Furry trusted in Sam completely. He was his first friend in this strange world, he was always nice except for those many times when he wasn't, and Furry was sure the two of them would stick together as they figured things out. He hadn't started feeling any seed of doubt, no matter what Angel said a few days ago, and he wasn't at all frequently considering every detail of their meeting and what they all could mean.

No, none of that was the reason why Furry had decided not to meet up with Sam today, despite this being the first time in almost two weeks that he hadn't done so. He had just felt… in the mood for some independent exploring, and some time alone. And so, he found himself walking around the Adventure Park, a wilderness with vibrantly colored, oddly shaped trees, and a few humanoid animals who said nothing other than "Sorry, I don't have anything for you right now."

He also found a sun lion, a creature with patches of brown, yellow, and beige fur that looked quite similar to himself (ignoring the color scheme) – also walking around.

They met near a bridge over a stream (the stream didn't flow; no water in Webkinz World ever flowed, and again Furry wondered why he expected that it would), and Furry didn't hesitate to introduce himself.

"Hi! I'm Furry. What's your name?" he chirped. He had met three new friends in such a short time! (Though either Angel or Sam wasn't trustworthy (no, just Angel, he was sure it was Angel), and he technically had only just met this sun lion… but that wasn't especially relevant, of course.)

"Oh, um, yes. Hello. I'm Lucky. Er, my name is Lucky," the sun lion responded faintly, shaking his head as if refocusing himself on the animal before him. "So… you talk, too?"

"Yes! The two of us are called 'Lucid', because we can move around and do things without our owners present. It's really rare to be able to do that for some reason, but I know two other Lucid pets that I can introduce you to… Well, maybe just one. But first, we should become friends on the cellphone thing up in the top right of your… internal perception? That lets us find each other, even with the different instances of the world."

"That's good," Lucky answered, staring absent-mindedly through Furry and into the distance and accepting the friend request he had sent. "I don't suppose you know how to get more food?"

Furry's ears drooped. "No. It's not possible unless our owners are with us, which… they probably won't ever be," he lamented. On seeing the resulting look of consternation from Lucky, he continued hastily, "But, I have hundreds of Almonds! You can have some of them, if you want!"

The sun lion shook his head. "I won't burden you. Hmm… may be an issue, though…" he trailed off, mostly to himself, it seemed.

Lucky began slowly pacing, walking slightly away as he stared at the ground in thought, and Furry followed. After some silence, the newcomer glanced back at Furry, then faced straight ahead and began talking.

"Do you…" he waved one paw in a vague gesture, looking for the right word. "Is it normal for Lucid animals to… remember things?"

The non sequitur perplexed Furry, and Lucky gave no further clarification. "In what way? I mean, Sam and I both seem to have some kind of strange knowledge, but it's not really, um, attached to any memories of learning it. It's just kind of… there."

"Hm… I'm not sure quite what I mean. There just seems to be… something important just out of reach. As though I were forgetting a vital part of me, but I don't remember… what it is, even." Lucky was speaking reservedly, introspectively – as he had been – as though he just happened to be sounding aloud what was going on inside his mind.

"I don't think I feel anything quite like that," Furry pondered, after thinking about it. "The knowledge does sort of make me think there's something missing, but I don't actually sense any kind of gap. How long have you been Lucid?"

"Er… about two weeks, I suppose. There isn't much of a day-night cycle to measure it by."

"That's about as long as me. So, it probably isn't that. But, I hope you remember it!" the wolf consoled.

"Yes, thank you. Me too."

From there, Lucky drifted back into a silence that was clearly only external, as one look at his actively thinking face – now glued to the ground again – revealed. This quiet was carried on for a fair few minutes as they walked out of the Adventure Park and into the circular road around Webkinz World.

Furry faced a moment of internal hesitation, quickly overruled the concern that he assured himself was irrelevant, and then suggested, "Should we go meet Sam? He's the other Lucid I'm friends with."

"Oh, yes," Lucky responded, snapping back to reality once again. "That sounds good. How do we, er, do that?"

Furry showed the two of them to the park, where they only had to wait a few minutes for Sam's arrival. The google approached the two of them, who were standing near some flower beds in the center of the park, and eyed Lucky up and down.

"How long've you been awake?" Sam immediately queried, looking roughly at the newcomer as always.

After hesitating for a moment, startling due to the unfamiliar question, Lucky answered wonderingly, "About two weeks?"

Sam nodded. "And whadd'you know about the hunger?"

"I've… experienced it, once. Is the situation truly as bad as it seems it will get?" he returned, for once seeming properly engaged in how Sam would reply.

"Yeah. It's pretty much, how to put it, really fucking shitty. You can only put it off. How much food have you got left?" Sam seemed weary of this, and some hint of hopelessness in his tone suggested he was already resigned to the eventual outcome before Lucky even answered.

"Three Bagels… two Baked Potatoes, and a plate of Chicken Nuggets. My hunger meter is only at 7 currently. Will that allow me much time?"

"I dunno, maybe a week if you limit your activity. Doesn't look good. Should probably get ready for it, maybe enjoy your remaining time, 'cause chances are you're gonna go catatonic with the hunger and stay that way. Just about everyone does. Good luck on that one."

Once more, Lucky's expression soured. "Okay. Thank you for telling me," he sighed.

"I'll still give you some of my almonds, if you've changed your mind," Furry offered, this time almost pleadingly.

"Really, I'm not going to burden you with taking care of me. I'll handle it," Lucky shook his head again, before looking to the ground and retreating to the active dispute inside his mind.

"So, um, this is Lucky. I met him earlier today," Furry spoke up at last, now that the questioning had finished.

"Nice to meet you," the sun lion murmured, not moving his gaze to look at Sam.

"Back at you," Sam answered, with what Furry hoped was a bit less sarcasm than there could have been. "I guess this is what you were up to this morning?" he continued, directed towards Furry now.

"Um, yes," he affirmed, feeling a little guilty at leaving out part of the real reason.

"Well. Two weeks, so he's probably already gotten around most places. Not much else to do, then. Go to Quizzy's, let his food last a bit longer than the Arcade?"

Furry assented, and so they went, Lucky trailing behind them with little attention paid to their conversation.


Lucky hadn't been participating much until they got a few questions into the science section, though he did seem to grow increasingly perplexed at a number of the queries, mumbling in confusion about how he knew these things.

He had glanced up at the board on a problem about which planet was closest to the Sun, looked back down again, and then quickly snapped to staring at the question more intensely than he had with any before.

"This – I know this," he started babbling, beginning to pace back and forth. "Mercury, the Sun, planets, space – what's space, there's no space here but I'm sure I know all about space – I remember terms, stars and supernova and – and binary systems, and… cepheids, and the main sequence on Hertzsprung-Russel diagrams, I'm not sure what those terms are but I could figure it out, with time, I think – and rockets, I know rockets, delta u equal times natural log m f over m e, that was important, but what does any of that mean…"

Sam watched with a sort of fascination, before stepping in with a, "The hell are you going on about?"

The sun lion looked at both of them, took a breath, and began to speak intently. "I feel as though I'm scattered, putting my mind back together. I feel as though I've been scattered for quite some time. I'm sure I'm close to understanding it, to remembering… I want to keep looking at these questions. They're sparking my recollection."

Sam remained somewhat confused, but shrugged (as well as a google could), and agreed, "Alright. Not like we were gonna head anywhere else."

And so the three of them stayed in Quizzy's Corner for hours, going through all the daily questions for every age division of the science category, and then the math. Lucky did little more than stare at the questions and the answers (and the fun facts that showed up after each one) and mutter. At the end of them all, when they were leaving, Furry asked if Lucky had remembered what he was looking for. He simply shook his head, and then said, "But I'm close."


Sam entered the house first, leaving Furry and Lucky together on the outside, the latter still staring at the ground in thought.

"Furry," he asked, turning his head now to the sky instead. "Do you think there are other worlds out there?"

"I don't know," Furry answered. "But our owners must have gone somewhere, right?"

"They must have," Lucky nodded. "You know what I think? I think there's too many to count. I'm not quite sure why, but it seems like it's part of those important memories. I think there's so many different worlds you can't imagine what all of them are like. I think there must be so much more than this town and the void around it. I don't know how to get to it all. I feel as if I've been reaching for it, though, for a long time. I'm not there yet, of course. But I'm close."


On the next day, they once more went through all of the day's relevant questions in Quizzy's Corner. Furry once more asked if Lucky remembered, and he once more shook his head and said, "But I'm close."

Once more they walked home, and Sam went in first, and for a brief time Lucky and Furry talked with each other.

"Furry… If there were something very important to you personally, something that you had to do, but you would have to leave behind those you cared about – would that be worth it?"

"I… I can't imagine something that would mean I have to do that. There isn't anything that would require that, is there?"

"I can't either," Lucky mused. "And yet I feel as though it's an important question to me, one that perhaps I had to answer once. I can't remember why. But, well, I'm close."


This course of the day became routine. Lucky seemed just as engaged in the questions every day, even if he hadn't figured out what he was trying to recall, and he still felt he was close, every time. And he did seem to be getting closer – his questions at the end of each day seemed to focus ever more on some specific experiences beyond Webkinz World, buried just out of reach.

But on their eighth day together, Lucky informed them that he was down to only 5 hunger, with no food left, which would likely only last through the day. Still, he insisted on attending Quizzy's Corner, insisted that he was almost there, that he was close, and that he at least wanted to understand his mind before the hunger hit.

And so they spent their last hours, with Lucky staring intensely at the screen, Furry staring anxiously at Lucky, and Sam looking at neither with a deliberately jaded expression.

They finished with 2 hunger left, and walked back to the house, entering Lucky's room (Sam had recommended they travel there beforehand, since it would be difficult to move afterwards.) The motion itself had cost Lucky another point of hunger, and so now they were simply waiting for the last one to tick away.

"Please, Lucky, just take even a few of my Almonds! It's such a small part, it won't even matter!" Furry begged one last time, desperate now, but deep down expecting nothing to come of it.

Lucky laughed, a short exhale of air too quiet and forceless to be heard beyond where the other two were standing. "And then, when those run out, shall I take a few more? I won't start on that. If I can't support myself, I won't be a strain on others. Keep them." As an afterthought, he continued, "And, er, don't offer me any after… you know. I grant I may accept them then, but I ask that you at least respect my desire."

Reluctantly, painfully, Furry nodded. "O-okay. I won't."

"Well, you know, you could still end up like me after you go hungry. I mean, you won't, I've seen it dozens of times and no one ever does, but you could," Sam… comforted.

Again that small laugh. "Thank you. That's very encouraging."

A few minutes passed in silence.

"Furry," began Lucky, gazing upwards. "Why do you think we're here? What do you think is the point of it all?"

Furry was quiet for a few moments, thinking, and then could only answer, "I don't know. Isn't it enough just to be here?"

And then Lucky curled up into a ball, released a strangled whimper, and became permanently silent – his memory still close, but still just out of reach.


Sam decided, soon after, to take Furry on his "rounds", as he called them. As it turned out, this entailed traveling to 17 houses, mostly inhabited by one animal curled up on the ground, and doing what they could to comfort them.

Each time, Sam would rest his head on the other animal – the extent of what he could do as a google. Furry would place a paw on their back. Sam said empty, comforting phrases – "It's okay," or "Everything will be fine," – and the animals only let out pained sounds, no coherent words. It was the most jarring thing Furry had seen Sam do, knowing what he was normally like, but he couldn't object to it.

When they were done, and back in the park, the two of them sat in a grieving silence for a few moments.

"It's horrible," Furry said, tears finally beginning to flow.

"It is."

"We – We have to do something."

"Of course. But what exactly do you suggest?"

Furry came up empty-handed at first, and delved into thinking about the problem with renewed determination. He found no answers.

And then he thought of Angel. He thought of her denial, that oddly responsible, 'there's nothing I can do about it!'

"Angel was hiding something," he declared.

"Sure seemed like it."

"She knew something we don't – something important, that let her learn things she shouldn't have been able to."

"You're probably right. Well, you're friends in the phone, right? Wanna go interrogate her?"

Furry merely nodded.


Angel, too, was in the park – just in a different fold of the world than they were, a different instance. She was waiting for them by a table far from the gate, notified of their arrival by the phone. As they walked up to her, looking vaguely accusatory (well, more than vaguely in Sam's case), she simply looked back at them calmly, undeterred.

"Tell us what you know," Furry demanded, trying to be as imposing as he could – which wasn't terribly much, but perhaps more than he had expected. (The two of them had agreed it would have more effect if he, who was less likely to be angry at her, was the one to open questioning.)

"What do you mean?" she answered, her face giving nothing away.

"You knew about Rainbow, even though I had never fucking talked about her to anyone, and certainly not you. But, you know, that one I could perhaps buy. It's technically possible others could have known, that maybe she talked to another Lucid at some point, and you talked to them – I don't know how the hell it would happen, but it's possible. But," now Sam stepped closer to Angel, stared directly at her, "You knew that Furry had 'a large stockpile' of food, despite our claims that he had none, and there is no possible way to have learned that. So you've got some kind of ability to learn things you shouldn't know, and you've been using it to try and manipulate Furry here. Tell us. What the hell is going on?"

Angel began to look bemused, and shook her head. "Again, I've told you that you met Rainbow before me. As for Furry, I thought he didn't look like he was feeling hunger, and I guessed that if you had reason to hide that from me, he must have enough food –"

Suddenly, she cut off, and her eyes widened with no apparent cause. "Both?" she mumbled to herself. "What changed her mind? Well, I can't complain."

Returning her attention to Furry and Sam, who were now thoroughly bewildered, she began to speak authoritatively, almost an announcement.

"I have a message. The boss says the two of you should walk out into the green void around us, and it will not be endless this time. If you want to know what's going on, you will find out there."

And then, impossibly, she disappeared.