[ WP ] Science and Magic are merely opposite sides to which the pendulum of time swings . It has leaned for the past few centuries towards the Laws of Science but even now it begins to return ever faster back towards the Laws of Magic .

`` What do you mean objects are n't falling at 9.8 meters per second anymore?'' 
 
 My assistant had a meter stick bolted to the wall and a high speed camera trained on it. Various visual compliments stuck out from the side making the perspective and exact position of the red rubber ball as it dropped more clear. 
 
 `` Exactly that. I do n't think I could sum it up any more succinctly. Really I do n't even need this much equipment. Watch.'' 
 
 He took the ball in his hand and dropped it again. Its fall looked... normal *enough*. Nothing obviously wrong with it. 
 
 `` I did n't see anything-'' 
 
 `` Wait, now see me do it again.'' 
 
 This time as the ball fell it was noticeably slower. Like a metal bar falling through maple syrup. 
 
 `` Whoa.'' 
 
 `` Yeah right?'' 
 
 He picked it up, repeated the experiment. The ball turning in air like a space odyssey. 
 
 `` Huh.'' I had a hard time formulating what exactly I wanted to say about it. On one hand it was most probably a trick of some kind. My assistant was known as something of a prankster - at least as far as harmless lab related pranks go. 
 
 As I turned to close my office door I heard a loud'CRACK!' like someone had just taken a sledgehammer to a billiard ball. 
 
 `` Christ! -'' 
 
 `` AWWW FUCK! OW-'' My assistant gripped his leg as red spotted clouds of blood began to swell into the fabric of his pants. 
 
 `` Fucking thing exploded! The rubber - it... *shattered! *'' 
 
 I took a step towards him and slipped, falling flat on my face. The floor was as slick as oil and for a second or two I wretched about helplessly. Getting ever more tangled in my own lab coat. 
 
 `` Did you grease this?!?'' 
 
 `` NO! FUCK!'' He was still clamping down on his wound with his hands as the spout of blood thickened and came shooting out with more and more force. A comically large gout of blood sprayed out of his ankle in alarming torrents. It was getting all over everything. 
 
 `` Get a bandage! The first aid kit-'' 
 
 I tried to gesture with my free hand but found it locked almost magnetically to the ground that seconds before had been so slippery. My assistant slowly, disbelievingly, released his hand from his leg. The blood continued unabated. 
 
 `` You know, maybe it's the loss of blood or something, but this does n't actually hurt.'' Blood gushed out of him like a busted water main. He raised his leg in the air, shaking it. 
 
 `` How much blood is supposed to be inside a person?'' The cubical next to him was soaked. Some areas of the same dryboard gulped up the blood soaking it in completely, other sections the blood rained off and did n't attach itself at all. 
 
 `` I feel fine actually.'' He tested the words in his mouth, as if in a dream. `` Where is everyone?'' 
 
 It was n't a big lab, only four of us in total. A small team but we all worked well together. It was n't common for anyone to be especially late. I managed to hobble over to the window, three stories up overlooking the parking lot. The variations in light that I had assumed were the result of a ceiling fan transformed before my eyes into something far more horrible. 
 
 The sun rocketed through the sky. It would rise in the east in less than a second, roaring up through the clouds. It would change directions, stopping suddenly and whizzing off north past the horizon. The iris of a panicked eyeball, darting about in the sky. 
 
 I had never seen anything like it. The whole world looked like a kid flicking the lightswitch on and off again. It looked incredible. Cars on the highway expanded and contracted, grew legs and arms and fireworks. I could hear them before I could see them. 
 
 `` I think they're going to be a little bit late.'' I said before falling like a ghost through the floor. 
 
 
 
 ************************ 
 
 So here's what's motivating this story. 
 
 1. **Repeat-ability**. The scientific method is characterized by being able to verify things. There is an assumed consistency to reality that we can demonstrably share with each other. If this is relaxing into magic, then the very consistency of the universe is at stake. That's why when the same thing happens two different outcomes occur. Without the ability to verify an experiment, science would cease to be. 
 
 2. **What aspect of science should be shown to fall apart? ** I'm sure a scientist could come up with something more specific but I wanted to start with things falling because dropping an object is just such a classical start to the age of science. 
 
 3. **Why did it end where it did? ** A world without science would n't hold up at all. It would be a world without logic. A world *without* science would immediately collapse on itself. No gravity. No strong or weak nuclear forces. No consistent verifiable pattern to anything. It would just be a soup of chaos. It certainly could be a *magical* soup of chaos, but without science it necessarily could n't have form. I rewatched the entire Harry Potter film series pretty recently and really came to appreciate again the compelling nature of JKR's universe. Magic has to exist alongside science to make any kind of sense. It's a really cool way to modernize and conceptualize wand-waving dungeons and dragons style wizards living in the actual world.
