Stranded in the void. No apparent means of escape. Although free from my cell, I still remained trapped, unable to go where I wished. At least the ball of entropy had released me.

I climbed back to the place with the radio, inspecting the wires, the battery. The bear still hovered in midair above my shoulder, allowing me sight.

I dug through the box of paperwork.

A lot of documents from a place called `The Foundation,' and `Oldest House,' apparently where I'd been imprisoned all this time. Documents about "Altered items." Several memos from Director Zachariah Trench (the name seemed familiar, but I'd never met him) and Casper Darling. Files about the accursed clothes drier I'd been sucked into, and the white void I currently inhabited.

Rumor had it that some otherworldly entity chose certain individuals, bringing them to the place for weapons and martial arts training. They fought golden men, endured long and difficult military training courses. After being exposed to the strange environment, the chosen ones could fly, use telekinetic powers to create ledges, deadly traps, and destroy their enemies with debris. Weapons became enhanced enough to shatter crystal formations several meters thick.

A red journal lay among the papers, likely from the skeleton. Although the entries began in an orderly scientific fashion, describing the swirling "Hiss Object" I'd just tangled with, he slowly devolved into lunatic ranting in a near illegible scrawl. On one page he gave a laser measurement of the Object, but followed it up with something about how cloud cover blocks the transmission of prayers to God, so he always prays with a piece of metal clutched in his hands, to boost reception through the ionosphere. Something about how the void is the cloud cover.

Near the end of the journal, the man drew a little diagram of the battery attached to the radio. Although most of the unreadable scribbling didn't make sense, the part I could read mentioned something very interesting:

"I am weak from starvation. My blood burns within me like sulfuric acid. If I had the strength to remove the battery cover, I could bleed into the reservoir and send my immortal spirit through the aether with my last dying breath. The golden men are..."

The rest looked like a bunch of squiggles, mostly about how a giant cartoon rabbit kept stealing his thoughts and putting them in canisters "Like they have at a bank drive-through," which in turn got fed to a large gray octopus monster in the bottom of the void. Oh, and "Zachariah Trench must die." He really liked writing that a lot.

Actually, the acid blood is mainly what caught my attention. That and the diagram.

Why did I want to get the radio working? What would I do with it? What purpose would it really serve? Perhaps, in the back of my mind, I had gone as insane as the dead researcher, believing I could transmit myself somewhere.

I had, in fact, traveled through a magic phone of some sort, and this SatPhone looked a lot like that machine.

I opened the top of the battery, drooling into the reservoir.

Boom! Crack! Pow!

I flinched, thinking it to be the battery, but when I glanced around, I noticed the swirling `Hiss Sphere' had exploded some more, the object shrinking to the point where I could barely see it from my location.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Parts of the marble block I stood on chipped and fell away. Not the sphere.

I whirled around and saw the soldier man aiming his assault rifle at me. His next shot hit me in the leg.

I swore under my breath, realizing I had few options but to stand and let him shoot at me.

Well, except...

I leaned over the opposite side of the cube. I did see a small ledge. I took the battery with me and slipped down there to continue my work.

The nice thing about having an exoskeleton is that it takes a lot to kill me, or even cripple me, so I didn't limp.

Bang! Pow!

That sounded like the Hiss Sphere again. I thought it odd that the powerful force that pulled everything in here would fail to eject everything out in the event of its demise, but I focused on filling the battery. My bleeding leg added some extra sizzle to the fluid supply, hopefully enough to get the radio going. How I would use it without getting shot to pieces, I didn't know, he still seemed to have a lot of ammunition on his person.

It took awhile, but I got the battery filled up, without being shot at once. I would have brought the radio and associated equipment down with me, for safety, but the marble stoop barely provided enough space to stand upon.

I rushed the battery up top, then dropped back down to contemplate my next move.

I could move a couple rocks, but unfortunately the marble block didn't offer enough to make it worthwhile.

In theory, a gun has a finite supply of bullets. If I could just get the man to use them all up...

...But how? If I danced back and forth, eventually I'd tire out, or his aim would improve and I'd be dead.

Dead...

I hopped up on the block, rushed to the tent, grabbed the labcoated skeleton. Parts fell off, but oh well.

True to form, the man shot at me, but I kept moving until I returned to the stoop.

More explosions. It seemed the Hiss Object had vanished entirely. When I peeked over the top, I couldn't see anything in the location where it had once been. Probably would have been handy in getting rid of the soldier.

No matter.

I pulled the old cowboy trick of sticking an object out from behind a barricade. Cowboys use a hat on a rifle, but I hoped a person shaped object would work better. Lucky for me, sinew and stuff kept most of the structure intact beneath the labcoat.

It took a lot of effort to keep the man firing at it, but a little skeleton boogie-woogie got his interest. I know because he blasted the skull, lab coat and rib cage to pieces, to the point where I basically held a white rag on a couple bones.

So much for that.

I jumped up again, grabbing the tent and some bones that had fallen off. A couple shots struck me in the arm and shoulder plate.

I made a fairly decent target with the materials, but the soldier didn't want to shoot at it. I returned to the top of the block.

It seemed the skeleton had done its job. The man didn't shoot this time, but I noticed him jamming a fresh clip into his weapon. I had to act fast.

On an episode of Hannigan, I watched a character stick the wrong clamps on the wrong parts of a battery. It exploded. They wasted a lot of screen time explaining how a battery worked, and the reasons behind the explosion, like they were on a children's television program instead of a cop show with murders in it. Perhaps the supernatural force behind the `Altered Item' had sent me a message: "Plus to plus, minus to minus. Never cross the polarity."

Of course, they were jumping a car, and the black cable was supposed to touch metal on the inactive vehicle or something, but they mentioned how the wires inside each car connected "Plus to plus, minus to minus," and they pointed to the symbols, like the viewer was an idiot child.

Thanks, Hannigan! I found the appropriate plugs, and lights blinked on, flashing from the radio and computer.

A bullet tore through the blinking computer tower, shorting it out. No big loss, considering how I didn't have a screen. The radio, though...

I returned to the stoop.

Thinking the man hadn't shot at the tent because of the empty ammo clip, I tried waving the tent around like a flag again.

He ignored the target. It seemed he'd become wise to my game.

How wise, though?

The man's sleeping bag and some empty water bottles later, I had a rough sculpture of my own head. Unlike my earlier creation, this did prove a tempting target. He blasted it to shreds.

I returned to the surface, searching for whatever I could scrounge up to make into a target.

I frowned at the box of paperwork, the trash, the empty storage container.

When the man fired at me again, I picked up the hard drive and used it as a shield, stacked it on the metal storage container. It sort of worked, but both got punctured easily.

I scowled at the SatPhone. I'd need a phone number, wouldn't I?

I supposed I hadn't needed one before...

I picked up the handset, listened for a moment. I thought I heard slight murmuring, but I'd been hearing the sound ever since I arrived in the void.

Nothing happened...well, except getting hit with debris from a bullet striking a computer tower.

I recalled seeing phone numbers on the bottom of paperwork in the box. Although most the numbers didn't seem very helpful to me (The Director whom Dead Scientist wanted to murder, for example, probably wouldn't lift a finger), I thought I'd at least enjoy hearing Casper Darling's voice again, so I dialed the number next to his name.

I saw a flash, and my pulse shifted to match the dialing phone again, my mind...thinking phone thoughts as my body turned into glowing light.

When I regained consciousness, I discovered that I had moved, curled on the ground in the center of a set of parabolic reflectors, marked with the phrase `Control Point.'

Still inside the void, but this area appeared to be on a larger set of blocks, and not as close to the soldier. Up ahead, a massive black pyramid floated upside down in the air.

"This creature displays remarkable intelligence." The voice echoed through the void, gurgling and muffled.

A second gurgling voice said, "The Director has been doing what it can, but it has not the time to fix root causes. We will use this one to restore Oldest House."

Third voice: "...Director...will create...difficulties."

"Hiss has existed, regardless of Polaris. It must be stopped. Polaris does not matter."

"Polaris has ties with Hiss...This...why Director cannot destroy it."

"Excuse me?" I called. "Where am I? What are you talking about? Why am I here?"

A telephone rang nearby. All the voices told me to answer it.

I wandered around in bewilderment, following the sound.

I discovered a red phone handset dangling in midair from a cord miles long. Above it, the black pyramid loomed.

I grabbed the receiver. "Hello?"

"Return to Oldest House and await instructions," gurgled a voice on the other end.

I transformed into light once more. Telephone thoughts, telephone pulse instead of a heartbeat.

Quite unexpectedly, I got thrown into a mod leather chair, which, in turn, crashed against an acrylic thermoplastic wall.

The bear continued to float in the air beside me, as it had in the void, so I could see. I shakily got to my feet.

I stood within a giant clear box within...darkness...Above a bottomless pit. A desk beside me held a lamp, notepad, and a red Bakelite rotary telephone. Two bridges connected to the ballistic glass cube, a long one leading to a room containing machines with flashing lights, and a shorter one which stopped at a simple wooden door.

I crept across the short one, constantly checking over my shoulder for soldiers.

I approached the door, pushing the button on the brass handle.

The moment it creaked open, a gun barrel got shoved in my face.

A freckly red haired woman with a big chin, clad in a leather jacket and jeans.

The hammer clicked back on her weapon. "How in the fuck did you find this office?"