//------------------------------//
// Chapter 9: Hot and Cold 
// Story: The Exchange Program 
// by Sozmioi 
//------------------------------//

So, Shankar and I are in the driver's seat of a car like the one we're actually in. We're in the same body or something like that. We do that all the time, and also we've been married or at least together for years. Jack is in the passenger seat, and in the seat behind him is Lyra - no. An actual pony, but not Lyra, like, oh, a colt with cobalt blue coat and light brown mane, wearing - no, that's silly, scratch that, he's naked. Eh, we're all naked. Like it doesn't matter.

Anyway, we're heading down route 1 in California, and the sea level has risen to the point that sometimes the tires get wet, not that we're in danger of being washed off the road or anything. We're here to do something about this. We just need to get to the right place.

We pull in to that beach I went to. It is not underwater, despite the sea-level rise... because of the sea-level-lowering magic it has! Right, that makes sense.

The human-sized tarot card in the seat behind the driver gives off the impression that this is all very silly. It's 13-Devil (no, wait. Devil's 14, I think?). It has no moving parts. Like a slanted cardboard Monolith.

So we get out. The guys are wearing white slacks and I'm wearing a white dress and I'm not in the same body as Shankar anymore. And for some reason I made Shankar white, let's fix that. Better.

Cobalt (for that is the pony's name, now) does some sort of weird dance and we trace a pentagram to spread the magic out.

"That's perfectly, exactly backwards." comments 14-Devil, which is now standing, still slightly askew, behind me on the beach.

Of course. I knew that. We were... getting the magic level up to something usable, and then we'd disperse it into the ocean afterwards.

But first, a message from Rhiannon! Cards begin slamming down onto the beach. Problem position: Five of Pentacles (impression: take at face value. Seriously, I should just look at the card) (unfortunately, the dream did not contain a visual impression of the face of the card). Default Solution: 19-Sun (also take at face value). Outlook: Ten of swords. Alternate Solution: Four of Pentacles, Ace of Pentacles. Outlook: Seven of Wands.

What?

Jack and Shankar and Cobalt and I look at it in confusion.

I turn and look to The Devil. "Any tips on interpreting this?"

14-Devil gulps, suddenly remembers an urgent appointment somewhere else, and vanishes.

I'm alone on the beach, and I feel nakeder than naked, like my skin was peeled back in places. This is metaphorical Thank you, I don't need to tell myself that this is a metaphor. This is not good. It's... I don't feel comfortable being asleep right now. So I'm going to wake up. Please. Come on, wake up!

Once I was panicking, I did wake up with a gasp and bolting upright out of Shankar's lap just as we pulled in to the train station.

"Dictation. Now. Possibly-prophetic dream."

Shankar fumbled out his phone and as soon as it was ready I began recounting every relevant bit of the dream - at first, the detailed data like the five cards and their roles. Then, taking it from the top.

We sat in the parked car silently for a few seconds. Jack was the first to respond. "Soooo… we're going to have a problem and the obvious solution would be to get Celestia" - "or Sunset Shimmer" interjected Lyra. Jack continued, "Help from Equestria, or perhaps from the sun itself, and from the fact that she's sending a message at all I'm guessing it wouldn't work, and the solution has to do with a bunch of pentacles."

Shankar, meanwhile, was looking the relevant cards up. "The five is cripples in the snow outside a church. The sun is a baby on a horse with a flag, and the sun. Ten of swords… all ten are stuck into some guy. That was the result of the obvious solution… let's avoid that. Four of pentacles… a miser? And ace is just basically a big pentacle. Seven of wands is some guy with a stick in front of a row of sticks."

Jack added, "And the devil. That's not ominous at all, nosirree."

I replied, "The end was worse. The Devil card was not nice, but I didn't get an actively malign feeling from it, for all that it was the Devil."

Shankar added, "Incidentally, the Devil is 15, not 14. 14 is Temperance. And 13 was Death. Hmm. Well, so about the rest… one of us might lose a limb or otherwise be crippled, and we should… be miserly about it and use magic?"

I said, "We don't have enough information to pin down what it's talking about. If there's something to it, then chances are good that we'll recognize the situation in time - I don't get the impression that she means to be cryptic. SO, what shall we do now?"

Jack said, "I offered to take Lyra to church tomorrow, and she said okay if you think it's okay."

I blinked. "I guess we can go. I was thinking nearer-term, but sure."

Lyra said, "You need a haircut."

I grimaced and nodded. I didn't know what my head looked like yet, and began to fear the worst.

Shankar said, "We can experiment with my nifty new amulet, or use it as proof of magic."

"Proof of… Wait. We have actually-working, reliable, externally visible, non-compliant-with-physics-as-we-know-it magic at our command?"

"To get me back in my body, she supercharged Lyra's old keep-her-in-this-body amulet, but attuned to me. Its main work of getting me back in me is done, but it's still charged up. We can use it to swap me into people if they put it on, which'll work a few times, or we can just both touch it to be able to sort of feel each other's bodies, and that's a lot cheaper. Except, while she's here, swapping Lyra and me lets the amulet recharge slowly. And it leaks slowly, and it'll wear out in a couple months. Want to try?"

He held it to me, and I put a finger on it. It was subtle for a moment, then it clarified. I could feel his fingers holding it, and his sweaty armpits, and the warm spot on his lap where I'd put my head. I could feel that his fingers were about to tighten before I saw them pull it away.

"Holy molé. We really need to sit down and think about what we're going to use that on. We can use that to give maybe hundreds of people direct evidence that magic is real, and get it in a lab and everything. If that's a good idea, which it might not be. And we don't have all the time in the world to think about it. Can we get another after this one breaks? That would give us more time to decide whether we want to blow open the masquerade or enforce the statute of secrecy."

He nodded. "That was one of the main topics while you were out. We're worried that it might do more harm than good, mainly causing hysteria, unless it's conveniently benign and we can make it so easily accessible that ordinary people could figure out that it's benign for themselves. Or if the good it can do is so massive that it would actually make things better despite all that."

Jack added, "I need to figure out some things spiritually speaking, since this is kind of outside the realm of what I was expecting, even given magic – what I had been told about things like this was more along the lines of 'pelt you all with rocks until dead' but I kind of ignored that part because I didn't take seriously the possibility that magic actually existed. I'm hoping that instruction was just because all the witches at the time were horrible, rather than something not so nice like 'in this world, magic corrupts you', or 'magic is an intrinsic evil'."

Lyra (back in Rhiannon's body - I had to remember for a moment that she wasn't Shankar) had been nodding along but stopped and sharply exclaimed, "Excuse me!"

"Make that, 'humans using magic is an intrinsic evil.'"

I mused, "What would that even mean anyway? I don't recall morality-as-dictate-of-God being a consistent position. And I wouldn't expect any metaethical theory to produce anything like that without another reason. Maybe humans using magic has some sort of negative consequence, which some ancient magically-aware being informed the ancient Hebrews of, and we should stop using it because of that… but given that the command skipped convincing them with good reasons and went straight to stoning, I'm not so confident of that."

Shankar put in, "Could be a tragedy of the commons. Using magic is beneficial for the individual but harmful for the collective. If they tried to explain that it would backfire hard, but just stoning could work."

Jack facepalmed. "Wait. The two atheists who are using magic are arguing in favor of stoning witches?"

Shankar corrected, "I don't think it's safe to call us atheist anymore. I am taking Hinduism a lot more seriously since yesterday."

With that out of the way, I actually answered, "We're not arguing in favor, we're trying to figure out why the rule is there. Chesterton's fence, if you're familiar with the idea. It could be a religious dominance play and there's no real problem, or it could be on to something. So. Since we need to know a lot more to make an educated decision, all in favor of getting back home and reading Rhiannon's notes?"

This motion was approved by general acclamation, and Shankar got out to bring his car back to my apartment.

Lyra asked what I had been up to while swapped, and I told them. When we pulled up, I saw Gwyneth leaning against the door-frame, reading a notebook.

She looked up as we approached, smiled, frowned, and sighed. "Hello there. How are you doing?"

I nodded. "All right. Managed to remember how to use our hands."

By this time, the others had caught up, and she had clearly been waiting for us, so I invited her in. The apartment was warm enough to be mildly uncomfortable. Not proud of it, but at the moment, that was fine by me because it might get her to leave earlier. Unless she was going to come around, but she didn't really look like it.

We sat down at the table (Jack and Lyra took the sofa).

She leaned forward, finger holding a place in her notebook, and asked, "Seen anything new?"

That was relatively promising. I figured that the most relevant thing would be the dream, so I recited it again; she stared at her notebook. In the beginning she nodded along idly. Partway through, she got very focused, frowning harder and harder. By the end, she was silently mouthing foul language. Shallow breaths, a slight quiver. She looked past me, then through me. Did she see that dream? Did she get a similar warning from Rhiannon? Was she the Devil card? She finally said, "I… it's probably silly, but can you get some wood to help me test…"

She stiffened for several seconds, then with a little jerk came out of it. "Could I lie down for a bit? Maybe get an open window?"

I led her to collapse onto my bed. Figuring I had overdone it on the heat, and she wasn't being as unreasonable as last time anyway, I opened the window. Then I went downstairs to the apartment's storage area to grab my pine crafting scraps.

By the time I was up, she was coming down the stairs, still looking pretty bad, and now shivering. "I'm sorry to bother you. I need to get home and…"

"You're not driving anywhere like that. Stay, please."

I heard the door behind me and there was Shankar, finally.

He looked at her, at me, at the wood, and at her again. "You look ill." he said. "How about you…"

"I'm fine! Just cold, that's all. Need to get into the sunlight."

Shankar and I shared an alarmed glance. I said, "Do it."

He charged up, picked her up in a fireman's carry. I followed him up the steps and dumped the pine in the main room. He sat down in the pentagram and lowered her into his lap, ignoring her feeble protests. I found the flaw I'd made in the diagram when freeing Lyra, grabbed the salt, and fixed it.

Shankar said, "She's freezing."

Jack and Lyra came to the doorway, confused. It registered with me that they had exclaimed in confusion as we had passed. I explained, "She was cold, like the cripples in the snow, and wanted to get into the sunlight. So, pentacles it is."

Shankar clarified, "Like, literally, I see frost forming out of her sweat. I'm touching her with the amulet, and what I can feel of her is cold to the bone. Pentagram isn't doing the job on its own. We need something more."

I checked it once more, and fixed a spot where Shankar had disturbed it sitting down. I glanced up - Jack was praying. For once, praying in an emergency might be a good move. All hands on deck, give it everything we've got. Lyra approached, knelt, touched the diagram with a fist, then with her forehead.

I kept orbiting the diagram, looking for anything out of place. It all looked good. I wrung my hands. What else could I do?

Shankar noted, "The frost melted. She's still really cold, though. Let me get that thing touching her again… okay, the bone coldness is gone, but she's still cold. Space heater?"

Now, this room was the warmest in the apartment, up around a hundred. It wasn't the kind of place I expected to be applying a space heater. But if the cold was out of her bones, maybe it wasn't magically imposed anymore, and we could deal with it by ordinary means. So I set it up, keeping it aimed so it wouldn't hit the salt. Having run out of things to do, I searched for Rhiannon's notes.

Lyra was staring at the two of them and frowning. "This is really strange. Why did it suddenly happen then?"

"Trap." Gwyneth croaked.

"What?"

"When I think magic is real."

I was confused. "When you think magic is real, you get cold?"

"Just change my mind."

Lyra summarized, "You have a trap on you that goes off when you think magic is real, and it changes your mind?"

She nodded.

"But this time, you're freezing. And it appears you didn't change your mind about magic."

She weakly said, "Yeah."

I cut in. "Who put the trap on you?"

She buried her face in Shankar's chest and murmured something.

Shankar said, "I think she just said 'demon'."