Chapter 13: Time Travel City

Sleep, Dan, sleep. Ah, forget it.

I woke up at 1:00am, drenched in sweat from spaghettification nightmares, and quickly checked my arms and legs. I still had them, thank goodness.

At first, I thought the mission was absolutely ridiculous. I kept asking myself why I agreed to do it in the first place. Oh, right. Mother. I decided to go for a walk around the space center to help clear my mind. Heck, why not if I couldn't sleep? The first thing I did was grab the PPMC Gauntlet. I dug it out of my bag, which I had propped up against my bed, and put it on my left forearm. The gauntlet fit me perfectly. It was almost as if the space center made it for me.

My eyes landed on the three buttons under the screen, and I instantly started to panic. "Ah! How's this work?" I had no idea what I was doing. I randomly pressed the furthermost right button of the gauntlet. As soon as I did, it turned on. The letters P-P-M-C appeared on the screen, and then I heard a voice.

PPMC herself. "Welcome, Dan, star of the PPMC Project. Currently, you are in the Cenozoic Era, Quaternary Period, Holocene Epoch, 5022." The letters faded to reveal the geologic time scale. "The 5000s are known for their vast, high tech cities, robots, and androids. The dominant life forms are human beings."

I have to admit, that was pretty sick. It was not every day a seventeen-year-old kid made friends with a starship.

"Are you friendly?" I asked PPMC.

"I am known as the 'Mother of All Spaceships'. It is my sacred duty to protect you during your mission."

"And you believe you can travel through a black hole? I'm not buying it."

"You're quite impulsive, aren't you? Now I see why Professor Chenoa gave me to you."

"I am not impulsive, stupid starship! I don't even want to do this!"

"If that's the case, then why haven't you run away yet?"

"Ah, shut up!" Pressing the center button under the gauntlet's screen, it shut off. Gosh, I had a headache. Professor Chenoa never mentioned PPMC was so annoying. However, she did have a point. Why hadn't I run away?

Thanks, PPMC. I have an idea.

I kept the gauntlet on my forearm and picked up my bag. With it over my neck, I tiptoed to my door. I had to be careful about this. Dada was a light sleeper. Gently and carefully, I opened my door and stepped into the hotel's common room. I had just reached the exit when I heard Dada's door open.

Crap! I'm so bad at escaping!

Except, Dada was sleepwalking. He had a huge, stupid grin on his face, and he headed towards our miniature refrigerator, which was just outside the bathroom.

I hid behind the dining room table and followed his every move.

Dada did not wake up. He merely opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water. He then started back towards his room.

I thought I was out of danger, but then the PPMC Gauntlet almost ruined everything. A light at the head of it flashed red.

"Danger! Danger! Daddy's on the set!"

"Shut up!" I whispered.

Dada snorted.

I closed my eyes and waited for him to wake up. He didn't, though. He just slipped back into his room.

Oh gosh, that was too close.

Taking a deep breath, I stood up from behind the dining room table. I waited until Dada closed his door before I stepped into the hallway. It was long and dark. There were no windows, so that made it extra spooky. It looked like a normal hotel hallway, with doors lined up on each side. I held the PPMC Gauntlet up to my face and said, "You're going to ruin my whole escape plan if you don't shut that mechanical mouth of yours!"

"Really? Well, last I checked, Danny, you're the one who's yelling. Besides, if you're going to escape, don't you want your hoverscooter?"

Snap, PPMC had a point. I could not get far on my own two feet. I needed my hoverscooter, and PPMC most likely had it. Chenoa said that Julian had already packed all my luggage.

Okay, I had a great plan! I was going to get my hoverscooter and fly all the way to Alaska! Dada would never find me there. That would force the space center to track down another guinea pig for their project. Oh, I love it when a plan comes together. Don't you?

PPMC interrupted my thoughts. "If you wish for your hoverscooter, Dan the Man, then I suggest you go to the Simulation Room on the second story. It's only a few doors down from where you currently are. There is a teleportation cubicle in there, and it will teleport you to the first story. There's also something I want you to do."

"What?" I wanted to know.

"Can't tell you. Got to keep it a surprise. Think of this as a bonding thing. Okay, Danny?"

That was weird. A starship was hitting on me. Just thinking about it made me shiver, but I listened to her. I hiked down the hallway and kept an eye out for the Simulation Room. It was towards the end of the hallway and near the elevator. Pushing open the door, I peered inside.

Like the Gravity Room, there was almost nothing inside, except an oval-shaped, glass cubicle at the end of the room. It was also ten times the size of the Gravity Room.

"PPMC, what is this?" I asked.

"I told you, kid. If you want your hoverscooter, you need to take the teleportation cubicle."

The room looked rather suspicious. I had no idea that PPMC was testing me, and that the space center made the room especially for the star of the PPMC Project.

I took a deep breath. Something was waiting for me inside. I just knew it. Yet, I did it. I stepped into that room. The second I did, the door locked behind me.

Sudden, robotic hands shot out from each corner of the Simulation Room, and they dressed me in an oversized astronaut suit.

I felt like C-3PO in Star Wars. I could not walk. "PPMC, what have you done to me?" I asked.

PPMC did not say anything.

Another robotic voice answered my question, instead. It came from the ceiling. "We shall now begin the simulation. We have dubbed it 'Through the Wormhole'."

"Through the Wormhole?" I wondered.

I had no time to think before another simulation of space overtook the whole room. It was the Gravity Room at a whole different level.

The robotic voice walked me through my task. "You have become both Dan and PPMC for this simulation. Your goal is to travel through the wormhole without getting spaghettified. Your reward is your hoverscooter."

I did not like the sound of that. "What are you talking about?" I nervously asked.

Before I could say anymore, gravity lightened up under my feet, and I floated up into the space simulation. A holographic image of PPMC's control panel in her cockpit appeared in front of me. It had numerous buttons and switches, as well as an image of the geologic time scale. It literally felt like I was inside the starship herself.

Without warning, a powerful wave of gravity hit me. "What's going on?" I yelled inside my astronaut helmet. I looked over my shoulder, in the direction the gravity wave came from, and screamed. There it was! The black hole, or, a simulation of it. I had never seen a black hole as enormous and intimidating as it. It spun at a rapid pace, much like a hurricane in the ocean. The gravity pulled me towards its mouth, the gates to Hell, and my eyes caught a star approaching it from the side.

The black hole acted fast. With my own eyes, I witnessed spaghettification. The black hole ripped the star's light right from its body and swallowed it in one gulp. Omg! What was this? It was a suicide mission.

Yelling, I tried to swim away from the black hole. Freestyle! Breast stroke! What works best? Nothing.

The gravity continued to pull me.

"Help! I'm too young to die! Mother! Mother!" I sobbed.

Just when I thought all was lost, the PPMC Gauntlet booted up again. "Listen to me, Dan. The first you want to do is change my form," she explained.

I was overcomplicating things, but that was because I was terrified. "What are you talking about?" I asked.

"What is that game you used to play at home? Portals and Aliens?" PPMC wanted to know.

"What does that have to do with this? This is a suicide mission, PPMC!"

"Will you shut up and listen to me? If we're going to survive the black hole and wormhole, then we need to work together. Think of this like a round of Portals and Aliens. I'm the alien, and you have to push me into the portal."

I considered PPMC's words. She had a point. Do not think of the black hole as a black hole, but as a portal to another world. I thought back to when Molly and I played Portals and Aliens. It all made sense. She also knew I was the star of the PPMC Project and had to travel through a black hole. That's why she suggested for us to play Portals and Aliens, so I could get in some practice before the real thing. Molly, you were always the sneaky sort.

Mother visited me to also give me confidence.

I heard her in my head. "You can do this, Dan. It's just like Portals and Aliens."

Portals and Aliens. Now I knew what I needed to do.

Thank you, Mother. Thank you, PPMC.

I stopped flailing and let the gravity catch me, like how a surfer catches a wave. A serious look on my face, I floated over to PPMC's holographic cockpit, which was my controller. The space simulation was the virtual reality, and my astronaut helmet was the virtual reality hat. Lifting my gloved hand, I examined all the buttons and thought back to the game. In it, someone disarmed the alien and used his own weapon against him. One hit of the blast, and the alien would shrink down to the size it needed to be in order to pass through the portal, or in this case, the black hole. The attack button was always green. I found PPMC's green button right next to the geologic time scale and pressed it.

At my command, the rest of the hologram came to life. I floated in the cockpit of a holographic image of PPMC herself. Her walls started to close in on me. Now I understood what had to happen. PPMC technically had to turn into a spaghetti strand in order to pass through a black hole and wormhole. What use was spaghettification if something was already spaghettified? The walls kept on squeezing the ship, but they stopped when they reached PPMC's control panel.

"Well done, Dan!" PPMC yelled from my gauntlet. "Hold on tight!"

Boom!

She dropped us into the black hole. It was only the beginning of the simulation.

***

Darkness. There was total darkness. PPMC and I were in the black hole. We passed the first level of Portals and Aliens. How do I know that? Because green letters flashed in front of us that read Level complete. Please move on. The letters broke apart to reveal a tunnel in space–the wormhole. I kept my hands over the control panel's buttons and nodded to myself. The next step was get the alien through the portal. Just like the black hole, it was dark in the wormhole. I could barely see what was in front of me, but I did see that the wormhole continued on and on.

My gauntlet beeped, and PPMC said, "Press the Precambrian button."

Nodding, I peered down on the image of the geologic time scale. I pressed the Precambrian button. Right when I did, the image faded to reveal a single holographic button. The word Go was on top of it. I clicked that next. Within seconds, the holographic form of PPMC started to spin counterclockwise. Once again, the image of the geologic time scale appeared on the control panel's screen.

"Paleozoic Era! Mesozoic Era! Cenozoic Era! Go, Dan, go!" PPMC yelled at me.

Click, Go. Click, Go. Click, Go.

PPMC now spun clockwise. A clock-like hand, as well as a circular version of the geologic time scale, replaced the flat form. The wormhole spat us out into the white hole. One more time, I pressed the green button next to PPMC's control panel.

Whoosh! We were out. We got the alien through the portal.

"Welcome, Dan, to Time Travel City," PPMC told me.

The sight was breathtaking. We floated in a whole holographic image of a city. Guess what the main life forms were? Prehistoric animals!

Pterodactyls zoomed by PPMC and I. Down below, early horses and rhinoceroses galloped through the skyscrapers. Floating at the back of PPMC was Hylonomus (the first reptile) and Arthropleura (an eight-foot long millipede from the Carboniferous Period). Behind them were stromatolites covered in cyanobacteria. They were the dominant life forms of the Precambrian Time.

I had never been so amazed in my life. Reaching up, I tried to touch the soaring Pterodactyls. I laughed when a few of them danced around PPMC and I.

The conclusion I came to was that PPMC's time traveling was basically just a big city. The black hole and wormhole was the entrance, the time traveling was the city itself, and the white hole was the exit.

I was taken so aback that I forgot everything was just a simulation in the Simulation Room.

The voice from the ceiling spoke up. "Simulation ending. Enjoy your trip up the geologic time scale."

"Huh?" I asked. Without warning, the holographic image of PPMC and the city vanished. I barely caught a glimpse of a lone Quetzalcoatlus that stood out from the rest of the pterosaurs, before the simulation faded all together. That was most likely because the Quetzalcoatlus lived during the Cretaceous Period, while the Pterodactyl lived during the Jurassic.

I fell onto my front back in an empty Simulation Room.

A pair of feet stopped in front of me, and a familiar, female voice said, "Well done, Dan. You passed."

Professor Chenoa.