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ABERRANT: WEIRDER STUFF - CHAPTER IV "SO WHAT DID YOU DO LAST NIGHT"


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Abel reached over with his other hand, and prevented Kia from completing her call.   "Wait Kia, we really shouldn't tell anyone else about this.  They're not going to believe us as it is, and we can't prove any of it.   Whatever happens, we will have to do this ourselves."  He looked over to Sean.   "Between the two of us we should have everything for the project, but as you said, it's finding the materials we'll need.   You need to call Clare, and we need to bring her in on this, if only to see if she's changed, or remembers like we do."

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Before Kia could say anything about Abel shutting her phone or Sean could acknowledge the request that he call Clare, the door to the diner opened letting in the howling wind and the snow as Sara hardly bundled for the weather rushed in shivering.

"Thank god this storm is getting worse. the Roads are a mess." She sees Sean who had stood when he saw that it was Sara, his heart clenching in fear. "I didn't know if...i..."

She looked at him, her emotions rippling across her face...so many shocks. With a suddenness that surprised everyone and no one she crossed the distance and swept the smaller boy up in her arms kissing him passionately.

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"Oh, now that... that's love right there folks.  To dare against all odds.  To stand in the face of all of today's social moors and stigmas and defiantly say 'if a man and a man or a woman and a woman can find happiness and love than so to can a human and a hobbit',"  Devin wiped away a false tear of sarcasm.  "It... it's just so beautiful."

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"We ain't in the real word, hotness," he smiled at her.  He slid her plate to her.  "C'mon, eat.  Y'gotta cold, Sean and I hooked you up.  Coffee and saturated fat.  And lighten up, geez.  So, share with us your special brand of weirdness this morning."

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Sara had swept him up in her arms so vigorously that his feet had left the ground and Sean felt a surge of relief as he kissed her back. After seeing her ex-girlfriend, Sean had worried Sara wouldn't look at him or care about him the same way now that he was his old self. But she had and she did and the fear he hadn't known was building subsided.

At the hobbit comment, the glare Sean shot Devin should have discorporated him into this constituent atoms, powers or no powers. Sean had always been sensitive about his height - though he had endured ribbing from his friends - but it hurt more now after being tall. "Bite me, Devin. At least what we have lasted through realities." Sean's face blushed faintly and he ran a hand through his short, dark auburn hair as he glanced at Sara. "Uh, about that, Sara. Seems like here, um, Clare and I are... are a thing. Probably not a good thing, since her number is blocked in my phone and she's already called my place five times, but I'm probably going to have to talk with her. If nothing else, to see if she remembers anything."

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"I could go talk with her,"  Devin offered up.  "For all you know she's super pissed.  Not that I blame her, since, you know, you've had her number all this time and STILL.  Haven't.  Called.  Her.  Just sayin'."

He slurped his milkshake, Devin was never a coffee guy, and shrugged.  "Seriously though, if she's mad at you, it raises our chances of her doing something dumb.  If someone else goes, and she remembers, no sweat, she'll remember us too and I bring her to us.  If not, and she's just all kinds of barmy, you dodged a crazy bullet bro.  Besides, she totally kissed me.  We have a rapport."

Marissa just sat there, watching, listening.  She had resigned herself to trying to take all this in, see where the rabbit hole was leading her.  "Wait, what?  You made out with Clare?"

"Long story."  Dev just shook his head, blowing it off as something he'd care to forget.  "Tell you later."

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"Did you even bring her along?" Lilly asked Devin, unsure of who exactly he was going to bring along to China with him.

"Because if you did, then I am sure she would freaking out too. And that's not cool to be alone and freaking out in the Twilight Zone. So somebody needs to call her. And even if Laurie does not remember anything, do we still need to have her with us, like if we end up finding a way out of here?" she asked as she pulled out her phone.

"For now though, we might want to see what we can find out on the web and then go from there. Like if the project is happening at all maybe, or where Kia's dad is or whatever. And we got to remember our S.O.'s or whatever and play along, I guess. I mean, the less attention we draw, the better, right?"

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"That's just it Lills, I really don't know," Devin said.  He lost the mirth in his expression for a few moments while thoughts of all this being his fault poured in like Sara in from the cold.  "I bring the points the two distances to zero.  I can't hop time or alternate realities.  She was with us when I jaunted us, but after that... I can't say."

He extended his hand to Sean, curling his digits in the universal 'give it here' gesture.  "Phone, bro.  Lemme her number and get this whole mess sorted."

"Dude, be my guest."  Sean handed over his smartphone, relieved and eager to dodge Clare's special slice of crazy cake.

Happily Devin dialed the numbers and then waited, after a few moments...  "Hey there punkin', it's Devin."

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Sean breathed a sigh of relief as Devin called Clare on his phone, giving him a grateful - yet dubious - look for taking the hit. 'Thanks, Dev,' Sean mouthed.

He hadn't forgotten how Clare had reacted after being enhanced, nor had he forgiven her for attacking Laurie, only her green skinsuit saving her life. And it seemed here, whatever here was, Clare was even more of a nutbar. The skinsuits were also a puzzle he was annoyed at not figuring out.

Sean took a sip of coffee and glanced over at Lilly. Under the table, he held Sara's hand. "I'm not sure about Laurie - she was coming with us, but maybe doesn't remember anything because she wasn't, er, like us. As for looking up Stepping Stone or Guardian Shield online, if there's anything to find, then the cybersecurity here is balls. But I can see about black-hatting my way into more secure databases or see if any of the passwords I know work here."

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"Sean! Wait.. Devin? Devin Jauntsen? Why are you on Sean's phone OHMYGOD IS SEAN ALRIGHT!?!" came the rapid fire voice of a distraught high-strung girl when the phone was answered.

Everyone could hear the shrill voice coming over the phone speaker.

Sara looked around and finally saw Mari she frowned. "What is she doing here and where is Laurie?"

ELSEWHERE

Laurie's stomach lurched this was by far the worst teleport Devin had taken her on. "Oh fuck" she said out loud

Above her she could see stars flashing rapidly by to her right and behind she recognized Jupiter, again.

She froze. She was surrounded by little green men? With wicked looking ray guns (at least she figure they were ray guns they looked like something from an old 1950's scifi movie) pointed at her.

 

Spoiler

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Devin held the phone away from his ear, giving it a wincing grimace.  When he could hear out of that ear again, he brought it back.  He was trying not to laugh because everyone was looking at him... also trying not to laugh.  "Woah, chill, you don't have to shout. Yeah, yeah... Sean's fine. Battery died on his phone, lost the charger, you know how it goes."  Sean thumbs uped the excuse, apparently Devin was a pro at lying to women.  "Anyway, so, how are you? How was the dance last night?"

Clare looked at her phone and the voice coming out of it then she put it back to her ear. "Why are you calling me? You don't even know me."

"I know, and we can thank the gods for small favors later," He spoke so fast he wasn't even sure she caught that.  "But at the moment, I need to talk to you, Sean's cool, he's with me, so don't wig out.  I just wanted to know... uh... what do you remember about the dance last night?"

"Well for starters," he could actually feel the vitriol in her voice.  This girl hated him.  "You are probably Shelly High's biggest prick.  A position everyone knows that Chet used to hold. You ruined Laurelei's night and mine when Sean left to take her home. That's P.  R.  I.  C.  K.  All capitals"

"Okay, yeah... so, mistakes happened, not denying that."  He completely dodged the responsibility of his actions, the only super power he managed to retain in this new reality.  "So you don't remember hopping through an inter-dimensional wormhole or battling aliens with the local flora?"

Silence.  Sweet, sweet, silence.  That told Devin all he needed to know.

"Kaybye."  He hung up on her and slid Sean's phone back to him.  "Yeah, she's not our Clare.  As to why Marissa is here, Sara, dimension hopping 101: when ever you wake up in a strange alternate reality, you always bring along a familiar native to help point out the differences between your reality, and theirs."  He waved a finger between Abel and Sean.  "These two might be the big brains back home, but when it comes to sci-fi survival, I. Am. The. Man."

"Wait, wait..." Marissa interjected.  "You guys all actually believe you're from another world, or reality, or dimension... or whatever?"

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Kia hesitated, phone in her hand but undialed. What Lilly said broke the spell though.

"I wasn't going to tell Mom about all of this," she said to Abel once she could get a word in edgewise, "I just wanted to ask her about Dad. But...maybe looking him up first is a good idea. Just so I don't sound totally clueless when I talk to her."

She brought up her phone's browser and tapped her father's name into Google to see what the hive mind had to say about him in this wild and wacky world.

As for Mari's question...Jesus, she wasn't touching that. She barely understood every tenth word of what was going around right now. Worst. Expositor. Ever.

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Slowly, Laurie raised her arms up in surrender as she stared down at the tiny Martians - they were green, that made them Martians. She just wasn't sure if it was better or worse that she could see their faces instead of just a pair of googly eyes in the darkness under a helmet like Marvin's. She roundly cursed Devin some more as yet again, he managed to teleport her and split at the same time.

<These aren't the right aliens, Devin! And this isn't China, it's the ship again, you asshole! Where are you? Are you even getting this?! Sean? Sis?>

Her mental projections began growing a sharpening edge of worry as she got no response and the Martians retro ray-guns didn't seem to wavering.

"Um, I come in peace?"

No weapons, no superpowers, just standing here on the deck of a spaceship coasting around Jupiter, all alone save for Marvin the Martian less stylish cousins. Just perrrrrrfect....

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"Don't shoot! It's the non-quantumed Human female." That not what the little green guy said but that's what Laurie somehow heard as one of the aliens lowered it's weapon and gestured for the rest to lower theirs.

""And we mean you no harm. We expected an Asheen assault when we detected your Q-Fold. It pleases us that you are still alive and not fodder for the Asheen war machine.

We now understand that your people are not tool/weapons of the most hated Asheen but are rather being eradicated by them.

Most unfortunate"

He shakes his head and so do the others an obvious expression of sorrow and pity.

"Anyway welcome aboard the Q'wee, we will be back in orbit of your poor planet in about twenty minutes. We will rescue as many as we can before the most hated Asheen detect us.

Is there any thing you need in the meantime?"

 

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"Alright guys we need a plan.  Then we need to do it.  C'mon, we do this every time, we sit around and talk about all we gotta do, but things don't get done that way."  Devin sipped his shake.  His words were shotgunned, something was irritating him.  "The snow storm's getting worse and we're on borrowed time.  Sean, Abel, if you two know what you gotta do, go do it.  Kia, make your call, look him up, quit talking about it and do it.  Guys, we need to stop talking and start doing."

"Devin, chill, we're trying."  Lilly placed her hand on his in an attempt to calm him.  "Once we have something that resembles a plan, you know we'll be on it."

"I know... I know," He was stressed and there was something about this world and what Clare said that started eating away at him.  "It's just that our Clare isn't here.  We ended up in some odd world, but she didn't.  Is she in a different world?  Our world?  Did I really do this?  What if we can't get home?  What if I shot m-, our Laurie to some alternate reality and we never see her again?"

There was a long pause, a silence that swept over the table.  Clare opened his eyes to the reality that in this world, Devin had already blown his chance with Laurie.  There was no way that she would even look in his direction after the way he treated her here.  It dawned on him that he didn't want to be in a world where he couldn't talk with her, joke with her, have her be mad at him for all the wrong reasons, and yet have to look upon her everyday and live with the gut twisting knowledge of 'what could have been'... and that, right there, The Dude did not abide.

"Okay, what do you need from me?"  Marissa said, breaking the silence.  "What can I do to help get you guys home?"

"You believe us?"  Sara asked in a dubious tone, snarky raised eyebrow and all.

"No, I think you're all crazy, including my brother here," She gestured to Devin.  "But Devin hasn't shown one iota of caring or sympathy for anyone but himself in the last three years.  Where ever it is you guys are from, the Laurie there must be one hell of a girl to get his feather this ruffled.  Lost fathers," Marissa gestured to Kia, then Sara, "Lost loved ones.  People don't just make this stuff up unless they're positively sick in the head, or they truly believe it.  For my brother's sake, I hope it's because it's actually true and we can get you all back to them.  So.  How can I help?"

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ABOARD THE Q'WEE

I am so not trained for this, Laurie thought as she hesitantly lowered her arms. But the little dudes seemed to by trying to be friendly and talked as if they were in a badly dubbed foreign movie. And they knew who she was, at least in relation to the others, in that she didn't have any quantum-whatsit juicing her. And they also seemed to know what they had attempted, if a Q-fold meant teleporting. Thanks, Sean, for making me watching more Sci-Fi than I ever intended.

"Yeah, I am grateful you saved me and are planning to save as many others as you can," Laurie thanked them, plastering what she hoped was an inoffensive, friendly smile on her face. It made her face hurt a bit. "But, uh, do you know where the ones I was tele - Q-Folding with went? And maybe get them back? They are all quantum-enhanced and were planning to disrupt the Asheen war machine. Did they make it? Can you help?" She gestured animatedly around at the ship. "They needed to get to the portal so they could get to the other, I bet this thing could help clear them a path."

She blinked expectantly at them, then her eyes widened and she pointed at herself. "Oh, were you the ones who squeezed me, Devin, and Clare into these things?"

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Sara sat down and started eating like she hadn't had a meal in ages. "Oh my god I forgot what it was like to be hungry." She said between mouthfuls of burger and fries.

"Ok so if I get this right, Mari is the new Laurie in this world that really isn't our world, and why are we meeting in Bunnies Diner in public when we usually meet either in the Barn at Sean's or at Abel's"

Sean's phone had been vibrating, surely it was Clare trying to call, he grabbed it up with the intention of turning it off when he noticed something.

It was just 8:49 in the morning.

He clicked the phone to bring up his call list and there it was.

He had dialed Sara at 8:32 AM.

He looked out the window at the raging snow storm. She said she had been at the trailer but that was almost sixty miles away. He looked at the old beat up Toyota Celica in the parking lot the only car he could see.

There was no way she could have driven that distance in less than an hour much less in 30 minutes especially in this sort of weather.

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ABOARD THE Q'WEE

Laurie was surprised when the little guy shook his head, it was such a human gesture that it caught her off guard.

"We did not rescue you and have no knowledge of the others that were here before. We merely detected a Q Fold in subspace and assumed the Asheen who had taken you before were coming back to attack us. We came up to the observation deck to fight off the boarding party.

As for the space suit yes after we abducted you and subsequently discovered that you were not what we thought, We saw that your garments were not conducive to space travel so we fitted the three of you with skin suits." said the little alien who was no longer holding his gun although she couldn't tell what he had done with it since he was naked.

Many thoughts rippled through Laurie's mind at what she was hearing startlingly she latched onto the most non panic inducing one.

"Thanks I guess but why aren't you guys wearing them too?" She asked

"But we are it is regulation." Suddenly there he was standing before her obviously wearing a neon blue version of the same suit she was wearing. "You left before we managed to make complete adjustments to your suits. Allow me." he said as he reached up and a tool basically materialized in his hand. He touche her with the tip of the tool and she felt a tiny tingle run across her body. "There."

The tingle subsided and she looked down at herself her eyes widening in horror.

Now she panicked.

She was completely naked.

 

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AT BUNNEE'S

Sean looked from the car back to his phone and gave a start before trying to force himself to relax and seem to be at ease. He was starting to notice other anomalies, things that couldn't be accounted for them never having been Quantum-enhanced in the first place. He glanced at Sara surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye. She looked like Sara, sounded like Sara and talked like Sara, moved like Sara and even kissed like Sara. But was she Sara? It took a supreme effort of will not to shift away from her.

"We're talking here because the Laurie here doesn't know what's going on," Sean offered, toying with his mostly empty cup of coffee. "I didn't know Devin was bringing his sister, but it was a good thing, if for nothing else, giving us a clue where things diverged between here and there." He gave Mari a quick, nervous smile to say he didn't find her presence an intrusion before nodding at Devin. "And where we start is by having Lilly talk all sneaky like with her father to see if the Project is a thing here, help Kia find out anything about her father here, and for me to see what I can dig up on it online behind any firewalls I can find my way through."

The small, slight boy looked around at the others, trying to covertly convey that he thought something might be up with Sara to Abel - who had known him the longest - with his eyes and the tilt of his head. "Anyone else has something to suggest we start on now?"

Sean glanced at Sara, finding it almost weird watching her eat from hunger rather than for pleasure. "You made really good time, Sara," he said, trying to keep his tone blithe and free from suspicion,though it was nowhere as easy as it had been when he had been a 6'1'' superbabe. He nodded towards the window and the heavy snowfall outside, "considering all the snow. Where did you say you were coming in from again?"

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"No, it's okay," Kia said, with only a quick glance at Devin when he invoked her name in vain. "I found him. Wow."

The last word was pronounced more as a long exhalation than a normal word. She even sank down a little in her seat.

"It says he's a geneticist. And mom's a historian. And they divorced a while back. That's so crazy though. That'd mean like...everything was totally different. They had different classes, did different things...who even knows how they met this way? Everything's completely different."

She looked up from her phone and focused on the others at the table.

"And you know, it's not as simple as us just getting teleported into another dimension or something, because we'd still have our powers if that's what happened. It's like...we replaced ourselves. There were other usses already here, and now we're them. So...what happened to them?"

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Sara chewed and looked out side following Sean's nod. She swallowed  "At the trailer. I took you there remember, by the mountains."  She missed the connection she had with Sean, missed the sense of ...things. She had become accustom to being in tune.

Something was wrong with Sean. She looked around the table at the others. She had been alone when she woke but where had they all been. Were they who they claimed to be. "I don't know what you mean seemed like it took forever to me. The roads are not good. I miss flying."

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Lilly nodded at Sean's comment about talking with her father and pulled out her phone, checking to see what number she even had in it.

"Well, you are here, so that means they must have met at some point in this reality." Lilly tried to reassure.

"But if he is not on the project for sure, than that might complicate things." she added.

Lilly paused for a moment as something else Sean had said registered with her.

"Dude. That drive, on a clear, snow-free day would take more than fifteen minutes, even if you had floored it the entire way. How did you get here so fast if you were an hour away when I offered to go get you a few minutes ago?" she asked Sara.

She then went into her call log on her phone, looking to see when she had called Kia and checking that against the current time, seeing if her own drive from the base added up right even. 

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"Fifteen minutes, that drive takes over an hour in good conditions. I left as soon as I got dressed and got here as fast as I could but that was still over two hours ago. So I'm kind a confused why you guys keep asking how i got here so fast." responded Sara a little annoyed.

Lilly had checked her phone as she asked Sara the question but she was still staring at it and trying to make sense of what she was seeing. According to her phone's clock and the time stamp on her cal to Kia, not even ten minutes had passed.

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ABOARD THE Q'WEE

Laurie's face went as red as her hair and she began hopping from one foot to the other as she flapped her hands, not sure what to do with them. How could this possibly get wor - No! NO! Don't finish that thought! You know by now what happens in any movie or book when someone says that! She was so glad her Sister or that cow Clare wasn't here, so she didn't have to compare herself in all her naked - pseudo-naked, whatever! - okayness to their quantum-enhanced curves.

She was triply grateful Devin wasn't here at the moment, even if it was all his fault, somehow. He would say something and then she would be forced to kill him by the dictates of terminal embarrassment - and wouldn't that just be so sad? - when she was finally coming around to the idea that she like-liked him. Taking a few steadying breaths, Laurie tried to get a grip on herself and stop fidgeting. She managed it, barely, even if she was sure her face was still some shade of pink.

"Um, yeah, thank you for adjusting my suit," Laurie said, sounding slightly hoarse, "but, uh - sorry, but what should I call you? I'm afraid I'm going to slip up and call you Marvin."

"I am not called Marvin, non-quantumed Human Female-"

"Laurie. My name is Laurie."

"I am not called Marvin, non-quantumed Human Female Laurie," her... benefactor? said, seemingly not all put out by her question or interruption. "I am Flight Officer Gort of the T'Tauri Space Cruiser Q'Wee."

Those were not the actual words he said, but what she heard and she swore there was hint of an upper crust British Accent to them, all prim and proper and sailor-y. He even gave her sweeping bow, something akin to a tricorn hat appearing for a moment. It was oddly, if still bewilderingly, charming.

"Right, Gort, well, thanks for adjusting my suit, but is there anyway I can adjust its colour and transparency like you did without the doohickey?" Laurie asked. This isn't too bad, like being rescued from being lost at sea by Horatio Hornblower... if by sea I meant space and by Horatio Hornblower, I meant Marvin the Martian's and a Roswell Alien's love child. "And hey, while we're at it, are they any other functions or apps on - in? - this thing I should know about?"

Laurie chewed on her lip in worry, then added. "I don't want to sound ungrateful - I'm totally grateful - but my friends were trying to stop the Asheen assault, being all Quantum-Powered and stuff. And while you said you detected the Q-Fold, it was only me that showed up here. Is there anyway you guys could, I dunno, re-calibrate the deflector array or something and found out where they went?" Star Trek the shit out of this, guys! "DId they make it to the target zone? Get shunted somewhere else like I did, or... or, I don't what else, but something else?"

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AT BUNNEE'S

Wordlessly, Sean slid his phone over to Sara, showing her the time, then swiping over to his phone log and showing her the time their call was logged at.

He looked up at Sara, watching her intently with his big, gorgeous turquoise eyes, the one aspect that had changed the least between his old and new incarnations. Maybe they were trapped in some sort of mindscape after all. Time, or the perception of it, was often wonky in dreams. Dreams, Mindscapes, Alternate Realities, they were the same in some ways, nothing said the passage of time couldn't be altered in any of them.

Sean blinked then looked at Kia with wide eyes, his brain just now catching up with what she had said. "Now that is an interesting. Not necessarily saying that is what happened - and not sure right now how to prove or disprove it - but certainly something to consider."

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"Okay. Something is going on here. According to my phone, I called Kia, like, less than ten minutes ago, and that makes no sense. I called here when I first woke up, which was more than ten minutes ago and sure as hell less than two hours ago. I called Kia, got dressed (you can stop perving, Devin) and drove from the base to here. There is no possible way I did that in under ten minutes." Lilly pointed out, placing her phone in the middle of the table so they could all see her call log timestamps.

"This is either some sort of dream we are sharing, which I guess explains the lack of Laurie, or some sort of Matrix-like simulation that has some data, like travel times, all wrong." she suggested.

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Sara looks at Seans phone then Lilly's on the table. She pulls out her own phone and shakes her head. she slides it on to the table next to Lily's.

It reads 10:57 AM

Every one checks there phones. None of them have the same current time and all of them show various improbable times from when their respective phone calls were made.

Almost as one everyone looks toward the back of the diner to the old mechanical clock behind the cash register. It shows 8:32 and the second hand is not moving.

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"Oh thank God," Kia sighed in relief. She looked around at everyone's expression and clarified. "It's not real. I thought it might be real, and it was messing with my head. But this means it's some kind of weird illusion or dream. All we have to do is figure out how to wake up."

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Abel, while not his accustomed self, still knew sean well enough to know something was off.  The revelation about the time was disturbing, but he wasn't sure it was a dream.  He got up and went over to the clock, checking it to see if it was run down, and giving it a couple cranks to be sure, waiting to see if it started ticking.

"We're not exactly who we were before then.   Our lives were different, useful, but we have no idea what caused things to skew off like this.  So how do we wake ourselves up?   I do know perhaps the most extreme way.   You always wake up in a dream before you die."

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ABOARD THE Q'WEE

Gort tilted his head like a puppy. "The suit should respond to your commands now. There are hundreds of color combinations and surface designs programed and you can of course program your own custom visuals. And you can always wear your normal coverings over the suit.  We T'tauri prefer our natural look.

If you will accompany me to the control center we can see what we can see about your two friends."

A section of the floor nearby rises revealing a tube about 6 meters across. Gort walks Laurie over to the tube which opens revealing what looks like an elevator car.

As soon as they are inside the door swishes shut "Bridge" Says Gort with a smile and the car whisks them away.

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"Huh. Well that's a thing." Lilly mused as she looked at the diner's clock with the others.

"Hmm.. let me try something." she said as she closed her eyes.

"I am going to see if maybe I can flip the switch and turn my power back on." she explained.

Lilly focused, treating the situation as if she were somehow forcibly dormed, and tried to open herself up to the quantum energy, as if she were undorming, unsure of what might happen...

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"It's not a dream.  Dream's are part of the lower brain function, which is why you wake up before you die.  Survival instinct."  Devin slurped his shake.  It might be fake, but it was a good shake.    He leaned back, waiting to see the fruits of Lilly's experiment.  "We're reading, thinking, problem solving.  That's high brain functions.  We're not asleep."

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BUNNIES DINER

Abels fiddles with the clock.

Lily makes a funny face as she concentrates real heard to reactivate her power through shear effort or will. Most everyone watches Lilly.

After a long moment Lilly let's ou the breath she had been holding and shook her head

nothing.

The hands of the clock seem to work ok but the clock itself does not seem to be running. "Abel Cross, you break that clock, your daddy's gonna have a hard time replacing they haven't made those since the mid nineteen eighties." Grumbled Bunee as he carried a tray of food out of the kitchen and moved toward they're table.

A table whcih didn't have any food or drinks on it anymore.

Abel glanced back at the clock

Even though Abel had moved the hands and he had not returned them the position it had shown before it showed 8:32

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"No, because I remember seeing a thing that said your brain works the same way when you're dreaming as it does when you're awa..."

She trailed off when Bunee came out with the food, and she realized there wasn't anything on the table anymore.

Then Kia gave Devin a smug look.

"Still think it's real?"

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"I didn't say 'real' I only 'not a dream',"  He gave her a smirk, sticking his tongue out at her.  "Besides, I'm going on accumulated Sci-fi knowledge here, I'm not an egg-head.  I don't have the benefit of Triple-Z Cup sized brains.  I'm guessing here, flying blind. However... if this is a dream/alternate whatever... think Laurie'll forgive me?"

"Nope," Mari said, not even noticing the difference in time.  "I wouldn't.  News flash, bro: you're a dick."

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"So we're in some half-assed loop time world, where we don't have our powers, The Flow of Time is seemingly mutable, and food vanishes without being eaten.   You know, I should be far madder about the beginning of that, but the food thing is the worst.  At least replacement food is brought out to us."   He said as he came over from the clock.  Somewhat at a loss for the moment.   He was somewhat ready to start trying irrational ideas to escape this trap, Being logical certainly wasn't working.  
 

"Anyone wanna lay odds on them waiting for us to all port together, and hijacking us?   We're on a ship somewhere, all plugged in like the Matrix, but they really have no idea what our lives are really like, so that's why there's all these little mistakes?"

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"Not sure about the ship thing, but yeah, I'm starting to get a Matrix vibe going on too," Sean agreed with a nod. "And it might not be based on their own programming, but made tapping into information we already have. Maybe. And now glitches are cropping up." The small boy glanced pointedly at the clock and the food Bunnee had just brought them. "Now we have to find a way of breaking out of the trap." 

Real or not, the coffee still tasted like coffee and warmed him like coffee, so Sean took a sip of his refilled caffeine transference medium. He gave Devin a wry grin. "It's not a bad guess, Devin, but whether this is a dream or mental/digital simulation is academic at the moment. While the whole dying-in-your-dream-to-wake-up might be an option, lets leave that on the back burner for now, since considering how real things are feeling right now, I'd worry about brain death. Instead, I want to see if we can crash or overload the program. If this, whatever it is, is limited in how much, er 'reality' it can generate, lets see if we can push it beyond its limits."

Sean pointed towards the cars parked in front of the dinner. "They made Shelly down to the smallest detail, that we've seen so far. Lets force them to make more. We just head out and drive, see if we can reach the edge of the simulation or make it collapse as they try to keep up making it all seem real. Anyone else have a better idea? Or even one that sounds like it makes more sense?"

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ABOARD THE G'WEE

"Uh..." Laurie was going to mention that she had been with more than just two friends, but decided not to complicate things anymore at the moment. Maybe with the skinsuits she, Devin, and - sigh - Clare were all wearing, the T'tauri could triangulate or something. She couldn't believe there wasn't some way for them to track or ping the suits. "Yeah, sure."

The swish of the door closing on what she could only call a turbolift sounded exactly like something from Star Trek, and Gort's proclamation of 'Bridge' sounded suspiciously Picardish.

Okay, now to fix this naked thing before we actually get onto the Bridge. "Red." The skin suit obligingly turned a rather vivid shade of red. "Darker Red." Laurie looked, then had to look again to tell that the hue had actually darkened. "Even darker red." Again, only a minuscule shift in the shade. Laurie frowned. "This might take a while."

"You misunderstand, non-quantumed human female Laurie," Gort commented. "The skinsuit is not limited to vocal commands. It can interpret electroencephalographic readings to fulfill requests."

"Huh?"

"It can be controlled by mental command as well."

"Oh! Cool!" Laurie nibbled on her lower lip and closed her eyes as she thought about what she wanted. She felt... something and opened to her eyes to look down at herself. The skinsuit was now blessedly visible and the shade of red she had been picturing. It had also shifted in appearance to what she had taken this particularly shade of red from. She now looked like she was wearing a skin tight Starfleet uniform from the Command branch. Her questing fingers even felt a quartet of pips at the collar. A quick looked around reaffirmed Devin or her Sister were nowhere in sight and she grinned. "Double cool."

<Jarvis, can you list your capabilities and other functions you are capable of?> Laurie thought at the suit, seeing if the direct route would work. Sean would get so wet at the thought of getting her hands on this thing.

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Alec shakes his head "I don't think that's right. According to our phones, watches, what have you, and our own perceptions we have all experienced time at different rates, yet we are all in the same time. If this were a simulation, the time whether expanded or dilated, would still be uniform. I still think this is a physics problem. Whatever happened where ever we are  all of us are here except for your sister Sean. And according to Devin when he teleported she was teleported too. Why are we all here where ever here is and why isn't she?"

"Excuse me." Mari held up her hand, "I really don't know what your talking about and i still don't know if I believe any of this. But I'm not a program. I mean if I were wouldn't i have just reset too. I mean i remember us already getting food and i'm still full." She said the last looking at Sara who was digging into her second hamburger and fries.

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