“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.”

“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.