by Scott Meyer
Martin scarcely noticed when Jimmy deactivated Giant Jimmy, landing lightly on the ground next to Martin, who continued crawling, his head slowly clearing, while Jimmy followed.
Jimmy explained in a calm voice, “While your friends have spent the last few years sewing robes, building cars, and making their homes look like Ozzy Osborne album covers, I’ve spent my free time creating shell commands that only I can access.”
Martin continued crawling and groaned. “You all agreed that you wouldn’t do that.”
“Which is often your first hint that you should do something.”
Jimmy followed silently, watching Martin crawl, and said, “It’s just so sad.”
Martin asked, “What is?” Martin ran into something. He looked up. He had crawled directly into the stone rim of the pool that surrounded the golden statue of the old king, the young king, and Jimmy. Every part of Martin that he could feel, hurt. He flopped over and sagged onto the ground, leaning against the rim of the pool.
Jimmy looked down at him. “Martin, you’ve thrown your life away. You must see that! There’s no way this can end well for you, and what did you do it for? Nothing!”
“Some things are just wrong, Jimmy.”
“Yes, and destroying yourself for no good reason is one of them!”
Martin shook his head. “Jimmy, you killed a town. A town, Jimmy, dead. You did that! For what? Because you like Tolkien? Your Hobbits died, your Orcs are in constant pain. God knows how the Elves are doing.”
“They’re fine.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it. Jimmy, you’ve killed or injured hundreds of innocent people! That’s why I came here, and that’s not nothing!”
Jimmy replied, “Yes it is, Martin. Yes it is! Look around you!” Jimmy gestured toward the crowd beyond the gate and the soldiers watching from the top of the parapets. They still had a large audience. Their now non-amplified voices could not be heard from the distances involved, but they were still in plain sight. Martin and Jimmy were having a private conversation in front of a massive audience.
“Look at them, Martin. They don’t know the truth, but you and I do. They aren’t real. They aren’t people. They’re lines of code. They’re information, and not very much of it. They’re algorithms, created automatically by another algorithm to accomplish who knows what for we don’t know who! What could be more unimportant? What could be more insubstantial? They’re not real, and nothing done by them or to them could possibly make any difference.”
“They’re just as real as you are,” Martin spat.
“Yes! Exactly! I’m not real either, and neither are you! Nothing any of us does matters, so why are we arguing about what I’ve done? Nobody else seems to understand this like I do.”
Martin smiled. “Which is often your first hint that you’re wrong.”
Jimmy shrugged, then pointed his staff at Martin as he lay prone on the ground. “I can see I’m not going to change your mind, so I have to decide what to do with you. The way I see it, I have three options. I can strand you in your own time, which in your case means jail. I can let you stay in this time, stripped of all powers. It’ll be a hard life, subsistence farming, but you’ll have your freedom and you’ll enjoy all the improvements I make to this timeline. Or, maybe it’d be more humane to just kill you now. You wouldn’t suffer, and you’d serve as an example to everyone else. What do you think, Martin? Prisoner, peasant, or …” Jimmy pursed his lips. His head turned up and to the left, lost in thought. Finally, he said, “Death.”
Martin laughed. “You couldn’t think of a word for death that starts with P, could you?”
Jimmy laughed as well. “No, I couldn’t, but as we’ve established, it doesn’t really matter.”
A voice said, “Passed away!” Both Martin and Jimmy looked to the top of the statue. The golden muck-covered head of Merlin was draped with what looked to be a tarp. A rope draped down off of the statue’s head, over the shoulder and down its front to the water. The other end of the rope seemed to disappear into thin air a few feet above the statue. Phillip stood on the statue’s shoulder, holding the rope with one hand and his staff with the other. He looked pretty pleased with himself.
Martin was surprised to see Jimmy smile. “Phillip! I really should have guessed it was you vandalizing my statue. It’s about the right maturity level. I should be mad, but I’m just too delighted at the symbolism of you appearing on that statue’s head along with all the other crap. Tell me, how’d you climb down a rope carrying your staff?”
“I had Gwen drop it down to me when I was almost to the bottom.”
“Ah,” Jimmy said. “Is she coming as well?”
“Soon enough,” Phillip said, before saying flugi, and using his staff to glide down to the ground, forming a triangle between himself, Jimmy, and Martin.
“I’m glad you’re here, Phillip. You’re just in time to watch me dispatch your sidekick.”
“I’m not his sidekick,” Martin protested. “If anything, he’s my sidekick!”
“Yes, of course,” Jimmy said. “Everyone remembers how Batman was Robin’s trainee.”
When Phillip and Jimmy were done laughing, Phillip said, “I can’t let you do that, Jimmy.”
For a long moment, Jimmy and Phillip stared at each other, their faces illuminated by the cheesy plasma ball at the end of Jimmy’s staff. Jimmy broke the silence. “You can’t let me do it, but you can’t stop me from doing it, either. You won’t ghost me. You won’t kill me. You can’t hurt me. You can’t stop me.”
“I dunno,” Phillip said. “Maybe I’ve learned to be a little more like you.”
“Phillip, if that’s true, I’ve already won.”
Phillip looked at Martin, then looked back to Jimmy. “You’re right, I won’t ghost you. I won’t kill you. I can’t injure you. But I can hurt you.” With shocking speed, Phillip swung his staff with all of his might. The head of the staff traced a graceful arc, striking Jimmy on the bridge of the nose. The bottle shattered on impact, and while the shards of glass could not pierce Jimmy’s skin, the ten-year-old Tabasco sauce it held easily penetrated the membranes of his eyes, nose, and mouth.
Jimmy shrieked, and gasped, and coughed, and rolled on the ground, writhing in helpless agony.
Chapter 28.
An hour later, every wizard in Europe had managed to find their way back into Camelot. With that many people working on the problem, and Eddie to act as a guide, it didn’t take long to reinstate the shell, deactivate all of Jimmy’s macros, and remove the exclusion field from around the city.
That all handled, it was time to turn to the task of punishing Jimmy. Phillip made no effort to hide his glee. When he was asked to try, he pointed out that his obvious enjoyment of Jimmy’s punishment was an important part of said punishment.
They gathered in Jimmy’s office.
The only surprising bit was Eddie. He was angrier than anyone. He’d acted as a glorified secretary for years, hoping that someday Jimmy would let him in on his amazing plans. Then, all in one day, Eddie found out that the great man shared his scheme with someone else on a whim, that the plan itself was abhorrent and immoral, and that his mentor and closest friend was all too happy to see him torn to shreds by fake Orcs with all of the other wizards.
The wizards engaged in some heated deliberation in Jimmy’s former office while Jimmy was stored safely on the floor of his former waiting room hogtied, naked, with a gag in his mouth. Finally, they brought him in to share their thoughts. The model of the new Europe was removed from the conference table. Jimmy was placed there instead. Jimmy’s face was still stained red and streaming tears, but he’d regained some of his composure.
They could easily send Jimmy back to his original time and place, but they had to make sure that he received some punishment for what he had done once he
got there. Nobody was surprised to hear that Phillip had some ideas.
Gwen’s levitation spell was used to hold Jimmy helpless in midair.
Phillip climbed up on the table behind Jimmy. He removed his hat and pulled out two fat grease markers, one green, the other yellow. Phillip took his time, writing Brazil in large green letters, then used the yellow marker to write #1.
“I looked up the day you left your time, Jimmy. Did you know that on that exact date, there’s a massive rally in Buenos Aires to show support for the Argentinian national football team? Seems they were about to play their arch rivals, the Brazilians. Have you ever been to Argentina? It’s a lovely country full of strong, healthy, passionate people, most of whom hate the Brazilians with the intensity of a thousand suns.” As Phillip clambered down off of the table, Tyler spoke.
“I wanted to ghost you, for at least as long as you ghosted me for. They all talked me out of it. Instead, we’ve pumped up your magnetic field so strong that any electronic device within ten feet of you will stop functioning, just like we did with Todd.”
Tyler walked up close to Jimmy, savoring the only satisfaction he was likely to get. “You can’t use a computer, you can’t use a phone. If you try to get anyone to help you, it’ll be by writing a letter or speaking to them in person. Either way, you’ll sound insane. As you know, we’ve reset your stats to the original factory settings. You’re aging again. You’re able to get hurt. For Todd, we all figured that was a sufficient punishment, but you have a talent for getting people to do what you want. That’s why we’re stranding you in South America. You don’t speak Spanish, do you? No, no you don’t. You will spend the rest of your life an illegal immigrant in the penal system of a foreign nation where you don’t speak the language and everyone thinks you’re insane, but you’ll remember your time as Merlin. It’s not quite like being a ghost, but it’s close enough for me.”
Eddie ungagged Jimmy, leaving him hanging in space. Jimmy knew better than to struggle. He was stuck, and any attempt to unstick himself would just entertain his captors. He looked at Phillip and said, “We’ll meet again, you know.”
Phillip stepped forward and pointed his staff at Jimmy. “Yes, in eight hundred years or so. Anything you want to say before we send you to your fate?”
“Yes ...”
“Too bad,” Phillip said, and sent Jimmy on his way.
As they filed out of Jimmy’s former office, Martin looked deep in thought. Phillip asked, “You aren’t feeling bad for him, are you?”
“No, not at all,” Martin replied, “It’s just, you sent him back to the moment he left his time to begin with, right?”
“Yeah, well, you know, the system won’t let him go forward from that time, and if we send him to a moment a little before, then there are two of him running around, which can cause trouble, so it’s best to go back to the same moment.”
“But, when he left his time, he didn’t leave from Buenos Aries.”
Phillip laughed. “No, he left from San Francisco. Martin, you go back to the same moment in time, but you don’t have to go to the same place. You get that, right?”
Martin said, “Oh yeah, are you kidding? Of course!” He thought, Stupid, stupid, stupid! Then he added an item to his mental to-do list.
Eddie led Phillip, Martin, and Gwen to the private chambers of the royal family. They weren’t surprised to find that while they were very luxurious by medieval standards, they were a hovel compared to Jimmy’s accommodations. King Stephen had died long ago. King Arthur, a thin young man in his early twenties with a confused manner and large, questioning eyes, shared his quarters with his mother, the regally passive Queen Matilda.
Eddie explained that Merlin was gone. King Arthur nodded, and asked what that meant. Eddie explained that Merlin had left and wasn’t coming back ever. The king nodded, squeezed his mother’s hand, thought for a moment, and asked, more emphatically, “What does that mean?”
Eddie explained that Merlin wasn’t going to be around to help him, and that life would go back to the way it was before Merlin arrived.
Arthur said, “But … I wasn’t the king before he arrived.”
It was clear that without assistance, the monarchy would fall. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that it would drag the rest of Europe into decades of bloody warfare with it. It was a terrible mess, but the wizards couldn’t in good conscience just stand back and watch as the Merlin-vacuum destroyed the fledgling western civilization. It was decided that the wizards would elect a new chairman to act in the wizards’ interests, and to help prop up and guide the royal family into self-sufficiency. When time came to pick a chairman, everyone wanted to know what Phillip thought, which said more than a vote ever could. Phillip had no interest in living in Camelot, so his first act as chairman was to order Martin to act as his liaison to the royals, with Eddie’s assistance.
Martin argued, but Phillip was firm. “Martin, we all have to do our part. I don’t want to be chairman, but that’s what everybody wants, so I’m doing my duty.”
“Yes, but …”
Phillip cut him off. “As chairman, I order you, Martin, to do your part. It just so happens that your part is to do the vast majority of my part.”
The wizards split into two groups, one to go talk to Jimmy’s attempted Orcs, the other to go talk to the Elves. The Orcs were delighted to hear that they would be turned back to normal, but less happy to hear that it would take several weeks. The group that went to talk to the Elves reported that the only manifestation of Jimmy’s work so far was that the entire town was thinner, so they were happy to leave things as they stood.
That night, the wizards held the largest victory party of all time, when measured in terms of area. There were still only about two dozen of them, but they had regained the ability to teleport, and having gone without it for the afternoon, they all felt like using it. The party started in Jimmy’s former office, but soon some wizards wanted to see Phillip’s rec room, and others wanted to check out Skull Gullet Cave. Eventually, teleportation points were defined for several of the wizards’ larger homes, and the event took on the feeling of a party held in a mansion, where one drifts from room to room, only in this case, the rooms were spread all over Europe.
The hardest part about throwing a party for time travelers is finding music everyone can enjoy. Everyone is invariably convinced that their artist/genre/format of choice is infinitely superior to all others. After making the obligatory rounds to see where everybody else lived and show them his empty storage facility, Martin settled into Phillip’s ‘80s-themed attic for the duration, but now it was getting late, and Phillip was loudly explaining that Thomas Dolby had recorded more than one song. Martin decided he needed some air.
Martin stepped through the open garage door and across the heavy wooden ramp that led to the hill behind Phillip’s shop. He found Gwen, sitting on the ground, fiddling with her wand and looking at the stars. Martin sat next to her. There were many things he missed about his own time, but he knew that if he ever went back, he would miss the medieval night sky. He knew it was the same sky, but it really wasn’t. The lack of any light source brighter than a campfire meant that even here, on the outskirts of a medium sized town, the sky was a spectacular vista of stars, far more than a city boy like Martin had ever realized were there. In his original time, a sky like this was a luxury he’d have to travel for hours out into the middle of nowhere to get. Here, on any clear night, he could just step outside and see the whole universe.
After a period of time Martin carefully calculated to seem nonchalant, he tore his gaze away from the sky, and looked at Gwen. He opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it.
“I’m going to Atlantis. I’m leaving tomorrow,” She said, in a tone that left no room for questions.
Martin wanted to say I’m sorry you got outed as a witch, but he didn’t want to say outed,
or witch, for that matter. Female wizard sounded stupid. Lady wizard was even worse. He tried to come up with a word that meant “witch,” that didn’t have any insulting or demeaning overtones. He couldn’t. In fact, after some thought, he couldn’t think of a word that meant female that men hadn’t imbued with some belittling shade of meaning. Finally, after a much longer silence than he had intended, he simply said, “I can understand why. I’m really sorry to see you go, though.”
She turned and graced Martin with the saddest smile he’d ever seen. “I’m sorry to be going too, but ‘Most famous witch in Medieval England’ isn’t a title that comes with a lot of benefits.”
Martin knew this was true. He kept his eyes on the stars and considered his next words carefully. “I’ve known you a while, but it’s like I just really met you today.”
“Yes,” Gwen said. “It is.”
“And that’s my own fault,” Martin continued.
Gwen laughed gently before saying, “Yes, it is.”
There was a long pause while Martin test ran several next sentences in his head, before finally settling on the safest course of action.
He turned his head to look at Gwen and said, “Well, I guess this is goodbye then.”
She looked back at him and said, “Yes.”
They looked at each other for a moment, then Martin asked, “Would you mind if I kissed you goodbye?”
Gwen smiled, and said, “No.”
Martin was thrown high into the air, silver robe flapping in the wind. He landed on the roof of Phillip’s shop, where he slid limply, flopping off the side and falling into the valley where the side of the hill met the wall of the shop. Gwen, radiating with glowing power, cursed herself and shut off her macro. She stuffed her wand into her pocket before rushing to Martin’s side. He was lying silently in the gutter, not moving. She tried to roll him over, but the fall had wedged him into the dirt crevasse, and now that she was close to him she could see that he couldn’t extricate himself because he was laughing too hard. He finally regained his composure enough to get up, but as soon as he made eye contact with Gwen, they both started laughing again.
