Derek and Ryan parted ways when they got to his street, leaving Ryan to travel the next couple of blocks to Lisa’s house on his own. He had left the PerSpectives off during their walk and took the opportunity now to slide them back on. There was one thing that he had been anticipating all day and wanted to take the short time before he arrived at Lisa’s house to check it out.
Sure enough, bouncing excitedly at the top of his display was the shopping cart, with a number 1 in the bottom corner. He focused on it and the cart turned smoothly in his direction as a sound like roller skates shot at his face. The cart came to a screeching halt right in front of him, causing Ryan to jerk back as if to dodge it, then the cart fell over, and he let out a soft chuckle as the contents began to spill out and seamlessly morph into the grid of a shopping window. Ryan had to stop walking because he couldn’t see anything, but the store window quickly became transparent enough for him to see and shifted to one side, so it wasn’t taking up his entire field of view.
Thanks to daily tasks and (mostly) his reading assignments he currently had 1,938 CP, but before he even thought of spending that on the store, he had the Silver Token to spend. He pulled up the second tier of the shopping list and started browsing through items. His first reaction to the store was the cost. These items were, to his sensibility, unaffordable. The cheapest he came across on the list was 1,800 CP. He had been intending to use his first batch of money to get something nice for his mother, like a new coat or take her out to eat somewhere nice. But just one of these items and he would be back to zero real quick. It made him appreciate the Silver Token he had.
The items in the store went from practical utility to almost unbelievable tech. There was the Sifting Technologies HaptaGlove, that could provide real tactile feedback when interacting with the mixed reality environment, providing another level of immersion into Perspective Vision. A Mapping Drone called “Eye in the Sky” that really caught Ryan’s eye. He focused on that one to get more detailed information.
“Eye in the Sky”
Mapping Drone
2,200 CP
A small, silent, collapsable quadcopter that syncs with your PerSpectives. Small enough to fit in your pocket, this little guy offers quite the bang for your buck. Equipped with patented 3D Mapping sensor technology.
This device will extend your PerSpectives sensory input by up to 500 meters (depending on field of view), providing real time rendering of the environment it is scouting. It comes complete with multi-spectrum scanning including, but not limited to thermal, infra-red, and astral resonance to help pick out those pesky anomalies before you run smack into them.
“If that isn’t a little used-car-salesmany I don’t know what is,” Ryan thought, but then remembered the add for the PerSpectives and decided that was about right. Even though he felt rather sold on that as his Token item, he minimized the window and continued browsing. There was a Dimensional Filter Lense, which reminded him of something that stranger had said about how the PerSpectives were tuned. The description made it sound like he could retune the perspectives and see things that he would otherwise be blind to.
Ryan’s foot landed wrong on an acorn in the middle of the sidewalk and almost slid out from under him. He managed to prevent himself from falling over by flailing wildly like a surfer in training. He glanced around to make sure no one was watching and then instructed the PerSpectives to tweak their opacity a little, so he could pay a little more attention to the real world while he walked and shopped. He kicked the acorn away and continued scrolling.
There was a pocket fabricator, kind of like a portable 3d printer, it could create a wide range of objects and could be fed by plastic scrap and metal he found on the street. One that he considered completely wild was the “Whisper Mantle” a Personal Cloaking Field that could render him as invisible as the PerSpective camo did for his headset. There was an Enhanced Reality Audio Implant, a mod for the PerSpectives that extended the range of the audio reception.
One thing on the list that disturbed him was the Q-Lixir; also called an Accelerant Shot, it was a single-use item that simulated the effects of the Chemical Q they had been speaking of in the class earlier. Ryan didn’t like the fact that he was being offered the chance to buy a drug through the app. The description claimed it was safer and had much milder side effects, but he dismissed it out of hand. If he couldn’t get the job done without drugs, he wasn’t about to try to do it with them. There were several other items on the list that were blurred out and no way he could tell to see why or how he might make them available.
The last item on the list that caught his eye was the Adaptive Clothing Upgrade. It was a smart fabric jacket that could change its color, generate pockets (for the cost of additional CP), regulate temperature, or even grow tough enough to protect against ballistic damage. That one was 1,900 CP and really tempted Ryan into getting it. There was an option when viewing the description to see a holographic projection of the items, and that one looked sweet.
Ryan thought about how belittling it was whenever Jeremy pointed out the difference in clothing between them, as a way of reminding everyone of the difference in their status. With a jacket like that he could really shut that jerk up. Then again, that would be a little flashy, and Ryan didn’t want to start standing out, not when he had a growing number of things he wanted to hide.
In the end he decided on using the Token for the drone, it was one of the most expensive items so it made the most sense to use the Token on it, and the utility it provided was the most immediately useful to him. He found that observation had generated the most tasks, and thereby had the potential to increase his CP gain, allowing him to ultimately purchase all the juicy items he wanted.
“Eye in the Sky” --2,200 CP
You do not have enough CP to purchase this item.
You have [1] Silver Store Token available.
Would you like to use Silver Store Token to purchase “Eye in the Sky”?
|Yes | No|
Ryan selected [Yes] and was given another message that said the item would be delivered within the next 24 hours. He considered wasting the rest of his money on another one of the alluring items in the store but forced himself to take a day to think about it before making any impulse purchases. With that, he closed the store and kept walking to Lisa’s house. It was almost five o’clock by the time he got there, and the sky was starting to turn that twilit tone that brought a calmness to the world. The wind had died down and the rustle of falling leaves was dampened.
On an intellectual level he knew Lisa had asked him over because of their shared interest and the fact that she had tangible advice to help him on this new path he had started to walk. But somewhere inside he had a hope that there was something more to it. After all, she could have just as easily asked to meet him at the library to discuss her theories. Standing in front of her house now, he told himself not to overthink it, took a steeling breath, and headed up to knock on the door.
“Well, well, if isn’t little Mr. Ryan Donnovan, as I live and breathe,” Ryan was pulled into a suffocating embrace as Lisa’s mom smothered him inside her ample bosom. She wore a green wool sweater which was rough against his face. Lisa’s mom was a head taller than him (and probably wider as well, he thought) and the strength of her hug combined with the potency of her perfume had Ryan concerned he wasn’t going to survive the encounter with her. He was glad he had chosen to remove his PerSpectives before coming into the house, they would probably have impaled his skull by that point. Luckily Lisa came to his rescue.
“Let him go, mother,” she said, tugging on his arm. Ryan’s eyes were beginning to water from the overwhelming cloud of perfume insinuating itself into their sockets via the tear ducts and he was grateful for the extrication operation from his friend.
“We just haven’t seen you in so long,” her mother complained. Lisa had lived in the house next door to Ryan’s when he’d first moved to District 7 with his mother. They had moved a few years later, and Ryan hadn’t been inside the house since then. He and Lisa stayed in contact through school, but generally they had been more friendly than friends since then. Derek’s easy outgoing nature really kept them in each other’s orbit, always making sure they had something to do outside of school. Lisa used to be rather flamboyant when they were young but had grown reclusive as she entered high school. Her pool of friends had slowly gone their own way, reduced to just Derek and Ryan.
Lisa finally extricated him from her mother’s doting and led him up the stairs to her room. He crossed the threshold with trepidatious apprehension. This was a girl’s room. This was a young woman’s room. And it was positively glowing with the light of a hundred candles flickering on every surface. It had a soft plushy carpet that tickled his toes—Lisa’s mom had a “no shoes in the house” policy, and he’d taken off his socks as well since they’d become damp while walking through the streets. There was a tall dresser along one wall and a shorter but longer dresser on another with a shield-shaped mirror on it. Most notably there was no bed in the room.
Lisa noticed Ryan’s curious expression and took a guess at what it was in regard to. “I don’t do beds. They hurt my back. Generally, I grab a pile of blankets and pillows from my closet and just curl up in the middle of the room.”
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“Ah, that’s…a thing I’m sure people do…” he said unconfidently. She laughed. Ryan took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and took a quick glance. He refolded it as if he were about to put it away, then paused and checked it one more time.
“You really are making a habit of that, aren’t you?” She noted.
“It’s just a silly game,” Ryan said dismissively.
“Anyway, I was thinking about how to introduce Densification to you,” she said, getting them back to the subject of his visit. “My family has a technique that might be useful. Depending on how your imagination works.” She sat at the edge of a large circular rug she had in the center of the room and gestured for him to do the same.
“Do imaginations not work the same for everyone?” Ryan asked, crossing his legs as he sat across from her. Lisa gave him a flat look.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the term ‘visual learner’ before?” she said.
“Of course. I just never really understood it. Isn’t everyone a visual learner? I see someone do something and I mimic it until I get it right.” Lisa let out a little groan.
“Think more internally, Ryan,” she said, but could see he wasn’t quite getting the point. “How about this, some people see images and colors vividly in their minds eye, others don’t see much at all but hear words or feel movements. Does that sound familiar?” Ryan thought about it for a moment before answering.
“I guess I can relate to all three,” he said. “I generally always hear my thoughts, but at the same time I’m seeing visualizations of what I’m thinking. Aso for the movement thing, that is a relatively new sensation I’ve been getting. Happened to me earlier today as a matter of fact.”
“Hmm, tell me about that,” Lisa said. She was absently tapping her fingers on her knee in a particular rhythm.
“We were doing a guided meditation, and I sort’ve imagined this orb inside my belly that was spinning sideways, and I almost thought if I were to grab onto it, I would get swept into its rotation.”
“Oh, that’s good, we call that Vestibular-motor Hallucinations,” Lisa said. “It sounds like my method will work for you in any case. I was taught this using an apple, but you can choose any object really. The simpler the better. Say, this pen,” she handed Ryan a silver pen. It was about five inches long and had no markings on it, not even a clip on the side, only a small button at the back to punch out the pen tip. “I want you to examine that pen, really examine it. Once you think you’ve got it, I want you to close your eyes and recreate that pen as vividly as you can.”
Ryan studied the pen for a long moment, taking in the way it refracted light along its smooth rounded surface. It was reflective, but the curve of the pen was so sharp that Ryan could comprehend no details of what it was reflecting. After he determined he’d memorized it visually he closed his eyes. The candlelight was so soft that it barely registered through his closed lids. All he saw was that blackness speckled with ever changing infinitely small pixels of light, rising and falling like inverse static in shades of yellow, red, and blue. Waves of rainbow light drifted across his vision. He focused on recreating the pen in his mind. He thought it would be easy, but the best he could get looked like what a negative exposure photo of the pen would have been.
Noticing the look of consternation on Ryan’s face Lisa took another guess at what he was thinking. “It’s harder to form the image than you thought it would be, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Ryan confirmed. “It’s like, I can get the outline of it, but the details won’t fill in properly.”
“Well, there is another trick that really helped me,” Lisa said. She pulled off a bracelet that had a key dangling from it. She’d had it for as long as Ryan could remember. It was an old, rust colored skeleton key, about an inch long.
“I remember asking you about that when we were kids,” Ryan recalled. “I asked what it opened, and you said you didn’t know yet.”
“Yeah, my grandmother said I would know some day,” she said, her eyes growing a bit detached as she thought back to some distant memory. “Well, it’s called an Eidolon. An item you keep on your person all the time, that you fiddle with when you’re thinking of other things, or think about when you’re not thinking about anything.” She looked at him in a way he thought of as interrogatively and asked, “do you have anything like that, Ryan?”
“No,” he lied compulsively, consciously ignoring the urge to pat his pocket. “I think this pen will work; I just need to keep at it. Mind if I borrow it for a bit?”
“Sure,” she said with a shrug. “It could be your new Eidolon. What are you going to write with it?” she asked with a smile.
“I’m not sure yet,” he said, mimicking her response when they were children. They both laughed.
“You’ll know what to write someday,” she said, echoing the words of her grandmother.
“Profound,” Ryan said sagely.
“Don’t you mock my grandmother, Ryan Donovan!” she scolded playfully.
“Who was mocking who?” he shot back which earned him a punch on the arm. Not a hard punch, but not a soft one either. They began to fall into an awkward silence when Lisa’s mom poked her head in.
“Will you be staying for dinner, Ryan?” she asked with a welcoming smile.
“Oh, I would love to, Mrs. Iona,” he said apologetically, “but I actually have to get home to prepare food for when my mom’s shift at work ends.”
“Such a shame,” she said. “Well, you better come visit us again, soon. And next time I won’t take no for an answer!” She left and Ryan stood.
“Thanks for the tips, Lisa,” he said. “I’ll practice tonight and let you know my progress tomorrow. Oh! I almost forgot,” Ryan pulled out his phone and opened the Sifting app. He tapped on the eBook and selected share. Since Lisa’s phone had already connected to his goggles he was able to select her from a list of users and send the book her way. “Enjoy the read, it’s kind of dry at times, but it has good info.”
“What about that third book on your list?” she asked.
“Oh, that one didn’t have an eBook available. It’s heavy, and really old. I’m surprised Mrs. Oaks even let me check it out of the library. If you want to come by some time to have a look that would be fine. There’re no afterschool programs tomorrow so Derek and I were going to hang out, if you want to come.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Sounds fun.” She walked him to the door, and they said goodbye. Lisa watched him walking down the street, pulling his goggles out of his bag before he got to the corner and sliding them onto his head before disappearing into the damp night.
“Well?” she heard her mother say. “Does he have it?” Lisa sighed and closed the door.
“I don’t know, mother, maybe he would have been willing to open up to me if you hadn’t’ve barged in on us like that,” Lisa began to trudge up the stairs, but stopped halfway. “He’s been fiddling with something in his pocket the last few days,” she said, not turning around. “Something he’s been keeping in his right pocket. When I started talking about the Eidolon, he made a point of not reaching for it.”
“Good girl.” Her mother said before returning to the kitchen. Lisa turned an angry look at her back, went up to her room, and slammed the door.
“Helios, call Derek,” Ryan said as he sauntered down the street, kicking a stone down the slick pavement. A light drizzle had begun again, and Ryan popped up his jacket collar to keep his neck from getting wet.
“Hey Ryan,” came Derek’s voice a moment later. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”
“Yeah, things got a little awkward, maybe I got scared. I made up a story about needing to make dinner for my mom and left a little abruptly.”
“That sounds juicy. Was there a little, you know, tension?” Derek made the last word sound sultry with his intonation.
“Eugh, no,” Ryan stated with a reluctant finality. “I just, got this weird vibe, like she was trying to get something out of me.” Derek’s tone changed, then.
“What do you mean?” he asked, all joking aside.
“I don’t know if I want to talk about it over the phone,” Ryan said. “I don’t think I want to talk about it at all.”
“So why did you call me then?” Derek asked.
“Because you told me to, dumbass!” Ryan said a little exasperated.
“Okay, okay, calm down sir.”
“I’m calmer than you are,” Ryan muttered, and Derek laughed.
“So did you learn anything useful while you were there?” he asked. Ryan scrunched up his face in thought.
“I don’t know, I guess I’ll find out tonight at let you know tomorrow.” With that the two said their goodbyes and Ryan headed home. When he got there, he looked at the empty kitchen and made a decision. He was going to turn his lie into the truth and make his mom something to eat for when she got home. She usually went straight to her second job after her evening shift and wouldn’t get home until two or three in the morning; so, he thought he’d make her a cake. He opened his cupboard to see what ingredients he had to work with, and his PerSpectives immediately started scanning the various items in its view. As if it could sense his intentions a list of possible recipes started to list on his display and, naturally, a new quest was created.
He settled on a simple white cake with whipped frosting and had a lot more fun than he thought he would, going through the motions. By the time he finished the icing, it was almost nine o’clock and he’d earned another 150 CP. He thought about taking another look at the Sifting Store, but a stifled yawn convinced him it was time to get ready for bed. He wanted to do a little more reading and then focus on practicing the densification trick that Lisa had shown him. He intended on using the orb in his pocket instead of the pen. It seemed to be his own secret “Eidolon” from the way Lisa described it, and he thought he could get farther trying to imagine it into being. If he could get the hang of it, he would try to see about projecting into the gate, though what he would do if he were successful, he had only a vague idea.
