Chapter 3: All the Gold In the Kingdom
What's the price?: A short read
A curious look came over Bill's face. "Not to my knowledge. You're the only one."
"I'm the only one? How's that possible? In these vast universes you described with trillions of people, am I the only one? And what's that look on your face?"
"Yes, you are the only one, as far as I know. The reason you are the only one is a little complex."
"Complex?" Jax stood up, knocking his stool to the floor.
Bill stood and walked to the edge of the lagoon. A fish jumped and flopped back into the water.
"What I did to your world was," Bill paused. "It might be considered illegal. Well, quasi-illegal."
It felt like Bill was talking to the fish, not Jax. Bill was forced into an unfortunate subject; if he didn't speak directly to Jax, that would make it better. It didn't.
"Quasi-illegal?"
"Well," Bill inhaled deeply and let it out. "It was illegal."
Again, Jax knew he should have been angry, but it wasn't in him. Not yet.
"What did you do?"
The fish swam by, stuck its head out of the water, stared at them, then swam off.
"You have to understand, I've been here thousands of years, maybe hundreds of thousands, I don't know, maybe more. The passage of time is one of my punishments, to not know or have any way of knowing how long I've been here."
"The time it takes for Earth to rotate around the Sun is one year. You couldn't figure that out?"
"I recognize what a year is and how time works, but every time your planet orbits the Sun, I start back at one, one, one, nor can I count one plus one, etc, when it comes to time. All I know is when they dumped me here, giant lizards were strutting around until a meteor struck your planet. Then the place turned into a shit show." He glanced over at Jax and sighed. "The point is you get a little stir-crazy after a certain point and would do just about anything to change your situation, namely get out of here."
Sixty-five million years, Jax kept it to himself. He didn't need a depressed Wizard on his hands.
"You were saying. Illegal?"
"Right." A bowl of fish food pellets appeared in his hand. Bill threw several handfuls of pellets into the water and watched the fish scramble for a morsel.
"The Council of Wizards thought it would be great fun to send me here with tomes of spells from tier-four to tier-ten. They knew I'd study them with the knowledge I would never break this exile. I might even become more substantial than many of them, but I would remain unable to leave here.
“I thought they stripped you of your powers?”
“They did that out of spite, knowing I’d regain them after much time and effort.”
A wistful smile slipped across his face and quickly disappeared. He threw the rest of the pellets and the bowl into the water, causing a feeding frenzy.
"And?" It’s good that those neural blockers were in place, or Jax's frustration at waiting for a solid answer would be at the breaking point.
"Yes. I poured myself into understanding these tomes. I was already well-versed in Tier Four. Tier-Five only posed a bit of trouble. Tier-Six and seven were challenging, but I got through them. I understand 60 to 80% of what's in them. Eight, nine, and ten were almost impenetrable. But, in ten, I found a section on fertilization in the dark arts section of the book."
"Dark arts." Jax’s lip jutted out. "That doesn't sound good. Almost as bad as inseminating, impregnating, what?" Jax shook his head. "Wait, you impregnated humanity with what?"
Surprised Jax hadn’t caught on, Bill cocked his head and smiled. “With me, of course."
Thank You for Reading!
Bill the Techno-Wizard is a serial story. It is ongoing even as you read. The table of contents, with links to existing portions of the story, can be found at the link below.
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