**Ring ring**

“What's that?”

“Telephone. It's my mother! Hello!?”

“Hi, Dolores? Where are you, dear!?”

“Hi, Mom! I am outside, jogging!”

OK, sure. Mom does not seem to be happy, and first thing first, she asks me where I am? I bet that this has to do with Clara.

“Why does Clara tell me she does not know where you are?”

I knew it.

“Because she was under the shower when I got out. Ma, I do not have to tell Clara when I go out jogging. I am eighteen, ma!”

“Dear, dear. Don't play now, the big independent girl. It is normal to tell your housemates when you go out, not just disappear like this?”

“Ma! Clara usually stays for hours under the shower, and Lola was sleeping. Should I not go jogging because of that?”

“And breakfast? Have you had breakfast? What did you eat?”

“Eggs, butter, bread, and some veggies”

I did not even lie. The butter was a funny thing kept underwater by that old man, but it existed.

“OK. When do you plan to go home? Clara and Lola want to go shopping!”

“Again? No, ma, I do not go shopping with them. They should call me on my mobile.”

“Clara said she called you, and you did not answer!?”

“Ahm... It is possible; I might not have heard it...”

“Dolores, it is not nice to ignore their calls!”

“I did not ignore it on purpose, ma!”

I did. Clara's calls go on mute on my phone directly to the mailbox that I almost never listen to. I heard ma's sight. White Flower poured oil over fire:

“It is not nice to lie to your mother!”

I almost said it aloud: 'Oh, shut up!'. I almost did that. Lucky me, at the last second, I realized I was talking with ma on the phone, and that would not go down well.

The call took only some five minutes more. It was unusually short. Ma used to call me regularly, and Saturday morning was such a 'calling time,' so I was not very surprised to hear her. What annoyed me was Clara's squeal, but I could not do anything against it. Good that she does not know about this bicycle.

As the phone call was over, I sighed and talked with White Flower:

“OK, now that you kept me for so many minutes to watch airplanes here on this field, let me try some magic.”

“Sure, but when I hear an airplane, you just look up, ok?”

“Sure... Ahm, speaking of trying magic, could you hide me from sight, so nobody sees my magic?

“OK, Let me lead to do that.”

Well, finally, I could exercise some magic...

Once she had finished camouflaging me, I started the exercises. She explained what I should do, what I should feel, and how I should concentrate. I tried. I really tried, but it did not work. I was very disappointed, but she encouraged me:

“Don't despair after half an hour? People need sometime years to get to the first stage and start a small flame!”

She is talking about spawns from that imaginary world!?

But let me be honest, she tried to be kind to me. I half-listened to what she was telling, concentrating on my work. I heard a truck coming on the road, but I was aside from the road in a kind of unofficial parking. I tried to concentrate on my exercise, but something was off with that truck. I heard that engine too near to be comfortable with and turned.

A giant wall of steaming dark green metal and silvery glass was just behind me, coming fast closer.

Fuck, this truck is going to run over me! The truck was now several meters from me, headed my way. I clearly saw the driver, and our eyes met, and I saw in his eyes the same horror I felt: he was going to run me over.

I jumped, tripped, and rolled over. The truck screamed an alien scream, something that I would associate with a dinosaur. Suddenly the rolling motion of the giant tires stopped, but they continued to skid my way, raising clouds of dust and throwing stones in the air like so many bullets. The metal mass bowed as if inclining its giant head to byte me, emitting all kinds of wailing sounds.

It stopped inches from my eyes. I screamed as loud as I could, but no noise that I made was heard; everything was covered by the truck's hubbub. Then for a long second, everything seemed to be suspended.

Finally, I heard the driver stepping on the metal stairs.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!!”

He came around the truck and bowed to me:

“Oh my god, oh my god, are you ok?”

It was good to see that incredulous face realizing I had not been flattened. He was surprised to see he could move me and that I was not pinned down there.

He helped me up. He was looking all over, trying to find the squished parts. I could not say a word; I was just trembling.

“I haven't seen you! I haven't seen you! And suddenly you were there, just in front! I haven't seen you! I am so sorry!”

It took me quite a long time to understand what happened. Fuck, it was me who asked White Flower to camouflage me. Yeah, to hide me from others. She must have done it pretty well.

I still feel guilty that I did not explain it to him. But what could I have told him?

My bicycle was under the truck, but it had not been run over by a tire. He had a bit of difficulty extracting it from there and even had to drive the truck a couple of meters backward. I was happy to find out that the bike survived the adventure almost without scratches. Only the steering was a little askew, but he fixed it back. He was dejected and shocked, and so was I, but in the end, nothing bad happened. I only almost got myself run over by a giant truck through my sheer stupidity. Only the wheels of the truck were almost as big as me; it was a giant truck carrying gravel. Why anybody would need such trucks for gravel was beyond me.

Well, in the end, there was also a good part in this misadventure. As we talked and he asked me where I was headed, he explained that he knew about the gamers and that his route was bringing him near to their new place. It was just another abandoned factory on the other side of the street to the old location, so he loaded my bicycle in the rear of the truck putting it over that gravel, and I had the occasion to get inside that high perched cabin and see the world from up there. White Flower was enthusiastic about it.

As soon as we arrived at my destination, he unloaded my bike and left me in front of a giant ruin. The truck honked a couple of times as he left. We were already best friends, or possibly he was thanking all gods honking happily that nothing bad happened.

The factory was about 100 meters from the road, enclosed by a fence. I left my bicycle there beside the road, hidden behind some bushes, and squeezed myself through a hole in the fence. Later I learned that a part of the fence could be opened, there was a simple trick to that, but yeah, nobody was there to tell it to me.

The gamers were indeed there. About one hundred people strewn through that building. It was so big that it seemed almost empty. When I entered, there was a kind of a checkpoint at the gate. There were two guys who even asked me my name. Actually, my gamers' handle: Zetta.

What they were doing here was probably not illegal, or not everything of it was. The scene was tolerated by authorities as it was considered a way for the youth to canalize and release steam. There were all kinds of movements, and the gamers were preferred to hackers groups or other even more shady organizations.

I only recognized a couple from the old guard; most were new to the scene. A couple of guys were looking suspiciously at me, but nobody asked me what I was doing. Many were playing, laying there on improvised mattresses.

I tried to engage a couple in conversation. They were drinking some kind of sweetened soda, sitting on barrels forming a kind of a bar.

"Hi!"

The girl shot me a tired look.

"Hey there. Looking for something?"

"Looking for info on Mephisto."

The scrawny boy grinned, sucking from his drink. Fuck, they have plastic straws here!

"You too? The game is blocked!"

I watched him, not understanding.

"What do you mean? I just played in the early morning hours..."

The girl cut me short:

"You were lucky. Now the message comes that the game is not accessible!"

"Not really? Is it crashed?"

"Maybe. The funny thing is, there are still some people inside the game."

"So it is not crashed?"

The boy raised his shoulders. As nobody added anything on that, leaving the question open I asked:

"Do you know where Claude or Markus is?"

The girl answered:

"I haven't seen Markus in a year or so. I think Claude is one of the guys still in Mephi. He knows Mephi is now off-limits, so he will probably stay in as long as possible."

The boy shrugged again.

"I suppose he wants to see the end of the world from the inside."

After a while, I left them looking for other people to talk to in order to get a complete picture. In a corner, a tower of cans was scintillating in the diffuse light. Probably a ton of expired cans or some automatic truck 'lost' part of the load. Robberies on automatic trucks were becoming common, and there were discussions about weaponizing some. Yeah, robocop comes to the rescue. Of course, only some nonlethal electric shocks for a start.

"Care to let me lead? I'd like to taste some of that juice?"

The other half of my brain, the one that acts like a three-year-old, wants to taste the poisonous soda.

"That's pure poison!"

A guy who just passed by grinned:

"You said it!"

Inside me, White Flower just shrugged.

"I would still like to taste it. That boy seemed to be so happy drinking it?"

Ah, whatever.

"You lead!"

It does not cease to surprise me when I let her take the lead. Both in-game or here outside. She moves in a different way; she acts differently. It is my body, and yet... could I say not the same soul? What defines us? What defines the way she moves? The way she is perceived by others?

I know a couple of people were watching me with interest. This was an unusual look. I am not used to boys watching me like this. Little red riding hood must have felt like this when the big bad wolf was looking at her.

But then something happened. People started to act in a panic running back and forth. A couple of people that were previously immersed in Dreamland under the dream interface were now sitting up, vomiting their breakfast. Typical dream interface breakdown, no normal exit.

What is happening?

"Let me lead!"

I don't know what was happening, but I feel more confident when I am in the lead. OK, with the exception when she has to blast something. I think I'll leave it to her to do that.