Why wasn’t this working? Professor Fischer had not admitted to anyone that he hadn’t solved a technical problem in twenty years. He always got a graduate student to work problems out for him. That was what they were there for. The notes from Zaitseva looked right. The paper made sense. Why wasn’t the simulation giving the same answers? He didn’t have the time to work through the code. The problem is, how to get someone to work on it out of sight of the department sticky beaks.
Freddy Jessen got the call from the creep Fischer. It was yet another backdoor job. He had to collect a package of Java modules sent to him by email. Then he had to go to the old Indian River Ranch bunkhouse and start looking for the problems. Fischer had set up a Physics department computer for him, all he had to do was turn up, run the programmes, and look for any problems.
The results certainly were not the same as the notes said they would be. Jessen searched for any comments in the source code to see if they agreed with the notes from the paper. He found the line that said, ‘Make a door to the next parallel universe.’ It was in a paragraph which showed how it was impossible to do. The line should have read ‘It is not possible to make a door to the next parallel universe.’ Because he was bored and thinking more of his next Crusaders re-enactment pageant, Jessen changed the line to read, ‘Make a new Crac des Chevaliers.’ It made just as much sense as a door to a parallel universe.
He had made some changes to reduce the mathematical calculations, hoping to make it run faster. The next simulation run didn’t work as planned. It ran for hours and nothing happened. It was getting late. Jessen crashed out on the best bed.
The next morning, Jessen made himself a simple breakfast and checked for any results. The programme had finished but the room was dark and cold, there was no sunlight. The view out of the front door had changed. Instead of miles of dry grass there was a massive stone wall which blocked out the morning sun.
The stone wall joined neatly to the bunkhouse wall outside where the computer was sitting. Hours later Jessen had to accept that this was just too weird. He had tried to find the end of the wall. It went around many corners with massive round towers at each corner. When he found a square tower with a gate leading to an open courtyard, he was forced to admit it to himself. This was a replica of the Crac des Chevaliers, the original was on a hilltop in Syria, but this was not it. The stone walls were perfectly made with no gaps. The stone looked like grey granite. He had to get Fischer to look at this.
Fischer didn’t want to hear from Jessen until everything was working as he had promised. The drive from Walnut Grove was uneventful, until the last few minutes along the dirt track leading to the ranch. “Jessen, what is that? What is going on?”
“I was hoping you could tell me Professor. It looks to me like a replica of a Crusader castle. It might be a copy of the Crac des Chevaliers. The original still exists, it is sitting on a hill in southern Syria.”
It took an hour of walking around the walls and the courtyard for Fischer to accept that it was real. “You say that you changed a comment in the main programme and the system then spent all night making this, exactly what you put in the code. Only it was a comment, it is ignored by the computer, it is there to remind the programmers of what they were doing.”
Fischer silently stared at the wall; his mouth was hanging open. Finally, he spoke up, “We have to do an experiment. Change to comment to say something else.”
“Like what, another fortress? A stack of gold bars?”
The greed in Jessen’s voice didn’t go un-noticed, but for the time being scientific experimental methods prevailed. Fischer slowly spoke next his words in what he hoped was a thoughtful manner; “We will try something simple. The computer isn’t doing this. It didn’t do this when I ran it in my office. What is different? We moved it out here. It must be something to do with this place.”
“I know you don’t like to talk about anything outside what is proven to be scientific Professor, but could we be in a magical place? A place where magic works just because it is asked to. I’ve read a lot about historical times, that is why I put the Crusader castle name into the comment line. Those people were not stupid. However, they had a different starting point in their thinking to us. They knew that magic worked. It was after sixteen hundred to seventeen hundred that only the amateurs and religious nuts were left trying to make it work.”
The atmosphere became frosty. Professor Fischer turned to Jessen; “Let me do the thinking, Jessen. We will experiment. We will do this before someone turns up and demands to know how a full-sized castle came be here. Change the comment to describe something which could be used to control unseen powers, but not a wand. That is too much for me to accept right now. Put my cell phone next to the computer and ask for it to be turned into an unseen powers controller.”
The computer finished the next run. A brief flash of light around the desk came from an unseen source at the moment the run finished. Fischer looked at his phone. The display was still working. It wasn’t hot or cold, it seemed to be exactly the same as it was before. Fisher prodded the phone with a pencil. It looked quite normal. He picked it up. There was a brief burst of red light in the room and a puff of wind coming from nowhere. The phone switched on when the button was pressed.
“Jessen, use your phone to call me.”
The call was made. Fischer answered and the connection went through. Cell phone coverage in the area was strong because a town and a psychiatric hospital were over the ridge from the ranch, the phone tower was located on the ridge and could be clearly seen.
The next step was to look at the built-in functions. These were simple, Clock, Calendar, SMS, Fax, Email, and Spells.
“Whoa! What was that! Spells!”
The function was activated, a list of what might have been spells appeared on the tiny screen.
- Accio
- Aguamenti
- Alohomora
- Avis
- Capacious Extremis
- Colloportus
- Depulso
- More . . .
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Fischer looked at Jessen. “All right mister medieval expert; are these spells? If so, what do they do?”
“Wow! I have no idea. If we want to find out in a hurry, we need someone who already knows this.”
There was a long period of contemplation. “Let’s make our assumptions. First, unseen controlled forces are real. Second, there are people who know what to do to control it.”
Jessen cut in; “Third, the programme has made a sophisticated interface to unseen controlled forces in this location. If all the assumptions are true, then we can ask for just about anything.”
“We have to ask the system to show us the nearest person connected to unseen controlled forces.”
The changes were made, the comment now read ‘Make a map which shows the name and location of every person using unseen controlled forces within fifty miles of the current location.’
The programme was run. A red light flashed in the room. A folded map popped into existence on the desk next to the computer.
Jessen unfolded the map. It showed fine detail of roads, and buildings for fifty miles in every direction. There were two names linked to tiny drawings of people on the map. The drawings were animated. One was walking along a road forty miles to the east, another was sitting in a bar in the town over the ridge. The walker was tagged ‘Thomas Lecky’ and the bar sitter was tagged ‘Marietta Edgecombe’ ‘’.
“Jessen, I need you to get over to that bar right now and get this Marietta Edgecombe back here. We have to find out about spells right now. She, if she is a ‘she’, might know how to hide this castle.” Professor Fischer was starting to unravel. This one day was too much. Another day like it would have him back in therapy.
The bar was an ordinary small-town bar. It was full of off duty staff from the hospital. Jessen took the quickest shortcut he could. He went to the bar and told the bartender. “I’m looking for Marietta Edgecombe. I’m here to offer her a job.”
The bartender pointed to the corner. A young woman was sitting on her own with an empty glass in front of her.
“Hi! Marietta, I’m Freddy Jessen.”
“Go away!”
“Marietta, please listen, I’m here to offer you a job.”
“What sort of job?”
“Well, I’ve been told that you have certain skills and knowledge which my employer needs right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is confidential, don’t get upset, I happen to know that you know something about, um”
Jessen whispered, “um, about magic.”
Marietta gave a look hostile enough to make Jessen want run for it.
“This is your last chance, go away!”
“The boss will pay you a thousand dollars for one day.”
Marietta looked away. She sat still for so long that Jessen felt he had to check for the best escape route to the door.
“All right, I’ll talk to your boss. You know I’m a witch. I know you’re not a wizard. If anything that I don’t like happens, you will regret it. That’s guaranteed.”
Marietta looked at the castle, the map and the ‘Spells’ function on the phone.
“The castle is easy. I think that it is a come-and-go object or space or something like that. You can see it because you know that it is there. Anyone who doesn’t know that will have trouble seeing. If you don’t need it, it will hide itself. When you do need it, it will come back again. When Professor Fischer first came here, he could see it because he is Jessens boss and it recognized that. This is magic, by the way.”
“The map is interesting; but the thing I want to try out is your ‘Spells’ function.”
Marietta took the phone, pointed at a broom leaning on the wall and selected ‘Accio’. The broom flew across the room. Marietta caught it, then selected ‘Depulso’. The broom flew back and hit the wall.
She handed the phone back to the Professor.
“You used this computer programme to turn your phone into a wand.”
“Yes”
“You have been making some very magical things with it, like this map.
“That’s right.”
“Has anybody from an official organisation visited you, to talk about this?”
“No, will there be?”
“Oh yes. They will be here pretty soon if they are not watching you already.”
Fischer strolled to the table and opened the map. “There are no other names on here apart from yours and this ‘Thomas Lecky’.
“That explains it. Thomas Lecky is the First Nation Protector for this realm. We must be just inside the border.”
“First Nation, he is an American Indian?”
“Yes, MACUSA have to get permission from him before they can enter here. You should have got permission from him before doing any of this.”
Fischer looked concerned. “Who is MACUSA?”
“Magical Congress of the USA. They are the law. They will deal with you pretty severely for performing uncontrolled magic. Whether you are in a First Nation realm or not.”
“You aren’t part of MACUSA?”
“No, I was employed by a wizard who it turns out was a criminal. I didn’t know what he was doing. He was collecting wizards who ended up in the hospital and was forming a criminal gang with them. He told me that he was helping them. What he was doing was robbing and killing wealthy wizards and witches and then hiding his gang in the hospital. Magic made it easy.”
“I saw a witch in the bar one day who I knew years ago. That was my job, spotting witches and wizards for him to recruit. When he tried to pick her up, she stunned his bodyguard, blew his car up and stunned him. Then she turned them over to MACUSA. Never let Daphne Greengrass get the drop on you. They interrogated me, and then let me go when they decided I was being conned by my boss.”
“Is there any way that I can learn more about this business without being closed down by MACUSA.”
“First you have to get cosy with Thomas Lecky. You will need a lot of money to do that. Once he has you under his control, you will have to go on paying him off, forever.”
“This guy sounds like a criminal. Why hasn’t MACUSA arrested him?”
“Because this is his country, his realm. He is the king of a little magical country. It is no more than eighty miles long and fifty miles wide. The way you have been able to get magic to work for you is probably his doing. He opens the flow of natural raw magic for his own use. It is usually something illegal if it happened anywhere else.”
The possibilities were assessed in Fisher’s mind. “So, if we stay here, we can carry on working with this as long as we pay off Thomas Lecky. If we leave his country, MACUSA will pick us up and end the whole thing.”
“And now I need my money, I’m getting out of here before Lecky arrives.”
“I’ll send you a check. It will be from the University of California.”
“Make sure that happens. Lecky won’t be the only problem you will have to deal with if you don’t pay up.”
“What will you do if we won’t drive you back to town?” Fischer looked as though he thought he was being clever.
“This.”
Marietta turned on the spot and apparated with a sharp bang.
“Whoa! We have got a lot of catching up to do.”
Fischer didn’t reply.
Suddenly they were aware of another person in the room.
An elderly man stood at the door, looking from Fischer to Jessen and back again.
“Who are you?”
“I am Thomas Lecky.”
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