One of the ghostly shapes floated down out of the night sky at her, gibbering as it came. Alaina stopped short and flung her arm up to it.
“demon_debug BEGONE,” she commanded in a cracked voice. “exe!”
The pale form stopped in mid-flight, shuddered and dropped to the earth, coalescing and changing form as it did so. By the time it reached the ground it was a small green man-like thing with a bald head, pointed ears and a wide mouth. In the flickering light of the mayor’s torch, Alaina could see that the little creature was bright green.
It blinked once, extended a foot-long tongue and licked one of its eyebrows, like a cat grooming itself. Then it smiled up at her nastily.
“Ya know, Lady,” the little green man said with a distinct Brooklyn accent, “ya really shouldnna have done that.”
“I tell you we are overrun with these things!” Alaina screamed into the communications crystal. “They are everywhere.”
One of the little green men sat on top of the image formed above the crystal, his legs dangling down in front, as if he were sitting on top of a television instead of in mid-air. She brushed at him like shooing a fly, but her hand passed through the little man’s legs. He stuck out a foot-long pink tongue and gave the hedge witch an especially juicy raspberry.
From where he sat in the Council’s great hall, Wiz couldn’t see the little green man. But Alaina’s gestures told him clearly what must be happening.
“How long have you had this problem?” he asked sympathetically.
“Since last night. These things are driving us mad and when I call for help, you make me wait for near a day-tenth before anyone will speak to me. Nothing but that terrible music in the background while I wait.”
Alaina put her head in her hands. The day had been the worst of her life. In laying the banshees she had created dozens of the little green men. Now they were all over the village, getting into everything, making rude and obnoxious comments to everyone and not giving anyone a moment’s peace.
Worse, there was nothing you could do to them. Magic didn’t seem to work and physical objects passed completely through them. Mayor Andrew was nursing a broken hand after trying to hit one of the little creatures that happened to be standing in front of a post. He was so angry at Alaina he wouldn’t even come to her for healing.
“I am sorry about the wait,” Wiz told her. “We are very busy here and none of our service representatives, ah wizards, were immediately available.” Out of the corner of his eye, Wiz could see all the communications positions in the great hall filled with wizards talking to people just as he was. But this one was special. Part of the reason Alaina had to wait was he wanted to handle this village himself. “Now, about these little green men. How did they appear?”
“First there was a plague of banshees and when I tried to exorcise them, we got—this.” She waved her hand helplessly. “Oh, I would rather the banshees,” she moaned.
“We have not been able to re-create your problem here,” Wiz told her. “There is nothing in ddt that could produce an effect like that.”
“I didn’t use ddt, I used demon_debug,” Alaina said.
Wiz frowned and pursed his lips. “Well, as you know, demon_debug was not our spell. We cannot be responsible for the consequences if users attempt to apply spells with unauthorized modifications.”
Alaina moaned again.
“However,” Wiz went on, “we have encountered this problem before. The spell you used was not thoroughly tested before release and contained some serious bugs that interact destructively with certain kinds of magic. In fact, we find it actually attracts those kinds of magic. You were quite fortunate, you know.”
“Fortunate?” Alaina asked miserably. Now three of the little green menaces were dancing a jig between her and Wiz’s image. They were accompanying themselves with their own singing and none of them had the slightest sense of pitch or rhythm.
“Fortunate,” Wiz said solemnly. “It might have been dragons.”
“Eh?” said Alaina, straining to hear over the caterwauling.