Chapter One: The Zeroth Law

The hallway outside the apartment was littered with trashbags and other trash which was not in bags, which the young man carefully stepped around. Not so much to keep clean, but out of worry of what might be hiding under or in the refuse. Eventually, he came to the correct door. Just like the bartender told him, he knocked three times, waited, and knocked two more times.

After a few seconds, the door shook a little as locking mechanisms on the inside were undone. It pulled back a few inches, held by the short security chain typical of apartment doors everywhere. A part of a face poked out from behind it, showing some skin, an eye, and some hair, but no more

“Who are you and what do you want?”

“Are you John Reeso?”

There was a pronounced metallic clicking noise from behind the door… not unlike that of a pistol being cocked.

“I asked you first.”

“Okay. I’m Mitch Turner, and I wanted to talk to John Reeso.”

The face behind the door nodded slightly.

“Alright then. Yeah. I’m John Reeso. Now, why do you want to talk to John Reeso?”

“Well… he… er… you…”

“Talk faster, please. I’m a busy man. The grass does not watch itself grow, you know.”

“Right… you’re said to be a very strong person. Physically. You can throw people around like nothing.”

“This is true.”

“And you’re also said to be really fast, snapping people’s wrists almost before they pull out guns.”

“Something like that might have happened a few times, yeah.”

“Finally, it’s said that your hands hold the stuff of life and death in them, that you can hurt or heal with a touch.”

The one visible eye had its one visible eyebrow raised in what could either be surprise or interest.

“The death touch is often found at the highest levels of certain martial arts. Arts I may have spent a while training in. As for the other, legally I cannot say anything about any healing power since I’m not in possession of any medical degree.”

“…you said you couldn’t talk about it. You didn’t say you didn’t have it.”

The eye stared, then the door shut. Mitch sighed and almost turned away from the door when there was a fumbling sound as the safety chain was removed. The door opened again, much wider this time, and Mitch got his first good look at John Reeso. He was just an inch or two shy of six feet, ripped in muscles, with face that would have looked incomplete without the beard stubble on it. The hair was short, black, and wildly unkempt. The man also lacked a shirt, and Mitch found himself staring at the extensive scarring on the chest… not to mention a bizarre tattoo on the shoulder that looked like an inkblot test seen under the influence of LSD.

John Reeso seemed to be giving Mitch the once-over as well, and then opened the door a bit wider. Mitch noticed that in the man’s other hand there was, in fact, a gun… but the finger wasn’t on the trigger.

“I think this is the part where you tell me why you’re here.”

“Wha?” Mitch stuttered, looking up from the gun.

John rolled his eyes. “You came to my apartment. You got my attention. You have yet to try to kill me or rob me. The only people who act that way are people who want something. So what is it you want? Some backup in a fight? Some tumors yanked out? Come on, the suspense has me on the edge of my seat.”

“I want you to train me.”

“Wha?” John’s eyebrows shot up as his brain tried to digest the sentence his ears had heard, and got instant heartburn.

“You can make yourself stronger and faster. You can hurt or heal with a touch. They say you can change yourself into anyone. I’ve even heard rumors that bullets go right through you without hurting you. Whatever it is — psychic powers, magic, some sort of martial art technique — I want to be able to do it to.”

John’s mind eventually caught up with the world around him. “Okay. So you want to do what I do. The question I gotta know is why.”

Mitch blinked, then reached up to scratch his head. “Why? I don’t really know. Up until six months ago I thought everything was just peachy with my life. Student loans all paid, steady career, good spot in the dating game. Then I was walking down an alley after clubbing one night, and I see two guys fighting. At first I thought it was a mugging or a drug deal, but one of them just pointed and all the trash can lids in the alley flew off the cans and hit the guy like giant frisbees. That’s when I realized I had no idea what the world was really like. And I’ve been trying to figure that out ever since. My search has led me here.”

John took a deep breath. “Come on inside. We gotta talk.”

***

At John’s kitchen table (a card table with a variety of different food related stains on it) the man put down some shot glasses and filled them both with an amber liquid that doubtless had a very high percentage of alcohol. John downed one glass, shook his head, then took a fairly long drink out of the bottle itself.

Once his nerves were sufficiently steeled, he sat down in the chair opposite the chair Mitch was seated in.

“Mitch. Mitch, Mitch, Mitch… do you even know what you have asked for?”

“Training in something I don’t understand.”

“Yes. Quite. Exactly. You do not understand it. This is not something that can be taught, like algebra or Japanese or CPR. It’s not so much a skill as… I dunno.”

John took another drink, this time out of one of the glasses.

“Mitch, what I do is something instinctive. I figured out how to do this when I was fifteen years old. And it wasn’t a choice or a decision, it was the way I saw the universe, and still do. This is magick, Mitch. Magic with a K on the end. Not card tricks. Not making the statue of liberty disappear. Not sawing a person in… wait. Never mind the last one. This is about forcing your will on the universe and MAKING it do what you want. Ass-raping the laws of physics. Do you really think you can learn this?”

“How did you learn it?”

“Okay, that’s different, right there. My father was this crazy factory worker who worked ten hour days, spent two hours at the bar, and then came home and started throwing random bible verses at me when he was trying to hit me with his belt. Who was your father?”

“He’s a patent attorney.”

“See, right there. We have a conflict. I can do what I do the way I do it because the way I see the world is… the way that I see the world. I think I probably shouldn’t have drunk this shit right out of the bottle.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that.”

“…I’m gonna try to make some coffee without burning my hands. Hang around if you want but don’t touch anything.”

***

John shook his head once more.

“Okay. I think I can think clearly. I think I am therefore I think that I… okay, maybe not.” In spit of himself, John laughed a bit.

“Mr. Reeso-”

“Call me John. Only the police call me Mr. Reeso.”

“Alright. John, if you’re willing to teach me, I want to learn. You can name your price. Whatever it takes, I’m going to figure this stuff out or die in the process.”

“Actually, you’re more likely to die AFTER you figure the process out. Secondary infections. You gotta watch yourself. Ohhhh god. I need to get rid of that bottle. Everytime I have a drink I do something I’m gonna regret later.”

“Does that mean you’ll teach me?”

“Look, yeah, I can show you shit. I can tell you all sorts of stuff about how to do other stuff. But you may not actually learn anything at all. This is not teaching like in college, this is the Socratic Inquiry smoking rock and wearing a strap-on.”

“Just what was in that bottle, anyway?”

“Oh hell, I dunno. It came with the apartment.”

***

The wind was blowing harder on the roof of the apartment building than it had been on the city streets. Then again, that probably made sense because there weren’t as many buildings in the way at higher altitudes. John shook his head and pointed at the rising cluster of skyscrapers downtown.

“Mitch. You see those buildings? Do you know what’s in them?”

“People.”

“Good. You’re smarter than most. They either think I’m talking about the materials of the building, or the stuff the people use like computers and elevators.”

“Seemed obvious to me. I’m not sure what’s special about people.”

“You know, I think. You know, but you don’t know that you know. It’s like owning a tricked out sports car but not knowing it because when they sent you the keys, you buried them under a bunch of other stuff and forgot about them.”

“That would be one messy house.”

“That’s what most minds are. Messy. You got your friends birthdates, old grocery lists, TV schedules, rent, repressed childhood memories, twelve years of compulsory schooling and if you’re lucky, something cool on top like memories of your first kiss or make-out session. You gotta tune it all out, but that’s something that comes later. Right now, what do you think those people in those buildings want? I mean, really want?”

“To go home.”

John blinked, then grinned. “Heh. Yeah, I suppose they do. I was thinking of another example, but this works too. Why don’t they go home?”

“Because they have to stay there and work to keep their jobs.”

“And?”

“And they need to keep their jobs to earn money.”

“There we go. Now, what is money?”

“Peices of paper and bits of metal with-”

“I’m going to cut you off right there.”

“Huh?”

“You’re thinking of currency. Actual bills and coins. What is money itself?”

“Money… is… a quality assigned to currency?”

“Closer.”

“A concept? Something you can assign to something solid, but not something that exists by itself, like numbers?”

“…what? Care to run that by me again?”

“Well, you can have three apples, three cars, three brothers or three testicles, but never three by itself.”

“I see what you mean. And you’re close. In the interest of time, I’ll jump the last gap for you. Money is a belief.”

“…a belief?”

“Yes. Not an idea or concept as you mentioned. An idea or concept can include notions impossible to be made real, or real possibilities not presently existing. What makes a belief different?”

Mitch scratched his head. “I don’t know.”

“Good. All those right answers were starting to get creepy. A belief is a dream that people treat real. People all over the world get up before their bodies are ready, and perform dangerous or mind numbing tasks in exchange for little tokens and tickets because they believe that those tokens are important. Outside of human action, money has no purpose, no value, no existence. What is the lesson today?”

“…that belief has power?”

“It’s so much more than that. This is the foundation of magick, Mitch. So be sure you understand this. All that an idea or dream needs to become real is for people to believe it IS real.”

Mitch blinked a few times, then walked over to the edge of the roof and looked down into an alley.

“You know, I was kind of expecting complicated rules about manipulating blood chemistry and muscle movements. To make things more complicated. But if what you say is true, then all sorts of shit in my life suddenly makes sense.”

John walked up and put his hands on the edge of the roof. “The truth is always simple. Only lies are complicated. Here’s another truth for you. I had to reasons for bringing you up here. The first was a visual aid for the foundation of magick. Do you know what the second is?”

“…you like the fresh air-”

Mitch’s reply was cut off as John gripped the building hard enough to cause small cracks, bent over the edge, and launched both his liquor and his meager breakfast into the alley. Mitch watched, both disgusted and at the same time terribly amused. Eventually John’s stomach settled down and he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, spitting a few times.

“The second reason… is the plumbing is out in my apartment.”