I struggled up, I felt sort of sluggish. I tried to blink my eyes, but they were too heavy. Even keeping them open was amazingly difficult.
I rolled over and checked the clock. 4:50 A.M. Too early.
Sighing, I rolled back again, smothering my face in the blankets. I closed my eyes; I needed sleep badly.
I rolled over onto my back again, and stood up. I felt a lot less tired.
I looked at the clock. 5:10. I'd slept for another twenty minutes, and I now had a really bad headache.
It felt like my head was pounding harder than thirty blacksmiths striking their anvils at the same time. Kind of like someone was pounding on the door.
"BJ! Lomond!" I heard Paula cry. "Open up!"
I shook my head rapidly, which didn't do any good for my headache. I walked over to the door and opened it. She, Ness and Tracy were there; Ness and Tracy probably looked very exhausted, and I had a feeling I looked as bad as they did.
"Lomond never gets up before seven," Ness mused. "When we protested the firing of Captain Strong two years ago by staying in our treehouse and refusing to leave, Lomond slept until seven. Even though Douglas and I got up at five. We should leave him be."
"What'd you get me up for any way, Paula?" I demanded, stretching my tired limbs.
"Prince Poo, he's another of our friends, just called me psychically," she explained. "Apparently Robe was attacking Dalaam, and he wants us to help clean up the battleground."
"That Robe," I muttered, "can he get any worse?"
"You know what?" Tracy said somewhat impulsively. "I don't think Robe's all that bad deep down inside."
"Really?" I asked, surprised.
"Yeah, really," she answered. "I look at him as being sort of like a puppet to Giogas. A rather liberated puppet, yes, but still a puppet."
"I'm pretty sure that Robe kidnapped Paul, so if he's not bad deep down inside, there must be a good bit of bad in him."
"And then there's the fact that he seemingly kidnapped the four of us," Ness added. (This discussion continued until we had exited the Hotel.)
"But Ness," Tracy insisted, "maybe in that case Giogas was exerting his influence. I mean, there's got to be something that holds him back from killing us outright. And that must be the good inside him."
You're a bit too optimistic, Tracy, I thought. It's not right to think that, because of perceived kindness or softness, someone is good inside. And even if there are exceptions to that rule, I doubt that Robe is one of them.
"Are you ready to go?" Ness asked us. No one voiced a complaint, so he called out the name of his Teleport PSI; and we ran down Twoson's Main Street, eventually disappearing into non-space and re-appearing in a country high in the clouds.
"Welcome to Dalaam," Ness announced. "The highest country in the world, even higher than Tibet!"
A boy dressed in what looked like karate garb and whose hair was shaved, except for a black ponytail in the middle of his head, came up. "Ness?" he asked. "Paula, Tracy, my gladness that you have come is immeasurable." He turned to me. "And who might you be?"
"My name is BJ Nichols," I answered.
"Ah, BJ," the boy said. "It is a pleasure to meet you."
"And likewise to you," I responsed. "Prince Poo, correct?"
"Crown Prince Poo," he amended, "but, as a friend of my friends, you may just call me Poo."
"Oh, Poo!" Paula laughed.
Poo looked perplexed. "Was I too forward?" he asked.
"Nothing of the sort," Ness replied.
"Prince Poo!" a voice cried.
Poo's eyes dropped. "Wonderful. She woke up."
"She?" I asked. "Who's she?"
"Ani," Poo muttered. "Ani insists that one day the two of us are going to marry. But her love for me -- unnecessary as it is, given that my marriage will be arranged, and that she's not of the proper lineage -- helped against the robed child who recently attacked the kingdom. He began to mock her feelings for me, and that gave me an opening. Regretfully, the robed child did notice this and jumped away, whereupon he disappeared."
I looked at Tracy, as if to ask: Do you still think that there's some good inside Robe?
She looked back at me, silently responding: Of course I do. If he was purely evil, he wouldn't have begun to mock Ani's feelings for Poo; he would have kept attacking. At least, that's what I thought she said.
"Prince Poo!" Ani exclaimed. "Finally, I found you."
Ani appeared. Her hair was red; she was a little taller than Poo was; and she wore a peach-coloured uniform. Her hair was done up in two ponytails.
She ran up to Poo and hugged him, knocking him down. Poo sighed, exhausted. "Ani, we have visitors; please refrain from behaving like this."
Ani looked up, turning towards us. "Why?" she asked. "I'll shout my undying love for you throughout the world!"
"I know you will!" Poo argued. "But that is not good."
"Why isn't it good?" Ani wondered, turning back towards Poo slightly. I should still see her eyes.
"There is something that is required of one when one is with of those coming from a different country: decorum. You seem to lack it when it comes to me."
Ani's eyes glimmered. They seemed sort of watery, in a depressed sort of way. "B... but... we're to marry."
"And that is another problem," Poo continued. "You seem to believe that, no matter what, our marriage is a sure thing. I consider that to be an uncertainty."
Ani's eyes glimmered again. I was almost sure that she was going to cry soon.
"You... you hate me, don't you?" she asked, angry. She left, sobbing. "I'll never forgive you!"
Poo sighed again. "She'll get over it. She always does. I think she'll mark this one up to the fact that 'Prince Poo had a bad day'." He smiled half-heartedly.
Paula was aghast. "I can't believe this, Poo!" she exclaimed. "You're making fun of Ani's pain!"
Poo shook a bit, enough to be visible. "I did not intend for you to believe that, Paula," he pleaded. "But it's true. Her reactions to my brashness are merely temporary measures: she always comes to the conclusion that I didn't mean it. And, perhaps, maybe I do think that we should marry."

Dusty
We woke up in Threed. I insistated that the others continue on to Twoson, and that I would catch up when I could.
"Go, watch the baseball game," I had said. "I'll meet up with you three as soon as I can."
Ñrutas, Tony and Picky rode the Grey Hand bus to Twoson. Hopefully, I'd be done with what I needed to do at the hospital long before the baseball game started.
I walked into the hospital.
There was a girl at the nurse's desk. "I called for an appointment today with the doctor yesterday," I heard her explain. "Can you tell me why it's been delayed until tomorrow?"
"I'm sorry," the nurse answered, "but somnic fever seems to be spreading around Threed like wildfire, and we're giving priority to appointments that have been made as a result of concern about somnic fever."
"What if I said I had the somnic fever?" the girl wondered.
"You'd still have to wait until tomorrow," the nurse murmured. "Your appointment was delayed because of a lack of priority, and the bureaucracy of the hospital would take too long to return the appointment to today."
The girl grumbled and turned around. As she walked towards me, she stopped.
"BJ?" she asked. "I haven't seen you since school ended."
"You're confusing me with someone else," I said. "My name isn't BJ."
"Then what is it?" she pressed.
"Dusty," I admitted.
"Dusty. That's strange," she mused.
"Why would that be strange?"
"Oh, I'm not sure." She laughed and walked out.
I moved towards the nurse's desk. The nurse looked up at me. "Yes?" she asked, her eyes boring into me like lasers.
"Could you do a search for me?"
"What kind of search?" she asked.
"A birth records search," I clarified.
I heard her push the keyboard under the top of her desk. She turned toward me.
"You're serious?" she asked, covering her mouth with a hand.
"What?"
"Haven't you heard? Somnic fever has come to Threed. We can't waste our time conducting birth records searches!"
"Then let me do the search!" I exclaimed.
"Oh yeah, I'll let a kid I've never met before mess around with the computer. That'll get my medical license revoked like that." She snapped her fingers for emphasis.
"You don't have any physical files?" I said.
"Oh, yeah, we have physical files. They're in that room." She pointed me to it. "Have fun."

I looked through all the cabinets until I found the birth/death files. Then I looked through them until I narrowed it to the year I was born. Then I limited it to the month. Then to the day.
"OK, Threed is a small town," I noted. There were only 20 births and deaths for the day I was born, 15 of which were deaths. I set them aside.
That left the five births. One of which was me.
There was a birth at 3:17 a.m., a girl born to Daniel and Tamara Michaels; one at 8:24 a.m., Francis, a boy born to Ken and Joanna Thompson; twin girls, born at 5:29 p.m., parents Geoffrey Cook and Robyn Parker; and finally, there was me. The last one
"'Born March 20, 1986, at 11:59 p.m., a healthy baby boy, to Gordon and Yukiko--'" I stopped reading. If this meant what I thought it meant, I had some more checking to do. I moved to March 21, 1986. "'Born March 21, 1986, at 12:00 a.m., a healthy baby boy, to Gordon and Yukiko...'"
I cleaned up the files and reorganised them. I replaced them and headed out of the files room. I sighed.
I caught the next bus to Twoson. Julia had a baseball game, and there was nothing that was going to stop me from seeing her play.
As the bus rolled along the Threed streets, I wondered. I wondered if I had ever lived here, or if my mother had taken me away from my father not long after my birth. Or if my parents just happened to be here when Mom went into labour...