Chapter 9

Chapter Nine:

What Really Happened, or How Benedict and His Friends Were Mysteriously Transported to Parts Unknown

It had all occurred on a beautiful summer’s day, when the sun was shining and the sky was such a brilliant blue that sapphires would look at it and turn green with jealousy if they had eyes. It was on this day that Benedict had gone out to the forest that surrounded the village he lived in with his three friends, Sunny, Rumple, and Rosamin, in search of something to do. All four of them had tired of the usual things they did to amuse themselves, and eventually the ended up sitting on a small hill and watching the few clouds go by.
After a while, the inactivity was too much for Benedict to stand. “Gah, there has to be SOMETHING to do around here!” he said, with much disgust. He lay on his back and waited for suggestions.
“Of course there isn’t,” Sunny replied, rolling on her side to face him. She was a soft yellow color, and it was from her color that she got her name, and certainly not her personality. “If there was anything better to do than this, we’d be doing it already.”
“And probably complaining about it being even more boring than this,” Rumple pointed out. He was a practical sort, pale-ish green, and had a tendency to point out the common behaviors he noticed in his friends.
“Hm,” was all Rosamin said. She had no interest in doing anything other than what they were doing, which seemed like a perfectly fine way to spend an afternoon, especially one that was as nice and sunny as this. But she also knew that once the others, who were not as easy to please as she was, thought of something, that would be the end of her peaceful time on the hill in the sun. So she was in no hurry to give them any suggestions. That didn’t stop her friends from coming up with a few of their own.
“We could go back to my place and make some scones,” Sunny suggested.
“Nah,” both Benedict and Rumple said.
“Just proves what I said earlier, then,” Sunny said. She fully believed that few things in life were better than baking, but was rarely able to get the others to go along with her more elaborate recipe schemes.
“We could go see what my Aunt Giana’s up to,” Rumple suggested. His aunt was a self-proclaimed scientist and was always running one experiment or another. They rarely turned up anything useful, but they could be interesting to watch.
“Sounds good to me,” Benedict said, nodding.
“Might as well,” Sunny said, which sealed the deal.
Rosamin sighed, but went along with the others as they left the hill and headed for Rumple’s Aunt Giana’s little laboratory on the outskirts of the village. As they went, they sang a boisterous song about a lost coat, but only got halfway through it before they reached their destination. All the while, they had a good time, but had to quiet down once they got to the laboratory. This was hardly the first time they’d been there, and they knew Rumple’s Aunt Giana’s rules. Rather than knock and interrupt her work, they were free to come in as long as they were quiet about it. So Rumple quietly opened the front door and let his friends in, and closed the door behind them just as quietly. Being as silent as possible, they crept around the various rooms in the laboratory, looking for the room that Rumple’s Aunt Giana was in.
“Do you think she’s in here today?” Sunny whispered to Rumple.
“She should be,” Rumple said. Truthfully, he didn’t know any day when his aunt wasn’t in her laboratory, working hard at one thing or another. But they searched room after room, and no Aunt Gina.
“Maybe she took today off,” Rosamin whispered, when they reached the last room.
“Maybe she went home to take a nap,” Sunny whispered back.
“If she isn’t here, why are we still whispering?” Benedict said, though he said it quietly.
“She might still be here,” Rumple said, also quietly.
“You mean she invented something that can make her invisible?!” Sunny whispered.
“I don’t think so,” Rumple replied quietly, “But it stands to reason that if we go in one room and she goes into another room at the same time, it’s possible that she could be here and we wouldn’t run into each other for a while.”
“Wouldn’t we hear her?” Sunny asked in a soft voice.
“Not necessarily,” Rumple told her, still quite quiet. “It would depend on how many rooms separated-- what are you doing!” he called out as loudly as he dared to Benedict, who was trying to boost himself up to see a panel of controls. “You know the rules,” Rumple told him in a more quiet voice, “No touching anything without Aunt Giana’s supervision.”
“I just want to see it,” Benedict said in a normal voice. He was tired of being quiet, and since Rumple’s Aunt Giana was nowhere to be seen, he didn’t see any reason to continue whispering or even just talking quietly.
“Well, all right, but just be careful,” Rumple said, still quietly. He watched as Benedict continued to try and get up to see the controls, but his friend was not having too much luck. Worried that something would get unintentionally broken (and with Aunt Giana, intentions didn’t matter; broken was broken), he finally came over and gave his friend a push, saying, “Here.”
The boost was a little unexpected, since everything had been so quiet. With the sudden rush of movement up in the air, Benedict flailed a little, to his embarrassment. But in his flailing, he accidentally hit a switch. A light flashed, there was a kind of noise that he couldn’t describe, and then the next thing he knew, he was in a strange place, surrounded by extremely strange creatures.

When he told all this to his parents and Linae, Lynne, and Grayson (even though he couldn’t understand it, he still listened as intently as the others), he left out one particular detail, keeping his direct involvement in the transportation a secret.
“So in the flash, they all must have been transported,” Linae said, her brow furrowed in thought. Particularly, the thought that there was a good chance that she was going to end up involved with getting these other three friends of Benedict’s back, and how much she did not want to do that.
“But where they all sent to our world, or to different worlds?” Lynne wondered. Benedict’s story really had not cleared up much of anything.
“Knowing how little regard the universe holds my convenience, I’d say they were sent to completely different worlds,” Linae pointed out. “Besides, if they had been sent to just one world, wouldn’t they have all been in the same general area? And if that were the case, wouldn’t one of us have heard something about it? You may recall,” she pointed this out more for Grayson’s sake than Lynne’s, “That almost everyone was doing some kind of searching into the issue.”
“Or said they were,” Lynne couldn’t help but point out.
“Regardless, I think we need more information here. Something just doesn’t make sense.”
“We ought to go see Giana, then,” Benedict’s mother said. “If anyone would know what happened, she should.”

Which was how they all ended up trekking out to the little laboratory on the outskirts of the woods. Although warned by their son, Benedict’s parents did indeed knock on the front door, and were soon greeted by Rumple’s Aunt Giana. She was a slight kind of orange and was wearing a lab coat.
“Millie, Tails, always a pleasure to see you,” the slightly orange creature said in greeting. Then she noticed the humans behind them. “Well, well, what have we here?” She smoothed a few curly bangs out of her face to get a better look.
“Giana, these are…” Benedict’s father started to introduce them, but faltered when he realized he couldn’t remember their names. Fortunately, Linae picked up on this, and took over before it became too obvious what was going on.
“I’m Linae, this is Lynne, and that‘s Grayson,” she said, introducing them in turn.
“Quite the pleasure,” Giana said, shaking hands with the three of them. “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t invite you in. I’ve had to do some clean-up that’s taken me two days already, and things still aren’t quite clean. Seems the Lesser Vilatron got started up somehow, and simply went kabloomers! I really haven’t any idea how it happened, though. I was out to lunch, and when I came back, well, it was quite a shock, believe you me.”
“I think our son can give you an idea of what happened,” Tails said, prodding Benedict forward. Benedict, for what it’s worth, repeated what he had told his parents earlier, again leaving out the most crucial detail.
“I see,” was all Giana said once the story was over. “But that doesn’t exactly explain what these folk are doing here,” she added, pointing to the humans.
“Well, you see, ma’am,” Linae explained, “apparently your contraption sent the four children to different worlds,”
“Or maybe different parts of the same world,” Lynne added.
“Right, right,” Linae conceded. “Anyway, Benedict landed in our world, and was brought to us, as it were, and after much trials on our part…”
“It wasn’t that hard, really,” Lynne reassured them.
“After much trials on our part,” Linae continued, “We were able to get him back home.”
“But since the other children are still out there somewhere, we thought it might be useful to get a look at the scene where the transportation took place,” Millie told Giana.
But Giana had something else on her mind. “Doesn’t he talk?” she asked, pointing at Grayson, who had been following the conversation on his computer.
“I could, but you wouldn’t understand it,” he answered, and Lynne explained about his sound wave editor and the translator headsets. For the moment, she left out the reason why she didn’t need to use a mouthpiece, feeling it wasn’t really necessary to know that for the task at hand. There was something about the gleam in Giana’s eye when she asked about Grayson that made her feel like withholding information. It was a look that seemed to say she would be willing to dissect anything she didn’t fully understand, just to see what made it tick. Lynne wasn’t entirely sure that they’d get out of this fully intact, but that was just a vague feeling more than a certain uncertainty.
“Absolutely fascinating,” Giana said, indeed with a gleam in her eye. “I don’t suppose I could take a look at that?” she asked Grayson.
“Why don’t we take a look at this Viletron while you look at that?” Linae suggested.
“Of course, and it‘s the Vilatron, actually,” Giana said, and lead them into her laboratory, straight into the room with the Lesser Vilatron.
As Linae looked around at the strange contraption, which as far as she could tell consisted of a long, circular control panel, it occurred to her that she had no idea what they were supposed to be looking for. Lynne wasn’t looking at all, but was translating for Grayson as he talked to Giana.
“So this is a transporter of some sort?” Grayson asked.
“Not really,” Giana answered, “At least, that’s not what I built it for. But if it has the potential, then I can easily tool it toward transportation.”
“What is it supposed to do?” Lynne asked.
“Well, I originally made it to monitor the levels of aerinths in the area (I noticed an increase from the previous years), and I just finished upgrading it to harness the aerinths (I was going to figure out what to do with them later) when it got accidentally activated,” Giana explained.
“So how would it do that? Harness aerinths, I mean?” Grayson asked.
Linae stopped looking around for something she had no clue about to listen for what might be a potentially interesting answer. However, all that she seemed to hear was a long string of techno babble that was absolutely meaningless to her. Why couldn’t people who worked with strange technology ever talk about it without sounding like a language that her earpiece wouldn’t translate, she wondered. But in wondering that, it suddenly sparked a thought in her mind. “Wait a minute! I just remembered something.” She waited for the others to stop what they were doing and look at her, but Giana was still talking to Grayson when she made her pronouncement.
“Now, tell me more about how this works,” Giana said, watching Grayson’s computer screen in awe as the editor program put out words that she didn’t recognize as she spoke.
Linae continued on regardless, “When my client brought Benedict in to me, he mentioned that the experiment they were doing involving harnessing something, although he couldn’t tell me what exactly they were after.”
“So you think it might be the same kind of experiment?” Giana asked, intrigued by this theory. She had been listening after all.
“It’s a distinct possibility,” Linae said, nodding solemnly. Not out of an inflated sense of importance of her sudden thought, but more to keep the growing possibility of things getting infinitely more complicated out of her mind.
“That’s a hypothesis that needs to be tested, then,” Giana said, standing up a little straighter. “All right, let’s go.”
“What, now?” Lynne said. She didn’t want to be leaving so soon, as she’d hardly seen any of Benedict’s world.
“Wait, what?” Linae said. She had not even imagined that Giana would presume to come. Although the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. If her idea was correct, who better to actually test it than someone who actually knew what she was talking about?
“This is awfully sudden,” Millie pointed out.
“You’re right, you’re right,” Giana said, “Of course, we need to have lunch first.”
“I don’t think lunch is the thing we should be doing right now,” Tails said.
“We need to pounce on this opportunity,” Grayson said, although only Lynne and Linae knew what he said.
“And why, pray tell, are you so gung-ho about this all of sudden?” Linae asked, looking at him askance. “Perchance you just want to get back to where you don’t have to keep looking at a computer screen to know what’s going on?”
“Of course not,” Grayson said, but before he could add any more, Giana had somehow pushed them all out of the lab and gotten them back on track to town.
“Wait, how is this happening?” Linae couldn’t help but ask.
“It’s better not to know, really,” Benedict’s mother told them. She, Tails, and Benedict were all walking beside the humans, who were the only ones being pushed.
“How interesting,” Grayson said, watching as they moved effortlessly. “One of your inventions?” he asked Giana, with Lynne translating for him.
“Very astute of you to notice,” Giana said. “Right now it’s top secret, but when I make it public, I’ll be sure to let you know all about it.”
“I don’t think I need to be pushed along, if you’d just tell us where we’re going,” Lynne pointed out.
“Well, all right,” Giana said, and quite abruptly, they slowed to a stop. She looked a little put out, but only for a moment. “We’re going to have some lunch with my husband in town, that’s all.”
“Do you do that every day?” Benedict asked, the first time he’d felt comfortable talking since they’d gone to see Giana.
“Do what?” Giana asked.
“Leave your lab and go out to lunch,” Benedict replied.
“Most days, yes,” she admitted.
“Then how come Rumple didn’t know that?” he asked.
“Didn’t he?” she asked, a mischievous glint in her eye.
“He totally thought you were still there,” Benedict said, defending his friend.
“Could be, could be,” was all Giana said, and they continued back into town.

Chapters 7 and 8

Chapter Seven:

The Plot Finally Gets to Advance Quite a Bit, but Not as Much as You’d Think

There were few things that lifted Linae’s spirits more than a slice of leftover pizza for lunch.  Hot or cold, plain or with toppings (especially ham and onion, and occasionally a chili cheese pizza could be good, too), it was by far her favorite lunch.  No matter that she had eaten it for dinner the previous night with Brooke, she was still looking forward to lunch time purely for the two slices in a plastic container waiting for her in the break room refrigerator.  So it was curious that she didn’t take off for the break room at the soonest opportunity.  Or not so curious, considering that she half-fell asleep while trying to make the words on her computer screen make some kind of sense.  By the time she picked herself up enough to actually go and eat lunch, Lynne and Benedict had already made it to the break room, as well as two other agents that were talking to Lynne.

“Did he say how long it would take?” One of them asked, poking at the remnants of her lunch, which was too eaten to be distinguishable any more.

“A couple of days, probably,” Lynne replied with a shrug.

“Hey, Lin,” the other agent, the only one facing the door, said with a little wave when Linae came in.  “Did Lynne tell you yet?”

“Tell me what?” Linae asked.  If she hadn’t been so intent on getting her pizza from the fridge, she probably would have sounded more accusatory.

“About the guy who cracked the code, that’s what!” the other agent replied.

Lynne turned in her seat to face Linae.  “Mary Ellen brought someone over from Halix, and he was able to get the data from Benedict’s language to make a sound wave plate.”

“That’s good, then,” Linae said, joining them at the table.  She briefly remembered what she heard in the restroom.  “You should thank Mary Ellen for helping you out.”

“That’s just what I said!” the first agent, whose name was also Mary, said.  “M.E. can be such a pain about getting credit for something.”  

“Oh, I know!” the other agent, called Sheila by the others, agreed.  “If you don’t give her some kind of acknowledgement, she’ll snub you for weeks.”

Lynne didn‘t generally see this as a bad thing, but she knew it was better to keep a good relationship with people at work.  “I’ll send her a message when I get back to my office.”

“I was thinking something more along the lines of a cookie bouquet,” Sheila said.

“Don’t do that,” Mary said, waving a hand in disgust.  “If you do, everyone,” she shot a pointed look at Sheila, “Will get to it before she does.  Probably.”

“I take it that happened to you?” Linae said, having finished enough of her first slice of pizza to feel up to joining the conversation.

“Not really, no,” Mary said, “I just think it was a little suspect for someone to suggest something edible.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that so that I could raid her office, if that’s what you think,” Sheila said, visibly offended, “Although I did think that she’d ‘share the wealth’ if she got one.”

“See, I knew you weren’t being altruistic!” Mary said, pointing an accusing finger at her friend.  “Honestly, Sheila, that’s your problem, you’re always so self serving!”

“It’s not like Mary Ellen would share, anyway,” Linae pointed out, although neither girl really heard her.  They had started in on what sounded like an old fight.  

“I’m done here,” Lynne said, pushing her chair away from the table.  Benedict did the same, having finished before Linae even showed up.  

“See you later, I guess,” Linae said, then looked at the squabbling agents and hastily crammed the remains of her second slice of pizza into her mouth, chewed it up, and left as well.

Lynne was still standing outside the door waiting.  “I wanted to talk to you about the patch,” she said to Linae.  

“Go ahead,” Linae said, and they started walking back to her office.

“Well, I was thinking, if this thing is really ready in a day or two, you’ll need to clear out your schedule to get Benedict home.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait,” Linae said, stopping in her tracks. “Whoever said I was going to do that?”

“I had just assumed you would.” Lynne said, also stopping.  

“Why should I do it when almost every other agent here is leaping at the chance to get involved with this situation?”

“But in the end, it is your client’s problem, isn’t it?”

Linae had almost forgotten that part of the situation.  She made a mental note to call Mr. Elwood and set up the payment for services, payment she would only get if she actually did the deed herself.  She sighed.  “You’re right.  It is my client and my responsibility, no matter what help I get.”  Then a thought occurred to her.  “But of course you’ll be coming, won’t you?”

“Hm?” Lynne cocked her head, “Why would I come?”

“Why would you come?  Why wouldn’t you come?” Linae was almost amazed at her sudden stroke of genius, if at the same time dismayed that Lynne hadn’t been planning on coming anyway.  “You’ve been so involved with this, and Benedict certainly has taken a shine to you.”  She looked down at the blue creature currently holding Lynne’s hand and glaring at both of them impatiently.  “I mean, he probably wouldn’t feel right going home without saying goodbye to you, and wouldn’t you feel better knowing that he got to the right home?  The home that is his world that he doesn’t even know the name of?”  She was starting to lose her thread, and Lynne was looking less than convinced, so she took a deep breath before continuing on.  “And don’t you want to know, just a little, what that world actually looks like?”

“I’ve already read the description Benedict gave us,” Lynne pointed out.

“Yes, but that’s just what he said,” Linae said, “How can mere description compare to seeing the real thing with your own eyes.”

“You could take a camera and get some pics for me,” Lynne pointed out.  But Linae could tell she was starting to turn to her toward her way of thinking.

“I could,” she said, “But then, I’ve never been all that good at taking pictures.  I’d probably leave something out.  And of course, if I went by myself, I’d just go and come back again.”

“You’d leave without finding out the world’s name?” Lynne asked.  Linae secretly smiled.  She hadn’t thought of that as a consequence of her words, but it was certainly a fitting one.

“Once I’ve been there, I can go anytime, and I can take anyone I like,” she said with a slight shrug, “So why should I stick around by myself?”

“You have a point,” Lynne said.  “Anyway, what I was really going to say…”

“Yes?” Linae said, unable to read her expression.

“I don’t remember what I was going to say.”

“Oh.  Well, if it comes to you later, be sure to send me a message.  Oh, and don’t forget to thank Mary Ellen.”

“Right, I’ll do that.”  And with that, the two women went back to their respective offices.

The rest of the day passed without incident.  Lynne dealt with all the messages Linae forwarded to her, although she forwarded back the ones that didn’t deal with Benedict directly.  She also sent Mary Ellen a nice iCard to thank her for introducing her to Grayson.  Linae met with two clients, answered the messages Linae forwarded back to her, and decided to stay in that evening (although Brooke did come over, and they ordered another pizza and rented a movie).  Benedict, meanwhile, spent the night wondering why everything in life had to be so hard.

Lynne was only slightly surprised when she found a message from Grayson Mason in her inbox when she got into work first thing that morning.  From the message, he seemed to be very pleased with himself.

“I have done it!” he wrote, “In just one night I have made a prototype wave plate for a headset.  I will be coming today to give it to you.  Please let me know what would be a good time to drop by.”

Lynne was pleased that it was finished so quickly, but couldn’t help but feel that it was a tad too convenient.  But then, the sound wave plate technology had been around since she was a child, so there had been plenty of time to refine the process of creating new ones.  And as Grayson said himself, what he was bringing was only a prototype.  Another part of her was thinking about what Linae had said yesterday.  She’d thought about it all through the previous night as well.  And the more she thought about it, the more she thought that she would go.  As long as she was free when Linae went, there wasn’t any reason why she shouldn’t go.  She had mostly been thinking that should wouldn’t go because she didn’t want to go alone.  And when she thought about that, she realized that there wasn’t any reason why Linae would want to go alone, either.  No wonder Linae had worked so hard to convince her to go along.  Thinking about it now, she really couldn’t blame her.  This was why, when she wrote back to Grayson, she asked him to bring an extra wave plate for an earpiece, if at all possible.

“For you, anything is possible,” Grayson had wanted to write back when he read her message, but he felt that might not be the best thing to say at the moment.  Open-ended remarks had a tendency to come back to bite him, like when he promised his cousin Mary Ellen that he would do anything to score some tickets to the big game.  But then, the favor she had called him for had certainly had a pleasant bonus for him, so perhaps it wasn’t a bite, exactly.

Chapter Eight:

The Unknown World Becomes Known to Linae, Lynne, and Grayson, too

“So, then,” Linae said as she placed the wave plates into the slots on her headset, “These work?”

“They’re only a prototype,” Grayson explained, again, “But they should properly translate the language.”

“All right then, say something,” Linae said to Benedict.  She was lucky that her headset had finally gotten back in from the shop that morning.

“Not this again,” Benedict grumbled.  “Did you guys have enough of this yesterday?  I sure did.”

“Heh,” Linae arched an eyebrow, “So it does work.”

“Well, I’d like you to test it a little more than that,” Grayson admitted.

“Do I really want to know what kind of secrets lurk in the inner workings of Benedict’s mind?” Linae asked Lynne.  “How’s your earpiece translation doing, by the by?”

“Probably not, and it seems to be working all right,” Lynne said, answering both of her questions in turn.

“Feh on you both,” Benedict said, but he wasn’t really mad.  A little offended, certainly, but for the most part, he was just glad to be, in theory, going home.

“Okay, if everyone’s ready, let‘s get a move on,” Linae said, eager to be getting on with it.  Not only was Lynne coming, which was good in a manner of speaking, but Grayson had decided to come along as well, which was potentially good.  But seeing as she had just met him that morning, she really couldn’t be sure of his usefulness on this trip.  Still, if this trip went as planned, everything would go back to normal.  She could ignore Lynne as usual, and the agency would have a new world to take customers to.  A win-win situation if ever she saw one.

“Ready,” Grayson said, taking Lynne’s hand.

“Ready,” said Benedict, taking Lynne’s other hand.

“Don’t know about these two, but I’m ready,” Lynne said, holding up her two taken hands.  

Linae rolled her eyes at the terrible joke, and took Benedict’s free hand.  “All right, just like we practiced.  Everyone get ready to step on my mark.  Ready, steady, GO!”

And then, there they were, the four of them, standing in the middle of a bustling village full of creatures of a similar vein as Benedict.  Just as Benedict had described, the buildings were mostly beige, and the whole place had a rather underwhelming look to it.

“I’m guessing this is the right place,” Linae said dryly.  

“I’d guess that,” Grayson and Lynne said at the same time.  Benedict, however, had taken off like a shot, and was now out of sight.

“Well, that’s gratitude for you,” Linae said when she noticed he was no longer there.  “That’s done, then, we can go back.”  But Lynne and Grayson were talking amongst themselves, and didn’t hear her say this.

“Should we go after him?” Grayson asked.

“I don’t know which way he went,” Lynne said, feeling a bit ill at ease.  The presence of three very strange strangers had not gone unnoticed by the populace of the village, although no one had stopped to talk to them.  But the stares of the passing villagers, that was something else entirely.

Linae didn’t seem to notice the staring, though.  She had realized that they were probably not going home without getting some acknowledgement that this was indeed the right place for Benedict, and so decided to move things along.  “I felt a whoosh, and the whoosh went that way,” she said, pointing randomly toward a small hut.  Sure enough, Benedict was going inside it.

“Oh, good, we didn’t lose him,” Lynne said, and started heading toward the hut herself, with Grayson and Linae following behind her.  They arrived just as the door of the hut opened, and they were in time to witness a heartfelt reunion scene between Benedict and two creatures who looked almost exactly like him; one of them the same pale blue, but the other a pink so pale it was almost white: his parents.

“Mom, Dad!”

“Benedict, we were so worried!” His mother hugged him tightly.  Then she looked at him disparagingly.  “What are you wearing?”  He was still wearing the poncho Rachel had given him, but before he could explain, his father took him aside.

“What in the world happened to you?” His father asked.  “The entire village combed the countryside for two whole days looking for you and your friends.”

“Friends?” Linae wondered, but pushed the thought out of her mind.

“You’ll never believe it, Dad, I went to a different world!”

“You’re right, I don’t believe it.  Where did you really go?”

“No, I really did go to another world, and I couldn’t understand anyone, and they trapped me somehow, but then I got to a place where I could understand one person, but she couldn’t understand me, and-”

“That’s enough,” his mother stopped him, “It’s all right, honey, we won’t be mad, but you need to tell us what really happened.”

Linae and Lynne were trying to hold back their laughter as they watched, but Grayson, who had pulled out his small laptop computer and was loading the sound wave editor program, couldn’t understand what was being said yet, and was more than a little confused about what the two women found so funny.  Finally, Lynne stepped forward.  “Everything your son told you is true, sir.  He really did go to a different world somehow, but we were able to bring him back home.”

Benedict’s parents just stared at her.  

“See, I told you!” Benedict said, pointing at Lynne and the others.  His parents looked from him to the humans and back again three times before they said anything.  During this, Linae asked Lynne, “Should we do something?”

Lynne shrugged, “I really have no idea what would be appropriate in this situation.”

The program on Grayson‘s computer finally booted, but not soon enough to catch anything.  “So, what’s going on?” Grayson asked, and Linae filled him in.

“Seems Benedict’s parents here don’t believe that he went to another world, but here we are as proof, so yeah.”

At last Benedict’s mother spoke, “P-p-please come in,” she stammered, a bit shaken, “Have something to eat and drink, if you please.”  She motioned to the door.  Benedict ran in, followed more sedately by his father, then Linae and Lynne looked at each other and shrugged.  The three of them went in, followed by Benedict’s mother.

“Please have a seat,” Benedict’s father said, setting out chairs for them.  But since even fully grown adults of Benedict’s species were still much smaller than the three of them, Linae had the distinct feeling of being at a parent/teacher meeting for a kindergarten class.  Not that she knew the feeling personally.  Lynne felt more like she was being forced to play musical chairs in a grade-school classroom, and Grayson opted to continue standing, with Lynne excusing him to their hosts.

“So, you really come from another world?” Benedict’s father asked, while his wife set out some food on a small table in the center of the room between them.  She also poured them all a cup of a sweet-smelling liquid.

“Of course they do,” she chided her husband, “Have you ever seen anything like them in your life?”

“I was just making small talk,” he replied, twirling his own cup nervously.

“That’s fine,” Linae said, “Really, it’s all right.”  She took a sip of the drink in her cup and found it tasted good.  This made her feel bold enough to try the small, round objects on the table.

“We do indeed come from another world,” Lynne told them.  “Our world is called Rearn.  My name is Lynne, by the way, and,” indicating toward Grayson, “he’s Grayson.”

“I’m Linae, and these are delicious,” Linae said, waving what she assumed was a biscuit of some sort.  That’s what it tasted like to her, anyway.

Benedict’s mother smiled.  “Thank you.  I’m Millie, and my husband’s name is Tails.”

“Thank you very much for keeping our son and his friends safe,” Benedict’s father said to them.

“Friends?” Lynne was confused, while Linae just groaned.  Somehow she knew that this would not end with everything back to normal like she wanted.  But Lynne continued, “What friends?  Benedict was the only one we ever saw.”

Benedict fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair.  “You mean they didn’t come back yet?”  But it seemed like he already knew the answer, and had known for a while.

“Please, please, don’t tell me there are others still in our world,” Linae said.  Her mind was already racing to think of ways to shaft looking for these friends onto someone else.

“I don’t think so,” Benedict said, looking even more uncomfortable as he did.  “When I… got there… I was the only one there.  I thought I was the only one that got transported.  I don’t even know how it happened…”

“Spontaneous transportation doesn’t just happen,” Benedict’s father said.

“I’m assuming that it had something to do with the experiment Mr. Elwood was talking about,” Linae said, and briefly explained the circumstances that had lead Benedict to the Tulin-Walker Agency.  Lynne added the occasional detail, especially concerning what they had done to get Benedict back home.

“I see, I see,” his father said, stroking the tip of his snout thoughtfully.  “Be that as it may, something still strikes me as odd about the whole thing.”

“I have to agree with my husband,” Benedict’s mother told them.  Then she turned to her son.  “Just what were you four up to that day?”

“You know… we were just out in the woods,” Benedict said, trying to keep a cool composition.

“Oh, really?” both his mother and father asked at the same time.  Although they didn’t move, it seemed to Lynne that they had gotten uncomfortably close to their son.  “Maybe it’s time you told us what really happened.”

Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6

Chapter Three:

Lynne Has a Working Earpiece, but Working isn’t the same as Working

Lynne spent the rest of the morning, which wasn’t long, once all was said and done, finishing the weather reports, and had them filed to be sent out right after lunch.  Slightly late, but not late enough to warrant a warning.  She used her lunch hour to go and get her earpiece.  Although she did not show it, it was slightly disconcerting to speak, but not know what you were saying.  Oh, she knew what she intended to say, but unless she heard it with her earpiece, she was never one hundred percent certain that what she intended and what she actually said were one and the same, even though she’d never had it be the case otherwise, as far as she knew.  But she waited until the reports were done to test out her earpiece.

She wasn’t entirely sure that the earpiece would be able to translate the creature’s language.  The technology used to run it worked by analyzing the sound waves that entered it and the pattern they followed.  That said, there was a limited pattern of sound waves built into it, and she frequently had to send it in for upgrades when new languages were added.  And she hadn’t mentioned this to Linae, but she had never seen anything like this creature.  She wondered briefly what it was called, what it’s name was, even.  So, to test it out, she decided to ask.  To his credit, he had been very good while waiting for her to finish her work.  She had given him a couple of magazines, and though she figured he couldn’t actually read them, he looked through them intently, although he did tear a few pages out of them.  She tried not to mind that.  But now she called him over and he came to her.  First, she explained that she could understand him now, and then she asked him what his name was.

“Benedict,” he told her.  So far so good.  The rest of their conversation was not the greatest, but it was passable.  Strangely, the earpiece picked up about half the words that Benedict said, something that Lynne hadn’t encountered before.  With the earpiece it was usually all or nothing, so to speak.  But this garbled translation coming out of her earpiece was better than nothing, she told herself, and she continued to press the creature for information.  Because of the imperfect translation, any kind of overly complicated explanation came out as pure nonsense that made next to no sense (for instance, she was almost certain he was trying to explain how he had ended up in their world, but too many crucial words were missing for her to truly understand), but simple concepts came across correctly, for the most part.  This method worked best, Lynne learned, if she asked him a question that could be answered in one or two words.  From what she could tell, Mr. Elwood had been correct, the name that Benedict wrote down earlier was indeed the name of his hometown (and was actually Hinagura) and not the world he came from.  He didn’t appear to know the name of his world, and didn‘t seem to have known that there was more to his world than where he lived, but she wasn‘t entirely sure that was what he meant.  And because of the earpiece’s translation jumble, she couldn’t ask him to simple describe where he came from and try to go from that.  To walk to an unknown world would take a very specific description, not one with half the words missing.

All this back and forth questioning and guessing left the two of them feeling worn out, and Benedict refused to say anymore until he got something to eat.  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” Lynne said. She was not perturbed by this lack of thought, but merely went to the break area to get him something to eat.  She came back with some fruit, which he wolfed down and then demanded more.  She didn’t need her earpiece to figure that one out.  “I guess they didn’t feed you over there,” she said.  She hadn’t been properly introduced to Mr. Elwood, so she didn’t really know what his relationship to Benedict was.  Nor did she worry about it, since it seemed to be over.

Watching him eat the sandwich she brought back, she felt a warmth wash over her, like when she watched her pet mini-coon eat its mini-pellets after a long day.  “Ah, such bliss,” she said to herself.

“What?” Benedict said, looking up from the sandwich.

“Oh nothing,” Lynne said.  She hadn’t realized that she had been speaking when she said that.  But that sparked the thought that she should probably let Linae know what she had found out at least.  She went back to her desk and typed up the information she had gotten from Benedict in a message to Linae.  She also told her about the quirk with her earpiece, and sent the message.  

Chapter Four:

It Doesn’t Take a Genius to Know the Unknowable or a Village to Find a Child

In spite of her desire to have nothing to do with the creature and its return, Linae couldn’t help doing just a little bit of research into where it might belong.  There were a handful of sites that listed the different inhabitants of various worlds.  Some where personal logs from travelers or walkers while others were official lists from the IWF itself.  The most interesting site was a wiki that anyone could add to, and Linae spent a good chunk of time just clicking links from one article to the next, deviating a bit from her original goal.  She liked to read about the places she had already been, and even added to a couple of entries herself.  But because the wiki could be edited by anyone, the information had to be taken with a grain of salt.  Still, it was a start, at least.  Unfortunately, she didn’t see any articles that mentioned inhabitants that looked anything like the creature, and none of the entries with pictures were remotely close.  After catching herself going off track again, she closed her browser window and got down to some real work.

No sooner had she closed her browser than she heard the incessant PING of a message.  A message from Lynne, she noted, and opened it, hoping to hear that the situation was taken care of now.  This appeared to be less and less the case as she read the message, and it became more and more clear that they were going to need more than just the two of them to solve this mysterious, as she had started to think of it.  So she sent a message back to Lynne, telling her about the information she had failed to dredge up, and suggesting they call an impromptu meeting with the other agents in that day.

“I thought we were supposed to keep this on the quiet side?” Lynne messaged back.

“Who said that?  I know I never did,” sent Linae.

It took a few more messages, but they finally decided to divide the list of available agents between the two of them and send out a brief explanation of the situation, asking them to meet and share any thoughts.

“Well, that’s that,” Lynne said once her messages had been sent, and she turned to watch Benedict again.  By then he had long finished his sandwich, and had been watching Linae typing her message.  He asked her something that she wasn’t sure of, so she asked him to repeat it, and when she still couldn’t understand his reprise, she asked him to rephrase it.  What he said to her next could only be translated as “Where are my clothes?”

An hour later, a handful of the other travel agents under the employ of the Tulin-Walker Travel Agency were gathered in the break room, including Supervising Agent (SA) Myrna.  Granted, the room was not really intended for this purpose, being only about the size of a double-sized bathroom, but there were enough chairs for everyone, and Lynne brought muffins, which lured in a few more agents.  She had picked them up while trying to find appropriate clothing for Benedict, after determining that the lab he came from must have confiscated his clothes (that was the only explanation she could think of).  But she couldn’t find any clothes that he liked that would fit him, being a rather awkward shape in a world of humanoids.  So she bought a blanket for him to wrap around himself.  “That’ll have to do for right now, but I’ll work something out for you later,” she told him, and he accepted the blanket.

“What is that?” Linae asked when she met them in the break room a few minutes before the approved meeting time.  An agent who was also a friend of hers, Brooke, was already there as well.

“It’s a blanket,” Lynne explained, giving her a slightly bemused look.  Brooke tittered, since she’d already heard the story and just kept thinking of a nudist…whatever Benedict was.

“I can see it’s a blanket,” Linae replied, glancing over at Brook, “Is he cold or something?”

“Not exactly,” Lynne said, and explained the situation again.

“He’ll have to take it off,” Linae said, “Otherwise no one will get a good look at him.”  She looked at Benedict, who was falling asleep in the molded chair he was sitting on.  He did look cozy, all wrapped up as he was.  “We’ll wait until everyone’s here, then we‘ll strip him,” she said, more to herself than anyone else, but Brooke heard her and giggled again.

“Interesting things do seem to fall in your lap, Lin,” her friend said, with just a bit of a leering grin peeking through her facial expression.

“I’ll ignore that,” Linae told her.  She was still secretly hoping to pass this mystery off to one of the other agents.  Perhaps one of them would be so impassioned by the creature, no, Benedict’s plight that they would take it on personally.  At the least, another collaborator would be helpful.

“Oh, you make a big show of hating anything outside of your usual prospects, but I know you love to tackle something new,” Brooke teased.

“Do I, now?” Linae said right back to her, eyebrow cocked, “And how do you know this, pray tell?”

But Brooke just smiled at her with an annoyingly mysterious grin, “I have my ways.”  Linae had decided to let the topic go.  She liked Brooke, but the girl could be maddeningly cagey when she wanted to be.

Now, with almost everyone in the room, and no new additions for the past five minutes, Linae cleared her throat and called for everyone’s attention.  The idle chattering stopped, and all eyes turned to her.  For a moment Linae felt her voice dry up, but she cleared her throat again and then addressed the crowd.  “You should all know why we’re here.”  But before she could get any further, someone (she wasn’t sure who, and she wasn’t looking) called out, “Have him talk!”

There were murmurs of agreement, and Linae noticed that most of the gathered agents were wearing their headsets.  Of course they wanted to hear the garbled translation for themselves, Linae told herself.  She was just a little surprised that the issue would be brought up so quickly.  “Well, if that’s what you want,” she said, and looked to Lynne, who shrugged.  “Thanks a lot,” she thought, and then prodded the sleeping creature.

Benedict opened his eyes and stared at the gathered crowd (which really wasn’t much more than eight people).  “Xxxx xxx xxxx xx xxxxx xx?”

The crowd gasped.  And then smiled as if one person.  With a simultaneous cry of, “That so cute!”  Linae was aghast, but Lynne just nodded.

“Yes, well,” Linae continued, a little flustered.  She hadn’t actually thought about the response anyone else would have to Benedict, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have considered that one.  “True as that may be, there is a more important matter at hand.”  But not only had the agents started conversing among themselves, Benedict had started talking to Lynne, demanding answers about what was going on.  Which only further spurred the suddenly smitten agents.

“Oh my goodness, he’s darling,”  “It’s really going halfway through the translator,”  “Let me get a pic of this.”  And then there was a rush of agents grabbing cameras and snapping semi-silent photos of Benedict and Lynne conversing.

“Now hold on, if we’re going to do this, do it right!” Linae said to the crowd, hardly believing the words coming out of her mouth.  To Lynne, she said, “Tell him to take off the blanket and, I don’t know, strike a pose or something.”

“What for?  Candid shots are fine,” Lynne replied.  Benedict had clung to her when the cameras came out, and she was still stroking the top of his head, pausing now and then to massage his ears.  

Before Linae could respond, a couple of agents called out, “Identification shots, of course!”

“If we send them around to all the walkers we know,“

“…someone’s bound to know where he comes from!”

“Of course, it’s so obvious.”

While Linae was glad that everyone caught on to her idea without her actually needing to say it, it also pointed out that none of them knew anything more than she or Lynne did.  She would have felt discouraged if everyone wasn’t so enthusiastic to help out.  Lynne had explained what the cameras were, and when she told Benedict what they wanted him to do, he was a little more enthusiastic about it.  He obliged the agents who circled around him, getting more shots than Linae thought was necessary.  But who was she to deny them their fun, especially if it got the job done.  

The rest of the “meeting” ended up turning into a “get to know Benedict” party.  The agents that brought their headset talked with Benedict incessantly, but since they couldn’t speak the way Lynne could, their translation mouthpieces (as far as anyone could tell) produced the same garbled conversation to him that their earpieces revealed to them.  This made the conversation sound something like a strange game of Telephone, but no one seemed to mind that much.

Linae had to admit, she was pleased with the amount of interest everyone was showing for the situation, much more than she would have assumed.  Almost everyone promised to help in some way, especially those with connections to the IWF.  As she headed home for the day, she felt considerably better than she had when she came in.  Soon everything would be back to normal, she just knew it.

Chapter Five:

Lynne and Benedict Go to Earth and Live to Tell the Tale

It was by mutual agreement that Lynne took Benedict home to her apartment for the night.  She was pleased to do it, having a soft spot for most small creatures.  In fact, it was only her practical nature that kept her from overrunning her living space with all kinds of pets.  At the moment, she limited herself to one mini-coon that lived in its own terrarium, although she let it out on occasion when she was home.  And the first thing she did once she and Benedict arrived at her home was introduce him.

“This is Little Bandit, my pet mini-coon,” she told him, taking the animal out of its cage.  “He’s from Andenita, where everything is like our world, but smaller.”  Mini-animals were popular pets in Rearn, and especially in Rigdun.  Many walkers made their living by licensing and selling goods from other worlds in their world, but selling other animals was a bit of a grey area.  Lynne would not have bought a mini-animal of her own accord, but her personal pet was an abandoned mini-coon that she couldn’t bear to part with, even though her original intention had been to take it back to Andenita.  “You two can play while I made dinner.”

Lynne put a small pot of water on the stove to make some pasta and watched Benedict playing with Little Bandit while she waited for the water to boil.  This mostly consisted of Benedict letting Little Bandit run over his body, a scene that was almost too cute for words, Lynne thought.

Once the pasta was done, Lynne tossed it with a little butter and parmesan cheese, noting that she was almost out.  “I’ll get some while I’m out tonight,” she made a mental note.  Then she divided the pasta into two bowls and set them at her dining table.  She added two forks, one by each bowl, and poured two glasses of water.  With dinner ready, she put Little Bandit back in his terrarium (“Otherwise he tries to steal food from the table,” she explained to Benedict), and the two nonpets sat down to dinner.  While they ate, Lynne explained her plans for the evening.  Since it involved walking, she explained how it worked, and where they were going: a little place called  Alantown on a world much like her own called Earth.

As Linae prepared to go home at the end of the day, Brooke poked her head into her friend’s office.  “Feel like going out tonight?”

“Do I ever!” Linae said.  The last thing she wanted to do was go back home and try not to think about what had happened that day.  It would be much easier not to think about it at that new club in Arron, the next town over.  “Let’s see if the Duoke machine at Arrow Arrow  is as good as everyone says it is.”

“Sounds good to me,” Brooke said, “But first let’s get something to eat.” 

“Definitely,” Linae agreed, and the two of them left together, ready for a night on the town.  

Lynne generally did not get to know the inhabitants of the different worlds she walked to, at least, not in a way that was deeper than the occasional “hello,” or other mundane bit of conversation filler.  But Rachel X. Wright was a different matter altogether.  Although they had only been friends for a couple of years, they both considered the other a friend above all friends, for reasons that will be discussed later.  

Since she was taking Benedict with her, she focused very specifically on Rachel’s door.  She took Benedict’s hand, closed her eyes, and spoke, “Go,” the signal for them both to take a step.  With the next step they were in front of Rachel’s door, just as Lynne had seen it in her mind.  The door opened almost instantly, and a young lady stood before them.  Slightly on the short side, with a round face framed by barely chin-length black hair, Rachel smiled at her friend.  

“I knew you were coming.”  This was Rachel’s special ability, knowing.  Specifically, knowing what to do.  It was a by turns vague and specific, but always emerged as a kind of feeling.  And it only made itself known when she had to make a decision.  Sometimes she could get the feeling simply when wondering whether to use the bathroom or wait until later.  Earlier that day, she had been thinking about what she should do that evening, and she just got the feeling that someone would show up that evening.  An unexpected visitor usually meant her friend Lynne, and as she wondered what snacks to pick up, she just knew to pick up some parmesan cheese as well.  And Rachel told this to Lynne, who exclaimed, “Perfect!  I just ran out.”

The two girls hugged.  “I have a special favor to ask you,” Lynne said, and quickly motioned to the creature beside her.  “This is Benedict.  He’s from a world, but I don’t know which one yet.”

“Heya,” Rachel bent down and offered him her hand.  Having gotten used to that at the meeting earlier in the day, Benedict shook it.  “Good job!” Rachel told him and gave him a thumbs up.  Then she stood up and turned to go inside, “Come on in,” she said, though Lynne needed no such invitation.  “So what’s up,” Rachel asked once they were inside.  She sat in a flowered armchair while Lynne and Benedict were situated on a matching couch.

“Not anything too big,” Lynne answered, “But Benedict doesn’t have any clothes, and I couldn’t find anything that would be appropriate…”

“I can understand how you might have a problem,” Rachel said, regarding the light blue creature who was currently helping himself to the bowl of chips she had set out.  “But I don’t think you’ll find anything more appropriate in any of the stores around here.”

“Actually I was wondering if you’d be able to whip something up for him?”

“I was hoping you’d ask,” Rachel replied with a twinkle in her eye.  She got up and started rummaging in a bag on the table in the dining room, which was connected to the front room (an acquired name for the area most people called a living room).  “Ah, here we go,” she pulled out a tape measure.  “This shouldn’t be a problem,” she said, and grabbed a pen and a pad that were next to the bag.  “Okay, kiddo, step away from the table and let me measure you,” she said to Benedict, and Lynne translated, explaining that her friend needed to get his measurements to make him some clothes.  Benedict gave her a look that told her more than if he had said what he was thinking about the obviousness of her statement, and gamely let Rachel move his limbs around as needed as she measured him from every possible angle, making notations on the pad.

“So what do you think?”  Lynne asked as Rachel rolled the tape measure up again.

“Well, I have a few patterns I can modify,” Rachel replied, “and I’m off tomorrow, so I can get started right away, but really, I don’t see this taking any less, fewer,” she corrected herself, “than five days.”

“Looks like you’ll be wearing my old t-shirts for a while,” Lynne said to Benedict.  Benedict just shrugged.

“Hold on,” Rachel said, and went to a room toward the back of the house.  She returned to the front room a few minutes later, holding a bundle.  She unfurled it with a little more flair than was necessary (she knew this), revealing a loosely crocheted, although well made, child-size poncho.  “Try this on,” she said as she handed it to Benedict.  Before Lynne could translate, Benedict slipped it on, adjusting it a little.  “No, this part goes in the front,” Rachel told him, kneeling down to help him get it on straight.  After a moment, he gave her a thumbs up.  “You catch on quick, I see,” Rachel said, beaming at her handiwork.

They spent the rest of the evening looking at the patterns Rachel thought would best suit the work she’d have to do.  Once she and Benedict agreed on an outfit, she let him and Lynne into another room in the back of the house where she kept her stash of yarn, and the three of them perused the collection.  Different materials were selected, rejected, tried next to other colors.  In the end, Benedict and Rachel compromised on a set of variations on light brown and tan, with a little dark green thrown in for luck.

“Just in time, too,” Rachel said, and the three of them settled in to watch one of her favorite shows.  Rachel didn’t usually watch a lot of TV, being more of a movie person, but she had one show she always watched from Monday to Thursday.  Since it was Tuesday, it was time for The Everyman, a kind of “everybody loves everybody” sitcom.  While she watched, Rachel got started crocheting a shirt for one of the outfits she would make for Benedict.  Lynne was more interested in watching her friend work with the yarn and hook more than she was in watching the show (she only caught sporadic episodes, so she was a little lost anyway), although Benedict seemed to be glued to the screen, despite not being able to understand any of it.  But for Lynne, there was something fascinating about watching the yarn turn into a long chain of loops that would somehow form a dense fabric.  Rachel seemed so serene as she pushed the hooked needle into a loop, put the yarn over the hook and pulled it back through, then put the yarn over the hook again and pulled it through the two loops on the hook, in a motion so automatic it looked like she might have been born to do it.  “No, just years of practice,” she’d said when Lynne pointed this out once.  Lynne had no desire to do it herself; watching her friend was more than enough for her.  A sense of peace settled over the room as the sound of a laugh track filtered out the television into the background.

After a few rows, Rachel paused and told Lynne, “Tomorrow, don’t be afraid to go for the big one.”

“Huh?” Although Lynne knew that Rachel tended to get mysterious and prophetic when she crocheted, it still caught her by surprise.

“Just think about it,” Rachel said, and returned to her project.

Elsewhere, Linae limped her way home after spending the night out with Brooke.  They had hit the club and had a little more fun than was wise, what with work in the morning.  Unlocking the door and quickly letting herself and her friend in, Linae kicked off her shoes and made for the one thing she could think about at the moment.  Her squishy, old couch, the only good thing that she’d gotten from her late uncle.

“Ah, life is hard,” Linae moaned, immediately sprawling herself out on the sofa.  

“You work too hard, you really do,” Brooke told her.  She gingerly moved her friend’s legs and sat down on the sofa, laying Linae’s feet in her lap and starting to massage them.  “And then you play as hard as you work.  It’s no wonder you get worn out like this.”

“Mm,” Linae approved.  They often did things similar to this, although Linae was unaware of her friends’ true intentions.  “Say it again.”

“Say what again?” Brooke teased her, as she always did.

“You know what I like to hear,” Linae said, with a little lilt in her voice.  And her friend obliged her.

“You work so hard, Linae,” Brooke said in a low voice, her fingers working their way across her friend’s feet and up her legs.  Although she longed to go further, she never strayed beyond the thighs.  “You should get a promotion with all the work you put in.”  This was all pure nonsense, of course.  Linae never aimed to work hard, and often avoided the kind of hours that others put in as a general rule.  But they both enjoyed their little ritual, especially Brooke.  It was a nice break from the usual face she had to put on at the workplace.  One day she would move on, she knew, and maybe she wouldn’t be able to spend time with Linae like this.  Linae would probably stay at Tulin-Walker for the rest of her life, she thought, and what would become of them then?  She didn’t like to think about that, so for the moment she just savored the chance to be close to a good friend.  She also did her best not to think about the guy she had noticed watching them the whole time they were at the club, singing duet after duet on the duoke machine.  It probably wouldn’t even be there in three weeks, and chances were very slim that they’d run into him again.  And part of her knew that she was just feeling a little, a very, very, very little bit jealous.  When Linae fell asleep on the couch, as she usually did, Brooke gently extricated herself from under her friend’s legs and covered her with a blanket.  She gave her the tiniest kiss on the forehead (as she also usually did), and then quietly let herself out of the apartment, locking the door behind her.

Chapter Six:

Advances in Language are Made, but No Other Advances for Lynne

“Lynne, you’ll never guess what!” an excitable agent by the name of Mary Ellen exclaimed as she burst into Lynne’s office.  Benedict and Lynne both looked up as she came in.

“What?” Lynne asked, pausing from reading the multitude of messages she had received since the previous day.

“You’ll never guess who I got to come in today!” Mary Ellen continued, as if she hadn’t heard Lynne at all.  Without waiting for a response, she went on, “Grayson Mason!”

“Who?” The name sounded familiar, but Lynne couldn’t exactly place it, especially since she was trying to type a response to another message while paying enough attention to Mary Ellen to not appear rude.

“Only THE most premiere senior member of the translation division of Halix Ind., Lynne!” Mary Ellen told her.

“Oh, that’s not true,” a voice from behind her said, and she rolled her eyes.  She moved aside to reveal a young man standing in the doorway.  “Grayson Mason, Miss Zink,” he said, shaking her hand.  “I do work with the translation division, but I’m hardly as important as Miss Liason makes me out to be.”  

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Mason,” Lynne said, returning his handshake.

“I brought him to talk to Benedict, isn’t that a good idea?” Mary Ellen said, and waited.  Lynne, however, missed this last sentence as she was too busy noticing Grayson Mason’s strong shoulders and neatly trimmed, soft brown hair.

“Please, call me Grayson, Miss Zink,” Grayson told her.

“And you may call me Lynne, Grayson,” Lynne replied, distinctly liking the way that sentence sounded.

Mary Ellen wrinkled her nose, not used to being ignored.  “Perhaps we should get down to business.  Grayson doesn’t have all day, after all.”

“Yes, of course,” Grayson and Lynne said at the same time, breaking eye contact for the first time since they had introduced themselves.

“The idea I had,” Mary Ellen continued, “was that Grayson can listen to Benedict’s language and analyze it.  Then he can build a new wave panel for the headset and we can all understand him,” she said, unaware of the pronoun confusion she had just committed.  

“Well, I’ll submit it to the division head,” Grayson said, “But I might be able to figure out a little bit right here and now.”

“I see,” Lynne said.  “How would that work?”

Grayson put his briefcase on her desk and opened it, pulling out a laptop computer.  “I’ll listen to Benedict as he speaks and upload the information into here,” he told her, “You can tell me what your earpiece translates, too, and I’ll match it to the data the computer gets.”

“Oh, I think it’ll be easier than that,” Mary Ellen said, “After all, our Lynne here is a Speaker.  You can just listen to her and ask her what she said!”  She paused after this, waiting.  Lynne, however, said nothing.  She didn’t even comment on the “our Lynne,” mostly because she hadn’t been paying attention to what Mary Ellen had said at all.  Fortunately, Grayson picked up the conversational slack.

“Well, that does simplify things a bit,” Grayson admitted, “but even so, it’s a little more complicated than all that.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Mary Ellen said, and with a quick wave, she made her way out of the door.

“Good, I thought she would never leave,” Grayson said quietly, just in case Mary Ellen was still near enough to hear him.

“She’s a good agent,” Lynne said, sneaking back over to her desk to finish up the message she had left half-typed.  “Just let me finish this up.  And then we can get started.”

“Of course,” Grayson said, “Take your time.”

Once Lynne was done with a few “just one more message”s, Grayson explained again how he would analyze Benedict’s language, and they spent the rest of the morning hard at work.  Lynne explained to Benedict what Grayson would do and how that would help them get him home sooner, and once he understood, Benedict was very cooperative.  Lynne also did her part to help in their effort, although her conversation with both Grayson and Benedict kept being interrupted by agents coming to check in.  Lynne suspected they just wanted to see Benedict again, so she tried to be fair to all of them, but after the first three interruptions, even she was starting to get a little ticked off.

In spite of the interruptions, after a few hours, Grayson felt confident that he had a fair grasp on the language.  “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to give the sound wave editor a real test,”  he told Lynne.

“A real test?”  Lynne suddenly remembered the words her friend had said the night before.  “The big one,” she murmured to herself.  “Do you think it could handle a formal description of his home?” she asked Grayson.

“I don’t see why not,” Grayson said.

“All right, then,” said Lynne, and she spoke to Benedict, “I need you give us a description of where you came from in your world, especially the areas around your home.  Be as detailed as you possibly can.”

And so Benedict began to describe his hometown of Hinagura.  With her earpiece, she could only catch every other word, but she watched the log from the sound wave editor on Grayson’s computer.  She watched the words scrolling on the screen for the ones that matched the random words she heard, and as far as she could tell, it was accurate.  She watched as Benedict described the village and its little houses, the people that lived in it, the forest that surrounded it, and anything else he could think of.  There really was plenty to work with there, Lynne knew, but part of her didn’t feel quite right about it somehow.

“Okay, now read it back to him,” Grayson said once Benedict finished, “And ask him if it’s accurate.”

Lynne nodded.  She wouldn’t have thought to test it like that, and was glad that she hadn’t decided to go into translation for a career.  While it was nice to work with Grayson, she wouldn’t have wanted to spend the rest of her days doing what they did this morning.  Getting back to Benedict, she told him what she was going to do, and he nodded.   Concentrating carefully, she spoke and read what was on the screen.  For his part, Benedict listened very closely, nodding at appropriate times.  When it was all said and done, she asked him how it sounded.

“Close enough,” he told her.

“It can’t be just close enough,” she replied, noticing her words appearing on the computer screen.  “If the description doesn’t fit perfectly, then we’ll end up in a completely different world.  And how would you get home then?”

“So you’d try again if you didn‘t get there the first time,” Benedict told her, as she surreptitiously checked the screen’s translation.  “Do you have limits on your ‘walking’ or what?”  Fully translated, he was cheekier than she had imagined.

“You’re right, of course,” Lynne replied, humoring him for the time being.  Granted, he was right that they could just try different interpretations of his description until they landed in the world, but first off, she had no idea how many worlds that could take, and second off, she was definitely not going to be the one to take him back home.  She simply didn’t feel secure enough to walk through a myriad of unknown worlds, even if her headband had never failed her.  It was bad enough to be stranded in a world that other walkers knew about, but to be stuck in one they didn’t… the thought sent shivers down her spine.  Metaphorically, of course.  She just wasn‘t going to tell him that at the moment.  “But it would be much easier to get it right the first time, don’t you agree?”

“Of course it would!” Benedict said, making a slicing motion in the air as he said it (for emphasis, Lynne assumed).  “But don’t think you can give up just because it takes a long time to get to the right world.”

“I have no intention of giving up.”  Because she had no intention of going at all.  Or so she thought.  But reading the description of his home made her curious.  Could there really be a world where majestic purple mountains speckled the background, and it continually smelled of ariethens, whatever those were?  And where had he learned such flowery language?

“Too right, you don’t,” Benedict said, decisively.  “So is he done yet or what?  I’ve been talking all morning, and it’s definitely time for lunch.”

“Is it?” Both Lynne and Grayson said.  Lynne noticed for the first time that she was getting hungry.

Grayson closed his computer and placed it back in his briefcase.  “I think I’ve got all I need here.  I should be able to rig something up… for you,” he said, a bit awkwardly.

“Can you really?” Lynne asked, quite impressed.  “You got enough from just one conversation?

“Well, it did last all morning,” Grayson pointed out, “And your contribution really helped a lot.  It probably would have taken days without… your…”

“Yeah, I know,” Lynne was never very good at accepting compliments about her speaking ability.  It made her feel awkward to be thanked for something that she did without even thinking about it.

“It’s truly a fascinating language,” Grayson contined.  “It seems quite similar to Fantica, but with a mix of Grion and Hunglish.”

Benedict waited, getting more and more irritated that this conversation that he couldn’t understand didn’t seem to moving in the direction of the room with the food.  He also didn’t understand why Lynne and Grayson (as he understood them to be called) couldn’t be talking and walking at the same time.  After what seemed like ages upon ages, finally Grayson picked up his briefcase, said a few more words to Lynne, and went out the door.

“All right, let’s get something to eat,” Lynne spoke, grinning at him for some reason.

“It’s about time,” Benedict grumbled, but took her hand when she offered it, and they both went to the break room, where Lynne had left a lunch of egg salad sandwiches with chocolate chip cookies for the two of them.  (Clearly labeled “Lynne & Benedict” so it wouldn’t be stolen.  Or if it was, she could claim restitution because their names were on it.)

Linae had spent the morning forwarding all the messages about Benedict to Lynne, since she was in no mood to deal with them.  The effects of her night out and sleeping on the couch were all to evident in her demeanor, though she did her best to hide it.  She was very fortunate in that the only client she had that morning had called to cancel, giving her way more details than were necessary to explain why he couldn’t come.  If she could have truly spoken her mind that morning, she would have told him straight out that it didn’t matter to her what had happened to his portfolio and where it had somehow ended up without his knowledge; all she needed to know what that he wasn’t coming, and when he could reschedule to.  But she politely listened while he went on and on about things she didn’t care about, prompting him at certain intervals to make a date to come in again later.

As usually happens at certain intervals during the day, the needs of her bladder kicked in and let her know it was time to make towards the toilet.  The Tulin-Walker Travel Agency had one restroom area, with three stalls and one sink.  As Linae finished up the familiar rush and splash, she heard the sound of an all too recognizable voice long before she heard the door open, although she couldn’t make out the actual words until Mary Ellen actually came in.  

“…believe the ingratitude of some people!  Honestly, honestly!  Here I practically drop the solution into her lap, and does she thank me?  Not even a word!  I guess she was too busy making peep-eyes at Grayson!”

Linae thought Mary Ellen was just talking to herself until she heard the voice of her companion.  “You mustn’t take this so personally, ME, I’m sure they just need time to see the true benefits of your gift, that‘s all.  Once that language is all sorted out, they’ll be falling at your feet with gratitude.”  Language?  Did this have to do with the creature and this situation, Linae wondered (she couldn’t bring herself to think of them in different terms).

“Grayson better say something at least,” Mary Ellen grumbled, and then entered the stall next to the one Linae was in.  This seemed a good time to get a move on, Linae thought, so she wiped herself and pulled up her pants and panties in one movement.  As she exited the stall, she said a quick “Hey,” to Mary Ellen’s confidante, a relatively new agent, new enough that she didn’t remember her name.  The other agent just gave her an extremely pointed look.  Linae ignored this and simply washed her hands and went back to her office.  She figured that if anything really had happened with Lynne, she would hear about it sooner or later, whether she wanted to or not.  She went back to check her messages, and once again sent all the ones regarding Benedict to Lynne.  Although if what she heard in the bathroom was really regarding Lynne, then the senders might be waiting for a long time.

Chapters 1 and 2

Chapter One: 

Linae Does Not Get to Go Home Early

It was a semi-cloudy, almost nice day, the kind of day Linae hated.  The kind of day where it seemed the weather couldn’t make up its mind about whether it wanted to be bright and sunny or dark and gloomy, and instead was both at the same time.  There was something about seeing the sun streaming through the dense clouds that put her on edge, as if the earth might tilt under her feet without warning.  It was days like this that she was glad she worked inside, in an office with no windows.  Safe in her office, she could pretend that the weather was something more natural, or that nothing existed outside of her little space, if she was in the mood.  And she had a feeling that today would be one of those days.  She ran a hand through her slightly wavy light brown hair and sighed.  She could think of any number of things she would rather be doing than working today.  Not that she had a terrible job.  She actually liked it on most days.  

Linae worked for a branch of the Tulin-Walker Travel Agency, one of the largest travel franchises in the country of Lirrell, on the world called Rearn.  Founded by Franklin Tulin and Amanda Walker, the agency catered to a very specific brand of traveler -- namely, those who wanted to spend their vacations not just in a different country, but in an entirely different world.  Part of Linae’s job was to book these trips.  She considered herself good at it, but she had to admit that someone ready to commit to traveling through dimensions was more than likely to be prepared to pay for the company’s services.  Not that they didn’t get the occasional curious cat, someone who had heard about the services but didn’t really know much about what it entailed.  With a little work, Linae could usually ply that kind of customer enough that they might decide to take one of the smaller packages, but it was never a given.  And there was always the customer who thought the “different world” was a figure of speech.  Those were a lost cause, the kind you could smell from the moment they walked in the door.  She had never encountered one of those (as she thought of them, with a mental sneer) that wasn’t a very mundane type of person who like the idea of going some place, but would never actually venture out of their own backyard, assuming they had one.

The other part of her job was actually delivering her clients to the worlds they would visit, for she was a walker.  Not the same Walker as in Tulin-Walker, though.  The similarity between the co-founder’s last name and the title given to those who could travel between worlds was merely a coincidence (although some said that Amanda Walker changed her last name for better publicity).  No, Linae was a walker, someone who could “walk” to different worlds.  All she had to do was picture the world she wanted to travel to, take the hand of whoever she was taking with her, and then walk.  She wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, exactly.  She knew that it had to do with the mind, but whenever someone explained it, the terms got too technical, and she couldn’t retain it.  It was enough for her just to know that it worked, and as long as she got where she needed to go, she was happy.

Her brand of walking worked best when she had been where she was going, but there were other walkers who made a living by exploring worlds yet unknown, and taking others there.  Linae was fine leaving this to the experts, and steered any customers who were reckless enough to enjoy that kind of walking to someone else.

She wasn’t meeting with any clients that morning, which was fine with her, as she was in no mood to try and wine and dine anyone.  Her plan for the morning was to stretch out checking and responding to messages until it was time for lunch, and then seeing if she could head home early.  It depended on which supervisor was in that day, of course, but if she couldn’t get out early, she had a couple of “busy work” tasks she had saved for a day like this.

Quite naturally, her plans were dashed by the first message that caught her eye.  “Urgent Client coming first thing - My.”  Ah, so Myrna was in today, Linae thought to herself.  Myrna referred to herself as My for a reason Linae had never been able to deduce, other than she didn’t like her first name, and she hated her last name so much that she never revealed it to anyone.  It was rumored that she hadn’t even given it on her application to Tulin-Walker, but no one could find that out for sure.  Not anyone that Linae knew, anyway.  Myrna would be easier to convince to let her out early, but not with an “urgent client.”  “Urgent client” was Myrna’s codeword for “someone to get at all costs” either because they were willing to spend that extra bit for the higher grade package, or they were a big name and would look good in the register log.  So much for an unproductive morning.

The urgent client turned out to be neither, but a middle-aged gentleman with a dark chestnut brown beard.  “Good morning,” she greeted him with a handshake.

“Good morning, I’m Mr. Elwood of Omnion Industries,” the gentleman told her, and handed her a business card.  “I have an important matter to discuss with you.”

“Please have a seat,” Linae said, motion toward a chair.  Her stomach lurched at the words “important matter.”  No one was that serious about a vacation, so this had to be something much more unpleasant.  Silently she cursed Myrna for dumping this in her lap, especially once she noticed the traveling cage the man had brought with him.  But she didn’t show any of these thoughts as she sat down.

“I don’t know if you’re aware of what we do at Omnion Industries,” Mr. Elwood said, “But it isn’t very important for you to know, actually,” he continued, apparently changing direction midsentence.  “No, all you really need to know is that…” he looked at the traveling cage nervously.  “Well, suffice it to say, we had a bit of an unintended reaction to a recent experiment, and we need to someone to return this, ah, creature? We’re not really sure what it is or where it came from,” he started to rush out the words, as if he had to say them before he forgot them, “But it isn’t from here.”

“I see,” Linae said, “Let me have a look, then.”  She got up from her desk and knelt down by the traveling cage.  She peered inside.  It was hard to tell what exactly was in there, but she could make out the form of something that was asleep.  

“So you can fix this?” Mr. Elwood asked her.  Linae had the distinct feeling that he had been the one who drew the short straw, metaphorically.

“You’ll need to take him out, I can’t tell what it is from here,” she told him, sitting up a little.

“Yes, yes, it should be all right,” Mr. Elwood said, more to himself than to her, and unlocked the door to the traveling cage.  He gently eased the sleeping creature out and set it down in front of Linae.  She looked it over carefully.  It was about the size of a small child, with pale blue skin and a large rounded snout.  It didn’t resemble anything she had encountered before, as far as she could recall.  But there were still a number of worlds she had yet to visit herself.  Perhaps this creature was from one of them.

“Tell me a little more about how it got here.”

Mr. Elwood wasn’t at liberty to discuss the details of the experiment, only that it involved a lot of technical equipment used to harness, well, he couldn’t say.  But he described to her the best he could the circumstances of the experiment, and how it resulted in a power outage and the seemingly spontaneous arrival of this creature. 

“And you’re certain that it didn’t come from another area of the institute?” Linae asked him.  For with all the vague details he had feed her, it didn’t seem too far from her mind to imagine that there could be a biological wing doing shadowy biological things.  Whether that was creating strange hybrids, or entirely new life altogether, she wasn’t entirely sure.

“Quite certain,” Mr. Elwood told her, although he refused to elaborate.  “Besides, once it..” but here he got no further, for the strange creature suddenly opened its eyes.  It looked from Mr. Elwood to Linae and back again.  Then it stood up and made a run for the door, which was closed, and started trying to turn the knob to open the door, but couldn’t manage to get a handle on it, although it did seem to have fingers, Linae noted.  “Yes, well,” Me. Elwood said as he grappled the creature and dragged it back, “It does tend to try and make a break for it.  I’ll put it back in the case.”  During his last sentence, the creature began to shout, and the words simultaneously sent a chill down Linae’s spine and filled her with a slight warmth of hope.  Not because of what it said, for she couldn’t understand a word of it.  But the fact that she knew she didn’t understand it, but was capable of understanding made it all too clear that this was not just a creature or an animal, but what walkers referred to as inhabitants, and as such, her job here had become slightly easier. 

While walkers and their clients are mostly humanoid, and generally the worlds they visit also feature humanoid populations, there are worlds populated entirely by sentient beings that did not resemble humans at all, but often resembled things from mostly humanoid worlds that usually did not have sentience.  To distinguish the two, the term inhabitant was made popular, although a number of different terms were put into practice.  

Since this creature was an inhabitant, it could, in theory, simply tell her where it had come from, and she could get it back home far more easily than if she had to do the research she had envisioned when she first saw it.  Only…she couldn’t understand it.  Linae groaned to herself, mentally cursing her earpiece, a device that instantly translated a number of languages, for breaking the other day, and also cursing the place she sent it to have it fixed for not having it fixed by now.  

“Xxxxxxxxxxxx,” the creature shouted, struggling against Mr. Elwood’s grip.  “XXX xxxxx XXXX, X xxxx XXX xx xx!!!”

“Once he’s in the case-” Mr. Elwood said, but Linae cut him off.

“Don’t bother,” she said, standing up.  “I’ll be right back.”  She quickly opened the door and left the room, closing the door behind her.  Leaving the confused gentleman to struggle with the creature, she set about checking the doors of the other agents on duty that day.  Everyone had a plate by their door where they could slide a card advertising their status, either with a client, on other duties, or not in.  She passed the doors of a couple of friends of hers, and a few agents she knew, but not well, but it seemed that everyone either had a client or wasn’t in.  Then she passed a door that she knew well, because she usually avoided it.  But she was running out of options: she would have to go see Lynne Z.

Chapter Two: 

Lynne is Only a Half-Walker, but She Doesn’t Mind

If there was one thing you could say about Lynne Zink, it was that she was dependable.  Lynne always did the same thing when she woke up in the morning: she relieved herself, she took a shower, and then ate her breakfast.  She used the same kind of shampoo and conditioner to wash her ginger hair, and she used the same brand of soap that she had been using for years.  She ate the same cereal that she ate every morning, with a slice of toast spread with apricot preserves.  She didn’t do this because she was fussy or stuck in a rut (although others might argue she was), but simply because she was not dissatisfied with anything.  She was a very simple person, and in that sense she liked what she liked and rarely thought of doing something different, or using an alternative brand, as long as she was able to accomplish what she needed to accomplish.  This is probably why she didn’t discover she was a walker until later on her life.

Most walkers are discovered as children, when their imaginations combine with a dream of going other places, often fantastic places.  But Lynne had never been an imaginative child, and had lived a very mundane life.  She grew up in the usual way, in an average house with her mother, father, and older sister.  It wasn’t until she was seventeen years old that she happened to find out she could walk, and like most walkers, it was entirely an accident.  She had simply gone out to get the mail one day, and since it was a nice day, she thought it would be nice to go to the beach.  She closed her eyes and thought about the last time she had gone to the beach, the sand and the water and sun, and continued on her way to the mailbox.  When she opened her eyes again, she was no longer in front of her house, but she was not at the beach, either.  For Lynne was not a true walker, it seemed, but half a walker.  

She was stuck in the area between worlds, seen only by a handful of walkers, if for no other reason than most walkers passed right through it on the way to their destination.  There are those who believe that this area appears differently for each walker, based on their inner construct.  But Lynne knew none of this at the time.  She merely found herself in a vast plain that was made entirely of splotchy blue and purple everything.  She looked upon this blue and purple world and sat down on a convenient fuchsia lump protruding from the ground while she tried to figure out what exactly had happened to take her from her front yard to this strange place.  She adjusted her glasses, but that didn’t change the fact of the matter: she was somewhere she had never been before.  There didn’t seem to be anything alive except for her, nor could she see any sign that it was any different anywhere else, so she stayed where she was.  

There was no telling how long she might have stayed there if she hadn’t been picked up by another walker, who was taking his family on a trip to the same place Lynne had been thinking of.  Although it was not the exact beach she had imagined, but a beach on a world known as Samara.  The walker, naturally, was surprised to discover he’d picked up another traveler, and when Lynne explained what had happened to her before he ran into her, he had an inkling of what might have happened to her.  He brought her back to her home and advised her to go to the main office of the Walker Federation.  So Lynne made an appointment, for while she was a rather mundane person, even then, she had to admit, she was a little curious about the incident she had been involved in.  The representative she met with ran a few tests, observed her walking, and came to the conclusion that she was a half-walker.  Not very common, but they came up often enough that there was already a term for it.

Lynne spent some time with different specialists trying to figure out if she could become a whole walker, and though many things were tried, nothing could be done about it naturally.  However, during her studies, she discovered that she had a unique ability: she could speak any language without prior knowledge of it, as long as she heard a sample first.  This talent was only hampered by the fact that she could not understand what she heard or what she said, but there was already technology that would translate for her; an earpiece that was barely noticeable, especially since Lynne kept her hair in front of her ears, although she kept it out of her eyes.

Not too long after her twentieth birthday, the Walking Headband was finally approved.  This headband, when worn, bridged the gap in a half-walker’s ability, and allowed them to behave as a whole walker.  With the Headband in tow, Lynne could finally walk on her own.  And thanks to her ability to speak, she quickly procured a job at the Tulin-Walker Travel Agency.

Which was where she was that morning.  She was working on filing the weather report requests (it was important for an agent to know what upcoming weather might dampen a trip, but it was easier for one person to check the updates from walkers abroad and distribute the results.  Today was her day), when there was a knock on the door.  “Yes?” she asked.

“Hey, it’s Linae Baker.” came a voice from the other side of the door.  “Can I come in?”

“You may,” Lynne said.  Even without being told who it was, she had recognized the voice.  “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked as Linae came in.

 “Are you free right now?” Linae asked, looking around the office, feeling a bit ill at ease.

“Not really,” Lynne said.  She looked at the reports she was working on.  “I have these reports to finish,“ she told her.  “I’ll have your report later this afternoon, if that‘s what this is about.”

“No, that‘s not what this is about,” Linae said, rolling her eyes.  “Would I bother you about that?”  She didn’t wait for the answer she knew Lynne would give regardless (“Yes, you would.”), and got down to brass tacks, “I need you to come and speak for me.  My headset is in the shop right now and there’s…well, just come and you’ll see.”

“I don’t understand,” Lynne said, fixing her with a slightly glazed stare.

“Why am I not surprised,” Linae thought, but she said, “Look, this will take two seconds, at most.  Just come with me.”

It took a little more wheedling, but eventually Linae was able to convince Lynne to leave her reports and give her a hand, although she kept the details about there being a creature in her office to herself.  Linae and Lynne entered Linae’s office only to find it had been reduced to semi-chaos.  Papers had been scattered everywhere, a number of the photos that had been on Linae’s desk now sat on the floor, and the gentleman and creature were nowhere to be seen.  But they could certainly be heard.  The creature was still shouting, and Mr. Elwood was trying to calm it down, although his attempts were mostly just trying to reason with it, and not very effectively.

“Now, there’s no reason for this.  It’s all right, it’s all right,” he was saying.  Linae and Lynne followed the voices (not that the office was very big), and found the two under the desk.  The creature was pushed uncomfortably against the back of it, and Mr. Elwood was on his knees, trying to coax the creature out again.

“All right, what’s it saying?” Linae said to Lynne, disregarding the two for a moment.  

Lynne didn’t answer at first, just regarded the gentleman and creature with a curious look.  Then she turned to Linae and asked, “Which one?”

“Oh for-,” Linae started, but quickly changed her tone and addressed the gentleman.  “Mr. Elwood, perhaps it would be more helpful if you leave this to us.  Would you mind taking a seat in the chair over there?”  She motioned to the seat he had sat in earlier.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Mr. Elwood replied, eagerly scooting himself out from under the desk.  He took a seat and watched to see what the two ladies would do.

“What happened here?” Lynne asked.

“That’s what you’re going to find out,” Linae replied, “Just ask that…. thing …down there.”  The creature was still shouting, “Perhaps you should calm it down first.”

Lynne knelt on the floor and said something that Linae couldn’t understand, but sounded similar to the language the creature seemed to speak, and the creature did calm down a little.  It spoke to her and Lynne spoke back.

“Well?” Mr. Elwood asked, after waiting a moment.

“Hm?” Lynne looked up at him.

“What did it say?” Linae clarified, eager to know herself.

“Oh,” Lynne said, “I don’t know.  I left my earpiece at home today by accident.  I figured it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Of course,” Linae groaned to herself.  It would figure that things wouldn’t go so easily for her.  Not today.

  “I can still talk to him,” Lynne continued,  “so I told him I couldn’t understand him, but we wouldn’t hurt him.  And then I told him that I just told him I couldn’t understand him.”

“So it’s a him,” Linae noted to herself, and said to Lynne, “Can you tell him to clean up the mess he made of my office?”

“It’s probably better not to get into something like that,” Lynne replied, shaking her head slightly.

“Like what?” Linae wondered, but she from past experiences that it was better not to ask Lynne to explain.  Meanwhile, she noticed that the creature had come out and was watching them.  She didn’t like the way he seemed to be glaring at them, her in particular.  “You’re right, that’s not important right now,” she said to Lynne.  “What we really need to know is where he came from, and we don’t need to understand him to find that out.”  She fished a blank piece of paper from the many pieces scattered around her office and found a pen easily enough.  “Tell him to write down the name of the world he came from, please,” she told Lynne, handing her the paper and pen.

Lynne did as she was told, handing the paper and pen to the creature as she spoke to him.  Again he spoke to her and she spoke back, again telling him that although she could speak his language, she couldn’t understand it.  But he took the pen and paper from her, and scribbled on it.  Then he handed it back to her.  

“And?” Both Linae and Mr. Elwood asked her.

“It looks like,” Lynne turned the paper around a couple of times, unsure of which way the writing went.  “it might be Amuamua.”

“Amuamua?” Linae had never heard of such a place, and said as much.

“We’ll have to run it past the federation, I guess,” Lynne said.  “and see if this place is in the database.”  The International Walker Federation kept tabs on all the known worlds, but getting clearance to use the database was not easy.

“If that’s even the right name,” Mr. Elwood chimed in.  “It could be the name of his hometown, not necessarily the world.”

“Yes, there is that,” Linae admitted, “But for the moment, we’ll have to assume that this is the name.”  Then a thought occurred to her, one that she should have had much sooner than this.  “How long would it take you to go home and get your piece?” she asked Lynne.

“About half an hour,” Lynne told her.  “It takes me approximately fifteen minutes to get here from home, depending on traffic and how I hit the lights.  But I still have to finish filing the weather reports, you know.”

“Couldn’t you do that later?  Isn’t this more important?” Linae asked her, trying to put enough emotion into her eyes that Lynne would be moved to empathy.  Instead, Lynne just looked at her with an unreadable expression.  So Linae tried a different tack.  “In other words, once we know where to send him, we can all go back to our important work.”  She paused, waiting to see how Lynne would take it.

“I understand where you’re coming from,” Lynne said, “But it’s not as simple as just going.  Even though it’s only a half hour for me to go and come back, it will still take time for us to find out what we need to know, and who knows how long that will actually take?  In the meantime, my weather reports are not getting done, and if they’re not done on time, it’s on my head, not yours.  Besides, didn’t you promise me that my involvement in this ordeal would be over in two seconds?  I don’t think I need to tell you that it’s already long past that by now.”

“So I was being optimistic.  But I was also under the impression that you had your earpiece with you, which would have gotten this whole thing over with a lot faster.”  This right here was why Linae had not wanted to get Lynne involved at all.  She always got on a high horse about the things she thought were important without looking at the bigger picture.  And though she hated to admit it, Lynne was right about the late reports.  “Fine, go finish your reports.  But what should we do with him in the meantime?” she asked, motioning to the creature, who still had the pen and was using it to doodle all over a sheet of paper.  A sheet, Linae suddenly noticed, that was also full of writing.  “If that’s something important…” she thought, unable to put words to the murderous intentions she suddenly felt flash through her.  She turned to Mr. Elwood.  “Maybe you should take him with you, bring him back tomorrow.”

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same with you,” Mr. Elwood replied, inching ever so slowing toward the other side of the room.  “Or rather, I really…can’t take him back…”

Linae was right, he had definitely drawn the short stick.  “Well, then, what do you suggest we do with him in the meantime, Mister Elwood?” she asked him, drawing out his name in an unpleasantly pleasant manner.

“Certainly one of you could take him?” Mr. Elwood replied uncertainly.

“I certainly can’t,” Linae replied, never one to miss a chance to turn someone’s words against them.  She took a perverse bit of pleasure from this, but only a bit.  “Not only do I still have work to do myself,” she shot a look at Lynne, “But now I have to clean my office, too.”

“I could take him,” Lynne said calmly.  She knelt down again and spoke to the creature.  He nodded, and she smiled.

“He does seem to be pretty quiet now,” Linae noted, murderous intentions cooled down for the moment.  

“Right then, I’ll be on my way,” Mr. Elwood said, and picked up the crate by its handle and left quietly.

“See you soon, Mr. Elwood,” Linae said as he left.

Lynne spoke to the creature again and he docilely took her hand.  “See you,” she said to Linae, and the two exited the office.

Linae started to pick up papers and other things that had fallen on the floor, all the while trying to figure out how she could shift this new assignment to someone else and rid herself of the ordeal entirely.  Perhaps she was being selfish, but anything capable of making this large a mess in such a short time was not to be trusted, she told herself.