The Last Magician

Future Seers 

An Utopian Science-Fiction Plot

R. C. Brooking


"The Last Magician"

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke

"...it is demanded of all of us. Without it there can be no survival of mankind, for man himself must be his last magician." - Loren Eiseley

Generations ago the Future Seers once lived in peace. The Prophets and the Wizards were united by the First Magician who centered the competing consciousness between the two classes in the founding of the Covenant of the Future Seers. This put an end to the strife but that era has long ended.

While the Prophets of the Terrestrial Ecotopia have developed the physical geosciences, the Wizards of the Celestial Technotopia have been developing astronomical and space sciences. Each has been developing their own use of psychic sciences. Their technologies have advanced to the point to be indistinguishable from magic. 

In the year 4055, after leaving the planet Mars now known as Outpost 1 of the Celestial Technotopia, a group of Wizards embark toward a distant speck. On crew is the esteemed angelic Astronaut Morulan Olsso. The distant speck gradually resolves into a sparkling twinkle. It's the Magi's Tower, located on the Moon. The Wizards are on a mission to submit a request for an Alteration to the Covenant. Such an Alteration has not been approved for decades.

Civil war has long ago been sparked in the solar system by a nefarious force. This was the doing of the Rogue Magician Hector Balkov, a descendent of the Magi who once ordained peace between the two warring factions - the Wizards and the Prophets. Balkov, believing himself to be the ultimate sorcerer's apprentice, ended the peace maintained by the Magi. Instead, he ruled by dividing and conquering. Now he reigns alone from the Moon on his throne in the Magi's Tower.

With the power of his Dark Moon staff, Balkov was able to change the emotions of others, a power he used to first instill fear in the inhabitants of the solar system, then to make the conquered devoutly loyal to him.

As a result of the rise of the Rogue Magician, the behavior of the Wizards and the Prophets will no longer be the natural or mechanic responses required by the mathematical magic of the predictions contained in the Covenant of the Future Seers. This results in the resolution that the Covenant itself is obsolete. Additionally, the Prophets and the Wizards start to resentfully consider each other as rivals, and begin to develop equipment related to detecting and blocking psychic influence, in order to combat members of the opposing class.

Within the underground of the Moon, the Magi slaves work at reconfiguring mathematical magic predicting the future. A central computer projects the equations onto screens thus allowing workers to manipulate them as directed. Control operates through the power of psychic science, allowing the user to zoom in to details of the equations, and to change them. One can make annotations, but by convention all amendments remain anonymous.

A Magi slave has to present an amendment to the Covenant. Five different boards then check the magic mathematics rigorously. Slaves have to defend their proposals against concerted and merciless attacks. If after the second examination it still passes muster the contribution becomes an Alteration to the Covenant. It was Balkov who had the Covenant altered to bring about his rise to power.

But alas, this is the story of the Last Magician. Loren Ütopian, a lonely moon boy who is a lowly slave and must toil away at life like the rest of the Magi class enslaved to Balkov. For it was Balkov who had the Magi enslaved, executed and exterminated.

Loren Ütopian dreams of a future grander than the golden ages of past when the solar system was harmonious. It is up to him to escape his Moon prison, reunite the Wizards of Outer-Space and the Prophets of Earth, liberate the Magi class, and defeat the evil reign of Balkov.

Astronaut Morulan Olsso's request for an Alteration that would lead to the destruction of Earth is rejected by Hector Balkov, given that it will put an end to his manipulation of both sides of the war. As a result, Morulan attempts to persuade a Magi slave to proceed with the Alteration without approval. That slave is Loren Ütopian. The boy pretends to go along with the plan but does not permit himself to defy Balkov. He does however find that the Astronaut has a sister on Earth after examining the lunar computer database.

Loren convinces Morulan that he must save his sister. With a new outlook, the Astronaut Morulan Olsso helps Loren escape from his lunar penitentiary. In gratitude, Loren Ütopian makes it his mission to reunite Morulan with his sister Morwenna, an ecological Druid living on Earth. For in their alliance is the seed of peace between the Wizards and the Prophets.

As part of a peace mission, they head for Municipality 12 on the planet Earth- now known as Terrestrial Ecotopia. When they finally arrive, they enter the Sunflower Forest. On Terrestrial Ecotopia, Prophets are organized in a confederation of various tribes. Each has different Earth gods to which they are devotees. The governance on Terrestrial Ecotopia is largely of a communitarian and eco-traditionalist structure. They encounter a tribe of Prophets as well as Morwenna Olsso. However the tribe is not receptive to the presence of a Wizard. The Prophets defend themselves against the perceived threat. Ütopian uses his cosmic ray gun to defend the Olsso siblings.

Ütopian and the Olsso siblings decide it's time to leave Terrestrial Ecotopia and steal a spacecraft to shoot their way out. However, they are intercepted by the tribe of Prophets. Ütopian is attacked and the Druid is captured by the Prophets and taken back to Municipality 12.

Ütopian must fight to save Druid Morwenna but when he accidentally uncovers the lost Magi's staff inside a Moon Temple, the entire future of the solar system is at stake...