Albert thought about how to approach the subject of magic. In the end, he decided, why not have some fun with it?

“Hey,” He said, right when Marc was about to hit play and start the third movie. “Wanna see a magic trick?”

Marc frowned. “Magic trick? What do you mea— shit.”

The fireball appeared in the air above Albert’s hand at the snap of his fingers, lighting the dark room orange. It slowly rotated on its axis like a miniature planet, hovering in the air without releasing any heat. Marc stared for a few long seconds, mouth wide open, breathing erratically. Then he got up and began to walk, pacing around Albert and the sofa he was sitting on, examining the spell from all angles, humming to himself. He was the physics undergrad of the group, the man of science. Albert had been one too, yet even before magic came in his life, his blind belief in science as it was presented to him was beginning to show some cracks on the surface. Now, he only stood there with a wide grin on his face, observing his friend as he went through the various stages of disbelief right before his eyes.

He remembered feeling quite the same way when the system appeared to him for the first time. Perhaps the moment when he actually started to believe was indeed the first Fireball, and it was only fitting that now Marc would be granted the same thing to witness. Albert wondered just how many layers of reality and truth were crumbling to dust in Marc’s mind, how many pieces of the puzzle he thought he had figured all out were now out of sorts. How much mental gymnastics he was performing to make them all fit again without shattering his worldview.

Would he believe in the Interface theory now, that the world is not really as it seems?

“Magic trick.” Albert said in a sing-song voice, snapping Marc out of his reverie.

“What is that?” Marc pointed at the fireball like it was something disgusting, unreal, out of this world. “How are you doing it? There is nothing attached to your hand, how…?”

“Magic.” Albert said.

“Not possible.” Marc stated. “Magic is not real, man. Not real.”

“Then how do you explain the fireball?”

Marc said nothing for a moment. Then his eyes lit up. “Show me something else!”

Hmm. There wasn’t much in Albert’s repertoire that was flashy enough to impress someone. Although…

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“Feast your eyes on this!”

Albert dismissed the fireball, letting the flames disappear without a trace, and plunging his room into darkness. Then, suddenly, Marc found that Albert was not sitting on the sofa next to him anymore, but was standing on the other side of the room. He flipped the light switch, letting light invade the room with unexpected violence. Their eyes had adjusted to the soft glow of the fireball.

“Woah. Teleportation?”

Albert shook his head with a grin. “Not quite.”

“Superspeed?”

“I have it, in a way, but nah.”

Marc’s face lit up even more. “No way.” He said, getting to his feet quicker than Albert had ever seen him rise from sitting. “No fucking way.”

“Say it.”

“It can’t be.”

“Say it!”

“Time travel! Time travel, really? Please tell me it’s time travel.”

Albert nodded solemnly. “It’s time travel, yeah. It’s not magic, per se, but yeah. It’s time travel.”

“Holy macaroni. How does it work? How does it treat causality? How does it treat the predestination paradox? The bootstrap paradox? The grandfather—”

“Dude, breathe. I can explain.”

It took a while.

There was another little thing he could show. “Here, watch this. This one should specifically trigger you in a way that will be quite enjoyable for me, and much less for you.”

“Don’t tease me, please.”

“Okay, here goes.”

This one was simple. Albert produced a little crystal out of mana in his hand, while Marc’s eyes were glued to the palm of his hand for the duration of the whole process, the gaze so strong to be solid. When the process was done, his friend gingerly touched the little gem with his finger, his face betraying some sort of expectation or fear of a reaction to touch. When nothing happened for a while, he finally felt more confident to handle the gem in his fingers, then to play with it and inspect it under many sources of light. Until finally he was satisfied and gave it back to Albert, who promptly reabsorbed the mana.

“What was it? Some sort of crystal growth?”

“That,” Albert said, savoring the words. “Was mana. Solid mana. You can’t see it when it’s not solid, sadly, or you would have witnessed the gem literally coming together from liquid magic leaving my body.”

“…I have no words.”

Albert laughed. “It’s okay. I had no words either when it happened to me.”

“Yeah, about that. How did it happen to you? Did you wake up with these abilities?”

A devilish smile appeared on Albert’s face as he tasted his friend’s barely hidden envy. “Not really. Not with the abilities. What if I told you that what I woke up with was a System?”

“A system.” Marc said, deadpan. “A system. That sort of system? The one with quests and all that?”

“Uh-hu.” Albert was grinning now, unable to contain himself.

“You’re not joking. I know you are not. You’d never. And I have seen it. I mean, shit. You showed me. How long have you had these abilities?”

“A few days.” Albert said, and he almost added that he had already saved the world once. It was not a correct statement, and he kept it for himself. But man, did he want to say it just to tease Marc. In fact, he decided to say it. “And I also saved the world once, while I was at it.”

“You WHAT?”

“Yeah, avoided the destruction of the whole city via nuclear missile not two days ago. In fact, I think it was yesterday.”