Off to be the Wizard

Ooh, I loved this!

Martin Banks is just a normal guy who has made an abnormal discovery: he can manipulate reality, thanks to reality being nothing more than a computer program. With every use of this ability, though, Martin finds his little “tweaks” have not escaped notice. Rather than face prosecution, he decides instead to travel back in time to the Middle Ages and pose as a wizard.

What could possibly go wrong?

An American hacker in King Arthur’s court, Martin must now train to become a full-fledged master of his powers, discover the truth behind the ancient wizard Merlin… and not, y’know, die or anything.

Geeky good fun with a really entertaining approach to time travel. One of the characters keeps teleporting back to his own time to use the bathroom, but time doesn't move forward more than the time he spends there, so his toilet has been in constant use for five-and-a-half days. The water bill will be astronomical, but not for another twenty years.

They write all their spell macros in Esperanto:

"All of our spells are in badly translated Esperanto. It's a universal language that was invented early in the twentieth century to foster international peace and understanding. It's perfect for our purposes because there are many resources to translate things into it and absolutely nobody speaks it."

"Nobody in this time."

"Nobody in any time. Seriously, William Shatner and that's about it."

It was just very entertaining, and now I want to go and become a wizard. Apparently all the women are witches and moved to Atlantis to oggle fit blokes with swimmers' bodies, but I think I could cross the gender gap. Sounds like my kinda life.

By 6 p.m. Martin was back with his new toolkit. A massive metal case full of sockets, wrenches, screwdrivers, even a saw. He also had a drill he could use to drive screws. As he assembled the furniture, he mused that unlimited money was like a superpower. It allows one to do almost anything: hire a plane to make you fly, hire a truck to carry heavy things, hire doctors to keep you healthy, hire mercenaries to vanquish foes. You could pay someone to do anything. At the end of the day, you were responsible for having gotten it done.

*

"The only power you need to know about to make your decision is the power to lead a life where you're free to pursue whatever seems interesting without the pressure of keeping a job or paying off a car loan or a mortgage. We live like gentlemen of leisure. Our greatest challenge is looking busy. Welcome to wizzarding. Your last hard day was yesterday."

Definitely worth looking into if you enjoy RPG-related comedy, like Mogworld.