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<11/01/2010 - 07:07 | (Enroute), Austell, GA, USA>

Will she really tell me why? Will she give me reason to believe her, try to actually convince me that she really does exist as a tangible entity? Or will Lumina just throw me into an abyss of unprovable tales or lies just to win me over to her side? And what happens if I do decide to believe her in the end? What happens to me then? "Okay..." I softly spoke as I started walking towards the ramp of the bus. "Fine. Just tell me what to do first about attracting less attention, cause it's not working out so far." I kept my voice to a whisper, certain Lumina would hear me either way. I was still getting glances from the students from the same bus stop, curious if I will appear to continue talking to myself some more. I said I would at least listen to Lumina, but I'm not burning down my reputation for this.

"Just remember to talk with your mind for now. And there, take that empty seat."

Lumina could not directly point to anything in a way that I could see, but she told me as much right as the empty seat a few isles back caught the very center of my own vision. It told me how precise her sensory sharing was compared to mine. If she can track not only what I see, but also where my eyes wander, what else could she determine without a second thought? I waited for those walking back in front of me before having access to one of the empty loner seats, taking my stride to the window with a view.

"Project your voice and your thoughts loudly in your mind. They have to be loud enough in dynamic volume for me to hear them. I can't visually see anything that you specifically imagine or daydream, but I can hear what you think, if you give those thoughts enough juice."

So there are some limitations! Not only that, but my earlier tactic of thought projection seemed to be working out too. She really can't hear everything I'm thinking, not right now. But if I return a response with more effort and volume like so, understood, then she can hear that and only that.

"Good," she replied.

She also can't see what I imagine, though I bet she could hear it if my thoughts amplify the noise loudly enough... Not that I had anything worth imagining today. As I stared out the view of my window, noticing the beautiful sunrise over the horizon beginning, I silently conferred to myself just how terrified I was on a deeper level, even though I didn't let it show. I've never been more afraid of anything until right now. I've never had anything like this happen to me. Real or fake, what happens if I can't hide this from the others? Worse, what happens if it turns out my fears are true? What if she is a real Altiri alien? Wanting to prove she exists and wanting to prove I am not crazy are two separate arguments altogether. If someone like that really does exist, if aliens can communicate with humans, then how long will it take until we all find ourselves invaded? What if the invasion never happens physically, but mentally? What if I am a victim of such an invasion, in a process yet to complete with limited time to be myself before I realize it is too late to revert? Or, what if this is a psychological disorder, growing into something bigger and putting me on borrowed time to stay true to who I really am? If that's the case, there is nothing I can do about it either. I certainly don't want to end up in a mental institution.

"You okay?"

Oops! I stayed quiet for too long. I'd rather not let her know that I figured out how to filter which thoughts she can hear and which thoughts she cannot. Someone such as her should be capable of knowing everything about me even before I can think of it, but her knowledge seems more limited than I thought. "Yeah. Hey, I got one question off the top. You can see so clearly through my eyes. So why can't I see like that through yours? Even earlier, your world never came into full opacity."

"That transparency effect is part of my view too, but I can view only your world if I shut my eyes. It won't help you out though. It has to do with connection strength, psionic properties, and shared load variations."

As usual, I didn't understand half of that. I didn't even know that connection strength was a variable until now. "What is all of that supposed to mean?"

"One question at a time please. I beg of you."

"Fine!" I grumbled. "How about you start from the beginning then? I heard you mention earlier that you watched over me and several other people. Meaning, I wasn't the only person in your scopes? Still, I thought telepathy only works on a purged individual."

At last, having something to dig into, Lumina began her explanation from my questions while making herself comfortable. "You're confusing telepathy with clairvoyance."

"Okay, what is clairvoyance?" Everyone including me has at least heard of the phrase telepathy before, but clairvoyance was a less common one I never heard of before.

"Clairvoyance is different. It allows us to watch other people from a third person aerial view no matter what they are up to, from any range, and without their knowledge of being watched. It has many limitations, but most of every Altiri has the ability to use long-range clairvoyance all day long. When it comes to telepathy, we can actually talk to other Altiri without a purge, automatically in fact. Altiri are born with those powers."

So they're not just aliens, they're espers too. This just keeps getting better and better. I only have faint knowledge on what an esper or psychic actually is or what they can do, but I guess I'll get to learn it all today. "So that's what that clair-thingy is?"

"Clairvoyance," Lumina corrected. "Like any other psionic sensation, it can be used on any location, regardless of the distance or what might be in the way of an imaginary path between both nodes. That and telepathy are also instantaneous forms of data transmission with no delay or lag."

Basically - all my entire life, even if I were in the bathroom, she and other Altiri could gaze upon me at any time. That's a scary thought if the Altiri are real. They would know everything about us including our language, while we know nothing about them.

"If I wanted to, I could easily watch over someone with a near-aerial view, acquiring all of the visual and acoustical sensations of their immediate environment. It can allow us to build up a best-fit 3-D environmental map of conscious data from their stimuli."

"Sure... Keep going." Uncertain if I was convincing, I let her continue even though I didn't comprehend a single word. She keeps using phrases I've never heard of, like stimuli and psionics. I can only imagine how powerful she actually is behind all of her words. But more importantly, how was she coming up with these arbitrary explanations if I couldn't comprehend them? If I were to try an internet search of all of this, what would come up?

"The thing is, any Altiri can use clairvoyance on any location. And that means, despite how far away we are, no matter what galactic distance we start from—"

"You can use this clairvoyant spy thing to watch the people of Earth..." I only finished the sentence for her since I knew where she was going with it, but it brought another harrowing possibility to my mind. "Doesn't that mean that the Altiri know our entire human history?"

"More or less," she responded sounding a bit unimpressed. "We discovered AC— Er, I mean, Earth, approximately thirteen thousand years ago."

Thirteen thousand years? Humans have been around for that long? "Wait a minute. Back up a bit. What were you going to say just then before cutting yourself off?"

"Oh that? It's just the scientific name we've given to your celestial object. Earth has the designation ACS414. That then puts the moon at ACS415, and so on."

"Cool." If I weren't so wielded out by all of this, I might find awe in having two minds at once. However, there isn't any evidence that any of this is true. "Actually, it's not cool. Why am I even listening to my deluded self?"

In an annoyed tone of voice, Lumina reminded me that I already made this turn earlier. "You promised you would hear me out."

"Fine." Not like I have choice, right?

"You really think you could have just made up every little detail about this on the spot?"

I don't know if the situation removed what filter I had for words, or if I was simply trying to be the realist, but my smart mouth managed to find me at last. "I apparently had a year, didn't I?"

"Maybe. But it seems that even that long wasn't enough to teach you everything."

Great to know she is still making no sense. "I don't get it. Is this purge signal supposed to be teaching me things?"

"That it is. The methods are random and come in different variations. For example, most of what you learned about the Altiri prior to you and I connecting to each other today probably happened within your dreams, though other methods exist too. The performance of a purge signal gradually injects information and data related to our experiences, including my own emotions about most important moments of my life."

"If only school were that easy." How nice it must be to teach people things in such a short burst of signal. "Hold on a sec. If that wasn't really you in my dream, that means the you here right now really is the first time we've met at all? Also, I only learned what fragments I did at random. Not all of it made a lot of sense, and I don't remember other parts of it."

"That's what I meant earlier about something not being right. When I spoke to you this morning, even though I've known you a lot longer, this was my first time speaking to you for real. Whatever you saw in a dream was part of the influence from the purge itself, which explains why you would have dreamt about me and my sisters; that much was expected at least. But I swear, the purge signal must have been slowed down or impaired when summer rolled in."

At first, I didn't know what to say. I still wasn't believing any of this, but the more I heard her speak, the weirder everything seemed to feel. The purge signal itself can interfere with dreams? What else can it do? I don't even know what this thing is! I definitely don't want it in me anymore. "Can that even happen, a purge signal failing I mean? What even is a purge signal anyway?"

Stomping her feet in dismay, Lumina told me why. "If you would stop interrupting me, you would find out!"

"Sooooooory!" I stretched the apology out longer, though it only made me sound like a jackass for doing so. "Continue then."

"Anyway, the Altiri Aggressor Groups—"

"See, there you go again, using terms I don't understand." I knew it was rude to interrupt like this, but it can't really be rude if I'm the one interrupting myself, in a strange Meta way.

Finally agitated with me, Lumina made sure to keep everything in summary. "Fine! I'll just define everything for you."

I mean, it is what I asked.

"Aggressor Groups are code names that we used for specialized orbital fleets. Each fleet consists of a small team of capital ships in outer space for the defense of the planet, who all serve in the Altiri military."

"You have an Altiri military? Man. Must be a tough world out there in Genosis." Not that I was trying to, but the way I spoke through my voice made me sound more sarcastic and uncaring than I meant to, but I wasn't sorry for it. I only then realized at the same time that I have been talking through my mouth for the past minute, though nobody around me seemed to notice thanks to the configuration of these bus seats and the busy students on the other side of me.

"As I was saying, our aggressor groups each took their own separate locations to use long range clairvoyance, all for the purpose of finding intelligent alien life. We also hoped to use it to find special resources we may need one day."

"So how did that work out?" Hearing about her orbital space fleet only made this less believable by the second, but I did promise to listen.

"Unfortunately, we soon learned that our clairvoyant abilities won't work on inanimate objects, dead people, or creatures without enough sensory intelligence to send us that information in echo return data. Our abilities can only affect living creatures, particularly those with a minimum level of psionic capabilities and variant dynamic thought processes."

I'm not even going to bother asking her to define all of this mess, but it sounds like she can't spy on the dead or inanimate. They either find nothing or find something. In their search for life using an ability humans don't have, "Eventually, you found ACS414, right?" Now that I think about it, we only use telescopes to find life. But if these Altiri were real and their abilities are not capped by distance, if they can really purge humans from any distance and telepathically communicate with them, that would be quite incredible. But I still need some proof.

"Oh, it was a moment that gave wonder to our entire world. There is something you have to understand Reed. To your perspective, someone like me and the other Altiri are considered aliens to Earth and all life around it. But from our perspective, the way we were examining the human race for the first time, we knew that all of you were aliens to our world too. In a weird manner of context, I can call you the alien, if I'm comparing you to my world."

Huh... She got me there. Even for an illusion, she isn't stupid enough to make an easy mistake. What she said isn't false either in the correct context. In the eyes of another being observing me, I'm the alien in that scenario. "Okay, fair point. But while we are doing comparisons, which one of us would be more superior to the other?" Like I even have to ask. The fact that an Altiri could use psychic abilities would make them stronger by default.

"Which do you think?" Lumina had her doubts that I had not already considered that possibility, but she didn't recall hearing any thoughts about it. Has Reed already figured out the dark rule to telepathy, the rule that implies thoughts can be hidden when not projected with enough energy? "I don't like admitting this, but Altiri people appear to be better adapted to our own bodies, and especially adapted to severe cold environments."

"So you don't like the heat then? Now that you mentioned it, it is rather cold outside today, more than usual."

"You really have no idea Reed." Lumina avoided the topic wherever possible, the idea of it making her sick. "Our bodies can only handle the lower ranges of temperatures. Once we stand in air heated to above sixty degrees, our bodies begin to struggle surviving, while our internal organs begin to liquefy. We die a quick and painful death."

It's worse than that one case I heard of a woman who had a severe allergy to the heat. In Lumina's case, or rather all Altiri people, exposure to direct heat is instant death for them. The cold really is their environment then.

"But now I'm getting off topic. Going back to our tracking abilities, information was stills scarce. We weren't able to track every single person during that era, especially back then. Most of the tribes tried to live in very warm places. It isn't just our bodies that suffer from the heat Reed. Our own psionic signaling falls apart from heat interference too. Since psionics requires two nodes for targeting, if the human we want to watch is in a warm area, even if we are in a cold area, any ability we throw at them including a purge would never get through. In a way, it produces many dark spots on your planet, places we can't get our eyes on, and places that we can see only during the cold seasons."

I repeated her words to myself silently, hung up on an addicting detail in particular. The Altiri not only hate the heat, but psychic powers can't handle the heat either. I wasn't expecting something so specific to come out as a particular detail of weakness. Lumina's weakness, and the weakness of her very own abilities are that of temperature. Even though I didn't believe, I couldn't deny how amazing that sounded. No way would I have come up with that on my own.

"Each aggressor group that tracked a human chose different targets at a time. Most never followed the entire life span of a particular individual. There was freedom and variance to use our ability on everyone, since it didn't harm or change anything."

That's it! I've got it now! I can't believe I thought of this so quickly, but this is the way to prove it once and for all. "Wait. If the Altiri have been purging humans for that long—"

"We haven't." Lumina didn't want to throw a lid on my excitement, but there was no changing the truth. "Observing is one thing. Purging is something else entirely. It involves a complicated process for an entire aggressor group, working together to send a very powerful telepathic signal to the selected host body."

No... That was the opening I was looking for. I was going to say, if humans have been purged for that long, there would be some trace of the Altiri already available somewhere else, somewhere I could research. Even then I could latch onto something... But this solo mission just wasn't possible for me to accept on such base terms. "Like me?" I allowed my replies to run automatic, since I had so many thoughts to process at once.

"Like you," she confirmed, giving herself a chance to breathe again. "Cy-Stars."

"Cy-what now?"

"Cy-Stars," she repeated. "That is the team name to my aggressor group. I'm in the military too, in a leading position. I am the leader of that unit, Lumina."

"Cy-Stars..." I repeated the name once more, burning into my mind while a smaller parallel mystery presented itself to me. Lumina just claimed she was in the Altiri military, and separately that her purge should have taught me details about that... But I'm totally certain I learned nothing of the sort. Does that mean the purge got messed up? Or does it just not do a good job each time?

"Right. Only aggressor group leaders are allowed to be the sender nodes of the purge, even though the process requires everyone's help. So, even though my sisters all pitched in, only you and I can hear each other's voice like this."

She mentioned before that purging was a one-time deal. Unless I got that wrong, doesn't that mean that all of her sisters would pay the same price without the same reward? If that is how it works, that's kind of sad.

"Yes it is. Sadly that is how it goes. But still, I could just as easily drag Junko into this room and have her speak directly to me. If she did that, you would hear her through my ears, and it would therefore project in your mind that way, but it may not sound the same or echo like my thoughts will."

Interesting. Of course, I didn't know that my last set of thoughts were being projected. I do it sometimes without thinking, which means if I'm not paying attention, I won't be able to hide a single thing from her. "Okay. That much I get."

"The purge is a very powerful signal. It needs to be in order to achieve what other abilities cannot. Humans by default don't have psionic abilities, so we can't just open a telepathic link with them at will, but the purge changes all of that. We can use it to literally train the human brain how to better use and conserve mental energy to make more room for transmitting psionic energy waves."

Psionic energy waves... That must be the key to all of this. She keeps using the term psionic too often for it to be a buzz word. It sounds like she prefers the term psionic in place of psychic or esper powers. God knows why. "What are psionic energy waves?"

"It's the same kind of energy that you and I are exchanging right now, because of our telepathic connection. Without the purge signal that we sent to you, I could never speak to you right now."

"But..." If the purge signal makes a permanent change in someone's brain to get them using psionic abilities, that means it must make other changes too. I suddenly felt the uneasy memories of the past, experiencing emotions that were most certainly not my own. "But that means that the purge signal changed me too."

"You probably experienced emotions that were not exactly your own. I'm afraid the purge easily manipulates the mentality of those who are selected, at least for the duration that the purge remains active."

So it is true! I really am losing myself! Everything I felt about the chilling cold, that lust I had for the stars, and even what I felt about being as girly as possible, all of that really was because of the purge! "So you're saying I'm not the same Reed anymore?" I stuttered at the end, trying to close my throat on demand once I realized how loud I was just saying that.

"Dude? What are you talking to?" "He on some shit!"

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I'm such a cringy dork! How could I let myself do it again?! I keep forgetting to project my words into my mind instead of my voice, and this time everyone to my right noticed with a clear view of my unfolding insanity! Those girls won't ever talk to me again now. "J—just ignore that." Is there a briefcase I can slam my face into somewhere?

"I'm not even going to warn you how awkward you're being right now."

"Oh, this is my fault somehow? You're the one who started this!"

"You're the same Reed you have always been. We have already proven that these personality changes and emotional remapping are absolutely temporary. The effects of the purge die off quickly after the purge's completion, its seventh phase, which for you started this morning."

I wasn't happy to see Lumina ignore my previous dilemma, but her testimony helped calm me down some. Hearing that the changes in mental personality were temporary softened up my frustration. Though it was still eerie enough to know they happened at all, and considering when the purge began, it was for quite a long time. "So you're saying, for the last year, ever since August 11, 2009, I have not been myself at all?"

"That's not entirely accurate. You've been plenty yourself, but during that time, weird things started happening to you. The process of the purge is never instant, and neither is its data transmission for knowledge of us and the Altiri. It introduces all of these processes gradually over time, cycling between several phases, all while introducing new and rerouting other neurotransmitters to the Cora Sector of the brain. The Cora is pretty much our psionic center, located near the brain stem at the rear-side central core."

I don't know what half of that meant!

"Based on what should have happened, you would have slowly started to sense things around you that most ordinary people were not able to. All of that was the start of your psionic powers coming alive, like flipping a switch."

Like flipping a switch? Is that what she thinks I've been through? Feeling the conviction of my own words, I stood up from my seat while we were still in motion, digging my nails into the leather in front of me to balance myself. I didn't say anything aloud, it was only to confirm to her how strongly this mattered. "Tell me something, Altiri. All of that longing I felt for the sky for no apparent reason was a result of some thing, not thoughts I came up with on my own?"

"My guess is that your feeling towards the stars was part of a strong sense that we Altiri were out there. The purge would have only given you the initial fragment data that the Altiri exist, and on a planet that isn't anywhere near Earth, but not in a logical manner which would make any sense. The results from that can trigger mental obsession over anything related to this fragment data."

"And what about the lucid dreams?"

"Sit down!"

I unwillingly parked myself back into the seat, sustaining heat from the angry bus driver at front, but I still wanted my question answered. This hallucination claims to have an answer for everything! So, I want to hear everything.

"We received several rumored reports from other aggressor groups that claimed their purged targets cycled through lucid dreams frequently. It's uncommon though, which is kind of cool. However, now that the purge cycle has already completed on you, it will likely never happen again."

"Lumina?" I pressed, certain I could find some angle to work from. "Did you know what I would dream of? My lucid dreams had you and your sisters inside. I got to see what you looked like from the dream itself. I got to talk to you, fight against you, and see the inside of your ship, half of it anyway. Did you know that was going to happen to me from the effects of the purge?"

"What you saw in those dreams, no matter how real it looked was only simulation. And I don't know what you did in those dreams. I have no way of processing something that happened inside your own mind while asleep, let alone before the purge was finished in the first place. Therefore, I don't know what happened inside of them. I can only guess that information about us on some level was revealed, as the purge intends to do just that - to all targets touched by its signal. However, I've just learned that the learning cycle from a purge can be incomplete, proving to only serve a secondary function."

Still, I argued back. Even if I accepted that explanation, it made no sense for why I remembered seeing everything to vividly and detailed. "But I saw everyone and their faces so clearly! I could feel the cold and snow on my skin! How could a learning process be that precise?"

"The purge was never specifically intended to teach its target hosts information about the people who send it, but that is the main side effect. It's not just the Altiri you learn about Reed. The purge contains fragmented information about myself and all of my sisters who took part in your purge. Since we know each other so well, me and my sisters all have a solid memory of what we look like, a memory that would have leaked into that purge signal. My purge, my thoughts, my personality, my emotional tastes, all of it can affect you."

That explains why the personality changes exist at all. If this is a hallucination, then I now understand the type of mental breakdown I am having; the kind they call split personality. However, I had proof of neither diagnosis just yet. I need more info! "Earlier, I heard you say that the purge was experimental... Is this some kind of experiment?"

"No, not really. Obviously, the very first purge was an experiment. We didn't know what would happen, so we relied on data collection back then. Still, only a tiny handful of humans have been purged before, all throughout human history. So, even now, not everything is really known about the purge. There are bound to be things that happen that we do not foresee, and it can happen for several possible reasons."

In all, that can be a yes and a no answer at the same time. If the effects are not all known and come with a handful of unexpected consequences within those personality changes, maybe it explains why... "Uhm... Might it explain..." I didn't know how to proceed. Just admitting it out loud was still embarrassing sometimes. This wave of emotion would come over me without any ability to control it. It by far made me the strangest person in school, even to myself.

"Explain what?" Lumina waited, but found it odd that I was suddenly bashful about this unknown tangent.

"Well... You know!" You're going to make me say it, aren't you? Oh god! That must be it! "The girly thing..." My mental voice was a whimper of shame too. I couldn't control how I felt about it, but I so badly wanted to play dress up and be as girly as possible. I was okay with having a feminine side, but what I'm referring to crossed a few lines I wouldn't have done on my own.

Lumina was silent, confused mostly be my absolute lack of context in what I was asking of her. The girly thing... What girly thing? Does he mean— "Oh!" Finally understanding why I was embarrassed to talk about it, Lumina hesitated to say anything herself shocked that this already presented one of these mentioned unexpected side effects.

So she does know! "I guess that was coming from you too? All I could think about sometimes was pretending to be a girl; that I wanted to be so badly. Thanks to that, I developed a feminine side. Was that from the purge as well?"

"It is," though Lumina felt like she had committed another great sin. "I'm so sorry! I didn't even think that could happen in the first place. I guess since I'm the host, and you aren't a girl like me, something like this was bound to happen."

"What about that hatred? Anytime I am around any males, I feel obligated to chop their fucking heads off! Uh, see? I still feel that way just a little. Was that sensation your doing as well?"

"I'm afraid it was. I know for sure that the purge is responsible for those two developments."

So I was right! Those emotions didn't belong to me after all! It was so strong then that I noticed and still didn't even care to do anything about it. But that raging hatred against men, I knew the whole time that it wasn't really me feeling that way. The desire to be girly was probably just a reaction to that hatred above all else, I think. "Okay, this is getting weird!"

"Needless to say, you are the very first male human to ever be purged. All twenty three other purged subjects were female, up until this point."

What the? "So the rest were all girls then?" I can't predict this situation anymore. I thought at first this psycho would tell me something about hero's destiny or that I had latent super powers that she awakened, but this isn't what I had in mind. I can't keep up with all of this anymore! How does she do it?

"Let's sweat the heavy stuff later... Reed? I should have said this a lot sooner, but I'm really sorry if all of this messed everything up with your friends earlier. Now that I think about it, I do feel a lot of responsibility for that. It really is my fault."

"Well... No... I mean..." Dammit! It is her fault that this is happening in the first place... But I can't really hold it against her. Thinking back on it now, my odd behavior attracted attention and made me a little bit more popular, for a short duration at least. Really, it had no negative or positive effect in the end anyway. That's why I felt bad for being an ass earlier.

"What? Don't tell me you're still feeling girly right now! I mean, I am a female, so that's why it happened in the first place. But that strong sensation to be as feminine as possible should fade within a couple more days, as will your montrum to the sky and outer space."

"Montrum?"

"Montrum."

"..." Does she expect me to know what that word means? I've never heard that before either... Say something Lumina!

"Oh come on! You humans haven't figured that one out either?"

What does she expect to happen? They can't just purge 24 humans and expect the world to change overnight. I can't believe that only 24 humans were selected at all, but it oddly made me feel comfortable talking about this.

"Montrum has a meaning similar to a repetitive pattern of thoughts, or more like an obsession towards a subject matter, usually an ideal or a non-living object. The montrum itself might be personal, but it simply happens when your thoughts are deeply focused on something. It's a mental behavior with a specific feeling really, the kind that can be obsessive and addicting."

So they have a name for that too? I knew I felt that way often, but never had anything to call it by... Montrum. Repeating it to myself actually sounds kind of nice. I'll adopt that word for sure. "Montrum is how I felt, so..." What else is there to say really? If the montrums are going to fade in a few more days, I'm glad. It will mean less distractions for me.

"And your sudden hatred towards men, that feeling of wanting to stab them in the eye with a fork every time one passes you by, that is also coming from me."

That's right! That hatred I felt was also part of the purge, but the purge is also part of her! That must mean those were her emotions. "Jesus Lumina! What happened? Killer tendencies towards men? Wait a minute... I'm a man!" What a terrifying thought! What if I say something else mean? Is she going to kill me too? What if my split personality takes over and makes me kill myself?

"It's an incredibly long story. I'd rather share the important details first, in the proper order."

"There's a proper order to this?!" Forget that! Claiming that such a powerful hatred is just a long story is not a good enough excuse! I want the reason behind that malice! But I'm too afraid to ask her directly, especially after realizing how much she really does hate us.

"Honestly," she huffed closing her eyes to reset herself, "I'm making that up as I go."

That's not surprising. That's the most realistic thing I've heard her say all day, but if that is the case, Lumina is capable of inventing details for anything that I ask on the fly! Yet she still wants to stick to her own subject matter. My imagination has to get tired eventually, right? "What is this, your first purge? Or is this armature hour?" I might as well provoke her and see if I die.

"You still don't get it, do you?"

Silence... Peace... Serenity... Must you break my peace and make me admit that I don't know?

"Sending a purge is an extremely power-demanding process. It requires at least seven different people helping the leader of the sending node during that process to have it send properly."

"So what happens to those who have less than seven people?" Is it something horrible? Is it something gruesome? I'm dying to know how this can be twisted around.

"If attempted without the proper numbers of consecutive assistance, and if done without the proper hydration levels, every person attempting to send or amplify this purge signal not only fail, but they would die right there on the spot. Their death would occur from running out of biological energy while damaging their Cora Sector beyond repair."

It was something terrible after all. When I expect the unexpected, I get what should have been expected instead. Still, if purging risks people's lives, then why do it at all? "That sounds harsh."

Lumina continued, increasing the pace her explanations since there was so much more to everything. It felt so wrong to summarize all of this, but three would be too much to go over in a single day. "Even for those of us who successfully send a purge, it takes out so much of our energy that all involved have to rest, and are rendered powerless for the next two days. That's not even the worst bit of it."

I can draw enough of a picture to understand what she is saying at least. There have to be enough Altiri assisting in a single purge because it has a high energy requirement, and even if they succeed, it still hurts them somehow. It only reinforces my earlier question. "It sounds like you really put everything on the line just for this one purge." What I want to know is why, but I don't want to directly ask her just yet. I already did before and got a strange answer.

"There are permanent side effects to sending a purge too, side effects that I got to find out firsthand. It happens to all of us who take part in a purge, but I can no longer use my long-range clairvoyance on anyone. Short-range clairvoyance still works for us, but I can't find out anything with that ability directed at Earth anymore. It hasn't worked for me since last year. It won't ever return to us again."

"So that means you can't spy on the Earth anymore." All things considered, it's a bit disappointing that she can't use that ability anymore, since it could have been an opportunity to prove her existence. Still, spying on people without their knowing is way too creepy, and she ought to know better. "I feel violated you know."

Lumina however chose to ignore my irrelevant complaint, leading into the other important aspect to this explanation. "It also permanently disables our ability to send another purge ever again."

"I did want to clarify about that." She mentioned it earlier, but I still want to be sure. "You're saying that you only get one purge, one human target to train telepathy to? And once that chance is spent, you are forever stuck with that one target for the rest of your life?"

"Correct. As you might have guessed, the loss of ability extends to anyone who assisted in sending the purge, amplifying its signal. So, even though you and I are the only ones talking to each other, all of my sisters will never be able to send a purge or use long-range clairvoyance for the rest of their lives either."

I softly exhaled showing concern to that revealed fact. It wasn't just Lumina who lost abilities permanently, but the consequences extend to those who helped her too. It means none of her sisters can send a purge or reap the benefits that Lumina is gaining from being the purge sender. If I believed any amount of this, I would feel a little guilty. But even if I don't, such a process seems too harsh to dip into.

"Are you beginning to understand why we Altiri are not so trigger happy to just go purging people left and right? There can only be one purge per aggressor group, and I am the chosen leader for Cy-Star, a decision that can never be undone."

I've been meaning to ask this now, and here is my only real chance to rub it in. "How important was I for this mission of yours? Why was it so important to put yourself through that much just for my sake?"

"You are worth more than you realize. Not everyone is like you Reed. There are a lot of flawed people in the world, some of which say or do terrible things, or are incapable of understanding basic qualities an enriching life. Finding even one human worth purging is a miracle in itself. But you're a good person, even when most around you are not the same."

I couldn't fully understand what she was trying to say. I only managed to catch onto one particular observation she made of me. It wasn't that she was wrong, but her view on everyone else seemed too biased. "There are lots of good people in the world too. I may be somewhat unique, but not on such a huge scale."

"The number is not really as high as you would think." I couldn't see it, but Lumina has never been more certain of herself about this one thing. She watched over so many of them, watched so many people destroy each other, hurt the people they claimed to care about, and converted others to do terrible things. Even though they all start out as children, it only takes minor social pressure to change them again. "People change, usually during their first few years of school because of how horrible they are treated. You of all people know what that can feel like, and you know how chaotic any social life can be when you aren't like other people."

So she knows about that, huh? I didn't reply to her, as she wasn't wrong. Even though it was more proof she invaded my privacy, those earlier years of school were tougher on me, more than I cared to remember. All this time, my true differences from everyone else was my shyness, my intelligence, and my moral principles. I was always too sensitive for my own good, and in grade school, the kids who caught onto that picked on me in a number of ways. Even though nothing ever got physical, it wasn't a pleasant experience. There are even people in middle school that I avoid specifically because I can tell they don't care about much for anything, nothing beyond the importance of sports and cheerleading. Some do, but I can tell they would willingly throw their own friends under the bus if it were to save their reputation. The guys are even worse though. They care so much about their manhood that any deviation from that principle is punishable with mountains of insults and ridicule. So of course I've never had an easy time making friends. There were even a few times I wanted to change who I was, change the pathetic kind of individual that I grew into, simply because it wasn't compatible with those who were more popular.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"I started to worry that you would follow that same pattern, to change the kind of person you are deep down just so that you could fit in better. My sole purpose and reason of purging you was to prevent that from happening."

She even knew about that? I shouldn't be surprised considering she is an illusion of my own mind and memory, but I certainly did come close to hacking away at my own integrity. I was so desperate to fit in during my fourth and fifth grade years that I gave a trial run to see how it would turn out. My hypothesis was proven true in demos of scenarios I put myself through. In order to fit in with a group of idiotic guys, I had to cast way everything that made me a good person. Tripping someone on purpose just to get a laugh, annoying some of the other kids, giving out dares to break school rules, and even calling each other stupid names is really what it took for them to start involving me in more things. It didn't seem at first like that would have increased their overall classroom popularity, but somehow it did. Maybe the kids respected them because they didn't care, but more importantly, it got me into a little bit of trouble too. I managed to look into the mirror long enough to know that I didn't want to be like that just to have friends. I wasn't willing to go far enough to hurt others for my own benefit. So, I backed out of the idea and just stuck to myself for a while. Similar things happened in the fifth grade with similar consequences.

I never knew Lumina would bring up that bit of my past. Just as well, I thought it was an even stranger reason to use that as the basis of purging somebody. "You picked a strange reason to purge somebody." Still, I couldn't help but see everything from her angle as well. For Lumina, this must be tougher than I previously considered. I mean, you end up wasting this one-time only purge on me just to make sure I don't change. And at the same time, I can think of you as nothing more than a hallucination. I tried to imagine how that would make me feel, if I were in her place instead. Even knowing she is a fake person, just imagining her to be real in this specific hypothetical situation really gave me more perspective about myself I never thought I would get any other way. If Lumina is somehow real, she must be freaking out inside wondering if she could ever convince me that she is real, not just because she wants to, but because her one and only chance to purge somebody else is already gone for good.

Still, she is a rather interesting hallucination. After everything we started with so far, I wasn't expecting to hear so much from her in such little time. Can a hallucination really make all of this up so quickly? In either case, I knew it was time to ask more questions. "I'm honestly having a really hard time keeping up with all of this."

Though Lumina heard more of my thoughts than I meant to project, she didn't comment on them. My assumptions were close on the money. Proving to me that all of this is real - is the most important thing on Lumina's mind right now, but she can get nowhere by rushing it. "I'm betting on the hopes that I made the right decision. People aren't purged often."

"But surely I'm not the first, right?" She said I was the first male human to be purged, which implies there were others. The fact that there are others actually makes this more believable. If I'm lucky, maybe I can find another one and compare notes; that would do it for sure.

"Nope. The reality is, about one to two subjects are purged every century or so, since the beginning discovery of humanity. The Altiri became very selective on targets once we realized the costs of sending a purge. For everyone else, our mission was only to watch and observe, never to interfere."

"Because if you interfere, there are consequences, right?" I still wasn't sure how far this goes, but I was beginning to understand the reasons why Altiri would purge other humans. The truth is, most of them don't do it at all.

"Because if we get attached to a single individual, and then end up purging that person, it changes both of our lives forever."

Maybe that could be the case for someone else. "But at the end of the day – for me, my life will remain unchanged." She can pretend that I'm destined to call her back tomorrow all she wants, but I'm not playing into that. I do feel bad that she wasted her only purge on me, but she should have through it through more if she didn't want to have this happen.

But Lumina did her best to ignore my current decision, wishing it could change by the end of the day. "To put things into perspective for you, there are only about 1,000 Altiri Aggressor Groups. That's about five thousand or so capital class mark space ships, with two pilots per ship, leading to about ten thousand of us in space. If all of us were to purge at the same time, our maximum target number would be only about 1,000 humans."

Of course, I did the math on that already without a second thought. Though the military aspect of this reminded me of something else. "So you live in those space ships when you are in the military instead of the planet down below?"

"That's our job. Our entire fleet is responsible for the total orbital defense designed to repel any potential space invaders."

That's one hell of a force just for defense. They must have mastered space travel at least within their own system, something humans have not done at all. But even with that, they only use the ships for defense? What exactly are they expecting to happen? "So," I implied with blatant curiosity, "did you ever wind up getting invaded?"

"No, nothing has ever happened like that. I'm glad that our world is safe from outside harm, but it really does make life up here really boring."

"Boredom, or war..." I openly began to consider which of the two issues would be worse. "I suppose that could be tough, but then now would be my chance to ask what alien entertainment is like."

"You must have missed the punch line earlier," Lumina reminded. "We don't offer any electronic entertainment such as radio-based television or video games. Even so, those of us stuck up here are taught easily how to invoke long-range clairvoyance. Ever since 11,000 years ago, we've had an interesting source of entertainment through such a powerful scope. Watching over specific individuals can bring about all kinds of stories and emotional moments for all of us."

"Just like one big reality TV show," I surmised automatically. "Except in this case, none of us are really actors." Despite being sarcastic about it, the theory did strike me as an amazing concept; aliens watching our world like one massive collogue of personal stories and comedy skits.

"Stop joking around!"

I winced at her response slightly, but didn't say anything else. She must have heard my tone and found out I was choosing to handle this in my own way.

"As I was saying earlier, each aggressor group has an average of ten people in each team. The minimum number to send a purge together is seven people, but nine or ten is preferred since it reduces other risks it puts on us. Even so, that severely limits the number of people we could purge at maximum."

"What's the count so far?"

"The cumulative number so far is barely above twenty. You happen to be the most recent, number twenty-four."

"So that means—" I stopped myself, rewinding the words I just heard in my head again. She said cumulative number of people, which means over the span of our entire history. "Right, most of them would already be dead by now."

"Yes. I know where you were going with this, and there is something interesting about the purge rates. Lately, the rate of purging humans has skyrocketed for this specific century. Right now as we speak, you and ten other humans who have been purged are still currently alive today. That also means that ten other aggressor groups have been busy. And as much as I would like to, I can't say who they are or where they are, not the targets or the aggressor groups that are part of it."

"Now isn't the time to slap me with the top secret cliché Lumina. Don't you realize that by revealing just one of their identities, I can find them, compare notes, and prove to both us what is real and what isn't real?"

"It's not that I know something and can't tell you Reed. The problem is, we really don't know any of their identities. All we know for certain are that ten other females have already been purged in the last twenty years."

I moved to stand up again, partly with anger that she wasn't seeing this my way, though I sat down, afraid of triggering the driver like before. "So find out then! Damn Lumina! This could have been your one chance to prove to me that your world is real, and you blew it!"

"I know, but it isn't my fault!" Her own desperation to absolve herself of blame in this made me quiet, waiting on her elaboration. "In the Altiri military, communication between other aggressor groups is strictly forbidden, even telepathic communication. Those are the rules set in place by the Altiri Queen. She set that rule in place to shield the identity of those who are purged from other aggressor groups. It means your personal identity is safe from everyone else."

"Well maybe I don't want my personal identity to be safe from everyone else!"

"I don't follow your logic."

Calming myself down, I explained the obvious to her. "I get it, really I do. But just imagine what it would be like if I could find the other ten, even find just one of them. Our shared knowledge of the Altiri would be something incredible! I just know I could be friends with someone like that. And what's more, wouldn't the clairvoyance of other aggressor groups be able to snoop on the details anyway? What if another group finds me and determines that I was purged by Cy-Star?"

"It is possible for other aggressor groups to do that, but they wouldn't have any leads to go on. Don't forget that the aggressor groups that already took part in a purge don't have long-range clairvoyance to their own name, so they wouldn't be able to directly assist their human subjects with that either." Still, Lumina had not considered that before. My desire for basic friendship was much stronger than she anticipated. I don't seem to care about anything else at all, just so long as I can have a more successful social life... Maybe...

"Okay," I shifted by presenting a new idea to her. "So just bend the rules a little... Or is your queen the kind of person who is more like; 'Off with their heads!'"

"You're not funny." Folding her arms in disapproval, Lumina still didn't fault me for thinking that based on what cartoons I might have seen.

"Eh, worth a shot." Even if I wasn't funny to her, I just proved by accident to myself that I have the power to change the volume, tone, and emphasis of my own thoughts as they are projected. It made me realize that I could sound like anyone I wanted to when speaking to Lumina, and I bet she could do the same.

"You seem surprising calm for someone learning all about a real alien civilization."

"The mistake is," I reminded for the tenth time, "you're the only one who thinks all of this is real. In truth, I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about it in the first place. I mean, what if it is all real? Would my reaction and mood really be any different, or would montrum take over my mind like before and turn me into a mindless puppet? Whatever the case, I did promise to hear out your entire story."

"Right." It was a reaction I knew she was not expecting. His freak out much earlier was only a result in believing he lost his mind, not because of the subject matter to learn about the Altiri in the first place. Most humans who hear about stuff like this panic a little more, or refuse to remain calm about it. More to the point, he seems more capable of handling massive amounts of information at once than expected. "I don't know what exactly made this generation of humans so popular for purging season. But one thing to remember is that the reasons for purges are always personal."

"Personal?" She did mention it before, that her reason for purging me aside from keeping me from changing by peer pressure was to be friends with me as well, but that still made no sense to me logically. The risks are too high, the stakes are too strong, and the idea of purging an alien being just to talk them feels like it is too far out there, but if she does have an ulterior motive for doing so, I'm having a hard time seeing it. Does my brain really want a friend so badly that it would create all of this and bend reality to make it happen? "You must really want to be friends with me more than ever... Or, maybe I really have gone insane from the lack of friends I've had for the past month. Maybe I invented someone like you just so that I wouldn't become crazy." Only, if that is true, it means I made myself crazy so that I wouldn't become a much worse version of crazy. "If that is true, look where it got me so far. I never expected far out stories like this to emerge from a false person."

Lumina wished she could just prove it to me in a faster method, and she wanted to argue that she was as real as I was to her. However, she knew better than to try that twice. The only way to get through to him now is by explaining everything else first before asking anything of him. Because despite what the purge did do to him, he is missing so much of the other elements of knowledge that should have come with it. The adaptation process would have been easier if I had that to start with, but that isn't an option here. "Anyway, that purge inside of you might have given you weird sensations in the past, and it might still continue for a short while, but they will all dial away soon."

I don't think she was trying to change the subject, but I cared less about the possibility when her unintended words reminded me of something else I had almost forgotten about. "Does that strange rage attack I had at my dad's house also have anything to do with the purge?" It's such a scary thought, to think some telepathic signal can basically change who a person is or make them act differently than they actually would. It's like some indirect form of mind control, but whatever happened to me on that day was one of the weirdest I can remember.

"What strange rage attack? Did something happen to you or your dad?" Missing some clarification, Lumina demanded swift answers, since it sounded both unusual and serious.

"No." It wasn't as simple as she was thinking. I felt weird describing a memory that she should already have given the assumption she isn't real, but the day still hung heavy on my mind. Whatever happened to me hasn't happened again since, but it was one of the scariest moments of my life. I remember most of what happened, but not why it happened. "I mean, my rage wasn't directed at any specific person, but just anything and everything around me. It wasn't the normal 'I got upset' kind of thing... I really don't know how to describe it properly."

"I won't say that is normal. It certainly hasn't happened before with anyone else we purged..." Oh no! What if the purge did more to him than what was foretold? What if there are bigger side effects for different people? Are the effects different because he is male? He is the first male we've ever purged...

"Why is that by the way?" I wasn't sure which of her thoughts were being projected and which she was trying to hide from me, but this has purge business written all over it. If every weird thing that happened to me over the last year can be explained by the effects of the purge, then it must be that! However, there was one more element bothering me about this. The rage of the Altiri is something I recall so strongly, a hatred against men. But was that part of history, or is that a current sensation? "Do Altiri people really hate all men? I mean, what do you do with the men in your society?"

"Uhm..." Uncertain how to answer those questions, Lumina tried to buy herself more time to think about it. Will Reed really understand the significance of it all? Lumina never once felt guilty or sorry about this deep down; a hatred that was well-founded and absolutely warranted, for her and all her sisters alike.

"What is it?" I didn't think it would be a hard question. She either does or doesn't hate men. What I wanted to know was whether that effect applies only to her or all Altiri.

"Well..." There isn't an easy way to explain this in a manner that he would find plausible, but there is no other way to push this off any longer. He must know the truth. "I'm guessing this was another thing the purge never did get to show you. For the record, there are no Altiri males in our society. Every last Altiri person is biologically female."

Every last one?! No, it can't be! Why would an alien civilization go that far, to eradicate every male in their entire race? That much hatred... "Oh shit! You really do hate all men!" I couldn't help but wince closer to the window, my arms tensing from discomfort. Is all of this some kind of punishment for something? Am I being singled out here?

"No... I mean well." But it was so difficult to say that with a straight face. Trying to avoid thoughts of the heathens that haunted her psyche only made her blood harden in preparation, but Lumina did her best to reassure me that it still wasn't what I was thinking. She could feel my growing nervousness already. "Just shut up for a second and I can explain it!"

I did more than shut up; her activated temper was a paralyzing command to me, one I had to obey for my own safety. I sat still, waiting and wondering with anticipation.

It's too late to come back from this, so Lumina did what she had to do, explain as much as she could to provide maximum context in this final decision. "Altiri women. How do you think they are born in a world without men?"

How are they born? Her words shifted my thinking to a separate possibility. I jumped to the conclusion that the Altiri women just killed all of their men. But what if there are no men in their society because there were never any to begin with? Is something like that even possible?

"Your second assumption is the correct one. It's all in our biology. Altiri women only birth more Altiri women."

"But then how do all of you reproduce? Without a sexual experience—"

"It isn't sexual." With both of us paying close attention, Lumina decided to give part of her mind a rest, switching to her physical voice for the rest of the explanation. "Parthenogenesis."

"Huh?" I feel like I've heard that term before, but where?

"It's a process in which Altiri adults become pregnant without any sexual intercourse. Some people have talked about it on Earth, but they are not totally correct about such a process birthing clones. Nobody here comes out as a clone of their mother. That could have more to do with our genetics, but I'm not the absolute expert on that subject."

"You mean, it just happens?" An Altiri woman can just randomly get pregnant?

"Yes," she answered while folding her arms as a stretch. "Always at that same age, one hundred eight."

"One hundred eight?! How old—" Could their cycles of years be any different from our own? It would have to be, but that still sounds like a long time. In fact, I had not even considered until now that the Altiri may have totally different aging cycles from humans. "How old are you Lumina?"

It figures he would get hung up on that detail. Stressing what was about to come of this, Lumina tried to reason with me first. "I can tell you my age, but only if you promise not to freak out."

Based on her reaction, it must be a high number. My initial guess began at 300 years old or something. After some of the lore I got into with vampire books and shows, I was kind of addicted to the concept for a while, and it made me wonder what it would like to live hundreds of years longer than a normal human. If the Altiri age similarly, it would mean that Lumina is up there on that scale too. In which case, I wouldn't have to wonder, I could just ask her what it is like. "You know I can't promise that. You've freaked me out ten times on this bus ride alone."

With a heavy sigh of determination, Lumina spoke raw fact. "Three thousand six hundred and sixteen years, and they are mostly comparable to Earth years."

"Holy smokes!" Three thousand six hundred and sixteen years old? Three thousand six hundred sixteen years of living? I couldn't stop myself from freaking out after hearing that. This went way beyond legends! Do the Altiri not age? Is Lumina immortal? As I panicked internally, I had stood up without realizing it, just as I was making the face I would if I had seen a spooky ghost right in front of me. The color drained out of me once more, attracting more attention from the people sitting to the right of me and the people a seat behind me, but I was paying them no further attention. The detail stuck on my mind hung in a strong loop. "Three thousand six hundred and sixteen years old?"

"Don't you dare call me an old hag!"

"Three thousand six hundred sixteen..." Though I did hear her warning, it was the furthest thing from my intension. I still came back around to my pervious question. Lumina... How long have you been alive? How does it feel to live countless days without ever experiencing death once? Still, my stronger projected thoughts occurring in parallel were louder, so she didn't hear that curious part of me clearly enough to reply to it. "Three thousand six hundred sixteen..."

Hugging her own chest with both hands with her neck leaned against the wall, she continued letting me judge every part of her by that one factor alone. "Well... Yeah. Now you know."

She didn't look that old in my lucid dream. But come to think of it, I have not seen this Lumina in person at all since we met. "Lumina?" I called with request. "Go stand in front of your mirror."

Here we go. Preparing herself for the worst, Lumina pushed off the wall she was leaning on, having already have stood next to a mirror that I could not normally see. After repositioning herself, she waited for me to be ready, since I wasn't capable of seeing through her eyes without her help. "I'm ready when you are."

"Good. Hold still."

"Wha— but?" What does he mean hold still? Does he not realize how much training he will need to see through my eyes?

Without understanding what I was doing, I sat myself back down with my arms folded to rest, tilting my head forward and shutting my eyes to focus. I had no idea what Lumina did the last time in order to make her world phase onto my like that, but I had to assume it was more of a matter of will than how. All I have to do is focus, concentrate, and desire what I want to picture badly enough. I have to remain unbiased too, separating fantasy and daydream from absolute reality, which is why I will desire to see through her eyes without imagining myself doing so.

I had at least some reference to start with too. I didn't notice it right away, but ever since Lumina and I were connected with telepathy this morning, there has actually been a separate sensation within me the entire time. It's faint, barely noticeable, and can be confused with many other things. I could only describe this sensation as a constant buzzing of invisible energy right inside my own brain. It was constant too, not fading in and out, nor decreasing in strength. I bet that is the visible symptom of telepathy. So, I'll concentrate on that feeling, trying to make it stronger, trying to amplify everything so that I can see what she sees.

With only five seconds of silence and effort, I was in. With my eyes shut, her world quickly flashed into view. Everything was still transparent, but against the black background of my shut eyes, it was much easier to make out fine details as if the transparency effect didn't exist at all. When I did see into this other world, I realized I was seeing right through Lumina's eyes, pointing to a reflection of her own self-image against a perfect mirror framed to the dark metal wall.

Lumina twitched once she realized what was happening. She could feel a shift in the load of the connection between herself and me, determining that I really was trying to see through her eyes despite having no prior training or knowledge of how to do it. Could the purge have prepared him that well? Is he so adamant on seeing my physical body that he can perform something he isn't ready for? The thought of standing in front of the mirror suddenly made her a little more nervous, mainly because I was doing all of this on my own without her assistance as she originally intended to give, and before she knew it, she saw my greenish eye color showing up on her iris of the reflection, a sign of where my new directional gaze shifted to.

I did my best to get all of the details as soon as I could. I was amazed I could do this back at her, since I didn't actually know how I was doing this, but immediately, I could feel a strong kind of drain pulling me back to my own world, making this harder each second. I did manage to see plenty before my vision was forced back onto a pure blank canvas of the world I came from. I opened my eyes once more, unable to keep that up for more than four seconds, but I remembered as much as I could just after.

Lumina did look like I remembered from the dream, even though I didn't remember her face too well from that same dream, but her vision was more defined than my own. It was like looking through some kind of ultra-high definition glasses that turned her world to a quality higher than my own natural eyesight. Her entire body was as tall as I remember it being, covered by the same space suit material that had such a reflective white finish. The suit wasn't bulky however; it was absolutely skin-tight with streaks and thin rectangles of cyan lines in various places all over her. If the suit were any tighter, it could very well become her own skin.

There were parts of her body that were not covered by the same shiny metallic material, such as the ends of her hands, parts of her neck, and the whole of her entire face. They say that vampires have such a drained pale skin color, mainly because they lack a lot of blood in the outermost sections of their body. With Lumina, the weak, pale coloration of her face made me think of it. It's as if she had only enough blood inside to keep her body going, turning her true skin light-grey like a ghost, but among her face and her long fingers, there were no signs of wrinkles. Based on her skin texture alone, there was no indication that she was aging at all.

Of course her dark brown hair color caught my attention too. It complimented most of her pale color so well, as if every pigment in her body had the sense to shift over to her long silky hair draping just below the backside of her shoulders. The very nature and movement of her hair seemed a little unnatural, free to move with as much entropy as I would expect in one of those high-graphics video games focusing on realistic models.

But the eyes got me the most. Her eye color was the most amazing thing I have ever seen before, a perfect and powerful shade of cyan blue. They too had more detail than most eyes ever did. It felt like I was staring into another possible universe just by seeing them for a flash of a second, so captivating and wonderful! Somehow, I knew that her eyes were capable of glowing from some effect, even though they were not glowing like that right now. They were still so defined that I could tell her apart in a crowd with those eyes alone.

In all, I had two things to think about. The more distracting aspect to all of this was how similar she was to a human woman. They're all supposed to be these Altiri aliens, but they have the same amount of limbs, toes, and fingers, the same average body height, the same hair lengths, the same facial structure, even an eye shape that was average by comparison. The suit she was wearing really seemed to be the only thing throwing out her difference from everyone else, that and such a defined eye color. I know I will never see another human being with such a powerful saturation of blue, not in my life time. I already knew from the purge that she kind of looked similar enough to a human being to pass as one with a disguise, but I never actually thought about it until this very moment.

This was only one parallel thought chain. The other was focused on the subject matter I wasn't letting go of. I initially wanted to see how old an Altiri would look at that incredible age... But Lumina, she looks nothing like I was expecting. I can tell she still looks older than me, but not all by that much. "I can't believe it. You don't look a day older than eighteen."

It felt so hard just to speak again. Having her body examined was different than she imagined it being in this scenario. She had watched over me for so long, but having me just gaze onto her for a few seconds was so nerve-wracking. "That was nice of you to say. Of course, I know you mean eighteen by human standards of comparisons."

"Do Altiri people even age?"

"Not the same way humans do. That's the reason my appearance is the way it is. If I were actually eighteen years old, I would look like a little kid. Our age gap starts climbing very fast, but exponentially slows down over time. Over here, an infant can grow up to be three years old but appear to be six. But then, between the appearance age of fifteen and sixteen, the real time frame between that is about two hundred years, and so on. That's how it goes if you scale by comparative human appearance alone."

They age with an exponentially declining slope? I've never heard of anything like this. "For all that time living, for all of that time going through life, and yet you look so young, like you are really eighteen, maybe nineteen..." And still so pretty...

"What?" Cringing from her own reaction and her voice cracking slightly from surprise, Lumina covered her mouth, but it didn't block out what I just said. Pretty? That's what he said.

"Eh," was all I could let out instantly. I gripped the bottom of my leather seat tightly, realizing my mistake. I didn't even realize that I was still thinking out loud even when I didn't want to. Controlling how far I project my own thoughts wasn't as easy as I made it out to be, especially with so much going through my mind at once. It's impossible to filter everything out! But that isn't the issue here. "What did I tell you about reading my thoughts?" How dare she! That was nothing more than a personal observation. Is she trying to mess with me?

"Shut up! Nobody is reading your thoughts, weirdo!"

It seems some of the kids around me were getting annoyed by my outbursts. It wasn't just what I spoke aloud. I realize that they were probably noticing me making weird faces or reactionary expressions to some of the things Lumina and I have been talking about, all without me realizing it. But I let her get to me so much that I had once again just blew the lid on what I was up to. Of course, they have no idea what is really going on over here, and will therefore automatically jump to the conclusion that I'm a wacko. I'm lucky if they conclude I'm still half asleep. I don't actually care if they think lowly of me, but I don't want them to spread rumors around the school because of something I said or the way I've been acting today. So the only thing I could do was turn my face back to the window, too ashamed to look at anyone.

Contrary to what I thought would happen, I could hear Lumina's raw voice, pointing in an imaginary direction and laughing hysterically at my own spectacle. She made sure her voice was loud enough do double the damage, but not so loud that she had to fake it. Her reaction was as genuine as ever, making fun of a mistake that wasn't really my own fault to begin with. That's why it was already pissing me off! You think this is funny Lumina? The people of your world are used to telepathy, but not over here. I must look like the biggest idiot of the world right now! And all you can do is hold your own stomach from my humility?

"What do you think you and I have been doing this whole time? Exchanging notes?" As if to rub it in further, Lumina's cheerful tone carried some tremolo in an effort not to burst into another laughing fit. "I did warn you three times already."

"I'm too embarrassed to be on this bus with you. I hope to god nobody here knows me."

"Haha! You're so funny sometimes."

I could finally feel the warmer rosy flush of blood through my cheeks, giving anyone I dare to look at proof that I was caught talking out loud to myself. But it isn't myself I am talking to, not really. "My humiliation is not for your amusement."

"When you do it to yourself, I have no choice but to make it my entertainment."

"Let's change the subject." Why does she have to be the person to enjoy my pain? I did my best to curb my mind back to what I should know about the Altiri, while noticing out the window how much closer we were getting to the school based on our position in the road. "I guess this means all of you have world peace, and no one ever gets sick?"

While Lumina could hear enough sarcasm to determine my question was rhetorical, she answer it anyway to let me know how it was in Genosis. "Never-ever. It's too cold here for most germs to thrive and spread, and our immune systems can handle anything, not that there is much here to handle. Altiri people are very kind to everyone. We don't go around killing other people or stealing what they have. Nobody picks fights just for the fun of it, and it's so peaceful here that we don't have a term in our language that means the same thing as crime. We only learned of that word from your world."

Yeah, that last part comes as no surprise. Even I knew that this planet, or rather most humans living on it are rotten to the core. Still, to have no crime at all in her world in an average day is quite something. It's so impossible that I find it too hard to believe like many other things. "Must be nice... How cold is it in your world for bacteria to not survive?" The Altiri are adapted for cold environments. Lumina is the one who said that. But how cold is cold?

"Well right now, me and my sisters are on our ships. It's much warmer on the ships that it is naturally on our home planet. Our ships have to run a special closed-cycle compression system so that the breathable air in all of the rooms are as cold as possible, even though the difference is quite severe. Using the air conditioning units we have here, the air runs at -70 degrees Nixus."

Negative seventy! I thought air would freeze at that temperature, but... "Wait... Nixus?"

"It's a bit different, but the unit of measure is still very close to the temperature system of Fahrenheit."

"Okay, so then it isn't exactly the same when converted, but it's still close to -70 Fahrenheit? That's still really cold!" She told me that her body would melt at positive 60 Fahrenheit, but 70 below zero is one insane way to live! How can her body handle that without freezing over or dying?

"It might sound cold, but keep in mind that the surface of Karnak is -360 degrees Nixus. That's -301 in Fahrenheit since you don't have the conversion formula yet."

"How do you even live with that temperature?!" Nothing should be possible at that range, right? I know that the place I was standing in during that dream was not Karnak, not if it was supposed to be that cold. Lumina, even if your body is somehow slated to survive only in a cold environment like that, such a range shouldn't even allow you to survive it. Do they have special suits or something? No, how would they survive before the point of needing them? The Altiri can't possibly be that incredible!

"Oh, it's awesome! That feeling of fresh cool air on my skin, it can't compare to being cooped up here. It feels amazing! I really miss it sometimes."

Her reaction tells me only one thing; the extreme cold feels to her the same way it does to a human who just walked into an air conditioner right after walking outside in extreme heat for a brief moment, or something like it. Being in a cold environment feels good for her now, and for some reason, the colder, the better. There isn't a Goldilocks spot for their survival of temperature. I'm sure there is a point where too cold is too cold, but their planet probably doesn't generate that intensity. Still, if they can die from moderate heat, at least one of them must have experienced it before. "You all need that cold just to survive. But doesn't the air freeze at that temperature?"

"Surprisingly, no. The air might be thinner, but we can breathe it just fine. Most of what we breathe in is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, but there are other elements in our air too, different from the air you breathe on earth."

"I figured that much." Even though I was just going along with everything at this point, I was finally able to start keeping up with everything. The premise of this wild hallucination is that Lumina is an Altiri, a different biological creature similar to a human from a distant world in a different star cluster. She lives in a frozen world, doesn't age, and has psychic abilities. In summary, she used up some of those one-time abilities just to telepathically talk to me about all this, still for reasons I don't know why. I'm still not sold on the whole friendship thing; it seems too simple, but it left me going back to something else. "Tell me again what happens to you if you walk into the heat."

"It isn't pretty. Any temperature above fifty becomes toxic to our bodies. A temperature of above sixty has fatal effects within just a few seconds. Our lungs are usually the first to stop working. It doesn't usually get warm anywhere out here, never on Karnak. But on these space ships, even though space itself has an absence of heat, some of the internal components of our capital ships can produce heat both inside and outside the ship within certain areas, especially during a rare accident."

So that would be their reference, I realized. Above fifty is toxic she said? I could tell that the air outside me right now was somewhere in the lower forties. The overcast forming in the sky might lock that temperature in place a little too, but the weather on Earth is just too unpredictable. "Damn. That means you could never live here."

"On top of that, all psionic transmissions work the same way. Our ability to project signals works much better in the cold – to an area of affect in a 1 mile radius. Understand what that means. If it suddenly warms up outside in your area, our communication will be cut off automatically, no matter how much either of us want it to stay. If that happens, there won't be a thing either one of us could do about it."

Though I didn't present it to her, that detail surprised every bit of me, demanding my attention to process all the possibilities of what that means. Lumina told me that the connection would cut off automatically at the end of the day when I get tired enough to sleep. But based on her newer testimony, the heat in the air itself can disrupt this connection, shutting it down just like that. It isn't really warm outside right now, but it can be at any moment. Georgia is not exactly known for its cold weather... "That's interesting. So the heat can disrupt psionic communication. It probably isn't just telepathy either, but something that would mess with any form of psionic power coming from a person acting as a node..." What am I saying right now? I don't know the first thing about psionics, yet here I am using it in complete sentences like a crazed up scientist. "Whoa! I'm starting to sound like you now!"

"In time Reed, I think that will happen more often. The more you learn from me, the smarter you will become."

"How intelligent are you, compared to me at least?" As I asked that question, impatient for a response, the rest of my mind still considered the weight of this one particular weakness when it comes to psychic powers. It's a shock in itself to learn that all psychic powers have a weakness to heat like this, but there was another reason I realized the significance of this. It's too inconvenient! I didn't want to conclude anything, but I couldn't just let go of this constraint either.

Look at it from my point of view. If I assume that all of this is an elaborate hallucination built for the purpose of allowing me to befriend a ghost and talk to myself in a new way, why then would I willingly add a constraint to the very foundation needed to establish that contact in the first place? If I made all of this up because a part of me wanted to make all of it up, wouldn't these psychic powers lack all constraints? It would be more perfect just to ensure I would have no issues continuing to bond with this other part of myself, going back to the original purpose. That's what is so weird about it. If I looked at myself as a crazy person with an insane goal to make friends no matter the cost, logically is makes no sense to throw in a curve ball that could derail everything so easily, such as the weather.

On the other hand, if all of this really is happening, if I'm not going crazy, and I've just attracted the most insane event of my life to the here and now, then this constraint could prove to be a nuisance. Or, I could leverage that as a tool, maybe. I don't know what it would be useful for. All I know for sure is, the knowledge that heat can shut down telepathy from either end is useful information. I'll have to leave it at that for now.

"I would have to assume I'm far more intelligent than you when it comes to the stuff I already know. However, I'm going to let you decide that for yourself."

"Okay...?" I didn't know what to make of that. If she really does exist, then I would have to assume she would be far more intelligent than myself by default. She is over three-thousand years old after all. I'm amazed her memory can function at that age. Then again, if she isn't real, then maybe I'm turning into a genius, while going off the deep-end at the same time. What if I turn out to be a mad scientist who does crazy experiments while believing I live in an alternate world, like in one of those Twilight Zone episodes?

Speaking of intelligence, there is a lot more to learn still left untouched. "Want to know more about the benefits of having an Altiri body?"

I could hear the hint of her gloating in her mental voice. She really thinks herself superior to other humans... She isn't wrong to think that way. "You're really just trying to make me jealous, aren't you?" Before I could expect a reply from her, my body perked up on its own, reacting on habit and instinct from the sight through my window view. My own alertness to the change in environment seemed to get Lumina's attention too. Basically, this was just me realizing that the bus was now taking its place in the parking lot of the middle school. I noticed everyone around me putting things in their book bags and getting ready to head out. "Oh. It's time to get off the bus. Sorry Lumina, but this is where school starts." The telepathic discussion was interesting and all, but this is where everything must revert to normal. She had her fun already. I can't possibly hope to focus in class with two minds going off at once. It's best if she realizes that now.

"Awesome!" Lumina exclaimed while jumping up with energy. "I get to see what the inside of your middle school is like!"

No! No! No! No! No! No! "Out of the question! I'm doing this solo. No weirdness for the rest of the day." I picked up my own backpack, standing up just as the bus door was swinging open, letting in the fresh air mixed with the scent of burning exhaust.

"But you promised you would hear me out until the day's end!"

"How much more is there for you to tell exactly? I think I can paint a picture already." She must want to stick with me for the entire duration of the day, but that isn't going to work.

"You can't possibly learn it all in one full day Reed. There's loads more to tell. And it's not just about my world. I want you to tell me more about your world too!"

"Don't you know everything already?" I asked while I was finally getting to the front of the single-file line.

"There are things about Earth that I don't know, things that clairvoyance cannot teach us. I've never seen your middle school before either. When we decided to purge you, it happened on the day close to your first day of attendance. But because of our purge, none of us could track you within the school using clairvoyance anymore. I only ever recall seeing you in Ovlar and Bereaton Elementary school. Besides, if you don't keep your end of the deal, I'll just distract you on purpose."

"You wouldn't!"

"You think I wouldn't? Did you forget that you don't know how to shut down a connection on your own just yet? I won't just leave so easily."

She grows more annoying by the second. Even when I try to reason with her, she won't leave me alone for half a moment! By now, I was getting close to the door of the bus, but I wanted to continue trying to get this girl off my back before I get into class and things really get complicated. "Look, Lumina. There isn't much more for either of us to learn here. I'm already understanding how telepathy works enough. We share not only thoughts, but sensory details too. I can already imagine how this must look from your angle, seeing through my eyes, hearing through my ears, and—"

I was making good on my own words, right up to the point where I forgot to watch where I was putting my feet. My right shoe, placed halfway beyond the ramp of the second stair of the bus exit slipped forward, bringing the rest of my tumbling weight down with it until I had flopped forward through the air. Cut off by my own clumsiness, I took quite the fall from the bus, smacking my ribs right into the black pavement of the parking lot below me. As I should have expected, that impact hurt like hell!

Before I could even begin to process the pain, several students from inside the bus and outside coming from several directions pointed and laughed at my own predicament. Not all of them were so heartless, since I could hear some of the girls asking if I was okay. Others stared at me with a more neutral attitude, like they wanted to swarm in and help, but not with everyone else watching. I on the other hand could care less, since tripping and falling like that was a most unpleasant experience. As soon as I started to pick myself up, a secondary commotion triggered with volume.

"IIiiiieeeee! That hurts me too you idiot!" Lumina found herself brought to the ground, holding her left arm to her ribcage after the impact against it left a burning pain of friction and mild bruising.

"Stop yelling! I'm sorry!" I didn't think telepathy would enable somebody the ability to sound so loud through my thought hearing process, but this proved as much. I only had right now to consider the proof that any physical pain we end up experiencing from a blow like that will hurt the both of us at the same time. Even so, she doesn't get to be as upset as me! There is one thing I already understood about this whole process. Even if physical sensations are shared, actual damage is not. "How do you think my ribs feel? It's not as if you actually take the physical damage..." I finally stood up, brushing myself off of any road debris and dirt that might have gotten onto my arms. The pain in my chest was subsiding much quicker than I thought it would, telling me that the damage was nothing beyond a simple tumble to the ground. I was going to be fine, and that means Lumina would be fine too. "Right?" When I didn't hear her reply right away, I suddenly rethought that whole process over. What if physical damage can somehow transfer between telepathy? It shouldn't be possible, but then I've been listening to impossible things all day. She's either really hurting, or just being more mellow-dramatic than I am about this. "Right?!"

"I guess this proves I'm the more intelligent one after all."

Oh, so we want to play insults now? She thinks I can juggle keeping a strong balance and pay attention to the world around me while handling not only my mountain of thoughts, but hers as well? The sting of her words was something I tolerated for only a single second, before turning around, aiming my eyes and my fist at the sky, and returning that challenge to her. "Yeah? Well you can go shove that intelligence up your ass!"

"Wha— Reed?"

Realizing that I just did it again for the fifth time in a row, my body suddenly went cold and numb. I threw down my fist from the air, acting as if I wasn't trying to make one at all, but I wasn't frozen or taken aback simply because I was embarrassing myself. I recognized the voice behind me, even though she sounded confused by what I was doing. Dare I turn around and see her face for real?

"Were you just talking to someone from the bus?"

Someone just end my misery already! I can't believe she just caught me yelling at the open air. Others did as well, but of all people, I didn't notice Banarus standing so nearby when this must have happened. I can only imagine that she approached me because she saw me fall of the bus in the first place, when I then had to go and make a fool of myself!

It is only Banarus, something I had to remind myself of a moment later while I collected my thoughts. Luckily, Lumina was being silent too, probably because she wasn't expecting someone to just come up and talk to me. My embarrassment was obvious enough, but I soon managed to ignore it after everything else I was able to recall about this situation. "No, no, and no!" I didn't shout or yell, but my words were firm.

"Huh?"

Don't play dumb Banarus! I told her no three times for a specific reason. Ever since the whole incident with Malica, she has been asking me the same three basic questions over and over again. I'm sick of the fact that she can't seem to learn anything from this. "The other no's were to your next two questions," I elaborated with an annoyed tone. "No, I do not want to sit with you and Malica today. No, I do not want to sit next to Maddison and your other weird friends who don't care whether I'm left out of the group anyway. And no, I'm not going to give you a different answer about how I'm doing." Hearing myself talk, I knew how stuck up I sounded, but I didn't care. My response was justified given everything her friend put me through.

Pretending to care less by making that *Tsk!* sound with her teeth and turning away to storm off, Banarus took her leave of me once again. "Whatever then." Her tone more annoyed than mine was, Banarus picked up her pace quickly to the side entrance of the school where the busses drop everyone off.

I just stood there glaring, waiting for her to leave, finding no peace until her presence was far away enough. None of the others that saw me fall were sticking around either. They were already walking in; considering that little episode to be business as usual.

"Huh. That was actually kind of rude... Did something happen?"

Right, I can't forget that the other nuisance is still here as well. She can see and hear everything through my senses directly, so everything I look at or hear is immediately relayed to her in real time. I can't get used to the lack of privacy right now. "Lumina? This isn't going to work. I can't keep you in my head like this and focus on my classes at the same time. I won't even be able to hide your presence either. I can project my thoughts quietly if I get used to it, but I can't control the expressions I might make without thinking about it."

"Don't make a big deal out of it. Since when did you care about what others thought of you anyway?"

See? She just ignored my concerns like they are nothing. I began pacing myself to the entrance too, but I made sure to walk as slow as possible, trying to come up with a way to remove this pest before I get into the hallway and it is too late. I'm too nervous to think straight anymore! How am I supposed to concentrate on anything like this?

"You've got this! All you have to do is remember to talk to me with your mind and not with your mouth. The others won't even pay you any attention, I promise that."

She's making that assumption based on my current popularity... But even I have not considered how bad things were until just now. How does she keep doing that? How can she know about how popular I'm not in school, yet not carry any memory between the beginning and end of the purge? Did she deduce I was a loser on her own?

I can't let myself get distracted! But I'm only about thirty meters from that door now. I don't know what to do anymore! I can't get rid of this illusion, no matter what I do. If I ignore her, she speaks her mind anyway. If I indulge her, enough is never enough. Even if I could care less what the school thinks of me, the last thing I want is for people to find out I'm hallucinating! I couldn't think of a worse scenario than that outcome. So why can't I come up with a way to put a stop to this? The idea of heat won't work. It's still cold outside, and Lumina told me it works based on a full mile radius of effect. I don't think the heater of the school would kick her out; it's just not in my cards of luck. If I don't do something right now, she's going to end up spending the whole day of school with me, right now! I can't let that happen!