Chapter 2

A Sufficiently Superior Science

Except for the gasp from his mother the room was so quiet that Carl could hear the cockroaches in the walls. He looked from face to face. His mother was wide-eyed, staring entranced at the miniature sun floating above Carl's hand. His father was almost bug-eyed. The two Homeland Security Agents were the least surprise or scared.

"Do you recognize what it is?" Carl asked them.

"We call it witch fire. You start with lighting candles and then develop control of the fire."

"But do you know what it is?"

"Magic."

"So you really don't know what it is." His voice dropped as he closed his hand extinguishing the sun.

"Son, Carl, as far as we know it is Magic. Anybody that can learn magic learns it as the first step in practicing the art, watch." Agent Drake said. He held out his hand and a flame appeared dancing over his palms.

Carl jerked, trying to sit up. His gazed locked onto the dancing flame, then in his mind he came to the conclusion that "Flame minus 'C' equal no flame." And the dancing flame in Agent Drakes hand went out.

He lay back down and took a deep breath.

"What!"

The flame reappeared in the Agent's hand and he relaxed. "What happened Drake?"

"I'm not sure just all of a sudden the flame went out."

"Well, we still don't know what happened in the basement at their house."

"Thanks for the reminder. Mr. and Mrs. Black, Carl, that is what we need to know; what happened in your basement? The other agencies are trying to find the chemicals or device that exploded in the basement of your house. From the results they can calculate out the force of the explosion and it is contradictory. It has to be x big and 2x small which is impossible. That, of course, brings us on to the scene. It took them about two hours to come to that conclusion. Let me tell you, none of them likes it but there is a standing order now; if it's impossible, contact and turn it over to the HLS Anti-Terrorism Division."

Sometimes we are able to come up with a scientific and rational explanation and can turn it back over to the right agency to finish the investigation. But we have found two flags that say this belongs to us. The first is this book. This book is a big red flag. The second is that flame you showed us a minute ago. We now have two really big red flags." He turned to the other agent who had been talking on his phone.

"Wolf?"

"Our agents bounced. She has a force five ward on her home."

"So?"

"They joined forces and the ward went up to force 7. The house is now in a shining ball of light. I told them to evacuate the neighborhood and contain the area."

"Star Trek shields."

"What did you say?"

"I said she has Star Trek shields. Watch out for her phaser and photon torpedoes."

"Oh my god! Wolf, tell our agent to pull back but continue evacuation of that neighborhood! Symbolic logic of course, the symbol is the thing!"

"Well, of course Drake almost the first thing we learn." Wolf answered.

"Carl, explain, how did she visualize the wards?"

"What are you talking about? Wards? Star Trek shields? Phaser?" His dad interrupted them.

"A minute Mr. Black."

"I told her I did not believe in magic when she loaned me her book." Carl paused.

"Then she tried to quote me a saying in science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke said it, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." She explained that she had no idea how they made shields on Star Trek but she could make wards that were no different. So I would imagine she would mix her visualizations from her favorite sci-fi and fantasy movies, and she has seen a lot of them. Plus, she has a genius IQ. When we left her house the other night my last sight of her was her floating in a lotus position three feet off the ground. If you hit her wards you might be in trouble. Get me out of here let me introduce you to her."

"Okay, strong visualization, Wolf, alert Abrigal that we have a super genius sorceress."

"Do you know what she did in your basement?"

"She did nothing. It was the result of my follow-up to the first example in her book. After I made it work, I took it apart and examined it to determine why and how it worked. When I finally figured it out, I simple rewrote the spell and simplified it. Then just as I did the new spell a complete understanding of the FLAME came to me. It affected my visualization."

"Oh, how long had you been practicing with the book?"

"Two times, first with the book lighting a candle and then with my simplified spell."

"Two times... ?"

"What was the change you made in the spell? Circles, four candles for the four elements, name them, and then call on fire to the light the fifth candle."

"'a' = 'A', 'b' = 'B', 'c'= 'C', 'd' = 'D', then A plus B plus C plus D equal FLAME"

"But my visualization of FLAME was of the ultimate source of FLAME the SUN I was lucky I used a very small sun."

"The Sun!"

"What did you mean that Einstein hated Quantum Physics?"

"Well he did, he called it 'that spooky thing that works at a distance'. He spent most of his later years trying to come up with unified field theory to explain everything but Quantum Physics kept getting in his way. He could not do it without explaining Quantum Physics and the effect it had on the universe. The laws of contagion and Quantum Physics are the same thing!"

"You are kidding?"

"No I am as serious as a heart attack. That's why I need to get up and over to Peggy's house. What if she set up a worm hole? She could suck the whole solar system into it."

"Wolf, get his doctor in here now!"

"Wait a moment! Carl, you are not going anywhere! You have been injured." His father was frowning at him.

Wolf came back through the door dragging Carl's Doctor. "Doctor you need to discharge this kid. We need to go now!" Agent Drake told the Doctor.

"He will be released in the morning." The Doctor was getting on his high horse.

Agent Drake held out his hand and flames appeared over his palm."Now doctor! We have no time. The whole town could burn to the ground."

The bug-eyed doctor grabbed Carl's records and ran from the room with Agent Wolf on his tail. "Mom, where are my clothes?"

"They cut them off of you when the ambulance brought you to the hospital." A nurse rushed into the room and began to disconnect him from all the equipment in the room. Needles came out of his arms and patches on his head and chest were ripped off taking hairs with them. The next thing he noticed the room was full of men. One each took his parents by the arms and led them away. Two more moved him into a wheelchair and he was pushed down the hall. His bare ass was freezing against the plastic seat.

In minutes, he was in the center of the middle seat of a black Tahoe with tinted windows which was speeding down a street. In front were two more Tahoes and when he looked over his shoulder at least two more were behind the one he was riding in. Special Agent Drake was not in the Tahoe with him but Wolf was.

"Excuse me Agent Wolf, but what has Magic got to do with Anti-Terrorism?"

Agent Wolf who was riding shotgun turned to look back at him; "That book you had was written by Abrigal Silverlocks. She is 172 years old and about three years ago she decided she wanted to be a published author. Now, as she tells it, she is one of the ten most powerful adepts in the world. She is not sure who the other nine are, which is understandable. Well when she got her book written and published, over one million copies were sold as a kid's book. Kids have the right mind set to learn magic; they have not reached a time that has hardened their mind to 'magic'. These kids started to do magic: Real Magic."

"Some started speculating on whether they should change their older brother into a cute little kitty cat. One boy was thinking "if only that girl was in love with me. Could I write a spell to make her love me?" By the way, Abrigal states that there are no spells for love, just lust. Well, when her fan mail started arriving Abrigal freaked out. Soon she was writing letters to kids all over the US explaining why they should not do what they were speculating on."

"Hugh, our boss had been on medical leave from a bullet he had taken and the doctors said he would probably be crippled for life. He found the book in a pile of donated material to the rehab he was going to and just to amuse himself he tried the fire spell. Now that spell has a geas on it, so that it is the easiest spell in the book to cast and get to work. Abrigal did that to help encourage the readers to try other spells. That helps to thaw the frozen mindset which is really frozen in adults."

"Well, he used the health section of the book to help cure his wound and was soon walking with no help: a real miracle cure. He made up some protection charms and shared them with the people on his teams. It did not escape the attentions of his bosses that he was solving cases faster than any other team leader. They also noticed that his people were having fewer injuries than other teams. He got promoted and then he started leaving a copy of the book lying around where members of his teams would pick it up. Soon, he had created a couple of teams whose members could do some magic. Then he started having team meetings after hours and letting us know why we were having such success. Then the day came when we met Abrigal. When she explained to Hugh what had happened and how there were now millions of young budding wizards all over America and how she had to make sure they did not trip over the Tri-fold law, he volunteered our division to help. You really do not want a million Mickey Mouse's in The Sorcerer Apprentice loose in America."