It wasn’t just me who was able to sleepover at Marco’s place the night before his party. D?nh and Mishil are here too!
It’s been so much fun already and the party hasn’t even started.
We’re still buzzing with energy, laughing about the craziness from last night, riding the high of everything we accomplished. My mind keeps going back to dinner. The smell of smoky fire and melted cheese are lodged firmly in my memory.
I can’t help but wonder what delicious food might be waiting for me this morning!
Mrs Monti mixed and rolled some homemade dough into pizza bases during the afternoon. Mr Monti arranged a huge range of deli foods for us, and we made our own pizzas! It was a fun process of sampling a little taste of all of the ingredients before deciding what to put on our own creations. They all tasted so good that I decided not to leave any out and built a mountain of everything, covering it with cheese to seal it all together. D?nh and Mishil’s pizzas were a lot more conservative than mine.
D?nh Quang is always so focused and particular in the way he does things. His pizza looked like it was planned with precision, a spicy alternative that started with just a drizzle of olive oil and a thin layer of cheese. Then he carefully added pre-cooked chicken strips, white onions, spring onions, bright capsicums in red, yellow and green, and finally a whole handful of chilli. he way he placed it down felt like the finishing touch of a master chef decorating a cake.
Mishil Yeon stays quiet around people she doesn’t know, but she carries herself with this calm, self-assured elegance. Her pizza looked like it belonged in a cookbook. She layered thin beef strips over a tomato and cheese base, then piled on plenty of garlic before arranging vegetables like white onion, shaved carrots, and zucchini. When she placed a fried egg right in the middle, not mixed in but sitting there proudly on top, I was sure it was for presentation. It looked amazing!
Marco’s pizza was a bit sad to look at, especially with all the ingredients he could have chosen. It was just a plain base of tomato and basil with three halved bocconcini balls arranged neatly in a triangle. When the cheese melted it looked so beautiful, almost too perfect to eat. But compared to my mountain of food, it was tiny. He really couldn’t have been very hungry!
Mrs Monti slid the pizzas into the stone woodfire oven, and sparks leapt up as flames worked their glowing magic at the back. The heat blasted out every time she opened the door, and in no time, they were cooked and ready. It was a good thing too. All that sampling had only made me hungrier!
Even though we each made our own pizzas, we ended up sharing them all so we could taste every single masterpiece. It was a good thing too, because I may… possibly… have created something a bit bigger than I was able to manage on my own. I kept eating long after everyone else had finished and wasted none of it. Good food is definitely one of the keys to happiness!
Actually, now would be a good time to write down my pizza recipe. I want to be able to make it again one day when I have tonnes of money!
Ernie’s Secret Pizza Recipe
Ingredients
- Pizza base
- Pizza base sauce
- Crushed garlic
- Basil
- Beef strips
- Chicken strips
- Ham
- Salami
- Pepperoni
- Chorizos
- Sausages
- Prosciutto
- Prawns
- Mushrooms
- Tomatoes
- White onions
- Spring onions
- Green capsicum
- Red capsicum
- Yellow capsicum
- Black olives
- Green olives
- Shredded carrots
- Shredded zucchini
- Sliced eggplant
- Spinach
- Cheddar cheese
- Mozzarella cheese
- Feta cheese
- Bocconcini cheese
- Parmesan cheese
- Salt
- Fried egg (optional)
Method
- Take the pizza base and cover it in the pizza base sauce after mixing it with crushed garlic.
- Spread cheddar and mozzarella cheese across the base.
- Spread a SMALL even layer of all ingredients, beginning with the flat ones before doing the chunky ones.
- Cover the top again with all of the cheeses to hold it together.
- Cook it in a woodfire oven.
- Eat the best meal of your life again!
Accompanying Beverages
- Excessive water (but only after the meal, so I don’t get full)
That will do. I don’t want to forget any of the ingredients. After dinner, we drifted from the dining table into the living room.
I can’t believe how huge Marco’s home is! There are so many rooms… and it’s an actual house. Just one of their bathrooms feels bigger than our whole studio apartment!
The building has two full stories just for Marco’s parents, older sister Perla and himself. Each of them has their own bedroom on the penthouse floor, and there are three bathrooms! His parents even have an ensuite I haven’t seen. The ground floor opens into a wide kitchen and dining space, and a lounge room stretches beside the entrance. Windows look out onto a patio where herbs grow thick and green against the neighbouring fence.
Needless to say, the living room gave us plenty of space and privacy to hang out. With the four of us together in person, we had the rare opportunity to talk about our pieces of Aetherforge.
Two years ago, Aetherforge was just our fun idea for a game, something we could all build together. It all began when I was telling Marco how sad I was to miss the end of a Sydney FC final on TV after the power cut out. Marco, feeling bad for me, playfully speculated that there was probably being a black market for power. After all, there’s a black market for nearly everything else that gets regulated.
Of course, I’d never actually steal power, but in a game? That could be really fun!
Imagine a strategy game where you get to choose to run United World, be a large corporation legally getting access to more power, be a black-market operator stealing it from the supply, or be an innovator creating your own power!
Personally, I’d pick to be the innovator!
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We asked around to see who might want to build the game with us, and D?nh and Mishil jumped in straight away. D?nh said he’d take on the backend development, while Mishil was excited to design the user interface and make the player experience feel amazing.
We spent months planning and brainstorming, but always became stuck on what to do for the innovator part. I mean, if we could come up with a great idea for generating more power, why wouldn’t we just build it ourselves instead!
We already know how to draw power from earth, wind, fire and water, but what about the elements we cannot see? In Ancient Greece, philosophers believed in a hidden fifth element beyond the physical world: aether. It would be amazing to forge this aether into electricity, leading us to our project’s name, Aetherforge.
Our other friends had lost interest in our game before it was named, so we decided to keep it a secret until we knew what we were doing with it. D?nh suggested the code AFR-4G, cleverly echoing Aetherforge without giving it away. It sounded cool, and we all loved it!
We continued our planning based on past scientific research. We realised there was no need to reinvent everything from scratch if parts of a similar device already existed, and it turned out that one had. We could just use the same concept as a battery!
All we needed was a way to collect the energy, a core to neutralise the positive and negative polarities, a stabiliser to smooth fluctuations when input frequencies shifted, and an output so we could use the power!
Marco scavenged parts from around his house and smuggled them into school piece by piece. In our spare time, we experimented and tested different ways we might incorporate them into our design. After many plan changes and small adjustments, we refined the device until, at last, we finished the prototype last night!
Well, almost.
The box we put together is no larger than one of my textbooks, a rectangular block with smooth dark sides and rounded edges. The casing is made from two shells that click together, and the collector plates are etched straight into the front and back of those shells. The spirals are so fine they look like silver filigree laid into the surface.
On the side, we fixed a small button that closes the circuit. When it clicks into place, the device transitions into resonance, the pitches rotating from one to the other as the plates vibrate at their tuned frequencies.
At a 2500 Hz sound frequency, which draws in negative energy from the invisible aether surrounding people and objects, the spirals twitch so fast they blur and the whole air feels tight and restless. At a 528 Hz sound frequency, which attracts positive energy from the aether, the vibration slows into long waves, the grooves stretching and bending so the light across them ripples like water.
Along one edge we left a narrow viewing strip that shows the core inside. The glow flickers like an ember, shifting between violet-blue when the pull is heavy and pale gold when it balances lighter flows. The pulsing comes from the stabiliser feeding energy back into the chamber, always keeping it even. The light is simply the charge becoming dense enough to spill out, the same way gases shine when electricity passes through them.
What matters most is not the glow but what comes from the base. The copper contacts and the port carry the balanced flow outward. By the time it leaves, the charge has already been purified, so the electricity that runs through a lamp or a tool is ordinary and steady. The light inside is only proof of the process. The real work is in the current that leaves the box, safe to use and strong enough to power whatever we connect to it.
Around the sides runs the stabiliser band, a ring of fine coils that click softly as they adjust, holding the flow steady even when the collectors pull in too much of one kind. At the base we fixed a pair of copper contacts and a small output port. Lamps light and machines run when it is connected, and the current that leaves is always clean and steady. Yet standing close, you can still feel what has passed through. The air can press close when the tension is drawn in, or it can ease when the peaceful flow is gathered.
But it is not complete. At the very centre of the stabiliser is a space that waits for clear quartz. The crystal is more than just another part. It is the converter and the balance. It would take all the gathered energy, amplify it, store what overflowed, focus it into a steady flow, and purify it before it left the box. Without it, the device shows what is possible but cannot yet hold it. With it, the stabiliser will become whole, and the machine would not only work but endure, strong and balanced no matter what energy passes through it.
It's so exciting. I really think it’s ready! The smallest flash of violet-blue light when the device starts on the 2500 Hz sound frequency leads me to believe that the right energy balancer would finish the device and we will have literally made electricity out of thin air.
We have heard all of the stories about stolen ideas and loved being able to get together in private to finish it off late last night. Sleeping in this morning was a great experience too! Although, I hope we didn’t miss our breakfast.
The hardest bit about Aetherforge has been keeping it from our families when it’s all we want to talk about. I haven’t even been able to tell Dad. As a former engineer, Marco’s dad has also been interested about what we have been building. But it’s nearly ready. Once we have that final piece and run plenty of tests, we will be able to make such a difference by improving people’s lives!
The clear quartz could be a blocker though. It’s a very rare crystal, and even though alternatives won’t be as effective, my next step is to research some other more accessible options.
Perla and a friend walk down the stairs into the dining room, where I’m sitting with Marco and D?nh.
Marco is dressed as casually as possible in baggy blue basketball shorts and a plain white singlet. He has the luxury of changing again before his party, but he might not bother.
The look his older sister gives him carries all the disapproval she needs to express about his outfit while guests are staying over.
D?nh, Vietnamese with straight black hair, deep brown eyes, and a healthy lean build, is about my height, which is fairly short. He’s wearing jeans despite the warm morning and a faded red shirt, the fading more from his quiet effort to blend in than from wear, unlike my own clothes. Even sitting upright, he looks comfortable in his posture, so different from Marco, who always seems to sink into his seat.
Perla is striking in a bright green dress with a red belt, red icicle earrings, and matching red polish on her hands and feet, her confidence letting the vivid green look effortless rather than loud.
Her friend is wearing a lightweight black cotton short-sleeve shirt with a picture of a frowning pink bear on it and tight medium-blue jeans. When she smiles at me, sweet and easy, I realise she’s caught me staring at her too long. With that smile, the image on her shirt feels like it contradicts her personality.
“Hi Ernie!”
Oh, it’s Misha! She looks different outside of school.
“Hi Misha!”
Perla pushes her way towards the kitchen where Mrs Monti is preparing food for the day and pours herself a black coffee.
“What are you boys doing just sitting there when there’s so much you could be helping with?”
I don’t really know what to say to that. Luckily, Mr Monti hears her and walks by us, placing his phone down on the table as he makes his way across to the kitchen. He kisses the top of Perla’s head and seeing her coffee, takes another sip of his espresso.
“Relax, furbacchiona. There is nothing left for them to do. They should have some food. They must be getting hungry.”
Perla gives an inelegant grunt and heads back to her room, where it seems she’ll spend most of the day avoiding the commotion from Marco’s party.
On the table, Mr Monti’s phone lights up with a text alert from Theo.
I know that you helped plan the break-in last night. I need something from you if you want your luxurious lifestyle to continue. Call me.
He quickly snatches his phone from the table, his cheerful demeanour giving way to a worry he tries to mask while reading the message. He calls out that he is going for a walk and leaves the house.
I wonder what all of that was about.
Mrs Monti carries over a plate of croissants, butter, jams, muesli, fruit, and yoghurt for us to choose and mix our own breakfasts too. I love having a wide selection of foods to explore, where I can mix things up and be creative!
Mmm, as I carefully taste every flavour of my breakfast, that’s where my complete focus is.
With every bite of enjoyment, I remember that the best part of today hasn’t even started yet.
It’s almost party time!