Hank kept his gaze on Rio, while Milton kept his on him. With Rio glaring murder at Hank, the tension was palpable.

"Dots are Geniuses," Milton said. "Some of us know that without getting PEPed. Most unPEPed Dots live peaceful lives, unless they get PEPed and find out they're Dots. Then for some reason, they get busy making life miserable for everyone."

Hank disagreed, glancing from Rio to Milton and back. "I'm not making life miserable for anyone! Speak for yourself, Milton."

"Oh, but you are! You're even making your own life miserable! You've left the only job you've ever known, the only thing you do that you still like to do. You've dismissed the only girl you've ever loved, without talking to her. The girl you've pined over for years."

Anna, Hank thought sadly. I dissed her instead of asking her out.

"You're miserable. She's miserable. The people you know at Asok's, they're all miserable. You've been busy, Hank, making people miserable."

Milton finally got to Hank. He felt like he should cry. He didn't though, and instead, he implored on scary Rio.

"But I didn't! I made those people happy! They love coming to Asok's, coming to see me! That's why I stayed there for so long. I really liked working there!"

Rio icy composure broke a tiny bit. She parted her lips and wet them before taking a noticeable breath. Then, after adjusting her glasses, she turned back to stone.

Milton finished Hank's last thought. "And you found out you were a Dot, and everything changed. Life was great until the lucky lottery PEP machine said you were a winner!"

Hank broke his suppliant gaze on Rio, and turned back to Milton. He waited for the man to tell him how to get his life back to good.

"I can help you fix things. I'll show you how to do it. You have to do it yourself, though. No one can do it for you. You'll get back all you've lost, everything and more! We're all Dots here, but Rio and I, we don't call ourselves Dots. Nobody who knows they're a Dot, and knows what they can do, calls themselves a Dot. It's a buzzword the media invented to describe us if we take a PEP Test.

"We're not Dots," Milton said to Hank's attentive face. "We're Others. We call ourselves, more aptly, Reality Makers—or at least the Good Guys do. Rio and I sometimes use the term RMers, for short. We make Reality happen; and not just for ourselves, but for everyone. The saying 'Make Your Own Reality' isn't fortune cookie advice. It's a gospel fact. But like how some people make their lives rich, while others barely scrape by, great Reality Makers like us make so much Reality that we drown out the pittances of those who are less gifted. We make Reality for everyone around us. Everyone for miles. For hundreds of miles even. For cities. For countries. For continents."

Milton paused, expecting a response, but Hank only stared blankly. Rio adjusted her glasses.

"For worlds," Milton finished. "We are kingmakers, Hank. The bearers of dreams."

"Or Satan," Hank recalled.

"Or Satan," Milton repeated. "The crusher of dreams. This is what Reality is like for us now, though. The PEP is pumping out unhappy Reality Making Dots and, unknowingly to them, they spew out bucket loads of new and unpleasant Realities that everyone has to live in. All because some dumb machine—incorrectly, I might add!—told them they're a loser.

"You may recall that PEP Tests began as a Western phenomenon. Asians didn't take them much, at least not at first. Even to this day, there's a stigma attached to people of Eastern descent getting PEPed. But that trend is ending. Many Asians now have been taking tests. Some, of course, are Geniuses. And some of them are Dots."

Milton leaned back enough in order to rest his arms across the hardness of his belly. He stared at Hank intently before making his next point.

"And some Asians, as my friend Rio will attest, know that they are Others. They know they make Reality. There's always been a smattering of Others throughout history, but recently, thanks to the PEP, we Others have learned that Dots are Geniuses at Reality Making. They're learning it themselves as well, although very slowly.

"And these Asian RMers, they don't much like us, Hank. They don't like the kinds of Realities we Westerners want to make. They want the world to exist under the Realities they make. Realities like the caste system—Communism, Marxism, Fascism. Totalitarian regimes, rife with chaos and warfare, all meant to subjugate the masses to a state of servitude, for Others to lord over."

"Hell on Earth," Hank concluded.

Rio inhaled noticeably. Milton sat in silence, until things seemed rather awkward.

"That's right," he said at last. "Hell on Earth, but especially Hell for us. Bad Reality Makers want to destroy us. They'll destroy Western civilization. It's gone past ideology; even past zealotry."

There was not a glint of happiness in Milton's voice anymore. He no more wanted to say these things than Hank—nor Rio!—wanted to hear them.

"They're going to destroy us. They're going to bring Hell. They will bring us to living Hell on Earth."

Rio inhaled again, rattling this time, and then turned back to stone. Hank spoke dismissively, looking at Milton.

"You say that like you know it."

"Oh, it's going to happen! Maybe it already has and we don't know it yet, in our happy little pocket of Reality. But that's the way it is. That's what's Real right now."

For some reason, Milton smiled and, after a quick laugh, he boomed. "But we have some Hell of our own for them, don't we, Rio?"

He let out another laugh, causing Rio to break her glare at Hank. She glanced at Milton for a moment, before turning her death-ray eyes back on Hank.

She stands there like a vulture.

Milton boomed again. "Oh, she'll swoop in and carry you off like you're dead meat, my friend! Or maybe she'll bite off your head or pluck out your eyes, and leave you for the jackals! Right, Rio?"

Milton looked towards Rio while keeping Hank in his line of sight. She didn't respond to his ribbing, although Hank thought she'd look nice if she smiled. Her lips were full, and he was certain that Rio's smile, when she chose to use it, was very full as well. He concluded that smiling didn't make her happy. And somehow, knowing that fact about herself made her even unhappier.

He wondered if she could read his mind the way Milton could. Don't think badly of yourself, Hank thought to her. You're a pretty woman.

"And then there's me, my good fellow!" Milton boomed. "Look around! Look at my place! Have you ever seen anything as grand as this?" He held out his arms and spread them wide. "I've got everything! Everything!

"And I have Bumbles, too. Don't I, Boy?"

With that, the anime dog trotted in past Rio. It jumped on the table where Milton sat, with its back to him, staring happily at Hank.

"And do you know what Bumbles has?" Milton asked with a smile.

Hank felt sure he didn't have to answer for Milton to continue, but he did think of a few rude things to say.

"He has you."

Hank was not expecting that. "What does that mean?" he scoffed.

Milton put his merriment aside for a moment to be serious again. "Make no mistake about it, my friend."

You're not my friend.

Milton seemed to miss that one as he continued. "Bumbles went out and found you. I Realed him up, you see, and I sent him out, and he found you. Only you."

He spoke in baby talk to the creature, saying, "We knew Hank was out there, didn't we, my Bumbles? Rio told us he was. Yes she did!"

Milton's childish behavior irriated Hank, especially with the dog-like thing making it another pair of eyes on him. This is too much weird, he thought.

"Okay, let me say something for a while," he said, before somebody read his mind again. "You, you're a… a Reality Maker? So is Rio. So am I, or so you say. But now, this dog—it's not real? You Realed it up? You made it?"

"Yes I did! Yes I did!" Milton repeated, answering both questions as he cooed at his pet. Then he got as serious as he'd ever been before. "And he found you. I made him with the sole intent of finding you. Rio knew you were out there, and we needed to find you. We need you to know what we're doing, and what we're up against."

Milton cast a cursory glance at the vending machine. "And to show you who you really are. We knew you'd have to see for yourself what you can do."

Hank eyes widened, while his eyebrows crawled up his forehead. I did that, He said to himself, about the vending machine. He believed it completely. Milton's smile and benevolent eyes confirmed Hank's epiphany.

"Apparently, we had to wait until your second PEP Test before you could find us," Milton concluded. "Now, I'm going to tell you something, Hank, and I don't care what you think about anything else I've said, but you'd better believe this." His voice regained the gravitas of a man of wealth and power. "There's a silent war going on. It's not coming. It's not out there somewhere else. It's right here, right now, and we are losing it. Maybe we've already lost, and we're too darn stubborn and short-sighted to see it.

"There are different kinds of Reality Makers, and each one is special in his or her own way. Some are really good at it, and some are only so-so, and some," Milton tapped his index finger on the table next to Bumbles, pressing it hard on the surface. "Some of us are great."

Milton looked straight into Hank's toasty warm, almond butter eyes. "What kind of Reality Maker are you?" Hank asked, matching Milton's gravitas as best as he could.

Milton belly-laughed. "Me? Oh, I'm good! I'm a Good Guy, too! I can even Real stuff up, but my friend Rio won't admit to such. Now she—as another example—she sees things. She can see what RMers are doing. She can even see what they're thinking about doing, or what they wish they could do."

Kinda like you, Hank purposefully thought at Milton, who smiled broadly before continuing.

"She can see the Realities other people make, and stop them dead cold. A Reality Preventer, if you will, as opposed to a Reality Maker. That is why she's here. That's why she's staring at you."

"To stop me? To stop me from doing what?" Hank asked as he stared back at her with uncertainty.

"To stop you from doing anything! And, if need be, to crush you with a thought. Well, maybe a really focused, very hard thought thought. But she can do it! To you, to me, to anyone! She truly is a crusher of dreams!"

Milton heaved his great frame around to speak directly at Rio. "I don't think she likes you much," he said as a glib matter of fact. "But Asian RMers, they don't much like any Reality Maker, right? I think we've covered that. So do not be in doubt, my friend. If she thinks you're a threat, if she thinks you're going to exert your Reality on us, on me or just on her, she'll destroy you. That is what she's good at. Crushing people."

Milton leaned towards Hank while still looking at Rio. He whispered loud, for comic effect.

"Don't make her not like you. Crushing Others may be the only thing that makes her happy." He leaned back in his groaning chair and spoke more pleasantly. "Besides, she's actually a sweetheart! I love her! Smart and dangerous! Wow! That's hot!"

Milton laughed at his joke. Hank did not, and neither did Rio. In fact, Hank was pretty sure that Rio's stony look broke for another moment, as she became annoyed at Milton's goofy antics. Only for a moment, though, and Hank felt he might be wrong. He smiled warmly at her, to see what would happen.

She didn't smile back.

Bumbles responded, though. He scooted on his butt a short distance across the table to be nearer Hank, looking happy with his cotton candy tongue hanging out. Hank was strangely certain that Bumbles' breath smelled like bubble gum.

"People are going to remember us," Milton said in a serious tone.

You're quite some character.

"You have no idea who we are. But you will. There are three special people in this room right now. People will remember us, despite your understandable denial of what's happening today. They'll remember me and also Rio, despite her wishing most sincerely, with every fiber of her being, that the world would just forget she ever was born."

Milton stood up and adjusted his finely tailored, extra-large dress shirt collar and tie. He stretched his neck and shoulders, causing them to pop loud enough to hear.

"Okay," he said. "Now, what if I told you I could help you get rid of those Dots? We'll have another soda pop later, and I'll show you how to do it."

It was weird how Milton said things as if they were a fact. But he was right—Hank would face a room full of blank-faced vending machines and very scary Rios if someone got these stupid PEP-dots off his face.

"Come on! Let's get some dinner, and new clean clothes for you, to freshen up a bit. You're a little too old to be sporting a slacker skater boy look, don't you think?"

Whoever this Milton guy thinks he is, Hank thought, as he found himself complying, he's good at what he does.

Rio walked alongside Hank as they followed Milton down the transverse hallway. The recessed light fixtures above were lined with gold leaf foil, and the resultant glow was breathtaking in both warmth and comfort. Hank turned his head just enough to peek one eye at Rio as she walked by his side. She kept her gaze ahead, motivated and undeterred.

She is really something, Hank thought.

Aware of the fact that Hank was sneaking a peek, Rio pursed her lips and licked them, as they walked towards the estate's guest quarters.

With Bumbles tumbling along merrily at their heels.