The Magic Factory

Oliver pushed his sadness away. Finally, someone was really going to give him some answers. He felt embarrassed to admit his ignorance, since he was so used to being the smart one.

“Why don’t you start by telling me what a Seer actually is?”

Ralph pulled a face. “Oh. Okay. You really need me to start with the basics.”

Oliver blushed and shrugged.

“All right then,” Ralph began. “Let’s sit down. Get comfy. I’ll start at the very beginning.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

They returned to the library and sat together on one of the red leather couches. Ralph selected a book from the shelves and laid it open on the coffee table before them. It was weather-beaten with smudged, dog-eared pages reminding Oliver of his well-read inventors book.

“First things first,” Ralph said, turning to the opening page. “Forget everything you think you know about time. Time isn’t real. There’s no beginning and no end. Everything exists always.”

Oliver blinked. “That’s not a particularly easy concept to get my head around.”

“Here,” Ralph said, pointing at a passage of text. “This explains it better.”

Oliver read.

Time is simultaneous. Everything that will happen has already happened and is happening now as you read this passage.

Oliver rubbed his aching forehead. “I don’t understand.”

“Well, I’m still a student myself,” Ralph said. “I may not be the best person to explain. But basically, for time travel to exist—which we both accept it does, since we’re sitting here in 1944—time can’t be real. ’Cause you can’t go somewhere that doesn’t exist, right?”

“Right…” Oliver nodded, uncertainly. “But if that’s the case, then everything must be fixed. In order for all time to exist and all events to have already happened and be currently happening, nothing can change or it would create paradoxes.”

Ralph shook his head emphatically. “Not exactly. Because there’s an infinite number of timelines. The universe wants the main timeline to follow a certain route, the best route. In order to keep everyone on the right path, the universe imbues Seers with the power to change and alter the timeline, to tweak and realign it and get it back to the correct path. No one knows what we’ve done because everything rejumbles itself and that becomes the new reality. But Seers know. Unlike normal mortals who tend to forget conflicting realities, we can hold many different timelines in our heads.” He beamed with excitement. “Although it can get confusing to hold on to many different timelines and threads. That’s why Seers take Rewritten History classes for most of their lives.”

Oliver frowned. His mind was spinning, his head pounding from trying to understand it all. “So we’re just pawns of the universe?”

Ralph blinked. He looked a little hurt. When he spoke again his tone was softer, his enthusiasm toned down. “Our powers are a gift from the universe. She chose us to do this. We’re part of the very fabric and essence of what makes reality real. I personally think that is really, really cool.”

Oliver looked up into Ralph’s earnest green eyes. He felt bad for feeling so overwhelmed that he couldn’t share in Ralph’s evident excitement.

“Why don’t you tell me a bit more about our powers?” he suggested.

Ralph brightened again immediately, clearly eager to oblige. “So, we each have a specialism that allows us to manipulate the physical world in order to change the future. I have a biological specialism. I can rearrange matter; make vines grow to tie someone up, or part the trees of a forest to open a pathway through. That’s how I was able to change the leaf before. It’s not a lot but once I’ve trained properly I’ll be strong. Right now I can just about make a petal fall off a buttercup.”

“What about the others?” Oliver asked. “What kind of rearranging can they do?”

“Well, my friend Simon has a molecular specialism,” Ralph explained. “Liquids to gas, lead to gold, that kind of thing. Hazel has a chemical specialism. She can change someone’s mood from happy to sad, for example. She once helped me digest a rather large burrito. So, I suppose if you want to see your role as some kind of predetermined burden you can. Or you can choose to see it as AWESOME like I do.”

“All right, all right,” Oliver said, relenting. “That bit does seem pretty awesome. Messing with molecules and atoms and the fabric of reality is pretty cool. But how does it actually work?”

“You have to look into the future,” Ralph explained, “and picture what you need. Then you work out which part of the manipulation will achieve it. So say I want to make a mountain grow, I’d have to visualize the future, where the mountain is already grown, and manipulate the necessary parts to achieve it. Any idea what your specialism is?”

Oliver racked his brains. So far he’d only used his to break a table leg and open some steel doors.

“Is there a specialism for manipulating materials?” he asked. “Like wood and steel?”

Ralph looked a little blank. “Not sure. I mean, an atomic specialism would be able to. It’s by far the most powerful but by far the hardest to master. It’s also super rare…” His voice trailed off and his eyes suddenly widened. Oliver saw a spark ignite behind them. “Unless you’re the one we’ve been waiting for!”

“What do you mean?” Oliver asked.

Ralph looked suddenly excited. “We’re waiting for someone. Someone very special, who will be the most powerful Seer of all. Every time a new kid arrives we think it’s them but they always end up disappointing us.”

Oliver gulped. “You don’t think it could be me?”

Ralph shrugged. “Only time will tell.” Then he stood suddenly and tapped his stomach. “I’m famished. Let’s go and have dinner.”

Oliver stood, too, glancing back at the heavy tome that contained all the theories of space-time he’d discussed with Ralph. He knew he would be back to read it as soon as possible. He needed to go through it all with a fine-tooth comb. Its theories had expanded his mind far beyond Einstein’s theory of relativity.

But for now, Oliver had to accept his rumbling stomach needed to take precedence.

They left through the L door, and Ralph led him to a door with an F on it. F for food, Oliver presumed.

Ralph pushed open the doors and before Oliver’s eyes was the most magnificent dining room he had ever seen.

It was just like the other rooms, a huge open space of fifty floors. There were brightly colored tubes crisscrossing all over the place, with conveyor belts inside and small plates of food moving along them. It was like a sushi bar in 3D technicolor.

In the center was a huge concrete column with round glass tables surrounding it at various heights. Oliver watched as kids walked over, sat down and clipped themselves in with seat belts. When the last chair was taken, the table started to rise into the air. The column was some kind of elevator system. Once the glass table reached its position, twenty floors up, it clicked into place. Oliver saw the kids upon it reaching for plates of food from the conveyor belts that were now within reach, chatting happily with each other.

Oliver couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Like everything else in the school he’d seen so far, even eating was a hurried affair.

“This is insane,” he said aloud.

“Come on,” Ralph said, pulling him by the collar. “Let’s get a seat quickly or we’ll have to wait for the next table.”

Oliver was tugged along to the column just as the next communal table rose up through a hole in the ground and clicked into place. Kids dashed into seats around him. At the same time Ralph shoved him down into one of the chairs.

“Clip in,” he said.

Oliver scrambled to find his straps. It was very fiddly trying to get them to click in place, and the other seats were filling up with kids fast.

Just at the last second, Oliver managed to get his buckle fastened. Then suddenly he was shooting upward.

Oliver gripped the side of the table to steady himself. He made the mistake of looking down and, through the glass tabletop, saw his legs dangling above the ground, which was shrinking rapidly out of sight.

Then the table stopped abruptly. Oliver’s stomach flipped from the sudden sensation of deceleration.

“All right?” Ralph asked.

“I think so,” Oliver replied, blowing his messy hair from his eyes.

The sound of mechanical whirring caught Oliver’s attention and he looked around as hundreds of different-colored tubes moved toward the table. With a whoosh, different plates started flying before him; bowls of fuchsia pink rice, plates of rainbow-colored hamburgers, a dish filled with sparkly broccoli.