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<03/05/2017 - 14:01 | Stars N Strikes, Marietta, GA, USA>

Arcade studios; these are interesting places I've visited in my youth more than once. When I was a little kid, I was strung through the charade of Chuck E. Cheese for birthdays and pizza. As I grew older, we left that place in favor of a different studio with an updated style; Stars N Strikes. I can't simply call it an arcade center because, despite its appearance, this place has a separate bowling alley and a few other treats as well. It isn't exclusively an arcade center, bowling alley, or a laser tag center, but rather all three combined in one place. The ultimate goal here is to win as many tickets as possible for future redemption of bigger prizes, and I've had my eye on this beautiful lava lamp for a while now.

Some might be wondering what I'm doing here in the first place, charged with the thought, Stars N Strikes is still a place for kids. To this I say, No it's not...

Okay, maybe a little... Don't judge me! I have every right to come here and take it easy. Ubers are still expensive, so I'm here today with my family, who thankfully are more focused on my brother Ivan than anyone else. It's a good thing, because I want to be left alone, just me and my amazing telepathic wife.

"It's so bright and flashy in here, a bit noisy too though."

This is the reason I know I can enjoy this place today. It's true that I might be a bit grown up for a family fun center, but this is Lumina's first time inside an arcade area like this, seeing, hearing, and feeling the world through my body second hand. While the noise level is a bit of a disturbance for us both, blocking it out won't be hard once I show her a good time. "Oh, we can put up with some of the noise Lumina. Look, they have so many arcade games and other things here we can try. Which do you want to try first?"

One benefit of our telepathy is that Lumina can physically share sensations through my body in what I feel as well. It means if I sit in one of those racer game seats, the kind that turns on a gyro-wheel, the shifts in inertia will register with her as well. If I'm holding a joystick for one of those classic fighting games, Lumina's hand will register the clicks and pops. She can't directly control my body, else she would be able to physically play video games through my vessel, but even a secondary simulation to what arcade games are like should excite her.

"Let's try the race car one first?" With an expression in her voice I've never heard before, Lumina already beaconed the bliss of simply being here with me, blushing in a manner I didn't have to see with my eyes to detect.

"Not a bad idea. All that inertia should make it seem right, I hope." Saying no more, I waited our turn to insert the single player token into the system, carefully masking the hint of Lumina's presence among the others. I could control my voice through secret telepathic speech, but external expressions were harder to hide, so this was slightly embarrassing.

"Show those programmed cars how to kick butt!"

I hadn't a care in the world given how much Lumina was enjoying the ride already. This also reminded me that Lumina has a unique liking to the sport of high-speed racing when it comes to cars, that and the fact that she's super interested in cars in every sense. Strange, but I'll support whatever interest she has of her own.

The game didn't last long though. I ended up in tenth place over some dumb obstacle and a few unrealistic physics. Plus, the force-feedback we were expecting wasn't anything worth repeating. It's no fun if neither of us can feel the effects of the car during a mad drift. Arcade games can be kind of fake like that.

"Or maybe you don't want to admit that you just suck."

"Hey, come on! You saw how that all went down."

"Excuses, excuses. You're never going to win enough tickets at this rate."

Yep, there it is. I was wondering how long it would take Lumina to tease or taunt me at any chance. She's lucky I've grown to love her long-winded confidence. "If you want to win tickets that fast, we'll have to use the Spin-to-Win machine." Though I was making up the name, the same machine towered in front of me after I walked far enough to its direction.

"What the heck is that thing?"

"It's a monstrous way to win huge amounts of tickets fast." While explaining how it worked, I prepared to insert my own tokens inside, demonstrating the only way I knew how to cheat the system here. This really is the only way to win massive amounts of tickets in record time. "It's kind of a risky game, because it won't always pay out that much, and it eats four tokens for every single spin. The idea is, I have to spin this big wheel with the lever, and hope it lands on something big, preferably the grand prize jackpot."

"Oh."

Having already placed my tokens in, I pulled that lever, showing her the spinning wheel that would decide my fate with every spin. After a few seconds of curious observation, the wheel landed on 25 tickets, spitting out that amount instantly. Considering the coin to ticket ratio, it wasn't a good spin. Hitting the jackpot is hard, and I've only ever done it once. Even with that, I've never had enough to redeem any good reward. But if I can hit this jackpot three more times, I'll have plenty.

"I guess I see the appeal, but isn't this kind of boring?"

"No arguments there, but what else would you have me do? It's not like any of the other games would pay out much. There is that weird Tetris Tower game, but it's impossible to win that one anyway." I continued spinning and losing, throwing away massive amounts of tokens. In the background of it all, after only five more spins, the disappointment brewing was too much for me to ignore.

"What is it Lumina? Why so quiet?"

"It's fine... Just, if you blow all your tokens now, you'll have to leave, right?"

In a way, she isn't wrong. If I run out of tokens, nobody will buy me more, and the fun will be over. I won't have to leave that soon, but I also won't be able to participate in much else. Still, the way she said it in such a saddened voice was enough to stop me cold. "Do you even have anything else in mind?"

"I just want to try all the games with you. What about that one you mentioned, Tetris Tower?"

"That's not the game's real name, though I could care less about that detail." My eyes drifted over to the front of the machine as I gave Lumina the bad news. From here, I could see the LED panel revealing the demo of how the game officially works. "The problem is, that game is rigged. I'm supposed to hit the stop button each time the 3-block light reaches an exact center to build off the digital tower. If I'm off even by a micro-second, the game counts that as a partial miss, and I lose one block. Once you're down to one block, not hitting stop at the exact perfect time results in a game-over, and the only way to win is to reach the top." Ideally, I would only have to hit stop ten times, but that's a lot of demand for reflexes that I just don't have. I've come to the conclusion that I do have the reflexes and the game is simply rigged to fail.

"Just get your butt over there and show me how it works."

"Fine."

"We came here to have fun, right? I don't see the point in being crabby over some dumb game. Still, I would like some reward. Let's see how fast your reflexes really are."

"What am I, being tested or something?" I still went for the machine, following Lumina's suggestion to give this thing another chance. As soon as I started, Lumina tried to keep quiet while she carefully watched my eyes and my two hands clasped closely on the big red dome. I actually got pretty far on my own, 7/10 to be exact. In the end, I could never win this one. The control block slides left to right, and increases in speed the closer I get to the top, exponentially I might add.

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"I see now... Can I try?"

Despite how weird it looked, I glanced around me surprised and confused. "Try how? I hate to be the one to point this out, but you can't take control of my hands Lumina."

"Maybe not... But maybe I can help you time this thing just right."

Without any specific plan, I have no idea what context she's referring to in this situation... "Alright, what are you planning exactly?"

"Again, no offense, but I think my reflexes might be faster than yours, given the whole Altiri advancements. With a connection this stable, I should be able to perfectly synchronize my reflexes with yours, and use what I'm used to for error correction."

"Hold on. Are you saying you can use your reflexes to boost my own?"

"It's not exactly that. I'd be synchronized to your reflexes, but I'd still be able to react much faster. If I take into account and modify my response time with your natural latency between your eyes and your nerves, and if I have enough time to analyze and remember the exact frame movement speed of the sliding block, I think we can actually win that prize together."

"..." Always does she find ways to amaze me. I never thought something like this existed, but if her strange trick of chronosynchronization is real, I'd be a fool not to try. "Okay, I'll do it, but only because this actually sounds like it could be fun." Seriously! What other couple could even practice with something this amazing? Lumina can synchronize her reflexes with mine? I know she isn't joking about her ability to analyze the frame rate of the machine or calculate several deviations in a split-second. Lumina is kind of a brainiac with computational analysis; it's actually the reason she keeps smoking me in Monopoly.

"Alright. I'm ready when you are."

"Before I insert the token, how is this supposed to work exactly?"

"You don't need to do much. Just make sure you have your hands on the button when you are ready. It takes less neurological response time to twitch hand movement than it does to reply in thought, so this isn't going to work the first couple of times. First, you have to play as you normally would, so that I can analyze your actual reflex ratio. I'll also memorize the exact timing of the block as it slides on each level. Try to get it close if you can."

"You sound like some super advanced, hyper-intelligent cyborg."

"Quarter in and eyes forward Reed. Let's see what a bit of my personal touch can do."

I'm not going to say no to that. Okay, tokens in! "Here goes."

As instructed, I just kept playing even after a loss until Lumina decided she had seen enough. She let me lose on my own for a total of three times before deciding it was time to get involved directly. "This is good. I can work with this. The next time you insert your token, keep your hands ready, but don't press the button until the exact moment I say so."

"But won't that have latency in it?"

"I'll be giving my order to you slightly before you should press the button, so that the latency becomes part of the equation."

Lumina can juggle huge numbers in her head constantly and simultaneously, and as an Altiri, thinks faster with incredible reflexes compared to humans. I'll have to try much harder to defeat her at non-luck based games.

"Hit!"

Uncertain what to expect, my hands reacted sluggishly by our standards, causing me to fail outright.

"What the heck was that?!"

"I wasn't prepared for it Lumina!" I can't blame this away from myself. Having not known exactly what she would say threw me off. In goes another token.

"This time, focus!"

"I got it this time. When you say hit, I hit."

"Hit!"

On response, I hit the button exactly when she told me to, rather a little bit after, not counting delay time which exists in my brain, something she can detect while I can't. Amazingly, I got a perfect-timed hit to the block, stacking a new layer while moving up one level. As a result, the sliding block increased in speed, which caused some delay before Lumina said anything else. She needed to take more time now given this change to calculate the rate of movement on screen and factor that back into her master equation.

"Hit!"

Mashing the button again, despite losing one block out of three, I was still in the game. Whatever Lumina is doing is working. However, once we got to level 9/10, it was a sad story.

"Hit!"

This time, my response was perfect, but the machine counted a miss going too early. It was quite the shock for Lumina, though I did try to warn her the game was rigged. The blocks move incredibly fast at the last level, but even at that speed, I can track it pretty well. The problem is, the range of the acceptable stopping time is made much too narrow on purpose for the final level, making the machine seem legitimate by getting players this far, only to throw the failure in our faces. After the third time of the exact same thing happening, it finally frustrated her enough to project through her voice.

"Ugh! That's not right. The allowed time frame on the last part isn't nearly the same as the previous ones."

"That's what I tried to warn you about."

"Give it another go then. I'm going to teach this machine not to mess with me."

I tried not to laugh, since her pent up desire to beat this thing was too adorable. In goes another token. "Okay. Your senses are my own. When you say hit, I'll make sure to hit it. I'm going to try to be faster this time, okay?"

"Will do."

After another long moment of reaching the final level, it finally happened. "Hit!"

My hands went directly with her desire and timing, and the block stopped right where it was supposed to, with the screen now flashing and blaring noises only made when a jackpot is reached! It was actually so unbelievable that I wasn't sure if I imagined it or not.

"Congratulations! You win!" The machine started spitting out tickets with a counter on the top, counting down from 2,500 tickets to zero as quickly as the tickets could be ejected. The noise had attracted some attention onto us too, but I was more awestruck that Lumina's plan actually worked!

"Yes! We did it Reed! I knew that would work with some practice."

I've never seen Lumina this excited in a long time either. I have to admit, that was more fun than I thought it would be. "That was incredible Lumina! Such thinking too, to use your reflexes to win instead of my own... Imagine what power we could unleash with that!"

"Don't get all crazy on me now... I can't believe you won that many tickets."

"It is a lot, but it's still not going to be enough for my lava lamp."

"... Reed? I have a new mission for us tonight."

"What mission?"

"I'm going to team up with you again, with this very same machine, and we're going to win you that lava lamp!"

I couldn't hide a slight chuckle, and cute as this was, I wasn't about to push back against her excitement either. I kind of like the idea. "You're on. Another token will go to this thing, as soon as I get my tickets." The wait for this was about five minutes, but after I collected what I could by my feet, I put in another token, allowing Lumina to synchronize my reflexes to her response time. What happened next would amaze me forever.

The next time we played, we lost again at only level seven, and once more on level 9. But after only those two cumulative losses, Lumina managed to store us two more consecutive jackpot victories! In no time flat, I had accumulated over 7,500 tickets just because of her assistance in timing. I was surprise the staff didn't rush in to close down the machine, believing it to be faulty or something before I was able to stride away with these new riches.

"That was fun!" Laughing through her newfound enjoyment, Lumina's voice hit me like a magic spell, making me vow to do everything I could to make her feel this way for as often as possible.

"That makes two of us... Hey Lumina? We still have some time and tokens left. Once I get my lava lamp, what's say you and I try some other games that require strong reflexes?"

"Want to see how far this goes?"

"We have to try." As I made my way to the ticket exchange counter, ignoring the surprised glances I got for having so many tickets, I tried to think more on what exact activities she and I could to together.

As telepaths physically separated apart, it's much harder for the two of us to go on normal dates and enjoy each other the other way couples would do. If we want to do something together, such as play a game, the game needs to have very specific specifications for it to work out at all.

My very concern was proven moreover when Lumina and I tried to win that weird LED laser jump rope game and failed. We failed not because of her reaction time but because of my inability to jump fast enough, a limitation to the human body when not in perfect shape. Laser Tag was out of the question before I bothered to try it, and I knew perfectly well why. When it comes to stimulating any physical sensations, Laser Tag has little going for it. It's a one player sport even when the body has two minds.

Coming up with fun activities like these are hard. Any physical sensation worthy of telepathic registry, one of high impact anyway - must involve some sort of heavy inertia shift. That race car game would have been fine for example, if the force-feedback were seven times more powerful. They probably limit this here due to not wanting to risk injury to kids, but it's not hard to see my point. Playing card games is impossible most of the time, because everything I see, she sees. Board games are often played the very same way, and there aren't many there which don't require a separation of view from hidden cards or other assets. Others exist while lacking enough interaction and mathematics like Monopoly has.

Aside from the awesome dinner dates, movie nights, stargazing, and simultaneous reading, there isn't much Lumina and I can do when we want a two-player situation. I wish I had more ideas I could try to invoke, but for now, I'm just glad we're getting to enjoy this night as we deserve to.