“Ow,” Eric said, “that hurt.”

“Sorry,” Dr.Sinta said. He took the needle out of Eric’s finger and placed it in a microscope like machine. He then pressed a button and the sample showed up on a small tv monitor just above the machine.

“This here is the average person's blood cells.” Dr.Sinta said, “and here's yours. Notice anything different.”

“Some of mine are blue.” Eric said, “Why?”

“It appears that you have Thundourus blood cells.” Dr.Sinta told him, “that would explain the lightning storm that you lived in. May I ask you, when did it start?”

“About four years ago,” Eric said, “I got struck by lightning and the storm started a few days later.”

“Was there anything strange about that day?” Dr.Sinta asked.

“There were reports of lightning with an orange hue.” Eric told them.

“That’s proof that there were Thundourusi there on that day.” Phil said.

“Anything else?” Dr.Sinta asked Eric. Eric shook his head.

“No,” he said, “but something felt off about that day.”

“What felt off about that day?” Phil asked. Eric shrugged.

“No idea,” he said, “we could just feel it.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jason walked down the hallway towards the control room. As he got close to the door he hummed a strange tune and the door opened in front of him. All thirty four people in the room looked up at him and then went back to work.

“Jason,” One of them said, “we’ve lost contact with squads M6-14 and 17.”

“Trackers still working?” Jason asked, “or did those go offline as well.”

“Two trackers are working but the signals are very weak.”

“Step aside.” he told him. The man got out of the way and Jason sat down behind the control panel. He quickly typed in what can only be described as complete and utter nonsense. The signals of both of the trackers tripled in strength.

“The signals being sent out was one concentrated beam that was trying to get through tons of solid objects. All you had to do was change it so they were small enough to pass right through most of the stuff in the way.”

“But that shouldn’t work.” He said, looking at Jason, “Then again the best way to understand things is to just stop trying to understand everything.”

“The only thing we know for sure is that everything is possible. Everything includes nothing, and if everything is possible then nothing is also possible.”

“Well we’ll get the last three remaining squads to go there and find out what happened. With extreme caution of course and stun turned off.” He told Jason. “We’ll let you know what happens.”

Jason nodded. “Glad I could be of help,” He said, “I’ll be in the ‘matrix’ if you need me.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Here is where you’ll be staying for now.” The ‘butler’ that was escorting Smith and Eric told them.

“Wow.” Smith said, “this looks very nice, but where am I staying?”

“This is your room.”

“Oh,” Smith said, “then where is Eric staying? Not to sound rude, but I’m not sharing a room with him.”

“Quite alright,” He told Smith, “Eric will be staying just two doors down the hall.”

“Phew,” Smith said, then turned to Eric, “not that I don't like you or anything it’s just.”

“We don’t really know each other. I mean we literally met like a day ago.” Eric said, “Don’t feel bad, I’m not comfortable with sharing a room with anyone right now.”

“Alfred!” They all turned to see the owner of the voice running down the hall towards them.

“I would appreciate it if you could call me by my real name,” ‘Alfed’ said, “but what is it?”

“I have something important to tell Jason,” he said, pausing to catch his breath, “do you know where he is?”

“As far as I know he was going to the Blank Palette.”

The man raised his eyebrows and looked at ‘Alfred’ in confusion. “Oh,” He said, “new guys.”

“Why is that important?” Eric asked.

“Well we can’t really tell you all of our secrets right now. You haven’t earned our trust yet.”

“We haven’t earned your trust.” Smith said, “I mean I understand that you’d keep some things from us but he just asked where what’s his name went.”

“Jason,” he told Smith, “and what he does is a mystery to all of us. He leaves whenever he wants, never says where he’s going, and does tons of things that most of us know nothing about. So it’s not that we will keep anything about Jason from you, it’s just most of the time WE don’t even know.”

Later that day both Eric and Smith were relaxing in their rooms. Everything was normal-or however normal a secret intergalactic organization can be-when the lights went out, plunging them into pitch black. In the distance they could hear yelling, screaming and every so often, a roar. Both of them poked their heads out of the doorways and were greeted by the faint green emergency lights.

“There is a breach in sector 48, everyone who is not part of the military please stay in your rooms and initiate Self Sustaining mode. Once again, there is a breach in sector 48, everyone who is not part of the military please stay in your rooms and initiate Self Sustaining mode.”

Smith and Eric shut their doors and, since they didn’t know how to initiate the Self Sustaining mode, hid in the best spots they could find. Several minutes passed and the noise got dimmer.

There was a knock on the door and then it burst open. Eric slunk further into the depths of the closet and waited as the figure paced around the room. He could hear them slowly getting closer to the closet. Eric held his breath as the figure stood barely two feet away from where he was hiding.

“I can hear your heartbeat you know.” They said, “you can’t hide from me .”

The figure opened the closet door and dragged Eric out by the neck. Once they did they lifted Eric up to examine him and he got a good look at his ‘face’. I say that because it was covered in a dark mask with barely any detail and glowing orange eyes. The figure themselves was dressed in a dark suit and tie that had a sinister look to it.

“You’ll do nicely,” they said, “now follow me and don’t even try to run away.”

Eric was tossed to the ground and he quickly scrambled towards the door. The figure kicked him in the gut and dragged him to his feet.

“Don’t even try to run away,” they told Eric, “was that really that difficult to understand.”

He let go of Eric and pushed him towards the door, Eric complied and slowly walked towards the door.

They got out of his room and halfway down the hall before they were met by a group of soldiers.

“Put your hands up and drop your weapon!”

The figure dropped the knife he had and slowly raised their hands. As they did Eric saw something shimer in his sleeves. Just as Eric realized what it was they swung their hands down and a dozen knives flew down the hall into the group of soldiers.

They fell to the floor and lay still, the figure walked over and, very rudely, yanked the knives out of them.

“Get moving.” They told Eric, “or you’ll end up like them.”

“Is that so?” They turned to see a man in a purple soldier's uniform standing at the other end of the hall. “I doubt that you would get very far.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” The figure said. The man grinned, “It doesn’t need to.” He then brought his hands forward and shot a big bolt of purple lightning down the hall into the masked figure. They were flung down the hall and crashed into the wall at the end.

The figure got back up and cocked his arm to throw a knife when another lightning bolt hit him square in the chest. The figure jerked wildly, fell to the floor and lay still.

“Remain calm sir, you are free from the crazed lunatic that thought that mask went well with that suit.”

Eric walked over to the man and looked him up and down.

“You're like me.” Eric said to him. The man perked his eyebrows.

“I’m like you?” He asked, “how so?” Eric held out his hands and mimicked shooting lightning.

“Ah, a fellow lightning lad huh.” He said, “well why didn’t you zap him then.”

“I don’t know how.” Eric told him, “I only realized I could control it a few days ago.”

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“It was a robot?”

“No, like I said before, it is an android.”

Why did it want me?” Eric asked, still unsure about what had happened.

“Doesn’t matter,” Phil assured him, “it’s been taken apart now”

“Aren’t you at all concerned about the fact that it broke in here and tried kidnaping me?”

“No, this is exactly what the Self Sustaining mode is for.”

Eric through his hands up in frustration .“Well I don’t know how to turn that on!” He complained.

“Well then read the manual that comes with the room.”

“No one gave me a manual.”

“Because it’s always in the room. There's no need for someone to take it somewhere else.”

“Fine,” Eric had given up trying to complain. “Where is it?”

“It’s in the bedroom on the nightstand.” Phil told him.

Eric’s eyes widened. “That like six hundred page book is the manual.”

“It explains how to use all the controls in the room,” Phil admitted, “But the important parts are in chapter four.”

“How am I supposed to find the controls?”

“The manual explains that,” Phil told him, “though most of the controls have been updated to voice controls.” 

“Voice controls,” Eric said, “because those worked perfectly when we added them to smartphones.”

“I understand your sarcasm but rest assured that we have actually figured out voice controls, though the old ones were frustrating to use they also provided the rest of us with some form of entertainment when watching other people use it. Besides,” Phil said, “image if we hadn’t come up with, even difficult to use voice controls, then you’d have to actually remember where all the buttons were and what they did. Now, you just say what you want and it happens.”

“So look on the bright side huh?”

“Like they say, there’s forty three sides to every Lendobion coin.” Phil turned and walked off down the hall, leaving Eric to wander by himself. Well, for a little bit anyway, as he then spotted the man that had saved him from said android.

“Hey.” Eric said while running towards him. He turned as he wasn’t sure if someone was calling to him or one of the two other people in the hallway.

“Ah,” he said after spotting Eric, “if it isn’t the gorda himself.”

“The what know?” Eric asked, as he had not been expecting to be called this strange term.

“Gorda,” the man said, “it's Temptar for hostage.”

“Oh,” Eric said, a little disappointed, “so what's Temptar?”

“What's Temptar?” He asked, which gave Eric the feeling that he had asked the wrong question, “what, have you been living on a desolate moon for your entire life?”

“No, more like a desolate island for the last three ish years.”

“Oh,” He said, “that kind of makes sense then, considering we're also on Earth.”

“So what is Temptar?” Eric asked, still unsure if he should be asking this question.

“Temptar, my fellow lightning lad, is the homeworld of the oldest and wisest species in the universe. They are rumored to be the ones responsible for a lot of major events in the past billions of years. Some even refer to them as gods, which as they have reassured us is not true, though beings do mistake some of their actions as ones made by their planet or cultures deity.”

“So they're like munks?”

He smiled an amused smile and let out a little laugh, “No, definitely not anything like munks. They spend their days either talking about the politics of the galaxies or partying until the quam is empty.”

“Quam?”

“It's a drink kind of like, I believe it’s called swamp water?”

“Oh, the combination of pops and soft drinks.”

“Yes, but instead of pops and soft drinks it's hundreds of different beverages from all over the universe coming together to make THE best drink ever.”

“Do you happen to have any?”

“You know,” He grinned, “I think we do.”

   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THUD.

“You could try to be a little quiet, you know.”

“Oh i'm sorry, I didn’t realize this was so important to you.”

“It’s not, it's important to HIM, and I don’t want to be the next person to mysteriously disappear forever.”

“Who cares, we should just get rid of him like the board suggested.”

“Are you crazy? Do you know what just saying that could get you into?”

“A whole lot of trouble.”

“No. A whole lot of porgath.”

“He has some?!”

“Not just some, alot.”

“Ok, we never spoke of this, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~