The spirits are rising... I hear their hollow bones clacking together like wooden wind chimes in the breeze... can you hear them? No? Oh, wait, that's just @Tine Svetomir going through my chopsticks. Because it's ramen time.

"Don't you have any that match?"

"Different tools for different jobs."

"This job is just putting food in my mouth."

"Choose wisely!"

I return to my meditation, but before long @Tine Svetomir needs my help.

"I need your help!"

It's those long furry tongues. They've pushed their way through the door and have cornered @Tine Svetomir on the couch.

I go for my chopsticks collection.

"Here! The Yellow Oblate!"

He catches it in mid-air and it lights up, surrounding him in its warm protective glow. The tongues back off.

I know my chopsticks well, and can distinguish them by feel alone. I fish around in the big ziplock bag till I find what I'm looking for then raise it over my head.

"The Vanquisher!"

A thunderclap fills the room, and when we open our eyes, the tongues are gone.

"Where do they keep coming from?" @Tine Svetomir asks.

"@Hana Song's secret vault, obviously."

I'm sensing a vibration... no, a pulse. A slow, throbbing pulse from the back of my brain up to my temples.

What a headache. I go through the medicine cabinet. No black cohosh, no white willow bark. Out of butterbur and feverfew too. Why won't the school just let us have Advil?

I head out of Wadjet Dorm and over the school grounds, through the gardens of lower campus and past the backstop at Subliminal Field. @Kurt Frankenstone says hi.

"Nice night! Sure must be nice to just walk around in it."

"It sure is, Kurt."

God my head hurts. I find the trail at the edge of the woods and start walking up it, through the dark. It doesn't take me long to get to Snake Mountain. I know the secret knock so they let me in.

"I'm here to see the doctor."

"The doctor will see you now."

The doctor has her own spread, a regular Cabinet of Curiosities. Squirming homunculi in bubbling show globes. Deathless butterflies pinned in velvet, slowly flapping their wings. Alembics, retorts, a Hessian crucible. And behind it all, the doctor in her turban, working at her desk.

"Doc, I've got a terrible headache."

"SHHH! Sit here."

The doctor's been shuffling something around in her hands. A stack of cards? No, coasters? They're heavy and rattle together.

"Open your mind..."

The doctor deals out the cards. But they're not cards, they're phones. All different kinds of phones.

"This represents you."

She lays the first phone on the table. It's got a gif of a dog taking off a mask.

"This represents your journey."

It was the Map from Dora the Explorer. Duh. The doctor was obviously doing a 5 card flower spread, but with phones as cards. Pretty heavy techno divination, if you consider she's working with live memes.

And there it was. Steve Harvey.

"That represents the obstacle."

"I actually like Steve Harvey."

"Well maybe that's your obstacle."

"Right now it's this headache. Do you have any ibuprofen?"

"SHHHH. This represents the outcome."

Road work ahead.

"Ah yeah I sure hope it does!"

"What? Be quiet. And this represents the outcome of the outcome."

"What does that even mean? Why have an outcome and then an outcome-outcome?"

"Just read it."

It was a selfie of @Francesca Lemon. From the photos on the phone. Because it was her phone!

"Yeah but my head still hurts."

I'm getting a name... yes, it is coming... appearing out of the mists from the world beyond... Rooo... Tootie? No, Rudy! Yes, it's definitely Rudy, @Eva Unbeknownst.

Oh, wait, no, that's the girl in the next room, yelling at her phone. Again.

I tried banging on the wall, and when that stopped working then I banged on the door. I put in a psychic voice mail to the RA but their memory was full. It's pretty cool having my own single room (because I'm in the clairvoyant startup accelerator program), but that doesn't mean I have to give up my right to peace.

So I took to the access tunnels. You know--the passages between the walls, the old servant paths and dumbwaiters, the psychic Jefferies tubes that underlie everything. Maurice, or whatever that kid's name is across the hall, was totally freaked about me going in there, but they're an arachnophobe. I get along with the spiders just fine.

Then I'm on my hands and knees in the dust and cobwebs and get to a crossroads and run into a gatekeeper--the one who looks like a cartoon moose-man with a sheet over it.

"WHICH WAY WHICH WAY"

"Room 113b"

"THIS WAY THIS WAY"

I kick out the crawlspace door and there's my neighbor. It's not a pretty sight. She's got herself tied up in a web of nasty ego-projected self-flagellation constraints, with some kind of shadowy subconscious audience hiding behind her.

"Ugh. Really. You could have knocked, you know?"

The twisted equipment from her self-punishment gym fades away, and she stands looking at me.

"Uh... you don't have a date for the Valentine's Dance, by chance, do you? I mean, I'm not asking for me, but for a friend..."

You are also welcome to make an appointment to drop by my room for an in person consultation. Wadjet Dorm 113a. It’s got beads in the door and tapestries and incense and a crystal ball and everything.

Send me a letter and I will provide advice, offer solutions, and in some cases solve problems and mysteries.

I am Teosinte.