“What’s he doing?”
A
woman, behind Jack, pointed down the line at a frumpy young man in his late
twenties fumbling with a phone and a half eaten sandwich. Jack focused on the
smartphone’s display and saw a lively procession of emoticons and ascending
praise.
“He’s
an influencer.”
“A what?”
“An
influencer.”
“What’s
that?”
“Someone
wealthy enough to have free time, but too poor to sustain it indefinitely.”
“That
sounds awful.”
Jack
nodded. It was awful.
The
line snaked along theoretical lanes inside the crowded government facility. Etched
into the bones of an aging strip mall, the Department of Motor Vehicles exuded
an odor of wet drywall and day old urine. False hope abounded, embodied in the
musty décor and hopeless faces of employees required, by law, to work
inefficiently. Above Jack, a sign fixture dangled perilously from the ceiling:
USE OF MAGIC
PROHIBITED
UNLAWFUL
EXPERIMENTATION WILL RESULT IN REMOVAL FROM THE PREMISES
The woman beside Jack groaned.
“Christ!”
Jack
chuckled. He would’ve liked to see Jesus here, kicking over desks and whipping
frightened attendants like weary cattle. He was the first Magus, the supreme
Mesmer. He would have burned this all down were it not for the brief detour
back to the realm of immaterial.
“Are
you here for the certification too?”
Jack
turned around and saw the woman for the first time: a retro embodiment of
sixties kitsch, replete with beehive hair and a tropical muumuu. She saw the
surprise in Jack’s expression and shrugged. “I’m in theater. You know? Plays…
This is art, okay.”
“I’m not
here for a certification,” Jack replied, slyly. “I’m here for a License to Think.”
The
woman sputtered jealously. “Lucky guy.”
“Correct,” Jack agreed. “But it’s not
all glamorous.”
“That’s
bullshit. Magic is awesome. I wish I
could do magic.”
“It has
its perks. Not all of them good I’m afraid.”
The
woman snickered.
“I
haven’t seen you online, have I?”
Jack
shook his head.
“When Experimentation Goes Wrong
is one of my favorite shows,” the woman continued. “It’s like screwball
comedies, if everything was on fire!”
Jack
smirked.
“My
name is Annie.”
“Jack.”
Jack
shook Annie’s hand. It was sweaty.
“This
makeup makes me burn up. Sorry.”
“Nothing
to apologize for. Far be it from me to judge another in this desolate place.
You might as well be Cleopatria in the nude, compared to the ghouls they have
here.”
Annie
frowned. “That’s sexist. You’re sexist. Of course you are. You’re a fucking
magician.”
Jack
wrinkled his nose.
“I’m not a magician. I’m a philosopher,” he replied smugly. “And it’s
a profession that precludes manners.”
“Asshole,”
Annie grumbled. “I’m always next to a
creep…”
Jack
looked ahead, unmoved by the altercation. A ghoul, with layers of foundation
caked on to her putrid skin waved him forward.
“Nnn…
Next…” she croaked.
Jack
approached the counter and flopped an envelope onto the plastic shield,
protecting the faux laminate wood. “I’m here for my license.”
The
ghoul looked down, straining her failing eyes. A valid birth certificate was
splayed out with a social security card and a utility bill. She ground her
teeth, snarling thoughtfully.
“Ahhh…
arrrr… are you pruh... prepared for a vuh… verbal test?”
Jack
placed his phone faced down on top of the documents and emptied his pockets of
loose change. The ghoul looked down, identifying the rhetorical objects and
growled.
“Duh…
door, four.”
Jack
smiled. “Thank you, my dear.”
The
ghoul smiled, worms crossing between blackened teeth. She dragged her arm
across the countertop, sweeping the contraband into an iron lockbox. It would
be returned after the assessment.
The
examination rooms were standing compartments: cubby holes with irritated,
bespectacled gentlemen shuffling tarot cards and organizing talismans. Jack
entered the booth, placing both hands—palms down—onto a blue stencil outline,
while “Steven” carefully categorized the mystic paraphernalia with sterile
precision.
“With
your hands bound, and relying only on verbal commands, you will be tasked with
transmuting three objects,” Steve recited, speaking dryly from a memorized
script. “You will be timed and all tasks will need to be completed before this
undisclosed time expires. Do I have your consent to proceed?”
“Yes,
yes. Please, I’m ready,” Jack
replied.
Steven
drew out one yellowed card from a dispenser. He reached into a box of bric-a-brac
and grabbed a pewter soldier and placed it in the center of the space between
them. Steven flipped over the card.
“‘If
matter is material, then what is consciousness?’”
Jack
looked down at the soldier and frowned.
“It is
the immaterial made material.”
As Jack
spoke, celestial energy coalesced around the inanimate object. The soldier
flexed, the cracking of bones and flesh faintly audible, and its green skin became
pink and soft
“Oh my
god,” the soldier wailed, thrashing on the ground. “Not again… Please god, make
it stop!”
Steven
quickly slapped down an opened Styrofoam cup onto the homunculus and slipped
the dialogue card underneath to carefully remove the figurine from the surface.
“That’s
actually my specialty,” Jack murmured whimsically.
Steven
looked at Jack, unamused. “Whatever it is that you people do, I don’t
want to know.”
Steven
drew another card from the dispenser, retrieved a feather from the box, and
flipped over the card.
“I…
also know this one.”
Steven
paused, tapping his finger on the countertop. He flipped over the card.
“‘How
do you make a feather weigh eight hundred pounds?’”
Jack
shrugged playfully.
“You
move it to Jupiter, obviously…”
The
feather flexed against the countertop, warping the plastic fibers of the manufactured
wood, until it ripped through and crunched into the linoleum flooring below.
Steven
left the side of his booth and motioned for Jack to follow him to the next
cubby over.
In the
second booth, Steven took out a dollhouse, placing it off to the side. With a swipft, Steven took another card and
cleared his throat.
“Why is
there a global housing shortage?”
Jack
took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “I hate this one.”
Steven,
who probably lived alone in a one bedroom apartment, nodded bleakly. He turned
to the side, looking over at someone and silently shook his head. Jack,
meanwhile, focused and breathed through his clenched teeth.
“Not
too much time left…” Steven muttered.
“It’s
because people don’t share,” Jack said, though not particularly to Steven. The
dollhouse shifted sideways, a transparent weave embodying the structure of the
original, only minutely as dense. Steven took out a telescoping pointer and
prodded the copy, which firmly resisted. He unclipped a pen from his front
facing pocket and jotted down a signature on a blue receipt.
“Bring
this voucher to desk 12F.”
Jack was out and back into the world a half hour later,
holding in his hands a provisional license to think in the State of Oklahoma.
As he walked out to his car, he shuffled through his pockets, feeling for the
familiar shape of his key fob. As he did, a blinking light on the seat caught
his attention. The fob was laid out across a pile of junk mail and a half eaten
energy bar.
“Is
there such a thing that I don’t lock
my keys in the car like some pedestrian simpleton?” Jack bemoaned. As he did,
an identical fob took shape inside his clenched fist.
Jack
grinned. “Imagine that.”
When he
opened his hand the fob was half materialized through his knuckles.
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