Author's note at the start of the chapter. Cliché, but relevant.
Canonically, the end-of-year exams happen around the second week of June, though I couldn't narrow down a specific date. So, I took the second Monday, assumed exams ran from then until Friday for years 3–7, put the end-of-year feast on the third Monday of the month, and have everyone going home on the 18th. Even if it took the first 2 weeks of the month, the timing still works best that way for the purposes of this story. Also, if they leave London in the morning, and arrive at the castle in the evening on September 1st, why would the return trip be shorter? That has bugged me many times across many stories, and I am sure will bug me again for many years still, while I still enjoy seeing what gets done with the story.
............
June 18th 1991
London
The drive back to Myrddin Manor had never struck Josh as particularly long or particularly short. By American standards, it barely qualified as a drive at all.
Growing up, a Saturday evening could mean piling into the car and driving two hours from a small city or rural town to somewhere larger just to catch a movie at the nice theater and eat at the burger place they didn't have back home. Compared to that, getting from King's Cross to the Manor in less than an hour wasn't worth thinking about.
Now, for anyone paying attention who also happened to understand the geography of Britain, that might sound confusing.
So, lesson one.
Wizards enchanted the hell out of their transportation.
For exhibit A, see the Knight Bus, transportation for the stranded witch or wizard, driven by Ernie Prang and conducted by Stan Shunpike. It could travel anywhere in Britain, and Josh meant anywhere. England, Scotland, Wales, wherever it needed to go. Allegedly, before the Empire started coming apart, there had even been work toward extending its routes throughout British territory overseas. That effort had quietly died around the same period Britain began losing most of said territory.
Josh couldn't prove there was a conspiracy involved.
He was merely willing to acknowledge that it looked suspicious as hell.
If you must narrate, then at least keep the conspiracy theories separate from the actual facts you have uncovered.
Shove it. I'm allowed to express my thoughts however I want. We've been over this.
We have. I agreed that you could. I also agreed that I would do my best to prevent you from becoming one of those knuckle-dragging, mouth-foaming lunatics screaming that the Earth is flat and vaccines cause Down syndrome or whatever.
Autism.
There was a pause.
Whatever....
As Josh was saying.
Witches and wizards who chose to participate in the wider world had picked up the habit of modifying their vehicles. Quite a few started with junkers from, surprisingly enough, junkyards. Cheap if not free, mechanically questionable, and cosmetically irrelevant when a competent wizard could point a wand at the thing and use Reparo before moving on to the more specialized work.
Those who couldn't handle the enchanting themselves took the vehicle to someone who could.
The list of available modifications was ridiculous.
Self-driving that wasn't insane. Self-cleaning charms. Automatic braking and obstacle avoidance. Muggle-repelling enchantments. Color-changing paint. Emergency Spongify deployment in the event of a collision. Air-resistance buffering that effectively made the vehicle more aerodynamic without requiring anyone involved to understand why a wind tunnel existed.
Then there was fuel.
The common enchantments didn't actually eliminate the need for it. Instead, they stretched what the fuel could accomplish, using principles similar enough to an Undetectable Extension Charm that Josh wasn't surprised Hogwarts didn't casually teach teenagers how to apply it to, well anything. He wouldn't have been remotely shocked to discover that somebody, somewhere, had taken the idea far enough that their car hadn't needed filling in twenty years, or completely eliminated the need for conventional fuel entirely.
The options went on and on.
But the pièce de résistance to modern magical travel was the Witches' Roads.
Not to be confused with the song from Agatha All Along.
The actual Witches' Roads were attributed to Helga Hufflepuff.
From what Josh had learned, Helga and Rowena Ravenclaw had been traveling together one day and taking considerably longer to reach their destination than either woman particularly appreciated. Floo travel didn't exist yet. Apparition was still being developed, or at least hadn't reached anything resembling its modern form, and magical flight was considerably more limited than it would become, and rather problematic as well.
Most people traveled by foot, horse, cart, or carriage. Witches and wizards being witches and wizards, those with the means occasionally substituted magical creatures for ordinary horses.
Helga had apparently decided that this was bullshit.
Her solution involved a runic construction that allowed two distant points to become, for the purposes of travel, infinitely closer together.
Whether that work had anything to do with the eventual development of Apparition, Josh had found absolutely no proof. He had also found nothing conclusively disproving it, which meant he reserved the right to remain suspicious.
What Helga's work had produced were the Witches' Roads.
They were one of the better-kept secrets among the magical population, though not because of pure-blood prejudice or some grand conspiracy to keep Muggle-borns ignorant. Traveling them could simply be dangerous if you didn't know what you were doing.
The easiest comparison Josh had was an interstate highway.
Except it was made of magic.
It traveled through magic.
And you needed magic to get onto it.
You just said you don't know how it works, followed by magic, magic, magic. It's a magical transit system. We get it.
There's nuance.
There is ignorance wearing a nice hat.
Josh ignored that.
The space occupied by the Witches' Roads was unique, and access was limited. A traveler needed either a magical vehicle or a magical beast properly registered for transit. There were claims that the Roads had eventually contributed to the development of the Floo Network, but once easier forms of magical transportation became commonplace, their use steadily declined.
The Statute of Secrecy hadn't helped.
Neither had magical Britain's occasional determination to look at a perfectly functional idea and decide it had been invented too recently sometime in the twelfth century.
Then came the automobile.
More specifically, the surge in magically modified automobiles after Voldemort's fall in 1981.
Apparently, a few Muggle-born Hogwarts students had stumbled across an old book mentioning the Witches' Roads, tried accessing one, and discovered that the bloody things were still there.
Which was why the Rolls-Royce carrying Josh home could leave London, enter a stretch of road that didn't entirely correspond with the geography around it, and arrive at Myrddin Manor considerably sooner than an ordinary car making the same journey.
As per usual, Jack Skeeter drove.
Josh sat in the back, his school trunk secured in the car's trunk, or boot if you want to be extra British, and watched Britain pass outside the window.
Chat hovered quietly at the edge of his awareness.
Then a message appeared.
BillionairePlayboy: Oi. We need to talk.
Josh's eyes shifted toward it.
BillionairePlayboy: LawLord and I were talking the other day about that upcoming thing, and he reminded me about that comic book you sent me.
Before Josh could answer, another message appeared.
cartoon_nightmare: Why is it that you can send him a comic book, but when I try to talk about |REDACTED|...
A second message immediately followed.
cartoon_nightmare: THAT. Every single time!
Josh sighed.
OffScript: We've been over this. Your name says it all. Cartoon_Nightmare. You live in a world of cartoons.
He continued typing.
OffScript: Ignoring the physics of that for a second, you can casually break the "fourth wall" and ruin someone's life by accident because you don't understand why one of their variants ...
cartoon_nightmare: Heh. Variants.
OffScript: chose to wear a particular color while doing a specific thing.
Josh stared at the interruption.
OffScript: Stop interrupting my messages. Honestly, that is more ridiculous than anything else. That is not how technology works!
BillionairePlayboy: EXACTLY!
cartoon_nightmare: It is when you have the power of |REDACTED| and |REDACTED| on your side.
cartoon_nightmare: |REDACTED| can just use her party cannon and blast messages right through the laws of causality, and |REDACTED| has extra personalities that let his own thoughts interrupt themselves. It's basic stuff over here.
disinterested_doorknob: I think I know who |REDACTED| is!!
The response was immediate.
Moderator: disinterested_doorknob has been muted for 5 minutes for attempting to speak of |REDACTED| in any context. This is your warning.
most_interesting_demigod: Holy shit. Auto-banning for talking about someone's name?
OffScript: You know as well as I do, and as well as anyone else here should by now, that names have power. Some names are Not Allowed.
most_interesting_demigod: Oh, like |REDACTED| and |REDACTED|! Both of them can break the "fourth wall".
A moment passed.
most_interesting_demigod: Oh.
most_interesting_demigod: CN was talking about them, wasn't he?
Another followed.
most_interesting_demigod: Must be. I got redacted too.
LawLord: How is it that the three of you can speak of these "forbidden names" without being banned, but disinterested_doorknob is muted immediately?
cartoon_nightmare: WE HAVE THE POWER OF GOD AND ANIME ON OUR SIDES!
Moderator: cartoon_nightmare has been banned for 5 minutes for the bad joke.
Josh snorted quietly.
Jack kept driving.
OffScript: If I had to guess, it has something to do with the origin of their abilities.
Josh considered how to explain what he meant.
OffScript: Remember when Chat first showed up for the newer members and you saw the Stream for the first time? We established that most_interesting_demigod, cartoon_nightmare, disinterested_doorknob and momfriend.exe had already been in contact for a while. Then we went through the structure of the universe, at least as I understand it.
BillionairePlayboy: The Prime. Yeah. Kinda hard to forget all of that.
OffScript: Well, to answer all of the above, I think I need to explain one of the greatest literary tropes ever created.
Josh waited a beat.
OffScript: |REDACTED|!
Another beat.
OffScript: Just kidding. Systems.
That required considerably more explanation.
Josh started with the games he'd grown up playing in his first life, particularly RPGs and the abstractions they used to represent growth. Experience accumulated. Levels increased. Points went into attributes. Skills improved. Numbers represented things that were considerably messier in reality.
From there, he moved into fiction.
Systems had become a trope unto themselves. Sometimes they appeared in otherwise ordinary worlds. Sometimes they accompanied reincarnation or transmigration. Sometimes someone died and woke up somewhere else with one. Sometimes they simply woke up on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday and discovered that reality had apparently decided to acquire menus.
There were leveling systems, quest systems, shop systems, crafting systems, cultivation systems, achievement systems, relationship systems, chat systems and combinations complicated enough that trying to catalogue every variation would have been pointless. Some were benevolent. Some were hostile. Some were neutral mechanisms. Others possessed personalities, administrators, sponsors, creators, or purposes that their users might not understand for years.
The details varied wildly.
The underlying concept didn't.
By the time Josh finished giving Chat the history as he understood it, several minutes had passed.
The five-minute ban expired.
cartoon_nightmare: Dude! Do you have to talk about systems to this extent?
Josh ignored him.
OffScript: Based on what I've observed, I'm fairly certain every member of this Chat is, at the bare minimum, part of what would be known as a "Chat Group System" for someone.
He thought about that for another moment before adding the second part.
OffScript: Additionally, I think many of us are reincarnations or transmigrators.
most_interesting_demigod: Holy shit.
most_interesting_demigod: He actually said it. All of it, and not a single real redaction.
Another message followed almost immediately.
most_interesting_demigod: OffScript, I think you just answered it yourself, homie.
OffScript: No, I'm fairly certain mine is a modified |REDACTED| with a |REDACTED|, with a light dusting of |REDACTED| combined with |REDACTED| to finish it off.
Josh frowned.
OffScript: I also got to have |YOU GUESSED IT, REDACTED, BUT MUCH BIGGER THIS TIME|
There was a moment of silence.
cartoon_nightmare: Can redactions get that big?
OffScript: Huh.
Josh stared at his own message.
OffScript: I didn't think that could happen to me too.
Hey bud, some things don't need to be told too soon.
Josh froze.
A notification appeared.
R.O.B. 37 has entered the chat.
R.O.B. 37: Hey bud, no spoilers. That ruins the journey.
BillionairePlayboy: What the hell was that?!?!
Josh didn't have an answer ready before Tony kept going.
BillionairePlayboy: I just want to know how many variations of my world you know of! I'm trying to figure out if one of those variations might be where that Job is going to take us.
BillionairePlayboy: I feel like my brain needs eye bleach.
Before Josh could finally answer the question Tony had originally come to ask, another handle lit up.
SandHatesMe: So, Master, Pip and I have finished our talks with Master Yoda. I've been nominated to act as a go-between for this and the Council.
Josh blinked.
Then Brad's five-minute ban expired.
cartoon_nightmare: Chancellor Palpatine and Jar Jar Binks are Sith Lords. Palps is Darth Sidious, and Binks is currently the strongest being on Coruscant and could solo the Order.
Moderator: cartoon_nightmare has been muted for 2 hours for taking advantage of the situation.
There was a short, beautiful silence.
Then one of the handles that had barely said a word through the entire conversation exploded onto the screen.
AncientLibrarian: MASTER YODA?!?! ARE YOU |REDACTED|?!
A second message arrived immediately.
AncientLibrarian: I KNEW IT!
Moderator: AncientLibrarian is muted for 5 minutes for being cheeky~
Merlin: Ha! That's why it's important to not just yell everything out when you figure something out!No foreshadowing detected there at all....
FulcrumInChat: Oh oh oh! Can I say Master |REDACTED|'s name?
Moderator: FulcrumInChat has been muted for 5 minutes for attempting to start drama.
SandHatesMe: See Pip. That's why we don't just try to start things. Now think about what you say before speaking to random people on the holo net.
KnightSentinel: |REDACTED|, just because it's true doesn't mean that you need to call her out like that in front of everyone. Also, I thought we had established that this isn't the holo net.
BillionairePlayboy: Nice to see that you are all getting involved in Chat, and based off of what has just been established I am fairly certain that we know who 2 of you are, but
most_interesting_demigod: Speak for yourself. I know all 3 of them.
BillionairePlayboy: we keep getting distracted from the problem at hand.
BillionairePlayboy: STOP DOING THAT! HOW DID YOU EVEN DO THAT?!?! I THOUGHT ONLY cartoon_nightmare COULD DO THAT!?!
CallMeDaddy: Hey @OffScript did you know that we can view the Stream and Chat on |REDACTED|! I finally found a terminal I can use to chat on it!
Moderator: CallMeDaddy has been muted until they enter |REDACTED|
Moderator: Huh.... I guess I can be censored too.
BillionairePlayboy: ....
most_interesting_demigod: .....
disinterested_doorknob: ...
LawLord: ......
momfriend.exe: I also didn't know that the auto mod could be redacted, or have independent thought.
Sys Admin: The Auto Moderator is taking a time out. Please refrain from doing anything against the Chat rules for the next 20 minutes. most_interesting_demigod, cartoon_nightmare, disinterested_doorknob, AncientLibrarian, FulcrumInChat, and CallMeDaddy, you have all been warned. Donotgive cause to block you until |REDACTED!
BillionairePlayboy: What is going on today? For the last few weeks, this has been like any other private chat group. What is with all the new faces?
R.O.B. 37: I'm not a new face.
Merlin: I'm not a new face.
SexOnLegs: Technically, you've seen us.
most_interesting_demigod: WE'RE NOT WORTHY!!!
SexOnLegs: ;)
SexOnLegs has logged off the Chat.
momfriend.exe: Throws hands in the air. I thought I was the MOD for the Chat?!?!
LawLord: "+1"
LawLord: I think is how that goes.
momfriend.exe: Oh my sweet sweet caring summer child. Thank you. You get a cookie. OffScript. Send LawLord a cookie! Please and thank you. <3
System, swap the Chat to transparent windowed mode. I don't see this ending anytime soon. Preload a response for Tony to message me directly as soon as he asks again.
Fine.
Thank you.
I turned away from the Chat as we turned off the Witches' Road and out onto the actual road, making our way toward the Manor's gate. God, I love this ride.
........................................
Myrddin Manor
Evening
Light spilled out across the yard as we pulled up in front of the house. Yes, Manor House. It's a house. Lay off.
Percival and Harry were inside doing something. Jack had been rather vague about it, but if I know Percival, it's either going to be very magical or insane. Guy fights like he's the third monkey trying to get on the Ark, and brother, it's starting to rain, but he parties just as hard.
The last few years since I came to live over here, he's done his damnedest to make sure I experience every holiday I would've otherwise missed by not being back home, as well as all of the Wizarding holidays.
And I do mean all of them.
Yule, Christmas, Saturnalia, Halloween, Samhain, Easter, Eastara, Independence Day, Boxing Day for some reason, Solstices, Equinoxes. Irish holidays, American holidays, old pagan holidays, Wizarding holidays. Halloween gets the feast in the Great Hall. Samhain gets the rites at midnight by a bonfire near the Forbidden Forest with the traditionalists in the castle. Those are two different holidays, and Percival will damn well celebrate both of them.
Honestly, I think I've celebrated more holidays in the last three years than I did in the ten before it.
Give the man a reason to celebrate, he's going to take it.
........................................
Manor Family Dining Room
The family dining room was warm in color without actually being warm. Golden light filled the room, catching on the old wood of the table, the polished brass fixtures, and the stone surrounding the fireplace. Summer had apparently been taken into account everywhere else. The windows stood open to let the cooler evening air through, the curtains stirring gently, while the fireplace burned low enough to provide light without turning the room into an oven.
Dinner had already taken a beating.
A platter in the middle of the table held what I steadfastly maintained were gyros despite having committed several crimes against Greek cuisine in making them. Warm pitas had been stuffed nearly to bursting with freshly shaved lamb, smothered in mozzarella, and shoved under a broiler just long enough to melt the cheese down through the meat and crisp the edges of the pita.
Slices of lemon sat on a plate beside the platter, ready to be squeezed over the lamb, while condensation ran down glasses of iced lemonade. At the far end of the table sat a limoncello mascarpone cheesecake, still mostly untouched because we weren't complete animals.
Harry squeezed another slice of lemon over what remained of his pita before looking across the table at me. "So no one outside of the family knows that you worked to get Sirius free?" Harry asked.
"Harry, if they knew, I am ninety-eight percent sure that instead of Hornaby writing the article about my book, it would've been Rita Skeeter," I told him.
Percival tossed back the rest of his lemonade, sighed, and set the glass down before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Look, we have more important things to talk about than rehashing history right now," Percival said. "The brat is back from the castle! Let's finish dinner and get him off to bed. Tomorrow, we're going to the beach!"
Starting immediately after Percival's beach announcement:
Harry paused with his lemonade halfway to his mouth. "The beach?" Harry asked.
"That's what I said," Percival replied as he picked up one of the remaining pitas from the platter.
I looked across the table at him. There were several ways Percival Myrddin could mean the beach, and experience had taught me not to assume he meant the normal one. "What beach?" I asked.
"Does it matter?" Percival asked.
"Yes," I answered.
"Why?" Percival asked.
"Because I know you," I replied.
Harry looked between the two of us while Percival frowned at me like I'd said something unreasonable. "It's a beach, brat. Sand. Water. Sun, if the weather cooperates," Percival said.
"That did not answer the question," I pointed out.
"It answered several questions," Percival replied.
"None of the ones I asked," I said.
Harry snorted into his lemonade.
"Don't encourage him," Percival told Harry, pointing his pita in Harry's direction.
"I'm not," Harry replied, despite the grin on his face.
"You absolutely are," Percival said before taking another bite.
I waited until he'd finished chewing before trying a different question. "What do we need to bring?" I asked.
"Swimming clothes and towels," Percival answered.
"And?" I asked.
"And yourselves," Percival replied.
That wasn't suspicious at all.
"Percival," I said.
"What?" Percival asked.
"What aren't you telling me?" I asked.
"Nothing you need to know tonight," Percival answered, leaning back in his chair with a look that made the answer considerably less reassuring than he probably intended.
There it was.
"Does he do this often?" Harry asked, looking over at me.
"Constantly," I answered.
"I do not," Percival objected.
"You once told me we were going for a walk and took me to a ritual site," I reminded him.
"It involved walking," Percival replied.
"You told me we were going shopping and took me to Gringotts," I added.
"We bought things afterward," Percival pointed out.
Harry laughed while Percival ignored him with the dignity of a man who knew perfectly well he was guilty. "You two have been stuck inside that castle or this house for long enough. Tomorrow we're going somewhere with water, sand, food, and absolutely no schoolwork," Percival said.
I stared at him for a moment. Percival had just given me another description of a beach without actually telling me which beach we were going to. "Where?" I asked.
"You'll find out when we get there," Percival answered.
"See, now you're deliberately making this suspicious," I said.
"It'll be fun," Percival assured me.
"I'm going," Harry announced before taking another drink of his lemonade.
"See? That's the proper response," Percival said, gesturing toward Harry.
"Harry doesn't have three years of experience dealing with you," I pointed out.
"No, I just want to go to the beach," Harry replied.
"Smart lad," Percival said as he reached for the cheesecake.
A quiet notification blinked at the edge of my vision.
BillionairePlayboy: OffScript.
Another appeared beneath it.
BillionairePlayboy: Since apparently every lunatic in the multiverse has finished interrupting us.
Then a third.
BillionairePlayboy: Can we PLEASE finish our conversation now?
Right. Tony.
System?
Already prepared.
The private-message window opened beside the transparent Chat.
Send it.
The prepared response disappeared from my side of the interface, leaving Tony's private window open for whenever he answered.
By the time I looked back at the table, Percival had cut Harry a piece of cheesecake large enough that calling it a slice was being generous. Harry stared at it for a second before looking at Percival.
"I thought you said we were finishing dinner and going to bed," Harry said.
"We are finishing dinner. This is the finishing part," Percival replied as he cut another oversized piece and put it on my plate.
Harry looked at me, apparently expecting support.
"You're on your own. I'm eating mine," I told him as I picked up my fork.
"Traitor," Harry muttered.
"You'll understand when you're older," I said.
Harry looked down at his own enormous piece of cheesecake, considered that for perhaps two seconds, and picked up his fork.
Percival grinned and started cutting his own slice.
The dining room door opened before he'd finished.
"Cut one for me too," Jack said as he walked into the room, already pulling out an empty chair.
"Thought you were heading home," Percival said, looking up at him.
"I was," Jack replied as he sat down. "Then I remembered there was cheesecake."
"See? The brat understands priorities," Percival said, reaching for another plate.
"Excuse me, but my priorities were well in place before I ever stepped foot on British soil," I objected. "You lot just introduced me to magical versions of my favorite foods."
Percival looked straight at me and blew a raspberry.
I stared at him. "Very mature."
"Thank you," Percival replied.
"You taught him to celebrate everything with food," Jack said, flipping Percival off across the table. "I'm just benefiting from your hard work."
Percival returned the gesture without hesitation, then cut Jack a slice every bit as unreasonable as the rest of ours and shoved the plate across the table toward him.
"Love you too, old man," Jack said, catching the plate before it could slide past him.
"Eat your cheesecake, Skeeter," Percival replied.
Harry looked around the table before glancing down at the massive piece of cheesecake in front of him. "I'm starting to think nobody in this house knows what a normal serving size is," Harry said.
"Of course we do," Jack replied, picking up his fork. "That's why we don't use them."
Myrddin Manor
Josh's Bedroom
At first glance, it would have been easy to think someone had constructed a small library or office and then decided to move a bed into it. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that wouldn't have looked out of place in the eighteen hundreds covered much of the room, filled with all manner of books, both mundane and magical. History, mathematics, science, religion, politics, Potions, Herbology, architecture, metallurgy, Charms, Transfiguration, enchanting, runes, computer science, Hogwarts textbooks, and on and on. Half the room was practically a library by itself.
Another wall held shelves dedicated to considerably more hands-on pursuits. Runestones and carving tools occupied one, alongside a blacksmith's hammer and the smaller hammers, mallets, chisels, and other tools commonly used for whitesmithing and jewelry making. The shelf beside it belonged to music. A record player sat above a collection of records, with a tape deck and cassettes sharing space with a CD player and a growing tower of CDs.
Against the odds, and in spite of appearances, Myrddin Manor had been wired for electricity.
The wary among you might immediately ask, How is that possible? Isn't mundane technology incompatible with magic?
Frequently, you'd be right.
And, interestingly enough, it would partially be your fault.
Magic responds to intent and belief. If you believe mundane technology will eventually fail around concentrated magic, then the magic you're surrounded by is perfectly capable of helping that happen. For general, everyday magical effects, belief can influence the way magic behaves.
Fortunately, there are ways around that problem.
There would almost have to be. How else could the Ministry of Magic exist beneath Muggle London? What about St. Mungo's? Diagon Alley? Some people liked to argue that places like those were exceptions, but that explanation became considerably shakier when you started looking at magical communities in other countries.
Japanese Rune Master Takiuchi Kurogami made a rather fantastic discovery in 1974 while studying exactly that problem. Intent mattered so much to the interaction between magic and technology that the collective desire to keep magic hidden actually helped protect the mundane world from casual magical interference. At the same time, the widespread belief among magical people that technology failed around magic contributed to technology doing exactly that when exposed to concentrated magical environments.
Kurogami spent the next five years working out how to reliably prevent it.
The answer turned out to be something the magical world had already possessed for centuries in one form or another.
Isolation runes.
They were predominantly associated with ritual magic, where different versions of the same basic runic structure had been used by multiple cultures to prevent outside magical influences from interfering with a ritual. The designs varied, sometimes considerably, but the underlying principle remained the same.
Separate what was inside from unwanted magical influence outside.
Kurogami discovered that the same principle could be applied to technology. Build the runic structure with the explicit intent of protecting the technology within its boundaries from wild ambient magic, and that intent became part of the function of the runes themselves.
The real trick was keeping the whole thing running.
Kurogami eventually developed a method of siphoning ambient magical energy to power the runic matrix protecting the technology from that same ambient magic.
Which was wonderfully circular in a way only magic could get away with.
The resulting matrix functioned somewhat like a system of ward stones for the technology within a given area, but that didn't magically produce an electrical grid where none existed. It still had to be integrated into existing infrastructure or have entirely new wiring and power infrastructure built to support it.
Doing that required an advanced understanding of runic structures and an equally important understanding of how to wire an electrical grid.
I was not an expert on electrical engineering, so I wasn't even going to begin pretending I understood every detail involved.
The point was, we had juice.
More importantly, I wasn't going to have to invent the magical light bulb from scratch.
You are leaving out a considerable amount of the sheer effort it took to even get this far.
Well, yeah. You keep riding me every time I go into too much detail. I'm just trying to get the basic idea across. We have freaking electricity, man. Computers. Video games. Dramatic gasp, THE INTERNET! It'll all be at our fingertips soon enough.
Do you honestly believe you are going to convince magical Britain to step into the twentieth century? Look at them. They're stuck in the seventeenth and seem perfectly happy to keep it that way.
That's why we need magitech, man. We have to get ahead of the curve. Listen, you and I both know how the future is going to turn out. Right now, cell phones are extremely niche, but give it a decade. Fifteen or sixteen years at most, and the mundane world is going to have camera phones. Less than ten years after that, everyone and their momma will have a smartphone. We get magical smartphones on the market before that first camera phone? Then it's the mundane world trying to keep up with us.
Are you attempting to use Prime-timeline logic to justify preventing specific businessmen from acquiring monopolies in the future?
No, I am not doing this because someone decided to remove the headphone jack from their phone in my last life!
I paused.
The Statute of Secrecy will break eventually. You've seen my memories. You know how fast technology advances. Nothing I've seen so far suggests this world isn't going to experience the same technological explosion mine did. Humanity is a fearful species. Every historical culture invented some variation of a few basic things. Doughnuts, beer, fire, and either a sharp stabbing instrument or a hard bashing instrument. Some cultures invented both! All of that before writing or record keeping. Hell, some of it before fabric. Man is afraid, and scared people do stupid shit.
Nihilist.
Hoe.
There was a pause.
Hoe?
I wasn't sure how to respond to you calling me a nihilist. Seemed appropriate at the time.
Sitting at my desk, I grabbed a pen and a new notebook from the top drawer. Got to love a family as pedantic about good writing supplies as this one. Great furniture too. If Percival would let me, I would take this desk and chair with me to Hogwarts.
I stopped before I could get too far off track, opened the notebook to the first page, and started writing down what I could remember of the Avengers timeline.
Steve Rogers came first, at least as far as the modern heroes were concerned. The 1940s. Abraham Erskine and the Super Soldier Serum. Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull, already having used an earlier version of the formula. Hydra. The Tesseract. James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes. Peggy Carter. Steve becoming Captain America, Bucky falling from the train, and Steve eventually putting the Valkyrie into the Arctic rather than letting Hydra's weapons reach their targets.
Howard Stark recovered the Tesseract while searching for Steve.
Then came the early days of what would eventually become SHIELD. Peggy, Howard, the SSR, and everything I could remember from Agent Carter. Hydra surviving the war and eventually worming its way inside SHIELD came later, although exactly when each part of that happened was considerably fuzzier in my memory.
I drew a line across the page and jumped forward several decades.
Carol Danvers. Not Ms. Marvel. Captain Marvel. Wrong name, wrong decade. Project PEGASUS. Mar-Vell. The Tesseract again. Kree. Skrulls. Carol getting blasted with energy from the Light-Speed Engine and eventually becoming Captain Marvel.
We could safely ignore the arguments surrounding that particular intellectual property from my old world.
More importantly for Tony, Fury learned aliens were real.
I wrote FURY KNOWS ABOUT ALIENS in the margin and underlined it.
Then the Tesseract ended up back in SHIELD's hands, where it would remain until considerably closer to the Avengers Initiative actually becoming necessary.
Another line.
Iron Man.
Tony Stark demonstrating the Jericho missile in Afghanistan. The Ten Rings attack. Yinsen. The cave. The miniature arc reactor. Mark I. Escape. Tony returning home and shutting down Stark Industries' weapons division. Rhodey trying to keep him from doing anything catastrophically stupid, which was probably a full-time occupation even before the suit entered the equation. Obadiah Stane's betrayal. The Iron Monger.
And then Tony standing in front of a room full of reporters and saying the words that kicked the entire thing off.
I am Iron Man.
That was the part I knew had already happened.
The problem was everything surrounding it.
Bruce Banner had already become the Hulk by then. Depending on exactly how this world's history lined up, he'd either already spent years running from Ross or was somewhere in the middle of doing it. Harlem and Abomination should be coming around the same general period as Tony's next major problem.
Thor was coming too. Loki. Jane Foster. New Mexico. Mjolnir landing in the desert and SHIELD descending on the place like somebody had dropped the world's most interesting government grant application out of the sky.
There was also Ghost Rider.
I stopped writing.
Where the fuck does Ghost Rider fit?
The Nicolas Cage movies had existed in the same general Marvel soup in my first life, but whether Johnny Blaze actually belonged anywhere near Tony's specific universe was another question entirely. That was exactly the kind of assumption that could get someone killed when dealing with a real multiverse.
I wrote GHOST RIDER? DO NOT ASSUME off to the side and kept going.
Iron Man 2.
Ivan Vanko. Whiplash. Howard Stark's work. The new element Tony eventually synthesized to replace the palladium poisoning him. Justin Hammer. Rhodey becoming War Machine. Natasha getting inside Stark Industries under the Natalie Rushman identity. Fury becoming considerably more involved in Tony's life whether Tony wanted him there or not.
Then Thor.
Then the Tesseract becoming an immediate problem instead of a historical one.
Loki arriving on Earth. Hawkeye getting compromised. The Helicarrier. Steve waking up in the twenty-first century somewhere before all of that became everybody's problem. Thor returning. The team being dragged together badly enough that calling them a team at first was generous.
New York.
The Chitauri.
The portal.
Tony carrying a nuclear missile through it.
I stopped writing.
That was far enough.
If I was right and Tony's world followed the cinematic Avengers timeline, most of what I'd written should describe his world's past, while everything after Iron Man described what was coming within the next 2 or so years for his world.
If I was right.
That was doing a tremendous amount of work.
Tony's reaction to the comic I'd sent him made me think I wasn't dealing with the comic-book version I remembered, or at least not one close enough for the comic to map cleanly onto his life. That pushed the cinematic version considerably higher on the list.
It didn't prove shit.
There were too many Marvel universes to count meaningfully, and that was before accounting for worlds differing because somebody turned left instead of right on a random Tuesday. Somewhere out there was probably a universe where everything I remembered happened exactly as I remembered it except Tony Stark hated cheeseburgers.
Then there was the TVA.
I lowered the pen.
Fuck.
If Tony belonged to something resembling the cinematic timeline, then the TVA might exist. Which meant the timeline might have been deliberately maintained.
Unless Loki had already destroyed that system.
Or changed it.
Or that happened outside time and asking when Loki did it was fundamentally the wrong fucking question.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at the notebook.
Too much knowledge could be such a headache.
God, I hope he's cinematic. The comic didn't register properly with him, so at least I've got that going for me.
How much knowledge was going to be too much knowledge here?
I pulled the private window back into focus and scrolled up until I found Tony's exact question.
BillionairePlayboy: I just want to know how many variations of my world you know of! I'm trying to figure out if one of those variations might be where that Job is going to take us.
I mean, I could answer that literally.
Quadrillions, potentially?
The multiverse was infinite, after all.
No. Bad idea.
Tony had already been kidnapped, tortured, had a car battery hooked to his chest to keep shrapnel from reaching his heart, watched Yinsen die, come home to discover that his father's friend and longtime business partner had arranged his murder, and then nearly died fighting the man.
Dropping By the way, there are potentially infinite versions of you and everyone you've ever known into his lap probably wasn't going to help.
Although...
I tapped the pen against the notebook.
There's an idea. Convince Tony Stark to talk to a psychologist.
That might actually be harder than fighting Voldemort.
Still, I could tell him to look up Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. If Xavier existed in his universe, that would answer one question rather spectacularly. More importantly, Xavier was a psychologist. When Tony inevitably asked why I'd sent him looking for the man, I could tell him the truth. He needed a good psychologist after Afghanistan, because blowing up terrorists only worked as therapy until you actually had to deal with the trauma.
If Xavier didn't exist...
I frowned.
Who the hell do I recommend then?
You could try to name-drop one of the greatest psychologists to ever exist in the Chat and see if they jump in.
No. I don't think I want to do that.
Your loss.
I went back to the notebook.
So, did I burden Tony with future knowledge or not?
I could tell him about the broad categories I remembered. The mainstream comic continuity and its endless branches. The cinematic universe. Animated universes. The Ultimate universe. The various television continuities, some connected to larger worlds and some very much doing their own thing. Alternate futures. Reboots. Worlds that looked almost identical until one seemingly insignificant difference sent everything sideways.
And that wasn't even getting into the adaptations that borrowed pieces from several different versions at once.
Reed Richards might help narrow things down if Tony knew who he was, but even that wasn't remotely conclusive. There were versions of Reed all over the damn multiverse. The Fantastic Four existing wouldn't tell me which universe Tony inhabited any more than Tony Stark existing did.
Fucking too much information.
I rubbed my forehead.
I don't even know for sure yet.
I can see why you locked your own memories before you dropped in now.
It's exhausting! Knowing too much and too little at the same time would make someone go insane. Plus, think about the danger levels of the Marvel universe. They only go up and up. I don't want to break Iron Man.
I looked at Tony's question again.
Man is to strengthen man like iron sharpening iron. If I break Iron Man, I could doom an entire universe, and I don't want that on my shoulders.
See, and that's why I call you a nihilist. You're sounding as bad as Tony did in the MCU.
I opened my mouth.
Stopped.
I... yeah, you've got a point there.
The pen tapped against the notebook one more time before I finally set it down.
Fuck it. I'll play it by ear.
I brought the Chat window back into focus with a mental command and opened Tony's private conversation.
Here goes nothing.
OffScript: Alright, Tony, I'm going to go out on a limb here and approach your question with a level of seriousness that might come off as condescending for parts of it. For that, I apologize in advance.
I hesitated before continuing.
OffScript: You are one of the smartest men to exist within the framework of your universe. Hell, you built your first suit in a cave, from scrap, while hooked up to a car battery. I have a lot of respect for you, and I don't want you thinking I'm looking down on you when I ask this.
OffScript: Having said that, when was the last time you spoke to a psychologist?
I sent the next message before he could answer.
OffScript: Hell, when was the last time you spoke to anyone about what you experienced?
My fingers drummed against the desk while I stared at the private window.
OffScript: You're asking me a question that I could answer in several different ways, and some of those answers could honestly break you. I don't mean that as an insult, and I don't mean it because I think you're weak. There is such a thing as a burden of knowledge, Tony.
I watched the typing indicator appear.
Disappear.
Come back.
Disappear again.
Then it stayed gone long enough that I started wondering if Tony had decided not to answer at all.
It reappeared.
BillionairePlayboy: If you'd asked me that question six weeks ago, I would've ignored it. Assuming I didn't tell you to go fuck yourself and mind your own business.
I kept watching.
The typing indicator appeared again, sat there for several seconds, and vanished.
Then came back.
BillionairePlayboy: While I'm still not convinced I fully need to be analyzed for what happened in Afghanistan, I can understand why someone would think that way.
BillionairePlayboy: Yes, I was betrayed by a man I thought of as family. And I'm not just talking about him selling me out and arranging to have me killed. He'd been stealing from my father's company for years. Selling Stark weapons under the table and lying to all of us about it.
BillionairePlayboy: I thought I'd dealt with the rest of it.
BillionairePlayboy: I got captured. I took my captors out of the equation. I escaped. I became Iron Man.
The indicator appeared again.
This time it stayed there for almost a minute.
BillionairePlayboy: Briefly, and I'm paraphrasing my new psychologist here, I was at an all-time high in my life and career. Then I was nearly killed, should have died, somehow survived, woke up with an electromagnet in my chest keeping shrapnel out of my heart, and spent the next three months being actively threatened with death in a cave thousands of miles from home.
BillionairePlayboy: My response to that was to build a suit of armor.
BillionairePlayboy: Not metaphorically. I literally built myself armor, killed or incapacitated everyone between me and freedom, and didn't stop moving until I was out.
BillionairePlayboy: Apparently that's the kind of thing psychologists find interesting.
BillionairePlayboy: I escaped. Yinsen didn't.
There was another pause.
BillionairePlayboy: They keep telling me Yinsen's death wasn't my fault. Consciously, I know they're right. He made his own decision. He knew exactly what he was doing.
BillionairePlayboy: But I'm Tony freaking Stark, and I couldn't save one man.
The typing indicator disappeared again.
When it returned, the messages came faster.
BillionairePlayboy: So I get home. I see what my weapons have been doing in the hands of people they were never supposed to reach, and I shut down the weapons division of my father's company because I'm not going to keep contributing to that.
BillionairePlayboy: Then I find out Obadiah is the reason those weapons were there in the first place. The man had been selling them behind my back, tried to have me killed when I became inconvenient, and when that failed he tried to take the company away from me.
BillionairePlayboy: And while I'm trying to figure out how to make sure the armor that saved my life can actually protect people instead of becoming one more Stark weapon pointed at them, the board of my own company locks me out.
BillionairePlayboy: Then Obadiah paralyzes me in my own house, rips the thing keeping me alive out of my chest, leaves me there to die, and uses my work to build his own suit.
BillionairePlayboy: So yes. Apparently my last few months contain enough "unresolved trauma" to justify a few appointments.
I stared at that for a moment.
Well, shit.
The typing indicator appeared again before I could decide what to say.
BillionairePlayboy: Then there's the Chat. And the Stream.
BillionairePlayboy: Honestly, learning from you lot about the sheer scale of the universe might've done more to get me through the psychologist's door than Afghanistan did.
BillionairePlayboy: I wouldn't have believed half of this if it hadn't been for that comic book.
BillionairePlayboy: Sometimes I'm still not sure I believe it.
BillionairePlayboy: But you sent me a comic book about an alternate version of me, from a universe that is itself different from mine. I've watched you travel through at least two different universes through the Stream. I've talked to people who shouldn't be able to exist in the same reality, much less the same group chat.
Another pause.
BillionairePlayboy: And I'm fairly certain you have more blood directly on your hands than I do at this point.
The typing indicator blinked once more.
BillionairePlayboy: So what do you think?
I leaned back in my chair.
That was a considerably better answer than I'd been expecting.
OffScript: I think your psychologist deserves a raise.
BillionairePlayboy: They charge enough already.
I snorted.
OffScript: More seriously? I think you're handling it better than I gave you credit for.
The typing indicator appeared for a few seconds before disappearing without a response.
I looked back down at the notebook.
Well, that changes things.
I'd spent the last several minutes worrying about whether telling Tony too much would break him, while apparently Tony had already looked at the impossible bullshit the Chat had dropped into his life and decided that maybe professional mental healthcare wasn't the worst idea in the world.
Good for him.
Also mildly inconvenient for the argument I'd been having with myself.
OffScript: Alright. You asked how many variations of your world I know.
I glanced at the pages in front of me.
OffScript: The answer is both a lot and nowhere near enough.
I rubbed a hand over my face.
OffScript: Listen, from my perspective, I'm familiar with worlds from comic books, video games, television shows, cartoons, and movies. I have never actually been to one of the universes in your cosmological bubble.
OffScript: Everything I know about your world right now comes from taking whatever information you give me about your life, your history, and the people around you, then comparing it against what I've seen and what I remember.
I glanced around my bedroom.
OffScript: Even the world I'm living in right now doesn't match what I remember. It doesn't match LawLord's memories either, and he actually lived in a version of this world. We can recognize people, places, events, magic, history, all kinds of things, but that doesn't mean either of us gets to assume the next thing will happen exactly the way we remember it.
I looked back down at the notebook.
OffScript: I could tell you everything I remember about one of the versions of your world. The movies, for example. Based on what you've told me so far, those are probably the closest match I have.
I shifted in my seat as I continued.
OffScript: I could theoretically tell you how the next decade of your life plays out.
OffScript: And doing that could doom your entire universe because Happy wore a specific tie on a specific day.
The typing indicator appeared.
OffScript: No. I'm serious.
It disappeared.
OffScript: Say Happy wears a particular tie one morning. Some random guy sees it. He's already seen five people wearing that color that day, and Happy makes six. That reminds him of something, which changes where he goes for lunch. He meets someone there he wouldn't have met otherwise. That changes something else, which changes something else, and eventually that chain of events contributes to something that matters.
OffScript: Now I tell you the future. You tell Happy something that makes him decide not to wear the tie.
I stared at the words for a moment before continuing.
OffScript: Normally, I'd call that a new timeline and move on with my life.
OffScript: Except I remember at least one version of your cosmology where a man from the future cracked interdimensional travel and time travel, encountered alternate versions of himself, and eventually they went to war with each other across realities.
OffScript: One of them won.
OffScript: His solution to preventing that war from starting again was controlling which timelines were allowed to develop.
I leaned back in my chair.
OffScript: Which means, under that particular model, Happy might have to wear the fucking tie.
OffScript: Not because Happy's tie is cosmically important. Not because the universe gives a shit what Happy wears. He has to wear it because Joe Blow needs to see six blue ties that day so he goes to a particular restaurant, meets a particular person, makes a particular decision twenty years later, and that decision keeps the timeline from developing into something the guy controlling it doesn't allow.
I tapped my pen against the desk.
OffScript: Or changing the tie creates a new timeline instead.
OffScript: Or both are true, because time can apparently be linear and cyclical at the same fucking time depending on what you're doing, where you're standing, and which rules are currently kicking you in the balls.
OffScript: Looped timelines are a pain in the ass. Traveling through time can create new timelines. Traveling between universes introduces another layer. Then you get places that exist outside normal time looking back in at all of it.
I let out a breath through my nose.
OffScript: You asked me a question because you're trying to plan for where The Artificer might send us.
OffScript: And instead you get a lecture on metaphysics at its most basic level, because that's the only way I can answer you without leaving enough ambiguity for you to walk away thinking I know more than I actually do.
I looked at Tony's private window.
OffScript: So when I say the answer is both a lot and nowhere near enough, that's what I mean.
The typing indicator appeared.
Stayed there.
Disappeared.
Then came back.
BillionairePlayboy: Okay.
I waited.
BillionairePlayboy: I think I understand what you're saying.
BillionairePlayboy: You know too many possible things, and you don't want to accidentally influence me by giving me information that could be wrong, causing some kind of doomsday scenario just because I asked a question.
OffScript: Got it in one, man.
The typing indicator appeared again.
BillionairePlayboy: Then how am I supposed to know what to do to prep for this?
I grinned.
OffScript: That's the neat part. You don't.
There was a pause.
I metaphorically cracked my knuckles and considered how best to explain why Tony Stark, of all people, should let sleeping dogs lie.
OffScript: Alright. One. If I'm correct, we're going to end up in a world neither you nor LawLord knows.
OffScript: Two. I'm going to have to work with the two of you to accomplish whatever needs doing in that world. Maybe that's stopping a war. Maybe it's repairing the genetic makeup of a people who can only reproduce through cloning. Maybe we have to jump-start a planet-sized terraforming ship to give humanity somewhere to live.
OffScript: Maybe we have to go back in time on a planet light-years ahead of us and save the whales. Maybe we have to stop an intergalactic menace from stealing a universe from a prince. Or maybe it's any one of a thousand other strange problems where somebody, somewhere, needs three assholes from completely different universes to keep humanity from wiping itself off the face of existence.
I paused.
OffScript: That's just a guess because of who issued the Quest, though. For all I know, he wants us to build a better bomb.
I leaned back in my chair.
OffScript: Three. Us not knowing how things are going to play out means we're actually living, man. We're not just taking whatever gets handed to us and maintaining the status quo because somebody already knows how the story ends. We're going somewhere new. We'll make our own choices, accomplish our own shit, and whatever we build or learn or become because of it will actually be ours.
I looked at Tony's private window.
OffScript: And four. Planning for the future is good and all, but I hate to peek at the ending.
The typing indicator appeared almost immediately.
BillionairePlayboy: You know, for someone who just spent several minutes explaining how one wrong piece of information could potentially doom an entire universe, you're remarkably comfortable telling me not to plan ahead.
I laughed.
OffScript: Oh, no. Plan ahead. Absolutely plan ahead.
OffScript: Build better armor. Improve your tools. Learn new skills. Figure out what you can bring with you. Make sure you're ready to survive somewhere without Stark Industries, your lab, your money, or anyone else you normally rely on.
OffScript: Just don't try to prepare for a specific problem when we don't know what the problem is.
The typing indicator flickered.
BillionairePlayboy: That's not preparation. That's packing.
OffScript: Says the man whose idea of packing probably involves several hundred pounds of titanium alloy.
BillionairePlayboy: Gold-titanium alloy.
OffScript: My deepest apologies.
BillionairePlayboy: Accepted.
I shook my head.
BillionairePlayboy: But I get your point.
BillionairePlayboy: Prepare myself instead of preparing for the mission.
I considered that for a second.
OffScript: Yeah. That's a much shorter way of saying it.
BillionairePlayboy: I have my moments.
OffScript: Occasionally.
The typing indicator appeared again.
BillionairePlayboy: So what are you doing to prepare yourself?
I stopped smiling.
Well, shit. He's got me there..... HA! Not.
OffScript: Not a damn thing. Where's the fun in that?