Author's Note: Based on the "Talk to Wilbur!" thread on the discussion forum.

Thanks to Elizabeth900 who is aiding me in the making of this. You rock, Elizabeth!

Also, this story takes place during the movie. All characters from Meet the Robinsons are property of the Walt Disney Company. All characters that did not appear in the movie belong to Elizabeth900 and me

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A city lay blanketed in the dark of night. Dots of artificial light sliced through the obscurity of the blackened world. Their origins were lampposts; some standing erect and proper, their white heads turned to the sky while others hung their heads to the asphalt below, as if it were a shame to provide the city with light. The bedlam fermenting in the ranks of the grime- covered buildings added the last component to the city atmosphere.

Suddenly, like a siren from an ambulance, a scream joined in the clamor of the night. A girl tossed spastically in her bed, her mind in the midst of a nightmare. "HELP!!!! MOM!!!! DAD!!!!!!!!" She called to the walls of her sleeping quarters, as her arms grouped blindly around. In her mind's eye, she was a toddler, about four years of age, who had been tossed into a trash bag by some mysterious stranger. She was deeply befuddled at this sudden event, but even she knew something didn't quite feel normal -at all. She cried for her parents, her relatives- anyone! She pressed a hand to the bag, as if she expected it to crumble like sand under her touch. She could hear people calling her name, responding to her helpless cries, but one shouted about above all the others.

"Dilana? Dilana?!?" A hand grabbed her right shoulder and lightly shook her awake. The frightening visions, the terror and the bag melted into her memory. Her brown eyes fluttered open to reality. She found herself lying in her bed, her blankets twisted around her body in a strange crudely-made toga. A boy's blue eyes gazed at her, stricken with worry. "Are you okay?" the boy asked, his voice holding a hint of sympathy.

Dilana sat up and struggled to unravel the tangled mess her blankets had become. Her hands shook with the shock of the dream and she could still hear the echo of her screams resounding in her head. When she finally had reassembled the cloth to a less constricting manner, she remembered she had left her friend's question unanswered. "I-I'm fine, Lewis." She stuttered, her tongue faltering with every word. She faced Lewis and gave him an unstable smile. "Nothing to worry about."

Right away, Dilana knew the twelve-year old wasn't convinced. She was horrible at being impassive; she might as well have written all her emotions onto her forehead in permanent ink. Besides, even without his glasses, Dilana was positive he could see her nervous sweat clinging to her neck and the fear glazing her eyes. Lewis's eyes softened with more sympathy as he spoke. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Before Dilana could reply, another voice floated down the hallway. "I'm telling you, someone intruded through Dilana's window!" The grouchy, careless tone heralded the arrival another friend of Dilana's. Goob casted his tired gaze into the room, his eyelids drooping like wilting leaves- lacking the energy to lift themselves to full height. His short, unsteady footsteps carried him until he stood next to Lewis. "Well?" he inquired, raising his head until he maintained eye contact with the blond-haired genius. "Any evidence of the culprit?"

Lewis flinched a tiny bit, as if he had awoken from a short slumber. "Huh?" he asked dumbly, obliviously not understanding his roommate's question.

Goob sighed and rolled his eyes. "For a genius, you sure have a short attention span…." He grumbled.

"Oh my, Dilana!" a feminine voice called urgently. Mildred, the caretaker, rushed to the bed where the girl lay and sat down on the mattresses bed. "Are you okay?"

Dilana groaned and let her head fall onto the flat pillow she slept on every night. How many times would people question her of her well-being? "Yes!" she cried bitterly. "I'm perfectly fine. There is nothing to see here."

Mildred, to Dilana's annoyance, tucked a loose strand of her long black hair behind her ear. "Was it a bad dream?"

Dilana merely nodded. She turned to face the off-white plaster of the walls, not wishing to discuss her distraught nightmare with others. Behind her, she heard Mildred speak to the boys: "Goob, why did you say someone was murdering her?'

"Well, it sure sounded like it!"

"Do you know what she was dreaming about, Lewis?"

"No. I know as much as you do."

Dilana didn't think her "company" would leave without any knowledge of her troubles. As if the statement were solely spoken to contradict her thoughts, Goob grumbled, "I'm going to bed. I don't see much point in standing here waiting for something that will never come."

A series of footsteps proceeded as Goob headed down the hallway back to the room he shared with Lewis. Dilana returned her gaze back to the remainder of the party. She sighed heavily before beginning her summary of her dream: "Okay. If you guys REALLY want to know what happened, here it is: I was in bed in another house. I was a toddler in my dream and I had been tucked in by my parents."

"Parents?" Mildred's eyebrows furrowed along her tan skin. "Strange…"

Lewis looked deep in thought, as if he were figuring out a gigantic puzzle in his head. "Did the parents in your dream look familiar?"

Dilana shook her head. "I didn't see their faces. Just silhouettes. And I don't even remember what my parents looked like." The last sentence she spoke cut deeper into her heart more than anything else. She knew that many orphans who were taken in at the orphanage had no living memory of their parents. Lewis happened to fall under this category, being that his mother gave him up as a newborn child. Dilana held no excuse to forget the ones who had raised her in the first four years of her life. She had arrived at her current home as a filthy, disowned toddler with an egg-sized bump on her head. She didn't recall anything about her other life, except her first name.

Dilana knew she suffered from amnesia. It had been her weakness-to never know her past. She would always have trouble with memorization at school, forgetting the meanings of vocabulary words or what the atomic number of a certain element happened to be. She could stay up till all hours, drilling the facts into her head until she could recite them without flaw, but next morning, it could evaporate into nothingness like water that has been sitting in the sun.

Dilana shook away her sorrow and continued to reminisce her dream. "Shortly after I was tucked in, this shadow ran across my wall and a person grabbed me and shoved me into a bag!"

Mildred cocked her head with curiosity. "A bag?"

Dilana nodded. "A garbage bag, to be exact. He stuffed me in there and ran away with me. I was screaming in terror for my parents before Lewis woke me." Her eyes swiveled to her friend and she gave him a warm smile. "Thanks for saving me from that nightmare."

For a split second, a flush of pink radiated from Lewis's cheeks, but soon, it vanished and Lewis responded. "No problem."

Mildred placed a confronting hand on Dilana's shoulder. "Well, you'd better get to sleep. It's 3 in the morning."

Dilana nodded and hugged the caretaker before settling under the covers once again. "Goodnight, Mildred. Goodnight, Lewis." She mumbled as they exited her room. The visitors each responded and dispersed to their respective rooms.

Dilana's eyes drifted to her bedroom window and she immersed the view with eyes hungry for a distraction from her previous fantasy. She knew that tonight wouldn't be easy-not with the trace of her nightmare still intact. Fragments of the nightmare floated in her memory like wispy clouds. She tried to shove them away into the back of her mind, but the dream refused to cooperate and lingered there-on the surface. Since ignoring the event didn't seem to help, she decided that perhaps working the nightmare out might help her fall asleep. After a few minutes of deep though, she discovered there was really nothing questionable about the vision-except her captor.

Even in the dream itself, Dilana hadn't seen much of her kidnapper. Only two dim details stood out among the rest- two thin arm extended out at her and a strange glow emitting somewhere from the person's body. It sounded too weird to be true, but Dilana held no doubt against it. The glow was present-she could tell, but, of course, her memory had never been a trustworthy area.

Thus, Dilana tossed ideas around about the stranger, until she sunk into a troubled, but dreamless, sleep.