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The light rap of knuckles on the door was swiftly followed by “Hey, you okay?”
Blinking back into this side of reality from the weird notes some crazy person had scribbled in some old Dragon magazines, I looked over at Mica. “Yeah, sure.”
“Just wondering. I hadn’t heard anything from you since the honeymoon.” They leaned against the doorframe. “You not upset about me moving out or anything?”
“Why on earth would I be upset about you moving out?” I chuckled. “Lord help us both if Dave and I had to live under the same roof more than two days running.”
They rolled their eyes, clearly remembering a few times, their then-fiancé crashed at our place on long holiday weekends. Dave and I are friends, better friends at a distance. Just because he married my best friends does not invoke best-friend-adjacent privileges. “So, then why? No text, no call. You give a non-bi person the worries.”
A smile creased my face. “Sorry, I got a new hyperfocus.”
I don’t know what they read into the smile and words, but they frowned; their eyebrows did the little fencing with each other. “Have you been eating?”
“Um…”
“Today, have you eaten today?”
“No?” I apologized. “I think. What day is today?”
“Thursday, I got back Tuesday.”
“Um, then definitely no.” I waved at the three empty glasses on the table next to the pile of magazines I have been pouring over. “But I am hydrated at least.”
“Thank mercy for small blessings.” They shook their head. “Let’s get some scrambled eggs into you and you can tell me all about it.”
“Be right there.”
“Now, genius.”
“I promise, you go ahead.” After waiting to make sure they walked away, I gathered the magazines up. Tapping them into a neat pile, I placed them into special briefcase I bought just for the forty-year-old publications and snapped it close. I checked once to make sure the lock held. I then tucked it under my desk and muttered a few short words under my breath.
The case faded from sight.
Between my study and the kitchen, my brain exploded into a thousand different directions on what to tell Mica.
“You are so lucky you are rich, Janis.” Mica said as they pulled out butter, eggs, and bread from my refrigerator. “How much work have you missed this week?”
“Oh, I got fired about three weeks ago.” Shrugging, I hopped onto one of stool lining the green marble island. “Missed too much work helping getting the wedding together.”
“What?” They spun my direction, spatula at the ready, threatening me like it was a sword … or a wand. “You didn’t tell me?”
“What? Like I wanted to stock shelves each day after I finished the bookkeeping because Bossing-Boss-Boss was like, ‘you are salary, you are working forty hours’? Fuck that. I’m not a quitter, but I wasn’t going to fight stupidity.”
After breaking the eggs into a bowl, Mica passed the bowl to me with a fork to mix it up just the way I like it while they got the butter sizzling in my cast iron frying pan. “Alright, then what next?”
“Oh, I haven’t decided.” I pushed the bowl to them. “Do I want to travel a little?” The speculation lining that question surprised me. … Do I want to travel?
“You hate travel.”
“Yeah, but I lost a roommate to the love of their life,” I ran the words through my head trying to figure out what I was thinking, “maybe I should go looking for mine?” That wasn’t it, but it wasn’t not-it. Love could be a sidequest.
“Really Janis?” Mica looked impressed. Then frowned, the eyebrows bowing and engaging like two Olympic fencers, “What aren’t you telling me? What the fuck is your hyperfocus?”
“Magic.”
I can’t believe I blurted it out like that.
“Like the Gathering? I go away for a week and Daniel gets you into that crack?” They scraped the eggs onto my favorite green plate and started browning the toast in the pan. The long-suffering sigh carried fifteen years of witnessing me collecting hobbies. “How many packs have you bought?”
“None.”
They stopped the eyebrow war long enough to raise one of the perfectly plucked blades high in disbelief.
“No really,” I assured them. “I’m talking about real magic, not cards.”
“What, like witchcraft? Wiccan or something like that?”
Toast buttered from the pan, three eggs with pepper, no salt, slid back to me while they put the bowl and utensils in the dishwasher and the butter and leftover eggs back into the fridge. “No, and not satanism or hoodoo or anything like that, although I have been doing some side research into those to figure out how this works.” I dug in and ate my first forkful.
And forgot to talk until the plate was cleared.
“How long since you last ate?” The sarcasm dripped like juice from a squeezed lemon.
“Shut up.”
They chuckled and took the plate back to add to the dishwasher.
They didn’t offer anything else. I hate getting a heavy belly when I am focused, which usually means I dropped five to ten pounds during a hyperfocus initial onset. At least I had learned to stay hydrated. Two hospital visits to for IVs to force fluids after collapsing had made me put some serious preventive measures in place.
Speaking of which …
“I need to refill my drinks.” I got off the stool and pulled out theirs for them to sit on. “Let me grab my glasses and set up for tonight’s session.”
“You’re not planning on sleeping tonight?”
Pausing in the doorway in the hall leading to my half of the house, I closed my eyes to test how heavy they were. With food in my belly, they had lead weights attached to them. But I got them open. “Alright, I will be setting up the drinks for tomorrow. Satisfied Mixtrix busybody?”
“Very.” They waved their hands in a ‘shoo’ fashion. “Off you go.”
The briefcase remained hidden by its cloaking. I moved it to a different location behind a bookcase, then gathered my glasses from the table and the four sealed, empty bottles on the floor and the hot chocolate mug beside my reading chair. Eight was a bit much to juggle, but cantrips would work long enough from the study to the kitchen.
May as well show off. Then the real explanations can begin. “Upsa daisy.” With four vessels in hand, the rest figured out what I wanted and hovered like a constellation of moons around the lightly glowing green center mass of glassware.
I inhaled deeply and returned to the kitchen.
(words 1114; first published 2/23/2024)
Ye Olde Dragon Magazines Series
- Smol Snak 2/16/2025
- Hyperfocus 2/23/2025
Not everything can be explored with rovers and flying drones. EELS offers a third option. The drill design allows the thirteen foot long robot to cross loose soil and even go into crevasses. Things the hard-working Mars and Moon rovers get bogged down in. With the AI-decision protocols (yes, this nightmare fueled design has state-of-the-art AI built in, and not just for making art on social media), the robot can figure out how to get from here-to-there using its corkscrew apparatus. The AI will allow the explorer to operate on Saturn’s moon Enceladus and other distant surfaces without constant checking back in with ground control. Mars is bad enough with distances between four and twenty light minutes in one direction; Saturn (and her moons) start at seventy-one minutes one direction and could be as much as eighty-eight minutes depending on the Earth-Saturn relative positions in orbit around Sol.