Disclaimer: The usual.

WAYFARERS OF THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM
Chapter Two
The Nexus

Marty had closed his eyes when the light had become unbearable, and now he wasn't too sure if he wanted to open them. He wondered if he was dead. Then he wondered if he'd be able to wonder if he was dead if he truly were dead. He was lying on something that felt strangely like grass, which then made him wonder if there was grass in the afterlife.

Something poked him, and Marty yelped. His eyes flew wildly open, and it took his mind a few seconds to register the fact that the brown eyes staring puzzledly at him in the dark belonged to Ted and not some strange creature that went around poking dead people. It took the author a few more seconds to notice the red squiggly line under the word 'puzzedly' and realised that such a word did not, in fact, exist in the English Language.

During the few seconds it took for everyone to do their respective realisations, Marty did a considerable bit of screaming, which served only to start Frank screaming as well and to make Ted wonder if maybe prodding Marty had been a bad idea after all.

Screaming is like yawning. It's contagious.

"Marty?" Ted asked hesitantly, when everyone was done screaming. "Are you okay, dude?"

Marty just stared blankly at him with his mouth still hanging open, when reality kicked in and he closed his mouth. "Yeah…" he said. "Yeah, I'm fine… Why'd you poke me for?" he demanded, in an effort to cover up his embarrassment at screaming at nothing.

Ted shrugged. "I just wanted to check if you were alive, dude."

"Am I?"

"I guess so."

Propping himself up, Marty surveyed the new world they had been dumped into. Their plan to get home had apparently not worked.

It was, as Marty discovered, indeed grass that grew below him, although in the darkness it was hard to tell. What light they had came from the stars twinkling above, stars that – if he were any of a stargazer, which he wasn't – were arranged in patterns no one on Earth had ever seen.

Before them lay a road; not so much a road as a simple dirt track, one that stretched out to their left and right as far as Marty could see. It was as Marty was staring at the road that he realised that the left side of it grew increasingly more illuminated, and as he followed it with his eyes, his gaze soon landed on a small, warmly-lit building in the distance.

"What's that?" he asked.

Neo was sitting up on the grass some distance from them, gazing silently at the same building.

"Neo?" Marty asked. "What's that?"

Neo didn't reply, so Ted crawled up to him and prodded him. Neo batted the teen's hand aside and got up. "Come on," he said.

The others got to their feet with varying degrees of enthusiasm and followed Neo, stepping from the grass onto the dirt road and then back onto the grass again. The building loomed nearer, and it was not long before they could make out the neon letters that stood above its doorway.

'Joe's'.

Frank frowned slightly when he saw that. After being yanked goodness how far through space and time, he found it a little hard to accept that they had landed in a world where the only building in a long way was called 'Joe's'. It just didn't comply with his notion of what the universe should be like. Not that many things did.

They walked on, the only sound that of their shoes rustling through the grass. After some time, though, strains of music could be heard emanating from the direction of the building. And now, only metres away from its front entrance, what had earlier been thought to be a thick and fancy neon line under the word 'Joe's' could now be seen as words of their own.

The Restaurant at the End of the Space-Time Continuum.

Ted mouthed the words to himself, and for some inexplicable reason was filled with a warm, fuzzy feeling. He smiled, as they approached the glass double doors and Neo grasped the polished gold handles. After a brief hesitation, Neo pushed the doors open and the four of them stepped into the warmth of the restaurant.

The chairs scattered around the dozen or so tables were only half-filled, but there was already a considerable amount of noise in the place. Voices of different languages mingled with the clinking of cutlery, and above all this the jukebox played. The current song was 'Doppelganger': a long time favourite of the time-travelling crowd.

This was Joe's, the Restaurant at the End of the Space-Time Continuum. It was the only place where time and inter-dimensional travellers alike could drop by for a meal without having any awkward questions asked. And if they weren't hungry, it also made a good meeting place if they didn't mind the noise.

Marty, Neo, Frank and Ted stood at the doorway, ignored by the other patrons of the restaurant. Eventually, Neo decided that just standing there would not achieve anything significant in the near future, and so started moving forwards, weaving his way through the tables towards the counter at the far end of the restaurant. The others trooped behind him.

Behind the counter stood a well-fed man wiping a glass with a piece of cloth. His name was Tom and he barely looked up as the four travellers reached him.

"What can I get for you?" Tom asked gruffly, putting down the glass and picking up another. The four glanced at each other, and Frank finally spoke up.

"Uh… what do you have?"

Tom jabbed a finger at the menu above him, then as an afterthought looked up and squinted at them. "You're not from around here, are you?" he asked.

Frank gave a short laugh. "Uh, yeah… how'd you know?"

"I can tell," Tom growled. "I've worked here for a long time."

"How long is that, dude?" Ted asked.

Tom glared at him. "A very long time." He finished with his glass and moved on to the next one.

Neo finished reading through the menu and shifted his gaze back down to Tom. "What place is this?" he asked quietly.

The bartender raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you see the sign?" He pointed a stubby finger in the direction of the door. "This is Joe's. The Restaurant at the End of the…"

"No," Neo interrupted. "I mean… outside… this whole, uh, place… what is it?"

Tom snorted. "You really aren't from around here, are you?"

Frank was about to make some comment along the lines of how he thought that that particular fact had already been pretty much established, and so could they move on now? when Tom replied.

"Nexus," he said.

"What?" Marty asked.

"Nexus. Gateway to the Otherlands. It's all forest out there. In the woods of the Nexus, time has a mind of its own. Night and day when it pleases." Tom chuckled. "And those trees go on forever. To infinity."

Ted meanwhile had got bored with the conversation and was watching a group of two-headed aliens eating at a nearby table. One of them was downing a frothy drink through the mouth of one of its two heads.

Ted turned back to Tom. "I'll have what he's having," he said brightly, pointing in the direction of the frothy drink and effectively cutting Neo off as the latter was about to speak. Tom bustled away to the barrels behind him, muttering under his breath about foreigners.

Neo stared incredulously at Ted. "I was just about to find out where we were!" he said, glaring at the teen.

Ted blinked. "Sorry, dude. I was thirsty."

Neo swore under his breath and glared at the countertop, which really had not done anything to deserve being glared at. It had always been a good and well-behaved countertop all its life, and this was the first time it was receiving the kind of treatment that Neo was currently giving it. The countertop mentally withdrew into a corner to cry.

Tom came back with a glass full of slugs slithering around in some murky green liquid, and placed the glass in front of Ted. The teen stared questioningly at it, then glanced back at the table he had pointed at and realised his mistake.

"Oh," he said. "Uh, sorry. I meant I wanted the drink that that two-headed dude was having, not the funny one with the five eyes."

The two-headed dude in question had just passed out on the table with a look of complete bliss on both of its faces.

Scowling, Tom dumped the slugs back into the barrel from whence they came and took up a clean glass, which he proceeded to fill with the drink that Ted had requested. He dumped the full glass on the counter.

"Served one Pan Dimensional Plaque Destroyer, two past hours please," he intoned.

Ted ignored him and downed the drink in two goes. He grinned. Then his eyes rolled upwards and he collapsed onto the floor. Tom regarded him with the same amount of interest that a student regards a teacher in the midst of doling out homework. Digging into his pocket, he emerged with several strange contraptions of slightly different sizes. They seemed to consist mostly of two circular rings, joined together by a string on a sort of pulley system. Tom chose one of the smaller contraptions and dumped the rest back into his pocket.

Tom separated the rings and stepped out from behind the counter. He was much shorter now, and his clothes could be seen clearly. They seemed oddly out of place in the somewhat elegant setting of the rest of the restaurant. His pants were the colour that bluebottles would be if they were green and not blue; around his waist was tied an old dirty apron which proudly announced that it belonged to Joe's; his plain T-shirt had lost colour a long, long time ago, but the words 'Antimatter + Matter BOOM!' were still visible on it.

Tom brushed Marty out of the way and crouched down next to the happily unconscious Ted. Brushing the teen's hair aside in much the same way he had brushed Marty aside, Tom placed the two circles on Ted's forehead. A second later, they glowed a faint blue, then red, then blue, then green, then blue again.

Tom turned to Neo. "Random hours?" he asked, pointing at Ted's still form. "Any special mems he'd like to keep?"

Neo hadn't the faintest idea what Tom was talking about. "Uh, no," he said, "not that I know of."

Tom shrugged and pressed a small button on one of the rings. There was a flash of white, then the light dimmed. Tom removed the contraption, fiddled around with them, and stuck them back into his pocket. He gave Ted a sharp kick to the side. Neo winced.

Tom shrugged again. "Wakes them up most of the time," he said, going back behind the counter.

True enough, Ted was beginning to come round. He had a dazed but happy look on his face, which in retrospect wasn't that much different from his usual expression.

"Whoa!" Ted exclaimed happily. "I just had the most excellent dream, dudes!" He grinned cheerfully at Tom. "I think I'll have anoth…"

Ted was cut off by Neo clamping his hand violently over the teen's mouth.

"Shut up!" Neo hissed. He stared at Tom. "What did you do to him?"

"Payment," Tom said nonchalantly. "Two past hours. You buy a drink, you pay for it."

"Two past hours?" Frank asked, a hint of incredulity in his voice.

"Time, pal, time. This is the Nexus. You pay in time here. Not much of it around," Tom added, indicating the clock behind him, which was twenty-four hours slow and running backwards. Tom picked up another glass and got down to cleaning it, humming the popular Nexan song 'Somewhen Out There'.

Frank Bannister, however, was far from satisfied with Tom's answer. "You took his time?"

"Yes," Tom replied. "So he'll just have lost two hours of memories, and he'll be that much younger too."

"You mean you just took two hours of his life away?" Marty asked, mouth hanging open.

"Don't worry. They don't miss them, most of the time."

"What do you do with the time?" Neo asked.

Tom shrugged. "Sell it," he replied casually, "or use it to buy things, add on to my life…"

"What?"

Tom glared at Neo. "Look here, pal. He bought a drink, he paid for it. Simple as that. It's not my fault if you don't know how things work around the Nexus. He glanced at Ted, who was cheerily humming away and waving happily at random customers who for some reason did not wave back. "And your friend appears happy enough about it. Though I admit that's usually a side effect of that drink he took."

Neo raised an eyebrow at the teen, and decided it was useless to pursue the matter further.

"Ah… do you know how we can get out of the Nexus?" Frank pressed on.

"Same way you got in."

"But… uh… we… uh…" Frank looked helplessly at the others for help. Neo and Marty looked helplessly back. Ted was still too deeply in a state of Pan Dimensional Plaque Destroyer- induced euphoria to look helplessly at anyone, so he just smiled brightly.

"Um…" Neo started to say, then stopped because he didn't know what to say.

Frank finally found his voice, which confessed that it had been away holidaying in the Bermuda Triangle and promised never again to go away without telling him first. "Well, you see, we, uh, sorta can't get back because, uh…"

"…it was a one-way journey," Marty finished for him.

Tom raised his eyes to the ceiling, then returned his gaze to the four of them. "You know, people who go on one-way journeys usually don't intend to go back."

"Yeah," Frank admitted, "but we didn't mean to come here. There was an… accident or error or something. We were trying to get home.

Tom muttered something under his breath about people who messed about with things they didn't understand. "I can't help you then," he said brusquely.

"Don't you know anything that might help us?" Neo asked.

"Nope." Tome moved aside as another customer came up to the counter. "What do you want?" he asked the newcomer.

"Two packets of peanuts, please."

Tom moved off to get the peanuts, and the new customer surveyed the small group of interdimensional travellers. Ted smiled brightly at him. He smiled brightly back, and turned back tot eh counter as Tom dumped two packets of peanuts on it. "Foreigners?" he asked, indicating the four.

Tom grunted. "What do you think? 28PM for the peanuts, if you would be so kind."

The man dug into a pocket and took out several small disc-like objects. They seemed to be hollow, filled with a strange colourful substance that shifted beneath the surface, undulating and changing colour. Ted found them very fascinating. He looked at the counter and found that very fascinating too. Ditto with the floor. One of the side-effects of the Pan Dimensional Plaque Destroyer is that of making the drinker find a lot of things very fascinating.

Ted grinned floopily at Neo, who started to feel uncomfortable.

Having made his purchase, the other customer put his peanuts into his satchel, gave Ted another bright smile – which was willingly returned – and walked off.

"Are you going to keep on standing there, or are you going to move eventually?" Tom asked.

"Uh…" Frank said.

Tom sighed. "Look, if you really want my advice, all I can say to you is that it'll probably be a good idea to leave this place. You won't learn much here. Go wander around this section of the Nexus or enter whatever Otherland that catches your fancy, and maybe eventually you'll get better help than I can give. But I'm not making any promises about that.

Frank nodded and looked down.

"Which way should we go?" Marty asked.

"Just follow the road and turn left at the second fork. There's a house someway up ahead, but you'll have to walk quite a bit. They usually take in travellers for the night; I'll tell them you might be coming."

Marty gave him a grateful smile. "Thanks."

Then the four of them set off down the road.

TO BE CONTINUED...