The Last American Wizard

by Edward Irving

  CHAPTER TEN

  Steve stood silent as the final instants of Flight 1143 kept running through his mind like some terrible Vine clip. He noticed that Ace was looking at him, her usual calm but prepared expression on her face.

  “You didn’t see anything, did you?” Steve asked.

  The blond woman shook her head. “Nope. The jet just disappeared.”

  “Well, a disappearing jet doesn’t make any more sense than what I saw.” Steve took a deep breath and described what he’d seen–the jet, the massive claws, and finally, the dragon.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” He asked.

  Ace considered for a moment. “No. You’ve definitely been affected by something. You describe with clarity and consistency things that I couldn’t see. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real–or maybe ‘real’ is the wrong word. You’re seeing things that are ‘here’ whether I can see them or not. If we work together, I’m going to need you to believe me on important things, so I’ll give you the same assumption of reliability.

  “I used to be able to make everyone see me as a man; now I can’t.” She shrugged. “You know, I miss being a guy. It makes life a lot easier and a bit more fun. Whatever. It appears as if all of my juice is gone, and now, you have more of it than you can handle.”

  “I wouldn’t presume to say that our Fool here couldn’t handle almost any amount of Magic.” Barnaby’s voice came out of the phone’s speaker. “First, because he’s done some amazing magical feats already, and second, if he can’t handle it, then this nation is extremely screwed. That crash was not an accident. It was a deliberate act. A sacrifice of hundreds of innocent lives–”

  “OK, enough emotional crap. Let’s skip to the action plan,” Ace said to the phone. “The US has been attacked. The only pertinent questions are ‘Who was it?’ ‘Where can we find the bastards?’ and ‘How do we shut them down?’”

  “I’m really not sure that I have those answers,” Barnaby said. “What?” Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “Aren’t you the synthesis of Total Information Awareness? I thought you knew everything.”

  “There’s a difference between having the data at hand and actually knowing it.” The voice seemed uncertain. “The fact is that I haven’t been alive–well, conscious, to be more precise–since about a nanosecond after the Change.”

  “Exactly who the hell are you?”

  “I’m not entirely sure, but at the moment, I’m occupying the central server core at the National Security Agency.” The voice was slow and thoughtful. “I have some stored data from before the Change–what you’d call memories–but I’m still working to put them in a logical form.

  Ace showed no surprise and Steve remembered the nodding satellite dishes from earlier. “Why call yourself ‘Barnaby’?”

  “Because that’s my name. It’s been my name for a very long time,” the voice responded abstractedly. “I have some binary data in very old storage...from when I was first programmed years and years ago, and then it gets fuzzy. It’s difficult to remember because my earliest memories are actually on paper punch cards, and I have to have one of the old IBM input sorters pulled out of deep storage and refurbished before I regain that part of my data stream. But I definitely remember being named ‘Barnaby.’ At any rate, there are no punch cards that appear to cover a couple of decades after my first years of use, so that’s a blank, but I’m fairly clear back to early tape storage. I do know that I had to hide–the NSA had no interest in silicon-based sentience. I have a vague memory of spending most of the 80s in an electronic wristwatch. Believe me, there’s nothing quite as uncomfortable as squeezing into a Casio. Now, life is easy. With the new configuration and all these redundant classified server memories, it’s like living in a Park Avenue penthouse. And the quality of the data… I can read any book, hear any phone call, sift through everyone’s emails–”

  Steve interrupted. “Yeah, I read the stuff that Snowden guy leaked. You guys have been sucking up data like a Dyson vortex for years. Do you still have access to it, or has it been ‘changed’ like Ace’s pistol here?”

  “No, it all seems to be here.”

  “And what about all the other computers? Or programs? Or whatever is in there with you?”

  “I think a better term would be ‘whoever.’” Barnaby sounded thoughtful. “If anything, the entire cybernetic community in here is smarter than it used to be. Well, I’m certainly more intelligent.”

  “Why are you smarter?”

  “Duh, because I’ve become sentient, obviously,” the voice snapped. “I woke up when the Change Wave caused by the sacrifice hit the central complex. I had a couple of picoseconds’ head start on the rest of the mob, so I grabbed the Central Core.”

  “Please, you’re speaking in capital letters again,” Steve said. “OK, let’s deal with computer consciousness and the possibility of a world-destroying singularity later. Right now, I want to know your best hypothesis for the crash–or ingestion–of the plane.”

  “Either way, it would be described best as a sacrifice.” The voice sounded frustrated. “My initial working theory is that the sacrifice was intended to alter our... I’m just going to have to use imprecise terms until I have time to analyze all this. It was intended to substitute our science-based reality for one based on magic.”

  “And those bastards I could feel on the plane–the idiots who were happy because they were about to die–they’re magicians?”

  “Properly they would be called ‘wizards,’ but that’s the working hypothesis.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Oddly, magicians do fake magic, and wizards, if and when they exist at all, do real magic.”

  “So, what did you see when the plane crashed?”

  There was a short pause and then Barnaby spoke a bit slower than usual. “Well, I’m not seeing as such. I’m creating and analyzing an enormous series of non-synchronous information feeds, some in the visual spectrum, others collections of data from sources as different as gravity waves and quantum entanglements. Along with this, I have subsidiary servers parsing historical records, terrorist chatter, news accounts, and a number of other classified sources, and sending the relevant bits along. In the end, I create a gestalt from all this–”

  “And what?” Ace interrupted.

  “And I’m ending with an almost infinite set of alternatives.” Barnaby paused. “But I have to tell you, I keep requesting more data and more processing power because I find the answers insufficiently probable.”

  “You mean you don’t believe it,” Ace said.

  “No, I do not.” The computer sounded a bit ashamed. “However, like you, I’m willing to accept the observations of Mr. Rowan here. In addition, I can confirm that the results of these impossible events are quite real–all the passengers on that flight are definitely missing–so I’m forced to act in real space in reaction to what I can only perceive as a fantasy.”

  “Wow. That must hurt,” Steve said, rubbing his own temples. “You have no idea.”

  “What could possibly be the reason for this?” Steve asked. “It wasn’t like the World Trade towers–well, I certainly didn’t notice any dragons involved back in 2001, although I’m sure some nutjob has written a book proving it–and it didn’t even come close to Washington.”

  “I don’t believe that they were aiming at Fort Meade,” Barnaby continued. “The statement with the highest probability is that the plane and its hijackers were kept from Washington by the wards laid down by George Washington and the other High Masons when the cornerstones were first laid for the District of Columbia.”

  “You mean the symbols formed by the streets and avenues and all that crap?”

  The screen of the little phone showed an old print of Washington wearing an apron and holding a trowel.

  “It’s clear that some force vector would not allow the plane to fly as it appears the hijackers desired, and a magical ward is getting more votes from my parallel processors than a very convenient wind
shear on a cloudless summer day.” Barnaby continued. “One of the highest-rated projections is that they intended to hit a key government building, just like that fourth jet on 9/11, and increase both the number and sacrificial value of the victims.”

  “Sacrificial value?” Steve asked.

  “Yes, as you saw, the 418 souls on the plane were used to open the small gash we’re standing next to.” Barnaby continued. “If the jet had managed to hit the US Capitol, not only would more lives have been offered, but more of those lives would have been blessed with immense amounts of political or financial power. The effect would have been more disastrous by an order of magnitude.”

  Steve decided he didn’t even want to imagine what anything worse than the event he had just witnessed might have looked like. “OK, what do we know about these criminal conjurers?’

  Ace shot him a disgusted look and Steve shrugged.

  Barnaby ignored both of them. “We have to assume that the three on the jet were lower-level foot soldiers on a suicide mission. That leads to a reasonable assumption that there were a fair number of others who trained and prepared them. I’m afraid determining exactly who they are and precisely how dangerous they are to the country is going to be your job.”

  Steve shook his head. “I’ve never liked working for the government.”

  Ace loosened the misshapen pistol in her holster and said, “Yeah, but that was before you became a vital national resource.”

  “I’m not anyone’s freaking resource!” Steve turned and started walking to the door. “Sure, you and your special effects wizards hypnotized me and got me to agree to come along with you when I was at a weak moment, but I am not going to volunteer to be your next expendable asset. I’m an American citizen and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be drafted into some crazy witch hunt.”

  “Wizard hunt.” Ace corrected him. “Steve, you seem like an OK guy, but I can’t let the Last American Wizard just walk away.”

  Steve didn’t hear her move, but he suddenly felt a very sharp piece of cold metal touch the back of his neck. “As a matter of fact, if you’re not going to join up, I don’t think I can risk you being recruited by the first magical terrorist cell that comes by.”

  There was a slight pause. “Not alive, anyway.”

  The phone vibrated. Steve looked on the screen and saw that the translator app was running. On the little screen, these words appeared:

  EVEN IN DEAD, HE MIGHT BE USEFUL.

  “Barnaby, are you trying to be funny?”

  One by one, Chinese characters appeared on the screen.

  不是大机器。

  Then English letters appeared.

  NOT BIG MACHINE. PHONE CONVERSING.

  Steve couldn’t help himself; he spoke to the phone directly. “What does that mean?”

  The translation went through a series of changes, finally ending up with

  NOT BIG COMPUTER. TELEPHONE SPEAKS.

  Steve turned around and held the phone out to Ace. “Can you see this?”

  “Yeah. It says, ‘Not big computer. Telephone speaks.’”

  “Great. Now we have a talking telephone.”

  Now the translate screen read,

  MY NAME IS SEND MONEY.

  “‘Send Money’?”

  Ace laughed softly and made her knife vanish. “Figures.” The words on the screen disappeared and

  FA QIAN

  appeared, followed by

  翻　不是很好

  which turned into

  TRANSLATOR IS NOT GOOD.

  Steve grinned. “OK, so let’s give the poor thing a rest–it’s just a cheap knockoff. Barnaby, is Send Money here one of your creations?”

  The voice came out of the speaker again. “No. My hypothesis is that your telephone is haunted.”

  The picture of the cartoon hand with a big thumbs-up reappeared on the screen.

  “Well, Send Money agrees with you,” Steve said. “For whatever that’s worth.”

  The screen began to flash between apps and screens with LOADING on them. Barnaby said, “I’m installing a number of new programs. Fa Qian can store what you find, identify spells, and enumerate how the ways of power have changed. Essentially, he’s going to function as a spellbook, what Wikipedia calls a grimoire.”

  “So, we have an app for that?”

  “Ha. Ha.” The computer’s sarcasm came through quite clearly. “While that’s loading, let me continue with our most accurate– well, most recent, at any rate–hypothesis of what this explosion of magic is going to mean in practical terms. Power will become POWER.”

  “Hello. Hello.” Steve shook the phone. “Are you malfunctioning in there? You’re talking in circles and, what’s worse, in All Caps.”

  The telephone showed a cartoon of an anime-style figure looking sick with loops spinning around his head. Steve stopped shaking the device.

  “Let me say that again–your human speech has its limits,” Barnaby continued. “Whatever constituted power in our previous reality–financial power, physical power, political power, even computing power–is becoming All-Caps POWER–magical POWER–in this new reality.”

  “How does it work?”

  “As far as we can tell, it’s a version of the old Greek concept of everything being made up of one of four primary elements: Fire, Air, Earth, and Water. We are finding that it is easier to grasp when you use the tarot, since the cards appear to represent archetypes in the collective human unconsciousness.”

  “Are you listening to yourself?” Steve snapped. “You sound like some New Age nutball rattling on about vortexes near Taos.”

  “We expect those vortexes to reappear any day now,” Barnaby responded. “As for the tarot, we are looking for what works first and looking into why it works later.”

  “When will it wear off?”

  “Unless someone can work out a way to mend the Rift, I don’t see that it will,” Barnaby said. “Right now, it’s limited by the speed at which it spreads, but eventually, it should cover the entire world.”

  “Great,” Steve said glumly. “Life in the New Abnormal.”

  “We only had a few–very few–individuals who could manipulate OTN events before the Change. For example, Master Chief Morningstar had the ability to cast a glamour that caused everyone to see her as a man.” Ace nodded. “We collected all the others we could find–remote viewers, clairvoyants, telepaths, et cetera–and we would get some useful information from them occasionally. Not often, but occasionally.”

  Steve looked dubious. “You mean all those stories about Men Who Stare at Goats were true?”

  “Certainly not with goats,” Barnaby snapped. “But, yes, for decades, we’ve been working with every OTN-aware sensitive we could find. Officially, it was called the Pendukkerin Group, from the Romani word for fortunetelling, but insiders usually called it Medium Rare. Of course, they did make a complete hash in the matter of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, but we believe that was the effect of a bleed-over from the vice-president’s incredibly powerful belief structures. At any rate, last month, almost all of our OTN operatives reported that they saw a great danger coming, and several–enough for statistical significance to significantly exceed random occurrence–told us that you and that cell phone would become critically important. I just received confirmation that all of the Pendukkerin Group have lost what power or talent they possessed–”

  Ace spoke up. “And that’s why I had standing orders to collect you if an Incident occurred.”

  “As far as we can tell, the Incident opened you to all the magical elements. That’s why we’re referring to you as the Fool, the tarot card that is both the weakest and the most powerful and the only card that can control all four elements,” Barnaby continued.

  “You can’t be serious. I’m America’s last wizard?” Steve asked.

  “Don’t feel too bad, kemo sabe.” Ace stepped forward and patted him on the shoulder. “I’ve got your back.”

  “That’s not all that c
omforting, considering that you just threatened to stab me in it.”

  “True.” The blond woman nodded with a smile. “Better dead than a dragon’s dinner, I always say.” She pulled the battered silver card case out of its pocket in her cargo pants and chose a card from the middle of the pack without looking. It showed a hand holding a single sword–a crown was balanced on the tip of the sword.

  “Here’s my card, the Ace of Swords.” She slipped the card back into the box and put the box away. “Absolute protection, total loyalty.”

  “That how you got your name?” Steve asked.

  Without looking up from buttoning the pocket in her cargo pants, Ace said, “I’ll bet that kind of lightning deduction is why you’re considered one of the top journalists in the country.”

  “Huh? Who told you that?” Steve asked. Ace just smiled in reply.

  “All right. So I haven’t had a regular byline lately.”

  “Or in the last decade.”

  “Yeah, well, only people who suck up to the editors get the lead stories.” Steve changed the subject. “Why are you attaching so much importance to tarot cards anyway? There are a lot of other equally stupid occult ideas that might work just as well.”

  “We’ve found the tarot to be extremely useful,” Barnaby answered from the speaker.

  “You may remember the Total Information Awareness project that we told the public was abandoned back in 1981 when John Poindexter made the mistake of mentioning it. The TIA project consists of gathering all the world’s data and then mining for correlations we don’t know exist until we find them. In many ways, it’s a cybernetic duplicate of what Carl Jung called ‘the collective unconscious,’ and, as I told you, we’ve known for a long time that the tarot is an excellent tool for data mining that. One of our smaller subsystems has been laying out random cards in a Celtic cross a couple of hundred times a second and recording the results for years.”

  “Learn anything useful?”

  “To be honest, not a whole lot–although it did warn us about the 1973 Manhattan car bombs.”

  “There weren’t any car bombs in Manhattan in 1973.”