The Spell Factory.
Imagine a colourful and vibrant building filled with smiling faces and chattering tongues, awash with energy and light. Imagine workers arriving early each morning just to soak up the magic and wonderment, to be a part of something great. Imagine Willy Wonker's chocolate factory on steroids, including the little people. Imagine the most creative, fulfilling, and exciting place in the world.
Imagine the Spell Factory, which was none of these things.
The building had been specially designed for its role by people who believed in finite creativity. You couldn't waste ideas with ancillary nonsense like grandeur and plush furnishings. Any non-essential trimming would only steal creativity from its occupants. The dull colours and boring architecture would be a source of inspiration!
Once completed, everyone agreed it was the most inspiring building ever made.
Within the Spell Factory's unimaginative confines, up its symmetrical steps, down one of its many rows of uniform desks, aside a boarded up window, sat the spell maker; his body still, his large hands waving about the air assuredly, like a master painter without a canvas. He was a painter of magic.
Swirls of light formed between the spell maker's hands. He played with the colours, adding a hint of purple to the nuanced red. Shapes formed, vague and tenuous. He worked at the shapes like clay, twisting and contorting them until he was happy.
Then a pause. The shapes stopped moving, the colours froze.
With a furrowed brow and stiff neck the spell maker eyed his surroundings. Around him sat forty-one other spell makers, each creating their own magic displays before their own eyes.
He coughed quietly.
No response.
He coughed again, a little louder. The man to his right effortlessly paused his own creation and turned his attention to the spell maker.
'What is it, Paul?' The voice boomed in the relative silence.
'I need your advice, John,' he responded, in hushed tones. 'I'm not sure where to go with this.'
'Use an existing spell – that's what they're there for,' he said, nodding at Paul's desk.
'I know. I'd like to do it without them.'
'Without them? Why?' asked John. 'You wont get into any legal trouble, you know. All the spells are copyfree. They're too old for any protection. Ha!'
'I want to create something different, something amazing, something that no one has ever seen before. I want to create a spell that's new. I want to create!'
'You are creating,' said John, his voice still booming.
'I didn't get into this industry to be a drone.'
'Paul, you're thinking in terms of revolution. Creativity is more like evolution. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. There is no shame in it.'
Paul looked down at the large symbols printed on a tattered and worn parchment, placed neatly on his desk.
'I can't do it, John. Not this time.'
'Stop being difficult. Look, it's quite simple.'
With that John flicked his hands. The light show dropped like melted cheese onto the parchment below, forming symbols and words in the paper. Not just on top of the paper, but in it, part of it. A new material structure that could have been explored for decades by scientists, if there were any left.
John tossed the parchment aside and selected two more at random, placing them front and centre. From the bottom of the page, he swept his open palm up, a fraction above the parchment, and closed his hand around the collected symbols. With a flick of the wrist they were in the air, already forming shapes and colours.
John did the same to the other parchment.
'It's simple,' said John. 'No one cares. We're a factory. We provide entertainment for the lowest common denominator. The people like it because they are used to it. It makes them feel warm and comfortable.'
John's large belly jiggled as he played with the colours, swirling the shapes. A moment later he was finished.
'Downstairs wont accept that,' said Paul. 'All you've done is join two spells together. Not even mixed them, just put one after the other.'
John melted the finished product onto new parchment and dropped it down a hole.
'We'll see about that.'
Milton sat between the floors in a little space he had carved out for himself, his little whiskers twitching at some nearby squeaks. Another one was coming down! He quickly joined the other rats who hovered along the pipes like spectators at the Tour de France.
The spell travelled down, worming its way through a labyrinth of pipes. Air resistance forced the parchment corners up, at times pushing it against the pipes. Each time it did, a spark would flash as some excess magic rubbed off.
The rats all pressed their little feet against the metal as they tried to soak up the magic. They had done this for as long as the pipes existed. Occasionally a rat would absorb some stray magic and would grow to double its size, becoming a power rat. Instead of leaving and using this back door of evolution to its advantage, it would stay by the pipes wanting more magic, more size, more awe. There was no end-game – the power was the aim.
These power rats became a symbol of hope. By not leaving, they were a very real reminder that with a little determination, and a lot of luck, any rat could one day realise their dream.
Milton had a feeling that he would soon be that rat. He pressed his little feet against the pipe and closed his eyes.
'Of course, it was all much easier in the past.'
The words came from an office which had all the trimmings that one might expect from top-level middle-management bottom-feeders: fake Monet paintings, a fake mahogany desk set upon fake carpet, fake fountain pens, a fake signed autograph of a former sportsman long since dead, giving a fake impression of tradition; and two fake men with fake watches, fake tans and fake smiles. The only thing that wasn't fake were the egos. These were the kind of men who liked to think of themselves as creatives, but who used expressions like flair and outside the box which no true creative person would be caught dead doing.
A magic parchment landed on the desk. The short, stout man waited for a response to his comment. It did not come, so he picked up the paper and fed it into a large machine behind the door. The old, tall, thin man did not turn to watch.
'Sure, you had small-scale copying,' he continued, walking back to his seat. 'But it didn't affect the bottom line. It was easy to monetise the content: send it out and tell them it's what they want. I tell ya, things are changing.'
Colours and shapes began to form and merge above the large machine. The show had begun!
'It's from all the theft,' said the thin man. Finally, thought the stout man, the bait had been bitten. The thin man continued: 'People steal so much these days. They don't care about property rights. We put out innovative, creative content and all they do is abuse it. Our spell makers don't want to see their carefully crafted pieces of magic mixed in with amateur stuff. It's ours anyway!'
Like all good representatives of the magic industry, the thin man knew The Trick. The Trick was to believe; believe in every single lie he spoke, every misrepresentation, every condemnation. To not only fake the untruths, but to live them! To feel the lie come bubbling up inside, exit his mouth, and enter his own ear as the truth. This was not as easy as it sounds. There were morals and ethics clawing and scraping at the lie, trying to peel it back to the shiny veneer of the truth. But with enough practice, and enough money, anything is possible.
The stout man knew this and understood how to use The Trick against them. If you wanted to succeed in this business you couldn't be like the others. You had to be different.
'Do you think so?' said the stout man. That's it, he thought, reel him in.
'Absolutely! In fact, I'm surprised we haven't seen more departments have this kind of reduction to their increase in profits.'
'You're probably right,' said the stout man. 'Maybe we need to put more pressure on our representatives to be more understanding of our plight. They need to see the damage it is doing to the economy.'
'I was just thinking the same,' said the thin man, feeling rather pleased that he was able to keep up.
'You were?', asked the stout man, a little incredulously.
Should he land this flaccid fish or throw him back in the water?
'Well yes. It is the only sensible option,' said the thin man, a little unsure of himself.
Throw him back, he thought. This one was too small.
'So what do you think of John's latest creation?' asked the stout man, looking over at the magic show.
'Oh umm fine, fine,' said the thin man, who hadn't bothered to turn around once.
'Yes, he certainly does know how to cast them out. Quite catchy this one.'
'Oh, come on!'
Paul looked on in disgust as the green light flashed above John's desk. 'How can that crap get distributed?' he asked.
'It's not crap, it's fa-mil-i-ar,' said John, extending the last word for emphasis.
Paul's body slumped. He looked around at the other spell makers, all focussed on their own diligent, enthusiastic and creative regurgitation of the same old thing. It was very depressing.
His body shook as his mind wandered. Why was belief in yourself so much harder than belief in anything else? He believed the sun would come up tomorrow. He believed in the ability of people to be horrible to one another. He'd even been convinced to believe in a higher power. But to have total and utter belief in who you are and in everything you do was completely elusive.
He had dreamed of becoming a spell maker for as long as he could remember. It was the only thing he was good at, and he wasn't even good at it. At least it seemed that way. So what else could he do?
No, there were no choices. Not liking the rules didn't mean he could just take his bat and ball and go home. It was this or nothing. Boom or bust.
He rolled up his sleeves and pushed aside the copyfree spells on his desk. A spark of magic rose up his outstretched arm as a piece of parchment floated slowly to the floor.
Milton looked up at the large rat standing over him and squeaked his congratulations.
It was not his time.
During the last descent he felt it, felt what it was like to embrace the magic. It was only a few stray scraps of the stray scraps, a percentage of a percentage, but he felt it. He wanted more.
But he wouldn't get it here. This was a sign. There's another way, he thought. A much better way. Why hadn't he thought of it before? He was blinded by the other rats and their provincial ways.
To get what he wanted he had to be different.
Paul's fingers glinted in the late afternoon sunlight as he waved goodbye. Standing outside the spell factory, surrounded by his raucous peers, Paul skipped triumphantly down the steps.
'It doesn't change anything, you know,' bellowed John.
'I know,' said Paul, smiling.
Sure, this wasn't going to make him a star. It wasn't going to make him rich. It was far from the greatest piece of magic ever produced. But it was important to him. It was original. It was different.
'Johnnnnn!'
The cries came like an undulating siren. Or was it an actual siren? It mattered little as the sound was replaced by deafening screams. A gaggle of teenage girls encircled John, screaming his name and asking for his autograph.
'I knew I shouldn't have gone this way,' shouted John, over the shrieking. 'Oh well, see you tomorrow.' His shirt being pulled and ripped, John's large body drifted away like a boat on a hard current.
The excitement was soon over and Paul realised he was alone by the street. As he headed off home he saw a commotion up ahead. A police car had pulled over hurriedly, still with lights flashing, its former occupants surrounding a teenage girl. Another man, tall and thin, who Paul vaguely recognised, stood nearby shouting at both the girl and the police officers.
What was special about the girl? he wondered. She looked identical to the screaming hordes who swam away with John. Just a regular scrawny teenage girl, listless and vulnerable.
As he approached, the voices got louder.
'Thief!' shouted the thin man. 'She's a thief! Arrest her!'
'Nothing is missing so nothing was stolen,' said Gary, the larger police officer, in a level tone, adding the word 'sir.'
Sir is one of those words a police officer can use to give respect, or to demand it. In this instance it was the latter.
'Are you stupid?' said the thin man. 'Did you just get out of school?”
Squeak.
'Sir, I don't often find a need to explain myself but I will do so this once: stealing means that the poor bugger who has the stealing perpetrated against him can no longer use what has been stolen. Or, to put it another way, it is gone. Has that happened on this occasion?'
'She committed a crime!' said the thin man.
'We require evidence of a crime, sir,' said Gary.
'Evidence? Who needs evidence? She did it! I saw it. That should be enough. You don't understand what it's like for someone to take your property, and, and...mutilate it. It's my magic! Well, mine on behalf of the spell makers you understand.”
Squeak squeak.
'Take her away, Gary,' said the smaller police officer.
Gary shot his partner a look. The frightened girl did likewise.
'They can sort it out back at the station,' said the smaller officer. 'We're just doing our job.'
Gary reluctantly but obediently handcuffed the teenage girl and placed her inside the police car. The thin man's eyes glinted as he shouted a parting shot, 'Pirate!'
Squeeeeak.
Paul had stopped at the entrance of an alley way. He turned and noticed a rat gnawing on something. As he drew nearer he saw a bright spark – Magic! - and shielded his eyes, uncovering them in time to see a large rat scamper away. Strange, he thought, it was almost smiling.
He approached quickly and in one movement bent down, picked up the piece of parchment with one hand, collected the entwined symbols with his other, and flung them into the air in front of him. He let the shapes move and turn, in and out of dimensions, with all the colours known to man - and a few new ones thrown in. Rather than interact, he immersed himself in the magic, allowing it to wash over him. He recognised parts, didn't recognise others, then recognised even more.
This was his most recent creation...but not.
It was changed.
It had evolved.
'It's beautiful.'
© 2010 Ben Safta
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Australia License
