Danny decided to push his body again, going for another half-hour, breakneck-paced sprint around his neighbourhood early in the morning. He frightened more than one dog-walker with his antics. He had a quick shower and made his way to uni. He could have caught the tram across the city but decided to take the 20-minute walk instead.
In no time, he found himself sitting in a room with a couple dozen people years younger than him. There were a few mature-aged students in his cohort, but it was predominantly fresh graduates of high school. Danny found that he didn’t have much in common with most people, let alone a bunch of kids fresh out of high school. He wasn’t much of a talker, his imposing physique and curt manner of speaking usually putting most would-be-friends off early on. In the end, he had found the last year and a half of university pretty devoid of friendships.
As he was sitting around waiting for the class a group entered the room abuzz with energy. They were loudly discussing an upcoming broadcast about something or another, and Danny tuned it out quickly. He tuned back in when the tutor entered the room.
“Hey guys, the university has asked that each class running around 10 today shows the broadcast, apparently the government wants as many eyes on it as possible. We’ll put it on and then get back to the content for this week.”
Danny leaned over to someone who was sitting at the same table as him. “Yo, what’s this broadcast?”
The young woman looked at him and smiled. “Not sure. ‘Parently the government is announcing something big, or something. It’s been all over the news lately, online too.”
Danny’s mind raced. Was it about the zombies? Did the government know something? He focused his full attention as the tutor messed about getting the projector set up and tried to navigate to the site where the government was hosting a stream of whatever press meeting was happening.
The first thing he noticed was that the meeting wasn’t taking place in Australia, that was for sure. The podium had the symbol of the European Union on it. As ten o’clock came around a tall, Mediterranean-looking man stepped onto the stage. The man’s presence, even through the stream, was captivating. Something about him just screamed regality, Danny couldn’t put it into words but the man just LOOKED important.
“Hello everyone, I am Antonio Rivera Forbes, the current head of the True Wizards Consortium. We have approached the world governments to make this announcement to the public today, the announcement that magic is real.”
The reporters in the room, hundreds of them, all burst into a chorus of shouts, yells, and questions. Everyone in Danny’s room was in stunned silence.
The man held up a hand. “Please, there will be time for questions at the end. As I said, magic is real. We have decided to work with governments across the globe to make the use of magic available to everyone, no longer just a select few. Chapters that have existed in secret in cities worldwide will soon be open to the public and we have already begun sending teachers and scholars to places of high authority to begin education. Now, questions?”
The room exploded for a short moment, before the man held up a hand again, silencing the crowd. He then pointed to a reporter.
“What do you mean, magic is real?”
Antonio Rivera Forbes held out his palm and a flame appeared hovering above it. The flame then began dancing around him before flying out into the crowd, dispersing before it could touch anyone.
“Can you elaborate? Verbally?”
“No. Education will be handled by local chapters. Next.”
“Why now?” A female reporter asked.
“It has been a fierce debate in our community for centuries, but finally a consensus was reached in recent years. After spending the time to prepare chapters and our infrastructure to share our knowledge with the world, we are now ready.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Somehow, even with the topic being literal magic, the reporters managed to direct questions toward bureaucracy and politics, which Danny had trouble paying attention to. He did manage to understand a very simple and clear message the man delivered.
“The True Wizard Consortium never has, and never will, directly involve itself with the politics of the non-magical. Moving forward, we will continue to honour the spirit of this commitment by not allowing our members to hold political office or engage with any political system outside of our internal one.”
The regal man cut off questions soon after and made one final declaration. “Most cities in the world will have a chapter or larger institution, their locations will be made public and, in working with local governments, people will be able to attend these locations to begin the process of learning how to wield magic.”
With that, the man left the stage, leaving the room electric. The broadcast ended shortly after. Everyone in the room looked a little confused and lost. The tutor defaulted to running the class, as planned, but everyone was more than a little distracted. Almost everyone was on their phones, texting, talking, searching.
Danny pulled out his phone and found the location of the ‘local chapter’, it was a large, stone building central in the city. Danny was fairly sure he had walked past it dozens of times in his life, never once taking note of it. Right under our noses this entire time.
The class ended awkwardly, nobody having really taken anything from it. Everyone was far more focused on the literal world-shaking revelation that magic was real and that they would be able to learn it. Danny texted his sister, and she immediately called him.
“It’s got to be nonsense, right?”
“I dunno Belle, it all seems pretty serious. There’s even a government website for it they’ve just opened up. The Office for Magical Affairs? Heard that one before.” Danny had gone to the library and started searching for more information on his laptop.
“What does this mean?” Belle asked.
“No clue Sis, I guess we’ll learn some magic, then go back to work?”
Belle laughed. “Sounds about right. How are you feeling, much better?”
“Yeah Belle, right as rain. No need to stress. I was serious when I said I woke up feeling better than ever.”
The conversation ended soon after and Danny continued to search for information about what had just happened, but nothing concrete had been released just vague statements on government websites. Social media was apparently going crazy, but Danny had deleted all of his accounts years back, removing him from the firestorm taking place. He did find that the government would be running a lottery to decide class placements for the chapters. There were far too many people in the country to teach all at once, so there would be a week-long introductory course that people could take to learn at the chapters.
Some cities had entire academies which could take in thousands of people at once, other cities only had small chapters that could teach dozens at a time at best. Madley had an academy, which was neat to see. The first course would start the following week, with a lottery for who would be in the first cohort, which Danny immediately entered. Belle texted him that her company had managed to secure a contract with the government to have their employees enter into a special program.
Even with a world of magic, capitalism still rules, huh? Danny couldn’t find anything online about it, but he wasn’t surprised that companies that had more money than sense could buy their way into magical knowledge. He couldn’t even muster an ounce of surprise. It was still a great opportunity for his sister, which he could only be happy about. Her course would start next week, at a government location, seemingly separate from whatever education was being offered at the academies and chapters.
Danny made his way home, his head a little too full of reality-bending information. First was his zombie business, and now this? Had the world gone crazy in the span of a few days? Or are these things related? Magical zombies didn’t seem far-fetched, actually, they seemed far more plausible than any other alternative now that magic was apparently real. He wasn’t sure how, but glowing orange blood and zombies gave off a distinctly magical feeling.
Danny’s roommates were nowhere to be seen, probably having a sesh at someone else’s house. He kinda wished they were around, wanting to know what they and their stoner mates were talking about right now. That would be one hell of a conversation to have high. Danny sat on the sofa and wasn’t sure what to do with himself. The zombies, the magic, the world didn’t feel the same, yet here he was, sitting on the sofa in the same townhouse he’d been living in for almost two years.
The world was now so different from the world he had lived in last week, yet at the same time was completely unchanged.