Rick Cook - The Wizardry Cursed

"It’s something that acts like a computer only it isn’t," Wiz added.

Moira regarded both of them coldly. "I see. Like your explanations."

Wiz shook his head. "No, our explanations are real. A virtual explanation would be something that acted like an explanation, but wasn’t."

Moira nodded. "I rest my case. Well, never mind. Just tell me what you will need to make this machine that is not a machine and I will see about getting it for you."

Wiz looked at the setup and nodded. This wasn’t going to be pretty, but it was strictly a proof-of-principal device.

Ranked in front of him were twenty-one Emacs, all sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Bull Pen. All of them had their quill pens out and poised expectantly.

"This will take a while," he told Jerry and Danny quite unnecessarily. "We’ve only got twenty processors here and that key is a twelfth-order function. On the other hand, our algorithm will converge on that function. We’ll start seeing a representation almost immediately, but it will be real fuzzy."

"And the more processing time we put on the sharper the image will get," Danny interjected. "We helped you write the damn thing, remember?"

Wiz blushed, nodded, and raised his staff.

"You know…" Jerry said slowly.

"What?"

"I don’t know. I have a feeling about this. Like the one I got in the City of Night just before we used the digging spell."

Wiz lowered his arms. "What is it that bothers you?"

"I can’t put my finger on it. But there is something about this whole business." He thought hard and then shook his head. "No, I guess not. Go on with the spell."

Wiz looked around for a convenient cover in case he needed it. Then he raised his staff again.

"backslash," he proclaimed.

"?" responded the first Emac.

"fractal_find exe," Wiz said. The Emac on the far left turned to the others and began to gabble at them. The other twenty Emacs bent to their tasks immediately.

The air above the Emacs began to thicken and take on a bluish tinge. It grew denser and bluer until a neon blue cloud hung over their heads.

"It’s working!" Danny said.

Wiz just stared at the slowly coalescing shape and wondered why everything the Emacs turned out was in such violent colors.

As the cloud solidified it began to show hazy lumps and hollows. It wasn’t even solid enough to be called a shape yet, but already Wiz could see similarities between it and the thing Duke Aelric had called up on the conference table. The process was slowing as the algorithm had to work harder and harder to discover which points were part of the shape and which were not.

The form began to pulse and Wiz realized he was getting a headache. He looked away, but the afterimage remained burned in his retinas. His vision grew dark around the periphery and everything seemed fuzzy. He shook his head to try to clear it but that only made things worse.

"Do you guys feel all right?" Wiz asked.

"I feel fine," said a large Saint Bernard dog with Jerry’s voice. To his left a six-foot-tall cockroach waved its feelers in agreement.

"Well, I don’t," Wiz sang with two of his mouths, creating a bell-like harmony. Vaguely he realized they were standing not in the Bull Pen but under an enormous crystal canopy that shimmered with pastel highlights. And wasn’t he supposed to have only two arms and one body segment?

As he watched, dog, cockroach and canopy all began to melt and run together. He felt his own body grow indistinct at the edges and begin to flow.

"SIGTERM!!" Wiz screamed.

The universe, canopy, cockroach and dog all froze in a half-melted state.

"UNDO!" he commanded. Instantly Wiz, Jerry and Danny were standing in the Bull Pen again.

"My God," Danny said shakily. "I mean, well, my God!"

"I think we have a problem here," Jerry said. His voice was calm but he was white and breathing in long, deep gulps.

"I think we just got closer to being inside a system crash than I ever wanted to be," Wiz replied, collapsing onto a bench before his legs gave out.

"You know," Jerry said, "this may not work after all."

Danny collapsed on the bench next to Wiz. "Right now, I’m just glad everything’s back to normal."

"Oh yeah?" Jerry said, "look."

Wiz followed his pointing finger. Where the Emacs had been stood twenty mice, all dressed in blue-and-red band uniforms, complete with frogged jackets and plumed shakos, and carrying musical instruments. The twenty-first mouse, wearing a tall bearskin hat, raised his baton. The mouse bass drummer struck three quick, sharp beats and the entire mouse marching band charged into song.

Who’s the leader of the club…

"UNDO!" Wiz, Jerry and Danny yelled simultaneously.

It was afternoon the next day when a tired, dispirited team of programmers met with Moira, Bal-Simba and Duke Aelric.

"… and we still don’t know what happened," Wiz concluded. "One minute everything is fine and the next minute the world goes crazy."

Aelric looked at him strangely. "You honestly do not know?"

Suddenly Wiz had the feeling they had missed something very obvious.

The elf duke sighed. "Forgive me, Sparrow. I had forgotten I was dealing with mortals and I simply assumed…"

"What did happen?" Jerry asked.

Aelric paused, weighing his words. "The object we call the key is in some sense a representation not only of the gate, but of this World as well. As your spell moved closer and closer to producing the shape of the key it began to have an ever-stronger effect because it became an ever-more exact replica of the World."

"And by the Law of Similarity, like things affect each other," Wiz said. "So it began to affect the universe."

"That is-ah-a not incorrect way of putting it. Quite frankly I wondered how you would deal with the problem. It never occurred to me you had not realized what would happen."

"Why didn’t the shape have any effect when you showed it to us?"

"What I showed you is powerful enough, believe me, Sparrow. But it was incomplete; only the part between the Bubble World’s creation and that moment. I did not attempt to reproduce the entire shape of the key."

"I told you guys it was a hardware bug," Danny said, running his hand through his disheveled hair.

"The question is, how do we fix it?" Jerry said.

"I know of no way to fix it," Aelric said. "Any spell which can produce that shape must inevitably affect the World in a chaotic fashion."

For a minute no one said anything.

"You know," Jerry said finally. "This thing acts like some kind of quantum effect at a macro level."

"So maybe we need a quantum mechanic," Wiz said. Jerry groaned, Danny scowled and Moira and Bal-Simba looked blank.

"Just trying to lighten the mood a little. Sorry."

"You should be," Jerry told him.

"Sparrow, there are times I think it is a blessing I do not always understand you," Bal-Simba rumbled. "But I take it that this approach is not practical?"

"I guess not," Wiz said. "Damn! And it looked so perfect."

"Just a minute," Jerry said. "You say that it is the spell which affects the World?"

Aelric inclined his head. "Just so."

"Well, suppose we did it without using a spell?"

Aelric thought hard. "You mean using no magic at all? Yes, I suppose that would be possible."