The two of them were walking on a street. The street had begun almost in the center of one of the meadows that Elfangor had recalled from childhood, and it seemed to stop after a fair distance. Loren had been troubled by this at first, explaining to him that streets such as this one did not belong in the middle of meadows. Elfangor had suspected that was the case.
There was however, something at the end of the street which excited Loren a great deal. Judging by the way that she jumped, and the expression on her face, Elfangor guessed that this was something that pleased her. It was a building decorated with two conjoined yellow arcs, it also had a great deal of transparent materiel on the sides and back of the structure.
"Can't be!" Loren gasped happily in shock; jumping up and clapping her hands like she hadn't done since she was still six years old. "It's just not possible! I brought Mickey D's! I brought a McDonald's here! All right!"
Trusting that Elfangor would follow her, Loren headed into the fast-food restaurant. As soon as she entered the building, though, Loren stopped short, one hand to her mouth in sheer horror. Standing in front of her, behind the familiar McDonald's serving counter was what at first glance seemed to be a person, but couldn't possibly be. Loren was peripherally aware of Elfangor behind her, but all of her attention was focused on the horrific figure in front of her.
Its overall appearance was human, but that only made the sight of its face all the more horrible. Its face was covered in oversized zits, but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was the fact that this thing had no eyes, none at all. But it looked like it was staring at her from behind the counter.
"Oh my God, what did I do?" Loren half sobbed, looking at the monstrosity she had created.
"Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order?" it asked, sounding like all the other McDonald's counter guys back on Earth.
It was this last part that really freaked her out. He looked like something out of a horror movie, so Loren hadn't expected him to sound so, so normal. Not looking back, Loren dashed out of the fast food place. Elfangor followed her out, wanting to somehow reassure Loren that this was not her fault.
Loren had bent over with her hands on her knees and was breathing hard, almost as if she had run a very great distance instead of merely taking a few hurried steps out of a human-built establishment. She was facing away from him, so Elfangor was not quite sure of how to approach her. Then he heard her speaking.
"Oh god, oh no. What did I do?" Loren panted, still reeling from the aftereffects of sheer horror.
Elfangor came up swiftly behind her, walking more heavily than he usually did so as not to startle her when she was so obviously distraught. He reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, knowing now that humans were more comforted by such physical contact than by mere words.
Is - is this a human you are familiar with, Loren? Elfangor asked, thinking that she would be better able to cope with seeing a stranger in this state than with seeing someone she knew.
"Yeah. Well, not very well, but I do know him. He's this guy that takes our orders whenever we come to McDonald's. My friends all say he likes me, but all I keep noticing about him is how bad his acne is. That poor guy, I can't believe I did that to him."
The food that he serves may still be real, At least as real as anything else is in this universe, at least. Elfangor thought to himself. It would most likely be beneficial for you to eat some human food.
Loren looked back at the McDonald's building, half of her wanting to go back in there and eat, and the other part of her wanting to get as far away from that particular place as she possibly could. But in the end, she was just hungry enough to go into that place, with the guy that would have landed himself a role in a horror movie with no trouble at all. Walking back into the restaurant, Loren steeled herself to face the nightmarish face.
"Welcome to McDonald's, may I take your order?"
"Yes… I mean yes, I'd like a Big Mac, fries and a Coke."
The human-looking thing nodded. "That will be four dollars and nineteen cents," he said.
Loren hesitated for just a moment, before digging into her left pocket for the money she had brought with her from the real Earth. She wondered idly if the bills and coins would disappear once she and Elfangor finally left this little funhouse. She hoped not, since she had planed to use it to buy herself a real Big Mac and fries when she got back to Earth. But, that had been before she had been sucked into this mini-universe with the Andalite she was starting to fall in love with. As well as some slug with a body of the same species, who also had delusions of grandeur.
The bag of food was placed on the countertop in front of her, and Loren could already smell the mouth-watering scent of a juicy McDonald's Big Mac. To Elfangor, however, the scent wasn't nearly so enticing. The contents of the bag smelled almost sickening to him. But Loren seemed pleased, and so Elfangor kept silent.
"Well," Loren said, feeling better than she had when she'd first walked in to this funhouse mirror version of a fast-food restaurant. "At least I did something right when I made this place," she looked inside the bag and grinned. "I remembered to put extra pickles on the Big Macs."
Elfangor did not know what a pickle was, but he surmised that it was some kind of edible substance that was pleasing to Loren. Or else, why would she be so happy about having extra? Loren turned to regard the pseudo-human standing behind the counter and spoke again.
"Come on, let's go back outside," she said, speaking in a soft voice so as not to attract the attention of the eyeless creature standing behind the counter. "I don't want to eat in her with… with him."
"Enjoy your meal, and come back soon," he said, repeating the send-off spiel that Loren had heard at every McDonald's that she had come in to for a meal. Sorry guy, but I don't see that happening, Loren thought.
The two of them exited the McDonald's, and crossed the street. There was an open patch of grass there. It didn't belong exactly where it was, but Loren wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She sat down to eat while Elfangor, who - having four legs - couldn't very well sit, walked around the small meadow. Almost as if he were checking for danger. But Loren was sure that that Visser Thirty-two creep was far away from them at the moment, so she decided to give him something else to think about.
"Hey, Elfangor!" Loren's sudden shout distracted Elfangor from his grazing. He had enjoyed the flavor of the Earthlike grass beneath his hooves, as the nutrients were absorbed into his hollow hooves. Now he turned his stalk-eyes to look at Loren.
Yes?
"C'mere," she said, making a gesture with her hand as though scooping up handfuls of air and throwing them at her face. Elfangor did not know what to make of this strange gesture, so he walked over to ask what she wanted. Loren made a smile with her human mouth, and Elfangor had the feeling that getting someone to come over to the other person was just what this human gesture was intended to do.
Once he was standing beside her, Loren - while still eating what she had referred to as a Big Mac - began to explain to him just what a Big Mac was. Elfangor would rather not have known. But, having actual human food to eat seemed to revive Loren, since she had her usual level of energy back. Even her sense of humor seemed to be coming back.
"Well, I'm glad that I didn't try and recreate the cheerleading squad in this universe," Loren said, laughing softly at what was obviously a private joke. "They rejected me, and I hate to think of the kind of mess I'd have made of some of them."
Elfangor did not know what Loren was talking about, but it was clear that she was starting to feel more like herself. Elfangor stared up at the patchy sky with his stalk-eyes, trying to make at least some sense of this disjointed and combined universe. Loren was now drinking something that she referred to as Coke, in between bites of some long, pale yellow sticks called "french fries".
All of a sudden, it came to him: It's a multidimensional pattern!
"Huh?" Loren asked, trying to talk even while she was finishing off a handful of fries.
The sky, the way small pieces of Andalite, Earth and Yeerkish environments are all combined in the landscape and sky around us. I missed it at first, but there is a pattern. I didn't see the pattern at first, because it looks completely random from our three-dimensional perspective. It would make sense if we were able to see it from a higher dimension, but I am sure now of what it is. It's a hyper spiral.
"And that's what, exactly?" asked Loren who had been trying, with limited success, to follow Elfangor's increasingly technical explanation.
A spiral. But in higher dimensions than the ones we experience every day. And if I'm right… yes! The Time Matrix should be at the center of the spiral.
"Where is that?" Loren asked, before she started to drink a bit more of her Coke.
I am not sure. But I think I would be able to find it. And if I can, Visser Thirty-two will be able to as well.
"That's why he hasn't been trying to attack us anymore! He's after the Time Matrix!" Loren shot to her feet. "We have to get to it before he does. Come on Elfangor, let's go! Let's go!"
You seem to have recovered your energy, Elfangor commented.
"The wonders of a sugar rush, Elfangor," Loren said, smiling at the slightly confused look that came into the Andalite's eyes. "Let's get moving quickly, before it wears off," Elfangor apparently decided not to comment, since that was the last she heard on the subject.
Come then, I think the center of the spiral is in this direction.
"How do you know?" Loren asked, finishing off the last of her soda and stashing the empty cup in her bag with the rest of her trash.
I do not know. I just, have a feeling.
"Well, since you're the alien here, I guess that's good enough for me," Loren assured him, smiling.
Loren and Elfangor both turned toward the northern horizon, and set off in that direction to find the Time Matrix. Almost unconsciously, they began to drift together, and Loren slipped her hand into Elfangor's. Elfangor was startled at first, to discover that Loren's strong hand was wrapped around his own more slender one.
And together they walked north, looking for the center of the spiral. Looking for the Time Matrix, hoping to find it before Visser Thirty-two. As they walked, the landscape around them became more and more confused. The patches of land and sky were more frequently combined, and in increasingly odd ways. As of right now, the two of them were walking through a patch that was part Earth, part Andalite, and part Yeerk.
"I like your planet, what I've seen of it anyway," Loren spoke up suddenly. "It's a lot like Earth, without all the cities and houses and stuff. But, you guys must have cities somewhere. I mean, you have incredible technology."
Once, a long time ago we had cities, just like you have them on Earth. But we are a race of free-running herd animals, it is the way we evolved. Millions of years ago, Andalites moved in vast herds across our continents. These huge herds would split up into smaller herds at different times of the year. Then, as time passed, we got used to forming smaller herds, families really. Each family had their own scoop, which would be our equivalent of a house, and everyone had their own grazing land. All of the Andalite environment you see around you is part of the land that belongs to my family.
They came upon a patch of Yeerkish territory, complete with green, lightning-streaked sky, Yeerk pools, and bizarre ground-hugging trees. By unspoken consensus they avoided it, and found a wide Andalite meadow to walk through. Elfangor again took up the thread of his narrative.
Once we had evolved to form families, we began to study science and nature. And again, over millions of years, we learned to build things. Flight capable vehicles, and communication devices to extend the range of our thought-speech. Our scoops became larger, as more families started to join together. We began to build cities, like the ones you have on Earth. Soon, we had thousands of Andalites all jammed together, without enough grazing space for any of them. But, at the same time, we were starting to develop space travel. We were not satisfied, though, since there were too many of us in one place. We knew something had to be done about this situation, so we dismantled our cities, divided up the land, and returned to our lives in simple family scoops. We still build starships, but now we do so one step at a time. My family designs heat transfer components for fighters. Another family will build the components from our designs. And another will transport the completed parts to the spaceport. I suppose that our three spaceports are the closest things we Andalites come to having a city like the ones you humans make.
"We're very different, aren't we?" It was kind of an obvious question, given how many things Loren had seen, so she didn't really expect an answer.
Yes, we are in some ways. But not so different in others.
"When all of this is over, you'll go back to your planet, I'll go back to mine, and then you'll erase all my memories of this place."
Elfangor stopped walking, surprised that Loren had remembered such a small thing after so many big events had transpired.
Loren, I no longer have the equipment aboard the Jahar, or any ship for that matter. I would need to have that kind of apparatus to be able to erase your memory.
"But, if you could you still would?"
No, I wouldn't, Elfangor said, coming to the rather startling conclusion that, if given the chance, he would not obey the laws of his people. He simply did not want to.
"Why not?"
Because… because I do not think, after all that has happened, that I could stand to be the only person alive who knew the truth. And, I do not think that I could stand having you forget me, Loren.
"I care about you too, Elfangor. I care a lot."
They resumed walking after that, but Elfangor was a bit confused by what Loren had said. Had he said that he cared about her? No, not in those words at least. And yet on some level, in some strange way, Elfangor realized that he cared for Loren as well. That was why, given the chance, he would not erase Loren's memories.