CHAPTER TWO

The first thing Brains realized as he slowly regained consciousness was that his back ached, like it always did when he fell asleep on the job. The second thing he realized was that there was an annoying humming sound, like that of an engine. The third thing he realized as his eyes fluttered open, was that he was sitting in the cockpit of Firefly.

Not so strange, he reasoned, he must have fallen asleep in the VRVS.

Except...

He looked down at the Control Panel…and realized it was the Control Panel. He looked at his hands. He wasn't wearing the black gloves. He felt his face. He wasn't wearing the black glasses. Finally he sat up and looked all around him. His face went ashen and his breath caught in his throat.

He was actually in Firefly.

"But how--what--where--" he stammered, rising to his feet.

When he looked out Firefly's front windows, he saw the remains of a burning building, the smoldering rubble piled high in front of him. His head felt very, very hot, and he noticed that although he was wearing a white protective suit, he was not wearing the facemask that went with it. Quickly reseating himself, he maneuvered Firefly back to the pod, which rested beneath Thunderbird 2, raised high on her stilts.

When Firefly was finally parked, Brains removed the protective suit and exited the vehicle. He stood in the doorway of the pod, staring all around. The only thing in sight besides Thunderbird 2 was the burning rubble about four hundred yards away. There was nothing else as far as the eye could see but grass.

Brow puckered in confusion, Brains raised his left arm to his face. "This is Brains calling International Rescue. Come in."

There was no response.

"Brains calling Mr. Tracy. Come in, please."

Nothing.

"Hello? Is anyone out there?"

He gulped when no one replied. What was happening? Why wasn't anyone answering him? Maybe his watch just wasn't working. He decided to head up to the cockpit. Surely at least Virgil would be there. Then he could find out what in the heck he was doing in Firefly.

In less than a minute, Brains found himself inside Thunderbird 2's cockpit. But it, just as with the pod, was empty. A strange, eerie feeling overtook Brains. He ran back to the emergency bunk area, but there was no one there.

"Virgil!" he called out. Only silence responded. "Scott?"

Shaking his head, he wracked his brain for the answers that just had to be there somewhere. As he headed back down to the pod, he replayed the last thing he remembered before finding himself in Firefly.

"I was working on the VRVS CPU," he said as he entered the pod. "I put it back in the unit and was running it through a test. Through…" His face paled as he approached the open hatch door. "Oh, my…I was running it through the Firefly simulation."

He turned and looked back at the Firefly, then outside toward the burning rubble. How could this be? It wasn't possible. It just wasn't possible.

"If I'm not sitting in the VRVS…and nobody's responding to my hails…and I'm the only one here…it can only mean one thing."

Looking around himself once more, he sank to the floor of the pod, legs hanging out over the open hatch. "Can it be? Am I in…am I inside the VRVS? Inside…virtual reality?"

It was the only thing that made sense…as if anything at all could make sense in this situation. He shook his head. "If I really am inside, how am I ever going to get out of here?" he asked the emptiness surrounding him. "How will they know where I am? How?"

Scott, as usual, was the first one up the next morning. He brewed a strong pot of coffee, then showered and dressed. As he was returning to the kitchen for his first cup of the day, he met up with his father, who had also showered and dressed and, it seemed had been awake longer than he.

"Mornin', Father."

"Morning, Scott. Have you see Brains yet?"

"No. Yuck, what's on that tray?"

"It's the food Mother took down to Brains last night. He didn't touch it."

Scott smiled as he grabbed a coffee mug from the cupboard. "Well, Dad, you know Brains: once he gets to working on something, the rest of the world doesn't exist. Sometimes I think his body feeds off his brain cells."

"Yes, but the VRVS was running. Brains doesn't usually leave things on."

"You mean he wasn't down there?"

"No. I turned the machine off, though. Come to think of it, that might be what caused the fuse to blow last night." As Jeff deposited the silver tray next to the sink and reached for a coffee mug, Ruth appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Ah, good morning, Mother."

"Good morning, Jeff. Good morning, Scott."

"Hi, Grandma. Sleep well?"

"Yes, actually, I did." Ruth took in the food…if you could call it that…left on the tray and she frowned. "Don't tell me. Brains didn't eat a bite."

"No, he sure didn't." Jeff replied as he and Scott seated themselves at the kitchen table. "Who's making breakfast this morning?"

"I am!" called a voice from the doorway.

"Gordo? You're sure chipper for this time of morning!" Scott teased.

"I oughtta be. I'm going down after breakfast to try out the Thunderbird 4 simulation Brains programmed into the VRVS."

"Figures," Alan said, yawning, as he entered the kitchen behind his brother. "Thunderbird 4's the only thing that would get you up this early."

"And what's your excuse?" Gordon replied cheekily as he began pulling pots and pans out of their cubbies.

"Tin-Tin and I are taking the Tiger for a spin. Gotta keep the old girl in shape, you know."

"Alan!" Scott exclaimed, a look of mock horror upon his face. "Don't you dare let Tin-Tin hear you talking about her like that?"

"Oh, knock it off, you know what I was-"

"Talk about me like what?" Tin-Tin asked, her brow knitted into a frown as she walked up behind Alan.

He spun around to face her, his cheeks flushing. "Uh, nothing, uh, Tin-Tin, I didn't say-"

"Alan Tracy, if you can't say something nice about a person, you shouldn't say anything-"

"Oh, come on, Tin-Tin, I didn't say anything bad about you, I was talking about the Tiger!"

"Of course you were, you'd rather talk about that haggard old plane any day of the week than me!"

"What on earth are you talking about?" Alan nearly bellowed as Tin-Tin turned and stalked out of the kitchen. "You come back here, what was that supposed to mean?"

Everyone stared at Alan's retreating form as he followed her out the door.

"Nice going, Scott," Gordon said as he cracked the first egg. "Now they'll be at it for hours."

"Me? What'd I do?"

"Honestly, Scott," Jeff said, frowning as he picked up the newspaper.

"What?" Scott asked, rising from the table. When he received nothing but a stern look from his father and a shaking head from his brother, Scott threw his hands up in the air and left the room, nearly knocking Virgil over in the process.

"What's goin' on?" Virgil asked sleepily, running his hands through his rather unkempt chestnut hair.

Gordon chuckled. "Same old, same old, Virg."

"Good morning, Virgil."

"Morning, Grandma, everyone." Virgil sank into the chair recently vacated by Scott. He looked toward the door, where the sounds of arguing voices could be heard, and groaned. "God, they're at it already? It's too early for this."

Scott hadn't meant to start a fight between his youngest brother and Tin-Tin. He honestly hadn't known Tin-Tin was anywhere near the kitchen. He laughed to himself as he rode the elevator down to Thunderbird 2 hangar. He'd blundered, that was for sure. Still, it was pretty funny. Tin-Tin knew better than to think Alan would ever berate her. Sometimes Scott thought they just argued to put on a show. Almost as though they were trying to convince the entire family that they weren't in love.

"Yeah, right, like any of us would believe that," he said aloud.

When the elevator came to rest, Scott exited and headed for the VRVS. He'd been somewhat surprised when his father had reported it having been left on. He himself had noticed that not even the water bottle had been touched. Even though he didn't usually eat while in the middle of working a new invention, Brains always drank water. So much so that sometimes Scott found it a wonder he didn't just float away.

Whatever the myriad of reasons, Scott decided to check on the engineer for himself. He couldn't shake the feeling that something strange was going on. He turned the corner and approached the VRVS, but Brains was nowhere in sight. He decided to check Brains' rooms. Perhaps he had gone off to bed after all, at a very late hour, and had just been too tired to turn the machine off.

But as he headed for Brains' suite, something in the back of his mind told him he wouldn't find him there.

Brains stretched and yawned. He actually felt pretty good, and assumed he'd had a good night's sleep in his own bed for once instead of hunched over a table or control panel. His eyes opened and for a moment, confusion reigned. He wasn't in his bedroom. He wasn't even in the house.

He sat bolt upright. It took a few seconds for him to realize he was in one of Thunderbird 2's beds. It took another few seconds for him to recall why he was sleeping there to begin with. Hoping and praying it had all been a bad dream, Brains hopped out of bed and opened Thunderbird 2's hatch. He descended the steps and was hit with the sickening knowledge that it had not all been a dream.

The outside world looked just the same as it had the night before. The sky was still clear and blue, the green grass stretched out flat in every direction and there was still a pile of burning rubble several hundred yards away.

"Oh, God," he breathed. "Now what do I do?"

Just then, it seemed as though the world flickered. For a moment, everything blinked off and then back on again. The wheels of Brains' mind turned quickly, and he soon understood what was happening.

"No!" he cried out, running around to the front of the open pod. He pirouetted wildly, running in circles, waving his arms about. "No! Don't turn it off! Don't turn it off! DOOOOOON'T!"

But it was too late. All at once, his world went black.