"So, that's why my mom knew about Andalites. Do you think that if I asked her about the Yeerks, she would say the things I'd been thinking about them?"
Yes. Since she is made out of your thoughts and memories, she would naturally share any opinions that you felt strongly about. But you must remember that she is not truly your mother. She is not even a true life form, she is just something that you have constructed out of your thoughts and memories of her. I think, and you must remember that this is just my hypothesis, that the more complex things like living creatures are more likely to be incomplete.
"Great. It's a wonderful universe, isn't it?" she snorted sarcastically.
That was sarcasm again, correct? Elfangor asked, still unsure of how to recognize when Loren was being serious and when she was not.
"Yes, that was sarcasm again." Then, Loren decided to ask the question that had just occurred to her. "But, what about all the trees and stuff? They all look and feel just like they should."
That is because any form of plantlife, no matter how complex it might seem, is nowhere the level of complexity of a sentient life form. A tree, a blade of grass, a flower, and even inert matter like rock, sand or water. All of these are things that our minds are able to recall quickly and with greater detail than living creatures, who we do not see as much of, or may not remember as clearly. All of this place is made of our thoughts and impressions of our three worlds.
As they had been talking, Elfangor and Loren had continued their walk through the woods at the edge of what Loren had called a softball field. Loren slowed her pace a bit to get a better look at the trees, if she were to be completely honest with herself she would have to admit that she did remember the landscape a lot more clearly than she remembered most people. Landscapes just seemed easier to call to mind, somehow.
Then, Loren noticed – or thought she saw – something up ahead that was so out of place in this seemingly tranquil forest that it just about screamed for her attention. She stiffened, staring at what she had almost seen, then started walking toward it with newfound purpose.
Loren, did you see something?
"No, just-just a feeling I have, Elfangor," she said without turning, evidently focused singularly on what was in front of her.
Loren, with Elfangor not far behind her, quickly came upon the thing that she had sensed. It was nothing, pure and simple. Empty white blankness of the kind that both of them now had experience with, the pure white emptiness of Zero-space.
They had just found the edge of their miniature universe. Loren decided to try something. She didn't know where she had gotten the idea to do it, but it didn't seem like it would hurt to try. Reaching forward, past the place where the ground and the sky both gave way to the endless expanse of white, she tried to touch the whiteness with her fingertips. Not knowing exactly where the exact end of the universe was, she just reached out into it.
As soon as she touched it though, her fingers bent backwards. This can't be happening, she thought. Not feeling any pain, and therefore unsure if what she was seeing was real, Loren pushed her entire hand and forearm into the expanse of white. This time there could be no doubting what she had seen, as her entire lower arm bent smoothly back on itself, apparently uncaring of things such as the strength of her bones, or the fact that they would break under such abuse normally.
"NO! No! No! No!" she screamed.
Loren stared at her upside-down hand and fingers, feeling more and more afraid the longer she looked. There was nothing normal about this place, nothing good. Pulling her arm back from that unnatural area of nothingness, Loren started to back away from the barrier.
Loren, it is only… Elfangor's thought-speech trailed off. Only what? Only what? He demanded of himself.
What could he possibly say that would help comfort his friend when she was trapped in this nightmare? Nothing. There was nothing that he could say or do that would comfort Loren, because he felt his own mind searching for some form of reassurance. And how could he reassure Loren when he was not even sure himself?
"Elfangor, this place is all wrong," Loren said, her voice not shaking nearly as much as it had been before. "I want to go home, to my real home on planet Earth. This place isn't real!"
I know, I feel it too, Elfangor said, outwardly still the very epitome of Andalite calm and detachment, even though inwardly he was just as frightened as Loren.
"We have to leave, right away. This place just can't be. And I-I get the feeling that this universe isn't entirely - stable."
We have to find the Time Matrix, Elfangor said. It is the only way that we can conceivably get out of this mini-universe. However, we also have the Visser to deal with, and he will try and stop us from reaching the Time Matrix.
Loren glared, she had had more than enough of that arrogant, overbearing Yeerk creep to last her a lifetime. Hefting her softball bat, Loren gave Elfangor a look that chilled his blood for a moment.
"Let him try and stop us," she hissed, glaring out at the horizon. "Just let him try."
Meanwhile, Visser Thirty-two was also coming to the conclusion that the Time Matrix was the only way to get out of this mixed and distorted version of their three respective homeworlds. He had not encountered his memory-projection of the Navari for quite some time now, for which he was both thankful and a bit disappointed.
"So, finally figured it out, have you," sneered a well-remembered voice coming from just behind him.
The Visser swiveled one of his stalk eyes, grateful now for the extra body part. The black-haired humanoid was smirking at him. The expression itself was familiar from his dealings with the human named Chapman. But it was also the same expression that the Navari himself had worn many times while on the Taxxon world. Visser Thirty-two wondered which of his memories this was taken from.
Why do you find this so amusing? Visser Thirty-two asked, without pausing to think about the fact that this was only one of his memories given a voice and physical form.
The Navari laughed. "Because you want me to," he purred in the Visser's host's ear.
Visser Thirty-two stopped walking abruptly, that was not the answer he had been expecting. Truthfully, he hadn't even been expecting to get an answer, much less anything like what he had gotten. He began to wonder if this could be the real Navari, instead of merely one of the Visser's memories of him.
No, I'm not. But you want me to be… don't you? the echoes of his silent laughter filled Visser Thirty-two's head, as his memory of the Navari turned and walked away. Fading into invisibility before he had passed out of the Visser's range of vision.
Elfangor and Loren skirted the edge of the miniverse, always keeping the boundary of Zero-space on their right. As they made their way though it, they began to see that no part of it, not even these outermost edges, was completely untouched by the trilateral split. Once, they had been walking through a band of Andalite land that Elfangor had recognized as a field where he had been fond of running around in when he was a young child. But, in the middle of that familiar field, there had stood three pine trees that Loren had recognized as being from a park that she and her father had gone to recently.
Another time, Loren had spotted a circular strip of the black substance that humans used to pave their streets. Asphalt, Elfangor had remembered it was called. Loren had said that this was a go-kart track that she had been to once for her thirteenth birthday. But Elfangor had been sure there had not been any derrishul trees bordering the go-kart track that had been on Earth.
And even that was not the full extent of the combining of their three worlds. Wherever they had gone, they had almost always come across a wandering animal from one of the three planets. The first one had peen a small quadruped with a very flexible tail. The animal, which Loren had identified as a cat, had been covered in soft looking white fur that had large and irregular black patches. The second time, Loren had almost stepped on one of the Hoobers that had been hopping past them, on their way to some unknown destination.
The latest animal that they had come across had been one of the Yeerkish quadrupeds that Elfangor had encountered when he had just begun to search for Loren. She had commented on it being "one seriously weird cow", whatever a cow was. They had also seen more examples of human construction, including what Loren called a school. However, it was nothing like the schools on the Andalite homeworld.
It had not been one of the more aesthetically pleasing examples of human construction, and even Loren had agreed with this assessment.
They had both made an unconscious decision to avoid the Yeerk patches entirely if at all possible, and it was not as though they were indistinguishable from the areas of Andalite or Earthlike land. The Yeerk parts of the landscape were like ugly, open wounds on the planet itself.
Loren shook her head. "I can't believe that I brought the school, of all things, into this universe. And then I completely forgot to put in a grocery store," she said ruefully, looking like she couldn't decide whether or not to laugh.
What is a grocery store? Elfangor asked, as Loren managed to confuse him once again.
"Oh, it's a place we humans go to buy food. And sometimes other stuff too."
Ah, Elfangor said, not quite sure what to say.
Elfangor was remembering the time that the humans had spent in deep space aboard the Jahar; there he had seen them eat the emergency rations of liquefied grass. The humans had opened the containers and just poured the contents into their mouths. Elfangor had not cared how they did it at first, but soon he had become interested in the way Loren's golden hair tumbled down her back. Almost like a liquid itself.
The shipboard emergency rations were intended for Andalites who were either too ill or had been injured so badly as to make normal grazing impossible. They were meant to be used to keep those Andalites reasonably healthy, until they could be treated on the homeworld. But, since both humans had flatly refused to feed in the manner of Andalites, they had had to improvise.