"Come back to me, Keely!!!" Zack pounded the cab Phil and Keely were in on their way to return home. "Come back to me!!!"
"Get away from me!!!" Keely screamed back at him as Phil secretly checked on his Wizard. The cab started pulling away as Zack started racing alongside it, but then he ran into a light pole and fell back on to the sidewalk. A bump to his head and a broken heart, he whimpered and ached for a minute and lifted himself back up on to his feet, his breath knocked merely from his body. Whining from his broken heart, he ambled aimlessly dejected into the lobby as Norman opened the door for him. Girls fell all over Cody for being sensitive and wimpy;was that what it was going to take? His heartbreak flashed back upon his life and lost loves; how many had their been? Several of them called him immature and insensitive. One of them ignored him to woo his brother along with her twin sister while another named Agnes was too unbalanced for even his tastes. Depressed and feeling unloved, Zack refused to allow his future become lonely and unloved. He lifted his head to Maddie and London at the candy counter.
"You two don't want to give me a massage, do you?" He asked defeatedly.
London looked to Maddie and Maddie made a face repulsed by the mere suggestion. Shaking their heads, they just wandered away in unison into separate directions. Left alone in his depressed misery, Zack dropped to the floor and started crying.
"What's wrong with me?!" He lamented his frustrated single life.
"You're living in my hotel." Moseby walked past him. "Get off the floor, Zack!" He dropped off a paper of messages by Irene the concierge and turned back toward the front desk. Out the corner of his eye, Hannah Montana and Lola Luvnagle rushed through the doors past Norman and into the lobby. Hannah looked around for a second and noticed Moseby then charged after him and clutched his suit by the lapels.
"Those contest winners!!!" She grabbed and pulled on Moseby's suit. "Where are they? Which room are they in?"
"As my daughter's trying to say…." Mustached Robby Ray Stewart entered accompanied by his son, Jackson, and pulled Hannah back. "She'd like to meet those two kids from Pickford again to talk to them."
"They just checked out a few minutes ago this morning…" Moseby was straightening his suit. "They've headed home." With that news, Hannah rolled her eyes back into her head and fainted. Her secret identity was out. It was only a matter of time before the tabloids had her secret as well. Her brother caught her fainting back into his arms.
"Hey, sis, look over there!" Jackson Stewart looked toward the elevators. "It's Hillary Duff!!!"
"For the last time…" Lizzie McGuire stood atop the steps near Maddie Fitzpatrick returning to the candy counter. "I am not, repeat, not Hillary Duff."
"Wear a padded bra and maybe they'd confuse you with Lindsay Lohan." Gordo stood by her with his hands resting in his pockets. Lizzie shot a look at him that could practically shatter glass.
"You know," Maddie wandered by Gordo and Lizzie and spoke up. "Some people say I look exactly like Ashley Tisdale from High School Musical."
"I don't see it." Gordo answered. Maddie shot a look at him.
"I do…" Jackson dropped his sister with a crash to the floor and confronted Maddie at the counter. "I'm in town for a few more hours. How about a date, Mrs. Tisdale…. Oh, I mean, Mrs. Fitzpatrick…." Maddie started grinning at him.
"Son," Robby Ray dropped to revive his daughter dropped to the floor. "There's a Billy Ray Cyrus look-alike over here that will ground you forever if you ever drop your sister like that again."
"Hannah?" Raven Baxter emerged from the elevators behind Gordo and Lizzie and recognized the teen pop star. Accompanied by her father and friends, Chelsea and Eddie, she reached down to Hannah and lifted her up to her feet. "Hannah, girl…" Raven supported and hugged her. "What's wrong?"
"It's horrible…." Hannah wandered defeatedly over the Tipton sofa. "My life is over, Raven. Two fans learned my most guarded secret!!!"
"What secret?" Raven felt that tingling in her brain again and looked away as a premonition overwhelmed her vision. She was looking into the future, possibly as much as ten to fifteen years into the future. Hannah was probably twenty or twenty-five years old in the images, a beautiful young woman who stole hearts from young male fans and who wore clothes from designers. It was later in her career and she was a bigger star than ever.
"So, Hannah…" Future TV Reporter Keely Diffy was interviewing her. "What made you want to reveal your identity after over twenty years?"
"Well," Adult Hannah still had a trace of her old Nashville accent. "It was important for me to have a decent childhood, but after all the years, I realized I've outgrown a need for it." The vision ended and Raven was looking at young and petite Hannah again, crying and distressed over her dilemma. Whatever the secret as to her identity, it would not be revealed for years!
"Girl," Raven shined and tapped Hannah's leg in a positive light. "You got nothing to worry about. I don't know who learned your secret, but I get the feeling they are extremely responsible with it."
"How can you be sure, Ray?"
"Well," Raven looked around to Hannah's family and her own friends. "I'll share with you my secret." She leaned over, cupped her hand over Hannah's ear and whispered two words into it. The teen pop star made a face and looked to Raven with new faith.
"Are you kidding me?!"
"It's true." Chelsea was hovering over the back of the Tipton sofa looking at them.
"We've kept it for years!" Eddie confessed.
"This ought to be SOME secret!!!" Jackson Stewart stood next to his father with his arms crossed.
"It's a really good secret!" Victor Baxter confirmed it.
"Hey…" Derek Venturi appeared from nowhere and tugged Eddie's shirt for attention. "Ten bucks if you tell me what it is."
A few hours later, Phil and Keely were sitting on a plane somewhere over Western New York ready to return home. Boston had been a great adventure. They had stayed in a grand hotel, they got to meet rock stars and they got to meet a lot of new friends. Phil had his Wizard out on the tray before him analyzing his sub-file routines. Afraid he was getting too careless with his device, he had a new alarm installed should it ever be out of his contact for more than five feet. He then thought that was too far and changed the distance to just three feet.
By his side, Keely laid back in her seat next to the window listening to Alyson Michalka on her headset and dreaming she was Alyson herself, on stage singing next to the sister she never had, or maybe that stupid clone of herself, wherever she was now. After that song, it was Jesse McCarthy singing to her and making her weak in the knees, but then the Boys in Motion came on and she was turning the volume down to order a drink from the flight attendant.
"Phil," She leaned over to her future partner for life and shined toward him. "This weekend was exactly like I pictured it. Fun, intrigue, adventures…." She noticed the Wizard before him being fine-tuned. "Twenty-Second Century devices causing trouble… I'm getting the feeling what it will be like being married to you."
"I haven't purposed yet and you've got our life together all planned out." Phil looked to her with an amused smirk.
"The only things we need to lose are the crazy in-laws." Keely answered back.
Practically announced, Lloyd Diffy set his skyak at the same cruising speed of the DC-747 passenger jet he was cruising with and started peeking along the starboard side windows looking for his son. The jet stream was strong, the jet turbines powerful, but the skyak's anaharmonic field generator protected him from being buffeted or knocked off by the winds around him. No one had seen him yet. Most of the passengers were either engrossed in books or asleep. A few noticed Lloyd and ignored him thinking he was a figment of their imagination. Other travelers just didn't bother to get involved. One passenger gazed into Lloyd's face and then over to his wife.
"There's a man out there!"
"Is he wearing tights and a cape?" The wife continued her crossword.
Another passenger noticed Lloyd and just closed his window against him. The last time he had screamed there was a man on the wing of a plane he had been institutionalized at the Serling Psychiatric Clinic in Willoughby, Ohio. Keely meanwhile received her juice from the flight attendant and peeled back the aluminum top to take a sip. Maybe she had known Phil for too long or had become used to weird things happening around them with increasing intensity, but when Lloyd appeared in the window next to her, she didn't react with much surprise. Her ruby lips parted, her jaw dropped and her eyes rolled into Phil's direction. Her hand tapped his shoulder and Phil lifted his head.
"I think I forgot to call my dad back." Phil looked out the window.
"You think!!"
Phil just flashed his Wizard to his father to show him he had got it back without him. Inaudible to his son through the thick inch-thick airport window glass, Lloyd just voiced a hearty "Good job!" and flashed two quick thumbs up and then quickly grabbed the controls of his skyak before starting to veer off from the plane.
In the cockpit of the jet, Captain James T. Archer looked at the controls of his jet and tapped a gauge. The plane was registering an extra eight hundred pounds from out of nowhere during mid-flight and it hadn't stabilized. It was almost as if something had latched on to his plane during the flight.
"I've got a mild bogey here." Co-pilot Leonard Doohan looked at the electronic radar. "At first, I thought it was a flock of birds, but then I realized it was keeping trajectory with us."
"Recheck telemetry, do we have a visual of the object?" Archer suddenly cocked his head to the starboard side of the plane. Lloyd had appeared a few seconds alongside them then dipped down out of view quickly to avoid freaking the pilots. Doohan looked around just fast enough to get a glimpse of the concerned father. Navigator Ralph Riker stood up and noticed along with them the object that had been keeping up with them now ascending even faster and dipping down toward Earth.
"Well, that's something you don't see everyday…" He commented half-concerned. "A man on a flying ATV…"
Back in Seats 23A and 23B, Phil Diffy put his Wizard together and as routinely as possible slid it back into his backpack. Keely sipped her juice pretending to be an innocent by-stander as a few other passengers started whispering to each other. Did they see that? Was that what they were talking about? She downed the rest of her drink quickly and pulled her headset back on over her ears.
"It will be so good to get back to normal back in Pickford." Phil dropped his pack to his feet. Keely gave him a look with one eyebrow raised.
"Well, almost normal…" He corrected himself.
"Just be grateful no one got a picture…" Keely mumbled and leaned back into her seat. Just as she said that, a camera flash passed over her and Phil.
"Who is taking those so many pictures of us?" She asked out loud.
END
POSTSCRIPT
It was 2165, and Phil and Keely Diffy were still happily married and still very much in love. In the after years of middle-age, Keely had maintained her looks, mostly for her career as a television journalist, and Phil still looked mostly like himself, just older, heavier and sporting a mustache and goatee. He owned thirty-three Twentieth Century-style restaurants in the Eastern portion of what was the former United States, now part of the United Republics of Earth under the United Federation of Planets. Their home over Lake Superior was computerized, maintained by mini-drones and assisted by holographic assistants. Keely checked her face for wrinkles, rubbing cream to eliminate spots from the sun and adjusted the ozone layer settings in the house. Phil shuddered from the cool breeze.
"Phil, honey," Keely draped herself over their marital bed as she prodded his back. "Happy anniversary." He rolled over to look upon her.
"Who are you?" He remarked quite seriously. "You can't be my wife. You're too young and sexy to be her." Keely just started grinning at him. Thirty years of marriage and he did still love her, unfailing in his devotion to never stop loving her. She closed her lips over his and stroked his beard stubble with the fingers of her left hand.
"Ewww…"
The contented couple looked up to their daughters watching them. It was Lisa Diffy's turn to pass herself off as a clone of Alyson Michalka and Tricia Diffy could pass for a brunette version of her sister, AJ. Behind them, Cathy Diffy, the youngest of the three, nudged in through the tinted glass doors of the bedroom. As a blonde, she could resemble Ashley Tisdale.
"What were they doing?"
"You don't want to know…." Lisa spoke as the oldest and held up a large leather bound album. "Mom, dad…. This is for you. Happy thirtieth…"
"Oh my…" Keely put her hand to her chest and pulled the book closer. Phil groaned sitting up and scratched his neck as he saw old photos of himself from his youth. No one made photos anymore, not with holography technology available. Actually having physical photos to hold and appreciate was a forgotten art that very few people admired anymore.
"Here's your father and I at school… one from our first date… here's us backstage at the Hannah Montana concert…." Keely was becoming misty-eyed. "This is so sweet. Oh, my make up…." She rose from her bed to adjust her look again.
"We never saw some of these photos before." Phil spoke up. "Where'd you girls get these?"
"Well," Tricia looked to Lisa and Cathy. "Grandma and grandpa loaned us the money to go back in time and take photos of you during your courtship."
"What?" Keely looked to Phil then her daughters. "You went back to when we were your age to take photos? That explains those constant photos back at Hannah's concert in 2007!"
"Wait a second…" Phil recalled another incident. "The week after that, I was in the boy's locker room getting dressed for basketball and felt a flash. Who was that?"
Tricia and Lisa looked to Cathy.
"Guilty…" Cathy smirked a little boy crazy. "That Grady Spaggett was sort of cute."
"I can't believe Aunt Pimmy was fat back then."
"Hey," Lisa Diffy spoke up. "Owen Tanner mistook me for mom!"
"You girls went back in time…." Clad in just his t-shirt and pajama pants, Phil was rising up off his bed. "Unsupervised?"
"Well," Lisa stood up to her exactly as her mother once did. "You and mom went to Boston unsupervised."
"Nothing happened between your father and me." Keely stood up straight pulling her cashmere robe closed. "He was a perfect gentleman."
"Yeah, right…" Lisa stood her ground. "I was there. I got the pictures!"
"Hand them over!!!" Keely screeched first and dived after her daughters running from her. Phil groaned a bit trying to catch up, grabbing his back and trying to straighten up.
"I gotta start exercising again…."
End