WV mourned the loss of citizen Tab.
His caffeinated jittering must have agitated all the little bubbles curiously hidden in the liquid, creating too much pressure in the can. He speculated this was why it exploded as he nervously eyed the timer on the monitors.
4:03.
He was starting to wonder what would happen when it reached zero. Maybe it would be best not to be near it when this happened.
Minutes in the future, though perhaps not as few as implied by circumstance...a Peregrine Mendicant trundled precious cargo beneath the gleam of the celestially ominous.
She walked through the desert, her white carapace hands wrapped around the handle of a cart she was pushing which was full of old mailboxes. It was a day not unlike the ones preceding it.
But behind her, up in the sky, something was glistening in the sunlight.
Deciding he should step outside and get a little sun, WV said a bittersweet goodbye to his beloved city. It was time to move on to greener pastures. By which of course I mean an arid, sandy wasteland upon which nothing green had grown in years.
Almost as soon as WV had stepped through the door to the lab, it clanged shut behind him and a panel on the door became illuminated.
As he pondered over the marks on the panel, he heard another mechanical sound overhead.
The entrance to the outside had been blocked by a metal grate!
Looking at the LCD panel, it appeared to have a touch screen interface. It showed a large circle with three rectangles inside, each containing a different symbol and connected to a smaller circle in the middle. Within that circle was a little triangle pointing upwards to the rectangle containing the house logo.
Curious, WV prodded the funny-looking spirograph symbol. This caused all the rectangles to swivel around the small circle until the triangle enclosed in it was pointing to the rectangle containing the spirograph. However, the symbol flashed into a padlock and then everything returned to its original position.
It appeared the funny-looking spirograph room was locked!
Beneath WV, the floor had rotated a full 360 degrees while the surrounding wall seemed to stay put.
Next, he decided to try the room with the triangley fractal symbol. This one did not appear to be locked.
The floor spun 120 degrees and the door opened.
WV went through the door and found another room. It was the same size as the other one he had just wasted all that time in, while a clock was ticking down to something which may or may not have been his doom. Maybe there was something in here that would help him escape.
Against the wall there was another perplexing contraption, and it had a control panel which caught WV's eye.
It had two large screens, but only one seemed to be active, showing a large map of the globe. There were also fields for numbers underneath the monitors which appeared to be modifiable with the dials to the right. Some numbers were already supplied by default, perhaps entered by the previous user. Below that there were a few buttons, the largest one bearing the symbol marking this room.
Also, it looked like there was a meter stick propped up against the machine for some reason.
WV immediately attached his trusty knife to the meter stick, crafting a measuring spear through possibly the most advanced form of alchemy employed thusfar – tying it together with a scrap from his rags. This was obviously the most important thing to do first.
OBVIOUSLY.
Or it would obviously be the most important thing to do if he had remembered to bring his trusty knife. It was sadly still sitting in the pot back on City Hall.
WV felt so insecure without his trusty knife, it made him want to slit his wrists. Or at the very least, flog his carapace with some sort of measuring apparatus.
Across the room was another perplexing contraption which he went to examine. It had a large platform with the triangley symbol in it and a laser, or needle, or something pointing down above it. He of course had no idea what it could possibly do.
So he adopted the only obvious course of action which was to poke and prod it with his handy ruler. He was quite sure this was what science was all about.
He then went back to the control panel which probably obviously controlled that gizmo and he pushed the big blue button which was obviously probably the most obvious thing to push.
Then the word APPEARIFY showed up on the screen and over on the machine platform a pumpkin appearified.
WV wandered back to the contraption and examined this new pumpkin.
It seemed this mysterious gourd was transported (appearified!) from a specific time and location on this planet he was on. He wondered if the machine (APPEARIFIER!) would take any object that exists at whatever time and location he supplied.
There was also a symbol carved on the pumpkin which slightly resembled the head of dog. But WV didn't know what it meant, and he doubted it would ever prove to be relevant in any way.
He considered dining on the ripe flesh of the plump vegetable, but his curiosity about the Appearifier got the better of him. (Although he did try to sneak a nibble from the pumpkin stem, nonetheless.)
WV inspected the attractive green buttons on the machine. The icon for the one on the left was that house shape he'd seen plenty of times before. The right one on closer inspection appeared to be the map for this underground facility, with an X marking its center.
He pushed this button and all the numbers on the screen above changed. Perhaps these were the coordinates for the location of the center of this facility, along with the local date and time? If this was the case, it would make a useful reference point for his current bearings.
One way to find out would be to attempt to appearify something from this facility.
It should be easy to zero in on a location relative to the center because WV had an uncanny knack for tracking precise distances he had already traversed, in whatever units he chose.
His handy ruler gave him a good clue as to the basic unit of human measurement. He would go with that.
WV nudged the coordinates very slightly and bumped up the elevation by 0.5 Human Measurement Units. He made sure to keep the time approximately what it was to begin with. Then he appearified his trusty knife.
Next, he nudged the numbers a bit more and appearified a bunch of cans from Can Town. And it looked like the firefly had come along for the ride as well.
This was so much more efficient than walking back to the other room to get them. He believed that time was at a premium, after all.
WV wondered if he could deappearify the pumpkin, but it was an incredibly stupid notion. Did this machine look like a Deappearifier? Honestly, the idea that an Appearifier could both appearify and deappearify things was so laughably ridiculous, he wished someone would deappearify his brain and reappearify it with a brain that was more smart and less dumb.
Instead, he took the trusty knife and carved off the top of the gourd, exposing a decadent cache of gorgeous, seed-laden ambrosia. Needless to say, he consumed all of it rather quickly.
Then WV decided to try and appearify the firefly out of the amber. He entered the appropriate coordinates and pressed the button.
It had worked! The firefly flew over to him.
He wanted to give his blinky new friend a name, and he had one in mind that was suitably whimsical. She would be called Serenity, he decided. (He was assuming she was a girl firefly even though he was not really sure that fireflies could even be girls.)
WV and Serenity considered new ways to waste more time with the Appearifier. WV targeted the extremely tasty rotten pumpkin that had been sitting in the other room hours ago.
But it seemed the Appearifier could not appearify something if it would create a time paradox.
A gelatinous green ghost pumpkin appearified instead and quickly dissolved into a pile of unappetizing sludge.
As WV pondered over what to appearify next, Serenity blinked out a message of urgency.
".-.. . - ... -. -!"
WV had nearly forgotten that while trapped in amber she was witness to all his tomfoolery and dillydallying in the other room, and knew the timer was about to expire. It was time to get this show on the road and escape.
He reset the coordinates with the right green button again, and this time only adjusted the elevation by approximately 10 Human Measurement Units.
The grate that had been blocking entrance of the facility appearified on top of the green sludge.
WV prepared for his escape. He grabbed the hollowed out pumpkin and began throwing his cans into it, as Serenity flashed at him to "hurry up!"
An extra Tab can had fallen out of the can-stuffed pumpkin, so he threw it over to the Appearifier console. It landed on the right green button, changing the coordinates once again.
He then scurried around in front of the machine, picking up the pumpkin lid and attaching his trusty knife to the ruler as he had considered earlier.
Serenity flew around impatiently. "Is this really necessary?" She blinked.
WV was attempting to close the pumpkin with the top, but it was so full it kept popping off. Frustrated with it, he decided to just eat the lid and be done with it.
"This is incredibly silly!" Serenity flashed.
Finally, WV found a method of carrying his pumpkin full of cans that worked for him. He took one of the cables from his sash and tied it into holes he had cut into the pumpkin to act as a handle. Then he picked up a metal bar from the appearified grate and used it to carry the pumpkin.
At last, he and Serenity made their way back to the entrance of the facility and began climbing up the ladder.
They had made it about half way up when it suddenly looked as if the entrance was moving farther away from them. WV had lost his footing and fallen back down to the ground, and the pumpkin and all its contents were dumped unceremoniously on his head.
But it was not long until everything was back in order, and the two made it to the entrance.
WV poked his head out and looked around at the desert surroundings. A little ways away from them was a piece of a broken statue, a hand holding some sort of orb. Peculiar.
However, if WV had traveled farther, he would have seen that he was not actually in a desert at all. But rather in a massive crater which had filled with sand over time and was surrounded by a burnt forest.
Suddenly, the ground felt like it was shaking, and before they knew what was happening the entire cylindrical facility burst up and out into the sky. Beneath it all were rocket engines, powering its ascent. And on the side of the whole thing was the familiar green house logo.
WV and Serenity cautiously moved to the edge of the top surface where they were and looked around as they passed by the clouds.
Years in the past, but not many...on the westward side of the continent, a meteor was heading straight for a peaceful suburban neighborhood.
It crashed down right in the middle of all the homes and caused a great explosion, leaving behind only an enormous crater.
Over time, the landscape dried up and the climate became an arid one. The ground which had once been covered in grass turned to dirt, and then to sand. The crater filling with it over the years, until you could barely tell there had been a crater there at all.
And right in the center of it all, something was growing - a huge white tree. It sprouted leaves and then a single fruit.
But it was not actually a fruit in the literal sense. It was a metal facility shaped like a large sphere.
Eventually the leaves of the tree turned orange and died, the "fruit" falling into the sand below.
It was at around this point in time that a Peregrine Mendicant pushed her cart through the desert. The very same desert where these events had previously occurred.
Unbeknownst to her, in the sky behind her, something was shining as it reflected the sunlight.
It was a cylindrical ship, with a very confused carapacian and firefly aboard.
WV looked down as they flew by and saw the Mendicant standing beside her cart and the round facility. She stared up at him.
Years in the past, but not many...an ocean westward, a volcano rose above the rocky landscape ready to burst.
Far above it though, in the deep of outer space, a portal opened - a portal that sent a meteor straight for this volcano on earth down below.
When the meteor made impact, however, it did not hit the volcano but the ground right beside of it. As the volcano released its molten lava, it poured into the crater, hardening into a flat bottom after some time.
Eventually, a giant frog temple was resurrected in this spot. Or perhaps it grew up on its own.
As time went on, the rocky landscape and the crater slowly filled with water, until only a small portion of land containing the volcano and temple remained. The crater in which the frog temple resided became a lake in the center of this newly formed island, the now ruins rising above the surface of the water.
And on this island, the rocky land began to grow vegetation – grass and trees. It had become a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean with its own little jungle.
Rose LaLonde crept out of the mausoleum and trudged over to the generator, fighting back the rain and the flames. She shielded her vision with her hand, trying to see through it all.
In a last ditch effort to power her laptop she banged on the generator with all that she had in her, hoping she could jostle it back to life.
Behind her, the forest fire had reached the edge of the yard and a burning tree collapsed right by her. Rose leapt out of the way just in time.
Nearby, Mom watched her daughter struggling in the fire and rain from a window. Hoping to help her in whatever way she could, Mom pressed a button on the wall next to hear, which caused the platform Rose had been using for her laptop (and which had previously held the coffin of her dearly departed cat Jaspers) to drop down, revealing a ladder descending into the ground.
Elsewhere, on a faraway purple planet, two imps marched Dad down a corridor in hand cuffs. But Dad was not about to let himself be taken prisoner by these underlings so easily.
He broke out of the hand cuffs and wielded his deadly birthday cake in one hand and Barbasol shaving cream in the other.
The imps cowered in fear.
In the scorching afternoon heat, Dave Strider stood on the roof gripping his ninja sword in his left hand. Facing him was Bro and Lil' Cal, Bro wielding his own katana sword.
The reddish light from the sun and fire gleamed off of Bro's kamina sunglasses.
Still looking over the edge of the facility/ship, WV and Serenity watched as they soared over a dried out rocky terrain. Where could this ship possibly be taking them?
Then they saw something up ahead. Rising up out of the ground were the ruins of some sort of frog temple.
Inside the facility, the ship had run out of fuel and thus began its descent to the ground. WV watched nervously as they touched down nearby the ruins.
With a thud it made a rather smooth landing, and as soon as WV realized they had touched down, hopped off of it and stumbled around on the ground. Serenity followed close behind.
He approached the huge tower of the ruins and stared up at the crumbling frog that sat upon it.