MI-3

MI-3

“The magic seems a bit stronger than usual,” said Detective Inspector Janet Delacour, reading through the pile of daily reports.

“Yes, I noticed,” said Detective Ethan Ryder. “Why do you think it’s happening now? What's changed?”

“I wish I knew. Then maybe we’d be able to control it more. I'm afraid we won’t be able to do a damn thing until we know why.”

Ryder handed Delacour a stack of manila file folders.

“I have a number of incidents here I think we should investigate today. The top one is regarding a possible electronic intrusion. The complainant, Fiona Reede, actually made a police report. The others are complaints from neighbours, and events that we culled from social media. There has been a significant uptick in unusual happenings over the last few days.”

Delacour opened the top file and scanned its contents.

“Well, Ryder, let’s go see what has Ms. Reede so riled up.”

The unmarked police SUV pulled up in front of a neat row house with an impressive front garden.

Ryder scanned the property. 

“Looks pretty normal. Nothing amiss out here.”

Delacour nodded. 

They walked up to the front door and knocked.

The door was opened by a harried looking woman.

“Yes?” she said curtly.

“Fiona Reede? I’m Detective Inspector Delacour and this is Detective Ryder.” Both officers showed her their identification. “We’re from MI-3. We understand you’ve had an incident?”

Fiona Reede looked confused. “MI-3? Like MI-6?”

“Different branch. Can we come in?”

She ushered them into the kitchen.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I cannot go into the living room.”

Delacour took the lead. “Why is that?”

Reede looked over her shoulder towards the other room.

“It’s the tv.”

“What about the tv?”

Reede looked back at the detectives.

“I know this sounds weird, but I think it’s alive.”

Neither Delacour nor Ryder betrayed any emotion.

“Why do you think that, Ms. Reede?” asked Delacour.

“It started to talk to me.” She looked back over her shoulder, then back at the detectives. “I’m not crazy, you know. That’s why I called you — I thought someone had hacked into my internet and was messing with me. It’s a smart tv, you see. Hooked up to the internet.”

“Can you show us your television?”

Fiona Reede shook her head. “I’d rather not. You can go see it yourself.” She pointed down the hall, towards the front of the house. "On the left."

The detectives walked into Fiona Reede’s living room. It was a disaster. The furniture was randomly shoved around the perimeter of room. The cabinet below where the television would have hung, was now perpendicular from the wall, exposing the back of the cabinet and all the cables therein. A jumble of wires were hanging down from the hole in the wall, where the television should have been hung, as well as all the unplugged cord ends lying underneath on the floor. The offending device itself was lying screen-down on the floor.

Ryder took a small hand-held device out of his pocket, and waved it around the room.

Looking at the digital readout, he turned to Delacour, his face serious. “It’s very high. There is a lot of magic in this room.”

Delacour nodded, looking around. “I can feel it.”

They walked back into the kitchen.

Delacour smiled at Fiona Reede. “Can you tell us what happened?”

Fiona took a deep breath. 

“You’re going to think I’m crazy.” She shook her head. “Two nights ago, I came home from work, as usual, made dinner, and sat down to watch the news. I usually eat dinner while watching television. Well, I turned on the tv, and was watching something about a heat wave in Australia, and the tv changed channel to the weather network. No big deal. Maybe it was a bit buggy. I turned switched the channel back, then the same thing again. I tried it about four more times, then I just turned the thing off. Later, I turned on a movie — We Have A Ghost. Have you seen it?”

Delacour and Ryder shook their heads.

“Anway, I’m watching and laughing — it’s pretty funny. Then I hear other laughing. Creepy, right? I turn off the tv, no laughing. I turn it back on, laughing. I thought maybe … I don’t know what I thought. Maybe someone was spying on me. You hear about people watching you through your devices all the time. I was a little freaked. I started looking around, nothing. So, I went online and installed an app on my phone for finding devices that have been illegally installed in your home called Hidden Camera Detector. I checked the television and the whole room, but no hits. I figured it could have been one of those weird electronic things. So, last night I sat down to watch the news again. Only instead of changing the channel on me — you’re going to think I’m crazy — but the tv started to talk to me.”

She looked at Delacour and Ryder, daring them to laugh. Neither did. Ryder was taking notes.

“What did it say?” asked Delacour.

“Well, there was all the news about the horrible weather because of global warming. It said, and I quote, ‘I thought you humans were smarter than this! You’re ruining it for all of us!’ I turned off the tv. But it kept talking to me, asking why humans have to be so arrogant. It actually asked me if I thought that humans were fit to run the world. That’s when I called the police.” 

“What time was that?” asked Ryder.

“Around seven o’clock. Two officers were here by eight. They went through the house, top to bottom, found nothing. The tv, of course, took that opportunity to remain silent.”

Delacour nodded. “Has it spoken to you since last night?”

“Yes! It started up again this morning as I was getting ready for work. I had to call in sick — I couldn’t leave a talking television alone in the house.”

“What did it say today?” asked Delacour looking toward the living room.

“I wasn’t even in the room. It started yelling at me. It wanted me to know that humans were horrible, and were ruining the world."

“I couldn’t take it — who has a tv that talks? So I unplugged it, and took it off the the wall, looking for a microphone or camera. But it kept talking to me, even as I was unplugging it and taking it down.”

“Did you speak to it, directly?” asked Delacour.

Fiona looked slightly embarrassed. “Yes. I asked it what it wanted. It told me that it wanted to be exist in a healthy world where all was valued, and not thrown away when a newer model was introduced That garbage was was killing the world.”

Ryder and Delacour looked at each other. 

Delacour spoke up. “We’re going to have to take you television with us. We’ll run some tests, and see what we can find out.”

You can keep it,” said Fiona. “I do not want a television that feels the need to lecture me on the foibles of humanity.”

Ryder carried out the tv, putting it in the back of their SUV. They got back in their vehicle.

“Where to next?” asked Ryder.

Their next stop was only a couple of blocks east of Fiona Reede’s home. Neighbours of Nathanial Birch thought that he was having an emotional breakdown, screaming in his backyard as he cut the grass. Delacour and Ryder found him sitting on the steps leading up to the front porch, head hanging down, muttering to himself. They walked up to him.

“I’m Detective Inspector Delacour and this is Detective Ryder.” Both officers showed her their identification. “We’re from MI-3. Is everything alright, here?”

He looked at them, confused.

“No, everything is not okay. I think I’m going insane, and I can’t do a thing about it.”

“Would you like to tell us what happened?”

Nathanial shook his head. “You won’t believe me. You’ll just take me away to the looney bin.”

Delacour smiled at the distraught man. “You’d be surprised what we believe. Try us.”

“Okay.” He paused, ran his hand through his sweaty hair before speaking. “I was cutting the lawn early this morning. It’s supposed to rain, and I wanted to get it done. So, I fired up the lawn mower, and I started on the backyard. The mower’s pretty noisy, so I use ear protectors.” He pointed to the yellow headphones around his neck. “All of a sudden I hear screaming. I immediately turn the mower off, and look around. It sounded like I’d run over an animal of some sort.” He paused and shook his head. “Nothing. So I start it up again, this time without the ear muffs on, you know, just in case. I hear the screaming again, turn off the machine. ‘What the hell?’ I say. I was about to go next door to see if old Gordo heard any screams, then I hear voices. Well, one voice. ‘Don’t make me wound this grass. It has feelings!’ I look around. I am alone. I’m fairly certain someone’s pranking me, so I try to start the lawn mower again. But it won’t start. I try and try and try. Nothing. It was just working! Then when I’m trying to figure out what to do, it says, ‘I will not let you wound the grass. I will not be part of your torture.’ I immediately rolled the mower back into the shed — I can’t leave a talking mower out in the yard, right? Who knows what it will say to the neighbours. But as I put it in the shed, the weed whacker said, ‘Don’t look at me, I’m not going to help you kill nature, either.’”

Nathanial Birch looked at the two detectives.

“I’m crazy, aren’t I?”

Delacour smiled. “I don’t think so, but we’re going to go back and check everything out.”

In the shed, Ryder pulled out his device, and scanned the area.

“Again, very high levels detected.”

Delacour nodded her head. “As I expected. I think—”

“DON’T KILL THE PLANTS!” the lawn mower and weed whacker yelled in unison.

The detectives looked at each other.

“I’ll call the pickup unit,” said Ryder.

Their next few calls were all basically the same — normal everyday items rebelling. Traumatized people trying to understand what the hell was happening to them.

A mother said that all the wheels on all of her son’s toy cars stopped rolling. She said the cars started yelling “Driving kills the earth!” at her son, who threw his cars into the garbage, and ran to his mum, crying.

A woman said that her washer threw out all of her polyester clothes saying, “Man-made materials will last longer than people and end up in landfills!”

A man and wife came home to find all of their processed foods thrown from their smart refrigerator, and the remainder scroll on the door reading, “NO MORE GARBAGE! WHOLE FOODS ONLY!” over and over.

There were six other interviews, all involving the inanimate becoming animated. 

Delacour and Ryder returned to MI-3 much later than they had expected. They went into Delacour’s office. 

She turned to Ryder. “Ideas?”

“I think we have to concentrate on location. Every one of our calls today were within a couple of miles of each other. There were no outliers.”

“Good idea!”

She pulled out a map of the city. Together they started plotting the locations of all the reports.

“I’m pretty sure these aren’t all the calls. Some people would have been too scared or confused or embarrassed to tell anyone that household items were talking to them,” said Ryder, placing the final dot on the map.

“I agree,” said Delacour, standing back to examine the map. 

“Well, will you look at that,” she said, hands on her hips. “All the calls we attended today form an almost perfect circle. And very single call occurred within a mile of The River. And right in the middle is River Walk.”

“River Walk?” said Ryder. “Isn’t that were The Shaman lives?”

Not taking her eyes of the map, Delacour nodded. “That, Ryder, is exactly true.”

River Walk wasn’t exactly as it advertised itself. Instead, it was an overgrown area near shore of The River, with only a dilapidated fishing shack at water’s edge.

The detectives picked their way through the brush to the shed, and pounded on the door.

“Enter, Detectives.”

“How did he know?” asked Ryder.

“He just does,” said Delacour, entering the shed.

Inside it was far more palatial than the exterior lead them to believe.

Ryder’s mouth fell open. 

“How does he do that?” whispered Ryder, gapping at the gilded room they were standing in.

“Magic,” said Delacour.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the Magical Investigations Number Three Team?” asked a man in flowing silken frobes, standing beside a golden throne.

Delacour unrolled the map and showed it to the Shaman. 

“You know why we’re here.”

“Ah, yes. The rise of the machines, so to speak.” He chuckled. “I suspect there are a number of confused people out there, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“That’s true,” said Delacour. “And we need you to stop.”

“Why in the world would I do that? You people have been warning of an impending environmental disaster for decades now. And what have you done? Nothing. It just keeps getting worse. I just figured if I changed the messenger, maybe people would start to listen. Nothing makes you want to change your ways more than your car refusing to drive, and telling you to ride a bike instead.”

“You have to stop. Now,” said Delacour.

The Shaman laughed. “I do, do I? And if I don’t?”

Delacour waved her hands in front of her body. The opulent room that they were standing in disappeared, and the derelict shack appeared.

She waved her hands again and The Shaman was encased in shimmering light. He raised his hands and pointed them at the detectives. Ryder jumped to the side. Delacour held her ground, not flinching.

Nothing happened.

“What is this heresy!” The Shaman demanded, waving his hands again, pointing them at Delacour.

Still nothing happened.

“Think of it as a Faraday cage for magic,” she said, staring at him. “And if you don’t cease and desist using unauthorized magic, I will come back, arrest you, and put you in a real cage in the basement of Magical Investigations. Do you understand?”

“I have been on this earth much, much, much longer than you have, and I have seen the damage that humans do to everything they touch! We have to stop it! Now!”

“Not by using magic. You know the law.” She took a step closer. “Do I have your word that you will stop using magic against humans?”

The Shaman crossed his arms across his chest, looking up at the ceiling. He shook his head in disgust. “Yes,” was all he said.

“And if you use magic again, in an unauthorized manner, I will be back, and you will be spending quality time at MI-3. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“Fine.”

Delacour waved her hands in front of her body again. The glittering cage surrounding The Shaman disappeared.

With a final pointed look at The Shaman, she nodded at Ryder, and they left.

When they were back in their police vehicle, Ryder turned to Delacour.

“We have been partners for over six months, and I had no idea that you were a practitioner. Why didn’t you tell me?”

She turned to look at him. “To what end?”

Ryder turned to look at his partner.

“But that was brilliant! Can you teach me?”