Chapter 6: "So here's the story..."

In the present, curiosity got the better of Junior. He started wondering out loud, "What would it be like to be a blob and then to disappear...?"

Senior started to protest, but Junior had already run outside underneath the magnet. He heard the machine whir, and then the lasers hit him. He was only a blob for a fraction of a second before he was zapped into the future.

Junior was a little disappointed when he found out that he could barely remember being a blob, as it had happened so fast. He landed, and took in his surroundings. He saw the issue with the banana, and then looked behind him. There were two people in lab coats, and they appeared to have fallen with him. The taller one said,

"Hello. I'm George Hoovey, and this is my sidekick, Reely Short. It appears that our machine was a success."

"Your invention caused all this trouble?! This was YOUR invention?" Junior was starting to get a little upset.

"We apologize, but it's not our fault–we forgot to turn the time machine off, and so it appeared to look for more things to zap into the future..."

"Time machine," repeated Junior. "What year is it?"

"It's 2236," say George Hoovey. "You have been frozen in time inside Netherspace for years. Yes, I know it seems like you were just zapped into the future. But that's what it's supposed to feel like."

In the present, Senior was getting worried. He flipped through his phone book and found SCIENTISTS -- 1-555-846-8785.

His hand was shaking as he dialed the number. When the phone was answered, Senior blurted, "There's something outside that's disappearing my family!"

There was a pause. "This sounds like our magnetic time machine," said the man on the other line. "How many have disappeared?"

"3 or 4," replied Senior.

"Okay," said the other man, "let me set a date for them to come out..."

"Come out of where?" asked Senior.

"Oh, of course, you wouldn't know," began the other man, but then another man on the other line said,

"Hey, Reely! What have I told you about telling others about our experiments?!"

"That it's your job," said Reely.

"Correct," said the other man. "So give me the phone and let me tell him."

Senior waited for a second as Reely gave the phone to the other man (who was George Hoovey).

"Okay," started George. "So here's the story..."

Chapter 5: Misses's Sacrifice

After Misses's announcement, there was another long silence.

"You?!" asked Junior, breaking the silence. "B-but what will happen to you??"

"I don't know," Misses solemnly responded. "But I've got to save Brother and Sister."

"Will I ever see you again?" Junior was close to tears.

"I hope so," said Misses.

There was a long wait full of tearful good-byes. Junior hoped to see his mom soon. Then Misses bravely stepped out the door. To see what would happen, Senior kept the door open.

There was a whir from above. Then Misses turned into a blob, and then the white flash appeared again. And Misses was gone. Senior sighed.

"Well, if she's gone..."

"Don't say that," cried Junior.

"...at least she went trying to save our family."

But of course Misses was not gone. She reappeared in the future, although it felt like no time difference to her. She saw the banana fall. But before she could look at her surroundings, the banana hit a girl to her left. It was Sister! Her head hit the floor, and she stopped moving. The next instant, the banana had flown up into the air, and into Misses's mouth.

That's when she vaguely heard "Mom??" She looked from the unconscious Sister to in front of her, and she saw Brother, crouching on the ground. She almost sighed with relief, in response to finding out that everyone was still alive.

Misses tried to answer Brother, but with the banana in her mouth, all she could manage was "Mmfb." Brother shook his head, tried to convince himself that it was a dream, and asked himself to wake up.

"Brother?" Misses began, in order to assure him that it was not a dream, but the word was muffled by the banana, so it came out as "Brfgnr?" Then she realized that the banana was still in her mouth. She spit it out so that she could tell Brother that it was real, but the banana hit Brother on the head before she could say anything. She was so shocked by this that, instead of telling him it was real, she gasped and fainted.

Chapter 4: Proof

Once Brother was successfully zapped into the future, though Misses didn't know it, she called for Senior and Junior. They wondered what was going on, and Misses told them what she knew.

"Was it chance?" asked Senior.

"I doubt it. The two disappearings seem to be related," answered Junior.

"Do we have anything we could throw out there that would test that?" asked Misses.

"How about this?" replied Senior, returning with a brown banana.

"No, I'm saving that for banana bread!" said Misses.

Junior inspected the banana. "No, Dad's got a good idea, Mom. There's a yellow spot right here...near the stem, see it?...that looks like Mickey Mouse. If it wasn't there, we couldn't tell that it was THIS banana!"

Senior handed the banana to Misses. She saw no reason not to use the banana anymore, so she threw it out the door. The lasers zapped the banana, it turned into a blob, and it disappeared in a white flash.

"Okay. Now we know that whatever's going on is consistent," said Senior. "But how do we save Brother and Sister?" There was a long pause as they all thought.

During the silence, Misses watched two flies fly into a spiderweb. Both flies tried to free themselves. A spider came and started to eat one of the flies. While it was still eating, the other fly managed to untangle itself and it flew free.

That fly sacrificed itself for its friend, thought Misses. That's when she got her idea.

"I'll go," she announced.

Chapter 3: New Knowledge

After about ten minutes, the Family family knew something had probably happened to Sister. Misses opened the window and screamed at the top of her lungs:

"SISTER!!!"

But in the middle of shouting this, she saw that Sister was nowhere near the mailbox. A million thoughts raced though her head. "Did she run away from home? No, she says she likes living here... Did she take a ride with a stranger? No, we've always told her not to do that... Did the stranger kidnap her? That's more possible...she wouldn't have gone willingly, but what are the chances that a stranger would be here at the exact same time she was getting the mail?... Was she zapped by a time portal into the distant future? No, who am I kidding? That's physically impossible!"

Brother came at that moment and asked if his new Lego set had come yet. "I'm not sure yet," said Misses.

"What? Didn't Sister come back with the mail?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. She could have been kidnapped."

"WHAT?! Well, if she's not there, can I get the mail?"

"Sure," said Misses. "But to make sure you actually make it, I'll watch through the peephole."

Brother went out the door. Misses heard a brief whir from the magnet before she closed the door, but she wasn't aware of it. She looked through the peephole. She saw Brother going to the mailbox. But he stopped in mid-step and looked up. She couldn't see what he was looking at, though. Then Brother appeared to scream and started running to the door.

Misses opened the door and outstretched her arms, prepared for him to run into them. But he ran into something else. Misses didn't know what. Was he playing or was something wrong with him? Brother backed away slowly, looking worried. Suddenly she saw Brother turn into a big shrinking blob. At this she screamed. Then she saw a big white flash, and the next moment, Brother had vanished. Misses almost fainted at this point.

Brother saw the white flashlight, but when it disappeared, he didn't see his mom. He didn't even see his house! He was in some kind of futuristic city! There were odd-looking machines everywhere. Almost a second after he saw the new environment, he realized he was falling feet first. And before he could think "What's going on?" his feet hit a floor. He fell forward but caught himself with his hands.

"Mom??" Brother said nervously. He heard a "mmfb" but nothing else. "This is a dream. I know it is. Wake up, Brother!" he said.

"Brfgnr?" said the muffled voice behind him. He guessed correctly that she (the voice was a woman's) had something in her mouth. Then he heard a spitting sound, and the thing in her mouth hit him in the head (not hard, though). He heard the woman behind him gasp, and then all was silent.

He looked to his left and found that the thing behind him was a banana! It was completely brown except for one yellow spot near the stem that looked like Mickey Mouse.

Chapter 2: Sister's Encounter

None of the Family family knew about their mysterious magnet immigrant, and continued on their business. Senior created banners for websites. Misses knit. Junior made his comic strip. Fraternal twins Brother and Sister built with their Legos. Sam looked cute.

The magnet was focused on the front door, so anyone or anything coming out of a window, back door, or garage wouldn't be affected by the magnet. The Family family had no knowledge of the magnet until a couple days after it arrived.

Normally, the mail was gotten on the drive home from school. But one day, they forgot, and didn't realize until several hours later. Misses asked Sister to get the mail. She opened the front door, but before she could close it, a strange sight awaited her.

A giant magnet. It was floating above her. For a moment, she was too scared to move. And the magnet didn't move either. Eventually she remembered that she was supposed to getting the mail. So she started walking toward the mailbox, but by the time she had taken only one step, the magnet started to whir. She was scared.

She tried running away, but she ran into something invisible. It felt like Jell-O. Then she felt something hot hit her skin (the lasers). Then she imploded, just like the car had. It is hard to explain the sensation she felt. You will have to imagine it yourself.

Then Sister saw a flash of light, and then she was in a completely different environment. She saw several other things falling to the ground. These were the other things that the magnet had sucked into the future. We have only seen two, but she saw more than that. This was the stuff that, from her time (in the present), had not been sucked by the magnet yet. But the magnet was set to transport it ALL to the future.

But she barely had time to see the view before something hit her on the head and knocked her to the ground, which felt like nothing she'd felt before. That was the last thing she knew before everything was dark...

Hiatus

We will be on a hiatus for a little while. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Chapter 1: The Time Machine

In the lab of Dr. George Hoovey, a big discovery was made: how to travel through time.

It was not in the usual methods of time travel, e.g., speed-of-light travel, a big car/machine, etc. This time, it was the type of movement someone would make that would send him or her into the future.

To be able to achieve this ability, first Dr. Hoovey created what looked like a gigantic magnet. Then he put in a microchip, as well as the ability to become invisible. Next, he created a big machine to put inside it. It took him six years to finish the invention.

When he completed his invention, he called in his assistant, Reelly Short, to send him a pointless object to test the machine. Because it had to be able to move, Reelly sent him a remote controlled car. He then put it ten feet away from the magnet, which now had the ability to float. He then turned on the magnet. It floated, and then became invisible. Reelly then turned on the remote control car and drove it directly under the magnet.

The magnet picked up the motion of the remote controlled car. The magnet then put a force field around the car, so the latter could not get out of the magnet’s grasp. Its sensors then sent a message to its microchip, which made the gears inside it turn quickly. The gears powered a laser, which fired all around the force field. When the laser touched the car, the car started to crumble. It imploded, and then started to become very blob-like. You could say it almost melted. The magnet’s tiny camera was creating a video, meanwhile, of the car imploding. When it started to “melt,” then the magnet’s laser got stronger. It zapped the halfway-melted car, and then the car disappeared. It had gone into the future. It had all happened within a fraction of a second.

Dr. Hoovey knew his invention was a success. But he had forgotten to turn of the magnet after it zapped the car! Consequently, the magnet floated out of the room and started searching for another place to zap into the future. It searched all over, and then a week later, it finally chose a house.

It was Junior’s house.