I spent the rest of the night packing up all my crap. All my unsold wares, all of my clothes, all of my food, all of my games and music, my console, my computer, my crappy low-resolution holographic projector screen. I took it all. I even took my bed and dresser stand Everything I owned in the world was packed up and stored away.

Thankfully, my [Ideation] basically made me into a turtle or snail. Allowing me to carry my home on my back. I was able to create subspaces that were linked to my being, which allowed me to pack up my crap and run without having any regrets about things I left behind, or worrying about the burden created by the things I was taking with me. Add that to the bug-out bag that I’d prepared, like any sane resident of the Nebula would, and should, and I was feeling pretty set by the time I turned off the lights in my little apartment for the last time and headed for the elevator. 

As to why I was running in the first place, after a mere bad dream, that answer was simple. My Perception, Will, and Luck stats were all fairly high. That and the passive data-sampling of my [Ideation] meant that while I wasn’t a full-on precognitive, and certainly wasn’t any kind of omniscient-being, my intuition generally tended to be on point. I’d never once regretted going the other way whenever I had a bad vibe about a particular gathering spot, shop, person, or stretch of road. 

In other words, waking up in the middle of the night after some seriously apocalyptic dreams wasn’t something I could just laugh off and go back to sleep on. As things stood, my senses were screaming at me to run, not walk, as I was making my way out of Goldfish City. I had no clue what was going to happen to this city but I knew it would be bad. Bad enough for my, technically immortal, ass to need to get the hell out of dodge. 

************************************************************************************************************

Thankfully, Goldfish City wasn’t super big as far as Live-Sites went. It only took me thirty minutes by self-driving taxi, to reach the City’s northern gate. I was almost out, scot-free, then a certain two faces started popping up my head.

“They’ll be fine…” I told myself. 

The faces remained and suddenly I could remember an old woman giving me a glass lemon-tea and hot days. I remembered a wrinkly old face that was impassive on some days, sardonic others, but would always favor me with at least one grandmotherly smile before I headed off on my way. I could remember a young girl asking for me to be allowed to sleep in a guest room while I was going through one of my growth-phases, and suffering from a fever hot enough to cook eggs with. I could remember the two friendly faces that probably were the sole reason I hadn’t become as big of a cynical, misanthropic, jerk as others with my background ended up being. 

“Ah...fuck it! Fine!... I hope you know this makes us even you, old bat!” I swore, pointing up at the sky toward higher-channels, and the realm where I assumed the soul of late, great, Miranda Decker now resided.  Then with great reluctance, I pulled out my smartphone to pay for a ride that would take me in the opposite direction of where I’d wanted to go. 

Here’s a not so fun fact, the artful dodger is a myth. Most children wandering the streets without parents or family, or any benevolent adults looking after their well-being, generally aren’t able to do “just fine”. This was especially true in universes where actual monsters were real, and the monstrous grown-ups tend to have magical powers to kick their awfulness up a notch. 

Even the more resilient children like myself, who got powers from non-mortal parents, weren’t immune to the dangers of life on the streets. If you had nothing, then most people would just treat you like air or a pest, because your presence made them uncomfortable, and they felt helpless to help you. 

If you had something, in a lot of ways you were even worse off. You’d probably be able to get some service and supplies from the less discriminating establishments. However, then you’d have to watch your back for those who were just as desperate as you were, but were also bigger, older, and more cunning. Being young and small, with resources and supplies that you normally wouldn’t have, and weren’t strong enough to fight to keep, was a great way to get extorted, exploited, and maybe end up dead in a ditch. 

I can basically say that its almost entirely thanks to old Granny Decker that I was able to make it to today in one-pieces. She didn’t adopt me or anything, she just happened to be a nice old lady who’d buy the basically worthless crap from my road-stand, and eventually started letting me sleep in a storage shed within the walls of the Decker Estate. 

I usually wasn’t allowed in the actual house, because the rest of the family still just saw me as an urchin, and even for old Miranda Decker, I was probably just someone she took pity on as a whim. However, having somewhere safe to put my head down, was basically the biggest boon anyone could give me back then. Having a home base, with enough backbone to it that the local street toughs didn’t dare even think of approaching the gates, allowed me to get my legs under me. It gave me a safe place to get stronger, get bigger, and just influential enough to no longer be treated as a total nobody. 

When I was little I’d try to do my part by helping with the yard work with the Decker’s other servants, and fixing broken things around the estate, but I’d always remembered the boon of that storage shed. It was a big enough of a deal, that my sense of obligation drowned out the panicking voice in my head that said that I need to get the hell away from this damned city. 

“This is a really, really, bad idea…” I grumbled to myself.

These words must have echoed in my head, dozens of times, during the trip to the Decker estate, but my memories of Granny Decker’s kindness were like stones, crushing me into my seat. Keeping me from having the taxi take me back to the city-gate. 

The Decker Estate was in the upper-class districts of the city. It wasn’t quite in the noble districts. Of course, it wasn’t. If it had been then a punk like me would have immediately been booted out of the neighborhood the first day I started selling trinkets there. The Deck-Estate was in the area where the city’s Business District started turning residential and suburban. High end enough that wealthy clans were willing to live there, but not so high end that the rest of the world was barred entry. 

The taxi dropped me off and I found myself standing in front of a gate that I hadn’t stood in front of in roughly five. I had no clue what I intended to do now. My mind had refused to let me leave without coming here first, but it had neglected to think up a go-plan for when I arrived here. Just as an extra bit of, fuck-you, from the universe, it started raining. A paranoid part of me suspected that this was part of whatever terrible thing was making its way to Goldfish City, but the rest of me was just annoyed that I’d neglected to wear a coat and my clothes were quickly becoming soaked. 

Thankfully, my [Ideation] could fix that. My clothes were instantly dried, and a bubble of altered-space appeared around my person keeping the rain from continuing to drench me.

“Er...Okay, I know what to do,” I said. Quickly coming up with a plan and making use of my [Ideation]’s data sampling sub-ability. 

Data sampling allowed me to tap in two great wells of knowledge in existence. The first well was the akashic plane which recorded all objective-data in existence, or rather the cosmic meta-data created by all objective data. The second well was the collective unconscious which was a polling of all subjective data in existence, a collection of everything that people in a given universe knew, or believed, or believed they knew. 

My passive data-sampling allowed me to kind of, sort of, know things before I actively knew them. It also made it easy for me to learn new things because I’d already have built up a background understanding of those things. Active data-sampling was a little more intense and was basically like an ascended version of the Appraisal ability because it essentially allowed me to stare at reality so hard that it flinched and gave up all its secrets. 

Using my active data-sampling in front of the Decker Family’s gate, created a sort of mental sketch of everything taking place in the estate. From the condition of the house, the growth rate of the grass, flower, and moss in the yards, the location of all the skeletons in their closets, and most importantly, the position of all the people within the estate. Sometimes life throws you a bone, because I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the person I needed to find was exactly where I would have hoped to find them. 

I teleported by bending space and time through the use of my [Ideation]. For my purposes, time was just a phenomenon, and space was just math, both of these could be played with through the use of my [Ideations] modification and manipulation abilities. The only reason I didn’t use it to travel was because the energy cost was quite extreme. Teleporting more than a few dozen meters at a time, and teleporting in fast succession were a no go for me. Apologies, I might be over twenty in human years, but as far as eidola went, I was just a baby. My larval title wasn’t just a metaphor. 

The Decker Estate was dominated by mostly open fields. There were two buildings that took up most of the property. One was the building that the Decker family used for training, storing their weapons and vehicles. The other was the actual Decker Family mansion. I teleported to the rear of the Decker family mansion. Right over by the eastern-most, outermost, angle. I picked up a pebble and tossed it out the window. I picked up another pebble and tossed it out the window. I picked up a third pebble, but by that point, the window opened. 

“Hey! Who’s out there?! It better not be you, kids, again! If it is, I'm so gonna tell Mom that you’re messing around late at....” 

The speaker halted as she saw me. Her annoyed expression froze and then quickly changed to one of apprehension. My own expression turned tense, and since I’ve been told that I’ve got the face of a mob boss, that probably wasn’t helping things. The woman who peered down her window at me, had honey-colored skin. Her face was diamond-shaped, her nose was small and slightly upturned. Her eyebrows were middling, but slightly on the fuzzy side. Her hair was a frizzy, fluffy, brownish-black. Her eyes were greenish-yellow, large, downturned, and slightly droopy, making her look perpetually as if she just woke up. 

“M-, Mister...You need to go before I call the guards on you…” said the woman. 

“Please, don’t do that. Don’t you remember me?” said I. 

This woman was one of my handful of childhood friends, and was the sole Non-Granny Decker exception, to the Decker’s clan policy of ignoring me or treating me like the urchin they saw me as. Her name was Mikaela, “Mickey” Decker. Back when we were younger she was a sort of, “disfavored” child due to her apparently low talent in both the martial and magical fields. Also, mom ran off with her bodyguard, and she ended up catching some of that flack. 

In any case, I played with her because I felt bad that no one else wanted to play with her. Also, I also got the sense that she might be a bit off in the hand, so I was trying to be nice. She played with me because I was poor and had no parents and she felt bad and “she” was trying to be nice. It was a friendship built on mutual pity and it worked surprisingly well. 

Which was why she was the one person I could reach out to who in the Decker family, who I figured would A) recognize me, B) Not immediately call for security, and C) hear me out.

I stood under the rain, watching water droplets stream down over the dome of protective magical energy, and data, that my [Ideation] had made. I waved lamely with both hands to show that I was harmless then I waited for her to recognize me. Holding my breath until she finally said, 

“Oh...So it’s you Jay-Jay! How’ve you been?” said Mickey. Her expression immediately brightened up again. Jay-Jay was my childhood nickname, I don’t know why that is, since I don’t have a middle name,  and my last name starts with E, but she started calling me that, and it kind of stuck. I tuck her use of the name as a good sign. 

“Er...Fine. Hi….Uh, sorry to bother you but I-, I can’t really explain what’s about to happen, or how I know it’s about to happen, but you and your Grandmother were super nice to me, and I thought I should give you a heads up that this city probably isn’t going to be around by this time tomorrow…” I said. Spitting everything out at once, because I knew trying to explain the matter bit by bit wasn’t going to make it any less crazy.

I expected her to ask what kind of drugs I was on. I expected her to ask for some kind of better explanation. I expected her to laugh at me, or switch back to threatening to call for the Decker family’s security team. I didn’t expect her to say, 

“Oh, uh...Okay. Thanks for the heads up...You should really come around again sometime. I’ve missed you…” 

Not knowing what to say to that I ended up being unintentionally honest. 

“Er...I-, I’m not sure that would be a very good idea but...I’ve missed you too?” I said. 

As soon as Granny Decker started getting sick, the family’s tolerance of my presence reached an all-time low. Once she was gone, my place at the Decker Estate was gone as well. I’d wanted to say goodbye to Mickey but that was the point where she started to discover her own unique talents and got sent off to that one military academy to train those talents. So, I ended up never coming back here. 

“Um...I’m gonna...I’m gonna go now,” I said. Hooking a thumb towards some random direction. 

“Already? Well, that sucks...See you later, I guess,” said Mickey. 

“Uh...Right,” I said. Pretty sure we’d probably never see each other again considering how hectic and chaotic things were liable to get. 

Then I teleported back out of the Decker Estate and got into the self-driving taxi because, of course, I left the meter running. Did you think I was going to call another one and risk having to hoof it?