said. “Turns out life here is just as boring as it is in the future. If I wanted to paint subsistence farmers I could have stayed in Minnesota. Tyler’s getting a lot more inspiration out of this place than I am.”
Martin turned to Tyler. “What do you do?” he asked.
“I write novels.”
“Really?” Martin said. “Anything I’ve read?”
“Doubtful. I’ve only finished one, and it wasn’t published. There wasn’t really a market for a gothic horror.”
Gary broke in, “Especially one called The Ghost of the Wolfman’s Mummy.”
“It was called The Curse,” said Tyler.
“And what was the subtitle?” Gary prodded him.
Tyler said, “Of the Ghost of the Wolfman’s Mummy.”
“The Curse of the Ghost of the Wolfman’s Mummy,” Martin repeated, trying to get his head around it.
Jeff said, “It answered the age-old question: what would happen if a werewolf bit a Pharaoh, who was then mummified, and whose tomb was defiled centuries later, causing him to come back to life and immediately get killed?”
“Turns out what happens is five hundred pages of confusion, gratuitous sex, and spooky growling noises.” Gary said.
Tyler said, “It was a great idea! To defeat the ghost of the wolfman’s mummy, you have to bring the ghost back to life.”
“With a ritual that involves naked priestesses,” Jeff interjected.
“Then gather all the funerary jars containing the mummy’s organs,” Tyler continued.
“By seducing them away from the beautiful, wealthy Countess who bought them,” Gary added.
“Then, once you’ve destroyed the jars,” Tyler pressed on.
“And had the sex to celebrate,” Jeff said.
“You still have a wolfman to deal with,” Tyler finally finished.
“As sexily as possible, one would presume,” Phillip said.
“Are you writing another horror book?” Martin asked.
“Nope. A fantasy novel. Living here’s been invaluable. I travel around the countryside and ask people to tell me stories, then I write them up and weave them into my narrative.”
“But Gary says it’s mostly farmers around here.”
“It is. I adapt their stories.”
Gary said, “Instead of farmer, he writes warrior.”
“And instead of carrot, he puts down goblin,” Jeff added.
“And instead of grew, he writes bludgeoned,” Gary finished.
“But the point is I’m inspired by their stories!” Tyler said, defensively.
“Inspired to lie,” Phillip said, not unkindly.
There was a long pause while Martin tried to decide how to phrase the question they all knew was coming next. Finally, Martin asked, “Do the farmers ever react badly to the fact that you’re …”
“A black man in Medieval England?” Tyler finished for him. “They ask about it, but I tell them that I’m Moorish. They assume either I’ve been converted to Christianity, so I’m harmless, or I’m dangerous enough to survive in this country as a heathen. Either way, it ends the conversation.”
Greg said, “The one here with the most interesting hobby is Jeff. He’s one of the shell’s most prolific contributors. Easily a third of the things we can do are directly thanks to him. What are you up to now?”
Jeff shrugged. “Still working on importation.”
Martin was lost. “Importation? What are you trying to import?”
“In theory, anything that was created digitally, but I’m specifically trying to bring in assets from videogames. If they exist in a computer construct, and we exist in a computer construct, there should be a way to have us exist in the same computer construct.”
“Yeah!” Gary said, pounding his fist on the table. “Then we’ll get some dragons up in here!”
Tyler looked at Phillip. “What I want to know is what you do with your spare time. More to the point, what it is you keep on the second floor of your shop. Has he let you up there, Martin?”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“Why not, Phillip? What do you have up there?”
“Nothing,” Phillip replied.
“Then what do you do up there?” Tyler asked.
“Nothing.”
“I see. You go up there to do nothing, with nothing. Do you expect us to believe that?”
“No.”
After a long pause, Tyler said, “Fair enough,” and they got back to their game of Risk.
“So,” Gary said, “I bet you’re anxious to get your own robes, eh, Martin?”
Martin answered, “Can’t wait.”
“We go back for the first fitting tomorrow,” Phillip said. “Until then he’s welcome to wear my old robe. I don’t really see the point
myself. He’s not doing magic in public yet.”
“I dunno,” Martin said. “I just feel safer if the locals think I have full wizard powers.”
“Nonsense! You’ve lived your whole life up until now without people thinking you have powers, and you haven’t faced the constant threat of violence. I don’t see why it should be any different here.”
“A, you clearly didn’t go to my high school, and B, maybe I’m wrong, but I just get the feeling that there are some people around here who’d like to get their hands on a wizard who can’t fight back.”
Phillip shook his head. “Nonsense. You’re just being paranoid. But if it makes you feel better to wear my old robes, I see no harm in it.” The other three studied the game board in silence.
Time went by. Battle lines were drawn and redrawn. Tyler had a run of luck and wiped Phillip off of the map. Phillip congratulated Tyler and handed over his cards.
Tyler said, “Europe is the hardest continent to defend. Too many borders.”
“Perhaps,” Phillip said, rising from the table, “perhaps. Well, gents, I’m off to partake in the greatest pleasure the Middle Ages can afford a man.”
Martin was confused until Jeff explained “He’s gonna take a whiz outside.”
Phillip had explained earlier that bathrooms were a matter of personal taste for wizards. All of the wizards Martin had met so far were male, so they were comfortable urinating outdoors, but one’s chosen mode of defecation was largely determined by one’s comfort level. Phillip had facilities in his home similar to a modern bathroom. It was a small addition grafted crudely onto the back of his hut, and it resembled a classic latrine, except for three important factors: It had a modern toilet seat and lid, it had a roll of modern toilet paper, and it didn’t have the horrible odor one expects in such a place. When Martin mentioned this, Phillip used his staff to shine a light down the hole. It was a deep shaft that was bone-dry all the way to the bottom. Martin asked if it was brand new. Phillip laughed, wadded up a ball of the bathroom tissue and threw it into the shaft. The ball fell down the shaft, then vanished into thin air a foot before the bottom.
