Trust in Oneself, Draft 1, CH 13 (Patreon)

It worked. Paul had trouble wrapping his mind around that.

What Shila had done had worked.

Living around magic people for the last few years, the main thing he realized, along with how many of them had a habit of overly depending on it, was that magic wasn’t a solution.

Problems didn’t get solved just because magic got thrown at them. No more than using Crispr protein at a genetic condition solved it. Magic was a tool, nothing more. With the right knowledge, a tool could be made to do impressive things, but every tool had limits.

It didn’t matter what you know and how hard you worked at it. Crispr wouldn’t give you a house, or Magic change the world.

Only Shila had done that.

Not that anyone realized the extent of what she’d done, or that she’d done it at all. As far as the world was concerned, five days ago, the sickness that had assaulted Denver and started popping up in cities around it had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Tests were still happening, but as far as the doctors could tell, no one was infected anymore.

It had come on the heel of the strange glitch that had affected the technological world. Phones, televisions, even appliances, had suddenly started glowing and running off code on their displays. There were only a handful of recordings of the event on ancient videotape nearly too degraded to provide much information.

Paul was amazed there even had been that many people with equipment that old on hand, and the presence of mind to grab it.

Magic couldn’t change the world. That was something he’d been told and accepted.

Except for Practitioners, it seemed. If they were willing to sacrifice their lives, it looked like the world was within the range of what they could affect.

So why hadn’t Merlin cured the sickness? He might not have been able to do it worldwide, but he had sacrificed himself, and as a doctor, he had to have known how to fix this. He didn’t believe much of what Nina had said any more, but he believed her story about Merlin.

Maybe he had been… not consumed, elevated? Did apotheosis have a verb? Maybe it had happened before he could make it happen? Or, since the holder of the genetic staff was active then, he had prevented Merlin from making the cure stick? Maybe fighting that power had caused the apotheosis to happen. Donal had said the Chamber engineered thing so the Practitioners had to over-extend themselves and make it happen.

Paul ignore the squirrel seated next to him as Donal looked him over with far too much appreciation.

Paul brought up another news story, this one about a small news team who’d found themselves drowning in problems in the wake of the cure. That worldwide glitch had caused their private servers to dump their content on the web for everyone to see. Seemed that the Chamber with the coat of many colors did more than ensure only her version of the news spread. She had had a penchant for blackmail.

That was over.

Had Shila targeted her as part of curing the sickness? He wanted to think it was impossible, but then there was the other story he’d come across. A hare who’d died when she lost control of her car. The picture that was included was Nina, and the name in the article had Nina Haldi. The timing placed the accident in the middle of the glitch, and while none of the other vehicles had been affected by it, other than the screen misbehaving, hers had had the entire operating system wiped clean.

There was no mention of Merlin’s cane in the article.

Magic wasn’t supposed to be that powerful.

Its use was also not supposed to lead to the user being consumed by it.

It was possible to die from overextension. Magic needed power and that came from the user, but from what he’d been told, they had to work at it hard to make it happen. There were a lot of safeguards in the body and the mind designed to keep people alive.

Paul looked up from his phone, and Donal smiled at him. It was the kind of smile that said the squirrel had an idea; that it was probably a bad one, but it would be fun.

“Can I offer you a beverage?” the steward said, pushing the cart by Donal— he had the aisle seat. And that broke the squirrel from his definitely lewd thoughts.

“No thank you.”

Paul also shook his head. He wasn’t paying airline rates for a coffee, can of soda, or, even worse, a bottle of water. This would be a short flight in the grand scheme of things. He could survive.

That they were flying out of the country at all stunned Paul. Shila had told them to give the staves to Grant, but Paul had thought they’d call him and he’d come pick them up in between securing all the other staves the Chamber was after. Instead, Donal decided it couldn’t wait, and that they were flying to Reykjavik immediately.

Immediately ended up taking five days, and even then Paul was still amazed. Neither he nor Donal had a passport, so he’d expected the squirrel to magic them through airport security by using lost corridors or causing the agents to be distracted so they could slip through.

Instead, it had been a series of phone calls, three accidental encounters, and a good deed, and both had ended up with passports in good working order. Donal insisted he couldn’t make anything happen with his staff. That wasn’t how it worked, but lost and hidden things seemed to include finding yourself at the right place and the right time to make someone feel indebted to him.

Getting on a flight within hours of obtaining the passports had been much the same, a good deed and bumping into someone by accident. It had meant they were flying coach, but Paul didn’t mind. They’d even kept the staves with them. The genetic one was in a case, and Donal was using the brass knuckle one as the cane it was fashioned to be. How it hadn’t even attracted a glance from everyone, Paul attributed to magic.

He’d have preferred going back to San Francisco, but he felt bad about abandoning Donal to this, and the squirrel wanted Grant to have a look at him. The kangaroo had the most experience of anyone Donal knew in dealing with guys who suddenly found themselves being magical.

Paul could return to the search for a job afterward, and a new car. He’d need one for his job, considering every biotech firm was outside the immediate city. Would Dietrich’s company be outside the city, too? If it was within the city, was being able to bus to work enough of an incentive to pick it over other offers he might have?

Donal was eying him again. Hadn’t the squirrel gotten any the night before? He had come home with a woman, but Paul hadn’t paid attention to what they had done or where in the house they’d gone.

(I’m realizing that I’m not sure if someone like Paul would consider physical appearance as a criteria for guys) Not that Donal was bad-looking. He was a little on the thin side, and what Paul had seen of the man, he seemed to be a nice guy, but working at getting their passport hadn’t left them much time to sit down and talk. And even if he owed Donal for having his memories back, the guy wasn’t much more than an acquaintance, and that didn’t work for Paul. Maybe once the staves were in Grant’s hands, the two of them could talk for a while, get to know each other, see if they could be friends.

Paul didn’t want to call Donal out on it, since he was just looking. So he went back to his phone and pulled up the friend’s chat they used. He went over the threads. Most were about the usual, plans for food, who was available to fuck, which club was the hottest these days. There was the one about Thomas, since they shared a lot of friends. That one was rarely active because of what the rat was up to with Grant and the knowledge of how insecure anything on the internet was.

That thought gave Paul pause. How much of the security Thomas and their friends took for granted had been Shila’s work? How much of that had been magical? With her being gone, how long until it failed?

He was halfway through typing a message telling his friends to be even more careful about what they said online, when he realized the stupidity of doing this when the Chamber could be listening in on his conversation, hoping to get to Shila. He couldn’t think of one way to let them know that didn’t put him and Donal at risk.

There was a new thread about him.

Something about the message Shila had sent to that list of ‘friends’ had raised the hackles of everyone he knew who had received it.

Niel and Roland were vocal on it, asking for any information. Madoc said he had a friend looking into it, but no news yet. There were a lot of theories. Not everyone on the list knew about Shila. He barely did until meeting her. Madoc knew who she was and had provided assurances she’d take care of Paul.

That made Paul smile. If Madoc had ever met her, he wouldn’t think of her as someone who took care of anyone.

He wished he could tell them he was fine. Maybe once they landed, Donal could do something and Paul could send a magically untraceable message to reassure everyone. Better, once he’d met up with Thomas, the rat could pop into his brother’s bedroom and tell him Paul was fine.

Shit, was his mom on that list?

He relaxed. No, she wasn’t. As open-minded about Paul’s life as she was, he didn’t want her to know about the level of sex that happened among his friends. It might cause her to question what had happened to Paul’s selective attitude when it came to bed partners. She’s always approved of that.

They were worried, but at least it didn’t look like any of them were mounting a search and rescue expedition. That was the problem with being friends with guys who’d already been through adventures. It was easy for them to consider another adventure as the answer to a lot of problems.

What else could he keep busy with until he was tired enough to sleep the rest of the flight?

As he did, since getting his doctorate, he pulled up his resume and went over it. There was always the suspicion that the lack of response was because it wasn’t written well enough. He changed a word here, and one there. Once his adventure was over, he’d upload it to all the sites and hope for the best, again.

He reached the life experience section and smiled to himself. It wasn’t like he could write this there. What would he even put? Helped a nice lady save the world from a magical plague? That would cost him all the jobs he’d applied to.

He looked at the section, thinking about what he’d been through with Shila. Maybe he couldn’t upload it, but he could put it down and make sure he remembered. It had been a life experience; and a good one overall.

He started writing it, considered the wording, simplified it, and settled on it.

Helped a friend save the world from the plague.