“I still don't get it,” said Rose.
“Yes?”
“We are going to rob a team of crack Unit 7 commandos who are carrying a briefcase with a very secret message. They have orders and the legal authority to shoot anyone who is trying to take it from them. Is that correct?”
“Yes. 100%.”
“And they only take one break for like 10 minutes. We only have those 10 minutes to attack them.”
“Correct again.”
“So, we have to secretly follow their truck, which we still haven’t found, wait for them to take a break, and launch an attack in those 10 minutes. Take out 6-7 armed commandos, who will be armed with machine guns, steal their suitcase, and get out before they call the police. Is this correct?”
“Indeed.”
“Let me guess, we are using a potato-powered machine again?”
“Certainly not with seven machine guns. There's a 100% chance that one of us will be shot.”
Rose shifted in her seat. “In that case, I don't get it. Also, why are we dressed like pizza delivery guys? And why do I have a fake moustache? Why am I dressed like Mario from that video game? And why does my dress say 'Best Pizza Chef in the World?'“
“Yes,” said Henderson. “Now you get it.”
They were speeding down the highway around 10 in the morning. The highway was fairly empty as it was a Sunday, but there was still enough traffic for them to have to weave in and out as Henderson tried to find the military truck the commandos would be driving.
He said the truck changed every time but there were a few signs he could tell which one it was. They had to find it as soon as possible on this highway and then secretly follow it until the commandos decided to take a break.
After 15-20 minutes of insane driving, he found a non-descript truck which he announced was the one carrying the commandos. It wasn't a normal truck but more like one of those military vehicles that could carry six or seven people. No doubt Henderson was correct. There was no reason for civilians to be driving this sort of vehicle down the highway on a Sunday morning.
But this left her even more confused.
“Okay, just tell me - why am I dressed like Mario, and why are we carrying boxes of pizza with us?”
“Because of rule 3, the most difficult rule to understand and follow. Like the first two rules, the only way to understand it is to experience it. But in this case, I'll have to explain a little bit to you because otherwise you won't be able to do what I need you to do.”
“Those crazy, chaotic gods from other dimensions - they don't see the world like we do. Hell, as I taught you, even humans don't see the world completely. And so, we have the situation where there are multitude of beings in this world, all of which can only see a small part of it.
The humans cannot see the demons and other supernatural creatures.
The demons can see the humans, but they only see them as food. They're completely oblivious to all our progress like our fancy clothes and pumpkin spiced lattes.
And finally, we have these chaotic gods. They don't see us as individuals. They see us as archetypes.”
“Archetypes?”
“As characters in a story. To them, our world is just like a story, and we are just the characters. That's why those gods are so unpredictable and chaotic - they see our world as a story or as a video game. Nothing here is real to them, and so wiping out this whole planet is no more of a moral conundrum to them than to you turning off your video game console.”
Rose couldn't understand a thing he was saying. “All that is very nice, uncle. I'm impressed at your knowledge. But it still doesn't explain why I have a fake moustache and why am dressed as Mario.”
“I discovered this secret from a human who calls himself the Storyteller. He was human once, many decades or even centuries ago although he has become something bigger now. Unlike the other chaotic gods, he likes us humans—maybe because he was one of us and wants to help us.
He told me the principles, although I had to learn the rules myself. I call it Reality Hacking or, in simpler words, Changing the Narrative.”
He turned to her and smiled. “This all sounds like ancient Greek to you, doesn't it?”
“Not really. I'm sure with Ancient Greek I could understand at least 1% of it.”
Anderson burst out laughing. “Okay, let's look at this day like a story. Pretend we are characters in a story being written by a mad and slightly incompetent writer. Say this writer is planning a scene. Seven very dangerous commandos are taking a secret file that must be stolen. If you were the writer of the story, how would you write it? How would you plan the assault?”
“No idea? I don't often plan assaults on Commandos; not even on a weekend.”
“Don't worry about being real or realistic; just pretend this is a Hollywood movie. What would you do?”
Rose thought about it. “Well, if this was a Hollywood movie, I would have my own team of 10-20 specialists. We would sweep in from a helicopter, launch missiles, and then land the helicopter to start shooting at them. Grab the suitcase and run.”
“Exactly,” said Henderson excitedly. “There will be a shootout, and you might blow the bridge out. At the very last second, the truck carrying the secret will be hanging off the bridge. I'd say to you, 'Oh no, the secret is falling into the river!' You'd jump down from the helicopter with a bungee rope tied to your leg and grab that suitcase half a second before it dropped. Meanwhile, the main villain would go falling to his death screaming, Nooooooooo! Is this accurate?”
She found the whole thing very silly, but he was so excited that she had to laugh with him. “Yep, that's exactly how it would happen in a cheesy B-grade Hollywood movie, but we don't have a team of commandos. Do we?”
“No, we don't, and even if we did, I told you the rules of magic are not reliable. There is no guarantee that we would be able to defeat the commandos.
And there is no guarantee the magic would help us; it might see us as the enemy. Perhaps this is the story in which we are the bad guys, trying to steal nuclear codes from the heroic government agents. In that story, the heroic government agents would kill us to protect the country. That's a problem with the third rule. You can change the narrative or hack the story a little, but only a little. Once you change the narrative, you have no control of where the story will go. We are nothing but characters in a play written by a madman.”
“I don't get it, Uncle. Tell me what the Third Rule of Magic is again.”
She saw the truck of the commandos turn the blinker on, and there was a sign for services a mile ahead. “Oh no,” she said, “we're out of time.”
“Relax, we have plenty of time. Enough time for me to explain the third law to you. The Third Rule of Magic says that our reality is not real, like the first law says. Like the second law, it says that we can change reality a little, but only a little. The place where the third law differs is: It says that reality is like a story, like a movie, and we are nothing but characters in it. If we want - at least those of us who have been exposed to magic - we can change the story a little, and that's what we are going to do today. Now hold on tight.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Without warning, he violently turned the car to take the exit.
“Jeez, Uncle, you could've done that slowly.”
“Nah, that would be no fun.”
“How are we changing the story again?” she asked while tightly gripping the dashboard in front of her.
“The story as it is happening now is: A bunch of commandos are carrying a top-secret file that we need to steal. We are going to hack the reality. We will change the story.
In our story, those commandos are not working for the government; they are working for the World Pizza Federation, and they are carrying a new recipe for a super tasty pizza. This evil corporation wants to shut us down because we are the last family-owned business in all of Italy.
So the two of us dress like pizza bakers. You’re dressed like Mario because I need an Italian theme in this. We are going to steal the pizza formula from this evil corporation. We are going to turn the story from a thriller into a comedy. You know what happens with comedy right? No one dies, and the good guys usually win.”
Rose knew she was dead. Her uncle was officially clinically insane.
“Oh my fucking god! You're kidding me right? Just give me a gun, I'll kill myself right now.”
***
It turned out Henderson was not kidding.
When she tried to point out how stupid this whole thing was, he reminded her of the demon and how unbelievable that had seemed to her as well.
“You trusted me then, you must trust me now. Like then, if you don't trust me we will both die. And you will never find out what happened to your sister. So are you with me or not?”
Gritting her teeth, she agreed. “Fine. How do we do this?”
“Simple. I will activate the magic, and I'll give you a sign. Your only job is to open the suitcase that one of the guards is carrying and swap out the paper in there for my paper. Don't worry about anything. Don't worry about if the magic will work or not. You only need to be laser-focused on opening that suitcase. That's it. That's all you need to do.”
Rose sighed. That's all she needed to do? How easy!
She tried to keep the content and sarcasm out of her voice. “But uncle, the man carrying the suitcase has it chained to his wrist, and he stands in the middle of five other armed men. Unlocking that suitcase will be the hardest thing - and the only hard thing - in the whole mission.”
“Don't you worry, my dear, that's what your uncle is for. Uncle Henderson, the last surviving honest and independent businessman of all of Italy. You and me, we ah gonna save-ah the peet-zah shop, ah?” he said with an exaggerated and fake Italian accent.
“Now watch how a magician does his trick.”
He opened the door to the cafe that the armed guards had gone into, and she could see them getting tense. All seven of them were looking at them like hawks.
Henderson shouted out. “It's a Mia. Benino Beniti of Beniccio Pizza Shop in Naples. We-ah heya fo’ the peetzah challenge.”
Rose could feel the whole vibe of the room change. It was like the world had gone from red to purple. Like somebody had changed the channel in the middle of a movie. Like the serious dark gothic fiction she had been reading had been replaced by a comedy.
The commandos suddenly seemed less dangerous:
-
One of them was scratching his butt
-
Another was trying to pick his nose with his machine gun
-
A third one had his shoelaces untied and fell down
As Rose looked on in surprise, her uncle walked towards them, did a comical wobble, and slipped, sending his pizza flying over to the commandos. The commandos moved back to get away from it but bumped into each other and all of them collapsed. Her uncle collapsed on top of them, spilling his cold coffee onto the man with the suitcase. The coffee landed light on his groin and it looked like he had had a pee-pee accident.
“What are you, stupid, old man? Why you no see where you're going?” said the commando in a terrible American Italian accent.
“Hey,” said Henderson, “me, just an old man. Here let me wipe that stain.”
Picking up some tissue he started roughly rubbing at the man's groin area. The other commander started giggling. “Oh, somebody's getting a happy ending.”
“Stop it!” said the commando.
He unlocked the suitcase from his hand, put it down, and went to the toilet to clean himself. Henderson winked at Rose and she got the message. As subtly as she could, she sat down by the suitcase, took out her lockpick kit, and started working on it. This was one of the harder lock picks. It would take her at least two minutes, and she hoped she had enough time.
Of course she didn't. One of the commandos immediately noticed her. “Hey, what are you doing?”
She panicked and her heart froze, but Henderson just stood up and slapped him in the face. “Hey! No staring down my nieces blouse okay? I know she has the big jugs, but she is a virgin. You stare at her breasts you marry her, okay?”
“How dare you slap me!”
The commando tried to slap Henderson but Henderson ducked at the last moment and the commando slapped one of his own friends. His friends tried to slap the first commando but ended up hitting a third one. The third one tried to hit the second one back but ended up hitting a waitress instead.
And within seconds, the remaining commandos, the waitress, and the chef were all involved in a big fist fight.
Rose was sweating profusely; she needed more time, more time!
And then click…
…the suitcase opened.
Henderson had told her to replace the sheet of paper inside with one of his. She removed the paper, put it under the fake pizza they were carrying, and put their own fake sheet inside.
She had a brief look at what it said: “Secret Pizza recipe from the Henderson family”.
It was an actual recipe Henderson had printed last night.
She locked the suitcase back just in time as the other commander came back and shouted at his men to stop fighting. Henderson grabbed Eve by the arm, and they quickly made their way out.
“We need to get out of here, but before that, wipe your eyes and nose. I have some antiseptic tissues in the car.”
It was only when they're in the car that Rose noted that her eyes and nose were bleeding. Her eyes were really bad, it was like her mascara running down her cheek, except it was thick red blood.
“What the hell is this?” she said.
He gave her some antiseptic tissues. “Don't worry, it happens at first one or two times. You will get used to it. It happens because your body cannot deal with the extreme magic. The magic I did in there is very powerful, more powerful than any other living wizard could do it. It's a sort of magic those chaotic gods from other dimensions do, and it usually leads to insanity in humans. I know how to control the magic so it won't drive us insane, but it does have some adverse effects, as you noticed.”
She nodded and cleaned the blood. After that, she looked at the file. There were a few names on this.
“What is this list? Who are these people?”
“Check my name, is it there?”
She scrolled through the list. “Oh yes, it is. It says here: Old Man Henderson, Certified Clinically Insane, Harmless and Silly. Avoid.”
Henderson let out a steady stream of curses and insults. “Those bastards! Calling me harmless and silly. How dare they? I should blow up their headquarters just to prove a point.”
“What is this list, uncle?”
“It is Unit 7's red list. The people on this list are so dangerous that Unit 7 usually keeps a plan to kill them when necessary, not arrest them or vanish them, just straight kill them.”
Rose looked at the list. She didn't recognise any of the names. Henderson asked her to read through the list, and Rose did so. Henderson seemed to know all of them.
“Ah, yes, her of course know about her. Who’s next? Lady Mirabelle? Oh yeah, she actually worked for Unit 7, but she found their methods distasteful, so she quit. Now they are looking for an excuse to kill her. What about this next person? Sort of know who she is.”
There was one last name on the list: Royce Raine. The list said he was extremely dangerous, extremely psychotic, and his powers were unknown. That he left dead bodies wherever he appeared. They gave him the code name X.
“X, eh?” said Henderson. “They give that to the most dangerous psychics - the ones they cannot control and the ones who they know for certain will never work for them. I was on that list for a long time, and they tried to kill me a few times. If this Royce person has a X in front of him, he will certainly be killed before the year is over. The strange thing is, I've never heard of him. How come a dangerous psychic has come on the scene, and I haven't heard of him? I know all the players.”
“What now, Uncle? Soon, Unit 7 will know that the list has been stolen. Why did you insist on replacing it with that fake pizza recipe? Wouldn't it have been better if I just photographed it?”
Henderson had been driving back to their home, this time driving more carefully, following every traffic rule, and staying two miles below the speed limit.
“No, because I want to send them a message. They will not be killing any more psychics on my watch. If it means going to war with Unit-7, that's fine. I've been to war with them before. Killed quite a few of their agents and commandos. They have almost infinite resources and always manage to hire more.”
Rose wanted to know more but she also felt that Henderson didn't want to talk about it.
“I have been avoiding picking a fight with Unit 7 for the last 7-8 years, mainly because I thought they were going straight, that they had stopped their most extreme methods. But then I started hearing rumours again - they've started killing psychics again, and the worst rumour I've heard is that they're actually working with the cultists.
I know I will have to go to war with them sooner or later, so I choose it on my terms and conditions.”
He was silent for a long time. Both of them didn't say a single word for the almost hour it took for them to get home. Just as they were about to reach home, Henderson's phone beeped. He asked Rose to look at it. “Someone who says that you are a dog walker. They want to know when it is a good time to drop by.”
“That's my agent. My informer in Unit 7. She is the one who spared your life in that Iraq dig.”
Rose thought about that. Her uncle had known about her the whole time and yet he had never made any attempt to contact her. Why was that?
“Why does she want to meet now?” she asked.
“I guess I’ll find out. But I will be going alone. For you, I have a job.”