The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister - Landon Wark (bill gates best books TXT) 📗

He stood in line at the coffee shop for twenty minutes, feeling a little giddy as he was reminded of being back home when he was first enthralled by the new power he was beholding. He took a deep breath through his nostrils and allowed the smell of grounds and steam to permeate his being before becoming annoyed at the lack of speed in the line.

Holding his change tightly against the paper cup he went through the ritual of making the bitter brew drinkable with his free hand. He grimaced as the metal became first warm and then searing. Finally managing to put the cup down he peeled the coins away from the indentations they left in his skin.

He thought of the electrons in the metal passing disruptive amounts of heat into his hand. He froze in place for more than a moment, nearly knocked over another patron as he spun towards the door. Leaving his cup behind he burst out into the hot air of southern mid-morning. His still stinging hand clutched the quarters tighter, re-merging them with the imprints they had left in his hand.

"Atomic number thirty. Atomic number thirty," he muttered purposefully, desperate to keep his nonsense spouting under control.

After several failed attempts to use the unfamiliar keys Sandy had given him Jonah burst through the door and ripped his old notebook, battered and worn from the months of hiding and running from its resting place.

"This is going to work. This is going to work," he gasped as he found the list of phonemes that had made the magazine at the department store smoulder and later created the fire under his television. He copied them out carefully, double checking each one as he did so.

"Come on. Come on."

His eyes scanned through the symbols and glyphs he was able to pull out of his notes. There were some parts that would work backwards. Of that he was certain.

A small plume of smoke rising from the coffee table warned him that he was saying certain parts out loud. By the time a flame licked up the joint between the wood and the glass his concentration was broken by the need to run into the hall for a fire extinguisher.

Fortunately the building's fire system was lackluster enough that the brief mistake went unnoticed by most of the tenants.

"WHAT THE FUCK!"

The same could not be said for Sandy.

As her gaze followed from the pile of melted metal on the kitchen floor to the seared coffee table and the blackened floor surrounding it she managed to spy Jonah sitting on the sofa, scrawling frantically on a pad balanced on his lap.

"Can you keep it down?" he asked without looking up. "I don't want to forget this."

"What the hell happened here? What did you do to-" Her eye caught sight of a small toy panda bear on a solar powered swing, its face partly melted off. "Jonah!"

"It was the electron movement," he said triumphantly. "Too much of it."

"What are you talking about? Did you burn my books?"

"A little. The reason atomic number thirty was the limit is that those elements had more electrons. More electrons, more average electron movement."

"Could you start talking English?"

"The reason that I got limited to 8 is that the electrons moving around interfered with things. But!" He exclaimed, shooting up off the sofa and walking towards the kitchen. "If we slow down the movement of the electrons by cooling the object at the same time..."

"If you're cooling things then why are there goddam burn marks all over the place?!"

"Well, it turns out there's a slight temperature elasticity following duplication. But, this took me thirty-seven minutes."

Jonah pulled open the door to the small freezer above the fridge and small, shiny metal discs began pouring from inside, instantly creating a small pile on the floor. There had to be over a hundred on the floor and hundreds more inside the freezer. His other hand, this one covered in small, bright pink burn marks held up a notebook, proudly bearing a series of symbols that Sandy recognized, but was just beginning to understand.

"Now you can quit your job," he said proudly.

Jonah McAllister Buys Some Land

Outside of the small city, in a place where the word rustic still applied, there was a small forest. Given the aridness of the land and the shallowness of the soil a forest was a rare thing to see in those parts and in honesty the inhabitants of the country preferred it that way. A tree or two was acceptable here or there for shade against the harsh sun in the blistering summer, but most in the rural areas, whether consciously or unconsciously referred to themselves as prairie folk. A forest blocked out the sun, closed in the mind and the body, and what was more, in a place that prided itself on the open and familial atmosphere, a forest hid things, brought about a sense of paranoia and privacy that was unacceptable in these lands.

Within this forest there was a road, a path really, that wound its way up from a nearby highway, through the concealing trees, past a few buildings that likely predated the forest itself and toward a house, sitting blissfully on top of a small hill, hidden away from prying eyes and nosy ears. It was unfinished. Whoever had owned the land had abandoned the house before adding shingles to the roof, or even siding to the walls and all those in the surrounding countryside who knew about it said a little thank you now and then that the trees kept the eyesore hidden. Privacy only had value when it hid things about which they did not want to know.

The real estate agent responsible for it, Henderson by name, a man who had once possessed great hopes for the market before the mortgage crash a few