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A/N: I'm working on my super story today, which I'm not publishing, so have an extract from another distraction. I wrote this to get it out of my head, basically, it was taking up space that I needed to work on Phantasm. There is more to it in my head, but the next bit is going to be about the world he ends up in, the nature of which I haven't decided.

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He was finally going to do it. Years of research, starting from when he was a kid. Months of painstaking mental preparation and discipline, disciplines that he’d had to invent himself. None of the practices that he’d looked at were right. Sufism, Zen, Pranahanya… all were pointing in the wrong direction, only useful as rabbit holes to not go down. But now, he’d finally done it.

The small flame didn’t look like much. It was about twice the size of the average candle flame. But it floated in the air over the carefully designed diagram. Not burning it, not burning anything, it just floated, creating energy out of nothing.

The effects of the spell were already radiating out, but he didn’t know about them, or care. The ball bearings in the rails of his desk drawers subtly changed their dimensions, changing to be no longer spherical. They would jam the drawers if he tried opening them, but he wouldn’t get the chance. The investigators might notice, but they would write it off as heat damage.

The laptop on the desk beside him was more noticeable. If he had thought to take his eyes off the flame for a moment, he would have seen the screen power down. He might have attributed it to the screen saver, but it was far more serious than that. Tiny changes in the substrate of the chips had rendered it inert, unrepairable. The battery was corroding, far more swiftly than it had any right to. In two minutes it would short itself and start a small fire.

That was actually useful, as it would give the investigators something to blame. It did put me on a deadline though, so I got started.

“Congratulations!” I said brightly. David yelled in surprise and gave a little jump as he turned around. He hadn’t been expecting company, what with his apartment door being locked and all. His spell winked out, which was for the best, as the alternative would be for it to go wild.

“What? Who? How?” he managed to spit out. I smiled. This form wasn’t much to look at, just a harmless-looking man of middle age. Under the circumstances though… I took a small step forward, and grinned as he pushed himself back against the desk. It wasn’t really necessary, I just liked having that effect on people.

“You cast a spell!” I continued. “Invented magic independently! It’s quite an achievement.”

He glanced back at the remains of his spell, and then back at me. He was smart, he put it together himself.

“I see,” he said slowly, “I’m not the first one.”

I shook my head. “Not by a long shot. Human history is long, and you’ve seen all those clues.”

“Hints,” he said. “There was nothing useful.”

“Of course not,” I agreed. “We made sure of that.”

“And you are… part of some organisation that uses magic? That controls magic?”

“Close,” I told him. “We’ve banned magic.”

He gaped at me. To a certain sort of person, the sort of person that would work himself to death trying to bring magic back into being, the idea that someone wouldn’t want magic was antithetical. Impossible. It would take him a while to wrap his head around it, but once he had, he would ask why. I saved him a bit of time by answering before he asked. Two minutes, remember?

“It wrecks technology,” I explained. “Warping probability like that, it wrecks precision machinery, changes how chemistry works… it makes the whole enterprise of modernity unviable.”

People could feel magic, even if they weren’t practitioners. What they could feel was their organs changing size by just the tiniest amounts. The human body was flexible, it could take it. Guns, steam engines, computers… they couldn’t.

“But… magic is better!” he protested. “It can do so much…”

“Not true,” I told him. “There are other worlds out there where they still practice magic. All sorts of systems and beliefs. The average world population of those places? 400 million. Maybe 500 in some. Here, we’re pushing seven billion. All those lives are made possible with technology.”

We were getting pressed for time, so I took him to the Fortress. I’m quite proud of my teleportation method. The trick is to teleport them into an illusion of where they just were, so they never notice that they’ve left. Then, you can slowly fade the illusion, until they realise, too late, that they’ve been moved.

That was how it worked here, his protests and expostulations slowly fading as his apartment disappeared, replaced by the obsidian walls of the Fortress. This part was particularly grim, as it was part of the outer walls. Some of the inner sections were quite nice.

“So… is this where I get invited to become part of a secret society for repressing magic?” he asked nervously.

“I’m afraid not,” I said gently. “We’re gods, we don’t need any new members. Or help.”

“Gods?”

“Not any that you’re familiar with,” I told him. “We made sure to keep our names out of the histories.”

“What is your name, then?” he asked. He was stalling for time, but that was fine. A flex of thought put a passable simulacrum of his body in his old apartment, which was starting to catch alight. Tossing his research notes into the fire helped it spread.

“What good would it do to tell you?” I asked, amused. “Give you something to curse for the rest of your life? I may be a god, but I still have feelings.”

“I doubt that,” he muttered, but there was a fresh gleam of hope in his eye. “So you’re not going to kill me?”

“That would be easier, and it’s still on the table if you want it, but I’ve learned not to bother asking. No, we’re going to send you away to one of those worlds we mentioned.”

“Why?” he asked suspiciously.

“We’re nice? You do have a talent for magic after all. I’d hate to see it wasted.”

“But…” his mind was working, looking at the consequences. “My family… Alice…”

“They will all think you’re dead,” I told him.

“Please, you can’t exile me like this… I didn’t know!”

“There is an alternative,” I told him. “I can switch you back with the fake corpse, have you stumble out of the fire. You’d have to be damaged, though, we can write it off as being due to smoke inhalation.”

“Damaged… how?”

“You’d lose anything that would allow you to rediscover magic,” I said. “Memory of this conversation, for one. Some of your drive, your intellect… your talent.”

“How much of me would be left?” he asked.

“That’s hard to quantify,” I told him. “And even harder to communicate. But say it’s just one percent of you. Is that too much?”

“I’d lose…” He struggled with it, but I knew the decision he’d make. They always did. I only gave them the option so that they’d feel bad.

“Or,” I said brightly. “You can go off on an adventure, with magic and monsters and find another pretty girl. It’ll be fun!”

“I don’t want… to lose myself,” he admitted. “I don’t get a chance to say goodbye, do I?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Do I get to choose where I go? Starting equipment?”

“Whadda you think this is, an RPG?” I asked laughing. This was actually new. The last one had been far enough back that she didn’t know about computer games.

“Nah, we just kick you out, and we don’t control where you land,” I told him, still smiling. “The capsule will protect you from the Void Between Worlds, but once you land, you’re on your own. Speaking of which—”

“Can’t I—” he started, but even as he spoke, I gave him a strong push into the black opening that appeared behind him. What lay behind it wasn’t space, exactly. Essentially, I’d pushed him into a bottomless hole.

“Have a nice trip!” I called out after him. He was still too surprised to scream before the doorway closed.

I glanced back over at Earth. The fire was proceeding nicely.

“Time for some tea,” I announced to nobody in particular.

* * *

It didn’t actually end there. Not for him, and not for me. We had enemies, out there beyond the darkness. Enemies that were jealous of what we had, of what we’d achieved. Piercing the veil was no small feat, even for a god, so one had to make the best use of the opportunities that we provided ourselves.

All it took was a link, cleverly concealed, and our malcontent exile became a spy. At the very least, he would be an interesting diversion, something to pass the time as we watched the mana roll in. At the most… well, we would have to see.