Jay Lure

The extraction is successful until it isn’t. Which is not a remark to put in any report, official or not. Roberts has retrieved the item; I have disabled the beacons and am considering promotional possibilities as we exit the operating theatre. Roberts stops dead outside the containment field. Swears.

The human male who stands as if he was waiting for us sighs. “Even for a secret government agency, stealing cell phones from a motel must be a new low. It is not as though you are with the FBI or NSA. You’re not Black Chamber because they don’t deal with such things and the Border Patrol would have used explosives and a lot of guns.” He looks ordinary, but worrying power thrums through his voice. “Talk.”

Roberts has been trained, at least as well as one can train a human. He has shields and protections for his mind, a dozen sigils and items that might protect him from harm. They do nothing at all. “We are from Project Containment,” he says.

“Ah. Of course. Something new. Explain.”

“The Border Patrol’s successes in stopping incursions from Outside the universe have been deemed too costly in terms of both human life and equipment. Project Containment contains Outsiders and releases them against threats, it being our hope that they will exterminate each other in battle.”

The human blinks. “This actually works?”

“Field testing is due to begin any year now.” Even under a compulsion, Roberts manages to sound defensive.

“I’d be amazed if that works at all. However, none of it explains why you’ve broken into a motel to steal the cell phone of an eleven year old boy.”

“According to our scanners, it contains more Outsiders than any other item on the planet by a factor of at least ten. We seek to reverse engineer it to aid us. This is in accordance with the Apple Accords.”

“Well, Jay’s cell phone is at least one generation ahead of the market, but I imagine that isn’t the kind of Apple you mean. Sleep.”

Roberts collapses to the ground as the man – the magician – turns to me. “I don’t see many Greys interacting with human agencies of their own free will?”

“I am part of an outreach program.”

“Hmm. And one that is drastically low on hard data. I suspect that every government agency worth note must have a file on Jay by now even if they don’t believe most of it.”

“You are a magician. This matter concerns your kind as well,” I snap. “Even my people could not make a containment field that can hold this many Outsiders at once: we need to learn more about it.”

He raises an eyebrow; the we is more than just humans, after all, and he catches that. “You could have considered asking. Not that his explanation would have helped. As far as Jay is concerned, he has been playing Pokemon Go on his phone and capturing Pokemon. I haven’t had the heart to break it to him that he hasn’t actually caught a single Pokemon but instead a great deal of Outsiders by mistake.”

“What?” I have been trained to make my telepathic sendings mimic human voices. I fail entirely this time.

The magician grins. “The Outsiders are mostly safe in stasis fields though I believe there is one chronovore that is still utterly confused as to how it could even be trapped in any form of stasis given that its nature is to devour time.”

“Such things are not possible.”

“Oh, ordinarily I would agree. But Jay is from far Outside the universe for all that he is eleven. And he is far more concerned with making friends, having adventures and being jaysome than whether something is remotely possible or not. The phone, please?”

He told as out a hand. I give him the phone. There will be consequences for this. Reprimands. But I think they will be nothing compared to what might happen if Jay were to come looking for his phone.

The magician walks back inside. Roberts wakes, confused. I spin an easy lie as we head back to our vehicle and prepare for transit back to the Project. I am wondering if this is a test. I am wondering if I failed it.

I am wondering if there is any way to succeed at all.

And Vacations (also prompts :))

“But this is a jaycation,” Jay says, “which means we have to do important things, Charlie!”

I close my eyes, count to ten. Someday, I worry this might even help. I open my eyes and stare down at the earnest eleven year old kid who isn’t human at all. “It is not even eight in the morning. You have managed to have three adventures already, kiddo. And, believe me, travelling with you is not some automatic vacation.”

“But it is jaysome since I am,” he retorts with a huge grin.

I like to think I’m a good person. If the wandering magician wasn’t dealing with the fallout of Jay making friends with a virus, I maybe would be a better one this morning. I’ve already had two cups of coffee, so there is nothing I can justify to escape what I say next: “And?”

“Charlie?”

“And you think being jaysome is always good, Jay? That your desire for adventures isn’t dangerous?”

“Well, there are some oopses,” he says. “But an adventure that is boring isn’t one at all!”

“How would you know if you’ve never tried that?” He blinks, gapes in shock. “One day without anything jaysome. Is that too much to ask?”

“But that’s me!”

“It’s a word you made up. That’s not the same as it being you, Jay. You’re Jay even if you aren’t jaysome,” I snap, because some mornings it’s too much. Jaysome this, and jaysome that. I didn’t even know my annoyance had reached something past a pet peeve until now, but I can’t find it in my to stop myself.

Jay’s mouth snaps shut. “But ... it ...”

“Not that word. Not today.”

“But a Jay who isn’t jaysome isn’t a good Jay at all!”

“The wandering magician is trying to stop an outbreak of the plague because you decided to make friends with a virus, let it inside you, and then let it go again because it ‘asked nicely’. Plague, Jay. Thousands, maybe millions dead.”

“I’m not stupid, Charlie! I know it was a huge oops and I know it would have been way worse if I wasn’t jaysome,” he yells, and vanishes between moments. Going somewhere, hiding. I have no idea which.

“Jay?”

There is no response at all.

I pour myself a third cup of coffee slowly. I don’t say I’m sorry. I’m not. Sometimes a little Jay goes very far indeed. But something crosses is face, when he said not being jaysome would be worse. There was fear, and maybe something eager as well. I have a very bad feeling that Jay intends to make sure I don’t consider the word jaysome to be a pet peeve ever again.

Which means whatever I just set into motion is liable to make a plague look like a prank. I text the wandering magician two words ‘Defcon jaysome’ And then, after: ‘My fault.’

I can do a lot of things. I can contain energy, police gods, perform exorcisms, and the god inside me can do more if I let it out. None of that is anything next to what Jay can do if he’s serious. I drink coffee, fingers barely trembling.

And I wait.

*

There is a knock on the door of the cabin. I’m on coffee number four, trying to pretend it doesn’t taste bitter on the tongue. The knock is once, soft and firm. Not Jay then. Jay bounces through doors or knocks on them a dozen times because ‘doors love knocks’.

The man standing on the other side is taller than I, and twenty one. I’ve never opened a door and just known someone’s age before. He is human, but – not ordinary. I step back without quite knowing why.

He smiles. The smile is small, sad, matching his eyes. But I know that smile. In any form, I would know that smile. It is a punch in my gut this time. “Jay.”

“Charlie.” He says my name in a careful way I’ve never heard from Jay before. There is no wild enthusiasm, no huge grin in the word. Just my name, with iron control over the emotions behind it.

“I intervened in this affair,” he murmurs. “Jay was going to bring himself back from when he is 13, perhaps 14. I am not certain you would have survived the experience.”

I walk back to the kitchen table of the cottage, sit back down. “Survived.”

“He was going to show you a Jay that is not jaysome.”

“Oh.” It takes effort to even manage that word.

He sits down across from me, movements sure and fluid. “There are limits to how far even I can move through time. Things I cannot do lest I break my own past. At eleven, I did not grasp this. He visits his future, makes friends. Helps us rediscover his kind of jaysome. Self-help by way of the Self.” He chuckles, low and amused.

“He has no idea how hard is it to see him. All we remember. All we have lost. What it was like to be so innocent that I could be arrogant. We don’t let him know how much it hurts. Hide the reasons behind certain changes.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I say. I mean too

Many things with those words to keep talking. I want to grab this Jay and hug him, but I know he will not let me. There is a distance here, and it was won at a terrible cost.

“The Jay you know is gargantuan,” he says, but does not speak my name at all. “I am more, yes, but he is larger in what he believes, how he lives, in everything he feels and knows. His emotions are gargantuan, which you know but do not understand. You need only say you forgive him and it will be fine.”

“And you?”

“You would need to believe it. And perhaps that would not even be enough.”

“Oh, Jay.”

He does not move, but what crosses his face is cold and alien. “Care for him, and perhaps – just perhaps – I will be a little less myself some days.”

“That is a hugey burden,” I say.

He lets out a small, soft laugh. “All burdens are. But that is what makes them something more.”

And he is gone between moments. I finish my coffee slowly, trying as hard as I can not to cry. Because that would not be jaysome at all.

Jay Prompt

“Did you know the neighbours are having a barbecue?!”

Charlie looks up from playing a game on her phone, stares at me. “Jay. We are staying in a cabin because the wandering magician asked it to let us in, and it did because the owners aren’t here and it is lonely. The neighbours likely would not understand that, given they probably know the owners. Nor would they invite us to a barbecue.”

“Oh. But I maybe kinda invited myself,” I boast, because I am pretty jaysome at a lot of things.

Charlie blinks. “You invited yourself?”

“Well, I asked the barbecue and it said yes since it will have lots and lots of food on it, and a Jay can eat a lot so I’d be doing a big helping. Also, the barbecue doesn’t like that they’re called Barbies because he thinks he’s more a Ken. Which was a joking!”

“Barbecues make puns. Of course they do.” Charlie puts her phone away and stands. “And you want my help making sure the people invite us, too?”

I nod. “Cuz if I ask, I might use bindings and that would be mean and not a proper asking and I am pretty hungry like a Jay.”

“So, what happens if I say no?”

“Charlie!”

She laughs at that and ruffles my hair as we depart. “For a kid from far Outside the universe, you’re really ease to tease.”

“That’s just because I’m hungry.”

“You had breakfast an hour ago, Jay.”

“But that was only my first one,” I explainify, because Charlie sometimes forgets.

And the neighbours do have a hugey barbecue and Charlie talks to them all charliesome so we get to eat and it’s entirely okay and they’re not cooking a Bigfoot or gods or even people, all of which Charlie suggestified on the way because sometimes we have a lot of adventures even when we don’t mean to. But this one is just eating food, and I am pretty jaysome at that so I impress lots of people and make Ken the barbecue happy and even take extras for Honcho to eat when he comes back from the deep part of the woods.

“We didn’t have to do anything appalling, or stop anything that was even worse.” Charlie glances over at me. “Which, given how you find adventures, is rather astonishing.”

And she says it with this really waiting pause after. “Well, maybe there was one person who kinda wanted to do not-nice things with Ken but I did some bindings and fixed it all up so you didn’t have to.”

Charlie stares at me. “What qualifies as ‘not nice’ to a barbecue, just out of morbid curiosity.”

“A lot of cleaning and painting Ken pink,” I explain, “which I said was weird because pink is a really jaysome colour but sometimes people cook food pink too and Ken gets really sad over that so I can kinda understand it.”

“Ah. Well, we got invited to dinner as well. I think Mr. Chow was rather impressed at how much you ate.”

“Uh-huh. I even didn’t eat too much so they wouldn’t be suspious of us!”

Charlie blinks. “Three chickens in under ten minutes,” she says, but to herself and not to me at all, so maybe she just wishes she’d had more chicken too :D  

Jay Visits

The castle is cold where the dragon’s breath does not warm it. I wait in the tower. Others have been captured by the dragon and tried to escape, their bones and ashes joining those of various knights and knaves who have tried to best the dragon down the centuries. I wait, because a prince of the Realm knows about waiting. It is a cousin to duty and a crown is all about duty and nothing else at all. Not love, not friendship, nor even kindness – all such concepts are cast aside for the good of the kingdom. So I wait to be rescued from the dragon, because if I am, the wealth of the dragon’s horde will allow the kingdom to prosper as never before.

The dragon roars far below, faint warmth seeping up through cracks in ancient stone, the roar cut off oddly. There is silent, and odd roars. Ones without fire to them, though the castle shakes and shudders with quakes all its own. I remain in the bed. The bed is protected by old magics, even by the standards of those who made the palace.

The door opens. No one has reached the door before, but what enters is not a knight at all but a boy of eleven who offers up a grin of such innocence it takes my breath away.

“Hi! I’m Jay and I got told there was a prince in a tower so I’m totally hear to rescue you.”

“You defeated the dragon?”

“Uh-huh. Dragons are really ticklish,” he says with a pride even the king would be hard-pressed to match.

“And you are here to rescue me?”

“Prince Dorran of the Realm, yup. Oh!” He snaps his fingers. “Only if you’re one of those ones who has to be kissed, I’m not good at that part. I haven’t had many dates at all.”

I flush, unable not to. “It is true that I do not sleep with women, but neither do I sleep with boys,” I snarl.

Jay blinks. “Huh? But your bed is really big and two people could sleep in it easily you know.”

“It means to have sex,” I say.

“Nope. Sleeping isn’t the same at all. Even I know that, and I don’t do sex with humans cuz most humans aren’t jaysexual,” he says.

“What – wait, you aren’t human?”

“Nope! I’m a Jay,” and he says that as though it should explain everything.

A child prodigy magician, then, no doubt sent to die and as an insult to the Realm. “Very well. Lead on,” I snap, heading to the door.

Jay bounces out. Actually bounces, and skips down the ancient narrow stone steps. I am beginning to think this child is touched by the gods, and not in a good way at all.

The eldest dragon west of the Great Sea is on top of the hoard, and snoring. Jewels and items of power are scattered everywhere, and Jay ignores every single one of them.

“You have not slain the Great Beast?” I demand.

Jay stops and turns. “Why would I do that? He’s pretty friendly and would be tons happier if no one bugged him and left him alone, you know!”

“Friendly,” I repeat.

“Yup. He only tried to burn me to ashes once.”

I stare at Jay, but there is nothing save honesty in his face. I wonder how powerful his magics are, and then am giving a demonstration as I ask about the Realm and he almost casually makes a hole in the world leading to the royal palace. A hole that ignores every ward and protection the Realm has.

My father the King offers rewards, but Jay it turns out just takes them and gives them away to commoners before leaving as strangely as he came. I, on the other hand, have returned without a hoard or any use at all save to bankrupt one of the royal treasures with the cost of my salvation.

It is less than a month before I decide what I must do, and a few more months of learning to understand how it can be done. I leave the palace, one child of the royal line among many, barely noticed for days. Almost no one recognizes me on the road since I spent years as a prisoner to the dragon. The dragon is in his castle, and studies me with eyes of endless fire.

“I have learned how to tickle a dragon,” I say in the tongue of dragons. “And a spell to protect me from fire. This, also, I know: that a dragon can take the form of a human. I do not wish to presume, but you have been lonely for a long time and I – I have nothing to offer the Realm at all.”

“Jay said you might return,” the dragon rumbles, “if you learned anything of jaysome. I did not believe, even knowing something of what Jay is. This is, at least, an adventure.”

And he smiles.

Rebeca’s Choice

The house isn’t on a hill. I think that’s it. Part of it. But I don’t know. One by one, everyone just moved away toward the cities. I hear news, though I’m still not sure how it works anymore. But my solitude no longer contains silence, even if no one has been here in at least ten years. The house sits vacant, and nothing else was developed in the valley. The orchard was going to become lots, but everyone moved away. I don’t think it was my fault, but I don’t know. Some things are hazy. Distant, like the memories of a stranger I once was.

Sometimes I don’t recognize myself in mirrors. I’ve learned to cope. I’ve even learned to drown out the sounds of the world, the signals in the air just background noises like the ocean grinding against the shore. Which is why I don’t notice him until he comes inside. The boy is alone with a glowing phone in one hand, wearing shoes meant for hiking. I know of cell phones, though until now I’d never seen one. He cleans off glasses. It is raining outside. I hadn’t noticed.

“H-Hello?” he says, his voice trying to be loud. “Is anyone here? My name is Damien, but everyone calls me Dami. I’m just here to find a haunter?”

I manifest. I don’t normally, but it has been years and he came without the machines and incense and crystals the others came with long ago. And the deepest parts of me like to see them run.

Dami stares at me. I don’t know what I look like to the living. I have had some run screaming. Some weep. A few faint. This boy just looks offended. “You’re a gastly?” he demands.

“Excuse me?”

My voice is the cold wind between places.

Dami pales visibly at it, but stands his ground. “You’re a gastly, aren’t you? Haunters are quite different.”

“Pardon me?”

“I know you’re a Gengar. And a Haunter is better than a Gengar any day. Do I need to level you up?”

“... what?” My voice is strange even to my ears. Even the insane would break and run by now, but there is something within him resisting me.

“Wait, the app update doesn’t mention –.” I have no idea what the boy is talking about, but I see the moment when he flatters, realizing I am real. Humans like to pretend ghosts exist, but they don’t truly like to encounter us and have realize the world they built their lives around isn’t how they understood it to be at all.

“My name is Rebeca.” I think it was that, at least once.

“You’re not a haunter? I really need one for my pokedex.”

“I am the spirit that haunts this place.”

“I know that,” Dami says. “But I really need to find a haunter.” And he turns his phone toward me, showing an image I don’t understand at all. I do hear the phone. Noises coming from it, into it. This is how the world speaks to me though I am here. In energies passing between phones and other places.

I am not sure what to make of this. “I am the only ghost in his valley.”

I am certain of that much. I think there were others, once. But there is only me left.

“Do you play pokemon?” he asks.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Dami grins. He grins at that, in delight. Delight. “Mom and Dad won’t come looking for me for hours. They generally take a long time to anyway,” he says, dusting off one of the couches to sit down on it. “I can teach you how to play it, if you want? You could help me capture a lot of pokemon, Rebeca.”

I have been dead for a long time, and a ghost for perhaps even longer. I draw my nature about me. I can kill, with the cold between places. I can pull a human into the darkness and leave nothing behind. I have done this before. The memory of doing it hovers about me, whispers in voices I almost know.

“Please?” he says. “There aren’t any other pokemon here and teaching someone new will help me remember things too.”

There are shadows in his eyes he doesn’t own. Darkness he somehow sidesteps, and this – this pokemon is the why of it, the how and the means. It is not a power I know or understand, but he stands in the house of hauntings, and I swear I feel smaller. Not in a way that hurts, but still smaller in directions I can feel but not name.

It has been so long since a human came here. So long since my hunger was sated. But he offers his faith as a meal without knowing, and it has no end that I can feel at all.

“Tell me,” I say, and he begins to explain pokemon, and has to explain his phone, and television, and he talks for so long and so fast I am almost wondering if he is going to talk until he keels over and becomes a ghost as well when he gets a message on his phone.

“Oh! I didn’t get a new achievement, but Mom and Dad are looking for me.” He bounces to his feet. “I should find them before they try and take my phone away.”

Not before they get worried. Not before they get scared. He understands his parents even if he does not understand them at all. “They are not good pokemon trainers, then?” I say, using the words he has taught me.

“No. But I think I can be, for you. If you want to learn more?” he asks, suddenly shy.

I am not certain who is more surprised when I say yes.

He leaves, and is not a reflection I carry with my in the mirrors. I walk the house. I float. I try and haunt, in the manner of the haunters in pokemon, but his faith is not the kind to change another. I dust the house, for the first time in many years. I remember everything he has taught me. I think of questions to ask Damien the next time we meet. And I wait.

Plans and plots (and things to never do)

"Let's talk about legitimacy. I think that's always something to talk about with hitman websites."

That was part of research on YouTube a couple of nights back. That and some harrowing videos I had to FF through and barely watch because people are the kind of monsters fairy tales warn you about. I tend to start gathering research for stories very early when they need any and eventually everything you come by counts as research.

The plot for the story is as follows: 'Near-future scifi where everyone lives off grid, and the real rebellion is living on the grid, being exposed, part of corporations and governments and with few secrets to your life at all. Most everyone lives off-grid following the PrivAct Wars – which some call Privacy Wars, other Pirate Wars; depends on what kind of history one wants to remember. The idea that being open, being known, is scarier and far more transgressive than hiding ever is.'

I figured the rough idea out long before the various election fiascos though I'm not about to pretend they won't influence the story. Science-fiction is, after all, a reaction to the present, and to the kind of future we see it leading toward. Often, the issue of privacy is pitched as that one can have freedom (privacy) or security, but you can't have both at once. This can be seen as a false equivalence, however - privacy advocates are generally not against 'here is data, we can use it to stop crimes' but where it reaches the point of thought-crime they are. But this is a novel, so it is going to go to extremes in both directions.

My notes include the line that 'History is the blade that informs how deep the wound is' and this is a deep part of the story. Much of the history of the setting is data. Most of that has been post during the PrivWars when advocates for privacy went far off the deep-end and wiped census records, tore apart databases in the deep web etc.  To be fair, it was reactionary. Also to be fair, a lot of it was earned. Immigration rules had been tightened the world over, insurance companies using data on citizens to only further their own goals (money) and many corporations doing the same. Governments, hemorrhaging money, were selling private data on citizens to keep the lights on. Everything was going sour and both sides wanted to protect the future.

The end result of the wars is that over 90% of the world lives off-grid, with many cities half-empty shells of themselves and the internet entirely decentralized, with cloud storage being spread out over the world and encrypted to hell and back (we're talking post-quantum cryptography, and probably stuff even further down the line) in an effort to be private and off-grid. This of course makes it much, much easier to do really dark shit and never be caught.

Governments still exist, in the ideal small-government form and mostly just provide very basic services such as trade arrangements, some import and export issues and basically keeping control over - and an eye upon - the much smaller and transparent corporate sector of society. If you work for the government, your life is an open book. To anyone. Ironically, this also keeps them far more honest and upright than other people ever need to be. The MC works for the government and the story is going to be about an assignment they are sent on and their exposure to the wild and dangerous 'world' of freedom.

And also fun things on cultural stagnation and how the obsession with privacy and freedom has limited the growth of technologies, nations etc. and issues over at what point the drive for anything goes too far and how the quest for pure freedom can created a totalitarian regime all its own. Should be very fun to work on.  If the research doesn't get Authorities knocking on my door, of course :)

They Day They Came For Doggy

Doggy always keeps me safe when mummy and daddy fight. They don’t know about doggy. Daddy says pets are too expensive, and mummy says she is a lergic, but I think maybe she doesn’t like a doggy in the way she sometimes doesn’t like daddy. Doggy curls up close to me and sometimes I get a little cold when Doggy is hungry but I have blankets so I’m OK even if it makes Doggy all puppy-sad when I’m cold.

Doggy tells me things, sometimes when I’m sleeping. Doggy paces our bedroom at night, even all over the ceiling, but mummy and daddy never yell about noise. Doggy says they’re like turtles and turned each other into a shell for them, but I’m not sure I get that? I don’t get a lot of what Doggy say, but sometimes I think Doggy doesn’t really get people either.

Sometimes Doggy says things that make me cry, because Doggy knows truths hat are all adult and hurt. They are always sad after, but not for long because Doggy doesn’t understand being sad. Doggy is Doggy, and I’m not me like that so I think it makes Doggy sad in a mad way. But not a mad way that goes bad like mummy and daddy.

Most days are good ways with Doggy around. Mummy and Daddy don’t shout at me, and no one at school bugs me because Doggy. But sometimes Doggy has to go away, and says they need to hide. And when they do, I have to think about Doggy really hard so Doggy can come back.

Doggy has been going away a lot this week, and it makes me scared. I think their might be a pound for Doggies, even if it’s not ours at all, because Doggy only looks like a Doggy, and then only sometimes.

I’m going home from school where no one bugs me anymore and thinking about Doggy when the woman says hello. She’s not mummy at all, and her eyes remind me of Doggy only they don’t at all because she keeps a bad Doggy inside them. I don’t know how to even do that – Doggy would be safer inside me, but likely really mad as well!

“My name is Charlie,” she says. “I imagine you know why I’m hear to talk to you?”

“Doggy is busy hiding,” I say sharp as mummy. I didn’t even want to mention Doggy, but she feels safe like a babysitter who gets rid of monsters under beds, even if Doggy isn’t that kind of monster at all.

“We know. But, ah, Doggy isn’t a real dog.”

“I know that. Doggy is better,” I say.

“Perhaps sometimes.” She crouches down, and I yelp as a finger brushes my left arm. “But you bruise easier than you used to, and you’re tired often. Doggy needs energy from you to stay in the world.”

“Doggy doesn’t meant to hurt me.” I cross my arms and glare like mummy does at daddy.

“And yet you’re still hurt.” She smiles, and the smile is soft and sad and like nothing mummy ever smiles at me. “Doggy is scared, and we do things we know we shouldn't when we’re afraid. Sometimes we fight, and sometimes we hide. A Doggy can make mistakes just like people do.”

“I’m not!” I’m moving, and Charlie is too because she’s quick like Doggy is. “I’m not a mistake even if mummy and daddy say so!”

“Oh.” And I stop, not just because Charlie is in front of me but because she reminds me of Doggy for a moment, only Doggy doesn’t understand mistakes and what it means but Charlie does. “No. No, you are not,” she says softly, and a small part of me is almost scared for mummy and daddy. Charlie lets out a breath. “But Doggy –.”

“Doggy is special.”

“Yes, but Doggy doesn’t make you special. You do that,” she says, and it would be all funny coming from a teacher but from Charlie it sounds just like a fact. “And you’re very brave to be friends with Doggy and to help them – I was never that brave when I was young age.”

“But you have a Doggy in you!”

And Charlie laughs. “What is inside me isn’t the same, and scared me for many years. I had help to get free of my fears; you didn’t need anyone to help you. And that’s very brave, but it doesn’t mean you don’t need people.”

“It’s better at school when everyone leaves me alone.”

“I imagine so. But it’s not better for you if everyone does that. Some people, yes, but not all the people.” And Charlie moves beside me. “Doggy has been hiding from a friend of mine who – deals with entities like Doggy.”

“Like the pound?”

“Ah. Yes, like a pound, only he’s not a bad one. He can help Doggy stay and not hurt you.”

“Really?”

“He’s waiting by the house, so you can ask him about the pound yourself,” she says.

I make it around the corner and the man standing by the house is ordinary, except he’s not at all. He nods to Charlie and walks over, and he is – safe. Nice, in the way Doggy tries to be nice. I don’t remember all the words he says, but his voice is powerful and gentle and Doggy is scared but the man offers to help.

Doggy speaks in a tone too close to daddy about magicians, and Charlie’s friend just smiles. “Not all magicians see Outsiders the same way.” And I think he does something like Spock does on the TV because Doggy relaxes and they both vanish and no one notices that at all.

“People are good at not seeing what they don’t want to see,” Charlie says as I stare about. “Do you want me to talk to your parents?”

And I want that almost as much as I want Doggy to stay, but I think it over as hard as I can. “Would you hurt them?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie says. “That would be up to them.”

“Then, no? Doggy can help me and we’ll be okay. But Doggy can find you, if I change my mind, please?” I ask.

Charlie laughs softly. “Of course,” she says, and I head inside to my room and I wait for Doggy to come back. It doesn’t take long at all, and I think Doggy is a bit smaller, and they jump into my lap and I listen to mummy and daddy fight come home and fight, but Doggy is warm and protective and I know everything is going to be all right now. Because Doggy told me it’s going to be all okay once I’m the Prime Minister.

Observable Jay

There are costs to magic that everyone knows. A magician can be defined as someone wishing to perform but lacking any charisma – I read somewhere that Houdini was one of those. The skills they develop are honed for hours and hours alone in bedrooms and in secret. While being able to do card tricks is impressive, people are left wondering why you bring the cards to a party at all, and especially to a funeral. The tricks becomes all they have, a performance they can never turn off that leaves them ostracized from other people.

Real magic is not like that at all. A magician is in the world, a part of it, acted and acted upon. You are given the gift to make the world a poem, and the cost of it is helping hold the prose that is the universe together. Standing against what lies Outside the universe, knowing and seeing what can never be unknown and unseen. There are no old magicians, for so many reasons. Some die, others find ways to give the magic up; some find things that matter to them more than power, even if magic is not about power at all.

We tell stories, but we are not outside them. Nothing can be changed from the outside, not in any way that lasts. The magician must be part of the weaving, part of the cloth, or they can’t make changes that matter. The magic is only a small part of that. It is not something I forget, being perhaps the most powerful magician in the world. But it is something others forget.

“You know things,” Charlie snaps to me as we walk through the woods. It’s more a military pace, her burning off energy, the god within her visible in her eyes as she marches along beside me. My pace is more sedate but I keep up without trying. She doesn’t notice: people can’t see what they don’t known how to see, even if they’re part of the deeper patterns of the world. Charlie is a god-eater, but she is Charlie first. I am the wandering magician, and before that – I’m not sure if I am anything before that, when I am being honest with myself. Which is as often as I can be. It is another reason magicians do not last.

“Jay told you that he talked to dark energy and matter, which scientists think is actually most of the universe?”

“He did, and it spoke to him in his voice, using his full name Jay is always boasting about how good he is at hiding, and how big he secretly is. We’ve always known he wasn’t really eleven and he is from very far Outside the universe.”

“And we forget that. As he does as well. Your point?”

“How can Jay be that, magician?” She hurls the word almost as an insult. Jay is made up of unknowns, but all too often it is terribly easy to forget that. To believe the story of the goofy kid who lives for adventures that he tells himself as much as us.

“I don’t know. I have always wondered how Jay was able to enter the universe at all, given how powerful he can be. No matter that he can hide his nature completely, it was always a puzzle. Now it is less of one.”

“Do you have any idea how absurd that sounds?”

“This is Jay we are talking about,” I say gently. “Time and space don’t mean to him what they to us, not really.”

“But –.”

“Charlie. He’s still Jay. Even if he is a little more confusing, it at least explains why he likes to eat so much.”

“Not funny,” she snarls.

“It has to be. If it wasn’t, we’d be terrified of him, Charlie.” I stop and turn before she speaks, pressing a finger to her lips. “I know you are, sometimes. As am I. As is Jay. But he doesn’t understand why anyone would be scared of him, since he’s jaysome. Among other things.”

“You hide the fear better than I do.”

“I have had a lot more practise at not showing creatures that I’m afraid of them. Jay is our friend: nothing is going to change that if he can avoid that.” I leave unsaid that Jay could avoid that: he can do things with bindings I try my best not to think about at all.

“And you don’t want to know how Jay is somehow himself, and billions-of-years-old dark energy and matter and whatever else?” Charlie says, but there is no force behind the question.

I smile in the way of magicians. “I would always rather not know.”

“Since when does a magician want to do that?” she says, but at least smiles in return.

“It is an important skill to know what questions you should never ask. It applies rather well in the subtle realms of magic as well as in the real world,” I say quietly. “And I value the friendship we have with Jay too much to go about seeking answers I should not. There’s an old saying about people turning over stones, and people forget that the danger of it is that the stone which is turned over can never be put back the way it was. Once you start down certain paths it’s almost impossible not to follow them to the end, and that is one I don’t want to move down.”

“You’re scared of Jay.”

“Not as scared as I am for him,” I say simply, and to that Charlie makes no reply at all.

We head back to the motel, and Jay arrives an hour later having been quite busy catching Pokemon on his phone. Or at least I hope he was, since his trying to capture one led to him discovering the dark energy/matter was him and talking to it. Happily, of course, since it is Jay and he loves making new friends. Even if the new friend he made today was himself.

“Honcho, I was totally trying to catch a Pokemon only Guutaley the Devouring is being really insistent they aren’t a Pokemon at all and want to devour the world and lots of unborn people, but! I have them in a really good binding and I thought I’d get you,” he says, radiating innocent pride as only kids can.

“You can’t banish it?” I ask.

“Oh, I could, but I thought I should make sure it really isn’t a Pokemon because it would be really rude to banish a Pokemon from the universe,” he says, and being Jay is quite, quite serious.

Charlie buries her face in her hands and I head outside to find what Jay has bound, and to help him deal with it. Everything is as it always is, and isn’t like that at all.

“Honcho?” Jay asks.

“Kiddo.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” I say.

Jay opens his mouth, closes it, blinks. “Uhm. Lots of reasons, because Guutaley the Devouring is definitely an oops and Charlie is being really weirdy.”

“I imagine that’s because you are,” I say dryly.

“Oh! But I’m jaysome,” he says, and fortunately Guutaley attempts to break free of Jay’s binding and devour the world before I need to think up a reply to that.

Which is, even for a magician, a very worrying use of the word fortunately.

Open and Shut Case

 “You’re telling me this is an open and shut case? There is a mob outside baying for the head of Constable Parrish, social media sites are up in arms –.”

“They do so love their false outrage in the morning.” The Detective didn’t move from his chair. “The public does not get to eclipse fact, Ms. Brown. Nor should their arrogance assume they can judge what they do not understand. You cannot sum pages of police reports into a twitter feed, and I am not throwing a constable under the bus for political expediency. You can tell the mayor this however you like, of course.”

“Constable Parrish shot an unarmed man!”

“An unarmed white man, yes. And the good constable is Indian, if you wish to spin that into your narrative as well.”

“Detective –.”

“Call the mayor, Emily. Ask him about October 30^th 1997.”

Ms. Brown marched out of the room, returned in under four minutes. Her expression was made of nothing save shock as the Detective handed her over a folder without a single word.

“There are people who can do impossible things,” the Detective said quietly. “Terrible, impossible and grotesque things. It is not well understood, but Constable Parrish recognized the signs. And killed the target before he could kill a great many people with his power.”

“Telekinesis.” Ms. Brown let out a small laugh. “How do you expect me to spin this to the press, Detective?”

“I have no idea. But it is your job. Let’s see if you’re as good as spinning truth as you are at the rest of it.”

“That is uncalled for,” she snapped, but the Detective held her gaze until she looked away. After a time, she stood and walked to the door.

“Open and shut,” the Detective said softly, and closed the filing cabinet beside the desk with a glance.

Jay Games

Magician

Jay marches out of the spare bedroom a house that let us stay in it while the owners are away. He’s eleven. He’s also from far Outside the universe. Sometimes these aspects of him are in a terrifying cohesion as he scowls up at me.

“Kiddo?” I say calmly in the way of magicians.

“The cake is not a lie! That’s really rude and GLaDOS is really mean and not jaysome at all,” he announces.

“Pretend I have no idea what you’re talking about?”

His jaw drops. “But you’re Honcho! You always know,” he informs me, and at least some of his anger drains away. “And and and it’s a computer game Charlie was playing and now I am too cuz she said it was funny and it’s not!”

He flings the last word out. I hear the tv screen crack in the spare bedroom.

“Jay.” I say it carefully. Jay can do things with bindings that even magicians can’t attempt. That he hasn’t even noticed doing this unbinding isn’t a good sign. “Breathe. Focus.”

“I am all kinds of focusable. I know!” He gestures, a tear opening neatly in the world. “I’m going to use this portal and visit Valve and get my cake!”

I blink, stare as Jay bounds through happily and the portal closes behind him. And then I go looking for Charlie to try and find out what is going on.

Charlie

The wandering magician has gone for a walk. As he tends to when he feels the need, or he needs to be doing something else. I tried to explain why I’d tried to get Jay not playing Portal, but he’s never been one for computer games much at all and just listens a bit, stares in disbelief at the end, but we both known Jay.

“A computer game declared that cake was a lie, so Jay is going to find the cake,” he’d said with awesome calm, considering.

I told him that was why I’d tried to keep the game away from Jay. He didn’t ask what other games I was trying to keep away from Jay. Probably because he doesn’t want to know how long that list is, if I’m being honest. So I’m left along in the house to wait when Jay comes through another portal he’s made in space with a huge, beaming grin on his face.

“Kidlet?”

“I went to Valve and asked about stuff and I got my cake,” he says, radiating pride. “And met the light of gaben!”

I pause. It’s an internet joke, but … this is Jay. “Ah. How was it?” I say, since that’s the safest bet.

“It was really nummy, but abe said that the cake was really expensivey since GLaDOS didn’t want to give it up and it was going to delay something called Half-Life 3 a lot?”

I blink. I stare at him.

“Charlie?” Jay says, his face as pale as his voice at whatever he sees in my face.

“You have ten seconds to get the hell away before I try and do something we’ll both regret,” I snarl, and Jay vanishes with a loud ‘eep!’ He has no idea what he’s done. None at all. And I’m definitely not going to try and explain this to the wandering magician. Or anyone at all. Ever.

Jay

“Jay. What are you doing?”

“I’m doing a helping so you’re not mad at me, Charlie!”

“I am trying to play Super Mario. You are on the screen. In place of Mario.”

“Uh-huh! This way I can help and be all kinds of jaysome so nothing tries to attack or hurt you at all in the game.” And I grin like a jayboss, which is hard to do when you don’t have many pixels!

“Jay. I am trying to play a game,” Charlie snaps.

“Oh!” And I fixify it entirely. “See? See? Now you’re Mario and I’m all the creatures he stomps on and I bet that fixes lots of you can stomp on me, right?”

Charlie blinks. “You might be onto something.”

And then she plays over six levels and stomps on me a lot when I’m lots and lots of monsters she stomps on and beats up and even a boss fight! Which I totally lose cuz sometimes it’s jaysome to lose when you’re being smart as a Jay!