Sixty Six

The concept of magic is a real doozy when it comes to definitions. There are so many different things that run around using that name. When a sleight of hand illusionist makes a quarter appear from thin air. Magic. A piece of foam takes sneaker marks off of a wall. Magic. A small food processor makes you a smoothie for later. Magic. When we say magic, what we really mean is easy access to the miraculous.
Back before the birth of science when chemistry was vaguely understood as a concept, magic would happen all the time. The Sumerians knew that if you left your barley tea out long enough Ninkasi would come in the night and craft a beverage that had some rather magical qualities. The Norse Berserkers of the Veringian guard would eat the seed of the black henbane. Before science they would go into a battle frenzy, after science they would simply have had a pretty bad case of alkaloid toxicity.
Some would suggest that science had taken all the fun out of the game by classifying things like psilocybin toxicity as a medical condition instead of a spiritual state of being. This in turn transubstantiated a brush with infinity into merely a pretty rad Tuesday night. With the inherent knowledge that you are taking a substance, you are able to jump onto your hallucinogenic bicycle with a handy set of training wheels, instead of diving headfirst into the deep end of the universe. Science hadn’t taken all the fun out of the game, it just made it boring and safe.
If you reach in your pocket and take out your phone and really look at it, it is an artifact of mystery. Sure, you know that there are some microchips in there that do some math related stuff. But, unless you have a Phd in computer science you pretty much have no idea how it works. It somehow turns off and on a jillion times a second and not only knows the digits of pi to a thousand places, but also your cousin’s birthday is next week and you should probably text them. That, for all intents and purposes, is magic. Look at it on paper. We take precious stones from the depths of the Earth and intone them with words of power to do our bidding. If that’s not magic, then what is?
What Fyndraxis was proposing to do was to make actual magic a reality for humans. He wanted to use the untold trillions of nanites as the mythical mana or magic force that was ever present in the games of his youth. He wanted to see humans bringing down lighting from the heavens or summoning Bahamut. Not only would it be cool as hell, but it would have a couple of side benefits. Number one: Humans would be able to achieve a comfortable level of civilization at some point in the near future. Number two: as humanity expanded its territory, they would take out the Wendigo along the way.
The world wouldn’t be a paradise, but it would certainly be demonstrably better than it was right now. He couldn’t help but think of Solomon drinking himself to death up on his hill. In the Renaissance, he would have been referred to as a polymath. Right now though, his mind was consumed with thoughts of his pot still, the Wendigo, the cannibals, and the future of his people. If he had safety and a modicum of peace in his life, there would be no limit to what he could achieve. The current population was a rough thing to estimate, but there were probably only ten or fifteen people in the world at this point with a mind like his. In a future with peace and magic, there could be thousands. And then finally, humanity could get back to the business of quibbling over who had the best carbonara.