EARTH — Bill’s Containment Room
Bill’s heart beating out of control, he opened the adjoining door into the Containment room, stopped, gazing at the small glass-like box shaped container.
Lizo and Tovi shook themselves off, preparing to fly out of the container through the transparent walls but instead bounced off the walls and weren’t able to pass through. This was unheard of. They were able to pass through anything. But not this time.
“ThiorhwGION?” Lizo looked straight at Bill and spoke in a miniature voice.
All Bill heard was mini gobbledy gook and knew that his instruments needed adjustments to compensate for the language differences. He adjusted the Translation button, slowly turning it until he heard this:
“What’s this, I said. Who are you and what do you want? Why can’t we get out of this container? Where are we?” the squeaky high-pitched voice insisted on an answer.
Bill’s wrinkly old face touched the outside of the container with a grin as wide as the moon. He was thrilled, ecstatic! He’d caught himself a Quarkle, and not just one, but two! Finally!
Now for the next part of the experiment.
QUARKOPOLIS — Portal Room
The Quarkles in the portal room looked around in shock and surprise as Lizo and Moki disappeared. The last they’d seen of the Quarkkid duo was when they flew out of the room to investigate a beam of light. The Portal team were continually monitoring their progress, of course, watching as they went to investigate a beam of light and then the Quarkkids were just gone.
“Where did they go? That is very unorthodox, there has never been a time when we couldn’t see all of our activity on earth, monitoring every Quarkle, er, now Quarkkid, that is sent on a mission.” The team leader was dismayed and not a little troubled at the prospect of losing two Quarkkids to who knows what and who knows where.
The entire team were stopped in their tracks and all activity was stopped for this emergency. They began testing the instruments, rebooting each one and generally scurrying around to see if they could find the lost kids by anything within their scope.
Earth — Bill’s Containment Room
In the meantime, Lizo and Miko were trying to wrap their energetic minds around what was happening to them. They could hear and understand the aging man whose face was so close to their transparent container. They just didn’t know what to do, since they knew that he, too, could understand them. The most disturbing part of this whole mess was that they were suddenly deaf and blind. Connection to Quarkopolis had been severed. They were on their own. So they didn’t say a word. Instead, they used their natural abilities of telepathy to communicate with each other.
“What is this, Lizo,” Miko projected his thoughts into Lizo’s mind and waited for a response.
Lizo was completely in the dark about their capture. He knew it was a capture but wasn’t sure how it had happened. “I’m not sure, Miko, I’m brand new to this and I don’t really know if it’s happened to any other Quarkle or not.”
Bill continued to stare at the beautiful animated winged pegasus horses with amazement and wonder. “Finally! Now to commuicate with them,’ he thought.
“Hello there little creatures,” Bill started to speak softly, slowly, gently, hoping they’d understand his words and his intent.
No answer, just stares.
“Hello there,” he said again.
Again no answer.
Bill knew that the quarkles could talk because he’d heard them just a few moments ago, he just didn’t know if the instruments were adjusted correctly for the language differentiation. If they wouldn’t talk, he couldn’t tell how to make the adjusments. Try again.
“Hi little ones.” No answer.
Frustrated, Bill decided to give up for a few minutes and move on to something else for a while.
QUARKOPOLIS — Portal Room
No results at the instruments. There was no sign of Lizo and Miko.
“I’m going to dispatch a rescue team immediately.” The captain of the Rescue division spoke and it was done. The team were on their way through Naylin’s portal.
Earth — Bill’s Containment Room
Bill looked at the many beams of light that he had set up in various places to try to capture a Quarkle. The one that had captured Lizo and Niko was still active and since Bill was smart enough to know that a rescue team might be sent, he deactivated it just before the Quarkle Rescue team jumped through the portal. Unfortunately, Bill wasn’t nearly as smart as the Quarkles.
Bill’s lab was elaborate. He had spent a lot of money and time to make it exactly what he wanted it to be. His theory was that there were invisible beings which he called Quarkles and that they were everywhere. And they were alive. Scientists so far thought that all matter was made up of energy called quarks, Bill agreed with that but he theorized that this energy was living, intelligent, and purposeful. He didn’t think it was random energy. Living like an alien culture, unexplainable, invisible, unimaginable. He’d gotten the idea while studying about quarks and other forms of matter. So he began to build his lab around his theories. It’d taken several years, but now he could move into phase 2 of his plan. Phase 1 was complete.
IN THE meantime, Lizo and Niko continued their internal chat. They looked all around for a way out, and finding none, resigned themselves to whatever was going to come next. They had confidence in their ability to persuade and influence this determined man to see it their way, they just needed to come up with a plan that might work for them.
Plan A:
“Let’s talk to him.” Said Niko.
“Ok, what do you suggest we talk to him about?”
“Let’s find out what he wants to know and then make our plan from there.”
“Ok, let’s do it.”
Bill decided to try again. He walked over to the container, bent down and looked in.
“Hello, little ones.”
“Hi.”
Surprised, Bill almost fell over backwards.
Stuttering, he said, “W-welcome to Earth. W-what do you call yourselves?”
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