Blue Magic

By Scott James Thomas

BLUE MAGIC -- Book 3 of the Black Magic trilogy.

It has been a year since Inessa Black and the spell riots swept the globe. The world has grown large and has been carved into a thousand city-states. Humanity survives by using the spells and on the remnants of the halcyon past.

Humanity is barely surviving and life no longer feels real. Just living normally is a victory. But powerful people, whose eyes glow, roam the land and they can kill on a whim.

Like the gods of old, sorcs are petty and they take what they want. Sarah Artemis, a young girl who has something a powerful sorceress wants, is kidnapped and it's up to the ordinary foster father, Klein, to travel through the post-apocalyptic world to save her.

On his impossible mission to far-away Australia, Klein discovers the source of all magic. But is it enough to save his daughter and the rest of the world?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott James Thomas
• Release date: Jul 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463923269

Scott James Thomas

Dr. Scott James Thomas has traveled the world as an exploration geophysicist, exploring remote locations in the search for critical minerals for society.He received his bachelors of science in geophysics from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, then his Masters and Doctorate from the University of Arizona in Tucson.He enjoys nature and creating, but since he can't draw, he writes. He favors sci-fi, but mostly his stories revolve around human interactions and life changes. His first novel was the sci-fi trilogy Darkmatter, which was started before E-Books existed. His second was Sakuya Stood In The Road, a fantasy fan-lit piece.Afterward was: Champ, Valkiree, The Elf War, and lately the Black Magic series.Scott currently lives in the Denver suburbs of Colorado.

Book preview

Prologue

The Galina Experiments – Summary notes by Graeme Hartley, Ph.D.

It was the scientists from the University of Colorado who sent us the coffin. The United States Army had exhumed it from the local cemetery and seen a blue glow. They quickly transported it to the nearest facility that had a reasonable chance of figuring out what was happening. The facts the army knew was: 1) It was Galina Black in the coffin; 2) Inessa Black had visited the coffin and retrieved something from it; 3) that something was blue.

They should have sent it to a national physics laboratory, such as Livermore. But as it turned out, the army delivered it to a nearby hospital. Meanwhile, Inessa was ripping through the United States and they were quickly finding out what wasn’t working. The army probably said to the medical doctors something like, What can you make of this? We need a weapon – anything.

The hospital was staffed by medical doctors who were already undulated with corpses, injured police, and military personnel. The hospital staff did all they could, they froze the entire coffin – it was after all a coffin that still had a decomposing body in it, as it had for the last year. Then the doctors called in scientists from a close university, which happened to be the University of Colorado, in Boulder.

The coffin was transferred to the university, where the blue substance was observed, extracted to some extent then put through x-ray diffraction, hyperspectral imaging and electron scanned. The substance was frozen, heated to steam, centrifuged, and subjected to a hundred chemical tests. It was determined to be nothing but normal bodily fluids, mostly water. But it didn’t behave like water, it was viscus and had photonic emissions. They knew something was missing – something very important. So scientists and equipment were urgently called in from many places – universities and corporate laboratories. They repeated the experiments again and again, but they were running out of time. Inessa smashed Washington DC and was heading back west, with a vengeance.

A commercial aircraft had to be used to relocate the coffin and its contents since by now the United States military was non-operational. Most large jets were already gone and the ones that weren’t were occupied with evacuating the country. So some quick phone calls were made and eventually the coffin was put on a private jet, a Gulf Stream, and sent to the last place in the world that Inessa Black would be likely to visit, yet have the facilities to further the research – Australia.

The trip took days, flying around the Pacific Rim, getting fuel where it could. It barely made it, China was shooting down anything that came close to its boarders, although the riots had not yet started. The three American scientists accompanying the coffin did not inform the Australian government what was on the plane – it was just one of thousands coming in from all over the world, Sydney Airport was clogged with refugees.

In Sydney, the American scientists sought out other scientists, which of course was CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the name of the Australian national laboratory. Only then did the Americans inform anyone of what was in their plane, and even then, they only did it in whispers.

CSIRO went into action. A secret laboratory was setup in the outback, far from any main roads that Inessa might travel along if she came to Australia. Wanaaring, a very small town in New South Wales along the Paroo River, was chosen as the site. Wanaaring was selected because a CSIRO chemist owned a property a mile northeast of Wanaaring that he inherited from his father, and the property contained a barn. For a hectic month, the barn was discretely converted into a state-of-the-art laboratory and the population of Wanaaring expanded tenfold with researchers, including myself, a biochemist.

While the world was consumed by Inessa, who changed her tactics to an erratic zigzagging, as if unsure where she wanted to go, we extracted all the remaining blue essence from the coffin. Governments around the world, China, Russia, India—and everywhere between—were disintegrating without any help from Inessa. There wasn’t a scientist in the world who wasn’t trying to unlock the mystery of the spells. But scientists were becoming rare, communication between laboratories even rarer. Desperate measures were put in place, Wanaaring was isolated – the roads in and out were not only barricaded but plowed up. Trenches were dug around the perimeter to keep out the rioters or any refugees who headed that way. A military detachment would have been worthless, the spells ensured that.

But, Australia was one of the few countries that withstood the riots well. By the time the Garvice Laws were made and adopted, it only lost seventy percent of its population. Not as good as some Scandinavian countries, but not bad either, considering what became of most of Eurasia. Electricity was restored before our generator fuel was consumed – our laboratory survived.

While the world was crumbling, we pulverized every organ of Galina’s desiccated body. The parts were liquefied, centrifuged, vibrated, heated and the blue essence collected – every last microgram. We did the same to the clothing, the interior padding in the coffin, and even the coffin itself. Interestingly, the essence was found in most everything, without favoring any particular part of the coffin or cadaver. Thus we had in our possession a sizable sample of the blue essence.

We see the essence as an entranceway to E-Space. For us it has no ability, although it would likely further enhance Inessa’s ability – if she were to obtain it. However, our secrecy ensured that Inessa had not been informed of its retrieval. We made a contingency plan to destroy the essence in the event that Inessa came for us, which was to vaporize it, releasing the molecules into the atmosphere. If we did not have time for that, the backup plan was to pour the essence into the nearby Paroo River, where it would flow to the ocean and be too diluted to exploit.

And so the experiments began. We had to figure out what the essence was, nothing less than the whole world was at stake. We already possessed the results of the numerous failed attempts by the Americans, so we were not starting from scratch. We also had tidbits of theoretical information that was flowing around the world by various scientists, particularly out of the United States, and more particularly a certain hospital in Pittsburgh Ohio. It was thin, nebulous observations, that all pointed in one direction, the quarks in the essence were intertwined with each other and with unseen dimensions. Furthermore, in those other dimensions was a vestige of a human mind – the particles were attached to that mind.

We were stocked with laboratory animals – some mice and one chimpanzee. We proceed straight to biological experimentation, injecting the mice – there was no effect. We retrieved the blue essence and tried it in our chimpanzee test subject, which produced the same negative result. These results were not unexpected. So we moved on to human experiments – Dr. Minerva Parks volunteered. Sacrificing a few milligrams of the precious essence, we injected her, there was no effect. Perhaps injecting it into a human zygote, which if allowed to develop while saturated with the essence, might have a long-term effect, but that was impractical. So we switched from biological experiments to trying to send signals through the essence.

Our electronics engineers and physicists mixed the essence with a gallium-arsenic mixture of a semiconductor as an impurity. It was noted that often the E-Space-connected electrons tended to flow out of the experiment vessels, so the electrons had to be isolated by semiconductors. From this we created light-emitting diodes, four-thousand ninety-six of them, which consumed ten percent of our remaining essence. The electrodes were laid out on a large circuit board, an array of sixty-four by sixty-four. The diodes would naturally have a feint blue glow from the essence in them, but when we activated them they would be stimulated to glow white as any LED would. The engineers chilled the diodes to near zero, then passed high-frequency electrical currents into the mixture to stimulate the E-Space connections. The experiment took weeks to set up.

After a day of having a simple array of four-thousand glowing lights, it changed. Something was happening, the essence-impregnated mixtures started forming varying resistance at different frequencies and times, which was visible as a time-varying intensity of the normal diode photonic emissions. This effect was not something intrinsic to our equipment, it was information transference from other dimensions. We had our breakthrough – we were ecstatic. We found the cryogenic chilling was no longer needed, the information pathways had been set and continued at room temperature. But no matter how we studied it, the pattern of diode resistance appeared to be random noise.

Inessa finished her loop through Africa, starting her first pass through the burnt cities of Europe.

After a week of studying the random lights brightening then dimming, semi-regular patterns began to emerge, the brightness sweeping across the array, in one direction then another, clumps brightening then dimming. We recorded these events, but to our astonishment, they only occurred when someone was looking at the lights, and to further our astonishment, it had to be our electronics engineer, Marcus Pinally.

Marcus spent more time looking at the lights than anyone, having built the circuit board, and they were only responding to him. In short order, Marcus found he could predict the patterns, by placing a finger on any single diode and calling out when it would brighten or dim – he could not explain how.

So we started to study Marcus. He had no physical contact with the essence, but somehow his mind and the essence had become connected. Using a hyperspectral analyzer, as a geologist would use for clay identification, we detected a faint blue emission from his eyes. We concluded that just by studying the diode pattern with his human mind, something on the other side is recognizing him and new essence, which did not originate from Galina, was forming in his brain.

We were wildly theorizing, not sure if it was Galina or just a natural effect from the E-Space connections. And more importantly, where do we take the new-formed connections from there.

Meanwhile, a subtle change appears in the spells, flying spells appeared as well as more spells that interact with biology. It is theorized that Galina is naturally growing larger, manipulating things on a more detailed level, such as to enhance plant growth or manipulation of animal thoughts. We formulate secret plans, planning to terminate Marcus if he starts becoming too much like Inessa. Inessa can read minds, if he can read our minds he might strike first – we become scared and unsure how to proceed.

However, Marcus shows no mind-reading ability, even though we subject him to numerous tests. What does happen is that he forms keratin deposits on his head. That was just the start. Horns develop – his skin changes color and texture. Not uniform changes, but it varies across his body, changing and re-changing.

Marcus thinks he has some limited control over the changes, that it is responding to some of his unrestrained thoughts, but he cannot stop them. The horns go away and his body hair changes to scales, a primitive form that might have been in cryptic vestige DNA, but then he forms feathers in other parts of his body, which like the horns, could not have been from vestige DNA. His iris morph, the pupils alter shape. His bones thin and shorten, but not consistently. He is in mild pain, but his internal organs appear functional, but they too are transforming.

We are taking lots of samples, tissue, bone, blood, spinal fluids and sperm – the changes are taking place on a molecular level, the DNA was morphing, mostly into non-fatal forms, but not always. His mental coherency diminishes, but he senses the weather without looking outside, or when a rabbit or kangaroo comes by the compound. The effect accelerates, his organs grow incompatible with each other, and he finally loses consciousness and a day later dies. His monstrous body is frozen and nobody dares look at the diodes, which have returned to pure randomness.

We’re baffled. The diode pattern interacted with Marcus’s mind, creating new connections to E-Space, and hence to Galina, and through the connections information from E-Space transformed his whole body into a combination of shapes. The individual shapes are not unfamiliar to us, but the combination and the manner of transforming were. Another thing we now had was a new batch of essence, that from Marcus’s cadaver. We harvest all of it. There is not much, but it is thought to be connected to E-Space in a different way than the original from Galina, perhaps in a better way.

We theorize that it may conform to an adult male better than Galina’s. But where to go next is a difficult decision. The answer seems obvious, more biological testing on a human, but should we? We might kill someone else, making them horrible monsters. We have a meeting about abandoning the research – the team is split – we decide to think about it and have a vote in the morning. We feel the pressure of time, Inessa is in China and heading south.

That night, Dr. River Walker, a young and foolish biochemist, injects himself with all of the essence retrieved from Marcus. I find Dr. Walker sitting in the lab in the morning, the empty syringe beside him. He grins at me and says, I did it.

Right away we isolate him and start taking samples, just as we did with Marcus. At first, there is no effect, just as with Minerva Parks, but then signs appear. The effect is different, calmer, not so much physical as mental. Like Marcus, he starts sensing his surroundings, the one outward manifestation we can detect. We find that his sperm has higher concentrations of the E-connections than any other organ, perhaps except for his brain, but that is uncertain. Unlike with Marcus, the connections are more ordered and he shows no sign of physical morphing – this is promising.

We wait as long as we can, three days, Inessa is lingering in Asia but has made it to Indonesia – she’s heavily pregnant . We’re not sure what to do – with Dr. Walker’s foolish, yet fruitful action, our research is on the cusp of expanding, but we fear that we are going to be destroyed if Inessa discovers us. Worse, Inessa might retrieve the samples, making her all the more powerful.

If the electricity is lost, there is only enough fuel remaining in the tanks for a few days, most was consumed when the power was lost during the riots months ago. Although we remain isolated, the telly shows Inessa diverting to Fiji and we think perhaps we are safe. But then she changes course, arriving in Sydney. She flew there – in an ocean liner – we ready the incinerator. God help us.

Inessa is in Sydney and we have a meeting, agreeing that although we are making E-Links, they are not fully achieving their goal of making a good, usable E-connection – all connections seem to be out of our control. Galina is calling the shots, not us. Our world is visible from E-Space, but E-Space is not visible to us, and perhaps never will be. Doctor Walker appears fine, with some enhanced perception, but it’s minor, like sensing rabbits, cane toads and kangaroos around the laboratory building.

Minerva angrily speaks out, We have to go the next step! She explains that her ovum must be fertilized with River’s sperm. For a scientist to experiment on themselves is not unheard of and certainly, for months, we have pushed aside ethics. I am doubtful, but many of the female scientists agree with Minerva, they are willing to take the chance. The plan is that to preserve the E-Links we have made, the women, young and old, will be artificially inseminated from cryogenic vials of Dr. Walker’s sperm, then flee the compound. It is hoped that the resulting embryos will have a meaningful, non-destructive connection to E-Space.

We acted fast that morning. We loaded up all the military trucks that could get across the Outback flats, Dr. Walker and a handful of other scientists went with them – but not everyone can escape, there are too many of us. One group of women will try to get to North America, another to Europe, and one group will try to hide in South America. Minerva wants to return to her home in Perth. Russia and China are considered too devastated to consider.

The trucks leave and the remainder of us go back inside, preparing to incinerate all the glowing essence we have, which is not an easy thing for us to do. Inessa seems to know of us and comes our way, we see her coming on the telly. Before we actually start incinerating the essence, everyone drops dead except me. I don’t know why I was spared.

Thankfully the women are gone, safe, for a while. I open the incinerator door, ready to throw in the containers of essence – it would only take ten seconds but I hesitate. Inessa spared me, I don’t know why. Did she make a mistake? I turn from the hot incinerator and look at the telly – camera crews are following her as she travels toward the laboratory. I consider killing myself to help preserve the secrecy of the women, but I know it’s too late. I’m full of doubt, and I have no gun with me.

For ten minutes I wait, looking at the numerous vials of essence and the incinerator and eventually Inessa arrives in a motorhome that had no difficulty with the barricade trenches or torn-up road. She walks up and knocks on the door of the laboratory.

I see her in the surveillance camera – what a sight, standing there in a large flowing dress, her priestesses all around, her blue eyes looking up at me through the camera. It takes me two minutes to compose myself and then I open the door. She steps in and calmly says to me, Graeme, could you please rebury my sister. Then she leaves.

It was not clear if Inessa meant to rebury Galina in her old grave in Colorado, or just anyplace. The world seemed big – travel options were limited. I dig a hole and carefully intern the various bags containing the frozen soup that Galina had been turned into – different parts of her were in different bags.

So to this day, anyone can go to Wanaaring, and a little way north of town they can visit the old CSIRO laboratory. And outside the back door, amongst a peaceful patch of eucalyptus trees near the Paroo River, they can see a ring of rocks that mark the resting place of the human remnants of a goddess.

– Graeme Hartley, Ph.D., Biochemist.

Chapter 1

Spells are, without a doubt, abominations of nature. Yet, with time comes a sense of familiarity. Familiarity leads to understanding. This understanding is surficial, yet sufficient to accept what once was unacceptable. Time is the enemy of all who resist.

Quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general relativity went through the same acceptance hardships, but who can doubt them now?

— Our Weird New World, by Lori Anderson

***

Klein opened the brass valve welded to the top of the three-inch diameter water-well casing and looked down the dark hole. The opening looked clear, but he could only see a foot inside, the water was perhaps a hundred feet down – he wasn’t too sure.

He glanced around, the funnel around the well opening was in place, the diffuser was ready to swing into position and the little ditch he dug was ready. He turned back to the water well and spoke into it, "How we supposed to get it out?" He was rewarded with a rush of outflowing air, which the water below pushed out ahead of itself. Klein quickly swung the diffuser in place over the open valve and stepped back out of the splash zone.

It only took three seconds for the gush of fresh groundwater to rush up the well-casing and hit the diffuser, which diverted the fountain into the catchment funnel that led the water to a wide pipe and from there to the ditch. The ditch then channeled the water to his cornfield. The diffuser was made from an ordinary stainless-steel mixing bowl, like what could be found in any kitchen. The bowl attached with a hinge to a metal frame that went around the wellhead.

For a few seconds he watched the water rise on its own out of the pipe – once again contemplating all he didn’t know. At one time the world seemed to be solid, physical. But now, when whimsical patterns of squishy air pulses could be used to move real solid objects, well, the proof was in the pudding – the world was indeed only a dream and perhaps nothing really mattered. Someday he might wake up, but even that was doubtful. Oddly, even though the world was no longer real and solid, he still needed to eat.

He knew from experience the water would only flow for five minutes before the universe decided it had enough nonsense, but it would suffice. His cornfield wasn’t that big, only a quarter acre. His tomato field, however, was a full five acres. When watering his tomatoes, he used a much bigger water well and a large above-ground water tank. With his six-inch well, he could extract nearly three thousand gallons of water with one incantation, which would fill the tank, and from there the water would flow to his tomatoes as needed. He once calculated it up – with a few words he could unleash about zero point three kilowatt-hours of dream energy, not counting internal friction.

Looking over at his tomatoes, Klein recalled a tomato plant he and his father planted in a patio pot at their Sunnyvale home. His dad hadn’t been a farmer, but somehow the memory of the tomato plant stuck, a token from when the world made sense.

He used to resist using spells, they didn’t seem right. So many nights were spent lying with a burning stomach and the wrongness ripping through his mind, of all that had been lost and that death would be only a release. Spells were a vice provided by some devil to weaken humanity. The bits of a wind-powered generator stuck behind his garage, which he could never get working. In a testament to his weakness, the old generator rusted in peace and the devil was winning.

Klein was primarily a tomato farmer, and since tomatoes produced an early crop, his tomatoes were a good source of income. Most people concentrated on staples. Therefore, he was the only large-scale tomato farmer he knew of in the Fall City area, not bad for someone just twenty-five years old.

Before being a tomato farmer, he had been a computer programmer, which was worthless in the post-apocalyptic world, just as was any money he once had in the bank. He no longer had much money – or a wife.

The water wells that nourished his crops were not his – he had no idea why there were two wells on the property, an old small one and the bigger one. It wasn’t his farm, he wasn’t living in his own house. And the clothes he wore he just found. Even the children he was raising were not his, although he had grown attached to them.

Klein watched the water flow through the ditches he had dug, going just as it always did. He waited another two minutes for the water to stop surging out of the well, then he closed the brass valve so the kids would be less likely to drop stones into the hole – it seemed like the thing to do.

He spent a few minutes pulling the larger weeds out of the rows of corn, then turned and walked back to his house three hundred feet away.

His house was a mess, toys were scattered around the lawn, and although there was a spell for mowing grass, it only worked on lawns that weren’t being overtaken by weeds. Stupid, he thought, a weed-killing spell would have been practical , not the mowing spell. Who needed a lawn anyway?

There were other dumb spells, like one to drain ink from a tube. His spell book even contained an entry to pull all the blue beads out of a pile of mixed beads. Some weren’t worth writing down, such as one that was rumored to turn a page in a certain magazine that no longer existed.

On the other hand, there was a spell to sharpen a knife and one to draw a circle. There was even a spell for leveling a board. With a simple phrase he could do something silly like clean a tissue, or hold a house together during a tornado – if it ever came up. He could carve the name of his dead wife in a piece of wood, or even stone, with only his bare finger. But what he really needed was something for weeds.

Sarah came running around a corner, the girl laughing in delight, and a few seconds later was Derek, her little brother, chasing her with a captured snake. Sarah was twelve, two years older than Derek, both were orphans, as were most children.

Klein shouted, Sarah, did you get the laundry done!

Sarah slowed and shouted, Yeah! then ran inside. He suspected she was entering the house to finish the laundry, mainly to bring it out for hanging.

Seeing what was about to happen, he shouted, Derek! No snakes in the house!

I know! Derek yelled back, then slowed to a walk and let the snake go in the yard.

Klein stopped and looked at the weeds then reached down and pulled one out. He didn’t know the name of the plant – it was just some weed, like a billion others on the farm. He dropped the weed, sighed at his tiny progress, and entered the house.

The television was on, it was a PBS children’s show, a rerun from a bygone era. All television reruns were old – as if nobody could make a new TV show anymore. If it wasn’t an old rerun, it was live news and there was only one station they received – Seattle. Seattle was twenty miles due west as the crow flies.

Darla, Jennie and Michael were watching the children’s show. They were all younger than Derek. Klein had no infants, but then he also had no older kids – Sarah was the oldest at twelve.

Klein walked into the kitchen and checked the voltmeter mounted on the wall, it was down to a hundred and five volts. Sarah had indeed been running the washing machine. He opened the door under the sink where a thick, zero-gauge cable snaked up from the basement. He touched the cable and said, "Dead again?" The cable warmed a bit and he let go, the kitchen meter now read over a hundred and fifteen volts. It should have been close to a hundred and thirty, but he had a bad battery in the basement. It was no immediate concern – there was enough juice to last all night even with a heater going in the kid’s room.

Sarah walked by carrying an enormous basket of wet clothes that probably weighed as much as she did. It was a nice day, it would dry in an hour or less. He set a pot of water on the stove, looked to make sure the two little girls were not listening, and exclaimed, "Christ!" He then dumped a tray of homemade noodles into the boiling water for lunch. The garage was full of canned food, enough to easily last to next spring, but he was saving it for an emergency.

It didn’t take Sarah long to hang the wet clothes on the clotheslines stretched over the weedy lawn. Between the Lifting spell and the Wind spell, she easily flopped the bedding and his working pants over the lines.

The Wind spell took a bit of getting used to, controlling it to blow just as you wanted. But it did come in handy to air out a room, extinguish a candle without having to stand, or help drape a wet sheet on a clothesline.

He fixed six plates of pasta and announced, Lunch time!

The children let up a cheer and came running from the family room. Wash your hands, Klein reminded them.

He had five kids, the average amount – five children for every adult. Some adopted less, some more. The Barkley family, just to the north, had twelve, including three infants. But the Barkleys were now a married couple, having married in the spring. Klein didn’t think he could ever marry again, not after watching his own child die in his wife’s belly. There were plenty of single women, but it was just too soon for most people – he still wore his wedding ring.

The children’s show stopped and the noon news hour started. The news always began with world news and then trickled down to the local Puget Sound area news.

The world news was, of course, about the new baby born into the world. Sarah, plopped on the couch and seeing the infant, exclaimed, Oh, he’s so cute!

Klein contemplated Sarah, the girl had seen plenty of death, gruesome death, but hadn’t witnessed her own family die. She had been in a school bus full of children being evacuated when Inessa Black hit her hometown of Everett. She had gotten off as easy as anyone could.

Sarah never had a father, and so quickly took to calling him Dad, something that had yet to happen with the boys. The boy, Michael, was the most traumatized, being quiet and reserved, but his nightmares were diminishing as the memories became less vivid.

Klein turned to the news of the infant. The video clip came from Bulgaria, the town of Ruse, situated on the Danube. The town was famous – or infamous, depending on your religion. It was where Inessa Black finally settled, finding a job as a barmaid . Her residence was in the upstairs portion of the tavern and that was where the baby was that everyone was forced to watch every time the news came on. Not that Sarah or the other kids minded.

The world news eventually managed to wrench itself from baby Bleu and moved on to an electric train in India that was up and running. It reminded Klein that the G-Linked world still ran on electricity and he had a battery that needed replacing. All his batteries were old, he found them in abandoned cars.

For the first month, after the riots hit, car batteries were essential for electricity. With a small inverter and a single car battery you could keep a radio going or power a light. Cooking had been with a campfire though. With a bigger inverter, a hot pot or electric skillet could be run. A large inverter in the garage took the one-twenty volts DC and converted it to one-twenty AC, which flowed throughout the house wires – running the refrigerator, washing machine and television.

He bought the three-kilowatt inverter in town, Fall City, five miles to the north. Someone had salvaged the inverter from some house that once had solar panels on the roof, probably in Seattle.

Luckily the water heater required no electricity, it was just a cut-open tank in the attic that could be filled, heated with a simple spell then left to flow through the house pipes as needed.

The TV news switched to the reopening ceremony of the University of Houston, with some fanfare. No university on the pacific coast had reopened, but it was just a matter of time. The high schools were going, some colleges were preparing.

California had been hit hard – the accepted estimate was that only two percent of California survived – that was mostly due to the riots. After the riots, Inessa Black culled the remains. He was one of less than a million that survived, much of which was only children .

California still had its climate, which was a pull for refugees swelling its population. It was now mostly an agricultural area. Other places, such as Houston, who hadn’t had their infrastructure destroyed, fared better as an industrial sector. Where he now lived, Fall City, was too far north to have a strong survival attraction, but it was where he decided to plant roots. It didn’t yet have a city council so there was no mayor or any services such as the internet.

The television showed a short segment of a Garvice Trial. The trial had been held over in North Carolina, a man was bound and blindfolded in the center of a field, surrounding him were twelve jurors and numerous observers. Garvice Trials were always very public events, however, the news station only stated that the man was found guilty, not going into detail.

Aw, Derek bemoaned. They never show it!

Klein replied to the boy, And a good thing too, I’m trying to eat lunch. He knew the kids were well familiar with Garvice Trials. Although his kids only knew a handful of child-safe spells, they were taught the consequences early on of using them in anger or haphazardly. Michael had been exposed to the more deadly spells, but luckily he never showed any sign of remembering them, and Klein wasn’t about to ask him for fear of jogging his memory. Plenty of children were put down in the weeks after the riots – another gruesome nightmare he tried not to think about, but still did.

Can I go see the next one? Sarah asked.

No, Klein scolded. They’re not for entertainment. Imagine if it was me being tried? What would happen to you?

Sarah was silent, looking back to her plate of food.

Klein continued, Most everyone who’s executed has a family, loved ones. The trials are terrible, terrible things – hope you never see one.

There were Garvice Trials around the country every day – Fall City had its share, but it had been a good month since the last. The only reason the North Carolina trial was shown, was because of how formal it was, the jurors evenly spaced in a wide circle around the accused, the other neat ring of observers. He knew that it would have been only seconds between the judgment and the execution, another bloody patch in the well-used killing field.

The trials were just a part of life, the Garvice Laws were important – if the person was found to have killed out of blind fear, they usually were Smashed or Vibrated on the spot. Sometimes the guilty were let off with banishment or warnings if the killing spell had been cast by accident, but that was rare.

Detective Bleu Green was the only killing spell that was somewhat acceptable, as it only killed those near who really intended to hurt you, but even then a trial could be held to see if it was really needed.

The trials were keeping the devil at bay, but sometimes it felt as if they were just what the devil wanted.

The news switched to more pertinent local topics – supplies that had come in, beef and crop prices. After it was all done, the TV station just couldn’t help itself and once again showed clips of the baby boy in Bulgaria, its overly bright blue eyes and no less than a dozen nannies swarming around.

There was one thing the TV never showed – spells. There were some children’s spells, but they were only taught by the child’s parents, unless they learned it from a sibling or school friend. Klein momentarily closed his eyes, so many orphans had been killed after the riots, simply because they were too young for the power they wielded. Thousands of children were smashing people during the riots – just repeating the devil-words their parents taught them. Relatively few had been captured to stand trial.

A commercial started for a Seattle auto repair shop and Klein said, Michael, if you’re done, clean your plate and fork.

Michael didn’t reply but quickly got up from the dining table. Derek, seeing his opportunity, followed his older adopted brother.

Eat everything, Klein warned. That’s homemade pasta, not easy to make.

After lunch, Klein went to the basement and said, "Damn thing burned out somewhere," which temporarily altered his mind, like a hallucinogenic drug, so that he could sense the voltages all around him. He easily saw which of the ten batteries on his rack was bad – two others were marginal, only three were good. The bad battery would need replacing.

Car batteries were getting harder to come by – they were prizes that were sought. Many could be found – if you wished to venture deep into the ruins of the large cities. But for the most part, the easily gotten batteries were already collected and sold, that was how he had gotten three of his, rounding out his rack of ten. Another was in his pickup truck, but that was it. Batteries had been going for only a dollar, but last he saw they were at fifteen bucks each and no doubt were higher now.

With two hundred million abandoned cars in the United States, he’d thought there would be plenty. But the world still ran on electricity, and there weren’t any power plants left in Washington State, not even wind farms. Batteries were not optional.

Klein bit his lip, he needed a new battery. He routed a cable to bypass the bad battery so he could disconnect it without interrupting the house power. It was hardly a task worthy of his electronics degree, but he abandoned electronics for programming long ago. He grasped the battery with both hands and said, "Oh God! Give me the strength!" and easily walked it up the basement steps and out the garage door and to his old blue pickup truck, setting it gently in the back.

Going to town? Derek asked.

Klein turned to the boy standing behind him. Gotta get a replacement battery, Klein explained. He knew what the next sentence out of Derek’s mouth was going to be.

Can I go?

Is your homework done?

Yeah.

He contemplated Derek, the boy had an older sister who hadn’t been seen since Inessa Black visited last Christmas. Derek was always anxious to go into town and look for her, but the likelihood that his sister wound up anywhere near Fall City was a hundred to one. Months ago they put up notices in surrounding communities, but there had been no response.

Everyone lost family. He himself once had a new wife with a baby on the way. He had it all, and if he hadn’t managed to escape from the bay area, he’d be dead. Instead, he and his wife hid out in a wheatfield on the east side of Stockton for a month to escape the riots.

They hadn’t been alone that night. There were many out the fields, hiding, digging foxholes, scavenging for food at night. The flames of Stockton hadn’t lasted long. It wasn’t long after that, on the night of December twenty-fifth, Christmas day, that his wife and unborn child died. Klein knew he would forever carry the memory of laying in the hole he dug for his family and crying, cursing God and the universe. It was Christmas, the day the universe changed, the day the devil revealed himself. It was a Christmas to remember.

It wasn’t till days later that he learned that Inessa Black had visited California that night. He tried to not think of it too much, but he still did.

He never found a single surviving relative, although information was sketchy. There were internet sites that listed survivors so that people could hunt for relatives, but there was no internet in Fall City.

Klein nodded, Sure. Get Darla and Jennie and we’ll pick a basket of tomatoes to take with us. We can also return the empty jars.

It was only an hour later when Klein put two baskets of ripe tomatoes in his pickup, along with a box of empty mason jars.

Fall City once had a population of about three thousand, then its population dropped to well under a hundred for one unpleasant reason or another, but now the supermarket was doing good business. Klein found an unused table and set up his box of mason jars and the two bushels of tomatoes. It was Sunday, many were selling and buying. He found a little weighing scale in the market’s back room that he could use to weigh his tomatoes.

He was walking back to his table with the scales when a tall, middle-aged, well-dressed man came up and politely asked in a deep voice, Excuse me. Do you live here?

Klein didn’t recognize the man, a stranger, he looked healthy – his fingers were white. Strangers weren’t unusual, people moved into the Puget Sound area all the time, many from the larger cities that were still struggling. Klein stopped and replied, Yes, I have a farm nearby.

Oh, a native?

No, only been here a few months.

The man nodded understandingly. I see. A refugee, like so many of us.

Have you just moved here? Klein asked.

The man shook his head, I’m only passing through, but should be here for a few days. Inessa allowed me to live and for that I am grateful. How about you? Did Inessa read your soul?

Klein nodded, Down in California. Can’t say it was my wish though.

The man returned the nod and said with a smile, Nice talking to you. Have a good day.

Klein continued to his table with the scales only to find Sarah haggling with a woman over the price of a few tomatoes.

Klein didn’t recognize the woman. She looked a bit disheveled and he habitually looked at the woman’s fingers, they weren’t black. He hadn’t seen many with the plague, none recently – most who died of it never left the cities.

Unlike the man he just spoke with, the woman’s hair wasn’t well-kept, her clothing looked dirty and a bit ragged.

Klein said as he walked up, We would like twenty cents per pound.

The frowning woman replied with an Australian accent, I have no American money.

Klein said, We can barter, do you have anything?

The woman looked at him, as if determining if he was lying. He hadn’t used the Lying spell in weeks, and mostly only when trying to figure out if it was Derek or Michael who started a fight. The spell was socially distasteful, as was the spell to know someone’s name.

The woman looked around at the other tables, nobody else was selling tomatoes. She turned back to him and said, I have some Fiji money, can you take that?

Klein glanced over at Sarah, who had probably been struggling with that very question. Then he looked back at the anxious woman, noticing that she looked a bit pregnant. He said, I have no idea what the exchange rate is.

About two to one, the woman said.

Are you new here?

I just arrived today.

Any children?

The woman looked aghast at the personal question, and Klein added, There’s children that could be adopted, check the bulletin board over on the north wall.

The north wall?

Klein nodded and pointed to the other side of the store, It’s a place for notices and things for sale. There’s a place where people post for children, adopting or unloading. Are you planning on staying, or moving on through?

I am not sure, the woman said as she gazed across the market, which consisted of dozens of tables and booths that were set up.

Plenty of nice houses here. Good soil and water.

Houses?

Klein replied, If you plan to stay.

The woman was just looking around, not answering.

Klein sighed, I’m sorry, until there is a money exchanger, foreign currency isn’t worth much. You should keep it till you can convert it. If you plan to stay, I can make a tab for you.

A tab?

Klein nodded and opened his money pouch and extracted a pad of note paper, where he wrote entries of other people who owed him money. He certainly was on other people’s ledgers, but that’s the way things worked.

He asked, How much do you need?

The woman said, At least four.

Four pounds?

Four tomatoes.

Klein scratched his cheek, looking her over. She was desperate. He said, That’s not much. How about two pounds and it can go on your tab. You can repay when you get some money.

Is there any interest?

Klein shook his head, No.

The woman thought about it, apparently unfamiliar with the system. She then said, Okay.

Klein pulled out a pencil and asked, What’s your name?

You don’t know?

Klein smiled and shook his head.

The woman said, Amelia Banner.

Sarah, weigh out two pounds for Amelia. He turned to Amelia and said as he wrote in his ledger, That’s forty cents on your tab. He looked at her and said, I suggest you get a ledger to keep a record of what you owe.

Sarah put the tomatoes in an old plastic bag, then handed the bag to the woman. Klein knew there was a good chance he would never receive payment, but that too was how things worked.

It wasn’t long before the box of glass preserving jars was sold, everyone needed them and their price was well established in the community, twenty cents for the quart size, ten for the pints. The tomatoes were also going well, Mrs. Mersk bought a load, as she often did for the ketchup and sauces she made and sold.

Klein, however, kept watching Amelia Banner, who looked completely out of place, walking around the market with her bag of tomatoes. She managed to buy four eggs, using some of the tomatoes as payment. Klein could use eggs, and if Mr.