ProductHex

by M. A. Mogus

The other day Mr. Fitzgerald, William R., came into my office. “Taffy, I have a job for you.”

He explained that MEMTEC had just released a product he was sure was hexed. Now standard hexing is allowed, but what was happening to MEMTEC went beyond what was permitted by law. Mr. Fitzgerald assigned the case to me.

“You're the best,” he said as he left.

My name is Taffy Griffin and I'm a CPT, a Certified Psychic Troubleshooter. I work for Spiral. When the government began to regulate magic in the business arena in 2022, firms like Spiral littered the business landscape. After the mergers in 2024, and the crash in 2029, CPT purveyors were whittled to seven corporations. We are number seven. Spiral is dedicated to keeping harmony in the magic business. Otherwise the world would have an even bigger crisis on its hands.

I didn't have to read the notes on my computer to guess which company did the standard hexes. I leaned back in my chair, propped up my feet and ordered my computer to call Delia at ProductHex. Her lopsided image appeared on the tiny screen before my eyes and I adjusted my headset to focus it.

“Oh Taffy, I'm so glad to see you,” Delia sniffed. Her face was blotched from crying.

“You know why I called?” My glance strayed to my desk. I use high-tech stuff, but I'm low tech at heart. When I do a computer call it means I'm after something.

Delia's somber face grew paler. “Yes, the MEMTEC fiasco. We did the standard hexes on MEMTEC, but I know they paid a bundle for the counters.”

“You know who did the counter hexes?” By law that had to be another company to avoid a conflict of interest.

“NORCON.” She sighed.

“Save me a read, Delia, what's the story?”

“MEMTEC came up with a new memory module, a big change on the standard D optical memory. The patent was in secrecy mode for almost a year.”

I was stunned. A year to bring out a new product? What was MEMTEC doing?

“What happened?”

“MEMTEC's competitors got wind of the product and contacted us for the standard delay hexes.”

“Who did them?”

Delia sniffed. “Stan.”

Stan was an old pro from Brooklyn . He'd moved to Seattle when ProductHex offered him a job after his company went bankrupt.

“How's he taking it?” I really like Stan. He's a low-tech junkie like me.

“He's devastated. He's holed up in his apartment,” Delia leaked tears. She had a thing for Stan. At seventy he was still a charmer.

“When did the trouble start?”

“When the product hit the market, the old companies like Micoapple and Asiapods contacted us for the standard lose-money hexes. Stan did those as well.”

“Then what?”

“The bottom fell out of the product. When companies installed it, their computers went crazy. Something burned out permanent memory, reserve memory, even some operating systems. Data loss was astronomical.”

“That sounds like a virus. That's not Stan's fault and not our job to track down.”

As Delia shook her head, I watched her braids whip across her somber face. “The first thing we did was to check for a virus. We've got some of the best freelance hackers in the world. They found nothing.”

“What did you do next?”

“We didn't have a chance to do anything. The FCC came after us. Said we must have used an illegal channel for the hex. You know how paranoid they are ever since that Houdini Affair. I swear no one here would use an illegal channel, especially not Stan. He's still afraid after what happened. He was involved, remember?”

I nodded, recalling what I knew of the incident and what my great-aunt had told me. Stan had been one of the people responsible for developing the regulations known as the Psychic Channel Laws. Because we sometimes have to access the Other Side during a hex, the FCC governs the channels any psychic can legally use. Only certain channels give the best and most repeatable results. Others are not reliable and only experimenters can use those, never commercial ventures. No one ever uses illegal channels. It's simply not safe.

“Did the FCC schedule a hearing for your company?”

Delia nodded. “Yes, and Stan is beside himself.”

I had an image of Stan having an out-of-body experience over this mess. It wasn't a pretty sight. I swung my chair to the side, reached out and toyed with the amethyst crystal globe on my desk. It was set at the Feng Shui position for prosperity.

Delia sniffed. “Stan is just so upset. It's not like him. He's always weathered everything. Since he's been at ProductHex he's been in demand.”

“Let me do some snooping here and I'll get back to you.”

Her image faded from the screen as the computer sensed by my tone of voice that I had concluded the conversation.

I stood and stretched. I needed to see just what the commercial buzz was about MEMTEC and I knew a few hackers with better credentials than those ProductHex had consulted. However, mine didn't live in the best neighborhood.

***

I hopped a maglev into Pittsburgh . It's a straight shot from the Laurel Highlands to the city. With my modest salary I can at least afford public transit. As the train snaked its way through the once affluent suburbs, I glanced from the decaying houses to the monitor in front of the car. The headline screamed that the Dow Jones average had hit 300. How long will that last, I wondered?

“It's going to get better.” An elderly man, dressed in what once had been an expensively tailored suit, nodded in my direction. “I still have my stocks.”

“I still have my great-aunt's stocks, but so far that hasn't gotten me a frozen pizza.” I couldn't help thinking that if it hadn't been for the Houdini Affair in 2020 we might not have been forced to repeat the crash that had occurred in the previous century and the Depression that had followed it.

The old man whispered to himself, “It got better after the first Depression. You'll see.”

“If I remember my history, crawling out of the Depression happened because of a world war.”

He glared at me, rose, and headed for the rear of the car.

The train slowed and stopped in the Strip District. The Port 2 stop came five minutes later and I stood and follow the old man from the train. We stepped into the gleaming terminal and exited to harsh autumn sunlight, a brassy blue sky, and the jagged teeth of tenement squats. The buildings fronting the Monongahela River had once been the pride of the city. The development had been completed in 2010 as pseudo-Victorian row houses and shops fronting small squares and pedestrian walkways as well as a park. The crash had hit Riverside Park hard.

Tenants and owners were forced into bankruptcy. The place quickly deteriorated into squats for anyone desperate or fearless enough to inhabit them. The old man hurried off to one of the few better maintained buildings. I halted as he walked through the door to the building. He was a ghost. I had forgotten there had been more than a dozen suicides in the area and several murders. Both the living and the dead were more than an annoyance. But this ghost had seemed so real so solid. I shook my head in confusion. My inner sense should have recognized him for what he was. I shrugged aside the nagging thought that something was wrong and continued along the brick walkway, sticking to the well trodden path through the weeds.

My favorite hacker, Remy Barrett, had a squat in a tenement by the river's edge. I turned from the main path and jumped as a specter moved into my field of vision. My stomach sank and my hair stood on end.

“Go back, go back,” it moaned.

Not another one. “It's noon ,” I growled, annoyed that I had let the ghost get close to my aura. “Get out of here.” I traced several symbols in the air and pulled out my medicine bag. At the sight of the jaguar sign, the ghost headed toward the river.

He shot me an insolent glare as he left. I took several deep breaths to regain my center. I was angry because I had let this ghost scare me. I reasoned it was because it had taken on the appearance of something out of a Dickens novel. Some spirits need to get an afterlife.

At the entrance to building B I noted that protection spells now radiated at least ten feet from the steps. The shiny new metal door was covered with seven protective amulets, including one I wouldn't consider using.

I whipped out my headset and dialed Remy's number. “Remy, it's me I need to talk to you but you come get me. I'm not breaking these spells.”

“Be right there, Taffy.”

A minute later he opened the door and brushed aside the spells to let me enter. He started up the dingy staircase. I followed.

“What's going on? Last time I was here you were using standard protection spells. Now you've turned this place into a psychic fortress.” My glance took in the enhanced spells on the door to his squat.

He brushed back his too curly dark hair and smiled. “Need to, otherwise I'd be over run by some things I'd rather not mention.”

I shivered. As I entered the room, muted lighting greeted me. His decorating style might be called cast-off chic, but he managed to make his squat look upscale. I took a seat across from his wall of bookcases and accepted a glass of cider.

“I got the cider from a local farm.” He took a seat opposite me. “So what do you need, as if I can't guess?”

“You know about the MEMTEC problem?” It didn't surprise me. Remy is really good at what he does.

“The whole Web knows about the problem. We've been trying to stem the data hemorrhage for a week.”

I frowned. “Delia said data loss was astronomical.”

“It's more than that. Data is being swallowed up in some kind of construct and then dumped on the Other Side. It's been going on since the new module was released.”

“Why didn't the hackers ProductHex used confirm this? Why didn't my own boss tell me? He must have known.”

“William tell you anything,” Remy grunted. “Why would he? All the companies are trying to keep this under wraps.”

“Why didn't I sense anything?”

Remy lowered his glass. “You have maximum protection with the spells for your work and home. Besides, you're in an area with lots of natural environment. That alone augments protection.”

“The MEMTEC product is responsible for this?” I sensed Remy's fears.

“I haven't been able to hack into MEMTEC's network. Not even Dorsey can get in. Best we can come up with is that the new module uses a quantum structure to store the data.”

“Messing with subatomic computing is dangerous.” I clenched my fists. “That's how the Houdini Affair began.”

“Tell me about it,” he sighed.

Remy had been fired from Spiral for doing secret work in subatomic computing. He is the best computer nerd in the business. He just doesn't look the part. In fact he looked as if he had stepped from the cover of a twentieth-century romance novel. In my mind I always referred to him as Lord Ravenwood.

“You and the other hackers are sure that this new memory module is causing data to disappear?”

Remy leaned forward. “No doubt about it. My best guess is that it's doing what the first subatomic computing attempt did. But this time it's worse.”

My breath caught in my throat. “How?”

“You have any weird experiences coming here?”

“I always have weird experience, I'm a CPT. It's my stock in trade.” I told Remy about the old man on the train and my encounter with the second ghost.

“From what I can figure out, the data dumped into the Other Side by the MEMTEC module is available for any unsettled, pissed off, or calculating spirit to glom on, and when they do, it helps them become more corporeal.”

“How can a computer module affect the Realities? The Realities are other levels of existence. Physical objects can't get to them. Even we can only nudge possibilities, activate archetypes or pick up stray probability waves.” My stomach was churning, more with fear than the lack of lunch.

“Data is stored as electrical signals.” Remy leaned back and ran his hand through his hair. “I'm not sure how the transfer to the subatomic level is made but I'm pretty sure that's what's happening.”

“And MEMTEC's keeping the lid on this. No wonder.” It was what I feared, what Remy feared, what anyone with psychic abilities feared. Another scare like the Houdini Affair and our carefully controlled psychic environment would collapse just as the economic one had. This time the people who paid no attention to their inner stirrings, any religious fringe group, and the hardcore skeptics would band together against us.

Remy's head jerked toward the window. Something had activated one of his spells. I too felt a stirring of unease. He rose and walked to the window.

“Taffy, is there any reason why MEMTEC would send a security van to follow you?”

“What are you talking about?” I jumped from my chair, ran to the window and stared at the MEMTEC van pulling onto the grass. Five black-clad security guards got out of the truck and pulled someone else with them. It was Stan, his wrists bound in plastic handcuffs.

“Why follow me I'm doing a job for them?” No one knew Remy lived in this squat, not even Stan. But Stan knew my psychic signature. The guards were using him to trace me.

Remy bolted from the window to the couch and pulled a pack from beneath it. It was his famous survival pack left over from his days with Spiral. He kept everything in it just in case he had to make a quick getaway. He started cramming in his headset and a packet of memory modules.

I pulled my headset from my vest. “I'll call Mr. Fitzgerald.”

Remy looked up. “No! Not here. Let's get somewhere safe. Follow me.”

I shoved my headset into my vest and hurried after him. I never carry a purse. A multi-pocket vest holds what I need and leaves my hands free.

We went into the bathroom and he removed a panel from the wall, revealing a metal ladder. He squeezed through the opening and started to climb down. I followed. I had only climbed a few feet when an explosion rocked the apartment. I felt the vibration through the ladder. The blast told me the security people were using stun grenades. Not many spells will stand against them, especially if they carry sleeping gas. A tendril of the stomach-turning gas whipped its way into the shaft.

I grew light-headed and clung to the ladder. “Remy.”

“Hold your breath,” he ordered. “And keep climbing.”

So much for Lord Ravenwood coming to the rescue. I fumbled and slipped along the ladder while holding my breath until I thought I would turn blue and faint. I stopped and took several deep breaths. Black spots danced before my eyes, but they were due to the lack of oxygen.

“Here,” Remy caught me as I staggered from the last step.

He flicked on a halogen torch. It threw out a lot of light, but the shadows seemed to coagulate where it didn't reach. I suddenly wished I had not watched all those old horror movies. The last thing I needed was to create illusionary specters where there were probably plenty of real ones.

“Careful.” Remy motioned for me to follow.

“Where are we?”

“These are the old service tunnels for the buildings. It's a regular maze down here, but I've mapped out escape routes to the river. I have a boat docked at an illegal marina.”

We had gone a few hundred yards when I heard a commotion behind us. “What's that?”

Remy picked up the pace. “The guards must have found an access panel on the ground floor. Let's move it.”

“Halt!”

Three black-clad guards were directly in our path. Before I could protest Remy yanked me into an adjacent tunnel. Pieces of rock flew past my head as a rubber bullet struck the wall where I had been.

“They're trying to kill us.” Rubber bullets at this close range are lethal.

“Come on,” Remy urged.

I hesitated for a minute. None of this made any sense. I heard a yelp from Remy and turned in time to see Remy pitch forward on his face.

“Taffy, take these.” He handed me his survival pack and torch. “About twenty yards ahead on the right is the exit tunnel. Get out of here now.”

I grabbed Remy and pulled him to his feet. He had sprained his ankle and couldn't put any weight on it, so we stumbled toward the corridor.

“Halt right there!”

I twisted to see the guards several yards behind us. Stan was with them. I saw Stan move behind one of them. I read his intention in his behavior, but he needed a diversion. I released Remy, who staggered against the wall and slowly slid to the ground.

“What's wrong with him?” one of the guards asked.

“He sprained his ankle,” I explained. What we needed at this point was a little chaos magick. I carry a confusion sigil as a means of protection. I reached into my vest.

“Keep your hands in plain sight,” the team leader ordered. He nodded toward Stan. “Back away from me.”

As Stan obeyed, Remy struck with his confusion sigil. It was one I had made for him and taught him how to use. Suddenly, the security team seemed unable to understand how their guns operated. Stan ripped one of the sleeping gas grenades from the holster of a guard who tried ineffectively to prevent it.

“Hurry, Stan,” I urged as I helped Remy to stand. “That spell won't last but a few minutes.”

Stan handed me the grenade. “This will last a few hours. I'd use it but I'm tied up at the moment.”

I took the grenade, armed it, and rolled it toward the security team, who chose this moment to awaken from the spell. The leader fired a rapid burst and the three of us hit the ground as the spray sliced chips from the tunnel wall. The grenade went off with a whoosh. I held my breath and crawled after Remy and Stan into the exit tunnel. I managed to get Remy upright with Stan's help.

I saw the grated opening to the outside and rushed ahead, bracing my back against the tunnel wall to shove the grate open with my feet. I dragged Remy from the tunnel. We were on a small ledge above the river; a worn path on my left snaked to the base. I helped Remy limp along until we reached what he had called an illegal marina. It consisted of several old boards nailed together over pilings that had once been part of something now unrecognizable. Three objects floated in the water. One was a dinghy that had been patched several times. The other was something masquerading as a water ski. Remy headed for the third.

“That's your boat?” I stared at the rowboat with the motor attached to its stern. The boat sported a coat of red paint flecks.

“In case you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of a Depression,” Remy muttered as he crawled into the boat. Stan managed to get in after him. I untied the boat before I got on board.

“Get these off me and I'll handle the motor.” Stan held out his bound wrists.

Remy opened his pack and pulled out a laser knife. If he could afford that, he wasn't too hard up, I thought. He sliced through the plastic and Stan discarded the cuffs.

Stan turned to the motor, started it, and gently drove us down the Monongahela. “I've been using boats all my life,” he explained. “By the way, Remy, where did you get this pulse 725Angle motor? This cost a bundle.”

“Gift from a client I did a job for.” Remy gritted his teeth as I wrapped his ankle with an elastic bandage from his survival pack and added a small healing spell. As I worked, I observed that nowhere in the old romance novels does Lord Ravenwood sprain his ankle as he flees the bad guys. Remy's got to work on his image.

“Stan, why did you trace me?”

“I needed to get to you but before I could come east the MEMTEC people picked me up.”

Stan directed the boat away from a body floating on the river's surface. It was a woman, her face bloated and bruised. She opened her eyes and waved as she drifted away from us.

Stan jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That's the problem and it's getting worse.”

“Tell me about it.” Remy winced as he pulled his bandaged ankle from my hold and shoved it into his shoe He grabbed his pack from me and fastened it. “So how do we stop it? How did you stop it the first time?”

“We used a flush,” Stan said. “By the way, where are we going?”

“What's a flush?” I asked.

“We need one of the MEMTEC modules to do it.” Stan shifted into a more comfortable position. “Then we use it and a sigil designed to flush the subatomic level of any inter-Reality construct.”

I felt my mind spin. “I don't understand.”

“The module is creating some sort of portal that allows data to be transformed so that it can pass to the Other Side.” Stan took a deep breath. “And don't ask me how it's done I don't know, but your great-aunt Laconia did.”

Remy's eyes widened. “Your great-aunt was named Laconia ?”

“Yes.”

“It's an odd name.”

“She was an odd aunt.”

Stan interrupted. “She left you the sigil. That's why I needed to get to you.”

My mouth dropped opened. “What?”

“You carry it in the medicine bag she left you. It ‘s hidden behind the jaguar symbol embroidered on the pouch.”

My hand went to the bag resting beneath my sweater. “Where are we going to get a MEMTEC module? I was thought all modules had been removed from the market.”

“There's a place I know that will probably have one.” Remy glanced around. “Head past the Point into the Ohio River . We'll stop at Neville Island .”

“What's there?” Stan asked keeping an eye out for human and ghostly pursuers.

Remy dry swallowed a few pain-killers from his pack. “There used to be a sports training arena on the island, but once the tent city was kicked out of Point Park they took over the arena. There's a big flea market there. You can get anything, most of it illegal.

“What about the police?” I watched the locks around Neville Island come into view. They were still operated by the legal inhabitants, who had sectioned off the less safe areas of the island.

“No one goes to the arena unless they have business there. People around here jokingly refer to it as the Coliseum. You enter at your own risk.”

Stan directed the boat through the locks and Remy paid the fare. At the western tip where the old arena lay, Stan maneuvered the boat into a small dock. Once he secured the boat, Remy dickered with the man on duty and some coins changed hands. I strayed to the concrete steps and pulled the medicine pouch from around my neck. Aunt Laconia had left it to me along with the rambling old Victorian house on ten acres of land in the Laurel Highlands and some stock that at last count was worth less than pennies on the dollar. Not that the dollar was worth more than pennies now.

I felt the jaguar symbol and sensed the outlines of something beneath it. I had always thought it was simply a piece of plastic on which the jaguar had been embroidered. It had the dull flat feel of a manmade object. I'd paid it scant attention until now. I frowned. If there was a sigil beneath, I sure couldn't sense it. Aunt Laconia must have laid one heavy-duty spell on it to block me.

“It's there,” Stan assured me as he placed a hand on my shoulder. “But it's sealed and has to be unsealed and awakened so it can be used. She did this to protect you.”

“Why didn't she destroy it?” A sigil like this one should have been destroyed once it was used. Goddess and God knew what sort of residue still clung to it. And I had been carrying it around for years. I shivered.

“A copter,” Stan glanced skyward.

I sensed the threat but before I could react Remy pulled me up the final set of steps and to the entrance to the arena. Three men and two women shoved open the double doors and took positions at the front of the building. One carried a surface-to-air missile pod armed and ready.

“Carl, is Amber there?”

“Yeah, Remy, she's at the same place as before. Now what the hell did you bring that the Feds are coming armed?”

“A cure for the data loss.” Remy flung the words behind him as he shoved Stan and me into the building.

My head buzzed with the two dozen or more spells we had broken before there was time to sweep them aside. I called up my advanced protective shield and did a quick cleansing. I sensed Stan and Remy doing the same.

The arena was huge but the merchants merely eyed us as Remy threaded a path trough the maze of booths until he came to one decked out like something from the old Renaissance Faires. The tent was lined with shelves stocked with crystals, herbs, minerals, oils, and other things I really didn't want to investigate. Beside these items the owner, a tawny dark-eyed woman of indeterminate age, carried a large assortment of electronics. I knew she was a techno-shaman.

“I could feel you coming all the way along the river,” she said, brushing Remy's lips with a brisk kiss. She looked at me. “ Laconia 's niece, I see.”

“You knew my aunt?”

Amber nodded. “Mostly by her reputation.” She reached beneath the cash box and pulled out a small bundle wrapped in purple velvet. “I have what you need. Take it, but whatever you're going to do don't do it here.”

“Where?” I accepted the bundle.

Amber bit her lip in thought. “One of the abandoned industrial sites is best. Perfect vibes for what you have to do.”

“What's happening?” Remy glanced around. People were packing up their wares and pulling down their tents. Several overburdened handcarts were wheeled past us.

“I'm leaving too.” Amber began to pack. “Whatever you do, cast a shield over the remaining residents of the island. You owe them that much.”

My hands grew cold at her words. The MEMTEC module shook in my hands. I spun toward Stan.

“How dangerous is this flush?”

“Very,” he whispered.

“What do you want for the module?” Remy asked Amber as he helped her to pack part of her stock.

“Nothing. Just get rid of the problem and give us time to evacuate.” Her gaze swept the three of us. “Get going now!”

Remy tugged us through the marketplace and we found the back exit which led to a battered concrete roadway. The light was fading and I sensed the copter flying in stealth mode.

“Let's hope the rush of people will keep our pursuers occupied,” Remy said. “See that plastics factory?” He pointed to a rust-streaked prefab building some distance ahead.

“Good choice,” Stan puffed as he kept pace with us. “Got to get out more, it's not good for a psychic to get flabby.”

The factory was surrounded by a twenty-foot high chain-link fence topped by razor wire. Remy pulled out his laser knife and managed to cut open enough for us to squeeze through.

A debris field stretched before us. I took a step, but Remy pulled me back. He scanned a rock at his feet to see if it was real. Before I could say anything, he lifted the rock and pitched it into a pile of debris. Metal burst in all directions.

I squelched a scream and the three of us huddled to avoid the lethal spray. The place was booby-trapped. I sent out a thought tendril and found the path empty of nearby traps.

Remy must have done the same, for he motioned for us to proceed. Single file we crept toward the door. It was already open and I smelled death. Inside, the last rays of the setting sun swept a path before us. Bodies were strewn around the entrance. The decomposing remains of people who had activated the traps. They had managed to crawl into the building to die. The building grew cold with the anger of their spirits now drinking data to manifest on this plane of existence.

“Hurry,” I urged. “Whatever we're going to do we better do it fast before any of these spirits materialized.”

“Cast a protective circle,” Stan whispered to me.

I removed my pouch and used the corn pollen it contained to create a protective circle. Great-aunt Laconia had claimed some Native American background hence the corn pollen. After Stan and Remy entered I closed the circle.

Remy opened the bundle Amber had given us and removed the MEMTEC module and five white candles. Under Stan's direction we used Remy's collection of colored pens to draw several symbols on each candle and set them as he directed.

“Now what?” I fingered my medicine pouch.

“Pull out the sigil and unseal it.”

I picked at the thread that held the sigil in place and it fell into my hand. It was a thin piece of translucent obsidian with tiny symbols worked on it.

“Unseal the spell that binds it,” Stan ordered.

“How?”

“Didn't Laconia make you remember something?”

“Yeah, the names of the crummy stocks she bought.” She had insisted I remember them in a specific order so that someday they would be of use to me. By the Powers, the order was the unblocking spell.

“Clever,” Remy chuckled as he realized what I was thinking. “What better way to hide a spell than in something no one would ever think of using.”

One of the traps exploded outside. I heard the sound of voices, one of them belonging to Mr. Fitzgerald.

“Taffy, don't do anything until I get there.”

Remy grabbed Stan's arm. “We have to shield the residents.”

“No time,” Stan muttered. “Taffy, the unblocking spell.”

I recited the names of the stocks great-aunt Laconia had willed to me in the order she had made me learn them. With each name, the sigil in my hand grew warmer. By the last name it was alive with power.

Several more explosions went off. The security guards must be clearing a large path to the door. I heard the sound of a motor beneath the cold whispering of the spirits still trapped in the building.

Stan lit the five candles with Remy's lighter and snatched the MEMTEC module from Remy's hand. He placed it in the center of the small pentagram he had outlined with candles. He motioned for me to place the sigil on top of it. I did and the three of us held hands as the security guards entered.

I knew now that the stock names not only unblocked the spell but also activated the sigil.

“Taffy no!” Fitzgerald shouted from the door. “You'll shut down everything. This requires study and research.”

“There's no time for that! Everything will shut down anyway.” I chanted and felt the sigil open a path into the void between dimensions. It was using the MEMTEC module as a probe to hunt down the inter-Reality construct and devour it.

“Shoot them!” someone shouted, but he was drowned out by a howling wind sweeping through the building.

Pieces of machinery, parts of the dead bodies, even a few live ones were caught in the vortex that enveloped the three of us. The fragile cornmeal circle was the only barrier between us and whatever was happening. As I finished the chant, the vortex coalesced over the three of us and dropped into the sigil. It bounced a bit before settling on the blackened module. The module crumpled into dust.

We were the only one in the building. I looked at the opened doorway and saw only darkness. We had shut down everything. But what did that mean?

***

Three months later I sat in my house watching January place its hand on the countryside in the form of a snowstorm. Stan lounged on the rag rug by the fireplace playing with Marigold my spaniel and Pearl and Crafty, the two orphaned cats I had rescued from Neville Island when we got away. Remy dozed on the old sofa.

We had indeed shut down everything, and not just the lights. The world economy hit bottom again and we were in the sub-basement of the Depression. Spiral was out of business as were MEMTEC, ProductHex, and many other multinational companies. Like winter we had all withdrawn into our own little universes to wait everything out. The sigil was destroyed and my stock was useless except as stock, which made it less than useless.

Stan, Remy, and I had started a freelance CPT Service. It was debatable whether or not anyone would consult us or could even afford to pay for our work. Stan's last counter-hex had netted us a chicken which was now baking in the Dutch oven in the fireplace. I was wondering where the next chicken would come from when someone knocked on the door.