The distant spires of the city are visible long before we reach it. However, in only a few short hours, I find myself at the Great Gate of Victoria, the city’s full splendor spread out before me.

This is the fabled White City of Melbourne. It is a symbol of mankind’s perseverance and ingenuity. Erected on the black-glass plains of war-torn Australia, it was the seat from which the restoration of the continent was achieved. And this restoration, this healing of a scarred land, was not done through magic. Instead of relying on power granted by fickle fate, the rulers of Australia turned to ancient and forbidden knowledge of technology. Through these “heretical methods,” life was returned to that which had been thought to be destroyed forever. Melbourne is hope: In five hundred years of post-magical history, it is the only major city never once to have fallen. And at its heart is the man who may well turn out to be the savior of all humanity: Michael Turing.

I am brought straight-away to the Tower of the Technocrats, the squad which captured me now making a perimeter around me, acting as both prisoner escort and security detail–for to be an unidentified and obviously foreign magician in Melbourne is a dangerous thing. I do not begrudge them that. After all, that attitude is largely responsible for unparalleled permanence.

We finally reach the Tower. It stands at Melbourne’s center, dwarfing even the otherwise impressive buildings nearby.

The Corporal says something into her helmet mic and the doors slide open. On her signal, I step forward into the Tower and begin the ascent to my latest blasphemy.