After confirming his worst fear that the vortex had actually transported him elsewhere, Billy asked the cab driver to take him to the nearest library.

"Barney Stinson," he said quietly to himself as his fingers typed the name furiously into the search engine. The search turned up quite a few hundred hits, most of which linked to business webpages that belonged to a company called UltraCell. After a few hours of meticulous investigation, Billy had procured records of Barney Stinson's living arrangements since the age of eighteen, the address of his last known location, the address of the UltraCell business building nearest to the apartment, and the most important piece of the puzzle: a criminal record which contained mug shots of the man himself.

"I knew it," Billy said under his breath. He searched his pockets frantically for his cell phone; then he remembered that he had taken it out of his pockets for when he stepped into the machine. Fortunate to have some change left over from his cab ride, Billy left the library for the nearest payphone. He dialed the only number he knew by heart.

"Moist," he said when he got the voicemail, "you're probably not picking up because I'm calling from an unregistered number. Listen, I may have done something... kind of bad. I don't have my cell on me, so you can't call me back, but I'm going to call you tomorrow. When you see a 212 number, please pick up. It's important."

He hung up the phone. It was late, and he had forty-two dollars in his pocket. After wandering around for almost two hours, he found a hostel that was cheap enough, but it terrified him to stay there. Still, it was either that or sleep out on a bench in Central –

He laughed. He laughed not his up-and-coming evil trademark laugh, but a short, mellow, self-pitying laugh. He was homeless. After all that teasing he did of Penny's efforts to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and after all that claim that it was a worthless cause, here he was, lost somewhere in New York, with no place to stay. He would give anything to be with her right now, to be one of her homeless, under her care, her caring hands...

He bumped the back of his ear with his shoulder and braced himself for whatever terrors he might find inside the New York Loft Hostel.

---

"So I can't stay very long," Barney said to a blonde girl at the bar. He had been laying down groundwork all night to lead up to this very mysterious conversation, and she was rapt with fascination. "I've got to get home to work on this... project."

The blonde perked up. "Ooh, tell me, tell me!"

Barney looked up at her, twirling his glass in the air before him. He dropped his jaw slightly as though he were about to tell her. "Nah, I shouldn't," he said after a moment. "It's top secret."

"Ooh, I won't tell anyone, I promise," she whispered, bouncing a bit in her seat. Barney noticed. He smiled.

"All right," he said leaning in. "You see, Melanie, I'm something of a clandestine evil scientist," he said enigmatically. "I'm working on this thing called a Genetic Vortex. It's very complicated. Lots of math, lots of science, you know."

"Wow," she breathed. "Can I see?"

Barney paused again for the dramatic element. "Why not?" he said, and her eyes lit up. "My laboratory isn't far from here," he said, making sure to pronounce it le-boor-a-tory. "But I must say, there is a no-touching-the-equipment rule. Well, when it comes to my lab equipment," he winked. Her face flushed, and she clung to his elbow all the way out of the bar.

When they got back to the house, the sweaty-looking kid he'd dubbed "Moist" was not there. Melanie was giving herself a tour of the place, admiring the test tubes with mysterious simmering liquids, the whiteboard with complicated math equations augmented by amateur diagrams and illustrations, the crank that lowered a wheel of peculiar gadgets over what looked like an operating table, the large silver ray-gun that resembled a satellite dish, various pairs of white gloves and bronze safety goggles, and asking Barney all along what each of them were. Being just as foreign to this place as she, Barney simply made up facts and descriptions off the top of his head, inspired by the wild imagination of the kid on the acid trip. As long as he spoke with an impressive confidence, she gobbled up every word.

"I knew magic existed," she said dreamily, reaching out and almost touching the ray-gun but thinking better of it a second later.

"It's not magic," Barney said, a little insulted that she would confuse the two. "It's science."

"I love it," she whispered, flopping down into an abnormally large armchair.

"Would you like some frozen yogurt?" Barney offered as he headed for the fridge. "I've got plenty."

"Sure," she said, massaging the arm of the chair admiringly. "Wow. So how long have you been doing this?"

"Since my dad died six years ago," Barney said, handing her a frozen yogurt and joining her on the large chair. "He ran the family business, and I wasn't supposed to take over for much longer." He paused and looked up thoughtfully. "I always wanted to be an architect."

"Oh, that's so hot," Melanie said as Barney spooned a small helping of frozen yogurt into his mouth.

"I know," Barney whispered confidently. "Anyway, like I said, I was still learning all the secrets when..." his voice started to crack, "Dad was trying out his new death ray and it backfired." He sobbed dramatically, waving his frozen yogurt. "I'm sorry."

"That's so sad," Melanie said. "You poor thing, come here..."

The frozen yogurts lay forgotten and melting on the otherwise pristine hardwood floors.

---

Billy lay flat on his back, staring at the water damage stain on the ceiling and trying to ignore the sound of four other residents snoring and two having... well, relations.

"See, later on," a voice in Billy's head was echoing, "I'm gonna take little Penny back to my place. Show her the command center...hammer cycle..."

Billy flipped over onto his stomach, driving his head into the caseless pillow. It smelled like old cigars and the body odor of a failing geriatric. He needed to come up with a better idea for lodgings, but it was so hard to concentrate when his every thought was interrupted by the infuriating voi–

"See, Penny's giving it up, she's giving it up hard..."

He punched the mattress, and his bunkmate below grumbled cursewords in Sweedish. During the course of the night, five other guests stumbled into the room at various hours from various wild nights. Billy finally fell asleep before dawn broke, but only after an idea curled his lips.