The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 15: The Wizard Casts Fireball

Dan wanted a hammerspace. That being an extradimensional storage space, instantly accessible, to put and retrieve stuff that might be useful. The Gap was almost perfect. Its existence fit the definition near exactly. And it was just sitting there, all that empty space to fill! If only it wasn't toxic! Poison! Such a waste. Dan wanted a way around it.

Originally, Dan had planned to use his appropriated underground lair as a substitute. He could just spread things out on a few tables, and instantly know where they were. His teleportation was near instantaneous, so picking what he needed was a simple matter of remembering it. Practically speaking, there wasn't a meaningful difference between storing things he might need, and having them directly on hand.

That wasn't a good enough reason not to try. Practicality had nothing to do with it. Dan wanted to master his power. Not knowing what he could do with it was like not knowing that he could close his hands, or how his legs worked. It was like never bothering to learn how to throw a ball, or jump, or speak, or walk. It was like knowing there was a part of himself that was entirely foreign, unexplored, and lacking, yet being too damn lazy to bother working on it.

Dan was not that person, anymore. He refused to be. Especially not when working on it was so damn easy.

He held a ball bearing in his hand, the same that he'd launched across his yard. He'd dubbed it his lucky ball. Hopefully the streak would continue with this next bit. The idea was incredibly simple, so much so that Dan was disappointed in himself that he'd never thought to try it before.

His veil was a doorway, opening and closing at his command. In and out of the Gap with but a flex of thought and will. His veil was the gate between reality and what lay between. It was connected, a bridge between the two worlds. It was an undeniable fact.

Dan could already selectively transport parts of his veil into the gap. By pulsing his veil he could shave away bits of matter, kind of like sandpaper, or a grindstone. Or he could remove something entirely, metaphorically opening the door, and hurling it into the empty Gap. He could bring himself, wrapping himself in his veil and falling away. What he wanted, now, was a sort of middle ground.

The idea was simple. The execution... just as simple. Dan sent his veil into the ball bearing, coloring the silvery metal a shimmering sapphire in his vision. He felt it, the weight of it, the tiny portion of his power nestled inside and around it. He opened the door, and the ball vanished.

But he didn't let go. His veil remained wrapped around it, an imaginary fist, holding tight. Dan stood in the real, while a tiny portion of his veil hovered in the Gap. It was—

Disorienting. Like a finger had just up and wriggled off his hand. There was a disconnect between feeling and seeing, that his brain struggled to adjust to. A phantom limb. He was a sudden amputee.

He quickly shut his eyes. He let his arms go slack, his legs loosen, his mind float free. His veil wrapped around the steel ball, unable to move it. He felt it. He felt it. The door was left open, just a crack. Enough for a tendril of his power to connect from here to there, from reality to not. He could move it, his veil, but it was sluggish. Without proper visualization, he was flailing in the dark. Without his input, the Gap had no form.

But it worked! The connection held! His veil was lessened, the vast pool from which he drew his power had diminished ever so slightly, but that was easily solved. Dan willed a change, and the ball reappeared in his hand. He held it tight, felling his reserve refill, as veil met veil and merged with its greater half. Nothing was lost, nothing was changed.

Dan grinned triumphantly.

It was slow, unwieldy, confusing, disorienting. It was annoying and impractical. The Gap was less responsive. He lost a chunk of his veil while doing it. It all seemed like a waste of effort.

None of these things couldn't be fixed with practice.

The disorientation would fade with time and repetition. Humans were too adaptable to be stalled by something as silly as nausea. The speed and ease of use would naturally increase as he got better at visualizing what he was doing. The impracticality of his new technique wasn't even worth mentioning. Dan wasn't a robot, and he wouldn't ignore something new just because it wasn't perfectly practical.

The Gap was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Dan's ultimate goal with this, the entire thought-scheme that spawned this little venture, originated in his old dimension. He'd never played Dungeons and Dragons before, but he enjoyed reading and listening to stories. Theorycrafting, though he was personally awful at it, was a special pleasure, and he remembered quite a few old, untested ideas.

The story went something like this: A high level wizard creates his own magical mini-universe; a demi-plane. Within it, he can modify the rules as he pleases. The wizard makes his pocket universe completely empty, just a massive expanse of space. He changes the borders to act as an infinite loop, as you reach one end, you wrap back 'round to the other. He adds gravity, pointing it arbitrarily downward. The direction was irrelevant, so long as it was consistent.

Then he conjures up a big fucking rock, and lets it fall.

Dan had once read a comic about what would happen if you were to somehow throw a baseball at the speed of light. The conclusion, as Dan remembered it, could be summed up as 'Everyone dies.'

There would be no air, in the demi-plane. No friction. No obstacles. Just an endless looping space. The rock would fall and fall and fall, accelerating at whatever the wizard had set gravity to be, forever. It was meant to be a doomsday weapon. A theorycraft on how to murder-hobo an entire planet. The wizard would simply use another spell to open a portal to his demi-plane, the rock would fly through, and everything would die.

It was a neat idea, and also completely terrifying, given that Dan was now somewhat confident he could replicate the idea. It was overkill beyond anything he could imagine, and Dan was uncertain he'd be able to even survive the aftermath. At some point, an object would be moving so fast that the air would ignite. If he wasn't careful, he'd blow himself up.

His plan was simple. He wanted to keep things in the Gap, attached to his veil, and falling. It should be possible. It was possible. He just wasn't quite sure how to visualize it, yet. There had to be an upper limit to the speed he could get, lest he fireball himself, so t-space would need air resistance. That was easy enough. He basically already did that, unconsciously even. It was probably why his ball bearing hadn't been more destructive.

But could he make something fall, keep falling, when he wasn't in the Gap? Able to summon it into the real, at any moment? To push his veil out, and fire one of those ball bearings with nothing more than a thought? No warning, no chance of missing? Dan thought he could. But it would be damnably difficult. Just trying to picture it was like drawing a portrait with his left hand, while writing an essay with his right. Multi-tasking did not come naturally to Dan. He'd have to work at it.

It occurred then to Dan that this latest assault on his life might have affected him more than he'd thought. He had never considered himself a violent person. He enjoyed fighting, true, and he was surprisingly good at it, but that wasn't his whole world. He had never wanted to place himself in a position where killing another person was the optimal choice. He didn't want that for himself. He wanted to be more... moral than that.

But it was different when the people close to him were targeted. He understood, now, this side of himself. He saw it all with clarity. There was a black pit in him, angry and unyielding, that wanted nothing more than to lash out. He had self control, he'd worked hard for that, but it was there nonetheless.

it was a dangerous game he was playing, trying to arm himself like this. He was exactly the wrong kind of person to have a gun. De-escalation was the name of the game. Every single concealed firearm class would tell you that. A firearm was not meant to assuage your ego. It was meant as a last resort, to save your own life. Dan knew he wasn't the sort of person to use that power wisely. He also didn't care. He understood the truth of himself.

The next time some idiot attacked one of his loved ones, he'd end them.