Reality Heist - Geordi Riker (ready player one ebook TXT) 📗

knowledge of ancient Greek math?”
“I dunno.”
“Well, to be fair, it was your dream.”
“Maybe my brain's so much on the fritz that I can't even tell the difference between a bit and a Byte.”
“A bit is a piece of machinery used by mechanics to fix insignificant problems and then proceed to charge colossal amounts of money for that action. A Byte is a morsel of food. Honestly Brandee, they aren't that hard to keep separate,” Jesse laughs.
I fling a hand towards him, trying to cause the Motes to move in his direction and knock him off his feet. No luck. The Motes do acknowledge me, though, and begin to swirl excitedly. Happy as they seem to be to see me, they don't seem to be too eager to obey my commands yet.
It will come.

The thought pops into my head, spoken by Hiyori . “Hiyori ?” I silently ask, searching for her. How could she be here? I thought the two worlds were separate entities.
No response. Must have been my imagination. I choke down another swallow of coffee, and can almost feel the caffeine buzz driving through my system, wiring my brain to take on more difficult tasks until the buzz wears off.
Jesse laughs, “What exactly were you trying to do?”
It takes me a moment to realize that he was talking about my failed attempt at telekinesis. “Trying to send some object flying towards you with my mind,” I snap. No lie is better than the truth stated in the right tone, Liars 101, lesson three.
“Right, with another random burst of telekinesis, like when the Drifters turned on you.”
“Exactly.” Let him believe what he wants, the patronizing jerk. First thing I do when I can finally move the Motes in the real world will be to send him flying into a nearby wall, or at least dumping a glass of water on him. Either or seems really appealing right now. I notice the glass of water by the sink, half-full. That would be a great one to use. I close my eyes and imagine the glass floating in the air, drifting up to Jesse from behind, him oblivious until whoosh! I can almost hear the water splash on his head, and his reaction.
“Hey!” I snap my head up from my little revenge daydream to see Jesse drenched. The levitating glass drops suddenly to land on the floor, shattering into thousands of tiny shards.
Chase and Jesse are both stunned. I start to laugh. Jesse's dark hairs is plastered to the top of his head, completely changing his entire appearance from some slacker to a drenched rat. The water drips from drenched spots on jacket, joining the puddles on the floor. “Sorry. Completely random burst of telekinesis.”
I hope you've had your fun. I suggest that you avoid such demonstrations of power in pointless arguments in the future. Using your power takes energy, a commodity that you appear to be extremely lacking at the moment

. Hiyori scolds in my head.
Oh, just shut up. I mutter back in my mind. Maybe now Jesse will stop treating me like such a kid all the time.
“How'd you do that?” Jesse asks, surprised.
Chase gives a low whistle, coming to my rescue, “She's a natural. Figuring that sort of thing out on her own, now that takes some doing. Congrats, Petite, you've successfully completed lesson one without having to listen to any of the boring theory stuff behind it.”
“Huh?” What is he talking about?
“Telekinesis appears to be one of the powers that all of us share,” Jesse explains, pulling off his sweater. His shirt isn't wet, maybe the sweater is waterproof like the jacket is bulletproof.
“But I did it without my Kinetic thing.”
Chase snorts, “I should hope so. If you needed to depend on that thing for getting you out of a jam, it would be kind of hard to break it out if it was across the room and a man was aiming a gun at your head while telling you to not move.”
“We get caught up in stuff like that?”
“No,” Jesse quickly butts in to reassure me, “Chase was just using that as a hypothetical, worst-case scenario. He tends to do that, a lot.” He shoots Chase a hard look at this last bit, a look that Chase just ignores as he goes back to reading his newspaper.
My stomach gives a loud rumble, heard by everyone. Jesse grins, “There's cereal and milk. Our options are extremely limited this morning, but we should have more food by tonight.”
I dig around the kitchen until I come up with a bowl and a spoon, pour myself a bowl, and dig in, gagging at the taste of the first mouthful. “The cereal's kind of stale, but that couldn't really be helped,” Jesse explains apologetically when he sees my face. “The expiration date is set for next week.”
“So the idiots in the cupboard decided that it was safe for consumption,” I finish for him.
He shrugs, “Exactly. And it's like they don't know what flavor is, or that we humans have a knack for wanting a good taste to accompany our meals.”
“Oh, please,” Chase begs, “Not this theory again. Jesse, I don't care if you want to hold to it, but I don't appreciate you trying to indoctrinate everyone to agree with your views. Could you at least save it until I'm out of the room?”
Jesse shrugs, “Sorry. Forgot.”
“Yeah, you tend to forget a lot.” Chase grumbles.
An awkward silence descends on the kitchen. Not one for letting it drag on, I clear my throat, “So if the Chaser is already gone, how are we getting to the museum today?”
Jesse shoots me a grateful glance, “Well, when we're set, I figured we might as well call a taxi and travel the real way.” He glaces at Chase, who's ignoring us, “By car rather than by plane.”
“Guess I won't see you anytime soon in the air force, right?” I joke.
He laughs, “No, definitely not. There's a reason why the first city was built instead of an air plane.” He shoots a quick glance at Chase again, almost guiltily.
I force myself through the bowl of cereal, glad to escape it at last. I approach the sink with some chagrin, remembering the half-finished plate of spaghetti still there. But the sink is sparklingly empty, the plate and leftovers nowhere to be found.
“I'm gonna go take a shower,” Jesse announces, “Don't want to look too ratty when we go.”
“Yeah, I'll probably take one too,” I muse, distracted. I shrug off the oddness, clean my bowl and spoon, and put away the milk and cereal, the milk in the fridge and the cereal in the garbage can that I find under the sink.
I wander up the stairs and find my room back. I dig through the closet, which is chock full of clothes for the average female, ranging from child to adult, from young and hip to old and vintage. I pull out several shirts, none of which are really my thing, until one logo catches my eye- “Speaking is NOT communication”. Perfect.
I take the fresh set of clothes, including black and green striped socks and loose fitting cargo pants, along with a towel, and wander down the hall, opening every door as I go along. Every single room is a bedroom, and I'm about to give up when I reach the very end of the hallway to find a half-decent bathroom. I knock on the door, hesitating before stepping in, but it was pointless. No one's in here. Guess Jesse must have found another one.
Half an hour later, consisting of a solid cold shower, wrestling with tangled hair, and scrambling to fix the shower after accidentally sending the curtain flying with a wave of telekinesis, I emerge, victorious, ready to go. Jesse's waiting for me in the hallway, leaning against the wall adjacent to the door, arms crossed against his chest. I don't feel too under-dressed when I see what he's wearing- the black bulletproof long coat, a black t-shirt with a Greek symbol on it, and jeans. At the sight of me, he peels himself up off the wall, “'Bout time. You are such a girl.”
“Hey, would you rather be wandering around with a girl who has a case of bed head?”
“Please. If you did that, I would have ditched you at the door.” He smirks, “Car's ready.”
We wander through the huge mansion. Chase was just kidding when he called it the palace of Versailles. The place looks great, but it didn't belong to any big-shot like a king. It belonged to a noble family, who had a lot of money, but they mysteriously disappeared. Ownership papers never exchanged hands, so the gang suspects the Black. I'm starting to think that the Black are just a fictitious creation designed so that we have something to blame for what's going on. But then again, there's the whole issue of the file Skip's apparently getting all the time. Why does he always get it though, why not someone else for a change?
A black cab, stretched out sort of like a limo, is parked outside the front door. The wind picks up as we descend the stairs. I take a moment to glance up at the overcast sky. A raindrop slam against my cheek. Perfect, just when I need it. “Is that a limo?”
Jesse laughs, “No, just a more expensive cab than the average Joe. It's even got rear-facing seats.”
I pull on my black jacket, sling my backpack over my shoulder, and follow Jesse towards the back door. Jesse opens the door for us, and slides in after me, taking the seat with the back against the driver's. The driver walks around the front, gets in, ans starts the car. Jesse glances at me again, “Did you happen to grab any cash?”
I purse my lips, “Nope. Completely forgot.”
He shrugs, “No big deal.” He taps the window behind him. The car pulls away. “The odds of us sliding any time soon is extremely low, especially with the gut feeling I've got.”
“Gut feeling?”
“Yeah, the little knot a person gets in their stomach when they're about to get sucked through time and space to an alternate time line without anything done on their part. The rest of the gang feels it too. Don't you feel slightly off?”
I hesitate, “Not really.”
“Dang. I was kind of hoping that when your pressure showed up on a normal scale that it would enable you to sense when the slides were going to happen, or at least give you an idea of how far off they are. We're going to have to persuade the security people at the museum to let you keep your bag with you.”
“Shouldn't you keep yours with you too, then?”
“Nope. See, if you have enough time to prepare, all you have to do is build a link with the object you want to take with you. It's a bit more complicated than Linking up with the others, because at least they're sentient, at least you would hope so. For inanimate objects you need to, overly simplified, imagine wrapping them up in your Pressure. It would be easier if you could actually see your own. What colour is your Pressure?”
“I don't know. I just know I have it.”
“Really? The world doesn't have one colour that kind of stands out more vibrantly than the rest of the spectrum?”
“Not that I've come across yet.”
He nods, looking away as he processes the information. “How'd you manage to do it, by the way?”
“Do what?”
“Control pressure on your own?”
“What do you mean?” It's almost as if he's trying