Real Magic

Matt sat crosslegged on the top bunk, drawing in his sketchpad.

While he drew, he listened to music via wireless headphones. The music was being sent through the air via ultra high frequency radio waves from his computer. The computer was wirelessly connected to the internet through a router. The router took data from the internet, converted the digital information into radio signals, and transmitted them to the computer. Once decoded, the signals made their final journey across the bedroom to the receivers in Matt’s headphones. All of this happened instantly and seamlessly.

While Matt sat on the bed, his brother Simon sat on the bedroom floor playing a video game. Simon controlled his character, Melkor The Destroyer of Worlds, via a wireless controller which he used to move his avatar around in hyper-realistic three-dimensional worlds. Simon was playing with people all around the world in real time in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game.

In his sketchpad, Matt started to draw a picture of a wizard using his imagination, an incorporeal space that only he had access to. From there, he synced up his imagination with his hand and transported the fuzzy immaterial picture of a wizard in his mind to the clear outline of one with distinct features onto the page.

When he finished his drawing, Matt held up the wizard and let out a sigh. “I wish magic was real.”

“Me too,” said Simon — as he used a thunder spell to vaporize Shitballs_96 and send him screaming to Valhalla.