Author's Note: Okay, let's see how the rest of the gang is doing...

China was decidedly not fun.

Andy could only stand on the balcony that overlooked the factory that doubled as his home. The whole place was a bit on the unpleasant side. It was a very strict atmosphere, and he wasn't allowed to go just anywhere he wanted. He'd enjoyed being able to walk around anywhere in his old neighborhood and go places he felt like going on a whim. Around here, he was restricted to only a five mile radius around the factory, and when he left, he had to wear a special gas mask because the pollution was so thick. Needless to say, he didn't go outside much.

He was just reflecting on how much he missed the sun when he noticed someone from down below pointing up at him. He realized he had been daydreaming on the job again, and he immediately resumed his task of passing out mission statements to the workers for the third time that day.

Child labor laws were a little murky, and he didn't really understand them, but he had ended up being put to work while he was here in the factory, helping where he could with papers and moving things around, not to mention making sure none of the workers committed suicide.

Working with an assembly line with lousy hours and conditions was beginning to depress the ever-loving snot out of Andy. He knew the workers were miserable, but there was very little he could do about it, and that just infuriated him even more.

He passed around more and more papers, trying not to look anyone in the eye, mainly because they all had that 'dead drone' look in them. He simply gave them each an individual sheet of paper and moved on until they all had one. He shook his head dismally before walking up the stairs that led to the offices up above. He walked along the gantries that overlooked the workers. He had special clearance to walk up here, so no one bothered him.

He wished he didn't feel like a jerk for every step he took above these people.

He walked past the various office doors until he finally found the one he was looking for. It had the name emblazoned on the glass window that had the venetian blinds drawn down it: SHERMAN J HAMSTER – PROJECT SUPERVISOR

Rolling his eyes for the tenth time today after looking at it, Andy opened it without knocking first and walked inside.

The desk loomed high over him. It was absolutely gigantic. It screamed 'corporate businessman'. Of course, the owner of the desk wasn't a man. He was a hamster. It rendered the screaming rather silly.

Andy walked into the brightly lit room and looked up at the desk. He thought the whole setup was ridiculous for such a little hamster, but in the short time they'd been here, Sherman had jumped into the role of being in charge of a project with both hind feet. He looked at the little hamster working away at his desk with quiet fascination.

Sherman had a smaller desk on top of the big one that was suited much more ideally to his needs. He was working away on some of the tiniest computers that he had built himself by replicating regular-sized technology down to his size. If he stood on his hind legs, he was really only about five inches tall, so the fact that he had pulled any of this off was no mean feat. He had somehow managed to hook up his tiny monitor and keyboard to one regular-sized computer modem, and he was going over a number of reports and signing them with a tiny pen.

The whole thing would've been comical if Andy didn't feel so sick about the whole thing.

"Shermie? You got a minute?" he asked hopefully.

Sherman glanced up at his friend. "What now?" he asked, having already been disturbed five other times today by Andy.

The boy squirmed a bit on the spot. "… It's just… Well, I've been wandering around, handing out papers with meaningless words on them meant to motivate employees, and I'm all depressed again."

"Andy, I'm sorry. I've tried to make you feel better, but as I keep reminding you – you're the one who wanted to come with me."

"I know… I guess I just never pictured it as depressing as this."

Sherman nodded sagely. "I know what you mean. It hasn't exactly been fun for me, either."

"Really?"

"Well, of course! Do you think I enjoy the fact that my employees are basically being slave-driven like this? It disgusts me! But I can't control it! This is a different culture we're living in, and I can't exactly change it! I've done my best, but the higher-ups nixed my idea for an outdoor game of volleyball!"

"Why?"

"Because the air is so thick with pollution that everyone would suffocate!"

"Oh, right…"

"Andy, I know, okay? Conditions around here are appalling and revolting, but what can we do about it? I can't challenge them, or they'll cut off the whole project! I can only make tiny improvements once in a while. If anything, it helps me preserve my soul."

Andy stared at his feet, beginning to regret ever bringing it up.

Sherman sighed. He'd only succeeded in bringing his friend down even further. "Andy, I'm sorry," he said quietly, walking around his tiny desk to the edge of the human-sized desk so he could look his young friend in the eye. "But this is my dream. And if it works, it will help people all over the world. Maybe I can make it up to them someday, but for now, there's nothing I can do. All I can advise is to get through to the best of your abilities. Find a distraction, if that's all you can think of, because it's sure as heck all I can think of."

Andy simply nodded with a somewhat helpless expression. He turned and left the office, closing the door behind him.

Walking out onto the gantry, he stared out at the ocean of misery. The workers were still staring straight ahead, working away and having no lives whatsoever. Every single one of them was focusing on their section of the assembly line, staring vacantly ahead like robots as they fitted the pieces together with their tools.

Sighing with a heaviness he hadn't known himself capable of, his eyes simply started scanning the room, looking for something to distract him from all of this.

He was distracted by a pair of eyes that locked with his.

The eyes were covered by goggles, but they were undoubtedly looking at him. They were so focused on him that Andy briefly wondered if his soul was being scanned at the moment. He stood in silent terror, wondering what he was supposed to do about this. Did he report this guy for not working? Did he yell at him to work? What was the company policy about unsolicited staring?

He opted to turn and walk away instead. He determinedly walked in the opposite direction of this person's gaze.

He threw a momentary glance over his shoulder. He was still being watched.

Swallowing, he resumed walking again. He wasn't sure why, but there was something familiar about that guy.

"Absolutely amazing…," Leroy said quietly, staring through his magnifying glass. "The amount of work that has gone into this…"

MTM was not enjoying this one bit.

His new owner was prodding over him with tweezers and cleaning swabs, trying to figure out how he worked and what his purpose was. He was being treated like some sort of lab experiment that needed to be examined and jabbed before being allowed out into civilization.

Unfortunately, in this scenario, he was not likely to get out into civilization anytime soon. He was being kept under very strict supervision by this person who had taken him home with him. Leroy wasn't necessarily a bad person. He just needed a girlfriend to distract him from strange things like examining perfectly innocent time-travelling CD players.

"The amount of work that has gone into this is incredible…," Leroy breathed.

Okay, he was full of compliments, but MTM was more concerned with getting back to Calvin. The problem was he wasn't sure how to do that without taking this guy with him. He was being screwed around with so much that some of his wires had been disconnected, and that meant that he was stuck with a non-functioning teleporter, a dodgy time machine and no access to his Netflix account.

All he had now was Leroy, a weird guy who collected electronic devices and talked to himself too much. He needed to do something about this. He searched the few working programs he had left for something that could possibly deter this young man from messing around with his innards any longer.

Finally, as he felt a screwdriver going into his gravitational stabilizer, he decided it was time to stop messing around, and he tapped into his power source.

There was a sudden flurry of sparks in the air that sent Leroy flying backwards and onto his back, startled by the effect his screwdriver had caused. He lay in silence for a few seconds, getting his wind back, before he finally registered what had happened and how to properly react to it.

"Okay…," he said slowly, "… next time, I won't touch that part…"

As he got to his feet, MTM quietly wished he had the ability to suddenly spout legs and walk away. He would have to talk to Calvin about installing such a feature when they next saw each other again.

That was, if this intelligent idiot didn't completely rip him to pieces first.

Leroy was just about to start tinkering within the CD player's systems again with a pair of pliers that looked like they'd be good at pulling teeth out with when, unexpectedly, the doorbell rang. This definitely surprised the MTM. Leroy didn't strike him as the sort of person who would have anyone to ring his doorbell.

Leroy set his tools down and headed for the door, pulling it open and letting in five other people. MTM watched as they all came into the living room, talking animatedly about things too boring to comprehend, from sci-fi shows to attractive girls that were way out of their league.

"She was, like, a perfect 'ten', man! She had those pink fluffy pants that said 'juicy' on them!" one was saying.

"Why don't you bite her and find out?" another suggested, waggling his eyebrows.

They all let out some sort of cheer that only really immature people use when they're demonstrating their comradely friendship.

MTM was beginning to feel a little left out.

Another one of them noticed the CD player on the table. "Hey, Leroy – what's this thing?" he asked.

"It's a CD player," Leroy replied. "I got it at a yard sale!"

"Looks like a piece of junk," the guy said, running his fingers across the circuitry.

Oh, really? MTM thought ruefully.

There was a bright flash of sparks that burnt the man's fingers, causing him to retract them and immediately stick them in his mouth in the strange hope that saliva would dull the sudden onslaught of pain.

The others started laughing at him.

"Yeah, I don't think it likes that," Leroy said with a grin.

The burnt fellow started waving his fingers in the air to cool them. "Dang, man – you got this thing at a yard sale?! I'd call the cops on those jerks!"

Another member of the group started looking the MTM over. "What'd they do it anyway? What's all this stuff for?"

"I haven't been able to figure it out," Leroy said with a shrug. "Looks like it's just a jumble of wires. Still, it must serve some purpose. There's a speaker grille in the middle, a bunch of circuit boards surrounding the edges, and there's a weird glowing thing attached to the 'play' button."

"Really? Where?" the guy asked, squinting with his eyes at the distinct lack of glowing thing.

Leroy picked up his screwdriver and gingerly used it to shift some wires over. A strange pale green glow emitted from underneath the wiring, causing everyone else to step back nervously at the sight.

"There it is," he said calmly. "Don't worry, it doesn't do anything."

"And none of us were probably ever going to have children, anyway," another one said.

This elicited a collection of snickers from everyone in the room.

"Anyway!" Leroy declared, tossing the screwdriver aside and leaving it on the table. "We came here for a reason!"

"Yes! For me to trounce you all in another game of Squid Monster Gun Fire VII!"

"Ha! You wish! Let's get this party started!"

They all herded into the living room to begin the festivities. They started loading up the game to Leroy's TV while simultaneously preparing snacks and beverages that would see them making some very stupid decisions in the near future that would more than likely lead to some interesting conversations in the morning.

MTM could only sit on the table, grumbling quietly at being abandoned in a half-finished state. He couldn't even get his robot arms work to put himself back together. He was a severely-damaged piece of technology that couldn't do anything.

As he sat there, wishing one of them would come back so he could zap them again, he felt like someone was watching him. He could just about detect that one of the members of Leroy's little gang was staring at him. He wished he had eyebrows to arch so he could get the man to stop it.

Eventually, the man, who had said nothing the entire time he had been in the house, suddenly turned and started helping his friends with the folding chairs and beanbags so they could start the game. They were all soon laughing and chortling along, threatening to 'pulverize' each other in this new game of theirs.

MTM tried to search his memory banks, but they were a bit on the blink as well. He wasn't sure why, but this fellow looked a bit familiar…

California was beautiful and wonderful, if a bit hot, muggy and earthquake-prone.

Socrates looked out of the balcony window of his new bedroom. He stood on the terrace, taking in a lungful of fresh salt air as he took in the ocean view. He watched the people on the beach running around and playing together. He took in the majestic beauty that the sea presented. He watched the ships leaving the nearby bay, heading for trips across the ocean.

Elliot came walking out onto the balcony to join him. "Hey, Socrates," he said awkwardly. "Enjoying the sights?"

"Absolutely!" Socrates said in his usually cheery way. "Just enjoying watching people walk around on the sand, half-dressed and drenched in the residue left behind by our amphibious friends!"

Elliot wrinkled his nose. "Charming…," he muttered. "Well, I'm going to have to go to school in a bit. First day in the new place. Looks like I missed spring break out here."

"Bummer. Never mind! I'm sure you'll have a good time! Actually, here – you might need these later…"

"What?"

Socrates reached into a paper sack he had on the floor and pulled out a handful of thumbtacks. "Put a few of these in your teacher's chair for me, will you? And try to record it with your camera phone."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because just knowing I'm pranking someone from twenty miles away would do me a world of good."

Elliot recognized that his friend was still a bit down about the move, so he decided to be nice about it. "Okay, ol' buddy, I'll see you this afternoon."

"See ya," Socrates replied, saluting theatrically.

Elliot left the balcony and departed.

Socrates continued to relax on the veranda, watching the people going by.

The mansion they'd wound up in was pretty classy. In fact, unlike the old one, which was a couple centuries old, this one was fairly new, probably built in the last three years. It was three stories high with an expansive parking garage attached to the side. It was painted a bland white color with dark red trim, just like all the other mansions on the block.

That was something that bothered Socrates a little. Unlike in the old neighborhood, where their old mansion had been the only mansion on the block, taking up half the cul-de-sac it was on the end of, the one they were in now was simply one of many. It was a cookie-cutter mansion, designed to look exactly like all the others so no one would feel jealous, and we all know how temperamental rich people can be.

Everything about the interior was faultless. A massive kitchen took up one half of the first floor, while the other half was consumed by the living room. The second floor was the home theater and game rooms. The top floor was bedrooms, and there were six of them – one for Elliot's parents, one for Elliot, one for his as-of-yet-unseen brother, and one for Socrates, relegating the other two for guests.

The house was huge, but Socrates had no one to feel superior to.

He was keeping his eye on some big buff guy on the beach – muscular, cocky, tanned and a probably never had a pimple a day in his life. He was showing off to all the beachgoers, making all the women titter excitedly and the other guys feel like total losers. He strutted around in a way that could've been described as catlike if we weren't using Socrates as a point of comparison.

Socrates watched as the guy struck a particularly manly pose, causing one girl to fan herself girlishly while her scrawny boyfriend tried not to be a jerk and point out that the big guy was being a jerk. He watched as the big guy walked closer to a particularly large palm tree, still keeping his eye on the girl.

"A little more…," Socrates murmured. "A little more… Nearly there…"

Finally, once the guy was standing right where he needed to be, the tiger reached over and pressed a button on the remote control sitting on the railing next to him.

"Three… Two… One…"

There was a splatting sound followed by a rather feminine shriek as the big guy was unexpectedly doused in about one gallon of mustard, covering from his immaculate hair to his freshly manicured toenails. He was turning around in three different directions at once, trying to figure out who had done it.

All the men on the beach immediately started laughing at him, feeling like their high school years had at last been avenged, and the women couldn't help but splutter with helpless giggles, having had the man's testosterone nuked by a bright yellow condiment.

As the man tried to clean himself frantically and maintain his dignity as best he could, he was unaware of the tiger watching him from the balcony, taking pictures of the whole thing with his cell phone.

The problem was that the tiger wasn't laughing. No insane annoying laughter to penetrate the sky and irritate everyone around him. He was just barely smirking at this clown in mustard. He had hoped this would be enough to shake him out of this infuriating funk he'd been stuck in since he got out here, but it wasn't doing it for him. Picking on total strangers was nice, but there was no danger of any of them coming over and yelling at him. If he ever played a prank on one of his friends, you could bet they'd be there in an instant, shouting at him and demanding to know how dare he do this and where did he get access to all that mustard.

California was a bit useless when it came to holding him accountable for his actions. He might as well have moved to Florida.

Depressed to all get out, he decided he might as well go for a walk. He figured he'd be safe enough to go by himself. He typically wasn't noticed by absolutely anyone in the street for reasons he was still unclear on. Something about a red-tailed tiger apparently wasn't very conspicuous in California. He simply chalked it up to living in a town with few excitable people and walked down the three flights of stairs and out the door, onto the streets.

It was a rather nice day, but that's hardly unusual in California. Red-tailed tigers and nice days – run of the mill for the western state, Socrates mused.

His walk took him along the neighborhood sidewalk. It was fairly early in the morning, but he was uninterested in making friends. There were a few people walking dogs – mostly butlers or various other servants. The dogs seemed to notice him, but the servants would make sure they kept going. Socrates shrugged at this. He wasn't all that keen on dogs, anyway.

Walking along with a degree of boredom, he watched as cars passed him on the road and planes roared overhead. He had to admit, for a place that was boring, it was nice to look at. He was just admiring the trees that lined the houses when he realized he could detect some sort of presence behind him. At first, he thought it was just another dog, but he decided to look anyway.

He realized it was a person. In fact, the person was all the way at the other end of the sidewalk. They just stared at each other for a long minute, almost sizing each other up for whatever was going to happen next.

What happened next was a car suddenly coming out its driveway, momentarily blocking their respective views of each other. The car pulled out onto the road and drove away to its destination, leaving Socrates alone on the sidewalk. The figure had somehow vanished into thin air.

Socrates scratched his head. He could tell something was up. He decided to walk into town where it would be more crowded and abduction would be unlikely. He walked off down the sidewalk in a brisk pace – not too fast and not too slow.

He wasn't sure who the stranger was, but Socrates knew one thing – he didn't recognize him one bit.

The house was still quiet.

Mom and Dad were going about their usual business. Mom would do the house work while Dad went off to work in the morning and came home in the evening. They ate dinner, talked, watched the evening news and went to bed.

Without Calvin to keep an eye on, it was getting increasingly difficult to find things to do to occupy their time. The yard sale had been moderately successful, but after using the money to pay the bills, they found they didn't have much leftover to spend on themselves. They went on with their everyday lives, finding things to do. Dad tried riding his bike after work, but he came home injured one night and decided that it was time to pack it in for a while.

One evening, Mom went up to Calvin's room to look around nostalgically. With most of his possessions either sold or in storage, it didn't really look like her son's room anymore. She decided to do a bit of dusting around the house. She started cleaning the bet posts and the dresser, and she was going to start cleaning under the bed when her husband's car pulled up in the driveway.

When he found her cleaning up, he felt compelled to ask if she wanted to do anything special tonight. "It's not every day we get to go out without having to fork over a boatload of cash for Rosalyn."

"True," Mom sighed. "But not tonight. It's a bit late to find a good table at a nice restaurant somewhere."

"I suppose… Is this all you've been doing all day? Cleaning?"

She gave him a stern look. "Anytime you want to pitch in and do some vacuuming or do the dishes, I'm all ears."

Dad cleared his throat awkwardly. "Right, well… Anything else you want to get rid of?"

"Are you determined to erase every single last detail of our son's existence?" she asked.

"Of course not! Just the bits we can do without. Remember: 'simplify, simplify'."

Mom sighed heavily. "Check his closet. Make sure all the clothes are put away neatly, will you."

Dad shrugged and headed over to the closet, opened the door and looked inside. He saw the nice clothes all hanging from their respective hangers and the spare shoes were in the corner. A few toys were still in place, neatly stacked away on a shelf that was Calvin's height. That was odd, because Dad didn't remember ever installing a shelf there.

However, his thoughts were distracted by the large cardboard box on the floor. He saw the crudely written words on it: 'Transmogrifier', 'Time Machine', 'Duplicator', and a few others that were written upside-down.

"What's this box still doing in here?" he asked.

"That's Calvin's favorite toy besides Hobbes," Mom replied. "I don't see any reason to get rid of it."

"Why? Look at how much room this thing is taking up! Think of how much room we could make if we threw it out?"

"Dear, he loves that box! He's been playing with it for years!"

"I know, but come on! He needs to move on beyond his normal way of doing things! If we let him keep playing with a cardboard box and a stuffed tiger, he'll just regress back to where he was before! You said yourself he's been a bit more behaved lately. Weren't we talking about how much he needs a fresh start?"

Mom looked uncertain. "I don't know…"

"Dear, come on. Let's just take it down to the curb for the garbage man to take away to be recycled. I'll bet he won't even notice it's gone."

"How do we explain the giant gap in the middle of his closet?"

"It's just a matter of moving things around enough so he doesn't notice. Trust me – he won't even miss it."

"Uh-huh… It's just… in the past you've been a remarkably poor judge of how your son is going to react to something…"

"Oh, come on and give me a hand. It's not like it's difficult to get a new cardboard box."

Mom sighed with dread as she gave in and helped him move things around so they could drag the cardboard box out of the closet.

The sun was going down.

Hobbes had resorted to playing solitaire with an old deck of playing cards he had found, but it was difficult to play such a game all by yourself. He and Calvin usually had tag-team Solitaire where they would take turns with arranging the cards, and sometimes they would move hiding them around the house. It was really boring doing it the normal everyday way.

Still, it was either this or talk to the raccoons that had set up camp in the corner of the room, and they were always playing Poker, and he kept losing, and he was running out of useless junk to bet with.

He was still playing it the best he could when he heard the sound of the door opening. He threw a glance out the boarded up window and saw Calvin's dad making his way out to the curb, carrying something large in his arms to the trashcans. At first, he was uninterested, so he focused on the game some more, but eventually, he found that the game was so boring that he had to look outside to preserve his sanity.

He kept a steady eye on what the bespectacled man was doing. He was setting down the object, which was fairly large and seemed to be the color brown. It was cube-shaped…

Hobbes' eyes widened as he it dawned on him just what he was looking at. It was the cardboard box.

Dad finished putting it away and walked away from it, whistling jauntily.

Hobbes tried shouting at him. "Hey, wait a minute! Stop that! Don't throw that out! We need that! Hey! Get back here!"

But it was no good. Dad either didn't hear him or blatantly ignored him, and he walked back into the house.

Hobbes stared out at the box on the sidewalk, trying to figure out a course of action. Did he try to save the box or not? He toyed with ripping open the window and climbing out of the attic to retrieve it. He tried to pull them open, but they weren't budging.

Then he heard a strange beeping noise coming from outside. His acute sense of hearing kicked in, and he realized it was coming from the box.

A few seconds later, much to his surprise, the box began to slowly rise up off of the concrete and into the air. It shuddered momentarily before steadily righting itself. It briefly hovered in mid-air as if it were figuring out what to do next, and then it decided, aiming itself towards the city. It soared off, away from the house and into the distance.

Hobbes could only watch in confusion.

"Well…," he said at last. "That took care of itself, apparently."

Author's Note: I'm sure we all remember that comic strip where Mom and Dad are discussing how their lives have become so hectic lately, and Dad remembers Thoreau said, "Simplify, simplify," and they both look at Calvin thoughtfully. That's sort of what inspired part of this story. I just took it to the extreme.