2~

"Whoa!" Red screamed. "That...that cat just...talked! Cats don't talk! Cats don't talk!"

"I suppose, to you, they can't dance, either," Schrödinger said to him. "But, here I am, although I won't dance for you. I do have my pride, after all."

"Whoa!" Red repeated. "Are you guys hearing this?"

"You're like that Rodgers kid's dog!" Daisy exclaimed, as well as she could without getting too emotional from this revelation, which was proving difficult. "I knew I heard him say something to him, one time. Something about a buffet, but my folks said that I was hearing things. Wait! Are you like that parrot I keep seeing in those Creationex commercials? I mean, does he know what he's saying, or do they teach him to say his lines?"

"I don't know, dear," he deadpanned. "When I see him again, I'll ask him."

Next, it was Jason's turn to throw a rattled question to the cat. "A-Are you an experiment of this organization? A robot, perhaps? I-I'm pretty good with machines, that's why I ask. If you are a device, let me say that you're incredibly lifelike."

Schrödinger gave the portly teen a sarcastic smile and turned his accidentally backhanded compliment inside-out. "How nice! I was about to say the same thing about you."

"Hold it, guys," Marcie told the rest of the gang, and then turned back to the cat, eager to get her questions answered. "Are you the director's cat? Is that why you had to leave me, that night at the park?"

"My, don't we sound jealous," Schrödinger said, cocking his head playfully to the side. "Actually, I had to finish my investigation on the phenomenon that's currently over your town, and in any event, he's not, technically, my owner. As if anyone could ever own me, dear girl."

Schrödinger hopped onto the desk from the man's lap, and made his introductions.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am Schrödinger," the cat said, pleasantly. "Mr. Schrödinger, if it will help you relax, and this master conversationalist, here, is the esteemed Dr. Avery Moon, one-time Head Director of the temporal think tank, Sundial. He's my host's owner, or rather; he was, until they both had an unfortunate meeting with a moving vehicle, some years back."

Marcie shook her head. "I don't understand."

"This man was the foremost thinker in temporal physics until the car accident left him a mere shadow of himself. I, being somewhat of a geek, myself, possessed the body of his erstwhile pet, and convinced the administrative board to let Avery continue being director in name, while I ran things in secret."

"Host? Possession?" Jason asked, fearful that the more he learned, the deeper into this weird world he found himself, as if sinking into quicksand.

"So, you're telling me," Marcie said, incredulously. "That the world's leading think tank in temporal engineering and theory is headed by...a Siamese cat?"

Schrödinger did his best to shrug, nonchalantly. "Well, to be honest, it was a tough pitch, at first, but when I gave them a taste of my eons-old, interdimensional know-how on the subject, they welcomed me with open arms and bowls of milk."

Everything the cat presented as an explanation only made Marcie ask more questions, the most pressing, being, "Who...are you?"

"We are the Annunaki," said a soothing, feminine voice.

Before anyone could ask who had said that, a youthful looking, female Cocker Spaniel padded from around the rear of the desk and sat by it, giving everyone a look from her wide, friendly eyes.

"Now, Schrödinger," she admonished him, gently. "You shouldn't be so mean to them. You've been on this world long enough to know what humans' reactions will be when they see us talk."

"Nova?" Daisy gasped. "You can speak, too?" The dog nodded.

Red asked, "You know that...dog, Daisy?"

"She belongs to the Jones'," she explained. "I sometimes saw her with that Freddy guy, whenever he'd come over to see Daphne. But, I never heard her speak. Not once!"

"Annunaki," mused Marcie. The word was familiar enough to spark the scholar in her. "You're one of the gods of Mesopotamian legend?" she asked.

"Although we have been the basis of much of your species' folklore and mythology, we're no legend, Marcie." Nova chuckled, with a wan, enigmatic smile. She looked to the others. "Nor are we experiments, Jason, or trained animals, Daisy."

"How do you know our names?" Red asked, suspiciously. "Are you some kind of magic, or something?"

"No, Red," she answered, simply. "Security monitored your conversation in the elevator, on the way up."

Nova walked back around to the rear of the desk, hopped onto Dr. Moon's lap, and then bounded onto the top of the desk, where she sat next to Schrödinger, and could more comfortably address the guests at an approximate eye-level.

"We are a race of cosmic, interdimensional beings," she continued. "And have been interacting with humanity for millennia, thanks, every thousand years, to a cosmic event called Nibiru, whereby the barrier between your dimension and ours becomes weak enough for us to cross over."

"Call it interdimensional slumming, if you will," Schrödinger slyly added.

"Are you all talking animals?" Jason found himself asking.

Nova shook her head. "We exist without form. When we come to you, we either inhabit animal hosts, like we have, or you may encounter one of our descendants, animals who have mastered the power of speech, or other abilities, because it was passed down to them when one of us and another animal loved each other."

"Like I said," Schrödinger purred. "Slumming."

"Schrödinger!" Nova chastised.

"In any case," he sighed. "Even though we're pretty neutral bunch when it comes to most cosmic affairs, some of us thought that you humans could actually make something of yourselves, in the grand scheme of things. So, whenever Nibiru occurred, some of us would stay and help you along. However, every bunch, occasionally, has a few bad apples in it, and those Annunaki would spend their time trying to keep you in The Stone Age, or worse. Something to do with fear that humanity would surpass us one day, or some such rot. Personally, I think it was just a hobby."

"You mean, there are good and bad whatever-you-ares, where you come from?" Red asked.

"Yes, but that is not the issue, here." Nova said. "What brings us together, now, is the need to address a great injustice that was done to one group of people in our desire to reward the great deeds of another."

"What do you mean?" Marcie asked.

"Remember when the imminent Dr. Spring, here, stole our T.H.R.O.B.A.C. from us?" Schrödinger reminded her. "Well, ironically enough, it was going to be used here in this town."

"Why?"

"For a few months, now, Sundial's been monitoring a growing disruption in the space-time continuum over Crystal Cove. Our first clue was a temporal displacement of five time signatures in the area, for just a few microseconds."

"What happened?" asked Jason.

"Well, to put it simply, in deference to your red-headed friend in the back," Dr. Spring joined in, smarmily. "Something came into this timeline and knocked something else out of it."

"Really?" Marcie asked, intrigued by the notion of such a dramatically scientific thing happening in their little Californian town, and the sheer probability of it occurring, at all. "Like what?"

"Well, that's the odd thing," Spring continued. "According to our instruments, the T-signatures, or Time signatures, for you laymen, were of four human beings-two male, two female, and a large animal, possibly a dog."

Schrödinger glanced over at Nova, who now held an air of uncomfortable quiet around her.

"Yep," Spring said, indifferently. "Apparently, it looked like some suckers were knocked out of this time period by some sort of alternate version of them."

While it took the rest of the gang time to try and process things like temporal theory, Marcie mused, quickly. "Alternate version. You mean, like, in alternate timeline? An alternate universe?"

Schrödinger attempted to shrug. "According to most theories, six of one, half-dozen of the other."

"How did this happen?"

Spring, again, glanced to the people in back of her. "Again, in deference to the brain trust behind you. Everything in a given universe is touched by time. You, me, City Hall. Everything. Now, imagine the universe as a finished jigsaw puzzle. Everyone and everything is in its proper place in time. Now, imagine someone taking similar pieces from another puzzle, another universe, and trying to cram them into this universe's puzzle. Some of our puzzle pieces might just pop out. That's the temporal displacement that's causing the temporal disruption over town."

"Well, who were these extra pieces, these copy-cats?" she asked the cat.

Schrödinger had to chuckle at that. "Copy-cats. I like that. Anyway, my purr-view is more into the technological. If you want to know who they were, specifically, then I yield the floor to my canine compatriot, who may shed more metaphysical light on the subject, then I."

All eyes then fell on the Spaniel, as Nova asked, reluctantly, "Remember when Schrödinger mentioned that there are good and evil Annunaki? Well, among our number, there existed the most evil of our race. His name, alone, was so abhorrent to us, that we simply called him The Evil Entity."

Daisy shrugged, self-consciously, not liking the direction this conversation was going. No good ever came from discussions about great and ancient evil. "Nothing subtle about that, I guess."

"Or about him," Nova continued. "Worlds were once his playthings, as were the poor souls who inhabited them, and like a cruel child who tired of his toys, he would wipe them out, leaving depopulated flotsam orbiting dead stars. Despite our people's neutrality, we, on the side of Good, rose up and pursued him across dimensions, and fought him mightily throughout the eons, until, finally, when he decided to punish our meddling by coming to a universe that harbored humans, like you, we acted.

We used the humans there as bait, and when he arrived to strike, we struck first, and captured our quarry, driving him into a sarcophagus, a prison of our own making, to seal him and his evil away from all of creation, forever. Our jubilation could felt all the way to our home dimension."

"Oh, yes. We partied well and hearty, that night. Remember the slumming?" Schrödinger reminisced, with a rakish wink.

"Wait, you just caught him?" Red asked, now getting absorbed into Nova's epic story. "Why didn't you, y'know, get rid of the guy, if he was giving you so much grief?"

Nova lowered her head in sad reminiscence. "That was our intent, young one, but as powerful as we are, we could not escape censure. Our elders, older even than some universes, decreed that since we displayed such blatant favoritism towards the side of Good, the balance of neutrality had to be restored.

As a result, although we defeated The Evil Entity, the sarcophagus would have to remain on that Earth, where his foul influence had already begun to take root, twisting that world into a dark reflection of your own, full of harsh intrigues, and served by generational pawns who thought they were solving mysteries to make the world a better place, but instead, were unwittingly seeking the key to his release."

"Whoa," the gang said in unison. Harsh intrigues, indeed.

"Thus," said Nova. "The Evil Entity, finally, succeeded with a young group of mystery-solvers who called themselves, Mystery Incorporated, who lived in a Crystal Cove, very much like yours. They, eventually, understood the trick, by which, The Entity had ensnared them, and so many others, over the centuries, and struck back.

"In the end, even against the destruction of their town, and the deaths of all they held dear, they did what even we could not, and destroyed him, utterly."

"Whoa! What happened next?" Jason asked, now riveted on every word.

"Those heroes gave proof to our belief, that humanity did have the strength, the will, and the character to one day become as we were, elevated to the cusp of a new level of being, to take their hard-earned place in the heavens. The whole of our race were so moved by their sacrifice, that we granted them a singular gift. They would happily live out their days, in an untouched Crystal Cove, free of The Entity or his influence, and surrounded by those who loved them. "

"So what happened to them?" Marcie asked. "It's a small town. I haven't seen anyone new here."

Nova, once again, gave an enigmatic smile. "Oh, but you have. In fact, some of you have already met some of them."

Marcie gave a frown of thought, as she pondered hard on who she might have talked to, that long ago. Then, a thunderbolt of sickening possibility struck through her.

She shook her head, not wanting to believe how deeply she had been mistaken, or for how long. "Wait a minute! Four people...and an animal? Them? No!"

Daisy, concerned, spoke up. "Who? Who is she talking about, Marcie?"

Marcie was too stunned to acknowledge her friend. "I...I thought I knew who I was talking to," she muttered to herself. "But, who was I talking to? If that wasn't my Velma...then where is she?"

Schrödinger sighed and padded quietly to the distraught girl. "Who can say? The universe has a way of balancing itself out when it needs to. They could have been shunted in time, but not in space, to a point, in the past, probably, when Mystery Incorporated hadn't arrived, yet."

Despite all of the impossible things that she had just heard, and from whom, a spark of hope ignited in Marcie's eyes. "You mean, they could still be in Crystal Cove, just not in the same time?"

The cat canted his to the side. "Possibly. All I do know is that this Mystery Incorporated may not have meant to do it, but they left an awfully big mess behind. They left town, and been on the move ever since we picked up the anomaly. However, we have been tracking their unique T-signatures, everywhere they go."

Marcie covered her eyes, for fear that an errant tear might betray her emotions, and took a deep breath to recover, saying, "Okay, let me see if I have straight. You guys are cosmic beings who look like animals and have been helping humans for a long time. You defeated your greatest evil, but had to leave him on an alternate Earth, where he corrupted everything and tricked some amateur detectives, one of whom is an alternate version my Velma Dinkley, into helping him escape. When he did escape, they destroyed him, and you guys felt so sorry for them, that you brought them here, but by doing so, you knocked my Velma and four of her friends out of this time period. Have I missed anything, so far?"

The Siamese shook his head. "Not really. Why?"

"Because I want to know what I have to do," Marcie said, with faith...and iron, in her voice. "To bring my Velma back."