Amy opened her eyes and was greeted by a collage of blurs that refused to resolve into a coherent view of the world. She didn’t seem to be dead. Squinting her eyes she was able to resolve one of the blurs into Baron, sitting across from her on a bench against a wall. They weren’t in the pub anymore. Three useful facts: Not dead, Baron is here, not in the pub. Further squinting revealed that she appeared to be in a small meeting room. There was a small table and four chairs in the middle of it, and Baron’s bench was against the far wall. On seeing her eyes open Baron scurried over to her side. ‘Are you ok?’

Was she ok? She seemed ok. ‘I’m not dead,’ she let Baron know.

‘Neither.’ confirmed Baron.

Amy realised she was on another bench identical to the one Baron had been on, but on the other side of the room. She was lying on her back, her head on an uncomfortable and lumpy cushion. Lifting her head she saw that the uncomfortable lump was Thomas’ lap.

‘Oh no.’ She tried to sit up but her body was sluggish and disobedient.

‘Don’t rush Amy, it takes a minute to wake up properly from whatever that effect was,’ said Baron.

Amy looked up at Thomas in horror. Thomas smiled down and patted her head. ‘We were having a lovely cuddle," he said.

‘This is a horrifying way to wake up’ said Amy as she continued to try and lift herself out of the snuggle.

‘It wasn’t me, I kept moving away but you kept grabbing me!’ protested Thomas.

‘You called him Mummy,’ added Baron.

‘You did, you kept snuggling into me and saying “I love you Mummy”’.

‘Oh no,’ repeated Amy. Thomas and Baron supported her until she was upright and helped her slump against the wall. ‘This could not be worse.’

‘Well I’ll ignore that because it is worse, in case you forgot we got magic bashed and now we‘re in jail.’

Amy took another look at the room. ‘This jail has a repurposed meeting room vibe to it.’

‘Yeah I guess so, but the door is locked,’ said Thomas. ‘And I think it’s magically locked because I couldn’t force it.’

Amy did a low level eye roll. ‘Well, if even you couldn’t force it... How long have we been here?’

Baron nodded towards a clock on the wall. ‘They took our phones but if that clock is right, it’s just past 9pm, so we’ve been here about 7 hours. We woke up about an hour ago and no one’s been in, maybe we’ll see someone now you’re awake.’ He gestured towards the cameras in each corner. A lot of cameras. Someone was definitely worried about magic.

‘Are you guys ok?’ asked Amy.

‘Not really,’ replied Thomas. ‘I’m pretty freaked out. Someone has kidnapped us, right? The monk I guess? What the hell is going on?’

‘And how did they do all that crap at the pub?’ asked Amy ‘They knocked out a whole room full of people! There were cameras everywhere you guys, and it was crowded. There was not a single corner of that pub that wasn’t in line of sight of the cameras or people.’

‘Do you think he actually did it? Observable magic?’ asked Baron.

‘No,’ said Thomas. ‘That’s not how it works, I don’t know how they did it but it won’t be that. People who claim they saw observable magic always turn out to be mentally ill or scam artists.’

‘I mean we said we saw observable magic,’ observed Barnon.

‘Exactly,’ said Thomas and pointed at Amy, still slumped against the wall. ‘Scam artist.’

‘I’m not a scam artist!’ protested Amy. ‘I just panicked.’

‘Ever since that mall job everything has been crazy, maybe we should have listened to Greg.’ said Baron.

‘We’re probably here because of Greg! We would have just ended up here anyway, at least we made him work for it. This is why I hate magic.’ Amy gave one of the chairs a bad tempered kick, knocking it across the room.

‘I guess you’re feeling better then,’ said Baron. ‘Someone kidnaps you and your main takeaway is that you still hate magic? What happened to you that you’re pretty relaxed about being abducted, but the thought that someone used magic to do it gets you all kicky? What is your origin story?’

‘I’m not relaxed about being abducted!’ Amy responded. ‘This is freaking me out too, but you wait, this will all be because of magic.’

There was a knock on the door.

‘They seem to be very polite kidnappers,’ commented Thomas.

The door opened and two heads popped into view. One belonged to a young man in a business shirt with thick hipster glasses and a flop of brown hair. The other was an older man with a shaved head and a t-shirt that had ‘DoHAC Innovation and Success Conference 2023’ printed on it. The younger man had an iPad tucked under his arm. Oddly, for what Amy could only assume were magical gangsters or evil wizards, both had lanyards around their necks with their photos on them. They looked more like they were here to get someone’s email working.

‘Hi guys,’ said the younger one.

‘Hi guys?’ repeated Amy incredulously.

The two men looked at each other and shared a nervous and embarrassed giggle.

‘I know, I’m so sorry about all this. You must be very upset. I completely understand, this is so much!’ said the older man. He held out some bottles of water. ‘Have some water, some sandwiches are on the way. I’m Jim. I’m a principal magical analyst here. How are you feeling?’

Amy gave him a look halfway between disbelief and rage. ‘Abducted Jim. I’m feeling very bloody abducted.’

‘Ah yes. Well you would, wouldn't you! Completely understandable that you would feel that way.’ said Jim.

‘Yes,’ said Amy. ‘It is understandable. Because that’s exactly what happened. We feel abducted because you abducted us.’

The younger man spoke up. ‘Well technically, I mean legally, if you look at it in a certain way, we just picked you up for an unscheduled meeting. The magical blackout is a little murkier, I’ll admit. I’m Brian by the way! Senior magical analyst.’ Brian seemed pretty upbeat. His overall demeanour was consistent with someone who didn’t believe they were participating in an abduction. Amy thought she just might have enough energy to punch Brian in the teeth. Brian’s confidence faltered a little as he noticed and correctly interpreted the look on Amy’s face, but he pushed on. ‘Just for health and safety reasons I have to tell you that this room is both magically and manually guarded, there are cameras, as you probably noted, and armed guards outside. It’s important you know this in case you … make any mistakes.’

‘Mistakes?’ repeated Thomas.

‘Yes mistakes. It's perfectly understandable that you might want to make a run for it, or um …’ he glanced at the chair lying on its side, ‘... have a go, so to speak, but you are perfectly safe and can just relax.’ In what looked like an afterthought, he attempted a reassuring smile.

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‘You knocked out a whole pub full of people and abducted us. I don't think we’re safe,’ said Baron. ‘Who the hell are you guys?’

‘Yes, thank you for asking Baron,’ said Jim. ‘You have been invited to this meeting by the Department of Health and Aged Care for your own safety, and the safety of the community.’

A stunned silence. Not gangsters. Not evil wizards. Not even the police or military. The Department of Health and Aged Care.

‘What?’ said Amy. It seemed the only available response.

‘Ha! Yes! “What!”,’ said Brian with a little chuckle. ‘I understand, it’s not what people expect! Let me explain. Technically the magic you reported being used in the robbery isn’t an abuse of magic, it’s not illegal, because it’s impossible. However we do need to unpack your claims in case there are any safety issues, and for security reasons the government has decided this sort of thing is better handled by a department that has a little less public scrutiny than the police or someone similar.’

‘Well that seems mad, and very very suspicious,’ said Amy.

‘That’s what I said when they hired us. Isn’t it Brian?’ said Jim, elbowing Brian in the ribs.

‘You did! It seems very “mad”. However you know, people get a bit nervous if there is any hint that… you know, it might be real’.

‘What?’ asked Amy.

‘You know,’ said Jim. He started making exaggerated mouth movements so they could read his lips. It was incomprehensible. There was a moment of blank looks all around.

He again made his large mouth movements but this time added a whisper. ‘Observable magic.’

‘Is that what this is all about?’ asked Baron. ‘Observable magic? Why do you think we know anything about observable magic?’

‘Because…’ Brian pulled out his iPad and tapped on it. ‘Because you said you did.’

Thomas and Baron both shot dark looks at Amy, who pretended she hadn’t noticed. Amy tested her weight on the bench and thought she might be recovered enough to get up. ‘If this is just a meeting then we’re off.’ She stood up and started to move towards the door, motioning Thomas and Baron to join her. ‘Come on guys, I’m sorry about all of this.’

Jim took a step and partially barred their way. ‘I’m sorry, you can’t leave just yet. For health and safety reasons.’

Amy gave him a hard look. ‘Are we invited to a meeting or detained Jim?.’

‘It’s a meeting team! Just a meeting. But it’s like a mandatory meeting that you can’t leave.’

On the whole, Thomas and Baron had fallen into an attitude of resentment, but also resigned submission. Amy on the other hand could sense her feelings start to get the better of her. These two buffoons acting like everything that had happened was perfectly reasonable was grinding on her nerves. None of this was reasonable! Baron saw the clouds begin to roll over Amy’s face, noticed the subtle tightening of her jaw that often preceded bad decisions. ‘Amy…. Don’t…’

Brian and Jim sensibly stepped back.

Baron lightly touched Amy’s elbow. ‘What are you doing Amy?’

‘I’m thinking of making a mistake on these two pricks,’ replied Amy.

Baron slightly tightened his grip. ‘Just don’t, this is too much Amy, I’m tired and this is scary. I just want to get out. Please let's just get whatever this is over with’.

There was a moment then, a moment where the situation could unfold in multiple ways, including whatever way included the violence Amy seemed to be winding up for. But Baron did look scared, and even Thomas did. Of course they were scared since the mall, everything had been weird: police, a reporter, a monk, weird pub magic, a kidnapping.

Amy let out a breath and addressed Jim. ‘What do you want from us?’

Brian and Jim seemed to breathe out as one entity. Thomas and Baron released breaths they hadn’t realised they were holding.

‘I’m sorry, I know this is so much. It really is mainly about your own safety,’ said Jim.

‘What do you want?’ repeated Amy.

‘First of all, we need to know exactly what happened when you saw your thief do observable magic.’ replied Jim.

Baron and Thomas looked at Amy, and she knew they were silently willing her to just tell the truth. She considered doing so but the thought of admitting how much they had lied felt exhausting and humiliating. She just needed to stall while she figured out what to do. She looked up at Jim and Brian. If observable magic is impossible, how had these guys knocked out a whole pub full of people?

‘Is that how you put everyone to sleep in the pub? Can you do… observable magic?’

‘What? No!’ laughed Jim. ‘That’s probably impossible!’

‘Probably?’ asked Thomas.

‘I mean that’s definitely impossible, but what did you three see? Do you really think you saw observable magic?’

‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. How did you knock everyone out at the pub? There were cameras everywhere. There were people everywhere,’ Amy said.

Jim and Brian’s reactions were not what any of them expected. They looked extremely pleased with themselves. They seemed very excited to be asked.

‘I know right! It’s actually so clever. But we can’t tell you. It’s very innovative and proprietary,’ Jim said.

Amy and the boys exchanged glances. This was extremely close to the words they had used when attempting to skirt the truth.

Brian picked up where Jim left off. ‘We can’t share the details but It’s probably not breaking any rules to say we kidnapped the feed from the security cameras and used a clever pattern matching algorithm, which I managed the review and purchase process of, to run face-tracking on the feed and assign a unique ID to everyone in the pub.’

‘And we can't go into it,’ Jim continued, ‘but obviously once you have unique IDs for every person, you can start tracking all sorts of stuff, like how often they blink and their gaze patterns around the room.’

‘Well you can if you are a clever chap like Jim,’ Brian said, ‘Once you have that, a clever chap like Jim can configure a self-learning algorithm to track how often each individual is blinking and map the times different areas of the room are unobserved. Then you can create a model that predicts where those unobserved areas are likely to be in the future.’

‘And if you are a clever chap like Brian, you can even extend that to include predicting areas that are unobserved momentarily due to all figures gazing in that area blinking at the same time, increasing your overall valid area.’

‘And imagine if you then compared the predictions to the reality in real time, using the data on when the predictions were successful and where they failed to fine tune the model on the fly!’

‘We can’t really tell you much more than that, but if you were clever enough to go into a venue before and set up some conditions…’

Jim and Brian looked so unbearably pleased with each other it was hard to look at.

‘And if you have a couple of magicians in a nearby van, then after only a few minutes you can start to predict what areas of the room will be briefly unobserved. You can then use the predictive algorithm to programmatically shut down the feed, signal your magicians to fire a spark, then restart the feed and continue to refine your predictions.’

‘Bam! Magic! Bam Magic! Bam Bam! Magic!’ Brain was shouting now, chopping the palm of his hand with every ‘Bam!’

‘So you can’t tell us any of that then,’ said Amy.

‘No! We can’t!’ responded Jim.

‘But you just did,’ said Amy.

‘Well, I suppose we did, but we shouldn’t, and can’t.’ Brian’s confidence seemed to edge away as he worked his way through the sentence.

‘It’s clever stuff.’ said Brian very quietly.

‘It is actually very clever,’ said Baron.

‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘You are a couple of… clever chaps.’

’Well I’m sure your workaround was just as clever, but to be honest we’re not as interested in that. Well we are, but the ministry isn’t interested,’ said Brain. ‘What we need to understand is what you saw before that, your claim that you witnessed observable magic.’

Amy looked over at Baron and Thomas. She could smell their need for her to tell the truth and end this whole mess. She took in a breath and held it in for a moment. There was a soft pop from her lips and she let it out in a long exhale. ‘If your monk had just explained that when he first came in, we probably could have avoided this whole mess.’

At that movement, with a jarring suddenness, Jim and Brian’s cheerful nerd enthusiasm disappeared. Amy, Thomas, and Baron all noticed it, the change was so rapid it felt physical. They saw blood drain from Jim’s face, they saw Brian, previously a constant motion of low level nervousness go utterly motionless. They saw both of them look up at the camera in the corner for the room. There was a brief but endless pause.

‘What did you say?’ asked Jim, in a very quiet voice. Brian took a step behind Jim and made eye contact with Amy. He very subtly shook his head.

‘Ummm…. wasn’t he with you?’ asked Amy.

Brian started shaking his head more emphatically looking at Amy with pleading eyes.

‘The monk?’ said Amy, a little more quietly.

‘Oh no.’ said Brian. Jim looked a little… sad.

Amy heard footsteps outside the room, someone running. Several people running.

‘That is… unfortunate. I’m so sorry.’

‘Sorry about what?’ asked Baron.