CHAPTER 23.

Everyone saw the tower. Everyone. There was no missing it.

Bethany found herself outside the bookstore, not even remembering leaving. She looked around at all the people pointing and shouting about the Magister's tower, and couldn't speak, almost couldn't breathe, like she couldn't remember how.

"I'd never actually seen it from the outside before," Kiel said from beside her. "It's usually hanging off the bottom side of a cliff, so it's not the easiest thing to sightsee. The actual one, I mean." He paused. "Or maybe this is the only actual one, if the other one is made-up. You did make my life a bit more confusing, didn't you."

"I . . . I don't-"

"I know," Kiel said, patting her on the shoulder. "This isn't going to be fun for you. But look at the bright side. When things are as bad as they can get, what's there to worry about?"

She slowly turned toward him, fighting off the extremely strong desire to strangle him where he stood. "This . . . this is going to be everywhere. The news will cover it. The police are going to come. And your teacher-"

"Magister."

"-will not be too happy when those things happen!" Bethany's voice got louder and louder as she went. "And I can't even imagine what that means. I never even thought he'd do this! So how much worse is this going to get?" She grabbed Kiel's black shirt and pulled him close. "You have no idea how much more I can worry about."

Kiel took a step back, his eyes wide. "That was impressive," he told her. "But I really do think you're going about this all wrong."

Two news vans sped past them on the street, heading toward the mansion. Bethany just waved her hand at them, giving him a "See?" look.

"Forget that for now," Kiel said. "Do you remember when Charm and I were trapped in the future?"

Bethany shook her head impatiently. "I've never read your books, and now isn't the time-"

"And do you remember how-wait, what?"

"I've never read your books!" Bethany shouted. "I don't know what happened to you in book two, I have no idea what you saw in book three, and I couldn't care less about whatever went down in book five!"

"You're angry," Kiel told her calmly, "so I'm going to forgive what you just said. Anyway, when Charm and I were in the future-"

"What did I just say?"

"Our time machine had been destroyed by Dr. Verity's great-great-grandson, and we realized there was no way back," Kiel continued. "Things looked dark, and this was all after we learned that, well, my own personal future hadn't turned out so great either. But that's when I decided that sometimes you have to embrace the bad to find the good." He winked at her. "Think about it."

She slapped his arm over and over. "THAT. DOESN'T. MEAN. ANYTHING!"

"We got home, Bethany, because we realized that if we changed the future's future, someone would eventually come along to stop us. So we started messing up everything we could, and soon enough, along came the future's version of time police to fix things. As soon as they were distracted, we stole their time machine and used it to get back to the present!"

Bethany stopped slapping him to stare at him openmouthed. "Do you have any idea how little sense that makes?"

"So?" Kiel said with a grin. "It worked. And it worked because I embraced the problem and made it work for me. That's real magic."

"No. Real magic is when you make something happen that's physically impossible."

"Well, sure, that too. That's real magic. But this is realer magic."

"No, it's not that either. That word doesn't even exist."

"So in a way, that word is magic, by your definition." He winked again. "Now, do you want to argue some more, or do you want to fix this?"

She glared at him, then looked back at the tower. Fix this? Fix this? They'd pa.s.sed "fix this" when Owen had started talking to fictional characters! This was so far beyond "fix this" that there was no fixing this at all!

A man stepped up next to them, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, despite the coolness. He lifted his camera to take a picture, then grinned at Bethany. "You know, Jonathan Porterhouse keeps saying he won't make a movie, but I bet that's what this is. Looks like a set to me, doesn't it?"

"What's a movie?" Kiel whispered to her.

"No," she whispered back. "These people can't be seeing this! Can't you use a forget spell on all these people or something?"

"Won't work," Kiel told her.

"Just try!"

Kiel sighed and mumbled something, and pointed at the man in the Hawaiian shirt. The man's eyes went blank for a moment, and then he shook his head as if trying to clear out a fog. He turned to Bethany to say something, only to abruptly notice the enormous tower of black and silver up on the hill. "What the . . . ?" he said. "Do you see that?"

"It didn't work. Do it again!" Bethany hissed.

Kiel pointed at the tower. "He's just going to keep seeing-"

"DO IT AGAIN!"

"I can only do magic once without a spell book," Kiel told her. "Now, it so happens that I do have this spell written down in my belt pouches, mostly because-"

Bethany shoved his belt back to him and stamped her foot while she waited for him to find the right page in his pouch, while he made comments like "Huh, forgot I had this one," and "Ooh, that reminds me of . . . forget it." Finally, he pulled out the right page and glanced over the spell. His body began to glow, and he unleashed the forget spell again at the man in the Hawaiian shirt.

The man's eyes blanked out once more, and he shook his head, just like last time. This time, Bethany grabbed his shirt and pulled him around so he wasn't facing the tower. The man gave her an odd look. "Why would you do that?" He took a step away, then noticed the tower out of the corner of his eye. "What the . . . ?" he said. "Do you see-"

"NO!" Bethany screamed. "I don't! It's not there!"

Kiel grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the Hawaiian-shirted man as Bethany kept screaming about how the tower wasn't there. Finally, he raised a hand. "I'm this close to just making you forget all of this, if you don't calm down," he told her. "It'd make my life a lot easier, honestly."

"How are they supposed to not remember it if they keep seeing it?" Bethany said, her hands shaking. "You need to make the tower invisible! Like a big bubble all around Jonathan Porterhouse's mansion! You can do that, right?" She grabbed his shoulders and looked him right in the eye. "RIGHT?"

"You know, this isn't my world or anything," he told her, so calm it infuriated her, "but unless me being here somehow makes me much more powerful than usual, that's probably not going to happen."

"JUST ONE SIDE?" Bethany begged. "The side closest to town? Can you do that?"

He sighed, then looked up at the tower with an appraising look. "Well, I am pretty impressive, contrary to what I just told you. I'm sure I could handle at least one side. Probably two, if push came to shove-"

She shoved him, hard. "It came to shove when that tower popped up! DO IT! As tall as you can so no one sees it!"

Kiel gave her an annoyed look, then slowly spread his hands, chanting a spell. For a moment she considered making him go do his magic in an alley, but at this point, with the tower and all, a boy in a Kiel Gnomenfoot costume doing magic probably would just make this all look like a publicity stunt for the nonexistent movie.

Kiel finished his spell, and a bright light shot out from both his hands, weaving its way through the streets of the town and up into the hills. It poured over the tower (or at least one side, maybe two), and then abruptly, tower and light both disappeared.

Kiel, meanwhile, swayed like he was about to faint. Bethany quickly grabbed his arm and steadied him.

"I told you I'm impressive," he said, sounding completely winded. "Now I'm impressive and tired. When did magic get to be so exhausting? What's wrong with this place?"

"That was amazing," she told him. "Seriously, Kiel. Thank you."

He smiled, and she smiled back.

Then she slowly began to push the forget spell page in his hand up toward his face, so he could relearn it.

"No," he told her. "Rest now. Tired!"

"You can rest when you've wiped the memories of everyone in town who saw the tower," she said. "There's no time to wait! The people in those news vans will start filming soon, so we need to make them forget before the story becomes about how the tower not only appeared, but disappeared. Plus, who knows what the Magister is doing!"

"Wait, what?" Kiel said, his eyes widening as he caught up with what she was saying. "Everyone in town?"

"Not everyone," she told him, shoving him toward the Hawaiian-shirted man, who now stared at Kiel with a look of shock. "No, actually, you're right, everyone is better. Let's do everyone."

"But I'm so tired-"

Bethany grabbed his hand and held it out toward the surprised man. "C'mon, you're Kiel Gnomenfoot! When bad things happen, you embrace them, or something!"

"You really are pure evil, aren't you," Kiel whispered, then read over the forget spell again.

Hawaiian-shirted man's look of surprise faded into a friendly smile as his eyes glazed over, then he shook out the fog and continued on his way.

"One down," Bethany said as Kiel dropped to his knees. "Who's next?"

CHAPTER 24.

AAH!" Owen shouted as the tube shot him and Charm straight up into nothingness, then twisted and jerked them around in a dizzying maze of other tubes and screaming billboards advertising cool science thingers.

"I need to clear our history!" Charm shouted into his ear over the noise of the ads. "The security system is going to catch up with us otherwise. This might scare you a little, so try to stay calm!"

"What does that mean?" Owen said, then screamed in terror as Charm shot at the sides of the tube just behind them with her ray guns. The tube instantly shattered, sending pieces of tube off to plow into various ads and other search tubes.

"That won't hide us for long," she said, putting her guns back in their holsters. "We'll need to be quick."

"Aah!" Owen told her, hugging her for dear life.

She pushed him off her, and they continued zooming along the tube separately-her looking impatient; him caught between terror and feeling like this was the greatest roller coaster ride ever, though leaning toward the first one, if he had to pick.

Just as Owen began to get used to the ride, or at least everything but his stomach did, the tube spat them out into what looked like a ma.s.s of zeroes and ones, the numbers actually breaking their fall.

Charm got to her feet before Owen did, then leaned down and yanked him up with her robot arm so hard he actually flew for a moment. "We're here," she said. "The Original Computer." She made a face. "It even smells out of date."

Owen sniffed loudly and nodded. There was an odd sort of sour-milk odor, weirdly.

"See all these?" Charm said, pointing at the zeroes and ones. "Can you believe computers ever actually ran like this? Binary? I mean, c'mon. We're up to centidecimal at this point in modern computers." She frowned at the streams of ones and zeroes. "It's like visiting prehistoric times."

Owen glanced around, seeing nothing but numbers. "So how do we find the location of the Seventh Key in all of this?"

"These numbers here don't mention anything about it," Charm told him, glancing around. "We could use an interface, but I don't see one anywhere. There should be one farther in, though. Come on."

With that, she led Owen off into the stream of ones and zeros, parting it like a curtain.

"What are these numbers, anyway?" he asked, dipping his hand into a bunch of zeroes. They felt cold to the touch, kind of like water, only less wet. Which was really all water was, but still. He reached for a one, then yanked his hand back as a tiny jolt zapped him.

"Ones and zeros are actually all a computer understands, at its core," she told him as they walked. "They're not even that, one or zero. It's actually just a different way of saying 'on' and 'off.' 'On' means there's electricity, and 'off' means there isn't. Everything else here is built off of those two ideas. On, off, one, zero. Get it?"

"So don't touch the ones," Owen said, and stuck his hand into another stream of zeroes, letting them flow over his hand. It actually felt kind of relaxing.

"Be careful," Charm told him, pointing at a different flow of numbers that looked exactly the same as the one he was touching. "That's the Original Computer's avatar software over there. Touch it, and you'll glitch us right into nonexisting."

"It looks exactly the same," he said, glancing between them quickly to see any difference.

Charm snorted. "So read the numbers before you touch them. Quanterian children learn to read binary in primary school."

Owen rolled his eyes. "Who cares if I did touch those specific numbers, the avatar software? What's the worst that could happen? We stop existing here and end up back in the ship?"

"I have no idea," Charm said. "But that's definitely not the worst that could happen. Enough of this. We're running out of time. Dr. Verity's armies are going to attack Magisteria in less than twenty-four hours, and we still don't even have the Seventh Key. I'm going to hack my own user interface, or we'll be here all day."

"Hack?"

She pulled something out of her glowing pocket and dropped it to the ground. The object instantly expanded into what looked like a desk, a chair, and a keyboard. She sat down and immediately began typing, and the air in front of her lit up like a computer screen. "One second," she said. "I have to make sure we're hidden."

"Hidden?" Owen asked, feeling like an idiot with all his questions. Though that's what Kiel always did whenever they were in Quanterium, so at least he was playing his role correctly.

"Hacking sets off alarms," Charm said, then nodded. Owen turned around to find a wall rising up to just about eye level in a wide circle around them. "There, I've set up a firewall. We should be safe now."

Owen touched the top of the maybe four-foot-tall wall in front of him. "Uh, really? This is hiding us?"

"Things don't work by sight here," Charm said. "Now stop talking."

"You need quiet?" Owen asked, looking out over the firewall. Something fluttered in the streams of ones and zeroes, and Owen stood up on his digital toes to get a better look.

"No, your voice just irritates me."

Fair enough. He glanced around at the number streams, but the flutter seemed to have disappeared.