Raccoon dashed outside with Ferret hot on his tail. He knew what I knew about creating and likely more but he was still excited. Having knowledge of something wasn’t the same as doing it yourself which is probably why he was so hyper.

Ellen stood up and stretched out a hand toward me.

I took it and she helped me outside. I could walk but every few steps a wave of fatigue put stress on my body making it hard for me to move.

Was it my avatar interpreting physical fatigue from the real world? How badly did I mess up my brain by using the Chronofield? Perhaps acquiring such a large amount of information in such a short period of time wasn’t healthy for my brain. I'd have to either limit the data I consumed down there or see if Raccoon could help me modify it so I could use it that way.

The outside was the same as it was before. Our sphere was the only thing around. What seemed like miles of open grassland spread out before us. It was a blank canvas ready for greater things.

“Raccoon, do you know my gestures?” I asked.

He spun and faced me. “Your gestures- Oh… yeah…” He lowered himself to the ground as if his spunk had been destroyed.

“You don't have to make what I want right now,” I said. See moms, I can be patient.

His ears sprung to life, a toothy grin spread across his muzzle. “Really?”

I nodded. “Ellen, do you still have edit access? Can you make a chair so you don't have to hold me up?”

“I can make you a chair!” Raccoon said.

A basic wooden stool plopped down before me. It didn't look particularly comfortable to sit on.

“Could you make something more comfortable for her?” Ellen asked. “So she can relax while watching you make things.”

The chair twisted and snapped as its legs split from its center. It floated there for a moment and shafts of wood sprouted from the dangling pieces connecting them together. The flat of the stool spread out as cotton sprouted along its base and cloth covered it.

It merged into a backless chair that seemed well put together but not something I would call comfortable. I wasn't going to complain so long as it didn't hurt when I sat down. The newly formed piece of furniture settled on the ground.

Ellen helped me onto it. There wasn't any pain so I gave Raccoon a thumbs up.

What happened next was intense.

Raccoon glanced at me with a wry smile.

A flash of light burst from above enveloping everything around us before pausing.

Ellen stood next to me unmoving bathed in white.

This is how you properly use the Chronofield, he said.

Ferret glanced at the sky. What are you do—

A flood of memories played in the sky before me as if I were in an old-school movie theater.

Zix and I practiced Narrative Design together, along with several other snippets of me and my parents. Birthdays, flickering images of the places we’d traveled to. If felt as if I shouldn’t be able to retain all of the information he shared but they were a part of me.

He pulled more out and showcased each one briefly. I was able to slow everything down and examine them in more detail. I’d lived through those moments but it was strange being able to see them in such detail. It was similar to when Kumo showed me Fen Li’s memories.

The light faded as Ellen raised a hand to block it. She screeched. “A little warning before you make flashes like that.”

You’re not supposed to show humans that, Ferret said.

Raccoon leapt onto my lap. She already knows about it. Kumo did much worse, he showed her other people's memories.

Ferret gasped. He did?

Was the emotion sharing him too? I asked.

If it was, it meant the doctors were squabbling over things beyond their control.

Raccoon and Ferret shared a look.

Spoilers, Raccoon said with a grin.

I squinted at him. Would Raccoon let people waste their time if he could stop it? Beyond that, how were all of the people streaming the experience able to share it?

There was definitely something there. I decided the doctors weren't chasing ghosts, not if Raccoon was being so secretive about it.

Playing the ‘wait and see’ game, it was.

“Let's see what you can make,” I challenged.

He stood up on his hind legs and turned his gaze away from me. His right arm raised and a ball of light appeared above it.

“Using my gestures for yourself?” I asked.

“If it works, why change it?” he said.

Was he mocking me? “Go on, make something cool.”

Large oblong stones, as big as a car, fell from above and stuck into the ground. Several other rocks fell on top of those.

“Stonehenge?” I asked. Our sphere was in the middle of them.

Raccoon raised his other hand and he floated into the air.

Another one of my moves.

In front of him, a shell the size of a beach ball appeared. It was similar to a snails but was smooth. He swiped a hand to the left and a ring appeared. Then to the right, and another formed. After repeating the process several times it looked more and more like how I expected it to. Then the striped parts of it began to glow. The colors were muted earth tones with a multi-hued reflection.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

His pace quickened until his arm became a blur. Nothing seemed to change even though his movement became more complex. After a minute, his erratic composition finally stopped. He closed his paw and the shell shrank until it was about the size of a marble.

He turned and floated to me. “For you.” It moved with him.

I was centimeters from it when I hesitated.

“Go on,” he said.

I plucked his keepsake from the air and held it up in the sunlight. The refracted light was beautiful, it seemed to move even though I held it still.

Ferret leapt into my lap and tugged on my arm.

She must have really wanted to see it so I showed it to her.

Her mouth dropped. Raccoon, how is that not more memory intensive?

“Can I see?” Ellen asked.

“Sure,” I said.

I handed it to her and she examined it.

A recursive algorithm with superposition-based elements added into it, he replied.

Ferret leapt onto an unknowing Ellens's shoulder to get another look at it. Ellen didn’t seem to notice.

Ellen's eyebrows rose. “It's pretty.”

Ferret’s whiskers twitched. That goes down to the nanoscale?

Quantum, Raccoon said.

Ellen handed it back to me. I didn’t understand what they were talking about but they seemed to be geeking out about the shell's composition. It seemed pretty ordinary to me other than the shifting colors that is.

“What else have you got?” I asked.

The light above Raccoon’s paw disappeared and he fell to the ground. “That’s not enough?”

He practically breaks the laws of physics for you and you want more? Ferret asked.

Truthfully I just wanted to kill some time till my parents got home so I could beg to play DO. If I could play that is. “Want to practice with me then?”

“Okay, but don’t treat me like you did Zix,” he said.

I blinked. “What?”

“He would do things perfectly and you made him constantly change his creations,” he said.

It was my turn to smile. “They need to be imperfect to—”

“be believable. I know what you said to him but I don’t think you’re right,” he said.

While the Zix could read our minds they couldn’t get every detail correct. “Ideas are malleable and sometimes they need to change so that a story can come together in a more emotional way.”

“But you change them in the middle of a showing!” he said.

I took in a deep breath. “What am I good at Raccoon?”

“Telling stories,” he said.

“No,” I said while shaking my head.

Raccoon sauntered over to my feet and stood. His little face reached just above my knee. “You’re the best in your school.”

“Maybe, but that’s not what I’m good at,” I said.

“Then what are you good at?” he asked.

I raised a finger. “You can’t read my mind right now?”

He shook his head.

“I’m good at reading people.” I pointed at Ellen. “She’s uncomfortable right now.”

Ellen’s hands were behind her back and she kept dipping a little whenever Raccoon looked at her.

“She doesn’t like AI, along with the other Dev’s,” I said.

“Jason made that obvious,” Raccoon said.

Ellen crossed her arms. “Did you program your Zix to act like this?”

Ferret grabbed Raccoon’s mouth. Don’t tell her.

“He hasn’t had his training and, like my mom said, they can be erratic the first couple of days,” I said.

If Raccoon was going to act like this all the time, that excuse wasn’t going to work for long. Especially if his mannerisms didn’t change after a week.

“She's defensive now,” I said. “If she were at my showing I would probably change my story a little to compensate for that. It’s all about reading the room and the story won’t always be the same.”

I’d only done smaller shows and didn’t plan on doing bigger ones. The gazers who liked to watch my shows seemed to like that about my tellings.

“Do you have large pheromone receptors or something like that?” he asked.

“Never tested for that,” I said.

Can you see Ellen’s profile Raccoon? I asked.

No, he said.

I can, Ferret said.

I laid my hand on Ferret and gave her a small pet. Can you tell me her likes and dislikes listed on it?

Ellen turned out to be a creative like me. Instead of Narrative Design, she was into poetry. Her work was dark, and she loved vampires. She liked to side with the monsters.

“Sorry,” I said to Ellen. “I got a little distracted. Want to hear a story?”

She took a step back.

“If you don't want to, that's okay,” I said. “It's just practice.”

Raccoon gazed at her. “Have you seen one of her performances?”

She shook her head.

“Let's work out any kinks between us first, Raccoon. Let's do, heat twenty-three,” I said.

“Seriously?” he said.

I crossed my legs. “We need to be in sync and you were so upset you couldn’t even read my mind earlier.”

“But—”

“It’s practicing what you don’t want to do,” I said.

He nodded.

“You’ve never even tried it and you don’t like it,” I said.

An awkward moment of silence passed.

I don’t make stories for myself. They are for my audience. It’s why I am so hyper-focused on their emotional state. How many things can you focus on at once? I asked.

He shrugged. I can talk to a couple thousand people at once.

That explained why Ferret was able to stick around with Raccoon as long as she was. She could be with Kevin and us at the same time.

Pay extra attention to Ellen and her micro reactions and remember that what we are doing is a selfless act of entertainment, I said. I hoped that Raccoon’s dataset had observational skills.

“Alright, put your arm up,” he said.

I raised my right hand as a dim light appeared above it.

The light was supposed to be dim, especially in an area lit up like this. People found it harder to focus on what was happening if the light distracted them.

A child's laughter rang throughout the area.

It started.

Ellen moved closer to us, her eyes darting around the area. Was she afraid of kids?

For whatever reason it made me think of Molly. She’d had an impact on me even though we only spent a day together. I’d broken my word to her saying that we could play again “tomorrow.” She would understand, I hoped.

The grass and my sphere disappeared and were replaced by our mall's bustling marketplace. A little girl who looked eerily similar to Molly skipped alongside her parents. Suddenly everyone but the child disappeared. She kept moving but she and her environment grew larger bringing the character to the forefront of our vision.

I imagined her falling and gave Raccoon a glance.

He shook his head.

Come on. Take in her environment and how she might react if she did fall, I said. Would she put her hands out? Would she skid her knee? What type of person is she? Aren’t these interesting?

The mall and child disappeared as the sky darkened. Rain began to pelt my skin. It didn’t stick but it didn’t stop Ellen from shielding her eyes.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

A lightning bolt flashed in the distance lighting up the sky.

I thought about the Stonehenge he’d created and focused on them appearing.

Suddenly the area lit up, the grass and the rest of the server came back into view.

Raccoon hissed at me and dashed off.

Did I do something wrong? I asked.

Ferret tilted her head, jumped off my lap, and followed after him.

***