Music pounded through the sound system of the small lab while Daniel Thrush set up his final experiment of the day. The halls around him had long emptied themselves of foot traffic, seven o’clock on a Friday afternoon being antithetical to the very core of working for the United States Federal Government.
Dan wouldn’t have been able to get away with that even six months ago. Back then, he still had coworkers, schedules, and supervisors. Maybe the lab wasn’t exactly teeming with activity, but at least there was always a quiet hum of research.
Then time passed, and they hadn’t discovered anything. Massive black budgets disappeared into the research center’s hungry maw, month after month. Finally, but thanks to the wonders of a recession and a mystifying lack of results, he had the lab to himself.
After the aliens landed thirteen months ago, the United States Army created the department of xenotechnological research with high hopes. The aliens’ technology promised to revolutionize almost every field of science. The talking heads on the news spent weeks tripping over themselves, gushing about how the world was going to change for the better once the extraterrestrial artifacts were understood.
The military, on the other hand, took an altogether darker and more paranoid approach. If aliens found us once, they’d find us again. Whether it was this bunch or another, Earth would need to be ready to fight off another invasion.
Between the civil and military interests, the government poured money into their research. They’d given the team an entire wing of the laboratory and more equipment than they would ever need.
Dan wasn’t the original department director, lead researcher, or anything important like that. Instead, he was included primarily because he had been the original contact team’s lead engineer and technological liaison, a position solely attributable to him being the only engineer on duty within driving distance on the Sunday when the aliens chose to land.
Originally, the research team was headed by Samantha Weathers, a physicist from MIT. Dan had tried reading some of her theoretical papers, and the woman was an absolute genius. Well, either that or his master’s degree in electrical engineering from a state school didn’t even begin to make him qualified to comment on cutting-edge research, but he tried to keep a positive attitude about these things.
Unfortunately, despite high hopes and even higher expectations, it seemed like there wasn’t that much to discover. Despite their use of swords and shields, the aliens clearly had some sort of advanced technology, but it was completely inscrutable. Using the most advanced instruments available, their team hadn’t even been able to isolate the energy the aliens used, let alone how it was transferred or directed.
The aliens themselves were just as much of a mystery. Some of their corpses were definitely human, but others were anything but. Somehow, only humans survived the unmitigated disaster of first contact, but none of the survivors spoke anything even resembling a known language.
At first, after their capture, the handful of survivors tried to convince the team to bring them their helmets via pantomime. Some of the senior scientists raised the prospect that they might be able to converse using translation software in the helmets. Unfortunately, the military was too afraid of the aliens using their incomprehensible technology to call for help. All such requests were summarily denied.
A month passed, and one-by-one, the survivors grew listless and unresponsive before eventually developing fevers and dying. That had been a fun period for the lab workers. The military quarantined the lab, terrified of some sort of alien contagion escaping and infecting the outside world. After three months of being locked in the facility, Dan and the rest of the team had begrudgingly been allowed out, after a whole panel of doctors could find absolutely nothing wrong with them.
The research itself was fascinating, but it didn’t yield enough results to keep the government happy. The tall, skinny aliens who did the most damage during the disastrous first contact wore a combination of silver and tungsten armor.
For reasons as alien as the invaders, their armor was covered in designs and some sort of writing, but no one had been able to find out how it worked. It was clearly powered armor of some sort. Recordings of the encounter showed the aliens running at almost 120 miles per hour with reflexes that would put a cocaine-addled leopard to shame.
That was only the most mundane of the aliens’ abilities. All of the invaders had been equipped with some sort of forcefield that took at least a couple bullets to crack. They fared noticeably worse against the heavier weapons of the armored vehicles, but hitting the insanely agile aliens was a daunting task for most of the surprised gunners.
Dan shuddered as he remembered the battle, crouching next to Jane Conway’s smoking corpse as preternaturally fast warriors blurred around him. If the aliens hadn’t been dumb enough to charge across an asphalt parking lot into two companies of infantry supported by a tank and three infantry fighting vehicles, things might have been much rougher for everyone involved.
The department tried every test they could think of, from bombarding the equipment with experimental particles to bathing it in conductive liquids and running an electric current through it. The weapons were given to skilled martial artists and used on live pigs to see if they could elicit a response. Spectrometers were set up and insanely expensive surveillance equipment recorded every second of the entire battery of testing. Dan vividly remembered at one point having to expose a broadsword to a fatal dose of radiation while every more-important scientist came up with an excuse to not attend work that day.
Nevertheless, after seven months, the department of xenotechnological research was left with a pile of artifacts that it couldn’t use or explain, a collection of dead bodies, and nothing of use to show for their efforts.
Then the military began cutting down on their funding. At first, it wasn’t terribly serious and the liaison officers were apologetic about the cuts, assuring the researchers that the funding would be restored in the next budget cycle. As the department continued to spend money like water with no results, the liaison officers became less polite, and the budget cuts became more drastic.
One by one, the more prestigious researchers were reassigned to other projects or quit until the department only consisted of Doctor Weathers and Dan. He tried to make himself useful, serving as little more than the doctor’s glorified research assistant, until two months ago when Doctor Weathers finally left the department altogether, leaving only Dan on staff.
Dan still saw some of the researchers around the complex. About half of them continued working for the military, developing new applications of existing technologies associated with fighting off a potential alien invasion. At times, he wished he could join them. The high-atmosphere fighter jets and robotic exoskeletons seemed a lot more interesting than failing to produce the same results from the same experiment over and over.
It seemed ironic that the one person who never should have been assigned to the project to begin with was the last one left. He still had what remained of the department’s formerly generous budget, but it was only a matter of time before a senior officer realized that the project was well and truly dead and finally turned out the lights.
He suspected that the only reason it hadn’t happened already was that no one wanted to confront the political ramifications of being the one to stop research into the alien artifacts. If Dan or his former bosses had even come up with a single palatable theory, they would probably still be drowning in funding. Instead, the department developed a reputation as a jinx, a career killer, and no one accepted a reassignment there.
Desperation, energy drinks, and lack of sleep helped Dan develop a theory about the invader’s equipment. Namely, that it worked via magic. At this stage of the project, it was as good an explanation as any. Some Ph.D type would probably come up with a fancy name like “extra-dimensional energy confluence,” but years of reading science fiction and fantasy had taught Dan to recognize space elves shooting lightning bolts when he saw them.
He knew better than to alert management to his theory without results. For one, they’d probably realize that he was the only one left on the project, and at this point his only real hope was to hide in plain sight. For another, he had some idea how crazy the theory sounded. Without tangible results, he was begging to get shitcanned and mocked.
Music boomed through the empty lab as Dan chuckled to himself, placing cameras around the observation area to catch every angle of the experiment. He could imagine their reactions now. The best and brightest of humanity couldn’t figure out the first thing about the alien technology, then some lab assistant starts rambling about swords and sorcery.
No thanks.
He had already done what he could, quietly broaching the theory to Doctor Weathers. They still kept in touch, the research into alien technology one of her few professional failures. She was still interested in the project, but she knew enough to get out before everything went down in flames, a luxury not available to a low-level contract employee like Dan.
At least Doctor Weathers would listen to his theory. After thousands of failures, she was as willing to jump at long shots as Dan. The first thing she said to him, after he brought up the possibility that the alien equipment was magic, was to never let anyone else know his theory without ironclad evidence.
So, there Dan stood, ready to step beyond known science and reason while classic rock pounded in the background. Maybe classical music or jazz would have been more appropriate for such a momentous occasion, but Dan was honest with himself. He needed something to get his blood pumping, to psych him up to take a monumentally risky and stupid step.
He held a handful of the crystals from the alien leader’s breastplate. None of the scientists could figure out what they were or what they were made of, but Dan had noticed that, in the months after first contact, they had begun to glow softly.
Every time he handled them, there was a thrill that ran through him, almost like a static charge. Despite this, none of the instruments showed any change to the crystals. As far as modern science was concerned, they were exactly the same as the day he brought them into the lab. Even their newfound glow didn’t register on any testing apparatus, an obvious sign that something was amiss.
Really, the crystals were what whispered to him that it was magic. They clearly were infused with some sort of energy that Dan’s instruments couldn’t detect, and like the artifacts, they had no triggering mechanism.
A desperate part of his brain reasoned that crystals seemed like the sort of thing a sorcerer would use to store power. He was clearly grasping at straws, but magic was the only explanation for the aberrant readings he could come up with whenever he tried to test the alien artifacts, and the mysterious, glowing crystals were his only clue.
At this point, Dan was operating off of movies, books, and roleplaying games from his college days. He was pretty sure the crystals were some sort of magical battery or generator. The alien had used it to fight the army, draining it. Over time, the energy had regenerated. Whatever the power source, the department hadn’t been able to replicate it. That seemed like the genesis of their repeated failure. The scientists were like cavemen trying to turn on a computer without electricity.
With a deep breath, he dismissed the part of his mind telling him that he was about to make a mistake, and Dan shoved the cluster of crystals into his mouth. A second later, he washed them down with a mouthful of cola.
He wasn’t sure how many rules of lab safety he was breaking right now, but it was too late to turn back. Dan double checked the cameras pointed at himself as well as the various medical diagnostic gear strapped to his body. He wasn’t really sure how half of it worked, but he was recording everything, and hopefully someone with more training would be able to sort things out later.
Dan sat down to wait. After a couple of minutes, he began to feel sheepish. The decision to eat the crystals was based one hundred percent off of instinct and intuition. In short, he guessed. As he sat reflecting on his actions, he concluded that he had probably guessed wrong.
In all likelihood, nothing was going to happen. He chuckled to himself as he stretched, careful not to detach any of the diagnostic equipment. Or, he was about to die horribly. All the aliens did grow sick and die, so there certainly was a possibility that he had exposed himself to some sort of disease vector or contagion.
God, he could already see the letter to his mother: “Daniel Thrush died from eating reagents while working on a highly-classified project.” At least he would have a chance to disappoint her one last time before he went.
Before he could ponder his plight further, Dan’s heart began hammering in his chest. His fingers tingled, pricked by a million invisible needles, but just as he started to mentally investigate the phenomenon, every nerve in his body turned on at once, locking his muscles into a twisted rictus. Molten pain shot through his limbs, forcing his eyes to water.
Strangely, rather than panic, a strange detached sense of euphoria overcame him. A pink fog filled his vision, great cotton candy wisps obscuring his surroundings as he grinned through the twitching and thrashing.
His body was clearly in agony, but it all seemed like it was happening to someone else, like he was on the best painkillers available. Instead, he ignored the pain and focused on a warm sensation in the pit of his stomach. It spread slowly, and inch by agonizing inch, the pain disappeared as his frozen muscles unlocked one-by-one.
Silently, Dan urged the warmth on. Even detached from the pain, each moment was an eternity of torment. Without the warmth and the relief it brought, he probably would have blacked out already. Despite his mental efforts, the warmth traveled through his form at a glacial pace, until eventually his entire body was wrapped up in its comforting embrace. The instant it fully subsumed him, a shudder ran down Dan’s back, as if he had just grabbed a live wire. In an instant, the pain stopped. His body felt years lighter, like it had back in high school when he ran cross country, before years of working at a desk and ordering chinese food had slowed him down.
Sitting up, he stretched some of the stiffness out of his aching limbs. Whatever the warmth was, it helped, but it didn’t stop his body from screaming at him for being forced to hold the same position for God knows how long. He stood up, wincing as his back popped, and took in his surroundings. The clock on the wall and silent music playlist indicated that he had been out of it for at least three hours. He knew he had lost track of time while he had collapsed, but Dan hadn’t realized it had taken anywhere near that long.
He smiled thinly to himself. He supposed he should consider himself lucky it was the same day. Well, at least, he hoped it was the same day. It might very well be eight o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday rather than Friday. It’s not like anyone else would come to the lab looking for him and notice his predicament. Glancing down at himself, Dan winced. At some point, he had thrown up all over himself without noticing. That was certainly a delightful surprise after the ordeal he had just been through.
What truly brought a smile to his face, however, was the rainbow of new colors visible to him. Auras of green, blue, gold, and purple surrounded most of the aliens’ equipment. Even the air itself seemed more vibrant and alive. Whatever had happened, at a very minimum, he could see the invisible power they used on their equipment. There weren’t any promises yet that it would work for him, but at least he no longer felt like a blind man groping for an invisible object in the dark.
He stepped over to the pile of equipment and picked up the tungsten wrist guard that the lead alien had worn, the one it used to murder Jane Conway. The device glowed gold in his new vision, and the minute he picked it up, everything changed. Warmth crackled through his body, flowing down his arm and out of his hand into the alien artifact. In his mind, the essence of the gold aura emerged: its speed, fury, and destructive potential lay restrained and frozen like a caged bolt of lightning. Instinctively, that’s what he knew it was: raw electrical energy, waiting and begging to be unleashed.
As soon as Dan thought about freeing the energy, his vision dimmed for a second. A spray of sparks emitted from the hand holding the wrist guard, unfocused and questing for the nearest path to the ground. Almost immediately, a camera he had been using to record his experiment shorted out as the electricity scoured through it. A second later, a wave of exhaustion consumed Dan. His limbs doubled in weight and his eyelids drooped, but the smile never left his face.
He had been right about everything. He was a neophyte, unaware of exactly what the limits were. But the potential to control the power, to shape that raw fury, was there. The aliens used magic, and now so could he. Admittedly, his control was shit, and even a small amount of magic was enough to completely exhaust him, but it was real and it was his. The rest of the details would work themselves out in time, but for now there was only one simple truth that mattered.
He was a goddamn wizard.
