The mechanical pen moved in leaps guided by the precision of the remotely mechanical hand. Leap after leap, and even more heaps of them. To anyone else, the way the pen danced across the paper looked cinematic. Ridge, however, thought of it a boring ritual through and through.

   Saccharine music played from his personalized jukebox. The more he inked, the more numbers and mathematical symbols sprawled over the paper, which was becoming blackening to dark. Ridge's pupils followed every movement of the pen, never failing to miss a single one.

   Ridge solved the math-based questions as if his future depended on them, though without the passion of an aspiring student. The brownness of his eyes stood out against the dimness of the room. Apparatuses and other tools were scattered everywhere, mirroring the state of the paper he was working on. With a sigh, Ridge rolled his shoulders and propped his cheek on his free palm. He had not bargained for this, but at least the contract was about to end. This would be the last time he ever laid eyes on a topology worksheet.

   Ridge's room and mind were full of clutter. While his eyes and hands were occupied with the paper, and his mouth with cashews, his head was filled with thoughts about the Sensing Snowglobe. He hummed in tune with the relaxing music and turned his swivel chair so that he was facing the brown pocket watch hanging from the sideboard of his L-shaped desk. The pocket watch's hand was just inches away from the top center, where a falcon symbol replaced the numeral twelve. The sublime pocket watch looked back at Ridge, whose lips upturned. It looked like it had been crafted by a talented kid; the tessellation was a combination of basic and intricate shapes and the falcon was carved inside with a playful, naïve touch. It was a small watch, but Ridge had always believed the micro world was superior to the macro world.

   Ridge's humming grew more wistful, drifting away from the background music. Maybe even excited—scratch that; it was laced with excitement. Internally, he was a miner, excavating a gateway out of the tedious math filling his brain. He kept digging until he found the gold—his unfiltered curiosity about awaited him in Nevah. The Outdoors, the opposite of his home Haven. The Outdoors that made up the other half of Thear. The Outdoors, neither advanced like Haven nor nascent like Havenians. Oh, the things he wondered.

  "Was Thear always a divided world? And if not, what was there before Haven and Nevah?" Ridge thought as he eyed the pocket watch. He wagged his finger and smiled at it, "Once you touch the falcon, I will get the Sensing Snowglobe and make history as the new Havenian hero and risk ridder."

   Yes, Ridge timed the arrival of the grand day that is known as the Snowglobe Decree Day—and the only one who did that for that matter. There were two clever reasons why Ridge chose the falcon symbol; one is that he'd be free like a falcon. Once the Sensing Snowglobe sensed his ideal career and created a landscape to match, he would finally become the hero he had always yearned to be as a child. Even Thear yearned for someone with that ambition. That someone had to be Ridge; it was inevitable for a man of such high devotion and inventiveness.

  Protruding his lower lip, Ridge blew his curtain bangs away his temples before deftly flicking another crescent nut into his mouth. He continued his math worksheet while puffing his cheeks. He paused chewing the cashew and stopped drawing.

   "Ah..." Ridge swallowed the cud and continued drawing. Ah, oval and crescent—shapes he was drawing on the paper, alongside other complex forms that only a genius could comprehend. Yet, that wasn't why he made the sound. He realized that finding gold wasn't enough; he had to pan it to create something marvelous. He had to transform his desire to step out of Haven and visit Nevah into something tangible. Luckily, his pan was already prepared. He knew exactly what to do once he got his Sensing Snowglobe.

  Ridge continued writing in desultory fashion until the pen stopped pelting on the book. The only sound in the room was the soft music from the jukebox. He leaned back, gripping the paper tightly between his slender fingers. Having completed the last math exercise he would ever work on, he let out a victorious huff and retrieved a piece of blotting paper from his drawer. With a cashew sticking out of his mouth, Ridge pressed the blotting paper onto the math worksheet. Once the ink was absorbed, he removed the blotting paper. Gripping the tape handle at the back, he positioned the paper before the scanner mounted on his deskboard. His swivel chair creaked as he leaned forward, letting out a matching sound of his own as the paper was scanned.

   "Last lot for the résumé and I'm good to go."

  The scanner signaled completion, accompanied by the sound of chimes blending with the background music. Ridge scanned his own eye while smiling from ear to ear. It almost seemed like the smile will stay there forever. Afterward, Ridge leaned back in the swivel chair and spun around gently—careful not to choke on the cashew—while running his fingers through his chestnut hair, eyes closed. His hand found the tilt adjuster, and he began pumping it. With a whoop, an incinerator tool shot out of the chair's cylinder as it extended. Ridge abruptly stopped and snatched it mid-air. He spun it in his palm and pointed it at the math worksheet. Flames crackled to life as he activated it. Ridge cackled triumphantly and declared with finality, "Good riddance to you, topology!"

   In a heartbeat, the fire whipped and reduced the worksheet to ashes. Ridge wiped away a sheen of sweat with delight and slid the tool back into the cylinder. With vein-bulged hands, he gathered the ashes, relishing the acrid smell of burnt paper. Ridge turned to his typewriter, twisting the falcon decal until the key top popped out, transforming into a bubble cap tray. He swept the ashes onto the tray and carefully aligned them. Rising from his swivel chair, he sashayed to the microwave.

   Ridge stood there ogling at ashes on the tray, his brown eyes glistening. Wagging his finger at the tray as if disciplining a child, he said, "You may outsmart others, but not me. You'll regret making me work for you since I was a prodigy."

  Ridge opened the microwave with the lever, slid the tray inside, and shut it firmly. His fingers curled around the lever as he hummed along with the background music, watching the ashes transform into cashews like popping corn. He closed his eyes and threw his head back. To Ridge, nothing could beat the soothing music and the sound of cashews sizzling in his microwave. The thought made his mouth water, but not as much as the dream of getting his Sensing Snowglobe and becoming the "Innovative Havenian Hero."

   As the ashes transformed into whole cashews, the intercom in Ridge's room crackled to life. The music from his jukebox came to a halt, and the sound from the intercom was accompanied by what sounded like an anthem. Ridge opened his eyes as though seeing would help him hear better. After the national anthem waned, a clear feminine voice was heard through the communal intercoms:

   "Happy and heartfelt living, Havenians. To all graduates from the Scapulars Wing, please go to Falcon Plaza as per the promise at seven sharp. The promise we made to announce the results for mathletes and the ceremonial post graduation. Congratulations again, graduates of the Scapulars Wing, and we hope to see you on the six times ten to the power of thirteenth Snowglobe Decree Day."

   Ridge couldn't help but laugh. The use of scientific notation in this context struck him as amusingly overblown. Sometimes, he'd catch himself mulling over the day when Sensing Snowglobes were first discovered. He never bought into the idea that they had always existed, like Thear and its two divided parts—Haven and Nevah. With an internal shrug, Ridge shifted his focus back to the cashews. He opened the microwave, carefully retrieving the tray by its insulated handle.

   As he headed to the door, he balanced the tray while munching on the cashews, unbothered by the heat, and poured them into a simple plastic bag. His eyes flicked to his red field jacket hanging on a rotating hook.

  "I won't need you now," he said, wagging a finger at it. "Not like I'd bring my pocket watch anyway. I will stick to this shirt—or rather, it'll stick to me."

   With that, Ridge elbowed the door open, stepped into the hallway, and bolted the door behind him with a swift kick to the base

   Ridge's eyes were sharp, though his movements were fluid, his smile fixed on his face as if glued there. He strode down the corridor, his gaze bypassing the stained-glass windows, locked on the path ahead.

   The windows, adorned with brown paisley mosaics and purple frames—some matte, others gleaming—cast intricate patterns onto the walls. The corridor was bathed in the soft, golden light of a spring evening spilling through the glass. Spring evenings, he mused—the kind of weather the Nevanese must long for after their punishing winters. Haven, however, knew no seasons. It had no need for them; its indoor climate was meticulously crafted to suit all living beings, inside and out.

   Ridge glanced up at the falcon-wing-themed fans circling the chandeliers above. With a playful gesture, he pointed a finger at them while chewing a cashew. "You're making people work for you so you can work yourself, huh? That will change as soon as I emerge."

   His hands clung to the tray as he plucked another cashew and flicked it into his mouth. The clocks on the pillars struck seven, and the chandeliers above flared to life. Graduates and parents from the Scapulars Wing surged toward Haven's center. Ridge, however, maintained his leisurely pace, humming contentedly as he popped another cashew into his mouth.

   People bustled past him, the rush of air sending his hair forward. Smoothing it back into place, Ridge smirked.

   "The first-place announcement will be last," he muttered. "And anyway, I won't need to worry about running into anyone."

   A tramcar rolled in, its approach marked only by the chatter of passengers, and came to a halt before the track-side sign. Ridge stepped aboard, gripping a metal bar as he positioned himself near the edge, keeping his distance from the crowd of diversely uniformed passengers, ranging from cassocks to antiquated suits. The tramcar whirred to life and glided forward.

   Ridge relished the sight of the concrete reliefs, a cashew paused midair near his lips. To think that ancient Havenians carved all these for future generations. It was all so stupendous; two dimensional figures in balaclavas and wings hanging from their biceps, depicted bearing fruit as fruits levitated above them. The figures were framed by undulating waves, interspersed with geometric patterns that symbolized the Havenian sky and ground. The ground was said to mirror the sky—or the ceiling—that enclosed all Havenians, sealing them off from the Outdoors. Havenians believed the flat ground and spherical sky were bound together in perfect harmony. But if the ground and sky were one, what did that make the walls?

The art reliefs also depicted a collection of brains, the letter 'H', and graduation caps carried by talons. They were meticulously organized and pristine. Ridge would be shocked if he ever saw a speck of graffiti.

   On the tramcar ride to the plaza, Ridge overheard every tale told through microphones and television screens for the children: "Naya the adventurer climbed the monkey bars until her hands blotted red. Oh no! She could climb no more." "The rocketship went kaput. Suddenly, a thick veil of smoke formed around the astronaut and gave him fatigue!" Gasps. "Slowly, slowly, the squirrel nibbled the pinecone. He stopped and suddenly spewed bits out. The pinecone was fake!" More gasps.

   Ridge scoffed, shaking the tray of cashews, listening to the hollow echo of a lone nut bouncing inside. He wasn't an author, but he found the overuse of the term "suddenly" cliche and unwarranted. As Ridge reached for the last cashew, someone snatched it and popped it into their mouth. Ridge frowned and snapped his head toward the intruder. Shaima, the apple-cheeked mathlete with an open notebook perched atop her head, grinned around the cashew in her mouth. 'Sup, Ribeye?' she said with a nasally drawl.

Ridge groaned. "Not this juvenile gourd head." "What do you want, Shaima?"

Shaima held up her hands in a flurry of animated gestures. "Okay, okay. Hear me out, just this once, okay?" Ridge gave a reluctant nod, prompting Shaima to pull the notebook from her messy blonde hair, pointing at it with green, expectant eyes fixed on Ridge.

   "Did you get this for the question with the sin and its co-worker?"

   "It's sine and cosine, for crying out loud! And no, the answer was 76, rounded."

Shaima repeated, fiddling with her sports whistle necklace, looking stunned. "76? But I got the square root of 1567. And what about the question where the interval from 0 to 1 made a pact—"

   "Compact. How they are compact subsets of R."

   Shaima nodded vehemently, "Yeah, that. You got-"

   Ridge interrupted, his voice tight with frustration. 'You don't just get an answer. You prove it through the Heine-Boren theorem.'

   Shaima dipped her head, a sheepish "Ohhh..." escaping her lips.

   Ridge crossed his arms and scowled, "And don't tell me you forgot the fundamental units for the "And don't tell me you forgot the fundamental units for the question on why they, though unrelated, connect through constants like the speed of light. You had to know the fundamental units first. You had to remember the guiding sentence I gave you—that they serve as bridges between mysterious phenomena."

   Shaima snapped her fingers and intoned in sing-song, "Yeah, "a mole caged my sick cd." I did, but..." She shrugged sheepishly. "You know."

   'How—just let someone tutor you,' Ridge said, pinching the bridge of his nose and wagging his finger at her. "Just leave."

   "No, but what about the tramcar, didn't it—"

   "Just leave and cross your fingers that you make it to the top twenty."

   "No fingers crossed, and no legs broken," Shaima sighed heavily, waving as she squeezed into the tramcar. "Later, Ribeye."

   Ridge clicked his tongue repeatedly, folding the bubble cap tray with practiced ease. "Shaima? More like Shame-a," he muttered, snapping the tray into two. With a quick flick, he spun both halves between his fingers before fastening them to the soles of his boots. Just as Ridge had predicted, the tramcar glided to a stop beside a beak-shaped lake, its waterfall cascading in neon hues. He skated out of the tramcar, the oil and bubbles from the makeshift wheelies creating just the right mix of glide and friction for smooth movement.

   Above him, a billboard tilted downward bore the slogan: Never visit Nevah. Ridge barely spared it a glance. His attention was drawn instead to the growing hum of activity ahead, where Falcon Plaza bustled with life.

   The heart of the plaza was a hive of orderly chaos, each person or group occupying their own two-meter bubble of space. The atmosphere was paradoxically busy yet serene, awash in muted shades of brown, maroon, and yellow that adorned the buildings and clock towers. Overhead, wires draped in neat U-shaped arcs between structures—parabolas, Ridge thought with a smirk. Looming over it all was the wing-shaped monument, a towering structure stretching 50 meters into the air. Its wingtips aligned perfectly with the ends of the elliptical Diurnal Bridge, which curved upside down into the clouds.

   As Ridge watched, the glowing orb of Haven's artificial sun dipped into the clouds like quicksand, sinking out of sight. In its place, the moon's beams began to emerge, radiating from the opposite horizon. The transition marked the start of Haven's choreographed nighttime—a detail Ridge appreciated for its technical brilliance, though it failed to spark any real emotion. Indoors always felt artificial.

   Ridge slid to a stop near a brick U-shaped wall, leaning against it as he peeled the trays from his boots. A passing basket on the waterwheel collected them without pause. He cracked his knuckles absentmindedly, his half-lidded eyes fixed on the rotating wheel. Water was scooped up, hurled down, and scooped up again in an endless cycle.

   He hated cycles. Everything Indoors seemed to repeat itself—orderly, predictable, and devoid of the chaos that gave life its spark. Ridge's lip curled slightly as his gaze lingered on the waterwheel, its unchanging rhythm taunting him. He imagined stopping it with his bare hands, forcing it out of its mechanical monotony.

   But Ridge didn't have the brute strength for such things. That was the domain of the Nevanese—people who lived Outdoors, unbound by Haven's carefully engineered perfection. Ridge sighed, his shoulders sagging slightly. Maybe it was jealousy, he thought. Yes, jealousy. He envied the Nevanese for their wild, unpredictable lives.

   Even if they didn't have what Haven offered, at least they weren't stuck watching waterwheels spin endlessly.

   From the still blue waters, two enormous bubbles swelled grotesquely before bursting with a sharp, visceral pop. Ridge's eyes widened for a fleeting moment before he exhaled sharply, closing them as he braced himself for what lay ahead. The moon crept fully into view, its pale light darkening the atmosphere and pulling his focus back to the ominous shapes in the lake. A low, eerie gurgle rippled through the air, clawing at Ridge's ears. The oppressive aura pressed against him like an unshakable weight, while muffled blobs and glogs punctuated the silence.

  Two translucent-skinned figures with pointed ears, fish net gloves, and grotesque Glasgow smiles emerged slowly, water dripping from the hollow contours of their faces. Their bristled platinum hair, streaked with black roots, bristled in a way that could send chills down anyone's spine. Their wide cat eyes were devoid of pupils. They wore tattered, ghostly robes adorned with miniature dreamcatchers dangling from their sleeves, swaying with every movement. The Lema twins crouched low, setting down the very trays Ridge had deliberately left in the waterwheel basket along the riverbank. They settled into frog-like crouches, knees jutting outward as their long fingers rested between their bare feet. The sight was especially unsettling. 

   Ridge turned around and bent down while resting his elbows on his own knees. He stared into Und's eyes, the one with frowning brows and a translucent green shawl with a frowning drama mask on his head, then into Ab's, the one with sharp brows and the smiling drama mask. No one spoke, just stared. That was until Ridge picked up the trays while deliberately scraping them against the ground and asked carefully, "Was it a mockingjay this time?"

   It was odd. Ab and Und, the Lema twins who always lurked by the waterwheel and helped Ridge, were not in their usual entertained spirits. They looked like yaks in heat. Their faces blank, making them look even creepier. Though they were the ones who petrified people for fun, they were the ones who looked petrified.

  Ab broke the silence by laughing maniacally. Und followed suit but by crying. The unnerving sounds of laughter and wailing filled the space between them. Ridge backed away a bit and stood up; for the first time, he felt unnerved by the scary Lema twins.

   AB's voice came out in asqueal, "It was just like in our dreams, but even worse!'

   Und was still in tears as he said, "Not only did our Sensing Snowglobes expose our love for disturbing movies, but one of ours envisioned a whole different career!"

   Ridge's face immediately dropped. He felt his heart sink. "What do you mean?"

   "I mean that, this traitor-" Und pointed at Ab, his arm trembling as he continued to frown, "- had a pet clinic as the Sensing Snowglobe landscape!"

   Ab slumped his shoulders down and hid half of his face under his shawl. He glared at Und smilingly and said, "I told you, I don't know how that happened!"

   Ridge wagged his pointer fingers at them and said, "Woah, woah. Let me get this straight; Ab chose to be a veterinarian?"

   "No, you're supposed to be a genius or something, Ridge!" Und leaned back and clutched his forehead. He whined, "The Sensing Snowglobe sensed that Ab's perfect job is to be in the pet clinic!"

   Ab growled and whipped his fist on his open palm while grumbling, speaking through his toothy grin, "I told you, it's not my fault."

   "Yes it is! Now how will we both be horror movie directors?"

   Und grabbed Ab by the shawl and sucker punched him, sending him flying to the lake. He got up with a livid expression and hurtled at his brother. Und screeched and fell on his neck, causing him to use his feet to sweep Ab off his. Ab toppled over and retaliated with a lethal blow on Und's stomach. They started pulling each others' hair and pummeling each others noses. They then pulled each others' masks and snatched them onto each others' faces with huge thwaps and thwaps. Thwap, thwap...it was like a matador versus ox scene, except there was no audience. What about Ridge, then?

   Ridge was completely in his own world. The sounds of the freakish fight in front of him were on mute. He was staring past the crazy twins with wide eyes, his lens vibrating and his mouth agape. His heart sank. This time, he could feel the ominousness of the night. The thoughts buzzing in his head drowned out everything around him and far away from him. He felt the world blur and tighten in size. But there were no actual thoughts. For the first time, Ridge had no thoughts.

   Then, it hit him. The Sensing Snowglobe...it was called that because it sensed your faculty. It sensed your faculty and envisioned the ideal career for you. It was probably also the object that determined whether a family must reside in Haven or Nevah forevermore based on the dominant hereditary faculty, if they have the brains or brawn. Then that would mean...no. Ridge did not want to believe it. It shook his core; Ridge could not choose to be an "Innovative Havenian Hero". Chances were that it would envision his career to be a computer scientist. No, not computer science...

   Ridge looked up at the billboard. It was laughing at him in a "I told you so" way.

   "Never visit Nevah." Now he cared.