The Magic Factory

He headed for a large door marked S. Oliver followed, frowning, curious.

“What does S stand for?” he asked.

Ralph wiggled his eyebrows. “Sports.”

He pushed open the large doors and Oliver gasped. Inside, the room was the same size of the whole atrium they’d just left, but instead of walkways and students rushing to classrooms, this one was filled with every kind of sports place imaginable, each one contained within a glass box, suspended at various levels. On the floor above, two students were playing tennis, above them two others were jousting. On the opposite side a basketball game was in full swing, and a couple of levels above was an entire baseball field. Crossing across the vast space was a ski slope, weaving in and out of a bobsled tunnel. Oliver could see a glass-bottomed swimming pool filled with swimmers, another just for diving, all kinds of gymnastics and tumbling equipment, a running track, a high jump, ping-pong tables, and a skate park.

“It’s very important for Seers to be physically fit,” Ralph explained. “We all have to partake in physical activity every single day with Coach Finkle.”

Oliver grimaced. He was not sporty at all. None of the schools he’d attended in his normal life cared that he hated physical activity. He’d managed to go through his whole education avoiding it.

“Do we have to?” he asked.

“It’s one of the rules,” Ralph said, nodding. “It doesn’t matter what kind of activity you choose, hence all the options. You’ll find something you like and don’t mind doing. I promise you. You’ll surprise yourself.”

He smiled his breezy smile and they exited the atrium through the door they’d first entered. Back in the main foyer Ralph directed Oliver to a door with a large R on it.

“R stands for reward,” he explained.

He ushered Oliver through the door. Oliver gasped. He was standing in another huge room, this one filled with candy-dispensing machines. They ran all the way around the room, like marble runs for candy. Oliver watched, his mouth open, as kids pushed buttons and watched their candy roll through the network of brightly colored tubes before being dispensed into their palms at the bottom.

“AWESOME!” Oliver cried. He looked over at Ralph. “What do you have to do to get candy?”

“Follow the rules,” Ralph told him. “There are a lot of rules.”

They left the amazing reward store and headed back out to the main atrium. Here, Oliver saw a door with a large L on it.

“What does L stand for?” he asked Ralph, feeling eager to look inside.

“L for library,” Ralph explained. He nodded his head in encouragement and Oliver went ahead to open the door.

Once again the room was just as big as the main atrium, the sports hall, and the candy reward store; fifty floors of books. Vast ladders connected all the shelves on all the floors, and students whizzed around on them, pushing themselves with ease around the place. Some people were even in harnesses, climbing like monkeys up the shelves then leaping off with their books in hand and floating back down to the ground. And right in the middle was a column of seating; a giant vertical, red leather couch unit, with different booths and armchairs at various points.

“Okay, this is definitely my kind of place,” Oliver said, astounded. “I love to read.”

“You’re not allowed to take any books out,” Ralph said. “It’s a rule. I’m not sure why, something to do with paradoxical texts exploding.” He chuckled. “Anyway, don’t stand there drooling, there’s plenty more to see.”

They went back out to the central atrium and headed toward more doors. The next door they reached was marked with an X.

“X?” Oliver said, racking his brains. “X for X-ray? Or xylophone?” He couldn’t really imagine the purpose of a room filled with xylophones but from what he’d seen of the place so far, he wouldn’t be surprised.

“X is for no entry,” Ralph said. “There are places the students aren’t allowed to go. Anywhere with an X on it.”

“Oh, okay,” Oliver said, feeling a little deflated by the answer. He’d been quite excited by the xylophone room. “Why?”

“It’s another one of the rules,” Ralph said. “Think of them like faculty rooms. You know, even teachers have lives.” He chuckled again.

His mention of teachers brought Oliver back to reality. He was here to learn, after all, not eat candy and play badminton. And as much as he was enjoying Ralph’s tour, he still had so many burning questions in his mind, about who he was, why he was here, how any of this existed at all.

“What are the teachers like?” he asked Ralph. “What do we even study?”

“We have three classes in our first year of training. Doctor Ziblatt teaches Sight, which is learning to look into the future and past and cross-dimensionally. Mr. Lazzarato is our Transformation tutor, he’s the one who teaches us how to use our powers to alter the fabric of reality. And then there’s Coach Finkle, who teaches us how to be physically strong and powerful. We see them every single day, for two hours each.”

It seemed like a lot of work, Oliver thought with a mix of excitement and trepidation. He liked hard work, especially when he knew it would all go toward developing his powers, but he was still nervous about it all. Everything was so overwhelming.

“What happens once you’ve completed your first year of study?” Oliver asked Ralph.

“You go into the second year. More classes, different tutors, a whole new schedule to follow. Which is very important, I have to stress.” He gave Oliver a stern, almost bossy expression. “The timetable is meticulously planned in order to stop certain timelines collapsing in on themselves.”

Oliver’s head spun. He’d never felt such immense pressure. He hardly even knew the rules of the school and now he was expected to follow them rigidly so as not to create any time ripples! Everything seemed to possess the potential for causing a timeline to collapse, even the mere act of taking a book out of the library!

“You’ll get the hang of it,” Ralph said. “I’ll be there to show you the ropes. Me and my friends. Everyone’s really nice. Well, not everyone. In my group there’s Walter, Simon, and Hazel. You’ll like them, I promise. And Ichiro, too. He’s in the second year and hangs out with us sometimes. Just steer clear of Edmund and Vinnie.”

Oliver nodded, trying to take it all in. But Ralph was talking so quickly and giving him so much information, Oliver couldn’t even begin to commit any of it to memory.

He pointed at the door with a Z. “What’s this then? Does the School for Seers have its own zoo?”

Ralph laughed. “No. Although that would be great. Z is for zzz, as in sleeping. That’s where the sleep pods are.”

“Sleep pods?” Oliver asked, curious. “Can I look?”

Ralph shook his head. “We all have allotted sleep times and we’re not allowed to sleep outside of them. What with the whole school existing out of time thing, the sleeping area is in perpetual night. It’s a very important…”

“…rule,” Oliver finished.

There were more rules to the School for Seers than he could really get his head around.

“Can I see someone using their powers?” Oliver asked Ralph. “I still don’t really understand what I am, what anyone here is.”

“Your guide didn’t explain?” Ralph asked, frowning.

“My guide?” Oliver asked, widening his eyes. “Isn’t that you?”

Ralph laughed. “No, I mean your human guide in your timeline. You must have had one. A person who appeared when you needed them the most, who had answers to questions you’d never before found.”

“You mean… Armando?” Oliver asked. His heart felt like a jagged rock when he remembered his dear friend dying in his arms.

“We each have one,” Ralph said. “A human who’s assigned to start us on our journey. They’re usually considered wacky by the rest of the world, because how could you not be once you know what we know!”

He laughed. Everything seemed so simple to Ralph, like it wasn’t some huge, crazy, mind-blowing thing. Oliver envied his laid-back nature a little.

“So Armando was supposed to guide me here?” Oliver muttered aloud. “That explains how he knew stuff about me. I guess he was killed before he had a chance to finish explaining it all.”

“He was killed?” Ralph asked sympathetically. “I’m so sorry.”

Oliver felt his tears welling in his eyes. He sniffed, not wanting to cry in front of Ralph.

“Don’t be sad,” Ralph told him. “I can fill in all the blanks. What do you need to know?”