"My agents and I are fully capable of handling all the necessary interactions with the magical community," Lynch informed him in a low, gravelly voice. "We're well trained, fully equipped, and legally invisible. You will likely never hear from us again."
Drummond was secretly glad of that, although he had harboured a degree of curiosity. In the days that followed, he had come up with several questions for Lynch—did the magical folk have cures for cancer or other diseases? Could their magic be harnessed for military use? What other historical figures might still be hidden away, alive and well in the wizarding community?—but he quickly discovered that there was simply no way to contact Mr. Lynch and his agency. No one else in Drummond's cabinet knew anything about the Magical Integration Bureau, much less the wizarding world it represented. He'd be seen as insane even to ask about it.
Thus, pragmatist that he was, Drummond had simply forgotten about it.
When the Event occurred, however, he instantly remembered. By the time he got back to his office, Lynch was already there, waiting for him. He hadn't had an appointment, of course, and no one else, not even Greta, knew that the man was there. Drummond dismissed everyone else, closed the door of the oval office with a slam, and demanded to know what was going on.
It was far worse than he imagined.
Apparently, some rogue witch with heretofore unimaginable powers had gone crazy at the Memorial Day parade in New York City. Lynch explained that the Statue of Liberty had been far more than a symbol, but a powerful magical object, responsible for the massive spell that hid the wizarding city of New Amsterdam from the Muggle city of New York that lay below it. This spell was supposedly impregnable, and yet somehow this rogue witch had been able to call out to the Statue, to give it a new order. Amazingly, the Statue had obeyed, lowering its torch into the ocean and thereby snuffing its spell. This act had revealed all of New Amsterdam to the Muggle New Yorkers below. Worst of all, it had occurred on live television, which had subsequently been broadcast to the entire country and much of the world.
It was time, Lynch announced gravely, for decisive action.
Fortunately, the Magical Integration Bureau had long since developed contingency plans for just such an event. Drummond had greatly disliked taking orders from Lynch, but he could think of no other alternatives.
"First, we must shut down all broadcasts of the Event," Lynch announced firmly. "We can do this via the Unnecessary Instigation Act of nineteen seventy-two. Send military units to every television station in the country to confiscate any and all hard copies of the Event, as well as to deliver the edict that any broadcast of said footage would constitute a wilful dissemination of propaganda meant to incite panic, punishable as an act of treason. Send the same announcement to all online communication services, instructing them to electronically ban the signature of any footage from the Event. This can be done easily enough with pattern recognition technology."
Drummond shook his head in wonder. "You're talking about a complete media blackout in a time when every cell phone is a camera and every American is a reporter! You might have been able to do it a hundred years ago, Lynch, but you can't wipe out the memory of such a thing now. It'll be everywhere!"
Lynch smiled grimly. "It's easier today than it's ever been before, Mr. President, precisely because of the use of technology. There are no hard copies of anything anymore. No physical photographs, no tapes, no films. Everything is digital, sir, and that which is digital is eminently trackable, ultimately temporary, and easily deletable. There is technology that can worm through the entire world computer system in search of the exact patterns represented by recordings of tonight's Event. The program is already in place and doing its work. It will search out every cell phone, every home computer, every Internet-connected device on earth. When it finds what it is looking for, it will delete it. Once the footage of tonight's unfortunate revelation is deleted, no one will ever be able to prove it happened."
"But—but people will remember it!" Drummond spluttered.
Lynch merely rolled his eyes. "You need to read more George Orwell, Mr. President. Memory is the most easily manipulated thing on earth. Trust us. We know what we are doing."
And apparently they had.
By the next morning, footage of the Event had almost entirely ceased to be broadcast. Still, the news networks talked endlessly about what had happened, offering all sorts of speculation and conspiracy. Fortunately (amazingly) very few commentators seemed to be considering the most obvious explanation of all—that a secretly magical city had been revealed to the world at large. Instead, there was talk of government mind control experiments, or mass hypnosis, or even alien involvement. After all, it had only been a year since the mysterious "magic trick" that had resulted in the Chrysler Building's relocation to the jungles of Venezuela. That had been blamed on alien technology, and perhaps outright extra-terrestrial involvement. It only made sense that those same mysterious aliens might be responsible for the phenomena that had seemed to happen in New York City.
"It might not have even happened at all," said one commentator, a NASA astrophysicist with heavy glasses and almost no hair. "The images that we all saw that night might have been a complete fiction, created by outside forces and fed directly into the cameras by some sort of broadcasting beam. It might be that the Statue of Liberty still stands just as always, and that what we all witnessed was, essentially, alien special effects."
It all seemed so plausible that even President Drummond wanted to believe it.
In the days that followed the Event, he signed orders that evacuated the entire population of Manhattan Island and erected a quarantine zone all around it. A no-fly zone was established over much of the eastern seaboard and coast guard cutters patrolled the waters for a ten mile perimeter around New York City. At Lynch's recommendation, Drummond had offered almost no official explanation for these manoeuvres.
"Let the press make up their own story," he had said wryly. "They're better at it than we are."
And, of course, he had been right. The news networks speculated that the military perimeter was a safety measure, established in the event that alien radiation might have affected the site of the Event.
And slowly, incredibly, life had seemed to go on.
The New York Stock Exchange had been relocated to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where a massive team of computer technicians had established a surprisingly functional international network in a matter of days. Most of the million and a half residents of Manhattan had gone through a short but intensive debriefing session, run by Mr. Lynch himself, and had emerged strangely baffled about the night of the Memorial Day parade. Most seemed to remember very little of the Event, or remembered it rather differently than it seemed to have happened. This, Drummond knew, was because of the influence of a team of wizard memory specialists in the employ of the Magical Integration Bureau. They were performing something called "Obliviations" on the witnesses, removing and altering their memories of that night. It was a painstaking process, but it was apparently necessary.
Drummond did not like any of it, but felt he had no other options.
Eventually, he held his first press conference about the Event. It was an unmitigated disaster. He could neither deny nor confirm the possibility of supposed alien involvement. He could not provide an exact date for when the island of Manhattan would be opened again to the public. And worst of all, he could not tell the truth. The press sensed this, and put it into their headlines:
DRUMMOND DENIES DENYING, CONFIRMS CONFIRMING—New York Times
PRESIDENT PRESENTS PAINFULLY PURPOSELESS PRESSER—Cleveland Plain Dealer
WHITE HOUSE MAINTAINS AWKWARD SILENCE ABOUT EVENT—Washington Post
PREZ MEETS WITH ALIENS, SIGNS DEAL TO STAR IN NEXT BROADCAST—Inside View
As if to add insult to injury, political pundits had begun to loudly lament the loss of Senator Charles Filmore, whose death was one of the few concrete realities of the Event. His funeral had
become a national affair, broadcast on all the major networks. The New York Post ran a eulogy of the Senator with the title "The Best President We Never Had". Bumper stickers appeared across the country bearing the slogan: Don't Blame Me, I Would've Voted For Filmore.
Political opportunists took up the mantra, using it to portray Drummond as equivocating, weakwilled, and incapable of handling the unique challenges of the time. It seemed that the next year's election was lost even before it was begun. One politician in particular arose to the head of the fray, a woman senator named Carla Murphy, from Ohio. An attractive woman in her sixties with a long Washington pedigree, her ideas had become increasingly popular. Her presentation was firmly accomplished, her background seemingly unassailable, and her career path set. She wanted Drummond's job, and it looked like she had a very good chance of winning it.
Drummond sat in the White House dining room on a Sunday morning three months after the Event, watching the morning talk programs with a dour frown on his face and a cup of coffee growing cold in his hand.
"Make no mistake," Carla Murphy said on the television, looking pert and knowledgeable. "The President knows exactly what happened in New York City on the night of the Event. He is silent not because the American people, and the world in general, cannot handle the truth, but because there are forces at work that make it unwise to let the truth be fully known."
"Do you know what those forces are, Senator Murphy?" the television host asked, raising one eyebrow.
"Of course I don't, Charlie," she answered. "And even if I did, I might not tell either. The fact is, there may be very good reasons for keeping these things a secret. But I will promise you this. Even in secrecy there is a right way and a wrong way to respond to the public. It's one thing to have a national emergency and not be able to discuss it with the American people for reasons of security. It's another thing to simply pretend that there is no such national emergency. We're all smarter than that, no matter what the President thinks."
"I do so hate that woman," Drummond muttered to himself, clacking his coffee cup onto the table.
"I share your passion," the man next to him agreed smoothly.
Drummond jumped, knocking his coffee cup to the tile floor, where it shattered. He boggled at what had been an empty chair mere seconds before. A figure sat there now, wearing a long burgundy robe with a heavy hood. Drummond could see nothing of the man's face except for his sharp chin and a small smile. Drummond glanced quickly from the figure to the door of the dining room.
"Your men are perfectly all right, Mr. President," the robed figure said. "They still stand outside that very door, although they have no idea that I am here. There is no reason to alert them. I mean you no harm. I am, in fact, here to help you."
"H-how did you get in?" Drummond demanded, staring wide eyed at the strange figure.
"For people such as myself, it is surprisingly easy," the robed man said with a sigh. "You really should be more aware of just how vulnerable you are in this New World, Mr. President. The law of secrecy between the magical and Muggle worlds has been breached. Why, I might have been anyone at all. I might have been an enemy, come to murder you right here at your breakfast. Then what would we all do?"
Drummond shuddered. He stared speechlessly at the man. Had he literally just appeared there? Was it even possible? Yes, of course it was. The man was quite right. Since the Event, this truly was a New World.
"Let me help you with that," the robed man said, gesturing vaguely toward the broken coffee cup. Drummond saw a black stick in the man's pale fingers. There was a faint spark of light, and the shattered cup snapped back into one piece. It lofted gently into the air and settled silently onto the table at Drummond's right hand.
"There," the robed figure sighed, pocketing his wand. "No harm, no foul."
"Who are you?" Drummond said weakly, his heart pounding. "What do you want?"
"For now, you may call me the Collector, Mr. President," the man smiled. "And like I said, I want to help you. You and I have a mutual problem. Fortunately, we also have a mutual solution.
Drummond forced himself to calm down. He sat up straight and tried to regain some sense of composure. "And what exactly is this mutual problem?"
The robed man nodded toward the television. "A certain popular Senator with designs to occupy your office."
Drummond glanced toward the television, saw the impeccable grey hair and handsome features of Carla Murphy still talking easily with her interviewer.
"She will succeed, you know," the Collector said with a light sigh. "She is already far more popular than you. Frankly, she will make a much more effective leader than you. I would vote for her myself if I had the chance."
Drummond frowned, his cheeks reddening. "Then why help me?"
"Because Senator Murphy has, shall we say, views that are counterproductive to our aims."
"When you say 'we'," Drummond said, peering closely at his visitor, "do you mean you and me… or you and others?"
The Collector shrugged vaguely. "Yes."
Drummond considered this. "What do you propose? You should know that I won't do anything unworthy of my office. I may not be the best statesman in the world, but I'm not above the law."
The Collector was already laughing, even as Drummond finished speaking. "How delightfully selfdeceptive you people are," he said with a shake of his head. "Already you have cheated, lied, and slandered, and yet you convince yourself that you are no worse than anyone else, that you have done only that which is required. How wonderfully resilient your consciences must be."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Drummond replied sternly, throwing his napkin onto the table. "And I don't care how you came to be here. If you're just going to make baseless allegations, you can vanish right back out of here."
"Calm yourself, Mr. President," the robed figure soothed. "I do not judge you in the least for your actions. I respect what you have done to achieve your office. This is why I am confident that you will, indeed, allow me to help you."
Drummond bristled but leaned back in his chair. "All right, then, Mr. Collector. Assuming your assistance is something I could benefit from, what's it going to cost me? Nobody gives free help in this town. What's in it for you?"
"It's very simple, Mr. President," the visitor answered. "You will make me your vice president."
Drummond startled. "Vice president? Are you crazy? I already have a vice president, if you haven't noticed. Joe Mattigan is a good man, even if he is a bit of a media dullard. What am I supposed to do with him?"
"That is not your problem, Mr. President," the Collector announced breezily. "I simply require your promise, unbreakable and sealed, that if the post becomes available, you will name me to the position. I will make it very easy for you. My credentials will be unassailable. No one will doubt your judgment. If you do this, and if you follow my very simple instructions, your problem with Senator Murphy will conveniently go away. You will be whisked easily into your next term as president, with me by your side, your loyal and constant advisor."
Drummond considered this. He was distinctly uncomfortable with it, and yet he could not immediately turn down his visitor's assistance. Perhaps he could get rid of the strange man later, once Murphy was happily disposed of as a political threat. Perhaps all he, Drummond, had to do was to appease his unusual benefactor until then. He studied the Collector for a long moment. Finally, he nodded.
"I will consider it," he said, knowing in his heart that he had already decided. "But if I choose to accept your assistance, you must promise to keep your methods entirely above board. Nothing illegal."
The Collector smiled warmly. "You can trust us, Mr. President."
Drummond considered this, realized that it was not particularly reassuring, but decided not to pursue it. "Assuming you do become my vice president, sir, I expect you have some ideas for how to handle this whole Event business? You are, after all, obviously a magical person yourself. What will you propose? Full disclosure
of the wizard community? Equality between our worlds? Peaceful integration of our different cultures?"
The Collector's smile widened slowly, becoming disconcertingly predatory. "Not," he said quietly, conspiratorially, "exactly…"
Marshall Parris stepped out onto the sidewalk, squinted up at the stunningly bright California sun, and shrugged dejectedly out of his trench coat.
For someone who had spent most of his adult life as a private detective in New York City, the sunny streets of Los Angeles took a lot of getting used to. For one thing, it always seemed to be summer. To a guy like Parris, who was culturally inclined to wear a fedora and a trench coat nine months out of the year, there was something fundamentally wrong with the math of so much sunlight. There was very little fog (even the legendary L.A. smog was barely a wisp of its former self), and the wind, when it blew, was light and gentle, unlike the gritty blasts that had scoured the streets of Parris' beloved Big Apple.
He hooked his trench coat over his shoulder, sighed, and began to walk. Whispering palm trees lined the boulevard that led toward his temporary office, a second floor walk-up situated over a coffee shop. The shop was called Jack's Magic Bean and was run by an extraordinarily fit seventy year old man named, unsurprisingly, Jack. Jack had rented the upstairs office to Parris for a rather high sum, but had been remarkably laid back about when—or indeed if—Parris ever chose to pay it.