A day later and Teresa still hadn’t given up on reading it, although she now was mostly curious as to why Wisdom would say such a thing. So now that she couldn’t sleep, she sat on the couch, opened the book again, but realized quickly that she just wasn’t able to concentrate. Looking around in the room absent-mindedly, her gaze first fell onto the grand piano; she had often wondered about whether it was Wisdom or the Future that knew how to play. Then, she looked further around and flinched.

She wasn’t alone in the room. The Future sat in front of her desk, succumbed to sleep over a huge stack of paper.

Teresa walked over to her to see a bunch of scientific drawings and pictures on the desk, mostly cross-sections of organs, cells and other biological structures. A shelf was mounted on the wall over the desk that was mostly stacked with pencils, rulers and different instruments for technical drawings. However, in the corner of the shelf Teresa saw a few notebooks as well as a pressed and framed four leaf clover. Seeing that, she felt a bit fuzzy in her stomach without knowing why.

Then, she got startled again by Wisdom, who suddenly walked into the room in her underwear.

“Hey Teresa, still got a fever?” she asked and put a hand on her forehead. Before finishing, her eyes fell on the Future, and she added in a whisper: “She was out there alone today, huh?” and Teresa nodded. With a sigh, Wisdom continued: “I hope you’ll be better soon. By the way, look. This is her hobby. Or rather, her work. I think those two concepts are the same to her.” She pulled some of the drawings from the heap to show Teresa. Pulling a bundle of paper out of a drawer, she said: “Look, she also writes sometimes.”

The writings were messed up. Teresa couldn’t read any of it. They seemed like they’d been written by a five-year old trying to copy and embellish some unknown symbol writing system.

“If you want to read it, feel free. I’m sure she’d have nothing against it as long as she doesn’t find out.”

Teresa declined partaking in this grave ethical violation but wondered if that offer meant Wisdom could actually read these writings.

“I don’t think she should sleep here,” Wisdom said. “Why don’t you carry her to her room?”

“Why me?!” Teresa protested immediately, but it sounded more like a coughy rasp than anything else. Still, neither did Teresa feel close enough to the Future that she’d feel comfortable carrying her around, nor was she physically fit enough to do it. Although Wisdom was shorter than her, she was quite athletic, after all.

“I’d love to,” said Wisdom, “… but I can’t. My arms are pretty exhausted right now, you know.”

Teresa remembered the two naked people lying in Wisdom’s bed, and rolled her eyes. She eventually gave in, although she wasn’t sure why — maybe the infection had reached her brain. Embracing the Future’s shoulders with one arm and her legs with the other, she picked her up. She was too light. In fact, way too light, and Teresa shuddered at the thought that a woman this light could even be alive.

The Future’s style of clothing did well at concealing her figure, and to Teresa’s horror, the Future probably weighed even less than she did herself. Teresa had never been a person to care too much about eating, and the past year of lying in bed all day hadn’t helped that at all.

With hard breathing, Teresa finally got the Future to her bed in her room at the end of the hallway. She was still deep asleep. Wisdom put a blanket over her and lovingly stroked her forehead, while Teresa tried to elope and go to bed herself.

“May I show you something?” Wisdom asked right before she could leave. Teresa didn’t know a single thing in the world that could capture her interest right now. She just wanted to sleep. “Sis has a shed,” Wisdom added. “Wanna look inside?”

Damn. The shed. The one Teresa had tried and failed to open several times. Suddenly, Teresa was wide awake.

Wisdom went up the stairs to put on some clothes, then they both stepped outside to the garden. When Wisdom pressed the bronze handle, the door to the shed swung open.

“Wait, what? When I tried it, it didn’t budge!”

“Yep,” replied smiling Wisdom. “It’s a capricious door. It only opens if you push it with courage.”

Yeah, right, thought Teresa. It took her plenty of courage to try opening it! Also, that kind of mechanism would be completely pointless.

When they entered, Teresa lost her breath in view of the incredible amount of dusty, rusty, yellowed refuse cramped together any and everywhere, up to the ceiling. It was mostly commonplace items of all kinds like boxes with books, some electronic devices, paintings, drawings, files, clothes. Many toys, some stones. When the dust started to settle in Teresa’s nose and throat, she coughed.

“That’s all her unused stolen goods,” Wisdom explained. “Most of the time she just immediately uses whatever she steals, but some stuff she stores for later. Look—” she said when knocking over a golden bird cage to grasp the handle of a floor door, “There’s more down there. Wanna see?”

“Is it the same as up here?”

“Yes.”

“Then no, thanks,” said Teresa, still visibly disgusted by the disarray.

Wisdom let go of the handle and stemmed her hands on her sides. “Lovely Teresa. I find it bold of you to react in such a manner to a bit of filth while you stand there with a running nose, having some sticky liquid on your shirt. What even is that?! Ew!”

Teresa turned around and covered up the honey stains on her chest by grasping her left shoulder with her right arm. In doing so, she saw something interesting, and walked a few steps towards a small realistic painting depicting a woman that looked a bit like an older Future. The frame stood on an antique wooden cupboard, next to a horrendously complex origami paper creature of almost a meter in size.

“Oh wow, that dragon,” Teresa murmured.

“Yes please? — Oh. You mean that. Yes. Cool, right?”

After saying that, Wisdom turned away again.

On the wall behind the cupboard hung a big azure coloured goldfish bowl made of extremely thick glass, big enough to encapsulate a whole head, so that it kind of reminded Teresa of an astronaut helmet. Curiously, it was coated in half-translucent paintings of goldfish and koi, algae and other underwater creatures, with two spots on the glass standing out, as there was nothing painted on them, as if leaving space for eyes to look through.

“This bowl is so pretty. Did it use to house a fish?”

“That’s a mask,” Wisdom explained. “The Future can use it to reduce her inconspicuousness.”

Used to the nonsensical nature of Wisdom’s explanations, Teresa’s gaze went back to the painting of the woman. “Who is that?” she asked, in another hopeless attempt to get some useful information out of her.

“That’s one of the Future’s relatives.”

Great, Teresa thought. She’d already guessed as much.

To her surprise though, Wisdom continued: “Let me see… as far as I know, Sis has…” She counted with her fingers, trying to remember, “… Four close relatives. I met all of them once, except for her brother. Her brother is very elusive.”

So despite calling her ‘Sis,’ Wisdom wasn’t directly related to the Future after all, Teresa concluded. “How did you and the Future meet? Did she pick you up like she did with me?”

Teresa hesitated. “Now that I think about it, what exactly was the point of her picking me up? I still don’t get what all of this is about.”

Wisdom pointed to the door. “Let me show you something in the basement of the house.”

When they left the shed again, the cold night wind tousled Teresa’s greasy, brittle hair. The world around her seemed unnatural; the lanterns relentlessly shone onto the rigid surroundings and it was quiet, except for the rustling of leaves on the two old birches in the garden.

She gulped and felt her scratchy throat. One step after the other, she slowly walked back to the house entrance, where Wisdom was already waiting for her and held the door open. Then, they walked to the stairs, next to which was a door revealing the entrance to the basement.

Down there were two doors; one of which led to the right and seemed incredibly sturdy. It was made of metal, was plastered in gears and had some mechanical switches and regulators on it. It seemed like a meticulous construction and didn’t fit in with the style of the house at all. Wisdom noticed Teresa feeling over the metal workings with her fragile fingers.

“That’s the daymaker,” she said offhandedly. “Don’t go in, you’re gonna get lost. It could also be dangerous.”

Wisdom’s sad expression made clear to Teresa that she didn’t like this daymaker at all. Yet, her curiosity got the better of her. “What’s in that room?”

“It’s not a room,” Wisdom replied. “It’s just a door. Anyway, don’t get distracted. Look what’s in here instead.”

She pointed behind herself to the other, much simpler looking door that led straight on, and vanished into the dark room behind it.

Teresa skittered after her and felt the cold stone floor at her bare feet, shuddering at the wave of cold air hitting her after entering. Inside was just a huge basin, reaching to her thighs, big enough to comfortably lie in it. It emanated a faint greenish, bluish light. Teresa bent over it until she saw a small amount of liquid in the centre of the basin.

“Are those the tears she’s gathered so far?” Teresa whispered gently. This room inspired her with awe.

“Yes,” Wisdom answered with a hint of pride in her voice.

“So, now that I’m here, you might as well tell me what this is all about,” Teresa said. “What’s she gonna do with them? How many is she gonna gather?”

Of course, it was impossible to fill the entire basin with tears. Teresa estimated that it could hold about five hundred litres of liquid. For some odd reason, imagining the basin filled also led to her imagining Wisdom taking a bath in it and pressing a squall of tears from a sponge down her back. Teresa pinned this mental image on her illness.

“So, as you know, the Future comes from a family of inventors.”

As you know?, Teresa thought angrily. How was she supposed to know!

“Especially her older ancestors have devoted a lot of effort in their devices, some of which you have already seen.”

Teresa guessed that these constructions must have been inside of the shed, although she wasn’t sure which items Wisdom was referring to. That, and maybe the daymaker?

“The Future was never really into engineering that much herself, she always devoted her time to real life events and experiences.”

Teresa nodded. She’d never seen the Future use any elaborate artefacts on their trips. It had always been about what was happening in the moment.

“Well. Things did change, though. In January this year, something happened to her. I’m not going to go into details, but what happened then made her choose to construct something after all, as did her forbearers.”

“Construct something out of what? The tears?”

“Yeah. She decided to use tears. It didn’t have to be tears, of course. She could have used anything she wanted to. I’m sure she thought about using honey. She wanted something that she could gather during her usual work. Considering how much she sees of it, if you ask me… she should have used blood. Of course, she decided to go the hard way.”

“So, what kind of thing is she going to make? Can’t be too big, since gathering the material would take ages.”

“Wanna know how many tears she is going to collect?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“67 million.”

Teresa thought she’d misheard. “What?”

This didn’t make any sense. On good days, the Future would gather about three or four tears — and those were just the good days. Imagining how long she would take to gather several million made Teresa dizzy. I don’t have time to accompany her to gather so much, she thought.

“So, why tell me all of this now? I’ve been begging you to disclose at least something for months.”

Wisdom shrugged. “I wasn’t going to tell a random person all of Sis’ secrets. Who knew whether you’d even stay?”

“So this is all a secret? I can’t tell anyone?” Teresa asked, as if she had anyone to tell any of this.

“That’s not really… to be honest, you can tell anyone you want. The Future doesn’t mind either way. But,” she said, with a devilish smile on her face, “I just thought today was the perfect day to share all this with you!”

“Why?”

“Because,” Wisdom added with a teasing up-and-down in her voice, “… tomorrow morning you will wake up all tired and dreamy, thinking all of what we talked about tonight was just a dream! Exactly like in Alice in Wonderland. Oh no! Now I ended up telling you the ending after all! And if you ever mention any of what happened tonight to me, I will just say: ‘Oh? Whatcha talking about, sweetie? I was busy with my nightly company the whole time!’ — Not to mention that, in the first place, you could have just asked the Future yourself about what she was going to build…”

Teresa rolled her eyes. “Wait, so you know what she is going to make? Or have a suspicion, at least?”

“Yep! I didn’t precisely ask her what it was going to be, but I have a strong guess.”

“So… what is it?”

“Well, of course I’m not going to tell you that. For the same reason as to why I didn’t ask her about it: It’s going to ruin the whole fun in guessing it.”

Inconceivable, Teresa thought, shaking her head slightly. “There is no such thing as fun in guessing. There is only fun in knowing.”

Wisdom pressed an arm on her own hip, and sheepishly said: “Well, must really suck not to know then!”

Teresa was dumbstruck. “That’s exactly what I keep telling you! It sucks! I can’t believe you! You know what, I’m going to tell the Future how you just keep teasing me. You’re in big trouble.”

Wisdom started laughing. “Sure, you do you. But, who is she going to believe? You, a pathetic loser, or me, the most trustworthy being in the universe, who happens to be her best friend for totally like ever, or to call it by the scientific name, her B.F.F.T.L.E.?”

That did it.

For some reason, this string of words from this person was the funniest thing Teresa had ever heard in her entire life.

She didn’t just start laughing. It ended her on the spot. She sank down with her face torn to a grimace, trying to laugh, but it was so heavy, she didn’t even get to make a sound. The laughing only came after she’d overcome the first stun. And then, it almost never stopped. Wisdom came to her side wondering if she’d accidentally killed her. She wrapped her arms around her to support her, while she just laughed and laughed and laughed.

“Oh my, sweetie, it wasn’t that funny! Calm down, or I’m gonna have some explaining to do to Sis tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” Teresa laughed. “It’s like your mouth is some kind of nonsense factory…”

“How flattering!” Wisdom laughed back.

It took Teresa almost ten minutes to calm down, and when she finally did, she was too weak to even get up. “Hey, Wisdom,” she said, which might have been the first time she’d actually used her name, “I’m so tired…”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

“I’m going to bed,” she added, and then immediately fell asleep in Wisdom’s arms.

“Oh my, what a cutie you are,” she whispered, and then picked her up to carry her back to her room upstairs.