Hovering and Holograms

I’m fairly normal…get good grades, average height—though you’d never know it to look at me—and below-average weight. That’s the story, and we’re all sticking with it.
“Tammy! Get up here!” My sister, Sam—no, it’s NOT short for Samantha or anything…I’ll cut to the chase and say that some doctor screwed up with the ultrasound detector, so our parents only planned boy names, and then didn’t bother changing it—called down to me.
She had appeared one level up, and the nearest stairs were fairly far off. (Malls always seem to be organized like that…) I could sense the urgency in her voice, so I took my personal shortcut.
“You know I don’t like it when you do that, Tam,” Sam said, shaking her head as I landed beside her. For whatever reason, I never learned how to walk; I went straight from crawling to levitating. In fact, I can’t actually touch the ground anymore; my feet are always at least six inches off the ground…well, unless I physically force myself down. “Now come on!” Sam said, grabbing my hand and pulling me energetically towards a nearby store.
“You show up and then drag me into some random shop?! Did you even look at what this store IS, or did you just see ‘Sale’ and go…?” I asked, digging in my heels. Oddly enough, I can get plenty of “traction”…even without my feet ever touching the floor. Don’t much know or care how it works, all I need to know is that it does.
“Game store!” Sam said brightly, still trying to drag me forwards. It rapidly became a tug-of-war. I would have been okay with being dragged into a video game store—mostly—but this was a store for board games and crap like that.
“Are you freaking kidding me?! There’s a ‘Moyen Aspect’ right over there!” I whined. In case you haven’t already guessed, Sam is the family geek—heck, Dad doesn’t help her with homework anymore; she helps HIM with the differential calculus he needs for work—and I’m more the fashion-and-artsy type.
“Doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “Because…”
A very familiar pair of arms engulfed both Sam and I. “Oof!! Florence…I didn’t realize you were here!” I exclaimed, trying to escape from his grip.
Florence is my cousin from Texas; his parents are French, and so his name is some long, complicated polysyllabic French word that translates to something along the lines of “Cheese”…I think. Anyhow, the average highschooler—myself included—can’t handle his name, so he picked up the nickname “Florence” somewhere.
I think that his long braided hair had something to do with that, but I digress. Florence is big on the muscles, big in general, and not-so-stellar in the IQ department. I mean, it’s not like he’s a Neanderthal, but he’s a little slower than me, and he DEFINITELY can’t do differential calculus in his head.
“Oh…yeah Decided I’d keep an eye on you two girls, keep you out of trouble…” Florence said, letting go of Sam and I. Sam immediately zipped into the games store. “Coming?” Florence asked me. “I’ve already perused most of the stuff, but there were a few things that looked cool…”
“Bleck, no!” I replied. “That place has ‘geek’ written all over it! Even being this close has reduced my coolness by a factor of, like, ten or so!”
“I think that if living with Sam hasn’t already done that to you, nothing will,” Florence chuckled. “But trust me on this, there’s one thing you simply HAVE to see, okay?”
“Is it essential to my continued living?” I moaned.
“Trust me on this one, you’ll like them,” Florence replied. “Come on, we’ll go for ice cream or something afterwards.”
“…Okay…” I sighed in defeat. To date, I have won exactly two arguments with Florence, and I don’t even want to think about how many I’ve lost.
I braced myself, and took a step into the center of geek-dom. I opened my eyes; there hadn’t been any immediate pain as my coolness was siphoned away. I wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing or not…
Looking around, it was pretty clear that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. All sorts of games lined the shelves…There was a Dungeons & Dragons game going on around a table in the back… (I only know what D&D is because Sam had made me play it a while ago, when her campaign needed one more player. She hasn’t made that mistake since.)
I saw a small chunk of semi-normalcy in this den of all things abnormal, and made a beeline for it. Florence and Sam had, oddly enough had the same idea. I think Florence was just following me, but I have no idea why Sam would be interested in…
“A fish tank?” I said, rather surprised. It was fairly large, crammed in amongst D&D sourcebooks, dice and other small things in a sort of multi-level stand thing, and more games. Four fish and two jellyfish swam in lazy circles. The colors were vivid, brighter than normal.
“Yeah…I can’t identify what those creatures are, though…they aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen…”
“That’s surprising; you spent that entire trip to Hawaii analyzing the physics of surfing without so much as touching the water, and identifying every sort of tropical fish you could s—EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!”
Florence and Sam cried in surprise at the same moment; one of the jellyfish had suddenly pounced—that’s the only word I can think of to describe what it did—a blue fish on the other side of the tank, and engulfed it. The entire thing from pounce to full ingestion had taken less than a second.
“That…that wasn’t physically possible!” Sam sputtered, recovering her composure and hyper intellect. “I mean, for a jellyfish to move like that…” She began muttering something about force vectors and other stuff I don’t understand.
“Sorry—didn’t mean to scare you,” a middle-aged man said, walking up to us. There was a grin on his face, glasses on his nose, and stubble on his chin. His shirt depicted a stick figure in a suit and tie, looking bored as all get out, with the caption “This is your brain…” Everything about him said “Pretzel-munching geek.”
“You did that? How?” I asked.
“Easy enough,” he replied, and clicked a switch near the base of the fish tank, which immediately vanished, leaving a small device that looked sort of like a projector, but with a lens that could be swiveled in any direction—currently, it was pointed straight up. “See, it wasn’t a real fish tank…it’s the world’s first hologram generator, like on Star Wars,” he explained.
“COOL!” Sam exclaimed, her eyes widening. “How does it work?!”
The man blinked. “Well, it relies on the fact that light has mass, and thus…” He launched into a highly technical description that had Sam barely suppressing her geek-squeaks of joy…I didn’t understand a word of it.
“Come on, Tam; I don’t understand this any better than you do, and there’s something I wanted you to see,” Florence said, leading me over to one of the tables…thankfully not the D&D one. I followed, glancing out the storefront window every now and then. I fully expected some member of the Cool Girl’s Club from school to walk up and see me…that would be a for-sure boot from the C.G.C.…
This table was one of the “interactive merchandise displays”; basically, a little table to play on while your geeky friend(s) shopped or, in Sam’s case, discussed “photonic spin properties”. “So…what was it you wanted to show me here?” I asked.
“These!” Florence replied, gesturing to a whole bunch of tiny silvery beads, each about ¼ of an inch in diameter.
“Okay, I’ll bite…why? They’re just beads…without…string holes…”
“Don’t need strings!” Florence said, shaping and molding the little heap of beads into a stack…and then an archway.
“Huh?!” I exclaimed. They were perfectly round…how could the arch Flo had made not fall down?!
“They’re magnets, itty-bitty magnets!” He explained. “You can shape them into practically anything—and if you want to build REALLY tall, there’s this little metal scaffold right here on the table!” The scaffold was a simple piece of metal mesh, like window screen but stiffer. It was folded so that it stood up on its own, and you could stick the magnets to it.
“So it’s…art? Really, really nerdy art?” I said. Florence moved aside so that I could hover next to him, and start building with magnets as well. I have to admit it, those little suckers were fun; I quickly learned how to arrange them in patterns the way I wanted, and then into sculptures…
I stopped glancing over my shoulder every few seconds, and after not very long, I was too focused to even notice when Flo moved onto another part of the store.

“Well, at least I know where to find you,” Florence commented with a chuckle.
As I turned to look at him, I saw the only legible clock on the store wall—it was the only sensible digital display. All the rest of them were analog or binary or something like that, but this one clearly read… “When the heck did it get to be 4:19?!”
“One minute after 4:18,” He replied with a chuckle.
I felt my cheeks blush scarlet; I had been occupied in a geek store for…an hour and a half?! “Where did all the freaking TIME go?!”
“Good question; I’d say head over to the GURPS section and ask Sam; she probably either knows, or would figure it out fairly quick,” Florence replied. He sat down next to me. “…Nice tower, by the way.”
“Oh…Um…thanks…” I replied. “…What the heck is ‘GURPS’?”
“It stands for ‘Generic Universal Role-Playing System’. Basically, it’s a set of core rules that you can use to make any home-brew RPG you want,” Florence said. “Cool stuff.”
“Gynngh,” I said, making a face. “Not my definition of ‘cool’…especially if Sam tries dragging me into one of her crazy games!”
“Think we should buy a set of these?” Florence asked, changing the subject, and pointing to the construction mini-magnets I’d occupied myself with for the past hour and a half. “I think that they come with the mesh…”
“Sure,” I said before it fully went through my brain. The magnets were just so cool…Wait. Cool? No!! They were the epitome of geekiness, and I—a high-ranked member of the C.G.C.—was ACTUALLY considering BUYING a set?! “Actually, wait, no…You can…but, um…” I trailed off.
Florence smiled, and whipped out his cell phone, which he used to snap a picture of my tower. “Guess I better get this on record before we leave, then. It’s really neat…Oh, by the way, I want to show you a little trick I figured out with these; may I?”
“…Go ahead,” I said. I was more concerned with who the digital photograph would find its way to, though…
It took an effort of will to keep from flinching as Florence proceeded to turn my tower into a long string of magnet-balls, one wide and…about 200 long. Then, he set it on the table, grabbed one end, and flicked his wrist. The string flew out of his hand and coiled itself up into a neat little cylinder. Somehow, the little cylinder landed on its end, a self-constructed mini-tower.
It was the neatest—not coolest, mind you, I refuse to attribute “cool” to something as geeky as those magnets—thing since Velcro shoe fasteners and chewing gum…combined. Florence didn’t have to say anything; the “Ta-Daaaa!” was implied in the sheer awesomeness of the trick he had just pulled off.
“Come on, Tam. Let’s go, and leave the magnets for someone else, right?”

I looked around; there were a few people I recognized—no C.G.C. members, thank goodness—and I hoped to heaven that they hadn’t seen me come out of a game store…Subconsciously, I handed the bag to Florence. There were two containers of magnets in there; one for him, and the other for…a gift. To someone else. Not me. Of course not me.
We had finally dragged Sam out of the store—she had purchased a few GURPS books—and went for ice cream.
I drifted about the food court area, looking at the artwork scattered about here and there to liven the place up, and also a few of the nearby shops. Sam and Florence hadn’t gotten their ice cream yet, so I had a little time before they’d want to sit and chat…
Someone wolf-whistled from behind me. My cheeks burned bright red, and I dropped two feet of altitude. The skirt probably hadn’t been the best thing to wear, considering my ability to float, but they were in fashion right now, and that’s something I tend not to argue with.
I turned, and opened my mouth to say something…but the words died in my throat when I found myself facing a small gang of men in leather biker jackets and baggy pants. Most of them had visible—and nasty—tattoos or scars. The dual shock of finding myself facing a gang and of how badly dressed they were sent me reeling.
At that moment, Florence appeared right behind me; he was half a head taller than the tallest person in the gang, and slightly broader shouldered too. “This young lady just happens to be my cousin. Don’t mess with her,” he growled, laying his hands on my shoulders protectively.
“We could take you,” one of the younger, more impulsive gangsters snapped.
“Really. And how many martial arts classes have you taken?” Florence asked, cracking his neck. A small crowd was gathering around us now on both levels of the mall. “Plus, how much to you want to fight on a public scene with security nearby?”
“…Come on, Ben. We’re going,” the leader of the gang said, and they all departed.
“…Thanks for the save, Flo…” I said, swallowing and remembering to breathe again.
“No prob,” he replied. “Come on; Sam and I saved you a seat.”
“Okay. So…just out of curiosity…how many martial arts classes have YOU taken?” I asked, following him to the table.
“Precisely none, but I figured they wouldn’t know that.”