by Landon Wark
The interference pattern played out in front of him, points in the three dimensional blob of light in front of him.
Jonah exhaled as the feeling started to return to his fingers.
He had just seen (screw it) magic's effect on the universe.
And if he could see it he could create a machine to replicate it.
Everyone Breaks
It was a rule as old as the art itself.
Sasha Barsi walked, coffee in hand, down the corridor of the decrepit government offices with little purpose. Over the years whatever zeal was left in him from his youth had been taken. Now only the obscure rituals remained. When he had first joined he was a man confident in the purpose of government work.
Now all that was left was the grim certainty that he was doing little more than propping up a decaying structure of tired oligarchs and their spoiled spawn. But he still went through the motions for reasons he couldn't quite pin down.
Maybe he was hoping that someday he would look up and all the goals he once saw would have been restored without him noticing. Maybe it was because the pay was at least semi-decent. Maybe it was because he didn't really care to begin with and had just fooled himself into thinking he had once had ideals.
The offices in the front buzzed with activity, whipping and beating the bureaucracy into some kind of shape. And where Sasha was headed, in amongst the flaking primer paint of decaying walls there were... similar things going on. Business in the front, party in the back, as they said in the West.
Sasha rubbed his thick, scarred knuckles, a Pavlovian response made them ache whenever he saw the line of guards at the windowless rooms. From the memories of being a few rungs lower on the ladder he supposed.
He sighed and placed his coffee on the floor a metre from the door. From within he could hear soft wheezing. Down the hall there was the unmistakable loud packing sound of something hard hitting the soft parts of a human body. Or maybe an inhuman body for all he could say. The talk that was coming in was... odd to say the least. Having survived several economic downturns throughout his life, Sasha had some experience with malcontented lunatics, and usually the worse the turn the worse their mental states. But things had been worse in the past. Things were not bad enough to justify the reports coming in from his subordinates.
"How is he?" He nodded to the man standing outside the room.
The man, square and muscular and not the type to spook easily, looked more than a little rattled. "Listen."
Sasha placed his ear closer to the door. The wheezing sound was ragged, but strong. A few of the capillaries in the lungs of the room's inhabitants had likely burst. He would likely be about ready to tell them something. Whether or not that something was accurate was a matter of investigation.
Sasha stretched the muscles in his neck. Years of experience had taught him that, no matter their zeal for the art, the men (and one or two women) he had learned under had been mistaken. The bloody back rooms could yield a haystack of information, but finding the needle required the same amount of work as just skipping the violence in the first place. Better to have good men, with good ears, out in the field.
But lately few of his paid informants, men who had given him plenty on other subversive elements, were reporting back. And those who were were telling him to fuck off.
Like the man in the room.
"And so we return to the old methods," Sasha muttered, popping his knuckles and unscrewing the wedding ring from his left hand.
The room was barren, save for a single chair in the middle. Four bulbs, one in each corner provided light regardless of what body might get in the way. Another of Sasha's innovations. The stereotypical bare bulb in the middle of the room provided dramatic shadowy corners, but made it difficult to work with precision. The change in the wiring had been time consuming, but worth it. Illuminated by the lights was the body of a man, arms bound to the chair.
His body stripped. Bruises about the sizes of fists dotted his doughy torso. His gaunt, hungry face was stained with haematoma. Blood oozed from his nose and from a cut above his eye, barely visible on his hanging head. The flesh around the wounds engorged and red. Some of it cast off into streaks on the floor, one even making it as far as the wall where towels hung from a rack.
Some institutions were careful not to leave evidence of what went on in places like this, but here they had leeway. The government had aluminum and oil and cared little for toothless sanctions from a greedy world.
The two men who had been interrogating him backed off as the door opened and Sasha entered. His foot came to a stop at the perimeter of a circle of coins that littered the floor. He looked to one of the interrogators with an arched eyebrow. The man shrugged, wiping blood from his knuckles with a towel.
"You want to see?" the interrogator asked.
"Please."
The interrogator grasped the man's short, blond hair, pulling his head back.
"Show him."
Like a robot that had been given a command, the man whispered... something that Sasha could not make out. There was the tinkling of metal on the bare concrete floor and a coin, identical to the ones that littered the room rolled over, settling a few centimetres from Sasha's wing tip left shoe.
His eyebrows raised and for a moment the world seemed to shudder. The words in the directives he had been getting from dozens of his superiors were suddenly very clear in his mind.
Regardless of what you see or experience, you are to get the names of the leaders.
"I can understand now," he said to the man in the chair, "why you suddenly don't want my benevolence."
The man rolled his head backward on an unsupportive neck. His one good eye glared at Sasha with a kind of exhausted defiance. The two of them had never met, but he made it a point to know where his payouts were going and likely could have picked each informant out of a crowd.
The man wheezed. He was trying to say something, likely a slurred, half concocted insult. One of the interrogators stepped up to him. The man struggled briefly, but when a towel was placed under his mouth and the command was given to spit he did so. A dark red slick stained the cloth. Then the other interrogator stepped in with a small plastic cup of water. The man slurped at it greedily, spit once more then took a full swallow.
"Tell me what is happening out there." Sasha motioned toward the door.
There were always manifestos just below the surface of the malcontents, itching to see the light of day. Motivations were always easy to find. They were impossible to contain.
"New world is coming," the man wheezed. "Where wealth is meaningless."
"Because you are going to give pocket change to everyone?" Sasha motioned to the floor.
The man laughed a sad, gasping laugh that turned into a cough and spray of pink saliva.
"What I can do, we all can do," he said with a conviction that made even Sasha pause.
"Well, let's see a trick," Sasha said. "A disappearing trick maybe. Get yourself out of here."
"I am just... Novice. There will be Adepts coming for you soon. Or even... Acolytes. They already killed your good friend Novak. Made him choke on his own filth."
Sasha harrumphed. "Oh. You have ranks? Acolytes of who?"
After a rasping breath the man whispered something inaudible where Sasha stood. One of the interrogators leaned in a little closer.
"McAllister, something," he relayed.
"Fucking Westerner," Sasha muttered. "Fine. Who else? Give me some names."
Western influence was a tricky thing and, to be honest with himself, above his pay grade. Better to deal with the locals who were backing them. With their little parlour tricks they might not need jobs, but locals still had families. Families who were within easy reach of the truncheon. A boy's neck was much easier to wring than a man's.
Whatever pocket change Westerners wanted to make was concerning from an economic standpoint, Sasha's bureaucratic brain reasoned, but he was no economist. The death of one of the people he was charged with p
rotecting was far more troubling, and the message had to be sent that it would not be tolerated.
As the man sat, wheezing, Sasha balled up his fist until the scars creaked like the ropes of a schooner.
"Come on," he said with a practised patience as he laid the fist into the man's diaphragm. "Tell me of any friends I might have who are the disciples of this McAllister."
Within twenty minutes Sasha stepped out of the windowless room, knuckles popping as he wrung out his hand. Even though it was a necessary part of the job, he had a hard time watching as men broke. There was always so much snivelling and bawling. The names had started flowing and he excused himself, leaving the note taking to his subordinates.
Mentally he began composing a report to his superiors in the government. Questions about whether to include the creation of coins from thin air came and went. Better to include everything and let the higher-ups figure things out. He paused briefly, wondering if the interrogators would be playing at making pocket change in their homes later that night. He might even have a go at it himself. As long as the oligarchs kept on breathing then the politicians would be happy and the world would keep on turning, regardless of the financial situation.
"Get me some information on this McAllister." He motioned for an assistant to fall in behind him. "From the English, Americans, maybe Australians or Canadians."
"Already done," the aide, a lanky sullen man replied. "Apparently someone by that name blew up a hotel and killed a few Sheriff's deputies in the States. Unknown if it was in separate incidents.
"So he's violent," Sasha mused. "If he needs to be."
"Should I start detaining everyone hanging around with this... group?"
Sasha paused. He had orders to put a stop to the cult's meetings, but going after a large group was potentially dangerous, especially if they really could do things beyond dropping coins from their mouths. But his men knew the risks that came with their jobs, and how much more dangerous could these cultist malcontents be than garden variety machine gun wielding malcontents.
"Break up the meetings. Grab whoever is there and keep grabbing until you find this McAllister."
Sasha stopped somewhere in the middle of the transition from the back of the building to the front of the building.
"Someone is going to want to have a long talk with him."
Defenders of Civilization
Within the penthouse a single shaft of light speared through the otherwise dark space, falling on a trash bin in the corner of the room where a series of twisted and warped ballpoint pens lay, overflowing the crisp edges of the bin and falling into an inky puddle on the floor.
As he paced across the shag of the floor Raymond took a drag of the cigarette clenched almost tenderly in his teeth, revelling in the racing of his heart. There was no finer feeling as far as he was concerned. That standing on the edge of a cliff feeling, never knowing if your brain was messed up enough to push you that last step. The running, fighting, fucking kind of racing that let you know you were alive and ready to "lick a bag of wildcats" as his grandfather would have said. He had not felt it in a long time (at least not without pharmaceutical enhancement) and strangely had forgotten that it was something he found desirable. Maybe he could persuade a few of the guys to take another cliff diving trip to Brazil in a couple of months.
The idea died almost as soon as it was born. If he didn't get everything on track there wasn't going to be money for cliff diving in a couple of months, or anything else for that matter.
His watch buzzed. Opening of the day in the East. He swivelled the dial on the watch and a list came up on the face. Sitting down at the desk a few paces away from his bed, Ray opened up the laptop and shifted the mouse around. By the time he had the conferencing app opened the computer was already ringing. He slid the mouse over.
Christ it felt good. All those days sitting through meetings with the big man prattling on, sitting there like a zombie, waiting for the next boom or bust (both were fine as long as they were big). It was fine, but it lacked a sense of purpose. For the longest time he had thought that money was a goal in and of itself, but the defense of money... That was proving to be an intoxicating high. Feeling like a white knight standing, shield at the ready against the oncoming dead-eyed muppet hordes. Raymond fucking Polaski, defender of the purity of Capitalism and therefore of civilization itself.
He was barely able to stub out the cigarette before the face of a woman appeared in the window of the conferencing app. He was about to say something when she preempted him with an accent tinged voice. A moment to appreciate her lips forming the words and he sat back in his chair.
"Please hold for Mr. Abramov."
The line went to a screensaver-like background while a tinny musak played through the speakers of his laptop. Ray sighed and swept his fingers through his hair. His heart pounded furiously with the knowledge that he was about to try to convince a member of a foreign government that there were literal wizards running around in his country. Literal. Fucking. Wizards.
He mouthed the words once and then twice.
But this was the way it was meant to be. His body on complete edge, brain practically itching. An overtly sexy woman passing him on to a man with more power than should legally be allowed to make an insane, impossible pitch. Fuck it felt good to be alive!
"Hello."
He had chosen Abramov for two reasons: First, he had studied at Oxford so his English would be first rate and second, Bob owned an entire city block's worth of property in his district. Just dropping the name had gotten his foot in the door. Of course Bob had no idea. It was one thing that strangers thought he was 'round the twist, but his colleagues?
"Hello?"
Ray straightened up. Abramov's face was like a slab of granite, somewhat intimidating, but his left eye was slanted in the direction that must have been his keyboard. It was all Ray could do to keep from cackling like a teenager at the sight of it.
"Mr. Abramov," Ray channelled his confidence and shackled the thundering of his heart. The adrenaline was going to carry him through this. "How are you? Ray Polaski. Bob Whitmier sends his regards."
"Yes. What can I do for you, Mr. Polaski?"
The sentence was not even a question, more of an annoyed grunt. Raymond mentally frowned, but the smile never left his face. He was expecting a little more sycophantic greed. The dollar was supposed to mean something over there. But, so much the better. The harder the pitch the sweeter the high.
"Mr. Abramov, we've been noticing some unusual trends coming out of your region. It's looking like sales are tanking pretty hard."
Abramov grunted. "Tanking." His non-lazy eye darted sideways, looking for the word on another screen. Abramov's English was obviously not as good as advertised.
"I'll save you the trouble of parsing the idiom. Everything but real estate is not selling. Maybe you've been able to figure out why, maybe you haven't—"
"Did Barsi put you up to this?" Abramov asked pointedly.
"I'm sorry?"
"Barsi. I don't know what happened to the man. You tell him to get back to... reality. There is no way to increase his budget, cult or not."
Raymond arched an eyebrow. Maybe they weren't as slow over there as he had thought. "And let me guess, he told you this cult is being run by a man named McAllister?"
Impatiently Abramov drummed his fingers audibly on whatever desk he was using. Ray imagined it was a stalwart slab of dark, heavy wood. A couple of cracks began to appear in the other man's impassable facade and he felt the first feelings of glee fill him, running all the way to his fingertips.
"He did."
"All right. So..." he made the motions of going through some blank pages on his desk. "Mr. Abramov, I'm here to tell you that this cult is responsible for the drops in revenue you're seeing. Did this... Barsi explain to you how they're doing it?"
Abramov grunted again. "Barsi spins fanciful tales of witchcraft. He says that people are out there selling their souls to this... McAlliste
r for the power to make money from nothing."
Ray pawed at the pen at the side of the desk, scribbling down the words 'soul' and 'witchcraft'. Despite everything he had not thought of putting it in exactly those terms. If nothing else he could take that away from this conversation.
"They're not just tales, Mr. Abramov." He inhaled through his teeth as he entered the most treacherous part of the pitch as he had mapped it out. "It's real. I've seen it. I've done it. There's an instructional video coming from your country. At least it was before your boy Barsi got it taken down."
"Look, Mr. Podolski—"
"Polaski."
""Yes. Mr. Polaski. Your Bob Whitmier has sent my re-election campaigns much money over the last few years. That is why I don't immediately hang up on you. But, if you want someone to tell fairy tales to, I have a niece who is five. I can have her nanny swing by with her this afternoon."
"Does your niece like her nanny?" Ray shot in almost immediately. The time for niceties had passed. "Let me ask you something, Abramov: Would that nanny take care of your niece if she could get everything she wanted out of thin fucking air? Look. If it's real or not is not the question. People over there believe it. And the more they believe in it, the less they're going to believe they need people like us."
Abramov paused. If nothing else had, being cursed at had gotten his attention.
"Abramov," he continued. "Men like you and me: We're the big, lumbering dinosaurs of this world. The twenty ton goddamn T-rexes. We keep the weak and stupid shitting in caves instead of all over the forest. And we're fucking good at it as long as we don't have a bunch of piddling crap to look after. Imagine a world where your brother or sister has to look after your niece by themselves, or where you have to do your own laundry because you can't pay someone enough to touch your jizz-stained boxers."
