The near-silence felt awkward, almost painful.

The taps and scrapes of forks on plates sounded like the only things heard to Marcie from her side of the dinning room table as she and her father ate breakfast that weekend morning, except it sounded more determined from Winslow's side.

"Hope I didn't make too much scrambled egg, Dad," Marcie said, for conversation's sake. "Don't want you having to buy a bigger car if you can't fit in the old one."

"It's fine," her father muttered to his food.

Breakfast normally didn't make her feel like some guilty act breezed between the two of them and left its stink behind.

"Thanks," she said. "Um, y'know, Eleanor told me about the ride malfunction at the park. It's the weekend. I can check it out for you. Y'know, before the inspectors do. Is that okay?"

Winslow took another bite and waited until he swallowed to say, in a wooden voice, "That's all right, Marcie. It's their job, not yours. You don't have to, if you don't want to. You probably have other things to do."

Marcie could feel this frustrating distance grow, if only by another inch. As if she were trying to hold on to a greased rope, and failing.

Inspiration, she felt, to try harder.

"Probably," she shrugged. "But it wouldn't take too much time to do. Besides, I've done it tons of times in the past to help the park for you."

Her father continued to eat and didn't reply.

"How much you wanna bet it's some sorta metal fatigue? We better give the customers low-fat food so we can save the rides, huh?" she joked.

"That's all right, I said," Winslow told her, evenly. "I can handle this. You've helped enough."

That sounded more accusatory than gracious in Marcie's ears. She felt as small as she did whenever she displeased her father in some way during her younger years. What was wrong?

She felt confused but decided to drop the subject.

"Okay, Dad."

She bowed her head and wondered if she did so to finish eating or because of the dour air between father and daughter that she couldn't understand.

'It's probably just stress from the job,' she finally thought to herself. 'The ride breaking down. That's it.'

Marcie stood up and took her plate with her towards the kitchen, but then stopped beside the still quietly eating Winslow. She put an understanding hand upon one of his to comfort him before he would leave for work.

"It'll be all right, Dad," she said to him, gently focusing all of her love into the gesture.

His hand felt hard, like stone.

That told her more than anything in their talk at the table that he couldn't or didn't want to be comforted by anything right now.

His daughter made her exit and quietly walked into the kitchen.

The late morning lit Marcie's bedroom with a strong, enlightening glow that gave her some hope that the day could get better for her before she went into her lab to tinker.

On her bed, she lied upon her stomach, gave her lean body a stretch, and then opened up her laptop.

'I hope she's there,' Marcie thought with quiet anticipation.

It took a few minutes of anxious waiting, but then, the familiar face of Velma Dinkely moved into view in front of her webcam, and Marcie breathed a grateful sigh.

"Hey, V!" Marcie said with a beaming smile. "How are you doing?"

It was hard to determine on screen, but it looked as if Velma was furtive, caught off-guard, somehow. "I'm doing okay. Why are you calling?"

The question gave Marcie a slight pause. "Well, I just wanted to talk to you. I shouldn't have to have a special reason, do I? Are you busy?"

"Uh, a little bit, Marcie," Velma explained. "We're in the middle of a pretty big case, so we're laying low for a little while so we won't get caught by the creep that we suspect is the criminal."

She guiltily glanced about the opulent hotel room that Daphne shared with her and whose parents graciously provided. There was no case and no perpetrator to sniff out at the moment. The Mystery Machine simply broke down in their entry of Missouri and managed to make it to Kansas City.

"Oh, okay," Marcie said, half-hidden depression coloring her words. "Well, let me know when you guys are done, all right? I've got some weird stories to tell you about what happened to me and some friends since you left. Man, I tell ya. Crystal Cove's been getting crazy lately, y'know?"

Velma's face tensed. "Um, I... don't know if I...can talk to you for a while."

An icy stab of worry pierced Marcie deep. "Why? What's wrong?"

"Nothing! It's nothing," Velma quickly said, her eyes darting momentarily from her screen, the words choking in her throat as she spoke them. "It's...just that...um, we've...got to, uh..."

Then she remembered the mysterious man whom Mystery Inc. had been seeing on several cases, state to state, so far. "We have to, I mean, I have to stop my webchats with you for a while because we're being followed by someone."

The worry changed into concern for Marcie after hearing that. "Who?"

"We don't know who he is, but every now and then, we see him from a distance. In the shadows. He could be working for some secret organization, for all we know, and might be monitoring anything we say or even transmit."

Marcie nodded to herself in comprehension. "So you've gotta maintain radio silence around this guy. I get it. So...you don't know when you can talk to me again?"

"No," Velma said with hardening resolve in the lie. "I'm sorry, Marcie. I hope you'll understand."

The wind was taken completely from Marcie's sails, yet she was buoyed by a pained maturity that she was determined to show to her friend.

"Yeah, I understand," she said, trying to find a reason to smile, but then decided not to even fake one, and so, quitted. "I still wish I can talk to you, but if it's getting too dangerous for it, then I guess we'll have to take a rain check on that until we can again."

"Yeah," Velma agreed, inwardly feeling defeated. "But don't worry. It shouldn't take long and then I can hear all of those stories you wanted to tell me, okay?"

"Okay."

Velma turned her attention away, hearing a soft knock from off-screen.

"Well, I better go. I think I heard Freddy and the others calling me. You take care of yourself, Marcie. Okay?" she asked, glad that Marcie couldn't see her teeth clenching through her speech.

Marcie's head dipped in inward sadness. Why did it feel like the loneliness that she escaped from in her young life, thanks to dearest Velma, was making a return with a vengeance?

"Sure thing, V," she said quietly. "You take care, too. All right?"

"All right. I'll see ya."

"Okay."

It was too much. Velma mercifully ended the link, and then a chunk of granite replaced her stomach, if not her heart. The girl who had cared for her with every online chat was cut off from her with all the emotionless purpose of a surgeon removing a tumor. Set adrift from her life with a keystroke.

She sat on her hotel bed, trying to force her conflicting feelings down into the cast-iron vault of logic that she worked so long and hard to build.

'She is not the Marcie that I know, I mean, knew,' she reminded herself, with all the steely tone of a judge passing sentence. 'That Marcie is gone. My world is gone. My reward for doing the right thing. Spending the rest of my life in this hell. Familiar, but not. Meeting people who only look like my family, my friends.'

Velma sadly shuffled on the plush living room sofa and stared at the laptop on her lap.

'Yes, we did the right thing by leaving Crystal Cove. Ugh! I hate that I still remember that name and...I hate that this Marcie just won't move on. I think I know how she feels about me, but I had to do it. I had to cut her off. I couldn't keep leading her on like this anymore. Making her think I'm the Velma of this world, wherever she is. And...I think I hate myself the most for that.'

Then she remembered the knock from earlier. "Come in," she called out.

"Hey, Velm," said Shaggy from the opened door. "Just heard from Freddy. We can get the Mystery Machine fixed up and hit the road again. Good thing Daphne's folks paid for the hotel stay and the repairs on the van, huh?"

"Huh?" Velma muttered to herself in reply. "Oh, yeah. Thanks for the head's-up."

"Velma," he said, softly, but his concern wasn't noticed by her. So, for a few moments, he continued to soberly watch from the doorway the bespectacled girl staring morosely at her still opened computer.

The air conditioned hall soothed Marcie as she watched the marine life move with their natural grace behind the tempered glass of the expansive aquariums that gave Ocean Land its local Californian fame.

A pang of depression hit her once again, so she focused on the manta rays as they glided past a school of tiny fish blessed with an almost unnatural brilliance of yellow.

She decided that she did the right thing by coming here. The scientist in her shook her head at the notion that she lived with and knew her father long enough to know when he felt a certain way, but the daughter in her couldn't help but pick up on the distant coldness that Winslow gave off.

In her mind, she knew that it couldn't last. Mainly because she didn't like the feeling and wanted it resolved in the best way possible.

'I'm smart enough to wait,' she thought. 'I'll wait 'till there's a good time to bring it up and I'll talk to him about it.'

With a sigh, Marcie went back to studying the school of tuna that moved along before departing further into the depths of the tank.

For a moment, she was spared from thoughts of home when she thought back to her excursion in Tanks! Alot!, the company that manufactured, among other things, aquariums. Past cases had brought a secret smile to her face. It was the satisfaction of proving herself smarter and more capable than the mysteries that stood before her.

Ever since she was very young, she knew that she was a performer. With the separation of her parents, she felt that she needed to either impress or prove herself to the people in her life.

Popularity wasn't something she was good at, and yet, science, chemistry, computers, and these odd, recent mysteries were things that she found that she was good at. That people knew from her, that she could prove herself to the world with.

Marcie glanced about the room at the crowds that took in the fish. Business was fair to brisk here and she hoped that she wouldn't get swallowed by the multitude while trying to watch more of the aquariums.

She managed to catch a glimpse of a great white shark and stood mesmerized at the sheer presence of the animal as it cruised slowly, with an almost calculated speed, up to the glass.

She knew that the glass was sufficiently strong enough to contain the predator, but she let herself feel the thrill of fear as the shark approached her. The sensation made her smile and forget her earlier troubles.

So much so, that she almost missed the volume of the surrounding people's chatter rise in what ultimately became the peaks and valleys of consternation.

Marcie looked around and saw people jumping and running apart in fearful, confused groups from something near a wide doorway that was led somewhere deeper into the building, perhaps maintenance-related.

She wanted to get herself into some defensive position to whatever was making the crowds agitated, but she couldn't see what they were reacting to. All she did know was that the commotion was surging her way.

Marcie backed up anxiously and suddenly felt something soft bump hard against her heels. Thinking that she had collided against someone's feet, she tried to correct her retreat, but lost her balance, tumbling backwards into seated crash.

She landed on her backside, hard enough to dislodge her glasses. She could hear them clatter nearby but her vision was filled with moving blurs that looked like they were moving further from her.

Marcie's hands probed the floor in search of her spectacles, until she felt them above it. Someone must have picked them up for her. Someone with hairy knuckles, she thought.

"Thanks," Marcie said while opening the handles of her glasses.

"You're quite welcome," said the nearby voice. "Hmmph! You'd think in this day and age, people wouldn't react so when they saw a cat."

Marcie puts her glasses on and looks around, seeing that most of the patrons had left the room while she looked for the person who helped her.

"Is that what was going on?" she asked. "I guess they were just worked up because a cat was running around in the building."

She then looked to where she was hearing the voice and just saw...the cat.

Her mind couldn't help but piece the scene together, and it still came out as incredulous this time as it did the last. The voice came from the direct location of the Siamese cat that sat beside her.

"Whoa! Wait! You're-You're talking?" Marcie said, shaking her head in shock and surprise. "I thought Scooby...Never mind. Who are you? Where did you come from?"

"I am called Schrödinger," said the feline.

Marcie almost laughed at the name. "Like...the cat?"

"Yes, like the cat," he sighed at the reference. "And where I formerly came from was the basement of this temple of temptation. Honestly, fish as far as the eye could see, and yet the only one I keep running into is that wretched Sea Beast."

Marcie scrunched her up-turned nose quizzically. "Sea Beast? What's that?"

A gargling roar boomed from the doorway where Schrödinger had left. A broad, tall, humanoid fish crossed its threshold, fast tentacles probing the air from its finned back. The pong of the deep sea proceeded it and it was festooned in loose seaweed. Clawed, webbed hands flexed, eager to rend anything in front of it, and sulfurous eyes searched for prey. And found it in Marcie.

The cat raised a paw and pointed at the creature.

"That, my dear, is a Sea Beast," Schrödinger said calmly.