Namu stormed into the technology room during lunch. He had made up an excuse to bypass Lily, Molly had bailed on him again, and he wasn’t in the mood to eat.
He had stayed up most of the night with the few books he had found from the library and ravaged the internet trying to spark ideas.
He had a solid idea now. Something that might move the world behind the door off-center and push it over. It could even make the world too busy to worry about anything else that slipped through the door. But he needed Koz’s help. Koz, who he had never approached before, although he many students in school went to him for apps and to solve their technical difficulties.
Namu wanted to ask Koz to build something into his phone. Something specific. Something infinite. Something that might not be possible, but Namu hoped it would be.
It looked like Koz and some girl with big blue eyes and messy hair that fell to her shoulders were setting up for the hour-long lunch period. He had heard that Koz preferred to eat in this room, and he spent every one of his breaks in that exact chair.
“Can we help you?” Koz asked him. His eyes were tired. There were no dark circles, but the gateway to his soul looked worn for the day, like he needed to sleep and to recuperate.
“I wanted to ask you to build me something. An app.”
Koz woke up a little at this. He looked over at the girl, who smiled a too-big smile and then plopped down in a chair before grabbing a purple tablet that Koz had set out.
“Build you something?”
Namu could see his desire for a challenge.
“What were you thinking?”
Namu had learned yesterday that through magick one could transfer metals if one needed to build something, but that it took a lot of work, a lot of energy, and usually took more than one person to do it. He had also learned that creating fake metals was something that they used to do in the past that had gotten banned. The metals had not been as strong and had caused all kinds of problems in the non-magickal world that a division in the magickal community had to go and clean up.
“I recently learned that certain things can be created through techno magick,” he said. It was a new study. Something about nano-bits, the electrons, and other things in the techno magick that made it possible, but it only lasted so long. “Metals can be created, right?”
Koz’s chin lifted as he grinned. He looked impressed. “Yes. Those things are real, in a sense, but for only a moment. Same with the feel of it. You can physically feel the item, barely. It isn’t as strong as the real thing, since it is a trick of the mind using spirit magick linked to memory magick held in revers with the added touch of the nano-bits and other things in our world. But—” Koz stopped himself and smiled. “I won’t bore you with the details. Go on.”
“What if you could make them infinite?” Like the fountain bubbles that had exploded a few days ago when Molly had first tried to talk to him. “What if they kept growing? What if they could keep being produced out of the technology through techno magick?” There had to be some kind of code.
Koz’s face lit up, and he dug his hand into his cargo pants to pull out his phone. He began pushing things that Namu could not see, but his smile kept on growing.
“That’s brilliant! I never thought of that! I actually have an app that does something similar. It creates water, but not water. Like what you were saying. It takes the elements I mentioned and a few more to combine them to temporarily to make an imperfect material that then goes away. See!”
Koz put the phone down on the desk and pressed a button that was taking up almost the whole screen. It was blue with swirls of green on it. Immediately, water started raining up from the phone like a fountain. Some drops hit Namu. Some even disintegrated before they hit any surface. They felt wet for only a moment, or maybe it was just a tickle, before they disappeared as if they had never existed.
“I can slow it down,” Koz explained, putting his hand through the water spout to push a button on the screen. The spout grew smaller and slower. The drops were larger, and the spray was not reaching as far, but the water stayed longer before it disappeared. Some water lay on the desk now, but never quite forming a puddle. “The less energy used up at a slower rate, the longer the imperfect-techno-material stays.”
It was almost exactly what Namu had envisioned. “Can you make something like that with metal—like coins?”
Koz hit the middle button on the app, making the imperfect-techno-water turn off. “Yes! I could do that in a matter of ten minutes since I have this system already set up. I just have to transfer and tweak a few things. I’ll do it on my phone before putting it into my database. Then I’ll transfer it to your phone. It will take me no time at all.”
Koz almost missed the chair when he went to sit down. “You may want to sit, though.”
Namu remained standing.
“Is this for a game or something?” Koz asked.
It took Namu a moment to realize he was asking him why he wanted the app. “Oh… yeah… kind of.”
“I don’t know why I’d never thought about what you suggested. I thought about other possibilities, of course, but I’ve never thought about metals. And the fact that you asked for coins…. With the correct outlining and coding numbers, I could, of course, create little bits of anything or everything to a certain degree. At least things that can’t move, right?”
He looked up at Namu as if assuming Namu understood, but Namu had no idea what he was talking about. Namu only knew as much as he had researched about the previous night. When Namu didn’t reply, Koz looked back down at his phone.
“If we could perfect this, it could really have an impact on gaming. After many years of testing, of course, to make sure it isn’t dangerous. Mentally in the psychological sense, I guess brain-wise in general also, or physically.” He reached down to pull out his laptop from his bag, then opened it on his lap.
It seemed like Koz knew a lot about a lot of things. It made Namu want to ask him more to push his knowledge.
“Do you know anything about empty vessels?”
Koz’s eyes were glued to his computer when Rem answered from behind him, “There’s a veil in the ghost game Koz designed!” She had abandoned her tablet and was staring at Namu.
“A what?” Namu asked. He didn’t know what she meant.
Koz lifted his head to where the back of his head was touching his seat to glare at Rem. He seemed caught off guard. From the thin line of his pressed mouth, he looked annoyed, his spark from only moments before gone.
Namu tried to fix his mistake. He didn’t want Koz angry if he was helping him build what he needed to finally end things with that door. “If it’s a secret game, you don’t have to tell me anything about it.”
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
“It isn’t!” Rem beamed. “The veil represents an empty vessel! It was so smart!”
So, Koz did know what empty vessels were.
Koz sighed. “Souls work differently than most things.” That was something Namu knew. He worked with them all the time. “Souls can spread themselves out like a veil. They can be thick or thin. The more they spread out, the thinner they are unless they are older and have more layers, but if they are smaller, they have a harder time existing. It’s almost like they’re not there at all.”
Why hadn’t Namu heard any of this before? He guessed he had never really studied the anatomy of a soul. He had only studied soul magick in general. He had never thought about the insides of a soul or what it was made of, only that it sometimes looked like the body of what it came from. But why would a technology geek like Koz know this? How had he found out? Was it for a game?
“I don’t understand,” Namu said, wanting Koz to elaborate.
Koz sighed again and shook his head. “An empty vessel is a newer soul. It’s a soul that hasn’t been reborn many times and hasn’t grown many layers yet.”
“They’re like thin veils you can barely see!” Rem added.
“In a way. It’s more complicated than that. That’s a personified explanation, not a scientific one.” Koz typed a few more things before reaching over and digging into his bag for a cord that he plugged into his phone and then into the device he had on his lap. “They are newly made souls from wherever they are made that either have never been reincarnated or have been reincarnated only a few times.”
Namu stared at him as he worked, wondering what that even meant. It was the most he had heard about empty vessels, but it still did not make that much sense. So, Molly was a newer soul? New enough that her body felt like it was empty? Was that why she was able to hide from those creatures? Had she been able to fold into herself because her soul wasn’t thick? Was that why spirits also tried to take her over? Because her soul was so new and easily swayed one way or the other, like a child, making it easy to warp or force down?
Koz closed his computer and unplugged his phone. He set it on the desk face up and opened an app to a black screen with a small golden coin in the middle of it. He rubbed his hands together, then hunched over his phone and pushed the button before backing away.
One golden coin with hints of silver popped out of the screen, landing on the desk with a clatter before vanishing. Then came another and another. It was slower than the fountain had been. Each coin stayed visible for maybe a second.
“You can tell they’re fake.” Koz didn’t look satisfied with the results he had produced. “It will need some upgrades later on, but will this do for now? The speed can be increased, but not as much as the water. There’s a lot more going on here. There’s more for the techno magick to lace together.”
He waited until another coin popped out before pushing a button near the bottom of the screen that made two coins pop out at once and then three at a time before they were gone, and the phone released three more. Those coins didn’t even touch the desk and made no sound before they were broken away, back into the nano-bits and pieces that had made them.
“It’s perfect. Thank you,” Namu said. It was close enough to what he could have wanted. He just hoped that it would work. That it could do something in that world. Anything.
Koz moved his hand toward the screen, brushing the coins aside that erupted out of it like they would from a video game. They bounced off his hand as they sprung loose, making a clinking noise before they faded. He pushed the button to turn it off.
“And that will go on forever?”
“As long as the battery is alive and the phone is still working,” Koz remarked, holding his hand out for Namu’s phone. Namu unlocked his screen and handed it to him.
Koz grabbed it, swiped a few times and then halted. “You have no magickal apps on here at all.”
Namu didn’t feel the need to respond to something he already knew. He was ready to take the phone and leave. He was pleasantly surprised with how fast he had been able to get the app that he had been hoping from Koz. He now had time to see what it could do.
Koz handed him the phone back. For some reason, it felt heavier in his hand, warmer, more alive.
“Have fun with your game,” Koz said.
Namu tried not to grimace and nodded instead. It was his game against fate. He just hoped he wouldn’t lose a piece of himself this time.
***
It was good that he had stored some of those transformation drinks they had used to help Molly in his dresser each time Mr. Vero had gone out to get food, more transformation drinks, or something else. It was the only thing that made him feel brave enough to return to that world again alone.
He slipped his phone into his pocket, hoping that it wouldn’t start acting chaotically until he was able to use the app. He hoped that at least a few coins would come out. He needed to see what it could do; if it disturbed the world at all. If it did, he would go and buy more phones if he had to. He would then ask Koz to put the app on each one, go into the world, and place them all over until he overwhelmed the place.
This was his game against the door like it always had been. Like it had been since the moment he had gotten trapped inside.
The idea was since Namu couldn’t actively make weapons without those said weapons disappearing, he would use this app to consistently make coins filled with the intention for them to disrupt and ruin this world. The hope was that techno-made coins would produce faster than the world could make them disappear and that they would overload the world or even confuse it, since techno-magick didn’t seem to pair well with this place.
He slipped on the belt that Mr. Vero had let him keep and put another transformation drink into it that he would use to get back. He would have to figure out how to make more of them if he was to go back and try this again later on, or at least figure out how to get more. He didn’t have too many left.
He moved the small dresser, said the incantation, and let the wall fall away, then crouched to get into the open room where he could stand. Where he was facing the door and his possible doom.
What happened if the phone did worse things than he expected? What if it went absolutely chaotic? Should he run as soon as he put it down?
The vial in his hand, that was already slipping with sweat, reminded him that he had a plan. He would drink the other drink and get out of there as quickly as possible, no matter what.
He turned the handle. As the door opened, he drank the drink in his hand and then slipped through the door as a mist.
The needles began right away, pulling and tearing at him. He couldn’t tell if the world was physically hurting him or if it was all in his mind. He felt this world hated him. It hated everybody.
He looked around. First at the bruised purple sky, then at the glass-ice lake, and then at the trees and the burning flowers. Where should he put the phone down? Over by the trees where those creatures always were? Or were they only there because the trees were something that anyone coming into this world would be drawn to, like he and Molly had been?
He decided the trees were his best bet, if only to try to do something to those creatures. At least he knew they would be there at some point.
He pulled himself back together, dissolving his mist and the magick that held him with a squeeze from his deteriorated hand to solidify before he pulled out his phone. The screen was already misting and blinking with static from black to lime green.
He opened the screen. He had to wait a moment until the green flashing brightness from his phone passed and his heart thudded before he was able to press the button for the app. Then he set it down gently in the grass and stepped away.
One coin emerged, slower than it had for Koz. It was gold mixed with silver, then it turned black. It hit the grass just as it twisted into that green dust before floating off into the purple sky.
He wanted this world destroyed and he wanted to watch it burn. Was that what fed the coins here? His anger? He was making this metal, this app, into a weapon with his mind because he wanted to use it for destruction like all the weapons in his world had been made for. His plan was to give this world a constant, direct supply of weapons it would have to eat up. A supply it could not keep up with. A fake meal with elements it may not enjoy.
Namu didn’t just want to confuse this world’s process; he wanted it to overwhelm itself. He wanted to destroy it from the inside out.
A few more coins popped out all at once. Four of them. The world took them, devouring them in greed.
He felt metal, warm, alive, growing on his shin.
More coins were spewed up out of the phone as the screen flashed. Golden coins flipped to black before they spilled along the grassy ground.
Namu unhooked the vial from his belt and held it to his lips as his metal casting grew to his thigh. He watched as another green flash from the screen revolted the anger from this world. This time, countless coins sprung up, spurting like a fountain. They were speeding up. Something was wrong.
Namu drank the concoction, turning himself to mist. He soared away over the grass that shifted and turned to black metal until each blade pointed straight up to his face like knives. He needed to get out. Things were changing. There was lightning for once in that bruised sky as if a bleeding cut had sliced across it.
He made it through the door, unhooked the astral spell from his body, slammed the door shut, and did the spell to get everything off his skin.
He only had a moment to feel relief. He only had a moment for pride to seep into his heart when there was a loud BOOM! as the door flew off the hinges into his face, and the world beyond the door came gushing out into his.