While the warehouse itself was mostly vacant save for a few large wheeled lorries and tool cabinets, our main point of interest was the lift positioned at the far end of the building.

Robert Bushnell, who was briefly mentioned to be Doctor Mofuni's lab assistant before entering the building, was a light-footed youngster who hurried me and Aaron along. His thoughts were overflowing, and nearly too many for me to decipher all at once, but all of them regarded me and all of my perceived abnormalities, and even whether or not I bit people when I was angry. It was so interesting to be equated with this elusive Earth creature as often as I was; it was almost tempting me to go out of my way just to find one of these Earth foxes so I could finally see what all the fuss was about.

"Yeah, so uh…the doc's just down the elevator," Rob said, pointing to the yellow lift as we approached it. "Don't worry if you smell anything pungent before going down; that means he's fried his sinus steamer again. That also might mean he's out cold on the floor from all the fumes; he'll wake up in the morning like nothing had ever happened."

I took a quick look at Rob, hoping that he was merely jesting, but the jadedness I saw in his earthy brown eyes proved he wasn't joking. "Oh…I see," I said, watching him casually step onto the metal platform with a yellow and black striped frame fixed around it. I took a concealed whiff before joining our young friend on the lift and thankfully smelled nothing foul.

"Shucks, Rob, please don't tell me he's portioning his dosages," Aaron pleaded with concern, his weight causing a noticeable dip in the lift's stability as he stepped aboard.

"'Fraid so, Mister Beuford," Rob said glumly. "That's why I'm kind of worried if this is the right time. His mood swings have been getting worse; I don't know how he'll behave when we bring her."

Leaning on the railing, Rob then pulled the lever on the console and the whole lift shook to life before shakily descending into the floor. "What's the matter with Doctor Mofuni? Is he ill?" I asked the young man.

"In the head?" Rob amended. "Yeah, a little bit. The old science lab place he used to work for before the Combine took over the world was a pretty sketchy one at best. They'd apparently do experiments on their own employees when they ran out of test subjects."

That was quite the ethical nightmare to mention so casually, and it did little to bolster my confidence in the individual that I was told would help me find my way home. "What employer would do that to their staff?" I wondered, appalled by the possibility.

"The name slips my mind," Rob shrugged. "He's not completely bananas, though; he's mostly the right kind of insane. He's built a whole bunch of things that's kept the Combine out of our business."

"What kind of things?"

"He'll be more than happy to run off a list of all the good he's done. It's useful in covering up for his other dwindling faculties. If you know what I mean."

Unfortunately, I knew exactly what Rob meant after I indirectly picked up a few of his thoughts. I wasn't sure how well I would have been able to handle the sight of a dozen or so jars of emiction in the corner of his lab. I prayed that Doctor Mofuni had spent some time outside today before our arrival.

Not but a moment later, the scrolling walls that flanked us on all sides finally ended once we reached the basement―about five stories below the surface―and what awaited my eyes was roughly what I was expecting from a mentally compromised mad scientist (though Krazoa be praised I couldn't see any filled jars anywhere). The whole room was filled with workbenches and opened tool cabinets that were cluttered with all kinds of miscellaneous junk, everything from half-assembled machines to lumpy clay sculptures that attempted to resemble human faces, though the heat lamps that many were positioned under made them look saggy.

There were a few robotic contraptions on the tables lining the walls, appearing to be performing some kind of function as sparks flared from the objects they held in their pincers―perhaps welding? What little space was there on the walls was plastered with maps, documents, and even a growing mountain of what looked like multi-coloured sticky notes layering on top of each other, jotted with words so close together they made the notes look grey. Oddly enough, however, the floor was clean and devoid of any stray clutter that would have fallen off any of the tables. It even looked like it had been freshly polished a few hours prior.

While I had yet to have spotted the good doctor during our slow descent, I could sense thought patterns down here belonging to a single entity, and they were the cerebral equivalent of white noise, which was something I was not accustomed to encountering. Before I could begin to wonder whether my telepathy was somehow misfiring, the lift touched down, and a spry little 'ding' went off before the gate opened up, leading Rob to step off with his hands in his vest pockets.

"Yo, Doc! You asleep? You got visitors," Rob called out, looking around as he began to search the room for his mentor. Aaron gave me a wary look before stepping off the platform to join Rob in his search, making the whole thing rise an inch now that his weight was lifted in turn.

I followed my friends and took a cautious perusal of the basement. While Rob and Aaron were looking under the cluttered workbenches for any trace of Doctor Mofuni, I relied on my telepathy to locate the hidden scoundrel, which in no time at all led me to a metal door on one end of the room. There was a sign stamped on the door's metal surface in that uncanny Earth lettering. I hadn't yet learned this alien alphabet, but later on, I eventually would, and the bold text on the door plainly read THINK TANK.

"Robert?" I called from across the room, making Aaron and the human in question turn quickly like he had been caught stealing something, though that was attributed to his lack of adjustment to my presence. "I believe your doctor is in here."

Rob noticed what I was standing next to, and his shoulders sagged so far, I swear they looked like they just slid out of his sockets. "Yeah, that's where he'd be hiding…" He then started trudging over in my direction as Aaron set down an assembly of loose metal parts that he was looking at.

I made room for Rob as he walked up to the door. He gripped the metal handle and sighed through his nostrils before glancing at me. "Mind the bouncing guy in the beanbag cocoon."

Leaving me no time to ponder on such a strange warning, Rob then twisted the handle and opened the door towards him, and a long green mass promptly slid out, aptly bouncing a couple of times before rolling to a stop by my feet. Amongst the flurry of questions that raced to escape my mouth first, my eyes quickly identified a clear zipper and seam along the side of what must have been a protective body case of some kind. My only question then was whether or not the vapid thought patterns I was sensing were coming from a possible dying body inside.

Unlike me at the moment, struggling to reach an appropriate reaction to this find, Aaron actually laughed at the sight. "Blimey; he's actually started committing to that ritual? I thought the man was only pulling my leg before I left for the outlands."

"Yeah, he's committed all right, for about a whole month now…" Rob said tiredly, kneeling and rolling the padded chrysalis towards him so the zipper faced upright. "I don't know who he talked into stuffing him in that closet this time, but I'm gonna have to put a sign outside the garage now. I don't think this actually scares away the demons like he thinks it does."

Aaron's smile steadily waned after hearing that.

Without hesitation, Rob pinched the zipper and tore it in the other direction, revealing an unconscious human man wearing a long white coat with his arms crossed over his chest. His hair was white and plumy, and was one of the first things to burst out of the pod once there was an opening. His skin was a pale olive and had saggy cheeks and wrinkled hands, indicating him to be middle-aged if not older.

I am inherently sensitive to things that most others aren't, so I ended up being much more fixated on the white noise in the man's head than I was on his features. It was like a televisional monitor; it was on, yet there was no signal. It truly was like he was both awake and asleep at the same time. I had never really encountered something like this before.

However, Rob was not keen on this telepathic discovery and began to liberally shake the doctor by the shoulder. "Doctor Mofuni, wake up please," Rob insisted, his face appearing more fed up than how he conducted himself. "Your brainstorming's done; you've got company."

Then, like a switch had flipped on in his brain, Doctor Mofuni's thoughts flashed into focus as his eyes shot wide open, revealing a bold earthy brown. His awaken startled his testy lab assistant, making him flinch back a bit as Doctor Mofuni's slowly opened in the sleepiest wail of discontent I might have heard. "Aaaaahhhhh… Son of a solar sausage in a flask of xylidine…"

I watched in bemused curiosity as Doctor Mofuni began to rub his eyes moments before he noticed his lab assistant looming over him, and his sleepy expression turned to disappointment. "Oh, Mister Bushnell, what did I tell you about waking me from my dream study? I'm trying to keep the walls from closing in…" he said, slurring his words slightly like he was hungover.

"Doc, you've got visitors," Rob informed, less than amused by the one he was speaking to. "You can't keep stuffing yourself in a closet. A little sunshine always does a world of―"

Doctor Mofuni interrupted his assistant by slapping him across the face, which would have been much more shocking to witness if his movements were not so slow and resulted in nothing more than a harmless light tap across Rob's cheek. But I sensed that the deliberation was there, and that quite disturbed me. "Sssshush, boy, shush. Your scarcely post-pubescent voice is not a pleasant one to hear sometimes, you know? Until I can get my hands on my happy amenities, I stay a snug bug 'till further notice. You hear me? You better hear me."

"Doc, quit embarrassing yourself," Rob pleaded, but Doctor Mofuni put a flaccid finger to his assistant's lips.

"Know how you can mmmmake yourself useful…?" Doctor Mofuni asked, his narrow eyes focusing poorly on his assistant. "Go pour me some Postum and go outside and roll a hoop with a stick or whatever you kids do these days. MMMajor Mofuni needs some renewal time and you don't gotta be around to see that. Do it or I'll reduce your salary."

"You don't pay me, and money's not a thing anymore."

"It'll be reduced anyway," Mofuni said stubbornly, laying his head back down in his cosy pod whilst pointing his finger behind his head. "Now pour, por favor…"

Rob made a disgruntled groan and rolled his eyes as he stood up, "Anything you say doc…"

I was able to tell that Rob was more frustrated by Mofuni's apparent condition than he was by how he was being treated. Memories were not accessible to me, but it was evident that this dynamic had more layers to it than it seemed on the surface. While Rob went off to the other end of the room, presumably at the station where the doctor's beverage was normally prepared, Aaron and I exchanged a mutual look of dubiety. It was hard to believe that this inebriated recluse possessed the knowledge required to help me get back to the Lylat System.

Assuming Rob in his place of assistance at the side of the doctor, Aaron shifted his broad shoulders and lumbered towards the delirious individual, who was rubbing his head to relieve tension in his head. "Come on, Doc, you know better than to treat a good lad like Robby like that," he encouraged, gently putting a big hand on the doctor's arm.

Mofuni drowsily looked in Aaron's direction and began to smile once he saw him. "Aaaahh… Mister Aaron Beuford," he beamed, laughing in delight before it turned into a brief cough. "It's wonderful to see my star breakthrough again―and working at optimal performance no less. Looking and talking just as well as the day I fixed ya…"

While Aaron maintained a friendly complexion, the discomfort shown in his eyes was overwhelmingly abundant. What about Aaron did he 'fix'? Clearly what had been uttered was a slip of the tongue on Mofuni's part; and as sore as a topic this seemed to be, Aaron possessed the strength to quickly move passed it.

"Doc, I'd like you to meet Krystal," Aaron said, eagerly changing subjects as he directed Mofuni's attention to me. Mofuni cocked his head and laid bleary eyes on my boots before slowly ascending his gaze up my body before locking with my eyes―as good as a half-conscious and arguably inebriated fellow could.

He looked at me for a long time, squinting his eyes as he tried to process what exactly he was looking at. I awaited his inevitable reaction of awe and bewilderment, but surprisingly, he gave me the tamest acknowledgement I had yet to receive from anyone since being marooned on this planet. "Huh…" he soon said, his thoughts full of mental fog. "You sure are…blue. You must be sad, 'cause only sssad people can be blue. And meanies. Only Meanies can be blue too. It's the way God intended, I guess…"

I didn't quite know how to reply to that, so I merely gave a simple head nod as I put my hands behind my back, doing a poorer job at keeping a straight face than Aaron. "Say, Doc," Aaron interrupted in a kind move to rescue me from this awkward interaction, "why don't we help you up and get you some of that Postum? A think little jolt of caffeine will do you, and us, a world of good."