“How do you know?” Painter asked.
“Because time travel into the past is impossible,” Design said. “I can show you the math.”
“Wait,” Yumi said. “Time travel into the future is possible?”
“Um, yes, dear,” Design said. “You’re doing it now.”
“Oh. Right.”
“We can slow or speed up time relative to other places or people,” Design said. “That’s easier in the Spiritual Realm, where time flows like water into whatever container you provide. But you can’t go back. Nobody, not even a Shard, can do that.”
“What’s a Shard?” Painter asked.
“Yeah, we’re not going to get into that,” Design said.
“Very well,” Yumi replied, “but many things I assumed impossible proved to be entirely possible recently. So perhaps something is happening that you don’t know about, Design.”
The buxom woman—well, entity—sighed. “You need proof, eh? All right, let’s read your aura, little girl.” She ducked down and began fiddling with things under the counter.
“Read my aura?” Yumi whispered, leaning over to Painter.
“It’s a carnival thing,” he explained. “Izzy loves readings. You know how she’s always trying to use dramas to guess what people’s futures are? It’s like that. Old lady sits in a room and squints at you, then tells you what kind of job you’ll like. It’s…mostly nonsense.”
Design popped back up and thumped a large piece of equipment onto the bar. A black box with some kind of…glass portion on top? Like a viewer?
“Is this normally part of it, Painter?” Yumi asked.
“I’ve…never seen it done like this before…” he said as Design took Yumi’s hand and put it onto the glass plate.
A customer came up for food, and Design shooed him away. When he didn’t leave, she stood up tall and snapped, “What? Can’t you see that I’m talking to a ghost and reading his girlfriend’s spiritweb? Go sit in the storming corner until I’m ready for you.”
The man frowned and trailed away. Painter, however, was shocked. Girlfriend?
“Took me longer to find this thing than I wanted,” Design said. “Hidden among all his junk. Guy needs a sorting system.”
（I have one. It’s called my brain.）
Design moved some dials, then hooked the machine up to the bar’s hion lines for power. While he waited, Painter reached over and took the spirit of Yumi’s soup, pulling it in front of him. He got two bites before it evaporated. He didn’t get hungry while a ghost, but he did miss Design’s cooking.
“Okay,” Design eventually said as something began to glow inside the box. “This fabrial will give a far more accurate reading of your spiritweb than I can on my own. Let’s see…” She leaned back, frowning, then leaned forward again, studying some…were those words? The waving lines that appeared on a smaller plate at the side?
“Huh,” Design said.
“What?” Yumi and Painter said in unison.
“The readings are going haywire,” Design said, “because you’re highly Invested. Like, super Invested.”
Painter blinked. Then waited for more. Then looked to Yumi, who shrugged.
“Storms,” Design said. “Yeah, this is like… Returned-level Investiture. No, more. Elantrian-level. The device isn’t built for that kind of reading—and you’re screwing with the system something crazy. It’s kind of fun. Oooh. I wonder if you’ll explode when you die.”
“What?” Yumi yelped.
“Highly unlikely,” Design said. “But possible!” She grinned. “This is awesome.”
“We have no idea what you’re talking about,” Painter said.
“Investiture is what souls are made out of,” said Design. “Well, everything is Investiture—because matter, energy, and Investiture are the same. But souls, as you’d call them, are parts of our beings that are pure Investiture. Like…fire is energy. This table is matter. Souls? Investiture.”
“And Yumi’s spirits?”
“Likely Investiture too,” Design said. “I haven’t met them, so I can’t say. But the nightmares are. Pure Investiture. They’re probably terrified of you, Yumi.”
“We’ve met several,” Yumi said. “And they were very not afraid of me.”
“Well, they should have been,” Design said. “You could maybe consume them, at least screw with them in all kinds of fun ways. Investiture—raw Investiture in particular—is kinda wahoopli.”
“…Wahoopli?” Painter said.
“Word I just made up,” Design said. “It means weird. Hoid says I should be more literary. He makes up words all the time. So I’m trying it out.”
（I do not make up words. I have no idea where she was getting that part.）
“Anyway, raw Investiture,” Design said, “responds to thoughts. Emotions. Especially the thoughts and emotions of heavily Invested beings. Painter, when you paint nightmares, it’s your thought—your perception of them—that causes them to transform. It’s not the actual painting. They can literally become anything, and because of that they have a weakness. Through concentration, you can force them to become what you envision.”
“Huh,” Painter said, shocked by how much sense that made to him. Considering how conversations with Design often went.
“Regardless, back to Yumi…” Design said, squinting—not because she needed to, but because she was picking up human mannerisms. （Which was, I can proudly say, part of the point of making her “human” in the first place.） “Yumi, have you experienced any memory loss lately?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Should I have?”
“It’s difficult to read your spiritweb,” Design said. “You glow like a bonfire, girl. Obscures a lot of things—but I do see an excision here. Some of your memories have been bled away.”
Both of them again stared at her blankly.
“Everyone imprints memories in their Investiture,” Design said. “It’s why a Cognitive Shadow remembers everything the body did, if the body dies? Storms, you people don’t know anything. Look, in highly Invested individuals in particular, memories get spread through your whole soul, okay? And you’ve lost some. They were cut out. Not many. Maybe a day’s worth? Hard to see details, though the scar is right here.”
“I…got touched by that stable nightmare,” Yumi said. “It seemed to drain something from me. Maybe that was it?”
“That sounds reasonable,” Design said, then clapped once, loudly. “All right, done. No more data here. I could stare all day and get nowhere. Like trying to understand one of Hoid’s more obtuse jokes.”
（Completely uncalled-for.）
“You,” Design said, gesturing at Painter as she shoved Yumi’s hand off the machine. “Your turn.”
“Me?” Painter said, feeling threatened. “I’m not real! I mean, I don’t have a body.”