Episode 18: Hotel California
On a dark desert highway,
Cool wind in my hair,
The warm smell of colitas,
Rising up through the air,
Up ahead in the distance,
I saw a shimmering light,
My head grew heavy, and my sight grew dim,
I had to stop for the night...
Drowsy stretched an arm out from under his duvet to shut off his alarm. He sat up, yawned, and tried to remember setting an alarm to begin with. He also noticed his bedding; it felt tighter than it had when he went to sleep.
After lumbering out of bed, he went to the window and watched the rain for a while. He didn't see rain often, but he loved the sound it made as it came down; that pattering noise that was somehow both delightful and miserable. It was hypnotic.
There was a knock at the door. "Your breakfast, sir."
Drowsy crossed the room, passing the miniature fridge, the closet with the built-in safe, and the desk that was barely bigger than him, and opened the door.
"Thanks," he said. "Just put it on the desk."
"The scrambled eggs are lightly seasoned with paprika," Remmy said. He floated in with a tray of golden eggs, glistening sausages, generously-jammed toast, and a tall pitcher of orange juice.
"As per your request." He set the tray down where he'd been told, then straightened his black vest and tie.
"Looks delicious," Drowsy said.
"How does it smell?"
Drowsy sniffed the air. "I, uh...I don't smell anything."
"Right. I better get to work on that."
Remmy floated in place for a moment, his head down at the breakfast, although his black eyes didn't seem to be looking at it.
"You okay, Rem?" Drowsy asked.
"I'm fine," Remmy said. "...Just wish I'd thought of it sooner."
"It's fine, really. I have almost no sense of smell, anyway. It's probably just me."
"Not the food," Remmy said with surprising firmness. Drowsy took a step back.
"I mean Drowsy. He's never come down to meet me after work. He's always busy baking or working on his sleep-aid tapes...Or sleeping...If I wasn't in such a good mood that day, I wouldn't have bought it for a second. But you probably planned it that way, didn't you?"
Drowsy looked past Remmy at the rain tapping on the window.
"Actually, I didn't. He was coming to see you. I caught him in the elevator of your apartment building."
Remmy looked up. "But why?"
Drowsy shrugged. "Because he wanted to. Because he likes spending time with you, even though you keep waking him up in the middle of the night."
Remmy looked back down, then at the window. The rain got heavier.
"I think that's why I've been even a little successful," Drowsy said. "As close as you all are, there are still a few things you don't know about each other."
Remmy looked back in his direction with a glare that blended anger and sorrow.
"It's not that we don't know," he said. "We just forget sometimes." He floated back to the door, turned around, and shut it slowly.
"Enjoy your stay, sir."
Drowsy kept his gaze on the door as he sat down. For some reason, he thought Remmy would return. When he realized he wouldn't, he turned back to the rain.
Suddenly, he could smell the paprika.
There she stood in the doorway,
I heard the mission bell,
And I was thinkin' to myself,
'This could be heaven, or this could be hell,'
Then she lit up a candle,
And she showed me the way,
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say...
Sparky gobbled up another AA battery, washing it down with a sip from his watermelon smoothie. He reclined in his chair, looking up to see the rain hitting the glass ceiling. Looking at it felt surreal, like waking up after a long sleep with fuzzy vision and waiting for the world to get itself together.
Being inside on a rainy day made Sparky feel warm. Even if the temperature indoors wasn't any higher than usual, merely being in from the cold filled him with a cozy, tingling feeling.
That was why he found it strange to look ahead and see so many guests in the lazy river. Weren't they staying inside so they wouldn't have to get wet?
The lazy river was gigantic. From his lonely seat at the poolside, Sparky couldn't even see most of it; the rest was hidden through a tunnel in the marble wall. What he could see was a snaking path of crystal clear water interrupting the tiled floor. The other guests were doing exactly what he was doing, nothing. But they did it on inflatable donuts that carried them in endless laps. To them, the allure of doing nothing wasn't enough; they had to do nothing in a way that made it seem as though they were doing something.
"Hey, Sparky!"
Angel and Flute floated by. They weren't doing nothing disguised as something; they were actually doing something. They'd brought their beloved guitar and flute in with them, stopping their recital to get Sparky's attention.
"Come on in," Angel said, waving her arms and antennae. "Water isa great!"
"Naga taka," Sparky said. "Naga like water, remember?"
Their eyes darkened at his words.
"We know Sparky can't touch water," Flute said, "but you're not Sparky, so it shouldn't be a problem for you."
Sparky blinked. He felt like he'd been smacked in the face. "Fair enough," he said, dropping his fake voice in favor of his natural one. At the very least, he felt relieved to stop making his voice sound higher-pitched; it did a number on his throat.
He got up and hopped into an empty donut near Angel and Flute, laying with his front over one end and his legs beneath the water. He anticipated a splash but heard nothing. He'd stayed dry as well. He looked to find that the river was empty, and yet its passengers still floated, and his feet still treaded against some kind of pressurized force. He kicked and kicked, but he would not move. Angel and Flute slowly passed by him.
"Um," Sparky said, "I think I'm stuck...Could I...I don't know, hold onto someone's donut or something?"
Flute and Angel exchanged looks, then rested their instruments carefully in their laps, and played a round of rock-paper-scissors. Flute's paper covered Angel's rock. Angel rolled her eyes as Flute snickered.
They were a ways away by then. Sparky expected Angel to begin paddling towards him, but all she did was point her foot at him.
"Here," she said with a grin.
"Huh?"
"Grab her ankle," Flute said. "She'll give you a tow."
"Give youga four, actually," Angel said, wiggling her toes.
"I, uh..." Sparky said. "I don't think I can reach."
"At least give it a try," Flute said.
Sparky sighed and reached, knowing he'd need an arm four times as long. And yet, somehow, his hand closed around Angel's ankle. And he was moving. It seemed that he'd always been moving.
"See?" Angel said with a few upbeat guitar chords. "Naga so hard."
"I guess..." Sparky said. "So...where does this lead?"
"Why?" Flute asked. "You in a rush?"
"I, uh...I suppose not. I just want to know."
"Well, we don't know."
"You don't? Haven't you been around once already?"
"Naga," Angel said, happily strumming away. "Jumped in only little while back."
"Huh," Sparky said. "I thought you'd been in longer."
He looked ahead; the tunnel was coming up. He squinted, trying to make out something, anything, but there was nothing but total darkness.
"What do you think is in there?" He asked.
Angel shrugged. "Hope there isa smoothie stand. Meega thirsty. What youga think, Flutey?"
"What do I think's in there?" Flute said. "Us, soon." She looked at Sparky. "Don't ask any more questions. I can't answer you and play at the same time."
"What should I do, then?" Sparky asked.
"Just listen."
They started up again, this time with Angel singing. Sparky took Flute's advice.
The tunnel was almost upon them.
"Welcome to the Hotel California,
"Such a lovely place,
"Such a lovely face,
"Plenty of room at the Hotel California,
"Any time of year,
"You can find it here..."
He gave them all his attention. All other sounds around him were silenced as they played.
He liked it. He didn't quite get it, but he liked it.
They were about to enter the tunnel. Even when he was right in front of it, Sparky couldn't make out anything. Angel and Flute kept playing; he wondered if they even noticed it.
The darkness loomed over them. For a moment, Sparky thought it might be okay to go inside. What did he have to fear?
It looked much darker up close. Much, much darker.
He let go of Angel's ankle.
Her mind is Tiffany-twisted,
She's got the Mercedes Benz,
She's got a lot of pretty, pretty boys,
That she calls friends,
How they dance in the courtyard,
Sweet summer sweat,
Some dance to remember,
Some dance to forget...
At least two dozen others were dancing around them, but Felix felt as if he and Elastico owned the floor. He could move in any way at all, and Elastico would transform it into a stellar show of acrobatics. The raise of an arm would become a flip over Felix's head. A duck would lead to a handstand on Felix's shoulders. And a simple twirl would end with Elastico falling into Felix's arms. Felix thought he looked incredibly suave even though he felt like Elastico was doing all the work. But it was fun, and if Elastico had taught him anything, it was to focus on the fun.
When they were done, they found their way to the foyer, where they sat together halfway up the wide, crimson-carpeted stairs.
"Phew," Elastico said as he began his cooldown stretches, tucking his left arm behind his head to hold his right as it reached for the ceiling.
"Feel good?"
"Ih," Felix said.
"Naga forget stretches. Make muscles feel better."
Felix joined in, mirroring Elastico's movements. "Youga so good at dancing," he said, earning a wide smile from his dance partner.
"Taka," Elastico said.
"Wish meega was as good."
They were both silent for a while. Elastico didn't respond until they'd worked their way to their left legs, stretching them across their laps.
"Felix was very good," he said. "He practiced at home. Said he put pillows on floor after falling too much."
"Yeah..." Felix said, letting his voice drop to its natural tone. "I'm not as good, am I? I haven't been practicing."
"Youga okitaka. Practice makes perfect," Elastico said as they switched to the right leg.
"Youga know...Felix ask meega to move in."
Felix didn't answer.
"Say we together except when we go home. If we have same home, then always together."
"That sounds nice," Felix said. "What did you say?"
Elastico finished stretching, resting his hands on his knees and looking down as if entranced by them. It was the stillest that Felix had seen him all evening. His smile melted away.
"Said naga ready...Meega live with circus ohana for so long. Remember hiding in rafters, watching shows, copying tricks...Going to new home, even just until next show...Isa scary."
"Don't you walk on tightropes and juggle fire and swallow swords and everything?" Felix asked. "How can moving be any scarier than those?"
"Meega know," Elastico said, absent-mindedly stretching his toes. "Isa scary in different way...Still, Felix brave enough to try new things. Dancing, tightrope, handstands...But meega naga brave. Even for Felix..." He shut his eyes, squeezing out tears.
"If meega was, then Felix naga home alone...Then..." His voice devolved into trembling breaths.
Felix shut his eyes and discovered that he had also been crying. He reached up, wiped a tear from his cheek, then brought his claw down, observing the tear resting upon it. It was warmer than he thought it would be. He felt sick. Deathly sick.
Elastico sighed. "Tired. Gonna go to bed." He stood up and began climbing up the massive steps. He walked so lightly; it seemed as if he was floating.
"Hey, El?" Felix said. He'd meant to say 'Elastico,' but somehow, his mouth couldn't be bothered. He looked over his shoulder to find a smile that seemed torn between eagerness and devastation.
"I'm sorry."
"I know," Elastico said. He carried on up the steps. Felix watched all the way, but as soon as he blinked, he was gone.
Felix felt even sicker.
So I called up the Captain,
"Please bring me my wine,"
He said, "We haven't had that spirit here since 1969,"
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night,
Just to hear them say...
The dinner rush was Slushy's most and least favorite part of the evening. He loved it because he got to meet so many different people, but he hated that there was never enough time to spend with any of them. He skated around the dining hall, swerving gracefully between the array of white-clothed tables and their black-suited guests. All the while, he balanced massive trays as if he were a set of scales.
Next up were a beef chop suey and a fish and chips for Chopsuey and Daniel.
"How's that book you're reading, Dan?" Chopsuey asked.
"Superlative," Daniel said. "I'm almost done. If you want, you can borrow it after I'm finished."
"Superlative?"
"Yeah. Didn't I tell you I was reading the dictionary?"
After that was a fettuccine alfredo and a New York strip steak for Clip and Hammerface.
"You really think I'd look good in a ponytail?" Hammerface asked.
"Sure," Clip said. "Not a long one. Long enough that you can see it but short enough to suit you."
"Maybe I want a long one," he said with a grin.
She sighed. "Good thing I'm here to save you from yourself."
After that was a sushi platter for Nani and David.
"You know, there's another surfing competition coming up soon," David said. "You should go."
"I don't know," Nani said. "I'm nowhere near as good as I used to be."
"Don't you get practice every time we all go to the beach?"
"That's not the same. I'm not surfing to impress anyone then. I'm just doing it so everyone has a good time."
"Who says that isn't impressive?"
Then a gazpacho soup and a quinoa bowl for Heat and Kixx.
"So, what do you wanna do when we're done here?" Kixx asked. "We could go bowling, or see a movie, or walk around the beach."
"We could just hang out in our room," Heat said.
"Really? Ya sure?"
"Whatever you want, booj. I'm just happy that we can finally properly hang out."
Finally, a loco moco and a hunter's chicken for Belle and Sample.
Sample signed something. Belle signed back, and they both lit up with silent laughter.
Slushy couldn't tell what they'd said. He'd had to learn so much here, much more than Dr. Hamsterviel had told him he would have to. Music, books, sports, food. He hadn't gotten around to sign language yet. He felt like a wall had shot up between him and Belle and Sample.
With his orders delivered, Slushy hurried back to the kitchen. He passed through a black curtain leading to a dimly-lit tunnel connecting the kitchen and the dining room.
Instead of carrying on, he turned around and peeked through the curtain. Everyone was still chatting away over their entrees.
Slushy wanted to talk to them. He wanted to know what other superlative new words Daniel had learned, and if Clip thought he would look good with a ponytail. He wanted to ask Nani if surfing was difficult, or Kixx what other fun things there were to do this late.
And Belle and Sample...Watching them sign to each other, he felt as if something were missing from him. He wondered if the real Slushy knew what it was.
He glanced back at the door to the kitchen. He knew he had to go back in, that he had to take more orders out, but he didn't want to. He wanted to go out into the dining room, to sit down with the other guests, but he knew that he couldn't. He was still on the clock.
All he could do was stand there in the tunnel, watching the guests and wondering when his shift would end.
Mirrors on the ceiling,
Pink champagne on ice,
And she said, "We are all just prisoners here of our own device,"
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast,
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast...
"Blitznak," Houdini said, finding a four of clubs in the mirror when she wanted a jack of hearts.
She looked down at the illustrated instructions in the book on her desk. She'd done what they'd told her to the letter this and the previous fourteen times. What could she possibly be doing wrong? She racked her brain until it hurt, but she just couldn't pinpoint her mistake.
Perhaps she needed to take a break. There was still plenty of time until her show started. Even so, wandering out of her dressing room and around the hotel did little to ease her anxiety. She knew a break would do her good, but it didn't feel right to be so unprepared with mere hours to go before her next performance. She hoped that, at least, nobody would raise an eyebrow at her walking about with her hat, cape, and cane.
Should she just stick with making things disappear? She knew she could do that; Doctors Hamsterviel and Jumba had seen to that ages ago. But she knew that people would be expecting more than just invisibility tricks. They would want to see cards, rabbits out of a hat, volunteers sawed in half, and then miraculously reassembled. All the things she hadn't figured out yet. Doctor Hamsterviel insisted that those things didn't matter. Still, Houdini was discovering more and more that they very much did matter. It didn't matter how perfectly she could mimic Experiment 604 if she couldn't mimic Houdini.
She passed a part of the hallway illuminated by the gray light from outside. The massive glass window seemed to be melting as drops of rain struck it before crawling down. She passed by it, spending all of five seconds in its gray light before returning to the hotel's golden glow.
Turning a corner, she spotted an open set of double doors that she couldn't remember seeing before. A plaque above it read, 'Gallery.' She found herself drawn into the room, perhaps because she couldn't think of anywhere better to go.
Beyond the door was a tremendous crimson velvet room that split off into rows upon rows of corridors. Each was filled with guests gazing intently at the walls.
Past the corridors, Houdini spotted Lilo, Stitch, and Angel sitting on a bench and facing the far wall. Their heads rested against one another. Houdini didn't think that would be comfortable, but the three of them still made it seem that way. As she approached them, Lilo and Angel stood up. They whispered into Stitch's ears. He nodded, and then they smiled before leaving him.
Houdini was soon close enough to see what was so fascinating about this wall; it was decorated with framed paintings. They lined the wall in tall, long rows. Each was drawn in watercolors that made them seem as beautifully blurred as the rain on the window outside. They were all of Stitch.
In the upper left corner, the first painting saw him as a blue patch roaring into an inferno of swirling orange. Looking at it made Houdini sweat; it seemed as if the monster therein might crawl out of the frame and lunge at her.
After that, Stitch was depicted peeking out from a dark cage. His black eyes were both curious and conniving.
The next showed only his back amid a sea of shadowy gray. The brightest color was a tiny bundle of white forming a baby swan perched on top of his head.
Then he was on a green cliff, reaching down to offer a piece of golden bread to a glistening orange fish.
Then he was grinning as he played his ukulele. He seemed to be floating. Stars of gold and white glowed behind him.
After that was...Nothing. Just rows and rows of empty frames.
Houdini looked away from them. She found Stitch smiling at her over his shoulder. He tapped the empty seat beside him. She obliged, waving her cape over the bench and resting her hands on her cane.
"What youga think?" Stitch asked.
"They look incredible," Houdini said. "Did you make them?"
"Had help. Youga have favorite?"
Houdini scrolled through them again; the monster, the trickster, the baby swan, the fish-feeder, and the musician.
"I don't know," she said. She was drawn back to the monster; she wasn't convinced that it wasn't looking back at her.
"But I know which one I like the least."
"Oh?"
She used her cane to point at the monster. That way, she could use it to fend the beast off in case it leaped out.
"Ah," Stitch said, his smile fading. "Ih. Meega naga like that one, either."
"Why keep it up, then?" Houdini asked.
Stitch looked up at the firey painting. To Houdini's surprise, his black eyes seemed to regard it not with fear, but with sorrow.
"Because isa still Stitch," he said.
"But it isn't," Houdini said. "It can't be. You haven't followed your programming in ages; that's what Dr. Hamsterviel told me. Experiment 626 was designed to level cities and wipe out armies. If you don't do that, then you're not 626."
Stitch glanced down at Houdini, then returned to the painting. "626 isa still Stitch. Everyone here isa Stitch."
"...I'm not sure I understand."
"Paintings all different, ih?"
"Yeah."
"Stitch isa different, too. There all different Stitches in here..." He placed a hand on his chest.
"Always different Stitches. But all are meega. If meega naga like being one, meega can always change."
"Just like that?" Houdini was surprised at her own eagerness.
Stitch shook his head. "Naga. Can be hard...Sometimes meega hear 626. 'My turn again,' he says. But meega naga listen."
"But you still keep his picture up?"
"Meega naga listen, but meega remember. Want to remember."
"I still don't get it." Houdini looked the other way, down to the painting of Stitch floating away with his ukulele.
"If you think what you are now is so much better, why remember how you used to be? Doesn't it...?"
"Hurt?"
"...Yeah."
"Sometimes...Some days, meega remember things from before and still feel sorry. But if meega remember, then know meega can always change."
Houdini now found herself drawn to the empty frames. They were like black holes on the wall, drawing her gaze into their gravitational force.
"You keep talking about change like it makes everything better," she said. "But doesn't it ever scare you? How do you know you won't change into something worse?"
Stitch observed the empty frames. His tall ears hid behind his shoulders. Moments later, they shot back up again as if jumping for joy.
"Meega always have choice," he said. "And ohana. If meega remember that, then meega think new paintings will be even better."
"You sure you can do better?"
"Ih. Meega can always do better."
Houdini sighed and shut her eyes. She needed a break from the paintings.
"I'm not like you," she said. "I'm not like any of you. I can barely even pretend to be like you."
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Meega started with pretending, too," Stitch said. "Meega naga good at pretending, either...But real thing naga like pretending. Maybe seem harder, but isa easier."
"I just..." Houdini said, keeping her eyes shut and clutching her cane as tightly as she could.
"I just don't know..."
She felt the hand leave her shoulder.
"Isa okitaka," Stitch said. "Just take time. Gallery isa always open."
She heard his footsteps on the velvet carpet, yet somehow, it still felt as though he were sitting next to her.
Her palms sweated against her cane.
Finally, she opened her eyes again. They surprised her with a film of tears. She broke it with a blink.
She wanted to see the one with the baby swan again.
Last thing I remember,
I was running for the door,
I had to find the passage back,
To the place I was before,
"Relax," said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive..."
The only trouble with vacations is their final days. The excitement of the first day is inverted, playing out in reverse in a day-long trek where everything screams out, 'back to the grind!' It's the tax that all vacationers must pay.
That was what Spooky thought as he towed his suitcase to the reception desk. Going from his room, then past the lazy river, the dance hall, the dining room, and the gallery, he felt as if a shadowy hand was dragging them all away from him. If he could, he would reach out and try to take them back, but he knew he couldn't. His reservation was finished.
The foyer seemed emptier than ever. There was nothing but the marble floor, the reception desk, the towering double doors, and the pictures on the walls. Spooky suddenly realized that he'd never given them a proper look. There were hundreds of them, all organized into neat groups that made shapes like diamonds and ovals. Some were of fish; he spotted one with a sandwich held tightly in its mouth. Others were of large Earthlings who Spooky assumed were previous guests. Many, however, seemed to be crayon doodles. Spooky recognized them as rounded, simplistic likenesses of his...He supposed the word was 'cousins.' They seemed out-of-place with the other photographs...Yet, at the same time, they blended right in.
Spooky found a line by the desk. Drowsy, Sparky, Felix, Slushy, and Houdini stood in front of it, all looking agitated. They wobbled on their feet as they clutched the handles of their suitcases. Spooky couldn't help but notice that their bags were all identical to his.
He noticed a bell on the desk. "Has anyone rung?" He asked.
"No," Slushy said. "We were waiting for you."
"Oh. Right, of course." With that, he slithered up to the desk and tapped the bell. Its chime echoed throughout the foyer.
"What can I do for you?" Lilo asked. She looked different than the last time Spooky had seen her, now wearing a sky blue button-up shirt patterned with spiraling green palm trees and a lei of purple flowers.
Spooky couldn't remember if she'd already been at the desk.
"I'd like to check out," he said.
"You sure you don't want to extend your stay?" Lilo asked. "We have plenty of vacancies."
"It's not that I don't want to," Houdini said. "I...I just can't."
"The problem..." Slushy said. "Is that I was made to copy the powers of all the others. But they're so much more than their powers."
"And I don't know if I'm any more than mine," Felix said. "I wasn't scared when Dr. Hamsterviel sent me here, but now I am."
"I know you and..." Sparky said. "What were their names again...Flute and Ace and Yin and Yang...I know you weren't trying to scare me. But everything you've been telling me, the things you say I can do because you all did them before...I'm too scared of what will happen if it turns out I can't do those things."
"So what if..." Drowsy said. "Nothing changes? What if I just go back to the job Dr. Hamsterviel gave me and pretend I never came here to begin with? You're going to find a way to stop Dr. Hamsterviel anyway. You've done it before; you'll do it again."
"Just throw me under the same bus," Spooky said. "And you can all go back to the lives you had before I came along and ruined them."
Lilo's face fell. Spooky was drawn to her lei. It looked like it should have a wonderful aroma, but Spooky couldn't smell anything.
"Or will you not let me?" He asked. "You said I had a choice, right? You said I don't have to be like this, but that doesn't mean that I can't. If I have a choice, then I can choose to just forget all this and keep going. I can choose to just leave all this behind. Isn't that right?" He tried his best to sound angry, but only when he stopped talking did he feel the sweat on his face and hear the desperation in his voice.
Lilo turned away. She looked as if she were talking to someone, but there was nobody else behind the desk. Soon, she returned, placing a thin black binder and a pen in front of Spooky.
At first, she seemed as if she would match Spooky's monologue with one of her own, but she only had one thing to say.
"You can check out any time you like."
Spooky sighed. He thought something more would come of all this, but it seemed as though there was nothing left to say. He'd had his vacation, and now it was over. Time to go home.
He opened the binder and signed his name on the first empty line.
Experiment 628.
He turned around to look at his associates, but they weren't there.
Of course they weren't.
He stormed over to the enormous doors. He threw them open as if he were pulling out a splinter.
The rain was relentless; there was too much to even see a few feet ahead. Some giant galactic entity might have been spraying the Earth with a cosmic fire hose. It impacted the pavement with a thunderous noise, as though it were trying to break through the ground.
There was nothing ahead but six silhouettes. He squinted and found that he recognized them. Drowsy, Sparky, Felix, Slushy, Houdini, and Spooky glared at him from the torrential rain. Their fur looked like it was melting.
Lightning sliced through the black sky behind them. They opened their mouths and spoke with voices like thunder.
"But you can never leave!"
VII
625 watched the others from atop a palm tree on Yin and Yang's island. Nearly everyone was there, bustling about as Remmy and Lilo, who clutched a heavily-mechanized spatula, rematerialized in a bubble of green light.
625 had to chuckle at the night's chain of events. All he'd said once Lilo answered the door was, 'Jumba needs your help.' From that, this whole operation had flourished.
"How did it go?" Chopsuey asked as Lilo returned the spatula to him.
"We got there a bit late," Lilo said. "I think Jumba's old dream-teleporter-thingy-whatsit is nearly dead."
"And 628?"
"I don't think he noticed."
"We're lucky he wasn't more questioning," Remmy said. "I nearly had a heart attack earlier when the water in the lazy river didn't spawn in."
"But we had to use Plan D," Lilo said.
"Ah," Chopsuey said. "I thought we might...Do you think it worked?"
"Maybe. We got kicked out right after, though. I think he's awake now."
"Then I guess we'll find out soon enough."
"Oh, Jason," Remmy said, floating over to the Kawena brothers and Nani. They were keeping watch for 628 at one edge of the island.
"Thanks again for lending us that blueprint for your hotel on the Big Island."
"Anything to make sure 628 has the most luxurious dream possible," Jason said. "...And, of course, to help our cousins."
"Yeah..." Remmy folded his arms as his gaze was drawn to the horizon. A line of purple was stretching across the water.
625 kept looking around. He'd seen dozens of Experiments imprisoned in Gantu's ship, but this was different. There were no cells, no rules, no looming threat of being sent to Hamsterviel. It was simply them, perhaps as they were always meant to be, regardless of Gantu, Jumba, and even Hamsterviel's best efforts.
Yin and Yang kept watch on another end of the island. 625 overheard Yin say, "I hope he hasn't done anything to my Bruce CDs."
Then he heard Yang respond, "relax. What could he possibly dislike about the Boss?"
Ace hovered a ways above them, keeping his own lookout while jotting away in a notepad.
Dupe was practicing kicks against a shorter palm tree. He drove his heel straight into it, then dropped to the ground, rubbing his foot with one hand and wiping his eyes with the other.
Elastico was engaged in the unthinkable act of sitting still on the shore. His feet were in the water, and his head was hung. Heat and Kixx were seated on either side of him, each with a hand on one of his shoulders.
Chopsuey regarded the mechanical spatula in his hands as if it were an injured animal. He managed a slight smile when Daniel came up beside him and planted a kiss on his cheek.
"We've done all we can," Daniel said.
"Yeah," Chopsuey said. "For now, at least."
"Enjoying view?"
625 snapped back as if out of a trance. Angel had taken a seat beside him on his tree and was tuning her guitar.
"Oh," 625 said. "Hey, er-Aloha."
"Aloha," she said with a smile.
The seconds went by like hours before 625 thought of something else to say. He remembered how fast he'd talked around Angel in the past; all the 'hello, hotcakes' and 'sorry, sweetlips.' His memory of himself turned to him and said, 'sometime today, dummy.'
"How'd, uh..." He finally managed, "how'd it go?"
"Okitaka," Angel said, "Think 628 listen, just seemed scared."
"Yeah. I know what that's like..."
"And youga?"
"Huh?"
"What youga up to these days?"
"Oh, uh, not much. Just enjoyin' the wide-open spaces, ya know? Been, uh...Been doin' a lotta karaoke."
"Youga sing?" Angel perked up. Her antennae waved about behind her head.
"A little, yeah. Just tryin' out different hobbies."
"Different isa good."
"...You're different, too. The guitar, the hair, even your voice sounds different."
"Ih. Meega mezzo now."
"It's crazy. You're nothin' like you were, but I...I still recognize ya...It's just..." He felt his memory glaring at him again.
"Gaba?"
"Even the way I feel about ya is different...I mean, I like ya, but back then, back in Gantu's, I used to..."
"Ih," Angel said. "Meega know." She strummed a few notes.
625 recognized the riff from All For Leyna and had to chuckle.
"But that feeling's gone now," he said. "I guess that means...It wasn't real, right?"
Angel nodded.
"I...I'm sorry."
"Isa okitaka," she said. "Means youga real now."
625 smiled. "Sure feels like it."
Angel strummed a few more notes. "Happy youga came back, Reuben."
625 felt like a bucket of hot water had been splashed on his face. "Come again?"
"What youga think? Meega and Lilo thought youga like it; isa sandwich."
"You mean...?"
Angel just smiled and kept playing.
625 ran an arm over his eyes.
"Youga okitaka?" Angel asked.
"I've just something in my eyes."
"Looks like tears."
"I'm not cryin'."
"Naga like name? Maybe Schmitter-?"
"I like the name," Reuben said, lowering his arm and blinking his tears away. "Thank you...I promise...I'm gonna keep bein' real for you guys."
Angel grinned and played one last winding riff.
"We've got a sighting," Ace suddenly called.
Reuben and Angel slid down the tree, rushing to join everyone at the island's shore. A stark white speedboat was revving towards them.
"Oh, thank goodness," Yang said. "He hasn't dented it."
It slowed to a halt as it neared the shore, its winding groan fading into the plinking of the gentle waves beneath it. A familiar blob of green ink slithered to the bow to meet them. His black eyes were cracked and red. He looked at them as if waiting for them to speak, then realized that they were waiting for him.
"I can take you to Hamsterviel," 628 said. "I...I want to help you."
He was answered with a sea of relieved smiles. He looked between them all as if wondering what they could mean.
Finally, his eyes landed on Yin.
"I've still got your Springsteen CDs."