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Ignoring him, Valerian gives me a knowing smile. “I never finished explaining why having a working level is good news. We have testers equipped with the Illusion Scope prototypes, waiting for something to play. There are twenty thousand of them, and growing.” He looks at me pointedly.
I stare back at him blankly; other than being even more impressed with the budget he’s throwing at this thing, I don’t see what the special good news is.
Disembodied letters suddenly appear in the air in front of me. They look like LEGO pieces and form a paragraph of text—clearly the work of Valerian’s illusion powers:
When thousands of humans play that demo, your powers will get a boost—I know this from personal experience. Not as big a boost as when the game goes live, obviously, but a noticeable one. If you’re lucky, that boost might be what you need to best your mother.
Wow. I was settling in for a wait that would span months, but it turns out I might be able to save Mom in a matter of days.
I beam at him. “This is great news indeed. What can I do to speed this up?”
“I got that part,” Valerian says to Rattie and Bernie. “Get in touch with your teams before Bailey and I leave.”
We’re leaving? Okay then.
Rattie presses a button on the side of the desk, and a bunch of giant screens slide from the ceiling and cover the walls. A video conference app chimes, and soon every screen displays the enthusiastic faces of hundreds of people—most likely developers, designers, animators, audio engineers, and so on.
Please introduce yourself and we’ll go, Valerian tells me via the LEGO text.
“Hi, everyone,” I say, looking into the cameras. “My name is Bailey, and I will be the model for the Lucid Dreamer project. I also happen to know something about game design, so I’d be happy to help in any way I can—just let me know what you need when you need it.” I keep going in that vein, eventually starting to sound like an army general psyching his troops for an attack.
“Thank you,” Valerian says when I finish my speech. “Why don’t we go to the motion capture lab so we can get started?”
Everyone applauds and waves to me as we leave.
I feel pleasantly odd, as if I just took a tiny sip of diluted vampire blood for the first time.
Am I high on being involved in game development, or is it Valerian’s proximity?
As we enter the elevator, I notice him watching me intently.
“I feel strange,” I blurt. “In a good way.”
Valerian presses the button for the fifteenth floor. “There’s a chance your powers got boosted by merely having that many humans believe in you as the game model for a dreamwalker-related game,” he says in a low voice. “When my own power got boosted, I felt very peculiar.” He closes his eyes, as if in bliss, and I store that expression in my memory banks for use in the dream world.
I imagine that’s what his O-face looks like.
The elevator opens, and we enter a room with green screens for walls and enough computer equipment to oversee a space launch.
Valerian picks up a small piece of cloth from a chair and hands it to me. “Put this on.”
It’s a onesie-like outfit made from a blue material with big gray dots. I look at it, then at him.
Nope, he’s not kidding. He actually expects me to wear it.
I heave a sigh. “Where’s the fitting room?”
An amused gleam appears in his ocean-blue eyes. “Why?”
I don’t justify that with a reply.
“I’ll just look away.” Matching actions to words, he turns his broad back to me.
At least I think his back is to me. He can be using his powers to make me think he’s looking away, while in actuality, he’s standing there with a magnifying glass directed at my privates.
Then again, where do I draw the line when it comes to paranoia? He can just as easily use his power to make himself invisible and stand in any fitting room—like he did the other day in the bathroom while I showered.
It’s a recollection that should enrage me, but it makes me feel warm and tingly instead.
Without further ado, I strip off my clothes and pull on the onesie. It’s stretchy, so it fits.
I look at Valerian’s back.
There’s a tension in his shoulders that I choose to interpret as him suffering with the effort not to turn around and gawk at my awesomeness.
“Done,” I announce.
He turns around and grins at me before going to a nearby table to pick up a bunch of objects that look like the dots attached to my outfit.
“I need to glue these to your face,” he says, approaching me.
“You what?”
“They’re sterile, I swear,” he says, and before I can object, he attaches the first one to my forehead, the tips of his fingers brushing over the skin around the dot.
