Music pounded through the sound system of the small lab while Daniel Thrush set up his final experiment of the day. He wouldn’t have been able to get away with that even six months ago when he still had coworkers, but thanks to the wonders of a recession and a lack of results, he had the lab to himself.
After the aliens landed thirteen months ago, the United States Army created the department of xenotechnological research with high hopes. Dan wasn’t the original department director, lead researcher, or anything important like that. Instead, he was included primarily because he had been the original contact team’s lead engineer and technological liaison, a position solely attributable to him being the only engineer on duty within driving distance on the Sunday when the aliens chose to land.
Originally the research team was headed by Samantha Weathers, a physicist from MIT. Dan had tried reading some of her theoretical papers and the woman was an absolute genius. Well, either that or his masters degree in electrical engineering from a state school didn’t even begin to make him qualified to comment on cutting edge research, but he tried to keep a positive attitude about these things.
Unfortunately, it seemed like there wasn’t that much to discover. Some of the aliens’ corpses were definitely human, but none of the survivors spoke anything even resembling a known language. At first, after their capture, the handful of survivors tried to convince the team to bring them their helmets via pantomime. Dan had been hopeful that they might be able to converse via some sort of translation software, but the military was too afraid of them using their incomprehensible technology to call for help so all such requests were vetoed.
After a month, one by one the survivors grew listless and unresponsive before eventually developing fevers and dying. That had been a fun period for the lab workers. The military quarantined the lab, terrified of some sort of alien contagion escaping and infecting the outside world. After three months of being locked in the facility, Dan and the rest of the team had been begrudgingly allowed out after a whole panel of doctors could find absolutely nothing wrong with them.
The research itself was fascinating, but it just didn’t yield enough results to keep the government happy. The tall skinny aliens that did the most damage during the disastrous first contact wore a combination of silver and tungsten armor. For some reason, the armor was covered in designs and some sort of writing, but no one had been able to find out how it worked. It was clearly powered armor of some sort, recordings of the encounter showed the aliens running at almost 120 miles per hour with reflexes that would put a cocaine addled leopard to shame, and that was only the most mundane of the phenomena. All of the invaders had been equipped with some sort of forcefield that took at least a couple bullets to crack. Dan shuddered, if the aliens hadn’t been charging across an asphalt parking lot into two companies of infantry supported by a tank and three infantry fighting vehicles, things might have been much rougher for everyone involved.
The department tried every test they could think of from bombarding the equipment with experimental particles to bathing it in conductive liquids and running an electric current through it. The weapons were given to skilled martial artists and used on live pigs to see if they could elicit a response. Spectrometers were set up and insanely expensive surveillance equipment recorded every second of the entire battery of testing. Dan remembered vividly at one point having to expose a broadsword to a fatal dose of radiation while every more important scientist came up with an excuse to not be at the lab that day.
Nevertheless, after seven months, the department of xenotechnological research was left with a pile of artifacts that it couldn’t use or explain, a collection of dead bodies, and nothing of use to show for their efforts. The military began cutting down on their funding. At first it wasn’t terribly serious and the liaison officers were apologetic about the cuts, assuring the researchers that the funding would be restored in the next budget. As the department continued to spend money like water with no results, the liaison officers became less polite and the budget cuts became more drastic.
One by one, the more prestigious researchers were reassigned to other projects or quit until the department only consisted of Doctor Weathers and Dan. He had tried to make himself useful, serving as little more than the doctor’s glorified research assistant until two months ago Doctor Weathers finally left the department altogether leaving only Dan on staff. Ironic really, that the one person who never should have been assigned to the project to begin with was the last one left. He still had what remained of the department’s formerly generous budget, but it was only a matter of time before a senior officer realized that he was the only one left and finally turned out the lights.
He suspected that the only reason it hadn’t happened already was that no one wanted to confront the political ramifications of being the one to stop research into the alien artifacts. If Dan or his former bosses had even come up with a single palatable theory, they would probably still be drowning in funding. Instead, the department developed a reputation as a jinx, a career killer, and no one accepted a reassignment there.
Dan had a theory about the alien’s equipment, but he didn’t think that management would take kindly to it. Namely, he was pretty sure that the world’s best and brightest couldn’t figure out how the technology worked because it was magic. He had already quietly broached the theory to Doctor Weathers. She had told him that she was open to any possibility given the thousands of failures to date, but that the Army wouldn’t want to hear it. Even if the equipment was magic, they would have to come up with some sort of technobabble explanation for its functioning for the people who controlled their budget.
So, here Dan stood, ready to step beyond known science and reason while classic rock played in the background. He had collected a handful of the crystals from the alien leader’s breastplate. None of the scientists could figure out what they were or what they were made of, but Dan had noticed that in the months after first contact they had begun to glow softly. Every time he handled them, there was a thrill that ran through him, almost like a static charge. Despite this, none of the instruments showed any change to the crystals. As far as modern science was concerned, they were exactly the same as the day he brought them into the lab. Even their newfound glow didn’t register on any testing apparatus, an obvious sign that something was amiss.
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Really, the crystals were what whispered to him that it was magic. They clearly were infused with some sort of energy that modern science couldn’t detect, and like the artifacts they had no triggering mechanism. Crystals just seemed like the sort of thing that a sorcerer would use to store power. He was clearly grasping for straws, but magic was the only explanation he could come up with for the aberrant readings whenever he tried to test the alien artifacts.
At this point Dan was operating off of half remembered movies and roleplaying games from his college days. He was pretty sure that the crystals were some sort of magical battery or generator. The alien had used it to fight the army, draining it. Over time, the energy had regenerated. Whatever the power source, the department hadn’t been able to replicate it. He was pretty sure that was the genesis of their repeated failure. The scientists were like cavemen trying to turn on a computer without electricity.
With a deep breath, he dismissed the part of his mind telling him that he was about to make a mistake, and Dan shoved the handful of crystals into his mouth. A second later, he washed them down with a mouthful of cola. He wasn’t sure how many rules of lab safety he was breaking right now, but it was too late to turn back. Dan double checked the cameras pointed at himself as well as the various medical diagnostic gear he had strapped to his body. He wasn’t really sure how half of it worked, but he was recording everything and hopefully someone with more training would be able to sort things out later.
Dan sat down to wait. After a couple of minutes, he began to feel sheepish. The decision to eat the crystals was based one hundred percent off of instinct and intuition. In short, he guessed and as he sat reflecting on his actions, he concluded that he had probably guessed wrong. In all likelihood, nothing was going to happen. He chuckled to himself as he stretched, careful not to detach any of the diagnostic equipment. Or he was about to die horribly. All of the aliens did grow sick and die so there certainly was a possibility that he had exposed himself to some sort of disease vector or contagion. God, he could already see the letter to his Mother: ‘Daniel Thrush, died from eating reagents while working on a highly classified project.’ At least he would have a chance to disappoint her one last time before he went.
Before he could ponder his plight further, Dan’s heart began hammering in his chest. His fingers tingled, pricked by a million invisible needles, but just as he started to mentally investigate the phenomenon, every nerve in his body turned on at once, locking his muscles into a twisted rictus. Molten pain shot through his limbs forcing his eyes to water. Rather than panic, Dan felt a strange detached sense of euphoria.
His body was clearly in agony, but it all seemed like it was happening to someone else, like he was on the best painkillers available. Instead he ignored the pain and instead focused on a warm sensation in the pit of his stomach. It spread, slowly, and inch by agonizing inch the pain disappeared in its wake and his frozen muscles unlocked.
Silently Dan urged the warmth on. Even detached from the pain, each moment was an eternity of torment. Really, without the warmth and the relief it brought, he probably would have blacked out already. Despite his mental efforts, the warmth traveled through his form at a glacial pace, until eventually his entire body was wrapped up in its comforting embrace. The instant it fully subsumed him, Dan felt a shudder run down his back, as if he had just grabbed a live wire and in an instant all of the pain stopped. His body felt years lighter, like it had back in highschool when he ran cross country, before years of working at a desk and ordering chinese food had slowed him down.
Sitting up, he stretched some of the stiffness out of his aching limbs. Whatever the warmth was, it helped, but it didn’t stop his body from screaming at him for being forced to hold the same position for God knows how long. He stood up, wincing as his back popped, and took in his surroundings. The clock on the wall and silent music playlist indicated that he had been out of it for at least three hours. He knew that he had lost track of time while he was collapsed, but Dan didn’t realize that it had taken anywhere near that long.
He smiled thinly to himself. He supposed he should consider himself lucky that it was the same day. Well, at least it hoped it was the same day. It very well might be eight o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday rather than Friday. It’s not like anyone else would come to the lab looking for him and notice his predicament. Glancing down at himself, Dan winced. At some point, he had thrown up all over himself without noticing. Certainly a delightful surprise after the ordeal he had just been through.
What truly brought a smile to his face however was the rainbow of new colors visible to him. Auras of green, blue, gold and purple surrounded most of the aliens’ equipment. Even the air itself seemed more vibrant and alive. Whatever had happened, at a very minimum he could see the invisible power that they used on their equipment. There weren’t any promises yet that it would work for him, but at least now he no longer felt like a blind man groping in the dark for an invisible object.
He walked over to the pile of equipment and picked up the tungsten wrist guard that the lead alien had worn. The one it used to murder Jane Conway. The device glowed gold in his new vision, and the minute he picked it up, everything changed. He felt the warmth crackle through his body and flow down his arm and out of his hand into the alien artifact. In his mind, he could feel the essence of the gold aura: it’s speed, fury, and destructive potential restrained and frozen like a caged bolt of lightning. Instinctively, that’s what he knew it was. Raw electrical energy waiting and begging to be unleashed.
As soon as Dan thought about freeing the energy, his vision dimmed for a second and a spray of sparks emitted from the hand holding the wrist guard, unfocused and questing for the nearest path to the ground. Almost immediately, the camera he had been using to record his experiment shorted out as the electricity scoured through it. A second later, a wave of exhaustion consumed Dan. His limbs suddenly doubled in weight and his eyelids drooped, but the smile never left his face.
He had been right about everything. He was a neophyte, unaware of exactly what the limits were, but the potential to control the power, to shape that raw fury, it was there. The aliens used magic, and now so could he. Admittedly, his control was shit and even a small amount of magic was enough to completely exhaust him, but it was real and it was his. The rest of the details would work themselves out in time, but for now there was only one simple truth that mattered. He was a goddamn wizard.