Real World
Written by Anakin McFly
« Contents Page + Prologue
« Chapters 1.1–1.11
« Chapters 1.12–1.16
« Chapters 1.17–1.21
« Chapters 2.1–2.6
« Chapters 2.7–2.14
« Chapters 2.8–2.24
« Chapters 2.25–2.31
« Chapters 2.32–2.33
PART THREE – Homeward Bound
- Bannister Residence
- Fesham
- Eddie's Request
- Jemma and Zeran
- Night-time Wanderings of the Keanu-Spawn
- The Woods of Renaken
- One Down, Two to Go
REAL WORLD: PART THREE
Welcome to the Real World
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”—Maria Robinson
Chapter One: Bannister Residence
14th November 1998, Saturday
New Zealand
The train arrived in Frank’s universe around nine in the evening there – the same time in the universe they had just left – and they were flying in the skies just above the east coast of South Island in New Zealand. The two teens and Verne fell asleep as they made the journey to the outskirts of Christchurch, and Neo was left to finish off the ice cream. They were his, anyway, and besides, those were the first ice creams he had taken in his life. The others had all been fake, so there was not much harm in taking a few more.
Frank was sitting in front with Doc, gazing out the window at the bright blue sea below. He’d be home soon. The pain in his arm was already less intense. Frank glanced back at the three fast asleep, and turned back to Doc.
“I can let them stay at my place for a while,” he offered softly, so as not to wake the others. “I doubt they’d have the energy to go anywhere for the moment.”
Emmett nodded consent. “Thanks.”
It was strange, Frank thought, looking at Doc. The inventor looked exactly the same as he did in the movies… Here he was, talking with a movie character and flying in a time travelling train as if there were nothing at all weird with that, and yet, in some other universe, he was fictional too.
What was real? That was the question.
Behind him, Neo had finally had enough of the ice cream. He’d managed to finish four without getting his fingers sticky, too. Taking out his really cool sunglasses from his pocket, Neo proceeded to wipe the fingerprints off them with the really cool sunglasses cloth. For the umpteenth time, he wondered just what Frank had been doing with them to get them that grubby; he should have told him to handle them better.
Neo painstakingly wiped the lenses clean until they shone, then moved his way down the handles before carefully replacing them in his pocket.
A curious bird drooled as it stared at Neo’s pocket from outside, and seconds later was a bloody mess on the front of the locomotive.
Moral of the Day: Curiosity kills the bird.
They eventually landed. Marty looked out the window at the huge mansion beyond the gates.
“You live here?” he asked sleepily, stepping out of the train.
“Yeah,” Frank replied, using his good hand to unlock the gate with a set of spare keys he took out from behind a bush. “It was the cheapest place I could find. No one else wanted to live here because everyone says it’s haunted, and the dealer was desperate to get rid of it. I even got all the furniture along with the house…”
“So is it really haunted?” Verne asked excitedly.
“Yep. But the ghosts are kinda friendly, once you get to know them. One of them’s Bob, and the other’s Eddie. Fairly nice guys, though Eddie’s got a few screws loose.”
Inside, the house was a veritable mess and reminded Marty of how Doc’s garage used to look. Papers and other sorts of random stuff were strewn all over, and to one side was a computer monitor on screensaver mode. Frank made his way over and shook the mouse, causing the screensaver to go off. He shut down the computer.
“Sorry for the mess… it’s much cleaner upstairs,” he said. “Ah… you can sleep wherever you like, just don’t touch the blue Chesterfield sofa because that’s Eddie’s sofa and he’s kind of overprotective of it. There’s food somewhere in the kitchen if you’re hungry, and you can use the computer if you like… I’ll just let the guys know you’re here.”
Frank went up the staircase and yelled to the two resident ghosts. “Hey, some friends of mine are here, so don’t scare them away, okay? …I just got shot, it’s not… no, I won’t be dying anytime soon… It’s a long, long story… yeah, don’t worry, I told them about your sofa… Right, see you later.”
Frank came back down the stairs. “Okay, that should be all…”
Doc drove Frank over to the nearest hospital in the BMW, while the others turned in for the night, sleeping in the same room upstairs. Despite what Frank said, none of them fancied being apart with Bob and Eddie on the loose.
Chapter Two: Fesham
The Nexus
Before long, it was morning, and Luke awoke to find someone sitting at the table downstairs waiting for him.
“Hello,” Akner said as Luke descended the stairs. “Had a good sleep?”
The young Jedi-in-training eyed him warily. “Who are you?”
“Akner Jansilan, but the main question here is, who are you? You look like a foreigner to me.”
“My name’s Luke Skywalker,” Luke said, “and I… I don’t really know how I got here; there was this wind, and…”
Akner nodded knowingly. “I see. Another newcomer brought over by the thirteen o’ clock wind, huh? We’ve had lots of those lately. Are you hungry?”
Luke blinked at the unexpected question. “Yes…”
Akner gestured at the food-laden table. “Then why’re you just standing there? Tuck in. It’s all free.”
Luke willingly complied. “Do you own this place?” he asked, biting into a piece of Elven lembas bread that had originated from a variation of the Lord of the Rings universe.
“No,” Akner replied. “No one really owns this house. It belongs to itself and to the Nexus, and seems to attract newcomers a lot. I come by now and then just to check on things and see if there’s anyone like you around.”
“Where does the food come from?”
Akner shrugged. “Different people. Most are those who have benefited from this place and want to give something back in return.”
“Doesn’t the food go bad after a while?”
“Nope. Not in the Nexus. Time is almost stagnant here. Nothing grows bad, nothing grows old. You can stay here all your life and not age a second, though who would want to do that? Time is money in the Nexus, literally. The older you are, the richer you are. Of course, people usually don’t want to get too old; once they reach a certain point, they start converting their age to cash.”
Luke would have probably done a lot of interjecting if not for the fact that he was too busy eating.
Akner popped a grape-like fruit into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a while. Then after some hesitation, he said, “You do know you’re never getting home, don’t you?”
Luke choked. “What?” he spluttered when his mouth was empty enough to do so.
“This is the Nexus, Luke,” Akner continued. “Once you get in the way you did, you’re here to stay forever whether you want to or not. There’s no way out. The only times when you can leave the Nexus are when you don’t really enter it, when it just appears as an extension into your own universe, like the Restaurant a little way from here. But other than that, once you’re in the Nexus, you can’t get out, unless you’re one of those beings who are naturally able to move in and out of universes at will… which I doubt you are. Apparently some of them have some kind of spells or secret phrases they use, but no one really knows… ”
“But… but I’ve got to get back! People will be looking for me!”
Akner sighed. “It happens all the time, I’m afraid. That’s why you always hear of missing people who are never seen again; many end up in the Nexus.”
“But…” Luke said pathetically.
“Although if you manage to find a portal to a part of your universe, you’ll be able to enter it to a limited extent. Though you won’t be able to move far in it or you’ll just find yourself back in the wood.”
“What wood?”
“The wood that makes up the Nexus. It goes on to infinity, but there are clearings here and there like this one. There’s a town further down the road from here, but most people prefer to be on the move because you never know what you might find when you explore. The wood is filled with portals; each tree is a portal, and each leads to part of a different universe. Some of those universes may be no more than a small room, while others are vast worlds of their own… though you’ll only be able to go as far as the portal allows.”
Luke took a while to digest all this, and would take quite a while longer to digest his breakfast. “Can I take things out of those universes?” he asked.
Akner swallowed the chewed up remains of his third grape-like fruit. “Sure you can. But they have to be dead. You can’t transport living matter out of the Otherlands into the Nexus. That means no people, no plants, and no germs too. Fruits and vegetables are usually dead, so they’re okay. If you try to bring something living across, you’ll simply come out in the wood empty-handed. Don’t even try to bring other people across – it’s pointless, and it could lead to complications like this messy incident once involving a bionic arm of an Otherlander which got separated from its body when someone in the Nexus tried to drag its owner across.” Akner ate another grape-y fruit. “Of course, living matter from the Nexus is a different thing altogether. Any person in the Nexus can go to any universe and come out fully intact.”
“I really can’t go home?” Luke asked, staring unseeingly at a bowl of unidentifiable steaks.
“Yes.”
Luke nodded. He didn’t fully know why he cared; after all, he had no family back home, his old mentor Ben was dead, his life ahead looked to be full of assorted dangers… Well, he had his friends back there, but he hadn’t known Han and Leia for very long. He would have liked to. Especially Leia. Not that he had a choice now.
“Ready to go?” Akner asked.
Luke looked up. “Where’re we going?”
Akner got up from his chair and slung his cloth bag around his shoulders. “Off to the town. I’ll have to get you some things you’ll need. You can’t just go wandering around the Nexus like that, empty-handed and everything.”
“Okay.”
They left the house and set off together down the road towards the town of Fesham, Atmena, Nexus.
#
Soft yellow light played on the travellers’ faces as they walked down the road. Luke would have thought it was sunlight, if not for the fact that he couldn’t see a sun. The light came from all over: the trees, the sky, the ground…
The wood flanked them on both sides, the trees spaced unnaturally far apart from each other such that one could look through one end and see fifty metres or so into the wood. Dead leaves and twigs carpeted the ground, and now and then more would fall off the golden-trunked trees to join them. Other than that, all was still. Not a bird sang from the branches, not an insect scuttled over the ground, yet at the same time the place felt strangely alive.
And all over, the light. The leaves on the trees were not so much green as gold with the curious radiance that covered everything in sight; the trees looked almost as though they were on fire.
About fifteen minutes passed before the path opened out into a large clearing, and there before them lay the town of Fesham that Jules and Verne had, not that long ago, unintentionally visited.
Like the house in which Luke had spent the night, the town was a conglomeration of several construction styles from all over the space-time continuum. The buildings were made mostly of wood from the plentiful trees of the Nexus, while others had been constructed from materials stolen from other universes.
The streets were fairly empty that morning save for the occasional bicycle or car or horse rider or hovercraft. As they passed the small building known as the Fesham General Hospital, a young girl of perhaps nine or ten years old called out to them from across the street.
“Akner! Where have you been?”
Akner turned to look at her, and pointed at Luke. “Another new guy!” he shouted back. “I went to get him!”
The girl acknowledged his reply and walked away.
“Who was that?” Luke asked.
“My mother.” At Luke’s stunned look, Akner continued: “She ran into a huge debt some time ago. I offered to help her pay it off, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
Akner led Luke between two rows of old brick buildings and into one of them. They climbed a flight of rickety stairs to the second floor, where they went down a dark corridor and stopped outside a metal door. Akner pressed his thumb to the fingerprint lock next to it and the door slid open to reveal Akner’s small but neat apartment.
“You live here?” Luke asked, looking around.
“Some of the time,” came Akner’s reply. “I’ve got a place in Aquintos too – that’s a much bigger town than Fesham here, and it’s located quite far north in the Xavarin region. I haven’t been up there in quite some time.”
“What’s it like there?”
“Oh, it’s different from here. Every region in the Nexus is different. In the Atmena region here, which stretches from the outskirts of Fesham to the Restaurant at the other end, everything’s pretty laid-back. Whereas up in Aquintos, things move fast. It’s a very advanced place, technologically at least. They have flying vehicles and all sorts of stuff like that, and there are all these strange underground scientific experiments going on which no one really knows much about. You can go on to Aquintos if you like; it’s about six days walk from here, but you’ll be passing through the Renaken region on the way there, so you might want to stop along the way… Here you go.”
Akner had been digging around in a box, and he now emerged with a device that bore more than a fleeting resemblance to a squarish pocket calculator if you ignored the fact that it was made of a dark polished wood, which most self-respecting calculators are not. A screen was set into the wood above several rows of buttons with numbers and other markings on them, and the screen lit up as Akner pressed a quick combination of buttons to turn it on.
“What’s that?” Luke asked, coming closer to look at it.
“Something that will hopefully keep you from getting lost. It’s a digital pathfinder; I’ve got several around, so you can take this one. All you have to do is key in the coordinates of your destination, say Aquintos – that’s 13110-2112-18…”
The screen changed, and an arrow appeared pointing in a north-north-east direction. Like a compass needle, it stayed put in that direction, even as Akner turned the pathfinder until the arrow aligned with a marking above the screen.
“You’ll just have to follow that arrow, and you’ll reach there eventually,” Akner said. “Most of the major towns and places are already stored in here – you’ve just got to press this button for the directory, see – so there’s not much need for you to memorise any coordinates, though that’s always useful. And you don’t have to worry about conserving energy, because this uses very little, and more importantly it runs off the energy of the Nexus which is more or less infinite. At least, I’d like to say it’s infinite, but some beg to differ. Whatever it is, you can leave that thing on all the time if you want to.”
Akner left the pathfinder in Luke’s hands and resumed his digging about in the box. In a much shorter time than before, he found and took out a small, disc-shaped contraption with a thick string wound around it.
“This thing here’s a converter,” Akner stated, unwinding the string such that the device swung freely from both ends of the string. It was hollow inside, with a slit to the side wide enough for a large coin to be slotted in. On the front, a top semicircle of wood had been cut away to expose the currently empty insides, and on the bottom semicircle was a small screen with five buttons curving around the lower circumference.
“You’ll need this for any financial transactions you intend to make,” Akner continued. “It converts time to a usable form, and vice versa.” Akner took out a bundle of a hundred or so transparent plastic-like discs from the box and separated one disc from the others. A raised coloured marking at its centre said ‘1 PH’.
Akner slotted it into the converter, whose screen then lit up with the words ‘OUT 1PH’. “Give me your hand,” Akner said, and Luke complied. The back of the converter held a smooth, shiny circle of metal in its centre, and Akner pressed it down on Luke’s open palm. He pushed the central button on the other side of the converter.
A strange but not unpleasant feeling shot through Luke’s body and out through his palm. Immediately after, the disc was filled with a colourful liquid-gas substance that swirled around inside, unable to come out but quite happy where it was.
“What was that?” Luke asked.
Akner ejected the disc from the converter and showed it to him.
“Just took one hour of your time away,” Akner explained. “You’re now one hour younger, though you probably can’t tell. Oh, and here’s another reason why you should always keep this converter with you – some places have their own converters, some of which are older models which don’t just take away your time but your memories of that time as well. Some can even remove all physical evidence on you – scars and suchlike – that prove a certain period of time ever happened. It’s potentially dangerous stuff.”
Akner slotted the now-filled disc back into the converter, which now read ‘IN 1PH’. “Hand,” he requested. Luke opened his palm, and Akner placed the converter on it. “You just have to do the opposite to take in time,” he said. He pressed the button, and the disc emptied its contents into Luke. “Understand everything so far?”
“I think so…”
“Good.” Akner returned the empty disc to the rest of the bundle and held up the bundle. “These can each take a different fixed amount of time – the markings on them tell you how much, though you’ll learn to recognise them by their shapes and sizes soon enough. The most a pre-fixed disc like that one just now can take is ten years, but the blank discs with no markings can take any amount. Just use the two side arrows on the converter to determine the input or output for any one of those, and this button here lets you toggle between minutes, hours, days, months and years. For standardisation purposes, one month is thirty days and one year is 360 days.”
Akner paused. “You should be safe while in the Nexus, but some of the Otherlands can get dangerous, and there’s also been a recent surge of Gaminorans coming down to these parts from the far West. There have been… attacks, nothing major yet, but you never know… Got a weapon?”
“Sure,” Luke said, patting his lightsaber hilt.
Akner regarded it doubtfully. “What’s that do?”
Luke willingly demonstrated, the blue blade of his lightsaber hissing to life from the hilt. Akner gave a low whistle. “Laser sword. All right, that should do fine.”
Chapter Three: Eddie's Request
15th November 1998, Sunday
Christchurch, New Zealand
It was past midnight when the once-haunted BMW rolled into the driveway of Frank’s house. Its headlights clicked off as the car powered down, and the doors opened to let Frank and Doc out. There was a jangle of keys as Frank took them out and unlocked the main door with his good hand, the other one now in a proper sling.
He opened the door and entered the lighted kitchen area, Doc following behind.
“Looks like they’ve all gone to bed,” Frank said, locking the door and chucking the keys onto the kitchen counter.
“It’s late,” Doc said rather pointlessly.
Frank trudged up the stairs to the second floor and found the others all asleep in the first room. He let Doc into the room next to that, which had a bed available. They exchanged goodnights and Doc went to bed.
Frank went back into the first room and stood there for a while amidst the sounds of breathing and the occasional snore. Marty had taken the bed, sleeping on top of the covers due to how deceptively warm the early night had been; that early night was now midnight and not half as warm. Frank took a throw rug from a nearby sofa and covered Marty with it, pausing momentarily to marvel at the teen’s sleeping position.
“Good night,” he finally said, and left the room for his own bedroom on the first floor, where he soon fell asleep.
About one hour later, Ted suddenly woke up. For several seconds the teen lay there on this random sofa he had found and wondered what had woken him. Then he noticed that the desk light on the nearby table had come on, and there was something moving above it. Curious, he got off the sofa, walked over to the table, and sat down.
The thing moving was a pen, and as Ted watched, it wrote a word on the piece of paper below it.
Hello.
Whoa, Ted thought. That sure is one smart pen! He grinned, then sat down on the chair, picked up another pen and wrote a reply.
Hi!
What’s your name?
Ted.
What were you doing on my sofa?
Ted looked back at the sofa he’d been sleeping on. And for the first time, he noticed that it was a blue Chesterfield. Eddie’s sofa…
Sorry, dude, he wrote back.
Indeed.
Yeah. I didn’t know it was your sofa, dude.
You’re from another world, aren’t you? Eddie wrote.
How did you know?
I can sense it. I was from another world too, of sorts. More like a world between worlds, actually – they called it the Nexus. One day I came here and accidentally died; I tried to go back, but I couldn’t. I’ve been stuck here ever since. Last year there was a disturbance in the space-time continuum and this sofa just appeared out of nowhere. I thought it might be a way out, but it’s never done anything particularly un-sofa-like.
Frank says you’re crazy, dude.
Sometimes. I can be a little psychotic when I want to be. I think it’s fun. I get to do all sorts of cool things. Like that time I killed two guys and two sheep and wrapped the guys up in the sheep fleece and put their clothes on the sheep. Apparently one of the guy’s friends saw me, so he killed me and that’s how I died. Heheh.
Ted backed his chair slightly further away from the table.
“Whoa,” he said under his breath. A little uneasy now, he reached out to write on the paper, but Eddie continued.
You don’t have to write to me, you know. I can hear you perfectly fine when you speak.
“Oh. Um, it’s been really nice knowing you, dude. But, uh, I guess I’ll go back to sleep now, and… I’ll use another sofa. Yeah. Catch you later, dude.”
Ted was about to get up and leave, when his chair was suddenly pushed from behind and he yelped as he got crushed between it and the desk.
Marty murmured something about sheep and rolled over.
Not so fast, kid.
“What?”
You still slept on my sofa, even though you were told not to. You’ve still got to pay.
“I’m totally sorry, dude! And I don’t have any money left. We used it up that day to buy lunch at…” Ted broke off in mid-sentence as he read what Eddie had written.
Just a favour.
It won’t take too long. Follow me.
Ted watched as the pen and paper floated up into the air and moved towards the door, hovering by the open doorway and waiting for him to follow.
Hesitantly, the teen got up and went towards it. Beyond was almost pitch darkness; the light from the room’s table lamp only spilled partly out the door, reflecting off the white surface of the paper, which flapped a little further off.
Ted glanced back into the room. The others were all soundly asleep.
With the paper, Eddie beckoned to follow. Ted made up his mind and obeyed.
It wasn’t that dark after all, he realised. The paper and its surrounding area seemed to give off a faint blue glow, enough for him to see it and follow it.
“Where are we going, dude?” he asked as they turned into yet another dark corridor, but Eddie wasn’t able to answer. Ted looked back, but all he saw was the same blackness that he saw in front. He raised his hand to his face and was barely able to make out his fingers. The only thing he could really see was the paper, still moving onward. He had no choice but to follow.
Suddenly, his foot struck the bottom of a step and he tripped, yelling in pain as he fell and his head hit the edge of a higher step.
A staircase.
All sense of adventure suddenly gone, Ted felt his way in the dark back on to his feet, wincing as he rubbed the emerging bruise on his head.
Back in the first room, Neo jolted awake.
He sat up uncertainly, not knowing what had woken him, when his gaze alighted on the sofa where Ted had been sleeping and he saw that it was empty.
Neo had a bad feeling about this. Getting off his sofa, he went over to the blue one to check to see if the teen was indeed not there. He wasn’t.
“Ted?” he called out softly.
“Yes, ol’ chap, I’d rather like a cup of tea,” Marty murmured, in the midst of a particularly British dream. He rolled over and let out a small snore, then smiled as in his dream he received the requested cup of tea.
Neo went over to the open doorway and stood there for a moment, squinting out into the darkness.
“Ted?” he called out again, a little louder this time. His voice faded off into the silent dark. Neo went back into the room and stared at the lighted table lamp for several moments. There was a pen on the table, but it didn’t look particularly suspicious.
He moved back to the doorway again, still stuck in the dilemma of whether or not to go out to look for Ted. The teen might be in danger; but this was a proven haunted house, after all, and although Neo would have died rather than admit it, he still retained from his childhood a fear of the dark. And this was dark dark, and furthermore if he went out there he wouldn’t be able to convince himself that the things going bump in the night were merely a figment of his imagination, because in this universe such things existed, and it was fact that this place was home to at least two ghosts who might not be as friendly as Frank made them out to be.
Neo returned to the room again and paced a bit. He wandered over to the blue Chesterfield sofa; Ted’s jacket was draped over one side of it, and Neo checked out the contents of the pocket, more to stall for time than anything else.
Wallet, house keys, tissue paper, a pen, some strange thing Ted’s aunt gave him, torch, a rather knotted-up piece of string…
Neo saw the torch and translated its name from British to American.
Flashlight. How convenient, Neo thought darkly.
He didn’t have much of an excuse now. Neo clicked the torch on, and a steady beam of orange light shone out one end.
Here goes nothing, he thought, and walked out into the dark.
The light chased shadows away from it, and the movement made Neo wonder if it may not have been a better idea to go without the torch after all – at least complete darkness stayed still – or if perhaps Ted had just gone off in search of the toilet and wasn’t in any sort of danger regarding the dead occupants of this house.
From the doorway, a little to his right and straight ahead was the staircase leading down to the ground floor. He shone the torch down it and onto the kitchen area on the left, the computer on the right.
On Neo’s left, the corridor went on for a short while before going up a short flight of steps, pausing at a window, and turning left. On his right, the corridor went on past the stairs and turned right, going deeper into the mansion. He took this path.
His shoes trod softly on the carpeted floor as he passed assorted wall hangings and doors leading off to several rooms. Here and there bits of the faded wallpaper had been torn off, and Neo withheld the urge to strip more off just for the fun of it.
The corridor split up after not much longer. One went straight ahead, and the other turned right. He paused, wondering which way to go.
Neo closed his eyes and tried to access his non-existent innate Force abilities, only to discover that they, being non-existent, did not exist and never had, and all he had accomplished was to make himself look more foolish than he already felt. Nonetheless, he kept his eyes closed, reaching out mentally to try and sense Ted’s presence and perhaps communicate telepathically with him; after all, the fact that he had woken to find the teen absent possibly indicated the presence of some psychic connection between them.
Neo tried to send telepathic messages to Ted.[x]
Something brushed lightly against Neo’s hand and caused his eyes to fly open. In front of him, a ghostly shaped white bed sheet was hovering slightly off the ground and glowing slightly, two circles cut into it near the top for eyes.
Neo screamed.
The cut-out eyes of the bed sheet looked mournfully at him, watching as Neo stumbled back into a wall and dropped the torch.
Under the bed sheet, Bob shook his head. He held up the piece of card he had written on and let Neo read the words there, printed on in his neat handwriting in glow-in-the-dark ink.
‘Hi, I’m Bob. I know where Eddie and Ted are. I’ll take you there, but you’ll have to hurry if you don’t want to miss them.’
Chapter Four: Jemma and Zeran
Outskirts of Reskun, Renaken, Nexus
After some time, a rough path became visible through the grass. It went between what looked like two small fields of unidentifiable crops, then led up to a yard and farmhouse. Several bird-like creatures wandered around the yard, occasionally wandering out of the open gate and onto the road. Luke stared as one casually walked onto his foot and sat on it.
“Hey,” Luke said, shaking his foot to try and dislodge the creature.
The churkey just stared solemnly up at him, bouncing around with Luke’s foot.
“Um,” Luke said. He walked awkwardly over to the yard, the churkey still obstinately sitting on his foot. Luke crouched down and tried to lift it off.
The churkey looked at him, then something seemed to click in its brainless head.
“Mouseworks,” it chirped randomly, then got off Luke’s foot and continued its wandering about the yard. The door of the farmhouse opened then, and a woman came out. She stared at Luke.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, getting back to his feet. “I was just walking here when that… bird sat on my foot…”
“Autobahn,” said a churkey.
The woman took in the sight of the open gate and sighed. “Looks like Zeran left that gate open again,” she muttered. She went out into the yard to close it, kicking a churkey out of the way. “Where’re you from?” she asked Luke. “I’ve never seen you around before.”
“I’m… uh, new here. I’m trying to get to this town called Aquintos; I heard it’s up through here.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Belachan,” said a churkey in an unnaturally deep voice.
Luke looked at it. “What kind of creatures are those?” he asked.
The woman gave a short laugh. “Churkeys. They’re not exactly living creatures; they’re bred just for meat, so they don’t really have any consciousness. The first churkey breeders thought it would be a good idea to have meat that was never really alive, so that people didn’t have to feel guilty when killing animals for food. So… churkeys don’t have brains. They function entirely on a simple neural system, and they’re programmed to just wander around and say the occasional odd thing to give them some semblance of life.”
“Wow.”
“Functioning, functioning,” droned a churkey, before keeling over and lying still on the ground.
“…That tends to happen sometimes,” the woman admitted, looking at the motionless churkey. “What’s your name?” she asked Luke. “I’m Jemma. Jemma Laivon.”
“I’m Luke Skywalker,” said Luke.
“Elvis has left the building,” said a churkey.
“How long have you been in the Nexus?” Jemma asked.
“Not very long,” Luke said. “I arrived just last night.”
“Why don’t you come in for a while?” Jemma offered with a friendly smile. “I could use some company. I’ve got a whole basket of tocberries to de-thorn today.”
“Wtcospoaoup,” burped a churkey.
Luke followed her into the small but neat farmhouse where a basket of purple tocberrries sat in a corner, waiting to be de-thorned.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nexus has this to say about tocberries:
Tocberries are regarded as one of the finer things in Nexus life. Small, purplish berries that are found in the higher regions of canopy trees, tocberries bear a fair resemblance to smulberies, but with a thorn stuck through each berry. When a tocberry ripens, it falls off its branch, impaling any unfortunate person beneath.
Renowned for their horrible taste, disgusting smell, and murderous thorn-spike, after much thought it has been multi-universally agreed that there are some people in life we just can’t stand, and the tocberry is the solution.[x]
From this had emerged a surprisingly good tocberry economy. People would now request de-thorned tocberries to place in berry hampers to their worst enemies, making use of the fact that a de-thorned tocberry is virtually indistinguishable from a sweet and juicy smulberi, and that some strategically placed fruit-basket-air-fresheners are usually sufficient to mask the distinct tocberry smell.
#
Ted reflexively shut his eyes as sudden brightness filled the place, lighting up the library with a warm orange glow. Rows of shelves stacked with old, dusty books lined the room, on the high ceiling of which hung a crystal chandelier from where the light now came.
The paper floated off to the end of the library and settled down on a wooden desk against the wall. Curious, Ted walked over to it, and watched as the desk drawer opened and from out of it floated a sealed yellow envelope and a small box. They too settled on the table, and Eddie started writing again, the words appearing quickly on the paper.
There exist spells to get temporarily into the Nexus from any location in another world. I am one of the few who know them, and many times since my death I have tried – in vain – to return through them. It seems they only work on the living. This is why I need your help. I left a wife back in the Nexus, and I want you to pass her this letter from me. Her name is Jemma, and she should still be living in the Renaken region, at our farm. You have only an hour or less before you’re brought back here, so try to hurry. It might take time to find her.
The box opened, and from inside four scraps of tattered cloth were taken out. They floated towards the teen and stopped before his hand. He scooped them out of the air and regarded them questioningly.
All that remains of my clothes from the Nexus, Eddie explained. You need them to get there. Place them on four sides around you and say these words:
‘L’anaicha kamanju, din air rala namanju.’
Then touch each piece of cloth in a clockwise direction starting from the top one, and finally read those words again. That should do it. Any questions?
“Um, yeah,” Ted admitted. “Which way’s clockwise, dude?”
Eddie rolled his eyes, but being an invisible ghost, his little action went unseen. He drew out a circle on the paper, then added in arrows to answer Ted’s question.
Taking the paper and letter, Ted sat down and separated the pieces of cloth, placing them as instructed. Stumbling slightly, he read out the words of the Nexan spell; was it his imagination, or did the cloth bits move slightly? He touched each, starting from the top and moving clockwise. Each piece seemed to hum slightly as he touched it, and soon the humming started to envelop him – a beautiful sound, a pure musical note that went on and on…
He touched the fourth piece, and was dimly aware of someone yelling his name; ignoring it, Ted started reading out the words for the second and final time – someone was running towards him – as a golden shimmer seemed to rise up and spread out from each piece of cloth, covering him, blocking out this world…
Neo pounced. He landed on Ted, something went bzzap, and a moment later they tumbled out onto a grassy plain in the west of Renaken, Nexus.
Neo stared at the grass. He stared at the trees. He stared at the sky. He stared at Ted. He blinked.
“…Neo?” Ted asked.
“What happened?”
Ted showed him the letter. “Eddie told me to pass this to his wife here,’ he said. “You didn’t have to come along, dude.”
Neo picked up the piece of paper that had fluttered to the ground and read through the conversation Ted and Eddie had been having.
“You stole my handwriting,” he concluded.
Ted wasn’t quite sure how to reply to that, and so he didn’t say anything.
Neo looked up from the paper. “So we just have to find this Jemma person and give her the letter?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is this place, anyway?”
Ted shrugged. “Apparently it’s called the Nexus or something. And Eddie said we’ve only got an hour or less before we’re sent back,” he added.
Ted checked his watch and took note of the time.
“We’d better get going, then,” Neo said, trying to ignore the fact that he’d just been transported into another world.
The wood behind them shone in the light of the Nexus, while before them the grassy ground sloped downwards towards a cluster of small cottage-like buildings surrounded by fields. It was to this that the two of them walked, seeing no viable alternative.
For a couple of minutes there was silence between them, then Ted broke it.
“What’s that thing at the back of your head, dude?” he asked.
“None of your business,” Neo replied.
“Can I stick my finger in it?”
“No.”
Ted looked disappointed.
The sleepy little village of Reskun appeared dead at first. The small houses along the single road were silent; only from what looked like a café came the faint sounds of conversation. Outside it, leaning against the café wall, was parked a weatherworn hovercraft that bore some resemblance to a Star Wars speeder.
Breakfast appeared to be in full swing. The smells of food wafted aimlessly around the place and made Ted hungry despite it technically being in the middle of the night for him. There is never a wrong time for food, unless of course you’re on a diet.
Ted gazed longingly at the assorted edibles around him, when Neo brought him back to the task at hand with a poke.
Several people were looking at them with the kind of idle gaze reserved for those who walk in on you and your friends having breakfast and then proceed to stare hungrily at your food.
“Excuse me, but do you know where I can find this person named Jemma?” Ted asked the guy behind the counter.
The eyes of the guy behind the counter narrowed slightly. “Why’re you looking for her?” he asked.
“I’m supposed to pass her something.”
The guy behind the counter briefly scrutinised the teen, then apparently came to the conclusion that Ted looked harmless enough. He wasn’t too sure about Neo, but as the latter seemed only half awake, he decided that there was no immediate danger at hand.
“Zeran!” he called out, and a young teenager of non-existent gender chocked on aer coftea.
Coftea is basically a mix of coffee and tea, a drink that is, for good reason, not commercially available. It was because of this that Zeran had opted instead to purchase both drinks and a large empty pitcher so ae could mix it up aemself, a venture into the culinary field that ae was increasingly beginning to regret.
“Yeah?” Zeran asked.
“These two fellas are looking for your mother. Say they have to pass something to her. Take care of ‘em, will ya?”
“Sure,” Zeran said. Ae stared mournfully at aer coftea, on one hand thinking that it had been completely not worth the three hours and twenty minutes ae’d paid for its components, but on the other hand rejoicing inwardly at the fact that ae now had an excuse to not finish drinking it.
Sighing inwardly, Zeran got up from aer chair.
“Are you going to finish that?” Ted asked, pointing at the coftea.
“Nah. Should never have made it in the first place.”
Ted’s face brightened. “Can I have it?”
Zeran raised an eyebrow. “Sure.”
Ted grinned, took a gulp of the drink, and ungrinned.
The coftea laughed silently at the teen’s reaction and stuck a figurative tongue out at him.
“You’re looking for my mother?” Zeran asked redundantly as the three of them went out of the café.
“Yeah.”
The walk took a while, but they soon arrived at the farm. Zeran pushed the gate open and kicked a churkey out of the way.
“Wardrobe malfunction,” said the churkey in a suspiciously Elvis Presley -like voice.
“Mom?” Zeran called out. “Some guys are here to see you.” Zeran opened the door of the farmhouse and paused when he saw Luke there. “Who’s that?” ae asked.
“A newcomer,” Jemma replied. “He’s going up to Aquintos, so I let him stop by…”
“Mom, you can’t just let strangers come in whenever you want…”
“Luke?” Ted asked, and his mouth fell open.
There was a moment’s silence, then recognition dawned on Luke. “Hey, you’re that guy who wanted to try my lightsaber…”
Zeran raised an eyebrow. “You lot know each other?”
“It’s Luke Skywalker, dude!” Ted replied. “I met him that day when me and Marty went out in the streets…”
“One hour, Ted,” Neo reminded him. “Keep this for later.” He looked at Luke. So it was him that he had seen that night, he realised.
Ted remembered the purpose of this trip and took out Eddie’s letter from his pocket. He handed it to Jemma. “I’m supposed to give this to you,” he said.
Quizzically, Jemma received the envelope and opened it. Her eyes scanned the first few lines, and she paled. “Ednan?” she gasped, and then seemed to realise that everyone’s eyes were on her. “Excuse me,” Jemma said quietly, and left for the next room, shutting the door behind her.
Zeran watched her go, then turned to Ted. “Who’d you get that letter from?” ae asked softly.
“It was a ghost, dude,” Ted replied. “His name was Eddie.”
“Ednan,” Zeran said. “He was my father. I never knew him; my mother said he went out into the woods one day shortly after I was born, and he never came back.”
“He said he tried, but he can’t,” Ted said. “He’s dead.”
Zeran nodded, eyes on the ground. Then, without a word, ae went after aer mother in the next room, leaving the three to themselves.
“I never knew my father either,” Luke said suddenly, breaking the silence. “He was killed by a man named Darth Vader. At least, that’s what old Ben said,” Luke mused, more to himself than anyone else.
Neo and Ted exchanged glances.
“Luke,” Neo said hesitantly, “Darth Vader… is your father.”
Luke looked up sharply. “What?”
“And Leia’s your sister, so you really shouldn’t kiss her, dude,” Ted chipped in.
Luke gave them a stunned look. “No,” he said. “No… no, it can’t be. How’d you… how’d you even know about them?”
“It’s a long story,” Neo said. Three movies’ worth, he thought. “I’m sorry, but you had to find out eventually.”
“No…” Luke said. “Who are you people?”
“You were at Kenselton Hotel, weren’t you?” Ted asked. “We saw your lightsaber mark on the wall, dude! We came from there too, just from different worlds…”
“They say I can’t go back home,” Luke said, “now that I’m in the Nexus.”
“Maybe it’s for the better,” Neo said.
“Darth Vader isn’t my father,” Luke said resolutely. He swallowed. “It’s… it’s not possible. Darth Vader killed Ben. My father wouldn’t have done such a thing to his own master…”
Search your feelings, Luke, you know it to be true, Neo thought, and withheld the urge to quote it.
A small noise behind them made them turn. The door to the next room opened, and Jemma came out, Zeran’s arm around her shoulders.
“Thank you,” Jemma said to Ted, her eyes red from crying. “When you get back… tell him I miss him, but other than that we’re… we’re both fine here.”
“Sure.”
Jemma smiled wanly. “Maybe… maybe one day I’ll get to see him again. The Nexus is infinite, after all. There are portals to every universe existing…”
That was when their time in the Nexus ran out, and Neo and Ted found themselves jerked back into Frank’s universe.
They landed on the library floor, the tattered pieces of cloth no longer there, and floating in front of them a sheet of paper with the words: “How did it go?” written on it.
“We gave her the letter,” Ted said, and relayed Jemma’s message to Eddie.
He wrote two more words: Thank you.
“You are most welcome, dude,” Ted said.
Then the paper floated down onto the floor and settled there.
Chapter Five: Night-time Wanderings of the Keanu-Spawn
15th November 1998, Sunday
Christchurch, New Zealand
Bob didn’t seem to be anywhere around, and it was with slight trepidation that Neo left the lighted library and re-entered the dark corridors.
“I borrowed your flashlight,” Neo said.
“Do you know the way back?” Ted asked.
“I think so,” came the hesitant reply.
They turned left out of the room and started walking, the torchlight dimly illuminating the way before them.
“Sure is dark here, dude,” Ted observed.
Neo didn’t say anything to that. He wasn’t too sure if he was going the right way; he knew that they had come from vaguely north-east of the library’s main door, but the corridors were disturbingly leading in the opposite direction and more than once he started wondering if perhaps he’d missed an opening somewhere. He concentrated instead on getting down to the ground floor, and hoped this place didn’t have basements.[x]
Ted yawned. “How much further do we have to go?” he asked when he was done yawning.
“I don’t know.”
The torchlight flickered and Neo swore under his breath, desperately hoping that the battery would last.
Ten minutes went by and they were still walking.
“Whoa,” Ted said suddenly, glancing back at a hanging portrait they had just passed. “That dude there looks totally like my Uncle Maurice!”
Neo frowned slightly. The next corridor just went further in the wrong direction, and there had been a glaring absence of stairs for the previous five minutes or so.
He was starting to feel claustrophobic.
The torch flickered again.
The first hints of panic started creeping up on Neo, and he pushed them aside. Doubts about the quality of his sense of direction came in to replace them.
He turned right into a corridor, and was forced to go right again when it turned. The corridor split, and he turned right again, and then again, thankful to be back on the right track and trying to ignore the niggling feeling at the back of his mind that not all was right.
“Whoa,” Ted said, looking at the portrait they were approaching. “That dude there looks totally like my Uncle Maurice!”
Neo suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. He stopped walking. Next to him, reality finally hit Ted.
“I think we’re lost, dude,” he concluded.
“Ted?”
“Yeah?”
“Do me a favour and shut up.”
Okay, Neo thought. We’ve been going in circles, so this isn’t the right way; we’ll have to backtrack through that corridor and try another path…
That was when the torch went out, plunging them into total darkness.
Neo swore.
“Whoa,” Ted said.
In Neo’s head, the second hints of panic shoved the doubts about the quality of his sense of direction out of the way and took their place.
Dark, he thought, trying unsuccessfully to see ahead.
Dark, he thought, checking to se if there was any difference between what he saw with his eyes open and what he saw with his eyes closed. There wasn’t.
A fearful thought struck him – what if this particular part of the house couldn’t be reached by daylight, and it was always dark? How would they know when it was light out?
“Should we just stop here and wait for the morning?” Neo asked nonetheless.
“Whatever you want, dude.”
The teen’s voice sounded a little far off.
“Where are you?” Neo asked.
“Here,” Ted answered from somewhere down the corridor, and Neo waded through the darkness towards him.
“What’re you doing?”
There was the sound of a door opening, and then a click – then glorious light spilled out into the corridor and revealed Ted standing in the doorway of a room, his hand on the light switch and a triumphant grin on his face.
#
Dust clouds billowed out as the glass door of the bookshelf was opened, and Neo waved them aside, coughing. When the dust had sufficiently cleared, he scanned the titles of the books inside, looking for any that might provide a map of this house. He wasn’t too sure how old this place was – previous owners had renovated it to make it look newer – but if it was sufficiently old, he figured that there might have been books written about it.
Behind him in front of the empty fireplace, Ted sat in a comfortable armchair, fast asleep and dreaming of coftea. His hand hung over the edge of one armrest, the time on his watch 02:37a.m.. The door was closed to shut off the never-ending darkness: possibly a foolish move if they were hoping to be found, but probably enough light from the room seeped out the door to let others know they were in here.
Neo closed the shelf door. There didn’t seem to be anything useful in there. He glanced at the sleeping Ted and thought that perhaps some rest wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all, when a tall, covered object at the other end of the room caught his eye. Curious, he went over to it, and after some hesitation pulled at the cloth draped over its front.
It was a mirror; a fairly big one, with a shiny golden frame that had the words: ‘Nisu oc d’nocess desi reforor rimeh’t’ engraved on it near the top. Neo paid no attention to the words; he was too engrossed in the strange reflection of the room he saw in the mirror.
Mainly, it was pink.
Which was very strange, Neo thought, because the glass of the mirror was clear and not pink-tinted. But before he had time to wonder about this, his pink reflection winked at him, conjured a folded sheet of paper out of thin air, and stuck it in his pink pocket.
Neo jumped in shock as he felt something slide into his own pocket.
Heart beating fast, he gingerly reached in. His fingers closed over the sheet of paper and drew it out; apprehensively, he unfolded it.
It was a map of the house.
His pink reflection grinned at him in a disturbingly Ted-like manner. Neo draped the cloth back over the mirror after a muttered thanks, and then settled down in the empty armchair next to Ted to peruse the map.
It wasn’t hard to figure out; for one, it had the words ‘You Are Here’ printed in neat, friendly letters next to an arrow that pointed to a red dot in the room he was apparently now in.
Neo decided that this merited at least one ‘whoa’.
“Whoa,” he said.
He realised that he should probably be feeling more weirded out than he currently was, but that looked like it would take quite some effort and so he chose the easier path of just calmly accepting everything.
Somewhere in the midst of plotting the shortest route back to the others, Neo fell asleep.
Chapter Six: The Woods of Renaken
Renaken region, The Nexus
It didn’t take Luke too long to realise that the two guys who had just vanished were probably not going to be reappearing any time soon, and before long he had bid farewell to Jemma and Zeran Laivon, trudged through a flock of churkeys (“Suri,” said one) and exited the farm.
Back on the road again. He’d been walking for about an hour, perhaps more – you do the maths. Aquintos lay ahead, but Luke had things other than his destination to occupy his mind as he re-entered the woods of the Nexus.
Darth Vader, his father? Luke was still not quite able to accept that fact, yet at the same time it seemed oddly fitting, somehow, as if he had subconsciously known that Vader was more than just another bad guy bent on galaxy domination.
Search your feelings, Luke, you know it to be true.
“Hey, noob!”
Luke turned, startled, towards the direction the voice had come from, and found himself looking at a group of about six Nexan teenagers, all grinning and closing in around him from all directions.
“New here?” the leader continued, still grinning.
Luke placed his hand on his lightsaber hilt. “What do you want with me?”
“What d’you think we want?”
Luke took out his lightsaber and ignited it. The gang backed off slightly, but remained in a circle around him.
The leader nodded appreciatively. “Impressive. Zaf?”
“Wha…” Luke started, then fell to the ground, paralysed, as Zaf shot him with a shiny gun. Luke’s lightsaber fell out of his hand and rolled away from him, where it was deactivated and kicked safely away by another of the gang.
The leader was bending over him and fiddling about with a converter, which he proceeded to place on Luke’s paralysed arm.
“Sorry, noob,” he said as he activated the converter, transferring fifteen years out of Luke and into the empty discs, “but some of us need to eat.”
“Nothing good in there, Shan,” another teen reported to the leader, indicating Luke’s bag.
The disc was filled, and Shan lifted the converter from Luke’s arm. “You should be able to move again in a min,” he informed Luke, now a very surprised four-year-old. “Sorry we had to ‘lyse you, but you had that laser sword thing.”
Their job done, the gang ran off into the trees with the stolen time. Lying on the ground, Luke finally felt some feeling coming back into his limbs.
Footsteps approached him, and then an unfamiliar girl’s voice: “You’re Luke, right?”
Slowly, Luke managed to turn his head to look at the speaker, a fifteen-year-old who was crouched down before him.
“Yeah…” he managed to say, noting how his voice was now that of a young child.
“I’m Tasel. Zeran told me to look out for you. Sorry I couldn’t do anything about those guys, but I was sort of outnumbered.”
Luke moved himself into a sitting position. His clothes didn’t fit and he felt disturbingly small, but at least the effects of the paralyser seemed to have worn off.
Tasel was digging through her pockets, and finally her hand emerged with several filled discs. She counted out five big ones and put the rest back in.
“It’s generally not a good idea to go ‘round the woods looking like you’re over sixteen,” Tasel said. “It’s safe in the towns, but not out here, ‘cause it lets people know you’re new and they’ll try to steal your time. Here,” she said, handing the discs to Luke. “Five years. It’s not much, but I’m kind of broke at the moment.”
“Thanks,” Luke said gratefully, accepting the discs.
Tasel smiled and ruffled his hair.
Luke slotted the discs one by one into the converter and got his age up to nine.
“Least they were kind to you,” Tasel observed. “Most of these gangs usually like to get their victims down to one year, which is the limit. They do it for kicks, mostly. It’s always fun to see some originally big burly guy crawling around helplessly. Where’re you going now?”
“Aquintos,” Luke said.
“What’re you going to do there?”
Luke shrugged.
“It’s no fun up North,” Tasel said, sitting down. “Everything’s new and boring and explored. Whereas the southwest is mostly untrodden, just a few small towns here and there – uncivilised, but that’s what’s fun. If you go far enough, you might even find Babel.”
“What’s that?”
“A tower,” Tasel replied. “Apparently it’s very, very, very tall, and no one’s seen it for hundreds of years. If they have, they never told anyone. Some people say it doesn’t exist, but… who knows?”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nexus has this to say about Babel:
Babel is tall. Very tall. You just won’t believe just how highly, loftily, mind-bogglingly tall it is.
Babel was built by The I[x] and several of his followers, and was an attempt to get out of the Nexus in a vertical way, since all evidence seemed to point towards the fact that the Nexus went on to infinity horizontally.
During the construction of what would become its topmost floor, The I mysteriously vanished, never to be seen again. This was, however, not before he purportedly caused the disappearance of the Mastragath race by using the tower as a broadcasting point for the thirteen o’clock wind.[x]
“Wanna try and find Babel?” Tasel asked.
“Sure!”
Tasel grinned. “We can stop by Reskun and pick Zeran up; ae’ll definitely want to come. The two of us tried to look for it several standard years ago, but we only got as far as Arden.”
“What about Jemma?” Luke asked, getting up.
“Nah, she’s not the exploring kind. She’ll be fine. She’s two hundred and thirty; she can take care of herself. She’s used to Zeran leaving her every now and then.”
Luke picked his lightsaber up from where it had been kicked, and returned it to its place in his utility belt, hanging loose around his nine-year-old waist. He adjusted the belt to fit better, then picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder.
“We’ll cut through the woods after Reskun, pass Joe’s, follow the road west through Ilmayen, stop by Vare and Ifla…” Tasel went on talking, as together they walked back to Reskun.
Chapter Seven: One Down, Two to Go
15th November 1998, Sunday
Christchurch, New Zealand
Neo’s fear hadn’t come true; standing in the doorway of the room where he’d spent the night – or rather early morning, the area was dimly lighted by a shaft of daylight that came through a slitted window one corridor down.
He looked down at the map in his hands and wondered how he’d managed to get it the previous night, then decided that wasn’t important; what was important was getting out of the maze of corridors.
Neo went back into the room and shook Ted awake. The teen made random protesting noises.
“It’s morning,” Neo said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Ted kept his eyes shut.
“Do I have to pull you out of there?” Neo asked threateningly.
Ted made several noncommittal noises, then his eyes flew open and he yelled as Neo lifted him bodily out of the armchair. “Put me down, dude!”
Neo heeded his request and dumped him by the doorway. “Let’s go.” Neo switched off the room’s light.
Ted stumbled unsteadily to his feet and followed Neo down the corridor. “Where’d you get that map?” he asked, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes.
“Good question.”
Ted waited for an answer to the good question, but none came. He checked his watch. “It’s only five-forty in the morning,” he said, as they made their way past the portrait of the dude who looked totally like his Uncle Maurice.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Neo asked.
“It’s most heinously early, dude. I didn’t have to wake up yet.” Ted yawned.
They went down a spiral staircase and emerged on the third floor.
“I wonder what Luke Skywalker’s doing now,” Ted said.
They turned left into a corridor, then right, and walked through a large ballroom-like room to the door on the other end.
“Whoa,” Ted said, marvelling happily at the room’s shiny décor.
They came out of the other end of the room, turned right, and went down a flight of steps. Straight ahead, and then they arrived outside the room where Marty and Verne were, the table lamp still on.
Ted noticed that Marty and Verne were still fast asleep. Marty rolled over in bed and said something about asparagus. Neo folded up the map and stuck it in his pocket. Ted sat down on Eddie’s sofa and sighed.
The doorbell rang downstairs, and he and Neo turned.
“Who’s that?” Ted asked, and followed Neo out the door and down the stairs to the kitchen. Neo opened the door, and they found themselves staring down at two boxes of freshly made hot pizza, with a post-it note tacked to it saying:
“From Freddy the Pizza Dude,” Ted read. “Whoa.”
Neo regarded the pizza box with more suspicion and less hunger than Ted.
“Maybe it’s poisoned.”
“It’s pizza, dude,” Ted said. He lifted up the boxes and carried them in as Frank, awakened by the doorbell, came down the stairs.
“Freddy dropped by, huh?” Frank said.
“Who’s he?” Ted asked.
“Apparently he used to work at a pizza joint, and one day he got killed in an accident there. Now and then he brings me a pizza… He brought two today. Phil probably told him you were here.”
“Who’s Phil?”
“He’s the one who haunts my car. Help yourself to the food. I’ll go wake the others.”
Ted happily complied, as Verne came bounding jubilantly down the stairs past Frank. He’d heard something about pizza, and he was hungry. He saw the pizza laid out on the table, and his eyes lit up.
Upstairs, Marty was the only one left in the room; Doc was still asleep next door.
“Marty?” Frank asked.
Marty stirred. “Mom, s’that you?” he mumbled, eyes shut. “I just had a horrible nightmare…” Marty rolled over onto his back. “I dreamt I got sucked into another universe and they told me I was fictional…”
Frank felt as though he’d just been dumped into a Back to the Future movie. He realised that he now had the power to make Marty repeat out in loud horror whatever words he chose to say. Like ‘1955?!’ or ‘twenty-seventh floor?!’ or ‘McFly farm?!’
Frank decided to spare the teen and not mess around with his brain’s pre-programmed reflex system.
“Sorry to break it to you, Marty, but uh, I’m not your mother,” Frank said.
He wondered if Marty would nonetheless snap his eyes open and yell ‘not your mother?!’, which he figured would be pretty funny.
Marty just opened his eyes, saw where he was, and looked disappointed.
“Come on down,” Frank said. “There’s pizza for breakfast. Better get there before Ted and Verne finish it all.”
“Okay.”
Doc was the last to come downstairs.
“Want some pizza?” Frank asked him.
Emmett shook his head. “I think we’d better be going soon.”
“So what did you tell them happened to your arm?” Verne asked Frank.
“I said I was trying out stunts with my new gun and accidentally shot myself. Luckily they didn’t ask too many questions.”
“Oh.”
Finishing his slice of pizza, Marty washed his hands and went over to the computer to check his e-mail.
From - hoedoeyoospeleethate@dictionary.com
To - futureboy85@hillvalley-online.com
Subject: Can you help me...Eye wante 2 bye a shepe. A ded shepe. Do u thinke it'ss ghooste is stile aronde? Cann u aske Frank 4 mee?
Thankssie[x]
Marty blinked. “Uh… Frank? Look at this.”
Frank came over and stared at the message. “No, I don’t think I’ve seen the ghooste of any ded shepe aronde recently. You could tell the sender to come over to New Zealand though. There’re lots of shepe to spare here. Some ded ones too, I bet.”
“Uh-huh…”
From - futureboy85@hillvalley-online.com
To - hoedoeyoospeleethate@dictionary.com
Subject: RE: Can you help me...Frank says he hasn’t seen any ghost of any dead sheep. He says you should come to New Zealand if you want to look for one.
- Marty.
#
“So I guess you’ll be leaving now, huh?” Frank asked when everyone was done eating.
“Yes,” Doc replied. “Thank you very much for letting us stay here.”
“And for the pizza,” Verne chipped in as the five visitors started towards the door.
Frank unlocked the door and opened it. “No problem.” He tousled Marty’s hair as the teen walked past. “Bye, kid.”
Marty turned and smiled. “Bye.”
Frank watched them from the doorway as they walked toward the time train, where Emmett did a double take when he saw the bloody mess on the locomotive. “What in the name if Sir Isaac H. Newton is that?” he muttered.
Oh, great, Neo thought as he recognised the remains of the poor bird whose death he had indirectly been responsible for. “I think it’s a bird,” he said lamely, walking up.
“What bird would be stupid enough to fly into a train?” Marty asked. “If this kind of thing happened all the time, animal lovers would’ve placed a ban on airplanes or something by now.”
Neo decided that it would not be a good idea to mention that the bird had been attracted by his really cool sunglasses.
Emmett shook his head. “Whatever it is, it’s too late to worry about now.”
The trio headed into the train where Ted and Verne were waiting, and got ready to set off through the space-time continuum again.
Chapter 3.8 »
#