Chapter 15: Imagine

Lena grabbed the bulb off the windowsill and took it with her into the bedroom. I heard her call out to Bernie. She chattered about her plans to test Fire.

I tuned out the details. The sound of her voice was enough to put a smile on my face.

I settled at my computer and typed out a summary of what she and I had discovered. A copy and paste later, I sent it to the wiki team’s Discord. What, and how much, they decided to share, I figured I’d leave to Erin.

For my part, I plowed my good mood into some actual work.

I knocked out the ad copy for a dishware set, coded the landing page for a restaurant in Toronto, and wrote a string of reviews for products I’d totally used and wasn’t being paid to give five stars to. What? If we started making real money off YouTube, the reviews would be the first thing I dropped, but for now, I couldn’t afford to quibble over ethics.

Writing fake reviews put food on the table, but it sure didn’t do anything for my appetite. Or my enthusiasm. I found myself staring at the Third Eye app on my phone.

I’d fretted so much over the MP I couldn’t get back that I hadn’t experimented as much as I should have. Lena was in the other room pushing the boundaries of her understanding of Fire. I had two Reactants, more obviously versatile ones, both of which I’d picked up before she got her first. What had I learned about them? Jack shit.

I glanced at my computer screen. Plenty more jobs to complete.

Back to my phone.

A few taps later, I manifested Stone with Air. I swished it back and forth, watching my hand movements, trying to conceptualize what they could mean except serving as guidelines for invisible currents.

Air seemed like the most useful Reactant for playing Third Eye. Earth gave it a run for its money, but I couldn’t imagine muddling my way through the game without the kind of precision movement I gained from Air.

It also seemed like the simplest, though. Wave your hand left, your conjured object moves left. Move your hand right, same deal. I’d seen Albie pull off tricks with it, but they were things like catching a second object in the same updraft you were using to direct your selected item.

Was that the limit?

What else did Air represent, besides movement? Flight, perhaps, but wasn’t that just another way of rephrasing movement?

Go more esoteric.

Go deeper.

Maybe the clearest ARG clue any of us had found was a link to a website with a heavily artifacted .jpeg of the “we need to go deeper” meme from Inception. Lena and I, along with our friend Miguel, an ex-player, had traced a series of clues to a tunnel beneath the local downtown. Following its apparent advice, we’d found my Water.

We’d thought so at the time, at least. We hadn’t had much luck tracing paths to other Reactants the same way.

I wondered if we hadn’t misunderstood what the devs were trying to tell us.

So. What was a deeper meaning of Air? Breath? Look at that the right way and you got to “life” again. Even “energy,” by way of Chi, although I supposed Third Eye used the wrong set of elements for that.

It struck me that if you adopted a torturous enough interpretation, you could associate any of the four classical elements with “life.” Did that make it a better fit for healing, or a worse one?

What else? Birds flew through the Air; so did other creatures, but avians were the traditional association. I figured a Daimon of Air would be at least somewhat birdlike. Atmosphere was the difference between a lifeless rock and a world you could at least theoretically live and breathe on, and that brought me back to the concept of life again.

Of course, all of those ideas were ones I knew human cultures had associated with the concept of Air.

Lena and I joked about the devs being wizards and/or aliens. The fact that Third Eye corresponded more to our idea of magic than of technology meant we usually leaned wizard. Alien had some evidence in its corner, though.

Albie certainly seemed human. On the other hand, her Daimon, Marroll, had initially looked like a big shaggy dog. The second time we saw him, he seemed more like an immense shaggy worm, with physiology like nothing I’d ever even heard of on Earth.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Which was real, the dog, or the alien monster? Was that even the right question?

Speaking of the right question, what about Albie’s concept of the three kinds of knowledge? The one she didn’t have ‘the right words’ to explain? Where did that come from?

I sighed.

“I think I might be going a little too deep,” I muttered.

Exploring the how of Third Eye opened new avenues for us. Speculating on the why? We simply didn’t have enough information. Nor, as best I could see, any way of getting more.

I tuned out the sound of Lena’s voice and the light from my computer and focused all of my attention on the Stone hovering before me. My hand darted back and forth, tight, controlled movements, never pushing far enough for the Stone to slam into the apartment walls. A microscopic adjustment of my fingers sufficed to send it dancing back and forth.

I fell into the rhythm of it, mesmerized. Vertical adjustment. Rotation. Then along the other axis. Then the diagonal. Out. In. Flip, left, right, flip back.

Back in, close enough for me to reach out and touch if I held the Stone in place with one gesture while my other hand shook its way free of control. I gripped the Stone and tried pushing it down with my muscles while my Air raised it.

My muscles won, but I felt it.

I raised an eyebrow.

I relaxed the tension in my outstretched arm. I directed the Air to raise the Stone. It pulled my arm up, tugged me from my chair. Not hard enough to actually pull me to my feet, but enough it would’ve been uncomfortable if I didn’t stand. I did, and the Stone kept rising, pulling me with it until my arm was fully outstretched toward the ceiling.

It stopped there. I couldn’t push any further without letting go.

Because I only had one unit of Air.

How many would it take to lift myself off the ground? Two? Probably not. If it followed a similar progression to the electricity from Lena’s Fire, I’d need at least three, maybe four or more.

If I got enough, though, all I had to do was hang on and I could ride that slab of Stone.

I closed my eyes. I pictured myself lifting from the ground on a Stone platform. I mentally swapped it for Plastic for a real flying carpet effect. A little Water – and, realistically, more artistic ability than I’d ever demonstrated – and I could even make it look the part. I pictured swooping down and offering Lena a magic carpet ride.

I pictured us scrabbling onto a magic carpet to flee a creature that was tearing after us. It unfolded behind us, growing more detailed, more real, more complex. It filled my vision. It dominated my cognition. Its tendrils extended, and unlike at the construction site, I could see more than just their shadows.

I couldn’t fly fast enough.

I couldn’t fly high enough.

The “magic carpet” collapsed beneath us because I’d miscalculated how much Air I needed to carry our combined weight.

Because I wasn’t strong enough to protect us like Albie had, and never would be.

A crash snapped my eyes open.

I realized I’d lost my selection on the Stone and dropped it on top of Lena’s discarded Iron.

I ditched my phone on the desk and grabbed a handful of my sweatshirt. It peeled away from my chest. Sweat soaked the fabric. My breath came fast and ragged. My heart slammed with each beat.

“You okay out there?” Lena called.

I sucked down a breath. “Fine. Dropped a Material.”

“Clum-sy,” she said, her voice singsong.

I gave the bedroom door the finger, but I didn’t think she’d peeked through it to see.

Good thing. I didn’t want her to worry about me.

I pressed my hands to my temples. I ran my fingers through my hair.

After a few minutes, my heart stopped pounding and my breath came normally.

Who was I trying to kid? I hadn’t experimented with Third Eye because I was worried about my MP?

Bullshit.

I hadn’t experimented because every time I fired up the game without Lena to anchor me, my imagination tore back to the construction site. Every time I tried to expand my powers, it reminded me how powerless I’d felt.

I had to get over it.

What was my alternative? Stop playing? Let myself fall into the bottom 1%?

Tempting.

But the first person I ever saw get hurt by Third Eye phenomena was Miguel, after he’d already dropped from the beta. The same Water I’d absorbed and mastered had pushed him over a railing because he’d lost the authority to control it. Third Eye didn’t become less threatening to someone who couldn’t play it anymore. Just the opposite.

At the construction site, Albie had insisted Third Eye wouldn’t hurt us, even as she warned us we were in danger. If I trusted her – and I did – then things like the creature were already out there, already a threat. Third Eye might lead me to them, but it was also the only chance I had of defending myself.

I shook my head and stalked to the counter. I filled a foam cup with water and clinked ice cubes into it. I knocked back a swig.

I really wanted something with more kick. Maybe I should add alcohol to my Third Eye shopping list. It was about as out of reach as everything else.

I gulped the rest of the water down and dumped the cup in the sink.

Shaking my head, I rounded the counter and headed back to my desk.

I made it halfway there when a sound froze me in my tracks. My brain was so frazzled, for a second, all I heard was pounding. I pictured the outer wall of the apartment caving in, or twisting and distorting. Or something reaching right through, unimpeded by anything as paltry as a physical barrier.

But the sound continued, ordinary knocking on our ordinary front door.

Then it was joined by a voice, and I realized I’d been underestimating how bad a worst-case scenario could get.