Off to Be the Wizard Read online

  Chapter 3.

  First, Martin selected the entire chunk of data that he now believed was essentially him, and copied it to a separate file, which he encrypted and copied to the storage card on his phone.

  The second thing Martin did was move the decimal on his bank account three spots to the right. He considered making himself a millionaire, but why risk it when he could make himself a thousandaire anytime he wanted.

  I have to be careful, he thought. I don’t want to screw this up.

  At first he wondered how something as complex as a human being could be described in a chunk of data that was small enough to be managed, but once he calmed down and thought about it, he could see how it might work. He saw that the file was a list of parameters, but not detailed descriptions. He could see the code that defined his heart. He verified this by taking his pulse and watching the numbers fluctuate in real time. The numbers made no sense to him. They might not even make sense to a cardiologist, but they changed predictably in time with his pulse. The code described what the heart was doing, and the ways in which it might differ from other people’s hearts, but not what it, as a heart, was. It was as if somewhere else there was another file that described human hearts in detail, and every person’s data referred to that to render their specific heart. The same went for all the other organs, although this was much less interesting to him once he realized that he had no access to the fundamental structure of his body, and could not, for example, make his skeleton an unbreakable metal.

  There were other shortcuts built into the system as well. He ran a search for his current longitude and latitude. He understood the notation thanks to a brief flirtation in his late teens with geocaching, and had access to the actual numbers thanks to his smartphone. When he found his exact coordinates in the file he decided to move around and see if they changed. He walked backward slowly while peering at his monitor with an ever-increasing squint. The numbers appeared to be changing as he moved. So, instead of tracking each person’s absolute position in space, the system tracked them in relation to the Earth. After the coordinates there was a number that he saw was his height above sea level. Martin jumped, and though it was hard to read the screen while jumping, he could see that the number changed while he was in midair, then returned to its starting point by the time he landed.

  Martin knew what he had to do next. If he didn’t try, he’d wonder for the rest of his life.

  No, that’s not true, he thought. I’d wonder until I eventually broke down and tried it anyway, so I might as well try it now.

  He hunched over the desk without sitting, swallowed hard and increased his altitude notation by one foot. He exhaled slowly.

  “Now we see if I can fly,” he said out loud to posterity, posterity in this case being his empty apartment. He hit the enter key.

  Instantly he was one foot off the ground. Just as instantly he was falling one foot to the ground. Slightly less instantly his full weight came down hard on the floor and his desk, jamming both of his wrists and twisting his right ankle. He was almost able to remain upright, but eventually fell backward very hard into his desk chair, which bent permanently from the strain and knocked the wind out of him. As he sat, trying to get the air back into his lungs, he could hear his downstairs neighbor hitting her ceiling with a broom and yelling at him to quiet down.

  Okay, Martin thought, I can’t fly, but I can fall whenever I want.

  Martin turned his attention back to the longitude and latitude. He took his smartphone to the far corner of his bedroom and noted the GPS reading. He returned to the computer, sat down and entered the coordinates. He took a deep breath, hit enter, and he was in the far corner of his bedroom. His feet were on solid ground, but the rest of him was in a seated position with no chair beneath him. His weight came down on his tailbone. It didn’t break, but it felt like it wanted to. He took a moment before he got up and walked back to the computer. The downstairs neighbor was hitting the ceiling even harder and yelling even louder. He pictured her trying to get her damage deposit back, claiming the hundreds of broom handle marks had been there when she moved in. This made him smile.

  He now knew he could teleport. He also knew that he had to put thought into how he’d do it, or he could seriously hurt himself. Again, he looked at the GPS app. He picked a spot about a mile away, a place that would be well lit, but where nobody would see him: the side parking lot of a Boston Market franchise. He entered the coordinates, stood up, bent his knees to absorb any shocks, extended his arms slightly for better balance, gritted his teeth, and hit enter.

  He was in the side parking lot of the Boston Market. He was glad that he hadn’t changed out of his work clothes when he got home, and that his wallet was still in his pocket. He wished he’d kept his shoes on, and his keys in his pocket, but you can’t have everything. He lived in the Pacific Northwest, so he was grateful that only the pavement was wet and not the air itself. He walked home, eating a bad Boston Market meatloaf sandwich, thinking about what he would do next, both about the file and his spare apartment keys, which he’d left with his downstairs neighbor.

  Who better? He thought. She’s always home. She pays close attention to what’s going on.

  His wrists, ankle, and tailbone hurt, but the walk home and the ruining of a good pair of wool socks were totally worth it, both for the time it gave him to think and for the look on his downstairs neighbor’s face.

  “Why are you being so loud up there?” she asked.

  “What do you mean? I wasn’t home. I walked to Boston Market. See?” he said, holding up his sandwich wrapper and his now-empty drink cup. “It’s exactly one mile away, so I’ve been gone a while.”

  “You could have driven.”

  “If I had my car keys, I’d have my apartment keys.”

  “Why aren’t you wearing shoes?”

  He looked at his feet.

  “I like to walk quietly. You know that.”

  He returned to his apartment a tired but happy man.

  He minimized the file for a bit and went to the Android smartphone app store. With some effort he found a combination of emulators that could pull up the file on his phone. No more walking home, or really, anywhere.

  He had one more item on his mental to-do list.

  He spent quite a while searching before he found the fields for the date and time. He was past being surprised to find these entries in forms he could easily understand. He figured the program had just passed these concepts on to the people it created as a short cut. Why spend cycles creating new notation systems when it can just give people ones it already knows will work and get on with rendering trees?

  He looked at the time notation for a long time. It was, essentially, the world’s most accurate clock. The numbers seemed off until he realized it was Greenwich Mean Time.

  He was going to try time travel. He couldn’t not try, even though he was terrified of the whole idea. He carefully added thirty seconds to the time notation, hit enter, and … nothing happened. He double checked. The time notation hadn’t accepted his input. He tried again, with identical results.

  Martin let out a long breath, and said, “It’s probably just as well.”

  A voice from the corner of the room said, “Try going back in time, not forward.”

  Martin jumped, then looked toward the source of the voice. He saw himself standing in the corner, holding his smartphone, which Martin was also holding. Martin was looking at himself. Not a picture. Not a reflection. He was seeing him.

  He’d expected himself to be better looking.

  They stared at each other for a moment. Finally, time-traveler Martin spoke. “I said, you should try going back in time, instead of forward.”

  Original Martin was too busy freaking out to listen, and didn’t catch what Future Martin said.

  “What?” Martin asked, snapping out of it. />
  Future Martin shook his head. “Great, now I’m confused.”

  “You’re confused?!”

  Future Martin looked irritated. He muttered something under his breath as he tapped at the smartphone in his hand. He looked up once more, made eye contact with Original Martin, and disappeared.

  Martin walked over to the spot where his double had stood. No scorch marks or anything. Martin didn’t know what he expected would happen to the area someone time traveled into, then away from in quick succession, but he knew he expected more than nothing.

  Martin looked at his phone and saw the file’s time field, ticking off the seconds. He quickly subtracted about thirty seconds from the time and hit enter.

  The world around him did a fairly fast dissolve between now and the dusty memory that was the world half a minute ago. He saw Past Martin standing in the middle of the room, absorbed in his phone screen, looking disappointed.

  Past Martin exhaled and said, “It’s probably just as well.”

  Martin felt sorry for Past Martin. I looked so sad, he thought.

  “Try going back in time instead of forward,” Martin suggested helpfully.

  Past Martin was badly startled. He looked at Martin with genuine panic in his eyes, which quickly cycled through incredulity, amazement, and, to Martin’s lasting dismay, disappointment.

  Great, Martin thought. I’m dumpy looking, and easy to read.

  Martin decided to try again. “I said, you should try going back in time, instead of forward.”

  Past Martin opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. Finally, he managed to ask “What?”

  Martin was not impressed with himself. “Great,” he said, “now I’m confused.”

  Past Martin looked genuinely affronted. “You’re confused?!”

  Martin gave up. “Fantastic,” he muttered as he reset the time. “I’m the first man in history to meet himself, and I learn that I’m an ugly idiot.”

  Martin hit enter, and watched his former self disappear as he returned to the moment after he left.

  That didn’t go well, Martin thought. Upon reflection, he should have expected it. First meetings are always awkward, even if you’re meeting yourself. Next time should go smoother. I’ll have a better idea how to behave, and how to react.

  Martin heard a quiet ahem to his right. He looked, and was not surprised to see himself standing there, smiling at him.

  “I’m you, an hour from now,” he said. “Wanna play some heads-up poker?”

  Chapter 4.

  The next morning Martin woke up with a hangover. He hadn’t drunk much while playing poker with himself. Just a few beers.

  The first round, when he was Past Martin, he lost badly. Then he went back in time and played through it all again as Future Martin. To be honest, he wasn’t that into the second round at first and had mainly gone back and offered to play out of a sense of obligation. Then he started winning, because he could remember some of the hands Past Martin had. Any game is more enjoyable when you’re winning, although in the end he broke even. He shuffled off to bed, as tired as he’d ever been in his life, but with his brain firing at full steam. He thought about what would have happened if he’d won the first round of poker, then come back and won again. Was that possible, and if so, where would the winnings come from? Could he create infinite wealth by losing at poker against himself? Of course, he could create infinite wealth anyway, by simply moving a decimal point in the file.

  He eventually realized that if he was going to get any sleep he was going to have to force the issue, so he downed his now nightly cocktail, two sleeping pills and a shot of bargain-brand bourbon.

  Now it was morning, and he had a hangover.

  He sat at his desk, eating toaster waffles and drinking coffee while he stared at the file. The night before had been a dazzling rollercoaster of discovery, but the morning after was, as usual, a grim slog through the bumper-to-bumper commute of reality. He had proven that the file was a tool that could improve every aspect of his life. His aching feet, twisted ankle, and jammed wrists, as well as his ruined socks and his confused neighbor, all proved that he could also ruin his life if he continued to act without thinking first.

  He had already decided not to change his body anymore. Until he understood the file much better it was too dangerous. Better to just create money and buy a health club membership, or plastic surgery if needed. He had also decided that rather than add a huge amount of money to his bank account, he would occasionally add small amounts. He hoped this would help him evade detection.

  He could fly, briefly. Really, he could place himself in midair for a moment before he fell to the ground. He had an idea of how to fix that, but it wasn’t his first priority.

  He could teleport. This was amazing, but also very dangerous. Happily, his clothes had teleported with him. He reasoned that the file, or the system that used the file, must define your clothes and the things in your immediate possession in relation to your location, just like it tracks your location in relation to the Earth. That was a relief. Martin didn’t want to have to explain to the police why he had materialized naked in a public place. Really, he didn’t want to explain to the police why he had materialized at all. He needed to make sure if he was going to teleport someplace, that in addition to having the right longitude, latitude, and altitude, he would need solitude. He needed a landing zone where nobody would see him.

  Lastly, he could go back in time and return to his starting point, but he couldn’t go forward beyond that. He reasoned that this was because the past was a known state, but the future had not happened yet, and was unknowable and unreachable. He didn’t know for sure, and likely never would. The point was, he could go back in time, and return to the present. Essentially, he was just teleporting to another time as well as another place. So, the parameters he needed were longitude, latitude, altitude, solitude, and … when.

  The only way he could do all of these things was to access the file. He could access it from his computer and now from his smartphone. Public computers were out of the question. He couldn’t install the software he’d need to securely access the remote computer that hosted the file. It looked like his phone was going to be his primary means of access to the file from now on, so he needed to make sure he didn’t transport himself any place that the phone wouldn’t work, or he’d be stuck. He pulled up his carrier’s coverage map. It was now a map, not only of reliable high speed data access, but also of the places where Martin had God-like powers over time and space. That shouldn’t have felt limiting, but it did.

  I can instantly travel anywhere I want, he thought, on this map of the continental United States, as long as where I’m going is in one of the red blobs. The dark red blobs. The lighter ones are iffy.

  For the first time since finding the file, Martin Banks thought before he acted. He made a list of things he needed to do before he could proceed, arranged them in a logical order, and started working down the list.

  He searched the file for his phone’s serial number and model name. He was relieved to find them. He was afraid that the file would only cover people, but that clearly was not the case. The file was immense (much larger than even the huge listed file size) but not infinite, and he wasn’t sure it was large enough for all people and all objects, but there it was, an entry for his phone. The entry wasn’t very large. He supposed, as with people, that mass-produced items like phones didn’t need to be described in detail for every copy. Instead, each copy had an entry that described how it differed from others of its type, but the full description of what made it a phone resided in a separate file somewhere else.

  He spent some time making a rudimentary smartphone app to automatically edit the file. He found the phone’s battery level. In the file it was accurate down to five decimal places. On the phone it was totally inaccurate unless you installed a separate app,
which only gave you the reading in whole numbers. He verified that he had the battery level by checking the file against the battery app, then playing a juice-hungry game on the phone for five minutes. He rechecked the battery level and was sure he had the right field. He set the experimental app to run in the background, resetting the battery level to one-hundred percent every ten seconds. He played the game again for another five minutes. Afterward, the battery was still full.

  After an hour of searching, copying, and pasting, he had modified his phone to always have seventy-three percent battery remaining (one-hundred percent would have looked suspicious). This would save him from needing a bunch of spare batteries and carrying them in a bandolier like Chewbacca.

  He also made his phone always broadcast to and from an area that was covered by three separate cell towers and two power substations, no matter where the phone was actually located. It was an intuitive leap, but Martin now understood that the radio waves produced by the phone were just as artificial as everything else, and could also be manipulated.

  He had a harder time trying to reason his way through time travel. In the cold light of day, Martin could see he’d been incredibly reckless in even attempting it. He’d also been incredibly lucky. In theory, once he’d gone back in time, there would have been two of him being described by the file at the same time, which you’d think would result in some sort of error, which would be a bad thing. It hadn’t, though. Martin had reasoned that there was a program somewhere that accessed the file and used it to render the world, and that the moment he was experiencing at any given time was as far as this theoretical program had gotten.