Chapter 5: The Meeting

After the game was over, Senior, Junior, Mr. DaLoiff, and Mrs. Hyken went back inside the office. Earth was still malfunctioning. Mr. DaLoiff tried banging his hand against the screen, but nothing happened.

“Well, I guess it’s time for our meeting.” said Mr. DaLoiff.

“Meeting? What meeting?” asked Senior, Junior, and Mrs. Hyken.

“The meeting,” said Mr. DaLoiff, “that we’re about to have. To decide what we’re going to do about your broken signal. I mean, our broken signal for your planet. I mean, the planet you used to live on.”

“He always stutters when he gives a spontaneous speech,” muttered Mrs. Hyken. Senior rolled his eyes; Junior didn’t know what “stutter” or “spontaneous” meant.
Mr. DaLoiff and Mrs. Hyken sat down at two laptop computers. Senior and Junior sat down next to them. “How are we going to get home?” was the first thing Junior said. Mr. DaLoiff explained that someone else on Earth had to fix the signal to get back, but the chances would be astronomical that someone would know to fix the signal and do it right! Senior sighed.

“What does that mean?” asked Junior.

“It means,” explained Mrs. Hyken, “that you won’t be able to go home, because someone on your planet has to fix our camera. But no one on that planet knows about us! And even if they did know about us, they don’t know that we can view their planet! And even if they did know, they probably wouldn’t know where the camera is! And even if they did, how would they know that something is wrong? And if they did, how would they know how to fix it? And even if they did know, they probably wouldn’t know how to do it right!! And the worst part is, we can’t even tell them how, because we can’t put anything from this world into that world!”

A long period of silence followed, and then a monotone “uh...” from Junior. Apparently, he had a hard time following the definition. He thought it was even more confusing than the original explanation!

Senior didn’t want to have to explain it too, so he just muttered, “Never mind. Move on.”

“This is weird. Earth’s signal has never been this malfunctioning! Do you think you could have done something?”

Senior remembered the game he and Junior were playing before they got sucked into Sprigg, and recalled, “Well, early on, Junior and I were playing a game. We were kicking a ball all over the place. It bounced everywhere.”

“That may be the problem. The ball may have hit the invisible controls of the camera, moved them, and distorted the signal. When were you doing this?”

“I think it was between 9 or 10:00.”

“Okay, that is probably not the problem...the signal was broken when we checked at 7:00.”

“Well, what else could be the problem?”

Senior’s eyes grew bigger, and shouted, “You know, earlier on, before 7:00, I opened the front door really quickly. I noticed that we fell right next to the door.”

“So...?” asked Mrs. Hyken.

“So maybe the door whacked the controls of the camera!”

“Yeah, I could have sworn I heard something just before I woke up!” exclaimed Junior.

“That’s weird. I heard something too! It sounded like a thump, a couple bleeps, some typing, and then some more beeping.”

Mr. DaLoiff and Mrs. Hyken stood up. “That settles it, we’ve solved the problem!”

“You mean we can go home now?!” cried Junior.

TO BE CONTINUED