"I say it would be wrong," began Theodulfr, "to refer to what we do, the way we live, all this, using the term 'magic.' ""And I ask," Theosophia replied smoothly, "what better word could there be?"
Theo froze. When he'd decided to do this again, to let two opposite instances of himself debate the question on which he'd spent months of fruitless frustration, he'd planned they'd each take the other side than they now apparently were.
"When people say magic, what, in all the history of the term, have they used it to mean?" Theosophia was already presenting his case, so Theo hurried to catch up with his notes. "Formulas of power over the universe. The ability to make one's environment, in every element and detail of it, conform to one's will. Well, we have that, don't we? If you went to any madji in ancient Persia, any post-scholastic alchemist in medieval Europe, any ritual master in imperial China, and explained to them the everyday circumstances of our lives, what would they call it, other than magic?"
Theodulfr raised an impatient hand. By reflex, Theo made a checkmark on the edge of his page of notes, to keep the queue, before he reminded himself there were only two in this discussion anyway.
"What were the ultimate goals of magic, in any practice or fantasy story?" Theosophia continued. "For what was the philosopher's stone sought? Immortality and wealth. Well, we no longer age, we no longer die. And we no longer have any scarcity of anything, so wealth is a long-ago-solved problem. The philosopher's stone is real: we live within it. We all know that we all know the saying: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
"Failure to distinguish between two things," Theodulfr said, "does not imply that those things are the same."
Apparently it was his turn now.
"Magic must, by definition, be an overriding of the material universe by some supernatural force. Whatever else magic is," Theodulfr gestured much more than Theosophia when he talked, "it has to do the impossible. Snapping your fingers to produce a flame is magic, using a lighter is not. Levitating into the air is magic, boarding an airplane is not. Living forever and being able to shape the world around you to your will is magic, having your mind scanned and uploaded into a computer simulation whose controls you can access is not. There's a qualitative difference: magic is numinous, awe-inspiring, wondrous. The mere fact we're even discussing the question of whether the mundane minutiae of our life counts as magic is proof that they don't. Magic is, by definition, mutually exclusive with mundane minutiae."
"That's how a thing is done, how it works." Theo recognized the rhetorical turn Theosophia was about to use, had used it himself often enough. "Not what it is."
"And next you're going to say: Just because the sky is blue by different means than a blueberry is blue." Theodulfr snorted the way Theo had learned to use a wolf's snout to snort. "or indeed the way some blue object in the System is blue, does not mean the sky is therefore not blue. That's a question of how blue works, not what blue is. We all know that one."
"Very well, then instead I'll say," Theosophia changed lines of attack, "you say magic has to do the impossible. What does impossible mean, here? If none of what we're doing is magic, then magic doesn't exist, cannot exist, because there is no 'the impossible' left for it to do!"
"It could do all the things we do in here," Theodulf parried and riposted, "in the physical world."
Apparently, Theo noted, his forks shared his refusal to say 'phys-side.' He doubted it would prove relevant.
"Sufficiently Advanced" by @RobMacWolf will appear in Clade — A Post-Self Anthology, out August 1 with pre-orders coming soon!