Ivy and the Fluorescent Lightbulb

Chapter 14.1 - Brainstorming

Early the next day, Ivy burst into the storage room, breathless. She and Eloise had agreed to meet in the abandoned classroom instead of canceling their tutoring sessions. That'll give us all of homeroom to stay in here! she thought with a smile. Hopefully, we won't get caught—I've never come in here this early. Ivy plopped her bag onto the floor, pulling out the clothes. Quickly, she hurried to change.

Eloise and Ivy had also agreed to stagger their entrance into the storage room in order to minimize the chances of anyone seeing them enter. Ivy had entered first, and Eloise, who was closely following her, had detoured to the nearby restroom.

Ivy had a difficult time focusing on her homework the night before, instead finding herself writing out theories on how she could attempt to open a portal with the outfit. Unfortunately, Ivy didn't write much more than one idea:

Fly near the lights with the suit and touch a bulb

"Not your smartest idea yet, Ivy," she muttered as she switched to the future world clothes.

The door softly clicked as Eloise slipped into the room. "Hey Ivy!" she said with a shy smile.

"Hey..." Ivy awkwardly replied, pulling her gloves on and sending the outfit into a soft glow.

"Woah, how does it do that?" Eloise said, trotting to Ivy and leaning closer to look at the sleeves. "Are you gonna try to fly again this morning?"

"Maybe," Ivy said with a shrug. "Listen, about the outfit..." she paused. "It's not mine," she finally said.
"Really?" Eloise said. "So, um, where can I buy one of those then?"

"Um..." Ivy started. Might as well just go with it, she thought. "Not from any store around here."

"Maybe I can order it online, then!" she replied, whipping out her phone.

"Well, no," Ivy sighed."I had wanted to experiment with these clothes before I returned them. Actually, I'm trying to figure out how to return it."

"I'm not following?"

Ivy walked to the door, taped a black sheet of paper she had carried with her over its window, and flicked on the lights. "Look, this is going to sound crazy," Ivy started, climbing the stack of boxes from yesterday, "But do you trust me enough to not make this completely backfire on me?"

"If you mean, telling on you, of course not!"

Ivy stopped mid-climb. "Say," she said, "why are you trying so hard to be my friend anyways?"

Eloise looked up thoughtfully, then shrugged. "I dunno," she said. "you really just seemed like a good person."

"Me?" she scoffed.

"I mean, yeah," she said. "I always—"

"Hold that thought, Eloise," Ivy said as she neared the light fixture. She reached for it, trying her best to ignore the pulsating energy in the clothes and her now-levitating feet, and pushed at the plastic cover.

It shifted out of place and dropped into her hands. Perfect! She thought with a smile. Ivy reached for the bright fluorescent lightbulb, squinting against its illumination. Cautiously, she tapped the glass surface of the bulb.

Nothing.

"Huh, I thought something would happen—" Ivy started to say, pulling her hand away.

Before she could pull her hand away, however, the interface on her health bar blinked to life. It filtered through green, yellow, and red, before blinking red and making a sharp beep.

"What was that?" Eloise said, leaning back to get a better look at the interface.

"Oh, it does that," Ivy causally said, lowering her hand and clutching onto the box, her floating boots causing her feet to float higher than her arms. "It'll turn green in a second."

"Do you need the lights turned off?"

"No, I'm fine—" The interface flashed to life, making a loud, angry beeping noise and sporadically flashing colors. The typically black center of the screen showed a caution triangle encircling a "?!" symbol. This didn't happen last time? Ivy thought in confusion. "Yeah, turn off the lights!" Ivy called down to Eloise.

Eloise rushed to the switch and turned it off, watching as Ivy's feet slowly lowered.

The beeping did not stop, however.

"What's wrong with that thingie?" Eloise said.

"I'm...not sure?" Ivy said, climbing down and tapping at the interface.

A miniature holographic screen appeared in front of her.

"Cool!" she said with a grin.

"Cool what?" Eloise said, looking around the room. "What are you looking at?"

"Oh, that's right," Ivy said, glancing at Eloise. "You need these to see the screen," she said as she held up her hands.

"What, those glowing straps?"

"Gloves," Ivy corrected, turning her attention back to the screen. "But yeah."

The screen had a very simple menu:

Home

Stats

Diagnostic

Ivy pressed "Diagnostic". On it was a long thread of code in a coding language she didn't recognize. Uncle Taner would've known what to do with this... she thought with a small sigh. She swiped out of the window and tapped stats. The screen beeped red, then returned to the menu. "Well there's only 'Home' left," she muttered. "But isn't that a redundant button?"

Hesitantly, Ivy tapped the button.

The holographic screen doubled in size, showing diagrams and schematics.

<<3022,>> the screen read.

Below, were two small buttons:

Read more

Deny

"Huh?" Ivy slowly said.

"What is it?" Eloise said, nervously glancing around the room.

"I don't know what this menu's going to do if I press read more..."

"Maybe make whatever that is larger?"

"What?" Ivy looked up and turned around to look at what Eloise was looking at.

In front of the whiteboard was a small, glowing circle, its corners ragged as it swirled around its center.