unblinkered | it's a piece of chalk, actually

it's a piece of chalk, actually

Parking on the street at Brenda's is full. It's what he gets for showing up for the 7:30 rush, instead of his usual 6AM. He takes the Volvo around to the back parking lot- the one that's not connected to the road, where you have to drive over the curb. It's... probably a parking lot. It's paved, after all. It's on the coffee shop's property. There's no "employee only" signs, anyway. There is, within reason, room to park a car. Maxwell Wax is sure the management will understand, if they even leave their room long enough to notice.

Hm? Who's this? Some kid in a hoodie, smoking a cigarette behind the building. He's standing right in the way of... what looks more or less like a parking spot, off to the side of some graffiti on the ground. He honks at the kid, who panics and drops his cigarette. Wasn't even lit. Did him a favor, in Max's opinion. He knows firsthand how bad those things can mess you up. He watches the kid round a corner, and pulls into the probably-parking-space.

He hears a snapping sound as he pulls in. Must've run over the cigarette... do cigarettes go "snap"?

In his rearview mirror, he sees nobody standing on top of the graffiti, and then abruptly sees somebody standing on top of the graffiti. There is no transition between these two states.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"...Yeah, sure. Okay, so: magic is real! Surprise. There exist three kinds of 'daeva': demons and angels and fairies. Drawing the right circle summons us. Normally there would be more bindings on the circle than there are on this one to prevent me from rampaging but I don't feel like rampaging so it's okay. The standard deal is that you summon one to do some magic for you. Demons make things, angels change things, fairies move things. You have to work out something the daeva wants - fairies are easy to pay because they can't just make whatever they want at home like that." He snaps his fingers. "I don't know who was summoning an unbound demon if it wasn't you who drew the rest of this circle - actually, come to think of it, they should probably be found and scared out of doing that, unbound daeva are dangerous."

Okay, this is good. A nice and straightforward explanation that is completely crazy and can't be true.

"Now- wait- what?! Magic- why didn't- wouldn't I have heard about- why is this a secret?! Where's your shirt!"

That last question wasn't really connected to the previous one, and Max isn't sure why he asked it. It just seemed like the sort of thing that demanded an explanation.

"...I have wings. I can put on a shirt if it bothers you, they're just easier to dispense with, because, wings. And you wouldn't have heard about it because somebody murdered me before I could make it generally known. I tried, dude, there are some serious economic incentives to keep it mum though."

"What kind of economic-"

He takes a deep breath.

"First thing- you said you wanted a phone, as payment for... something. If I give you this phone, how many answers will that buy? What sort of leverage does... what's with this circle?"

"I don't want to keep your phone, I want to call some people. And I don't even really need to do that, because you have no idea how to send me back to Hell, so I can just go find a pay phone if those haven't died out completely and feed it counterfeit quarters, or outright visit them - whether you feel like letting me or not - but you're sort of entertaining. The circle summoned me. If you draw one exactly like it again you will get a near-random, completely loose demon. I really don't recommend that."

No leverage. Okay. He'll have to keep being... sort of entertaining.

"So... you... the big question is still 'how is this a secret?' What are these economic incentives that prevent people from talking about... wherever... you came from?"

"So, I'm a demon. I can make stuff. If you had summoned me bound properly so I could not just flap off and do whatever I want, and said, 'I will give you half an hour on the phone if you will make me an exact duplicate of the original Mona Lisa', I would have made you an exact duplicate of the Mona Lisa, bam - ideally you'd pick a painting you could actually flip because I think everybody knows the real Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, but, you know - because I don't really care about the stability of the black market in paintings, see? So there are some people who know how to summon demons and angels and fairies, and if nobody else knows they can do that, then they can sell all the Mona Lisas - flawless emeralds, electron microscopes, outright counterfeit cash - that they want. Or if they prefer to work with angels they can get paid to take radioactive waste off people's hands and turn it into grilled cheese sandwiches, or if they want to summon fairies they can power an enormous generator for what it costs to keep the fairy in muffins and trinkets, fairies are cheap. But if everyone knows how to do it, they lose their advantage, so, when I started trying to look into how to go public with 'oh my god, you can summon magical beings', I got shot in the head. And died. And went to Hell, which, not a bad deal, it's pretty nice there."

Edited 2014-09-28 19:44 (UTC)

"And... there's no way for you, or an angel, or- you can't just come here on your own, then? If the only way for these... worlds, I guess, to interact at all, is through these summoning circles, and anyone who knows how to make one has incentive to keep it secret..."

Dear god, that makes sense. That, all by itself, suffices to explain why such a major part of the universe could have been kept secret indefinitely. Max breathes.

"So... okay, back to- Hell, there's - not a bad deal? Is it- is it just called Hell, or is there- there's angels, what's... theologically...?"

"Transit is indeed live-human-initiated only. It's sort of just called Hell? I mean - there are demons and lakes of fire in it, but there's also a sense in which we're just called demons. And the lakes of fire are for garbage disposal, since we can only make stuff, not get rid of it. I have detected no evidence of a deity orchestrating anything. When I used to talk to angels they never mentioned one either. Demons and angels as groups don't care for each other for stupid racism reasons, it's annoying, makes the interworld mail system all screwy. Demons are the ones with bat wings who make stuff, angels are the ones with bird wings who change stuff, there's not a lot of fancy metaphysics on top of that unless I don't get briefed until I've been a demon for fifty years or something."

"And... is all this... which way do the arrows go with how... I assume it's not a coincidence that there's all this mythology about demons and angels and such, but... you said you went to hell when you died, so are... the bat wings and such... somehow reflective of unrelated cultural icons, or did Hell somehow... influence human culture such that... bat wings, I'd imagine it's the first thing, since you couldn't culturally influence the existence of bats..."

"Okay, I didn't actually have the wings right away when I died. Most demons aren't dead people, they just happen, I have no idea why or how, and those have bat wings. So when dead humans become demons we make ourselves matching wings, since, flying, awesome, and looking like an angel in Hell, not so awesome, and fairy wings don't actually work, they're for decoration, fairies are telekinetic, so that kind of limits our options. I'm pretty sure no real bats have blue wings."

"So... you can modify your appearances, then. Likely to be... some kind of cultural phenomenon, not a fundamental part of..."

Okay, Max is realizing there were more important questions.

"So- Hell, what- are there different places for- where is Hell, is it... another planet, and I teleported you, or is it a parallel world, or... how does it relate to the universe? Should I be worried about physics?"

"Hell is natively infinite vacuum which is not physically contiguous with - this." He waves, generally, at the entire mortal world. "Demons have added things to it; most of the civilization is on a gigantic tacky plane of solid gold. I am not a physicist, so I can't tell you much about whether any laws of physics are being broken apart from our ability to make stuff and be summoned, but when there is a source of gravity water flows downhill and my laptop works and stuff like that."

There is half a sigh of relief.

"And... 'making stuff', is that... what does that mean? If you wanted to just 'make' a phone, could you do that, or would you need to... know how phones work, and how to build one? Do you know where the... information content, so to speak, of things you make comes from?"

"I can copy things without knowing how they work. Angels have a harder time with the detail work - and they're slower - and they need raw materials, so being a demon is the best deal overall. But I do have to know something about what I'm copying. I can make a book I've never read with title and author, but I can't just guess that there must be a book with such and such an ISBN and produce a copy. Also, I'm pretty sure if I make a phone it will not start out subscribed to Verizon or whatever phone companies are popular these days."

"That's a... really strange limitation, actually. You can make a book using a title and author, but not if you make up a title and author, or an ISBN... your magic system would have to have some sort of... underlying search capability, so that you can ask for Moby Dick by Herman Melville and the magic does all the work of figuring out what that is and where to find all the words to put inside of it. Is there... does anyone know what does that, or is it-" there's a brief pause, he makes a face- "-an unsolved mystery?"

"If there's a solution to it, I don't know about it. There's not really a thriving demonic science community - not that demons don't do science, there's just dramatically less collaboration when you don't need to band together for funding in order to have all the sciencey swag you may want."

"And- do fairies and angels run on similar systems? Infinite void, some are people but others just appear, mysterious magic powers... or are they each their own kind of thing?"

"Fairies get Flatland with preexisting air and plants and geography and wildlife, it sounds like it's really pretty there from what I've heard. Angels get infinite glowy cloud-fluff that they tunnel through to make other things. I think both of them work on the mostly spontaneously generated, some dead humans, deal."

"And... christ, it's an afterlife? You got killed, and... were you Bad, or- how worried do I need to be about, about being killed, now that I know this stuff?"

He looks around nervously. Whoever that was in the hoodie, earlier... Max doesn't want to tangle with them, considering how much more they must have known.

"Not everybody turns into a daeva when they die, I know that much, most people wind up in Limbo, but I don't know how the sorting works. Demon is what I would have picked, but I don't remember making a decision. I don't think I was bad by any conventional definition. And I would be a bit worried about getting killed if I were you."

"...Limbo. That's... I mean, I'm worried about getting killed, sure, but not the same kind of worried I'd be if I hadn't just had the existence of an afterlife confirmed."

He frowns.

"Is Limbo... unpleasant?"

"Limbo sounds - disappointing. It's a flat place with air in it, like Fairyland, but there isn't any of the stuff - I am informed that Limboites get stuff when they die and appear there, and they'll take presents from demons when we get concordances, but otherwise it's just dirt and sky going on forever. It's not like it's a disaster if they don't have water or food or whatever - they're just as indestructible as daeva, we can get thirsty but not really as far as parched, same with hunger etcetera - it's just. Boring."

"It's got people in it, doesn't it? Hard for anywhere to be boring when there's people. Why else would I keep coming h-"

Wait.

"Wait. Wait. Indestructible?"

"Yeah. I can get hurt, just not very much. If you shot me I'd bleed but not break a rib. Kindly don't try it."

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