One Unchecked Box

"Republished" because it was the only way to add the embed for the newly recorded audio version of this story due to the Top Story badge. Plus it serves as a nice, informal announcement of the podcast's revival for another season (go subscribe!):

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***

One Unchecked Box

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished.

Now, at first, it didn’t seem such a big deal. The boats simply shifted to the opposite end of their moorings. The fish—or what passed for fish around here, anyway—still kept on swimming. If they were confused, they didn’t make their feeling known.

However, Chief Dam Administrator Quentin hadn’t summoned me because everything was fine and she needed some distraction to help pass the time.

“How bad?” I asked.

“Pretty bad,” she said with a shrug that seemed at odds with the alarms blaring from the speakers above our heads. “With the river’s unexplained change in course, we can’t generate power.”

“I don’t get it. Can’t the turbines just spin the other way?”

“Theoretically, yes. But although the river may now flow toward the base of the dam, that doesn’t mean gravity isn’t still at play.”

“Man, this planet sure is a fascinating place of contradictions, isn’t it?”

“Yes, well,” Quentin said, blowing a stray bang that had fallen out of place from the hardhat that served as a headband, “I’m not sure I put this one on the planet.”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t seen the report?”

“IT still hasn’t unlocked my account. Say they’ve got higher priorities.”

“Higher priorities than their Chief Sorcerer?”

“Funnily enough, I got locked out trying to perfect a Password spell. I figure what hacker can get to a wand that doesn’t even have an ethernet port, much less a WiFi connection. Whisper the password to the wand, point it at the screen, give the incantation, and presto!”

“So what went wrong?”

“The, uh, wand can’t distinguish between websites and apps. So it tries all of the passwords you’ve told it.”

“And if you don’t get lucky and have the right one come up in the first ten attempts…”

“Yep, you’re locked out. I think IT has grown a bit sick of me trying to bridge the divide between tech and magic and decided it’s better if I’m cut off from their systems completely.”

“You did open a backdoor portal for that Russian hacker all the way back on Earth once.”

“Okay, so we didn’t have clean drinking water for a couple days. But think of all we learned!”

“You yourself said you still don’t know how you did that.”

“Yes, but now we know it’s possible, don’t we? It’s on the to-do list. Ivan has said he’s ready and willing any time I want to try to recreate it. His exact words were ‘very eager.’”

Quentin raised her left eyebrow. “Would ‘Learn to control the divine waters’ be somewhere on that to-do list?”

“Possibly…”

“Could you check? It could be quite helpful in our current situation.”

After a moment, I saw no convenient way to change the subject and withdrew a roll of parchment from my belt. I knew exactly where the item was, but I still unrolled the scroll and made a great show of reading the lower items to myself.

“Ah,” Quentin said. I hadn’t noticed she had taken hold of the top of the scroll. “Here it is. Right at the start of the list, actually.”

This time she raised her right eyebrow. “Still unchecked, I see?”

I squirmed, which the robe proved quite adept at hiding.

Quentin’s eyebrow remained aloft. “Perhaps that might have proved a bit higher priority than attempting to solve the minor inconveniences of daily life with your great gift?”

“Are you saying the current situation is more than a minor inconvenience?”

Structural integrity at 70%, the ceiling chimed in.

The Chief Dam Administrator apparently decided the irony of the moment was too great to not allow herself a slight grin. “A slightly more than minor inconvenience, yes.”

“Hindsight is 20/20,” I shot back as I rewound the scroll, casting around for anything to change the subject. Then, inspiration struck. “What was this report you were talking about?”

“Ah, right.” Quentin opened an email and rolled back from her desk so I could read.

Subject: Whoops

Body: Hey gang,

No good way to say this, but turns out that bug sitting atop the massive crystal deposit may have been a bit more than a simple interloper. As soon as we shot it, it vanished into thin air. Never saw our guns do that before.

On the plus side, I didn’t end up needing that janitorial detail to clean bug guts off the crystal after all.

On the downside, the crystal formation stopped glowing. And now we got water seeping into previously bone-dry tunnels and filling the whole place up.

TLDR: the alternate power source project might be suffering a few delays. Though perhaps not as many if @ChiefScubaAdministrator can spare some hands.

All the best,

Chief Mine Administrator

Quentin gave a slight shake of her head as I met her gaze. “Say what you want for the Planetary Union, but their prohibition on shooting local fauna certainly seems prescient right about now.”

“What, you mean the galactic government that forgot all about us? Dropped us on this planet and forced us to reverse engineer everything we now have?”

“I think they were a bit preoccupied with the Europa Incident unfolding at the time and figured it would be safer to limit contact with any settlements in case things were to go worse than they did. Plus, they had direct proof of the drawbacks of leaving interplanetary transport available to those who might be subject to the, er, adverse effects of the local ecosystem.”

Quentin sighed. “Regardless, if we had just one reactor like the ones they power the Lighthouses with, we would not need this dam. And I would not be about to be die.”

“Okay,” I said, “but the Planetary Union also doesn’t recognize magic, do they? If they returned and took control, I’d just be some nobody. Again.” I paused. “Wait, did you say ‘about to die?’”

Quentin nodded.

“What’s that about?”

“The water has reversed direction.”

“We established that.”

Her pupils moved in what might have been the start of an eyeroll. “So, instead of flowing out the dam base…”

“It’s flowing against the dam?!”

Structural integrity at 60%.

Quentin nodded, gesturing back to the computer screen. This time, she had pulled up a camera feed from the top of the dam. It offered a bird’s eye view as the river surged at the base of the concrete megalith, unable to move forward but with more water piling up with each second. The net effect appeared to be a balloon inflating against the side of the dam.

“Isn’t that, like, defying physics?” I asked Quentin.

“The magical water isn’t conforming to scientific standards,” Quentin said, letting my ludicrous argument hang in the air for a moment. “So, you see why I had such vested interest in that checkbox?”

I nodded.

“With each passing second, the volume and weight of water pressing on the dam is increasing. And, believe it or not, the dam was not designed to take pressure from the front.”

Quentin opened another camera feed that showed the reservoir behind the dam. It was not nearly as dramatic as the front side, but after a few seconds, it was clear that the water line was dropping.

“Meanwhile, the reservoir is emptying, so we don’t even have that for counterweight.”

“Well,” I said, unsheathing my wand. “No time like the present to start learning.”

The Chief Dam Administrator pointed behind us. “There’s an elevator that will take you to the top of the dam from here.” She rose from her chair. “I’ll be quite interested to watch this.”

***

I pointed the wand and let the vision of the growing mountain of liquid retreating back down the river fill my mind. When the sensation in my fingers grew to a fever pitch, I flicked the wand down toward the base of the dam and opened my eyes.

In time to see a scattering of droplets fly from the top of the demented water balloon.

“It’s a good start,” Quentin said beside me.

“Just warming up,” I agreed, fighting down the sinking feeling in my gut at the fact that that was the strongest effect I’d ever had on the divine waters.

I did the whole routine again, this time exhorting as much power into my fingertips as possible. To the point I was surprised my fingernails didn’t explode from all the raw energy.

This time a singular wave traveled off the peak of the water and rippled the opposite direction into the horizon.

Promising, if not for the fact that the amount I had skimmed off the top had already been replaced by the inflow.

Also, my wand was now smoking.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Quentin. “That’s all I’ve got. I’m honestly surprised I did that much.”

Quentin put her hand on my arm for a moment. “Me, too.”

“You knew?”

She nodded with a sad smile. “The title ‘Chief Sorcerer’ when everyone’s learning magic from scratch doesn’t carry as much weight as people think it does.”

Amen.

“Well,” Quentin said, returning to her normal implacable expression, “guess you’d better be off.” She nodded to a crack in the cement beneath our feet that I did not remember seeing before.

“You’re staying?”

“I’m the Chief Dam Administrator. It’s my job.”

“I just failed at my job. Who’s to judge you for doing the same?”

“Nonsense,” Quentin said as she pushed me toward the elevator. “You’re just learning. You’ll improve.”

I turned around and met her eyes. “You really think so?”

“I do.” She grinned again. This time, the smile was grim. “Or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say, you’d better. With this dam’s destruction, magic will be the only source of power available.”

I was about to reminder her the other sorcerers and I had tried that already and sucked at it when she continued, “Plus, if the river runs dry because all the water has returned to its source, then you’ll be all that stands between the survivors and complete societal collapse.”

I gulped, then held out my hand. “Good luck, Chief.”

She took it. “Good luck, Chief.”

***

I stood on the cliff, watching as the reservoir continued its race to the bottom. Until that race was interrupted as the blocked river finally overran the top of the dam and resumed its own dash upriver.

Within minutes, larger and larger chunks of cement were joining the great migration.

“Well, buddy,” I said to my wand, pleased to see it had reduced from smoking to steaming. “Guess the Password spell will have to wait a bit.”

I could have sworn the wand seemed disappointed.