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Chapter 2

The luminescent screen of Piper's laptop suffuses through the air, the digital realm with a thousand eyes slowly grasping and tightening its grip on her. Her fingers dance across the keyboard, clicking and tapping. The fan gyrated, a muffled melody, as she started Zoom, sweating to join in, right before she was late to class.

"Robert?"
"Here..."
"Johnny?"
"Here."

The familiar chime, the messenger of digital gatherings, plays.
"And lastly, Piper?"
"Here!" Piper declares, catching her breath, escaping the tight grip of tardiness.

The pixelated faces of her classmates individually appear on each grid, all collectively bearing the same boredom, Piper included. Mrs. Cipher, her teacher, blasts the speaker with transmitted replicas of her real voice, each decibel filling the virtual classroom with Python lessons, which Piper found unimportant and irrelevant for her future careers. In her perspective, her classmates are far more capable and could outperform anything she could achieve.

With her eyes battling light with its shiny armor, Mrs. Cipher's voice dampens. Eventually, she revisits her long-awaited slumber. In the dimension of dreams, the once vivid recollections of public places like movie theaters have become mere petals absorbed by the digital era.

With only herself and the forgotten memories in a void, seemingly alongside a hidden force, it guided Piper's soft hands to reach for the petals drifting further and further away. With one gentle tap on her fingertips, it rippled the air.

Emerging, she discovers a wooden bench in front of her, shielded by shades of the too familiar oak tree. A rough, weathered gravel path stretched towards the exit, an arrow pointing towards her house. Seated on the bench, it's her and the body of her friend's online avatar, except both are years younger. Piper, stunned, sprinted alongside the gust of wind dancing around the strands of her hair in rhythm to each heavy footstep. She quickly swiped her hand to the ghostly dream counterpart of her after racing as fast as she could. Yet, there was no collision, only her hand passing through each part like it was a mirage. Breathing heavily, Piper struggles to take a step back. She couldn't move, nor twitch at all. Down to her nerves, Piper was forced to stand there and witness what's happening.

"Emmy, do you want to go to the movies with my family? It'll be really fun!" Piper's spectral figure asked in a high pitch.
"Sure! But what movie? I heard the new Disney movie came out!"
"We can go there! Let me ask my-"
"Emma Zheng! It's time to go home! It's getting dark," a woman, seemingly to be in her forties, yelled across the park.
"I'll see you soon, Piper!"

Piper, undoubtedly recognizing both of the childish, innocent voices, hesitates for a moment. "Emmy? Who's Emmy?" Emma's voice, this park, her as a young child— all once was a painting of clarity, unwraps itself in a shroud of mystery, leaving Piper to solve the enigma of this recognizable, yet so unfamiliar, situation. Within her ear, she captures the echoes of laughter and humiliation as she slowly fades from her surreal dream.

Piper wakes from the kingdom of dreams, her hair turned into a bird's nest, laid peacefully on her keyboard. The Zoom meeting is deserted and the clock reads 3:05 p.m, an hour after school concluded.

Best as she could, she strides back to the kitchen. R-T was already preparing a delicious meal of pizza topped with pepperoni, exactly what Piper craved. R-T always knew exactly what she desired, anytime, anywhere.

She sat peacefully waiting for her pizza, yet Emma Zheng continued to knock on the door of her thoughts. Once the pizza was handed to her gracefully from R-T, she ate bit by bit, hoping to create a distraction from whoever Emma was. However, with each bite, it only teased and tempted Piper to probe more. She couldn't shake off the feeling that there has to be a reason for her dream—this was nothing like any other.

Piper, gobbling the pizza, hurried back to her laptop and googled who Emma Zheng was.