Reece Chung, now known as Regina Chung, sat on a bench right outside the gates of the high school she once taught at. Her breakdown in her morning class had been genuine. She honestly felt like she was a failure and her entire life's work had been for nothing. All the hours of studying, of the pressure of college entrance exams, of the endless conferences and rivalries, of the endless grubbing for grant money and the politics of who's name got to be first or last on an academic journal entry, of the experiments conducted over years just to answer the most basic of life's questions, all of it, pointless! If the fabric of reality could be upended so casually as it had been over these last couple of days, how could it not be!? Reality was apparently elastic and random, with no order to anything. Regina was beginning to believe in Lovecraft's cosmicism, that humans are at the end of the day meaningless in the grand scheme of the universe, and to make it worse, that we are at the mercy of unknowable, horrifying entities.
Regina was crying, her face in her hands on her lap, loud sobs able to be heard from all the way across the street. It was so cacophonous that she hadn't heard the other young lady sitting down right next to her. Regina wouldn't have been able to know that this young lady had once been the elderly woman who left her purse in the supermarket and gave Joe D'Amico the magic ring for his reward for returning it to her, which had started off the chain of events leading to the Great Change.
"Regina?" she asked softly, not expecting a reaction.
"ReGINA" she emphasized again, putting more base in her voice this time, but to no avail. Finally, the woman grabbed Regina's shoulder and said "Hey!".
Regina looked up at the woman, a pale white lady with curly red-blonde hair and wearing a long black skirt and heeled black boots.
"I-I'm sorry. It's just that I'm g-g-going through a bad time in m-my l-life right now" the adorable Chinese woman sniffled.
"You mean The Great Change?"
"Y-yes. I t-take it that you are a born woman?"
"I am" admitted the mysterious woman. "But I'm not the one that's important right now. It's you."
"W-what d-do you mean, I-I'm important?"
"Oh, Regina. This Great Change doesn't negate what nature is! If you only knew what magic really was, you would know that the scientific method is still the greatest invention humans have ever created, by far. You've never come closer to the truth about reality than you have in the last four-hundred years."
"H-how can you say that? Don't you know about the sheer improbability of this happening? All the laws that it broke?"
The white woman put a hand on Regina's shoulder.
"None of the laws of nature have been broken. They're still there, and while I admit that your current understanding of the universe is way off in most respects, humanity as a whole is inching closer and closer the ultimate truth every day. I see really good things for your species in the future."
Regina's eyebrows furrowed. "What do you mean, your species?"
"Oops" said the woman playfully. "Slip of the tongue. All I'm saying is this- Have you heard of Neil Gaiman? Lovely man. In one of his books, he wrote a very wise quote about the difference between magic and science:
“Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore. The two are rarely compatible.”"
Regina looked skeptically at the woman.
"I'm saying that nature exists, but magic also exists. There are sources of unimaginable power to be harnessed, but they aren't natural, and when they come into contact with the natural world, it creates effects like the Great Change. Personally, I like it. The Earth could do with a more feminine touch for a change." She grinned. "And I know for a fact that this isn't going to be permanent, so don't sweat the small stuff."
"Next you're going to tell me that there's a hidden world of witches and warlocks" snarked Regina.
"There are. And there are aliens, fae, dragons, monsters of all sorts, demons, angels, and all manner of magical things. I've seen them myself."
"What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't."
"If you're really telling the truth" said Regina, "How dare you keep that kind of knowledge hidden from the world? That's why I could never understand why people enjoyed Harry Potter. The idea of a world of magic, and you have these characters who refuse to share their knowledge with the rest of the world that would utterly revolutionize every field and discipline you can think of, which would improve countless lives forever came across as the most selfish thing ever to me."
The woman nodded her head. "You've got me there."
"You're probably just some crackpot" said Regina. "Or part of some new viral marketing campaign for the Doctor Strange movie. You can be rest assured that fantasy isn't really my thing. I love me some science."
"Funny, that, Doctor Strange. Of all the stories humans have come up with about sorcery, there are parts of Stephen Strange's journey across space-time which is closer to the truth than anything I can recall, Regina. That's why I'm here, actually. Thanks for breaking the ice for me."
Suddenly time seemed to stop. Traffic froze in mid flight, and Regina began to panic.
"You are under consideration to be this world's magical protector. To use an analogy, you could be this world's equivalent to the Doctor Strange character. I can feel it. Think of it- Regina Chung, Sorceress Supreme. How does that sound? There's no actual title though. There are many people who are in contention for it, many people steeped in occult lore from old magical families. There's even a child competing for it, though she doesn't realize it yet. But you, Regina, I believe you may be the person we've been looking for all along. It just took until this special day, this Great Change for me to realize it."
"Come with me, and you'll learn all about how magic works. It'll be difficult at first for somebody so empirically minded and skeptical like yourself, but I believe that will make it even more rewarding once you master it. If you want to, when you are finished you can come back and teach others how to harness magic, and incorporate it into the natural sciences."
"This-this is crazy talk! I'm going to go back inside now" said Regina. She began to get up, but before she could take another step, a swirling, colorful portal opened right in front of her and the mysterious woman.
"Is that a wormhole?" yelled Regina, now able to hear herself over the loudness of the portal.
"Yes!" yelled the woman. "Jump in with me. Call to adventure for one! Limited time only!" and she jumped inside the portal, disappearing into the aether.
**
Elizabeth, Greta and Jean had debated for hours over the ethics of the Great Change, and the responsibilities of a bearer of such great power. They had told Elizabeth the story of Joe, Greta's patient, how he had abused his power and was promptly punished for it, given his just desserts, being reborn as a baby girl in a world full of women.
Elizabeth had been relentless. She could have been a prosecutor. Though she had been sympathetic to Jean and Greta's story, she still was resentful over how capriciously the two women were using this gift which could turn the Earth into a utopia. That they could, in one fell swoop, end every single problem plaguing the human race. Instead, they used their magic to carry out petty revenge against one little brat to justify punishing one half of humanity.
Greta felt that she had learned much from Elizabeth and had come to make a decision about the ring...
**