Meanwhile in another area of the city, Debra was busy experimenting with her own piece of alien technology. Unlike Kimberly, Debra was not in a big hurry to toy around with her device. Hers was just a bracelet which displayed a map, and therefore not as exciting as the shrink ray that Kim had found. Chores were her higher priority, but once they were finished she stepped down into the dark privacy of the basement, hoping to learn more about the bracelet and its map displaying potential.
But even before she opened the basement door, she could make out light leaking through the gaps between the door and the frame. She knew right away who was down there; her big sister, Ellie. Their parents were both upstairs, and they seldom went down there anyway. Ellie probably spent more time down there than anyone, because she frequently used the pool table and the other games down there. Debra, on the other hand, went down there for completely different reasons; usually to escape the ruckus of the rest of the house. It was a great place to lose herself inside one of her books or in one of her video games.
The two sisters were almost complete opposites of one another; Debra sometimes wondered whether one of them had been adopted, or if they had different fathers. While Deb was the typical height for a female at 5'4", Ellie -- on the other hand -- was exceptionally tall, towering over her peers at about 6'1". The two girls also differed wildly in their interests: Debra was very shy, introverted, and into books; whereas Ellie was outgoing, sometimes boorish, and very much into sports. Ellie's favorite sport was basketball, and as Deb descended the basement steps she found her sister playing with the mini-basketball hoop that was attached to a steel Lally column.
Ellie was holding one of the foam basketballs when she noticed her sister coming down the basement steps. "Hey squirt! What are you up to?" she said. Debra always hated when Ellie ridiculed her for her height; it wasn't her fault Ellie was a freak!
"Just wanted to test out this new Gizmo I picked up at one of those sci-fi conventions," Debra replied. It was a lie, but Ellie was ignorant of these sorts of things, and Debra knew her poor ogress of a sister would be unable to grasp its significance, nor be able to distinguish it from any modern human technology.
Ellie simply nodded to her, then went back to playing with her ball. "Idiot," Debra thought as she sat down on one of the couches. "Okay, let's see what we've got here," Debra said, clamping the bracelet to her wrist and looking over the buttons. "I think this is the one which activated..." She pressed one of the buttons, and right before her appeared the same holographic projection of the city that she had seen back on the spaceship. She gasped in amazement at how detailed and 3-dimensional everything was.
Ellie took a moment from her game to interrupt Deb's astonishment; "Dan was talking about getting one of those things for his car. I think he called it 'Tom-Tom', or some shit like that..."
Debra sighed. She refused to dignify her sister's moronic comment with a response; instead, she simply took a look at the other buttons to see what else she might learn about it. This was no easy task, since the buttons were labeled with Alien markings, and it would take some time to decipher their functions. Nevertheless, she had to begin somewhere. "This here looks pretty obvious," she said, looking at what appeared to be arrow keys; by pressing them she found she could adjust the area viewable within the projection, as easily as if she had been using Google Map.
She shifted the map to the west until it reached the ocean, and then it would go no further. "Hmm," said Debra. "It seems as if the map is limited only to this town... but why?"
At this same moment, Ellie decided to be mischievous and tossed the foam ball into the center of the projection. "She shoots, she..." but went silent when the ball failed to fall through to the floor. Instead, the ball seemed to merge itself into the projection. Both sisters gasped in amazement as the foam ball floated on the ocean within the projection. They turned and looked at one another with wide eyes and dropped jaws.
Finally, Ellie broke the silence. "What... the... hell...?" She walked over to the projection, brushed the long blonde hair from her face, and then slowly circled it; never taking her eyes off the animated bobbing of the ball inside. Then she reached her hand towards it. "Stop!", shouted Debra, but it was too late. Ellie had already reached in and pulled out the foam ball. "What the hell did you do?!", Debra shouted.
"What do you mean what did I do? This is your fancy gizmo, or so you tell me," Ellie replied. The girls became silent; the sound of dripping water could be heard. They both looked and discovered -- to their horror -- that the foam ball was dripping water on the basement floor...