Rose spent the first few days inside the house, but then she quickly got bored. She mastered the lock-picking in a few days, although it still took her two minutes to open the hardest lock. She read everything she could about network security and cryptographic algorithms until she could at least go to a dedicated computer security forum and understand most of the discussions going on there even if she couldn't actually take part in them.
After four days, she was bored out of her socks and decided to go for walks. She avoided people or at least talking to them. But she spent hours walking in the countryside.
True to his word, Henderson returned a week later.
“So my favourite niece, how goes the training?”
“Good, uncle. The hardest lock here still takes me two minutes to open, but the other ones I can open in 30 seconds. Computer security I understand all the theory, and I've been practising some simple password cracking using the tools you have on your laptop, but I doubt I'll master this anytime soon.”
“That's okay; like I said, we rarely have to hack into computers, and when we do, I'll show you the magical way to do it. You still need to understand how computer hacking works as well as how lock picking works because of Rule 2, which I'll explain to you in a moment. Before that, let's practise some quick fighting skills. Come at me any way you want.”
She went for a strange punch to his face, but at the last minute tried to kick him in the knees instead. He was fast enough to notice her subterfuge and blocked her kick with a kick of his own. Then he grabbed her by the shirt and threw her over his shoulder.
“Again.”
She tried again and again, but each time she found herself lying on the floor. “Clearly,” she said, “My combat skills are lacking.”
“On the contrary, I'm very impressed. You are managing to go toe-to-toe with me. I have a lot more experience than you. I've been mastering my fighting since before you were even born. So don't be so hard on yourself.”
He helped her up.
“I know where you are at now, and in the next few weeks, we'll practise more, and I'll teach you some more tricks. Your fighting style is very good, but I can see that you learned everything in competition and tournaments. You go for the safe and allowed punches, but on the street, they fight dirty. They will try to gouge your eyes out and bite your ears - the sort of things they ban in tournaments. But don't worry, your form is solid and that’s the hardest thing to master. Most street punks try to use brute force because they never learned the proper technique. Their tactics might work against accountants and drunk plumbers, but against somebody trained like you and me, they are no more danger than a paper tiger.”
Rose was pleased. She had often wondered how good she would be in a real fight. And was pleased to know that her training hadn't been wasted.
“The second rule of magic. By the way, these are my own rules that I made up, so you won't find them in books or anything like that. The best way to learn it is to see it in action. Are you ready to go out?”
“Sure, where are we going, uncle?”
“Simple, we are going to go on a mugging job.”
“Did you say mugging?”
“I did indeed. A powerful cultist is visiting the nearby town and we are going to beat him up and steal his laptop. He will be carrying a revolver and he's very good with it, but that's fine. I have a magical device to counter him.”
He gave a flourished bow like he was a magician. “Do you want to see my magical device?”
“Yes, please.”
He reached into a nearby box and took out five potatoes connected together with wires. Connected to one of the potatoes was a really old Nokia-style flip phone from the late 90s. The phone was still working.
“Are you impressed, my dear Rose, with my super-duper magical device?”
She looked at the potatoes. At least one was starting to grow spuds.
“Ummmm, no comments.”
He burst out laughing. “Yeah, that's fine. I'll tell you what it is though. It's my potato-powered probability neutralizer. I told you that the cultist we are going to see today has a gun, right? And he very good with it. Even if we get a jump on him, he will pull his gun out and shoot at least one of us. So we must turn the probabilities in our favour.”
He pointed to the potatoes.
“This device can alter the probability slightly in our favour. There is a 0.1% chance of the gun jamming under normal conditions. With this device the probability will go up to 90%. So there is a 90% chance that his gun will jam when he tries to shoot at us.”
Clearly, Henderson was very impressed with himself and gave another flourished bow like he expected clapping, but there was something in Rose's throat, something stuck there like a bad frog. She had to say it.
“But uncle, that still means we have a 10% chance of getting shot. What happens then?”
“Ahhh, right.”
He opened his shirt to show at least six bullet wounds. “Then we get shot, and it's an awkward conversation with the police and the doctors. I usually go for the Dick Cheney defence, which if you don't know, since you are young, is that I was out partying with my friends hunting some ducks when my friend shot me by mistake.”
“I know who Dick Cheney is, but I also know that Britain doesn't have a culture of hunting ducks.”
Henderson winked at her. “That's why I said it's an awkward conversation. But worry not. I have a good feeling you won't get shot today. Trust your uncle. They don't call me Crazy Henderson for nothing.”
Rose wasn't too convinced about that but decided to follow her uncle. They drove into town and parked the car at a nearby pub. The plan was to follow the cultist when he left the pub and try to mug him in an alley. Rose still wasn't sure what this had to do with magic.
“Since we are waiting, let me tell you the second rule of magic: The rules of the physical world cannot be changed; they are fixed. But magic can slightly modify them. That's what I want to show you today. I want to show you how we can change the laws of the world. The second rule is a weak rule, and the third rule is much more powerful, but you need to understand the second rule before you can understand the third. That reminds me, put on this scarf.”
And he gave us give her the most ugly yellow and black scarf. Not only did it look bright and ugly, it was also badly knitted, and she felt stupid just wearing it. It was a sort of scarf a clown would wear at a circus as someone threw a pie in his face.
“Do I cover my face with it?” she asked him.
“No need! This scarf will show you the third rule, which I'll explain to you later. I can give you a quick hint: People usually see what they want to see (related to the first rule), but also sometimes they make up stories in their head which can change reality. But this is too complex a topic to go into now. Look, our victim is here. Let's go beat him up and steal his money like any low-level thug would do.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Rose wasn't sure about being called a low-level thug, but she went along with her uncle. They followed him from a distance. Her uncle gave her some great tips on how to avoid being noticed. He also taught her the techniques people used to detect if someone was following them.
“Do you see how he keeps pausing near windows and looking left and right?”
It was very subtle, and if her uncle hadn't pointed it out, she wouldn't have noticed it. He just looked like a man window shopping. But once Henderson pointed it out, it was clear he was using the reflection in the glass to look to the left, to the right, and even behind him.
“That tells us that he's been trained by some intelligence agency. I wrote the manual for most of these intelligence agencies so I know how to counter his tactics.”
Henderson taught her how to stay back and avoid coming into his gaze. He taught her not to panic and continue walking when he stopped suddenly so he wouldn't notice them. A few times they even crossed ahead of him and would later stand near a shop and wait for him to catch up. Rose noticed this was quite smart because it looked like he was following them, and he wouldn't suspect anyone in front of him.
Finally he entered a dark alley, and Henderson said, “Now let's grab him and beat him up a little.”
Henderson wasn't exaggerating when he said, “Beat him up a little.” He walked up right to the man and said in the most stereotypical movie thug voice, “Oi governor! Hand over your cash, will ya?”
The man just smiled and took out a gun. “Walk away. Or I will shoot.”
Henderson laughed at him. “Oh, look here! The man has a fake toy gun! Oh, I'm so scared! Please don't shoot me with your little toy.”
“Very well, you asked for it.”
The cultist put the gun right up to Henderson's head, and Rose's breath caught in her throat. She remembered the 10% probability of the gun actually going off and killing Henderson.
She tried to run and say no, but it was too late.
The cultist pulled the trigger.
The gun not only jammed but sort of exploded in his hand. His hand bleeding, he dropped the gun and screamed, “What the hell! Stupid gun!”
Henderson kicked the gun away and grabbed the man's backpack. “Thanks, Governor. We'll be taking this. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
***
Back at their headquarters, Henderson told her not to open the man's laptop.
“As you may have read in your security training, many of these laptops have a remote wipe. He'll have activated by now, and as soon as we turn the laptop on, it will wipe the hard disc.”
“That's why you have that sealed room; it has no network or Wi-Fi traffic.”
“Exactly. We will open the laptop in there. As long as it doesn't connect to any network, we should be safe. Here you give it a try.”
They went to the special room and closed the door and windows. Eve turned the laptop on, but was disheartened to see that the hard disc had an encryption on it. This was in addition to the password on the machine.
“This is the strongest encryption. Not only is his hard drive encrypted, but he also has a password on login. There is no way we can guess the passwords, and looking at the software, cracking this code will take us months or years. We can’t do it.”
She felt really sad, like their whole journey had been wasted. But Henderson put a hand on her shoulder. “Remember the second rule of magic?” he said. “You remind me what it is.”
Rose tried to remember. “The rules of our world are fixed,” she said hesitantly, “but you can change the probabilities with magic?”
“Exacto mundo! I have just the device.”
He opened a small cupboard and took out an old typewriter. It was really old, like 19th century old, all rusted and dusty. The typewriter had a USB cable coming out of it which was surprising. He connected the USB to the laptop. Opening another box he took out what looked like a bone of a human finger. A dried one.
“Here you go: Tap in any password and press Enter. This device will change the probability of your random password being accepted from almost 0% to more than 99%. Give it a try.”
Feeling a bit dubious. Rose typed in some random letters on the typewriter using the bone finger and pressed Enter.
To her utter shock, she found that the disc encryption was successfully bypassed, and the login page came up.
“Go on type in any garbage. Type in Bob for the username and Bob-has-a-small-dick for the password.”
Not believing what she was doing. She just typed in “Bob” for the username and password.
The laptop allowed her through, and she was logged in. Rose was so surprised she had to take a seat while she stared at the laptop.
“But this doesn't make sense - if this is possible, why isn't everyone using it? I mean, the CIA, FBI, KGB, Mossad?”
“How do you know they aren't using it?” He smiled.
“But you are correct, they don't; usually because most people, including those who work at intelligence agencies, refuse to believe that the supernatural world is real. You just don't need belief. Even stupid religious people have that. You must have belief with actual experience of it. Which is why I showed you the demon first, because I wanted to shock your system into accepting that the world you see is fake. If we hadn't done that, this magic wouldn't have worked - the gun would have fired, and I would have died, and you would have never gotten this laptop.”
He started poking around in the files of the laptop, trying to find anything useful, while doing so he continued talking. “Another reason is that the second law is not very reliable, as you correctly pointed out, 90% isn’t a very great odd. Because, like me, if you're getting into daily fights with cultists, terrorists, and armed soldiers, then 90% isn't good enough. Even 99.999% isn't good enough. If I only relied on the second rule of magic, I would have died decades ago.”
He finally found some plans for a ritual on the cultist's laptop and started printing them. “Looks like this cult is planning to do a ritual in a few weeks. We'll have to disrupt it in case Unit 7 isn't aware of it.”
As the files were printing, he turned to her.
“For many years, I was only aware of the second rule of magic. Like I told you and you discovered for yourself, while it is useful, it is not reliable enough when you are dealing with life and death situations. But most people never go beyond the second rule. Even Unit 7, which has dozens of psychics and people with magical abilities in their pay, never go beyond it. The reason I've survived so long in this game and the reason I can go toe-to-toe with any Unit 7 idiot is because I discovered the third law. The third law is the most powerful law!”
She could hear the printer humming as it printed, the smell of warm paper flying to her nose.
Henderson seemed to be in a conflict, like he was trying to think how much to tell her. “The third law is the most dangerous law of all. Remember I told you that there are few chaotic gods who could destroy our whole planet, and maybe even our whole solar system, in a few seconds? I learnt this law from them. I hate them for it; because every time we use this law we have to use their magic. Their magic is the most dangerous and unpredictable. The most chaotic. It is as chaotic and insane as them. And still I use it and I will teach you to use it because once you get the hang of it, it is unbeatable.”
“But didn't you say that this third law isn't also 100% reliable?”
“No, it isn't. No magical law is. But this law works differently. Even though it isn't reliable, it is dependable and stable. You will understand this when I show it to you. Meanwhile, let me give you a hint of how it works.”
He shut the laptop off and took her to the next room where there was a normal laptop connected to the internet. He went online and Rose saw that news of their mugging had already been noticed by the police.. It seemed a few witnesses had seen them escape and they had given them a description to the police. The most clear description was a woman in an ugly yellow and black scarf. But witnesses couldn't agree on what she looked like. Some said she was white, but others said she was black. Yet others said she was Chinese.
“How can anyone confuse me for a black or a Chinese woman?” said Rose, a little amused and a little surprised. “Are the people that stupid? Or are they just blind?”
“Neither. I told you that the third law relates to the first law, right? People don't see the magical world; they only see what they want to see. The third law is related to that. We can trick people into seeing something that's not there, or we can change the story so they only see what they want to see. In this case, they only saw your scarf and not you because that's how I had planned the story. I know this isn't making sense to you now. It will make more sense when we go on our next mission.”
“What's the next mission? Do we track down this cult and try to stop their rituals?”
“Nah, that would be too easy. Unit 7 is sending an armed commando team carrying a briefcase with a very important and top-secret message tomorrow. We are going to assault them and steal that message.”
If Rose had been drinking coffee, this would have been the time when she would have spit it out. Pffffttttttt, like in those cartoons.
“What!” she said with surprise. “Attacking armed commandos from a government agency? Won't they be well-trained?”
“All of them have training in the Special Forces, and Unit 7 gives them special extra training. They are the most dangerous people on Earth, and a single commando could kill 20-30 of normal army soldiers.”
“And we are going to go against them? Just the two of us?”
He gave her the biggest smile. “Yeah, isn't it fun?”
