Space Magus

By Scot Morgan

A mysterious beam of light strikes Earth for the second time in seven years, bringing with it a creature of death and destruction. But for Adam Magus it also brings a long-awaited bridge to his past.

 

Too long without any magic in his life, Adam must reclaim his former glory as he joins his fellow stranded travelers: a bartender with a battleaxe, a kind-hearted construction worker and a lethal night watchman in an adventure across space and time.

 

Along with a writer, an astrophysicist, and an unfulfilled corporate vice president, they must race to save a distant world, the future of humanity, and the woman Adam loves.

 

Love, sanity, and loyalty will be tested before their journey's end. Some will fall. Others will rise as heroes.

 

To succeed they must uncover a secret from the dawn of creation, a secret wielded by a despotic emperor to enslave his people.

 

Only then can they stop the spread of his sadistic rule and open the portal that will take them home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inka Press
• Release date: Apr 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223626121

Book preview

1

The Beam

William widened his green eyes, scrunched his freckled nose, then leaned back in his wheeled swivel chair. His white lab coat bunched up over the top of the low gray seat-back cushion. The chair creaked and clicked. He exhaled, then pushed his freckled hand across his face and up over his orange curly hair. He flicked his hand open at the three flat panel monitors in front of him, then turned to Robert. Tell me again why we are spending our life sitting in this observatory.

Robert answered with an exaggerated staccato delivery, his best Captain Kirk impersonation. Because it’s the final frontier. One, then the other of his bony shoulders rose and fell in a contortion synchronized with his words. Robert more resembled his namesake, Robert Sagan, than a young William Shatner. He lacked Sagan’s more refined demeanor, however. His movements came straight out of Jim Carrey’s playbook, though he only let loose when working with his friend.

Where no science nerd who ever wants to have a girlfriend will boldly go, William said.

Robert turned his well-oiled hand-stitched high-back Italian leather chair to face William. He leaned forward a few inches off the seat. That’s NOT the way the opening sequence goes!

William shrugged. Yeah, but it should. I think the new spinoff starts with something like that.

Three vents above them shot out a blast of cool air. Several stacks of papers between the keyboards and monitors on their shared desk ruffled. The clear acrylic desk ran the length of one wall in the fifteen by twenty foot room. Metal square panels covered the raised floor. The panels hid the subfloor space that housed endless bundles of cables. Every chair movement or footstep echoed in the chilled air underneath.

Robert settled back into the thick soft cushion of his chair. The discrepancy in furniture arose from the fact that Robert's boss gave him the task of ordering the chairs at company expense right after William had gotten the better of Robert in one of William’s epic pranks. The prank involved a fast-drying adhesive and the eyepiece of the large reflecting telescope in the adjacent room.

Robert took pride in being a science nerd. He owned that title at seventeen, when he decided to devote his life to astrophysics.

That decision came exactly seven years and two months ago when Robert, along with every other person on the planet, thanks to global instantaneous news coverage, witnessed the most spectacular event of the twenty-first century.

William had been impressed by it also. That’s why he worked in the observatory now too, but he had lost the sense of wonder over the last few years.

Seven years and two months ago, Robert sat for dinner with Rebecca and Sydney, his two best friends in high school. The crowded restaurant smelled of spices and cheese, a perfect night for Robert. Two of the most beautiful girls in high school also happened to think him an all around great guy. That was icing.

A special breaking news brief interrupted the sitcom that played on the television in Mario’s Pizza. Through the laughs and shout outs from the rowdy crowd of hormone-driven peers, they heard the announcement. We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you this breaking news, the forty-ish man in the standard blazer, dress shirt and tie said. He spoke in a professional tone with measured enthusiasm, but the strain of masking his excitement showed on his face. What you are looking at is a live video feed from just outside Kearny Marsh north of the 280 Jersey Turnpike intersection.

The picture-in-picture window on the flat panel suspended from the ceiling over their table showed a white beam of light coming out of the clear night sky and down to the ground. The beam appeared a few hundred feet wide at the highest visible point and tapered to a few feet in width as it neared the ground. It might have been a spotlight, but it pulsed every minute or so, which made it apparent that it originated from above and shot downward.

A few people yelled for everyone to look at the screens. All forty diners in the room stopped talking and watched the spectacle.

A new video feed played over the brown-haired anchorman’s shoulder. Reports are unconfirmed at this time, but we are being told that the unexplained beam of light is not related to any military exercise in the area. Though storms have been moving over the area for the last several hours, National Weather Service officials are saying the beam is too sustained to be lightning, and is not a weather phenomenon of any known sort.

Robert, Rebecca, and Sydney looked at each other, then nodded in unison. They grabbed their styrofoam drink cups and the last three slices of pepperoni mushroom pizza and walked out to Sydney’s car. Thirty minutes, later they arrived at the marsh site to see the light beam. By that time, it had disappeared.

No one could get close to the area for the next month. Five square miles were blocked off by a ring of camouflaged men and their toys. The nation stood on high alert for a time, as our leaders scrambled to determine whether the incident portended a threat and if a foreign government or terrorists were the cause. Ultimately, no determination came except that nobody knew anything definite and more money needed to be pumped into securing the homeland against unknown threats. Eventually only the scientists and the military held any interest in the incident. Robert couldn’t let it go. He decided he would be one of the scientists.

Robert tapped a sequence of keys on his keyboard, while looking at the different screens that cycled on his largest monitor. F4, F5, F6, and so on. The click sound grew louder toward the end.

Don’t break the keys, William said.

He turned to William. The girlfriend reference was harsh, man.

William knew Robert fell out of a serious relationship with Rebecca a year ago, the third fall from the same cliff. Rebecca lived to write. She was art; he was science. Neither one of them could find time in their schedule to be with the one person that mattered most to them. It didn’t work out, but Robert hadn’t moved on entirely.

Robert changed the subject. Did you go through last hour’s data yet?

I was just about to get to that. William rolled his squeaky chair to the station to his right, past the metal box covered with red and orange LEDs and pointless toggle switches. He brought the blinking oddity in to work one day, saying it made the place look more sciencey. That set off a ten minute debate over who had the right to coin new words. The argument ended when both of them conceded Shakespeare had the right, and they left it at that.

William touched the screen in front of him, pulling it out of its slumber. A string of numbers filled the display. He traced his finger across each line. Yep. Ok. Gee. No aliens, and planet Niburu is nowhere in sight.

Pop. Pop. Robert pressed his lips together and popped them open. Then he let out a sigh, making a fluttering sound.

I guess I’ll order us some pizza, Robert said, as he reached for the Enterprise NCC-1701-D phone on his desk. He picked it up with his hand wrapped around the lateral sensor array. He held the ship to his face, so that main bridge portion nearly touched his mouth, and the two impulse engines docked on either side of his ear. He made use of the voice dial feature. Beam me pizza. The sound of a transporter engaging came in stereo from the speakers in the two engine cylinders.

Hold off on the deep dish for a minute buddy, William said, his finger held on the screen keeping his place fourteen lines down. He reached over with his other hand and touched another monitor. The display lit up. He flicked through four windows on the screen. There! he said. Look at this, Robert!

Robert hung up the phone, cutting off the man on the other end of the line, in the middle of the pitch on the specials for the night, ending the call with the sound of a phaser blast.

What is it? Robert wheeled his chair over to William.

See this? William nodded to his right hand, which pointed to one of the readings from last hour’s data.

Yes.

William stared at Robert, raised his eyebrows and tilted his head to the side.

Is that from The Zone? Robert asked.

William curled his closed lips inward and nodded.

And the baseline readings? Robert looked at the other screen William had up.

See for yourself.

Whoa, Robert said. That’s big.

The numbers from last hour’s data of the scans of The Zone and the baseline numbers, which showed radiation level readings taken from the zone over the last seven years since the beam incident, were apart by orders of magnitude.

Robert and William came to work every day because of The Zone. They owed their job to The Zone. The Zone - their name for the area in space just beyond the lunar orbit, determined to be the point of origin of the beam that shot down to Earth seven years before. Saying Sector Gamma, Anomaly 372 got old after two days on the job, so they started calling it The Zone instead. The investigation of The Zone never became public.

Robert and William gained a front row seat because someone high up in the hall of secrets tapped them during their first year at university. The department head arranged a meeting for them with a man they now called their boss. At the end of the meeting, they both signed a contract to work for the Space Weather and Extra-planetary Communications Agency, a classified stepchild of the Continuity of Government program set up under President Reagan.

They were an obvious choice. Robert and William met their sophomore year at M.I.T.. In short order, each received a doctorate in astrophysics. Both could’ve schooled their professors by the time they were halfway through to completing their dissertations. Both would work for peanuts if it meant being neck deep in space.

This is great! Robert said.

Finally, it gets interesting around here, William said. Ok. We need to patch this through, and then recalibrate the other Sats to get as much on this as we can.

Already on it buddy, Robert said as he typed the commands into his terminal, sending the feed over to the other SWECA stations scattered across North America. Shifting to another keyboard, he sent the requests to commandeer the Hubble, the HAARP system, and the properly outfitted X37s that were available, along with five other systems. I’m not sure which assets are actually going to give us anything, but I’m pulling them all.

Sounds good. I’m calling the boss, William said, dialing what he had designated the Bat-phone by placing a Batman sticker on it a couple of years ago.

Right. Robert rolled his chair back to the screen full of numbers to check the readings again.

Oh yeah! he said.

What?

The readings just tripled! No quadrupled. No… They’re not stopping, Robert said. I think it’s going to happen again.

Sir, William said into the phone, three seven two is on fire.

Tenfold now! Robert shouted.

No, sir. Not an actual fire, but the readings are off the charts and climbing, William said. I think there’s going to be another rift opening up any moment.

Robert drummed three times on his desk.

You see, William. I told you it would be worth it.

Yes, sir. William hung up the phone.

What did he say?

Keep scanning. Keep recording. Sit tight. He’s calling for instructions.

I’ve got Hubble and ground station video up, Robert said.

Still sitting, William kicked the floor with his heels. His chair coasted next to Robert's. They watched the screen, looking at the blackness of space just beyond the moon’s orbital path. The pinpoint light of stars speckled the otherwise black image. The Zone remained, only the stars beyond it made it look otherwise.

William rapped his fingers on the desk.

Did he say how long ‘til he calls back? Robert asked.

No, but he sounded pretty pumped. Shouldn’t be long.

William snapped his fingers, one hand, then the other, then back and forth.

Look at that! Robert said.

Where did those stars go?

A circular area of the image on the screen blackened. The stars around it showed up the same, but in the center of the view the stars disappeared. A bright white pinpoint of light, brighter than the stars, appeared in the black center.

Awesome! Robert said.

The pinpoint exploded into a circle of light encompassing the entire zone area. The white circle of light became a beam shooting down to Earth.

Wow! William said. Where did it hit?

Give me a minute. Robert typed furiously at his terminal. He stopped and turned to William. Siberia.

So much for going to check it out, William said.

The Bat-phone rang.

Robert picked it up. This is Robert.

William leaned in to listen.

Yes, we saw it. I’m sure everybody in Russia saw it.

Understood. Robert hung up the phone.

Well?

You and I just became top secret.

We’re already top secret.

Well, now we’re Secret Squirrel top secret.

Ok, but only if you’re Morocco Mole.

Twenty minutes later, the intercom for the door downstairs buzzed.

Who is it? William asked, pressing the button for the intercom.

SWECA Special Security, the voice came back.

No big surprise there, William said.

Fast though. Do these guys just park outside every day, just in case?

Robert glanced at the security camera feed to see what SWECA Special Security looked like. One of the men flashed an identification card in front of the camera. Robert depressed the button to unlock the door. He held it as the men opened the downstairs door. A two second buzz sound came back through the intercom and echoed through the room.

Robert held a finger up in front of William. From the looks of these guys, you may want to be on your best behavior.

So much for unassuming, William said. Don’t draw attention. Isn’t that the first thing we were taught?

Three men in jeans, black Wolverine boots and bulky leather coats walked up the stairs. If they were trying not to stand out in a crowd, they failed. In the Eastern European Crime Syndicate Bodybuilding Competition they would’ve blended in just fine.

Robert opened the door at the top of the stairs and the two of them waited for their visitors to come up.

The first man’s dark wavy hair appeared in the stairwell, then Robert and William saw his chiseled face, fixed with a sour countenance.

Gentlemen, Robert said, hoping the men would try to live up to the appellation.

Robert, William, good work you two, the first man through the door said, his deep voice exuded a sense of entitled authority.

Robert and William were surprised by the man’s geniality and unnerved that he called them by name.

Robert extended his hand to the man, Thanks, Mister?

Unanswered, Robert drew his hand back to his side.

The overwhelming smell of bargain cologne preceded the other two men, the first of which sported a two-inch scar on the top of his bald head. He lumbered instead of walking, as if pulling something heavy behind him, but it was only himself he struggled to move.

The third man wore unkept black hair and a matching mustache. A tattooed string of eleven faded black teardrops hung from just under his left ear to directly over his hyper-developed Adam’s apple.

The second and third man fell in deferentially behind the first.

The first man spoke, We’re going to sit in from here on out.

Of course, William said. Do you know if we have a team heading to Siberia?

We have teams everywhere, the wavy-haired man said.

Robert gestured over to the computer screen with the video, which still showed the beam of light shooting down from space. Do you guys want to take a look?

We’ll pass, the one in charge said.

The other two men took a seat at the back of the room, while the talkative one leaned on a file cabinet.

Go ahead, the man leaning said.

Sir? Robert asked.

Do your job. Don’t mind us.

Right, Robert said.

And don’t wait on your phone to ring again, either.

Robert and William went back to their chairs and faced the screens on their desk.

So what is our job now? Robert whispered to William.

Beats me. I guess we keep watching it and record everything. That’s all we’ve done for as long as I can remember.

They sat in front of the screen, watching the beam. They kept their enthusiasm less vocal, to avoid interaction with the three men from SWECA Special Security.

Fifteen minutes later, the beam disappeared. William glanced back at the three men watching them. The bald one nodded. William turned back to the displays. The black circle devoid of stars took its place. A minute later, the missing stars reappeared.

Robert and William sat quietly for another thirty minutes, occasionally looking at each other and shrugging their shoulders. The men at the back of the room just sat there. Every few minutes one of them coughed or sniffed, but neither Robert nor William turned around to see which one made the noise.

Robert leaned over to William and whispered, These guys are sapping the life out of here. Let’s head out and meet up somewhere to get something to eat. There’s nothing more for us to do here. We can check with HQ later.

William nodded.

His chair squeaked as he rotated it to the back of the room. Well, if there is nothing else for us to do here, I suppose we’ll go home for the night. After all, it is an hour past our normal quitting time.

There’s no quitting tonight. Sit tight, the man said, still leaning on the cabinet. We’ll tell you when your shift is over. Then he sniffed.

2

Magnificent

H ello. My name is Adam Magus. Some call me Adam the Magnificent. I am a magician… and an alcoholic. He sounded tired and sad. Though six feet tall when he stood, Adam seemed shorter sitting slumped with his back conforming to the curve of the blue plastic chair. The stage lights reflected off the chair’s metal legs behind his blue jeans, which he wore well, being in his prime still.

Hello Adam, the group of eleven people seated in the circle of chairs with him said in unison.

Adam's dark brown hair jolted forward, patting his unshaven face, as he scooted his chair an inch forward to get the glare from the spotlight hanging on the batten above him out of his eyes. The squeak of the metal chair leg on the waxed wood floor echoed.

The Magnificent, Adam mumbled. His wrinkled white t-shirt said otherwise.

They were a mixed lot, five women, six men, plus Adam. Almost everyone looked weathered beyond their years.

Adam sat opposite a man in his early twenties, a once-promising tech titan in the making, who always wore expensive and trendy clothes. The Armani suits and Hugo Boss shirts he wore were what remained of his fortune after his personal tech bubble popped.

There were a couple of women that had turned to drink as a companion, once their husbands found women that more resembled the ones they had married. The blond woman, a forty-five year old who wore her make-up the way she did at thirteen, gave off the conflicting smell of generously applied department store perfume and equally generously applied bottom shelf liquor. The brunette friend stayed in competition with her fellow desperate housewife by continuing to shop at Forever 21, twenty one years later.

Between them sat a surgeon, who faced retirement because his hands were aging faster than his mind. Two meetings earlier, Adam realized why the man always tucked his hands under his thighs when sitting. He spent that entire meeting thinking about the surgeon’s trembling hands and how life could be cruel, even to people trying to do something good with their time.

Maybe they were mostly decent people, Adam thought. Who could judge? Everyone had their reasons for being there, including himself.

They met once a month in this abandoned downtown theater. The place smelled dingy, but maintained vestiges of its glory days. Curtains struggled to dress the place with dignity. Leading men and starlets from the Golden Age of Hollywood looked on in silence, from the murals on the foyer walls. The screen at the back of the elevated stage, just above the orchestra pit, now housed vending machines and another hallway leading to the restrooms.

In the eighties, competition from new big screen cineplexes drove the old theater out of business. In the nineties, as part of downtown revitalization efforts, the property housed a community stage theater. Now, years later, it served as a poorly maintained rental space for meetings and the occasional one-man show performance.

The stage lights kept the rest of the theater out of view, for the most part. It seemed like the group was in a small private room, after they walked down the once red aisle carpet, matted with years of soda spills and dirt.

The mildew smell hit them when they first entered the theater. Walking through the doors, everyone but the blond could taste the funk in the air too. By the time they took their seats up on stage, their noses and mouths, out of fatigue, stopped keeping track of their surroundings.

It might have been someone’s idea of a poetic statement or an off-color joke, meeting how they did, but out of convenience they met here. The chairs down below served well for audiences watching early talkies decades ago, but the support group Adam joined six months back sat up on stage. They needed the chairs to face each other. It just so happened, the stage provided the only suitable place for that arrangement.

A few people had apprehensions about the setup at first, but most of them didn’t mind. They were part of the second, maybe third act of a melodramatic play with an uncertain ending. They lived their lives as improvisations, and this was as good a place as any to figure out what came next.

After a sigh, Adam continued. "It has been four hours since my last drink,