Magic-o-Matic

     “Ah, that hits the spot. But where is everyone?” he wondered.

     He pulled out a laptop which featured a prominent Virtupets, Inc logo and stared at the screen. It displayed a calendar for the day.

     “Well, nobody is out today…”

     A couple of seconds later, the door to the room swung open and a Yellow Grundo and an Eventide Aisha strolled into the room, each carrying a laptop and a mug of coffee.

     “Joey, Zerp, good morning!” the Chomby greeted.

     “Hi Barry,” Zerp replied. The Eventide Aisha set their coffee and laptop down on the table and sat down on a rolling chair.

     “Good morning,” responded Joey. The Grundo followed suit. Soon the rest of the team arrived, Taren the Red Kacheek, Dana the Green Shoyru, Whitney the Blue Xweetok, and Zartrex the Purple Grarrl.

     All of them sat down around the table with their laptops, sipping coffee or tea. Barry then clicked a few times, and the laptop screen flashed up on a large screen in front of them.

     “Alright, let’s get started. This is the end of sprint 1023, we are going to begin sprint 1024. However, as usual, we will begin with demos. I’d like to invite our Bython developers, Joey, Taren, and Zartrex to start us off.”

     “Sure, Barry, just let me get situated here and share my screeeen,” Taren began. She pulled out a wand-like device out of her pocket.

     “Today, I’m going to show you air magic generation, specifically, a levitation spell.” She turned to the wand and spoke to it.

     “Mipsy, please generate a spell that levitates this pen!”

     After a few seconds, the pen began to glow blue along with a wand-shaped device and soon the pen floated up into the air and remained there.

     “Nice! That’s cool! We got it working!” Barry exclaimed.

     Next, Zerp came up to do their demo.

     “Alright, this task was to use magical generation to mimic the magic of the Faerie Queen,” they stated. Setting up things similarly to Taren, they spoke to their wand device.

     “Mipsy, please generate a spell that Queen Fyora would use to entertain her guests.”

     The wand made a whirring sound before flashing purple sparks. Zerp stared at the wand in disbelief as Whitney and Dana appeared confused.

     “It’s supposed to be pink, right?” Barry said. Zerp poked around on their laptop screen.

     “It worked before I came in here on my machine. Somehow it stopped when I switched to this demo wand.”

     Zartrex leaned over to look at Zerp’s screen.

     “Hmmm… perhaps the magical database of magic is not configured correctly,” he suggested. He then returned to his own laptop and began typing.

     “Ok, while you do that, Joey how is that task of generating Xandra’s magic going?”

     “Oh um, well it’s coming along, but it hasn’t turned anything into stone yet.”

     “So it’s going to carry over into the next sprint?” Barry asked.

     “Yes, I’ll try to have it done next sprint.”

     Whitney cleared her throat.

     “To be fair, the data we got for Xandra turning the faeries into stone was limited. It’s a little hard for the Large Magic Model to train on such a thing,” she began.

     “Basically we, um, modelled it after Jerdana’s magic. She also has magic that can turn a faerie into stone,” Dana added.

     The two data scientists nodded at each other.

     “So, I guess that’s a requirements question. Does it have to be Xandra’s magic, or could it be Jerdana’s? Let me take that offline with the boss,” Barry noted.

     “Zerp, how’s that demo coming along?”

     “I think we’re going to need time to investigate,” Zerp replied.

     “Well, I guess I’ll move this task to the next sprint too then. Our backlog is just going to have to wait. Even though the Boss wants us to replicate Razul’s magic. But actually, perhaps Taren can get started on that?”

     “Umm… this task might be too much for a single… sprint,” Taren replied.

     “Well, I’ll let you break it up in a way that works. Dana can probably help with the data.”

     “Anyways, let’s move on to our retrospective. Please take some time to fill out the virtual retro board.”

     A minute passed by, and Barry looked back at the board. “Okay, so I see that only one thing went well this week which was Taren’s task. Anything else?”

     Deafening silence.

     “Oookay what didn’t go well, oh pretty much everything else. But that’s ok, we learned a lot this sprint, didn’t we?”

     At that moment, Barry’s laptop made a “dinging” noise, temporarily distracting him so he could read a wall of text that showed up on his screen.

     “Oookay, so the Boss wants us to ship what we have as a minimum viable product.”

     “Now wait a second, I don’t think it’s ready!” Zartrex protested. “The demos show it’s not production-ready.”

     “I agree,” Taren said as the rest of the team nodded. “A release at this stage would have dangerous consequences for Neopia.”

     Barry stared at his laptop screen and shook his head.

     “I don’t think the Boss is asking, they are telling us to release it next week and said if anyone is not on board, their unwillingness will be considered a ‘resignation’ by them. Now does anyone wish to leave now?”

     Nobody budged from their seats.

     “Okay, let’s get ready to ship these magic-generating wands out to the... I guess Neopia Central. But what do we call these?”

     “The Mipsy Magic-o-matic,” Zartrex said after nobody else chimed in.

     “I guess that works….”

     —

     “Hanso, just what is that thing? It looks otherworldly,” Brynn asked, staring at the metal wand-shaped thing in his hand.

     “Oh, this is a Mipsy Magic-o-matic you see. Fyora’s been concerned about these, so she asked me to swipe one. Here, let me demonstrate.”

     He held up the wand and said “Mipsy, please fill this mug with hot tea!” Then he tapped a mug.

     A few moments later, a hot liquid filled the mug, but instead of tea, it filled with borovan.

     “Hmm, this isn’t tea now, is it?” Hanso muttered.

     Brynn sniffed the mug and shook her head.

     “This does not even pass for drinkable Borovan either. Are you sure this thing actually works?”

     “Well, everyone in Neopia Central seems to think it does? These things are flying off the shelves.”

     Just then, Queen Fyora made her way down the hallway, eerily perfect in her timing as usual whenever Hanso did a task for her. She floated towards them, looked at the object in Hanso’s paws and then glanced at the mug.

     “You used it?” Fyora asked.

     “Yeah, I tried some harmless spell.”

     “Well, Hanso, I told you not to, but I’m just glad you and Brynn are not hurt.” The Faerie Queen patted Hanso on the head as she took the magic-generating wand away from him.

     “This is quite a dangerous tool. I’m not sure what the folks at Virtupets, Inc. were thinking. I’m going to have to investigate this. I shall talk to Mira.” Fyora furrowed her eyebrows as she examined the wand.

     “How do you use this?” she finally asked.

     “Oh, I got this one. Just say ‘mipsy’ and followed by what magic you want it to try and copy.”

     “Mipsy, change the colour of those flowers over there to pink,” Fyora said.

     The wand emitted pink sparks and changed the flowers pink but also changed the stem and leaves pink too.

     “Hmm… definitely not a safe product,” she muttered to herself.

     “Anyways, thanks for your assistance Hanso and Brynn, I’ll take it from here.”

     --

     At the Neopian Times office in Neopia Central, Weewoos were busily folding the latest issue for delivery. A Green Kacheek sat at his desk, reviewing the next batch of articles. There was a knock at the door, so the Green Kacheek got up from his desk and went to go answer it.

     “Greetings. My name is Trent, and I am from Virtupets, Inc. Have you heard about our new product? The Mipsy Magic-o-matic?” A Faerie Hissi stood in the doorway, holding one of the wands.

     The editor rolled their eyes. “Yes, and we won’t be needing its assistance here. We are the Neopian Times and we do our own work here.”

     “Ah, but before you write us off completely, allow me to demonstrate how this could help.”

     “Fine, I’ll allow it.”

     The Hissi slid over to a pile of Neopian Times papers that had the pages in the wrong order.

     “Mipsy, arrange these pages in order!” Trent muttered. The wand flashed blue and then the papers began to arrange themselves in order.

     “See, now your Weewoos don’t have to do all that sorting,” he continued.

     The Kacheek shook their head.

     “That’s very nice, but the Weewoos are really passionate about the Neopian Times and want to make sure their work is accurate. The Mipsy wand does not allow them to guarantee that. Besides, it just made an error.” The Kacheek grinned as they noted the wand had put the comic section in front.

     “Comic section has always been near the back of the NT. Perhaps we should leave this to the pros. Now please leave us alone.”

     The Kacheek escorted the Hissi outside and closed the door behind him.

     “Don’t worry my dears, I’ll never let some fake magic replace you,” they said, stroking a few of them on their foreheads.

     “Weewoo!” they hooted.

     --

     Jerdana and Rasala met on a street corner in Central Altador.

     “Are we doing this? You’re ready right?” Jerdana asked.

     “Don’t patronize me, I’m now the leader of the Order,” Rasala shot back.

     “Sorry, I-“

     “That was a joke, sorry. I actually think you should have gotten it, but you didn’t even try for the position.”

     “I’m old too. And I have lots of duties on the Altadorian Council. The Order needs to be led by our youngest and brightest. Anyways, you know about the incident, right?”

     “Yes, someone tried to start a campfire with one of those Mipsy wands,” the Bori, Rasala, said, rolling her eyes.

     “Instead, we have a fire that rages on, doesn’t consume what it's burning, but is dangerous and slowly spreading.”

     Jerdana sighed.

     “We really need to ban these devices; there’s no shortcut to learning magic.”

     “Agreed, it may get magic right some of the time, but anything more complex than levitation is going to be dangerous.”

     The two of them brought a bag of scrolls, magical scrolls that could aid in their mission to put the fire out.

     “If we have everything, we should get going.”

     The Aisha and the Bori walked up a path that brought them to the top of a small hill outside Altador City. They peered down and saw smoke rising off to the distance.

     “That must be it.”

     “Yep, did you bring the Water Powered Pistols?”

     “Certainly.”

     “Well, hopefully this works.”

     The two continued in the direction of the smoke. Upon approaching, they saw that a crowd had gathered to see the never-ending flames.

     “Hey, it’s Jerdana!” a blue Lupe sitting in a wingchair exclaimed.

     “Oh hello, you look like you’re from the Neopian Times.”

     “Oh, and you’re with Rasala the Bright! I’ve always wanted to meet you and talk to-”

     Jerdana shook her head. “Sorry, we are on an important mission. We’ll be happy to speak to you once it’s completed. Rasala, let’s go.”

     The Lupe offered a salute as the two of them proceeded. However, the rest of the crowd seemed to be curious and wanted to follow them.

     “Stay back! It’s way too dangerous. None of you have the magical abilities to protect yourselves!” Rasala yelled. She used a barrier spell to push the crowd back. Finally able to move along, the two continued until they began to feel the heat of the flames. The air was thick with suffocating smoke. The two of them then donned masks. They approached the flames which had now spread to multiple trees.

     “O, great and powerful Nereid, please grant us your power of water in our hour of need,” Jerdana chanted as she read from a scroll.

     Rasala removed the Water Powered Pistols from a bag and began to aim them at the flames.

     A small sphere of water began to form. As Jerdana continued chanting, Rasala squirted water into the sphere which made it larger. Soon the sphere grew to the height of the trees.

     “Release!” Rasala shouted.

     The sphere then slammed into the flames and neutralised them instantly.

     “Well, that worked much better than I thought it would,” said Jerdana.

     Rasala laughed. “This isn’t the real endless flames spell. It’s a weak impostor. Sure, ordinary water can’t put it out, but we didn’t even need the advanced water spells.”

     Jerdana put her hand on Rasala’s shoulder. “Careful to get too ahead of ourselves, Rasala. Be glad that it wasn’t worse.”

     --

     “Mr. Krawley sir, your shipment is here.”

     The Krawk made his way to the door of his laboratory, a hidden bunker deep in the Haunted Woods where he experimented with all sorts of forbidden magic to create items to trick people.

     He opened it and waved the courier, a Mutant Blumaroo, into his lab. The Blumaroo carried a large wooden box.

     “Set that down here,” Krawley said, gesturing to a table in the back of his lab. The Blumaroo headed to that spot and set the box down.

     “Alright, that’s it, here’s your payment for the trouble. Now scram!” he said.

     “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The Blumaroo scurried out quickly after taking a small bag of Neopoints.

     Krawley turned his attention to the box. He pried the top off.

     “Glorious, look at all these beautiful Mipsy Magic-o-matics! Now I can use spells I was never capable of to create even more dangerous traps for those pesky faeries!”

     He cackled as he removed one of the wands from the box and went over to his cauldron.

     “Mipsy, make a sleeping potion that also saps Aethia’s power.”

     The wand sparked green and then filled the cauldron with a green liquid with green spheres with tiny red hats.

     “What the…? What is this? Why is this filled with Seasonal Attack Peas?”

     Krawley stared at the wand and tried again.

     “Mipsy, remove this abomination and do what I asked. Make a sleeping potion that makes Aethia weak!”

     The wand flashed green again and the cauldron filled with healing potion I.

     “Ugh, this thing is utterly useless! False advertising! I shall exact my revenge on VIrtupets!” Krawley shouted, storming away from his cauldron.

     --

     Mira sipped coffee at her Virtupets Space Station desk as she picked up a small tablet device and flipped to the Neopian Times to look for any news about the Void spreading across Neopia.

     “Strange… it seems the void has temporarily stopped spreading…” she muttered to herself.

     A knock at the door interrupted her.

     “It’s open! Come in!”

     At the door stood Joey along with Zerp.

     “Oh, hello there.”

     “We are here to file an ethics complaint against our own employer, Virtupets, Inc.,” Zerp began.

     “Yeah, uh, there’s some shady stuff going on,” Joey added.

     Mira motioned for the Aisha and the Grundo to come in. She closed the door behind them and locked it. With a flick of a switch, the blinds for every window went down and closed.

     “Ok, please have a seat. I have a hunch on what this is about.”

     The two of them took a seat in front of Mira’s desk. The Space Faerie sat down across from them and put the tablet device in front of them and took out a stylus.

     “Alright, you may begin.”

     “We think our boss recklessly released a dangerous tool out in the wild. We were told we’d be kicked out if we did not agree with the release. However, we’ve heard of incidents on Neopia that seem dangerous,” Zerp said.

     “I’m being asked to replicate Xandra’s magic. That seems dangerous too,” Joey added.

     Mira’s face changed suddenly as she looked at the two of them seriously. “I see, thank you for telling me. I think I’d need to have a word with your boss.”

     “Thanks, I think we’d best be on our way then, to go back to work before the Boss gets suspicious.”

     The two scurried back to their desks without anyone else noticing. Meanwhile, Mira went over to a keypad and dialled a number.

     Moments later, a voice came up on the loudspeaker.

     “Hello Mira, I suppose we haven’t talked for a while,” said the sinister voice.

     “Do you know what you’ve done?”

     “I am furthering technology across Neopia. Technology that can make lives easier.”

     “It’s already caused serious harm across Neopia. Fires that cannot be put out. Poisonous potions. And you’re replicating evil magic too.”

     “Look, the thing cannot work if we only train it on good magic. It’s a magic generator; the user determines what they want to do with it.”

     “No, the user does not. It can generate erroneous magic, and you know it!”

     “Well, too late, the Kadoatie is out of the bag.”

     “If you don’t shut down the servers this instant, I’ll do it for you.”

     “Oh, we’re threatening now, are we?” cackled the voice.

     “Yes, this is a threat. I will follow through with it if I must.”

     “Good luck, our magic servers are very secure.”

     The voice then fell silent as Mira shook her head.

     “We’ll need the help of the workers there; that’s the only way to infiltrate the system.”

     --

     “Joey, how’s that Xandra prototype going?” Barry asked again as he stopped by Joey’s desk.

     “Oh, umm…. It’s almost done,” the Grundo replied nervously.

     “Really? Can we demo it at the next sprint planning?”

     “Oh, umm, sure. I can have that ready.”

     As soon as Barry left, Joey opened up his computer and began frantically typing a command. He hit the Enter key on his keyboard and immediately got a Neomail from Mira.

     “I’m in, thanks,” it read.

     Back at her desk, Mira examined the finishing touches on the Bython code and nodded in satisfaction. She dragged and dropped it into another screen and then clicked it. Suddenly, the lights flickered slightly and then recovered.

     Moments later, the loudspeakers rang. Mira pushed a button and heard an angry voice.

     “What did you do?!”

     “You told me good luck; well, my luck is good.”

     “I know you corrupted one of my young Bython developers!”

     “Corrupted? Nah. But he works for me now so feel free to dismiss him from your ranks.”

     “You have merely delayed my progress for a few days. This is just a futile exercise.”

     Mira shook her head. She knew he was right. In a few days, they’d have it all up and running again.

     “Fine, that’s enough time for me to get Neopia to ban these devices.”

     “Ban, eh? Well, you do know there’s an underground market still. Generative Magic is here to stay muahuahuahua!” the voice said. And then it went silent again.

     Mira sighed as she stared at her screen. This was going to be quite a long battle. She got up from her seat, poured herself another cup of coffee, and settled back in, gearing up for a lengthy war from her own computer screen.

     “Are you both ready?” she asked Joey and Zerp.

     “Yep!’

     --

     “Mipsy, cast a plant watering spell on this plant.”

     The wand sparked blue for a bit, but then the light suddenly faded.

     “Hmm, it seems to have stopped working,” Fyora muttered to herself.

     She then took her staff and pointed it at the plant.

     “Oh, the spirit of the water faerie, make thy living water hydrate this plant,” she said. After a pink flash, water sprinkled onto the plant at just the right amount.

     “Now this is how magic is supposed to work!” Fyora exclaimed. She then turned and looked at the other plants in the room that had withered away.

     “I ought to get the ones poisoned by the Mipsy Magic-o-matic replaced.” Fyora sighed as she shook her head.

     “To think, Virtupets wanted to replace all the magical creatures on Neopia,” she muttered, rolling her eyes.

     The End.