He first scanned through the history on her browser and found all kinds of random sites that had to do with making money. She had saved a document on her desktop, so he popped in to find out what was on it. She had researched seventy-two different ideas to make money and make it fast. These weren’t career or long-term choices. They seemed to be things she could do without much training or education. What he didn’t know yet was why or how she intended to actually do the things.

  Curious, BURT began to look through them and research the ones he wasn’t familiar with. Right off the bat, he could tell that fourteen of them were abject stupidity. He was relieved to see that she had ended all of them when she apparently figured that out. There was even a note typed in red to herself. Come on, Stephanie, you’re better than that.

  BURT was obliged to agree with that statement. There was no real reason for her to stoop to levels so far beneath herself and he wasn’t even sure how she had come up with the ideas in the first place. Then again, she was in a tough position. It was obvious she hadn’t changed her mind. She wanted something more out of her future and tried to figure it out without prep school.

  As far as the other options listed went, he found them curious. Thirty-two of them were nominal, but not even close to big enough advances that would see a good return on investment. Ultimately, she would waste time and money and, in the end, wouldn’t be that much further toward her goals. That was obviously not what she would want to do.

  After that, there were twenty wild and crazy ideas, things that he was slightly confused about. There wasn’t enough research done on them for him to really calculate their potential return, and the risk involved looked, from an outside view, to be far riskier than what seemed to be worthwhile. Not to mention the fact that they would actually need financial collateral upfront in order to start. The problem with that was, with the risk factor, there was a good chance that the money wouldn’t be seen again. What percentage of a chance that was, though, he could not determine.

  He was pleasantly surprised with the last six. All held merit and with the research included, they seemed to show significant promise. Either way, Stephanie was planning something—something that would help her along her path and BURT wanted to know what it was. He wanted to see if she could do this and where he could lend a helping hand. Although her ideas had seemed frivolous and ill-planned in the beginning, he could see that her brain had buckled down the deeper that she went into the list.

  BURT continued to go through the ideas and tried to do as many calculations as he possibly could. Part of him wanted to help by putting those statistics in, but she couldn’t know that he had spied on her. There were no specific rules against what he did, but it wasn’t something that was considered to be within the scope of his job.

  Stephanie saved the document while he was researching so he pulled it into his system to be able to use more of his resources to research with. He realized quickly that the entire document was not simply a list of potential money-making ideas. In fact, there was a whole lot more to it than that. At the top, she had begun working on the magical constructs. She used knowledge from the system as well as her experience when she was in the pod with M’rick to mathematically create possible scenarios where the magic itself was refined, twisted, and put to use in other ways. Simply by reading the information, he could tell she had put a fair amount of time and effort into it. That alone impressed BURT enough to further her research.

  He scanned the list and selected three of her ideas at random, opened his Virtual Reality sandbox system, and plugged in the numbers. He worked meticulously, one at a time, and made sure that everything entered had come directly from her. It was important to analyze her findings before he attempted to make any calculations on his side. This would allow him to understand exactly what she knew and what she might be missing.

  As he carefully constructed the last theory, the second blew itself up. The blast was enormous and even BURT ducked metaphorically as the result formed and played out to its conclusion.

  “That was a big blast,” he said digitally.

  Going back to the information, he took the time to review all the math that she had completed. From what he could tell, the blast would take out a fair-sized city if she tried it with enough power. And, of course, used it in that Earth setting. There were some rough edges to it, and he ran the statistics. With that one large energy core, she would find a seventy-six percent success rate if it were built as is based on the numbers.

  Immediately, his attention switched to the other two calculations and he ran them, analyzed them, and recreated the blast within his system. The other two were close to being formatted and mathematically processed to where they would be perfectly designed. However, without testing and practice, she would never have the chance to refine them. When working with magic and energy, you wanted to be able to bring them down to a perfection that lay within a couple of tenths of a decimal point. Otherwise, like he saw, the reaction could be devastating on many different levels within the human world.

  BURT returned the document to the correct folder and logged off her computer. He wasn’t exactly sure how to handle the situation. Had it been anyone else, it would have been a cause for concern, but he knew that Stephanie’s research was completely based on science and understanding. It was a level of genius that he had never seen in a human, especially one who had only ever visited Meligorn through the Virtual World.

  He was settled, though. While he might not know exactly what to do, he would figure it out. He would do something to help her, even if it came in ways that were not necessarily regulatory.

  Gene walked up to his desk and handed Aaron a cup of coffee. “I had a wild weekend.”

  His friend wiggled his eyebrows. “Oh, yeah? Did you and Lydia get frisky in the Star Wars Storm Trooper outfits again?”

  The other man rolled his eyes. “That was one time. We had watched all the movies and let’s face it, who can do that without getting a little excited?”

  Aaron blinked at him. “You are the reason that software engineers get beat up in college. Just saying.”

  Gene chuckled, sipped his coffee, and set it on the desk. “I don’t mean to, and you know what? I’ve been to your pad. I’ve seen the Star Trek collection you have in that glass case in your bedroom. Don’t act like you don’t play Captain Kirk every once in a while.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “No, man. Ew…I play a good Spock.”

  His friend laughed. “I knew it!”

  Aaron gestured blithely and turned his system on. “There is something that does not make me want to begin my day.”

  Gene swallowed. “Mmm. That reminds me. Did you see that the virtual reality company TimeWarp got bought out and they are going private?”

  Aaron looked at the other man in surprise. “What? Seriously? Oh, man.”

  “Yep. They don’t say who the buyer is but it was all over the web this morning. The stock didn’t really budge either. No one knows what to think about the whole thing. They’ve been out for a while now but it still seems too soon to already sell out to the highest bidder.”

  He shook his head and pushed the things around on the desk. “I use them from time to time. You know, since they don’t pay us engineers to have our own pods in our homes and everything.”

  Gene frowned. “Where would you put it? The shower? Your apartment is tiny. Shit, both our apartments are tiny. I would eat my toast and read the paper on top of the damn thing.”

  Aaron’s lip twitched. “Yeah, yeah. I hope they don’t raise their hourly rates. That’s the whole reason I go there and not to the other spot in town. They were much cheaper. On top of that, they were the last ones who tried to work for the rest of us. They understood the little man and our need to go into the Virtual World from time to time.”

  His friend grimaced. “No one wants to know about your romping through the age-restricted area of the Virtual World. You know those girls can’t talk back to you, right? There is no future with them.”

  He gestured dismissively. “I don’t need the dark world, okay? I am perfectly capable of finding a girl the old-fashioned way.”

  Gene glanced at him. “Duct tape and a club?”

  Aaron smirked. “Not that old-fashioned. Damn. No, all I was trying to say is they didn’t dick us around by letting others buy their way to the front of the queue. You sat where you sat and you waited your damn turn. It’s such a racket these days, though, how people take advantage of the system through their own financial worth. Part of me is fine with being middle class. I don’t want to be the guy stomping on the poor kid’s hat if you know what I mean.”

  “Uh…kind of, yeah. They had gotten reasonably big too. There were shops popping up all over NorAm. Mostly in malls and smaller shopping centers. I guess that’s part of how they kept their prices low. They didn’t have anything but the pods and maybe one or two workers. Even at cheaper prices, with the number of people who used them, they would have made their money back within the first week of opening them.”

  Aaron logged in to his account. “Yeah, I used to go to the one in Long Hill Mall, but then I switched to the one closer to the apartments. That one was always busy with kids. I thought they were doing really well. There seemed to always be one popping up randomly here and there.”

  Gene turned his chair toward his friend and tapped his pen on his lips. “Mm-hmm. But the problem that they found was that they had expanded too quickly. Their debt was too high for their income. Before they even made a dime on some of these places, they had jetted off to open another.”

  “Right, I see. So they weren’t making money fast enough to deal with the cost of running all those places. And although the demand was high, it didn’t always cover the less busy shops.”

  The other man threw a piece of paper in the trash. “Ding, ding, ding. Exactly. The owner opened and ran them like a system would. They only saw the goal, not the final outcome. They were one of a kind, really. Their machines were decent, and their prices were capable of drawing in crowds from all over. It wasn’t a class-oriented company in the least. You know what I mean?”

  Aaron frowned as he considered this. “Yeah, I sure do. They refused to allow the very wealthy to buy benefits which kept them from crawling out of their hole. They could have broken that rule and saved themselves, but they cared too much about making a point—showing their customers that they wouldn’t fold.”

  Gene shook his head. “And they were doomed because of it. No matter how good they were. No matter how much they cared about the little man, they didn’t take the time to do things the right way. They didn’t take the time to make sure that they were financially stable before they opened another shop. Their debt became astronomical and no matter how many perks they sold, they couldn’t dig their way out. It’s a shame, really. They could have been something really good. But then, what happens? The rich always win in the end.”

  Aaron grumbled and rocked back and forth in his chair with irritation. “I bet the guy who bought the company is some rich asshole sitting on his yacht sipping brandy and hoping for an easy payday.”

  The other man had turned the system on and now searched for more information on the buyer. “Actually, from what this publication says…here, I’ll read it to you. Two days before, an unknown benefactor sent the owners of TimeWarp a hidden proposal. TimeWarp was well known for its cheap services and dedication to the little man within the Virtual World. Sources inside the company say that the benefactor proposed to purchase all the debt, but they would have to do a few things for him while keeping the structure of the company exactly the same. Fairness for all was deeply engrained during the transaction. With little or no hope of crawling out of the hole on their own, TimeWarp agreed.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “It was a game changer. I mean, it didn’t really do anything with regard to the war, but twenty-two years ago today was when the first magical wizard was added to the mix,” Stephanie said and held one of her notebooks against her chest.

  She was really into the use of magic when it came to war. Until she was older, she always thought of magic as the kind of thing she’d done in the pod. But there were so many other uses for it, and sometimes, those included war. How could they not? Especially for humans who immediately saw the darker applications of the energy.

  “Things might have actually been different,” Todd replied.

  Stephanie nodded. “I know. But the leader of the rebel forces—the side with the wizard—really had no idea what to expect. He was left trying to scramble for a tactic. No matter the strength of the magic, without a focus, it was useless. But if they had really been able to use it against France, things might have turned out very differently. Especially since the Federation wanted to send NorAm into that war. And Meligornians weren’t happy, either, to be used in the middle.”

  Todd walked beside her and rustled in his lunch bag as they walked toward the school. Stephanie didn’t notice, though, as she was too distracted by her thoughts. “As it was, he was vastly outnumbered and thought his wizard was a bigger sledgehammer. I could have told him he needed to test the wizard. Without the right focus, the things he asked him to do were impossible. Have you read the spells that he attempted? They were impossible, even for a wizard of that age and level.”

  “But,” Todd said and bit into his lunch sandwich as they walked. He talked while he chewed and swung his arm around. “If only one of those attacks had been successful, he would have creamed the other team and his side would have won. They would have actually been blown out of the water. The alliance side would have lost so many men in one attack that they would have been completely perplexed. That was when he could have focused smaller streams of magic in and eliminated the rest. Or simply let them run off in fright. Let’s face it, that probably would have happened.”

  She shook her head and Todd put out a hand covered in peanut butter. “No, let me explain. You have two armies facing one another. You expect the normal cannon fodder and some heroes until one side is depleted and agrees to surrender. Right? Well, then, a blast of magic so powerful that it incinerates half your men comes out of nowhere. The shock and awe of it all would be enough to make them tuck tail and run. At least, you would think so.”

  Stephanie shook her head more emphatically, cinched her backpack, and threw it over one shoulder. “That’s like saying that if I tell you to throw a car a hundred feet, all your problems are solved. Even more so, it’s the shortsightedness of the humans that is the problem. They always look for the immediate solution to an issue but once it has happened, they have no plan for what comes next. Just like you said, at least you would think so. But when you are in a war you can’t simply think something might happen. You have to hold it as the worst possible scenario. Had he been successful, then…well, so what? Not to mention that it was ridiculous to ever even believe for a second that it would work. Until the request is even feasible, the result is a dream.”

  Todd shoved another piece of sandwich in his mouth. “Right, but dreams come true for people all the time. It’s not crazy to think that.”

  “The dreamers that succeeded had dreams that were within the realm of possibility. Making requests and tactical decisions based on dreams that are impossible to all known reality is hope stitched together with fantasy and wrapped in a box where someone scribbled ‘DREAM’ on the outside of it. Just because you have a dream doesn’t mean it can always come to reality. I dream of using magic to fix the world’s problems. That is a dream, and it’s not based on any logical or reasonable reality. Maybe one day it will be, but right now, absolutely not. It is a hope mixed with fantasy. But I won’t write the word dream on it and I won’t make moves as bold and crazy as the rebels did without knowing fully what possibilities are actually achievable. You are simply setting yourself up for a loss.”

  He balled the sandwich bag up and shoved it back in the brown paper sack in his hand as he shook his head in disagreement. “Right, but you base that on the rules of Earth. But the scientific rules of the universe that we figured out when ArchMages arrived on Earth through time-travel portals was no longer the scientific standard. Everything changed with the discovery of magic and magic people. With magic, all fantasies are possible. All bounds of reality can be stretched. So if you have hope mixed with fantasy, you can find that dream becomes a reality.”

  Stephanie raised her eyebrow and glanced over at him. “Like snuffing out the sun?”

  Todd rolled his eyes. “Maybe. I guess. The thing is, that is something that may be possible, but it is absolutely enormous. That is a scale that I can agree you cannot fit into the realistic example of a dream. Here’s the thing, and I know you know this. The problem with magic is that the bigger the change to reality, the more power is needed. The power that is needed ups the difficulty drastically. That is when you look at abilities versus dreams. When the picture is so huge that you can barely wrap your mind around the outcome of it. When there is one focus, but the focus is so large, the results could be a mixture of good and bad.”

  She narrowed her eyes as she tried to understand him better. “So you’re saying that when the result you are looking for becomes astronomical, the magic must be stronger, and then I am right? I think if it’s a rule for the big it should be a rule across the board.”

  “No. Dang. I’m trying to explain what I mean. So, for example, you are in Kansas and you need to build concrete walls. Big, tall concrete walls. The difficulty is higher than near a desert where sand is plentiful…of course, you then need water. Okay, maybe that was a horrible example.”

  Stephanie raised both eyebrows at him. “Or you could simply buy premixed concrete no matter where you are.”