RinthCon Day 5 - Harry Dresden

Red Alert

a Dresden Files Microfiction by Jim Butcher

“I don’t know about this boss,” Bob the Skull said from his spot on the shelf, orange eyelights twinkling. “You sure you’re up for a spell like this?”

“Hey, you never know until you try,” I opined philosophically.

“Looking at the future is a dicey business, Harry,” Bob said seriously. “You’re a little wet behind the ears to try this one.”

“What did I just say?” I complained. I turned to the mirror in my shiny new lab in the basement of the Castle. It was covered in a cloth that was blacker than black, and which the artist who designed the Bean did not have exclusive rights to. The cloth was stitched with a number of runes and sigils that would prevent anyone else from using the mirror as a window—or worse, a door—into the Castle. But now I needed to make a window, so I carefully uncovered the mirror.

“Did you have to buy a replica of the Mirror of Erised?” Bob complained.

“It was the biggest one in the thrift shop,” I said.

“The guy who robbed Lord Hades’ vault goes thrifting,” Bob jeered.

“I have a little money,” I said. “If I’m not careful with it, that won’t be true for long.”

I studied myself in the mirror for a second. Inconveniently tall, dark, early forties, lean with muscle, heavily scarred. It’s a hard-knock life.

“You’re absolutely sure,” Bob said.

“Big choices coming up,” I said quietly. “I need to get a look at some possible futures. If I can get any kind of edge, I need it.”

“Future’s a tricky thing, boss,” Bob hedged. “Always changing, slippery, elusive.”

“That’s why the undisciplined don’t do so well with magic,” I said firmly. “You hold the construct of the spell steady. I’ll focus the energy.”

“Hokay,” Bob sighed. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Think positive, buddy,” I said. “Here we go.”

I closed my eyes, clearing my mind, beginning to build a mental construct that would shape and contain the energy I was about to summon. Once I had it firmly in mind, I reached out and put my fingertips lightly against the surface of the mirror. “Okay, come get it.”

Orange light the color of campfire sparks flowed out of the eye sockets of the skull and plunged into the concrete of the wall, where it transformed to a glowing dot of light, as if someone was aiming a large laser pointer at it. The light whipped around the room quickly enough to leave a streak of color along the wall and leapt into the mirror, gathering around my fingertips.

I passed the mental construct off to Bob—him being a spirit of intellect, an entirely mental construction himself, it was right up his alley to handle—and then began to call up power. It flowed into me, focused and magnified by my will, and I directed it forward into the mirror with a murmured, “Prognosticare.”

“Boss!” Bob snapped suddenly. “Wait! There’s an energy surge!”

But it was too late. The die was cast.

The surface of the mirror rippled like water, and something like a sudden and immense gravity seized my fingertips and dragged them forward as forcefully as if I had suddenly leapt from a precipice.

There was a wild, spinning sensation of falling forward, rather than down, and I plunged into the surface of the mirror, slammed my shoulder painfully on the frame, and then suddenly gravity seized me and pulled me unceremoniously to the floor.

There was the sudden scent of sharp, chemically sanitized air, and I landed in a heap on some kind of metal flooring.

“Ow!” I complained, pushing myself up. “Dammit, Bob, what went wr—”

I felt my voice die away.

I stood in some kind of gallery or hallway. Metal floor. Metal walls. There was a long row of windows and outside them was…

Rock. And black skies. And stars. So many stars, so sharp and so clear that it boggled the imagination.

A hung banner draping from one wall to the other somehow projected images on it as if it had been a television screen, the fabric displaying a cheery animated logo that read, “Welcome to RinthCon 2323!”

And there were people there. I recognized this. It was a fan convention. I didn’t recognize any of the costumes, or any of the people, and there were a number of tables and booths where… honest-to-God holograms rotated, denoting virtual goods and collection pieces for sale, but there was something about the way they stood, and talked, and had fallen into a sudden silence while they stared at me that just screamed of the single most salient personality trait of an SF fan—rampant enthusiasm.

“Bob. I don’t think we’re in Chicago anymore.”

I looked from the congoers to the windows and back.

This was… my god. It was a space station.

A wizard. On a high-tech space station.

Magic didn’t get along with tech, and evidently the future was no exception.

The draped banner went first. It made a weird screaming sound, and then blurs and streaks of color and partial images strobed across it, and then it caught on fire. Holograms at the vendors tables expanded wildly into giant images that devolved into faces who began to rant in tongues unknown before exploding into showers of sparks.

A door slammed down not ten feet behind me. Then it opened halfway and slammed down again.

A plastic dome on the wall began to glow scarlet, and a woman’s voice began to calmly state, “Red alert! Red alert! Artificial gravity failure. Please secure yourself to a solid surface immediately.”

My stomach lurched, while the plastic dome began to change colors like a Christmas tree, and the computer voice began stammering and stuttering like Max Headroom. My shoes came up off the floor, and I flailed my arms wildly, seizing a tentacle sticking off of some kind of alien-looking sculpture that appeared to be fixed to the floor.

Congoers screamed as they floated up off the floor. More doors slammed down.

“R-r-r-r-inthCon, RinthCon, RinthCon!” screamed the computer voice.

“Bob!” I screamed, turning my head wildly while my feet flailed around in open air. “Bob!”

“Harry!” came Bob’s dim voice. I raked the gallery with my gaze but saw nothing until I spent a moment to focus and opened up my Third Eye, drawing upon my wizard’s sight. Then I saw the back side of the mirror, back in my lab, rippling in the air like a rectangle of etheric water. “Hurry, Harry! I can’t hold it open by myself!”

Of course he couldn’t. I ground my teeth, drew myself into the sculpture, planted my feet against it and took aim. Then I pushed off into zero gravity, holding my arms ahead of me like a diver.

My aim was true. Mostly. I plunged into the ripple in the air, and fell back through the mirror and into my lab, banging my head on the mirror’s frame on the way.

“Warning, warning, warning!” screamed the computer’s voice, somewhere behind me. “Deploying firefighting countermeasures. Halon gas dispensing!”

“Close it!” I screamed to Bob. “Hell’s bells, close it before their own tech kills them!”

“On it, boss!” the Skull’s voice said—and suddenly the secondhand mirror shattered into tense of thousands of pieces that crashed to the floor of my lab like so much sand.

I lay on the floor gasping for a moment and shaking.

“Boss?” Bob said. “You okay?”

I rubbed at my shoulder and my head, annoyed. “Yeah. I’ll live.”

“What the hell just happened?” he asked, bewildered. “I couldn’t see anything but you.”

I seized the blacker than black cloth and threw it back over the frame of the shattered mirror—just in case.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said. “Um. We’re gonna wait a while before we try mucking about with the future again.”

“Oh, thank whoever,” Bob sighed, relieved. “Hey, you got something stuck to your shirt.”

I had to take my shirt off to find a simple square of plastic with some kind of adhesive on the back of it. The front read, “RinthCon 2323! Hello, My Name Is Harry Dresden.”

I eyed the name tag sticker. Then the broken mirror.

“Stars and Stones,” I said. “My life.”

Then I went to find a broom and a dustpan.