Author's Notes: My responses to the questions in your review, Annony, are as follows. I'll try to put him in; yes, of course I know what they are; yes, it is a reference to the book.

The fire team barely had time to assemble. By the time someone had called them up saying there was a fire just outside of town, the house was already half burned down. They hadn't noticed that they had been driving through farmland for two and a half minutes when they got into this second town, Free Country. They were in a hurry and weren't thinking straight, so they just all assumed that their town was longer than they thought.

When they got to the burning house, the foundation of all the walls was already about to collapse. Before they could enter the house, they had to douse the flames around the walls, which were unfortunately all made of wood, so the flames had spread pretty quickly.

"Don't spray so quickly!" shouted one of the firemen over the blare of the sirens and the roar of the flames, as some others began pulling the hose out from the truck and aiming it towards the house. "We could knock down a whole wall with that force, and we can't risk bringing the whole house down!"

Some firemen, maybe including the one who had shouted a moment before, began adjusting the hose to its lightest setting. The water shot out of the hose. It was too late—the house was already too weak. The wall gave out like it was made of paper.

Some more people ran to another truck. Another hose was pulled up to the house. Before it was turned on, one of the firemen holding the first hose let go to stop the second group from spraying, knowing it could damage the house more. He dived forward to push the hose away from the house. The first group wasn't strong enough to hold the hose with just two people, and quickly lost aim. The running fireman turned around to see what the first group's hose was spraying now. The second group turned on their hose. It was set too strong. The spray of the first group's hose kept shooting forward, through the huge hole in the wall and through the second wall, destroying it in the process.

The second hose's stream hit the bed in the room they had knocked down the walls of. The mattress was lifted up in the stream, and it crashed through a third wall along with the second hose's stream. The mattress careened across the backyard and through a group of bushes that seemed to line the entire edge of the town. Behind the bushes, the land declined, and led down to the path that was always curving around the town, the River Prance.

The mattress floated through the surprisingly quick river all the way around Free Country for about an hour, finally coming to a stop when it got jammed on a large rock jutting out of the ground just a few yards to the left of the Highway 44 overpass.

Homestar had fallen just a few yards to the right of the Highway 44 overpass. He crashed down into the torrent of water, right in front of one of the steeper mini-waterfalls. He had already passed out on the way down from fear. He probably would've drowned, or at least died, when he hit the jagged rocks just behind the waterfall, if not for the fact that he landed head-first, and the fact that when his cap was installed with all those hydraulics he had showed off to Strong Bad one day while he was on his computer, the interior had been coated with a thick layer of metal. So when his head landed on the jagged rocks, the metal coating of his hat protected him from injury. He toppled to his side and began floating under the overpass and towards the waterfall.

Just as he reached the edge, he began to fall down the waterfall, on his back, head-first. So, as he fell down the waterfall, his head went down and his feet went up. And when his feet went up, the kicked the bottom of a mattress that had was stuck on a large rock to the side of the waterfall. The mattress, pushed by Homestar's foot, slid off the rock, back into the current, and down the waterfall with Homestar.

As Homestar fell down the waterfall and landed at the bottom, he was pushed underwater. But he was too light, so he rose to the surface right away. The mattress fell down the waterfall just after him, went underwater, and rose to the surface, directly under Homestar. Homestar began floating along the river, lying on the mattress. After a minute or too, the riverbed got flatter and the rapids died down. But Homestar continued floating on the mattress.

Homestar floated for a long, long time.

He floated after the trees and bushes of the Free Country area gave way for long fields. He floated after the fields turned to crop fields and farms. The farms turned to cottages. The cottages turned to houses. The houses turned to tiny groups of buildings in the woods such as hardware and garden stores. Around the stores and the houses were factories and airplane hangers and storage lots, like those found on the outskirts of town. The stores turned to some villages. The villages turned to towns. The buildings began to grow taller and greater in numbers, though mostly just houses and schools. After the River Prance (by now, it was called the Eaton River, and this was the name is was given on all the maps) passed an airport, the buildings began to grow. Motels and clubs and restaurants began springing up. Hotels and malls, then apartment buildings and office buildings…the size of the buildings grew and grew. More crowded. More populated. The noise of traffic grew. The air grew crowded with smoke from cars, and all the radio waves from satellite dishes and cell phones. A huge metropolis had sprung up.

The Eaton River finally stopped in a kind of tube-shaped reservoir, made out of an ugly colour of beige bricks. The wall ending the tube was about forty yards away from the beginning. The ceiling was lined with little bar-shaped fluorescent lights every 10 feet.

When the mattress reached the wall at the end of the tube, Homestar's head bumped into it and he woke up.

"What the...?" he murmured. "Is it Christmas already?"

He opened his eyes and bolted upright.

"Bwaaah!" he shouted. "Oh no! I'm stuck in a…! Wait a second—where exactly am I? Brickland? No, it can't be Brickland. Not enough outlet malls. Okay, let's assess the sit-she-ation. Retrace your steps, Homestar. What do I remember doing last? Well, I remember some big glowy lights…oh, no, maybe it was a giant snake come to eat me whole, and now I'm dead! I'll check."

He leaned over the side of the mattress and looked at his reflection in the water.

"Crap! A reflection! I'm not dead!" he said. "There goes that theory. Well, I might as well get out of this tunnel."

Homestar pushed his leg through the water one more time. The mattress floated forward a bit. It floated out from under the shadow and into the light, where the water got all bright and yellow-green. After about 10 minutes, he was finally out of the tunnel.

On either side of him were two walls, sloped diagonally away from him. At the top of the walls were long chain-link fences. The second thing Homestar noticed was that wherever he was, it was the middle of the night. He could only distinguish his surroundings from the dim light cast over the water by tall street lamps that lined the street.

Homestar jumped from the mattress onto one of the walls, walked up to the fence, and climbed over. He surveyed his surroundings for a minute. This is what he saw:

He found himself on a very long, dark street that led way off into the distance. The street was lined with apartment buildings and some warehouses, as well as a multi-story parkade or two. There were many small streets that snaked in between the buildings, forming lots and lots of blocks. A thin traffic light hung over his head on a very empty intersection. The few cars that passed him were dark-coloured and dusty, and moved slowly and awkwardly. Some people walked by him every now and then, wearing thick jackets and with toques and scarves around their head. They didn't stop to look at him; they just walked right past him, usually pushing past him kind of painfully. The buildings around him were grimy and faded, and the windows were dirty and often cracked. Everything around him was very dark and cold.

Homestar didn't like where he was.

He looked over across the street in the direction of a small recently abandoned coffee shop, and saw there was a street sign next to it.

"Ooh! A road marker," said Homestar. "Maybe this'll help me id-net-nify my surroundings."

He crossed the street to get a better look. Next to a speed limit sign with all sorts of messy, squiggly writing drawn in marker all over it, was a thin white metal sign with black letters reading AVE C.

Homestar gave a Roman Salute and said, "Ave, C!"

He turned around and noticed someone was going down the sidewalk, but he wasn't like the other people in jackets and scarves. He was a man with messy hair and a rough unshaven face. Even though his hair was grey, he still looked pretty young. He wore a black trilby on his head and a thin and cheap-looking suit hung over his shoulders, too many buttons missing to actually put on. One his hands were black leather gloves with the fingertips cut off. In one of these gloved hands was a dark green garbage bag filled with what looked like cans. In the other hand was a glass bottle in a paper bag. The man just seemed to be wandering down the sidewalk, scanning the ground with his eyes.

Homestar walked over to him.

"What're ye looking for, man?" he asked.

The man glanced up at him.

"What?"

"You're looking around the ground and all. Are you looking for something?"

"Leave me alone, unless you got any change."

"Fraid not."

"Well, then what are you doing here? The only things around here but cheap studio apartments, muggers, and people like me."

"Who're people like you?"

"You're not from around here, are you?"

"No-sir-ee!"

"Thought so. How'd you get here?"

"I can't remember. I just woke up a few minutes ago in that tunnel over there."

Homestar turned around and pointed across the street to the reservoir.

"Really..." remarked the man. "So, you don't remember how you got here?"

"Nope."

"Do know where you came from?"

"Nuh-uh."

"And you don't have any money?"

"No way man."

"Can you remember ever not being here?"

Homestar thought very hard.

"Not that I remember."

"Well...then, maybe you belong here."

"Where is here, anyway?"

"Well, I'm not exactly sure...some big city, that's all I know. The only cars that I know are from this city are cop cars and taxis. And usually those have New York license plates, but sometimes I see California plates. And I'm positive I saw an Illinois plate once."

"Right on, right on."

"If you don't have anywhere to go, are you going to stay here? In a situation like yours, that's probably the best thing to do."

"Well, if it's in a situation like mine."

"If you're from around here or not, you don't seem like you are, so I'll show you around."

"Good," said Homestar. "Cause this place really gives me the creepie-jeepies."

"Yeah, it'll do that," said the man. "These types of places…well, we call it a sletto, because that sounds better than ghum. You should stick with me, it's a dangerous place."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't call me sir. I don't have any money and I don't have a home. No one could possibly be under me. Call me Kurt."

"Hi, Kurt!" said Homestar. "My name's Homestar."

"Home staugh?"

"H-o-m-e-s-t-a-r," said Homestar, sounding it out.

"Home…?"

"Star. Like in the sky."

"Star?"

"Yeah, like that."

"Your name is Homestar?"

"Yeah! Isn't it great?"

"It's...it's unique, I can tell you that."

"Yunnow, Kurt, for a homeless guy, you're pretty smart," said Homestar.

"Well...my life used to be a lot better than it is now," said Kurt. "My intelligence is the only thing left over."

"Whoa," said Homestar. "That's deep."

"Homestar, I want to show you something you'll need to know to survive around here," said Kurt, and then he turned around.

"Look up at that sign," Kurt continued. He pointed to the street sign Homestar had been looking at a minute ago. The one that said AVE C.

"See all that black stuff scribbled over it?" said Kurt. Homestar could now see there was black ink scribbled all over the sign from the 'C' on.

"That's ink from graffiti artists," explained Kurt. "A while back, some vandals noticed that four avenues next to each other running north from Youngstown (that's the street we're on right now), each of their street names started with the first four letters of the alphabet, in the right order. Like, the first avenue's name started with an A, and the second avenue started with a B, and the third started with a C, and the fourth started with a D. No one around here can remember what the street's actual names were anymore without checking a map. Anyway, they thought it'd be funny if they scribbled out all the letters after the first letter on the four avenue's street signs. That's why the square area running horizontally from there—"

Kurt pointed to the street sign a block over marked 'Ave D'.

"—to there—"

Kurt pointed to the street sign, barely visible, two blocks over marked 'Ave A'.

"—and running vertically from Youngstown about 20 blocks that way—"

Kurt pointed down Ave C, off into the distance.

"—is famous. Because of it's four streets in alphabetic order. Well, that, among other things..." Kurt added as he glanced over at a suspicious looking man walk by wearing a trench coat, not wanting to expose this kid to unnecessarily adult themes.

"Really?" said Homestar in interest.

"Yeah!" said Kurt with a smile, and then he leaned back against the wall of the apartment building next to him.

Homestar looked around once more, at the derelict apartment buildings, the graffiti'd walls and signs, the bums, the muggers, the alphabetic street signs, the complete feeling of uneasiness.

"Welcome, Homestar," said Kurt, "to Alphabet City."