Wearily, Ripley follows Peter around the side of the tram and towards a dig spot he dug while she was on the other side of the tram.

Embedded in the ground, there's an egg-shaped metal object, smooth, and had seams going from the base to the top.

Ripley didn't know what it was other than it looked like a robotic dinosaur egg.

"What is this?" Ripley asked Peter as he hurried down into the hole and proceeded to yank on the egg.

As he struggled to pull on the egg, stuck in the sand, Peter told her what it is.

It's the trap.

Going towards him as she watched him yank handful of sands from the hole, Ripley heard Peter confirm that it's the trap that's keeping them in this state.

He ordered her to help and she jumped in the hole, helping him scoop handfuls of sand.

It's hard scooping sand by the handful, but eventually through sheer will, they managed to dig deep enough to pull out the egg from the hole and carry it out.

Taking it into the tram, the two looked at it on the table, their reflections barely reflected off the dusty metal.

"This is what trapped us?" Ripley's not convinced that this egg, the size of a watermelon, could've caused their situation, but Peter's convinced.

Not to mention, they don't have anything else to try or do, so this is as good as any.

Regardless of Ripley's protest, this is better than nothing.

"Oh, yeah, this is what hunters use," Peter showed her the egg shaped trap.

He described it in detail.

Think of the hunters that stay in blinders for hours on end, waiting for a buck or a doe to make its way to them.

That's boring to some and for others it's a grand old time.

For hunters who want an easier time collecting their games, they want to easily trap them without trapping the undesirables or the ones they're not supposed to hunt.

So, in comes the egg-shaped trap.

It's preset with the legal binaries and the like, meant to keep people from messing with the programming to expand the horizon sooner.

All hunters couldn't just buy the trap and go off hunting, they needed to make the commission check it each time, from when they leave to hunt and especially when they come back.

There's no tampering with it, no matter what anyone does, it'll log every change in settings and the time and location, even when powered off.

It'll even note when someone's trying to make unauthorized changes in the programming and their location. Coordinates and all.

This trap's considered one of the more humane traps there is, because it's not like laying bear traps everywhere and hunting whatever's trapped and bleeding.

The game's still alive with this trap and because of the presets, it won't be the incorrect one.

This trap's not cheap, because it's much more effective than the alternatives and the rigorous testing that's required.

At least it's around ten million a trap.

"Ten million!" Ripley exhaled sharply as Peter affirmed that's the price for the trap. He emphasized that this one's so good, you only needed one.

Waterproof, shock proof, fireproof, able to survive in negative freezing temperature, and has lifetime warranty.

"For ten million, it better come with a caddy!" Ripley huffed.

This device allows a hunter to simply drop it wherever they want and leave.

Come back, their game's trapped in a "net" of sorts.

"So, this thing made an alternate world?" Ripley summed.

Peter nodded.

One of the advertised features.

It's not an actual world, that'd be against some legislation pending possible wars, but to them, it's a world.

A carbon copy of the habitat of whatever the hunter fancied.

Whatever the game is, it won't know the difference between the real world and the fabricated world.

The temperature and such, well, a hunter can't hunt their game when they can't safely traverse the sands without burning up.

So, it allowed the hunter to safely hunt their game without fear.

The presets must've been the reason why there's no change in daylight, because the hunter who laid the trap set it for this hour.

Makes sense, even hunters wouldn't put themselves in a disadvantage.

As for their game, they're as healthy as they came in, they don't wither and die, it's preset that they'll remain peak for the hunter.

Certain things that happened, now explained easily.

Peter couldn't satiate his thirst because of the preset. It captured him at the time of him drinking his coke. It doesn't have the preset where he guzzled his coke, just yet. That's why it continuously refilled and his thirst returning.

To an animal, it won't think of anything.

To a trapped human, well, you get the picture.

When a hunter wants to finally hunt their game, they'll simply enter the world.

As for what happens after, it's quite simple.

Hunt the game, tag it, dress it if necessary, and simply end the fabricated world.

They'll return to the real world with their collected game and go their merry way.

"Yeah, but question, how'd it gets us and where's the hunter?" Ripley looked around.

Fumbling with the trap, Peter muttered under his breath as he tried to open it. He asked for Ripley's help and she did, holding the seams of one corner as Peter pulled the seams open, sand spilling over the table.

"Ah," Peter pushed off the sand to see the smooth bottom of the egg. He followed the grooves of the side and twisted the bottom off, exposing a screen with buttons and knobs.

It's complicated to explain, so think of it looking like a green Commodore with parts of the keyboard stuck to the monitor and there's hard buttons with switches on top of everything else.

"This one's old," Peter noted.

The newer versions would've prevented the sand from seeping in, so this one's from fifty years, give or take.

"Yeah and how does it help us?" Ripley asked him.

Finding the button to turn on the screen, a wall of white text and numbers scrawled with a green background.

Peter explained as he watched the scrawl continuously moved, "They stopped making this version a while ago. Even banned it. Not supposed to be here in the first place. Whoever left it here, probably didn't come back for it. Presumably because this is a banned model and if the hunter's caught, it's going to be a hefty fine. More than ten million for the trap.

"Why'd they ban it?" Ripley gestured, wanting her answers.

Peter told her, "It tended to trap things other than the intended game. You know, like a net. Cast it wide and it'll get everything but what you want."

Explaining to her, Peter described the tendencies of the older molders and how unreliable they tended to become. Hence, the banned.

"So, it never meant to catch us," Ripley summed. "It only intended to catch whatever, but the unreliability made it improbable."

Bringing up the others, Ripley asked why weren't they captured, too.

As the scrawl came to an end and Peter started messing with the trap. He mumbled under his breath before seeing the internal compartment of the computer filled with sand.

"Ah-hah, this is why, luv. Look at it, sand in the wires, must've triggered the trap," Peter showed her.

Crossed wirings but with sand, this would've made it possible for the trap to work unintended.

Sand kept triggering the trap and it scanned the area, picked out the two.

And the sand worm.

"So, the sand kept setting it off, okay, once more, how did it only come up with both of us?" Ripley raised a brow.

Peter went through the scrawl, but there's a million texts and numbers, so it's impossible for him to read the specifications of the trap.

It took time, but since it's infinite here, it's enough for him to eke out something that explained their situation.

The trap's meant for the sand worm, but the warm sand started affecting components and messed with the specifications.

Peter found the log of when he went missing and the specifications that followed.

His height and everything matched, except it classified him as a sand worm.

Going forward, Peter found the log from when Ripley went missing and found she's classified as a sand worm.

"False positive?" Ripley crossed her arms.

It sounded obtuse, but Peter shrugged as he said that it's as good as a guess he can offer.

They're both classified as sand worms and the trap caught them.

Why, because the specifications jumbled.

Sand worms don't have binary genders like humans. They're intersex and can asexually reproduce without mates.

Somehow, the trap thinks the sand worms were and got the height and length wrong too.

Traps commonly have specifications written to exclude animals and especially humans so they're not trapped.

Unfortunately, this trap jumbled them and concluded that Ripley and Peter were sand worms.

As for why the trap didn't capture the whole tram of people, because the specifications regarded a specific set of traits to exclude that only shared between Ripley and Peter.

"That's… creepy…" Ripley frowned.

Peter comforted her and said that it's not common for the hunter to have a partner, so likely the hunter who left this had a daughter with him.

"So, basically, what you're saying is, the trapper who left this has a daughter and they're the one's hunting sand worms. Somehow, they share similarities to us and this old thing mistook us for them and brought us here even though we're not intended game," Ripley summed this whole convoluted thing.

Peter nodded as he gestured that, yeah, that's what it amounts to.

Ripley then asked, "Well, how do we get out of here?"

It's as simple as disarming the trap, but since it's an older model, it'll take time. Newer models streamlined the process and made it quite easy to do. Older models needed time and dedication, because one wrong setting could cause a permanent mistake.

"Well, we got plenty of time in the world," Ripley sighed as she moved sand with her forearm.

Having Matt's Sonic Screwdriver would help a lot, because it's taking arduous amount of time, and the two had breaks in between the time it took to disarm the trap.

"You never told me," Ripley held a hand under her chin as she watched Peter fiddling with the trap. Peter barely bat an eye, didn't even stop doing what he was doing, just listened.

"What?" Peter asked as he read off the scrawl of text before following the numerals in the third line as he typed them in the keypad.

Ripley responded, "The mice. You said the traps and the mice were gone when you went to check them."

As he fiddled, Peter told Ripley what happened.

His daughter talked him out of the glue traps and said it wouldn't be fair for them to suffer for hours until her father euthanized them.

She snuck out while he slept and collected all the traps from underneath their house, just so her father wouldn't have to deal with the traps himself.

"What'd she do with them?" Ripley inquired.

Peter told her that because he didn't like mice, his daughter did the only logical thing, and let them loose somewhere else.

The headmaster who lived on their street's garden, of course.

"Good or bad?" Ripley continued.

Peter had a smile on his face as he told Ripley that he was happy, not just that his daughter kept him from killing mice, but humanly released them into the headmaster's garden. He wasn't liked and Peter especially didn't like him.

It was a lesser of two evils.

Ripley watched as Peter had a look in his eye as he mused about what happened.

He looked so… pleased with his daughter… so… happy…

It looked… foreign… so… very… foreign…

All Ripley remembered about her own father, callous and angry, never liked her much, but he didn't lay a hand on her like her mother. He'd just ignored her, pretended she wasn't even there, and when he left them that one day, he never looked back when she looked out the window.

Couldn't handle the idea of fatherhood, couldn't handle having to lie about the pregnancy because of their judgmental village, and the fact he never meant to impregnate her mother, just wanted some fun. Got more than he bargained for when he's forced to marry her to save face, a girl he barely knew, and raise a child he didn't want.

Ripley learned to deal with it, the abandonment, in fact, considering her mother, it was better for her father to leave than continue to stay in that sham marriage with a child he never wanted.

Here Peter was, gushing about his own daughter, not a hint of contempt or anger, just joy. It looked foreign that Ripley could've easily mistook him for someone crazed.

She heard about the good kind of parents from listening to Matt and the others, but this, seeing it in motion, just bizarre.

When Peter asked what was wrong, Ripley turned away, and instead look at the trap.

Peter asked her softly, "What's on yer mind, luv?"