Eric and the Quantum Dragon

10th District Junior High School

Thursday December 27th, V26 (2046)

Sarah waved at the school’s security guards as she entered through a narrow side gate into the front courtyard. The main gates were kept closed during the holiday season but she had her special smart key with her, the one that opened nearly every door on the premises.

Like so many other days in the Zone, the morning was warm and humid, with clouds rolling in from the harbour promising a shower or two by the afternoon. Sarah didn’t mind the rain, although riding with Stanley in a thunderstorm one time had been utterly terrifying.

The Steam Dragon had assured her he was immune to lightning strikes, but Sarah was not so sure about herself. Anyway, today she had not planned on flying with Stanley and just wanted to visit.

One of the big, burly guards, a man she only knew as Henderson from his name tag, politely escorted her into the school lobby. He looked intimidating yet he was often chatty, telling her about his wife and two kids.

“Here we go, Miss Evermore” he announced as they arrived at the central elevator banks. “Off for some more secret missions?” he joked as he summoned an elevator for her.

“Not today” she laughed and held up a carry bag of Boxing day leftovers. “Just here to feed my dragon”

Henderson laughed too and waved goodbye as she entered the car.

“Always count your fingers afterwards!” he suggested and the doors closed with a ping.

At the roof-top level the doors opened to show a waiting Guard in armour vest and peaked cap, one of the four always assigned to the AURA Project here at the school. Sarah frowned at the Guard for a moment then her face brightened when she spotted the big fighting knife carried on his right hip.

“Hi Francis!” she called out and a faint smile creased the clone’s handsome face.

“Good morning, Miss Sarah” Francis responded. “We were not expecting any team members here today”

“Yeah, but I am grounded again so this is the only place I am allowed to go” she explained. She held the bag aloft she had brought with her. “Old greedy guts made me promise to bring him any leftovers too” Sarah added, nodding her head in the direction of Stanley’s house.

“Then allow me to escort you” Francis offered and Sarah fell into step alongside the tall clone soldier. It was hardly very far to the Project building but Sarah realised the Guard was enjoying her presence.

“Did you and your brothers have a good Christmas?” Sarah asked as they came to the wide doorway to Stanley’s house.

“We did, thank you Miss” he replied. “Miss Fiona spent most of the day with us and visited yesterday as well. She brought us special food created by Miss Carmody’s mother plus some pastries from a bakery nearby”

“I guess Fiona was lonely, with Miss Abrams still in hospital” pondered Sarah. She considered what Francis had said about the food and looked at the bag in her hands.

“Would your brothers be allowed to eat stuff that I brought you?” she asked. “I mean, I know you guys were told you could eat food that Carmody brought. But what about if I gave you things to eat?”

Francis tilted his head to regard her, his cybernetic right eye seeming to lock onto her face.

“We would like that very much, Miss Sarah” he said, a hint of eagerness in his voice.

“Okay then!” Sarah replied. “I’ll bring you guys some of my mom’s cookies next time”

Francis paused for a brief moment then nodded at her.

“I have informed my brothers and we are looking forward to it”

With that she made her goodbyes and opened the newly widened door, letting herself into the dragon’s lair.

=====

Stanley leaned back from the big metal bowl, his long tongue running around the sharp teeth and lips of his mouth. He let out a gentle burp, steam puffing from his snout in the process. Overhead an extractor fan whirred into life, pulling the humid air away.

“Your mother is an excellent cook!” Stanley declared with satisfaction and smiled at his friend. Sarah was perched on one of the chairs set around the long table they used for meetings, drinking a can of Panic Cola. She was about to agree when a long burp erupted from her lips, catching them both by surprise.

“Challenge accepted!” Stanley replied and let out a long, rippling burp of his own, filling the room with steam once more. Sarah snorted back a laugh then swigged a big gulp of cola down. Moments later she countered his burp with a mighty gut buster of her own.

“Take that, Dracoris!” she crowed victoriously.

“No fair!” Stanley whined. “That drink is loaded with Burp Juice. Achmed told me so the other day”

“Yeah, that’s true” Sarah agreed and let loose another throat warbling burp. “Ahh, you never stood a chance you poor thing!”

Stanley grinned at his friend and coiled himself on the big rug that lay in the centre of his living space.

“We don’t have fizzy soda in my realm, so I don’t know how to defend myself” he said by way of justification.

Sarah looked at the dragon and realised he nearly filled the circular rug as he lay on it. A few scant months ago, the dragon had room all around the edges.

“You’ve grown again, haven’t you?” Sarah asked. His snout was longer, his body broader and his tail spikes curling nearly back to his head as he lay there. “I may not be able to get my legs over your back at this rate!”

“Hmm?” Stanley mumbled, his brilliant pale blue eyes beginning to close. “I’ll just have to carry you then in my arms, like the first time”

“No way” she retorted. “I am not a Princess, I am a Dracoris Familia. I have to ride on your back like a Knight!”

“That would make me your noble steed” Stanley’s voice grumbled in her head. “Not sure if I want to be a steed”

Sarah smiled and got off her chair, leaving the empty can on the table. With careful steps she crept to his side and sat down, leaning her back against his blue scaled flank. His warmth flowed into her, a soothing heat that made her quite drowsy too.

She heard the dragon sigh in contentment and she did so too, closing her eyes and letting her attention wander.

“If you could go home Stanley, would you?” she asked quietly.

“Not without you, Sarah Evermore” he answered softly, his voice the barest whisper in her mind.

They settled a little more and soon they were both fast asleep.

=====

Sarah found herself seated in the old seafood restaurant they used to visit in Port August. The big round tables were the same, with a rotating centre section to move dishes around to her family members, although only Uncle Rex was seated at the table with her.

“Isn’t this the Krazy Krab?” Sarah asked her Uncle. He was watching her from across the table, an open can of beer in his left hand. Rex was dressed liked he always was for the family dinners when on vacation – a brightly patterned Hawaiian shirt straining to hold back his beer belly, with a pair of sturdy knee length shorts.

“Looks like it, Sarah” he agreed amiably and took a long swig from his can. “You really must have loved those holidays we took”

“They were the best” she said. “This place was where I tried deep fried squid for the first time. I remember Brent tried to tell me they were made from giant worms, but you told me they were really tasty and ate one to prove it”

“Was I a good Uncle?” Rex asked her, emptying his beer and eyeing the can with regret.

“You drank too much” Sarah answered honestly. “But you always told funny stories and had time for all of us kids, not just your own. So yeah, you were a good Uncle”

She twisted in her seat and saw the empty restaurant had some other occupants. Fish to be precise, swimming contentedly in the floor to ceiling tank that served as a wall between the reception area and main dining room.

“Cool!” she exclaimed and got out of her seat. “I remember this aquarium as the best thing I ever saw! My plan was to build one in my own house when I was old enough”

She ran her hands over the warm glass, watching the fish dart back and forth wherever she touched. The tank was long and tall, yet it was only the length of her forearm thick. The fish lived in a big vertical sheet of water, able to see the world of the restaurant out of either side.

Excitedly she ran around to the reception side, looking at her Uncle through the wall of water. She waved and called out to him and Uncle Rex waved back with a smile.

“You used to do that all the time, didn’t you Sarah?” he laughed. “The owners had a fit, worried you might break the glass walls”

“Yeah” she responded and laid her hand on the glass wall of the aquarium. There was a thought niggling at the edges of her mind, trying to work its way into the light. She looked through the wall at her Uncle, seeing the barrier that lay between them with the dining room on one side and the reception on the other.

A few curious fish had gathered to watch her, little bright blue fish from the Tropics. Their eyes watched her steadily, unlike any fish she had encountered before.

She focussed beyond the clear wall to her Uncle Rex, who beamed at her with his big, broad smile.

“You figured it out, didn’t you?” he called to her. “You always were the clever one”

=====

She woke up, lying comfortably against the side of Stanley. The dragon was snoring gently, wisps of steam rising from his snout until they were drawn in by the extractor fans.

“Stanley, wake up” she said and nudged his side gently with her elbow.

“Huh?” his voice came to her groggily. “What’s up?”

“I know where your home is” she told him. “The one place no-one ever thought to look”

Stanley shifted, lifting his head and craning his long neck around to regard her with his blue eyes.

“Where is it, Sarah?” he asked her.

“The Dracoris Realm is in the Boundary, between the Light and Dark Sides”

=====

Eric was the first to arrive at the Project base, striding in still wearing his heavy bike jacket and carrying his helmet and gloves in one hand. Soon after Carmody arrived, her new cricket bat slung over one shoulder and carrying a bag of home-made cookies her mum had sent along.

Lilly and Achmed arrived together, hand in hand, both looking tanned from a holiday in the sun somewhere. Angelina was the last to arrive, rushing in with hasty apologies and throwing herself into the seat beside Carmody.

“Alright, we are all here now Sarah” Eric said in his flat tones. “What was the big announcement you needed to tell us all?”

Sarah was standing at the far end of the meeting table, the familiar dark blur of Stanley behind her.

“Okay, this is only a theory so far, but I think I have found the Dracoris Realm!” she said triumphantly. She looked eagerly from face to face and her excited expression slowly turned to confused despair.

“Um, Sarah, what do you mean?” Carmody ventured. “Have you been there?”

“Well no, but I am pretty sure I know its location” she assured her friend. She activated the holo-screen to display a quick sketch she had made online, showing the Sphere of Existence that her tutor, Sister Domenica, had explained to her.

“Look, I think by now you have all learned about our world, the Light Side, and the opposing world of magic we call the Dark Side” she began. Her friends nodded to varying degrees so she pressed on.

“Between the two worlds has always been the Boundary. It was assumed this was just a thin veil, a partition that kept the two realities separated. Are you following me so far?”

“Sure” Angelina spoke up. “This is accepted knowledge among the Adepts. Their talents allow them to reach through the Boundary and draw energy from the Dark Side. Adepts like Warlocks and Summoners can dive into the Dark Side and bring creatures back to serve them in the Light”

“Right” Sarah agreed with enthusiasm. “But they never realised the Boundary was more than just a thin layer. Even my tutor only thinks of it as a layer like the surface of a pond, something she can push her hand into to draw out water”

Sarah manipulated her image on the holo-screen, showing instead of a single thin line separating the Sides she had two parallel lines with a narrow gap between them.

“I think this is how the Boundary is meant to be represented” she declared. “It is far smaller than the Light or Dark Sides, just a narrow strip that the Adepts barely notice as they push through. But our universe is huge and so is the Dark Side, so even a narrow Realm like the Boundary is still immense”

Eric stood and walked towards her holo-projection, examining her simple illustrations with interest.

“What does Stanley think about this?” he asked her.

“I agree” came up on his message board as the dragon tapped out a reply. “Sarah may have solved a riddle no-one else on this world could”

“How did you think of this, Sarah?” Eric asked her.

“It has been something I have been talking about with my tutor, Sister Domenica” Sarah answered. “However, the real inspiration came from the Krazy Krab”

That brought a slew of questions so she told them about the seafood restaurant from her childhood vacations and the wall sized fish tank.

“It’s a great theory” Eric finally admitted. “If we could prove it, I could see Archimedes being very interested”

“Why is that, Eric?” questioned Lilly. “I don’t imagine Archimedes is too keen to lose the services of Stanley in his fight against the Abyss”

Eric was lost in thought but looked up sharply at the girl’s comment.

“You misunderstood me” he replied. “Our biggest problem in fighting the Abyss has been we can only react to what it does here in our world. If we could find a way to reach the Abyss in its home Realm, we could attack it there”

“Take the fight to its own home?” Achmed said with glee. “That would make it think twice about messing with the Zone!”

“Attack it how, Eric?” Lilly demanded. “Sarah says the Realms like Avalon and the Abyss are immense, at least as big as Australia or one of the major continents. What would you do, send nuclear missiles into Stanley’s world? Or maybe another Virus like from twenty six years ago, something that only kills Dracoris Abyssal?!”

Lilly had gotten to her feet, the last words shouted with fierce passion. There were tears in her eyes and when Achmed reached towards her, she shrugged his hand away angrily.

“You boys, all you think about is hurting your enemies. Making them suffer so that they will stop doing whatever it is you don’t like!”

Eric looked stricken and had no answer to her vehemence.

“So what should we do, Lilly?” Carmody asked her harshly. “Roll over and let the Abyss do whatever it wants to our world?”

“No!” Sarah spoke up loudly. “I will never open a Portal to let bombs and viruses into the Dracoris realms. Yet I won’t let the Abyss win either. There are allies in the Dracoris realms, not just Avalon and her Dracoris, but others too. If we can find a way to reach them, we can band together against the Abyss!”

“Form a big gang” Stanley tapped out onto the message board. “Big enough to take on all the bullies!”

“Hell yeah!” Sarah shouted in agreement. There were shouts of agreement from all her friends and even Eric and Carmody were swept up in the group’s enthusiasm. Finally they stopped and looked as one towards Sarah.

“Okay, Sarah” Eric stated in his calm way. “How do we open a portal to the Boundary?”

“Oh, right now I have no idea” she responded casually. “But I am working on it!”

=====

The rest of the gang had scattered for the moment, eagerly discussing Sarah’s discovery and catching up on what their holidays had been like so far. Eric left the Project building and walked to the edge of the roof-top to sit down, dangling his legs over the side in a blatant violation of the school’s Health and Safety rules. He had no Christmas celebrations to chat about and he really wanted to talk to his brother.

With a simple thought he opened his mind to the Quantum Network, seeing again the broad expanse of glowing lights in the darkness, each one an active Guard or Agent. Eric idly contemplated checking every remote Ident, hunting for any of his fellow Agents like himself or Seven, but discarded the idea for now. Instead he focussed on locating his brother Two and found his Ident where he had expected, at the side of Miss Abrams in the hospital.

“Brother, I need to talk to you” he transmitted to Jericho-Two.

Two took no time to reply, devoting part of his mind to talking with Eric even as he spoke in the real world with Sofia.

“Good morning, Thirteen” his brother said. “I am glad to see you using the Network rather than barging in on my personal affairs. What do you need from me?”

“There have been some developments and I wanted to check up on someone, get some background on her work, but the files seem to be locked out”

“I see” Two replied. “Who would this person be?”

“Her name is Sister Domenica, a Necromancer who is employed as a Trainer at the Tenth District Awakening Centre. The files are locked by you, Brother” he answered.

“Domenica? Yes, I know her. She is a tutor to Miss Evermore” Two responded flatly. “Her other work is highly restricted, directly controlled by Archimedes”

“I see” Eric replied in as flat a tone as his older brother. “So she must be dangerous. Too dangerous to be allowed near someone as important to the AURA Project as Sarah”

Eric could actually feel his brother’s deep sigh in response and grinned to himself. Sometimes Two was remarkably easy to manipulate.

“The details are highly confidential, Eric, so not even the AURA Project members can be told. That specifically includes Miss Evermore. Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, Brother” he assured his sibling. “Archimedes must trust me, so I hope you will also”

“Very well. To understand Sister Domenica, we need to go back to the Second Global War in V-Zero-Two. She was not in her Order at the time, and was a talented young Necromancer going by the name of Dominique Porter. The Northern Bloc had recruited her to serve in highly classified research under the code name of the Lazarus Project”

“The Lazarus Project?” Eric interjected. “Is that the same project that wiped out most of Greater Las Vegas in 2022?”

“The same” Two confirmed. “Miss Porter was instrumental in bringing the project to completion, as misguided as those efforts were. She was the one who was able to fuse the reclaimed spirits with the bodies of deceased soldiers, resurrecting them as Zombie fighters for the Northern Bloc army”

“In theory, each body had been fitted with experimental neural processors to allow their commanders complete control over the soldiers. The spirits that Miss Porter bound into each corpse allowed them to animate and behave almost like living soldiers”

“It was meant to be the Northern Bloc’s answer to the Sentinels commanded by Archimedes. Loyal, strong and deadly soldiers able to be created in large regiments, completely under the control of the human officers. They could take tremendous damage and keep fighting, with no reservations about following orders, no matter how morally corrupt those orders were”

“So what happened?” Eric asked. “How did the Vegas Massacre occur?”

“They had made over a thousand of the Lazarus Soldiers, or the Reclaimed as they labelled them. Initial deployments had worked well against local insurgents so when the Vegas Collective declared independence, the Northern Bloc sent in the Lazarus zombies. One thousand Reclaimed against a rebel militia of over ten thousand men and women”

Jericho-Two paused as if reflecting on the events, all of them before Eric and Two had been created.

“Something went wrong with the command signals to the Reclaimed” Two continued. “They broke through the rebel lines easily and the militia began to surrender in large numbers. The Lazarus zombies were too hard to fight and by all accounts were utterly terrifying up close. Yet instead of following their orders, the Reclaimed went on a killing spree”

“Every living person or creature they met, be it Militia or civilian, adult or child, dog or cat – they massacred them all. The numbers were never known for sure but even modest estimates put the death toll at close to twenty three thousand people”

“In the end, the Northern Bloc had to send in their own troops to stop the Reclaimed. They lost another five hundred soldiers in the process and only stopped the fighting by carpet bombing Las Vegas”

“Holy crap!” Eric exclaimed. “And Archimedes brought that woman here, to the Zone?”

“There was a lot of speculation at the time that an AI had interfered with the command signals to the Reclaimed” Two continued. “It was never proven and I have no idea if Archimedes was ever involved. However, Miss Porter certainly had assistance from Archimedes in fleeing the Northern Bloc and has been in the Zone ever since”

Eric pondered the information his older brother had revealed.

“Two, when did Porter join her Order?” he asked.

“Domenique Porter took vows about a year after arriving in the Zone and became Sister Domenica. She is under oath to the Ordo Sacramentum and follows the commands of her patriarch. Under an arrangement with her Order, she conducts research on behalf of Archimedes into Necromancy”

“You know that woman is wanted for war crimes by the Northern Bloc” Eric said quietly to his sibling. “They called her the Butcher of Las Vegas”

Eric could sense his brother nodding his head in mute agreement, then the older sibling spoke.

“Many of those who come to the Zone are running from their past. If Archimedes or the Governors allow them in, those sins are forgotten. Our City has drawn some of the greatest minds here, giving us technology that far exceeds the rest of the world. That is the price we pay for those advances”

“Do you agree with those decisions?” Eric asked.

“I am an Avatar of Great Archimedes” he responded. “My agreement was not asked for”

=====

Sarah eyed the plastic and Ceramite band with an air of faint disapproval. It was as big around as her neck and looked suspiciously like a fancy dog collar. It had fastening straps to join it together and a raised section of plating with a stubby antenna sticking out in the middle.

“So where exactly am I going to wear this?” she asked Achmed suspiciously.

“What?” Achmed replied and shook his head in mock despair. “That one is for Stanley. It goes on his wrist like a watch, but it contains a GPS tracker. That way we can locate his position using navigation software on our phones and datapads”

“Oh” Sarah said, comprehending at last. “This is what you were talking about at the Levitator Races. You managed to get it assembled quite quickly”

“He spent a lot of time on our holidays working on the plans” Lilly added to the conversation. “A lot of time” she added with a sharp glance at the boy.

“Yeah” Achmed agreed, oblivious to the stare of his girlfriend. “Once I worked out the basic design, I created a smaller version for you too, Sarah” He held out a similar looking band, this one suitable to wrap around the girl’s wrist. “I sent the plans to Eric and he had them 3D printed and assembled at the Guards Armoury for us!”

“Okay, let’s give it a try” Sarah said and went to where Stanley was lounging in the noon sun, his white belly scales exposed to the warm rays. “Hey, fatso, wake up!” she called to him as she approached.

Stanley grumbled and lifted his head to regard her with half lidded pale blue eyes.

“I am not asleep” he insisted, “I was just resting my eyes. And knock off the fatso jokes. I am not the only one who ate too much at Christmas!”

“Hey, I am having a growth spurt!” she spluttered as she knelt at his side. “We are both at that age I guess” she added as an afterthought.

“Apology accepted” the dragon said graciously, although Sarah was not sure she had actually apologised. She showed the wristband to her Dracoris friend then strapped it around his blue scaled forearm, fitting it snugly on his left arm.

“How does it feel?” she asked as Stanley held his arm up and examined it curiously.

“Like a small vambrace” the dragon answered. He saw her confused expression and continued. “That’s a piece of armour you wear to protect the lower arm. This tracker reminds me of that. My mother wears vambraces on both her arms as part of her battle harness”

“Cool” Sarah responded and fitted her wristband tracker to her own left arm. The fit was snug but comfortable and she tapped the tracker housing that was made of Ceramite. “This is armour you know, Stanley. A small piece but I reckon it could stop a bullet if I could parry with it”

“The Ceramite is to protect the tracker, not to stop attacks” Achmed warned her. He could not hear Stanley’s side of their conversation but he could certainly hear hers. “Don’t go waving it around like it is some kind of shield”

“I won’t” she replied breezily and stood up, making blocking motions with her left arm like she was in a fight and punching out with her right.

“You know this may not have been such a good idea” Lilly suggested to Achmed, who only nodded and watched Sarah’s shadow boxing with an air of unhappy acceptance.

=====

Stanley did a barrel roll high over the school, Sarah screaming with excitement as she gripped the riding harness with her hands and thighs. The Dracoris then dove towards the ground, the air that was rushing past snatching away his partner’s yells of enjoyment.

At a bare ten meters over the brightly patterned courtyard, Stanley ached his back and curved into the sky once more. Pieces of trash scattered across the paving stones as the shockwave of his flight blew over the ground.

With a final racing arc around the school buildings Stanley slowed to a stop above the waiting AURA team members and dropped slowly to the roof-top. Sarah dismounted once he had settled himself and she reappeared to the sight of her friends.

“How did it go?” she asked breathlessly. “Did the trackers work?”

Eric and Achmed were side by side, one holding a datapad and the other his phone. They both looked up with satisfied grins and Achmed added a big thumbs up.

“Perfectly” Eric told her. “We had an accurate fix from both trackers, yours and Stanley’s, throughout the flight” He held out his datapad and showed Sarah, zooming in the map display. She leaned in close, touching his shoulder, and could see two flashing markers. One was tagged Sarah and the second was Stanley, the display currently showing them about five meters apart on the school roof.

“That is pretty damned accurate!” she told the boy. “I didn’t know the school had been mapped out so thoroughly to show the buildings and stuff”

Eric and Achmed both smiled and Achmed spoke first.

“The entire City has been mapped out in three dimensions, with a lot of structures showing their interior layouts as well. Other cities in the Zone, like Spitfield and Port August have been mapped too, just not as extensively as Pan City”

“What, so if I was wearing this tracker you could tell if I was at home in our apartment?” Sarah said in alarm.

“The tracker would show us if you were in the bathroom!” Achmed guffawed and then yelped as Lilly elbowed him in the ribs.

“You will only need to wear the tracker when you are on missions for the Project” Eric assured her. “Same goes for Stanley, although knowing where he is would be a bonus since only you and Carmody can actually see him”

“Okay” Sarah agreed with some reluctance. “What do you think, Stanley?”

The dragon examined his wristband and nodded his long head, sending puffs of steam in little bursts into the air.

“It actually looks pretty good to me, so I will just leave it on” he told his partner. “Besides, if I try and put it on or off myself I think I may break it” He held up his long finger claws and Sarah was reminded how easily they cut the concrete of her tower roof.

“Sounds good” she acknowledged and relayed his answer to the rest of their friends.

Carmody came over from where she had been watching with Angelina and the Guards.

“Hey, Eric, how secure is the signal from the trackers?” she wondered. “Could someone hack them to locate Sarah or Stanley?”

Achmed glanced at Eric, who thought for a moment and answered in his flat monotone, the one he used mostly these days to sound serious.

“The trackers are Guard models, used on their own remotes. Each has an encrypted signal that we are using the Guard Post here to decode and relay to our phones and datapads. It is as secure as we can make it but any system is vulnerable to a talented Net Diver”

“That’s right!” Achmed piped up. “Even Nick Knox, Net Diver Detective couldn’t crack the algorithms that protect our data streams!”

Carmody had to giggle at Achmed’s reference.

“Seriously Achmed, are you still watching that show?” she teased him. “Even my little brother Vance has moved onto other anime”

“Don’t knock the Knox” Lilly warned Carmody. “We like to watch it together you know” She looped her arm through Achmed’s in a display of solidarity that made the boy blush furiously and garnered snickers of amusement from everyone else.

“Okay, okay” Carmody replied and lifted her hands in a gesture of apology. “Anyway, if Eric and Achmed say the data stream is safe, that is good enough for me”

Sarah added her agreement and checked they were done for now with testing the trackers, to which she received confirmation.

“Hey Stanley, do you want to go to Port August for some lunch?” she called out. Her dragon friend nodded eager agreement so she made her farewells and dashed to climb aboard.

Once she was strapped into the harness, Stanley lifted them off the roof and rocketed into the sky. Sarah whooped loudly as they raced high over the school grounds, their friends watching the vague blur they had become as they gained altitude.

“Do you know the best thing about meeting you, Stanley?” she asked as they flew over the residential towers of the surrounding District.

“My sparkling personality?” he ventured in her mind.

“Nah” she said. “Even when I am grounded by mom and dad, I still get to fly with you!”