Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5) by D.W. Moneypenny

cloud.
    “That’s our sample?” she asked.
    He shook his head. “That’s our steam, our undifferentiated matter—our canvas, if you will.” He dropped the sample into the turntable and rotated it with a finger until the globe aligned with the bottom lens of the eyepiece. “Now, look through the upper lens without touching the Chronicle, not with your hand and not with your cheek. Look. Don’t touch. Understand?”
    Mara’s brows knit into a frown. “Whatever.”
    She bent forward and lined up her right eye with the top of the Chronicle. Clouds roiled inside a masked circle—like any microscope. After an instant, the image swallowed her. Vapor filled her field of vision. It rolled in from as far as she could see, as if to a horizon out there in the steamy distance.
    After she gasped, she heard Ping’s voice. “Be careful not to bump into the eyepiece. Tell me what you see.”
    “It’s like I’m floating in clouds. No, wait. They’re not that thick. It’s like a thick fog, but it keeps rolling and rolling, swirling from every direction. It even seems like it’s coming from behind me. Weird.”
    She turned around, and the image melted away. After shaking her head, she stared down at the hand she’d used to steady herself, grasping the edge of the counter. She looked up at Ping and said, “That seemed so real, like one of those virtual-reality headsets. Amazing.”
    “That’s not even the impressive part.” He looked around the room and stopped at the beaker Mara had shattered earlier. Picking it up and handing it to her, he said, “You like breaking glass, so why don’t we give this a try?”
    “What do you want me to do with this?”
    “Just hold it for a moment.” He walked along the counter and stopped when he spotted a metal bucket. Grabbing it by its wire handle, he returned to Mara and set it on the ground before her. “Now, shatter the beaker in the bucket.”
    “Just throw it in there?”
    Ping nodded.
    She shrugged and threw the beaker as hard as she could into the bottom of the bucket.
    He cringed at the loud clatter but smiled as he lifted it, shaking it, making clink ing noises as he walked to the counter. Once there, he plucked a sample globe from the carton and gave it to Mara. “Please open this and hand me half.”
    She twisted the clear ball into two pieces and handed one back to him. He used it to scoop broken glass from the bucket. Handing it back to her, he said, “Okay, put the top on and place the sample on the turntable.”
    She did so and stepped back. “Now what?”
    Ping pointed and said, “Rotate the turntable. How can you look at the glass sample if it’s not aligned with the eyepiece?”
    “Oh. We’re going to look at the broken glass through the Chronicle? Is that what we’re doing?”
    “What did you think?” he asked.
    “Look, I’m new here. Don’t assume any of this makes sense to me.”
    He nodded. “You look so much alike, it’s easy to assume basic things. You know what I mean?”
    “Yes. Now, what’s the point of this?”
    “We will look at the glass through the Chronicle. While you examine it, I want you to think about the characteristics of the glass that might be useful in other contexts.”
    “You mean, like the fact that it is transparent?”
    “Yes, exactly. Imagine how useful it would be if you could take that quality of glass and apply it to other things in the world. Understand?”
    She looked confused. “You mean as a thought experiment. You know, like what Einstein used to do?”
    “Who’s Einstein?”
    “Never mind,” she said. “Think about the clearness of glass. Got it. Can I peek now?”
    “Go ahead, but remember to observe. Don’t touch the eyepiece at all.”
    “What’s your hang-up with touching it?”
    “We do it my way or not at all,” he said.
    “Okay. Okay.” She leaned over the eyepiece and looked into it. This time she felt it sweep her into a world of swirling steam, but it looked different, wispier