"There is no way that magic is real." he said to the man who was sitting in the driver seat of the government vehicle.

“Believe me, it’s a lot more mundane than it sounds. Most people never experience anything that couldn’t be described away as basic good luck, or coincidence. But those are the lucky cases, worst one that I know of happened back in the 1960’s, apparently a couple in Hoboken figured the whole thing out and nearly destroyed the fabric of society. Took the bookstore, almost a decade to straighten everything out.”

“Okay we are going to come back to that, but why do they call us the bookstore?”

“They call the CIA the Company, the FBI the Bureau, and they call us the bookstore. They do it so that they can talk about us in open company. Besides, I assume that the bookstore was one of the more acceptable things that they could have called us. We handle things that are of an occult nature. Which honestly sounds cool till you've been on the job for about a month. Most people who figure their magic, out blow it in the first couple of days before they can really control it. Seriously the number of people who get caught trying to beat the lottery makes this the most boring job ever. Then again that's probably why we run the game.”

“Back to the Hoboken thing, you mean to tell me that the entirety of the 60’s was the responsibility of people from New Jersey?”

“You can look the whole thing up your self, you have the clearance now. It’s all part of the training documentation, hell it should have been part of your onboarding training. The story goes something like this, an old couple in their mid 70s, grandpa has a failing libido and grandma suffers from migraines. One day she snaps, and figures if she can focus all of her mental energy on a sewing needle the headache goes away, and she finishes her cross-stitch at meth addict speed. Next thing she’s working on grandpa’s muscles, and suddenly he’s like a twenty year old. Over the next three months she teaches him and the two of them start tugging at the fibers of reality as we know it.”

“So all of the things that we know about the 60s are because of these two people. All of the sex the drugs and the rock and roll, all because of those two?”

“God no, seriously didn’t they teach you this stuff. Most of what you know about the 60s is from the bookstore cleaning things up. As you put it the sex, the drugs, and rock and roll were all of the tools that were required to get everything back into order from the mess that the two of them created. You hear about people taking acid and seeing sounds and tasting colors? Well here’s the thing, there were two types of ‘acid’ that were going around at that time, one was LSD, the other was an open door to magic that people shouldn’t be experiencing. The worst outcome wasn’t communism or free love, it was the complete unraveling of reality as we know it. Everything else was part of the cover up.”

The recruit looked down at his pressed shirt, everything had been okay when he had left the house this morning, everything felt right about the world. But now there was something that was deeply wrong and he wondered if it would ever be right again.

“Cheer up, like I said in most cases we don’t deal with anything anywhere close to that. The system is designed that way, most of the people blow it within the first couple of hours of making their first awakening. So we really aren’t anything more than glorified tax collectors. Seriously, flash your badge and see what kind of response you get. Most groups will look at you like your from land management or from the county health inspector, you know… check that, the county gets more respect. If, they recognize the letters then they will probably not give you the finger, but it’s never guaranteed. Some you flash the badge and it just pisses them off more, because now not only are you walking into their jurisdiction they now have to look up what backwater agency the letters stand for. I stopped using my badge about two years back. I think it’s still in there. It honestly if it wasn’t I couldn’t tell you where I lost it.”

Mike knew that he was trying to cheer him up but he still didn’t know what to make of all of this. The lead up to all of it had been so weird, and now that it was here and they had basically dumped all of it on them, he didn’t know what to think. He had sat though the orientation but all of the information that they had given them had been veiled in science speak, and he hadn’t been particularly good at science through school. Most of it went over his head and once that started the rest of it washed over him pretty quickly. They explained, in the most clinical way that they could, that there were people who could modify the world around them using their thoughts. They explained that most of the people would be harmless and that they would just need to be redirected. Then they assigned them partners and sent them on their first run. The whole thing felt rushed and reckless.

Sensing the stress in the silence his partner broken in, “The reason that the trainings are so short is statistically speaking most of the runs that we are going to go on are simple ones, and they make sure that the first couple are going to be routine. After a week they are going to take you back in and give you the full briefing and more training. They do it this way to make sure that you don’t freak out with all of the information. Retention has always been a problem with the bookstore, mostly because its super routine until it’s not. Once you’ve had one of ‘those’ experiences you either hang around or your out. Hang around long enough and you get special training to use some of the skills yourself. Outstay your welcome then they put you on patrol and give you a rookie.”

He let out a small chuckle, and it seemed to ease the tension in the car. The radio cut in, “Mike need you to go talk to Sean, over on willow.” He picked up the radio, “Alright, loud and clear, we’re on it”. He chucked the microphone into the center console. “Well rookie, welcome to your first house call, you’ll like Sean… just don’t look at the paintings on the wall.”