For a moment there was no change. It was late, and he was tired. All that anticipation had been coursing through his veins for the past hour like caffeine from a soda. With nothing happening, a wave of fatigue overcame him. He felt like a pool toy losing its air, a condition that left him wholly unprepared for what happened next.
Wayne appeared on top of his desk, just in front of the keyboard. A small hologram of Wayne, no more than four inches tall, impossibly real-looking. Finn waved his hand through the image just to confirm it was what it was.
“Whoa!” Finn said aloud. “Can you hear me?”
“Hello, Finn.”
It was Wayne’s voice-there was no mistaking the scratchy quality. But, maybe because of the projection or the transmission, the words sounded somewhat artificial, almost glued together, the intonation wrong.
“What exactly…? Where…? Is that really you? Where are you?”
“Come down…lower…Finn. Look at…my face. I should see…you…better.”
Finn had heard Philby talk about augmented reality apps-AR-baseball cards that came to life as holograms on your desk, maps that did the same thing. The Keepers had heard rumors that Disney was considering making Kingdom Keepers playing cards with an AR component, allowing them to appear as 3-D images just as Wayne was now appearing. Some augmented reality could even be animated-a baseball player swinging a bat, a dancer spinning on her toes-but he had never heard of an AR element projecting in real time the way this one was. It was like a 3-D video chat, and Finn found it captivating.
He backed up his chair and lowered his head as instructed in order to look directly at Wayne’s small face.
Somewhere in the far reaches of Finn’s mind, a warning light went off. The choppiness of Wayne’s voice could be a transmission problem, as he suspect-ed-but why would the hologram be so clear and the audio be so choppy? That didn’t make sense. The audio sounded edited-words cut and pasted into sentences.
As he lowered himself toward Wayne’s small face, Finn simultaneously cleared his thoughts and pictured a dark tunnel with a pinprick of light showing far, far in the distance. He allowed that light to grow closer, allowed himself to sink not only toward the desk, but into a peaceful, blissful state.
“That is…better,” said the hologram.
Then, as Finn looked at Wayne, the face transformed, no longer a man with white hair, but suddenly the stern face of a beautiful woman. The Evil Queen’s mouth was already moving, her voice both haunting and musical.
Finn’s fingers and toes tingled. With the mention of kissing Jezebel-the name Jess had gone by a few years earlier-he panicked, and he slipped out of
Finn was caught in a state of partial
In this interim state, he managed to reach forward, move the mouse, and click the “back” button on his browser. The computer screen showed an Algebra 2 Web page he’d been using for homework.
The Evil Queen hologram sparkled and vanished. Finn sat back into his chair feeling…different.
The page-forward button on the browser flashed as if he’d clicked it with the mouse, which he had not.
Someone was controlling his computer.
The Queen began reciting the verse again. Finn pulled the power plug on his computer, but the laptop, being battery-powered, continued to run. He shut the lid, and the computer went to sleep.
He focused at that space in front of his keyboard where the Evil Queen had stood. No matter how he fought against it, he could hear her.
Kissing Jess? He spat on the floor before he knew what he was doing. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Jess, of course he did. But not in
Why Jess? Why would the Evil Queen want him to do that? Was it simply a matter of making Amanda jealous- dividing the “sisters”? What would that accomplish?
He would have to reboot his computer in safe mode and run a virus check. There was work to do before he could attempt a chat session or e-mail. He put the machine to work, searching for the backdoor or bug that had allowed it to be controlled remotely. He knew he should have probably allowed Philby to look at the machine first, should have given Philby a chance to trace the infection back to whoever had caused it, but he had no desire to share the stupid verse with anyone. Just the mention of it could have the desired effect: anger, jealousy, confusion. He had to think this through.
He relived the incident, convincing himself he’d been
Finn was there. Practical Finn. Organized Finn. Amanda’s Finn. Jess preferred boys like Kaden Keller, more on the unpredictable side. More wild. But Amanda was crushing-no doubt about it. And Jess liked Finn a lot, so she was happy for Amanda.
So why, she wondered, was she just standing there as Finn walked up to her with that look in his eye-a look any girl knew. A look that said he was going to kiss her. And why, she wondered, was she going to allow it to happen when she knew how it would hurt Amanda? He took her by the shoulders, closed his eyes, and pressed his lips to hers. And he stayed there like that. A real kiss that flooded through her like a sugar rush, lips to toes. By the time she awoke and began to sketch in her diary, she knew full well it had been only a dream. But with her dreams came a connection between now and then, between here and there, the present and the future. Only later could she ever make full sense of such a dream-a day, a week, a month. Adults had labeled it a power; Amanda called it a blessing; Jess often thought of it as a curse.
She knew some piece of the dream would happen, but not when, or why, or how it might change things. Upon seeing her sketches, the Keepers often looked for answers she didn’t have. She could see the future; she couldn’t interpret it.
But the kiss lingered on her lips. It had felt real-incredibly real.
She adjusted her pillow and continued to draw. She started with the background first-the five uneven steps seen in profile, rising to a landing. She loved the sound of the pencil lead scratching the paper; she felt no fatigue.
