I had a dream there was a new series of novels popular with teenage girls, basically think Harry Potter crossed with a high school romance anime. At a magic school strongly segregated between boys and girls, where romance was forbidden, the mind control spells were thrown left and right - girls who seemed to have crushes on a boy would - plot twist! - have been under the influence of a spell from that boy, or a mean girl, or even a best friend playing matchmaker.

And there was something very, supernaturally wrong about it all. While there was a book in the novels that had the mind-altering properties of Tom Riddle's Diary, it was like a blueprint or internal algorithm because the novels themselves were having that effect on the populace, harnessing people's psychic potential to bring the world in those books to reality, much like the movie In the Mouth of Madness http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113409.....ef\_=fn\_al\_tt\_6

Me and my Dad were security guards, me an apprentice following in his footsteps while he was nearing retirement, at a university campus. This place was becoming the epicenter of the novels' psychic effect. Book 6 had recently come out, and the impact on culture made Harry Potter look small in comparison, and we weren't about to wait and see what Book 7 would do.

Because in the heart of campus, the dean of the university had to lock off a section of a building. It was supposed to be a small wing, but inside, one could see teenage girls in short skirts moving behind the glass... in a castle. The magic school in the book was starting to materialize, but at the moment, it was like an appendix sticking out of our universe, and maybe, just maybe, we could find a way to nip it in the bud.

Inside, it had the unreality of a Star Trek Holodeck program - characters treating us like a teenage boy and girl even though we clearly weren't. Everyone was trapped in the school and ok with it - the outside world hadn't been written by the author, therefore it didn't exists in their reality. New students just popped into existence as they walked through the front door.

We knew from the books what hazards to avoid - stare at the little statue inside the arched window of the girl's common room and you'd be in a daze. Read the popular book passing from student to student and it will take over your mind. Smell a love potion and you'll submit to its creator. It was easy to let your guard down, and buy into the happy vibes of the place little by little. Everything was full of golden sunshine streaming and giggles, yet what were effectively non-consentual relationships everywhere like candy for kids.

It was a near thing.

Somehow, one of the mean girls hypnotised my dad, and he began acting exactly as a teenage girl, in love with certain others. Nothing in the books said how to undo that particular spell, though I needed to figure out who did it first. Before it was too late.

I was next. We were all next.