Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard

by Glenn Michaels

  The team breathed a sigh of relief. The patient was improving now. It had been close, so terribly close.

  Of course, any one of a thousand other things could still go wrong. Their patient could still die on them. But a major hurdle had been overcome, and the patient’s prognosis had just gotten substantially better.

  • • • •

  Paul’s eyes opened to a semi-darkened room. He felt disoriented for several seconds, but then the memory of the stabbing came back to him followed by the visit with his parents and the experience in the operating room. For a while, he lay unmoving, reliving the bittersweet, but too short time with his parents over and over again.

  Finally, he turned his head, taking in his surroundings.

  He was lying in a hospital bed, in a semiprivate room with the curtain drawn across the middle. He could neither see nor hear another occupant, but that, in and of itself, didn’t mean much. His abdomen felt stiff and incredibly sore. He lifted the blanket with his right hand and discovered that his lower chest was wrapped in bandages and white cloth. And he was incredibly tired.

  “Hello, it’s good to see you finally awake,” a male voice said.

  Paul turned his head again.

  “Feeling better?” asked Merlin.

  He was hovering in midair six feet away, smiling cheerfully at Paul.

  “Yes. I was stabbed, right?” Paul asked, wincing in pain with every uttered word.

  “Two hoodlums stabbed and robbed you,” Merlin replied. “One of your neighbors called the police, who then called an ambulance. You are currently in Room 408 of Saint Anthony Hospital. Do you remember any of that?”

  Paul shook his head. “Not much, no. But it doesn’t matter.” With his right hand, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Merlin, I need to talk to someone with spiritual connections. My preacher back in Mojave would be nice. Could you mimic Minister Parsons?”

  Merlin morphed into the dapper middle-aged man, wearing black-rimmed glasses and a three-piece suit.

  “Yes, Brother Paul, you needed to talk to me?”

  Paul was instantly impressed. This superintelligence stuff was pretty handy.

  “Yes, I do,” he admitted to the hologram. “I...ah...experienced a near-death vision. I think.”

  “You would not be the first,” Minister Parsons said with a knowing smile.

  “My parents came to see me,” Paul said. “They said that I had to stay on Earth, that I had things to do.”

  The specter cocked his head to one side. “And was that all they said?”

  “No, they said that they loved me and had confidence in me.”

  Parsons nodded. “Near-death experiences are almost always short, but very much to the point. If you are asking my opinion, I would treat the experience as real, and I would do whatever was asked.”

  “You would?” Paul asked, his uncertainty evident in his voice.

  With a smile, Parsons replied, “I know you, Paul Armstead. You are a man of deep, abiding faith, even if you are also a man of science. On this occasion, listen with your heart and not your head. You won’t regret it.”

  Paul lay still, deep in thought, considering the advice proffered to him.

  “I will, Mom, Dad. I will,” he muttered, half to himself. Then, with effort, he took a deep breath. “Thanks, Minister Parsons. I’d like to talk to Uncle Sam now.”

  Parsons disappeared, morphing into the tall figure of Uncle Sam, complete with the tri-colored hat and old-style suit.

  The image of the white-bearded man said nothing but gazed at Paul. He doffed his hat and sat in a holographic chair on the other side of the bed.

  Paul cleared his throat while meekly studying the ceiling tile above his head. “First off, I would like to apologize for my emotional outburst in our last conversation. I misjudged you. Please forgive me.”

  The apparition nodded but remained silent, his expression giving nothing away.

  Paul glanced up at him. “This...having magical powers is not what I expected at all. I thought...well, I somehow thought that it would open up a bunch of doors for me. I expected to do great and wonderful things with my new powers. Instead, I have been nearly killed several times, chased halfway around the world, and now I am a scared, poverty-stricken refugee huddled in this...dirty, cold city! Have I mentioned how cold it is here?! Three days ago, the idea that I could challenge the wizards of Errabêlu was too much for me to accept. And I admit it. I’m still having trouble accepting it.”

  “But the people of Earth need you, Paul,” Uncle Sam said, taking up the dialogue. “You are the only one who can help them. That is what your mother and father were trying to tell you.”

  Paul morosely stared at the hospital room.

  “But I’m just one person. What can I do to help the people of Earth?”

  “You can rescue them from the other wizards,” Uncle Sam declared, frowning into the distance. “The ones that have committed such evil and destruction, the ones that will keep on committing murder and devastation, too, unless you stop them.”

  Paul studied the other’s face. “You’re serious? Really? Me? All by myself?”

  “You are the only one in history that has had a chance...or will ever have a chance, at stopping those monsters,” Uncle Sam announced, his jaw muscles clenching. “And you can do it, too, if you will only have the faith in yourself that your mother and father obviously have in you.”

  Paul grimly stared at the man. “Assuming I survive that long.”

  The apparition nodded coldly. “There is that, of course. Your risk is high, very high. But consider this. As it stands right now, the Normals of Earth are virtually slaves to the wizards. Unknowing slaves, perhaps, but still slaves. The future of the Normals is tied to you. To free yourself, you must free them as well. It’s the same decision your forefathers had in the Revolutionary War. It’s the same one for Central and South America, for Israel, France, Scotland, and a host of other countries around the world. Is the goal worth the risk? Only you can answer that question.”

  His words troubled Paul greatly. It still seemed like guaranteed suicide to him. And then there was the question of arrogance.

  Paul decided to ask that question. “Okay. Let’s assume that somehow, I go up against the other wizards and win, that I free the world from slavery, as you put it. That seems so...well, arrogant to me. To single-handedly change the course of the whole planet? That would put me in the same category as them! Arrogant to the max! If and when the world finds out what I did, without consulting them, they’ll crucify me!”

  For several moments, Uncle Sam stared at Paul without expression. “So, if you defeated the wizards of Errabêlu, you would enslave the Normals too?”

  Paul jerked back in shock. “NO!” Then more calmly, “No, of course not, that is not—”

  “Do you intend to start more wars and other armed conflicts, to kill off Normals in batch lots?”

  These questions embarrassed Paul, and he felt his face flush red in frustration.

  “NO, of course not!” Paul replied heatedly. “I simply meant—”

  “Preventing the slaughter of Normals is not arrogance,” Uncle Sam declared sternly. “It will not put you in the same category as the wizards of Errabêlu, not even remotely so. And you can’t consult them, the people of Earth. You can’t ask their opinions.”

  Paul opened his mouth to object but slowly closed it as the truth of what the strategist was saying rang home.

  Uncle Sam nodded with conviction. “That’s right, Paul. You can’t conduct opinion polls or form focus groups to find out how the Normals feel about the wizards and whether they want to be free of wizardly control. To get their honest opinions, you would first have to explain the situation to them. And of course, you would have to do so while all the other wizards are trying to kill you. Not only would your efforts to tell the Normals be wasted, but the truth is that they must never learn about magical powers. And I think you know why, too, don’t you, my boy?”

 
Yes, Paul did, although he didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to him before. But the thought of what could happen...what would happen, if people all over the world suddenly learned that magical powers really existed. There would be riots and witch-hunts. There would be demands made by every Normal on Earth to be given those powers, first for self-defense, but then conditions would devolve into global fighting, magic being used to wipe out one’s potential enemies before they could strike first. Yes, indeed, there would be death and destruction on a scale that would make World War II look like a church bake sale. No, the superintelligence was right. Paul couldn’t reveal to the people of Earth that magic was real. Maybe someday, when they were ready for it. But definitely not now.

  “You are concerned about arrogance,” Uncle Sam continued. “Was it arrogant for William d’Aubigny, Roger Bigod, and the Council of Barons to force King John of England to sign the Magna Carta? Was it arrogant for George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and the other Founding Fathers to stage the rebellion against Great Britain? Or for Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence? Was it arrogant for Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves, during the American Civil War?” He glanced over at Paul, his eyes sorrowful. “I can keep this up for hours, Paul, citing historic examples by the score. Where would the people of the United States be if these and other men and women had not challenged the wrongs of kings and governments, if they had lacked the courage and the faith in their convictions, or if they had been paralyzed into inactivity by some inane desire not to appear conceited?”

  Uncle Sam’s words made Paul feel very uncomfortable and childish.

  “But none of those men were arrogant!” he feebly protested. “It was just their destiny to do what they did....”

  Uncle Sam laid his hand on Paul’s arm, shaking his head.

  “Paul,” he said firmly, a stern look in his eye. “Just because some boring history teacher in a high-school class taught you a few names and dates does not give you the right to assume that history was a preordained sequence of events leading up to your current life! That George Washington was fated to win the Revolutionary War so that you could be born and live in the here-and-now. Now, that’s true arrogance, to pretend that the men and women of history were not real people, with real fears, doubts, weaknesses, trials, and failures, as well as successes. To ascribe their accomplishments to destiny is to rob them of who they were as real people and make them into cardboard caricatures without souls or free will. Please, don’t do that! They were no more destined to do what they did than you are right now! They were no less real than you, and what they did took true strength and courage. Don’t take that from them and ascribe it to destiny! And don’t you dare use that pitiful excuse to absolve yourself of the responsibility to do what must be done now. Do you think that your doubts, your humility, and your weaknesses are greater than theirs? That the odds you face are worse than what they faced?”

  Paul opened his mouth but found himself to be speechless. He was stunned by Uncle Sam’s recrimination. The hologram was right. It was arrogant for him, in this day and age, to look back on history and assume that the events of the past were foreordained to occur just because it justified who he was and the way people lived now. He hung his head sadly and gulped.

  With a sigh, Uncle Sam took a half step back. “I can still sense your reluctance to take on this admittedly Herculean, perhaps even fatal task. Apparently, your freedom and the freedom of the world is not quite enough motivation for you. So let me give you another reason to do so. You know that the wizards of Errabêlu are good at starting wars. To name just two such conflicts, there were 16 million deaths in World War I and 65 million in World War II. And millions upon millions more in hundreds of other conflicts, all because of those monsters.”

  Paul frowned in confusion. “But those wars and conflicts are in the past. I can’t change those. Are you suggesting that I exact some sort of revenge for those deaths?”

  The apparition smiled sadly at him. “No. You are missing the point entirely. Yes, all those deaths are in the past. But Errabêlu isn’t finished yet, Paul. Even now, those evil monsters are building toward the next great conflict.”

  Paul’s eyes opened in total shock. “The next great conflict...?!”

  The superintelligence nodded slowly and sorrowfully. “In as little as ten years, but not more than fifteen, World War III will begin. And in that war, a lot of nuclear weapons will be used. In fact, the war will begin with the use of a nuclear weapon in a major city.” He stared at Paul with steel in his eyes. “A war that will eventually kill over 500 million people. And of those, over 26 million will be Americans.”

  The blood drained from Paul’s face, and he froze in shock. 500 million people? To be killed in World War III? He didn’t doubt the apparition’s information for a millisecond. He knew without hesitation that the strategist was telling him the truth.

  “What’s more important, Paul?” Uncle Sam asked quietly. “Your self-centered desire not to appear arrogant? Your freedom? Your life? One person against 500 million?” He paused, but only for a moment. “You are the only person in a position to halt this tragedy, to save the lives of 500 million souls. Yes, you risk death. But ask yourself how you can look at yourself in a mirror if you don’t at least try to stop it!”

  Uncle Sam favored him with a poignant look. “There’s one more reason why you should do it, Paul. Not just for the people of Earth, but also for yourself. I know what you have been feeling in your heart. I understand that you feel like you’ve wasted your life in pursuit of the American Dream. And I know why you feel that way, too. All your life, Paul, you’ve done what others have expected of you. You’ve followed their agendas and done what they’ve required of you. And you’ve never questioned it. You’ve never been challenged by any of it before. You’ve drifted through life, never taking control of your destiny, never making the hard choice, never tackling the seemingly impossible, and never once setting an unachievable goal for yourself or allowing yourself to live your own dreams. At least, not until you met the man who gave you your powers.”

  Uncle Sam stared earnestly into Paul’s eyes. “Ever since you were given magical powers, what have you felt? What do you think of your life now? Look deeply within yourself before you answer.”

  Paul had no need to think about it. He knew the answer the moment he was asked the question.

  “I’ve never been happier in my whole life,” he quietly admitted to the phantom, surprised at his own words.

  “There’s your answer,” Uncle Sam pointed out. “‘The illogic of waste. The waste of lives, potential, time, resources. If change is inevitable, predictable, beneficial, doesn’t logic demand that you be a part of it? One man can change the present. What will it be? Past or future? Tyranny or freedom? It’s up to you. In every revolution, there’s one man with a vision!’”

  The words of Captain Kirk to Spock in the episode “Mirror, Mirror” were decidedly and terrifyingly appropriate. Paul eyed the hologram, nodding in appreciation.

  But a fear gripped Paul’s heart and squeezed it in a vise. Clearly, in his near-death vision, his parents had wanted him to return to Earth and to help the people there. And that was his desire too, now that they and Uncle Sam had helped him to look within himself, to point out things about himself that he should have already known.

  “Thank you, Uncle Sam,” Paul told him. “I’d like to talk to Merlin again, please.”

  Once again, the holographic image morphed back into Merlin.

  “It’s time to leave now,” Paul announced.

  Merlin shrugged. “You suffered a major injury. You need to rest, to recuperate.”

  Paul lay back on his incredibly comfortable pillow, still feeling very tired. “I can’t stay here. The police and the doctors are going to ask me a lot of questions that I’d rather not have to answer. Tell me, do they know my name?”

  “No. Neither the police nor the hospital staff
knows your name. Your wallet and ID were taken from you. You are listed on the chart as James Doe, whoever that is. Funny thing, there are two other Does in the hospital too, a John Doe and a Julian Doe. Humph. Anyway, the thieves took your gold wristband, your wallet, and your credit cards. They hit the maximum spending limit about five hours ago.”

  Paul’s eyes narrowed, his jaw tightened. “Can we track them down?”

  Merlin looked at him without expression. “You made a pledge not to kill.”

  “And I will keep that pledge. But I am tired of playing the part of the helpless victim,” Paul told him with steel in his voice. “Tell me, what time is it?”

  For a moment, it looked like Merlin might object, but he nodded instead. “Four o’clock in the morning.”

  “Great.”

  Grasping the handrail of the bed, Paul cast a spell, pulling the two IVs from his arms. Another spell helped lever him up and to the edge of the bed.

  “Where are my clothes?” he asked Merlin as he cast a glance around the room. There didn’t seem to be a place that his clothes might be kept.

  “They didn’t survive the attack,” Merlin informed him with a shrug. “The left shoe might be salvageable if you can get the blood out. I know a spell or two that you can try, but for one shoe, it’s sort of pointless, don’t you agree?”

  “You’re a big help,” Paul muttered. The hospital gown he was wearing was typical of its kind, reaching down to mid-thigh, but with a breezy slit all the way up the back.

  Beside his bed was a small nightstand, and on the middle shelf was a bedpan.

  Paul smiled. “Perfect.”

  He grasped the object, the cool feel of aluminum in his hand. There wasn’t enough of the metal for a portal, but there was more than enough to create a spell of invisibility.

  “In the name of the invisible monster of Forbidden Planet, Claude Rains, and Pete’s Dragon, may a cloak of invisibility surround me.”

  And it did.

  • • • •

  Shivering and feeling a bit self-conscious (a cool breeze up one’s backside tended to do that to a fellow), Paul ambled slowly down the hallway, favoring his right side. He took the elevator down, getting a funny look from one of the orderlies when the elevator opened on the main floor without anyone apparently inside.