by Scott Meyer
Todd said, “Guys, let me show you what real power looks like.” He ripped off the tarp and threw it with a flourish. The tarp burst into flame the instant it left his hand. It distracted the wizards from Todd’s presentation more than he had expected, because he accidentally threw it directly at them and because it burned much more slowly than he had anticipated. The flaming tarpaulin fluttered to a rest draped over the middle of the banquet table, several chairs, and two wizards who hadn’t been quite fast enough to get out of the way. The wizards cursed and flailed until they were out of danger, watching as the tarp burned itself out in a few seconds; then everyone was able to turn their attention back to Todd.
A large man, a full head taller than Todd and easily twice as broad through the shoulders, stood motionless next to Todd, who looked sickeningly pleased with himself. Many of the wizards immediately jumped to the conclusion that Todd had created the image of a man and had gotten many of the basic dimensions wrong. The wizards from Leadchurch knew better. Leadchurch was too small a town for someone as large as Kludge to go unnoticed.
Kludge was the second-largest, second-strongest, and second-most-violent person in Leadchurch. The fact that the largest, strongest, and most violent person in town was a woman named Gert had led Kludge to become the angriest person in town by a comfortable margin.
Gary, who had very specifically told his trainee that non-wizards were not allowed at the banquet, asked, “What’s he doing here, Todd?”
“Anything I want,” Todd nearly squealed, “and only what I want. He’s powerless to make a move until I make him move. I have complete control.”
“So, if you don’t make him move, he’ll just stand there until he dies?” Phillip asked.
“He’ll keep standing there after that. He’s held in place by invisible force bands around several parts of his body. Even if he goes totally limp, he’ll keep standing there at attention, but what fun is that?” Todd muttered something under his breath, reached into his hat, and pulled out an object Phillip had never seen. It was an oddly shaped chunk of plastic that had been dyed unconvincingly to look like metal. It had two small handles and was covered with switches, triggers, and buttons.
Jeff asked, “Is that a Nintendo Wavebird?”
“Yeah,” Todd said. “Good eye. They’ve never really made a better controller.” Todd flipped a switch and a small light glowed on the controller. He held it in both hands, his staff tucked under his arm. Todd looked at Kludge, giggled a bit, then pushed the control stick forward with his left thumb. Kludge lurched forward with his right foot, as if suddenly seized with the irresistible urge to stomp on a bug. He stood motionless for a moment; then his left foot whipped forward and stomped down with bone-jarring force. His right foot lurched forward again, followed by his left, and the cycle repeated so that he walked inexorably toward the wizards. After a few graceless steps his trajectory curved so that he walked in a circle around Todd. Each step was a powerful stomp, as if he were trying to crush the floor with his heels. From the waist up, however, Kludge remained motionless, as if his lower half were a vehicle upon which his upper body merely rode.
“I know the walk cycle needs a lot of work,” Todd said as Kludge continued to orbit him, “but you have to admit, it’s a good proof of concept. This isn’t all either. I can control his arms too.”
Todd’s right thumb pushed a second, smaller joystick to the left, and both of Kludge’s arms whipped instantly to Kludge’s left as if he were dancing the world’s most aggressive hula. Todd pushed the stick to the right, and Kludge’s arms followed suit. Todd rolled the stick around, and Kludge waved his arms over his head as he continued to stomp circles around Todd.
Todd said, “I can also make him turn his head,” and instantly, Kludge’s head wrenched to the left, then to the right, then back and forth as he continued to flail and stomp laps around his master.
“Stop him!” Phillip yelled. “Stop him right now!”
“I can do that too,” Todd said. He lifted his fingers and thumbs from the controls, and Kludge came to an immediate halt. Todd looked at the dumbstruck faces of the other wizards. He turned to Jimmy and said, “Mr. Chairman, would you like a closer look?”
Jimmy came forward, as did Phillip, even though he was not invited. As they got close to the now-stationary Kludge, they could see that while he stood unnaturally still, his eyes were alive, blinking and rolling around frantically in his head.
Jimmy turned to Todd and asked, “Is he awake?”
“Yes,” Todd answered.
Jimmy asked, “Why?”
Todd snorted. “I guess he’s not tired.”
“But I thought you said you have total control over him,” Phillip sputtered.
“I do,” Todd replied. “I have total control over his motions.”
“But not his mind,” Jimmy said.
Todd shrugged. “Okay, yeah, you got me. Yeah, I can’t control his brain, but I’m pretty sure I know what he’s thinking.”
Phillip looked up at the large man’s eyes, glaring down at him, and thought, Yeah, I think I do too.
Jimmy asked, “Can I talk to him?”
Todd said, “Knock yourself out.”
Jimmy and Phillip exchanged a look; then Phillip asked, “Will he be able to answer?”
Todd smiled. “Sure.”
Jimmy and Phillip exchanged another look; then Jimmy asked, “Will he answer with his words, or yours?”
Todd said, “He can’t say anything on his own, but I can make him talk. Check this out.”
Todd pressed a button, and Kludge’s mouth stretched open to the very limits of what his jaw muscles could endure and snapped shut violently, slightly out of sync with the syllables as a recording of Todd imitating a deep, menacing voice said, “Hello, world! I am Todd’s slave! Isn’t that great?”
A wave of uncomfortable murmurs rose from the wizards. Phillip and Jimmy glanced at each other, fidgeting nervously. Phillip knew what he thought of Todd’s handiwork, and he knew what he hoped Jimmy thought, but with Jimmy it was always difficult to know for sure. Maybe I should say something. Speak my mind, Phillip thought. It’ll reassure the others who know this is unacceptable, and maybe sway the few who are on the fence. I hope it’s only a few of them who’re on the fence, anyway.
“Todd,” Phillip said, “this is awful.”
Todd looked irritated and said, “Wait, wait, I know what you’re thinking. Look, the lip sync is off, and the big dummy’s moving kinda clumsily, but you have to admit the potential. I haven’t even shown you all he can do yet. Here, one second. Look at this.”
Todd pressed some combination of buttons that went by too quickly for Phillip to catch them. Kludge’s arms whipped up in front of him with his palms facing forward. His mouth whipped open and the mocking recording of Todd’s voice cried, “Double high five!”
Phillip and Jimmy glanced at each other again. Jimmy shrugged and started to oblige, but Todd lifted a finger and said, “One sec.”
After a moment, the recording said, “Come on, bro! Don’t leave me hanging!” Kludge’s eyes were closed now, as if he were trying to convince himself none of this was happening, but his mouth still followed the recording like a reluctant ventriloquist’s dummy.
Jimmy shook his head, then lifted his arms over his head to slap Kludge’s hands. Just as his hands made contact, Kludge’s right arm swung down in a blindingly fast arc and punched Jimmy in the crotch so powerfully that it lifted Jimmy off his feet.
Jimmy staggered backward, fell to the ground, and rolled onto his back, doubled over in pain. Several wizards ran to his side to offer assistance. Phillip strolled to his side to look at him. Jimmy looked up at Phillip, and the look in his eye removed any doubt Phillip had felt about Jimmy’s feelings regarding Todd’s macro.
Phillip looked at Kludge, standing frozen in his crotch-punching pose. His eyes were st
ill closed. Phillip saw a single tear rolling slowly down Kludge’s cheek. Phillip’s eyes went down to Kludge’s hand. Obviously, Todd didn’t have control of the fingers, and had been unable to force Kludge to make a fist, because at least two of Kludge’s fingers were badly broken.
The next morning, Phillip was back in Leadchurch, standing in a small side room in the lead-covered house of worship that gave the town its name. He was looking down at the sleeping form of Kludge, who was lashed to a heavy oak table with thick leather straps. Three of the fingers of his right hand were tied to wooden sticks, and his arms and forehead were ringed with dark bruises. In a sense, Kludge had caused the bruises himself by struggling against Todd’s force fields. Phillip suspected there were more, all over Kludge’s body, but he wasn’t going to look.
Phillip asked, “How is he?”
Bishop Galbraith, the gruff, crusty master of the lead church, said, “He’s resting comfortably.”
Phillip shook his head. “Those straps don’t look very comfortable.”
“Maybe not for him,” Bishop Galbraith said, “but they make me more comfortable. If he weren’t tied down, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him when he wakes up and remembers whatever it is you all did to him.”
“Of course. Please give my thanks to the sisters for tending to him. I want you to know that we all didn’t do this to him, Your Excellency. It was one wizard’s work.”
The bishop held up a hand and said, “I’ll trust you lot to take care of that. Don’t lose too much sleep worrying about this oaf. This isn’t nearly as bad as some of the things he’s done to other people in his life. Some of the villagers might actually think better of wizards once word of this gets out. I’d just recommend you all avoid Kludge in the future. He’s not apt to forgive and forget.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Phillip said. “I can’t imagine any of us would be lax enough to let him catch us off guard.”
“And what about whichever of you heathens did this to him?”
“It was an apprentice.”
The bishop whistled. “An apprentice did this? Who was his master? Who’d be irresponsible enough to let this happen right under his nose?”
Phillip said, “His master was the necromancer of Skull Gullet Cave.”
“Ah,” Galbraith said. “That makes sense. What do you intend to do to the apprentice?”
“We’re going to make certain that he never hurts anybody ever again.”
Bishop Galbraith said, “Aye, you hate to do it, but killing him is probably the only way.”
“What? No. I’m sorry, you misunderstood. We’re not going to kill him.”
The bishop shook his head. “Well, I understand wanting to be merciful, but I’m pretty sure that even if you don’t do the apprentice in, Kludge here will as soon as he’s up and around, and he won’t do as clean a job of it as you would.” The bishop looked sideways at Phillip and smirked. “Or is that your plan? You get to be merciful, the apprentice gets justice, and Kludge gets his revenge. Phillip, I didn’t think you were that clever.”
Phillip said, “That’s not our plan.”
“Oh,” Galbraith said. “Oh well. Good to know I was right.”
“About me not being clever?” Phillip asked.
“Yes, Phillip,” the bishop answered, a bit more slowly than Phillip thought necessary.
“Don’t worry, Your Excellency. While you and the sisters were tending to Kludge’s wounds, we spent the entire night planning how to deal with the man who did this. We’re going to send him to a place where he’ll be safe from Kludge, and everyone will be safe from him. We’ve made sure that he will never be able to return.”
“What are you thinking? Some sort of dungeon?”
“Worse,” Phillip said. “Far worse. I give you my word, he will spend the rest of his life in a place many would consider worse than death.”
1.
Seven years in Florida, Todd thought. Has it really been only seven years?
Todd, like most Americans, had a very clear picture in his head of what life in Florida was like, a picture created entirely by commercials for theme parks and old episodes of Miami Vice. Again, like most Americans, his real-world experience of Florida had been quite different. For most people, this was because they lived in the real world, in which they needed food, had to work, and didn’t drive an apparently bulletproof Ferrari. For Todd, it was because he had spent his entire time in Florida sitting in a private cell in a top-secret maximum-security federal prison.
Life in an air-conditioned cinderblock cage had shaped Todd’s perceptions of the whole state. If asked to describe Florida in three words, he would have said, “Gray, chilly, and dry.”
For most of his time in The Facility (that was the only name his prison had ever been given), he had been in solitary confinement, not because he had done anything particularly bad but because none of the other prisoners had done anything bad enough to deserve being put near him. It wasn’t that his company was that unpleasant. It wasn’t just that, anyway. It was mostly because, for reasons that very few people understood, no electronic device would work anywhere near him. No television. No radio. No computers. Nothing. Being near Todd Douglas meant also having nothing to distract you from the fact that you were near Todd Douglas, and that, it was decided, was cruel and unusual punishment.
For years, Todd sat in his cage and rotted, his only entertainment coming from video game strategy guides he got through the prison library. He loved video games. Reading about them when he couldn’t play them was torture, but it was slightly less torturous than not reading about them at all. Todd had been on the verge of losing all hope when out of nowhere, a Treasury agent named Murphy turned up with a note from Merlin. He was calling himself Jimmy now, but he was still one of the bastards who had stripped Todd of his powers and exiled him here in the present for no reason.
I didn’t even do anything, he often thought. I just made someone else do stuff.
With that one note, Jimmy had done Todd three big favors.
He had told Todd that he was not alone. Others had suffered the same fate he had, and at least one of those exiled like him was one of the very wizards who had exiled Todd in the first place.
He showed Todd that it was possible to escape. That one could regain one’s powers. It was possible. You just needed to find someone stupid enough to help you.
Lastly, by having the letter hand-delivered by one of the Treasury agents who was working with him, Jimmy had essentially introduced Todd to someone who was, in fact, stupid enough.
It hadn’t surprised Todd when the agent and his partner turned up later with Merlin (a.k.a. Jimmy). They never said as much, but their silence on the subject, their need for Todd to help them find another iteration of the file, and their overabundance of caution where Todd was concerned sent the clear message that Jimmy had regained his powers and escaped.
Of course, in doing so, he had made it that much harder for Todd to trick them into giving him his freedom, but Todd knew that sooner or later an opportunity would present itself.
It was late. Agents Miller and Murphy had long since left for the day, back to the one-bedroom condo the Department of the Treasury had rented for them when it became clear that they were going to be in Florida indefinitely. Todd sat on his bed and reread a strategy guide for a game he had, of course, never played. The game was about a fortune hunter exploring exotic locales, seeing the world, having adventures, and making love to beautiful women. Todd closed his eyes and dreamed of a future where he could escape this prison and, if he was lucky, play that game.
Todd was so caught up in his fantasy, picturing the game console, feeling the controller in his hands, that at first he didn’t hear the footsteps coming toward his cell. Usually, the way their search for the file worked was that one agent would stand near the cell and get directions from Todd while the other sat at a
computer around the corner and out of range of Todd’s magnetic field, following the directions and yelling back what he saw, but all of that happened during business hours. Once the agents left for the day, nobody bothered Todd except to deliver meals. Todd put his game guide down and sat up straight, wondering who his visitor would be. One of the agents? The warden, perhaps?
Todd was surprised when a guard he’d never met walked around the corner. The guard studied Todd and didn’t seem impressed with what he saw. Finally, he said, “I know who you are.”
“Really?” Todd asked.
“Yes,” the guard replied. “You’re Todd Douglas, the prisoner who’s been assisting Agent Miller and Agent Murphy, and now you’re going to help me.”
“Really?” Todd asked.
“Yes,” the guard replied, squinting at Todd in a way he probably thought looked shrewd. “I don’t know what you’ve done, or how it helped them, but it did, and you’re going to tell me all about it.”
Todd stood, and stepped toward the bars of his prison cell. He leaned on the bars and said, “Really?”
“Yes,” the guard said.
A long silence passed before the guard coughed, then continued. “See, when they first showed up, we all looked down at Miller and Murphy. Heck, we sorta felt sorry for them. Murphy, at least. They clearly had a crap detail, shipped out here from California, stuck talking to you all day every day. Their lives sucked.” The guard saw the look on Todd’s face and said, “Oh, uh, sorry. No offense intended.”
“Really?” Todd asked.
The guard pressed on. “I’m just sayin’, they seemed so beat down. Then, all the sudden they’re on top of the world.”
It was true. Using the skills that had helped Todd hack into the file to begin with, and the patterns Agents Miller and Murphy had found going over their notes from their time spent seeking out copies of the file with Jimmy, they had, just two days ago, found a fresh, undiscovered copy of the file. One that hadn’t been locked down by those who were trying to keep the power of the file for themselves.
