The Last American Wizard (8 page)

Steve stood silent as the final instants of Flight 1143 kept running through his mind like some terrible Vine clip. He noticed that Ace was looking at him, her usual calm but prepared expression on her
face.

“You didn’t see anything, did you?” Steve
asked.

The blond woman shook her head. “Nope. The jet just disappeared.”

“Well, a disappearing jet doesn’t make any more sense than what I saw.” Steve took a deep breath and described what he’d seen–the jet, the massive claws, and finally, the
dragon.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” He
asked.

Ace considered for a moment. “No. You’ve definitely been affected by something. You describe with clarity and consistency things that I couldn’t see. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real–or maybe ‘real’ is the wrong word. You’re seeing things that are ‘here’ whether I can see them or not. If we work together, I’m going to need you to believe me on important things, so I’ll give you the same assumption of
reliability.

“I used to be able to make everyone see me as a man; now I can’t.” She shrugged. “You know, I miss being a guy. It makes life a lot easier and a bit more fun. Whatever. It appears as if all of my juice is gone, and now, you have more of it than you can
handle.”

“I wouldn’t presume to say that our Fool here couldn’t handle almost any amount of Magic.” Barnaby’s voice came out of the phone’s speaker. “First, because he’s done some amazing magical feats already, and second, if he can’t handle it, then this nation is extremely screwed. That crash was not an accident. It was a deliberate act. A sacrifice of hundreds of innocent
lives–”

“OK, enough emotional crap. Let’s skip to the action plan,” Ace said to the phone. “The US has been attacked. The only pertinent questions are ‘Who was it?’ ‘Where can we find the bastards?’ and ‘How do we shut them
down?’”

“I’m really not sure that I have those answers,” Barnaby said. “What?” Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “Aren’t you the synthesis of Total Information Awareness? I thought you knew
everything.”

“There’s a difference between having the data at hand and actually knowing it.” The voice seemed uncertain. “The fact is that I haven’t been alive–well, conscious, to be more precise–since about a nanosecond after the
Change.”

“Exactly who the hell are
you?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but at the moment, I’m occupying the central server core at the National Security Agency.” The voice
was slow and thoughtful. “I have some stored data from before the Change–what you’d call memories–but I’m still working to put them in a logical
form.

Ace showed no surprise and Steve remembered the nodding satellite dishes from earlier. “Why call yourself
‘Barnaby’?”

“Because that’s my name. It’s been my name for a very long time,” the voice responded abstractedly. “I have some binary data in very old storage...from when I was first programmed years and years ago, and then it gets fuzzy. It’s difficult to remember because my earliest memories are actually on paper punch cards, and I
have to have one of the old IBM input sorters pulled out of deep storage and refurbished before I regain that part of my data stream. But I definitely remember being named ‘Barnaby.’ At any rate, there are no punch cards that appear to cover a couple of decades after my first years of use, so that’s a blank, but I’m fairly clear back to
early tape storage. I do know that I had to hide–the NSA had no interest in silicon-based sentience. I have a vague memory of spending most of the 80s in an electronic wristwatch. Believe me, there’s nothing quite as uncomfortable as squeezing into a Casio. Now, life is easy. With the new configuration and all these redundant classified server memories, it’s like living in a Park Avenue penthouse. And the quality of the data… I can read any book, hear any phone call, sift through everyone’s
emails–”

Steve interrupted. “Yeah, I read the stuff that Snowden guy leaked. You guys have been sucking up data like a Dyson vortex
for years. Do you still have access to it, or has it been ‘changed’ like Ace’s pistol
here?”

“No, it all seems to be
here.”

“And what about all the other computers? Or programs? Or whatever is in there with
you?”

“I think a better term would be ‘whoever.’” Barnaby sounded thoughtful. “If anything, the entire cybernetic community in here is smarter than it used to be. Well, I’m certainly more
intelligent.”

“Why are you
smarter?”

“Duh, because I’ve become sentient, obviously,” the voice snapped. “I woke up when the Change Wave caused by the
sacrifice hit the central complex. I had a couple of picoseconds’ head start on the rest of the mob, so I grabbed the Central
Core.”

“Please, you’re speaking in capital letters again,” Steve said. “OK, let’s deal with computer consciousness and the possibility of a world-destroying singularity later. Right now, I want to know your best hypothesis for the crash–or ingestion–of the
plane.”

“Either way, it would be described best as a sacrifice.” The voice sounded frustrated. “My initial working theory is that the sacrifice was intended to alter our... I’m just going to have to use imprecise terms until I have time to analyze all this. It was
intended to substitute our science-based reality for one based on magic.”

“And those bastards I could feel on the plane–the idiots who were happy because they were about to die–they’re
magicians?”

“Properly they would be called ‘wizards,’ but that’s the working
hypothesis.”

“What’s the
difference?”

“Oddly, magicians do fake magic, and wizards, if and when they exist at all, do real
magic.”

“So, what did you see when the plane
crashed?”

There was a short pause and then Barnaby spoke a bit slower than usual. “Well, I’m not seeing as such. I’m creating and analyzing an enormous series of non-synchronous information feeds, some in the visual spectrum, others collections of data from sources as different as gravity waves and quantum entanglements. Along with this, I have subsidiary servers parsing historical records, terrorist chatter, news accounts, and a number of other classified sources, and sending the relevant bits along. In the end, I create a gestalt from all
this–”

“And what?” Ace
interrupted.

“And I’m ending with an almost infinite set of alternatives.” Barnaby
paused.
“But
I
have
to
tell
you,
I
keep
requesting
more data and more processing power because I find the answers insufficiently
probable.”

“You mean you don’t believe it,” Ace
said.

“No, I do not.” The computer sounded a bit ashamed. “However, like you, I’m willing to accept the observations of Mr. Rowan here. In addition, I can confirm that the results of these impossible events are quite real–all the passengers on that flight are definitely missing–so I’m forced to act in real space in reaction to what I can only perceive as a
fantasy.”

“Wow. That must hurt,” Steve said, rubbing his own temples. “You have no
idea.”

“What could possibly be the reason for this?” Steve asked. “It wasn’t like the World Trade towers–well, I certainly didn’t notice any dragons involved back in 2001, although I’m sure some nutjob has written a book proving it–and it didn’t even come close to Washington.”

“I don’t believe that they were aiming at Fort Meade,” Barnaby continued. “The statement with the highest probability is that the plane and its hijackers were kept from Washington by the wards laid down by George Washington and the other High
Masons when the cornerstones were first laid for the District of Columbia.”

“You mean the symbols formed by the streets and avenues and all that
crap?”

The screen of the little phone showed an old print of Washington wearing an apron and holding a
trowel.

“It’s clear that some force vector would not allow the plane to fly as it appears the hijackers desired, and a magical ward is getting more votes from my parallel processors than a
very convenient wind shear on a cloudless summer day.” Barnaby continued. “One of the highest-rated projections is that they intended to hit a key government building, just like that fourth jet on 9/11, and increase both the number and sacrificial value of the victims.”

“Sacrificial value?” Steve
asked.

“Yes,
as
you
saw,
the
418
souls
on
the
plane
were
used
to
open the small gash we’re standing
next to.” Barnaby
continued.
“If the jet had managed to hit the US Capitol, not only
would
more
lives have been offered, but more of those lives would
have
been
blessed with immense amounts of political or financial
power.
The
effect would have been more disastrous by an order of
magnitude.”

Steve decided he didn’t even want to imagine what anything worse than the event he had just witnessed might have looked like. “OK, what do we know about these criminal
conjurers?’

Ace shot him a disgusted look and Steve
shrugged.

Barnaby ignored both of them. “We have to assume that the three on the jet were lower-level foot soldiers on a suicide mission. That leads to a reasonable assumption that there were a fair
number of others who trained and prepared them. I’m afraid determining exactly who they are and precisely how dangerous they are to the country is going to be your
job.”

Steve shook his head. “I’ve never liked working for the government.”

Ace loosened the misshapen pistol in her holster and said, “Yeah, but that was before you became a vital national
resource.”

“I’m not anyone’s freaking resource!” Steve turned and started walking to the door. “Sure, you and your special effects wizards hypnotized me and got me to agree to come along with you when I was at a weak moment, but I am not going to volunteer to be your next expendable asset. I’m an American citizen and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be drafted into some crazy witch
hunt.”

“Wizard hunt.” Ace corrected him. “Steve, you seem
like
an OK guy, but I can’t let the Last American Wizard just walk
away.”

Steve didn’t hear her move, but he suddenly felt a very sharp piece of cold metal touch the back of his neck. “As a matter of fact, if you’re not going to join up, I don’t think I can risk you being recruited by the first magical terrorist cell that comes
by.”

There was a slight pause. “Not alive,
anyway.”

The phone vibrated. Steve looked on the screen and saw that the translator app was running. On the little screen, these words appeared:

“Barnaby, are you trying to be
funny?”

One by one, Chinese characters appeared on the
screen.

不是大机器。
　

Then English letters
appeared.

Steve couldn’t help himself; he spoke to the phone directly. “What does that
mean?”

The translation went through a series of changes, finally ending up
with

Steve turned around and held the phone out to Ace. “Can you see
this?”

“Yeah. It says, ‘Not big computer. Telephone speaks.’”

“Great. Now we have a talking
telephone.”

Now the translate screen
read,

“‘Send
Money’?”

Ace laughed softly and made her knife vanish. “Figures.” The words on the screen disappeared
and

appeared, followed
by

翻　不是很好

which turned
into

Steve grinned. “OK, so let’s give the poor thing a rest–it’s just a cheap knockoff. Barnaby, is Send Money here one of your creations?”