Free Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane

Be themselves think that this is something new…
    He picked up the manual and flipped it open again, pausing briefly to look at the Wizard’s Oath, all by itself in a block of text in the middle of its page. Just after that came a section containing your own personal data—especially about the way the “long version” of your name looked in the Speech at the moment, information that was vital for doing spells. After that normally came the sections on spell writing, specialized vocabulary in the Speech, and so on. But now, before those sections, Kit’s manual contained a “notifications” area nearly a quarter inch thick. Every page of it was full of bold headings and blocks of text that rewrote themselves as you read them, constantly updating with real-time information from the physical universe. He glanced down at one heading: METEOROLOGICAL INTERVENTION:
    Diversion of tropical disturbance/incipient cyclone “Pewa” (NOAA) aka CP102010 (JTWC) approved JD 2455307.2625. Cyclone centerpoint latitude: 21:11:15N, longitude 141:55:30E, SSE of Iwo Jima. Storm heat energy release presently holding at only 1.6 × 1012 watts/day, making it ideal for “bounce-away” intervention within thirty hours (cutoff time/latest implementation 2455312.8900). Intervention team is scouting for available backup wizards with past experience in tropical-latitude hydro and meteo work (usual SE Asia specs on assignment to master [interim] crisis evaluation group Earth). Seniors are urgently requested to check their local talent for availability.
    Kit shook his head, for this was just one small problem on a planet full of them. On all the pages that followed were status reports on more interventions of every kind. Wizards all over the world were doing spells for everything, from melting back an overaggressive glacier to stopping a small southeast Asian “bush war” from breaking out by giving all the potential combatants a brief, profound case of amnesia. The fighters in question had instantly forgotten what they’d come for; by the time the spell wore off, all of them had wandered hours and miles away from the battlefield, and were universally so freaked out that they had no desire to find their way back..
    Sweet, Kit thought, reading that précis with admiration. And smart. But that spell must have really cost the wizards. The psychotropic wizardries are so tough to work.
    The trouble was that the smart people who thought up that solution were the very ones whose expertise the Earth would shortly be losing—the typical adult wizards who worked the spells that kept Life going, or stopped bad things from happening, unnoticed by anyone but other wizards, their Seniors, and the Powers That Be. It’s going to be us carrying the weight now. And either doing what the real Seniors have been doing… or screwing it up.
    Kit made himself breathe. Don’t get too hung up on how big it looks, he thought. Take it a piece at a time. That has to be what Tom and Carl did. They weren’t born Seniors.
    Ponch jumped up on the bed and walked up to just behind Kit, flopping down. The springs creaked under them both as he settled himself with his head over Kit’s shoulder. Kit turned over a few more pages, looking at team wizardries going on all over the planet. There are so many things happening, Ponch said, looking down at the pages.
    Kit turned his head to look at Ponch in some surprise. “Can you read this?”
    I see things happening on the page there, Ponch said. Those marks—when I look at them, I see the ice melting. Is that reading?
    “Maybe not exactly the way I understand it,” Kit said, “but, yeah, I think so.” He turned another page.
    Look at all the spells. Everybody’s so busy.
    “This is what the wizardly world’s like every day,” Kit said. “And for us, it’s about to get a lot busier than this if we’re going to solve this problem.”
    What if you can’t?
    It was a thought that had been coming up for Kit about every ten