Something rather remarkable is happening.
It begins here:
Posted at 13.13 on Magicals Anonymous by Rhys Ellis:
Amazing meeting everyone, tell all your friends–Magicals Anonymous is here to stay!
Posted 14.28 on Magicals Anonymous by Sally:
I would like to say thank you to everyone at Magicals Anonymous for all their support, and a very big thank you to Jess in particular for recommending the Kandinsky; once the security guard had passed out, I found the exhibition very stimulating.
Posted at 21.38 on Magicals Anonymous by MS (Protector of the City, Defender of the Night, etc. etc. etc.):
Hi everybody! So, someone’s sucking the soul of the city and I was wondering if any of you guys felt like doing something about it? Drop me a line if you do! Cheers!
Posted at 21.48 on Magicals Anonymous by S.Rafaat:
Oh, no! Is the city going to be all right? I’ll bring snacks if anyone needs them.
Posted at 23.41 on Magicals Anonymous by Burns & Stoke Ltd:
If you wish to live another night, you will give her to us. We will not warn you twice.
This last post was censored by admin within half an hour of being placed. But half an hour was more than enough.
The word spread.
It began with the techno-literates: young summoners who couldn’t quite get their containment circles right and who had fallen back on Facebook to keep themselves occupied while the sacred incense was cooked in their mum’s microwaves; eager diviners who scoured the internet for clues as to the future of tomorrow, and who read the truth of things in the static at the corners of the screen; bored vampires who knew that it was too early to go out and hunt, too late still to be in the coffin. The message was tweeted and texted onwards, sent out through the busy wires of the city, from laptop to PC, PC to Mac, from mobile phones the size of old breeze blocks through to palm-held devices that not only received your mail, but regarded it as their privilege to sort it into colour-coordinated categories for your consideration. The word was whispered between the statues that sat on the imperial buildings of Kingsway, carried in the scuttling of the rats beneath the city streets, flashed from TV screen to TV screen in the flickering windows of the shuttered electronics stores, watched over by beggars and security cameras, and the message said:
We are Magicals Anonymous.
We are going to save the city.
Later, scholars would detect more than a little digital technology in how quickly the word was transmitted. They would study the emails that spurted forth, examine the text messages and consider the stories of those lonely ghouls in their cellars who, in the dead of night, received phone calls with no voices but which seemed to impart through static alone a sense of urgency and fear.
Some might question why the Midnight Mayor, usually to be found on such nights prowling the streets of the city, was sighted sneaking into a telephone exchange a few minutes before the word began to spill across the streets, spreading outwards from the website of Magicals Anonymous. Some might wonder why one or two computers, having received their messages, exploded three minutes after. But, as the Midnight Mayor was the first to point out, all this was speculation. Nothing could be blamed on him.