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
- Back to the Future
- The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul
- The One with the Cheese
- What Happened Before Dinner
- Deus Ex Machina
- Dinner Et Cetera
Chapter Twenty-Five: Back to the Future
1st April 2004, Thursday The Real World
It rained. Frank stood by the windows of Room 437, gazing contemplatively at the rivulets of water making their way down the glass panes, occasionally merging into a small stream that would then speed up and slide away from view.
From the other side of the room, the steady tap of Neo’s fingers on the keyboard filled the air, pausing now and then, punctuated with the clicks of the computer mouse.
Ted was sitting at the foot of the bed and missing Bill. He wondered what his best friend would be doing now, wondered if they’d ever get to see each other again. Since childhood, the two of them had rarely been separated. Never before had they been literally worlds apart.
Next to him, Marty was feeling most egregiously bored.
Rain, rain, go away, come again another day, he thought.
“What are we doing here?” Marty asked rhetorically.
Ted shrugged. He hadn’t felt homesick for ages, and he didn’t want to be interrupted now that he was.
Marty got up and went over to see what Frank was looking at. It turned out that Frank was not really looking at anything, unless sheets of rainwater falling past the windows counted as something.
“What?” Frank asked, looking at Marty.
“Nothing,” the teen replied. “I’m just bored.”
“As Neo to let you use the computer,” Frank suggested.
“Dream on,” Neo muttered.
Marty left the room. Ted looked up, wondering briefly if he should join him, then decided against it and went back to being homesick.
Keith was standing outside the door to the control room, leaning against the wall and lost in thought. The sound of the closing door of Room 437 alerted him, and he turned as Marty came around the corner.
“Hi Marty,” he greeted.
“What’re you doing here?” Marty asked.
Keith shrugged. “Nothing much. You?”
Marty didn’t reply, so Keith went on. “Feel any symptoms of impending death yet?” he asked. “Nausea, dizziness, headaches?”
“No,” Marty replied tersely.
Keith stuck his hands into his pockets and went back to staring at the opposite wall. “Yeah, I guess it would take some time.”
“What’s it like,” Keith asked several seconds later, “knowing you’re not real?”
“I am real,” Marty said.
“So you say. I could program a computer to say the same thing. I bet Barney the Dinosaur thinks the same thing, but as we all know, he’s just a dinosaur from our imagination.”
“Who?” Marty asked.
“Oh, that’s right. You wouldn’t know about Barney yet.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Are you thirsty?” Keith asked.
“Why?”
“I could make you a cup of coffee or something.”
“So you’re gonna start being nice to us now?” Marty asked suspiciously.
“No. I’m just immensely bored right now. I need something to do.” Keith paused. “I could make you tea instead, if you like,” he offered.
“No thanks.”
“I mean, you’re here, so the machine works, and now I’ve got nothing left to work on.”
“What about finding a way to send us back?” Marty asked.
“Whatever for? As I said, ‘back’ doesn’t technically exist. Theoretically, yes, but not really… though I suppose it may be an easier option than having to look for a place to bury the bodies when you guys die. It’d be much more convenient to just zap the corpses off to a parallel universe where the police won’t find them,” he mused.
“You’re just sick,” Marty said.
“Thank you. Do you want to watch Back to the Future?”
Marty hesitated. “No.”
Keith grinned. “You know you want to. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Ever wanted to be on TV?”
“Not that way.”
Keith shrugged. He turned around and opened the door of the control room. “Come on,” he said, and went in while Marty hung back at the doorway in apprehension. Keith emerged shortly with the Back to the Future DVD box set in his hand. “I’ll start it up for you,” he said, and led the way to Room 436, Marty following uncertainly behind.
Marty contemplated grabbing Keith from behind and performing the Vulcan neck pinch on him; but then he realised that, firstly, he wouldn’t know what to do after that, and secondly, he didn’t know how to administer said Vulcan neck pinch.
Marty tried not to dwell too hard on the fact that Vulcans and their neck pinches were both fictional. He had the ungrounded feeling that if he did so, Mr. Spock might come out of one of the rooms and proceed to demonstrate just how fictional the neck pinch was.
Keith stuck a key card into the key card slot of Room 436 and opened the door. He held the door briefly for Marty, used the card to turn on the room’s electricity, then went over to the television set and turned on the DVD player. He put the disc in, got the remote control, selected the correct channel, and selected ‘PLAY’ when the menu loaded.
The screen turned black and the Universal Studios opening credits started playing. Standing by the bed, Marty watched them, stupefied.
“Want me to watch it with you?” Keith offered.
“I said I didn’t want to see it,” Marty said hollowly. His stomach did a figurative roll at the sight of one of the names in the credits.
My life is a Steven Spielberg movie, he thought in a dazed sort of way.
That’s Doc’s garage, he thought a moment later, his mind reeling uncomfortably.
“Would you like some popcorn?” Keith asked. He grinned. Then his gaze moved over to the decommissioned camera lying on the floor, and he grimaced. “That camera cost money,” he muttered. Keith went over to the fallen camera and picked it up, giving it a look-over.
Marty dropped heavily down on the bed, blue eyes fixated on the screen. He didn’t want to look, but at the same time he couldn’t not look…
Not much later, Marty heard his own voice coming through the speakers of the television, and a funny feeling arose in the back of his throat.
Shaking his head, Keith left the room with the camera and let the door close behind him.
Inside, Marty McFly stared helplessly at the television screen and fought the simultaneous urges to throw up and cry.
#
Staring at rainwater can eventually get boring, and so when Frank Bannister heard sounds from next door and registered the fact that Marty had left, he decided to go see what was happening there. He left the room and knocked on the door of Room 436. “Marty?” he asked. “Are you in there?”
The only response he got was the continued sound of the television. Frank turned and went back to Room 437; perhaps one of the other two had the key card. He rang the doorbell, and Ted soon answered the door.
“D’you have the key for next door?” Frank asked.
“Sure, dude.” Ted dug in his pockets and produced it.
“Thanks,” Frank said, taking it. Ted followed him out, and Neo mentally swore as he heard the door close, knowing that probably neither Frank nor Ted had taken the key for this room, which basically meant that the next time the doorbell rang, Neo would have to leave the computer and go answer it.
#
Marty didn’t look up when the door opened; he didn’t notice when Frank came in and stood by the bed, silently watching the movie. The Power of Love was playing in the background of the movie, which Marty had noticed with a weird feeling that was almost happy; a feeling that was covered up quickly by everything else.
“You skateboard really well,” Frank said softly.
Marty gave a start, his eyes darting towards the direction of the voice. Then recognition hit. “Frank…” he croaked.
No, it’s Michael, Frank thought randomly, then decided that Marty currently looked too pale to take a bad joke like that. He sat down on the bed next to Marty and looked at him. The teen’s eyes were back on the screen.
“You’re shaking,” Frank said.
Marty took a ragged breath and temporarily squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted so much to stop watching the movie, but at the same time he had to see it. His curiosity was too strong.
Frank unclenched Marty’s right fist, which was attempting to strangle a part of the bed comforter. “Calm down, Marty,” he said. “It’s just a movie. Be glad it’s not a sit-com with a laugh track and corny music.”
Some subconscious part of Marty’s brain registered that fact and acknowledged that, yes, that would be worse. The conscious part of his brain was engrossed in the movie, partly freaking out and partly watching the old, before-the-time-line-changed Jennifer on screen and realising how much he missed her. And even Strickland and the rest of Hill Valley…
His heart ached for the television screen to magically open up and suck him into the movie, back home. He then realised with a funny feeling that many Back to the Future fans around the world had probably had that same desire at some point or other in their lives, and he thought somewhat angrily that at least his longing was justified. He just wanted to go home, not get whisked off on some cool time travelling adventure.
“I wonder what Superman would think of all those little kids who go jumping out of windows, wearing their underwear outside their clothes with a towel tied round their necks,” Frank mused.
“I wonder what kind of toilet paper Batman uses,” he pondered aloud some time later.
Several minutes went by, by which time Marty had more or less stopped trembling and was gazing homesicked-ly at his onscreen family.
Frank got up. “I’ll go see what Ted’s up to,” he said, and left the room.
#
Ted Logan wasn’t particularly up to much. Frank had said not to go in after him, and Neo adamantly refused to open the door, so he had wandered off and through the open doorway of the control room, where he found Keith fiddling away with what looked like a broken camera. Keith gave him just a cursory glance before returning his gaze to the camera bits.
“Look what Neo did to this,” he said, indicating the pieces.
“Neo said you were watching us through the cameras,” Ted said warily.
Keith shrugged. “Big deal. They do that in shopping centres too, you know. And elevators. And these things cost money,” he added as an afterthought. “So… having fun?”
“Not really,” Ted said. “It’s becoming most heinously boring.”
“Marty’s watching a movie. You could join him,” Keith suggested.
“Frank told me not to go in.”
“What’s Neo doing?”
“He’s on the computer in the other room. He won’t let me in either.”
“So you’re stuck here with me, huh? Want me to make you a cup of coffee?”
“Nah.”
“Or you could be my first human subject in testing out my sub-meson averager,” Keith suggested.
“What’s that do?”
“It alters the sub-atomic particles of whatever’s in it, such that they become like those in this universe and are no longer regarded as foreign. Basically, if I use it on you, you probably wouldn’t end up dying of universal incompatibility and this universe would, technically, become your true home.”
“Why would I want to do that?” Ted asked.
Keith raised an eyebrow and poked at a dislodged camera lens. “Well, if you prefer to die, I’m not stopping you,” he said.
“We’re not going to die, dude. Marty told Doctor Brown where we were. He’s coming in his time machine to rescue us.”
At that, Keith looked up at Ted. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
Keith appeared to think for a moment, then a brief grin appeared on his face. “When’s he coming?” he asked casually.
Ted shrugged. “I don’t know. He hasn’t replied.”
“But I guess we’ll find out eventually, huh?” Keith said cheerfully. He got up from his chair, smiled, and ruffled Ted’s hair. “Thanks for the info.” He went over to the door, opened it, and gestured Ted out. “Just leave me alone for a while, okay?”
“Sure, dude,” Ted said, not sure what was going on. He went out, and Keith closed and locked the door before going back to his desk to do some serious planning.
Ted met Frank in the corridor.
“Where’d you go?” Frank asked.
“I was talking with Keith.”
“What about?”
Ted shrugged. “Nothing much.”
They turned down the corridor, and Frank knocked on the door of Room 437. “Hey, Neo, open up!”
“I tried that, dude,” Ted said. “He won’t listen.”
“Neo?” Frank called out again.
Inside the room, Neo calmly opened up another Internet window and ignored the knocking. How d’you like the taste of your own medicine, Bannister, huh? he thought.
“Maybe he’s dead,” Ted suggested from the other side of the door. “There’s this thing called spontaneous combustion where people just…”
“I don’t think Neo spontaneously combusted,” Frank interrupted. He started to give up and turn away, when a thought suddenly struck him. “Spontaneous combustion… Hey, where’d you get that idea?”
Ted regarded him questioningly. “I don’t know, dude. I just thought of it.”
“There was… a quote on IMDB about…” Frank paused. “You wouldn’t happen to know what Keanu Reeves’ PIN number is, would you?” he asked as casually as he could make it.
“1 2 3 4 5?” Ted hazarded.
“Really?”
Ted shrugged.
“Forget it then,” Frank said, realising that even if that was indeed the correct number, there was still the issue of getting hold of Mr. Reeves’ ATM card, which might turn out to be a little hard to borrow.
Frank thought of the unattainable 350 million dollars, and he felt a little sad.
Frank realised that there wasn’t much to do out there in the corridor.
“Would you mind if I go back in there?” he asked Ted, indicating the door behind which Marty was watching Back to the Future.
“Go ahead, dude.”
“Thanks.”
Frank unlocked the door and went in.
Ted realised that there wasn’t much to do out there in the corridor.
He went over to the next room and knocked. “Neo?” he called out. “Can I come in now?”
Oh no, not again, the door thought mournfully to itself as Ted went on knocking to no avail. Humans, the door thought bitterly.
Still no response came from inside the room. Ted leant resignedly against the wall, when an idea struck him. Brightening up, he started:
“Seventy-five green bottles, lying on the floor…”
The door soon came unlocked and was opened.
“Thanks, dude,” Ted said, but Neo was already walking back to the computer, looking frustrated.
“Why aren’t the lights on?” Ted asked as the door swung shut behind him.
“I prefer them off,” Neo said, sitting back down.
Torrents of rain fell past the windowpanes, the stormy sky outside casting a greyish-blue light into the room.
Ted wandered over to the computer and stood next to Neo. “What are you doing?”
“Looking things up.” Neo considered shooing the teen away and requesting some privacy, then changed his mind. Opening up a new Internet window, he typed a string of words into the search bar, hit ‘enter’ and then clicked on one of the results. The page loaded, he scrolled down, and he highlighted a paragraph of text. “Here… read this.”
Ted did so, and a grin spread across his face. “He crashed into a mountain?”
Neo gave a rare smile. ‘Yeah. And ruptured his spleen.”
“Whoa.”
Neo typed in another address into the URL bar, and continued to introduce Ted to more crazy exploits of one Keanu Charles Reeves. It made him suddenly feel a whole lot closer to the teen.
#
Frank tried to make his presence unfelt as much as possible; the movie was, after all, a display of Marty’s private life, and it didn’t seem right to intrude by watching it with him. Although there was, of course, that little fact that thousands of people around the world would have seen it.
Frank found the kettle and put some water on to boil. He was thirsty, and a cup of coffee or tea or just plain water wouldn’t do him any harm.
A CD case sitting by the television set caught his eye, and he picked it up. The Matrix, read the little plastic stick-on label. Frank put it back down and thought that it could make great blackmail material. He flipped through the magazines stacked by the TV, chose one, and sat down on the bed to read it, looking up now and then at the movie.
About one and a half hours later, it finished. Credits rolled to Huey Lewis and the News’ song ‘Back in Time’.
“How d’you turn this off?” Marty asked, still looking slightly green. Frank tried out the various remotes, and after accidentally altering the screen’s proportions and changing the language to Portuguese succeeded in getting it back to the DVD’s main menu. Music played amid a quick montage or shots and sound clips from the movie. Marty plugged his ears with his fingers and stared at his knees.
Frank found the arrows on the DVD remote, fiddled around and managed to select ‘Special Features’.
“Want to watch the making of your life?” he offered.
Marty shook his head.
“Outtakes… deleted scenes… make up tests?”
“No.”
Frank took out the DVD and put it back in its case. “What about the sequels?”
“Okay,” Marty said after some hesitation. The movie hadn’t been that bad after all. It helped to think of it as just some glorified home video with superb editing, a soundtrack and a seemingly omnipresent cameraman.
Frank popped in Back to the Future II and started up the movie, then went to pour himself and Marty cups of the now-cooled boiled water to drink.
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul
1st April 2004, Thursday
The Real World
About five minutes from the start of Back to the Future II, the doorbell rang in Room 436. Frank opened the door to see Adwin standing there and grinning at him.
“Shoo,” Frank said, and closed the door in Adwin’s face.
“Hi!” Adwin said to Neo six seconds later in the doorway of Room 437. Neo regarded him in a glazed sort of way, mostly the result of having spent too much time in front of the computer laughing at Keanu Reeves.
“Can I come in?” Adwin asked.
“…” said Neo, intending to say: “Why?”, but his brain didn’t seem to be working too well, mostly as a result of him having spent too much time in front of the computer laughing at Keanu Reeves. His hand therefore decided to take things into itself and opened the door to let Adwin in.
Adwin strolled in, grinned at Ted, and sat down on the bed.
“How’s it going, dudes?” Adwin asked.
“Not good,” Ted admitted.
“Getting bored, huh?” Adwin continued. “Welcome to the real world. Nothing interesting ever happens here.”
Two years into the future in a country halfway around the world from where Adwin was speaking, the author narrowly escaped being knocked down by an ambulance.
“Bogus,” Ted didn’t say.
“So… what’ve you two been doing?” Adwin asked, bouncing on the bed.
“It’s none of your business,” Neo said before Ted could open his mouth.
Adwin shrugged. “Fine.” He stopped bouncing on the bed because it was making him feel slightly nauseated. “Why don’t you get out of here?” he suggested. “The doors are unlocked.”
“We don’t have anywhere to go, dude,” Ted said.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to stay here either. Just get out on the streets… wander around… find a nice cardboard box to settle down in, or murder Keanu Reeves and take over his life… There’s a whole world out there. Maybe it’s not as interesting as the ones you guys came from, but it’s still something. D’you really want to spend all your time cooped up in a little hotel room?”
“Why not?” Ted asked.
“…That was a rhetorical question,” Adwin said, slightly miffed.
“What’s a rhet-“
“Forget it,” Adwin said. “Stay here till you rot, then, if that’s what you want.” He got off the bed and left the room.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Fifty-three green bottles, hanging on the-“
“Ted, shut up. You can’t sing.”
There was a moment’s silence. Ted looked at Neo. Neo looked back. They gained no insight whatsoever from this ocular activity, and looked away.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Ted asked in a way that came out sounding a lot more rhetorical than he’d intended.
Neo scratched his ear and gazed blankly at the computer screen. He gave up, turned off the computer, and went to look out the window, a part of him hoping to see just what Frank had been so intently staring at earlier that day. He saw nothing but traffic and buildings and people.
Ted discovered a cookie crumb on the carpet and wondered if he should eat it. He eventually decided to spare its life and put it back down.
“This has been a most egregiously boring day,” he concluded.
Neo saw a pedestrian picking his nose by a traffic light. He squinted, and saw the pedestrian then proceed to eat his nasal excavations. Neo turned away from the window and sat back down in the computer chair.
“Wanna play Twenty Questions?” Ted asked.
“No.”
“Charades?”
“No,” came the firm reply.
“Tic-tac-toe?”
Neo gave in, tore a sheet of paper off the hotel memo pad on the table, picked up a pen, drew a quick grid, and put an ‘X’ in the centre before passing it to Ted.
We get zapped into a parallel universe, and all we do is sit around playing tic-tac-toe, Neo thought.
They tied on all four of the tic-tac-toe games attempted and soon gave up playing. Several more minutes of non-activity followed, during which they just sat and listened to the television from the next room showing Back to the Future II.
Neo went to make some tea. He felt once again in a strangely British mood, and he knew that most British people derived large amounts of comfort from drinking tea. While waiting for the water to boil, Neo poked around the sachets of coffee, creamer, teabags, and sugar.
Ted’s eyes lit up at the sight of the sugar. He took a packet, tore it open, and emptied its contents into his mouth before Neo could stop him. Liking the taste, Ted reached out for another packet of sugar, and this time Neo grabbed hold of his hand to stop him. It was Neo’s honest opinion that the teen was already too hyper for his liking, and sugar would just make things worse.
Ted trudged despondently off to sit down on the bed and stare off into nothing as the last vestiges of sugar dissolved in his mouth. He got up and went to look out the window, wondering just what Frank and then Neo had been staring so intently at.
He saw some guy standing by the traffic light digging his young son’s nose and then eating whatever came out.
That is most heinously gross, Ted thought, and turned away from the window.
Neo went off into the bathroom. Ted saw the door close, and he grinned. Sugar! he thought happily, nipping over to the basket of drinks stuff. Now he could take all the sugar he w…
Ted blinked in stupefaction. The sugar was all gone.
“No way,” he whispered in disappointment.
The kettle clicked to announce it was done boiling. The toilet flushed, the tap ran, and Neo came out of the bathroom. He gave Ted a cursory glance, and then went to make his tea, dumping a teabag into a cup of hot water and extracting two sachets of sugar from his pocket.
Ted’s eyes travelled to Neo’s pocket. Sugar, he thought sadly, and went off to watch television.
We get zapped into a parallel universe, and all we do is sit around watching television, Neo thought, joining the teen after a sip of his freshly brewed tea left Neo with a slightly burnt tongue, and he decided it might be best to let the tea cool a little before any further attempts at drinking it.
Neo briefly toyed around with the idea of killing Keanu Reeves and taking over his life, as Adwin had suggested. He wondered where he could bury the body. Unless he burned the thing…
350 million dollars. Whoa.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The One with the Cheese
1st January 2000
Room 439, The Kenselton Hotel
The Real World
Looks like the world hasn’t ended yet, after all, were the first thoughts that went through Keith’s mind when he awoke. He shut his eyes again, not wanting to get up just yet.
There were sounds of someone else moving about in the room.
“Adwin, s’that you?” Keith mumbled. “You’re not s’posed to be here.”
“Ah, you’re up,” came a reply in a voice that was not Adwin’s. Yet it sounded familiar…
Keith’s eyes flew open and he bolted up in bed.
Dem looked coolly over and held out a cup. “Tea?” he offered.
“What… what are you doing here?” Keith spluttered.
“Oh, just checking up on you,” Dem said, sitting down on the bed. “You’ve grown,” he observed. “Oh, and Happy New Year, by the way.” He stirred the tea, realised that Keith didn’t seem to want any, and so took a sip himself.
“Is that mine?” Keith asked, looking at the tea.
“Yes it is. You weren’t up and I was a little thirsty; dimensional hopping does that to you, you know. So I made some tea. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Keith said, feeling more than a little dazed.
“I could make you some if you like,” Dem said.
“No… uh, you don’t have to…”
Dem shrugged. “All right then,” he said, and drank more tea.
Keith tried to move himself into a more dignified position on the bed.
“So how’s your little inter-dimensional machine coming along?” Dem asked.
“I…” Keith hesitated. “How did you know about that?” he blurted. “And that… that book… how did you know…”
Dem waved aside the question. “So does it work?” he asked.
“Huh?” I… uh… I’ve… tried…”
“Bringing things over from other dimensions?” Dem asked pleasantly, as though he were discussing the weather.
“Uh… yeah. Um, cheese,” Keith said lamely. He didn’t quite like the direction this conversation was thinking.
Dem raised an eyebrow. “Cheese,” he said.
“Yeah. I… uh, thought I’d start out with something small…”
“Did it work?”
“Sort of. I got mozzarella instead of cheddar.” Keith paused. “Tasted pretty good,” he added as an afterthought.
Dem raised his other eyebrow. “It is generally not wise to eat your experiments,” he said with a reproachful tone.
“Uh, yeah. I know. Uh, sorry.” Keith grimaced. He was not at his best in the mornings, especially not after having just woken up. And Dem was just making it worse.
Dem finished his cup of tea and got up. “Come on,” he said, placing the cup in the sink. “Let’s go see how things are going.”
He walked over to the door and looked back at Keith, still sitting up in bed. “Well?” he asked.
Keith mumbled something and got out of bed.
**
Dem whistled a cheery tune as he led the way to the room that housed the machines. “You first,” he said, stepping aside and letting Keith go in. Dem entered after him, gazed around the L-shaped room, and then headed for the row of computers. Next to them on the table lay a half-eaten hunk of mozzarella cheese on a plate with a knife next to it.
“What’re you doing?” Keith asked sleepily, seeing Dem sit down in front of one of the computers, do some clicking about, and then type furiously. Lines of complicated-looking computer code flew rapidly across the screen faster than it was possible for any human hands to type.
Dem’s fingers were a blur on the keyboard. Keith watched him with suspicious curiosity. He picked up the knife, cut himself a small slice of cheese, and chewed on it appreciatively.
“Helping you out a little,” Dem answered. He hit a few more keys, then moved away from the computer. “Try it now,” he said.
Doubtfully, Keith went over to the computer and keyed in several commands.
The machines hummed to life. The room shook a little. There was the distinctive sound of the space-time continuum being mercilessly ripped apart.
And then there was silence.
Keith went through the adjoining door out of the control room and into the larger modified function room where the actual inter-dimensional travelling took place.
In the middle of the clean white floor lay a lump of something yellow. Keith picked it up, broke off a piece, and stuck it into his mouth.
“Cheddar,” he said, with some surprise. “It worked.”
Dem gave him a look of utter incredulity. “Cheese?” he asked.
“Want some?”
“I give you the means to bring anything imaginable into this world, and you bring cheese?”
Keith looked a little disgruntled. He muttered something about not having had breakfast yet.
“You don’t,” Dem said, taking the cheddar out of Keith’s hand, “eat your experiments.”
“Right,” Keith said tersely, wanting his breakfast back. He gazed around the room, glancing at the various bits of machinery and starting to feel mad with Dem for some reason he couldn’t quite identify.
Dem popped some cheese into his mouth when Keith wasn’t looking.
“You don’t understand the potential of this machine,” Dem said, putting the rest of the cheese into his pocket and walking up to Keith’s side. “It can do a lot more than get you free cheese. This is ultimate power, Keith. The ability to harness the full powers of the multiverse. Anything imaginable – and then some – can be brought over. All for you.”
Keith shook his head slowly, staring off into space. “This is crazy,” he said quietly.
“Isn’t everything?” Dem asked. He turned and walked back into the control room.
Lost in his thoughts, Keith was only alerted to Dem’s departure when the machinery suddenly came loudly to life.
“Hey!” he shouted in the general direction of the control room. “What are you-“
There was a flash of light and a flwop sound and a piece of paper floated to ground out of nowhere. Curious, Keith walked over to it and picked it up.
On the paper was boldly printed two parallel lines in black.
They intersected.
Keith blinked.
He was staring at the paper with his mouth open when Dem came back out and walked over to his side.
“Intersecting parallel lines,” Dem explained.
Keith squinted and held the paper up in different directions.
“Optical illusion,” he finally decided. “I think,” he added in a more uncertain manner. He stared at the lines again. They were parallel, and they intersected. It made his brain hurt.
Keith released the sheet of paper, and it fluttered to the ground.[x]
“But of course,” Dem said, “what you really want… are people.”
Keith turned to look at him, a startled look in his eyes.
“What started it all, Keith?” Dem asked softly. “What made you want to break the barriers of the multiverse?”
Keith’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Dem smiled. He went back into the control room, leaving Keith staring soundlessly after him.
The machines powered up again, and this time the noise seemed to last for a longer time.
A coloured ripple of light flash through the air, and out of it suddenly fell a young woman in her mid-twenties. She hit the ground flat, her head whipping up in horrified panic at her sudden journey through the multiverse.
Keith just stared, a lump rising in his throat.
“Mom?” he whispered.
The woman had started hyperventilating. “Who are you?” she asked with barely controlled hysteria. “Where am I? Where is this… what happened to me?”
Dem came up to Keith’s side and regarded the newcomer calmly. “Technically, her name’s Clarisse,” he informed Keith. “She just a movie character. I thought it would be more… interesting.”
“How can this be happening?” Keith asked softly.
Dem shrugged. “Why not?” He stuck his hand into his pocket, broke off a piece of cheese, and put it into his mouth.
Keith just continued staring at Clarisse.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked in a panicky tone, gathering herself off the ground and backing into a wall, looking wildly about her. “Let me out of here!” she screamed, more than a little unnerved by the way Dem and Keith were observing her.
Clarisse was used to screaming. She was, after all, just another one of those pretty little things who go screaming at pretty big things like giant mutated armadillos from outer space.
And then Clarisse saw what was happening to her left arm, and she screamed again.
Its flesh was undulating in ways that were not natural. Every now and then streaks of psychotic colour would shoot along it, shifting, changing…
Keith gave a start.
“What’s happening to her?” he asked Dem.
“Dimensional incompatibility,” Dem replied casually. “The bigger and more complex the thing you bring over, the faster and more intense the effects. The machine’s not quite perfected yet, but I’ll leave it to you to fix that.”
“But… why can’t you-“
Clarisse was now on the ground, writhing in pain and screaming fit to wake the undead. The dimensional incompatibility effects had spread through more of her body, strange and unpleasant sensations overwhelming her from all over.
Keith hurtled over and dropped to her side, taking in the sight of her suffering.
“No…” he said. “No…”
“She’s not real, you know,” Dem said. “She’s fictional.”
“Stop it,” Keith said through gritted teeth.
“It’s a little too late now,” Dem said. He ate more cheese.
Clarisse retched violently on the floor, choking up on her vomit, her body still shaking.
Then she gave two final jerks and was still.
The ripples of colour still surfaced here and there on her skin, rippling along it, but they were all that moved.
Keith cried.
“Three minutes and five seconds,” Dem said, checking his watch. “That’s how long she lasted. You’ll have to work on that. Meanwhile, here’s some advice – it’s always easier to break into universes where there’s already been some meddling with the space-time continuum. Connected universes are usually affected as well to some extent. In fact,” he said, digging into another pocket and extracting a small piece of paper, “I’ve discovered one such opening while on my travels. Here you go.”
He handed the paper to Keith, who took it without looking at it, his eyes still on Clarisse’s still form.
“Have a good day,” Dem said cheerfully, and vanished.
On the paper was written:
Back to the Future
Emmett Brown creates portal, end-March 2004
Easiest path.
The Matrix, The Frighteners, also affected
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure – same universe as Back to the Future
#
2nd January 2000
1:06 am
Keith hated the situation he was in. The machine was supposed to have been his invention, all of it, the result of his own work, not helped on with un-requested assistance from Dem. At the same time, without Dem’s help, he knew he would not have managed so much.
He didn’t like being in debt to some mysterious old man.
And Clarisse – Dem had just stood by and watched as she had suffered, as she had died… The morning had grown late, Keith had fully woken up, the fog had cleared from his mind, and the true horror had hit.
The disposing of her body that night was something that would continue to haunt Keith for the rest of his life, and it was because of it that he was now pacing fitfully around his room at one o’clock in the morning.
Dimensional incompatibility had wrecked most of the body, but it was still recognisable enough as that of a human who bore identical physical resemblance to his young mother. Somehow or other he had managed to get up the nerve to wrap it up in garbage bags and then – several hours ago – drive it far away where he dumped it.
It had been as though he were her murderer, what with all that sneaking about; and in an indirect sort of way, he realised that he was.
It sickened him.
“It’s Dem’s fault,” he muttered under his breath, executing a U-turn at the windows and pacing back down in the other direction. “It’s Dem’s fault. He did it.”
Keith threw himself backwards onto his bed and lay there, legs dangling off the foot of the bed and breaths still coming quick as he glared at the ceiling.
It’s all right, he tried to tell himself. She didn’t feel a thing. It wasn’t her. It was Clarisse, that idiot from that stupid B-grade horror flick she did in ’71. She’s fictional. Dem said so. She’s not real. Didn’t feel a thing…
Eventually he fell into a fitful sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: What Happened Before Dinner
1st April 2004, Thursday
The Real World
Richard Murdoch paid for the newspaper and walked off briefly scanning the front page. Nothing caught his eye; that is, until he looked up from the newspaper and saw someone strangely familiar sitting on a bench a little way from him.
Richard shook his head. Nah, it can’t be, he thought, but was unable to keep his gaze away from Luke Skywalker. He wasn’t the only one, though. There were quite a few other people looking at Luke, for the young Jedi-in-training stood starkly out among the people of this universe.
Richard told himself that it was probably just some Star Wars fan dressing up, but he failed to convince himself.
His son had said he’d seen Neo; perhaps Rupert hadn’t been making it up after all, if Luke was here too. If it was Luke. It seemed to be a day where movie characters roamed the land.
Richard’s eyes travelled to the lightsaber hilt stuck in Luke’s utility belt. Serve him right, perhaps, for not believing his son. In his mind, he heard Rupert’s voice chiding him: “I told you so.”
Richard went a little closer. Luke looked up at him momentarily, then dropped his head back down. But that single glance seemed to confirm that it was probably not just some look-alike fan; the man on the bench looked every bit like Luke Skywalker or at least Mark Hamill, and Richard was pretty sure that the actor didn’t look that young any more.
Mark Hamill has a son that age, Richard thought, in another attempt to grab on to reality. The little voice in his head told him to stop thinking up excuses and just admit to himself that, yes, his fictional childhood hero was sitting right there in front of him, and no amount of denying would make him go away.
Then Luke looked up again and spoke to him, haltingly: “Excuse me… I’m sorry, but, uh, could you give me some money for food? I haven’t eaten all day, and I don’t have any cash…”
In normal circumstances, Richard Murdoch would never have given a complete stranger money, for food or otherwise. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and he saw the sincerity in Luke’s eyes along with his desperate hunger.
“Sure,” Richard said. “Come with me. I’ll get you something to eat.”
This could be his good deed for the day, Richard thought as he watched Luke wolf down a plate of spaghetti. Or perhaps this was just a chance to make up for his scepticism.
“Do you have somewhere to go for the night?” Richard asked.
Luke looked up temporarily and swallowed a mouthful of food. “I’m trying to get home,” he said.
Richard nodded. “I wish you luck.”
Later that evening back in the hotel room, Richard called Rupert to him.
“I saw Luke Skywalker,” Richard told his son.
“Really?”
Richard nodded seriously. “Yeah.”
Rupert smiled. “I believe you, Dad.”
#
21st December 1985, Saturday
Hill Valley, California
Steven Dent quavered, grasping hold of his cup of tea for comfort as he repeated his statement about twenty-four hours.
“I know about the procedure,” Captain Logan spat. “But I think you’re missing the point here, officer. It’s three days before Christmas Eve, and my son has gone missing four hundred miles from home. Is that too hard for you to comprehend?”
“I…” said Steven Dent. He looked at his cup of tea for reassurance. It looked back at him, calm and milky brown as always.
“Uh, yeah,” Steven said, cradling his cup of tea. “I, uh, understand you perfectly, sir…”
Minutes later, both reports had been lodged, and Steven retreated to his office with his tea as the police cars were dispatched to search for the missing teens.
“My Preciousssss…” Steven murmured, eyes half-closed as he stroked the cup’s warm body.
Lifting the cup of tea to his mouth, he breathed deeply, inhaling the sweet aroma of freshly brewed tea. A slow smile spread across his face, chasing away the memories of Captain Logan and his demands.
“Ahhhhh…” he sighed, savouring the moment.
“It’s just you and me, baby,” Steven whispered seductively to his cup of tea, cradling it protectively in his hands. “Just you and me. No more crazy guys from out of town trying to persuade us to go against normal procedure, oh no. Just you and me, as it should always be, my Preciousss…”
At the front of the rented house, Bill sat on the doorstep gazing out into the distance and missing Ted. Lewis sat next to him with a piece of paper, composing lyrics for a new band song. Jennifer came out to join them. “I called the McFlys,” she said. “They aren’t home.” She sat down next to Bill.
Bill pulled out a blade of grass and looked at it before chucking it aside. It hadn’t been that bad after all, he reflected. Captain Logan had given him and Lewis a brief lecture about responsibility, but it seemed that he was too worried about Ted’s disappearance to do much scolding. Now he was out there with the rest of the police, searching…
Bill had the feeling that it would be no use. He hadn’t seen or heard Ted leave the house that morning, and there was no other way out from where the telephone was situated. Ted had just vanished, that was all. Out of this world. They wouldn’t find him in Hill Valley; that much Bill was sure.
#
Frank found the correct button on the remote control, and the DVD player ejected the disc, cutting short the credits of Back to the Future III.
Marty sat on the bed with a glazed look in his eyes, partly due to having stared at the television set for so long at a shorter distance from it than that recommended by optometrists if you wish to retain good eyesight.
Frank kept the DVD and then sat down next to Marty and joined him in gazing dazedly at the blank television screen that now reflected them and the room.
“Are you hungry?” he asked after a while.
“What time is it?” Marty mumbled, eyes still on the screen.
Frank looked at the clock on the DVD player. “7:46.”
Marty acknowledged this bit of information in silence. He didn’t want to talk if possible, didn’t want to hear his own voice coming out of his mouth after he’d heard it coming from the television speakers.
Marty decided he needed the toilet. He got up from the bed and walked unsteadily into the adjoining bathroom.
Frank lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. He had a headache, partly due to having stared at the television set for so long at a shorter distance from it than that recommended by optometrists if you wish to retain good eyesight. He heard the sound of the toilet being flushed, and then the tap running as Marty washed his hands.
In the bathroom, Marty dried his hands on a fluffy hand towel, gazed hesitantly into the mirror, and decided that he looked more or less like a member of the living dead – a far cry from the version of himself he’d just watched in three movies.
Marty tried to look less pale. He went back into the main room and got himself a cup of water.
#
1st April 2004, Thursday
The Real World
Several minutes later, Frank rang the doorbell of Room 437.
Neo eventually answered it, looking half-asleep with his hair sticking up at odd angles. Inside the room, Ted laughed as a talking yellow sponge said something to a talking pink starfish on TV.
After several more minutes of aimless hanging around, the four of them decided that the issue of dinner could not be put off any longer. Frank pointed out that since he was the one who had risked his sanity to go Out There to buy lunch, he was not going to do so again.
After a good five minutes of debating, Neo finally gave in and agreed to go. He had to admit that he was practically dying to get out of the confines of the room, and this at least gave him a reason to do so.
Being the only two with usable – albeit slightly outdated – money, Marty and Ted were forced to pay up for the second time that day. As of lunchtime, all the cash that Frank had had was in New Zealand dollars, and they had no reason to think that the contents of his wallet had changed or increased in any way since then.
It was dark outside, which Neo figured was a good thing: there was a substantially lower risk of anyone recognising him. And besides, he had the really cool sunglasses with him. Frank was about to make some comment on just how inconspicuous the really cool sunglasses made a person, then decided that it was too dark to really matter and merely advised Neo to take the stairs down instead of the lift.
In the end, Neo ditched the idea of using the sunglasses because for some reason there were fingerprints on the lenses and he couldn’t see clearly with them on. It also happened to be night, and there wasn’t much sense in wearing sunglasses at night. They had a certain tendency to impair your vision, and although they made you look cool to some extent, there was nothing very cool about bumping into things because you couldn’t see them.
“Oh, and I really don’t think you should do so,” Frank added, “but there’s this girl working at McDonald’s who’ll give you a free ice cream in exchange for an autograph.”
Pocketing the money, Neo left the room and went down to the ground floor via the staircase. On his way down, some guy who was climbing up to the third floor saw him and fainted. Other than that, though, nothing of much interest happened. Neo reached the bottom of the stairs and opened the door.
Cool night breeze hit him as he stepped out. Neo stood there in the doorway for a while, looking out into the darkness and tasting the freedom just out of his reach.
Then he set off, heading in the direction of the small and inconspicuous café Frank had told him about.
He should have borrowed someone’s jacket, Neo thought, as he walked down the pavement. The temperature was a little too low for his liking. He turned the corner, and saw a figure huddled by the side of an alley. He glanced briefly at him and was about to look away when the glint of shiny metal hanging by the side of the figure caught his eye. Neo stared. It looked uncannily like a lightsaber… his eyes travelled up to the face of its sleeping owner, and his heart nearly skipped a beat. Luke Skywalker?
It can’t be, Neo thought. Probably just some guy who happens to look like him…
Yeah, and with a lightsaber, because that sure looks like one.
It’s not possible.
Why not?
Because… uh…
Neo didn’t know how to answer himself. Shaking his head, he went on and turned right into the welcoming warmth of the café. There were two other customers sitting at a table by the side, but neither looked up when he entered. Neo scanned the menu above the counter, trying to see what he could get for four people with the cash he had.
Coming to a decision, he walked up to the counter and placed his order, trying not to look at the man behind it any more than necessary.
So far, so good, he thought, as the man took his order and went over to the back of the café. Neo glanced casually around the place, when he realised that the other two customers were staring at him. Overcome with a sudden feeling of self-consciousness, he turned back to the counter and tried to appear interested in the price of steak and mushroom pies.
He didn’t like people staring at him. He really did not like people staring at him, because it made him very nervous, but he bet that the two guys at that table were doing just that, and he wished that they would stop, because he really didn’t like people staring at him…
His fingers tapped out a rapid rhythm on the countertop. Ten seconds later, Neo stole a quick look to see if the two men were still staring at him.
They were.
He wished that the café guy would hurry up.
The food finally arrived, and Neo took the bag with relief. Now all he had to do was walk out the door, and he’d be saf…
“Are you Keanu Reeves?”
Neo froze in his steps, two metres away from freedom.
Oh, s***.
Closing his eyes, Neo took a deep breath and let it out, then he turned slowly to face the two guys.
“My name,” he said as firmly as he could, “…is Neo.”
One of the men raised an eyebrow.
Neo turned and walked with deliberate steps out the door. Then, when he was sure the people in the café could no longer see him, he ran all the way back to the hotel.
#
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say about irony: “Guide HQ said that I should make this entry really ironic, but I’m zarking tired now and I don’t give a swut about what they think. I only joined up for the fringe benefits. So zark off and go read something else.”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say about the writer of that entry: “Sacked.”
According to the world renowned Internet Movie Database, more commonly known as IMDB.com, Mark Hamill is one pretty rich guy – actors tend to be. Rich ones, anyway. It was therefore ironic that on that April night in 2004, Luke Skywalker, the character who had made him famous and one of the most well known fictional people in the world, had to make do with sleeping in an alleyway like some bum.
He was hungry, cold, and lost.
And confused.
And therefore understandably miserable.
Luke didn’t know what had woken him. He stared wonderingly at the alley wall opposite him, before remembering with a muted jolt where he was. Turning to his left, he discovered an old, battered copy of The Coxford Singlish Dictionary, placed there by courtesy of the Infinite Improbability Drive. Flipping through the newly-arrived book, Luke soon gave up and put it back down.
That was when he felt a breath of wind disrupt the otherwise still air. There was nothing very significant about the wind itself; what startled him was the sudden sensation of being briefly reunited with the Force, a sensation that disappeared the moment the wind died away.
The night suddenly seemed a whole lot quieter. The sound of traffic grew muted; a child’s cry in the distance was reduced to a mere whisper. Along the roads, the light from the streetlamps suddenly took on a faded quality.
The zephyr wafted by again. Luke was standing up now and facing it, prepared this time… although for what, exactly, he could not be sure. He felt the Force flowing along with the strange breeze; merely a hint of it, but that was enough. Luke made a mental grab at it, and held on, pulling it towards him, his eyes closed, reaching out with his mind and with his senses…
When he opened his eyes again, the streets of Los Angeles were gone. He was standing on a grassy plain in the dark, a road before him and a small house to his far right down the road.
A warm light was shining though the windows of the house. Feeling as though he were in a dream, Luke made his way towards it.
The thirteen o’clock wind had struck again.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Deus Ex Machina
21st November 1895, Thursday
Hill Valley, California
It had long been a dream of Emmett’s to enable inter-dimensional travel in the time train, ever since that fateful incident in which they had ended up in the alternate reality, 1985-A, where Biff Tannen ruled Hill Valley. He wondered if it would be possible to revisit such alternate realities – albeit better ones – at will, without needing to alter history first.
A year before, he had formulated the basic way of making it work, but had not discovered how to make the time train travel to specific dimensions.
Emmett had spent a good amount of his time studying the computers’ early records of the readings from the device he’d created for him and Marty to communicate, paying special attention to the points where they had skewered from the norm, signalling the entrance of different universes. Yet that was all he could do; he had no idea how to translate those readings into identifiable universes that could be travelled to.
On this night, Emmett was in a dilemma. Marty’s SOS still showed on the computer screen in the room next door to his laboratory. In the laboratory, Emmett was frantically pacing the floor and muttering to himself, occasionally pulling at his untidy white hair or absent-mindedly putting various tools between his teeth, taking them out, waving them about, and returning them to the places from whence they came.
Emmett knew that just about every second counted and that it was just unwise to waste so much time pacing up and down. This knowledge, however, served only to increase his agitation.
Marty was being held captive in some foreign universe, and the teen had contacted him, trusting that Emmett would somehow have a solution. But Emmett did not have a solution. The time train at present could no more travel to other dimensions than a penguin could obey a command to dress up in drag and dance the hula in order for its actions to be caught on tape and the footage used to disprove a point.
Every second counted. This was not a normal day when, to get more time, all Emmett had to do was take a little trip in it. The space-time continuum was gradually falling apart, all throughout time. It didn’t matter when you were; when the time came, everyone and everything would be simultaneously affected, your four-year-old self sucked into a vortex of destruction at precisely the same time as your hundred-year-old self. Naturally this would result in no end of paradoxes, which would in all probability cause the space-time continuum to give up trying to work them all out and choose instead the much easier method of blowing up.
Emmett came to a halt in front of a wall. He let out his breath, took a fresh one in, and continued in his frantic pacing.
“What do I do?” he muttered. “What do I do?” he demanded of a portrait of Isaac Newton. “What do I –“
“Hello there.”
“AAAAAGGHH!”
Emmett fell back against the wall, knocking over bits of miscellanea in the process.
“Need some help?” Dem offered.
“”How did you get in here?” Emmett hollered.
Dem shrugged.
“Who are you?”
“Well, I’m mysterious, I’m old, and I’m a man. They call me the Mysterious Old Man.”
Emmett’s mouth moved in ways that indicated that he had a lot of things to say, but didn’t know how to say them.
“You can call me Dem,” Dem said.
“Aah… Wh… wh… b… y…”
“Need some help rescuing your friend?” Dem asked. In his hands was a flat metal box with an LCD screen and several coloured buttons on one end, and a lot of wires on the other end. He placed the box on the cluttered desk and patted it.
“Everything’s programmed in here,” Dem said. “You’ve just got to connect it to the time circuits and the rest of the train. This big red button here turns it on. The first green button here sets the coordinates for where Marty and co. are. Second green button is for this universe, namely yours, Marty’s, and Ted’s – Ted’s one of the guys you’ve got to rescue. Third is for Neo’s universe, fourth for Frank’s. The purple button over there doesn’t do anything, but I thought it looked pretty. Look, I’ve written it out here for you so you won’t get confused,” Dem said, pointing to the masking tape labels over each button. “When you press one, this screen will give you the exact coordinates for the respective universe, with the date it currently is over there with respect to how much time has passed since the captive was taken out of his world; although the destination time will be that of the current universe you’re in. The time circuits will reflect whatever information is needed. It’s really all very simple.”
“W… blg… g…” Emmett said. “What?” he finally managed to splutter.
“Oh, and don’t worry about the rips and eddies in the space-time continuum,” Dem said. “They’re not your fault. I made most of them. The effects just seem to be more obvious in universes where people like you mess about with space-time in general. It sort of aggravates the rips, I think. But the point is that they’ve been around for quite a while. Fun things to create, they are. One day I hope that the cumulative effects of all those little tears in the fabric of space-time will bring the entire continuum crashing down. But it’ll be a while before that happens, and when it does, you’ll be too busy being wiped out of existence to worry about it.”
Dem looked at Doc. “Do you intend to stand there all day?” he asked. “People need rescuing.”
Emmett just continued staring at him wide-eyed.
Dem sighed. “Oh, all right, I’ll do it for you.” He ambled over to the time train with his box and fiddled about with the wiring.
Emmett meanwhile found his tongue. It had been in his mouth all the while, the naughty thing. “What reason do I have to trust you?” he asked Dem.
“None at all,” Dem admitted. “But your objectives are precisely in line with mine. You get to rescue your friend, and all that mucking about in space-time will help bring my Armageddon a little nearer. It’s a win-win situation. There. It’s ready. Get in that train. People are waiting.”
Dem pushed the red button. The LCD screen on the metal box lit up with a ‘HELLO THERE!’ He pressed the first green button. Numbers flashed on the screen, and the time circuits changed their destination display to ‘APR 01 2004 20:35’.
“Cheerio,” Dem said. He got out of the train, walked past Doc’s desk, and vanished.
On the time circuits, the destination time changed to 20:36.
Chapter Thirty: Dinner Et Cetera
1st April 2004
Room 437, Kenselton Hotel
The Real World
Dinner that night in Room 437 was a fairly quiet affair that consisted mostly of biting, chewing, swallowing and digesting. The four of them didn’t have much to talk about, save a short grouse from Marty regarding the depletion of his week’s pocket money. Ted then pointed out that his money had also contributed to the food fund, and Marty therefore proceeded to explain to the younger teenager that a larger percentage of the fund had been from his truly, and would Ted like him to get out a calculator and prove it? Ted said no, it was okay, he believed him.
Other than that, dinner that night in Room 437 was a fairly quiet affair that consisted mostly of biting, chewing, swallowing, digesting, and the author repeating sentences.
Nothing much of interest happened, so we’ll just fast forward to the time when they were done eating and Frank decided that he was bored and wanted to go out for a walk. It was the night, after all, and a pretty dark one too, so what better time was there to go for a little stroll without having to worry about the risk of being seen?
Frank left by the back staircase, leaving the other three alone in the room. Neo went over to the computer and logged onto the Internet.
Sitting on one of the beds, Marty and Ted looked at each other.
“So… where’d we stop at? Seventy-five, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Seventy-five green bottles
Lying on the floor
Seventy-five green bottles
Lying on the floor…”
Neo swore, shut his eyes, and counted quietly but firmly down from ten.
“And if one dumb person were to kick one out the door
There’ll be seventy-four green bottles
Lying on the floor.”
Neo cheated, breaking off at six, and whipped around in the swivel chair. “Can you two either shut up or go next door?” he asked way more calmly than he felt.
There was a moment’s pause, during which Ted realised the pointlessness of going next door to sing about bottles where no one could hear them. He sighed and flopped backwards onto the bed. Kicking off his shoes, he edged higher up the bed and settled down on the pillow.
Marty muttered something about taking a shower and went off into the bathroom which, due to the presence of towels there, was at present the most massively useful place an interdimensional traveller could be.
Marty emerged ten minutes later with his hair dripping wet and a towel slung around his neck. He hung around for a while, discovered that Ted had fallen asleep, threw his massively useful towel to dry over a chair and left for Room 436.
Soon after he left, the computer beeped and a small sign popped up in a corner announcing the arrival of Doc’s e-mail reply. Neo abandoned his efforts to hack Keanu Reeves’ bank account and turned his attention instead to the message.
From - julesvernefan@yahoo.com
To - futureboy85@hillvalley-online.com
Subject: RE: HELP!Marty, I can get you out of there now. I just have to know exactly where you are in that universe. ‘A hotel somewhere’ isn’t descriptive enough.
Please reply asap.
- Doc
Neo sat down and typed.
From - futureboy85@hillvalley-online.com
To - julesvernefan@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: HELP!Dr. Brown,
Neo here. Marty’s not around at the moment, but I’ll tell him about your message later.
We’re at the Kenselton Hotel in L.A., fourth floor, rooms 436 and 437.
Thanks.
Neo hit the ‘send’ button and sat back in the chair, enjoying the quiet of the night. He glanced over at the bed, saw Ted fast asleep, then turned back to the computer screen and opened up a game of Minesweeper.
#
Reaching the door of the house, Luke hesitated. He wondered what he was going to say to the owner of the house. He barely had any idea as to what was going on. He could ask for lodging, perhaps, but that seemed more normal than his circumstance warranted; something a passing traveller would say rather than one who had just been plonked clueless-ly in the middle of a new world.
It was as he was thinking that he noticed how strange the light seemed. There were no moons in the sky, and the only ground lighting was that from the house; yet the whole place was lit with a dim radiance of unknown source.
Luke finally decided that it was pointless just waiting around. He raised a hand and knocked on the door.
When nobody answered his second knock, he tried the knob and found it turned easily. Cautiously, he opened the door and stepped into the room.
A fairly large wooden table took up most of the centre, and on it was piled huge amounts of all kinds of food. Some looked vaguely familiar to Luke; most others he had never seen before. On one side, a door led out to another room, and opposite to that wooden stairs climbed above the ceiling.
All around could be seen a curious collection of other things that seemed to have come from all over the space-time continuum, from ancient-looking ornaments to a futuristic computer-like object sitting in a corner of the room. Everything looked out of place; yet at the same time they complemented each other in an unusual way.
Luke moved towards the table, almost salivating at the sight of the food yet not daring to take any. He didn’t know who this place belonged to; what if its owner caught him stealing? By chance, Luke then looked up and he saw the plaque affixed to the wall opposite the door he had come in by.
Pause here, you weary travellers,
The road ahead is long.
Here may you find the rest you need.
He supposed it was all right then. Pulling out one of the chairs, Luke sat down and hungrily attacked the food.
When Luke had eaten his fill, he got up to take a better look around. He went through the side-door and emerged in what looked like a kitchen. Boxes of supplies lined one wall, and adjacent to that another door led out into a small grassy yard behind the house.
Luke went back into the main room and headed up the stairs. On the upper floor were six beds situated parallel to each other. Opposite them were two bathrooms in a different fashion from what Luke was used to seeing, but he soon discovered how most things worked and had a quick wash up before going over to the bed furthest from the stairs to continue his previous interrupted sleep. The plaque below had said he could rest here, after all. Luke put his senses on alert while he slept, just in case any danger might arise.
He could look for answers later.
Chapter 2.31 »
#