Chapter 4

As soon as the Ellimist touched my hand, everything disappeared, including him. Instantly, I was floating in an infinite starfield. Though the Ellimist's confusing body was gone, I could sense his presence, and he spoke.

(What you are about to see is very simple,) he explained. (I am not going to show you some make-believe version of your friends. I'm not going to show you something that is merely a possibility. I'm simply going to send you to an alternate timeline. Everything in your life and your world will be as you know it, with one difference. I will take away your meeting with Elfangor. Then, you can decide for yourself whether what you and your friends are doing is important or not.)

I wanted to ask a question, but I didn't have a body, either, which meant I didn't have a mouth. The Ellimist sensed my question, I guess, because he answered it. (You will wake up five years from the time I took you from your bedroom. Like I said, everything will be exactly the same, except you will not have met Elfangor. I will not take the journey with you – you need to experience it alone, without distraction. I will guide you when necessary, but from this point on, you are on your own.)

By the time the word 'own' was out of his mouth, or head, or wherever, I was sitting up in an unfamiliar bed. I looked around the small room, and the first thing I noticed was the institutional feel of the place. Almost instinctively, I knew I was in a college dorm room, although I'd never been in one.

The second thing I noticed was the bed exactly like mine on the other side of the room. A lump under the covers gave me pause – who would I be rooming with in college, if I'd never met Elfangor and learned of the Yeerks? I got out of the bed and walked over. I wasn't really worried about being timid or shy – this was just an alternate timeline, right? And I was supposed to see things? So it wouldn't do me any good to just try and fake my way through this alternate life of mine.

I poked the figure under the covers, and they groaned and rolled over. Cassie, looking right about five years older, peered out of the blankets at me. Glared might have been more accurate. "It's Saturday," she accused. "You'd better have a good reason for waking me up on my sleep-in day."

I shrugged. To me, it wasn't Saturday. It was Wednesday night. "Look, just wake up. I need to talk to you." Cassie looked even more perturbed, but sat up. I waved my hand around the room. "So, obviously, we're in college, right?" I asked.

Cassie stared at me like I was a moron. "You woke me up at 6:45 on a Saturday to ask me if we're in college?"

I tried not to laugh. It must sound pretty ridiculous, from her point of view. I knew Cassie, though, and even if she was older, I could handle her. "Okay, sounds dumb. I want you to pretend like I hit my head and I don't know anything. What school are we at?"

She was still looking at me with that dealing-with-a-lunatic expression, but she sighed and decided to play along. "The junior college. The one in town. Are you feeling all right?"

"I'm a little confused," I said honestly. If the Ellimist was trying to convince me I was on the wrong path by showing me a well-adjusted college student, well, I wasn't getting it. "So, if we go to the junior college, why do we live here? It's, like, ten minutes from my house."

Cassie was staring at me in open shock, now. "Are you serious?" I nodded impatiently, and she sighed again. "I can't believe you're going to make me hash this out just so you can play a game, but whatever. Your mom does live twelve blocks away…are you sure you want me to talk about this?" she asked again. When I nodded, she bit her lip and continued. "You and your mom haven't spoken since your…falling out. You haven't seen or talked to your mom since you were seventeen. Are you happy?" she asked bitterly, and I reminded myself that she thought she was talking to another person.

I wasn't happy, I was confused. What could me and my mom possibly have argued about that would have ensured an at-least three year silence? And the Ellimist wanted me to see how terrible Cassie's life would be if she hadn't met Elfangor – so far, she was exactly what I would have expected.

"What was the fight about?" I asked. Her eyes fixed onto a point far away, and quickly began swimming with tears. She shook her head violently, and the message was clear – this was a game she would not play with me.

I decided I'd tortured not-quite-Cassie for long enough. I'd come back if there was anything else to see – right now, it was just a grumpy and now-upset college student. "Sorry. Hey, go back to sleep. I'm going to…run some errands," I said lamely. Cassie seemed all too willing to roll back under the covers.

I opened the closet on my side of the room, instinctively looking for some skin-tight clothing to put on first. I couldn't find any, and it hit me like a bolt of lightning – I didn't need it. I couldn't morph. The feeling was indescribable. The power to morph had been such a part of me, something I had begun to take for granted. I couldn't morph into an eagle and fly around to find my friends. If a controller rolled up on me, I'd have nothing but my fists to defend myself. It left me feeling weak and naked.

Numbly, I threw on an outfit and left the room as quietly as I could. I emerged into a strange, barren hallway, but I wasn't thrown off. It was easy to see where the dorm opened up into more common areas, and I went there. Again, empty, but that wasn't strange – according to Cassie, it was before seven am on Saturday morning. I let the sunlight filtering through the glass doors warm me for a moment, and I stepped outside.

Again, I looked around, looking for the dramatic stuff the Ellimist wanted me to see – again, nothing unusual. I figured it was the Animorphs themselves I was supposed to encounter, so I checked the small bag that had been hanging on my bedpost. Nice – I had almost two hundred bucks, cash. I almost wondered how I'd come by it, if I wasn't speaking to my mother, then shrugged as I figured I'd just gotten a part-time job in this alternate world. I hailed a cab and got into the back. I told the driver Jake's address, and he booked it.

Fifteen minutes later, I handed the cabbie a few bills and got out of the car. Jake's familiar house loomed in front of me, and I took it in. The shutters were a different color, and the car in the driveway was a few model years newer than Jake's parents' station wagon from my time, but everything else looked similar.

I went boldly up the front steps and rang the doorbell. Whatever else was different in this when, me and Jake would still be fairly close – I was sure of it. We were never best friends, but we were always sort of close.

Jake's mom, my aunt, answered the door, and I almost took a step back. I couldn't believe how old this woman in front of me looked. She looked like she'd aged twenty years, not five.

She actually did take a step back when she saw me. "Rachel?" she asked, as if she couldn't quite believe it.

I tried a lighthearted smile. "It's me, Aunt Jean. Is Jake around?"

I expected her to invite me in, or to tell me that Jake was out. I wouldn't have even been surprised if she'd told me that he was away at school at Tulane, or Rutgers, or West Point. She put her hand over her mouth and looked at me like I had morphed into a rattlesnake. I stood there, looking confused, as she began to cry.

"Rachel, honey, it's good to see you, it really is. But this isn't funny at all." She studied me, hard. "I can't believe you're going to make me say it, like you don't already know. Jake is dead, Rachel."