“I am at home, nothing out of the ordinary.” Send text.

“Okay,” Albert said, talking to Marc who was sitting right across from him. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Marc shoved his phone on Albert’s face. A video was playing on it. “This.”

Albert watched, and as he watched his eyes grew wide first with recognition then with worry and apprehension. He started to sweat, to the point he had to bullet time and circulate mana to calm himself down before he was ready to talk. Some of the tricks he learned during the patience mission also came in handy.

“Shit.” He said after a while.

“You recognize it, then.” Marc said. “I was 99% sure but I needed to hear it from you.”

Albert hummed. “You know what’s the technical term in these cases?”

“Being a complete idiot?” Marc said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Albert nodded. “Yeah, let’s go with that.”

“Albert. This is serious.” Marc said with an intensity that was quite uncharacteristic of him. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“More like I was not thinking. I got carried away, okay?”

Marc shook his head violently. “Recording a video on someone else’s phone? What are you, crazy? You know it doesn’t get deleted with rewinds! We used that trick to play with fireballs literally days ago! Information carries through universes, man.”

“I know. I’m stupid, okay? I made a mistake, I got carried away and thought I could just delete everything with a simple rewind. I was too embarrassed to admit to myself that I fucked up and I escaped the situation as fast as I could... What’s the damage estimate? Your opinion.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Marc thought about it. In truth, he knew the answer already, having thought about the problem the whole day, but he wanted to give the impression that he was thinking about it now for the first time. This way he could be ready to refute anything Albert could use as a counterargument if he needed.

“The video is out and is viral. If there are agencies and other magical operatives in the world, and they are active online, they have seen it. It looks… authentic, man. Too authentic to be CGI, even with Unreal Engine 5, GAN, and StableDiffusion it would be hard to make something this realistic. Besides, the café is now closed by the fucking police!”

“So there is no chance people will think it’s fake? I find it strange to believe.” Albert argued.

Marc was ready for this. “Oh no. People do think it’s fake. It’s not the wide public I am worried about, man.”

“Did Aubrey say anything?”

“Complete radio silence on her part.” Marc said.

“Any movement online?”

“I was getting to it. That’s the strange part. I saw nothing! Nothing. No proof of magic ever being a thing. No secret gov organizations. Nothing. You know how shit they are at keeping secrets, right? They suck, big time. Think about Watergate, think about Russiagate, think about Datagate…” Marc trailed off, listing conspiracy theories and real events.

“Okay. They are either very good…”

“…Or there’s really nothing.” Marc said. “I refuse to believe either of these things. Perhaps they bought it and thought it’s fake?”

Albert didn’t feel right about it. “Then why close down the café?”

“Public safety concerns? I went there, there is nothing that can tie you or any of us to what happens in the video. We even went to sit at another table.”

Albert nodded. “Yeah, I did it on purpose to avoid a repeat. Okay, so this might actually blow over without casualties.” He heaved a sigh. “Whooh, wow. Uh…”

“Yeah. That.” Marc said, raising his beer to his mouth and taking a big swig. “That big time. You need to be more careful man. This is not a game. You are not playing a game. And, as you can see, time rewind is not like loading an old save.”

Albert nodded. “I’ll be more careful.”

“Now,” Marc said, changing his tone completely. “With this said and done, let’s do what any other irresponsible teenager would do and let’s play games and forget all about it, shall we?”

“We are not teenagers anymore.”

“Who cares?”

Albert frowned. “Aren’t you the anxious type who can never let go of these things? What happened to you?”

“Shut up and play. It’s my coping mechanism. Either that or we go to McDonald’s!”

They laughed.