TIMOTHY AWOKE.

He felt sick, and his head hurt. Also, something wasn’t quite right with the ground. He had studied the ground his whole life. He didn’t like it when it changed too much.

Then he realized that he must be on a plane. It was a little quite for a plane—no crying babies or loud announcements, or even the annoying hum of engines, but he supposed it was nice to be on a quite plane once in a while. He must be on some sort of business trip. Though wearing a McDonalds uniform may not be suitable for such an important trip, especially when his host was rich enough to own a private jet.

A boy came into view. “Hello,” the boy said.

Timothy thought the boy had too much and too long hair, though it may be just the new style. What was the word? Trend. Timothy didn’t like young people who followed new trends, especially when they were as absurd as growing her hair very long. Timothy, his voice crackly and raspy, told the boy just that.

Then it occurred to him it probably wasn’t a very smart thing to do. The boy may have been a son of some important scientist, and insulting the son of an important scientist on a nice plane surely won’t make a good impression.

But then again, Timothy was also lying on the floor in a McDonalds uniform, so to hell with good impressions.

Timothy decided he would just lie a little bit longer. Standing up felt like it would take a lot of energy.

“Something’s not right,” he complained loudly.

“Oh?” the boy asked, amused.

“I don’t know what it is,” Timothy admitted, “Let me think. Is there hair on my head?”

He patted his head and smiled with satisfaction. “Yes there is. Is my neck connected to my head?”

“Yes,” the boy answered, “along with all your other body parts, to my knowledge, at least. I’m not very up to date with Odriew anatomy. Have you recently evolved a tail?”

“What?”

“Never mind. All your external body parts seem to be connected.”

Timothy was glad the boy had stopped being confusing. The boy’s talking gave him a headache. “Oh, good,” Timothy paused, trying to think of another reason why something was off, “Is my shoe on the wrong foot then?”

“Which shoe?”

“Any one of them.”

The boy bent down to look. “The right shoe—I mean, your left shoe—is on the right foot. I mean, it’s on the correct foot, not the right foot as in—hold on. Let’s put it this way. Your west foot is on the west shoe, or should I say your west shoe is on your west foot? And, of course, assuming your feet are pointing north.”

Timothy was irritated. The boy was talking again. Timothy’s brain pulsed painfully, trying to comprehend words as fast as the boy spoke them. “What about my eastern foot? Is it in an eastern shoe?”

“Er, well, your eastern shoe is nonexistent.”

“What?”

“My ferret pooped in it, so for the interest of your sock, I didn’t replace it on your foot.”

“Oh.” Timothy relaxed again. That seemed thoughtful. He certainly did not want to get poop on his sock. But something about this seemed odd and absurd, even for a son of a really important scientist. “Wait, ferret?”

“I have a pet ferret.”

Now that was odd. He’d never heard of a scientist who got their son a ferret as a pet, and allowed it on a plane where it could roam around pooping on undoubtfully expensive material. “Are you a son of an expensive scientist?” he blurted, “I mean, rich scientist.”

“I don’t think so, though I have no way of knowing.”

Now that was certainly a very odd answer to the question. “Then whose plane is this?”

“It’s not a plane,” the boy said matter-of-factly, “it’s a ship painted with—” a sudden garble of language came out of the boy’s mouth.

“A ship painted with what?”

“Box!” the boy yelled suddenly, “what Nedriew substance is closest to—” and the garble of language again.

An Australian answered somewhere from the left. Timothy didn’t want to waste any energy turning his head to look. “The closest substance on Driew that matches that is Vanta black,” a strangely flat voice replied

“Yes, this is a ship painted with something that closely resembles vanta black,” the boy said.

Vanta black. Timothy had heard of it somewhere. Somewhere in the news, when he had been trying to find an article about himself. Vanta black—wasn’t that something like the blackest black in the world? Then again, many people claimed to have made a substance even blacker.

Timothy closed his eyes. His head was hurting again.

Maybe he should go to sleep.

HE AWOKE AGAIN.

This time, Timothy sat up. The sleep had helped significantly. It didn’t take him long to figure out he was in a different room.

“Hello?” he called.

He heard some mumbling that came from what seemed to be another room. Dark splotches of black and yellow clouded his vision. He blinked them away.

Then it came back to him. McDonalds, his excuse of smoking, seeing the figure in the woods, hearing the humming, looking up…

Explosion.

A sudden panic filled him. Was he captured now? Was he a prisoner? Timothy stood up rapidly, searching for a window, but the movement hurt his head. The splotches came back.

He sat down again, steeling his nerves. His head hurt, and the pain reminded him of something. It was a boy with long hair, and being on a plane. Was it a dream?

Timothy breathed in deeply, momentarily placing the dream aside for now. So there weren’t any windows. Big deal. If he was on a plane, windows wouldn’t have been very helpful anyway. Timothy didn’t remember coming in this room. Somebody had to have put him here. There would have to be a door.

He was quite right. There was a door. He opened it, and the door yielded.

Timothy felt like an idiot. He must have watched too many action movies. But then again, in movies, this was when an unseen attacker would appear and clock him in the head. Timothy glanced back just in case. There wasn’t anyone.

“Hello?” he called again.

The mumblings were definitely louder now, but the source of it was nowhere in sight. Timothy glanced back at the door he left, but realized he had no way of knowing which door it was, for there were four identical doors next to each other.

Should he try to go through each door? Timothy decided against it. He was already pushing his luck. Now that he was out of his original room, Timothy wished he had looked around a bit more, just in case he’d find anything useful. You know, just a random gun lying around or something, in case someone tried to kill him.

The room he was in now was no larger than the room he exited. It consisted of several flamingo-shaped chairs, what looked like a complex coffee machine, and a plate full of cheese puffs. At the back wall were another four doors, and on each side were two more. Slowly, Timothy advanced for the flamingo seats.

It occurred to him that this would be a perfect time for a booby trap to spring up. Was that a scurrying sound?

Of course it was a scurrying sound, Timothy decided with a hint of pride. In movies, when there was a scurrying noise, the protagonist always dismissed it as a rat. But Timothy was different. He knew the scurrying noise was no good, so he was one step ahead of the idiots in movies. But, as he could not find the source of the scurrying, he advanced further, constantly turning his head painfully to see what was behind him.

Each time he saw only the pale beige walls, yet the pattering of little feet constantly followed him. He knew the feet likely belonged to a small mammal. Even though his most famous discoveries were about the tyrannosaurus rex, most of archeologist work consisted of tiny little fossils of imprints and whatnot. These imprints, though boring, can reveal plenty of clues to the size of the animal, and therefore the environment it lived in.

This animal, however, seemed invisible. Timothy once had a cricket in the house where it screeched all night. No matter where had looked, he could not find it. This went on for three days, the screeching become quieter and quieter until the cricket expired. Timothy often wondered when he’d find the dead body.

Timothy shuddered a bit. Maybe the animal was in the walls?

Timothy realized this couldn’t be true, because just then, a furry animal rubbed across his shin.

He fainted.