章 14: Indestructible Bubble
Sara spent hours in the creative space without realizing. She decided after the bubble debacle to try something new. She wasn't willing to let go of the idea of a bubble castle, so she decided to…change her bubbles.
First, she tried different variants. If bubbles wouldn't work, maybe snow would? But, the castle that was created was almost as flimsy as the previous castle of bubbles, but with the added discomfort of the freezing cold. So, after snow was a failure, she immediately gave up on her idea of an ice castle. The ice castle didn't really appeal to her anyways as it didn't seem like it would be very comfy. She just wanted that image she had in her mind to come true! The one of her jumping and falling into a cloud of bubbles, smiling and content.
This imagery lead her to attempt an actual cloud castle, just held together, but wasn't actually a structure. She wound up able to walk through the walls and doors and couldn't go up the stairs as her feet went through them when she tried.
All this while, Na-Na sat, watching Sara try out different things, with the DUNCE hat atop her head. She watched as idea after idea failed, and at times, she seemed to want to say something, but would immediately shake her head and sit, once again, in quiet contemplation while watching.
It seemed that Na-Na was without ideas as well.
Eventually, Sara lay in a large wet pile, after her foam, bubble, cloud and snow castles all failed. She lay, soaking wet and frustrated.
Why couldn't she find a suitable substance to make her castle out of!?!?!
As Sara lay there, fuming over her past failures, a tiny bit of an idea began to form.
She could create anything here. Anything….
Up to this point, Sara had only tested the creative spaces ability to create things that actually existed in the real world.
But…one thing that she hadn't tried….was creating something that didn't exist in the real world….
With this thought, Sara's eyes widened in excitement and awe.
She was so smart!
If regular bubbles didn't work, then she would just have to "create" bubbles that wouldn't pop!
At this point, it was safe to say that Sara had forgotten her original idea of learning to use the VR system in a game long ago. In fact, the idea of using the built in games had fled from her head even before she'd placed the VR set on….Most people would feel a sense of loss, as if they were forgetting something, but for Sara, the thought never crossed her mind. She was so engrossed in her own musings in the create space, so absorbed in her "mission" that the idea of actually using her time in a way that would HELP her with her second channel had suddenly seemed to have never crossed her mind in the first place. Here, was a prime example of someone with short term memory problems, someone that couldn't remember what they ate five minutes ago, let alone that morning.
Sara sat up slowly, her eyes bulging out of her head in a way that truly represented her state of mind.
Exhausted and mildly crazed, she turned toward Na-Na with a manic smile.
Na-Na sat watching Sara turn toward her in apprehension. Why was she looking at her like that? She couldn't have lost her mind and then started to wonder what the taste of avatar flesh would be like, right?
Sara hurried to her feet and sprinted toward Na-Na.
Seeing this, Na-Na jumped up and hurried to run away. It should be said, at this point, that many times a person's avatar would begin to show certain personality traits that their user also shared. Usually, these wouldn't start to be noticeable until the two had been around each other for a few weeks, sometimes months. But for Na-Na….she was unlucky enough to "catch" Sara's wild imagination.
Na-Na had, at this point, completely convinced herself that Sara was losing her mind and was in fact trying to catch her in order to "taste" her. As she ran, she pictured herself slowly roasted over a fire, she pictured Sara creating a fire and then a large pot to put her into, she pictured Sara creating a giant oven and baking her….
These images were in fact not very gory, but because Na-Na believed them, they became grisly reminders of what was to come if Sara was able to catch her. This pushed Na-Na to increase her speed to its absolute maximum. After images were seen as Na-Na rushed away into the giant white abyss.
Sara watched as Na-Na raced away from her as she slowed her steps. Her brows pulled together as she spoke aloud to no one in particular.
"What's her problem?"
Sara shrugged, then turned away and began heading back to the giant messy pile of soap and water.
She stood next to it, trying to think of a way to clean it up. She knew how to create things, but she never bothered to ask Na-Na how to get rid of them….
So, she assumed that she needed to create something in order to clean up the mess she made. This was actually accurate. In fact, the create space allowed people to create whatever they wanted, but it would not allow them to 'will' the items created away. They were in fact treated as permanent existences in the create space as soon as they were created. Unless, they were perishables or edibles, these could be eaten or would eventually perish just as they would in the real world.
It should also be said, Sara's imagination helped her immensely with the create space. For most people, creating something in the space took a lot of time and energy, but for Sara it seemed as if it was second nature. Creating anything in the create space required one to not only picture the object, but to imagine it. Imagine it's scent, feeling, any emotional attachments one has to it, it's texture. This was something that many found difficult to do, or at the very least, other's found that in order to do this, they needed to concentrate immensely. Sara, on the other hand, seemed to have been in the habit of always doing this when thinking of anything. She would never just "picture" something; she would EXPERIENCE it, in her mind. This was something that brought a bit of trouble to her in her previous encounter at the F.R.I. office, when she honestly believed she was being held and thrown about by the security guard. Here, however, Sara's imagination abilities could only ever help her. Unless she decided to conjure something truly…grotesque and frightening….
So, without much difficulty, Sara conjured a drain in the middle of the puddle of soap and water that connected to a complex draining and sewage system beneath.
This, even for Sara, took quite a bit of time. After all, one had to be able to picture and "experience" a draining system and where exactly all the water and waste would go. Sara had seen an old photo of what she thought was a sewage system in one of her text books in school. If she had paid attention in class, she would have found that this was in fact not a sewage system, but was a complex transportation system utilized in major cities in the past…. Yes, Sara was using the subway maps in her mind as a blueprint for a sewage system. If the New Yorkers of over 150 years ago could see what she was doing, perhaps they would have slapped her until her teeth fell out onto the floor….
Regardless, after a time, Sara did succeed in her creation of her "sewage" system and was even able to create a small pond nearby that the water would be pumped into. She made a mental note to create a filtering system in it, though with her memories track record, it seemed that her pond would never get its filtering system.
From there, Sara got to work.
The system was set up that a user could create anything that they wanted, as long as they could imagine it in great detail. Users didn't need to know the exact chemical or elemental makeup in order to create something and could create things with unknown elemental make up. However, creating something that was originally not in existence in the real world would be much harder than creating something that in fact did exist. Creating something that one had never experienced or seen before was hard enough, but creating something that didn't even exist in the real world was on another level entirely.
At this point, Sara had already created something that she'd never felt or seen before. The crystal chandelier. She merely wanted a chandelier and began to picture what she thought a chandelier should look like in great detail. If someone else that was familiar with the create space were to see or hear about what Sara was doing, they would have probably stood with their mouths open in shock. For most people, the create space was something that wasn't much fun and was even seen as something that was very misleading. Yes, someone can create whatever they may like, but doing so took quite a lot of work and was not fun in the least. The create space was seen as having very little function and was something that most over looked. Sara, who most would say had very little to no real talent, was like a fish in water in the create space. It allowed her to do as she pleased and brought her much enjoyment and excitement.
She stood, her eyes closed as she tried to picture a bubble type that would never pop. What would it feel like in her hands? What would it smell like? How much pressure would one have to use in order to actually pop it? Could it withstand an elephant stomping on it? Could it withstand a bullet being shot into it?
To these questions and more, Sara answered…yes. It could withstand an elephant stomping on it. It could withstand a bullet, the bullet would pass through it and the bubble would just readjust its form. It would take an immense amount of pressure in order for one to pop the bubble. It was almost indestructible.
The bubble…smelled like fresh cut grass and felt silky to the touch. It was always clean, dirt and muck would slide right off, but it would form to Sara's and other's touch. Almost as if it was created for the comfort of humans.
Slowly, as time ticked away, a large respectably sized bubble began to form.
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