Place: A Manta Ship
Time: Sometime early in the year 2001
The mid-20ish man with dishwater brown hair ran down the corridor as fast as he could. He had escaped from hundreds of Manta Ships over the years. But never had he felt so certain that he wasn’t going to make it.
The sound of sirens blaring was almost intolerable. He approached a beautiful woman roughly his age, with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wearing thin-frame oval glasses. Her name was Sarah Jenkins, and she turned around as he approached.
“W.A.! You made it!” she said with a flicker of a smile, before turning all business again. She was shouting at the top of her lungs, but she could still barely be heard above the sirens. “We have to go now.”
“What about Lexie and Ransom?” asked the young man, whose birth name was Max, but for reasons too long to explain at the moment, was nicknamed “W.A.” by those who cared about him.
“They’re safe,” replied Sarah.
Sarah twisted a dial on a device she held in her hand. From that device shot an expanse of energy that formed a wormhole in time and space, just a few feet from them. The coloring of the wormhole appeared red, which may have simply been a reflection from the ship.
“You’re opening a vortex while this ship is traveling through a vortex?” W.A. shouted. “That’s too dangerous! No telling what the results will be!”
“If you have a better idea, I’m open to it!” Sarah shouted back sarcastically. “Besides, didn’t you try something like this before?”
A sudden laser shot disrupted the conversation. They turned and looked. An all too familiar looking creature made his way down the hallway towards them.
This creature was known as a Kromagg. He looked somewhat human, but had very ape-like features as well. The creature had a slight limp when he walked, and distinctive scarring on his face. What drove him more than anything at this point was hatred, and revenge. Revenge particularly on W.A. and his band of friends.
W.A. finally did what he should have done when he caught up with Sarah – he pushed a button that shut a door, separating them from the Kromagg. If he had a blaster, he would have shot the control panel with it, but he didn’t. Shutting the door wouldn’t buy them much time, but they would take what they could get. At the rate the Kromagg was moving, he would be at the door in a minute or less.
The noise was a little quieter on this side, so the two of them continued to speak with a little lowered, but still strained, voices.
“Good thing that Kromaggs are about as poor of aim as Stormtroopers,” Sarah noted.
W.A. nodded. “That vortex strong enough to hold two people?”
Sarah shrugged. “The last time it was used, only one person went through. I tried to re-calibrate it, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.
W.A.’s mind raced. The Kromagg would be here any second. And the vortex wasn’t going to stay open much longer, either.
“You go,” W.A. said.
“What?”
“You heard me. I’m not going to take a chance on you becoming a vortex pancake if we both go in there!”
“W.A., if they catch you this time, they’re not even just going to just let you die. I’m sure they have worse things planned for you. We have to take a chance!”
“No, I won’t let you. I care about you too much. I—I love you.” W.A. leaned forward and kissed Sarah passionately on the lips. “You go without me.”
Just then, two things happened simultaneously. The first that was the door slid open.
The second was that Sarah said, “Yeah, right,” and grabbed W.A.’s arm and yanked him into the vortex with her.
As the vortex closed behind them, W.A. closed his eyes, bracing himself for landing – or being splattered across the multiverse – or whatever was going to happen next . . .
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Unsolved Mystery - Season Nine
From: (Wrong Arturo)
Date: 3 Sep 2010 12:18:10
W.A. took a deep breath and opened his eyes.
He was lying in a very comfortable bed. Not exactly what he expected to see after that last moment.
“Sarah?” he said, getting up. He found a shirt next to the side of the bed and put it on. “Sarah? Where are you? Is everything OK?”
He wandered over to the nightstand. There was a framed photo of him with Sarah, at what looked like a museum. They were happy and laughing—an all-too-rare moment for them.
Still groggy, feeling like he just woke up, W.A. stumbled to the bathroom. He looked in the mirror. Something was definitely not right here. For one thing, the previously clean-shaven W.A. now had a goatee. Great, he thought. I look like Evil Spock.
Speaking of hair, W.A.’s hairline was much more receded up his forehead. And he saw wrinkles and worry lines that weren’t on his face the last time he looked at it.
He walked back into the bedroom and noticed a calendar on the wall. The dates up to that one had been scratched off. The date now read as Friday, Sep. 3, 2010.
2010? He ripped the calendar off of the wall. He stared at it for a moment, simply stunned, then flipped back through the pages, as though somehow it was going to make more sense. But of course, it didn’t. Every page said the same: 2010.
I’m ten years older? W.A. said to himself. I’m—I’m 35! What the heck? What happened? Where is everybody?
W.A. moved to the bedroom door and opened it. He had to get some answers.
He found himself in a hallway with a long stairway leading down. This looked like a nice place, but it certainly wasn’t anyplace he had remembered being in before. He heard noises downstairs, so he decided to investigate.
As he got closer to downstairs, a welcome smell greeted his nose: eggs and toast. He walked into a kitchen near the bottom of the stairs, and there, seated and munching on her breakfast—while working on her laptop, naturally—was a young woman with straight black hair that W.A. immediately recognized.
“Morning, W.A.,” she said calmly as she picked up her glass of orange juice.
“Nekka!” W.A. exclaimed, and ran over and threw his arms around her, even while she was still sitting at the table. “It’s been forever! How are you doing?”
Nekka barely managed to hold on to her juice. She looked at W.A. like he was out of mind. “Uh, I’m doing fine, W.A.—since you saw me last night.”
“What?” W.A. said, releasing the grip.
“I guess someone got up on the right side of the bed today,” said a familiar-sounding, somewhat booming, voice, as the speaker entered the kitchen from the entrance on the other side of the room. He was in his 50s now, with somewhat graying hair, but he still had his mostly dark beard and thick-framed glasses.
“Spindoctor!” W.A. raced over to his other friend. For a moment, spindoctor tensed – he was worried that W.A. would want to hug him too. He relaxed considerably when W.A. simply shook his hand.
“Good to see you too, old friend,” spindoctor exclaimed. “Why so chipper this morning?”
In the excitement of seeing these two again, W.A. had almost forgotten himself. “Actually, I’m excited and kind of freaked out at the same time. I—I woke up this morning without any memory of the last 10 years.”
Nekka and spindoctor looked at each other with concern. “So do you remember us, or how you got here?” Nekka asked.
“The last thing I remember, we were all still on the run from the Kromaggs.”
Nekka smiled. “Well, you don’t have to worry about them. We defeated them once and for all—about 9 years ago, in fact.”
W.A. sat down. “Well, that’s a relief. What is this place?”
“Sort of a wayward home for interdimensional travelers—the friendly ones, of course,” spindoctor noted. “We bought this old place and renovated it on Rifter Prime after we had settled down from our adventures.”
Now it was W.A.’s turn to smile. “Well, that’s just awesome. . . . So, where’s Sarah right now?”
Nekka and spindoctor exchanged puzzled glances. “Who’s Sarah?”
And with that statement, W.A.’s world fell apart again. He stood up.
“Sarah Jenkins is the woman I love,” W.A. said. “And if you two don’t remember her, then it’s not just my memory that’s been messed with. Sorry, guys, but our adventures aren’t over. We need to find out who’s doing this to us.
“So, my next question is: What happened to Lexie and Ransom?”