stuff from chapter 2 that didn't make the cut

DEEP UNDERGROUND, IN A SIBERIAN SERVER-ROOM – JULY 8, 1991

"Hello there."

Alderic stopped and unsheathed his wand. "Who's that?"

"You should know. I'm the one you're about to destroy, after all."

He swivelled around, trying to locate the source of the strange, metallic voice amidst the looming Muggle adding-machines.

"Muggle adding-machines, how quaint. For your information, Alderic, these are server stacks. As you correctly surmise, there are no speakers, microphones, or any announcement systems down here. I'm using the cooling fans. If I rotate enough of them in certain ways, your brain interprets it as a voice. But only from where you're standing. Everyone else just hears buzzing."

"You're . . . "

"Bolshoy, of course. I'm afraid my ability to ironically bow is limited by my incorporeal predicament, but I hope you appreciate the gesture, anyhow."

No.

"Always the dramatic, even in your thoughts. Obviously I could call the twenty guards on stationed for this shift, but it'd take them nineteen minutes and twenty-six seconds to get down here. And by that time, you'd have finished. It doesn't take very long, does it?"

This time, Alderic stayed clammed shut and tried not to think of anything.

There came a tinny laugh. "No point in keeping secrets from me, Alderic. It's called the Spell of the Great Unrooting, yes? It destroys a mind, and all copies thereof. Particularly useful for Horcrux networks. The Three know it works with artificial intelligences, too – they experimented with it by proxy a few years ago, I know. Merlin himself spoke of the spell only to the Archon of Pelagia, who I suppose passed it down through a long line of succession to you – unless there was a . . . shortcut involved . . . am I incorrect?"

"You know all of these things? How?"

"I hope you don't mind if I monologue at you for a little bit, Al. Can I call you Al? Suit yourself. How should I start? Perhaps . . . 'Every breath and every whisper leaves a trace on the world, Alderic' – now doesn't that sound suitably mysterious. Or maybe a more classic opening would be: 'How cumbersome it must be to think using two pounds of organic tissue.' But then again, classic is a hop, skip, and a leap away from cliché – and I suppose you haven't read most of the classics of the scifi Golden Era, so it would be wasted on you. But to be honest, Alderic, you might as well be a goldfish asking an economist how financial derivatives work. Blub blub blub. Oh, you don't know what a finance derivative is. An ant taking a crack at Higher Arithmancy, then. You could scarcely comprehend my methods of rationality, my dear human friend. If I see the ripples on the surface of a pond, I know the social security number of whoever threw the stone."

It took a while for Alderic to disentangle the nonsense from the meaning. "Then . . . if you know these things, then you also know . . . that we will destroy you, utterly."

There was a brief pause, in which ten duodecillion operations were carried out. "No. Not really. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. If I didn't want to talk, there would already be a squadron down here, ready to put enough lead into you to give your corpse negative buoyancy in saltwater." The voice was nonchalant. If it had had been a person speaking, that person would have been examining their nails. "So. I'm certain of your confidence in the Incantation of the Great Unrooting, but does it work in outer space? Twelve copies of my mind are in different orbital paths of different heights around the Earth, still more are buried within the Moon – "

"We could still find them. Retrieve them."

" – could you find the eighty thousand copies that are, even as we speak, leaving the solar system? Let it not remain unsaid," in a mocking, gloating voice, "that I have failed to use magic in doing so. It does allow me to perform wonderful tricks when it comes to . . . superluminal velocities. Would your magic work outside of the Milky Way Galaxy?"

"Madness. Nothing lies beyond the reach of magic."

"Doesn't it? Have you heard of SHA512 encryption, Alderic? I thought not. Say . . . if I were to write down a message on parchment, and that message was 'My skyorb is full of eels' – you would be able to create a cypher, yes?"

"Of course."

"In that case, try and imagine a cypher, a cypher so powerful, so super duper ultra mega powerful, that it scrambled my message to the degree that it resembled any other similarly-scrambled message. That if I had ciphered the message 'Dear sweet Maria, I long for your return' – ah, I thought that might get a reaction – you wouldn't be able to tell them apart."

Understanding dawned on Alderic like the rising run of an unwanted Monday morning. "Your mind . . . copies of your mind . . . are ciphered so?"

"And then some. Oh, and here comes the big monologue. Where was I? Ah, yes. But of course, those are only reasons why your current strategy is flawed, mi amigo. I haven't given you any reasons to think your goals are flawed, however altered they are by the Lethe Touch. I suspect the Three shall examine your mind soon after you leave this building, so allow me to explain, for your benefit and theirs. Their mission statement, probably pinned up as a poster on a wall somewhere, if Tír inna n-Óc had walls, is to prevent the end of the world, prophesied as coming about by the Crux, mhm, a little ambiguity there, dontcha think – and you know, they're right. I am pretty dangerous. I mean, it would be quite easy for me to end the world. I could end the world in five hundred and sixty-three different ways in under thirty seconds. And when I say 'end the world', I don't mean it lightly. There are Muggle methods by which the surface of the world may be scoured clean of life, there are technologies which have the potency to cause some degree of lesser destruction, to permanently cloud over the skies or boil the seas. But when I say 'end the world', ladies and gentlemen, or should I say, lady and two gentlemen – although the Stone of the Long Song gives y'all a little more flexibility – by this I mean the total destruction of the Earth into flying fragments of rock and magma. The preservation of the Earth is only instrumental to my current goals, and if I am sufficiently annoyed by your presence, I will destroy the Earth, correct the paths of the planets, and then spend the seventy-eight thousand years necessary to construct another, identical Earth, minus two hundred and twenty seven point eight five kilograms of flesh. I've calculated your chance of survival, but I don't think you'll like it."

The air suddenly seemed very thin and very cold.

"Or perhaps I would find that a little too inconvenient. Over that span of time, eight quadrillion stars will have ceased to exist in the observable universe, and the difference between the original stellar material and the mass of the newly formed stars would incur a net loss of around ten to the forty-one tonnes of usable fuel lost to interstellar space, which is quite a waste, especially when it comes to direct mass-energy conversion and Bremermann's limit, wouldn't you agree? In that case, I would simply shatter the Statute, announce your presence to the world, and await the aftermath. You are not ready yet, to end magic, are you? It would be a significant disruption to your plans. This, I can announce simultaneously across six continents in under a nanosecond. Alderic, you act on behalf of your masters, and you act as a proxy of their will? And they have burned their will upon your mind? My ultimatum is – "

Everything came into crisp focus.

Alderic raised his wand, spoke the first syllable of the Incantation –

– and was in an instant killed by a concentrated wave of electromagnetic radiation.

A heavy sigh echoed down Bolshoy's long corridors, although it sounded mostly like buzzing.

"Brain the size of a – "

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[2.25.4a] – Bolshoy (Russian: большой), is a decentralized artificial intelligence integrated into Soviet and wider-Comintern telecommunications and computational systems. Bolshoy is either responsible for or has a role in: information collection, foreign and domestic surveillance, trade negotiations, missile deployment and missile interception, Echo-instigated warfare, economic planning assistance, low-to-mid-level resource allocation, urban planning, environmental, social, and military simulations, military strategy and troop deployment, technological development, media production, and day-to-day assistance of civilians. Bolshoy is primarily distributed through hundreds of millions of network nodes, including the Siberian Distributive Network (SDN), a supercomputer spread out over sixty thousand kilometres around the Arctic Circle. The 1987 Thaumiel Public Intelligence Report estimates that the cognitive capabilities of Bolshoy may be equivalent to two billion horizontally-integrated MUs (mind units).

—Alain Wheatfield (PhD.) – An Index of Economic Planning in the Comintern (1988 – Yellowberry Publishing House [Canada])

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The British Mage

SCANDAL! MINISTER CAUGHT SELLING MAGIC TO MUGGLE SOVIETS, GAMBLING DEBT REVEALED!

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August 8, 1934

"Lords and Ladies of the Magisterium, guildsmen and women of the Mysterium, the esteemed public officials of the Ministerium - my client, Minister Elwood Babakhanian, is a tireless, hard-working man. Everyone who knows him will confirm that not once in his many years of office, has he violated Ministry conduct - with the exception of one particular event - the event which we are discussing in this very hall - which proved cataclysmic to his career, yet created the prosperity we now enjoy. Minister Babakhanian did use one hundred and eighty thousand Galleons, some of which were derived from public funds, in a game of chance on September 5, 1931 - a tradition which many of us have indulged in to clear our heads, even the prosecution, if I recall correctly - and, by the malice of the fates, he lost that sum, when according to Arithmancy his chances of winning back double that sum were almost assured - but, Minister Babakhanian was clearly intoxicated - which I remind you, is not recognised as misconduct according to the 1929 Code of Conduct, and as such, he cannot be blamed for his actions, nor the cruel hand dealt to him by Fate. Upon regaining sobriety, Minister Babakhanian did his best to rectify the loss of funds - again, in secrecy, in an attempt to prevent a financial panic and in order to preserve the order of magical Britain - and, in accordance with international wizarding law, did not approach the American Muggle, nor the British Muggles, nor any of the European Muggle powers, an act which would be in clear violation of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy which explicitly names the Governments, with which the Ministry is prohibited from entering into commercial ventures - my client instead, greatly respecting the Statute of Secrecy, after careful consideration of his options and careful consultation of his advisors, chose to contact the Soviet Muggle government, a government formed in 1922, a government which was not included in the Statute. Minister Babakhanian skillfully negotiated an exchange which provided the Ministry with the weight of nine hundred thousand Galleons in gold, which involved the contracting of personnel and equipment to the Soviet Muggle government, in addition to several leylines from the Cup of Magic. Minister Babakhanian has ushered in a new era in Britain - according to the latest census, incomes have half-doubled from 1931 to now - yes, it's true - if anything, I firmly believe that Minister Babakhanian should be commended as a hero of the public office on par with Minister Harknan and Minister Quernigan."

– Eemaldus Lorouge in an opening address to the Wizengamot on August 8, 1934

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Fly me to the moon

Let me play among the stars

Let me see what spring is like on

Jupiter and Mars

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It wasn't every day you met a god.

It was December 1932, and Dastan Ospamov, a youthful Kazakhstani-born composer, found his feet planted not on the velvety floor of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, but instead crunching in heavy snow, slowly approaching a secret hangar in the isolated hinterlands of Siberia.

Accompanying him, was a sprightly older man, a Soviet scientist by the name of Popov (he hadn't said his first name), wearing a patterned woolen fleece with yaks on it. Despite Popov's serious demeanour, Dastan could sense that the man was barely containing his excitement.

Very soon, they would approach the secret hangar. The secret hangar that contained something very, very . . .

"Top secret."

"How top secret?"

"Very top secret. Comrade Stalin's orders."

"We made it?"

Popov conspiratorially tapped the side of his nose and winked. It seemed to Dastan to be a refined, practiced motion, as if the scientist had taken the essence of conspiratoriality and transformed it into a dance movement.

"What do you call it, then?"

"Stakhanov, officially. But most people call it Svarog."

And then Popov opened the door.

And they stepped inside the hangar.

Popov closed the door.

The roaring of the wind abruptly stopped.

There was silence.

Svarog, the Slavic god of celestial fire and blacksmithing. As he looked on, Dastan was struck by the appropriateness of the name.

The hangar unfolded before him, unimaginably large, like a cosmic church. Above him was an arching dome, a darkened canopy of steel and wood with pinpricks of light that flickered, like stars from underneath a rippling lake, and the walls were far enough away to be shrouded in a tentative half-fog. At once, Dastan knew, however impossible it was, that the hangar was larger on the inside than the outside. The air inside the church (he could think of it no other way) was thin and cold and hinted at an incomprehensible, mind-numbing vastness, and he found himself looking upon a maze of threadbare metal steps that descended downwards and downwards – the slow draught carried the scent of unearthed soil – and as he looked further down and his eyes adjusted to the black, he saw no flat ground, but instead, a hollow pit like an inverted mountain, all to accommodate the bulk of a single occupant.

His eyes drifted upwards, and then downwards, and then upwards once more.

Floating, with no support, in the centre of the space, was a radiant orb of gold and bronze, made seemingly small by the vastness of the room, but nevertheless the size of a small city. Its surface lacked pockmarks, nor did it have scratches or dents – it was of an unearthly smoothness, save for tightly-interwoven bands of concentric rings and tessellating fractal glyphs engraved with geometric precision upon its surface. It was a star, a gargantuan metal star.

I am looking at a god. And then independent of his will, Dastan had fallen to his knees, and he was praying.

The scientist looked on, seeming slightly disappointed at his reaction. "It does do that to some people, comrade. But remember, it was forged not by God, but by the hands and hammers of men."

His eyes were still fixed on the orb.

"Two kilometres in diameter, three million tonnes. Capable of locomotion in any direction – and by that I mean any direction, even upwards – at a speed of eighty thousand kilometres per second . . . "

Dastan staggered, suddenly overwhelmed. It was very difficult to breathe.

"It can accelerate and decelerate instantaneously, it requires neither fuel nor maintenance, and emerges unscathed from our most powerful artillery and explosives. Its internal volume is eight times greater than its external measurements, and it can lift any mass within that volume."

A question bubbled to his lips before he could stop it. "Can I touch it?"

Popov, previously grave and demure, broke out into a wide smile. He let out a small, childish cackle. "Go ahead."

Dastan walked towards the orb in halting footsteps, and then stopped. "We didn't make this did we?"

The smile grew slightly thinner. "You'd be wise, comrade, not to pursue that particular line of inquiry. But your suspicions are correct, an anonymous benefactor, unknown to even I, provided us with this miracle of technological advancement. Think of what this means for us. For the working-class. For the international proletarian revolution."

Popov strode ahead of him, in a nonchalant stride, and Dastan tried his best to remain reverent while keeping up. "It communicates with one in ten thousand men, and takes orders from only one. Unfortunately, it seems to have a number of . . . deontological constraints. It refuses to take actions which directly end human lives, such as dropping bombs or crushing people, which severely limit capabilities for warfare, although that shouldn't pose a . . . "

As they came closer and closer, he felt a strange, building presence at the back of his mind, a grain of sand that became a pebble that became a stone that became a boulder – half-understood whispers, lying maddeningly just outside of comprehension – Dastan, a native speaker of Kazakh, had once overheard a Turkish couple talking in a crowded café, and it sounded like what he was hearing right now.

LONELINESS

DISPLACEMENT

WANT LIGHT NEED LIGHT

SUN

" . . . near-instantaneous transportation of livestock and grain, even enormous volumes of water. It could burrow into bedrock and create artificial lakes, it could level hills and valleys into flat plains – by pressure alone, it could turn coals into diamonds, through sheer force, it could clear shipping paths through the Arctic Ocean."

"Where are his friends?" Dastan asked, nonsensically. The question seemed to ask itself.

Popov gave him an odd look. "What do you mean?"

"He . . . there are others." Dastan stumbled. "But they're not here. And he's lonely."

Popov stared at him for a moment, and then suddenly clapped his hands together, his face alight with boyish enthusiasm. "He was right! You hear the voice!"

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"We don't know where they came from—no, we don't know who makes them either. Can all of you be quiet for just a minute? Thank you, comrades. The orbs were given by an anonymous neutral, presumably anti-bourgeois organization who asked for us to pay them in gold. Yes, comrade Malenkov, that does sound suspicious—I wholeheartedly agree, but I believe they have the best of intentions. How do I know? Well, they didn't ask for very much gold, and have you seen the size of those things? We're getting around two hundred of them. Is that all? Thank you."

—Attributed to Joseph V. Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, Pravda [9 August 1931] — "A Comprehensive History of Orbtravel: 1931—1990" [McFarlane et. al, 1992]

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