by Jim Hines
Imprinted
A Magic ex Libris novelette
by Jim C. Hines
Copyright (c) 2018 by Jim C. Hines
All rights reserved.
For book giveaways, information about new releases, and random human-goblin banter, sign up for Jim's more-or-less quarterly newsletter.
Imprinted
Jeneta Aboderin fought a losing battle with stage fright while she waited for Isaac Vainio to introduce her.
At first glance, Isaac looked more like a schoolteacher than one of the world’s most powerful libriomancers. A skinny white dude in his mid-to-late twenties, he wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and a blue necktie printed to look like a library due date card. He ran one hand through his blond hair, adjusted his plastic-rimmed glasses, and said, “Johannes Gutenberg’s work with libriomancy began with two assumptions. The first was that all people have some capacity for magic. Most simply aren’t powerful enough to produce real-world magical effects. What was needed was a way to combine those slivers of power into something larger.”
Jeneta swiped a finger over her e-reader, skimming a scene from a 2014 science fiction novel about interstellar colonization called New Destiny. Another part of her brain recited what she’d say when it was her turn to go out there.
A young Japanese woman stepped to Jeneta’s left. “You’re nervous?”
Jeneta jumped. Kiyoko Itô’s hand shot out to catch the e-reader as it slipped from Jeneta’s grip.
“Thanks,” Jeneta said tightly. “A little bit, yeah.”
They waited in a curtained-off area to one side of the main stage, which had been set up in front of New Millennium’s ten-story Rosalind Franklin Research Tower.
Kiyoko frowned. “You’ve already completed the most difficult magic, creating the Mars shuttle. All that’s left is, as Isaac put it, to upgrade the stereo system.”
“I didn’t have an audience when I made the Venture.” Jeneta gestured at the blue curtains, indicating the audience beyond. “Two U.S. senators, a NASA astronaut, several millionaires, and who knows how many reporters. Not to mention my father.”
“Twenty-three.”
“Huh?”
“There are twenty-three reporters, along with their camera crews, sound techs, and other assistants.”
Leave it to a living computer to keep track of numbers. Kiyoko was one of New Millennium’s many magical residents. She was one of thirty-some psychically-linked clones sharing a single mind and consciousness. She’d been brought into this world through libriomancy, using a book called All of One, by Shunro Kuronuma. Gold wires embedded in her bare scalp came together in the back to form a thin, glittering braid that disappeared beneath her white jacket.
Kiyoko had originally been created to be a servant, bodyguard, and on occasion, a killer. Isaac and others at New Millennium had helped to free her, giving her a home and a fresh start. Just as they’d done for Jeneta.
“From what I’ve observed of your magic,” Kiyoko continued, “you’re fully capable of completing this spell.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.” Jeneta tugged one of her dreadlocks and nervously twisted the loose hairs at the end.
“Are you afraid because you’re a child?” asked Kiyoko. “Or because of your history of magical trauma?”
“Blunt, much?” She hunched her shoulders. “I’m seventeen.”
“I apologize. I didn’t mean to offend.” Kiyoko paused. “Isaac chose you to represent New Millennium. He has great faith in you.”
Jeneta smiled and didn’t argue. It wasn’t about faith. It was about proving to the world that Jeneta and New Millennium were safe.
On stage, Isaac held up a battered paperback. “Imagination activates magic, and books activate imagination. Gutenberg’s second assumption was that physically identical books would anchor and collect the imagination and magic of readers, allowing libriomancers to tap into that power. Anything could then be created from a book’s pages, so long as it fit through the physical book.”
Isaac gestured in Jeneta’s direction. “Not only did Jeneta Aboderin leap beyond that second assumption, she’s also spent the past eight months helping New Millennium, in cooperation with NASA and the United Nations, to plan and prepare a magically-fueled mission to the planet Mars.”
Jeneta wiped her hands on her slacks.
“Did you say Aboderin?” asked one of the reporters near the front. “Isn’t that the girl who—”
“I’ll be happy to answer any questions about our presentation once we’ve finished,” Isaac interrupted. He signaled with one hand, and curtains opened behind him to reveal a movie-sized screen. The New Millennium logo appeared in the center: an oak tree whose branches fanned outward, thinning into lines of text in every known language.
“One week ago,” Isaac continued, “Jeneta successfully worked with another libriomancer named Talulah Polk to create the Venture from a book called Mars 2020.”
The image behind him changed to show a spaceship roughly the size of a school bus. The hull was polished to a mirror finish. Triangular wings ran the length of both sides, with a shorter fin on top that reminded Jeneta of an angular mohawk.
Isaac waited for the applause to quiet. “It holds eight people. Once the Venture leaves Earth’s atmosphere, it will have a cruising speed of roughly one tenth the speed of light. Under ideal conditions, we’ll be able to reach Mars within two hours. When our people return to Earth, they’ll spend more time getting through customs than they will in flight.”
That earned a wave of polite laughter.
“The average distance from Earth to Mars is twelve-point-five light minutes. Depending on our respective positions around the sun, it could take up to half an hour for a radio signal to travel between our worlds. For safety reasons, we’d like to improve on that time. Jeneta is going to bring us the solution.”
Jeneta stood. Her mouth had gone dry. Kiyoko leaned closer and whispered, “Dr. Shah says to remind you that she and your other friends and family are in the audience.”
Trust the therapist to anticipate Jeneta’s anxiety. She checked the small microphone clipped to her shirt and took a slow breath, trying to relax.
Another burst of applause. Oh God, had she missed her cue? She peeked onto the stage to see Isaac clapping and grinning that dorky grin in her direction. He nodded slightly.
Jeneta stepped past the curtains to join him. The lights from the front were brighter than she’d expected. She squinted, but couldn’t see anyone beyond the first few rows. That was a good thing. She could pretend the audience was smaller than it was.
Isaac shook her hand and gave her a one-armed hug. “You’ve got this,” he whispered, too low for his mic to pick up. “Just relax. Try not to think about how this project could shape the future of our species.”
She pulled back and scowled. “You suck, you know that?”
“I do,” he said solemnly.
Jeneta switched on her microphone while Isaac retreated to the far side of the stage. She faced the audience, her mouth dry. She’d practiced this all week, but her mind was a blank page. She should have brought her notes.
“Hi.” Her voice boomed out from the speakers to either side of the stage. “I’m Jeneta. But you knew that…”
She trailed off, then glanced to the side. Isaac was mouthing the word Gutenberg.
Right. He’d reviewed her speech. Probably memorized it, knowing him. She nodded her thanks and swallowed. “Gutenberg thought you needed physical books for libriomancy. He was wrong. I’ve performed magic using ebooks on my cellphone, e-readers, and computers. I’ve tried to teach Isaac to do it, but he’s a slow learner.”
That hadn’t been in her notes, but it got a few chuckles from the audience. And from Isaac.
“Li
briomancy has always been limited by the size of the book. Or in my case, the size of my reader. So we built a bigger one.”
A wall of text appeared behind her.
“Talulah and I are going to create an ansible. Basically, it’s a giant scifi cellphone that lets you communicate instantly between any two points in the solar system and beyond.”
‹Ready to make history?› Talulah’s mental voice sounded cheerful as she joined Jeneta on stage. She’d used her magic to give herself telepathy several years ago.
Jeneta grinned. ‹Yeah.›
Talulah came up behind Jeneta, looking calm and composed. She’d traded her usual blue jeans and T-shirt for an ankle-length skirt and white button-down shirt. Her traditional Pokémon baseball cap topped her head, keeping her black hair back from her face.
Jeneta turned and reread the scene, which came from a 2014 science fiction novel about interstellar colonization called New Destiny. Jeneta didn’t care for the plot, and the characters were so wooden you could lash them together and make a raft, but the author had an obvious love for technology. His descriptions were almost poetic.
The scene was split between the moon base that housed the main ansible transmitter and a planet called New Gaia, where the first colonists were setting up their smaller, quantum-linked ansible unit for the first time.
The screen rippled as Jeneta’s hands sank into the story. She lost herself in the author’s description of subatomic particles eternally entangled in a dance beyond time and space. Infinitesimal specks of matter whose bond would reunite human civilization. The Lunar characters’ emotions washed through her: elation and pride at a successful mission; eagerness to reestablish contact with the colonists, who would be waking up after months in hibernation; the anxiety and stress of knowing everyone on Earth was waiting for this transmission.
Talulah’s hands joined hers, helping to channel the energy it took to manipulate magic on this scale, but she was merely following Jeneta’s lead. This was Jeneta’s spell, the culmination of a project she’d been pushing for eight months, ever since she joined New Millennium.
The lunar air on her hands was cool and dry. She began with the primary ansible unit, a sofa-sized box with a glassy surface. It felt warm, almost alive. ‹Are you set?›
‹I’m good. Hey, do you think this ansible thing could run an MMO? Imagine gaming with colonists on Mars.›
Keeping her hands firmly on the transmitter, Jeneta shouted, “Start moving.”
The entire screen crept backward, receding one centimeter at a time along a metal track. Behind her, the audience gasped as the front edge of the transmitter emerged. The surface was dull black, with blue light gleaming between panel seams and through ventilation screens.
They weren’t pulling the ansible from the screen so much as they were creating it, transforming imagination and belief into reality like a magical 3D printer.
Jeneta laughed, a sound of unfiltered, unrestrained joy that broke free of its own accord. Libriomancy came from a place of love and wonder. Despite everything she’d been through these past few years, nothing could compare to the thrill of magic. The drumbeat of her pulse, the sweat trickling down her spine as words became real—it was a high like no other, the giddiness of creation. She barely noticed the whispers from the audience behind her, or the flicker of flashbulbs.
The first meter of the transmitter had emerged when Jeneta felt another presence, like a half-seen movement from the corner of her eye.
‹What’s wrong?› asked Talulah.
‹Nothing.› Probably just an echo from the characters in the book.
Isaac stepped closer. Talulah must have said something to him as well. Isaac glanced down at his fire-spider Smudge, who rode in a small cage clipped to his belt. Fire-spiders lit up like a grill with too much lighter fluid in the presence of danger, but Smudge appeared to be sound asleep. “Is everything all right?”
“We’re fine,” said Jeneta, drawing the transmitter another centimeter into this world.
Isaac studied the screen. “It’s not a problem if we need to stop and double-check everything.”
“You’ve quinvigintuple-checked everything,” Jeneta complained. “Stop now, and every one of those reporters will be publishing stories about New Millennium’s failure.”
“I’d rather see stories of our overcaution than of magic gone wrong.” He tugged the knot of his tie, then sighed. “Be careful. If either of you feel anything wrong, we call it, understood?”
“Got it.” Jeneta returned her full attention to the text.
It took another minute to finish creating the ansible transmitter. The stage creaked from the strain, but the tech crew had reinforced it to handle the weight. All that remained now was the secondary unit, no larger than a briefcase, that would be mounted in the Venture.
Talulah took a single step back, remaining close enough to assist if needed, but letting Jeneta be the one to complete the spell. The text on the screen jumped ahead several pages.
Jeneta touched the story again, expecting to feel the humid air of the New Gaia colony. Instead, her hands plunged into warm, slow-moving water. She blinked and reread the text. There was no mention of water in this scene.
‹Jeneta?›
‹I’m fine.› She concentrated on the story, sharing the explorers’ triumph and excitement as they saw the faces of their loved ones back on Luna and Earth. She reread their dialogue, hearing their tearful greetings, shared across light-years in an instant.
The world tilted, as if the stage was catapulting her through the screen into the glowing pages of the book. Jeneta plunged into the water. Shadows moved at the edges of her vision with short, sudden bursts of speed.
Panic flooded her thoughts. She heard Talulah calling, her mental voice hollow and distant. Jeneta tried to warn her to stay back.
A new mind touched hers, coiled through her thoughts. Tried to pull her deeper.
Jeneta heard herself coughing. Her cramped fingers clung to the partially-created ansible unit. Talulah’s hands tried to pull her free. The book’s magic flowed over them both.
Get out of my mind! Had Jeneta screamed the words out loud? She couldn’t breathe. Please, not again.
The screen went dark, like sunlight fading as she sank deeper beneath the waves. The unformed ansible splintered and evaporated into nothingness. Jeneta lashed out with all of her strength, with everything she was, an explosion of rage and fear and defiance spreading outward from her chest to burn and shatter the magic around her. Then, darkness.
* * *
A day later, Jeneta sat in a comfortably-worn faux-leather armchair in the office of Doctor Nidhi Shah. Jeneta’s fire-spider Nkiruka crouched inside a small traveling cage on her lap. The red-and-black spider waited on a bed of crushed gravel while Jeneta shook the last pieces of caramel popcorn from a paper bag through one of the vent holes in the transparent aluminum top.
Cautiously, Nkiruka stalked the closest piece like it might fly away at any moment. Black bristles along her back glowed red at the tips.
Without warning, she pounced and seized the helpless kernel between her forelegs. Red flame engulfed the popcorn. Nkiruka turned it several times before stuffing it eagerly into her mouth.
“How much do you remember?” Dr. Shah sat in a black office chair in front of a desk busy with books, notes, and photographs. The psychiatrist wore earrings like oversized silver teardrops, and a charm bracelet with a single silver acorn. She was roughly the same age as Jeneta’s father, with threads of white woven through her black hair.
Jeneta screwed the vent screen back into place in Nkiruka’s cage. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“They never do.” Dr. Shah smiled. “Everyone thinks it’s a sign of weakness, that they should be able to cope through sheer stubbornness.”
“I’m not being stubborn.”
Dr. Shah cocked her head to the side, but didn’t argue. Despite having no magic of her own, she’d spent most of her career working
with magic-using humans and magical inhumans. She was one of the first permanent residents of New Millennium, joining the small settlement outside Las Vegas shortly after its creation to help in its mission of providing peace and security for those with magic, and using magic to improve the world.
“I’m worried about Talulah,” Jeneta said.
“So am I.” Dr. Shah’s face turned serious. “The doctors haven’t found anything physically wrong, but she’s not waking up. The more we know about what happened yesterday, the better our chances of helping her.”
“I told Isaac everything I remembered,” Jeneta snapped. “I don’t need your guilt trips.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I know the past few years have been hard. Having to flee your home as the world discovered the existence of magic. Your parents splitting up.”
“Having a dead necromancer set up shop in my head.”
“That too.” Dr. Shah pointed to Nkiruka. “You’re safe. Your fire-spider wouldn’t be busy stuffing her face if she sensed the slightest threat.”
Jeneta tried to suppress a shudder, but failed.
“What story are you telling yourself right now?” It was a familiar question from more than a year of therapy.
“That I’ll never be free of what Meridiana did to me,” Jeneta mumbled. “That she’s waiting to take control again, to use me to hurt people. That what happened to Talulah is my fault.”
“How would it be your fault?” There was no judgement in her words.
“I panicked. Whatever happened yesterday, whatever it was I felt, I flung it away and it hit Talulah instead.”
“Isaac blames himself, too.” Dr. Shah sighed. “It’s one of the problems with magic. All that power…you feel like you can do anything, which leads to feeling like you’re responsible for everything.”
“Does he know what went wrong?”
“He thinks someone tried to piggyback a second spell onto yours. He’s working with security to find the source of that second spell.”
Jeneta’s legs bounced, her heels thumping against the wooden legs of the chair. “What was it supposed to do?”
