John Umland
October 16, 2014 2:57 PM
Practicing (Sports Room). by John Umland
Some of his family and friends wouldn’t believe it of him, but sometimes, occasionally, John was capable of recognizing that the solutions to some problems were far, far beyond his abilities before he was in so far over his head in the attempt to find those solutions that it was impossible to keep things from blowing up in his face. The MARS complex was, he thought, probably the best example there was of his capacity for that kind of insight. He had taken one look at the descriptive brochure and known that there was no way he was going to be able to figure out how it worked before he was in at least sixth year, if then. He assumed he wouldn’t get the finer points until he was at university. The most brilliant first year ever to live probably couldn’t have cracked it, and John was very aware that he was not that person. He suspected had won as large a portion of the genetic lottery as far as someone from his biological background could possibly hope to, knew he would someday achieve great things, but he was not a genius.None of this, of course, had stopped him from thinking about it at all. He had a notebook dedicated to observations of the rooms and copying down any facts he ran across in other reading which he thought might apply to the problem. The key was in how the room mirrored desires; he had tried a number of experiments, picturing one thing, going in, then leaving and trying it again with another image in his head, then while trying to have no pictures in his head, just a concept – lake, swimming pool, ocean. His mom had taken a particular interest in that last one, writing a lot about Plato; she had talked about Aristotle, too, but John hadn’t been able to follow those parts at all. He had concluded the rooms were bigger on the inside than on the outside, but didn’t think size was as plastic as appearance, though Julian had refused to cooperate with his plan to find out by swimming as far as he could through different settings in the water room to see if he ever hit the walls, citing it as an example of one of his ideas which was more than usually stupid. John disagreed, feeling it was only more than usually stupid if he did it without someone there to save him if it turned out the wall was a lot further away than he thought, but his sister had not responded to this logic, so he hadn’t done it yet since he didn’t know anyone else well enough to ask them in.
The same difficulty about asking people he didn’t know that well into his projects was why he entered the sports room alone a few days after returning to Sonora, but this time, he wasn’t there to do research. He couldn’t help thinking about the problems for a minute (he was sure Transfiguration was at least a major element, but he had no idea where the power might be coming from, since he would have bet his favorite books that at least half of the students who used these rooms were not and never would be anywhere near powerful enough in themselves to work those kinds of changes for more than a few seconds, if they could do it at all. Since he wasn’t sure where to begin looking for those answers now, though, he settled for taking out his notebook to jot down a note about asking Julian to open the door to the water room one day while she pictured one body of water and he, intending to go in, thought about another so he could see if the doorknob was the point where the rooms interfaced with their users), but working out the magic of MARS was not why he had come to the sports room. He had come to actually use the Quidditch setting for what its makers had intended it for.
The descriptive brochure said the dummies suspended in the air above a scale Quidditch Pitch – he tried not to be too creeped out by them – were charmed, which meant they almost certainly had patterns, which meant he might (it was possible there was a very high number of potential plays and combination of plays, especially if the person who had charmed the room had been clever enough to incorporate varied speeds and distances into the basic moves) eventually figure out what the patterns were. If that happened, it would limit the room’s usefulness for him for the rest of his time here. Once he saw a pattern, he could beat it, and the real thing, though it had its patterns in the named plays, seemed more variable. Until that became a problem, though, the dummies would suit his purposes, and hopefully, he could get past the difficulty he’d had in the first game long before he found out if the room was smarter than he was.
He’d gotten a little overwhelmed, confused, alarmed, and generally over-emotional during the first Quidditch game, and that was fine. That was allowed. The first time. Next time, he had to get it right, and since he would rather cut his own hand off than address the issue with the other Aladren Chasers, the Quidditch room in MARS was his best option. An empty broom stood between the two Chaser-dummies closest to him – more evidence of complex interactions, he thought –so he got on it, trying to ignore their not-quite-human faces and joints.
They sat there. He cleared his throat. “Er – begin?” he tried.
It worked. One second, the room was a shade too still for comfort; the next, he was the only thing that wasn't moving, not to mention making clacking noises....
He had to ignore it, though. Just focus on what he needed to focus on: two dummies wearing, in what he assumed was a nod to his own uniform robes so he would know what team he was on, green, which were his allies, and the other three, in black, which were his enemies. Nothing else. Now, of course, there was nothing else – just five Chasers and two Keepers – but he found it easy enough to pretend that the Beaters were still there, when they – armed and too often behind or above him – were what it felt natural to concentrate on. The person who appeared best able to hit him was the one who it was easiest to pay attention to, but they weren’t what was important. What was important was the people who were either trying to stay far away from him or who were working with him. He had to trust the armed people on his own side to watch his back and not take it personally when he got knocked silly anyway every now and then – that was just the game, and his failure to lose his head when it had happened was the one part of his first performance on the Pitch he hadn’t been too displeased with.
Pleasing or not, though, it wasn’t relevant. He just had to concentrate on the pretend players. The one on his left had the Quaffle…it was going to pass toward him, he thought. Yes, there it went – he saw one in black approaching out of the corner of his eye and lunged for the ball, feeling like he was going to lose his seat on the broom.
Not good. The black one flew at his neighbor, driving the neighbor off; now the black one was sticking to him. If it had been real, he guessed there would have been some taunting, but it wasn’t. It was just…in the way. It could not touch him, but it was in the way – he needed to evade it.
Focus. He could try to speed up, but he suspected all the brooms would be equally fast here, the school one he used on the real Pitch was slow compared to a lot of other players’, and the dummies and other players both were probably better fliers than he was. Bad plan. He could act like he was going to collide with one of them, but that also ran into the problem of control – again. Stupid problem…That left going up or down. Both offered a good chance of falling off – gravity was a harsh mistress – but the key thing was to get rid of the Quaffle before he did….
All this, though, was taking too long. He would have been hit by a Bludger by now if it were real – maybe, he didn’t know, but anyway, he was not thinking quickly enough. He would have to keep practicing until he could decide quickly. For now, he flew upward, gripping the broom as tightly as he could with his fingers while still keeping the Quaffle covered by his arms and then leveling again as soon as he could – blood rushing to his feet was easier to deal with than blood rushing to his head, but he liked being as close to level as he could better than either. He had done this before, in team practices, but both of the black Chasers were now following him to try to cut him off. On impulse, he then dove – act at random and the enemy didn’t catch on, but then, neither did the other greens –
Looping around and then flying back and feeling supremely stupid, he threw the Quaffle toward another green and nearly collided with a black trying to intercept. A few feet later, as he regained his composure, the green threw the Quaffle back toward him – did the charms dictate that the Quaffle should go toward the real person or people in the room as much as possible? He saw that the other green was, after all, on the other side just before he saw why it was a bad idea to take his eye off the ball; he got it, but only after it smacked him in the nose and actually started to fall before he grabbed it back.
He didn’t hear the door open, but as he turned back around, he saw someone else enter the room. “Er…end program!” he tried, and they stopped. The words evidently didn’t have to be specific. While he was glad not to have ended up with them all trying to beat him over the head or something for using the wrong phrase, it did add one more mystery to the room…as did the other person, actually.
“Hullo!” he called to them. “Er – do you mind if I ask if you meant to come into the Quidditch thing?” he asked. If he had been them, he would have said ‘no’ and then waited for them to ask without the qualifying question, so he was prepared to speak a few more words if he needed to, but his hand was already drifting toward his pocket and the notebook within.
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