Finally I dropped the bacon on my plate and stood up. “I…I’m not hungry. I better get dressed.” I left the table, headed for the door to the dining room.
“But you have to eat something before the game!” Mom called after me.
“I’ll get something later,” I yelled back.
I was going mental. If my parents had said: “Well, Bobby, you were in a coma for the last year and a half,” I would have understood. That would have meant that everything about the territories had been a dream. But they didn’t. They acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.
There was only one possible explanation. It must have been a dream. A really long, detailed, incredible dream that happened all in one night. Isn’t that how it worked with Scrooge from A Christmas Carol? I read somewhere that dreams may seem long, but they really only last a few seconds. I figured that must have been what happened to me. As I walked back toward the stairs, I began to accept that possibility. A few moments crept by where I actually started to relax. I was home. The nightmare was over. Everything was going to be normal.
That warm, fuzzy feeling didn’t last long.
I walked by a mirror and saw my reflection. What I saw wasn’t the image of the guy who had kissed Courtney, then got on the back of Uncle Press’s motorcycle bound for the flume. No way. This guy was older. About a year and a half older, to be exact. Everything in this house was the exact same as I remembered it… except for me. In that instant, my dream theory came crashing down. There was no way I could have slept for one night and dreamed up the whole adventure, because I wasn’t the same guy anymore. No, the answer wasn’t as simple as that.
It was then that a single word came to my mind. I didn’t know what it meant at first, but it definitely felt like it was the key to unlocking this mystery.
The word was… Lifelight.
No sooner did I remember that word, than I felt something on my wrist. I looked down and saw I was wearing a wide, silver bracelet with three buttons. It surprised me at first because it wasn’t there a second ago. But still, it seemed familiar. What was I told? If I needed to talk with someone, push the left button. Well, I couldn’t imagine a bigger need to speak with someone than right now, so I pressed the button on the far left. The button glowed white for a moment and gave off a soft, quick hum.
“Not bad, Pendragon,” came a voice from the top of the stairs. “You put it together faster than most.”
I spun around and looked up the stairs to see someone sitting on the top step. It was the one thing that was out of place in this house. Besides me, that is. She was a pretty girl with a blond ponytail, blue eyes, and yellow-tinted glasses. I stared at her for a few seconds, confused. It was like having an answer on the tip of your tongue, but you couldn’t quite get it out.
“Breathe, Pendragon,” she said. “It’ll come back.”
“Aja…,” I said.
Aja smiled and clapped. “Very good. There’s always a little disorientation at first, especially if you’ve never jumped before.”
I looked around the house. My house. It seemed so real, but it wasn’t. It was an illusion. An incredible, wonderful, heart-wrenching illusion. It was all coming back. I wasn’t home. I was lying in a dark tube in a giant pyramid on the territory of Veelox, and this was all happening in my head.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Aja said. “You’ve seen a little of what Lifelight can do and you’re pretty impressed.” She walked down the stairs and came right up to me. “But you’ve just had a taste. The only limits to Lifelight are the limits you put on it yourself.” She touched her finger to my forehead. “It’s all up there, waiting to come out.”
“There’s more?” I asked.
Aja laughed. “Pendragon, you’re just getting started.”
(CONTINUED)
VEELOX
I walked around my living room in a daze. Or should I say, I walked around the illusion of my living room. The dazed part was real, though. No illusion there. I ran my hand along the back of my couch and felt the soft, cotton fabric. I turned the switch on a table lamp, and the light came on. I picked up a frame that held a picture of me holding a newborn Shannon the day she came home from the hospital. Everything looked and felt totally normal, and real.
“You shouldn’t be surprised,” Aja said. “Everything is going to be right because it’s coming out of your head.”
“But I can feel things,” I said. “And I tasted bacon. How is that possible?”
“You know how it should taste, so that’s what it tasted like. Simple as that.”
Simple as that? Who was she kidding? This was the furthest thing from simple I could imagine. I had about ten miles of questions. “What if I hurt myself?” I asked, my mind racing with possibilities. “Do I really get injured?”
“No. You’ll feel the pain if you get injured, and you’ll stay that way until the jump is complete, but you’re not really here.
You’re in the Lifelight pyramid. Nothing physical happens to you; it’s all in your head.”
“So I can’t, like, die or anything?”
“If you die, the jump is over.”
I looked at the silver wrist bracelet that had magically appeared when I began to remember Lifelight.
“Why didn’t I see this at first?” I asked, holding my arm up.
“The goal of jumping is to completely immerse yourself in the experience,” she answered. “Having that control band on your wrist would be a constant reminder that none of this is real. You’ll only see it when you need to.”
“Really? It’s like my mind tells the band when to appear?”
“Exactly. Your mind controls everything.”
“So I could, like, wish for a pizza to appear? Or for a swimming pool to be in the garage? Or for a spaceship to land on the front lawn and take me to Mars?”
Aja laughed. That was a surprise. For a change she didn’t sound annoyed. I think she liked showing off what Lifelight could do. “Sure, but only if those kinds of things would normally happen. Lifelight was designed to create a perfect experience. A realistic experience. You can’t suddenly sprout wings and fly away. Your mind wouldn’t let you because you know that can’t really happen. You’re governed by the rules of reality. But the thing is, it’s a perfect reality.”
She reached over to me and lightly touched the middle button on my wrist controller. Dingdong. The front doorbell rang. Mom hurried out of the kitchen to get it.
“You expecting somebody?” she asked me on her way to the door.
I shrugged. I was expecting nothing… and anything. When she opened the door, I saw that standing outside was a pizza delivery guy from Domino’s Pizza.
“Large pepperoni, extra cheese/’ the guy announced.
Mom gave me a look. “No wonder you didn’t want breakfast.” She paid the guy and took the pizza. “Do you have any idea how disgusting it is to eat this so early in the morning?”
“Uh, yeah,” I answered, dumbfounded.
Mom then smiled and said, “Fine, you can have this because it’s game day, but do not give any to Shannon or Marley, or your father. And eat it in the kitchen.”
She disappeared back into the kitchen along with the pizza. She hadn’t even said anything about Aja.
“Lifelight read my mind,” I said to nobody in particular.
“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Aja said.
“Why did you press the button? What did it do?”
“This starts getting a little advanced,” she explained. “When you started the jump, I told you to think about a place you’d like to be. Lifelight read those thoughts and created this house and your family. That’s the basic jump. That middle button is only used if you want to vary it. Let’s say your family wanted to go on a picnic, but it was raining. All you’d have to do is touch the button and the storm would clear. Or let’s say you wanted an old friend to be part of the jump. Think about the person, touch the button, and they’ll show up.”