Part One: The Animal Ark

Ignoring Cuckoo's ravings, Mikey races right up to the orb and, using the shovel, tries to destroy it like he did Asimov. He knows that didn't go well for his friends last time but he has to try at least. Whatever Cuckoo is doing, it can't be good!

"Mikey!" Em cries, still at the back of the pack as the pre-teens swarm into the boathouse, heading for the lake. "We don't know what that will do!"

Pedaling furiously, the girl heads for the freezing water as fast as she can, throwing her bike down when she reaches the edge of the lake. Raising her hands to her mouth, she shouts:

"Mr. Hernandez, we don't understand! Stop! Tell us what's going on! Why are you doing all this?!"

Testing the ice with a few trepidatious steps, Morgan raises her voice -- she's loud for such a slight young thing. "STOP! Or we'll wreck the sphere!"

Georgie chases after the others, lagging behind, except for his rage which keeps him going when breath and legs should fail. His damaged wrist fuels that ire.

When Em zooms ahead and he sees Mikey trying to wreck stuff, he remembers the explosive force that blew Jaden back. "Mikey!" he yells but his voice is too ragged to convey his concerns.

Em steps tentatively out on to the ice, shouting for the madman to stop! The storm swirls above her now, and she constantly reaches to pull the hair from her face. Suddenly, a blue glow illuminates the scene for a second, as Mikey races to the orb. The shield flashes and the boy is sent flying back, hitting the sandy lake-front ground. Georgie is there with him, his warning falling on deaf ears. The two other boys stand behind Em, unsure of whether to attack the orb, or chase the man out on to the ice.

"STOP! Or we’ll wreck the sphere!"

Cuckoo turns unsteadily, almost comically on the ice. A heavy sound screams out from above. You all look up. The huge gauss freighter appears in the rumbling clouds with swirling thick snow and blasting sand.

Mikey climbs to his feet again, shovel still in hand. He races at the orb again. This time, he anticipates the force field. He slams his shovel against it.

Blue flash! Blue flash! The orb’s protective energy lights up the boy’s face to create this terrible, pained visage. Above, the ship creaks and begins to fall toward the water, while the lake now seems to freeze more fully and becomes completely covered in ice.

He shouts back to Em:

"THE SHIP IS JUST AN ECHO! ITS UNIMPORTANT NOW… BUT NOT LATER!" he slides a few steps backwards.

Beyond Cuckoo, at the center of the ice is a small area that, rather than turning to ice, has turned into a boiling, muddy sludge. It’s where the Ridgeview Math Teacher is headed! Slowly, slowly he moves backwards across the ice. Shouting to Em as he goes:

"THE EYE OF THE STORM IS THE TREASURE!"

A few more steps. Mikey slams his shovel against the orb some more, desperate. Georgie and the others are basked in blue-white light.

"THERE WAS… NO. THERE WILL BE… A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT."

The ship slowly falls with a tormented metallic scream. Torn off magnetrine discs seem to be frozen in the air and when the freighter hits the water's surface, something happens with time.

Five dizzying seconds of crashing chaos, water cascades, explosions, and flashes seem to stretch over a minute that is played over and over again. The time rift has stabilized, and in the middle, a milky white membrane made of pure light flickers – a portal.

Cuckoo is knocked to the floor with the impact. He rights himself with great effort. The children on the shore shield their eyes as dust is kicked up.

Finally you hear:

"YOU NEED TO STOP HER! KIM! STOP KIM! TAKE CARE… OF THE FUTURE!"

Em clears her eyes in time to see the math teacher slip and slide his way towards the portal at the middle of the lake. With great effort, the ice robbing him of momentum, he throws himself through the portal. And then he is gone. And so is everything else. The ship. The ice. The wind.

Mikey’s shovel finally meets metal, and the sound makes you jump in the sudden quiet.

The next sound you hear is the side of Em, your friend, crashing into the lake.

FIN

Mikey is still dazed and groggy from his running into the forcefield and his subsequent assault on it and the orb so when he hears a loud splash, it takes him a bit to figure out what's going on. He looks around and sees the ice gone. Then he remembers that Em followed Cuckoo out on the ice. Then he sees her sitting in the shallow water near the edge of the lake.
"Morgan!", he calls out. He drops the shovel and jogs up to the edge of the water where he hesitates a moment and then taks off his shoes and walks inside. "Are you alright?", he asks, pulling her to her feet without asking if she wants his help first.

Once they've emerged from the lake again, Mikey looks down at himself. He feels dizzy, his shirt sleeves are scruffed - luckily he wasn't wearing one of his new Christmas gift jumpers - and his arms are bleeding in some places from scratches. He must have hurt himself when he was trashing Asimov. His hands are also trembling, and it's not from the cold of the water, though that is also not nice, but from the adrenaline pumping through his body. "We... we should probably go home," he suggests to everyone in a trembling voice.

Mikey arrives home not long after. His sweater is ruined, his arms are scratched up, his pants wet and he's just not feeling great overall. After putting his bike in the shed, he sits there for a long time, taking long, measured breaths as he tries to get the tremble in his hands under control.

He is still left with more questions than answers, even if it seems like they stopped Cuckoo's animal killing for now. But why did he do it? Did these spheres really let him travel through time? And what exactly was he trying to prevent? Where did this ship come from?

Resigning to the knowledge that he won't find out the answers to these questions, he shambles lustlessly to the door of the house and unlocks it. His parents are in the living room watching TV, which is good for him as it means they're busy. He quickly takes off his shoes and heads upstairs where he grabs his PJs and a tracksuit and then locks himself in the bathroom. Filling the bathtub with hot water, he takes off his clothes and looks himself over in the mirror. He looks terrible, he decides. Pale skin, a scrawny chicken-chest, bony arms and legs... Plus his injuries from the day. He turns away from the mirror and sits down on the edge of the tub, running his hand through the water as its level rises.

"Michael, is that you?", his dad's voice asks from outside the bathroom.

"Yes," he replies quietly.

"I thought you were still out."

Mikey hesitates. "I just got home."

"You were with this girl, right? Emma. How did it go?"

Mikey doesn't want to talk to his dad right now, least of all to disillusion him of his idea that his son found himself a girlfriend. He'll only be disappointed in Mikey. "It was fine," he lies. "We had fun."

"Good man," Coach Rogan says with a grin in his voice. The compliment feels hollow to Mikey. He hasn't earned it. It doesn't apply to him. "You'll have to tell me all about it. What are you actually doing in there?"

"Having a bath," Mikey says. "I got a bit dirty."

There's a pause, then his dad says: "Alright, son. When you're done, join us downstairs. Your mom will cook something for us."

Mikey waits until he hears his dad's steps disappear down the stairs again, then he turns his attention back to the tub. He shuts off the water and then reaches for his mom's milk and honey bath soap, adding it into the tub and mixing it with his hand. Then he climbs inside and curls up in the hot water, trying to wash away the stress and worries of today.

---

Over the upcoming days, Mikey's parents can't help but notice that their son seems to be changed. He spends a lot more time in his room than he used to, only coming down to eat. They both try to talk to him and figure out what's wrong but he doesn't talk to them. Mikey's dad suspects it's something about Emma but every time he brings her up, Mikey shuts down completely, just insisting that "Everything's fine" and refusing any more comment so eventually, they decide to just leave him alone. It's the holiday break after all. A child can do whatever they want during that time.

Mikey spends most of his time in bed, lying and thinking. About himself, mostly. He's always prided himself in not being scared of anything. But he was scared. When he learned of what Cuckoo did, when he was fighting Asimov and attacking the orb, he was scared. So if that part isn't true about him, then what other parts he always believed of himself are also wrong?
As he is lying under his blanket, staring up at the walls decorated with posters of soccer players that his dad chose for him, Mikey isn't sure he really knows who he is anymore. What he is certain about is that he is not who his dad wants him to be. He's not this strong, tough and fearless man that his dad has always been trying to turn him into.

But if that's not who he is, then who is he?

Andy pedaled home barely realizing he was doing so he was in so much of a daze, the Miami Vice theme playing an endless loop in his brain. Shaking his head a few times in the hopes it would just go away he realized it was no longer his favorite theme song. In fact, he hated it, because now it was associated with bad things, things that made him afraid and made him feel weak. He was this big jock wasn't he? Jocks aren't afraid of things. They are tough, strong, and fearless.

I need a new song, he thought as he pedaled home on autopilot. Rocky! That's the one, he thought. He had watched and loved that movie several times over the years.

When he arrived home he had finally come out of his daze, the Rocky theme bringing him up out of his funk. Checking over his bike he saw a bent fender and several scratches where it had made contact with the robot. The handlebars were a little out of alignment and two of his tire spokes were bent but he didn't care, He was safe at home uninjured apart from a few minor scrapes and bruises that he didn't even remember getting.

There was dad in the garage tinkering with something. How would he explain the bike to him?

Hi Dad. I smashed into a kid I know. We were coming around the corner at the same time and .... well I'm ok and the bike isn't too bad.

He sold the story. His dad asked how the other kid's bike was and was the kid ok and who was it. Andy managed to fill all that in convincingly and then went inside and straight to his room to process the events of the past few days. Stop Kim. What was it all about? That was the question he kept asking himself.

Andy's favorite song changed to The Rocky I Theme Music. His pride didn't change but he became obsessed with wondering who Kim was so that became his problem. His drive changed as he had enough thrills to last years (or so he thought at the time) but for the moment his drive is to get to the bottom of the mysterious professor's behavior and what he meant by the end of the world. There was no opportunity for an anchor change.

Georgie didn't cry. The doctor wrapped his wrist, two of the small bones broken. He doesn't even remember what happened really.

When he got home, clutching his damaged hand to his belly, his mother freaked out. She was too drunk to drive, so they took a cab to the hospital. Georgie mumbled only that he was playing with a pile of metal and fell badly.

Shock. He could hear them talking. Mom had good insurance, but there wasn't any reason to stay overnight. Just a few broken bones. It wasn't like he was scrambled through time and died from massive organ failure.

The elements of the story didn't make sense. But as the adults worked on doing the medical treatment thing, he was sorting the information, reorganizing it.

This is what he comes up with: There was a woman named Kim. Maybe not a woman. But this person likely activated a sphere and began a series of events. Somehow, Hernandez got wind of it and attempted to undo what she did. For some reason, this lead to him trying to send animals through the machines he found, or built, as he attempted to just guess how it was supposed to go together.

So much death, and for what? Would they ever know?

All Georgie knew was that just wasn't that funny.

---

-- Georgie's Pride (smartest kid in school) remains intact.
-- His Problem (Nobody will tell me how my dad died) remains unanswered, and central.
-- His Drive (I need something to brag about) no longer fits. Now, it's "I will rebuild Asimov and learn what it knows," or more generally, "I will prepare for the apocalypse."
-- His anchor (author Milliken Mortensen) I'm not thrilled with, but I think it still makes sense. There's leverage to be had.

Days later, Em stands on the shore of the lake, her hair and pleated skirt ruffling in the breeze. Her eyes are on the sky, are on the surface of the water -- searching. She doesn't know any more than the boys about what really happened here, but she's haunted by the thought of all the animals who suffered, by seeing Hernandez go through the portal, and by the thought of the ship materializing one day and crashing for real. She tries to not think about the water suddenly closing over her head that day, about her panicked scramble for the shore, where Mikey reached her and helped her.

Milo, perched on her shoulder, squeaks and twitches his whiskers as the girl maintains her silent vigil. She does this from time to time in the weeks and months that follow, worried about the future meeting the past in violent fashion.

But not too worried to try and figure out the roleplaying games she's "borrowed" from her brother's stash. Turning from the shore, she heads for the hideout and mulls over in her mind how she thinks the boys will react to the encounter she has planned...

Boulder City, "the hideout", a few days later.

Jaden has been going over and over what happened in his head for a zilion times. What was the meaning of all these? And Hernandez? Asimov? The rotating orbs? With his mind racing all over, he naturally missed a couple notes from Billy Idol's Rebel Yell chorus.

Frustrated as he was, he left his guitar on the floor and paced around the room for a while, pausing in front of the windows. Abruptly he turned, grabbed his guitar, climbed down the tree and drove his bike back home. As he entered, he saw his dad sitting in the living room - obviously waiting for him, looking dead serious.

He stopped at the door, his mind already racing;
"Dad? How?... I mean why?..." his dad looked up and in all seriousness said "Jaden Peter Jameson, we need to talk..."