That night Ryan lay supine on his bed, breathing in a slow, controlled manner. On his nightstand, beside his alarm clock, were the PerSpectives resting on their cradle. He had been reading the first of his three books all afternoon and into the evening and had planned on getting into the last one by TetraLex but was beset by a weariness of mind. The leather-bound tome lay on the ground beside his bed, looking ancient and daunting. Between his fingers, Ryan was absently rolling the faintly glowing orb he’d taken from the stranger earlier that day while he tried to focus solely on his breathing and nothing else.

  He was attempting one of the exercises from Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming, the goal of which was to initiate a hypnogogic state, which apparently was an essential step in the process of entering the dream state while still conscious. So far, he had been unsuccessful at the first step, which was to clear his mind. Thoughts just kept intruding. He would try to follow the instructions, to let them come and go on their own, but he kept finding himself caught up in one train of thought or other.

  He had been looking forward to seeing his mother that evening, to boast a little about his achievements so far, and generally share his excitement with her. He’d even purchased some flowers for her on his way home with his hard-won CP. Unfortunately, he’d missed her by the time he got there, only finding a note saying she was going to pick up a second shift, and that she’d left food for him to heat up in the fridge. He’d taken the time to tidy up the kitchen for her, unprompted by his goggles, and got back to reading; but even that took some time to take off as his thoughts kept wandering back to how much his mother was working herself to the bone for him. He rarely saw her anymore, and the more he thought about it the more he realized how little they had ever spent time together, especially since moving away from InnerCity.

  There you go again, getting lost in your thoughts. Try it again. Breathe in slow, breathe out slow. The Breath is the only thing in this moment. There is nothing else. Breathe in, breathe out. As he worked on his breathing he started to relax, from his toes up to his head, and before he knew it, sleep had come to claim him. He relaxed his grip on the orb, and it rolled out from under his covers, off the bed, and landed atop the old leather book. It began to hum.

  Ryan was walking down an infinite staircase towards a white sandy beach in the darkness of night. He could hardly see the steps in front of them. They felt like they were made out of a pebbly concrete, which pressed into the bare soles of his feet. He kept one hand on a metal rail to steady himself as he made his way down towards the ocean. He looked out at the dark expanse of the sea, which seemed to be roiling with white crested waves. He sensed something powerful, tugging at him from somewhere inside his belly, way out there beyond where light could reach. As he descended the steps became slick with moisture, feeling cold and slippery against the bare skin of his feet. Lightning cracked across the sky, lighting up the underside of the dark clouds that blotted out the distant horizon.

  As Ryan reached the bottom of the stairwell and made to step onto the sand, he found himself standing in the hallway of his school, eerily empty. He turned around to see the hallway stretching out behind him, longer than it should have. He took a step forward and the bright fluorescent lights above him flickered. He took another step, and they flickered again. Ryan noticed a ripple in the air, like the distortion from heat waves, but emanating out from a location like ripples on a placid lake. He headed towards the epicenter of the distortions, the lights flickering with each step, until he found himself standing in front of a Janitors closet. Now the waves were hitting him rapidly, passing through him with rhythmic vibrations, a sense of urgency mounting in his chest. He reached for the handle on the door when—

  “Ouch! What the—ooow,” Ryan jerked awake to the sight of his mother sitting on his bed, holding her toe and wincing in pain.

  “Mom?” he said in a confused voice.

  “I thought you cleaned up your room,” she said accusatorily.

  “I... did...” he said, sitting up and looking over the side of his bed. The True Firmament had barely moved from where his mother had apparently slammed her toe into it. “Sorry mom, I was planning to read that but fell asleep before I got around to it. What are you doing in here?”

  His mother sighed and reached out to tussle his hair. “We don’t see each other much these days,” she said. “I just wanted to give you a kiss goodnight.” Ryan looked over at his alarm clock, which showed it was nearly four in the morning.

  “Not really night anymore,” he said.

  “Well, sorry honey, I’ll let you get back to sleep. Don’t leave books on the floor, its disrespectful.” She reached down to pick up the book, first with one hand, then with a frown she strained with two hands to lift it. “What is this thing made out of, metal?” she said, dropping it onto his nightstand next to his PerSpectives.

  “I don’t think I’ll be getting anymore sleep ‘tonight,’ Mom,” Ryan said, throwing up air quotes. She smiled and gave him a light shove.

  “So, how are they?” she asked, motioning towards the Goggles.

  “Let have breakfast, and I’ll tell you all about them,” Ryan said, swinging his legs off the bed.

  An hour and a half later Ryan was cleaning off the skillet he’d used to fry up the eggs and bacon, his mother now sound asleep in her room. His heavy heart from the night before now felt elated, having had an opportunity to connect with his mother and share the joys of his yesterday. It had been a while since they’d had the chance to talk about anything, so being able to have some time, just the two of them, to connect and catch up, felt good. He had avoided telling her about the subjects of his reading assignments. Something about the way the librarian had reacted gave him pause.

  “What am I doing?” he asked the empty kitchen. “I could be earning CP for this I bet.” It was too late, he was already drying the last dish and might as well put it away. After placing the skillet inside the cupboard, he trudged back upstairs. He stared at his unmade bed, looked at the book and the goggles. He was forgetting something. Something important.

  Ryan patted his pockets, his eyes went wide, searching about the room frantically. Where was it? It must have rolled under something. Ryan got on all fours, searching along the ground, under his bed, under his nightstand. Nothing. He sat up in a crouch, looking up at his PerSpectives. They had a scanning feature. He took them from the cradle and slid them over his head. A group of system windows were waiting for him which he shuffled aside with a flick of his eyes.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Helios, can you help me find the marble from yesterday? I seem to have misplaced it.”

  Checking environment for Concentrated Firmament.

  In Ryan’s vision he saw a bright laser-like line shoot out from his forehead and sweep across the room. It narrowed down under his nightstand and started flashing.

  “But I checked there!” Ryan complained. He crouched back down, following the indicator in his vision. The small marble sized orb had rolled behind one of the nightstands legs, just out of view. He reached his hand in and grabbed it, letting out a slow breath. “I don’t know why, but I’m pretty sure it’s important I don’t lose you. He set it gently on his nightstand so it wouldn’t roll away and went to grab some pants from his clean clothes pile, only to be reminded that he’d cleaned his room yesterday and had to go to his dresser drawer to get a pair.

  That reminded him of the system messages and notifications that had been in his vision. They were still waiting for him to check them somewhere in the periphery of his view. He was able to drag them back over with a concentrated glance.

  Sub-Task Clean up Kitchen Complete

  Reward: 30 CP

  10 XP

  Sub-Task Make Breakfast for Mom Complete

  Reward: 50 CP

  15 XP

  Hidden Quest

  Descend the Staircase Complete

  Reward: ???

  100 XP

  Ryan had been casually swiping away at the sub-task messages—unsure how he felt about how much the headset was able to track his activities, especially when he wasn’t even in the same room as it, but still mildly satisfied with the rewards—but when he came across that last message he froze. Disjointed images of his dream came back to him, the look of the dark ocean, the tactile feel of the steps on his bare feet, and the hallway at school. His subtle sense of unease exploded into full on anxiety. How did the headset know what he was dreaming about? He pulled the device from his head and stared at it in his hands. It looked like a lifeless pair of exquisitely designed technology. There wasn’t a sinister line in its design. Then what was with the pit in his stomach?

  A glint of light caught his attention, and he looked up to see the Concentrated Firmament had begun to pulsate more insistently than it had before. He reached down to feel his radial pulse on his wrist and sure enough the orb was synchronized with his heartbeat. Ryan closed his eyes and slowly took a deep breath, letting his anxiety flow out of him with the exhale. The storm of worry within him died down. He looked up and the orb had also quieted. After a moment’s hesitation, he put the goggles back on.

  “Helios, can the PerSpectives see my dreams?” he asked the foremost question on his mind.

  Dream recording technology is disabled by admin.

  “Disabled by admin…” Ryan repeated, noting that the system didn’t really answer his question. “Helios, can I have more details on the ‘Hidden Quest’ I just completed?”

  Opening Quest Log

  A list of all the tasks and quests Ryan had completed appeared on the screen; he focused in on the third from last entry, Descend the Staircase, and a new system window popped up.

  Hidden Quest

  Descend the Staircase

  Objective: Enter a dream state by stepping down the Staircase. Extra points for making it to the beach.

  Reward: ???

  “Helios,” Ryan croaked before clearing his throat and trying again. “Helios, how can I have completed the Hidden Quest if dream recording is disabled?”

  Warning, hydration level low, salivary glands are not producing enough moisture.

  New Task:

  Drink a Glass of Water

  Reward: 1 CP

  Ryan’s eyes scrunched up in a look of suspicion, but he also agreed he needed water, so he accepted the task and went downstairs. He also noted his daily task of Clean Up the Trash had been reset to 0/10 and had automatically appeared on the task counter in his HUD. He drank his glass of water and begrudgingly accepted his meager reward. It seemed the interface was intent on being dodgy with answering his questions.

  “I bet Derek would have an idea about this one,” Ryan thought. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell his friends about PerSpectives, but something about the way they had been behaving made him want to tell someone, and that someone definitely wasn’t his mother. Ryan looked at the time, it was almost seven o’clock, too early to call his friend up. They were planning to meet at the park later in the morning anyway, so Ryan went back up to his room to continue his reading.

  When he got up to his room, he saw the book by TetraLex sitting on his nightstand. As a general rule, Ryan didn’t read more than one book at a time. It was something he determined didn’t work for him early on in high school when he’d become a reading fanatic, he’d gotten up to four books at once and then started conflating which page he was on and which character did what in which book. It was a whole mess. So aside from school assignments that required it he tried to read a book from start to finish before moving onto the next.

  Still, he was curious about the contents of that hefty tome, and it couldn’t hurt to just peruse it a bit, he thought to himself. He picked up the book and moved to his desk in the corner, set it on the surface and turned on his reading light. He opened it up. The first page was blank textured parchment. The next was probably supposed to be the title, but to Ryan’s eyes it looked like complete gibberish. Pretty, curly, masterfully handwritten gibberish. Confused he turned to the next page, and the next, and then flipped to the center of the book. None of it was legible.

  “Helios, is this book written in some kind of cypher?”

  Analysis of text is inconclusive.

  No known language or cypher detected.

  “Well, we know the title of the book is The True Firmament. Can you use that information to at least decode the title page?”

  Attempting to decode Title Page with known quantities.

  An image of the Title Page Ryan had opened to earlier popped up in a new window, to the left of it another window popped up with the title The True Firmament and the author TetraLex. The system began trying to parse the letters, but the way they flowed together in an almost cursive way made it difficult to distinguish where one character ended and another began. For the first time since he’d put the headset on, he heard and felt the fan turn on, blowing hot air up into his hair. The interface was always smooth, but now it was starting to stutter as the framerate noticeably dropped. And then, without warning, everything went black. Ryan made to remove the headset but instantly pulled his fingers away with a start. It burned.