George realized he was staring at the boy, transfixed. A spring of encouragement welled up inside him. “Thank you, Master Sato. I think we’d all agree that we needed that.”
“Just make a decision. Do something. Or we’ll go crazy.”
George nodded then straightened his posture, his strength returning. “You’re quite right, Sato. Quite right. Enough of our talk. Let’s go around the room and make assignments. It is indeed time to get to work. If something comes up that seems more important, then we’ll change those plans, but getting to work is our number one priority. Mothball, you first.”
The giant of a lady looked as if a little bit of life had been breathed back into her as well. “Alright, then. I’ll start winkin’ me way from one end to the other—not just in Reality Prime but all of ’em. Start makin’ reports and such. We don’t know much, now do we? Not with the communications so bloomin’ shot.”
“Excellent idea,” George said. “We need to determine exactly what’s happening or we’ll never know what direction to take in the long run.”
“Your middle name Danger all a sudden?” Sally cut in with his booming voice. “You plan to hightail it this way and that all by your lonesome, do ya? Not on my tickety-tock watch, you ain’t. I’ll go with Mothball.”
George loved the idea. “Perfect. Plans settled for two of us. Rutger, I think we both know what you need to do.”
The fat little ball of a man shifted in his seat. “Um, well, I’d be happy to go on an adventure with my fine two friends, but . . . I seemed to have sprained my . . . elbow. Yes, yes, it’s giving me quite the fits lately . . .”
“Master Rutger, please.” George struggled to keep from laughing. “We all know very well that we need you here. Our instruments that survived the disasters have been reporting strange anomalies across the Realities. We need your keen researching mind devoted to solving that puzzle.”
Visible relief washed over Rutger’s features, but he tried to hide it with his words. “Oh, well, I guess you’re right, then. Pity. I would’ve gladly risked further injury to my elbow to help Mothball and Sally.”
“I have no doubt of it.”
“Didn’t know you could even see your elbow,” Mothball muttered. “What with all that natural padding.”
“Well, at least mine don’t jut out like pelican beaks!” Rutger countered. “Try gaining a pound or two so we quit thinking a skeleton rose up from the dead to scare the willies out of us.”
“Well, I would, now wouldn’t I, if you bloody let us have a bite or two at supper before you gobbled it all down that fat neck of yours.”
“Ah,” George said through a sigh. “This is more like it. If you two are going at it with each other, then at least something is right in the world.”
“What about us?” Sofia asked. It was the first time she’d spoken since the meeting began, and her soft voice was sad but strong. These new Realitants had life in them yet. “Our families are fine—we’ve checked on them, visited them—so we can do whatever you need us to do now.”
“Yeah,” Paul added, a little more spirit in his face too. “I can’t sit around this place one more second, listening to Rutger brag about his cooking and telling stupid jokes.”
George looked at Sato. “And you?”
The boy folded his arms across his chest. “I said I’m ready. And my army is too.”
“Okay, then.” George thought a moment. There were countless things that needed to be done throughout the Realities. Where to start? “Sato, I want you to go back to the Thirteenth Reality and destroy the remaining creatures that Jane manufactured at the Factory. We need to make sure that world is safe and back to the way it was meant to be.”
“Done,” Sato said immediately, without the slightest hint of fear.
“And . . . us?” Paul asked.
George put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “You two are going to pay a visit to a very old friend of mine. She lives in the Third Reality, and we can only hope that she doesn’t eat you for supper when you arrive.”
Chapter 5
Squishy Grass
Lisa screamed when it happened, but she couldn’t hear her voice over the terrible sounds of thunder that pounded the air like detonating bombs. One second she’d been sitting in the forest, looking at her mom and the Barrier Wand, hearing a hum and feeling vibrations in her legs. The next, she’d been whipped into a tornado of swirling gray air, spinning, the world tilting all around her. The noises pounding her skull. She tried to find her mom—at least see her—but there was nothing. Only a gray whirlpool of smoke.
And then it ended. Abruptly.