- Chapter 061 -

  Budget Mismanagement

  Clyde let out a low, guttural growl, a sound of pure, frustrated rage. A more intense wave of green, magical energy pulsed from him, making the half-empty pint glasses on a nearby table rattle a furious, discordant rhythm.

  "Oi, mate!" a voice barked from the bar. It was the man in the high-vis jacket. He turned on his stool, fixing Clyde with a look of annoyance. "Keep it down, will ya? Some of us are trying to enjoy a quiet drink."

  The mundane complaint was so utterly at odds with the high-stakes, magical confrontation that Mark couldn't help it. Through the magical mental torment, he laughed. A real, genuine laugh that echoed in the suddenly quiet pub.

  "Alright, you win." he said, wiping a tear of cynical amusement between coughs. "If it gets rid of you, I'll offer you what you want. Just tell Clyde to lower the tone before he collapses or breaks something irreplaceable."

  Clyde stared at him, his expression laced with suspicion. Eric, however nodded towards Clyde, then sneered. "Finally," he snapped. "Get on with it."

  Feeling some of the pressure ease from Clyde's memory magic, Mark turned his attention to the arc of cards spread across the table. With a slow, deliberate motion, he slid two of them from the spread and, with a flick of his wrist, flipped them face up. “These should be a good start, something old and something new.”

  The first card depicted the Great Pyramids of Giza, their ancient, weathered stones stark against a brilliant blue sky. The moment it was revealed, an almost physical aura of sand and age seemed to burst from the card, a wave of dry heat and the phantom smell of a thousand years of dust. It wasn't just a picture. It was a memory, a perfect composite built from every book, every documentary, every film Mark had ever consumed on the subject.

  The second card showed the iconic, sail-like arches of the Sydney Opera House, gleaming white against a backdrop of deep, blue ocean and an endless, open sky. Its aura was different, a cool, clean breeze that carried the scent of salt and the distant cry of gulls.

  "Those," his voice a quiet statement of fact. "A copy of my memory. Everything you could want. All the history, all the detail." He tapped the second card with a fingernail, a small, knowing smile on his lips. "I even saw the original construction blueprints for the Opera House once. A fascinating study in architectural overreach and budget mismanagement."

  "What are they?" Eric demanded. "Clyde, tell me what this fool is playing at."

  Clyde didn't answer. He took a hesitant step toward the table, his hand outstretched, a faint, green pulse of magic flaring from his fingertips as he scanned the two cards. And then he staggered back clutching his fingers as if he'd been physically struck. The constant pressure he put against the environment stopped in the instant.

  His face went pale, his eyes wide with dawning, intellectual horror. He stared at Mark, no longer as a victim, but as something impossible, a break in his personal reality.

  "They're... his memories," Clyde whispered. "Perfect, self-contained copies. But..." He pointed a slightly trembling finger at the image of the pyramids, his mind clearly struggling to process the data. "This... these structures... They're over four thousand years old. That's not possible! The level of historical depth! There is nothing that old on the Ark… How… do you know all that in detail?"

  Mark just smiled, a tired expression that held no humor at all. "I'm full of surprises," He slid the two cards across the polished wood of the table with the tip of a finger. "Take them. That's what you came for, isn't it? Something to exploit, something to be famous for?"

  Eric's eyes went blank for a fraction of a second, a flicker of greedy, avaricious light in their depths. He snatched the cards from the table, his movements quick and furtive, and shoved them into the inner pocket of his jacket.

  The moment they were out of sight, he gasped. It was a sharp, ragged intake of breath, the sound of a man who had just been plunged into a freezing ocean. The sheer, overwhelming volume of information, four thousand years of history, the intricate mathematics of ancient engineering, the complex politics of a modern architectural marvel, all crashed over him in a single moment. He swayed on his stool, his face pale, his eyes wide with a look of pure, uncomprehending overload.

  "It's... not enough," his voice a strained, desperate rasp. He pointed a trembling, accusatory finger at the remaining arc of cards on the table. "We're not leaving… Not without all of it."

  A small, sad smile touched Mark's lips. "I really have to thank you for this, Clyde," he turned to face him. "All this… an ocean of your Memory magic trapped in this little room. It's making everything so very clear. So easy to recall." He gestured to the two empty spaces in the arc of cards. "Making these copies? It hardly requires any effort at all."

  Clyde did not look impressed. His face was a thunderous mask of professional outrage. He had been used, his own power turned against him, and he knew it, it was a question of if or when he would do anything about it.

  Mark's fingers danced over the backs of the remaining cards before selecting another. He flipped it with a bored flick of his wrist.

  The image that appeared was simple, almost primitive compared to the architectural marvels of the first two. A fragile-looking aircraft with fabric-covered wings and a sputtering engine. Beside it, a magnificent, brightly-colored hot air balloon, its basket dangling beneath a vast, buoyant sphere.

  A fast, clean breeze seemed to rush from the card, carrying with it the scent of open sky and the phantom thrill of leaving the ground behind, the sound of the engine and the flame of the balloon. Mark slid it across the table. “Complex yet simple, and your people lost it centuries ago, take it!”

  Eric couldn't contain himself. The moment he saw the images, the sheer, world-breaking potential of them, his eyes went wide with a light that was no longer just greed, but a blazing, fanatical ambition. The maths, the engineering, the theory of the basics, Mark could see it racing behind Eric’s eyes.

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  "Flight" he whispered, the word so simple, yet spoken with the reverence reserved for meeting a god. He rounded on Clyde, his face incandescent with an joy. "Do you see, Clyde? Flight! I'll be the greatest! Greater than the fools in the Verdant Conclave! Greater than the warmongers in the Sentinel State with their failed experiments! I will have true flight!"

  Clyde, however, was not celebrating. The suspicion and worry that had been a faint, nagging presence in the back of his mind now slammed into him with the force of a physical blow. Three cards. Three perfect, self-contained memories. And this one… flight. The revolutionary physics…

  "How many?" Clyde demanded with an urgent whisper. He looked from the three cards to the remaining arc on the table, and then to Mark's calm, unreadable face. "How far are you going to go with this?"

  Mark just smiled and shrugged, an eloquent gesture of infinite, unknown possibility.

  “I suspect you can leave at any time, it's a choice for you.” Mark questioned, fingers dancing over the cards as he thought. “But… if you do, you can’t keep us here can you?”

  “This isn’t… How is it you know of these… this knowledge?” Clyde’s question itself an avoidance of Mark's own, but taken for the acceptance.

  Allowing the phantom breeze of impossible height to flow over the table, Mark looked directly at Clyde, voice filled with tired serenity, “I’ve given you the old, the new and now I’m giving you both the potential, the freedom of the skies. Take the win and let us all go our separate ways.”

  "More!" Eric demanded, raw and hungry with entitlement. "Give me more!"

  "We have to go," Clyde grabbed Eric's arm, his face pale with a dawning terror of the unknown. "Now."

  "Coward!" Eric shrieked, wrenching his arm free from Clyde's grasp. He rounded on his specialist, his magic, magic of the community flaring in a fiery red fury. "You have been paid! You will see this job to its end!"

  "It's already too late!" Clyde shouted back. He gestured frantically at Mark, at the cards, at the entire situation, once again Eric’s magic finding no hold. "He's not like the others! And time is running out! I can't wipe their minds anymore! We'll have to find them, kill them, before they can summon the Militia!"

  "NOT YET!" Eric’s eyes fixed on the remaining cards on the table, a man consumed by a singular, blinding greed.

  Mark's fingers danced over the fanned-out deck. He selected another card, its back a swirling pattern of silver and gold. He didn't flip it. He simply slid it, face down, across the polished wood of the table until it rested just within Eric's reach. A silent, final offer.

  "Take Clyde's advice, Eric," His voice quiet but carrying the unyielding weight of a final warning. "Take what you have, and go, be inspired, become something greater. And never darken my door again."

  He took that moment to stand and roll his shoulders. The physical act was a declaration. He straightened his suit jacket, adjusted the knot of his tie. In this room, in this memory, he was no longer the crippled patient, the lost anomaly. He was the man in charge. He was claiming the high ground, and from it, he was offering them one last, safe exit.

  Whether his friends would understand why, he didn’t know, things were different in the collective than back home, but for himself he had to make the offer, even if he knew they wouldn’t take it, the offer to avoid conflict.

  Eric didn't see an offer. He could only see a prize. He lunged, his hand a greedy claw, snatching for the face-down card on the table.

  "No!" Clyde was raw, almost terrified as he grabbed Eric's arm, trying to pull him back from the brink.

  A short, ugly scuffle erupted at the table, a frantic grab and pull as Clyde tried to wrench Eric's hand away from the face-down card. In the chaos, Eric's fingers managed to catch the edge of the card, flipping it. It skittered across the polished wood, spinning, and came to rest, face up, in the absolute center of the table.

  The warm, dim lights of the pub were instantly extinguished, replaced by a brilliant, silver glow that flooded in through the frosted glass windows. Outside, the grey, mundane reality of a Manchester afternoon was gone. The sky was a deep, star-dusted black, and hanging in it was a single, magnificent sphere.

  The card was the Moon. Luna. The moon from Earth.

  An aura of pure, unadulterated wonderment washed over the room. It wasn't just a picture. It was a feeling, a shared, collective memory of a world united in a single, breathless moment of wonder. The patrons of the pub fell silent, their gazes turned upward, their faces bathed in the impossible, silver light.

  Eric just stared, his greed forgotten, replaced by uncomprehending confusion, filled with a wonder he couldn't understand. "What… is that?"

  "It's... not one of The Ark's moons," Clyde whispered, a disbelieving rasp. His hand, glowing with a faint, green pulse of magic, reached out, hovering over the card as if it were a holy relic, a reverence he was struggling with.

  "It's my moon," Mark beamed with quiet ancestral pride. "A moment from our history. One small step that united us all together. The day we walked upon it."

  The words were a devastating blow to Clyde's already crumbling reality. He stumbled back from the table, his face pale, his eyes wide with the look of a man who had just seen a ghost. "Walked... on the moon?" he stammered, the words a delirious, uncomprehending mumble. "Impossible... the moon… Travel there…?"

  "Yes, and you know it's the truth, your magic confirms it… doesn't it?" Mark’s voice provided the absolute statement of fact. "Personally, I never had the chance. But we did. Decades ago." He looked directly at Clyde, his own gaze now holding the weight of a thousand years of lost history. "This is my history, Clyde. The history of Earth. Not the small, limited reality you and Eric belong to."

  Eric was staring directly into the silver moonlight, his mind not breaking as Clyde’s, but opening with the possibilities. “It’s possible…” he mumbled, trembling at the concept itself, “The mountains are so small compared to…”

  Mark’s hand reached for another card, his fingers hovering over the fanned-out deck.

  "Stop," Clyde's voice was a raw, terrified plea. He raised a hand, a desperate, warning gesture. "Don't. Or else."

  Mark's hand paused, his fingers hovering a mere inch from the back of the next card. He didn't look at it. He looked directly at Clyde, his gaze sharp and analytical, stripping away the last of the man's blustering threats.

  "Or else what?" he asked, his voice a quiet, cutting challenge. "By your own estimates, you're out of time. Your window of opportunity to do your job... it's closed, hasn't it?"

  Clyde tried to compose himself, to pull the tattered remains of his professional arrogance around him like a shield. But it was too late. He had seen previously impossible truths, and Mark had just revealed it was not the end.

  "How!" Eric pleaded, his voice raw, oblivious to the quiet, deadly game being played across the table. “Show me how!! There is more… There has to be!” a voice of growing desperation.

  "I will end all of this if I have to!" Clyde shouted, the words a desperate, final threat.

  Mark's expression didn't change. The sinister, understanding smile remained. He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial murmur, the tone of one professional offering a quiet, brutal assessment to another.

  "Can you?" the question a simple, devastating probe. "Do you, Clyde, really have the finesse, with such little time, to do your job, wipe our minds, this entire construct and escape?"

  He let the question hang in the air for a single, agonizing beat before delivering the final, quiet, and utterly damning conclusion.

  "Without all this connected knowledge burning both yourself and Eric to a crisp in the process?"