The Watchtower

I went to the bar with David tonight. He cries if I won't go out at lest once a week, and tonight was a good night for it because work gave him a migraine but left me pretty much alone. That means I can keep up with him - well at least for the first four or five drinks.

We drove separately from work and when I got to the watchtower David was already hunched over his drink in a coroner booth looking miserable. I snagged a beer, a local lager I enjoy, and joined him with "Tough day?"

David groaned then rallied enough to look at me with red eyes, "Every time I cast the spell it was like lifting a mountain, and it seemed like I had to recast it every five seconds."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. Those bastards have sold more licenses for the spell. That's the roomer."

David scowled at me, "It's the truth. Are you saying you couldn't feel it?"

"No, the spell took more energy."

"And didn't last as long.'

For a mage David is remarkably superstitious about magical things. We've had this debate before, "How long our spell lasts isn't effected by its energy requirements."

David just grunted, then circled around to his original thesis, "Well more people were doing the spell." A waitress sashayed by and he flagged her down, "'Nother beer, and a shot of jack." Perhaps I wasn't going to keep up with him. When David's shot arrived he pounded it back and then looked at me as though inspired by the alcohol. "What I need to do is come up with my own spell."

I raised my eyebrows. "Yes, that would be nice."

"Something everyone will want. Or better yet a few very rich people will want it."

"You could also win the lotto."

"No, I'm serious. I need to come up with something good, make my mark, make some money!"

I shrugged. I should explain. Not many people come up with new spells. Try it for five minutes and you'll see why. Flying, fireballs, magical shields, immortality, and the like have all been done. Most of what's invented now is a little dongle of a spell that makes some piece of some industrial process easier.

Don't get me wrong, that sort of thing makes someone a lot of money. But you have to be on the inside, you have to know just what goes into - um, well into making a refrigerator for example, which parts are cheap and easy and which are expensive and cumbersome. Then you get a team of engineers the problem for a few weeks (or moths, or years, or decades) and they tell you the best way to improve a process is make part 52A experience 10% less friction at some point. This you give to the mages who will normally say a spell like that exists but it's too hard, or expensive, to include in the process. So you cycle and research until you come up with a total new effect you can develop a spell for, or - less optimally but more frequently - you can license and implement existing spell cheaply enough to make the improvement economically.

In response to my shrug, David gave me a squinty version of the evil eye. "You're a downer."

"Oh I guess. Alright, um, if you could figure out how to teleport things you'd make a ton of money."

"That's never been done."

"Well of course. I was thinking negative energy to make wormholes."

David grinned seemingly more interested in this conversation. I think his headache was going away. "No one knows how to make negative energy. I think gravity is clearly the way to go."

"Sure, but it's impossible to make enough..." and then we spent much of the night debating the impossible.