Chapter 25: String Theory
"Hold still! This will only hurt for a second." Jennifer rubbed Joey's wounds with some alcohol and he screamed.
"Stop! Please! Just leave them alone!"
"I have to or they'll get infected!" The rest of us were crowded around a fire we had built for the night. We had stolen some supplies from the now abandoned positions along the DMZ.
"Guys, I think we need to keep moving." I stood up and kicked a stick into the fire.
"Moving where? Can't you see we're all hurt!?" Kristen yelled at me.
"Yeah man, we need a break." Chris just lied on the ground, eyes closed.
"I know we're all tired, hurt, bleeding, and burning from the rubbing alcohol," Jennifer shot me a dirty look, "but if we don't go now the Devimon may catch up with us and there won't be much we can do." With the exception of Joey's whimpers from the alcohol, silence ensued. Tentomon finally pushed himself up from the ground.
"Don't worry about it Kristen, I can stand to fly a little farther." Agumon followed his lead.
"Same here; we don't always have to travel by air you know." Both struggled to just stand up though.
"Tentomon, don't try and protect him." Kristen turned and looked at her partner. "You need rest too, maybe more than any of us."
"But Kristen…"
"That's enough!" Kristen slammed her fist on the ground. "We have to get some rest or we're all useless no matter what we do!"
"Well, who says we have to travel on our digimon?" Chris sat up, his eyes wide open and a slight grin forming on his dirt covered face.
"You have an idea?" Agumon looked up at Chris.
"Well, we are in a military zone, right? There is bound to be at least some vehicles they didn't take. We could just take a few and drive!" Chris looked around at us as he spoke. Jennifer finished applying the rubbing alcohol and Joey quickly took a few steps away from her, just in case she 'missed a spot'.
"Or better yet, what if they left behind a helicopter?" I began to come up with ideas of my own.
"One problem with that: none of us are qualified or even remotely know how to fly a helicopter! You and Jennifer may be able to drive, but we can't see a thing as it is!" Kristen always seemed to know the possible problems with a plan.
"Oh flying a helicopter can't be that hard, and did you forget how bright the night sky is tonight?" I turned around and ran into the distance, looking for anything. It didn't take long before I found a jeep parked beside a building. Chris, Agumon, and Jennifer followed me. "Please…" I hopped in and found the key sitting in the ignition. I turned it and the jeep cranked right up. The motor was loud in the night and everybody else came running up upon hearing it.
"You sure you can drive this thing?" Jennifer asked as she hopped in the front passenger seat beside me.
"Hey, if it wasn't for that tornado I would have gotten you home in a heartbeat." I thought back to my Camaro and how it was probably totaled from the tornado. I winced at the thought and made sure everybody was piled in. Tentomon and Agumon had to sit in their partners' laps while Joey was squeezed between the two. "Please keep all limbs, objects, claws, wings, and whatever inside the vehicle at all times. If at some point you feel like you are about to hurl, please aim over the edge of the vehicle and refrain from hitting us."
"Shut up and go." Chris spoke blatantly, shifting about under Agumon's weight. "You need to go on a diet." Agumon suddenly looked like he wanted to murder Chris.
"You got ANY idea how long it's been since I've eaten anything!?" Chris thought for a moment and smiled nervously.
"Oh yeah…"
"Let's go." The headlights flickered to life and I pulled away from the building. I quickly found a dirt road and pulled out my digivice. "Okay, north, we're going the right way."
Everybody was fast asleep, their heads bobbing with every bump I hit. I was craving coffee, wishing that there had been some with the few supplies we had stolen from the DMZ. I had been driving all night and felt sleep tugging at me, but I didn't have the nerve to ask Jennifer to drive. The sun was beginning to peak over the horizon and I pulled down my shades to keep from getting blinded. I gripped a little harder onto the wheel and looked around. I had found my way onto a long, paved road in the middle of the night, but it didn't seem to lead anywhere except north, north, and further north into nothing. Mountains reached into the sky in the distance and I sped towards them. Behind us, clouds covered South Korea and slowly crawled up the peninsula. I turned back around and noticed something.
"What the hell is that?" Distorted waves rose off the road like you see on a hot summer day. Only, there was something behind the waves: grass. I brought the jeep to a halt and everybody was jolted forward.
"What's going on?" Chris opened his eyes and looked around groggily.
"I think the worlds are closer than I thought they were." I hopped over the door to the jeep and walked up. The road seemed to disappear and become replaced by a dead, brown grass. All along the road there were distorted patches of this, as well as in the trees beside it. I reached down and touched the hole in front of me and sure enough, touched grass. The hole became a little wider, small bolts of energy discharging around it, and I took a step back. "I don't like this. The Digital World and Earth are beginning to overlap." Chris sat up, now a little more attentive. Everybody else had shrugged off the jolt and fallen back asleep.
"You mean they're mixing?" He climbed out of the jeep and walked over to me.
"Yeah." I took a step forward to stand in the patch of grass and fell forward like I had just walked off a cliff.
"James!" I couldn't see anymore, it was like falling through the tornado from what seemed so long ago. A few moments later I hit the ground with a thud. I looked up from the ground and could see again. Now, instead of mountains in the distance and holes of grass, I was in a wide open plain filled with dead grass, with splotches of pavement stretching along where the road had been just a moment ago. I could still hear Chris' cries, but they sounded miles away.
"Dude, is this… this Digital World?" I looked around. The sky was a slate grey, even through there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I didn't see the sun or anything, it was just… grey. The brown, dry grass waved slightly as a cold wind blew across the rolling hills of the plain. I looked back at the holes. Some of them were pavement from where the road should be, but there were others off to the sides that were completely different. Some looked like water, others like sand, and a single one looked like it was carpeted. "If stepping in one hole in the real world brought me here, then stepping in a hole here would… I stepped onto the carpet and fell again... only up this time. When the winds cleared I was firmly on both feet.
The portal had emerged in a dark room with tables all around. The blinds on the windows were open, but no light fell through; it was night outside. I saw posters hanging on the walls and televisions hanging from the ceiling, aimed at the tables around the edges of the room so that people sitting there could watch them. Too bad the room was empty. I looked up at a neon sign that was turned off that said "Bud Light" on it. I ran over to a window and looked outside. A bright starry sky lit up the dark city, lighting up the well paved streets and few homeless people who lied in an alley.
"Oh man, I've got to get the others." I ran back to the portal I had come through and whooshed back to the Digital World. There, I stepped on the pavement and in a few moments was looking at Chris.
"What happened!?" He rushed up to me from the jeep, where he had woken everybody up.
"I think I just found a way home. Everybody in the jeep." Everybody got back in and I cranked shifted it into gear, slowly crawling towards the hole. "I hope this works." When the tire hit the portal, the entire jeep seemed to fall the way I had, except that it stayed upright. A few seconds later, we landed in the Digital World and realized how good the shocks on the jeep really were. Joey shoved Kristen out of the way and hung over the edge of the jeep, heaving loudly. We all cringed as he did so. When he was finished, he pulled himself back in, wiping his pale face.
"What… just happened?" He plopped back down between Kristen and Chris.
"The worlds are so close now that they are becoming connected. Thus: wormholes." Kristen's face lit up while everybody else just looked at me confusedly.
"Oh my god we just did what people have questioned the existence of for nearly fifty years we just made history I can't believe it!!!" Kristen quickly looked about, running her sentences together in excitement.
"Chill Kristen, I don't think the people who research things like this would get quite as worked up as you. Everybody ready for part two?" I turned the jeep and drove into the carpeted hole and we were ripped into the classy bar I had been in just a moment ago. The jeep knocked a table out of the way and Joey looked like he was going to be sick again, but there was nothing left to send up.
"Please…" he burped, "don't do that… again."
"Where are we?" Agumon looked around at the bar as I opened the door to the jeep and climbed out.
"We're in a bar in some western city." I went to open the door and an alarm went off. "Shit."
"Oh no! It's a trap!" Tentomon panicked and flew out of the jeep while everybody jumped over the edges. Chris picked up a chair and threw it through a window before I could stop him.
"Idiot! I have the door open!" Chris turned red.
"Oops, guess I got caught in the excitement." The people sitting across the street watched as we all ran out of the bar and onto the sidewalk.
"This way!" Jennifer pointed to our right and we all ran towards the downtown of the city. Lights shined everywhere and I looked around.
"What is so familiar about all this?" I looked around and finally noticed something on the sidewalk as we rounded a corner to another street. "We're in Hollywood!" Stars lined the sidewalk of the Walk of Fame.
"Hey, you're right! I'm home!" Chris jumped up and down.
"We can celebrate later, come on!" Kristen grabbed him by the arm and jerked him down the street as we ran. Sirens could be heard in the distance.
"If they see us they'll pull over in a heartbeat!" Jennifer stopped and looked around. "Quick, in the bushes!" We all dived into some shrubs that sat between a building and the sidewalk. The patrol car turned the corner we had just come from and rode towards the bar.
"Chris, where do you live?" I turned to him. He was trying to look over the bushes to see if the cops were gone.
"Way out on the outskirts, nowhere near here." I looked back above the bushes.
"Come on, there ought to be some hotels this way." I fought my way out of the bushes and everybody followed.
"How do you know?" Jennifer turned to me.
"I did a research project on Hollywood in the eighth grade. We had to make an entire travel package to learn how to do extensive research on a subject or place. The Hollywood-Roosevelt should be just over… here." I was right. In a matter of minutes we were across the lit street from it and calmly crossed, trying not to arouse suspicion. We walked inside to the massive lobby, which made the hotel in Korea look like a Motel 6. "Over here." We walked up to the night receptionist and he looked at us, nearly laughing.
"Can I help you?"
"We need a room." I thought about it for a second and decided I didn't want to spend another two hundred dollars like I had before. "Just a regular room with two beds—nothing fancy."
"Alright, just a moment." The receptionist walked through a door behind the reception desk. I turned around and leaned on the counter and looked at everybody.
"No wonder he almost laughed, we look ridiculous." We were all filthy, covered in a mix of dried mud, dirt, dust, and blood.
"You're no prize catch yourself." Jennifer waved at me. I looked just as bad as they did, caked in blood and dirt. The receptionist came back and handed me a key. I paid for the room and we all went up to it. Everybody took showers and put on the same dirty clothes. "I hate this." Jennifer looked at her scuffed boots, filthy jeans, and t-shirt. "Don't they have laundry here?"
"But we don't have anything else to wear." Joey interrupted her. "We would be walking around in our underwear."
"I guess you're right." Jennifer looked defeated and sat down.
"Guys, aren't you forgetting? We're in my hometown. We can all go to my house, I'll run things over with my parents, and we can go out and buy some new clothes!" Chris still couldn't get over the fact that he was home.
"In the morning." I threw myself down on a bed. "I'm beat." I passed out while everybody else argued over what clothes they were going to get.