Wayfarers of the Space-Time Continuum

Written by Anakin McFly

Chapter One: Departure

The Kenselton Facility for Quantum Research Control Room #12
Kenselton Hotel

Thomas ‘Neo’ Anderson scanned through the complicated diagrams on the computer screen, checking through the various numbers that ran between them. Somewhat satisfied, he turned in his swivel chair to face the others behind him in the small control room.

“How’s it?” Frank Bannister asked.

“It looks okay,” Neo replied. “I’m not really sure how the thing works, but we’ve got nothing to lose… Where’s Keith?”

Ted Logan grinned. “We locked him in a most convenient broom cupboard.”

“Uh-huh.” Neo swivelled back to face the computer screen. He ran his gaze down it once more, then typed on the keyboard. “I’ll give us one minute…” He hit the ‘enter’ key. A small countdown counter popped up and started, well, counting down.

Marty McFly moved out of the way to give Neo space to get off the chair, and then the four of them headed through the adjoining door into the much bigger modified-function-room where they had first arrived.

The machines that ran the side of one wall were now humming and blinking, ready to do their job. The four travellers walked to the middle of the room and stood there.

“I guess that’s it, then,” Frank said.

“Yeah.” Marty glanced nervously at the closed door of the control room. “What if it doesn’t work?”

No one answered him. Neo just stared at his feet. His feet stared back at him.

Marty looked around at the other three whom he’d spent the last one-and-a-half days with. It wasn’t long, but they’d grown to become friends in that time… no that there had been much of a choice. When you have to spend more than a day cooped up in a poky little hotel room with three other people, it’s usually a good idea to be friends. The other alternative is much more dangerous, and might result in the loss of a pretty well-liked life.

They were four movie characters who had always thought themselves to be real until a scientist named Keith had zapped them into this world by the means of a revolutionary new technology discovered by the Kenselton Facility for Quantum Research. Not that the rest of the facility had much of an idea as to what Keith had been doing. As far as most of them were concerned, he had only been experimenting with transporting little particles from other universes into this one.

So now, here they were, trying to find a way back. A way home. A way into worlds that Keith repeatedly insisted were fictional, though they never really believed it. They refused to believe that their memories and all they had ever known were mere creations that had come into existence only at the point of their arrival into the ‘real world’.

They believed that home still existed, somewhere out there.

Without looking at the teen, Frank tousled Marty’s hair as a way of saying goodbye. Fourteen-year-old Ted restlessly shifted his feet around and stuck his hands into his pockets. When he’d been taken from the same universe as Marty, the year had been 1985. The events of the movie responsible for his existence would not come to pass until three years time, and they might not come to pass at all.

They waited for the minute to be over.

In the control room on the computer, the zeroes clicked into place.

The machines stepped up the volume of their humming. At the corners of the white ceiling, the strange contraptions there lighted up, filling the room with an eerie white radiance as a high, keening noise sounded out from the machines. Then, suddenly, all the noise stopped.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

There was a terrible ghastly noise.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

When the light returned to a comfortable level, the room was empty.

Chapter Two: Joe's

The Nexus

Marty had closed his eyes when the light had become unbearable, and now he wasn’t too sure if he wanted to open them. He wondered if he was dead. Then he wondered if he’d be able to wonder if he was dead if he truly were dead. He was lying on something that felt strangely like grass, which then made him wonder if there was grass in the afterlife.

Something poked him, and Marty yelped. His eyes flew wildly open, and it took his mind a few seconds to register the fact that the brown eyes staring puzzledly at him in the dark belonged to Ted and not some strange creature that went around poking dead people.

During the few seconds it took his mind to realise this, Marty did a considerable bit of screaming, which served only to start Frank screaming as well and to make Ted wonder if maybe prodding Marty had been a bad idea after all.

Screaming is like yawning. It’s contagious.

“Marty?” Ted asked hesitantly, when everyone was done screaming. “Are you okay, dude?”

Marty just stared blankly at him with his mouth still hanging open, when reality kicked in and he closed his mouth. “Yeah…” he said. “Yeah, I’m fine… Why’d you poke me for?” he demanded, in an effort to cover up his embarrassment at screaming at nothing.

Ted shrugged. “I just wanted to check if you were alive, dude.”

“Am I?”

“I guess so.”

Propping himself up, Marty surveyed the new world they had been dumped into. Their plan to get home had apparently not worked.

It was, as Marty discovered, indeed grass that grew below him, although in the darkness it was hard to tell. What light they had came from the stars twinkling above, stars that – if he were any of a stargazer, which he wasn’t – were arranged in patterns no one on Earth had ever seen.

Before them lay a road; not so much a road as a simple dirt track, one that stretched out to their left and right as far as Marty could see. It was as Marty was staring at the road that he realised that the left side of it grew increasingly more illuminated, and as he followed it with his eyes, his gaze soon landed on a small, warmly-lit building in the distance.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Neo was sitting up on the grass some distance from them, gazing silently at the same building.

“Neo?” Marty asked. “What’s that?”

Neo didn’t reply, so Ted crawled up to him and prodded him. Neo batted the teen’s hand aside and got up. “Come on,” he said.

The others got to their feet with varying degrees of enthusiasm and followed Neo, stepping from the grass onto the dirt road and then back onto the grass again. The building loomed nearer, and it was not long before they could make out the neon letters that stood above its doorway.

‘Joe’s’.

Frank frowned slightly when he saw that. After being yanked goodness how far through space and time, he found it a little hard to accept that they had landed in a world where the only building in a long way was called ‘Joe’s’. It just didn’t comply with his notion of what the universe should be like. Not that many things did.

They walked on, the only sound that of their shoes rustling through the grass. After some time, though, strains of music could be heard emanating from the direction of the building. And now, only metres away from its front entrance, what had earlier been thought to be a thick and fancy neon line under the word ‘Joe’s’ could now be seen as words of their own.

The Restaurant at the End of the Space-Time Continuum.

Ted mouthed the words to himself, and for some inexplicable reason was filled with a warm, fuzzy feeling. He smiled, as they approached the glass double doors and Neo grasped the polished gold handles. After a brief hesitation, Neo pushed the doors open and the four of them stepped into the warmth of the restaurant.

The chairs scattered around the dozen or so tables were only half-filled, but there was already a considerable amount of noise in the place. Voices of different languages mingled with the clinking of cutlery, and above all this the jukebox played. The current song was ‘Doppelganger’: a long time favourite of the time-travelling crowd.

This was Joe’s, the Restaurant at the End of the Space-Time Continuum. It was the only place where time and inter-dimensional travellers alike could drop by for a meal without having any awkward questions asked. And if they weren’t hungry, it also made a good meeting place if they didn’t mind the noise.

Marty, Neo, Frank and Ted stood at the doorway, ignored by the other patrons of the restaurant. Eventually, Neo decided that just standing there would not achieve anything significant in the near future, and so started moving forwards, weaving his way through the tables towards the counter at the far end of the restaurant. The others trooped behind him.

Behind the counter stood a well-fed man wiping a glass with a piece of cloth. His name was Tom and he barely looked up as the four travellers reached him.

“What can I get for you?” Tom asked gruffly, putting down the glass and picking up another. The four glanced at each other, and Frank finally spoke up.

“Uh… what do you have?”

Tom jabbed a finger at the menu above him, then as an afterthought looked up and squinted at them. “You’re not from around here, are you?” he asked.

Frank gave a short laugh. “Uh, yeah… how’d you know?”

“I can tell,” Tom growled. “I’ve worked here for a long time.”

“How long is that, dude?” Ted asked.

Tom glared at him. “A very long time.” He finished with his glass and moved on to the next one.

Neo finished reading through the menu and shifted his gaze back down to Tom. “What place is this?” he asked quietly.

The bartender raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you see the sign?” He pointed a stubby finger in the direction of the door. “This is Joe’s. The Restaurant at the End of the…”

“No,” Neo interrupted. “I mean… outside… this whole, uh, place… what is it?”

Tom snorted. “You really aren’t from around here, are you?”

Frank was about to make some comment along the lines of how he thought that that particular fact had already been pretty much established, and so could they move on now? when Tom replied.

“Nexus,” he said.

“What?” Marty asked.

“Nexus. Gateway to the Otherlands. It’s all forest out there. In the woods of the Nexus, time has a mind of its own. Night and day when it pleases.” Tom chuckled. “And those trees go on forever. To infinity.”

Ted meanwhile had got bored with the conversation and was watching a group of two-headed aliens eating at a nearby table. One of them was downing a frothy drink through the mouth of one of its two heads.

Ted turned back to Tom. “I’ll have what he’s having,” he said brightly, pointing in the direction of the frothy drink and effectively cutting Neo off as the latter was about to speak. Tom bustled away to the barrels behind him, muttering under his breath about foreigners.

Neo stared incredulously at Ted. “I was just about to find out where we were!” he said, glaring at the teen.

Ted blinked. “Sorry, dude. I was thirsty.”

Neo swore under his breath and glared at the countertop, which really had not done anything to deserve being glared at. It had always been a good and well-behaved countertop all its life, and this was the first time it was receiving the kind of treatment that Neo was currently giving it. The countertop mentally withdrew into a corner to cry.

Tom came back with a glass full of slugs slithering around in some murky green liquid, and placed the glass in front of Ted. The teen stared questioningly at it, then glanced back at the table he had pointed at and realised his mistake.

“Oh,” he said. “Uh, sorry. I meant I wanted the drink that that two-headed dude was having, not the funny one with the five eyes.”

The two-headed dude in question had just passed out on the table with a look of complete bliss on both of its faces.

Scowling, Tom dumped the slugs back into the barrel from whence they came and took up a clean glass, which he proceeded to fill with the drink that Ted had requested. He dumped the full glass on the counter.

“Served one Pan Dimensional Plaque Destroyer, two past hours please,” he intoned.

Ted ignored him and downed the drink in two goes. He grinned. Then his eyes rolled upwards and he collapsed onto the floor. Tom regarded him with the same amount of interest that a student regards a teacher in the midst of doling out homework. Digging into his pocket, he emerged with several strange contraptions of slightly different sizes. They seemed to consist mostly of two circular rings, joined together by a string on a sort of pulley system. Tom chose one of the smaller contraptions and dumped the rest back into his pocket.

Tom separated the rings and stepped out from behind the counter. He was much shorter now, and his clothes could be seen clearly. They seemed oddly out of place in the somewhat elegant setting of the rest of the restaurant. His pants were the colour that bluebottles would be if they were green and not blue; around his waist was tied an old dirty apron which proudly announced that it belonged to Joe’s; his plain T-shirt had lost colour a long, long time ago, but the words ‘Antimatter + Matter = BOOM!’ were still visible on it.

Tom brushed Marty out of the way and crouched down next to the happily unconscious Ted. Brushing the teen’s hair aside in much the same way he had brushed Marty aside, Tom placed the two circles on Ted’s forehead. A second later, they glowed a faint blue, then red, then blue, then green, then blue again.

Tom turned to Neo. “Random hours?” he asked, pointing at Ted’s still form. “Any special mems he’d like to keep?”

Neo hadn’t the faintest idea what Tom was talking about. “Uh, no,” he said, “not that I know of.”

Tom shrugged and pressed a small button on one of the rings. There was a flash of white, then the light dimmed. Tom removed the contraption, fiddled around with them, and stuck them back into his pocket. He gave Ted a sharp kick to the side. Neo winced.

Tom shrugged again. “Wakes them up most of the time,” he said, going back behind the counter.

True enough, Ted was beginning to come round. He had a dazed but happy look on his face, which in retrospect wasn’t that much different from his usual expression.

“Whoa!” Ted exclaimed happily. “I just had the most excellent dream, dudes!” He grinned cheerfully at Tom. “I think I’ll have anoth…”

Ted was cut off by Neo clamping his hand violently over the teen’s mouth.

“Shut up!” Neo hissed. He stared at Tom. “What did you do to him?”

“Payment,” Tom said nonchalantly. “Two past hours. You buy a drink, you pay for it.”

“Two past hours?” Frank asked, a hint of incredulity in his voice.

“Time, pal, time. This is the Nexus. You pay in time here. Not much of it around,” Tom added, indicating the clock behind him, which was twenty-four hours slow and running backwards. Tom picked up another glass and got down to cleaning it, humming the popular Nexan song ‘Somewhen Out There’.

Frank Bannister, however, was far from satisfied with Tom’s answer. “You took his time?”

“Yes,” Tom replied. “So he’ll just have lost two hours of memories, and he’ll be that much younger too.”

“You mean you just took two hours of his life away?” Marty asked, mouth hanging open.

“Don’t worry. They don’t miss them, most of the time.”

“What do you do with the time?” Neo asked.

Tom shrugged. “Sell it,” he replied casually, “or use it to buy things, add on to my life…”

“What?”

Tom glared at Neo. “Look here, pal. He bought a drink, he paid for it. Simple as that. It’s not my fault if you don’t know how things work around the Nexus. He glanced at Ted, who was cheerily humming away and waving happily at random customers who for some reason did not wave back. “And your friend appears happy enough about it. Though I admit that’s usually a side effect of that drink he took.”

Neo raised an eyebrow at the teen, and decided it was useless to pursue the matter further.

“Ah… do you know how we can get out of the Nexus?” Frank pressed on.

“Same way you got in.”

“But… uh… we… uh…” Frank looked helplessly at the others for help. Neo and Marty looked helplessly back. Ted was still too deeply in a state of Pan Dimensional Plaque Destroyer- induced euphoria to look helplessly at anyone, so he just smiled brightly.

“Um…” Neo started to say, then stopped because he didn’t know what to say.

Frank finally found his voice, which confessed that it had been away holidaying in the Bermuda Triangle and promised never again to go away without telling him first. “Well, you see, we, uh, sorta can’t get back because, uh…”

“…it was a one-way journey,” Marty finished for him.

Tom raised his eyes to the ceiling, then returned his gaze to the four of them. “You know, people who go on one-way journeys usually don’t intend to go back.”

“Yeah,” Frank admitted, “but we didn’t mean to come here. There was an… accident or error or something. We were trying to get home.

Tom muttered something under his breath about people who messed about with things they didn’t understand. “I can’t help you then,” he said brusquely.

“Don’t you know anything that might help us?” Neo asked.

“Nope.” Tome moved aside as another customer came up to the counter. “What do you want?” he asked the newcomer.

“Two packets of peanuts, please.”

Tom moved off to get the peanuts, and the new customer surveyed the small group of interdimensional travellers. Ted smiled brightly at him. He smiled brightly back, and turned back tot eh counter as Tom dumped two packets of peanuts on it. “Foreigners?” he asked, indicating the four.

Tom grunted. “What do you think? 28PM for the peanuts, if you would be so kind.”

The man dug into a pocket and took out several small disc-like objects. They seemed to be hollow, filled with a strange colourful substance that shifted beneath the surface, undulating and changing colour. Ted found them very fascinating. He looked at the counter and found that very fascinating too. Ditto with the floor. One of the side-effects of the Pan Dimensional Plaque Destroyer is that of making the drinker find a lot of things very fascinating.

Ted grinned floopily at Neo, who started to feel uncomfortable.

Having made his purchase, the other customer put his peanuts into his satchel, gave Ted another bright smile – which was willingly returned – and walked off.

“Are you going to keep on standing there, or are you going to move eventually?” Tom asked.

“Uh…” Frank said.

Tom sighed. “Look, if you really want my advice, all I can say to you is that it’ll probably be a good idea to leave this place. You won’t learn much here. Go wander around this section of the Nexus or enter whatever Otherland that catches your fancy, and maybe eventually you’ll get better help than I can give. But I’m not making any promises about that.

Frank nodded and looked down.

“Which way should we go?” Marty asked.

“Just follow the road and turn left at the second fork. There’s a house someway up ahead, but you’ll have to walk quite a bit. They usually take in travellers for the night; I’ll tell them you might be coming.”

Marty gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

Chapter Three: First Night

It was with some regret that they left the restaurant. Despite the little help and information they had received there, at least it was a place with people around. Out here, there was not a soul to be seen, just the darkness that almost, but not quite, enveloped everything; for some reason the place wasn’t as dark as it ought to have been with no moon and just a few stars.

From somewhere in the darkness came the swishing sound of trees blowing in the wind, a wind which now swept past them, ruffling through their hair. In the distance behind Joe’s were what might have been mountains, but they couldn’t see for sure.

They trudged down the road.

Marty didn’t know if it was his imagination, but he thought it felt colder than before. He pulled his jacket tighter around him. On his right, Ted was also starting to look more subdued as the drink’s effect wore off and the burst of energy it had released started to take its toll.

Joe’s gradually grew further away as they trudged down the straight road which seemed to go on forever.

Eventually, they passed the first fork in the road. It led off sharply to the right, disappearing into the distance. They took note of it and walked on.

“What time is it?” Marty asked several minutes later.

Frank shrugged. Ted checked his watch, trying to make out the faint glow of the numbers. “Ten twenty,” he replied.

“Whoa,” Marty said softly. “I didn’t think it was that late yet.”

Time ticked slowly by.

Ted yawned. He was starting to wonder just what he had been so happy about mere moments ago, because now all he felt was the clichéd combination of tired, hungry, and cold. He wished that they would arrive somewhere soon where they could stop and rest; at the moment, it took all his will and energy just to keep his feet moving forward, telling himself that it was just one step more, just one step more… just one step…

Ted rubbed his eyes and blinked sleepily into the darkness.

Turning his head to look back, he saw Joe’s as no more than a tiny speck on the… Ted paused and squinted. Strange. There wasn’t a horizon. Or maybe there was, only it was too dark to see. The sky and the ground just seemed to go on forever without meeting, but as both were currently kind of blackish, he couldn’t really tell…

Neo put a hand on the teen’s shoulder and steered him forward. “Keep moving,” he said.

“I’m tired…”

“We can’t stop here.”

“I wanna sleep, dude.”

“Later.”

Eyes barely open, Ted forced his feet on, Neo guiding him forward whenever he strayed from the path. In front of them, Marty yawned.

It took about another five minutes before they reached the second fork in the road, this time leading left. They headed thankfully along it with slightly more enthusiasm than before.

There was a small building in the distance, and Frank pointed at it. “D’you see that?”

Neo looked up. “Yeah,” he replied. “I suppose that’s the place Tom told us about.”

As they got closer, the house became more distinct. Two stories high, a sloped roof that made the upper floor look like an attic of sorts, its exterior walls a whitewashed white with wooden windows set into them at intervals.

They finally arrived at the main door. Frank knocked and waited, but no one came.

“Try the door,” Marty suggested.

Frank turned the knob, and the door opened. Beyond was a cosy room whose main feature was a table in the centre filled with food. A side door next to it led out into another room, and opposite that a staircase curved along the wall and disappeared upstairs. On the wall before them a wooden plaque read:

Pause here, you weary travellers
The road ahead is long.
Here may you find the rest you need.

“I guess that means we can go in,” Marty said.

“It’s funny,” Frank commented as the four of them stepped in and he closed the door. “There’s all those fantasy books where some character reaches some place and gets a fancy rhyming poem to greet him. Whereas all we get is something that sounds like it was composed by some student who was attempting poetry writing when she should have been paying attention in Literature class.”

Neo gave the food an appraising look, and felt sorry that he was too tired to eat.

“Where’s Ted?” Frank asked.

Marty gestured in the direction of the staircase. “He went up there.”

“What’s upstairs?” Neo asked.

Frank shrugged. “Beds, maybe.”

There were beds up there, which Ted had discovered to his sleepy delight. Six of them, to be exact, all made and waiting. Grinning tiredly, the teen sat down on the nearest one and kicked off his shoes. He stripped off his jacket and chucked it onto the foot of the bed, then climbed under the covers and settled his head down onto the pillow with a contented smile. By the time the others came up, he was fast asleep.

Neo raised an eyebrow at the sleeping teen. “That was quick,” he muttered.

The other three turned in for the night as well. Frank lay awake for a while, staring out the window next to him at the curious radiance outside. There was no moon, and the lighting from the house was minimal, yet the sky was brighter than it had any right to be. Frank eventually dismissed it and focussed instead on the fact that the four of them were sleeping unprotected in a strange house in a strange place, and who knew how safe that could be? What if they woke up the next morning and found themselves dead? And then wondered how they could wake up since they were dead? Tom had said that there would be people here… what if the owners had been brutally murdered? Or what if they had simply ended up in the wrong place?

Well, it’s too late now, isn’t it? he thought. Yeah, he replied, and went to sleep.

Outside, a low breeze rustled through the wood around them, and the Nexus registered the presence of its four new inhabitants.

Chapter Four: Morning After

Marty woke the next morning and lay in bed for several minutes staring at the ceiling and wondered if this was still part of a dream. Sunlight – at least it looked like sunlight, though Marty would have been hard pressed to locate the sun – shone through the wooden windows on both sides, and a cool breeze was circulating the room.

For about a split second or so, he wondered why he wasn’t in his bedroom back home at Lyon Estates; the next split second he remembered Keith and Kenselton Hotel and wondered why this didn’t look like Room 437; then everything clicked into place.

Familiar voices floated up the stairs towards him, and Marty realised with a guilty jolt that he was the last person awake. Somewhat embarrassedly, he got out from under the covers, slipped his shoes on, and headed down the stairs.

The other three were sitting at random seats around the table having breakfast. Marty joined them with a sheepish “hi,” and gave the food a look-over. “Whoa. Are you sure we’re allowed to eat all this?”

“No one’s stopping us, are they?” Frank asked, reaching over to grab a handful of nuts. “Tuck in.”

Marty hungrily complied.

“So where’re we going later?” he asked, after swallowing a mouthful of some unidentified purplish mush which Ted had insisted tasted awesome. Given its unconventional colouring, Marty had to admit that said mush actually did taste quite good, though he was in no hurry to discover what it was exactly.

Neo shrugged, absent-mindedly twirling his finger around a loose string dangling from the tablecloth. “We could just follow the road,” he said. “There’s nowhere else we can go.”

“How do we know there’s anything up ahead?” Frank asked?

“The road has to lead somewhere.”

“Maybe they just put a road there because it looks cool,” Ted said, helping himself to more purplish mush.

“Nobody does that,” Neo said, looking pointedly at the teen, only to be interrupted when his cheese waved at him. Neo blinked, staring at his now-still cheese, then decided he must have imagined the waving and ate it up.

The cheese said a cheerful hi to Neo’s oesophagus and moments later met its untimely end in stomach acid.

“We could always try going back,” Frank said. “At least we know there’s something there.”

“There’s not much point in retracing our steps,” Neo said. “Tom said he couldn’t help us any further.”

Marty bit into a small yellow fruit-like thing that tasted surprisingly sweet. “So we’re going on, then?” he asked.

Ted shrugged. “Anything you want, dudes.”

Frank sighed and got out of his chair. “We’d better bring some supplies along, then: food and stuff, in case we don’t reach anywhere in time. I wonder if there’re any bags around here we could use…” He went into the back room, which appeared to be a kitchen of sorts. Frank dug around and discovered a sole cloth bag ditched in a corner. It wasn’t exactly in a very good condition and smelt faintly of onion soup, but he took it anyway and returned to the others.

“That’s all they have,” he announced, holding it up.

“Won’t it be stealing if we just take it?” Marty asked.

Frank shrugged. “Well, the food was free… and I doubt anyone would really miss this.” He paused, looking around. “How’re we going to wrap up the food?”

“We could use the pillowcases,” Ted suggested brightly.

“Okay, I think that would be stealing,” Frank replied.

“What about water?” Neo asked.

Frank looked stressed. “Ah… Well, there’re so many trees out there, there’s bound to be springs or streams or other… water things… around…”

“I think there was bathroom or something upstairs,” Marty said, getting up and dashing up the stairs. He found not one, but two bathrooms on the upper floor, and from their taps gushed out crystal clear water. Marty wondered where the water came from; this didn’t really look like a place that had indoor plumbing. That particular matter was, however, pretty insignificant at the moment – what mattered more was how they were going to store the water, considering the noted absence of bottles or dead animal skins lying about. Marty went down and reported this.

“It’s pretty obvious then,” Frank said when Marty was finished talking.

“What?”

“We go back the way we came,” Frank replied. “We know at least that the restaurant had food and water, probably other sorts of supplies too…”

“We were told to go this way,” Neo stated matter-of-factly.

Frank folded his arms. “Got a better idea?” he asked tensely.

Neo glared at him and said nothing.

“Let’s take a vote then, shall we?” Frank said, still looking at Neo. “Marty?”

Marty hesitated. “We’ll go back,” he said quietly after a moment’s pause. “We don’t know what might be ahead, so we might as well play safe…”

“Ted?”

Neo shifted his glare from Frank to the younger teen, who squirmed under his gaze.

“We go back,” Ted said after a while. He gave Neo an apologetic look. “Sorry, dude.”

“Three against one, Neo,” Frank said. He picked up a small grape-like fruit from a bowl and chewed it. He swallowed. “Finish your breakfast, Marty, then let’s get moving.”

Opposite him, Neo stood up. “Ted?”

Ted looked at him, and Neo motioned the teen into the back room. When they were both in, Neo shut the door and faced him.

“Tell me your full name,” Neo said.

Ted blinked. “What?”

“Just do it,” Neo said with gritted teeth.

“…Theodore Logan.”

“Age?”

“Fourteen?” Ted said, wondering just what the point of this was.

“Species?”

“Huh? Oh, human…”

“Actor.”

Ted paused, wishing that Neo would stop glaring at him because it was making him feel very uncomfortable. “Keanu Reeves,” he said softly.

Neo nodded slowly, not taking his eyes off the teen.

“Remember that,” he said.

#

The road looked a lot different in the morning than it had the night before. The ever-present trees of the Nexus were ablaze with golden light on both sides of the road, and the place looked a lot less gloomy than it had the previous time. The other-worldly feeling still pervaded the air, hanging about them and intensifying briefly with each breath of wind.

With renewed energy from the night’s sleep, the travellers soon arrived back on the main road and headed down the way they had come.

They reached Joe’s slightly earlier than expected. Tom was sitting behind the counter with a bored expression on his face, watching the customers eat as the light played on the wooden floor. He grunted as the four travellers entered and walked u; to him.

“You again?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Uh, any idea where we can go now?” he asked, realising the stupidity of the question only after the words had left his mouth.

“I thought I told you to follow the road left.”

“Uh, yeah,” Frank admitted. “But, uh, we thought we would probably need supplies and things, and this was the only place we knew of.”

Tom sighed. “This restaurant is in the outskirts of the Atmena region. If you’d gone on further the way I had told you, you’d have reached the town of Fesham in less than a day. Whereas if you go the other way now, it’s about a three-day walk to the next inhabited region of the Nexus. If you cut through the woods you might shave a day off the travel time, but you might have to go into some of the Otherlands for food and lodging, and there’s no knowing what might happen in there…”

“We could always go back,” Neo suggested.

Frank gave him a look that said he wasn’t particularly interested in treading the same path for the third time. “No,” he said.

“Well, I can’t help you here,” Tom said. “If you want anything, you’d best check out the general store back there. Tell them Tom sent you.”

“Where’s the store?” Frank asked.

“Go behind this restaurant, and from there you should be able to see a small bunch of buildings. The store’s one of them.”

#

It hadn’t been clear in the night, but they saw in the morning light that Joe’s was indeed not the only building around. A path from the back of the restaurant widened out into a small unpaved road that led to a cluster of buildings partly hidden by the trees, and it was down this road they decided to go, just to see what lay ahead.

It soon turned out to be a village of sorts with several people milling about the centre around which ringed about five houses. A little way nearer, a small open building proclaimed in faded paint lettering that it was the Jonke General Store. Inside, the shopkeeper sat engaged in jovial conversation with a friend.

The people regarded the four travellers with some interest.

“Now what?” Marty asked, then yelped as a churkey ran past his feet. The bird in question gave him an annoyed look, then ran over Ted’s foot and disappeared into the store.

“What was that?” Marty gasped.

Frank shrugged. “Looked like a cross between a chicken and a turkey,” he said. He eyed the people in the middle of the village with some discomfort. “Let’s check out the store.”

The shopkeeper looked up as they entered. “Hello there,” he greeted cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”

The other man got up and stretched. “Well then, I’ll guess I’ll be leaving you to look after them,” he said to the shopkeeper. “See you, Ches.” He left the store, walking out into the bright outside.

“You lot new guys?” Ches asked.

“Yeah,” Marty said.

“How long you been here?”

“Uh, since last night…”

“Where’d you stay?”

“There was this empty house further down the road, so we spent the night there…”

“Tom sent us here,” Frank cut in, before the pointless little conversation between Marty and Ches could drag on any further. “He said you might be able to help us get provisions and stuff.”

Ches looked faintly miffed at having his talk with Marty ended. “Did he? I suppose he’s not far wrong there.” He moved behind the counter and lifted out a box from under it. “You lot travelling together?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, you can share some things then. You’re going to be stuck in the Nexus for the rest of your life and then some, so you best be equipped.”

The first thing Ches took out was a converter, a small circular device used to covert one’s time to a usable monetary form. It was a more efficient version of the two rings that Tom had used on Ted – Ches spoke derisively of “that old model: it actually takes your memories away as well, did you know that?” – and would be needed for any financial transactions they intended to make.

The converter device contained a slot on its side where an empty plastic disc coin could be inserted in order to be filled with time. A small screen on the front of the device displayed the input or output, and the values could be adjusted by the use of buttons beneath the screen. There were two kinds of coins – the more common pre-formatted sort which could only contain the fixed amount of time printed on them, no more no less, and the blank discs which could take any amount determined by the converter. Ches gave them about fifty discs.

Next came a digital pathfinder, an electronic map-cum-compass with a wooden casing that bore more than a passing resemblance to a pocket calculator with a huge screen. The pathfinder contained a directory of the major towns and landmarks in the explored section of the Nexus; by entering in the coordinates of a place, a compass arrow appeared on the screen pointing in the direction of the requested location, with numbers under the arrow that gave you the distance in nems, a term of length roughly equivalent to six tenths of a kilometre or three-eights of a mile.

The pathfinder also included a calculator feature for the less mathematically-inclined to work out distances.

They received as well a firebox, which was essentially a cigarette-lighter with a fancy name. (“Things don’t burn easily in the Nexus,” Ches said, “but it’s always useful to have a lighter around.”)

Ches then took out a book from a shelf and passed it to them with a rather sheepish expression. On the front of the book, the title was printed clearly in bright cheery letters: ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nexus.’

“Friend of mine wrote it,” Ches said. “He got inspired by some Otherland book… I don’t think too much of it myself, but I promised him I’d help sell it to newcomers. Oh, and it comes with a free towel.”

The four of them stared dubiously at the towel, which was an innocent light green piece of cloth. Ches handed the book and the towel to Neo, who was standing in the unfortunate position next to him.

“Ted?” Neo asked.

“Yeah?”

Neo passed the towel to him. “You keep that.”

For food, they received eight metal containers of commercially packed roast churkey meat, each with a colourful picture of a live churkey on its front and a little plastic spoon. They also got a container of de-thorned tocberries; the thorned ones were cheaper, but they were much more likely to end a consumer’s life by sticking in his throat with the ‘toc’ sound that was its namesake.

“And you should keep the containers when you’re done,” Ches advised. “They might come in handy some time.”

They got six filled water bottles to last them until they found another water source, and two bags to store the things in. They split the load fairly evenly – each carried two containers of churkey and one water bottle – Neo and Frank carried two; Frank slung the converter around his neck and stashed the empty coins in his bag; Marty took the Guide and the pathfinder; Ted kept the towel; Neo carried the tocberries and the cigarette lighter.

“Firebox,” Ches corrected.

“It totally doesn’t look like a box,” Ted said.

The four of them split the cost of one month and fifteen days. Passing the converter around, they took it in turns to transfer about eleven days worth of time each into the coins, and passed them to Ches.

That settled, they set out for good into the woods of the Nexus.

Chapter Five: Reltis

“So where are we going now?” Ted asked.

“Where d’you want to go?” Frank asked in reply, instinctively checking the road for traffic and then realising it was pointless.

“Home would be good,” Marty mused.

“Yeah,” Ted agreed.

“I meant besides that,” Frank said. “I doubt we’ll be getting home any time soon, if ever.”

“Where’s the nearest town?” Neo asked.

Marty turned on the pathfinder and fiddled around with the buttons. “Fesham,” he finally replied. “But that’s the one Tom told us about, back the way we came. The next closest is Reskan…” He pressed one of the buttons, and an arrow appeared on screen pointing in the direction of the town. “It’s that way,” he said, pointing.

“How far?” Neo asked.

“Ah… it says 377 nems.”

“What the #$&% is a nem?”

“It could be short for nemesis,” Ted suggested.

Marty interrupted Neo’s reply to that suggestion by a quick use of the handy calculator function. “It’s about a hundred and forty miles,” he said.

“They could just say so,” Frank commented. “It’s a better option than using some weird unit of distance that just conjures up strange mental images of having to get past three hundred and seventy seven nemesises.”

“So we’re going there?” Marty asked.

“I say no,” Frank said. “What’re we going to do when we get there? This whole place is the same; it doesn’t matter which part of it you’re in. We might as well ditch the pathfinder and go wherever we feel like going.” He gave a short laugh. “After all, we’ve got eternity to be here. Eternity is a long time. Let’s just walk and see where we end up.”

#

The trees in the wood were placed surprisingly far apart, giving the travellers ample space to walk. Golden black trunks rose up around them into the bright radiance of the sky; on the ground, twigs cracked beneath their shoes with each step on the leaf-carpeted floor. All was quiet. They appeared the only living things around, apart from the trees, and even the trees didn’t look particularly alive.

It was only after several minutes of walking that Neo realised just what was so weird about the trees: their roots were not visible above the ground. The trunks simply went clearly through, not even widening as they descended but rather remaining the same width as the middle of the trunk.

No one talked much. The four of them just wandered aimlessly through the trees in a roughly western direction. There weren’t in actuality any real north, south, east or west in the Nexus: those had been decided arbitrarily, and beacons placed at various points to orientate the pathfinders’ compasses.

After about twenty minutes, they came to a break in the trees. Up ahead, the remains of a stone wall cut through the wood, and beyond that lay old broken down stone buildings, stretching for some way into the distance.

“Whoa,” Ted said.

Neo gave him an ‘I-was-going-to-say-that’ look.

“Wonder what place this is,” Frank said.

Marty dug a pathfinder out of his bag and did a quick location search. “The ruins of Reltis,” he replied. “Apparently it was some city or something…” A sudden thought struck him, and he took out The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nexus. Flipping through the pages, he soon found the relevant entry. “Here,” he said, and read it out.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nexus has this to say about Reltis:

"Reltis was the first major city in the Nexus, founded and populated by a humanoid race of beings known as the Mastragaths. The city flourished and grew for three hundred standard years, before the Mastragaths all vanished mysteriously one day. Rumour goes that this was caused by a focussing of the thirteen o’clock wind from Babel, a tower constructed by The I, who didn’t like Mastragaths very much."

There was a short silence after Marty finished reading this.

“That’s it?” Frank asked.

“Yeah.”

“What’s The I?” Neo asked.

“Ah…” Marty flipped the pages, and found the entry. “’The I was supposedly the first human ever to enter the Nexus, though time being what it is here, that claim is therefore subjective. Not much else is known about The I, except that he liked to sing and his name was Elvis.’”

A long silence greeted Marty.

Frank shook his head slowly. “This is the weirdest place ever,” he muttered. He got out his water bottle and took a gulp of water from it, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

They got into Reltis through one of several gaps in the broken down wall, stepping out onto the cracked paved road on the other side. Heading on straight, they wandered through several rows of stone ruins.

"Elvis,” Neo uttered incredulously to himself somewhere along the way for no particular reason.

Ted’s gaze was drawn to a small bright splotch of faded red on one of the exterior building walls. Things that are simultaneously bright and faded are, to say the least, pretty unusual, and Ted wandered over to get a better look.

“Whoa. Check this out, dudes!” he exclaimed several seconds later.

Marty wandered over. The Nexus is meant for wandering. “What’s that?”

“Words, I think.”

“What’s it say?”

Ted squinted to make out the marvellously bright faded lettering. “You ain’t nuthin’ but a hound dog,” he read.

“You gotta be kidding,” Frank muttered. He went over to the wall and stared closely at the words.

“You ain’t nuthin’ but a hound dog,” he was forced to admit. “This is the weirdest place ever,” he repeated.

They moved on, heading nowhere. At one point, Neo thought he heard something – several somethings – but he couldn’t pinpoint its source and decided it was probably just the trees. Nonetheless, he kept taking short glances behind him; just in case.

It was as they were passing what looked like the remains of an old tower that Marty first noticed that the sky had changed. By right it should only have been about late morning, yet the sky above seemed to disagree. It was a definite evening blue, and getting darker.

“What’s up with the sky?” Marty asked.

“Time moves strangely in the Nexus,” Frank mused, eyes to the sky and back to the tower as he quoted Tom. “Night and day when it pleases…”

A low growl sounded from behind Frank, and he jumped in shock, turning unsteadily to face several dog-like creatures that crawled out of the tower’s opening. He yelled and tripped over a rock.

The dog-like creatures opened their mouths to bare huge undog-like green fangs, moving slowly but deliberately towards the four in a hungry sort of way.

Frank stumbled to his feet, half-tripped over an old, partly buried pair of blue suede shoes, and stumbled to his feet again. He took several steps backwards, not daring to take his eyes from the newcomers.

Neo swore as another group of them appeared from the other side. Together, the two groups came closer, trying to cut off any way of escape.

“What I say ‘go’, run that way.” Neo said, pointing.

“Maybe they’re friendly,” Ted suggested.

“GO!”

Three of them dashed towards the increasingly narrow gap, as the momentarily stunned predators watched them go. A second passed, then Neo executed an admirable U-turn, ran back, grabbed Ted’s arm and yanked the teen along just as the creatures decided it might be a good idea to give chase.

Ted winced as he lost his footing for the sixth time but was dragged along nonetheless. “Slow down, dude, you’re going too fast…”

“Do you want to get eaten?” Neo hollered at him, then went even faster. They soon caught up with Frank and Marty.

The creatures rounded the corner and pounded after them. One stopped along the way to investigate a curious piece of stone shaped exactly like Jabba the Hutt. It tried to eat it and choked to death. Another then ate its late comrade and met a similar fate when it reached the stone.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nexus has this to say about ganras.

“Ganras are medium-sized, furry creatures which look like a cross between a dog, an anasaurus, and something the cat dragged in. Once kept as guard animals in the Mastragath city of Reltis, ganras survived when their owners disappeared, and they have since taken up residence among the ruins.

“Ganras are armed with low intelligence and long green fangs. The former is of not much use, but the latter can be used to poison their prey. However, this is not so much poison of the kind that can kill one, but more of the kind that affects one’s mind and makes one think one is a gin and tonic. The ganras would then spend some time being amused by their prey’s alcoholic identity crisis before eating it.

“Ganras are extremely hardy creatures and can spend up to twenty-five standard years without food. By a strange but useful coincidence, that is also the amount of time it takes before some idiot wanders into the ruins of Reltis, thus satisfying the ganras’ consumption needs.”

The remaining ganras continued in their pursuit, gaining on the travellers.

Marty’s life started flashing before his eyes. He had just got past the Universal Studios opening credits when from slightly in front of him, Frank yelled and disappeared beneath the ground. Marty had little time to think about this before momentum carried him forward and he became the one doing the yelling. Seconds later, the other two joined them.

For a moment there was nothing but sand and soil and dust and very small rocks and yelling and not so small rocks and falling, then with several thumps they landed on a smooth floor in pitch black darkness.

From far overhead came the happy yelp of one ganra relaying the message that one of their party had apparently died someway back and could therefore be eaten. Then came the sound of all of them running to investigate the news.

There was silence.

“Is everyone here?” Neo asked.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Ted fumbled in the dark for his pocket torch and turned it on. The orange light showed the four of them on the ground, both them and the ground covered with sand and dust and very small rocks.

“Where on earth are we?” Frank asked rhetorically.

Neo turned somewhat furiously to Ted. “About just now,” he started, “why the ---- did you just stand there for?” he demanded. “You nearly got us all killed!”

Ted shrugged. “Maybe those things didn’t want to eat us,” he said. “Maybe they were just lonely, or…”

Neo took off his bag and dumped it on the floor. “Give me the flashlight.”

Ted handed it over, and Neo placed it a safe distance away. Then he grabbed the teen’s shoulders and shoved him forcefully to the ground. Ted yelled as his head hit the floor. He kicked out, his foot connected with Neo, and the latter responded with a well-placed fist that narrowly missed Ted’s jugular vein.

Neo gritted his teeth. “The next time I say run, you’re going to run, you understand me? Because if you don’t, I’m not going back for you again, and you’ll be eaten and torn to bits and digested and no one will care.”

“I would,” Frank said.

“Shut up.”

“Cheery fellow, isn’t he?” Frank commented to Marty. “Let go of him, Neo. You won’t accomplish anything by killing him.”

“Wanna bet?”

Frank raised an eyebrow.

Neo released his hold on the teen and gave him back his torch. Cautiously, Ted took it, on guard for another attack, but Neo appeared to have lost interest in beating him up.

One by one, they got to their feet and looked around. They were at the end of a long corridor that went on for a while before turning left. Strange markings marked the wall in the way markings tend to do, interspersed here and there with strange drawings. What looked like torches of the non-electric kind were situated at intervals on the walls.

Frank walked over to inspect the nearest one. “We could try lighting one of these,” he said as he brushed very small rocks out of his hair. “We’ve got that cigarette lighter thing, after all.”

“Firebox,” Marty corrected.

“It shouldn’t be that hard,” Frank continued. “There might be some sort of fuel still left in these things…”

Holding the torch such that its light fell on where Frank was looking, Ted looked to his right and saw a strange small rectangular piece of metal set flat into the wall. One-half of it was raised slightly. Curious, he pressed it.

The wall-torches came on, flooding the place with warm light.

Everyone stared.

“Whoa,” Ted said happily, shading his eyes from the sudden brightness, “electric lights!”

The lights in question were not exactly electric, but that is just a minor thing that normal people normally don’t care much about. As such, no one questioned Ted’s assumption regarding the electricity of the lights.

When his eyes had become accustomed enough to the light to keep reasonably open, Frank started inspecting one of the strange coloured drawings on the wall. It consisted of three panels; the first showed a humanoid figure climbing a tree; the second showed it sitting on a branch and sawing at the connection; the third showed it falling off the tree, still half-sitting on the sawed off branch.

Ted found another switch near the first one and pressed it. Merry piped music filled the place.

They had just entered the largest comic strip gallery in the Nexus.

“Nice,” Marty commented.

The end where they had fallen out onto was filled with rubble – sand, stone, sandstone, very small rocks, rather big rocks, and the occasional twig. From up above, small specks of light could be seen from the broken ceiling that hadn’t been broken until they’d broken it.

They stood and gazed around for a while until they discovered the futility of that and started walking down the gallery. Its floor was tiled with smooth, large white tiles, each one amazingly spotlessly clean. Each gleamed and shone as the travellers approached, then got covered in dirt and very small rocks as they walked over them.

Passageways opened up here and there, leading to other parts of the gallery. They turned into the next passage, not literally of course, for people generally do not spontaneously transform into architectural structures. At the end of this one the lighting ended, and the corridor went up several steps that turned into darkness. A cool drought was blowing from it.

Ted looked for a light switch, found one, and pressed it.

The lights on the stairs came on. They went up, turned, reached an archway, and stepped outside into the darkness. It was night in the Nexus.

“Sure is dark out here,” Frank commented intelligently.

They trooped down the crumbly stone steps, beneath which a nuclear family of little kitches snuggled in a little hole in the steps that had been their home for fifteen years. The children kitches listened peacefully to the parent kitches telling them a bedtime story, when all of a sudden Neo’s foot dislodged a piece of stone and it squished the whole family.

Ted thought he heard what sounded like five small creatures cry out suddenly with shrieks of pain, only to be silenced. He gazed uneasily at the general area around Neo’s foot, and thought he saw a pale yellow kitch antenna poking out from the stone, twitching feebly.

“Uh, Neo?” he asked.

“What?”

“…Never mind.”

Ted waited until the others had moved on a little, then dropped down and scrabbled at the bits of loose stone. There was indeed an antenna poking out, and digging deeper he quickly uncovered a half-dead little kitch lying there, one of its four legs trapped under its father’s dead body. The kitch looked like an oversized cartoonish ant, about one inch long, smooth all over, and exceedingly cute. It looked miserably at Ted.

“Hey, little dude… you okay?”

The kitch chirped, then gave a little click of thanks as the teen freed its leg and scooped it up gently.

“Sorry about your family,” Ted said, looking at the dead kitches in the hole, “but it looks like Neo totally killed them.”

The kitch snuggled into Ted’s palm, and he smiled.

From up ahead came Neo’s annoyed voice. “Ted, what the ---- are you doing?”

Ted got up and hurried ahead to join the rest. He showed them the kitch. “I think you killed his family, dude,” he informed Neo.

“What the ---- is that?” came Neo’s reply.

Ted shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think it’s hurt…”

The kitch made little whirring sounds.

“We’re not having some weird bug thing with us,” Neo said. “Put it back.”

“It’s not a weird bug thing. His name is Andy.”

Neo closed his eyes in exasperation. “Look…”

“Lay off him, Neo,” Frank said. “It’s just a weird bug thing.”

“It’s not a…”

“Fine!” Neo said. “Keep it then. Just don’t come crying to me when the thing drills into your skull and eats your brains.”

Ted looked doubtfully at Andy.

Andy nuzzled against his thumb in the way only kitches can.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nexus has this to say about kitches:

“Kitches are small, yellow, four-legged insectoid creatures which first appeared in someone’s kitchen in the Severil region. They spread out from there, and can now be found in most human parts of the Nexus. They bear a creepy resemblance to Jiminy Cricket of Disney fame.

“Unlike Jiminy Cricket, however, they eat brains.

“But it may be of some comfort to the reader to know that many kitches have since discovered alternative sources of food, and few kitches, if any, still remember what their ancestors used to feed on.”

Some way from the travellers, a ganra bounded across the landscape and crashed into a three o’clock rock.

Chapter Six: No Need to Get Hung About

The shadows cast by the ruined buildings lay strangely on the ground. Put together, each seemed to contradict each other with regards to the position of the light source that did the shadow-casting.

The travellers did not follow any visible path, simply walking where it was possible to walk, stepping around the larger piles of rubble that dotted the landscape. Ted hung at the rear, his attention often captured by some thing or other, while the other three took it arbitrarily in turns to take the lead.

The forest of the Nexus did not intrude here. Up above, the undulating blues and blacks that formed the sky were clearly visible, as were the Nexan constellations that shone down from it.

Down below, the only sounds in the architectural graveyard were the footsteps of the four travellers and the occasional snatch of the one-sided conversation between Ted and his newfound insectoid friend.

“…and I don’t think brains taste good, so you really shouldn’t eat them…”

Andy’s only reply was an unintelligible whirr.

“And try to stay away from Neo,” Ted continued nonetheless. “I don’t think he likes you very much.” He hesitated. “I don’t think he likes me very much either,” he added as an afterthought.

Near the front, Marty cast a worried look to his left, thinking he’d seen something move. It turned out to be a dead-looking shrub swaying drunkenly in the Nexan breeze.

“I wonder what this looked like in the past,” Marty said. “Looks like it was a fairly big city.”

“The real question is, where did all this stone come from?” Frank asked in reply. “Is there a quarry nearby, or did the builders just steal materials from other universes?” He turned around to look behind him. “Hey, Ted – don’t get left behind,” he called out.

He’d be faster if he wasn’t gossiping to his bug about me, Neo thought darkly. A thought struck him, and he paused in his steps. He looked back. Ted was too far away from him, beyond hearing distance. Neo frowned slightly, then shook his head and continued walking.

Marty wondered where exactly they were going.

Frank wondered where exactly they were going.

Neo wondered where exactly they were going.

“Hic,” burped the dead-looking shrub swaying drunkenly in the Nexan breeze.

Ted carefully placed Andy into his pocket for safekeeping, then ran up to join others.

They walked on until they reached the western edge of the ruined city of Reltis. Large iron gates loomed up in front of them, bent outwards and to the sides as though pressed down by some huge unseen force, pointing out onto the wide path beyond that went on a bit before curving into the forest and out of sight.

The sky was turning light in the Nexus’ particular brand of daybreak. There was no sun; bright streaks of warm colour just stretched their way across the sky, the trees casting surreal haphazard gold-lined shadows on the ground.

The four travellers went on through the gate and onto the path. They didn’t really know where they were going; no one had any particular destination in mind, and at present were mainly taking in the sights – namely trees, trees, and more trees.

But these weren’t ordinary trees, as Frank discovered when he passed by one of them, curious. The trunks of these trees passed straight down into the ground without widening and with no sign of roots; secondly, each tree trunk was not a perfect cylinder but flattened on one side, the latter a lighter side of brown than the rest of the trunk.

Frank reached out a hand to touch one, and his fingers went right through. He paused, staring at his hand inside the trunk, then cautiously pulled it out. It looked the same. He put his hand in again, followed by his arm, and reached out as far as he could; but it failed to emerge on the other side of the tree trunk.

“Whoa,” Ted said in awestruck wonder.

“Other worlds,” Frank murmured, pulling his arm out of the tree trunk. “The trees… the trees are the other worlds… portals of some sort…”

“Are they safe?” Marty asked.

Neo stuck a finger through the portal, wiggles it around, pulled it back out and looked at it. His finger looked fingery and nothing weird seemed to have happened to it.

Ted wondered just what the other three were waiting for. When you discover a portal to another universe, anyone knows that the only sensible thing to do is to go through it.

“Why don’t we go in?” he suggested.

The others’ only reply was to stare philosophically at the tree-portal.

Ted looked at them, realised that future conversation would be pointless, shrugged, and walked into the portal.

Frank blinked. “…Ted?” he asked. “Hey! Don’t…”

The portal closed behind the teen, leaving Frank hanging in mid-sentence.

There was a moment’s silence.

“…Is he dead?” Marty asked.

There was another moment’s silence.

“Why hasn’t he come back out yet?” Marty asked.

“He probably found something totally excellent in there,” Neo said, and walked into the portal.

Frank and Marty looked at each other.

“You first,” Marty said.

#

Marty went in last. The sounds of the Nexan wood were suddenly cut off as he entered the portal, and the woodland scene replaced with a large, bare stone room. Marty felt his feet leave the soft forest floor and step onto hard stone. When he was fully through the portal, he looked back, and saw just the other side of the room. He stuck a hand in the direction he’d just come from. It slipped through the portal and made him look as if all his fingers had mysteriously vanished. He returned his hand to his side, comforted by the fact that there at least appeared to be a way out.

Thin window slats positioned near the high ceiling allowed long shafts of light to shine through into the chamber-like room, where they fell coldly onto the floor. At one end of the room lay an open archway; three others gaped into the walls on the other side, each giving hem a glimpse of similar-looking corridors and stairs.

Ted looked, for some reason, jubilantly happy. He took Andy out of his pocket and let the kitch take in the sights – namely stone, stone, and more stone.

“Now what?” Frank asked, his voice echoing around the high walls.

Ted smiled. He liked echoes.

“Doesn’t look like there’s much here,” Frank continued.

Ted had gone through the archway and was gazing in wonder at the next room. “Check this out, dudes!” he shouted happily.

“What?” Marty asked.

They moved towards the archway until they reached where Ted was standing. This room was made completely out of stone; the longest of its walls sloped downwards from the ceiling and was of a transparent material. And through this window…

They were high up; very high. Well, not very high; they were considerably lower than the heights commercial airlines usually fly at. But they were still pretty high, enough for a cloud to float nonchalantly past them.

Neo instinctively took a step back. He didn’t like heights, his love of flying notwithstanding, and this place was making him dizzy. He didn’t mind heights when he was flying about. But he minded them quite a bit when he had no control over gravity, as was the case here.

From the long window they could see out to what appeared to be short buildings clustered together far below, but this only took up a small portion of the land they could see. The rest of it was covered in neat rows of green all the way to the horizon. A building or two dotted the fields at intervals, but other than that, the fields met no interruption.

They had yet to know this, but those were strawberry fields. All over, all around, strawberry fields forever.

A wooden shaft was cut into the stone wall adjacent to the windows, going down as far as they could see. In the shaft sat a wooden lift, and Ted was about to step into it when Frank stopped him

"I don't think you should go down there," he said.

Ted's face fell. "Why not, dude?"

"We don’t know what's out there," Neo said, glad of any reason to get out of this place.

"But-"

A loud shout from behind made the four of them jump. They turned, only to find a small army of strangely pale humanoid creatures blocking one of the two exits to the room.

They looked angry. And from the way one of them was pointing at the travellers, the latter were probably what they were angry at.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Frank murmured.

The leader of the army barked a question in a tongue none of them could understand. When an answer failed to come, he gave a command and the group started advancing into the room.

"Go back to the portal," Frank said quietly. "We'd better make a run for it. On three. One… two… RUN!"

They dashed wildly through the other exit and back to the portal room, but their pursuers were both smarter and faster than ganras. Marty made it out of the portal safely, but before the others could follow, they found themselves pinned down by strong hands; for Ted, only to get roughly yanked back to his feet and his hand forced open – where Andy sat for all to see.

The locals went into a manic frenzy at the sight of the kitch. The leader started hollering at Ted, making frantic gestures between Andy, the general area of his brain, and his mouth, as Ted looked on in blank incomprehension.

The leader swept Andy off onto the ground and squashed him dead with a forceful stomp of his foot.

Ted's mouth fell open in horrified comprehension.

"Dude… you killed Andy…"

On the ground, Frank struggled to get hold of the converter around his neck as quietly as possible. It had fallen to his side, barely within his reach. His fingers grabbed at the string and made their way down to the converter. He set the controls: 'IN 100Y'.

With one swift motion, Frank slapped the converter against his captor's arm and pressed the big button.

Almost instantly, the hand shrank away in size and a scream filled the air as Frank's captor found himself a hundred years younger.

Neo made use of the distraction and broke free of his captors, treating them to a brief display of his kung fu mad skillz before grabbing Ted and leaping out of the portal with Frank.

They landed in a pile back in the woods of the Nexus. Marty was nearby; relief coursed through his face as he saw them and realised that there was no longer any need for him to go back in after them.

Panting slightly, Neo got himself into a sitting position on the grass. "Good thinking back there," he said to Frank.

"Thanks."

"I guess this means no more new universes, huh?" Marty asked, dropping down to sit with them.

"And no more pets," Neo said, turning his gaze to Ted. The teen was too busy being depressed over Andy's death to notice.

"Marty?" Frank asked.

"Yeah?"

"Where are we?"

Marty took out the pathfinder and pressed several buttons. "Nowhere in particular," he concluded. "Nearest city is Reltis, which we just left."

"Any other tourist attractions nearby? Apart from parallel universes, I mean."

"There's a small village called Brey several nems from here," Marty answered.

"Great," Frank muttered. "More nemesises." He pulled out his water bottle and took a swig, then leant against the non-portal side of the tree and shut his eyes.

Ted plucked mournfully at the grass. He missed Andy. He hadn't even got to say a proper goodbye. He wondered what happened to little bugs when they died. Did they go to little bug heaven, or did they just-

"AHHH!"

The other three looked up at Neo's yell, only to find him seven years old and surrounded by four teenage newcomers wielding converters and advancing rapidly towards them.

Frank scrambled to his feet, bolting head-first into the tree-portal they had just escaped, as a hand swiped at his disappearing foot and missed.

He emerged sprawling on the stone floor, the room now thankfully empty. He cast an anxious look in the direction of the portal, but the air was still. He got up nonetheless and made his way into the next room; there was no knowing if they would come in after him.

A couple of minutes later, he heard his name called in an urgent whisper.

Frank peeked cautiously round the corner and saw Marty in the next room, his face slightly ashen.

"They're gone," Marty said quietly, not wanting to alert the locals.

Back in the Nexus, Neo was feeling most supremely annoyed -partly at being half Ted's age, and partly because he was having trouble keeping his clothes from falling off. He gritted his teeth, muttering silent curses in his head as he rolled up his sleeves using hands too small for his liking.

Frank watched him in concealed amusement for a while, then extracted fifteen minutes of his own time into a disc and chucked the converter-cum-disc at Neo.

"Fifteen years," he said. "You owe me for this."

Neo gave up on his sleeves and picked up the converter. "Thanks," he said quietly.

"Don't mention it," Frank said, leaning back against his tree. "I just don't like the idea of having to look after three kids."

Marty was flipping through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Nexus, and he paused on a page near the book's beginning. "I guess we should have read this first," he said. "'If you intend to travel in the woods, it is advisable to maintain a physical age of eighteen or less so as to present yourself as a less likely target of time thievery. The Ilmayen woods are especially dangerous, as they are home to a large number of Nexan gangs."

He flipped the book shut. "And that's where we are," he added. "Right smack in the middle of the Ilmayen woods, according to that." He gestured at the pathfinder.

"Just our luck, huh?"

Neo got up off the ground. "Let's make a move," he said.

"Where?"

Neo hesitated, decided that Frank made a good point, and sat back down.

"Here's our situation now," Frank said. "We've got enough food for one meal. The water should last a while longer. Money is time, and we've got a total of… uh… not very much."

"Seventy-three years," Marty said helpfully, flashing the pathfinder in calculator mode.

"Thanks. How much did they take from Neo?"

"Thirty years," Neo said. "They thanked me for them as they ran off."

"Where's Ted?" Marty asked suddenly.

And for the first time since the attack, they realised that the youngest member of their group was not with them.

To Be Continued...

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