Lounge of Tomorrow - Inspiration 7.0

There is magic in the world, though we don’t see it anymore. Technology, the new magic has done away with most of it, science and logic conquering all of that stuff once reserved for sorcerers and Gods. Now, a flick of a finger will light up a city now; we can talk to just about anyone, anywhere on the globe; and the powers of destruction we command could upstage any biblical apocalypse. It would seem there’s no room for magic anymore. But it’s still here, mostly unseen, and in unexpected places.

People marvel at Stonehenge and the pyramids of the Mayan; that the movement of the sun and the planets might be expertly mapped with these huge weathered stones. Then they return home to their sprawling cities, and towering structures failing to recognize the patterns they map. That there are certain moments when the sun will shine directly between two buildings; that a ray of light might strike a glass façade and be bent and refracted into a prism of color, that some might pass and be filtered through yet another window, only to shine like a pointer on what might be an ordinary doorbell.

It seemed miraculous when I saw it – at the moment of solstice, though I didn’t know it at the time. A bright red beam suddenly appearing in a downtown alley, I couldn’t help but follow it to the doorway it pointed to. More amazing still was that it landed directly on the call button to one of lofts. There was no name beside this one, perhaps that’s why I had the courage to press it. If anyone did live there, certainly they’d want to know about this odd moment of astrological happenstance.

It was Sebastian who came to the door, though I could Sophie’s voice calling to him from the top of the stairwell. I was startled, of course when the door opened and the beam vanished, but Sebastian just grinned as I tried to explain myself, and what I had seen.

Of course they knew. It would be Sebastian who would later point out the handprints and explain their meaning. A marker – or warning as ancient as the first cave paintings, soon I would be seeing them and others everywhere. In this case two left hands, something sinister perhaps, or at least something beyond one’s ordinary control of right handed thought.

Some would see it and flee in fear. Others, the curious, would be seduced by their mystery. That was my first test, passed without thinking – for there is magic in the world, and where it exists there is no place for reason and logic, just fear and wonder.