Now You Can. But What Do You Want?
The Valmont Herald
It is becoming difficult to walk through our city without being offered something else to buy or invest in. Yesterday there was a button shop here; today they are offering you a new face. A monster floats above the entrance to the cinematograph. The man who was asking you to lend him something until payday only the other day now explains that you are simply afraid of anything new, and invites you to invest in his enterprise.
I should still ask for my money back first.
But on the whole, I understand them. For the first time in their lives, people can try their hand at magic without first spending years studying runes and seals. Buy an Interpreter, and set about something that used to mean finding a magician, explaining your idea, and hoping that afterwards he would at least name a price rather than show you to the door.
Now you can try it yourself. This is usually where things become interesting.
Suppose you want to show your friends a sea. Not one you have visited, but a sea of your own: pink water, dark rocks, fish glowing beneath the waves. The image need take up no more than half the table. You can already imagine your guests leaning closer, and somebody calling the others in from the next room.
Telling an Interpreter “I want a sea” is easy. But as you touch the wand and direct what it is to do, you have to hold in your mind exactly what you want to see: how the light falls on the water, where the shore ends, how a wave moves. And then you discover that you remember the sea perfectly well, but not the wave nearly so well. It is moving all the time, after all. You never meant to make it. You were looking at it.
You do not like your first attempt. The pink is too bright; the water looks like jelly. On the second, the colour is right, but you want to get rid of the rocks. On the third, you finally understand why you needed them.
By now you are hungry and feel as though you have spent the evening unloading a cart, although you have done nothing but sit at the table. Your own strength runs out after the Interpreter’s energy. You could eat, rest and come back tomorrow. That would be sensible. But you have just worked out what is wrong with the wave.
An accumulator will come in handy. Then, perhaps, another. Best put the receipt away for now: it looks particularly out of place beside the pink sea.
And suddenly it works.
Light passes through the wave; the water darkens beside the rock. One of the fish turns, and for an instant you can see the whole of its slender, luminous back. You call the family. They do not come at once, and you are already shouting for them to hurry, growing cross: can they really not put their own business aside for a minute?
