Disclaimer: Why are you reading this part? The story is down there!

Second Earth

Mark was worried. He had been waiting. Too long.

It was three months after Courtney's accident. She was still confined to her hospital bed, and while more responsive, still had lapses of unconsciousness, and could barely feel her legs.

In all that times, Mark recieved absolutely no contact from Bobby. His journals stopped at the point where he flumed to Quillan, the new mystery territory. In the time he was waiting, Mark not only became friends with Andy Mitchell, but had been working on a revolutionary new invention: Forge, a clay-like substance that could manipulated stimply by telling it the shape you wanted it to take. If Forge was patented, Mark and Andy could become millionaires. However, the creation was still in the alpha phase, and could only take simple forms, like a cube or ball.

Then, it all happened at once.

It was on a Saturday, December 14. Deciding that Courtney's hospital room needed some holiday cheer, Mark had gotten a ride from Andy to take a wreath to her room. After being checked several times to make sure he wasn't lugging in a decorative bomb, he was finally turning the corner into the hallway that would lead to Courtney's room.

Without warning, his ring began to twitch.

He barely felt it, but over a year of experience had helped him to recognize it.

Mark froze in his tracks. Not only had the time he was waiting for come, but he was surrounded by doctors, nurses, and a variety of patients with an even bigger variety of illnesses. He did the only thing possible.

He darted into a bathroom.

Just as the door shut, he ripped off the ring and tossed it on the ground. By a stroke of luck, the bathroom was made soundproof, as it is not pleasent to listen to the sound of someone with horrible diarreah.

The ring grew to the size of a frisbee, and Mark shielded his eyes as light burst forth from the new hole in the ground, accompanied by the sound of jumbled musical notes. When the cacaphony ended, the ring was sitting on the ground, perfectly normal, right next to the new journals, in a form stranger than even the hologram from Veelox.

It was a completely normal stack of paper, bounded together with modern staples.

For all Mark knew, the journals could have come from this very territory. Praying that Courtney was awake, he rushed from the restroom, the wreath forgotten on the ground.

He burst into Courtney's room, and lo and behold, she was awake, reading US Weekly. She looked up from her main source of celebrity news, and tossed the paper onto the bedside table, the pages opening to the latest weirdness on Tom Cruise and Scientology.

"Mark?" she asked. "What's the rush? I know it's close to Christmas, but you're kinda getting too far into the holiday spirit!"

Mark said nothing, and simply tossed the stack of papers on her lap. Her amused/confused expression evaporated into one of shock and knowing.

"The latest journals?" she said. Mark nodded. She gave the papers a strange look. "But it looks too...modern."

"I know," said her greasy-haired friend. "Lets look at these. Whatever's going on, considering recent events, this can't be a normal tale of adventure like the older ones."

Mark leaned over Courtney, and began to read.