Issue 1 Downtime

Haley looked awful. Weeks of poor sleep were really starting to take their toll. She fought through math and science to stay awake, but midway through English, where the class read Julius Caesar Haley was clearly asleep, slumped over her textbook.

((Wide open))

"Hayley, wake up." Aisha said, shaking her shoulder gently.

Cal, in the meantime, from the other side of her, mad a very obvious "sneaky" move to give Haley a shock to the arm... obvious enough that the teacher would have to look at what he'd done and not notice that Haley had been sleeping.

Which was where having a precog as a teacher just sucked. Because Nailah was already looking at them before Cal was even doing anything obvious.

She clears loudly her throat. "I am sure she'd appreciate the distraction, but for the next time might I suggest doing something loud enough to distract me and wake her up instead of electrocuting her, Calvin."

Haley snapped up, her face bright red.

"Sh--crap. I'm sorry Ms. Weaver," she said, wiping some drool off her mouth. "It...won't happen again..."

"Of course. But would you please come and see me after class anyway."

Cal muttered something that more than likely wasn't complimentary or grammatically correct as Nailah gave this pronouncement.

Jason snickered from his seat. He was bored too, but with his well of energy, sleep wasn't going to happen.

Nailah shoots Jason a look but then goes back to the lesson at hand.


((Unless anyone has anything else we can probably skip to the end of class.))

Haley demurely gathered her things after class as people filed out, and padded up to Nailah's desk.

Nailah waited until everybody else had filed out of the room.

"Haley... What is going on?"

"I'm...just tired I guess. Haven't been sleeping very well..."

"You look like you've been barely sleeping at all."

"Look, I know I'm probably not the most accessible teacher around, but if there's something wrong..." she adds, sounding much less harsh than she does during class.

Haley sighed, remaining silent for a minute and staring at the floor pretty intently before looking back to Nailah.

"I can't sleep here. Every time I close my eyes, I wind up having awful nightmares. At first they just seemed like ones that I've always had...big scary old house, lots of ghosts out to get me. And I still have those a lot...but lately this woman keeps showing up in them," she explained.

"Last night it was the worst one yet. I woke up screaming mad standing in the middle of my room, thinking I was still in the dream. My roommate was...well less than happy about it."

She chewed her lip for a moment. "Did there used to be a lighthouse on the point?"

Nailah was mostly just nodding along, looking like she was about to dismiss it as Haley being homesick, but at the mention of the lighthouse she perks up and suddenly the thought of a strange woman stalking through peoples dreams sends a shiver down her spine

"There did indeed. Was that what you dreamed about?"

"Yeah..." she nodded.

"I was walking around campus at sundown, and noticed the lighthouse, and started going there cuz I was all curious, and then I hear this voice floating above me and she's like 'don't.' And I'm like 'don't what?' And she's like 'don't go there you don't want to be there in a second,'

Haley scrunched up her face a bit as she tried to recall every detail of the dream. "Anyhow, she just tore into this lighthouse, blowing the hel...heck out of it. She was all like "I have to stop him before he gets any more powerful.' It was really pretty freaky."

"She's been in my dreams before...but this was the first time I heard her speak. She like...usually just was sorta there at the end, and them everything was on fire and then I'd wake up soaked in sweat."

"Sometimes at night, too, the walls like...hum," she added quickly. "And I like heard the same sort of hum when she blew up the tower. It...I dunno it's kinda like that sound you make when you run your fingers around the edge of a wine glass."

"You're seeing ghosts of the past..."

"That hum, is it like you feel it more than you hear it? Like a resonance brimming in your mind and tingling in your hands?"

"It's kinda..just in my head. I hear it, but like...it's like when I hear people think..."

Nailah looks relieved. At least a little bit. It's getting worse, but it's not that bad yet.

"It's... Think of it as psychic residue. Like a fingerprint of thoughts and feelings. You shouldn't be picking up on them though..."

"That stuff...like can linger around? Like thoughts tht are....Not just in people's heads?"

"It's a little more complicated than that. And part of the problem is that lighthouse. Or rather the lack of it. Is there anything else you remember from those dreams?"

"Always fire, she always looks like...I dunno either mad or just really determined. She talked about like....this person named mastermind. And she needed to blow up the lighthouse before it was too late or something...."

"Did that really happen? Am I like seeing things that really did happen?"

"Yes. There used to be a computer called Mastermind that went insane long before we moved here. Back when the Braddock family lived in this mansion. What you are dreaming about is how it was stopped. Even the good guys can seem... scary sometimes, huh?" she smiles a bit awkwardly.

"Am I only seeing this because of my telepathy? Is that why no one else has trouble sleeping?"

Other than my roommate...who deserves it every time I wake her up...

"Most likely, yes. It should stop once we restore the Mastermind node. Preferably as a less insane one."

"You're going to fix the thing that woman was trying to blow up?" She asked, puzzled.

"We need it. Otherwise things are going to get worse in the long run."

"How do you know it won't....like go bad?"

"We don't yet. Which is why it might take a while to fix."

Haley's face darkened and she signed, "So...no sleep for a whole lot longer..."

"I'll see if there's something I can do in the meantime. Meet me in the library after dinner. Say... 8 pm?"

"Really?" She asked hopefully.

"Really." she smiles.

"Okay...ill see you at eight, Ms. Weaver," she smiled wearily.