Rise Of The Immaterial Man

Waiting Room

The undercity was a marvel.

I had been expecting a dingy and disgusting place, with leaking walls and rumbles from trains passing overhead, but I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Magic, it turned out, was just as magical in reality as it had been in all the storybooks. While my scientific mind was having trouble understanding everything my eyes were seeing, the little boy in the back of my head was whooping with unbridled joy.

The ceilings were high and had been charmed in some way to display what was essentially a holographic display of the outdoor sky.

Though unlike my technology there weren’t any telltale signs that what I was seeing was fake.

I’d never managed to eliminate the slight shimmer that occurred whenever an image updated itself, kind of like scanlines on an old CRT, there was nothing like that present in the illusory sky.

Alongside that were all the different types of people that I was seeing.

It was hard not to want to run away screaming the first time