Birthday Magic

Chapter One

The balloons are a dead giveaway. I travel through the air, my loose cloak billowing behind me. The balloons are small specks tied to the front of the house that I think is the house holding the birthday party. Still, I have my UI, user intelligence, verify it is the correct place while keeping track of my location and flight plan. It has already warned off several amateur camera drones that were sent up to watch, I don’t want them disturbing the official invisible streaming ones ones set up around me.   I ride standing on a storm cloud, electrical displays flashing in and out of it for dramatic effect. 

I’ve done several birthdays every year, for the five years I’ve worked for “lord” Lowman. As his wizard It’s in my contract. I remember to set a scowl to my ancient looking face as I start to descend. I love doing parties, in many ways it is like a wizard or magic battle. Handling the unpredictability of dealing with people and not just presenting a fully planned out display set up to impress guests to the household. My character however hates them, well he hates many things, being a cantankerous ancient wizard of obscene power. Breaking character is one of the worst things you can do, the viewers will eat you alive for doing it. 

I’ve done adult birthday parties where I summon succubus from hell, with the help of some talented adult professionals. More standard ones where I make a tree grow in the living room and present a golden apple as a gift or unicorns, dragons,  butterflies. The fan ones, which are getting more common, where they just want me in my loud cantankerous glory.  I get to insult people to varying amounts based on age and parent approval, then give them usually a slightly oversized novelty gift at those ones. 

The cloud disperses as my feet touch the ground, I grunt a little as the anti-gravity effect is lifted. It’s easy to walk like an old man if you have forty kilos of gear and prosthetics on.  just one of the ways my giant staff helps at times. I’m a little nervous, though this is a fan one, I’ve never done one for a group so young.  I can hear the gaggling of eight year olds playing loudly inside as I knock on the door.   The mother opens the door in a bright pink fuzzy sweater and a skirt to her knees. The heads up display contacts tell me she’s Alice Jenny a senior project manager at Lowman’s  peanut company. It also does things like list her height, the fact she likes snowy days, puppies and pizza. ”Wizard Joontal, welcome to our house.”

Keeping in character I harumph and step inside. She looks a little taken aback by my lack of greeting, obviously less of a fan than the birthday boy.  “We’re running a little behind, it’ll be five minutes til the kids are ready for you.”  

I pull out my pipe. It is large and long and carved to look like a tiger battling a phoenix.  I start puffing on it, producing a smoke that is heavy in sandalwood scent.  Dead air is the worst, people will switch streams or get bored . The pipe is one of those things where I can do something with while actually doing nothing. “Please sir, no smoking.” Alice asks me after a moment. I quickly go through my options, bubbles wouldn’t work and neither will fireworks.  With the briefest of pauses I start again and this time  snow comes out the end. Mostly tiny, but a few are large enough to see as the perfect flakes you can see under a microscope. It comes with the scent of baking cookies. It’s a bit christmas in september, but at least allows me to shoot her a smug, see no smoke now look.

The kids are still noisy and playing, the break does allow me a moment of reflection. An eight year old fan of wizards, that was me when I was eight.  Of course I’m still a fan, and even more amazingly I’m doing what I love.  Sure, i’m no Magduin the great or the Illusionary Sasandra and my character is so niche. Wizard Joontal probably will never be counted among the best, but I’m working my way up in the minor leagues.  Be it one birthday party at a time. 

The mom signals my attention, and it’s the UI who notices and brings me out of my reminiscing. “Hey kids guess who’s here! It’s wizard Joontal the father announces.” I can see from most of the kids faces that the majority of them have no idea who I am. The birthday boy is excited and so are maybe a few of his friends. Kind of like being a semi- famous minor sports star, someone has to follow the topic to really know the players.

Thankfully most of them, according to the survey’s I sent out beforehand are fans of explosions and flashing lights. Blue and red lightning arcs around my body and a scarf of fire rolls out from around my neck. A crystal ball rolls out my sleeve and into my hand, it starts cracking like an egg unleashing a black mass that grows into my two foot tall, black, shimmering raven; Muninn whose feathers catch a rainbow glimmer with the right light. Yes I steal some from classics.  “

Muninn caws and shakes bits of crystal shards off his feathers. He was the body of my public UI, user intelligence. Think personal, computerized, mechanical, magical assistant, kept up to date to the highest specs allowed by the Charter that governs registered magical community members. They lay out all rules, contracts, contests, standards, and grievances, multi-system and local. Laying out the requirements from everything to planet wide events to things like this birthday party.  The survey and validation for this party had been filtered through them.

“My Lord has bid me to come and entertain his subjects “ I give the children a withering look. “I did not expect them to be so small. A wild brawl might be a bit to much for this group.”  It is a reference to the last birthday party I did, where I split the kids, I guess teenagers up and gave them realistic but harmless play swords and had them battle it out until I declared a winner. Successful, despite the mutterings of Oh lame a birthday magician when I first showed up.

 “I suppose  instead of a taste of battle, I shall give you a taste of magic if you’re interested. Who here is interested?” There is some hesitation in the crowd. “Come on, show of hands!”

A good two thirds of the hands shoot up, Jacen the birthday boy’s stretches close to the highest. “Me! Me!” he shouts.  

I throw my pipe above the crowd, it hovers above the group of kids before starbursting into a little more than a dozen forearm length glowing wands that each float down to a kid. “Now take your wand and point at something and yell Ikith!”

“Ikith!” yells some brave girl, Sofia the AR informs me.  At the tip of the wand there is a little poof, then across the room a slightly drippy looking splat of color appears on the wall she is pointing it. It is pink, the color the survey had listed as her favorite. 

“Good job Sofia!” I bark. 

“Ikith! Ikith! Ikith!”  All the kids start yelling. The room fills with poofs and splats of color, whichever had been listed as that child’s favorite in varying shades.  The effect only lasts roughly a minute before fading, but all the kids are going at it so much the fact that that is the case is not very noticable. I give the mom who is starting to get a slight look of dismay a wink, and subvocalize my UI to send her the specs on the toy.

It isn’t long before the children turned it on themselves, painting themselves in  a dazzling display of colors. One turns his wand on me only  to have the color hit a shield, the mess sliding to the floor. Joontal is too dignified to take such a hit or the subsequent pelting if I had allowed it.  Muninn however is not so lucky.

He lets out a loud “Caw!” and jumps as his black shiny feathers are suddenly coated in pink. He takes flight..

“Oh this won’t end well.” I say just loud enough for everyone to hear. In the air Muninn’s feathers ripple and twist transforming him into a dragon, he lets out a roar.  With aerobatic flair he is diving and buzzing the kids.

“Quick Children! you need to show him that you have the power. Point your wands at him and keep yelling Ikith!”   With only a little encouragement the little army gets going. Now Muninn has to spend all his effort dodging poofs of color. He’s quite good, but eventually gets overpowered, he twitches in the air, getting splattered again and again until he dramatically falls to the ground. There he lays a still ruddy color covered mess. 

Most of the children look like they are feeling a sense of satisfaction for their victory. But there is one girl, the youngest one, a five year old my AR tells me is Halsey, probably someone's younger sister who tagged along to the party, she starts crying. 

I walk over to her, my body by its very nature looms over the girl. I give her an inquisitive look, letting my eyebrows do the talking. “The… the bird? Is it hurt?”

I snap my fingers and the still form of Muninn turns into a cloud of glowing motes as the nano-drones that make up his form and allow the shapeshifting float over to me coalescing back into a crystal egg in my palm. “Like a phoenix, it would take a lot to put Munninn here out of commission. Would you like to watch him until he hatches again?”

She sniffles and nods, taking  the egg as I hand it to her. I know it will feel warm and move as though it is occupied. She cradles it and I go back to the majority, who are now just slowing down their seemingly destructive color display. . 

The color blasting wands are already a minor success, both at the party and out in the world. A hundred of the color wands have sold to fans or people who’ve stumbled into my stream. More should come in when I submit my edited display of the events for this week's episode. Only about thirty percent of the profits will go my way, having spent weeks negotiating with the original creator/patent owner about the value of my modifications.  

I start to announce loundy. “Well now it’s…” but clearly the children aren’t paying attention. I pound the base of my staff twice on the floor. This grabs the attention of a few, not most. More importantly the action activates  a subroutine that causes a holographic still to be projected in front of the audiences eyes for a few moments. Makes it look like the rest of the room has been frozen still, just long enough to shock them to attention. “It’s time to present birthday boy with a gift.”

Technically the wands already count as the required party favor, a brief visit like this one doesn’t require a personalized gift. This is an appearance request, not a partial planning like the medieval battle the teenage party had been, or a hosting like the succubi experience which had taken weeks to set up and book properly.  Never a lack of paperwork in this profession, but that is why UI’s exist. However I still remembered what it was like to be a die hard eight year old fan of magicians. That was only fifteen years ago. 

I reach into my robes and pull out a leather bound book decorated with straps and buckles and what looks to be a layer of dust. I blow off the top and the dust swirls off a brown cloud, but if you look closely you can see little sparkles of gold lighting it up. “Knowledge, the greatest gift anyone can get! With this if you are dedicated and a hard worker you  will be able to learn the essentials of being a wizard one day yourself.”

The book at its face isn’t too different from many so-called magic kits you can get. Words, movements, activations for pre-programed effects.  There is a deeper layer to it if someone is really interested. Slowly teaching and explaining the real craft of using technology for creating magic. It even had a built in base UI I had helped design on it if Jacen chose to stick with the topic and was really interested in more than being just a fan. It has everything I wish I had when I was his age, but couldn’t quite get to on my own without stumbling along.  The book is a more refined primer than what I had given Lowman’s daughter after joining his team years ago. 

It will self destruct if tampered with too much, though if it got to that point the book probably won’t be needed anymore. I know the odds are Jacen would either grow out of this phase or simply remain a fan. Though a lot of the skills learned in this type of career can be useful to many other jobs among the worlds. I sent the parents a brief though not full explanation of the book to the parents and even some information about jobs it could lead too for the future. Ridiculous as that is to think of future professions for an eight year old, maybe they could offer some encouragement. I know I would have liked some adult encouragement when I was younger.  Hell, I wouldn’t mind some now if my dad or aunt knew or even cared where I was now. 

The book floats over to the birthday boy who grabs it and hugs the slightly oversized thing as if it is the most precious gift in the world.  It is a real effort to keep my face stoic, still and not smile. I silently message the father to interrupt us with the cake so I can take my leave. Moments later he does, drawing the attention of almost all the sugar hungry kids away from me. 

I turn away and start walking towards the door, “Come Muninn.” I know the crystal egg the girl is holding is dissolving into a soft feathery black mess that will slip out of her arms and fly to my shoulder. I instruct the UI to leave a singly shiny black feather in the girls lap as a present.

The Mom is waiting for me near the exit. “Wizard Joontal, I want to thank you for coming and visiting my boy. He’s been a fan for a while, since I let it slip that my boss had a Wizard.  He actually wanted you for last years birthday but I wasn’t sure he was old enough. He wore me down enough to convince me to let you do a short visit this year. It really has been a positive experience.” She offers her hand for a shake goodbye. 

I don’t know if she expects me to break character. I really do regret that I can’t take her hand in thanks and tell her that she has a wonderful child. I simply look at her hand like it is a snake. With a Harumph the door swings open as though on it’s own volition before I step outside, ignoring the woman’s sincere thanks. A new storm forms, taking me back into the sky.