Dreamland

The commotion continued for some minutes. I think seven people in total had been brutally thrown out of their virtual world. Things got slowly calmer but not less intriguing. There had been an almost total outage in a circle of around twenty to thirty meters... around me. I mean around that tin cans mountain of juice. Nobody made the connection to me. Not even I did that... for some time, I was that oblivious.

Now really, why did I need that long to recognize this fact?

“What did you do?”

“Nothing, nothing. I swear I did not do anything!”

My fairy alter-ego was protesting, but she must have done something.

After I took the lead, most things started to work. Not immediately but slowly. Except for one computer and two dream interfaces that were utterly bust. Also, one mobile phone, mine, but I did not add that to the list.

It was at the moment when I discovered that my mobile phone had broken that I first started to suspect my fairy. I wanted to use it to look like the innocent girl surfing on her mobile phone when I saw that it did not work.

“You took the lead before, but my mobile phone did not die. Why did it die now? Did you do something different?”

I was sipping juice from one freshly opened tin can, sweating guiltily, sitting on a box and watching the still-happening commotion around me. My fairy must have done something without being aware that she had done it. That was the conclusion I was slowly drawing to.

“I don't know. Do you want to heal them? Your heal might help fight nausea... ”

Hmm, is she feeling guilty?

“No. How do you even come to the idea? Magic healing would be a cool show and would instantly put a target on my head for I don't know how many shady organizations. They are not that badly hurt to need a heal. The question is, if it was not you, what else could have been?”

“How could I know? I just tried to inspect those things around when it happened. I did not even get a feeling of the surroundings to be able to tell.”

She did not get a feeling of the surroundings to be able to tell...

I sighed. No, she did not do anything special! Why do I have the feeling I have to use forceps to extract any useful information from her?

“What do you mean by this sentence: you were trying to inspect the surrounding? Visually?”

“No, silly. With magic, you can inspect in a much faster, better way, especially when you want to look around and be unobserved. Plus, you learn much more...”

Silly. She called me silly, and she did not even intend to be mean to me. I sighed. Unobserved! Is this what she calls inspecting unobserved?

“Describe it to me. What do you mean by inspecting with magic?”

“Not with magic, through magic. You must know that I have an aura. Every person that possesses magic has an aura. Most people are not aware of it. Cala, as an assassin, was able to sniff it and even locate her target through it. If you have higher-level mana manipulation, you can do much more than only having it around. You need centuries of exercise to arrive at a high degree of control, but aura can do many things, like, for instance, replacing or complementing your other senses. Seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching; you can do all these through your aura.”

I abstained from commenting that she had first said inspect 'with magic', not 'through magic'. I tried to focus on the essentials.

“You can look around? Are you joking? You can do this? Wait, I could see the boys undressed?”

I think she sighed inside me. I giggled.

“Of course, the first thing you do is think about boys. Yes, you could see your precious Joe and how he looks completely undressed. I did this. No, I do not mean I did see Joe; I mean, I peeked around me. It is as if you see something instantly from many points of view. You can even see inside things. Your nose flies to every point that you want to smell; your fingers get to every point that you want to touch.”

She was now getting excited, explaining to me aura manipulation possibilities.

“Even inside things? I'm not sure I want to smell everything, but OK, why did you not tell me when I asked what you did?”

“You asked if I did something different. No, I did this before.”

“Did you check my mobile phone before?”

“Yes, but I might have done it more throughout now. I was just curious after you talked with your mother...”

“You busted my mobile phone!”

“Ahm. It could be, but I do not understand how. This should not have happened. Aura check is not lethal...”

“It seems to be lethal for mobile phones. Why did the problem disappear after I took control?”

“When I am not in lead, my aura is blocked, and what was in the air dissipates.”

Now I probably got an understanding of what had happened. It could have been her aura. Maybe it was her aura, her 'magic inspection'.

How did her aura influence mobile phones, dream interfaces, and computers was still an enigma for me, but I might have identified the culprit.

Hopefully, the others will not make the same observation. What could help me was that even if I stayed there, nothing terrible would further happen; therefore, they could not correlate the problem with me. If I had left, that might have been bad.

Forced to stay in one place and wait, I thought things through. My visit there had not brought me the enlightenment I hoped for. Not even a pale ray of hope!

To my disappointment, the gamers had no information about any cases similar to mine. There was nobody there with any witchcraft powers, and they had no record or information about such a case.

On the other hand, my alter ego was behaving too consistently with a game character. That made me wonder again, could I have some weird connection to the game that had triggered some witchcraft genes in me?

How would this connectivity work? The internet is full of so many theories, starting from chips in food and medicine, which had been experimented with to check if you really took that medicine, to all kinds of bio nano chips that I didn't want to think about. Would they not experiment with some weird connectivity if they could?

Now, there is a long way from ingesting a chip to actually have it connect to your brain. No way this could just 'happen', but, the problem was that I was hearing voices in my head. What else could be the cause?

Yeah, but I did test that with the Faraday cage, didn't I? Do I really trust that test?

So what now?

I mixed in a group that was feverishly discussing the events and listened to them. They were calling it an S-event. They had some kind of scale for unexplained events, and it was relatively low on the scale, yet it was still classified as a significant event. Significant in the sense that no normal explanation could be given to it; it was a clearly abnormal event.

The group consisted of five boys and two girls, three with me. After a while, as the conversation turned around the same arguments, one of the boys decided that it was time to have lunch. The group approved, and they stood up. The girl near me smiled at me:

“You come with us?”

At first, I wanted to refuse, but then I followed. Nothing unglues tongues as well as food, mother used to say. Let's see if there is any truth about it. I took another can of juice with me on the way.

The murky brown-haired girl with brown eyes and a warm smile who had asked me to come gave me her hand:

“Helen!” - she said

Her hand was smaller than mine, warm and soft, her face traits delicate.

“Dolores.” - I answered, shaking her hand.

I followed them to the 'canteen'. It was in an open area where about twenty people were currently gathered. A cauldron was above an open fire where a 'cook' was mixing various liquids.

Besides the cauldron was a small mountain of opened tin cans of various soups clarifying the cauldron's content enigma.

Around the cauldron, several low tables made from stacked used tires covered with wood panels were spread in a circle, people sitting on various boxes or barrels, eating, drinking, or just chatting.

I followed my group as they continued chatting happily whilst picking up plastic saucers and lining up for the soup. There was also a beer barrel, and I learned it was a self-brewed beer. There was a bit of a beer-mugs crisis. I got a mug only after I made my puppy eyes look. The brewery was obviously illegal, but the beer tasted good. I gave up my juice and swapped it for a beer and a bowl of that consistent soup.

I followed the group to an oversized table made from a used cable drum. As seats were smaller cable drums and various boxes.

“This was not normal! This was a fucking attack on us. Somebody tries to intimidate us, not to investigate the Mephisto thing!”

That was a tall boy with an aggressive moustache that spoke. I tried to put my two cents:

“Maybe it was an accident?”

“An accident? Ridiculous!”

The tall boy was just getting warmed up. Helen sighed. I lowered my eyes to my soup, promising to keep silent for a while. The soup was good.

“You really knew Markus?”

This was Sebastian, a relatively fat boy with some strange ticks. Every couple of minutes, he looked over the shoulder as if checking if somebody was there. He was eating the soup with bread. He had a big brown bread with him. The bread looked tasty, but I'd seen it too late to grab some; however, I did not like what he was doing with that bread in his bowl.

I tried to ignore it. He had a genuine smile on his face. It seems Markus is some kind of a legend now, one of the organization's original founders.

I nodded.

“I haven't met him for almost a year now.”

From my right, Helen confirmed.

“None of us did.”

“I did!”

This was a thin young boy with long brownish hair. I did not remember his name. He explained further without being asked:

“It was in the underground salt mine stolen!”

I wondered:

“What could he do there?”

The other girl turned to me, a tiny esoteric blond girl with a timid smile:

“Probably detoxifying from electrical smog!”

“Electrical smog?”

The 'I-do-not-remember-his-name' boy shook his head:

“He was meditating there!”

The blonde took over to explain:

“The stolen is the best place for mediation. Even the lighting is done there with local batteries and especially isolated cables. That's why the visit to the mine is so expensive.”

“It's not expensive; it costs only one per hour.”

The blonde insisted:

“Per hour!”

Another boy, Peter, I think, explained further:

“The really expensive part is the transport. The train is twenty. If you want to stay for ten hours, you have already to pay above thirty without eating and drinking.”

“Yes, that's why I do not go. I do have a gratis voucher for three hours, but the train is too expensive.”

This was the fourth boy. A dark-haired, dark skin, small in stature but relatively well build type.

“It's only about twenty kilometres away?”

The dark-haired boy shrugged:

“You propose to walk? A marathon back and forth!”

This raised my attention:

"You mean there is no internet connection down there?"

The dark-haired-boy laughed:

"Not only that. There is no electrical smog. Nothing. Clean as during the time of the dinosaurs."

Sometimes you have to grab the chances that life offers you. Maybe I should redo the connectivity test, now that I have the occasion.

I risked begging:

“If you do not use it, would you consider giving me the voucher?”

He shrugged:

“Sure, but it expires today, and the cheap train tickets are sold out. I just tried.”

“Is it not possible to get there by bike?”

Helen nodded affirmatively:

“Oh yes, there is a good bicycle route!”

“Can you describe it to me?”

She wondered:

“Don't you have a mobile?”

“I do, but it got busted...”

“So you still have a valid id? You could try with Mike; he has a lot of scrap mobiles; he would find one that works if you put a valid id in them, or you can use only wi-fi!”

She pointed towards the end of the hall.

“Mike?” - I asked to be sure.

“He is there where that mountain of tires is!”

The fifth, a red-haired boy, explained, pointing in the same direction.

I continued to talk with them, eating my soup, but I got no other interesting info. I exchanged my email address with Helen, as she promised to let me know if they would find a way to the Mephisto game. The general sentiment was that the game was broken, but there was some incertitude.

“What does this mean?”

White Flower wanted me to clarify the access issue whilst I was walking towards Mike's place.

“This means that I cannot access Mephisto's world.”

“You mean that I will not see the Lynx anymore? You mean I will forever be stranded here?”

There was a bit too much panic in the way she said that. I sighed.

“Maybe there is still a way to do that. We'll see later. Until then, don't panic; everything will be alright. We are safe here.”

She found some consolation with that:

“Hm. Maybe you are right. At least this world seems safer than my world, the one that you call Mephisto's world.”