The Knight and the Jester

Chapter Two

Chip woke up on his back. He remembered arguing with Dale, and then the world turning the color of lightning. Where am I? he thought. Maybe I was hurt, a little. He tried to turn his head, but the pain in his skull soon stopped that. He closed his eyes and just lay there for a while, recovering.

Even in this state his mental gears kept whirling. I feel sheets, the ceiling was metallic--I must be in an animal hospital. He ventured to open his eyes again. Feeling no pain yet, he slowly turned his head to look around him. He was in the corner of a room. The wall at his feet was painted white, while the one on his right side was blue with a strange swirling pattern that seemed to move slowly as he looked at it. He was lying on some sort of gurney, with low panels of burnished metal on either side to keep him from rolling out of bed. The panels kept him from seeing the rest of the room without sitting up, something he felt he would not be able to do for several minutes. His body was covered with a sheet. He slowly raised a paw to see how weak he was, and was dismayed by its unexpected weight. He noticed that he was wearing a white bodysuit, hardly the expected attire for a patient.

Just then he heard the sound of a door open to his left, followed by the footsteps of a woman in heels approaching him. Probably a mouse, he thought, I've only met one doctor before who wasn't a mouse. I wonder why? The woman stopped before she reached his line of sight and sat down on a cushioned chair. "I see our guest is awake," she said.

"Where am I?" asked Chip. "This doesn't look like any hospital I've ever seen." He was already feeling well enough to tackle a mystery.

"This isn't exactly a hospital, although we are here to help you. My name is Doctor Verbena Beeks, and I'd like to start by asking some questions."

I'm not in a hospital, and apparently the other Rangers aren't here. What's going on? Have I been captured? And if so, by who? Chip had been in far more bizarre and threatening situations than this, and he knew there wasn't much he could do in his current state anyway, so he remained calm and alert for clues to his current situation.

"Um, sure, go ahead and ask."

"First of all, what is the current date?"

"August 15th."

"And the year?"

He told her the year. Why does she want to know the date? he thought. The only time a doctor asks you the date is if... I was hit hard on the head--am I suffering from memory loss? "Is that right?" he asked the doctor. Not a medical doctor...a psychologist, probably. I wonder what sort of things I might have forgotten--maybe I'm married to Gadget and don't even know it! He grinned broadly at that possibility.

Chip heard the psychologist write his answers down on a clipboard before answering his question. "Of course it's the right answer. Now the next thing I need to know is your full name."

"My name is Chip, Chip..." At that moment he was interrupted by the sound of a second person coming through the door.

"Good morning, 'Bena," the new arrival said, a rather tired-sounding man.

"Good afternoon, Al," answered the psychologist.

"Anything on our guest?"

"Our patient is doing fine. I've gotten the date and name from him and I was just going to..."

The man interrupted. "Let's have a look at the arrival. I always like to know who I'm dealing with."

Chip turned his head towards the footsteps of the man. As the face appeared over the edge of the side panel, Chip was shocked to discover that the man was a human as small as he was. Chip threw his arms up in front of his face to defend himself. Chip's next shock was to discover that the human was even more afraid of him.

The human shuffled back, falling against what was probably the chair the woman was in. "It's a monster!" he yelled. "We've got to get out of here before it gets us!"

He heard some more scuffling. "Sit down!" cried the woman. "I don't care what you see, this appears to be a perfectly rational being, at least so long we act perfectly rational ourselves. I told you I already got his name and the date. Now you come with me to apologize to Chip."

Chip heard a dragging sound and guessed that the woman was pulling the man towards the bed. "I take back what I said before: I don't want to look at it! Please don't make me, please..." At that point he was shoved into Chip's line of view. "Oh, uh, hello, Chip. Sorry about that outburst." He seemed to be looking anywhere but at Chip's face. Chip looked over at the woman, Verbena. She was also human, but seemed to have no problem with Chip's appearance. He noticed that Verbena was wearing an unbuttoned white lab coat over a plain yellow dress. The man, Al, on the other hand, was wearing a florescent-green sports jacket over a black shirt. His purple tie was adorned with red polka dots armed with rapiers and apparently fighting each other to the death.

Al stepped back a bit, narrowing his eyes and looking Chip over, head to toe. "Wait a second," he finally said. "You're a woodchuck, aren't you?"

Chip sighed as his species suffered yet another blow to its self-esteem. "Chipmunk, actually."

Verbena turned to Al with a confused look. "I thought that chipmunks were little things."

It was then that Chip realized who in the room was their rightful size.

"Yikes!"

Sam Beckett had been fulfilling the job description of "time traveler" for several years now, leaping from one odd condition to another. He had impersonated children, women, and even a chimpanzee. To the best of his recollection he had never leaped into a space alien...until now.

He didn't have much of a chance to study his own appearance in a mirror at the moment, because his personal space was being invaded by another alien that appeared to be angry with him (assuming of course that alien and human emotions are depicted in a similar manner--it could be overjoyed or crying for all Sam really knew). The creature was a mammalian-type biped, covered with brown fur. Al would probably suggest that this was Bigfoot. It was attempting to communicate with him using a rapid form of spoken communication. Sam knew that he was supposed to know several languages (the leap in had swiss-cheesed his memory again, so he couldn't recall how many he knew at the moment), but obviously this wasn't one of them. Sam desperately looked around for something useful. His eyes met those of a second type of alien, a green insectoid suspended in the air by its rapidly buzzing wings.

"He did save your life." The voice came from the second alien, and to Sam's amazement it was in English. By this time the first alien had stopped talking and was looking at him expectantly.

Sam decided to trust his instincts on this one. "I guess you're right. After all, you did save my life."

The first alien grinned wide, which allowed Sam to learn that there wasn't too much threat to him from that direction. It reached out a hand and Sam shook it.

Now everyone was looking at him expectantly. Am I their leader? he thought. Besides the two he had seen already, Sam noticed two other creatures of a third type. Sam blinked a few times looking at the pink one in the purple jumpsuit.

"You don't look at all well," this one said, coming up to him and feeling his forehead. "We need to get you back to Ranger Headquarters as soon as possible!"

"Leave it to me, pally," said the largest of the aliens, picking him up with no effort.

The group made their way down what Sam suddenly realized was a tree. He practically fainted with the realization of his true size and of the fact that these were not aliens, but normal animals. Normal except for the fact that they're talking in English. And also for the fact that they're wearing human-style clothing. The big one wore a pullover sweater and a jacket, the fly was wearing another pullover, and the one who had been arguing with him was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. That's when Sam looked down and saw that he was wearing a bomber jacket... and nothing else. "Oh, boy!" he squeaked in embarrassment.