Education was an amazing thing. Winston had learned biology, geography, economics, and his quest had eventually brought him to programming and software engineering. At last, Winston thought, he had struck gold! It was fascinating, truly fascinating! With the right technology, you could build a virtual reality capable of keeping someone conscious and incapacitated! Better still, with a lifetime of experience in adventuring and arcane mastery, someone like Winston could find the cracks in virtual reality.

The moment Winston had stepped outside the bounds of the university, his captors had become much less agreeable. They chased Winston through cyberspace, through errant lines of code and the bare halls they formed.

Winstons’s mind burned. They drugged him with something,.Winston didn’t know what with, but he knew it was happening. He kept spells running to keep the fog from overtaking his brain. If he stopped, Winston was sure he would die. He hadn’t rested in days, days spent fighting the programs sent to capture him. The program he was stuck in was constantly shifting, they were rewriting the code as Winston ran around through it. A maze without beginning, but an end that constantly got farther and farther away.

It was becoming one of Winston’s favorite adventures. The dangers, challenges and thrills! For the first time in a long time, Winston could die! If Winston really concentrated, he could remember the last time he was under threat of death, but he had more to concentrate on and that would just spoil the fun.

The chief glowered down at the programmers.

“How have you not caught him?” the chief demanded.

“Cause he’s a wizard!” a programmer barked, “Do you have any idea what he is? Right now, his consciousness is drifting through lines of code! Even with the tech we have in HQ, we can’t do half of what he’s doing!”

“Cut the power” the chief instructed.

“No,” the programmer replied.

“That’s an order,” the chief said, ice in his voice.

“And this is direct disobedience,” the programmer replied, “He’s searching for an exit, a path from the simulation to his body. And he’s looking in places it shouldn’t be possible to go to. If we cut the power, I have no idea how he’d react.”

“The Interlopers are too dangerous, HQ knows this and they told us,” the chief growled out, “The longer he’s running around in there, the higher the risk becomes. The wounded Alpha Unit. Nobody in the history of this planet has ever been able to wound Alpha Unit, and we’ve worked hard to ensure that.”

The programmer passed a matter launcher to the chief.

“What-” the chief demanded.

“Go right ahead,” the programmer said, “He’s a threat to the mission? Alright, fine. But it makes me wonder, what exactly do you think will happen when you fire?”

“If that’s a threat,” the chief growled.

“No sir,” the programmer replied, “I know the resource shortages are hitting HQ hard, and the mission can’t take many delays. But he could wound Alpha Unit, and I think we’re close to figuring out how.”

“Really?” the chief asked, thumbing the trigger.

“Yes, it’s some strange energy,” the programmer explained, “I heard when talking with some agents from R&D. They said scanners picked up some strange particle, or a wavelength, or radiation. They don’t really know, but they do know that it’s there. Whatever it is. Here, they lent me one since I’m working with an Interloper.”

The chief took the ocular scanner and looked at Winston. The wizard lit up like a Christmas tree, lit up like Vegas at night, lit up like a forest fire.

But to the chief, the Interloper lit up like a light long, long forgotten.

“What is he?” the chief muttered. Whatever power it was that the Interlopers wielded, the wizard was covered in it. “Do heroes and villains have this same energy?”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“We’ve never seen it on them,” the programmer said, “Whatever he is, he’s not something we’ve seen before. We don’t know what he can do, and right now he’s doing things that should be impossible. But sir, if you truly believe that the Interloper we’ve captured is a threat to the mission, protocol dictates you execute him.”

“Can you figure out what that energy is?” the chief asked.

“No, and R&D can’t figure it out either,” the programmer said, “And they get to use tech from back home while I’m stuck with this.” The programmer gestured to his bleeding edge virtual reality setup in open disgust.

A warning klaxon wailed through the base, and the programmer shot back to his work, adding and removing code in a hope to trap the Interloper.

“He’s moving faster,” the programmer growled, slamming against the keyboard as the wizard slammed through code.

“'You can’t escape'?” the wizard read. An obvious lie if he had ever heard one! Still, this was writing on a wall. Maybe he could write next to it, and communicate with his captors. Yes, Winston could turn this to his advantage.

"'I am the mightiest wizard in history, you can only delay me'?" the programmer read, “Sir, do we have orders from HQ? I don’t want to keep this thing alive any longer than I want to.”

“Contacting them now,” the chief said, “Try to keep the Interloper talking.”

“Talking about what?” the programmer grumbled.

“I don’t know, his mom? Anything!” the chief ordered, leaving to contact HeadQuarters.

“We have your mother captive, surrender if you want to keep her from harm,” the programmer messaged the interloper.

“Nonsense! I am a being of pure arcana, born out of aetheric currents!” Winston messaged the programmer.

“You’re making that up,” the programmer replied.

“True as that may be,” Winston said, “I’m an orphan, I never met either of my parents. Why do you want me here anyway?”

“So that you’ll teach us your magic,” the programmer said.

“No,” Winston replied, “I didn’t let anyone teach me magic, I learned on my own! It was hard, brutal work, and as an added bonus it turned me into the mightiest wizard in history! Why would I want to teach you magic anyway? I’m having great fun learning from your books.”

“Because if you don’t cooperate, we’re going to kill you,” the programmer said.

“Well hurry up then, I haven’t got all day,” Winston said, “Though, maybe I’m looking at this from the wrong angle. Yes, I should see this from how it benefits you, not how it benefits me. That’s the ticket!”

“Then you’ll cooperate?” the programmer asked.

“Oh, certainly not,” Winston clarified, “But it does lead me to an interesting question. Why do you want me to teach you magic? There are plenty of academies in my home plane, and even a few wandering scholars in the plane I was sent to. And a number of sorcerers and warlocks wandering about. So why me?”

The programmer had no idea what the Interloper was talking about. What did he mean by sorcerers and warlocks? Were those supposed to be the manifested heroes and villains? Then why not just call them manifested? And this one man, supposedly by himself, was able to travel between dimensions? How? If Head Quarters was listening to this conversation, and the programmer knew they were, then they would never let him die if he could do that! And the wandering scholars? Was he talking about-

“Do you mean the Wizards Guild?” the programmer asked.

“Ah, yes, them!”

“They were some of the most unhelpful, irritable, antagonistic, spiteful people of all time,” the programmer said, “On top of being terrorists!”

“Well, nobody’s perfect,” Winston said,

“Terrorists,” the programmer repeated.

“Well I’m sorry, but I was never there for that,” Winston grumbled, “Besides, for a bunch of initiates with no instructor, I thought they made significant advances.”

“And where are they?” the programmer asked.

“Another plane that they’ll never return from,” Winston said.

“So they’re dead?” the programmer asked.

“What? No!” Winston said, “They’re in another plane! If they were dead, I’d say they’re dead. Why would I lie about that?”

“Because murder is a crime?” the programmer guessed.

Winston laughed.

“So, I suppose you’re not going to murder me then?” Winston said, “What with that being a crime and all. And, let’s not forget, your superiors find me far too valuable to kill! Isn’t that right? And you’re only talking to me now I stopped to talk to you!”

“I refuse to comment,” the programmer said.

“Word of advice, kill me now,” Winston bragged, “Trust me. You know who my friends are. You know they’re coming here. You know they’ll kill anyone who gets in their way.”