I left behind scattered images of racist graffiti, a piss-stain on a wall, an egg in a sandwich, and a blurry image of a guy taking up three bus seats.

We walked into a region where the images were a blinking, obtrusive sign, a square image that lunged up at our feet, with flashing text. A graphic image of Jesus on a cross near Rain’s feet. The images overlapped, blurring into one another. Like the other images, these were clear only if we were looking directly at them, but they had a way of shifting and moving that latched onto my attention whenever I gave it any.

I could see the array of images around Kenzie shift, taking on a different cast. I was put in mind of a crescent moon. The ‘crescent’ part of it was blinking lights, indicators, slices of light cutting through darkness and sun peeking through blinds, very bright. There were square images, maybe screens, showing dramatic changes.

Contained within the crescent and bleeding out into the surrounding area was a storm. Closing doors, people in a crowd, thrown plates, faces turning, hand movements, cars, signs, store displays, papers moving in the wind from a window…

Five or ten images in the time that the ‘crescent’ showed one, sometimes hard to make out because of the fuzziness and vague edges of it. Were we still in the data storage for ‘obnoxious things’, respective to each of us?

“Who are you talking to?” I asked Kenzie. I blinked to bring up the image at my right eye, flicking through to Kenzie perspective, but it wasn’t showing me much. A bird sitting in front of a keyboard, and the camera’s point of view on a screen.

“She’s talking to someone?” Rain asked.

“One sec,” Kenzie said.

I waited.

“Okay!” she said, sounding pleased. “Finished filling them in. Bringing them in, for convenience. Tattletale says the more information she can pick up, the better the info she can provide.”

There was a pause, and then Tattletale and Imp appeared beside Kenzie.

“Oh wow, motion sickness,” Imp muttered. Tattletale just looked around.

“Those are settings I can fiddle with,” Kenzie said.

“Don’t bother. Let’s just have this conversation and then I can take this thing off my head.”

“What do you want?” Tattletale asked, irritated.

Kenzie moved her hand to her mouth, like she was going to whisper, but spoke at normal speaking volume, “Headache.”

“Ignore her. I’ve got ten people demanding my attention, I need a fifteen minute nap to get this headache to calm down, and I chose to focus on you first. You’re not getting the full benefit of my power, this is a token effort to pacify a bunch of kids who are going to whine incessantly unless I help you out.”