Henry Clark often wondered how he’d landed the position he had at the school as the administrator of all things IT. He had no real idea what he wanted to do with himself after high school aside from the vague notion that he liked computers. He had got into a mild argument with his father one day, in which his dad had claimed that in the guard they allowed you to drink at the age of eighteen. Henry had yelled something along the lines of “you don’t believe in alcohol, father!” at his dad and found himself at the recruiter’s office the next day.

  He did his time in the service and then floated from one gig to the next until he’d landed the job at District Seven’s Elective High School. The previous administrator had a very lazy attitude towards the job and Henry threw himself at it, doing his best to improve and update the infrastructure of the whole school, running cables through the whole building and adding access points in strategic locations. He had network stacks in each wing on all three floors of the school providing each with multiple layers of redundancy.

  So, it wasn’t like the switch above the janitor’s closet on the east wing of the first floor was essential for the school’s network to operate. In fact, most people wouldn’t even notice there was an issue at all. But he was a bit of a perfectionist, and seeing the strange inconsistencies of the packets coming through that stack had his hackles on the rise.

  One of the perks of his job was that he had the veritable keys to the kingdom. Anywhere a device needed network connectivity he had access to, which just so happened to be everywhere. He was just about to slip his key into the door of the closet when Derek arrived with Ryan in tow. Both were heaving in lungfuls of air, so we were unable to speak for a few minutes.

  “Holy cow, Ryan! I just meant it would be a good learning opportunity, not that he needed to sprint his way down here.” He shook his head at the two boys and turned back to the door, lining his key up with the lock.

  “Wait, don’t!” Ryan stifled himself from shouting. Being out of breath assisted with that.

  “Don’t what?” Henry asked as he turned the handle and began opening the door. Both the boys winced, as if expecting something to explode. “Guys?” Henry gave them a quizzical expression. “You…Okay?”

  “What? Yeah, we’re just messing around,” Derek said dismissively. “What’s going on?” Mr. Clark shook his head, turning back to the closet.

  “Not sure yet. Some packet loss. Other packets have messed up headers. Some getting routed to the wrong device.” He had been flipping the light switch up and down while he spoke, looking up and around, but no illumination came. In the end he pulled out his flashlight and handed it to Derek. “You mind?” he asked.

  Derek clicked on the light and shone it up at the ceiling while Henry unfolded a step ladder he grabbed from the wall, climbed up, and started poking at the ceiling tile. A few white flakes fell on his shoulders before he got the tile up and out of the way. The roar of fans running at high speed filled the cramped room, bleeding out into the hallway. Ryan absently slipped his hand inside his pocket, tentatively reaching out to the orb. It didn’t shock him this time, but was warm to the touch. He was watching the various flashing green lights of the switch as Henry hooked up a diagnostic tool to one of the ports.

  After a moment Mr. Clark apparently got the data he needed and slid the tile back into place, muffling the fans and sprinkling a little more of the white dust everywhere. He looked towards the broom hanging on a rack next to where the step ladder had been, obviously thinking about cleaning up, took a look back at the device in his hand, shrugged, and put the step ladder back in place. He saw the amused judgement on Derek’s face and answered with a challenging “what?” They both chuckled as he closed the door.

  “Want to see the results?” he asked the two of them. Ryan looked at the time on his watch and shook his head sadly.

  “Sorry, I’ve got Biology next. Last time I missed a class it took me forever to catch up. Thanks though.” Derek gave him a fist bump, and they shared a look. Neither had any idea what they had been expecting, aside from the fact that they were expecting something. The lack of anything out of the ordinary left them both feeling a bit more let down than relieved.

  There were only two more periods to the day, both classes were a bit of a slog but also required Ryan to be directly involved in labs, so he didn’t have much time to let his extracurricular concerns impede on his thoughts. Instead, his mind just let them stew in the background until the final bell rang and the students were set free to their own devices for the rest of the evening. He and Derek had planned to meet up outside the school Library, where the Astral Academy Study Group met up every other day. They had about fifteen minutes before the club would start and took the time to discuss the non-event from earlier.

  “Look, I’m actually a little more worried that we didn’t see anything than if there had been some entity in there,” Derek said.

  “I know, right? Somehow, despite seeing for myself, the ominous has only increased.”

  “Well,” Derek continued. “The data Mr. Clark collected seemed to indicate some kind of electro-magnetic interference damaged the switches. We swapped them out and they’re running fine now.”

  “Hmm,” Ryan took on a thoughtful expression. “So, something definitely was there but isn’t anymore. Either it’s gone now, or it’s intermittent and will come back.”

  “I had another thought.” Derek said. “What if it’s still there, but the type of interference is no longer magnetic, but some other type of radiation that is invisible to the human eye. And what if we had some way to see those parts of the spectrum?” Ryan nodded as he understood what Derek was getting at.

  “You want me to try and check with the PerSpectives? See if they detect anything?”

  “Exactly,” Derek said. “We can try it now, if you want, or wait until after the meeting.”

  “Won’t the door be locked?” Ryan asked.

  “You didn’t notice? Mr. Clark totally forgot to lock it.”

  “Forgot, huh?” Ryan threw up air quotes at the word. “Either way, let’s wait until after,” Ryan said. “I’m already late trying to get into the club, I don’t want to show up late on the day I’m trying to join late.” Derek rolled his eyes at Ryan’s convoluted sentence, and they headed into the Library.

  Mr. Fritzinski, the teacher running the after-school program, turned out to be completely ok with Ryan joining. He was a bit of an enigmatic figure, with wild locks of hair jutting out in odd and contradictory directions, like he’d stuck his tongue into an electrical socket and didn’t bother to pat his hair back down afterward. Which sort of jived with his position as the AP Physics teacher. His mannerisms, gestures, and speech patterns all seemed to follow that theme, as being one who was recently—or about to be—struck by lightning. He was funny, serious and above all intense.

  To Ryan’s surprise, the group began with a guided meditation exercise. Derek had always been so vocally opposed to all things spiritual, so Ryan was thrown off by him being involved in a practice that was originally designed to help humans touch the divine. In his mind the group would be more focused on the technical aspects involved in the Astral Academy and knowledge necessary to pass the entrance exam. The meditation technique was new to him but was akin to the methods he’d been practicing recently, so it didn’t take him long to slip into the meditative mindset.

  There were no rules on posture for this meditation, the students just needed to be relaxed and try to focus on the teacher’s words. There were chairs, couches, pillows and mats. Ryan sat in the lotus position on one of the latter, legs crossed and hands in his lap, one cupped under the other. The words of the instructor were forming an image in his mind.

  The lights were dimmed in the library as Mr. Fritzinski began leading the meditation. “Calm your mind and focus on your breath,” he began. “Your breath is the center of your being. Your breath is the source of life. Imagine the vital energy of the world entering in through your lungs as green vapor. Hold that breath and let the light flow through your body. At the same time imagine the negative energy within your body as a red light that you are collecting back into your lungs. As you exhale, release the negative and inhale the positive. Your thoughts may rise and fall, but they are not who you are. Let them come and go as they will, but do not attach yourself to them. You are your breath; your breath is your center.” The meditation went on in this vein, but in time Ryan was no longer listening to the man, for he had sensed something within himself while imagining the energy flow. A core in his abdomen. An orb of light that was spinning sideways. He felt like he could spin with it too, if he grabbed onto it.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The lights came back up to full brightness, jerking him from that state. He blinked wide eyed, forgetting where he was for a moment. Derek gave him a concerned look, but Ryan shook his head, indicating he was ok. They formed a circle of chairs and Mr. Fritzinski began the next activity, which was a sort of hybrid lecture and rapid fire quiz session.

  “What is the purpose of the Ministry of Integrity?” he asked. “Ms. Samson?”

  “To maintain the boundary between our world and the Astral,” said the girl a few seats to Ryan’s left. She spoke as if she’d memorized the answer. “It was founded in the year 2235 in response to the events of the Crisis.”

  “And what were the events of the Crisis?” he asked, gesturing to another student. “Mr. Todd?”

  “The ah, the ah,” began the boy with a bit of a stutter before getting his sentence in order, at which point Ryan—along with the rest of the class—was treated to a deluge of words. “The rapid degeneration of reality due to conflicting paradigms. The terrorist Tomas Tiresias broke the layer that kept the Astral world separated from the Real world, causing the two dimensions to overlap in a—uh—chaotic and devastating fashion. Even after the barrier was restored, through the efforts of the Ministry, Incursions continued to occur for years until the membrane was able to be healed.”

  “Always a pleasure Todd,” the teacher nodded at the long-winded explanation and the class chuckled. “So, what was the method they came up with to heal the rifts?” He asked the room. Another student took it upon themselves to answer. Ryan thought her name was Janice, but he didn’t have any classes with her, so he wasn’t sure.

  “The first Astral Traveler teams were formed to go into the Astral and repair the damage from the other side,” she said.

  “Now, in ideal circumstances, the Astral Travelers will be able to put themselves in the state necessary to project themselves into the Astral. Unfortunately, in their line of work, situations are rarely ideal. When time is of the essence, what are their options? Ms. Rice?” A girl across the circle from Ryan and Derek answered.

  “There is the Chemical Q, that can be used to induce the state,” she said.

  “Yes,” the instructor concurred. “But it comes with heavy consequences. Once the Traveler returns to their physical form, they are unable to enter the state again without some serious rest and relaxation. There are other, less drastic methods, Mr. Hito?” This time a boy next to Ryan answered.

  “Brainwave entrainment can induce the desired state,” he said. “Though it won’t work as quickly and is subject to interference if a nearby fissure is unstable.”

  “Very good. Why is it important to practice meditation?” This time he looked directly at Ryan. “Mr. Donovan?”

  “Well,” suddenly very self-aware, Ryan could feel the blush rising up his neck and into his cheeks. He pulled knowledge from his recent reading assignments. “The act of regularly tuning the mind to the meditative state will eventually make all states meditative,” he quoted from Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming. To his surprise, Mr. Fritzinski caught on to that fact.

  “Ah, a reader of Gupta Rama, huh? Where has you friend been hiding, Mr. Petersen?”

  “In a Library usually,” Derek muttered. “This one just doesn’t have enough books for his taste.” The group laughed, but it was a comfortable laugh that made Ryan feel welcome and among friends. A feeling he rarely, if ever, experienced in large groups. He smiled, and the rapid-fire questions continued. He learned a lot about the Astral Traveler program of the Ministry that he hadn’t known and was glad he’d accepted Derek’s offer to join them. Ryan had never really set his sights on what he would do after High School, but maybe following Derek to the Astral Academy wasn’t entirely out of the question.

  After the club wrapped up, Derek and Ryan headed to their lockers to grab their stuff, then headed to the Janitor’s closet to try their experiment. Derek acted as lookout while Ryan extracted the PerSpectives from the bottom of his bag. He put them on and felt a sense of security as the familiar weight of them pressed against his head. The display initialized and a system message appeared.

  Welcome Back Aitherios

  30XP Earned for Lessons Learned

  Continue to Strive for Academic Excellence!

  “Thanks, Helios. Spying on me from my backpack now?” Ryan joked. The system stuttered slightly, and the HUD Updated.

  Helios

  System AI

  HP: 20/50

  Ryan sighed and shook his head. “Anyway,” he said, tentatively reaching for the handle to the closet door. Sure enough, it was still unlocked, and the door opened smoothly. Inside, it looked the same as it had earlier. “Helios,” Ryan prompted. “Can we do a spectral analysis?”

  Engaging Spectral Analysis

  Anomaly detected.

  Analyzing…

  WARNING!

  Proto-Astral Gate Detected

  Time until Rift forms 34:22:13

  The timer drifted up under the task bar of his display, counting down and flashing red.

  New Task:

  Close the Gate

  An Incursion Event is Immanent

  Objective: Repair the Locus before the Timer Runs Out

  This is an Event Quest and must be completed within the specified timeframe.

  Reward: One Gold Store Token

  Penalty for Failure: Astral Incursion

  “Ok, so this isn’t good,” Ryan said to Derek after reading the alarming system messages. “It’s actually exactly what I was afraid of. There’s a fissure forming inside this closet. The PerSpectives say it will open in about 34 hours. Also,” Ryan lifted up the goggles and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Apparently I have a new quest to fix it myself.”

  “What?” Derek said. “Wait, What? What?!”

  “Yeah, I don’t know if those are rhetorical, or you need me to repeat anything I just said?”

  “No, yeah, shut up,” Derek turned to start pacing. “What are you going to do?”

  “What am I going to do?” Ryan parroted incredulously. “We need to tell the Ministry of Integrity, of course!”

  “Think about it Ryan. How do we know about the fissure? Because you had a dream, and were able confirm it with the suspiciously recalled AR goggles that you won from an essay writing contest that you officially didn’t win? You’ll be taken away in an unmarked vehicle, never to be seen or heard from again!”

  “You’re being a little paranoid, Derek,” Ryan admonished.

  “Am I? Ryan? Have you ever seen one of those vehicles before?” Ryan thought about the vehicle he’d seen the other day, and about the mysterious stranger, and about the orb that was starting to feel like it was burning a hole in his pants pocket.

  “Ok,” he admitted reluctantly. “You might have a point. But what are we gonna do then?”

  “This is going to sound crazy, but I think you should try to fix it,” Derek said.

  “Uhm, I don’t know the first thing about how to do that,” Ryan said.

  “Don’t you though? What do you think that headset has been training you for all this time? The reading assignments. The lucid dreaming. The astral projection?” Ryan didn’t have anything to say to that, so Derek continued. “I think you should take Lisa up on her offer, learn what you can about that densifying stuff and give it a shot. We’ve got almost three days, so if it doesn’t work tonight, we’ll have all day tomorrow to figure out how to inform the Ministry anonymously.”

  Ryan sighed. “This is kind of a big deal, man,” he said. “I guess I’ll try, but if I couldn’t make it more than a few feet from my body last night, I don’t know how I’m supposed to project several blocks to get all the way over here.” Derek reluctantly acceded the point with a nod.

  “Well, you’ve got a date with Lisa tonight anyway, so see how that goes, and we can talk after.”

  “It’s not a date,” Ryan blushed, momentarily forgetting the somewhat dire circumstances.

  “Sure, bud,” Derek said. “She never invited me over before.”

  As they turned to head back down the hall, Jeremy Witkins quickly ducked into a nearby classroom. He had been leaving the showers after practice when he heard their voices and couldn’t fight the urge to do a little snooping. He opened an app on his phone called Scribble Tattle, which he’d synced with his Smart Paper. The paper he’d given Ryan earlier had a transcription mode enabled which would record everything it heard and transmit it to his app. He didn’t understand most of what they were on about, but when he read what Derek said about the goggles his heart went up in his throat. How had that cheating little imposter gotten his hands on the grand prize. Jeremy had won that contest; everyone saw the email. Besides, the Sifting Corporation had issued a recall on the goggles. Something wasn’t right with this, he thought, and was determined to get to the bottom of it.