Author's Note: Thank you to *Andrea, who told me how to end this story.  You rock!  The book they mention at the end is 'The Big Orange Splot' by Daniel Pinkwater.  And in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, the idea of combining time travel and babies was very definitely inspired by robling_t's Torchwood fics, and the idea of a 24-hour drop-in center for kids is one I originally saw in miriel's SGA 'Ripples' universe.

Chapter 1: In which Harold wonders why he never wins at bingo.

"Bingo!"

Harold looked up from his cards to see who'd spoken.  He didn't recognize the voice, but that wasn't unusual for the house's bingo nights.  (It was more like a bingo afternoon, really -- some of their more senior guests didn't like to drive after dark -- but everyone agreed that "bingo night" sounded better.)  Depending on who it was, the game might or might not be over.  If it was someone who actually understood the rules, they were set.  Harold checked his watch -- in record time, even.  But the game was open to everyone, which meant they occasionally got some of the younger kids (or more recent arrivals) who were a little vague on the details of when you were supposed to mark the board and when you were supposed to yell bingo.

"Well, do we have a winner or not?"  Harold rolled his eyes.  Some people took their bingo way too seriously.  He debated turning around to give the heckler a stern look, but he was pretty close to the front of the room.  Turning around would be really obvious, and he didn't want Toby to feel like Harold didn't have complete confidence in his abilities as a bingo caller.  Because he did -- the whole point of Harold's being there was to show how confident he was.  Usually Harold could get out of the weekly bingo games, but this one was Toby's first time as caller, and he'd seemed a little nervous.  Harold figured the karma points for moral support probably made up for the lost time.

"We have a winner!" Toby called from the side of the room.  Everyone clapped, and Harold breathed a sigh of relief.  With a confirmed blackout bingo victory, the afternoon was officially over, and he could go get a snack.  It wasn't that he didn't like bingo -- okay, it was that he didn't like bingo.  He just didn't like to say that, because then the pirate captain would find out somehow, and give him a lecture on the game's "rich history" in space pirate culture.  He'd thought that since he and Al were honorary space pirate captains themselves, they might've gotten a little more leeway on the whole issue, but no -- apparently it only increased the importance of "honoring the traditional ways."  In other words, no playing more than four cards at a time, no checking your phone during the game, and no snacks.  Plus, he never seemed to win anything good, but he thought that might be more of a personal luck issue than an honoring tradition issue.

A kid who looked vaguely familiar followed Toby back to the front table to collect her prize.  It looked like a plate of cookies, and Harold's mouth watered.  He wondered if Al had gotten back in time to do any baking.  The girl looked a little warily at the plate, then back at Toby.  "Thank you?" she said, hesitantly.  

Toby gave her a thumbs up and shook her hand.  "You're welcome," he said.  "Congratulations!"  She smiled, looking relieved, and hurried back to her seat.  

When the bingo idea was first floated -- was it only three moths ago? -- the idea had been to play for money.  That got into a tricky and confusing area of gambling law, though.  Charlotte had tried to explain it three times before she finally just said, "Why not just play like they do in space?"

It was a breakthrough, and not just because it meant that his sister (probably) didn't think he was a crazy person any more for hanging around with aliens and basically running a hostel/waystation/daycare center out of his and Al's house.  The "potluck bingo" plan was a huge success (or at least, Harold liked it, and Al liked it, and Cate and Toby were willing to add it to the list of things they organized, and he figured they were really the ones who counted).  Anyone who wanted to play brought something to put in the pot, and whoever was calling the game decided how the prizes got distributed.  

It started with just the usual house guests and traffic.  Harold wasn't really sure how word had spread to the surrounding neighborhood, but they showed up too.  Al said it "helped maintain a presence in the community."  Harold said it gave everyone something to do on Saturday afternoons, and just asked Charlotte to show up once in a while.  So far nothing had gotten out of hand, but it never hurt to have a police officer around.  

He made for the exit as soon as he could politely extricate himself from a conversation with an elderly couple.  They'd been asking if the "rumors about Harold, and that nice boy Al" were true.  He was almost 100% sure they didn't realize he was the Harold they'd been asking about (and he wasn't sure why Al got to be the nice one).  "I'm not sure," he'd told them.  After all, honesty was usually less complicated than lying.  And really, who knew what the rumor mill was saying these days?

Chapter 2: In which Al is late, starting a trend 

There were no cookies in the kitchen when Harold arrived.  There was also no Al -- he came bursting up the basement stairs just as Harold opened the refrigerator.  There were probably still some of of the kids' healthy snacks left in there; they were usually the last to go.  "Harold!" Al said.  Harold froze.  "Sorry I'm late.  Sabri says she's sorry too."

"Is everything okay?"  In the years since he'd met Al, Harold had helped evacuate a planet, been investigated by the FBI, and had his house blown up by aliens.  Anytime Al looked flustered, Harold liked to find out right away whether it was a "we're out of milk" situation or a "don't touch anything in the refrigerator; I think there might be a bomb" situation.  

Al nodded.  He didn't mention anything about the refrigerator, so Harold figured he was safe to keep looking.  "I think they're going to approve her project," Al added.

"Really?  That's great!"  Al had spent the day back on his own planet, helping Sabri plan for a school project.  Her class was doing some sort of summer assignment that sounded like an online role-playing game to Harold, but that Al assured him built leadership and decision-making skills.  They were also supposed to be inventing something -- no guidelines, just "invent something."  Harold wasn't quite sure how that tied into the first assignment, but it had been a long time since he'd been in middle school.  All the kids had to get approval for their planned invention before the official end of term.  Sabri and Al had practically been attached at the hip for the last few weeks, since Sabri wanted to use the doorway in her invention, and Al wanted to make sure she didn't accidentally get them all killed.

"They're all coming for dinner," Al said.  They looked around the kitchen.  "I'm thinking pizza."

"Pizza sounds good," Harold said.  Cate had been away for a week while her family was visiting, and everyone had struggled to keep up in her absence.  They'd had the usual traffic through the doorway from Al's people, plus a surprising number of overnight guests from the school in Alabama.  Both of his sisters were somehow involved with that; he thought the Chandraskars were thinking about starting some kind of satellite school in the area.  Add to that the weekly bingo game and the everyday demands of the house's cat population, and there hadn't been a lot of time for grocery shopping.  Or cleaning, but it wasn't like a bunch of 12-year-olds were going to care about dust bunnies, and everyone else was probably too polite to say anything.

"We'll have to go get it, though."  Their new house was outside the delivery radius of their favorite restaurant.  It was the downside of living farther from town -- the upside being that they had a lot more space for people to run around without attracting curious neighbors.  "Do you know how many are here for the meal other than the kids?"

Al shrugged.  "No, but I'll just squawk everyone."  

"I love this feature."  Harold grabbed a piece of scrap paper and searched for a pen.  There never seemed to be any where he remembered leaving them.  Did they move on their own?  He imagined a huge colony of pens, hiding from him somewhere in the house.  Possibly laughing at him, he decided, settling for a crayon.  "Okay, I'm ready."

Al dialed a number on his phone.  Harold's beacon let out a noise that really could only be called a squawk.  Toby and Cate had voted for a pterodactyl scream, but Harold had vetoed it.  Al had upgraded the beacons considerably since their first incarnation, but he said he couldn't do anything about the fact that Harold kept ending up in the grocery store when they went off.  One of the improvements he had managed was to give them limited walkie-talkie capability.

Al spoke into his phone, and Harold heard it in stereo -- from Al and from his own beacon.  "Pizza for the evening meal, around 6:30.  Five minutes to call in."  

Everyone who checked in at the house got a beacon.  (And a lanyard.  Harold was particularly proud of the lanyards; they said "NIMBY Center" in English, as well as a variety of non-Earth languages.  He'd had to order a thousand, though, to get the rainbow color assortment, so they had cartons of them stacked in the basement.)  The beacons were mainly to call for help -- you could twist it to activate it and it would set off the beacons of whoever was in charge of safety that week.  Anyone who had the right number could also "squawk"  the beacons -- sort of a heads up to anyone wearing one.  They mostly used it to pass on meal time announcements, but everyone agreed it had a lot of potential.

Harold's phone rang at the same time as Al's, and they spent the next five minutes taking down pizza requests.  The girl from the bingo game walked into the kitchen near the end, along with Toby and an older woman.  Now that Harold was looking for it, he could see they were all wearing NIMBY lanyards.  That would explain her confusion about the game, he thought.  She was probably from off-planet.  "Hey boss, you want us to make a run into town for the pizzas?"  Toby grabbed an apple from the bowl on the counter, ignoring Harold's glare at the word "boss."  Cate had started it, but Toby was embracing it wholeheartedly.  Harold and Al were hoping if they ignored it, maybe it would go away.

"Sure, that would be great," Harold said. "Zahar's coming with the rest of the class, so I put down an extra buffalo chicken for you guys."  

"Thanks boss!"  Toby tossed the apple from hand to hand and headed for the garage.  Harold sighed.  

Chapter 3: In which a large number of pizzas are consumed by a large number of people.

The pizza was delicious.  Everything else was chaos.  Harold had long since given up on keeping an accurate headcount of the number of people in the house at any particular moment, but it seemed like a lot.  He worked his way through the crowd in the kitchen, intent on refreshing his plate.  In situations like this, the key was to keep your eye on the goal.  For instance, when someone called out, "Harold -- are the rumors true?" he paused, but didn't let his gaze stray from the stack of pizza boxes.  

"I'm not sure," he said.  "You know rumors."  He made a vague handwaving gesture, meant to indicate the inexplicable nature of the rumor mill.  He could see the box he wanted, and it only had one slice left.  He made an effort to be a responsible adult -- taking a quick look around to see if there were any hungry-eyed children looking longingly at the same slice.  No waifs in sight, so he snatched it up.  Success!

"So it could be true?" someone asked -- it looked like the bingo girl's mom.  

"Well, what are they saying?"  Now that his food was secure, Harold was feeling more relaxed.  Plus, it was never a bad idea to pause when you had a chance to do it right next to the food.  He leaned back against the counter. 

"I heard you were adopting a baby," the woman said.  Harold was suddenly very glad he wasn't holding a drink.  As it was, he nearly dropped his pizza.  

"What?  That's not what I heard!"  Someone else spoke up in protest.  Thank goodness, Harold thought.  Too soon, it turned out, since they added, "I heard you were adopting twins!  And that one of them is a dragon!"

Harold frowned, and shook his head.  He was pretty sure he wasn't the one who was wrong about what "twins" meant.  He opened his mouth to explain when the bingo girl piped up with, "I heard you can fly!"

It brought the room to silence astonishingly fast.  On the plus side, at least he had everyone's attention.  Harold held up a hand.  "Okay, no," he said.  "I definitely cannot fly."  He looked at the bingo girl.  "And yes, I would know.  As for the rest -- as far as I know, Al and I have no plans to adopt any number of children or dragons.  If that changes, you'll probably know before I do.  So... keep me informed."  Everyone was still looking at him -- this was where he always had trouble, with the disengage.  "That's all," he said.  "Thank you."  And he hurried back to the living room before anyone could ask anything else.

Usually, they tried to keep meals to the kitchen, but sometimes it just wasn't big enough to hold everyone, and they overflowed into the rest of the house.  All the kids were in the living room -- Sabri, PJ, Nadeka, Zahar, Lishendri, Meshkalla, and Damaris -- along with Al and the guards.  Harold was never sure whether the guards came along because they actually thought the kids might be in danger on Earth, or if it was just a relaxing break from their actual jobs.  They looked pretty mellow, lounging on opposite sides of the room, but looks could be deceiving.

The kids were taking up most of the center of the room, so Harold picked his way around the outside to where Al was sitting.  "Hey, I just heard there's a rumor that we're adopting a kid, or maybe more than one."  He waited a beat.  "Or maybe a dragon; it was a little confusing."

He expected Al to laugh it off, but he just looked worried.  "I'm a little worried," Al said.  "Sometimes these rumors seem to know more about our lives than we do."  

"Come on, Al.  You guys would know if you had a kid stashed around here, right?"  Rose's expression said, "Don't be ridiculous, of course you would!"  Rose was one of the guards.  She was a practical and highly capable individual -- Harold was positive if she had a baby, she'd know about it.  He wasn't so sure about himself and Al.  It had taken him ten minutes that morning to find his toothbrush.  

"I don't know," said Harold.  "I mean, at the reunion..." He trailed off.  He wasn't sure what had happened, exactly, except that there had definitely been a small child involved, and he and Al had appeared to be the default parental units for said child.  

Back in January, he and Al had attended Harold's 11th high school reunion.  (Yes, 11 was an odd year to celebrate -- it was a long story.)  Somehow, time travel had gotten involved, and a dragon showed up, along with various relatives, acquaintances, children, and aliens.  (Some of whom were there twice, in older and younger versions.)  No one had specifically identified themselves as a future family member, but Harold figured anything was possible.  It was pretty hard to build a worldview that could encompass "there was a dragon at my high school reunion" that didn't also have room for "I accidentally adopted a baby with  my alien husband."

"Yes, but Sabri's not old enough yet," Al insisted.  "We should still have years before she's as old as she would have been when she was watching Harry for us."  

Harold tried to get that sentence to make sense in his head, and failed utterly.  "But -- time travel," he said, still wanting to contribute something to the conversation.  He didn't understand time travel, but he was absolutely willing to toss it into the debate.  It was like a super wild card in Uno; time travel trumped everything.

Al nodded like he'd said something important, which actually made Harold a little nervous.  "Exactly.  Maybe we should keep an eye out for a few days."

Rose looked like she thought they were crazy.  (Harold couldn't decide if that was more or less reassuring than Al's expression.)  The kids were busy talking, planning for the simulation/video game/educational opportunity they were doing for school.  He hadn't thought they were paying attention, but he should have known better.  Sabri was Al's daughter (or niece, depending on which planet's terminology you were using -- Al's planet tended to have a more "flexible" definition of family).  She, along with the rest of the kids, turned out to be eager to put in their two cents.

"I think it would be great," PJ said.  

"Me too," said Sabri.  "I've always wanted to have a younger brother!"

Nadeka and Lishendri were twins -- they exchanged a look and Lishendri said, "We think you'd be good parents."

There were nods all around the room, and Harold wondered when, exactly, the conversation had shifted from a discussion of crazy rumors to a forum on his parenting abilities.  He looked at Al.  Al looked back.  "Right," said Harold, in his best "we're moving on" voice.  "Why don't you all explain this game thing to me. How is it connected to your inventions?"

Chapter 5: In which Harold does not go to the grocery store.

Harold had always thought that Sunday was a great day to do grocery shopping.  Especially when you could give your list to someone else, and hang out in the basement with Al and the cats.  He slouched lower in his chair and scritched Bob behind the ears.  Really, it was almost like being outside -- they had artificial turf on the floor, blue sky and clouds painted on the ceiling, HEPA filter circulating the air...  Just like outdoors, except without bugs, sunburns, or allergy attacks.  

And, of course, the interplanetary doorway humming in the far corner.  Sundays were usually a quiet day for traffic; Al liked to spend the day tinkering.  Whether that was the cause of the low volume, or simply a natural consequence, was still up for debate.  There were a few die-hards from the school in Alabama who came up every Sunday for some kind of running club.  (They didn't need to use the doorway, but Harold and Al's basement was listed as a "safe arrival and departure point" for a lot of groups.)  Anyway, they always looked alarmed when they saw Al sitting on the floor surrounded by bits and pieces, so it was possible they'd spread the word.

Al's current project was setting up the doorway so it could run off its own independent power supply.  It was designed to be connected to the standard utility grids on either end, but Al wanted it isolated before Sabri started, in his words, "messing around with it."  They'd run a doorway off generators once before, but it was a temporary solution at best.  Harold never wanted to have to explain to another trash pickup guy why he wanted to throw out five generators all at once.  He'd had to pay extra, and all the trash guys thought he was weird after that.

Harold's musings were interrupted by someone appearing in the middle of their office area.  "Mail call!  Whoa, what are you doing?"

"Hi Pete," Harold said.  Al just waved distractedly from his pile of tech.  There were a lot of blinking components; Harold always thought those ones looked particularly alarming.  "Al's taking the doorway apart," he said.  

"Is that... safe?"  Pete looked like he wasn't quite sure what he would do if Harold said no.  On Earth, Pete was an FBI agent.  He'd been assigned to a team investigating Harold and Al.  (Really, it was just a training exercise -- Rob, who was the head of the team, had already investigated them the year before, and had turned out to be very understanding about the whole buying hundreds of cell phones, almost getting arrested, and transporting a space ship across state lines thing.  Eventually.  Well, actually, he still didn't know about the space ship thing, but Harold was sure that if he ever found out, he'd still be understanding, although maybe a little upset he hadn't gotten to see the ship.)  

Pete was also the son of a space pirate.  Which made Harold realize that he and Al seemed to run into a lot of misunderstandings, because they'd first met Pete's father when he kidnapped Al off a space bus.  It had all worked out in the end, of course, and now Harold and Al's basement acted as a mail drop for any pirates in the area.  Harold wasn't sure how Pete had gotten roped into being the mailman (could he still use that word? maybe 'mail delivery person' was better) but it was always nice to be able to catch up.  He'd gotten used to the FBI hanging around over the winter, and he'd kind of missed them once they were gone.  

Pete's hand was reaching for his emergency beacon (they'd given one to all of "their" agents as a going away present) when Harold realized he was still waiting for an answer.  "Oh," he said.  He assumed it was safe, but he didn't really know what Al was doing.  "Al?"

"I'm not really taking it apart," Al said reassuringly.  "Just adjusting it.  Like tuning a piano."  Harold raised an eyebrow at that, but Pete seemed happy.  

"Okay," said Pete.  "Listen, I heard you guys had a new arrival -- congratulations!"  

"What?  We don't have a -- wait, is this the baby rumor again?"  Harold sighed.  "There is no baby.  Believe me, we'd know if there was.  Besides, aren't there enough children in this house already?"  Bob dug in his claws as Harold gestured dramatically.  Harold patted him soothingly.  "Don't worry; I wasn't talking about you, Bob."

Pete looked confused.  "Huh," he said.  "It's just, they seemed really sure...  Well, I guess you'd know."  His expression said he wasn't entirely sure that Harold would know if he'd suddenly acquired an infant, but it would be rude to say that out loud.  Harold nodded firmly.  "Anyway, I got you this," Pete said, handing over a brightly wrapped package.  "Why don't you keep it, just in case."  Then he looked at his watch and winced.  "Shoot, I'm running late.  I'll see you guys later!"  He disappeared, leaving Harold gingerly holding the present.

"What do you think it is?" Al asked.  He'd been conspicuously silent through most of the awkward conversation with Pete.

"Well, I'm certainly not opening it," Harold replied.  He gave the box a little shake, and set it off to the side.  "Also, what was that -- 'like tuning a piano'?"  

"It was the first thing that came to mind!"

Harold eyed the assortment of -- whatever it was that Al was disassembling.  "If you're not taking the doorway apart, what are you doing?"  

""I'm switching it over to solar power," Al said proudly.  Then he frowned.  "It's a little more complicated than I'd expected."

"Did you know that more sun falls on the surface of Earth in a day than we would need to power every electrical device in the world for a year?" Harold asked.  "I heard that on the radio the other day while I was driving.  I don't know what you did to the radio in the Armada, but I still can't figure out how to change the station."

"Hey, that one wasn't me," Al told him.  "Toby's been trying to fix it after one of the kids zapped it by accident."  Everyone from Al's planet had a sort of technology-oriented aura, which tended to negatively impact anything they came into contact with if they weren't paying attention, or if they were too young to control it.  Some of them -- like Al -- could go the other way too, and fix things, but apparently that was much less common.

There was a companionable silence for about a minute -- long enough for Bob to work up a rumbling purr, but not long enough for Harold to start thinking about what they would need to clean/put away/throw out before Cate got home.  And then there was a sound like static electricity, and a familiar figure appeared in the basement, where he immediately tripped over a pile of books.

"Harry?"  Harold and Al exchanged startled looks.  "What are you doing here?"

Harry looked surprised by the question.  "I'm here to help," he said.  His hair was still spiky; he looked about the same age as he'd been at the reunion.  This time travel stuff was way too confusing.  Harold was ready to sit everyone down and get it explained to him, in small words, so he'd understand once and for all whether or not it was dangerous to go back in time and accidentally step on an ant, but Al broke in with a more topical question. 

"Help with what?" Al asked.  

Harry looked around.  Then he tilted his head to the side, like he was listening.  Then he looked back at Al.  "With the baby?  You told me he -- wait, what day is it?"

"It's Sunday," Harold told him.  

"We're still in 2009," Al added helpfully.  "We just met you, back in January."

"Is this June?" Harry asked.  They nodded.  Harry pulled what looked like a phone out his jacket pocket.  "And there's no baby here?"  The nods switched to head shakes.  "He's late," Harry said.

"Is that bad?" Al asked.  He looked fascinated by the whole situation.  Bob just looked bored.

"I don't know.  I'm going to go find out."  Harry disappeared again, with more static electricity sound effects.  Bob jumped out of Harold's lap and walked over to where Harry had been standing.  He sneezed twice, then lay down and curled up, apparently going back to sleep.

"Well," said Harold.  "That was weird.  Even for us."

Chapter 6: In which Harold and Al get up early for school, and wonder how they get into these things.

The alarm went off way too early on Monday morning.  "What time is it?" Harold mumbled into his pillow.  It was really just to check if Al was awake -- if Al sounded more alert than Harold felt, maybe Al could turn off the alarm, and Harold could go back to sleep.  If he sounded less alert, it might even be possible to convince him that it was his turn, which would also mean Harold could go back to sleep.  

"The same as always," Al said.  "It's your turn."

Harold sighed.  That was true; it was his turn.  "How do we get into these things?" he asked.  Al didn't answer, employing the tried and true technique of pretending to be asleep  until it became reality.  Harold switched off the alarm and scrubbed his hands over his face.  At least there was only one more week -- then they'd have a whole different set of issues to deal with, but Harold was hoping they could institute some sort of "no crises before 8 am" rule for the summer.

By the time Harold got downstairs, Toby was already there, staring at the coffee machine.  "I don't think that makes it go any faster," Harold said. He wondered if he had time to eat anything.  

"I'm not so sure; haven't you heard about 'The Secret'?"  Toby didn't look up, but he did wave in Harold's direction.  "Technically, you should be able to create your own reality to the extent that you would be able to bend the fabric of time itself and make the coffee machine work more quickly.  Or possibly will the coffee into existence already brewed."

It was early, but Harold was pretty sure there was something wrong with that concept.  "If you could do that, why wouldn't you just make it so you didn't need coffee?" he asked.  "You know, adjust your cosmic energy levels or something."

Toby finally looked at him.  "Yeah, but you'd still want coffee."  Harold couldn't argue with that.  Partly because it was true, and partly because he could hear kids coming up the basement stairs.  They burst into the hallway and made a beeline for the kitchen.

"Harold!  Toby!"

"We're going to the pool today!"

"I want to go to the pool too!  Why do we have to go to the planetarium?"

"Are you coming with us?"

There were six of them that day, so Harold quickly directed each kid to a chair at the big kitchen table.  They were all from the school in Alabama, doing a month-long student exchange program with a local Montessori school.  Except that the Montessori students were actually living in Alabama, and the Alabama kids were "commuting" every day to Harold and Al's house.  There was a bus, thankfully, to get them to the school, but it came early and Harold liked to make sure no one got left behind.  Instantaneous transportation devices were all well and good, but not helpful when you couldn't actually use them without attracting a lot of unwanted attention.

Harold told all the kids he was sure they'd have a wonderful time wherever they went, and that he and Toby weren't coming because they had to get ready for Cate's welcome back party.   Then Toby clapped his hands together and said, "Okay, backpack check time!"  The kids put their bags on the table.  Toby's job was to make sure they all had water, and something to eat during the day.  Harold's job was to check if they were carrying anything that would look suspicious to a regular Earth citizen.  The first week he'd collected a lot of contraband, but the kids had figured it out pretty quickly, and Harold had time to pour the coffee before the next group arrived.

They almost always heard Kim before they saw her, accompanied by one of her parents and chattering away at a mile a minute.  To be honest, Harold had no idea why Kim kept showing up every morning.  Her parents didn't seem to know either, although Betty said she just liked Earth, and liked Harold and Al, and everyone was willing to indulge her until she got bored of it.

Right behind Kim was Zahar.  He didn't come up from the basement, though -- anyone from Al's planet would've had to use the doorway, which would have required Al to operate the controls.  Instead, Zahar came wandering down from the upstairs guest room, followed by Damaris and the rest of the class (they'd stayed overnight).  Zahar was not a morning person.  The only reason he managed to get downstairs first was because he'd followed Toby's example of just putting on a sweatshirt over his pajamas.  Of course, Harold had used the same technique, but he wasn't actually going anywhere except the end of the driveway.  Zahar was headed to the local university (where he would probably blend right in) -- the whole class was doing training course in being a camp counselor, so they could "work" at Harold and Al's house over the summer.

"Is this everyone?" Harold asked Toby over the noise.  It was a larger group than usual, and he wasn't quite up to trying to count everyone.

Toby looked around.  "I think so.  I'll send any stragglers out after you."  He handed Harold his mug and a Power Bar.  Actually -- Harold looked at the package more carefully.  

"What is this?" he asked.  

Toby shrugged.  "I don't know, I think they must be Cate's.  It's organic."  Harold eyed the bar with suspicion.  Cate was always trying to get them to eat healthy stuff, which usually ended up sitting in the cupboards pushed to the back while they all ate the unhealthy (but delicious) stuff first.  If they were really down to eating Cate's bars...

"We need to do more grocery shopping," he said.  "And make sure we get more of these for Cate, so she doesn't think we ate all her stuff while she was gone."

"Sure thing, boss!"  Harold rolled his eyes, but let it pass.  It wasn't worth arguing about before 7:00 in the morning.  Instead, he clutched his mug a little tighter to his chest and led the group towards the door.  Getting to the bus stop was always a kind of "hurry up and wait" situation.  They had to get out there early enough so they wouldn't miss anything if anyone's transportation was running ahead of schedule, but it usually turned out to be the other way around -- running behind schedule.  At least it wasn't freezing outside anymore.

It had been on one of those freezing cold days back in March that he'd accidentally volunteered their driveway to be the neighborhood bus stop for all the kids in the local school system.  Harold still insisted it wasn't his fault -- he'd been wearing his warmest hat, and a hood on top of it, and he hadn't really been able to hear everything the kid had been saying to him.  It was something about waiting for the bus, so Harold had just waved him over to the rest of the group.  Sure, he'd been a little surprised, but it had been Cate's week to keep track of everyone's schedules, so he didn't think much of it.  Except it turned out that the boy wasn't one of theirs at all -- he'd moved in down the street, and his parents hadn't been sure of the bus schedule, so they'd just told him to go find some other kids to stand with.  

It hadn't been a great day.  The kid wound up at the wrong school, and then his parents had accused Harold of attempted kidnapping (which was clearly not true, but when he'd explained that he didn't even know who the boy was, the parents had tried to change the charge to child endangerment).  Charlotte had gotten involved in all her "officer of the law" glory, and somehow the solution had been turning his driveway into the official bus stop for the street.  

Harold called a good morning to the Laytons as they dropped off their two youngest.  They'd been asking if NIMBY was running a daycare program for the summer, and he and Al had been putting off answering.  It was pretty obvious if you spent any amount of time in the house that people were leaving and arriving in... non-standard ways.  And they'd never had any restrictions on what guests could talk about in terms of planet-specific conversations -- there'd been a brief (very brief; less than 12 hours, and most of those had been spent sleeping) period when they'd tried to keep things quiet around the FBI officers, but it had failed spectacularly with the revelation that Pete was, in fact, not from Earth at all.  On the other hand, it would seem pretty weird to have lots of people running around the house all summer if none of them were local.  They were supposed to be having a house meeting about it after Cate got back, and he knew Sabri was planning something, so Harold was letting it go for the moment.  

Helen and Isaac took up their usual spots sitting on his feet, to finish their juice boxes.  Harold was impressed that their parents had managed any kind of breakfast; he and Toby had declared the last week of school a free choice breakfast zone -- if you wanted to eat, you could have anything you wanted, but you had to get it yourself.  There had definitely been cookies at the breakfast table that morning.

The rest of the school-age crew showed up one after another.  First the boy who'd started it all (Harold could never remember his name, and was afraid to ask), then the girl from across the street, and another set of siblings who'd apparently decided to show up on time for the first time since he'd met them.  And then two familiar faces -- familiar, but completely unexpected.  He drank some more coffee, just in case he'd fallen asleep without noticing.

"Tifa?" he asked, when the coffee didn't change anything.  "Xikade?"  

They looked as surprised as he felt.  "Mr. Gabe!" Tifa exclaimed.  "We didn't know we were waiting at your driveway!"  There was a split second pause before she said "driveway," and Harold wondered how long the family had been on  Earth.  The last time he'd seen them, Tifa and Xikade (along with their parents) had been living on a space station.  As far as he knew, Tifa had never been on a planet before -- and there were no driveways in space.  It seemed unlikely that they'd showed up so close to him by complete coincidence, but anything was possible, and he certainly hadn't heard anything on the phone tree about new arrivals.  

"We just got here last night," Xikade said, gripping his sister's hand.  "Our ride was late, but we're supposed to do an orientation day at school, and Mom said we couldn't skip it."  Then he added, "And it's just Zeke here."

"Right," Harold said.  "And you can call me Harold.  Um... welcome."  There was a shriek of laughter as some of the kids started an impromptu game of tag.  "It's good to see you again," he continued, since they were both still looking at him expectantly.  A thought occurred to him.  "Do you know what bus you're supposed to get on?"

Tifa nodded excitedly, which seemed to be her default setting.  "The yellow one!"  Harold managed to stop himself from saying "right" again.  He didn't even sigh, which he thought was pretty impressive.  

"You're both going on the same bus," he explained.  "I'll let you know when it gets here.  Tifa, you should get off at the same time these two do."  He pointed at the kids still sitting on his feet.  "Xikade -- Zeke -- you should get off at the next school, at the same time that boy gets off."  He made sure Xikade knew who he was talking about, and felt bad he didn't know the kid's name.  He must have known it at some point, right?  

"Do you have a way to call home if you have any problems?"  Harold didn't want to imply a lack of confidence in their abilities, but Xikade looked pretty nervous.  Both kids shook their heads.  "Okay, hang on."  Harold looked around.  "Zahar!" he called.  

Zahar hurried over -- his expression said he was hoping Harold didn't know what he'd just been doing, and Harold decided not to ask.  Instead, he said, "Can you go back to the house and ask Toby for two emergency beacons for these two?  This is Tifa, and this is Zeke -- did you meet them before?"  

Apparently, the answer was yes, because Zahar said, "I thought you were getting here last week!"  Why did everyone else always seem to know more about what was going on than he did?  

Between the explanations of how the beacons worked, and making sure all the Alabama kids got on the Montessori bus, the time passed quickly.  Unfortunately, Tina was early to pick up Sabri and the rest of her class for the first day of their camp counselor training.  Harold had bet she'd be late, which meant he was going to have to do the grocery run for the day.  On the plus side, even thought the "yellow bus" was late, they managed to get everyone on board without any last minute "I forgot my lunch" / "I can't find my homework" / "I have to go to the bathroom" issues.  When it finally pulled away, Harold was left holding two juice boxes, a crumpled up napkin, and -- bizarrely -- a mitten.  How did he get into these things?

Chapter 7:  In which Harold gets tired of having the same conversation over and over again.

He was getting tired of telling people he didn't have a baby.  And really, it was looking more and more likely that a baby would, at some point, appear, and wouldn't that be awkward?  He'd have to explain that before they really didn't have a baby, but now they did, and he just knew it would get weird, and somehow he'd end up looking like a crazy person.  As it was, people kept asking questions he didn't know the answer to -- how much does he weigh?  Does he have hair?  How were he and Al holding up?  Oddly, no one asked who the baby's parents were.  Harold thought it would be even more awkward if he asked, but it was reaching a point where he was really curious about the content of the "rumor."

There were also the gifts to consider.  He'd been to the grocery store and the gas station, talked with seven people he (mostly) recognized, and by the time he got home -- seven gifts.  He would have said it was just that baby things were fun to buy, but three of the gifts were diapers, and there couldn't possibly be anything fun about buying diapers.

"Al?" he called, stepping carefully around the pile of presents.  It was possible there were more than seven.  Instead of Al, Cate came around the corner from the utility room.  She holding a towel (grown-up sized, which was actually very reassuring).

"Harold!" she said.  "What's going on?  My parents wanted to know if they should get you a christening gift!"

"A what?" he asked.  

"I had to Google it," she said.  "It's a naming ceremony, usually, but not always, associated with a religious affiliation of some kind."

"Really?" Harold said.  "I thought christening was just something you did with ships, by breaking a bottle of wine across the bow."  Al walked down the stairs, looking at his phone.  "Al, have people asked you about christening?"

"Not yet -- why, do we have to do a christening for the baby?"  Al eyed the stack of presents warily.  "Are all those for us?"

"For Harry, yeah.  I don't know about christening, though; maybe we could just ask him when he shows up again?"

Cate looked back and forth between them.  "Whoa, hold on," she said.  "Let's back up here: is there, or is there not, a baby?"

Harold shrugged.  "There's not."

"But we think there will be," Al added helpfully.  "Probably a lot sooner than we thought there might be one before."

"And everyone knew about it before us," Harold said.

Al nodded.  "Except you, I guess."

Cate stared at them.  "So...  There's no baby, but we're expecting one to arrive at any minute, and people keep giving you presents?  I can never go on vacation again.  Where is this baby even coming from?"

"That's a good question," Al said.  "We're not really sure.  Maybe we can ask Harry when he gets back."

Cate held up a hand.  "Wait, I thought Harry was the baby."  

"He is," said Harold.  "But older Harry's back too -- the one we met at the reunion?  He was here the other day; I guess he's here to babysit, or something.  He said baby Harry was supposed to be here already, and left again."

There was a knock on the door.  Harold was closest, so he opened it.  There was a man standing there.  He was holding a gift bag.  Harold opened the door wider, in case Al or Cate recognized the guy, and could help him out by verbally identifying him in some subtle way.  "Hi," Al said.  Well, that wasn't exactly what Harold had been hoping for.

"Uh, hi," the man said.  "Congratulations.  I live across the street?  My daughter waits for the bus here.  We heard you had a new baby, and we -- my wife, actually -- she got you this."  He handed over the bag.  

"Oh, thank you," Harold said.  "That's so nice of you."  His brain finally caught up with his mouth.  "Hey," he added, trying to work up a "good neighbors help each other out" smile.  "I hate to ask this of you, but we're new to this whole baby thing, and everyone's a little off their usual routine right now.  People have been so generous, and believe me, we want to make sure we thank you all.  I don't have to tell you; you're a parent -- it's never too early to set a good example for the little ones, you know?"  

The man looked a little confused, which was understandable, since Harold was just saying whatever words popped into his head, and not really filtering them.  He handed over a piece of paper and a pencil.  "Could you put down your name and address so we could put it with the gift?  It would be a big help when we write the thank-you notes."

The man just seemed happy Harold wasn't asking him to do anything harder.  "Sure," he said.  "No problem."  He scribbled out the information.  "And seriously, about the thank-you notes -- we managed to put them off for six months.  Biggest lesson we learned -- if you include a baby picture and a story about bath time, all is forgiven."

They shook hands, and Harold carefully put the piece of paper with his address into the gift bag.  "Wow," Cate said, after the man left.  "I'm impressed."  Al laughed.

"What?" Harold said.  "Six months from now, there's no way we're going to remember who that gift bag came from, and it'll be my mom who gets on us about the thank-you notes.  Why not save time and take care of it now?"  

"I think it's a great idea," Al said.  "It's very efficient -- would it be wrong to just write the notes now, even before there's actually a baby?"

It was a hard question.  They were all silent for a minute.  Then Cate said, "Technically, there is a baby.  He's just not here yet."

They started writing as soon as they got everything unwrapped.

Chapter 8: In which there is a house meeting about summer camp.

"We need to talk about this."

Harold was worried. There were just so many places Cate might be going from that sentence -- the baby, the rumors, the fact that no one had done any laundry for the last week (give or take a few days).

"Uh, about what?" Toby asked. He'd clearly learned the same lesson as Harold about just picking a topic -- there was always a chance that the thing you thought was the problem wasn't actually the problem at all, and there was no sense borrowing trouble.

Harold gave him a discrete thumbs up when Cate looked up at the ceiling, possibly asking for patience. Al took the pause to spoon more pasta onto his plate. Really, Harold thought Cate should be impressed; they were eating real food! Sure, it had come from a box, but they'd used pans and the stove and everything to prepare it; it had to count.

"About the summer camp," Cate said.

Oh. That hadn't even been on his list of things to worry about. "Sure," Harold said. "I think the kids are organizing it; isn't that why they're going to that class at the university?"

Al and Toby nodded, but Cate rolled her eyes. "You really want to let a group of 12-year-olds 'organize' something like this? I think we should probably set some ground rules. I worked at a camp when I was a kid, and I saw a lot of campers come through the aquarium when I worked there, and believe me, not all camps are created equal."

The house had done pretty well through the school year with just one rule: "Own your choices." Harold thought it was a great rule, and encompassed all the other nit-picky things they wanted to express -- don't tease the cats, don't leave the planet without permission, don't go anywhere without an emergency beacon, call for help if you need it, clean up your own messes. It was true, however, that they'd had the advantage of having most of their younger guests be in school, with plenty of homework to take up their time, along with plenty of time they were required to be somewhere else (he assumed it was in class, but with aliens, who knew?).

Al, who was consistently the most practical of the four of them, at least for most things, said, "Well, what do we have so far? Have we actually agreed to anything yet?"

"I haven't," Toby said, and Harold shook his head.

"Me either," said Cate.

"So right now we have a name, and six capable kids willing to take on the responsibility of running a summer camp." For emphasis, Al waved a piece of paper. Even without looking closely, Harold knew it must be the note they'd received from the future; older Harry had sent it after their adventures at the reunion to let them know he'd made it home safely.

The note was written on letterhead, with the name "NIMBY Center" on the top, and their address at the bottom. Harold thought it was a great name, even though apparently the "Not In My Backyard" phrasing didn't translate correctly into most alien languages. Cate had put it in the house's answering machine message, but since they all used their cell phones for most things, the people most likely to hear it were telemarketers.

"Okay, so we all like the name?" Toby's question got nods all around the table. It was always good to start with the easy questions. "In that case, let's move on -- what do we want to have happen this summer?"

Harold's sisters compared the house to a hostel, because they had so many travelers passing through. It was set up so that people could stay the night (or several nights, as long as it wasn't a bingo day, or if they were willing to sleep in the living room), or just pop in to get directions, do laundry, or leave messages. There was also a certain daycare-like aspect; the kids from Sabri's class and Matthew and Betty's daughter Kim in particular had permission to come and stay whenever they liked.

"Whatever we do, I think we need to open it up to Earth kids too," Harold said. "It doesn't seem fair to exclude them. Plus the Zhos just moved in down the street, and you know those kids will show up either way."

"Open to everyone, got it," Toby said. He wiped his hands on a napkin and went over to the massive whiteboard. He wrote "EVERYONE ALLOWED" in bright red all caps.

"Wait," Cate said. "What about the under-twos? I'm not changing diapers for anyone who's not my godson." She looked at Al. "I get to be a godparent, right? It's a big deal in this country, and I think I'd be good at it." Then, somewhat alarmingly, she added, "It might be a good idea to just make anyone who's rumored to be the kid's biological parent a godparent. Except for you two, of course."

"What?" Al said, which saved Harold from having to say it too.  He wasn't even sure where to start with that information.

"You don't have to decide right away," Cate said. "We can talk about it later. I don't want you to feel pressured."

Al looked speechless, so Harold said, "Yes, let's talk about it later."

"I don't know about excluding the under twos," Toby said. "Now that we've said everyone's allowed, it seems hypocritical to add 'unless you're still in diapers.'" He looked completely serious as he said it, despite the fact that the "everyone's allowed" rule had literally been created less than five minutes ago, and was written in dry erase marker.

"Maybe we should ask around, see if anyone wants to volunteer," Harold suggested. Toby and Cate had just showed up when he and Al moved in, and that had worked out well. Since they'd already had Harry appearing out of thin air, though, it might be too much to ask that another helper arrive unasked for. "Trudy could put the word out on the phone tree."

Toby drew a line down the middle of the white board.  On the side with "EVERYONE ALLOWED" he wrote "Stuff We Want."  On the other side he wrote "Stuff To Do," and put "Ask Trudy - phone tree - help with < 2s."  

"Got it," he said.  "What's next?"

"Are we going to need paperwork for this?" Harold asked.  "Aren't there laws about this kind of thing?  Running summer camps, I mean.  Don't we need licenses, and insurance, and inspections and stuff?  I haven't been CPR certified for years, but we probably should be, right?"  When it had just been aliens, there were no problems, but the incident with the bus stop kid was still fresh in his mind. 

Toby wrote "Ask Charlotte - licenses.  Ask Trudy - insurance, certification."  

Al waved a hand.  "What time is this going to be?  Are there going to be kids here 24 hours a day, or do we have times when we're open and closed?"  

"Well, that's tough," Cate said.  "It would be the most useful for people if they could drop their kids off at any time of day.  Like, what if they were a doctor, and they were on call and had to go to the hospital at 2:00 in the morning?  But that could get really annoying for us, because how would we keep track of everyone?  And we don't have a ton of extra sleeping space."

"And what about allergies?" Harold asked.  Everyone looked at him.  "We're brainstorming," he said.  "It doesn't have to make sense yet.  Are we going to be peanut free?  Because I really like peanut butter, but I don't want anyone accidentally eating some and going into anaphylactic shock."

"Actually, what about money?" Cate asked.  "Not that we really need to worry about running out, but if we don't charge anything, there's going to be some people who take advantage of that.  And it would be bad for all the other local daycares and stuff."

"This is really hard," Toby said, adding "food allergies" and "24 hours?" and "$???" to the "Stuff To Do" side of the board.  He sat back down at the table.

Everyone looked a little discouraged.  Harold checked the whiteboard.   There was still only one thing on the "Stuff We Want" side.  "Come on," he said.  "There's no way this is as hard as some of the things we've managed.  We can totally get this done.  We'll just get on the phone, and ask for help."  Cate and Toby looked unsure, but Al nodded.  "It's worked before," Harold said. 

"Is there anything else we need to put on the board for what we want?" Al asked.  "I really just want to not have bunches of kids running around the house at all hours.  Especially if there's a baby."

"I'm fine if there's running kids," Harold said.  "As long as they stay out of the basement and the bedrooms, and someone else is responsible for them."  

"Not me," Cate and Toby said simultaneously.  Toby added, "We've got plenty to do organizing the other guests.  I like the idea of a drop-in center for kids, especially over the summer, but I can't take it on."  

Cate nodded her agreement.  "Me too," she said.  "Great idea, but there's no way the four of us can do it on top of everything else."

"Great."  Harold plucked the marker out of Toby's hand and headed for the whiteboard.  In giant letters he wrote "GET HELP."  Just for good measure, he added, "HAVE FUN."  "There," he said.  "Done."

Chapter 9: In which Harold realizes they should have invited the kids to their meeting.

"Don't worry, we have all that worked out," Lishendri said, dismissing their whiteboard with a quick glance. "This is PJ's project; she has all the lists."

Harold blinked. "PJ's... project? I thought you were supposed to be inventing things."

"We are. This is her invention. It doesn't have to be a physical object; it actually makes more sense for it to be some kind of community or service-oriented creation, since so many societies and economies are based on the exchange of services as opposed to goods."

Harold stared at her. Sometimes he forgot that Lishendri's parents ran a planet; she acted like such a "normal kid" most of the time that he was always surprised when she came out with something like that. "Okay," he said. Obviously they should have just invited the kids to the meeting, and saved themselves some time. "So it's PJ's project, but you're all helping out with it?"

Lishendri nodded. "You can work as a team if you want. Sabri wants to be here for the doorway anyway, and the rest of us are doing things we can work on anywhere." She smiled, and Harold really hoped she wasn't going to say 'what could possibly go wrong?' Instead, she ended with, "And we all want to see baby Harry. Did you know there's a rumor that he's my illegitimate brother?"

No, Harold didn't know that. He was also pretty sure he hadn't known what the word illegitimate meant when he was 12. "He's not," Harold said.

"Oh, I know," Lishendri said. "But Mom and Dad want to know if they can be godparents now."

Harold wondered if he needed to start his own list, of people they needed to remember to talk to about god-parenting. Maybe he could get someone in the know to help him figure out what all the rumors were saying. Eliza might help. She and Tina were practically joined at the hip these days, and what one didn't know, the other would. "Al and I are still trying to decide the best way to make sure Harry has all the support he needs," Harold said. "But we'll keep your parents in mind, I promise."

That seemed to be enough for Lishendri, who headed for the refrigerator. Harold pulled his phone out and walked out the kitchen door onto the porch. He loved the porch; it was one of his favorite parts of the house. There were actually two porches -- the one he was on wrapped around from the front door, down one side of the house, and around the back corner to the kitchen door. The other was on the opposite side of the house, outside the laundry room.

Eliza's phone went straight to voicemail. "Eliza," he said. "It's Gabe." (Both his sisters called him Gabe; their parents had deemed his middle name easier for his younger sisters to pronounce when they were babies, and it had stuck.) "Al and I could use some advice on all these baby rumors. Give me a call when you get a chance. Oh, and say hi to Mom and Dad for me; I haven't checked my email yet today."

For a while, the Jones parents had planned on staying in town instead of continuing their cross country travels, since their children seemed to be generating enough excitement for several families. It only took a few snowstorms before they were ready to hit the road again. Last he knew, they were headed to the northwest, emailing photos at every stop they made along the way. Harold tried to keep up, but his computer had been acting up for a couple weeks -- it didn't hurt to cover his bases by sending hellos through his sisters and Al.

His second call was to Trudy.  Even after four years, he still wasn't completely clear on how Trudy came to be involved in all the alien stuff.  She appeared to be a perfectly normal Earth teenager, living with her mother in a duplex in the western part of the state, but she was a genius with computers, and basically ran all the computer support for Al's people on Earth.  She also ran the phone tree -- when you needed to get information to a lot of people, fast, you went through Trudy.

Unlike Eliza, Trudy picked up on the first ring.  "Hi Harold," she said cheerily.  "What's up?"

Harold never knew how much of a situation to recap for Trudy.  Usually she already knew more about it than he did, but it always seemed rude to just assume she would know what he was talking about.  "We need help," he said.  He didn't know how much was encompassed by PJ's "lists" but he figured it was always a good idea to have extra assistance standing by.  "Can you put out the word that we're looking?  Mostly for someone who's willing to deal with kids under two -- anyone who might get dropped off here that can't do whatever 'summer camp' activities are going on."

"Sure, no problem.  Sounds like you guys are going to have a full house this summer.  Anything else?"  Harold considered.  He was glad she hadn't called him "boss."  There was really only one other question he had, but he wasn't sure Trudy could help.  

"Trudy," he said slowly, still trying to decide if he should go through with it.  "Do you know who the baby's parents are?"  Really, he was kind of weirded out by the idea an infant was just going to appear in their lives, with no explanations offered.  An instruction book would be nice too.  

There was a long pause.  "Not... exactly," Trudy said.  "I know there's time travel involved, and that makes everything more confusing.  No one's going to be chasing after you for custody, though, if that's what you're asking.  You and Al will be great dads."

He couldn't think of anything to say to that that wouldn't be strange, so he just said, "Thank you," and left it at that.  If she sent a gift, they'd figure out something better for the thank you card.

Chapter 10: In which the last day of school is fun for everyone, regardless of whether or not they're actually in school.

Friday felt like a party.  Harold woke up early, for the first time all week not dreading the sound of the alarm.  Even Bob and Mama Tibbles deigned to show up at breakfast.  Toby did eggs for everyone (except the cats, they had their own food), and Al manned the toaster.  The public school kids actually had one more day (a half-day, on Monday, which Harold had never understood), but everyone else finished on a Friday, which just made sense.

The smells of eggs, toast, and coffee powered Harold through his email check -- parents were somewhere in Colorado, sisters were thinking about redecorating the living room, three messages from Trudy with updates about summer schedules for groups on the phone tree.  They went out as a group to wait for rides; someone produced a frisbee, and Nadeka set up a portable music player.

"I don't remember waiting for the bus ever being this fun," Harold said to Al as they watched the kids playing.  "Hey, Hannah, put your shoes back on, okay?  I don't want you losing your socks again."

"I never waited for the bus," Al said.  "We walked."

"Uphill, in the snow, both ways?"  Luckily, Al was familiar with the saying.

"Yes," he said.  "Barefoot."  He lasted about 30 seconds -- which was long enough for Harold to actually start wondering if maybe Al had walked to school barefoot -- before he laughed.  "Your face!" Al said.  "No, we weren't barefoot, and there were no hills.  We did walk, though; it wasn't far."

"Let's do something fun today," Harold suggested.  "It already seems like a celebration, and these guys will be gone till mid-afternoon.  Harry hasn't been back, so there's no baby to worry about yet.  Do you have any doorway hours scheduled for the morning?"

Al shook his head.  The doorway was genetically keyed to him, so he was the only one who could operate it (except when they had to fiddle with that for emergencies, or road trips).  His people were the only ones who used the system, though, everyone else seemed to use a combination of spaceships and transporter technology.  Harold wanted to know why Earth hadn't managed to come up with instantaneous point-to-point transportation yet; it was common enough in the rest of the galaxy.

"I'm free for the day," Al said.  "What should we do?"

"Well, it's a beautiful sunny day.  Not too hot, no rain predicted.  We should probably do something outside."  They looked at each other.   Harold squinted into the sun.  

"Or we could go to the movies," Al said.  "I bet we can find somewhere still playing the space one."

Sometimes, Harold really loved Al.  "Perfect," he said.  "Let's do it."

The "let's go watch a movie" part of the day went great.  There was a theater still showing "the space one," which Al pretended to think was silly, but could actually recite at least two thirds of the dialogue.  They turned their phones to silent and Al turned the sound off on their emergency beacons.  You weren't actually supposed to be able to do that, but they were in a movie theater, and the blinking and flashing would be more than enough to attract angry glares without any noises going on at the same time.  Luckily, there were some advantages to hanging out with the person who'd invented the beacons in the first place.  Even more luckily, no flashing or blinking occurred, and both phones were voice message free at the end of the movie.

It was during the "go home for a quiet afternoon, and possibly even a nap out on the porch" part of the day that things got a little off track.  For one thing, they couldn't get to the garage.  The driveway was full of cars (plus a delivery van), most of which Harold didn't recognize.  "Al?" he said.  "Are you seeing this too?"  It was always good to rule out visual hallucinations right away.

"A bunch of cars blocking our driveway?  Yeah.  Is that your sister's squad car?"  Al sounded curious, as opposed to worried, and Harold had to admit that this was hardly the weirdest thing that had ever happened to them.  

"I think so," he said.  "All police cars look the same to me.  But it seems likely."  Another car pulled up behind them, and a girl got out holding two cans of paint. 

"Excuse me," Al called out.  "Can you tell us what's going on?"

Harold almost laughed at the suspicious look the girl gave them.  "I'm bringing the paint," she said, as if that wasn't already completely obvious.  "Are you sure you're supposed to be here?  Did you get an invitation?"

"Yes.  I mean, we didn't get an invitation, but we live here."  Harold thought Al sounded perfectly honest and sincere, but the girl narrowed her eyes. 

"Are you sure?" she asked.  Any minute now she was going to ask for ID.

"Of course we're sure," he told her.  "I'm Harold; this is Al.  This is our house.  What's going on?"

He still didn't think she was convinced, but someone called their names from the porch.  "Harold!  Al!  Welcome back; sorry for the mess!"  It was Matthew.  One of the Matthews, at least.  The one they'd met in Rhode Island, and driven with to DC, not the one who was Kim's dad or the one who worked for the FBI.  (Actually, the FBI one was named David, but he went by Matt -- his middle name -- because the team already had a Dave.)  

"Matthew!  How are you?  What's going on?  Where's Sam?"  Matthew and Sam had been travelling around the galaxy the last time they'd run into each other, doing retreats on various planets.  Matthew still had a Baltimore Orioles cap, but he'd traded the robe for  shorts and a t-shirt, both liberally splattered with paint.

"Great, come see!" Matthew said.  "Oh, and more paint, too," he added, as if just noticing the girl with the paint cans.  "You can go straight upstairs.  That's where Sam is," Matthew added, to Harold and Al.  "We came for the redecorating party."

Harold was positive that his sisters' email had been about redecorating their living room.  "What redecorating party?" he asked.

"For the baby," Matthew said.  "We're turning Cate's room into a nursery, and she's moving her stuff into the guest room.  There's another team working on the loft, since it's pretty much the only space left for a guest room, and the Cals probably don't want their kids sleeping in the living room all summer.  Not that it's not a great living room, it's just -- well, you know."  

If Harold had a dollar for every time someone had said "well, you know" to him and he'd had no idea what they were talking about...  He might not be rich, but he'd certainly have enough for a nice dinner out.  Al just shook his head.  "Who organized this?" he asked.  

"Trudy," Matthew said.  "She told us you asked for help, and this is what we came up with.  Oh, and I can stay on, if you're still looking for help with the littlest kids.  I'm fine with diapers, fully certified in first aid and CPR, and we're adjusting the lounge in the basement into a playroom."  He must have seen something in Al's expression, because he said, "I know, but it's the only floor where we won't have to worry about them falling down stairs.  It'll work, I promise."

"Maybe we should take a look around," Harold said.  Then he frowned.  "Wait, where are you going to sleep?"

Matthew waved a hand towards the side of the house.  "Oh, I've got a hammock I can set up on the porch," he said.  "Come on in, you can see what we've done so far."

Chapter 11: In which Harold and Al get the grand tour of their own house.

The first thing Harold noticed when they walked in the front door was that there were a lot of people around.  Most of them he recognized, which seemed like a good thing.  Matthew gestured towards the stairs on the right.  "The loft is still in progress," he said, and Harold heard Eliza yelling at someone about trim colors.  

Al looked up the stairs.  "Let's come back later," he suggested, and they moved on before anyone could draft them into helping.  

"We did the quiet study room first, since it didn't need much.  Mostly just baby-proofing -- we did that all over this floor; there's baby gates too, but we didn't want to put them up while everyone was carrying stuff around -- and adding more storage."    

Harold nodded, as if it made perfect sense that vague acquaintances were redecorating their house.  The quiet study room / craft room / you can call it anything but an office did look great, though.  Everything had been moved up about three feet, above a sturdy-looking shelf.  The table was still in the center of the room, but there were several more chairs around in than Harold remembered.  "What are we going to do with that bottom space?" Al asked.  

"Backpacks, shoes -- it'll fill up.  Plus, having that space more open will make cleaning easier.  PJ's got some sort of schedule for the day campers, but it can't hurt to keep things simple."  Matthew looked like he was well-schooled in the art of "getting kids to help out with things."  "We weren't going to change the paint in here, but we can if you want."

"No," Harold said.  "I like this color."  The walls were green -- yellow-green, it had been called in his crayon set, before everything had to have some fancy name.  He was sure the actual paint name was probably something like "Dewdrop Moss" or "Daffodil Bud."  But it worked, and he liked it, and it would be nice if not everything was changing.  

"You got it," Matthew said, leading the way back out and down the hall.  "We left the living room and the kitchen, although the pantry is a lot more full than it was this morning, and there's an extra chest freezer hooked up in the utility room."  He looked at Harold and Al.  "Utility room?  Laundry room?  Any preference?"  Clearly he'd heard about their refusal to let anyone call the front room an office.

"Either's fine," Harold said, and Al nodded.

They turned the corner into the kitchen.  "Wow," said Al.  "Those are new."  The inside wall -- which previously held a calendar, and a tiny bookshelf that seemed to attract junk mail and cat toys, was covered by a giant whiteboard.  The bookshelf had been replaced by a wall unit, which was already covered with mail.  "Looks like it works, at least."

"Don't we have enough whiteboards in the basement?" Harold asked.  They needed to be able to keep track of all the guests who came and went, so they had walls of the things downstairs.  And someone kept adding dry erase markers to the shopping list, because they had nine or ten packages stashed away in the office down there.  Then he realized -- "This one's to keep track of us, huh?"  It made sense, and would be easier than calling people all the time.

Matthew grinned.  "Well, you can do whatever you want with it, really, but I think that was the original plan.  There's another set for the front hall, to keep track of the guests who --"  He broke off, and Harold figured a little bit of the absolutely weirdness of the situation had just hit.

"Come in through the front door?" Harold offered.  

"Yes, exactly," Matthew said.  "There's going to be a bunch of hooks and stuff out there too, for emergency beacons, and maybe some kind of allergy alert bracelets.  PJ's doing that part -- that girl knows how to make lists."  They circled around through the utility room and back to the front hall.  "Anyway, that's pretty much it on this floor.  Do you want to see the upstairs too?"

"I should probably check on the doorway," Al said.  Unspoken, but still clearly on his mind, was finding out what "improvements" had been made to the basement.  

"And I need Gabe's help with the porch," Eliza interrupted, coming down the stairs from the loft with suspiciously good timing.  "My car's full of all-weather baskets, and I need an extra set of hands to get them all where they're supposed to be going."  She paused.  "You were already planning to take out the flower beds, right?"

Harold wondered what she would do if he said no.  The house's previous owners had planted flowers all along the edge of the porch, which he thought was ridiculous -- what good was an awesome wrap-around porch if you could only step on and off of it in two places?  Still,  he considered telling his sisters that he and Al were not planning on taking out the flower beds, just to see if she had a gardener or two ready to fix the damage -- he was pretty sure they'd already started ripping out the plants.  

In the end, though, he couldn't do it.  For one thing, he was undeniably curious about what exactly an "all-weather basket" would look like.  Also, it usually wasn't a good idea to piss off family members who were helping with things like painting and redecorating your house -- you just never knew what form the retaliation might take.  He didn't want the walls of the loft to end up covered with murals of his most embarrassing childhood incidents, and he didn't doubt Eliza could do it if she really wanted to.

"The flowers are going, yeah," he told her.  "Thanks."

"No problem.  Hey, is Al okay?  He looked a little nervous."

Harold looked in the direction of the basement stairs, even though Al was long gone.  It felt like a long time since they'd eaten breakfast that morning, not expecting any of this.  "It's a little overwhelming," he said.  "We're good, though."

Chapter 12: In which a serious conversation takes place in the middle of the night.

Harold wasn't sure what had woken him up.  It was still dark out, so he hadn't slept through the alarm.  He was pretty sure it was Saturday, so there were no kids waiting to go to school.  The smoke alarm wasn't going off, his phone wasn't ringing, and Al wasn't pacing the floor.  In fact -- oh.  Al wasn't there.  "Al?" he said softly, just in case.  No answer.  He sat up.

There was still a cat sleeping on the end of the bed, so Harold figured there probably wasn't some terrible disaster occurring in or around the house.  "Bob?" he whispered.  "Mama Tibbles?"  The second name got him a sleepy "prow?" and he smiled.  "Where's Al?" Harold asked, reaching out a hand to ruffle her fur.  The silence after his question was answer in itself: Find him yourself; I'm sleeping.  "Right," he said.  "If I trip over something in the dark, I'm blaming you."  

It was warm enough so he didn't bother looking for his slippers, just wandered out into the hall, blinking against the sudden light.  He could hear muted sounds coming from the lower floors.  Technically, the house was open to travelers 24 hours a day.  They were supposed to make an appointment, but there were always going to be times when people showed up unexpectedly.  The four of them -- Harold, Al, Toby, and Cate -- usually traded off the staying up late / getting up early duties, so that someone was always awake.  It had taken some getting used to, but he'd grown to appreciate it.

There was only one place he could think of that made sense for Al to be.  (After all, there were snacks in the bathroom, and if he was dealing with the doorway, he would have taken the handy transporter-device-disguised-as-a-watch that Harold happened to know was still on the bedside table.)  He headed towards the nursery, and pushed the door open carefully.  "Al?"

And there was Al, leaning against the wall and staring out the window.  "Hey," he said.

Harold took that as an invitation and stepped fully into the room.  Al wasn't much of a brooder, usually.  "Hey," he replied.  "Is everything okay?"

Al was silent for long enough for Harold to sit down on the floor.  His body knew it was the middle of the night, even if Al's didn't.  Harold found what he hoped was a giant stuffed animal and wondered if it still counted as a serious conversation if he was lying down.  Probably not.  Instead, he tucked it between him and the wall -- he could at least have a comfortable backrest.

Finally, Al said, "Do you think we're ready to be parents?"  He was still looking away.

"No," Harold said.  "But I don't think anybody ever really feels 'ready.'  I think most people feel like us -- alternating between nervous and terrified, with a hefty dose of confused."

"I don't think most people are counting on a future version of their child providing babysitting services," said Al.  "Harold, what are we going to do?  Babies aren't like cats; they have needs.  What about vaccinations?  What about school? What if I drop him?"  Al turned to look at him.  "I've never held a baby before."

Harold hoped it was dark enough to hide his smile.  It was actually sort of a relief to know that Al was worried too; everyone had been acting so calm about the whole thing, he'd started to feel like he might be stuck in some kind of alternate universe where babies appearing out of nowhere was normal.  He figured the last thing Al wanted to hear was any variation of "you'll be fine; don't worry about it."  Seriously, all that did was ratchet up the pressure.  "I dropped Eliza," he said instead.  "A couple times, actually."

"Really?  What happened?"  Harold looked intently towards the window.  Sure enough, Al's expression had changed from freaking out to mildly (or possibly morbidly) curious.  Oh well -- might as well get some mileage out of those embarrassing childhood stories.

"Okay," Harold said.  "So imagine Eliza.  You know how much volume she can get when she's really shouting, right?"  Al nodded.  "All right, now imagine that  same level of noise coming from a tiny, tiny baby.  It scared me so much I dropped her.  Which of course she thought was hilarious, so she did it over and over again.  I'd pick her up, she'd scream, I'd drop her, and she laugh and laugh.  Charlotte thought it was great.  Our parents didn't, though.  They weren't crazy about any of the shouting games."

Al winced.  "I can imagine," he said.  "Sabri wasn't a screamer, but I heard the twins were."  

"And they all turned out okay."  A thought occurred to him.  "In fact, we kind of have an advantage over most parents.  As awkward and weird as it may turn out to be to have our kid living here at two different ages at the same time, at least we know we must not mess up too badly."  Al frowned.  "Don't we?" Harold asked.  He didn't have the first clue how time travel worked, but the last time they'd run into people from the future, none of them had seemed too concerned about stepping on ants or accidentally erasing themselves from the timeline.

"I don't know," said Al.  "To be honest, time travel's a little out there for me.  I always thought it would stay in the realm of science fiction, at least for my lifetime."  He paused, and Harold took a moment to appreciate the irony of having this conversation with an alien from another planet.  "I guess that's sort of the tricky part," Al continued.  "Once someone, somewhere -- or some-when -- invents time travel, wouldn't everybody, in every time, technically have potential access to it?"

Harold shook his head.  "You lost me," he said.  "Is that a giraffe?"

He and Al squinted at the pile of plush animals in the corner of the room.  "I... I have no idea," Al said.  "It has a long neck, but giraffes are spotted, right?  Not striped?"

They both jumped as the door pushed open, but it was just Bob, sauntering into the room as if to say, "All rooms are my domain."  He made a circuit of the nursery.  First he walked past Harold, who was still sitting on the floor.  Harold reached out to run a hand down his back as the cat walked by.  "Hi Bob," he said.  "What do you think?"  Bob twined around Al's legs and gave the crib a long look before curling up on next to the giraffe-like thing.

"I think he's giving us a message," Al said.

"Is it 'Go back to sleep, crazy humans'?  Because if it is, I think it's a great idea."  Harold didn't want to hurry along Al's moment of doubt, but he was really tired.

"Sure," said Al.  "Let's call it that."

Chapter 13: In which, well, everyone knew it had to happen eventually.

"Is that a --"

"I think so."

"Huh."

"Well, I guess we all knew it was going to show up eventually."

"Hey guys, what's going on?" Harold walked down the stairs and found all the kids gathered around the front door. "What is it?"

The kids all looked at each other. Harold had a sudden, and hopefully irrational, fear that there was actually a baby on his doorstep. That would just be... He didn't even know.

Sabri stepped forward. "It's not a baby," she said. Harold held his breath, because she didn't look like that was the good news.

"Okay," he said.

"It's a dragon."

"What?" It was like a movie -- the kids parted silently. The front door was open. Harold raised his eyebrows. "I'm not going out there; you realize that, right? I've seen this movie." He leaned backwards to look up the stairs. "Al!" he called. "Your daughter says there's a dragon on the porch!"

There was a crash from the second floor. Al must have thought a dragon was worth transporting directly down, because he appeared at the foot of the stairs. "What?" he said, breathless and only wearing one sock.

Harold pointed at the door. "Dragon. On the porch."

Al nodded slowly. "A dragon," he repeated. "On the porch."

"What should we do?" Harold asked.

That was what the kids had been waiting for, apparently, because they jumped into the conversation. They talked over each other to get out their suggestions. "I think you should invite it in," Lishendri said.

"I think you should feed it," said PJ.

Sabri's suggestion was, "Maybe you should ask it what it wants."

"I think it's too little to talk," Nadeka said. "Maybe Bob could figure it out."

Damaris shook his head.  "The dragon's sleeping.  I don't think we should wake it up."

"I'll wake it up," Zahar offered, and Harold held up a hand.

"No, please don't," he said.  

Meshkalla giggled.  "It's going to wake up on its own eventually, you know."

As if in response to her words, there was a rustling from the porch.  He heard someone say, "Oh, hey."  And then Matthew walked in the door, holding a tiny red ball.  He seemed surprised to see the group gathered in the hallway.  "I found this little guy on the porch," Matthew said.  "Did anyone lose a dragon?"

It was cute; Harold had to admit it.  And tiny -- not at all what he would've expected a dragon to look like, but everything had to start small, right?  Or at least, most things.  Including, apparently, dragons.  

Really, it was an educational day all around.  Between waking up and lunchtime, he learned the following:

1. Dragons exist, to the extent that they sometimes show up on your front porch and don't disappear again.
2. Baby dragons are small.  And adorable.  And sleep a lot.
3. Dragons wake up hungry.  And they like canned tuna fish.
4. When they're not sleeping or eating, baby dragons like to be close to people.  As close as possible, in fact, and they'd climb a person's leg to get there.  Not fun in shorts.

They'd rigged a sort of baby sling for the dragon so it could be passed around from person to person without waking it up or worrying about fingers getting chomped on.  Matthew seemed surprisingly knowledgeable about the care and feeding of infant dragons -- the sling had been his suggestion, and he'd been the one to assure everyone that tuna fish would be an acceptable snack.

"They're not too picky at this age," Matthew had told them.  "I spent a while at a foster camp -- there were all sorts of beings there, including some orphaned dragons.  We learned how to keep them happy until they were old enough to tell us themselves."

Harold was still confused how the dragon had come to be on their porch.  Everyone else mostly just seemed confused on what to call it.  "The dragon," "our dragon," "Harold and Al's dragon," and "the cutest baby dragon ever" were common choices, along with a complete set of gender pronouns -- him, her, it, they, we.  Al liked the dragon a lot, but it made unhappy noises whenever it was in the basement.  Harold hoped it got over that, because he didn't there was really any other space suitable for housing (or hiding) a dragon in the house.

What were they going to do about the neighborhood summer camp kids?  It was pretty obvious that the dragon was, well, a dragon -- not like they could pass it off as a dog or cat.  It was bright red, with a tail and little stubby wings that it waved around whenever it wanted something.  And it wasn't furry.  "Maybe we can say it's some kind of lizard," he suggested.  He was sitting in a rocking chair that had somehow been added to the porch decor.  (Hey, for every weird thing, that showed up, there was a cool thing too.  For now, he was withholding final judgement about which was which.)

"Would that work?"  Matthew looked up absently from where he was reviewing a stack of paper.  Probably PJ's lists.  "I mean, your neighbors must already know something -- and they still show up to bingo every week, right?"

"I think that may be why they show up," said Harold.  "Just in case something exciting happens; they don't want to miss it."

"We could re-enact it for them," Matthew said.

Harold shrugged.  "I wouldn't worry about it.  By Saturday afternoon I'm sure something else will be happening."

Matthew looked at his watch.  "Harold -- today is Saturday.  The game starts in just a couple of hours."

Harold almost shrugged again, but the dragon laid its head on his shoulder, and he didn't want to disturb it.  "We've had stranger things going on during bingo," he said.  "Oh, I shouldn't have said that.  Knock on wood."

Matthew obligingly rapped his knuckles against the porch floorboards.  "If the dragon's here, does that mean the baby is close by?"

Other than the one rumor, Harold had never heard anything about a dragon.  "I've never heard anything about the dragon," he said.  "Well, there was one rumor, but it didn't make any sense.  So I don't know -- do dragons have some sort of mystical powers of foresight, or baby-bringing, or something?"

Matthew looked at him like he was crazy.  "Um, not that I know of," he said.  "I just figured -- rule of threes, right?"  

Harold returned the expression.  "Rule of what?"

"You know, the rule of threes.  Things happen in threes, usually.  Or at least we notice when they do, which makes it seem like that's the way they always happen.  Like this -- you've had future Harry show up, and now the dragon.  Baby Harry would make three."

"At least that would mean we were done with unexpected things showing up for a while," Harold said.  Matthew knocked on the porch again.

Chapter 14: In which the rest of their "rule of three" arrives (or re-arrives)

When cars started pulling into the driveway for the bingo game, Harold stayed firmly ensconced on the back porch.  Having a baby dragon in your lap was the perfect excuse for missing bingo, as far as he was concerned.  A few visitors from Al's planet stuck their heads out the back door to say hello, but other than that he was undisturbed.  None of them seemed surprised to see the dragon.  Either the phone tree had already spread the word far and wide, or it had reached the point where no one was surprised by strange occurrences at their house anymore.

It was a beautiful afternoon, sunny and warm.  There was even a breeze, and dragons must be naturally repellent to insects, because he hadn't seen a single mosquito.  Harold could hear Toby and Charlotte moving around in the kitchen.  They'd been on late night / early morning duty the night before and had slept through the morning excitement.  Matthew had taken his papers and gone off somewhere to meet with the kids -- they were planning to present "the plan" for the summer that evening, and they'd recruited him to help.

He was a little surprised he hadn't heard from his sisters.  He hadn't bothered to call either of them because he figured they'd find out soon enough and save him the trouble, but they'd been strangely absent.  Maybe they'd gone to the beach or something.  Somewhere without cell phone reception, or maybe they were just enjoying a day away from all the crazy.

The dragon picked that moment to yawn widely, showing tiny teeth.  Harold held his breath, but instead of going back to sleep, it lifted its head and looked around.  "Hey," he said hesitantly.  The dragon turned to look at him.  "Hungry?" Harold asked.  No response.

Harold wondered what he would do if the dragon leaped off his lap and ran away.  They hadn't exactly planned for anything like that.  Luckily, the dragon made no effort to leap anywhere.  It just sat there, looking expectantly at Harold.  "What?" Harold said.  "If you're trying to communicate, I've got to tell you, it's not working."  Since his words didn't elicit an eye-roll, Harold decided the dragon probably didn't understand what he was saying.  Or maybe dragons just didn't roll their eyes.  

Suddenly, there was a noise like static electricity, and Harry appeared on the porch.  Right at the edge of the porch, actually, and the first thing he did was fall off.  "Whoa," Harold heard from the shrubbery.  It was really pretty impressive that he'd managed to fall into the only bush left.  Harold wasn't sure why that exact bush had been saved, but it was nice, for a bush.  It looked prickly, though.  "Are you all right?" he called, hearing leaf-rustling and twig-snapping sounds.  

"I could use a hand," Harry called back.  

Oh.  "My hands are sort of full right now," Harold said.  There was a yelp and what could have been muffled cursing from the bush.  "Sorry," he offered, as Harry finally made his way back onto the porch.

"Am I here yet?" Harry asked.

"Baby you?  No, not that I know of.  All we've got so far is the dragon."  Harold nodded towards the dragon, who was looking back and forth between them with an intense stare.  "And you," he added.  "Welcome back, by the way."

"Thanks."  Harry frowned.  "The way you and Al tell this story later is a lot different than this."

Harold frowned back when Harry didn't elaborate.  "Okay," he said.  "I'm new to this, but is that a 'different' like 'oops, we've irrevocably damaged the timeline, or a 'different' like 'me and Al embellished the story so it didn't sound like we were clueless people who had a baby -- and a dragon, I'd like to mention; no one warned us about the dragon -- dropped in our laps while we were worrying about bingo games and whether or not cheesy puffs could count as a dairy serving?'"

"I don't think you can irrevocably damage the timeline," Harry said.  "It's spongy, but it usually bounces back into the right shape.  Sometimes you have to give it a little push in the right direction."

"Is that what you were doing?"

Harry nodded.  "Yeah, to try and get baby me here.  Are you sure there's no baby yet?"  He looked at Harold like maybe Harold had just forgotten, or perhaps failed to notice the baby's appearance.

"Pretty sure," Harold said.  "Just the dragon."  More static electricity sounds, and a basket appeared in the exact same place Harry had popped in.  Harry grabbed it just before it could take the same tumble into the shrubbery.  From inside the basket came an ear-splitting wail.  Harold winced, but future Harry grinned.

"I'm here," he exclaimed.  "Finally!"

It didn't take long for Harold to figure out why future Harry had come to  help.  Or how he'd been able to tell by listening that the baby wasn't in the house.  Baby Harry cried.  A lot.  All the time, it seemed like.  Harold assumed he was quiet when he was asleep, but he'd been awake since his arrival, and the only time he wasn't screaming was when Harry was holding him.  Luckily, Harry seemed willing to keep holding him as long as necessary.  In fact, he hadn't let go once -- all Harold had seen of the baby so far was the back of his head.  He was tiny, and Harold wondered again exactly where he'd come from, and when.  

"How long did Al and I tell you we were able to handle this?" Harold asked.  "When we were telling you the story of how it happened, I mean."

"Three days," Harry said, swaying gently side to side, baby tucked firmly in the cradle of his arms.

"We were lying," Harold said.  "I'd give myself less than 30 minutes before I was begging Al to invent a time machine just to get you here."  

Harry smiled.  "I get over it; don't worry.  And don't forget the dragon; we get along well at pretty much any age, so putting us together is always a safe bet."  

Harold nodded and took a deep breath.  Now that the baby wasn't crying, he could think more clearly.  "We need to get everyone together," he said.  "I think it's time for Baby Care 101."  As he pulled out his phone (he couldn't physically go get Al, because he was still holding the dragon, and he wasn't sure where anyone else was), Harold wondered if they could set up a sort of mini-phone-tree just for members of the household and close family members.  Tina's phone tree worked great, but there were some things that just didn't need to be shared with hundreds of near-strangers.  He realized it was possible that his phone already had some sort of group texting option that he just didn't know how to use.  He'd have to ask Al.

Harold sent, "baby here meet kitchen snacks=yes."  Al must've had his phone out on the table, because he arrived in less than two minutes.  Cate and Toby were right behind him, followed by Matthew -- the kids were nowhere to be seen.  "They've gone to the store with Rose and Gary," Matthew said.  "For supplies.  They took the Armada."

"Should we meet without them?" Harold asked, hoping someone else would make the decision.

"We'll just have to go over everything again when they get back if we do," Toby said.  "Maybe we should wait.  PJ's going over the plan this evening anyway; we could talk about this at the same time."  When he said "this" Toby waved a hand towards Harry, who shot him an irritated look and pulled the baby closer.

"Do you have a sweatshirt?" Harry asked.  "A hoodie would be best."

Harold nodded, then frowned.  It was pretty warm out for sweatshirts, and Harry was already in long sleeves.  "Why?" he asked.  "I mean, yes, we do, and you're welcome to one, but why?"

It was his turn to get the irritated look.  "Because I'm not letting anyone else hold baby me until we've talked, and I'm going to need my hands free eventually.  I'm going to use the sweatshirt as a makeshift baby sling."  He said it like it was completely obvious -- like of course, what else would you do with an infant and a hoodie?

Harold looked at Al.  Al raised his eyebrows and shrugged.  "I'll get one," Al said.  "Cate, can you call Rose, and let her know what's going on?"

"And I'll call Eliza," Harold said, already dialing his phone.  His sister picked up on the first ring.  "Eliza," he said.  "Can you do me a favor?"

"What is it?" she asked.

"I want you and Tina to go shopping for us," Harold told her.  He knew from experience that Eliza and Tina made a formidable shopping team -- they'd dubbed themselves the "super shoppers" during the evacuation of Al's planet a few years back, and managed to help all the hundreds of people who realized they'd forgotten their toothbrush/pillow/jacket/etc and had no idea how to get a new one.  

"Don't you have minions for that?" Eliza asked.  Harold sighed.  No matter how many times he explained, Eliza insisted on calling Cate and Toby (and now Matthew) minions.  At least she didn't call him "boss." &nbsp;

"It's not for the house," Harold said, not disputing the implication that he often asked Cate or Toby to go to the store.  It was true, after all.  "It's for a baby."  He still had trouble thinking of baby Harry as his baby.  Right now it seemed more like Harry's baby, and that was just weird.

"A baby," Eliza repeated.  "Is this your baby?  Gabe, did you get a baby and not tell anyone?"

"He just showed up a few minutes ago," Harold insisted.  "You were my first phone call!  Okay, second, but the first one was Al, and he hardly counts.  I could have yelled for him; I just didn't want to disturb the dragon."

"I thought it was a baby," said Eliza.  

"It is."  Harold rewound the conversation in his head, wondering how they'd gotten off track.  "There's just also a dragon.  Someone else is getting things for him, though, so it's just the baby that we need more stuff for, because he's here, but we've got kind of a full house right now, and summer camp starts on Monday."

There was a long pause.  Then Eliza laughed.  "Your life is so weird; I love it.  Wait till Mom and Dad hear about this.  You know they'll want to come and visit, right?"  Harold groaned, and Eliza laughed again.  "Tina and I will cover the shopping, at least.  You're on your own for the rest."  

As Harold hung up and looked at the crowd of people who'd gathered in the kitchen, he reflected that Eliza was wrong about one thing, at least.  His life might -- and he stressed the might -- have some unusual elements in it, but he definitely wasn't on his own.

Chapter 15: In which "the plan" is revealed.

It was always surprising to Harold how many people could fit into the living room, although he supposed it helped that so many of them were willing to sit on the floor.  The seating hierarchy went something like this: if you had an infant (any species), you got first pick.  That meant Harry (with baby Harry) and Al (with the dragon) were relaxing in comfort on the couch.  If you were part of a security team, you got second pick.  Rose and Gary were about as far away from the babies as they could get and still be in the room.  After that, it was a first come, first served, musical chairs free-for-all.  Harold had started out standing in the back, but he was slowly working his way towards the couch.  Sabri would have to get up eventually, and he was going to be ready.

Everyone was gathered to hear PJ reveal "the plan" for summer camp.  That was what she kept calling it, at least.  The kids had moved in one of the whiteboards to sit in front of the television.  Most of them were lounging on the floor.  Toby, Cate, and Matthew rounded out the room -- Toby and Cate had notepads, which made Harold feel unprepared, but he was hoping his role in summer camp was going to be limited to "stay out of the way as much as possible," which wouldn't require a lot of note taking.

"Right," PJ said, stepping up to the whiteboard.  She said it quietly, so as not to wake the babies.  Babies slept a lot more than Harold remembered.  Maybe he just hadn't paid that much attention when his sisters were days old; his attention span had been a lot shorter then.

"This is going to be a great summer.  It's already great, because we're all here, and now we're going to extend that greatness to even more people."  Privately, Harold thought that PJ was being awfully optimistic, but it was good to stay positive, he supposed.  She uncapped a purple marker.

"There are four basic areas that the plan is divided into," PJ explained, drawing four lines to split the white board into surprisingly equal quarters.  Harold could never get his lines to go straight.  "The first is operation of the doorway and receiving area.  Doorway traffic is handled by Al --"  She wrote "Al" with a circle next to his name.  "That's the doorway," PJ said.  "At scheduled periods throughout the day.  Receiving for mail also happens at certain times of day; aligning these two things just makes sense, especially since the mail hardly ever actually needs our participation."

Al cleared his throat, and PJ added, "Okay, there was that time with the doves, but --"  Al cleared his throat again.  "And the time with the explosion, but it was a very small explosion, really.  The pirates have been doing much better."

But Al was firm on the issue.  "If we're going to get mail delivered at the same time we're moving people through the doorway, I want someone from the school in Alabama here to supervise," he said.  "They use the mail as much as the pirates now, and I don't want any unexpected surprises.  We can't run a system that only works if nothing goes wrong."

"Got it," PJ said.  She added "mail help from Alabama" to the board, and drew a frowny face next to it with an arrow pointing from Al's name.  Then she said, "Actually, that's already on my list -- Bart said it was a good idea; someone will be here starting tomorrow.  I do think of things, Al."

Harold grinned.  Of course she did.  He wondered how many of their other objections she'd already anticipated and planned around.  Probably all of them; there was a whole stack of papers in her hand.

"The second basic area is visitors, both those just passing through and those staying for varying amounts of time."  PJ moved to the second section of the whiteboard.  "Al, Harold, Cate, and Toby already have a rotating schedule for handling that."  Harold thought that was a somewhat glorified way to describe their "system," which was really just a posted list of information on the wall of the basement and a bell that said "Ring For Service."  The bell actually rang one of their phones (that part did rotate).  They'd recently added a globe, with a pin in their approximate location.  The pin had a flag on it that said, "You Are Here."  He thought it was a nice touch.

Now that their house was less of a novelty destination, they didn't get anywhere near the volume of traffic they'd seen in the first couple months.  Steady, yes; overwhelming, no.  And the posted information covered most of the basics (in multiple languages -- they'd learned their lesson quickly on that one): a basic welcome, a reminder that the house and grounds were officially considered neutral territory and protected by multiple planets/peoples/organizations (in other words, "please no feuding or stealing"), as well as a reminder that there were nearly always children in the house (so keep the language clean, if possible).  There was a diagram of how to interpret a 24-hour analog clock right next to the wall clock, along with a guide to "quiet hours," "sleeping hours," and "eating hours."  

Other than the globe, the most recent addition was a map of the house, showing how to get to the key areas: kitchen, laundry room, bathroom, bingo game, that sort of thing.  When people did have have questions, it was because they needed help getting their wireless connection to work, or they wanted to know the best place to park at the local university.  Slowly but surely, they were working on making the "visitor area" more self-sufficient.

"Now, the third area."  PJ looked around, as if to confirm that everyone was still paying attention.  Harold shifted closer to the couch.  "That's the summer program," she said.  "Basically, it's a 24-hour drop-in option for friends and family.  You already do it with us and Kim; we're just expanding it to other kids, and including people from the neighborhood, like Tifa and Xikade.  We are not calling it a summer camp."  Harold winced.  He'd been calling it a summer camp.

"Summer camps have fees, just like daycare centers."  Meshkalla stepped forward and took up the explanation.  "You have to register yourself as a business and pay taxes, along with getting a lot of paperwork filled out.  We didn't want to do that."  Harold breathed a sigh of relief.  

"Especially now, with the baby, and the dragon," PJ said.  "There's inspections, and all these rules you have to follow.  It would be a problem."  She added, as an afterthought, "Oh, and Matthew, you should get your license renewed.  It expired a month ago."  

Matthew looked startled, but nodded.  "I've had trouble getting everything forwarded from D.C.," he said.  "The letter must have gotten lost along the way."

It was looking like the conversation might be starting to drift, and Harold saw Al nudge Sabri.  In a stroke of luck, she jumped off the couch and headed to the front of the room.  Harold quickly dropped into her empty spot.  "So it's not a camp," Sabri said, "but we will be doing activities, for all the kids who want to do them, at certain times of day.  It's less 'send your kids to camp' and more 'send your kids to the neighbor's house to play.'  It's just that the neighbor's house is totally awesome."  She picked up another marker and stepped up to the board.  

"Here's how it will work: kids can be dropped off at any time of day, right?  Two of us will be 'on duty' all the time.  If someone's here early in the morning, they can sleep, snack, do crafts -- but they're on their own; no planned activities.  We'll do one mid-morning activity and one mid-afternoon activity, led by two or three of us -- ones who aren't already 'supervising' the kids.  If people are here at mealtimes, they can eat with us or not, it's up to them. &nbsp;Parents can pick them up anytime."

PJ picked up the thread again.  "Anyone who's here is treated like a member of the household, not a guest.  They're expected to do their fair share -- chores, cleaning up, putting groceries away, picking up after themselves, all that stuff."  The guards nodded firmly at this statement; clearly they weren't planning on being stuck with extra work as the kids' "helpers."

"And they'll all have bracelets," Meshkalla said excitedly.  "And beacons.  We're putting them up in the front hall.  As soon as someone comes in, they take a beacon, in case of emergencies.  And we have colored bracelets to help identify who's got allergies and stuff."  She grabbed a marker and started listing colors on the board.  "We're focusing on personal responsibility," Meshkalla said, "but this will be a good backup system."  Harold suddenly saw the wisdom of the notepad, since he was pretty sure he'd never be able to remember that blue was for peanut allergies and green was for bee stings.

There was a short burst of questions as Toby, Cate, and Matthew all asked for clarification about how mealtimes and chores were going to work, and Al wanted to know if he needed to modify the beacons at all, or just make a bunch more of them.  And then Cate said, "What's the fourth area?"

PJ looked so unsurprised by the question that Harold almost wondered if it was staged.  "The fourth area is the babies," she said.  "Harry's going to take this one, I think."  Harry also looked unsurprised.  Seriously, when had they had time to consult about this?

Harry stood up from the couch gingerly, both hands supporting the baby.  The hoodie sling was pretty impressive, but it was clear Harry was feeling extra protective.  "Hi," he said.  "I'm Harry; I think I met most of you back in your January.  I'm from the future, and this is me as a baby."  He pointed at the sling.  "It's a little weird.  Basically, no one seems to really know where I came from, just that I showed up here as a baby, and then future me came to help out.  It's happened kind of backwards so far, actually.  But he's here now, and I'm pretty sure that's the important thing."

He reached into the sling and held up the baby.  "This is Harry," he said.  "I don't know what we're going to do about the name thing; with two Harry's and a  Harold it's going to get confusing.  Maybe middle names or something."

Al leaned in and whispered, "I hope we didn't pick Matthew."

"And no, it's not Matthew," Harry said, turning to give them a stern look.

"Hey!" Matthew said.  "What's wrong with Matthew?  It's a great name."

"It's a long story," Al said.  "We'll tell you later."

Harold leaned forward to get a better look at baby Harry.  His face was all scrunched up and red; he really wasn't cute at all.  Luckily, future Harry didn't pause to wait for compliments.  "He's a newborn, so he's going to sleep a lot.  It would be best if someone could be holding or touching him at all times.  Time travel's dicey with infants, he's likely to be... slippery, I guess is the word, for a week or so.  I don't want to have to go looking for him again." 

Something tickled at Harold's memory.  "Matthew and Betty," he said.  "Didn't they have a thing on Kim?  Like a tracker, or something, so they could go right to her location if she got lost?"  Harry looked in confusion at Matthew.  "Not that Matthew," Harold said.  "A different one; Kim's dad."

Al nodded.  "They did, and it was automatic, I think.  I'll email them and see if we can borrow one for a while."

Harry seemed willing to take their word for it, because he continued on.  "Right now he can't lift his head on his own, so if you're holding him, you need to support it for him, like this."  Harold remembered some of the basics from when his sisters had been born, but Harry was good at explaining things, and easy to listen to.  The rest of the room seemed equally entranced, and he sat back to take it all in.

Chapter 16: In which it's Al's turn to think about movies.

"You know," Al said.  "If this were a movie, this would be the part where there was a montage."

They were in the bathroom, finally at a point where it looked like they were going to be able to sleep for a few hours.  Harold spit out his toothpaste.  "A montage?"

"Yeah, you know -- there would just be little snippets of all of us doing stuff, set to some sort of background music, and in 60 seconds it would be three months later and the baby would have stopped crying every time we picked him up."  Al was pretty upset about the crying thing.  Most babies loved him.  Harold was used to making babies cry; all he usually had to do was look at them and there were tears.  It wasn't fun, but it also hadn't been quite so unexpected when baby Harry hadn't "taken" to him right away.

"I was thinking about things being like a movie earlier today," Harold said.  "You don't think one of the kids is filming us for their summer project, do you?"

Al shook his head.  "I sat in on all their approval boards, just in case.  No, I think it's just one of those things -- when a dragon and a baby and your son from the future all show up in one day, it just feels a little surreal.  Movie-like."

Harold didn't think he'd imagined Al's emphasis on the word "your."  "Hey," he said, "If he's my son, he's your son too.  Equal parenting responsibility."  He paused.  "Is it okay that I'm still not really able to process that idea?"

"Yes," Al said quickly.  "It has to be.  Let's face it; this is not exactly the usual way of becoming parents.  And even people who've been preparing for years have moments of doubt."

Harold thought that if he could reduce his doubt to mere moments, he'd feel a lot better about the whole thing.  "Right," he said.  He reached for a towel.  "Al?  I'm having more than just moments of doubt."

Al gave him a relieved look.  "Yeah, me too."

Chapter 17: In which it's Sunday, at least according to the calendar, because 5:30 am is too early to think about time vortices.

They woke up to the sound of a baby crying, and Harold had to scramble for the memory of why there was a baby in the house.  A tiny roar brought it all rushing back.  Future Harry, and baby Harry, and the dragon, and was it really only 5:30 in the morning?  He sat up suddenly.  "Al," he said.

Al sat up too.  His hair was sticking up in all directions.  "What time is it?"

"Early."  There was silence for a minute.  Well, except for the baby.  "I guess we should go see what's going on," Harold said.

Opening the door seemed like a mistake as soon as he'd done it.  There was Bob, looking innocent as could be, licking his paw outside the nursery.  Inside the nursery they could hear Harry cursing.  It was enough to make Harold raise his eyebrows.  "Do you think we let him get away with that all the time?" he asked.

Al looked just as surprised.  "Maybe this is just an exceptionally difficult situation?"

The nursery door was already open, but they knocked softly anyway.  "Morning," Al said.  The guilty look Harry gave them answered their question about swearing.  "What happened?"

"Bob was sleeping in here, and then the dragon woke up and wanted to play.  Bob swatted him in the nose and he yelped, which woke the baby, and now we have this."  He gestured tiredly at the cranky infants. 

"Can we do anything to help?" Harold asked.  "You look like you could use some sleep."  

Harry hesitated.  "Well..."  

"We're going to have to learn sometime," Al told him.  As if sensing that his words weren't, perhaps, the most positive ones he could have chosen, he added, "We want to help."

"Okay," Harry said.  Then they did a sort of musical chairs "who's holding what" dance as Harry got them both outfitted with baby wraps.  "This is the basic X wrap," he explained.  "It's perfect for keeping these little guys safe and secure, especially since baby Harry can't support his head on his own."

"Where did you find these?" Al asked.  Harold had never seen them before; Al's had koi fish on it, and his own was some kind of abstract paisley pattern.  

"They were in the dresser," Harry said, and suddenly Harold realized he and Al were still in their pajamas.

"Should we have gotten dressed first?"  He thought he'd been watching the process carefully, but he was sure he wouldn't be able to recreate it without help.  If Harry was going to get some rest, they were going to be stuck until he woke up.

"Oh," Harry said.  "I thought you were dressed."  Harold and Al looked at each other.  Apparently their fashion choices weren't any better in the future.  

"It's fine," Al said.  "You're sure he won't fall out?"

Al was holding Harry, who was still fretting and red-faced, but not actually crying.  Harold got the dragon, who was happily gnawing on his finger.  "No, they'll be fine," Harry assured them. "Just don't, you know, bend over, or jump up and down or anything."

That wasn't exactly reassuring, but Harry looked really tired, and it wouldn't be good to exhaust their babysitter before 24 hours had even passed. "We have more baby things coming today," Harold said. "Do you want to sleep in our room?" Harry looked like he couldn't decide whether that would be weird.

"Or you could use Toby's room," Al said. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind."

"I don't know." Harry had clearly crossed over the line from "tired" to "brain shutting down."

Harold turned towards Al. "Is Toby on beacon duty this morning?" Al nodded, and Harold fished his emergency beacon out from underneath the dragon and twisted it on. A minute later, Toby came bounding up the stairs, slowing to an exaggeratedly slow walk when he saw the babies.

"What's going on?" he said.

"Can Harry sleep in your room?" Harold asked. "Eliza and Tina are bringing more stuff for Harry today, and there's going to be people in and out of the nursery."

"Sure, no problem." Toby seemed relieved at such a low-level "emergency." "Hey, are you guys in your pajamas?"

First lesson of the day: it was 100% possible to change the lower half of your outfit even while wearing a dragon-containing baby wrap. Not easy, but possible.

Second lesson of the day: cargo pants were clearly designed for people with small children to carry around. There were pockets for everything -- phone, toys, wipes, stuffed hippo plushies...

Third lesson of the day: even with cargo pants and baby wraps, breakfasting with an infant was a challenge. Harold was lucky, because he could at least snack on the tuna that the dragon was scarfing down. Al was stuck with baby formula, although he did manage to eat a granola bar after Harold unwrapped it for him.

"Are the kids coming back tonight?" Harold asked.  'Sabri and company,' as he often thought of them, had all gone home the night before, to finalize whatever they needed to do there before being on Earth full time for the summer. Harold wasn't sure why aliens who could travel across galaxies in the blink of an eye wanted to spend so much time on Earth, but Al assured him it wasn't unusual, especially for school-age kids.

"After dinner," Al said. "So there's seven we don't need to worry about feeding tonight."  Baby Harry screwed up his face like he was about to start screaming again, but all he did was spit formula all over Al.  Al rolled his eyes.  "Of course, I think these two more than make up for it."

It wasn't until they'd finished a sketchy clean-up of their "breakfast" dishes that Harold realized why no one else was around. It was still pre-7:00 on a Sunday morning. "Did you know it's still before 7:00?" he asked. "On a Sunday!"

Al looked surprised. "Really?"

Somehow, they decided that the best way to explore the strange new reality of being awake so early on a Sunday was to go for a walk.  They made it to the porch without any trouble, which was encouraging.  "Does he need a hat?" Al asked worriedly.  "Don't babies need hats when they're out in the sun?"

Harold looked around.  "It's pretty cloudy," he said.  "I think he'll be fine; we won't go far."  It was a beautiful morning, even with the clouds.  They crept down the driveway in flip-flops and cargo pants, adorned with bright-colored baby carriers.  The mailbox seemed like it was a long way away. Every time there was a noise -- a blue jay calling, a squirrel rustling in the bushes -- they stopped, but baby Harry had gone back to sleep and stayed that way through it all.  

They did eventually reach the mailbox and retrieve the newspaper, at which point they both agreed to quit while they were ahead and go back to the house.  No need to push their luck, really.  Even better, by the time they made it back to their starting point in the kitchen, Toby was making breakfast.  Pancakes -- even pancakes from a box -- were a huge improvement over tuna and granola bars.

Chapter 18: In which Harold and Al discuss parenting, parentage, and alternate universes.

The clouds cleared by mid-morning, but Harold and Al didn't stray any further than the front porch.  (Matthew was still asleep on the back one; the hammock thing might turn out to be less convenient than they'd expected.)  After all, they still weren't sure whether baby Harry needed a hat, and it seemed like too small a thing to wake future Harry up to ask about.  Harold read the paper, then spread the boring sections out on the porch for the dragon to play with.  He realized they still didn't have a name for it.  Maybe dragons named themselves, when they got old enough to care about things like that.  Or maybe they never did care about things like that, and eschewed the naming tradition entirely.  It wasn't like they were going to get it confused with some other dragon.  

"Okay, which one of you wants to be the superstitious one?"  Cate stuck her head out the door and waved her phone at them.  "Because that's the best explanation I can come up with for why you didn't tell anyone you were planning to adopt a baby."

"What?"  Al looked up from where he'd been tinkering with one of the emergency beacons.  Matthew and Betty had already stopped by to loan him a tracker like they had for their daughter, and he'd been hard at work ever since.  Honestly, he looked more relaxed than he'd been since the babies appeared.  Harold didn't think he even realized how often his hand drifted to rest on Harry's head.

Cate stepped fully onto the porch and squatted down to wiggle her fingers at the dragon.  "People keep calling me," she explained.  "Word's gotten around that you two suddenly have a baby.  Actually, it's a pretty even split for one baby versus two; the dragon's definitely throwing off the accuracy of the rumor mill."  The dragon in question put it's front feet on her knee, and she cooed at it.  Harold wasn't sure how he felt about the fact that a dragon was still considerably more cute than the baby.

"So why does one of us have to be superstitious?"  Rumors were always floating around about him and Al, and the children, and anything else people could think of to talk about.  When he'd gone to his high school reunion, he'd found out half the class thought he was a drug smuggler.  Harold thought that was a good reason not to go to any more reunions.

"This is the United States," Cate said.  "You don't just suddenly stumble across a baby and decide to take it home with you."  She paused, and looked at baby Harry.  "Okay, you two do, but it's not exactly the culturally accepted way to have children.  Adoption is the best cover story, but adoptions can take years to work through all the paperwork and formal procedures.  That's where the superstitious part comes in -- it's the perfect excuse for not telling anyone.  You didn't want to jinx it."

Harold was sure what Cate was saying made sense -- he'd given up on quelling rumors after the FBI assured him he wasn't going to get arrested, but he certainly didn't want Child Protective Services getting involved.  "I'll do it," he said.  "It seems more like an Earth thing anyway; one of those crazy things we believe in over here."  

Cate nodded.  "Got it.  So if anyone asks, that's what I've been telling people."

Harry waved his arms and -- of course -- started crying.  Al rubbed his back and said, "That could be a problem, actually.  I told Ilia and Janar that I think he's Harold's."

"What?  Why would you tell them that?"  Harold stared at him in shock.

"Because I do!  Future Harry looks just like you," Al said defensively.  "There's an obvious family resemblance.  And Trudy said it's much easier to get custody papers than to fake adoption records."

Harold couldn't believe everyone else had given this so much thought.  "And who's his mom supposed to be?"

Al waved the question away.  "There could be lots of explanations for that.  Just say she's not in the picture, and you don't want to talk about it."  

"I do want to talk about it," Harold said.  He couldn't believe Al had said that.  "I can't believe you would say something like that without asking me first.  Also, how is that even possible?"

Cate stood up quickly.  "I think Harry may need his diaper changed.  Why don't I take him inside and take care of that, and you guys can talk this over."  She plucked the baby out of Al's carrier and retreated inside at a suspiciously fast pace.  Harold looked at Al.

"She thinks we're having a fight," he said.

Al looked at the dragon.  "Are we?"

"No.  Well, maybe."  He paused.  "Do you really think Harry's my biological child?"

"Yes," Al said.  

Harold took a deep breath.  "Wow."  Another breath.  "I just -- I never expected to have kids.  I figured I could be the cool uncle if Charlotte or Eliza ever wanted to have them, but I never thought I'd be a dad.  It's like -- we've been together in all this, up to now."

"Up to now?"  Al looked upset.  "You don't want me to be Harry's parent too?"

"Do you want to?"

"Of course!  We are together; in this too.  Harold, I would want to be Harry's parent even if he was no relation to either of us.  This just makes him even more special." 

This was always the most tricky part.  Harold never knew what to say to statements like that.  "Thank you," he finally decided on.  "That -- it means a lot."  Then he frowned.  "I still don't seen how it could be possible, though."

"Alternate universe, parallel dimension, time travel?"  Al looked supremely unworried about the explanation.  "Future Harry said the baby was 'slippery.'  I don't even know what that means, but we probably will someday, and in the meantime--"

Whatever Al was about to say was cut off by the dragon, who rolled over onto its back, waved all its legs in the air, and clearly projected, "Hey."  Then they got, "Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey."  

Harold looked at Al.  "You heard that, right?"

Al nodded.  "In my head, yeah.  I guess that answers the question of when they can start talking.  Kind of a limited vocabulary, though."

Now that the dragon had their attention again, it bounced back upright.  Harold waved.  The dragon climbed eagerly up his leg and burrowed inexpertly into the baby wrap.  Harold rearranged things as best as he could, and then it was sleeping again.  "Is that normal?" he asked.  "From bored to asleep in less than two minutes?"

Al shook his head slowly.  "I have no idea," he said.  "I guess it's not uncommon, for an infant?  The kittens were like that, when they were really young."

"Let's go check on Cate and baby Harry," Harold suggested, standing up carefully, just in case the dragon wasn't as secure as he'd hoped.  "And I want to call Eliza -- I really thought she'd be here by now."

Al caught his arm as he turned towards the door.  "Are we good?" he asked.  

"Yeah," Harold said, leaning in close to bump shoulders with Al.  "We're good."

Chapter 19: In which Harold family finally shows up to help.  

It was after two when Eliza arrived with Tina.  They weren't alone, though.  Charlotte pulled in the driveway right behind them, and behind her --  "Is that my parents?"

It was.  They rushed to the porch and Harold found himself engulfed in a hug.  "Hi Mom."  As soon as she let go, his dad took her place.  "Hi Dad.  Um, it's great to see you.  What are you doing here?"

"We came to see you!"  His Mom hugged him again, then glared at him.  "Why did we have to hear about you having a baby from your sister?  Where is he?  Can I hold him?  How big is he?"

Eliza, Tina, and Charlotte were unloading huge bags from Eliza's car, and deliberately ignoring his plight.  "Well..." he started, hoping for inspiration.  

He got interruption instead, which worked just as well.  Harry walked out the front door and stopped in his tracks.  He was holding the baby, and Harold's mother instantly transferred her attention to him.  "There he is," she said.  "My grandson!"  Luckily, she kept her exclamation quiet, and baby Harry stayed asleep.  

"Shh," future Harry said.  It must have been an automatic reaction, because he looked surprised when Harold's parents turned their attention to him.  

"And who are you?" his mom asked.  Harry's eyes met Harold's over her head.  They clearly said "help!"

"Mom, this is Harry," he told her.  

"I thought the baby's name was Harry," she said, looking back and forth between them.

"It is," he told her.  "It's sort of a long story."  

"Well, you can tell me all about it while the girls get things unloaded."  

Which is how Harold, Al, Harold's parents, Harry, baby Harry, Matthew, and Toby all ended up in the living room with a pitcher of ice water and a plate of cookies, trying to explain how they'd all gotten there.  Cate had been excused, to help with the unloading.  Harold had literally never wished to be a girl so much in his life.  Even arranging baby clothes and diapers would have to be more fun than explaining time travel, and the reunion, and the summer camp (it was stuck that way in his mind, no matter how hard he tried to exchange it for 'drop-in hangout for friends and family'), and the dragon.  It was exhausting.

The best thing to come out of the discussion was a chance to see a very impressive display of baby-handling skills.  Between Matthew, Harry, and Harold's parents, he and Al were seriously outclassed, although Al did manage to finish up with the emergency beacon during the conversation.  Baby Harry obviously couldn't wear it on a lanyard like the rest of them, so Al tucked it into a wristband and tucked it onto the baby's ankle.  Harold made a mental note to ask Al where he'd found the wristband later -- he didn't want to worry his parents, but he was pretty sure Al didn't actually own any wristbands.

It took all afternoon, but they must have managed to display enough competency to pass some sort of standard, because his parents didn't demand to stay (much to his relief).  Instead, they took over the kitchen and whipped up some sort of stew, using vegetables that Harold had never seen in the refrigerator before.  Maybe they came from the camper. It was delicious, wherever they came from, and his parents left after the meal with strict instructions to call if they needed anything.  Charlotte, Eliza, and Tina actually left before the meal, taking Cate with them for a "girls night  out."  Which probably meant pizza and a movie, but Harold was willing to go along with whatever they wanted to call it, especially after he saw how much work they'd done in the nursery.

Chapter 20: In which Harold eats ice cream in the middle of the night.

Harold ended up wandering through the kitchen around 3 am.  He was on call for the midnight to six period, and a group of Matthew and Betty's people had showed up looking for help.  It was always strange to be awake when most of the house was asleep; for some reason, it always made Harold want to eat.  Ice cream would be good, and he happened to know the freezer was well-stocked.  He leaned against the counter and listened to the rain pour down outside -- did the kids have a plan for rainy days?  

He also reflected that it must be a sign of responsible adulthood, to actually get a bowl when you were snacking on ice cream in the middle of the night, instead of eating it straight from the carton.  It was good to know there were some aspects of his life that were at that point.  A couple minutes of staring into space was enough for him to start feeling bored.  The computer beckoned from the middle of the kitchen table, but it wasn't like anyone important would be expecting him to email back at 3:00 in the morning.  Breakfast would come soon enough.  Instead, he moved to the kitchen whiteboard.

The board listed all the names of the people who lived in the house.  Bob and Mama Tibbles were on top, of course, being cats.  Harold was pretty sure Mama Tibbles was staying with his sisters; she didn't seem too keen on crying babies or dragons.  Bob was staying close, though, making sure the new arrivals knew who was boss.  

Al's name was next (he was listed as "sleeping"), followed by Harold (who, of course, was "on call").  A list of everyone's phone number was posted next to the board, so anyone who'd managed to miss the information in the basement could call directly from the kitchen.  One time he'd had a pirate call him from the kitchen to ask how to get back to the basement.  Sometimes people who lived in space didn't  have a great sense of direction on the ground.  

Cate was fifth on the list, then Toby and Matthew.  Harry's name was on there twice, with handy pictures next to each one to tell them apart.  As far as he knew, Harry was still awake, watching the babies.  Despite Al's tracker, Harry still seemed a little paranoid about the baby disappearing somewhere.  Harold wasn't sure where, but it was keeping them all on edge, like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  On the positive side of things, Harry had assured them that the dragon's behavior and development was completely normal (at least so far) -- basic communication and brief spurts of energy were to be expected at this age.  On the negative side, Harry wasn't offering any helpful hints about the name.  All he would say was, "It'll come to you."  Time travel -- it just opened up whole new ways for families to fail to communicate, as far as Harold was concerned.

For now, all the kids names had been added to the board, to help keep track of them while they were doing the summer program.  Lishendri, Nadeka, PJ, Sabri, Damaris, Meshkalla, and Zahar all had the word "sleeping" next to their names, although Harold had no idea if that was what they were actually doing.  They were staying in the loft, far enough away so no one would be able to hear them unless they were having a really noisy party, especially with the rain.  Speaking of the rain...

Matthew wandered out from the living room, blinking at the light.  "Hey Harold," he said.  "Is that ice cream?"

Harold waved his spoon at the freezer.  "I thought you were..."

Matthew shook his head.  "Sleeping outside in good weather is awesome.  Sleeping outside in the pouring rain is a little hardcore for me.  I crashed on the couch in the living room.  Is that okay?"

"Yeah, of course."  Harold moved over so Matthew could get a bowl.  "So, what do you think so far?"

Matthew grinned at him over a heaping bowl of ice cream.  "Well, I'll tell you one thing -- I don't know why I ever thought I had to leave the planet to find excitement.  I should have just stuck with you guys; everything comes to you."

"It does feel that way sometimes," Harold said.  

"I'm serious," Matthew told him.  "This is great.  You've got aliens, pirates, time travel, dragons, and a well-stocked refrigerator.  I got really sick of eating pasta when I was traveling with Sam."  Harold nodded.  Matthew had clearly received the same advice he had about space travel and eating: when in doubt, stick with cooked grains, and avoid anything that looked like dairy or meat.  Not all cultures had the same ideas about what parts of things were appropriate for eating, and it wasn't something you wanted to find out after the fact.

Matthew took his nod as encouragement to talk about some of the strange things he'd been offered to eat on his adventures.  Harold mostly tried not to listen -- he was trying to enjoy his ice cream, and mental images of fried insects were not conducive to enjoyment.  There wasn't enough ketchup in the galaxy to make those go down easy.  Still, it was a friendly conversation, and Harold countered with stories about how he'd gotten lost everywhere he tried to go when he'd been in space, which Matthew seemed to think was hilarious.  When they were done, Matthew took the bowls to rinse, and Harold carefully wrote "triple mint pistachio heath bar crunch (ice cream)" on the shopping list taped to the refrigerator.  He couldn't find a pen, but there was a magic marker wedged next to the toaster, so he used that.

They got the lights turned back off and Matthew took a glass of water back to the living room.  "Sleep well," Harold called quietly as he headed up the stairs, and heard Matthew's acknowledgement floating up after him.

The light was on in the nursery.  Which wasn't unusual, based on his previous experience of, oh, one day, but Harold moved closer anyway.  There was no crying, but he did hear talking, and there was definitely more than one person involved in the conversation.

"They're going to figure it out eventually," someone said.

"Of course they are; they're his parents.  My parents.  Our parents, whatever."  Harold figured that one must be Harry, and wondered who he could be talking to.  It didn't sound like a voice he recognized, but he wasn't exactly a voice recognition expert.  It would be embarrassing if it turned out to be Al, but anyone else he didn't think he should be expected to identify based on voice alone, outside of his immediate family.

"What's it like, being back here?"

"It's fine.  A little strange, I guess.  The food's good; they eat a lot of pizza."

"No surprise there; it's NIMBY."

Harold stepped up to the door and knocked softly.  The voices cut off instantly.  No cursing this time, though -- Harold was pretty sure Al had mentioned something to Harry earlier about being a good role model for himself.  And if that seemed like a circular argument, which it most likely was, Al had probably brought up the fact that they tried to keep things clean in front of all the kids.

The nursery door cracked open and Harold pointedly didn't look.  He actually turned around and addressed his words back towards the stairs.  "This might be a good time to remind you that this is a 24-hour household," he said.  "So any conversations that we shouldn't be overhearing, you might want to be a little more subtle about."

There was silence from behind him.  Then Harry said, "Right.  Sorry about that."

"No problem," Harold said.  "Just trying not to create a space-time anomaly that will envelop the house, eat the surrounding neighborhood, and ultimately destroy the planet.  Also, I'd like to get some sleep now."

"Good dreaming," Harry said.

Harold smiled.  That was what Al always told the kids.  "You too."

Chapter 21: In which summer camp starts, even if it's not technically called that.

Monday morning dawned bright and sunny.  Actually, that was a complete lie.  Monday morning was rainy and chilly; it just seemed like it would have been more appropriate for it to be bright and sunny, and Harold was trying to see if he could affect the weather just by wishing really hard.  It didn't work any better than it had in high school, when he was trying to bring on a snowstorm to get out of taking a test he hadn't studied for.

"It's raining," Al said.

"Yeah.  Do the kids have a plan for this?"

"I think so.  PJ had a lot of lists; she must have included what to do on rainy days on one of them.  I think I'm more worried about no one showing up.  They've put a lot of work in to this idea.  I think they'll be upset if no one comes."  Al looked out the window.  "It doesn't seem like a very good day to go anywhere, though."

"Maybe they'll get some people from off-planet," Harold suggested.  "They won't even know it's raining."  Which wasn't necessarily true; the internet worked fine almost anywhere, and it wasn't like people couldn't check a weather report before they left home.  But weather was often regarded by interplanetary travelers as a sort of quirky tourist attraction.  The snow over the winter had been hugely popular, with some people stopping in just to see it.  

"And..."  Al looked at him curiously.  "The baby's not crying right now," Harold said.  

"Good point," said Al.  "We should definitely enjoy that while we can."  It was a little later than they'd gotten up the day before; at least late enough so the sun was up, even if they couldn't really see it.  Harold was hoping Harry had managed some sleep as well.  It couldn't be good for him to just stay awake all the time, no matter how worried he was about the baby.

"I think we're going to have to put laundry on the list for today," Harold said.  "I'm down to wearing your shirts -- all of mine are dirty."

Al laughed.  "I was just thinking the same thing; we need to do laundry because I'm out of shirts -- now I know why."

Harold threw a sock at him, which Al ducked expertly.  For once, they had plenty of clean socks, but they didn't need them in the summer -- the curse of seasonal laundry.  Finally, armed with emergency beacons, cell phones, and shirts they were fairly confident were mostly clean, they headed for the kitchen.  It sounded like plenty of people were up before them.

"Hey, pass the cereal, please."

"Which one?"

"Are there any grapes?"

"I thought babies couldn't eat grapes.  Isn't that one of those foods?"

"Which cereal?  The o's, or the flakes?  I don't have the other one, it's still in the cupboard."

"No, the grapes are for me."

"Do we have more paper towels?  Actually, do we have a regular towel?"

Harold took a deep breath before entering the room.  It was good, he reminded himself, to encourage personal responsibility.  Letting people do their own thing was the only way the house worked as well as it did; they weren't going to appoint a kitchen monitor just to make sure no one put an empty milk carton back in the fridge or dropped cheese into the toaster by accident.  "Own your choices" -- that was their motto, and it worked.  You figured out your own mistakes and learned from them.  It was just -- sometimes that meant a little extra mental preparation time before actually seeing those choices.

There was quite a crowd gathered in the kitchen.  All seven kids, plus Cate, Matthew, Harry, and the baby.  Between the table and the breakfast bar, there should have been enough seats for everyone, but half the kids were sitting on the floor anyway.  It had become a tradition, somehow, or maybe they just liked it.  It did encourage everyone to put in a little extra effort when it came to keeping the kitchen clean, at least.

"What's the towel for?" Al asked, walking in just behind Harold and quickly identifying the most pressing question.

"To clean the microwave," Sabri said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.  "We were just reading about it online."

"Good morning, Harold and Al!"  Tifa waved excitedly from the table.  She was on her knees in one of the chairs, leaning forward to read from the kitchen computer.  

Zahar nodded.  "If you microwave a wet towel for 45 seconds, you can use it to clean the microwave afterwards.  It's the steam," he said, still nodding.

Harold considered asking why the kids thought they should be cleaning the microwave.  He probably didn't want to know.  "There's extra hand towels under the sink," he said instead.  "Remember it will be hot; there's extra gloves under there too if you want them."

Al picked his way through the maze of breakfasters to reach the refrigerator.  "And put the towel in the laundry room when you're done, if you don't mind.  We'll be running some loads through later today anyway."  He pulled out the orange juice and started refilling glasses.  Harold waved back to Tifa, who was the only new face in the room.  Xikade was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's Toby?" Harold asked, casually handing out napkins to everyone who didn't have one (everyone).  

"He's out walking the dragon," Cate said.  "With Tifa's brother and the other kids."

Harold ignored the "other kids" part of her sentence.  PJ was the one with the plan; he was the one who was supposed to do laundry.  Also, he wasn't sure how it had escaped the morning crowd, but there was definitely a half-casserole of leftover lasagna in the refrigerator.  Al must have read his mind, because he snatched it out along with some plates.  "Should we not use the microwave until you've done your towel trick?" he asked Sabri.  

She bit her lip.  "I don't know.  It's pretty messy.  There was some soup.  It exploded."

"Cold is fine," Harold said.  "I like it cold."

"Me too," Al agreed.  "Good luck with the microwave, though."

Chapter 22: In which there is laundry, reading, and a bear.  Yes, a bear.

Somewhat to his surprise, the towel trick actually worked pretty well.  The door looked a little streaky afterwards (the internet suggested lemon oil for that -- who had that just sitting around their kitchen?), but nobody minded.  The key to a harmonious sharing of cleaning duties, Harold had learned, was not to ask anybody to clean in a particular way, or using a particular method.  Really, all that led to was people saying, "If you're only willing to have it done in one way, why don't you do it?"  Since that wasn't the goal -- in fact, it was the complete opposite of the goal -- Harold kept his mouth shut.

After breakfast, Harry finally went to sleep, leaving the baby with Harold, safely tucked into his wrap.  Harold assumed that eventually he'd figure out how to tie the thing himself; until then he at least had Harry to help.  Luckily, it turned out that laundry was one of those chores that was fairly easy to accomplish with a baby attached to you.  Harold just hung out in the laundry room, and let things come to him.

First, Matthew stuck his head in from the front hall.  "Harold, do you have any waterproof markers?  Sharpies, or something?  The kids are making signs."

Then PJ hurried in.  "Can we borrow some clothespins?  All of them, maybe?"  

It wasn't until Xikade wandered in from the kitchen and asked, "Would it be okay to use duct tape on outdoor paint?  PJ said I should ask you," that Harold thought he should probably find out what was going on.

"What's going on?" he asked.  "What are you guys doing?"  It was still raining, but the noise level inside the house would seem to indicate that most of the kids were outside somewhere.  Or just being really quiet, but that seemed less likely.

"We're turning the porch into a fort," Xikade said.  "The clothespins aren't strong enough to hold the tarps, though, and we thought maybe duct tape would work, but PJ said I had to ask first, because of the paint.  We used duct tape for everything, back on the station."

Harold thought about it, idly rubbing the baby's back.  "Duct tape probably isn't a good idea, unless you're taping the tarps to each other and not the painted wood.  We have a lot of clothesline, though -- you could try that instead.  It's with the camping stuff in the garage."

"We know," Xikade told him confidently.  "That's where we found the tarps.  It's okay to use, though?"

Harold gave a sort of cross between a shrug, a nod, and a "I'm holding a baby, what do you expect?"  "Sure," he said.  "Own your choices.  Just make sure everything's dry before you pack it up again, or it'll get all moldy."

"Cool.  Thanks, Harold!" Xikade left at a considerably faster pace than he'd arrived, and Harold settled back into his comfortable laundry routine -- sort, load, hang, fold.  It had a sort of soothing rhythm to it.    

The odd part of the morning was that after he stopped getting visits from people, the animals started showing up.  Mama Tibbles and Bob walked through together -- it sounded simple, but actually required Harold to get down from his perch on the dryer twice, once to let them out onto the side porch, and once to let them back in.  Cats.

After that came a cat he didn't recognize, followed by a parrot.  Neither of those were particularly unusual; the house was a pet-friendly area, and lots of visitors brought their animals along with them.  The tortoise was a little strange.  And, of course, there was the bear.  Harold had been reading out loud to the baby, so he didn't notice it at first.  (They didn't have any kids' books in the laundry room, so Harold was reading from a sporting goods catalog; he figured the sound of his voice was probably more important than the words at that age anyway.  That's what he was hoping, at least.)  His attention was pretty firmly focused on the catalog and the baby, but when he went to turn the page, he glanced up, and there it was.  A giant, lumbering bear.  In the laundry room.

"Whoa," he said.  The bear moved closer.  Harold fumbled for his emergency beacon.  His phone, of course, was halfway across the room.  Since there was a giant bear between him and it, he just twisted the beacon on, pushed the tiny call button on the back, and said, "Help!"

His phone rang less than ten seconds later.  Harold glared at it from his seat on top of the dryer.  The bear swung its head around and appeared to glare at the phone as well -- Harold took the opportunity to scoot further back; the further he was from the teeth, the better.  Ten seconds after that, he heard footsteps hurrying through the front hall.  Toby slid to a stop just inside the laundry room.  "Whoa," he said.

"That's what I said," Harold told him.  "Help?"  To be honest, the bear didn't look terribly menacing, beyond the standard "giant lumbering bear" aspect.  Maybe it was one of those nice blueberry-eating bears, and not one of the people-mauling ones.  

Toby held his phone up to his ear.  "Yeah, I found him," he said.  There was a pause; Harold wondered who he was talking to.  Al, probably.  "In the laundry room," Toby said.  Another pause.  "Well, there's a bear.  Yes, I'm sure it's a bear.  I'm looking right at it!"  Harold rolled his eyes, fully expecting Al to appear any second.  Toby said, "Okay, that's not good.  How many are we talking about?"  

There was a long pause.  Harold thought the bear (along with baby Harry) was starting to look antsy.  It was like a race -- would Harry start crying before the bear got bored and did something, or vice versa?  Then Toby said, "So what are we supposed to do about this bear?"  Harold didn't think he was imagining an emphasis on the word "this."  It was a little worrying, really.  

"How many bears are there?" Harold asked.  It was possible there was a hint of panic in his voice.  Could bears smell fear, or was that just dogs?

Toby put his phone away and took a cautious step closer.  "I'm not sure," he said.  Harold decided that the situation had reached the point of being more than just a little worrying.  "Al's kind of busy right now.  It seems like the bears might be an accident."

Harold wondered what that meant.  "What does that mean?" he asked.  "No, never mind.  What are we supposed to do about it?"

Toby took another step towards the bear, who rolled its head to the side to eye him suspiciously.  Toby put his hands up -- Harold wasn't sure if the "I'm unarmed, please don't shoot" hand gesture really worked on bears, but it was probably worth a try.  "Well," Toby said, "according to the bear's trainer, it should respond to voice commands."  He moved even closer and made sure the bear was still looking at him.  "Back off," he said firmly.  

The bear didn't move.  In fact, if a bear's facial expression could be said to express condescending disdain, that's what the bear was feeling in regards to Toby's words.  "Maybe this one's deaf," Toby suggested.  

Harold shook his head.  "It heard my phone ringing before."

"Huh."  Toby frowned.  "I was sure he said 'back off' was the right phrase."  He looked at the bear.  "Back up," he said.  Nothing.  "Back down."  The bear continued to do nothing.  "Well," Toby said, "it's not actually threatening us.  Have you tried just... slipping past?"

"I'm holding the baby," Harold said.  "It's not exactly conducive to 'slipping' anywhere."  He twitched his foot anyway, just to check -- it would be pretty silly to be getting all worked up if the bear wasn't going to do anything.  As soon as he moved, it growled.  "Okay, that's a problem," he said.  "Go get Harry."

"Harry?  Why?"  

"Because I'm assuming that if Al or the bear trainer could be here, they would be.  If they're not available, Harry's the best choice for taking baby Harry without making him cry.  Also, I don't know where anyone else is."

"Right, got it," Toby said.  He fiddled with his watch (actually a transportation device -- it was so useful knowing people with super-advanced technology) and disappeared.  The bear didn't seem to notice; all his attention was still focused on Harold's toes.  

Harold passed the time by imagining what was going on upstairs.  Toby would appear in the nursery, and say, "Wake up; there's a bear in the laundry room."  Harry would say, "What?"  Toby would say, "A bear.  A big, potentially hungry bear, and it's looking at baby you like it wants a snack."  And Harry would leap out of bed and hustle to the rescue.  He ran the conversation through in his head several times, with variations in each person's parts.  Finally, Toby reappeared.  "He's coming," Toby said.

Sure enough, Harry rushed into the room -- he did skip to a stop, but he managed not to say, "Whoa."  Harold breathed a sigh of relief.  "Hey," he said.  "Sorry to wake you."

"No problem," Harry said.  "I wish I could say this is unusual, but it's pretty much par for the course.  Weird stuff happens at inconvenient times of day; you get used to it."

Harold was really hoping he never got used to giant bears wandering through his house.  "Help?" he said.  

Harry clambered up on the washing machine and stood up.  The bear looked at him with vague interest, and Harry glared back.  "Back off!" he said loudly.  Just as Harold was about to explain that Toby had already tried that, unsuccessfully, the bear dropped its eyes and took a few steps -- not exactly backwards, but in a sort of general "further away" direction.  "Lie down!" Harry said.  Obediently, the bear lowered itself to the ground.

"How did you do that?" Toby asked.  "I tried that!"

"It's all in the tone," Harry said.  "PJ taught me that.  She was older, though."  He stepped across the gap to the dryer.  "Here, hand him to me.  I probably woke him up with all the shouting."  Harold gratefully handed over the fretting baby and slid off the dryer.  

"What do we do with it now?" he asked.  "The bear, I mean."

Harry managed an only-slightly-awkward hands-free transfer to the floor, keeping his eyes on the baby the whole time.  Harold was feeling a lot better now that the bear was lying down, but Toby raised his hand hesitantly.  "Um, maybe we should help find the other bears?"

Chapter 23: In which the bears are explained, and there's a trip to the grocery store.

Learning that there were, in fact, upwards of twelve bears potentially exploring and/or wreaking havoc somewhere in the house was apparently enough to keep Harry from going back to sleep.  He helped them track down the remaining bears (two in the living room, a surprising three packed into the craft room, one who'd managed to get all the way up the stairs to Harold and Al's bathroom, along with the original laundry room bear) and herd them down to the basement.  That was where they found the bear trainer, along with six more bears (apparently when the trainer said "a dozen" he really meant "a baker's dozen" -- Harold didn't even want to consider the possibility that there was an extra unexpected bear in the mix).  

"Thank you so much," the trainer said, heartily shaking everyone's hands.  "We're part of a traveling circus, and the bears aren't even supposed to be here today, but they must have gotten into the magic box when I wasn't looking, and then they all came out when we got here!"  As was his usual strategy when Harold had no idea what people were talking about, he just smiled and nodded.  He always hoped it came across as gracious and understanding, but secretly feared it might just make him look kind of slow.  

Al was looking extremely stressed by the whole thing.  Somehow, the kids had managed to stay safely on the porch the whole time (although if the noises were anything to go by, "safe" might  not describe the fate of the porch itself), but one of the bears had started chewing on the doorway when Al wasn't looking.  It was a lot of excitement for a day that had started with laundry duty.  "Great," Al said.  "So you're all set to go, right?"

The bear trainer looked disappointed.  "I was hoping I could make it up to you, maybe stay and do a show for everyone."  Al seemed torn -- the kids would hate to miss the opportunity to see performing bears, but clearly he himself would prefer to never see any bears ever again.  Harold jumped in to try to help him out.

"That's very generous," Harold said, adding in more smiling and nodding for good measure.  "Really, very generous.  We'd love to have you stay and show the kids what you do.  Al and I will go see if they're ready."  

He pulled Al towards the stairs.  "Think how much they'll enjoy it," he whispered.  Al crossed his arms and Harold tried again.  "It's still raining; it will give them something to do this afternoon."  In a last ditch attempt, he pulled out one final argument: "It may be the only thing that saves our porch."  That did it -- Al relented, on the condition that he didn't have to stay and watch.  

"Thirteen bears!" he said.  "If this all goes terribly wrong, I'm going to say I told you so."  

Harold wasn't sure what Al was expecting to happen; maybe he had a traumatic bear-related experience in his childhood.  "Look," he said.  "We'll go to the grocery store.  With both of us out of the house, the probability of something bizarre happening will decrease dramatically, right?"

"We went to the store yesterday," Al said.

"We're out of milk again," Harold countered.  They looked at each other.

"I really don't like these bears," Al said.  "Did you see the teeth marks?"  

Harold had seen them.  "I know," he said.  "But think of what a good role model you're being for the kids.  Plus, we can take the Armada."

Technically, Al didn't have a car.  Of course, technically Harold didn't either.  His car had been vaporized when their house was blown up by aliens, but he'd been borrowing Eliza's old car.  Both of them preferred driving the Armada, a huge beast of a car that actually belonged to Nadeka and Lishendri's mom, Ilia.  It wouldn't fit through the doorway, so she left it on Earth in the care of Harold and Al.  It was a perk.  And it could fit a lot of kids (or groceries), which made it convenient to have on hand.

"Good point," Al said.  He considered for a minute.  "Okay, we can do that.  I need to wash my hands, though, they're all covered with bear fur."

It took a little longer than that to actually be ready to go, and then Tifa and Xikade wanted to come with them -- apparently growing up on a space station meant that traveling circus bears were old hat, but driving a car to a grocery store was new and exciting.  Harry and baby Harry also came along.  (Harold had no idea why, and decided not to ask.  He was just glad there was a car seat for baby Harry.)

Al seemed much more relaxed once they were out of  the house and on the road.  Harold wondered if there was more to his dislike of bears than just the day's events.  Not that he thought they weren't enough all on their own, but he'd seen Al handle much weirder and more potentially dangerous things without even batting an eye.  "Are you okay?" he asked.  

"I don't like bears," Al said.  "I'm not sure why."  

That seemed clear enough, and Harold was happy to assist in ignoring the fact that their house was currently full of the only creatures Harold had ever seen Al actively dislike.  "Right," he said.  "What should we have for dinner?"  It wasn't a subtle change of subject, but he figured it would work.  Al's smile let him know that his effort hadn't gone unnoticed.

"Xikade?  Tifa?  Are you staying for dinner?" Al asked, raising his voice so it would carry to the back seat.  Harold twisted around to look at them.

"Our mom said we had to come home," Xikade said.  "But we'd rather stay for dinner.  Your house is a lot more exciting than ours."

The trouble with a car as large as the Armada was that it was actually kind of hard to have a conversation between people in the front seats and the back row.  Luckily, Harry stepped in (figuratively, not literally, since he was securely seated in the middle row of seats).  Completely ignoring both Al's question and Xikade's answer, he said, "Have you ever been to a grocery store on Earth before?"

Xikade stayed suspiciously silent, but Tifa said, "Of course we have!  Well, a couple times.  Then Mom and Dad said we couldn't go any more."

Uh-oh.  Harold should have known something was up when they'd been so excited about coming along.  It had been a while since he'd had to give a "grocery store rules and safety" talk, but he was mentally reviewing how much he could cover before they arrived in the parking lot when Harry started talking.

"Grocery stores on Earth aren't like a space station," he said seriously.  "Listen carefully; we want to show your parents you can handle the responsibility, right?"  Tifa and Xikade nodded.  "Okay, number one: you're with NIMBY; do you have your emergency beacons?"  More nods.  "Great.  Number two: stick together.  Don't get separated from Harold and Al.  What should you do if you get lost?"

"Try and find them?" Xikade asked.  

Harry shook his head.  "Stand still and act like a tree," he said.  Harold blinked.  Really?  He looked at Al.

"Maybe you should write this down," Al whispered.  "It sounds like he's done this before."  It was a good idea, except that Harold didn't exactly carry a notepad and pen around with him on a trip to buy groceries.  He rooted through the glove compartment and found a stack of fast food restaurant napkins.  No writing utensil, though, and he wasn't going to write in blood no matter how good the safety rules were. 

"I'm not writing in blood," he whispered back to Al.  

"Of course not," Al said.  "Here, I have a pen."  

Harold took the pen and scribbled, "put pens in car" on the napkin.  Then he wrote, "Stand still and act like a tree."  He hoped he remembered what the notes were for later on.  He imagined finding the napkin stuffed back in the glove compartment six months down the road and being completely baffled.

"What kind of tree?" Tifa was asking, when Harold started paying attention to the conversation again.  "A willow tree?"

"The strongest tree you can think of," Harry told her, which seemed like a good answer.  "You want to be a strong tree so your roots -- your feet -- won't move at all.  Yes, the rest of you can move," he added, probably anticipating her next question.  "As soon as we see you're not with us, we'll come find you."

"What about a police officer?" Xikade asked.  "Mom said if we got lost we should find a police officer."

"Do you know what a police officer looks like?" Harry asked.  Xikade paused, then shook his head.  "Well, what if someone just told you they were a police officer, and that it was okay to go with them, but they really weren't?" 

"What?"  Xikade looked shocked.  "Would someone do that?"  He looked accusingly at Harold with an expression that said, "What's wrong with your planet?"  Harold just shrugged.  Apparently space stations were safer than he'd thought.

"So if anyone tells you they're a police officer, or a store employee, or they seem nice and have children with them, that's probably good, but don't stop being a tree.  Tell them you're lost, and waiting for your parents.  You can ask them to use the loudspeaker to announce it if they want to, but don't go anywhere with them.  Stay where you are."

"And be a tree!"  Tifa seemed the most interested in the acting part of the conversation.  Harold thought she'd probably get along well with Eliza.  He wasn't convinced she was going to remember to tell people anything other than, "I'm a tree" if she actually got lost, but it wasn't like their town was a hotbed of criminal activity.  (There were a lot of rumors, but most of them were about him and Al, and Tifa's parents already knew about them -- it wasn't like the rumors were true, after all.  Most of them, at least.)

"Exactly," Harry said.  "What if someone doesn't listen to you, and tries to grab you and pull you away?"

Xikade looked excited.  "I know!" he said.  "'You're not my parent!'  I learned it at school; Tifa's class didn't do it."  He looked accusingly at Harold again, which Harold thought was completely unfair.  He'd been Tifa's teacher for a day, and they hadn't even actually held class -- there'd been a safety drill and spent the whole day in an evacuation lockdown.  None of the teachers had taught anything.  

"Hey," he said.  Unfortunately, no one was listening to him.

"But you're not our parents," Xikade said.  

Harry nodded, like he'd already thought of that problem and taken care of it.  "That's true," he said.  "But we're helping your parents by hanging out with you guys.  Right?  And if you shout 'you're not my parent' in the grocery store about one of us, it's really serious.  We'd have to revoke your store trip privileges.  Do you understand?"

Both kids nodded, wide-eyed.  Harold wondered if they'd ever actually done that in Harry's time -- revoked someone's "going to the grocery store" privilege.  The hopeful, optimistic part of his brain hoped the answer was no, but Harry's expression said yes.  Well, that was something to look forward to, then.  

And just like he hadn't completely freaked them out just seconds before, Harry clapped his hands together cheerfully.  "Okay, I think that covers everything," he said.  "Emergency beacons, stand like a tree, and don't shout 'you're not my parent' unless you really need to.  We're ready to buy some food!"

The kids cheered -- quietly, thank goodness, mindful of the baby sleeping in their midst -- and Harry looked back towards the front of the car.  "You guys know I'm not coming in the store with you, right?" he said.  "Babies aren't good with shopping; I'll just walk around for a while until you're done."

Harold resisted the urge to groan, or possibly bang his head against the window.  They really hadn't thought this plan through enough.  

Chapter 24: In which a lot of people recognize Harold and Al in the grocery store.

They didn't split up.  Usually Harold and Al would head in opposite directions as soon as they got inside.  It was a carefully constructed strategy, which took into account a variety of factors:

1. Some people had a harder time recognizing them when they were on their own, which cut down on the number of times they were interrupted. 

2. If someone did recognize them, and corner them into a conversation about (Harold would insert pretty much anything into that sentence, but Al only got really bothered if someone starting asking about the mob rumors), they could pretend they were late to meet the other person, and escape.

3. It made the shopping go faster.

4. Harold sort of perversely enjoyed being the rude and inconsiderate shopper who talked on his cell phone while he was in the grocery store.  He was usually talking with Al, which meant the conversation was helpful, and mostly about food anyway.  There were a lot of rumors about his potentially criminal activities (also, his potential life as a government operative, international spy, or secret eccentric billionaire) -- but none of them were true.  It was kind of satisfying to indulge in such a small, petty thing as talking on the phone while shopping.

5. As much as he didn't like to admit it, sometimes the rumor mill knew things before Harold and Al figured them out.  It was good to keep up with the latest gossip, just in case something turned out to be true.

Since they had Xikade and Tifa with them, splitting up seemed like a bad idea, though, so the four of them headed into the produce section as a group.  Almost instantly, someone flagged them down.  "Harold!  Al!"  

Harold took a deep breath and waved (possibly a little half-heartedly) at the person who'd called their names.  He was looking at the pineapples, which Harold always found intimidating -- how could you even tell if a pineapple was ripe or not?  They had spikes.  Harold didn't recognize him, but that wasn't unusual.  The tricky part was figuring out whether people knew Al, which probably meant they knew about aliens, or knew Harold, which would mean they probably didn't.  Unfortunately, neither he or Al was particularly good at remembering people they were supposed to know, so most conversations started out fairly awkward.

"Hi," Harold said.  "How are you?"  Asking questions was usually a safe choice.

"Good, I'm good," the man said.  "How are you doing?"  

"Oh, you know," Harold told him.  Al tried to look busy, handing each of the kids a bag to open.  "We're all doing well," Harold said.  "Busy."

"I can imagine," was the reply, which wasn't helpful at all.  Harold just smiled.  "Are these your children?" the man asked.  "I'd heard they were visiting."

"Nope!" Tifa said happily.  "They're not our parents.  But we're not supposed to say that."

Xikade added helpfully, "Harry's outside, with the baby.  He's waiting in the parking lot."  

"Tifa and Zeke live a few houses down from us," Al tried to explain.  "We're watching them today for their parents.  It's Harry who's visiting."

Harold wondered if this was the same guy who'd tried to sell them insurance at his high school reunion.  He did look vaguely familiar.  He also seemed inordinately curious.  "Of course," he said.  "And Harry is...?"

Harold and Al looked at each other.  Harold was pretty sure it was an obvious 'what lie can we make up that will seem believable?' look, but he tried anyway.  "Harry's my cousin," he said.  

"Right," the man said.  "Your cousin.  Named after the same relative, I'm guessing."  

Harold frowned.  He was used to people asking questions about his life, but this was getting weird.  "You know parents," he said.  "Who can tell what they're thinking when they pick a baby name?"  And then, knowing it was rude even as he said it, he exclaimed, "Oh, look at that!  Fresh pears.  Aren't those on our list?"  He hustled the kids away, calling back, "Good to see you," in a tone that probably conveyed the exact opposite.

Once they were safely out of sight, Al said, "That was weird.  Did you know that guy?"

"I don't think so," Harold told him.  "Hopefully it was nothing."

The rest of the store proved equally full of people who knew their names, but no one as strange as the produce section guy.  In the cereal aisle, they met a woman who'd come through the doorway with her husband for a week-long honeymoon on Earth.  She asked which brand of cereal they thought was best, which led to a lengthy comparison of ingredient labels, box colors, and toy surprises.  In the paper goods aisle, they ran into Sam, who was taking a summer course at the university.  Actually, Harold wasn't sure whether he was taking it or teaching it -- Sam was also one of those people who liked to talk on the phone while shopping, and it was hard to tell which parts of his conversation were intended for them and which were for whoever was on the other end of the phone call.  They let him know that Matthew was doing well, and invited him to stop by anytime.  

In the frozen food section, somewhat hilariously, they found Charlotte and Eliza arguing over pizza toppings.  "Hi," Harold said.  "What are you doing here?"  It was a stupid question, but he was caught off guard.  In all the time he'd lived in the same town with his sisters (which was most of his life), they'd never accidentally run into each other in the grocery store.  It seemed odd that now that he'd moved farther away, there they were.

"Gabe!" Charlotte said.  

"I was just saying that frozen olives don't taste right when you heat them up," Eliza said.  "Right?  You can't get a pizza with frozen olives on it, no matter how good the rest of it looks.  It's a rule, like the sardines thing."

Harold honestly had no idea what she was talking about.  He hadn't known that she ate pizza with olives or sardines, and his personal preference would be to keep both of them as far from his plate as possible.  "I don't know," he said.  Tifa and Xikade, of course, wanted to know what the sardines rule was, and they spent several minutes discussing the specifics of when and where it would be acceptable to eat fish out of a tin.

"Charlotte," Harold said quietly.  "Can I talk to you for a minute?"  He drew her slightly away from where the kids and Eliza were talking. &nbsp;Al had moved down the aisle to pick out breakfast waffles, or possibly ice cream.  "There was a guy, back by the pineapple.  He was asking a lot of questions."

Charlotte gave him a bemused look.  "More than usual?  When I came in Sue asked me if I knew there was a sale on diapers.  It's a small community; everyone loves to gossip about you guys."

Harold frowned, trying to pinpoint the source of his unease about the earlier conversation.  "This was -- it was weird.  Just keep your radar up, okay?  I don't want anything going on that we're not ready for."

"Gabe, when it comes to you?  And Al, and the children, and even your cats?  My radar is always up, believe me.  If I hear anything, you'll be the first to know."

"Thank you," Harold said.  "You know we appreciate it, right?"

"Of course," Charlotte told him.  "Now, help me convince Eliza that olives are a perfectly acceptable frozen pizza topping.  If she doesn't like them, she can always pick them off, and then there's more for me."

Harold laughed, and they made it through the rest of the shopping trip without any more strange encounters, lost children, or phone calls about bear crises happening back at the house.  Charlotte and Eliza agreed to come by for dinner, and baby Harry even managed to sleep through the car ride home.  If the bears were gone by the time they got there, the trip would be a complete success.

Chapter 25: In which there is even more confusion than usual.

The problem with having a 24-hour household was that you could never count on any time of day to be quiet and peaceful.  On the other hand, Harold was technically not on call, so he might be able to get away with ignoring whatever was causing the commotion that had woken him up at --  he checked the clock and blinked -- way too early in the morning.

He lay there for almost 30 seconds, feeling his eyes drifting shut even as his logical, responsible side argued that he should get up and see what was going on.  Wasn't Matthew covering the late night/early morning hours?  If he needed help, surely he'd call, or send someone to get them.  

Suddenly, Harold's emergency beacon started buzzing and flashing, echoed by Al's.  Well, that answered that question.

He fumbled for clothes, his beacon, his phone, dimly aware of Al doing the same thing.  They rushed down the stairs towards the front door.  Ninety percent of Harold's attention was focused on not tripping on the stairs, so he didn't actually look up until he'd gotten all the way to the bottom step.  What he saw made him wish he was more awake.  There was Matthew, holding up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender.  Okay, Harold didn't know if it was universal, but that was so much faster to say than "the well-recognized on Earth gesture of surrender."  Just inside the doorway were two men holding guns.

Harold was literally speechless.  His brain was stuck on the image, and he blinked, like maybe it would make more sense if he tried again.  It didn't.

"Stop right there," one of the men said, waving a gun in their direction.  "Down on your knees, all of you.  Hands on your heads."

Harold felt like he was in a movie.  Did this sort of thing actually happen to people in real life?  He also felt like they should probably vacuum the front hall -- there was a lot of grit under his knees, and it really wasn't comfortable.  He could feel his beacon still vibrating in the pocket where he'd shoved it, and he wondered where everyone else was.  Cate and Toby's beacons should have activated at the same time as his and Al's; that was the way the system was set up.  

"Where's Matthew?" the other man said.  There was more gun waving, which was nerve-wracking.  Charlotte had very strong opinions about people who waved their guns around in hostage situations, and none of them were good.

"I keep telling you, I'm right here."  Matthew wiggled his fingers on top of his head.  He sounded exasperated, like they'd already had this exchange once or twice.  "I'm Matthew."

Harold had the sudden urge to say, "Once I thought your name might be Joe," but he managed to suppress it.  Dangerous situations didn't showcase his best side.  Al, who'd been silent up to that point, also wiggled his fingers.  "What are you doing here?"

"Where's Matthew?" the gun waver said again.  "We're looking for him."

"Why?" Al asked.

"Where is he?" the man countered.

"I'm right here!" Matthew said again.

Harold realized that they might be dealing with the kind of situation that arose when you knew more than one person named Matthew.  As much as he didn't want to put anyone in danger, they really weren't getting anywhere with the current strategy.  "Which Matthew are you looking for?" he asked.  Both guns swung to point in his direction.  He tried to sound apologetic.  "We know more than one.  Sorry."

For the first time, the men seemed hesitant, and Al jumped in.  "That's true," he agreed.  "At least three.  More if it turns out we named the baby Matthew, although I don't know why we'd do that."

"Do you have a last name?" Harold asked.  "Are you looking for a Matthew who's married?  Or one who's with the FBI?"  He really hoped they weren't looking for the baby.  He also really hoped they hadn't given the baby 'Matthew' as a middle name, especially if it was just to confuse people who  broke into other people's houses and waved guns around.

The men looked at each other.  "We have a picture," one of them said.  The other one pulled out what looked like a grainy computer printout of a photograph.  It was definitely FBI Matthew -- he was with the rest of his team, somewhere Harold didn't recognize.  

"That's the Matthew who works for the FBI," Harold said.  He couldn't think of any reason to lie, and it didn't really make much difference anyway, since Matthew wasn't there.  "He's not here."  The men didn't say anything, so Harold added, "Why did you think he would be?"

"Are you sure?" one of the men asked.  Harold nodded.

"Positive," he said.  "Come on, he's with the FBI.  Do we really look like the kind of people who need year-round FBI surveillance?"  Actually, Harold thought privately, they probably sort of did.  It might keep things like this from happening, at least.

"We could call him," Al offered helpfully.  "I have his number in my phone."

The robbers, or hostage-takers, or whoever they were, still said nothing.  Harold shifted uncomfortably and wondered if they would shoot him if he moved.  Matthew -- who Harold thought, as the youngest, should have been able to handle the kneeling for the longest -- raised his hand.  "My knees hurt," he said.  And then he actually started to switch positions, which quickly got him the full attention of the men with guns.  It also had the effect of making them turn completely away from the stairs that led to the loft above the garage, and Rose and Gary chose that moment to make their appearance.  

Harold had often wondered if the kids' guards carried weapons with them on Earth.  It wasn't one of those things he felt confident asking about, but it looked like the answer was no, because they went for the leap and tackle approach in their rescue.  The ensuing fight --  more like a brief scuffle, really -- was over quickly, and definitively in their favor.  Unfortunately, he was pretty sure no one had anticipated a whole lot more people with guns showing up on the porch and streaming into the house with angry shouts and a lot more waving of guns.  As fast as things seemed to improve, they got worse again.  Harold, Al, Matthew, and the two guards were herded into the living room.  The good news was that it was a lot more comfortable being held at gunpoint on the sofa than it was being held at gunpoint kneeling on a hard floor.  The bad news was that all the attackers looked the same, so he couldn't tell how many there were, but it seemed like a lot, and they were searching the house room by room.  Harold thought the bad news pretty much outweighed the good at that point.

"Please tell me the kids got away," Al whispered to Rose.  The original two men were standing guard in the doorway of the living room, but they were looking the other way.  Now that they had so much backup, they didn't seem as worried about letting their prisoners do things like talking and moving.  

"Of course they did," Rose whispered back, indignantly.  "All of them are at Nick and Steve's with Harry and the baby.  And the dragon.  Cate's at Trudy's; she'll get things rolling with the phone tree.  Toby's gone to tell Harold's sisters."

"It took too long, though, to get everybody together and coordinate things," Gary said.  "We weren't ready.  Meshkalla thinks we should drill."

Harold was still stuck on Rose's explanation.  "Wait, what's Toby going to do with my sisters?"  

Rose just looked at him.  "Charlotte is a police officer.  Matthew is a member of the FBI.  If these people are from your planet, we will need to go through official channels to arrest them, not just phone Matt and the rest of them team and ask them to drop by."  Harold winced.  The guards only said "your planet" when they were particularly irritated.  He was pretty sure she was mostly just worried, though.  

"Do you think these guys are... arrestable criminals?"  Harold was doubtful; usually their trouble came from off-planet, and they didn't have to worry about things like potential court appearances or the fact that he and Al were probably still on the national watch list.

"We don't know," Rose said.  "But they're not jamming the personal transporters, and they didn't know how many people were supposed to be in the house.  That's a pretty easy piece of information to get if you're not from Earth.  Plus, they're looking for Matthew."

"But the house is empty, right?" Al asked.  "Except for us?"

Gary nodded.  "We debated whether we should put a sign on the boards downstairs, but it was too risky without knowing who these people are or where they're from."  

Harold hadn't even considered the fact that more people could be showing up at any point, and walking right into danger.  He checked his watch -- it was probably too early for any of the neighborhood kids to show up.  Luckily, it wasn't a Thursday, or else they would've had Helen and Isaac Layton arriving on their doorstep in less than half an hour.  (On Thursdays their parents shifts overlapped at the hospital -- only by an hour, but enough to cause some serious headaches in terms of childcare planning.)  Traffic from other directions was less predictable.  

"Were you expecting anyone?" he asked Matthew.  

"Not really," Matthew said.  "I was expecting a quiet night."  He stopped there, but his expression said, "But this is much more exciting."  Harold looked away so no one would see him roll his eyes.  Matthew had come a long way from the kid who'd cried when he'd tried to catnap Bob from a motel in Rhode Island.  Who knew all those space travel adventures and encounters with aliens would turn him into a such an adrenaline junkie?

The basement door stayed shut at night, to keep the noise level down.  You could never count on time zones to match up with interplanetary travel, and it only took one loudly singing party group showing up at three a.m. to figure out some precautionary measures.  In an oddly polite move, the armed men had closed the door again after they'd searched the basement.  (Harold didn't know what they'd made of everything they had set up down there; no comments had been made where he could hear them, and they hadn't gotten any questions about it.)  

And, of course, it would be just their luck to have someone coming up the stairs right then.  Harold could hear muffled voices.  The men guarding them must have heard them too, because they looked around in confusion.  "Remember, it's early here," Harold heard a woman's voice say.  "Let's get you checked in with Matthew -- that's the name on the board -- and settled with a snack, and we'll pick you up after dinner."  The basement door swung open and the men turned sharply towards it.  Harold caught a glimpse of -- of all people -- Matthew (this time the Matthew who was Kim's dad).  And there was Kim, and Betty too.  "Oh," Betty said, startled.  As one, she and Matthew reached out a hand for Kim, and all three of them disappeared.

Chapter 26: In which Harold and Al and Matthew and Rose and Gary all play dumb, then make plans.

"What was that?" one of the men said, looking suspiciously at the still-open door.  

Harold looked around.  "What was what?" he asked.  His "I have no idea what you could be talking about" expression was nowhere near as polished as Al's, but he hoped it would be enough.

"Who were they?" the other man said.  He gestured at the space where Matthew, Betty, and Kim had been standing.

"Who?" Al asked.

Both men turned to stare at them.  "There was a man, and a woman, and a little girl!  They were right there!  You didn't see that?"

"I didn't see anything," Harold offered.  

Al shook his head.  "Me neither."  He paused and leaned in slightly.  "Are they still there?" he asked quietly.  Harold resisted the urge to laugh.

"No," the first man said.  "They disappeared!"

"Really?" Harold asked.  "Are you sure?  How is that even possible?"

The second man pulled out a walkie-talkie.  "We have potential intruders in the house," he said.  "Man, woman, child.  They appeared at the door of the basement and then disappeared again."

There was a call back on the radio.  "Did you say 'disappeared'?" 

"Yes, they disappeared," the man said.  "Like magic.  Or ghosts, or something."  He turned and walked into the kitchen, so Harold couldn't hear what else was said, but the remaining man looked nervous.

"There's something weird about this house," he said.  Harold did his best to keep up his innocent look, and wondered how long it would be before rescue showed up.  More rescue, since the first one hadn't gone so well.  

If his life was a movie, this would be the time to try to get additional information from the gang of armed thugs who'd broken into his house.  More information was always good, but Harold wasn't sure that his life was like a movie.  After all, there were a fairly significant number of people outside the house who should be able to figure out what was going on and provide whatever assistance was needed.  He decided to ask someone who might know.  "Gary," he said, catching the guard's attention with a wave.  "Should we be trying to get information from these guys?"

Gary just shrugged.  "I don't think we really need to," he said.  "I mean, it could help pass the time, but there's no reason to antagonize them.  We have no way of sharing any information we do find with anyone else, so it would just be to satisfy our own curiosity."

Harold had always liked Gary.  He was one of the more laid back guards who worked for the Cals, and he didn't seem phased at all by the situation.  "That makes sense," Harold said.  

"What are we going to do, then?" Matthew asked.  "I'm hungry."

Harold checked his watch again.  It wasn't anywhere close to breakfast time as far as he was concerned, but he figured they'd all get hungry eventually.  "Maybe one of us should ask if we can get some food," he said.  Everyone looked at him.  "I wasn't actually thinking of me," he added.

"No, you'll be great," Rose said.  Harold thought she was just glad they hadn't picked her.  Rose wasn't really a "people person."  

Everyone seemed to agree that Harold should be the one to ask for snacks, so he put his hands up and stood up, slowly.  Their remaining guard looked at him warily.  Harold said, "Is there any chance we could get some food, or water, or something?  We're getting pretty hungry.  Maybe some crackers?"  Astoundingly, it seemed to work.  Harold was pretty sure it reflected more his non-threatening demeanor (a nice way of saying he didn't look dangerous enough, or possibly competent enough, to have a nefarious plan) rather than his diplomatic skills, but the man radioed for someone to bring them something from the kitchen, so he was willing to count it as a win.

When he sat back down again, Al said, "I'm not hungry.  Does anyone mind if I go back to sleep?"  

No one minded.  "Wake me if anything interesting happens," Al told them.  He grabbed an extra pillow and reclined as much as possible on the far end of the couch, determinedly closing his eyes.  Harold couldn't tell if he actually fell asleep, or if he was just pretending, but he didn't get up when the food arrived.  He wouldn't mind getting another few hours himself, but he was pretty sure he couldn't get back to sleep even if he wasn't worried about missing something important.  That sort of thing seemed to happen to him a lot.  Instead, he stared out the window until Matthew broke the silence (about thirty seconds).

"I'm bored," Matthew said.

"Yeah, me too."  Rose and Gary, of course, said nothing.  They had probably been trained not to get bored when waiting in dull situations for long periods of time.  "I don't think they'll let us have anything else, though."  Harold didn't want to push their luck.

"What can we do to pass the time?" Matthew asked.  "'I Spy'?  Word games?  Television's probably not an option, not that there's anything on this early anyway."

"I think we should paint the garage door," Harold said.  He hadn't actually been paying much attention to what Matthew was saying, and was still looking out the window.

Matthew apparently wasn't listening to him either, because he didn't respond to Harold's statement.  Rose said, "What, now?"  

"No, not now," Harold told her.  "We're still being held at gunpoint; I don't think this is the best time to be doing home improvement projects.  It just popped into my head, so I said it."

Gary looked thoughtful -- probably more thoughtful than the idea of painting the garage door warranted.  "It would be a good time to plan home improvement projects, though," he said.  "Or plan home safety projects."

It made sense.  Meshkalla's idea of doing safety drills was a good one -- as evidenced by the day's events so far -- but the house didn't even have a basic fire evacuation plan.  And it wasn't like they had anything better to do.  "We'll need paper," Harold said.  "And something to write with."  It was like a theme -- never a pad of paper and a pen when he needed one.  They did manage to scrounge up a paper plate from under the sofa (it was clean, so Harold was guessing it was leftover from a craft project instead of a meal -- fingers crossed, at least) and Matthew had a pen in his pocket. 

"I always carry one," he said.  "You never know when you're going to need to write something down."

"Okay," Rose said.  She'd been elected as group scribe, thanks to her incredibly small handwriting.  They only had one plate, after all.  "What's first?"

They worked their way through scheduling battery changes in the smoke detectors and picking a meeting place outside the house before they got caught up in a debate about the best way to keep track of who they should be looking for after any given "emergency."  The whiteboards were an imperfect (and non-portable) way of logging who was in the house; they were better than nothing, but Harold really didn't want to bet anyone's safety on the idea that the list of names on the board was an exact match for who they should be able to account for at any particular moment.  After all, right now the boards said there should be 16 people in the house, but only five of them were still there.

Al woke up with a startled jerk just as Gary finished detailing a multi-step plan for how to evacuate their neighbors to Alabama in the event of an earthquake and/or tidal wave, and said, "Our phones -- why haven't they taken our phones?"

Everyone looked at each other.  It did seem a little strange, now that he was thinking about it.  Then again -- "It was pretty early when they showed up," Harold said.  "Maybe they don't think we have them with us, like they caught us in our pajamas or something."  It wasn't true, of course; Harold could feel his phone in his pocket, and was sure everyone else had theirs as well.  You just didn't go anywhere without one; it was the only way to find out about things like babies appearing, and children from the future, and dragons, and bingo games, and when a ship was due in orbit.   

"Or maybe they're waiting for us to call someone," Al said.  "Or for someone to call us."

More looks were exchanged.  Gary and Rose looked very ominous.  Al also looked ominous, but with a side of sleepy.  His hair was sticking up wildly on one side.  Matthew pulled out his phone and eyed it suspiciously.  Harold wondered if he'd missed something.  "Like who?" he asked.  

"Well," Al started.  Then he stopped.  "I'm not sure, actually.  It makes sense, though -- it would explain why they haven't done anything."  It was true; the gunmen had stormed into the house, searched it, and since then hadn't done much of anything except sit around.  Harold was pretty sure he'd seen one of them drinking the last of the milk, which was annoying, but it wasn't like they didn't go shopping almost every day anyway.  The one guard left in the living room had ignored them ever since he'd brought breakfast, even when they'd been searching for something to write on.

Harold took his phone out of his pocket.  "So, would that mean we should call someone, or not?"

"Actually, isn't it kind of weird that no one has called us?" Matthew asked.  "I mean, it's after 8:00 now.  What's taking them so long?"

Chapter 27: In which rescue arrives, finally.

In a perfect world, it would only have been seconds between Matthew's question and the arrival or whoever was going to arrive to rescue them.  In reality, they spent several more hours stuck in the living room.  By then it was obvious that someone (or, more likely, multiple someones) was warning people away from the house.  No one had shown up at the door -- no one had so much as texted them their inspirational daily quote from the school in Alabama.  On the plus side, Al figured out how to rig their phones to run four-player pong, and that kept them occupied for a while.  For once, Harold had an advantage over the aliens, since he'd spent way too many hours in high school programming basic computer games into his fellow classmates' calculators.  There were only just so many ways the ball could move.

The score was hard to keep track of, since they actually had five people, which led to a complex team rotation that Harold wasn't sure any of them completely understood.  But he was fairly sure he was winning when a knock came at the door.  The back door, which was the only way they'd been able to hear it over the sound of their game.

"Quiet," their guard snapped.  Harold was startled enough to miss the next move, and he watched the ball soar off the side of his screen.  

From the kitchen, they heard another knock.  "Who is it?" one of the men called.

"It's Matthew -- I heard you were looking for me?"

Harold raised his eyebrows.  It wasn't like he'd been keeping close track of where Rob's team was working, but they'd seen Pete a week ago, and Harold had thought they were all headed out to South America after that.  Venezuela, maybe, or Columbia.  They were supposed to be bringing back coffee, so it couldn't be too serious.  Still, not exactly a quick trip back.  He wondered if Rob had relaxed his rule about not using alien technology while they were on duty.

"Are you alone?" the man called.

"No," Matthew replied.  "Not exactly."

The living room guard had abandoned them for the kitchen, and the five of them clustered around the window.  There was Matthew, standing on the porch in an FBI jacket.  He waved cheerfully when he saw them watching.  Sitting next to him was the dragon -- actually, it looked like it might have dozed off; its head was drooping towards its chest.  Harold didn't see anyone else.  Harold really hoped that the reason it had taken so long for help to arrive was because they'd set up some sort of clever plan, not because they'd been baffled and spent hours debating, before ultimately picking two names at random out of a hat and sending them to the house hoping for the best.

Nobody seemed to know what to do next.  Matthew gave them a thumbs-up through the window, and Harold figured that was a good sign.  Finally, the man in the kitchen (Harold assumed he must be in charge, but it wasn't like anyone had exchanged introductions) said, "I'm opening the door.  Don't try anything funny."

"I'm unarmed," Matthew called out loudly.  The dragon raised its head and glared at him, probably for disturbing its rest.

The door swung open slowly.  "Whoa!" someone shouted.  "What's that?"  From the corner of his eye, he could see most of the men in the kitchen raise their weapons.  Harold was sure they were pointed at the dragon, since it was still looking angry, and Matthew looked about as non-threatening as could be.

Gary and Rose seemed to catch on to what was happening faster than anyone else.  Both of them whipped out their phones and started taking pictures -- of the dragon, and of the men pointing guns at it.  Almost at the same moment, uniformed officers in SWAT gear burst in through the front door and started shouting the usual "drop your weapons" lines.  Based on the number of people who ended up in the kitchen, Harold thought they must have come in through the side door as well.  He saw Matthew shoo the dragon off the porch before he entered the house.  As usual, he turned to Al for an explanation.

"Dragons are a protected species," Al said, as they all stood quietly with their hands up, waiting for the SWAT officers to clear them.  "I'm guessing no one was able to figure out if these guys were Earth criminals or not, and figured this way they can be prosecuted by multiple governments depending on where they're from."

Harold nodded, then frowned.  "Wait, so you're saying that if they're not from Earth, they would get in trouble for pointing a gun at a dragon, but not for breaking into our house and holding us hostage for hours?"

Al looked uncomfortable.  Matthew said, "Technically, I did open the door for them.  I didn't know they were gun-toting criminals at the time."

Rose said, "We definitely need to set up some safety drills."

Chapter 28: In which things get back to normal, at least as normal as they ever get.

"Harold, do you want one gallon of milk or two?"

"There's an email here from your parents; I already read it, your mom says everything's fine and that next time you get yourself held at gunpoint you should take advantage of that time to write to her."

"Matthew and Betty are here.  Apparently gifts of pastries and baby clothes are the appropriate items for saying, 'Sorry we left you to your hostage crisis and didn't stay to help.'"

"Are there still ice packs in the freezer?  I'd use frozen peas, but I can't find any."

"Bob says we're almost out of Fancy Feast.  Someone's going to the store, right?"

"Nick and Steve said they'll come by for dinner and fill in anything we haven't heard by then.  It sounds like their house was the base of operations for everyone except Trudy, but you know she hates to leave her computers in the middle of a crisis."

"Is there a red crayon out here?  Or a parrot?"

Harold sat at the kitchen table sipping his coffee and letting the chaos swirl around him.  It was almost peaceful, really, to be back to the regular chaos, after the morning's events.  He found himself in what was possibly the unusual situation of being able to say that his normal life was much more exciting than being held hostage by gun-wielding thugs.  Actually, just about every hostage-type situation he'd been in (not that there were a lot, but enough to compare) had been really boring.  He knocked on the table, just in case.  No sense tempting fate, and it wasn't like nothing good had come of it.  They still had all the emergency plans on the paper plate, after all, and Al's game was nothing to sneeze at.

They managed to organize a trip to the store, since running out of milk and Fancy Feast was a definite problem.  Harry and the kids stayed at Nick and Steve's, doing Harold had no idea what.  Watching movies, maybe, or planning to take over the world -- it was hard to tell sometimes.  Harold made it through lunch before he crashed, falling asleep to the familiar sound of Al and Toby talking outside on the lawn.  

When he woke up, feeling sleepy and disoriented, there was no one around (which made sense, since the bedroom was strictly off-limits except in the case of extreme emergencies -- fire, flood, broken bones, monkey coup, that sort of thing).  He was up in time to help carry in the massive amount of groceries Cate and Matthew had purchased.  Not for the first time, Harold wondered if it might make sense to extend the driveway somehow so they could back the Armada up closer to the kitchen door.  It was a long way back from the front porch when you were carrying thirty  pounds of groceries on each trip.  Or maybe Al could figure something out so that it would be safe to use the personal transporters.  Apparently there was some concern about using them repeatedly in a short period of time in an enclosed area.  Harold didn't understand the science of how they worked when they were working; there was no chance he'd be able to follow an explanation of what could potentially cause them to fritz out.

It turned out that the only thing he'd really missed during his afternoon nap was the issuing of dinner invitations to practically everyone they knew.  There was going to be quite a crowd at the evening meal, that was for sure.  Nick and Steve showed up first -- kid-free, which was a little worrying, but they assured him everyone was fine, just "finishing up."  Luckily, both Nick and Steve were excellent at cooking, and they'd brought their own supplies (namely, a grill to set up in the backyard).  There might be a crowd, but they were going to eat well.  

After Nick and Steve came Matthew and Betty, along with Kim.  The rest of the kids were next, arriving in a big group with both Harrys and the dragon in their midst.  Harold looked around the kitchen with an appraising eye.  With the house's five regular occupants, plus all their guests, they were up to 21 people already -- 22 if you counted the dragon, but he wasn't sure if he was supposed to or not.  He'd counted baby Harry, but not the cats, and he didn't know where the dragon fell on that spectrum, or if it even made sense to have a spectrum.  The exact number of people didn't really matter, just whether they'd fit in the kitchen.  

"Who are we still waiting for?" Al said.  He'd been put in charge of making sure everyone had a plate and something to drink out of (silverware was optional, but he was doing his best).  "We're running out of glasses."

There was a honk from outside as a car pulled in and parked by the garage.  A minute later, Trudy, Eliza, Charlotte, and Tina entered the kitchen at a pace that wasn't exactly rushing, but couldn't be described as leisurely either.  Trudy was carrying a notebook computer, which she set on the table and immediately opened.  "We have a problem," she said.  

Chapter 29: In which Harold finds out what the problem is.

Harold waited for Trudy to say something else.  Outline what problem she was talking about, for instance, or helpfully suggest solutions.  There had been a time when just hearing her say the words "we have a problem" would have made him exceedingly nervous, but he was living in a house where time travel had recently become an acceptable excuse for being late to breakfast, so his threshold for anxiety was higher than usual.

Trudy didn't say anything.  In fact, no one said anything.  There was silence for a long moment.  Finally, Harold said, "What is it?"

Trudy gestured at her computer screen.  Whether it was the glare or the resolution or the angle (or just that Trudy's ability to comprehend data was way beyond Harold's), he had no idea what he was looking at.  "I have no idea what I'm looking at," he said.  

Charlotte cleared her throat.  "Trust us, there's a problem."

"I'm starving," Tina interrupted.  She looked completely calm.  Of course, she'd seemed completely calm about the "let's blow up Harold and Al's  house" plan too, so that might not mean much.  "Can we eat first?  Or eat and talk at the same time?"

"Sure; Nick says the food's all ready."  Steve casually leaned out the back door to signal Nick at the grill.  "Hot dogs and hamburgers; veggie burgers for anyone who doesn't want meat.  We've got some baked potatoes, too, and there's salad."  He looked reprovingly at Harold.  "You really should get fresh lettuce, though -- that stuff in the bags has no flavor."  Harold raised his hands to disclaim any responsibility for the bagged lettuce.  He hadn't picked it out, or even put it on the list (he probably wouldn't have bought lettuce at all, actually, but Steve didn't need to know that).

It took a while to get everyone seated and eating, and Trudy started the explanation while Harold was still waiting his turn for mustard and ketchup.  "It's like this," she said.  Then she paused, like she was trying to decide what to say next.  Harold realized they'd mixed up the mustard knife and the relish spoon, and now both utensils had both condiments on them.  He was still trying to decide if he should wash them or just wipe them off with a napkin when Trudy continued.

"As soon as we figured out what was going on here this morning, we tried to find out why it was happening.  Why would a gang of armed men suddenly show up looking for an FBI agent who hadn't been at the house in months?  It didn't make any sense.  Then Charlotte told me you'd also run into a guy asking a lot of questions at the grocery store, so we looked into that too.  The more we looked, the more we found."

Harold worked his way around the outside of the kitchen towards Al, who was sitting in a lawn chair that they'd pulled in from the porch.  Al offered him a bottle of water just as Harold realized he'd forgotten one.  "Thanks," Harold whispered, grabbing the chair next to Al.  "Do you know what's going on  yet?"

Al just shook his head.  "There are a lot of coincidences in your lives, but this is unusual, even for you guys," Trudy said.  Harold guiltily realized he'd missed part of the explanation.  "The man at the grocery store?  He's a private investigator."

"Wow," Toby said.  "I didn't know that was a real job."

"Who's he investigating?" Cate asked, then blushed.  "Oh," she said.  

Harold had the sudden feeling that everyone was looking at him.  "Wait, he's investigating us?" he said.  

"He's been hired to investigate you," Trudy corrected.  "Just like all the other private investigators in the area -- four within a 50 mile radius.  That's a lot of PIs per square mile, by the way; I was surprised."

Charlotte said, "I didn't think it was connected at first, but we got an anonymous complaint today about this address.  I checked the logs, and it's not the first one.  There's been half a dozen complaints in the last week alone, all anonymous, all little things -- noise, litter, strange lights, that sort of thing."

"The worst part is that someone's tipped off CFS," Trudy said.  "I hate them; they do paperwork like nobody's business, and everything's in triplicate with official seals and signatures."  Harold wondered when Trudy had encountered Child and Family Services in the past, and why.  And was she talking about legitimately filling out paperwork, or offering to forge documents for them?

Trudy seemed to sense that her audience wasn't grasping the most important element of what she was telling them.  "Someone's doing this on purpose," she said.  "Child and Family Services, the police, the local PIs, even criminals -- someone's got them all focused on Harold and Al, and this house.  It's hard to trace back, but it's possible this person even started the rumors about Harry."

"Must've thrown them off when an actual baby appeared," Steve commented.  

"I don't know," Harry said.  "Is it possible they're from the future?"

"I don't think so," Trudy said.  "It all seems so... not small, but unfocused, I guess.  Like they weren't sure what would work, so they just tossed in everything they could think of."

It seemed like there was an obvious question still unanswered, so Harold said, "Who is it?  Do you know?"

"I can't tell," Trudy said.  "They're covering their tracks really well.  We need to find out who it is, and what they want.  Right now you've got Earth bureaucracy hovering over your heads, and that's never good."

Harold considered the situation.  When he and Al had moved in, they'd done so with the support of four separate interplanetary organizations.  The house and property were protected in a variety of ways -- the mere presence of a doorway made it neutral ground, and Harold had never considered the possibility that it would be Earth rules that got them into trouble.

"And you need to prepare for unexpected visitors," Charlotte said.  Harold just looked at her -- what did she think they did all day?  "Earth visitors," Charlotte amended, sounding exasperated.  "Police officers, concerned neighbors, that sort of thing.  People who won't fall for the whole 'we're practicing to be in a play' routine.  This could be serious trouble.  You've been flying under the radar, but not anymore."

Personally, Harold thought the 'practicing for a play' story was a classic that was appropriate for just about any situation.  Still, the whole thing was disconcerting.  "What should we do?" he asked.

"I need everyone to come up with a list of people that might be really pissed off at you," Trudy said.  "I'll work from those and try and figure out who's behind all this."

Charlotte looked around like she wasn't sure whatever she was planning to say would be well-received.  "You're going to have to make some changes," she said.  It would have been hesitant, if Charlotte was the kind of person who ever said anything hesitantly.  "The porch, for one."

"What about the porch?"  Harold loved the porch.  The porch was perfect just like it was.

"It doesn't meet safety regulations and you know it," Charlotte said.  "No railing, remember?"

Harold frowned.  "But --"

Charlotte interrupted.  "And you definitely didn't hear this from me, because I don't want to know anything about what Trudy does for you guys, but you need to make sure whatever adoption paperwork you have for Harry is perfect."

Everyone in the kitchen looked confused except for his sisters.  "We don't need it," Harold said.  Maybe they had forgotten?  "Harry's mine."  The confused expressions switched -- Charlotte and Eliza looked baffled, everyone else nodded in agreement.  Huh.  Apparently that had never made it into one of the daily emails.

Chapter 30: In which there are more plans but no more bears, and Harold learns about Damaris' summer project.

They compromised on the porch.  Harold thought its best feature was the ability to walk on and off it at any point, so they planned a set of steps every ten feet.  In between the steps were railings -- tiny, tiny sections of railings; Harold thought they'd be useful for hanging things on, like wet towels.  The steps had railings too.  Harold couldn't quite believe that there were really rules about that sort of thing, but people kept assuring him it was true.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the steps would have railings, once there were some steps to have railings for.  The construction phase of the project had yet to begin.  Nick and Steve were the only ones who had any experience building things out of wood, and they had a business to run.  (Summer was the busiest time of year for their hot dog stand.)  Al could probably fit existing steps with motion sensors and video cameras, but he didn't have a lot of low tech construction skills.  And the last time Harold had made something with wood it had been balsa wood, and he'd been in shop class.

Harry said he had a solution for them, but it apparently required him to go off on his own somewhere for the day, taking the Armada with him.  Personally, Harold thought he just wanted to get away for a while.  Hopefully he'd spend the day sleeping.  Baby Harry seemed to sense the tension in the house, and he'd been up crying for hours the past few nights.  Future Harry was his hands-down favorite, and the only one he'd stop crying for, so Harry hadn't gotten much rest.

In lieu of construction, the rest of the household was focusing on cleaning.  According to Trudy, an untidy house would be a serious mark against them if anyone from CFS showed up.  So they were cleaning.  A lot.  Every day, they cleaned -- luckily, kids thought it was a lot more fun to clean someone else's house, so PJ had recruited all the day camp kids to help.  It led to a significant amount of noise in the house.  Al had escaped to the basement to handle a string of arrivals and departures through the doorway, and Cate and Matthew had taken baby Harry to the loft for some peace and quiet.  Harold was headed for the porch to take a break when he ran into Damaris, focused intently on his computer.

"Hey Damaris," Harold said.  "How's it going?"  Damaris gave him a thumbs-up without taking his eyes off the screen, and a thought occurred to Harold.  "Weren't you guys supposed to be doing some kind of computer simulation game this summer?"  He hadn't seen any of them at a computer for anything but cursory email checks since they'd arrived.  Except for Damaris, Harold realized, who either got a lot more email than everyone else, or was working on something.  

Damaris' fingers flew over the keyboard for a few more seconds, then he breathed a sigh of relief.  "There," he said, turning his attention to Harold.  "That's set for a while.  Sorry, I missed whatever you said after 'how's it going.'"

"I said, 'Weren't you guys supposed to be doing some kind of computer simulation game this summer?'" Harold repeated.  

Damaris looked away.  "Yes," he said.  

Harold looked at him.  Damaris wasn't the most chatty of kids, but he'd been expecting a little more than that.  "And?" he prompted.  Damaris fidgeted, and Harold wondered if he should have asked "But?" instead.

"You can't tell anyone," Damaris said.  "That's what I'm doing for my project."  Harold nodded like he understood what that meant.  "I'm doing the simulation for everyone," Damaris explained.  "I'm playing all the parts."  

"Isn't that cheating?"

"The rules are... unclear about that part," Damaris said, which Harold thought meant 'yes, but I might not get in trouble for it.'  "Besides, Al knows.  He's the one who approved it."  

Of course.  And it wasn't like Al had ever gotten in trouble for bending the rules in the past.  Harold wasn't sure if this was one of those times he should offer his help, remind Damaris that Al had essentially been banished from his own planet and might not be the best person to ask permission of, or simply ignore the situation, since Damaris was clearly handling it and hadn't asked for his advice anyway.  "Right," Harold said.  "Um, is there anything I can do to help?"

Damaris just grinned at him.  "Would you be willing to say that as a future advisor, attempting to predict the actions and reactions of a wide-ranging group of people provides a valuable learning experience that can me pinpoint my strengths and weaknesses?"

Harold considered.  "Of course.  I'm sure it's true, anyway.  Do you want me to just sign something, or should I put it in my own words?  No one's going to believe I just whipped out an argument like what you just said."  

"That's okay," Damaris said.  "It's more of a character witness thing anyway.  I'll send you the file."  His eyes were back on the screen, and he said, "Sorry, everyone's coming back from the break, I have to get to the negotiations."  Harold was pretty sure Damaris wasn't listening to him anymore, but he wished him good luck anyway.  It was an interesting sight -- Damaris sitting on the edge of the porch, swinging his legs carelessly, computer on his lap, negotiating who knew what in a computer simulation where all the players were himself.  Harold wondered if that made it easier or harder.

Hoping that the basement would be more relaxing than the porch, Harold headed back inside.  Maybe he could check with Al about the lists they were supposed to be making for Trudy.  Harold had tried, but he couldn't think of anyone who might be really angry with him.  There was Mrs. Bale, of course, but she'd been angry at him and his sisters since they were little kids and he'd ridden his bicycle over her front lawn -- he'd put her on his list just in case, but he really didn't think she had the resources.  He'd also put Mr. Echalko Zhak on his list, because he couldn't think of anyone else, and he had hosted a party in the man's room without his permission.  Al's list was a lot longer, and Harold was torn between feeling jealous of Al's obviously more exciting life before he'd met Harold, and worried about the sheer number of names Al was coming up with.

"Harold!"

"Mr. Jones!"

"Gabe!"

Harold never made it to the basement -- he was ambushed just inside the door by a group of kids who needed help moving furniture in the living room.  He got three different explanations for why they needed to move everything, ranging from "we need to wash the windows" to "it's to make sure all the outlet covers are on."  One of the kids seemed to think it was just really fun to move stuff around, which Harold could sort of understand, because they ended up rearranging everything a bunch of times.  The windows didn't get washed, but the kids were tired out by the time their parents came to pick them up, and Harold found a quarter under the sofa, so it worked out okay.

Chapter 31: In which Charlotte's prediction comes true, but not before everyone has breakfast. 

In a week, they were ready.  As ready as they could be, at least, for a situation where they had no idea what they were actually preparing for.  Harold woke up to the sound of babies crying -- sadly, not that unusual.  Harry's "help" had arrived as promised, but they were all from the future, and they had another baby with them.  Dinner conversation had gone from occasionally confusing to completely baffling, but the porch was done.  

"Here, let me," Harold said, holding out his arms.  Harry had been pacing the corridor with both babies.  Harold gently took baby Harry and rubbed circles on his back.  

"Thanks," Harry said.  "I think they're both ready to settle down, just cranky.  They've been fed and changed already."  

A third person joined them in the hall.  She was one of their future guests -- they usually kept to themselves, and she just gave Harold a small wave as she took the other baby.  "Get some sleep," she told Harry before moving silently back towards Cate's room.  

"I agree," Harold told him.  "Were you up all night again?"  Harry shrugged.  "Take a nap, at least.  We've got the morning routine down."

Harry helped him settle the now sleeping baby in his wrap, and the dragon bounded out of the nursery when Harold turned for the stairs.  "Are you coming too?" Harold asked.  He knelt down as gracefully as possible (not very) and the dragon clambered up onto his shoulders.  Harold winced as tiny claws made it through three layers of fabric to his skin.  The dragon struggled mightily with the concept of stairs, and it was much easier to carry it up and down than watch it trip over its own legs.  Apparently it was a phase the dragon would eventually grow out of -- until then, it got carried.

Easing his way down the stairs, Harold took note of the changes they'd been making.  The porch steps and railings were the most obvious.  He could hear voices coming through the open windows (they were in the middle of a June heatwave that was making Harold reconsider his stance on air conditioning, and he felt like the windows had been open nonstop for days).  It sounded like Al and the twins talking.  Harold stopped long enough for the dragon to climb back down before pushing the door open and stepping outside.  "Good morning," he said.  

A chorus of "good morning"s and "how are you"s came back.  He'd been right about Al, but it wasn't just the twins who were with him.  The whole class was lounging on the porch, looking sleepy.  

"I'm good," Harold said.  "What's going on?"

"Matthew's gone to get breakfast," Al told him.  "We're just waiting for him to get back."

"And we finished the book," Sabri said.

"The book" was a project inspired by the quest to look like responsible adults.  And, Harold had to admit, it was useful.  The first section of the book was phone numbers (plus any additional relevant contact information they had) for anyone it seemed like they might want to get in touch with.  It had all the usual suspects, plus they'd collected emergency contacts for all the kids who'd been coming over from the neighborhood, and a lot of the off-world kids as well.  

The second section was paperwork.  Deeds, insurance, titles -- for the house, the car, anything someone might look at and wonder about.  Vet records for the cats, health records for baby Harry.  (And sure, they'd taken him to the school in Alabama for all his checkups, but it wasn't a crime to be a quirky or overprotective parent -- they just wanted the best, which happened to include a requirement for not being startled by statements like "we don't know where he came from" and "he's being nannied by himself, from the future" and "can you run a DNA test, please, because his parentage is pretty much a mystery to us."  Harold was still working through the implications of that answer, but at least they wouldn't need to worry about custody battles.)  They'd included Harold's (real) birth certificate and a copy of his social security card, along with Al's (fake) immigration papers from Canada.  Harold thought it was hilarious, but apparently anyone who spent a significant time on Earth got immigration papers from Canada.  Toby and Cate had them too, along with all the kids.  

The last section of the "big book of responsibility," as Harold had taken to thinking about it, was all about NIMBY.  The kids (along with some help from Trudy) had been working to put together the paperwork they would need if they ever wanted to apply for status as a non-profit organization.  There were a lot of benefits to Earth bureaucracy not knowing anything about them, and simply continuing on as the house that had a lot of visitors and whose kids liked to have a lot of friends over to play -- but there would also be benefits to being recognized on a more formal basis as the kind of place that the rest of the galaxy already thought they were.  Honestly, Harold didn't completely understand all the ins and outs of the process, but he trusted the kids to handle it. 

"Great," he said.  "I'm impressed.  What's Matthew bringing for breakfast?"

Bagels, apparently, was the answer to his question.  And some really delicious little souffle-like things that had bacon in them.  Harold gave Al a discrete thumbs-up when he saw one of the porch-builders-from-the-future take a souffle and bite into it.  Hopefully that meant that in the future, people were still allowed to eat meat.  Someday, Harold figured, that wouldn't be the case anymore, but he hoped it was many, many years away.  There was nothing quite like bacon, especially bacon for breakfast.

"Is anyone coming over today?" Cate asked.  

PJ finished a bite of her bagel and nodded.  "Kim will be here in the afternoon," she said.  "I don't know about anyone else."

"We were planning to head out this morning," the souffle-eating porch-builder said.  (None of them had ever offered their names, so Harold had to make things up.)  Everyone turned to look at her.  "To go to the beach," she explained.  

"There are still beaches in the future, right?" Al asked, sounding worried.  That would be a disaster on par with a lack of bacon.

"I thought you were going home today," Harry said. 

"We are," the woman said, which was news to Harold, but okay.  Probably good to start sorting out the timeline again.  (More and more he was convinced it wasn't a line at all, but more of a squishy mess -- he didn't like to think too hard about it.)  "And yes, there are still beaches.  This is just an... experiment," she said.

"A dare," Harry said.  "It's a dare, isn't it?"

"Maybe I shouldn't tell you," the woman said.  Harry just rolled his eyes.  

"Fine," he said.  "Is it something cool, at least?"

"Oh yeah," the woman said.  "And we'll be back this afternoon, before we leave."  She gave Harry a stern look.  "And then we'll see you in six months, right?"

Harry nodded, but Harold noticed he didn't meet her eyes.  Well, one crisis at a time, and that one was apparently six months away, so it could probably wait a while.  

Al broke the ensuing awkward silence.  "The pirates are planning some kind of surprise party for Pete's dad, and they'll be using the basement as a staging area to get things ready so he doesn't get suspicious.  It shouldn't be more than a day or two, but they'll be taking up a lot of space down there."

Harold nodded -- that, at least, he'd known about.  "Anyone else?  Big plans for the day?"

Toby leaned back in his chair, patting his stomach.  Harold was pretty sure he'd just eaten three bagels, along with his share of the mini-souffles.  "I'm taking it easy today," he said.  "No big plans, just relaxing and staying cool.  Weather report says its supposed to be over 90 again, and we've got plenty of popsicles, and I say that's the perfect time to lounge around and do nothing."

"Here, here," Matthew added.  

Cate nodded absently.  "Are there any more bagels?" she asked.  Harold reflected that it was possible she'd been hanging around them for too long.

Chapter 32: In which Charlotte's prediction comes true, for real this time.

The house was well into lounging mode when Harold heard a knock at the door.  Baby Harry was asleep, tucked against Harold's chest (he'd made the rounds over the course of the morning, and was back to Harold since he was the one with the baby wrap).  Future Harry was still sleeping, and Harold was pretty sure Matthew was napping out on the porch.  He had a book with him, but Harold knew that trick.  Al and Cate were with the kids in the backyard, dripping popsicle juice everywhere as they attempted to set up a truly ancient sprinkler they'd found in the garage.  Harold had wandered in for some paper towels when the knock came.

With a firm grasp on his priorities, Harold tossed the paper towels onto the back porch before he answered the door.  It was probably one of the  neighbors coming to see if they could drop off their kids for the afternoon, which they could, as long as the kids liked the green popsicles.  For some reason they kept ending up with boxes of only the green ones left; red and purple were the popular colors, and the adults kept getting stuck with green just so they'd get eaten.

It wasn't one of the neighbors.  In fact, it wasn't anyone Harold recognized.  "Hi there," he said, trying to sound friendly just in case he was supposed to recognize them and had just forgotten.  

The man held out his hand and Harold shook it automatically.  "Hi," he said.  "I'm Gerald Winters.  I've been --"  Whatever he was about to say was cut off as a police car pulled up to the house and parked.  Two officers got out and walked towards the front door.  Harold didn't recognize them either, but he usually only saw Charlotte's coworkers at the softball games.

"Hi," Harold said again.  "Is there anything I can do for you, officers?"  He stepped fully onto the porch and pulled the door shut behind him.  He did listen when Charlotte told him things about police procedure, at least when it seemed interesting.  A closed door was an entirely different set of procedures than an open one.  One of the officers frowned at his actions, and Harold offered his most innocent smile.

"Do you live here?" the first officer asked.

Harold nodded.  "Yes," he said.  "I'm Harold Jones."

"I'm just visiting," the first visitor -- Gerald Winters -- said.  He didn't volunteer any more information than that. 

"We're here investigating a large number of reports of suspicious noises coming from this address," the officer said firmly.

"Suspicious loud noises," the other officer added.

Harold looked at them, speechless for a long minute.  "Really?" he asked.  Charlotte had told them it might happen, but he hadn't really believed it. Then he realized that might not be the best thing he could have said.  "Sorry, I mean -- I can't think of any suspicious noises."  There was a shriek from the backyard, and Harold winced.  "Loud, yes," he said.  "We're trying to set up a sprinkler.  Do you want to come around back and see?"

As they walked, Harold kept talking.  "There's the new baby, of course," he said.  "He can be pretty loud when he gets going, but he's generally a happy guy.  He didn't like the construction, though."  Harold gestured at the porch.  "That was noisy too, I guess.  We were adding the steps and railings along here.  We had all the proper permits and everything, and we never did any of the loud stuff before 8 or after 6."

The officers nodded, and they turned the corner to the backyard.  The first thing Harold noticed was that Al was soaking wet.  It was possible that ancient Earth sprinklers were too low-tech for his fix-it powers to work on them.  It was also possible the kids had gotten bored with waiting and started dumping water on each other -- it was their favorite new activity in the heat, and it would explain the shrieking.  

The second thing he noticed was that Matthew wasn't in the hammock anymore.  He was out on the lawn, "assisting" with the sprinkler (if by "assisting," Harold meant that Matthew had all the kids in a group huddle ten feet past Al, which of course he did).  Harold hoped that meant he'd heard the police arrive, and was warning everyone.  

"Who are all these people?" one of the officers asked.  Harold thought it was a little rude that he was asking for their names when neither of the officers had introduced themselves.  They didn't even have their names on their uniforms or anything.

Al came over right away.  "Good afternoon," he said politely.  "Is there a problem, officers?"  Harold tried really hard not to roll his eyes.  Al was never allowed to see a movie seven times in the theater again, ever.  

"Do you live here?"  Harold gave up on figuring out the officers' names.  It didn't really matter if they were both going to ask exactly the same questions.

"Yes," Al said.

"What about them?"  The officer gestured to Matthew and the kids.

"Well, the tall one is Matthew," Al replied slowly.  "He's one of our student renters.  The kids are my cousins.  They're here for a few weeks while they're on summer vacation.  So I guess yeah, they all live here right now."

"Have you noticed any suspicious noises?" the officer asked.

"Suspicious loud noises?" the other one clarified.

Al looked confused.  "No?" he said.  "I mean, sometimes there are loud noises -- did Harold mentioned we just finished renovating the porch?  But I've never heard anything 'suspicious.'"  Al somehow managed to convey both the emphasis and the air quotes with complete sincerity.  

"Then what's that?"  

They'd been so close, Harold thought.  He almost didn't want to turn and look -- there was only one thing he could think of that might have caused that tone.  He did look, though, because that was what you did.  And yes, there was the dragon, tumbling out onto the porch with an undignified squeak, closely followed by Cate.  Based on her expression, Harold thought he might have forgotten to mention that the dragon had learned how to open doors on its own that morning.

"Ah," Al said.  No one else said anything.

A memory struck Harold, of trying to explain a very-obvious cat to an employee of a very non-pet-friendly motel.  "It's animatronic," he said.  "Al's an inventor."

The dragon fell down the steps.  "It still has a few kinks to work out," Al said apologetically.  "Stairs, for one."  

Both officers looked suspicious, but really, what was more likely?  A robotic device designed by a quirky inventor, or a baby mythical creature suddenly appearing in a suburban neighborhood?  Harold knew which one he'd believe, but he had the benefit of four years exposure to aliens.  Don't move, he thought as hard as he could in the dragon's direction.  Whether it heard him, or just felt like regaining its composure by holding still for a few minutes, the end result was the same.  

"What's it called?" one of the officers asked.  Harold looked at Al.  Somehow, they'd never quite gotten around to that question.

"They haven't decided," Sabri said confidently.  "But I think they should call it NIMBY.  You know -- 'Not In My Backyard'?  Because it's good at keeping squirrels away from the feeder."

Astonishingly, the police seemed to think this was a good explanation.  "Wow," one of them said.  "That's great.  We could really use one of those at my house."

Al produced a business card out of nowhere that looked only slightly damp, and spent a genial ten minutes discussing artificial intelligence, robotics, and the menace of squirrels before walking the officers to their car.  Harold trailed along behind them, feeling bemused.  Were they off the hook?  Was Al going to have to create an actual animatronic dragon now?  Was lying about an animal that didn't legally exist a crime, and if so, was it a felony or a misdemeanor?

He'd completely forgotten about their other unexpected visitor, until he returned to the backyard (with his sights on Matthew's hammock for a quick nap with the baby), and saw Gerald Whitney -- Whitley? White? -- patting the dragon.  He looked up as they returned. "Animatronic, huh?"

Chapter 33: In which one person leaves and four more arrive.

"Who are you?" Harold asked.  He could see his chances of a nap slipping away, and he'd been carrying Harry around for long enough for his back to hurt, and it had to be at least 90 degrees out, and he really wasn't in the mood for strangers to keep barging in like this.

The man seemed to sense the lack of goodwill, because he stood up quickly and hurried towards them.  "Gerald Winters," he said, holding out his hand for Al to shake.  

"Al," Al said.

"That was a good cover story," Gerald said.  "I've never heard that one before, and believe me, I've heard a lot of cover stories.  I'm with the Galactic Allegiance of Creature Rights Advocates."

"GACRA, really?" Harold muttered to Al.  He'd never heard of it, but Al nodded.

"The acronym works better in the untranslated version," Gerald said with a shrug.  That certainly matched with Harold's experience of off-world organizations.  After the Protectioners and the Very Protectioners, he thought he'd be more suspicious of a name that did translate well into English.  

"So you're here about the dragon?" Al asked.  

"We got an anonymous tip that one was here that might be in trouble.  This little one says it's happy and healthy, though.  I don't suppose you've got papers for it?  We could square everything away and I'd be out of your hair.  There's not any other creatures around, right?"

He didn't mean cats.  ("They can take care of themselves," were his exact words.)  And in fact, they did have papers.  They were in the other book, the one they kept in the office in the basement (aka the mail room, aka the space currently taken up by boxes upon boxes of what they'd all been told were party supplies).  Harold begged off the search -- it was cooler in the basement, but he'd have to go up and down the stairs, and Harry was hungry again anyway.  

"Good luck," he offered, and it didn't take them too long to make it through the mess to the book -- less than an hour, at least, because that was how long he had until it was Cate's turn to watch the baby, and she hadn't shown up yet.  Whatever Al had shown him, Gerald seemed satisfied, because he left with a cheery wave and an invitation to call if they needed anything.  Al joined Harold at the kitchen table once Gerald's car had disappeared back down the driveway.

"I don't want to jinx anything," Al said, "but so far the whole 'people dropping in to make sure we're not doing anything wrong' thing is going pretty well."

"Probably because we're not doing anything wrong," Harold said.

"I don't know, Trudy seemed pretty worried."  Honestly, Harold was still worried too, but mostly he was distracted by... everything else.  He tried to convey that through a complex handwaving gesture, which Al apparently interpreted to mean 'please offer assistance; I must nap now,' because that's exactly what he did.  

Harold dozed off to the white noise of the fan.  He heard Kim's voice, which was good -- she was probably staying for dinner, which would probably be pizza (it was the kids' favorite, and it wasn't like any of the adults were complaining about not cooking).  He also thought he heard Pete's voice, and wondered if he was helping out with the party planning.  He thought it would probably be polite to get up and go say hello.  On the other hand, he could get up in an hour and say hello then.  

Chapter 34: In which Harold and Al experience an utterly normal day, which naturally includes at least four disasters.

It was a Thursday, Harold was sure of it.  It had to be Thursday, because he'd slept late and Al had gotten up for Harry, and Helen and Isaac Layton were at the breakfast table.  PJ and Toby were there too; the rest of the kids must still be sleeping, along with Matthew and Cate.  He checked the clock on the microwave out of instinct, but it was blank, just like all the other electronic clocks in the house.  

"Al," Harold said, as calmly as possible.  "Why don't we have any electricity?"

"Well, it's a funny story, actually," said Al.  "We're not really sure."

Great.  Harold tried to think of something to say and drew a blank.

"There's coffee, though."  Toby held up the pot.  

"How?"  Harold asked the question even as he was pouring -- there was curiosity, and then there was coffee, and he knew his priorities.  

"Well, we were kind of desperate," Al said.  "Everyone was here, and the baby was crying, and there was no power."  He was stalling, and Harold eyed his mug suspiciously before taking a cautious sip.  It tasted fine.

"Did someone drive to--"  PJ's giggle cut off his question, and Al sighed.

"Not exactly," Toby volunteered.  "Al went to your sisters' house and used their coffee maker."  There was a pause, and Harold sensed they were finally getting to the point of the story.  Everyone was looking at him expectantly, like they were waiting for his reaction.  Finally, Toby said, "And then he reappeared here in the kitchen."

"Al!  In front of the neighbors?"  Harold frowned, but couldn't find the motivation to get too angry.  Clearly the neighbors hadn't been too freaked out, or they wouldn't be sitting at the table calmly eating -- well, he wasn't really sure what they were eating; it looked like a bowl of milk, but he assumed there had been cereal in it at one point.

Isaac said, "Don't worry, Mr. Harold.  Our Mom and Dad explained all about you and Al."

"Mom said you were different," Helen chimed in, "and we shouldn't say anything about it."  She didn't seemed to notice she just had said something about it, but Harold wasn't about to point it out.  "And she said Harry has two Daddies instead of a Mommy and a Daddy, but it's okay because you're still a family and you're good..."  She trailed off and looked at her brother for help.

"Role models," Isaac filled in, with all the wisdom of a seven-year-old.  Once again, Harold had no idea what to say.

"Wow," Al said.  "Thank you.  That's..."

"Really great," Harold finished for him, and Al nodded.  Unless the kids' parents had been talking about blatantly using alien technology to transport instantly from place to place, they were reassuring him about the wrong thing, but it was still nice.  Personally, the alien technology thing was actually more of a concern than their non-traditional family.  Mostly because he didn't want any of the kids to get in trouble for saying they'd seen things t heir parents thought were impossible.  He felt like he should address it somehow, but on the other hand, it would be really nice to just sweep the whole disappearing/reappearing thing under the carpet and ignore it.  He went for a compromise.  "So, thank you, and if you ever have any questions, or if you see anything that you or your parents want to ask us about, you know you can come talk to us any time, right?"

Helen and Isaac nodded, and Toby said, "I have a question.  How are we going to do laundry today if there's no electricity?"

Harold drank his coffee and said nothing.  He was supposed to be on laundry duty for the day, and it was a good question, since they were about to run out of towels and couldn't really afford to put it off for another day -- but he'd already stepped up on the awkward 'family unit' issue, and it was definitely someone else's turn.  

Al didn't say anything either, busying himself with the task of feeding baby Harry.  In fact, no one said anything.  All the kids were suddenly completely engrossed with their cereal, and Toby seemed to decide it would be best to give up before he accidentally volunteered himself for something.  "Okay," he said.  "We can figure it out later.  Al, any thoughts on when the power will be back on?"

"We're working on it.  I've called Matthew and Betty to see if  they can help figure out what's causing the problem."

Al's comment was followed (of course) by a lively debate of what could be happening, with the explanations growing more strange as time went on.  Harold really hoped most of the conversation went over the heads of the neighborhood kids.  After Toby had progressed to speculating on how big a spaceship would be required to block a utility grid from working, Harold intervened.  "Right, let's move on.  Who else is coming today?"

It turned out to be quite a list.  Harold got them all down on his napkin and studied it carefully.  As far as he was concerned, a power outage counted as an emergency (a minor one, sure, but on par with unexpected parental visits or school reunions, and therefore still an emergency).  Which meant he and Al were allowed to tell people what to do.  Harold rarely got to be the one doing the telling, but he felt uniquely qualified to handle the situation, and the usual planners (Tina, Trudy, Al, Nick) were all either busy or not present.  

"Al, you've got the power problem, along with Matthew and Betty.  Harry and Cate will be your backup for the baby.  Toby, see if you can get in touch with Trudy and see if she's found out anything else about what's going on.  I don't know if this is connected, but it seems like an awfully big coincidence.  Also, we're going to need more groceries."  Al and Toby nodded, and Harold turned to PJ.  "PJ, if you can, keep everyone outside today.  Do a nature walk, or something, just make sure you take Gary and Rose with you, okay?  I'm going to take the laundry to the laundromat in the middle of town, so anyone who's not nature-y is welcome to come along."

He checked his napkin list to see who he'd forgotten.  The only people left were Rob's FBI team -- apparently they'd stopped by the day before to say hello and were planning on coming back.  Pete was helping the pirates get ready for the big birthday party, and Rob, Dave, and Matt just wanted to "hang out" according to PJ.  She thought it was cool.  Harold thought it was a little intimidating, but was willing to put them to work if they showed up.  He just wasn't sure what he should put them to work doing.  "When Rob and the guys show up, Al -- you're in charge of figuring out what they can do to help.  Maybe one of them can take the dragon for a run."  There, that was taken care of.  Al gave him a look that said 'I know what you just did -- what am I supposed to tell them?' but Harold ignored it.  He was the one braving the laundromat, after all.

Chapter 35: In which Harold goes to the laundromat.

If he was honest, and actually counted back the years, it had literally been decades since Harold had been inside a laundromat.  College dorms didn't count; he'd been one of those kids that just took their laundry home on the (rare) occasions he'd decided something needed to be cleaner than it was.  Still, he reassured himself with the thought that many people managed to get their laundry done at laundromats across the nation every day.  How hard could it be?

Really hard, turned out to be the answer to that question.  Luckily, he had children with him.  Sabri, Nadeka, and Damaris had chosen 'trip to the laundromat' over 'stay out of the way outside,' and Sabri had figured out the washing machines while Harold was still trying to figure out which bag he'd put the laundry soap in.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that all three of them got bored just a few minutes later.

"I sort of thought a laundromat would be more... interesting."  Nadeka looked around the one-room building, full of washers and dryers and not much else except some metal chairs.  "Don't people usually have to spend a long time here?"

"Usually people bring their own entertainment," Harold said.  "Books, magazines, handheld video games, that sort of thing.  Knitting, I guess, if you're into that.  Some people probably go away and come back, but I'd be worried about someone stealing our stuff."  

"Huh."  Nadeka looked around again.  "Can we walk somewhere?"

"There's a library, right?  We could get some books!"  Damaris looked almost too excited, and Harold wondered if the kids had been planning this from the beginning.  Then again, it wasn't like they couldn't go to the library any time they wanted -- maybe it was just more fun when they felt like they were getting away with something. 

"Sabri?  How about you?  Do you want to go to the library too?"  She did, and Harold reminded himself that it was a very safe town, and the library was even on the same road as the laundromat -- it wasn't like they could get lost going from one to the other.  "Okay," he said.  He could see they all had their emergency beacons with them, just like he had his.  "Do you all have phones?"  Three phones were fished out of pockets and displayed.  "Do you know how to get there?"

"Harold!"   

"Right, okay, you can all go.  Just be careful, and call me as soon as you get there, okay?  Or if anything happens."  All three kids rolled their eyes at him, but Harold stayed firm.  He didn't want anything to happen to them, and there was still an unknown someone out there with possible bad intentions.  He didn't want anyone living in fear, but there was no need to invite trouble either.  "Everyone pick someone to call now to tell them where you are and where you're going."  There was grumbling, but also dialing.  "Safety first, guys.  It's important."  

"Dibs on Al," Sabri said quickly.  

"You took mine!"  The words slipped out before he could stop them, and all the kids laughed.

"I'm calling Toby," Damaris said.

Nadeka frowned.  Harold knew how he felt.  Cate and Harry were probably still sleeping, and they were supposed to call an adult.  "I'll call Eliza," Nadeka said finally.  

Okay, so that left... who?  Charlotte wouldn't be thrilled if he called her at work, and he knew Trudy would laugh at him.  Sabri, Damaris, and Nadeka were clearly aware of the tricky situation he'd gotten himself into -- they were watching him with a look of anticipation.  He was the one who'd randomly decided on a new safety rule, and now he was stuck.  It came to him suddenly.  "I'm going to call Pete," Harold said.

"No fair; I didn't know we were allowed to call the FBI!"  

"They're off-duty," Harold explained.  "And they're our guests at the house, and we treat our guests like family, right?  So it must be allowed to call them too."  It was the kind of logic that probably showed he'd been spending a lot of time around kids, but it worked.  Of course, then he had to explain it to Pete, since all the kids were watching him.

"Hi, Pete?  It's Harold Jones."

"Harold?  What's going on?"

"Well, it's kind of a long story.  Everyone's good, but I just made up a new safety rule about calling people to let them know where we are, and I picked you."

There was a pause.  From what he could pick up over the phone, Harold thought Pete was repeating his explanation to someone else.  "Um, okay," Pete said.

"So, I'm at the laundromat, and Nadeka, Sabri, and Damaris are going to walk to the library.  Are we going to see you guys for lunch?"

"Yeah, we'll be there -- we were going to bring food, is that okay?"

"That would be great; we don't have any power at the house right now, so the breakfast options weren't great.  I'm sure everyone will be looking forward to lunch."

"Great!  We'll see you later.  Maybe we'll stop by early and say hi to everyone.  Call if you get into trouble, okay?"

Harold ended the call and looked at his audience.  "Hang on a minute -- why did I have to call someone?  Everyone already knows where I am!"  They all laughed at him again, but he was pretty much just happy to see the kids having fun, and he shooed them out the door with a smile.  

It was only after the kids had gone that Harold realized they hadn't been alone in the laundromat.  There was a woman sitting on a bench in the far corner.  She was holding a magazine but not even pretending to read it.  Instead, she was staring at him with an expression that looked a lot like disbelief.

"Hi," he said weakly.  "Good morning."

"Are you Harold Jones?" she asked.

"Um, yes?"  Harold smiled, just in case he knew her from somewhere.

The woman set the magazine aside and stood up.  "I'm Ashley Mettier.  This may sound strange, but I'm a private investigator.  I was hired to investigate you -- well, everyone in your house, actually."

Harold wasn't sure private investigators were supposed to announce things like that to the subjects of their investigations.  Also -- really, the laundromat?  "Really?" he asked.  He gestured around at the washing machines.  "Kind of a long shot, staking out the laundromat, wasn't it?  It's not exactly a usual hangout for us."  Although, he supposed it had worked, so maybe she was onto something.

The woman blushed.  "No, I'm not working right now.  I was just doing some laundry and heard you talking, and I figured -- why not introduce myself, right?"

"Sure," Harold said.  It didn't make much sense to him, but that was probably why he wasn't a private investigator.  She was looking at him like he was supposed to say something else, so he said, "How's the investigating going?  Can I help at all?"  No need to be rude, after all -- if she was going to be polite, he could be too.

"You have an interesting family, Mr. Jones," she said.  "And I have no idea what's going on in that house of yours."

There weren't any actual questions in there, so Harold didn't say anything.  

"Why Harold?" the woman asked.  

"Excuse me?"

"I've never met a Harold that didn't shorten it to Harry," she said.  "I told you, I'm not actually working right now.  Just curious."

"Well, it would be awfully confusing if I decided to go by Harry right now," Harold told her.  "Plus, I like Harold."  A thought occurred to him.  "Would it be a conflict of interest for you if we asked you to reverse-investigate the person who hired you to investigate us?"

"Probably," the woman said.  "I could give you the names of a couple other PIs in the area, though."

Harold shook his head.  He said, "No, they've all been hired to investigate us too," before he realized that maybe he wasn't supposed to know that.  "Or so I hear," he added quickly.

"Wow, that's kind of weird."  She looked at him appraisingly.  "What are you doing?  I've heard all the rumors, you know -- drug smuggling, government operatives, international spies.  Any truth to them?"

"No," Harold said.  "If there were, though, do you really think I'd tell you?"

"You never know," the woman said, shrugging.  "People don't always distinguish between credit and blame these days; it's always worth a shot.  So you're really not doing anything illegal?"

"Not that I know of," he told her.  "Our porch is even up to code now."

They watched the washing machines spin for a minute in silence.  "Do you pay taxes?" she asked.

"Yes, of course we pay taxes."  Harold looked at her indignantly.  "Who do you think we are, anyway?"

"I don't know," she said.  "Your neighbors like you, though, and that's usually a good sign."  

Harold was trying to think of something else to say -- he wasn't great at small talk, but if it was going to help him "pass" with a private investigator, he was willing to give it a shot -- when his emergency beacon started beeping.  

"What's that?"

"New invention," Harold said, scrambling for his phone.  As soon as it rang, he took a quick step away.  "Yeah, I'm here," he said.  "What's happening?"

Lishendri's voice answered.  "It's Rob," she said.  "I was showing him the nature walk, and we were looking at the ducks, and then he disappeared!"

"She activated her beacon and ran back to find one of us," Tina explained, probably taking her phone back.  

"He just disappeared?" Harold asked, then shot a probably very guilty look over his shoulder at Ashley, who was eavesdropping unashamedly.

"Like a personal transporter disappearing?" Al asked.

"Did it make a sound like radio static?"  That had to be Toby.  

"Lishendri says it was silent, but weird."

"Weird how?" Harold asked.  "I still have five loads of laundry going, here.  What are we thinking?"  If people were going to start disappearing at random, he was fine with abandoning the laundry.  On the other hand, if Rob had been disappeared by, say, the pirates (Harold wouldn't put it past the captain to kidnap someone if he'd gotten wind of the surprise party and wanted details), there was no need to go rushing off and risk losing his favorite t-shirt.

"I can watch your laundry," Ashley offered.  "If you need to go."

"Who was that?" Matthew asked.

"A PI I met at the laundromat," Harold told him.

There was silence on the line.  Then Cate said, "Okay, that could only happen to you."

"Dave just tried calling Rob, but his phone's not picking up at all, not even voice mail."  Al was starting to sound worried.  "I think we should get everyone back at the house."

"What about the laundry?"

"Let the PI watch it; ask if she'll bring it by the house later.  We'll give her a tour, or something."

Harold put a hand over the speaker.  "Were you serious about offering to watch our laundry?" he asked.  "We'd really appreciate it.  Cate says she'll give you a tour of the house if you want -- do you need our address?"

The look Ashley gave him was priceless.  "I know where you live," she said.  "For a tour?  I would do twice this much laundry.  I'll be over as soon  as everything's out of the dryer."  

Harold refrained from telling her that she could have just walked up to the front door at any time and just asked for a tour.  They had an open door policy -- she could have seen the house without doing any laundry at all.  He did decide it would be rude to ask her to fold everything too, though.

Chapter 36: In which everyone learns about geography and gets a lesson in identifying credible witnesses.

"Lishendri, why are there ducks in the bathtub?"

He'd gone upstairs to find baby Harry's giraffe -- it was a key component of the all-important tummy time ritual, and when it was time for the baby's tummy time, everything else took a back seat, even disappearing FBI agents.  Of course, he'd gotten distracted by the strange noises coming from his bathroom, and that's when he'd found the ducks.  Which was why the tummy time ritual was being modified to include a question and answer session about wildlife in the bathroom.

"Because they're witnesses," Lishendri said.  "They were at the pond when Rob disappeared, and they saw the whole thing, just like me.  Charlotte taught us that any time a crime occurs, you should interview all the witnesses, because they all see something different."

Harold made a mental note to speak with his sister about passing on incomplete information.  Clearly she'd left out some important elements in the identification and detaining of potential witnesses.  Still, he supposed it wasn't a bad thing to cover all their bases.  "Is there anyone here who can ask the ducks what they saw?" he asked with complete seriousness.  Then he tried to pretend he hadn't just asked that question.  

Lishendri looked disappointed.  "I didn't think of that," she said.  

"I think we have bigger things to worry about right now," Al said.  Harold sent him a look that he hoped conveyed 'have you seen the bathtub?'  Al ignored him.  "Here's what we've heard so far: it wasn't the pirates; the Captain said he didn't do it, and they haven't identified any ships around that look out of place."

They'd all gathered in the basement -- it had the most open space of anywhere in the house, and it was cooler, too.  The heatwave was mostly over, but it was still plenty hot.  (Also, the basement had electricity.  When Al was switching the doorway to run off a separate power source, he'd ended up with "a generator or two left over," and hooked up everything in the basement to them.)  And anyone attempting a surprise entrance via instantaneous transportation would show up right in the middle of them, which would be chaotic, but also pretty much ruin the element of surprise.  Harold, Al, Toby, and Cate were closest to the stairs.  Matthew and Harry (with the baby) were in the lounge area along with all the kids and Gary.  The other Matthew, Dave, and Pete were there too, slightly off to the side.  All of the pirates' party supplies had been pushed to the office area (carefully, and without shaking them, just in case).

The only people not in the basement were PJ, Rose, and however many neighborhood kids they had visiting.  Tifa and Xikade had both been on the list that morning, along with a couple kids Harold would probably recognize if he saw them.  They were all in the loft, doing some kind of craft project, Lishendri had said.  With all the windows open, the loft got a great cross-breeze, and they had a supply of snacks, so they should be set for a while.

Matthew spoke next.  "Trudy hasn't heard anything on the phone tree, so that takes out friendly personal transporters.  She did say she hasn't managed to work through everyone on Al's list of people who might be angry with him, and some of them are good with technology."

"Why Rob, though, if it's someone after Al?" Harold asked.  He looked at the remaining FBI agents, who'd been quietly conferring in a corner of the basement.  "I mean, no offense to you guys, but if the goal was to hurt Al, why wouldn't they have taken Lishendri?"

No one looked offended, which was good.  Harold hated having to be the one to ask the rude questions.  

"What if the goal was to cause Earth trouble?"  Toby actually raised his hand as he spoke, although he didn't wait for any acknowledgement.  Harold wasn't sure who would have given it, anyway -- was anyone actually in charge?  (Sometimes he got the sinking feeling it was supposed to be him, which made him feel both slightly honored and extremely alarmed.)  "I mean, four FBI agents take some R&R, one of them 'mysteriously disappears' -- who are they going to suspect first?  Us, right?"

Harry shook his head.  "I don't know -- not with the other three here to vouch for us.  And the first time we had trouble, they were looking for Matthew, not any of us.  What if it's not someone after us at all?"

Harold considered the possibility that they'd gotten so used to weird things happening to them that they just assumed any strange occurrence must be about them.  It actually made a lot of sense.  "So we've been off-track this whole time?  What about the animal control guy?"

"Maybe that was a coincidence," Harry said.  He didn't sound very convinced.

"Remember, this is Harold and Al," Cate said.  "A coincidence like that in their lives is probably less likely than a massive alien-government conspiracy to use this land for a spaceship construction laboratory."

Harold had to admit that it was possible she was right.  "Trudy did say that the attacks, or whatever they are, were unfocused.  Like someone had just tossed in everything they could think of."

"Oh no," Pete said, startling everybody.  "Venezuela.  I knew there was a reason I wasn't supposed to go to South America."

"I thought it was me," Dave said.  "There was that woman, remember?"

And then Matthew groaned, and said, "No, I think it was me -- when we were at that place, with the thing?"  

Harold looked around, but everyone looked as confused as he felt.  What were they talking about?

Whatever it was, it was quickly developing into an argument, complete with wild hand gestures and angry mentions of 'I can't believe I didn't think of it before!'  They also seemed to use the word Venezuela a lot.  Everyone just sort of watched until it became clear that the three of them weren't going to stop and explain things anytime soon, and baby Harry started fussing.

"Shhh!" came from about six people all at once, and the argument came to an abrupt halt.  "What's going on?" Harold asked.  

"Were you really in Venezuela?" Toby asked.  "Or is that a code word for some top secret project?"  

Harold was never sure if Toby was serious when he asked things like that.  Dave frowned.  "No, we were really in Venezuela," he said.  "I think we might have stirred up more trouble than we were expecting, though."  He looked at Pete.  "Of course, we didn't know there were aliens involved at the time."

"I didn't know either," Pete insisted.  "Do you know how many places are on my list of 'locations where I might run into alien-related trouble'?  A lot!  But it's never been a problem before, and it's really not my fault that the Bureau sent us to Venezuela, or that they have such strict regulations there."

It looked like another argument might be brewing, and Al stepped in with a noisy throat-clearing.  "Why don't we start at the beginning?" he said calmly.  "Or we could start with this: do any of  you have an idea of where Rob is now?"

The three agents looked at each other.  "He's probably back in Venezuela," Pete said.

"Is that even possible?" Matthew (not FBI Matthew, the other one) asked.  "That's pretty far away."  

"Well..."  Al ran a hand through his hair.  Harold figured he was probably thinking, 'I could probably do it, but I don't know anyone else who could, and maybe I shouldn't arouse suspicion.'  

"It's like this," Dave said.  At the same time, there was a knock on the front door, and Harold sighed.  Finally, an explanation, and he was going to miss it by answering the door.  

"I'm going to get the door," he said.  Hopefully someone would take notes, or something.  He'd catch up later.

Chapter 37: In which Harold answers the door, and the ducks are more of a problem than anticipated.

If Harold had taken the time to compile a list of who he most expected to see at the door, it probably would have looked something like this: 

1. Ashley Mettier (the PI from the laundromat, bringing their laundry, preferably folded, but most likely not).
2. One of their neighbors, dropping off a kid or two.
3. A traveling salesperson (most of the people Harold knew wouldn't bother to knock).
4. His parents (they did tend to show up unexpectedly during times of crisis; it was like his mom had radar or something).
5. Rob (because mysterious appearances couldn't be more unlikely than mysterious disappearances -- since they'd already had the latter, why not the former as well?).

"Good morning," the man said without smiling.  "I'm from Venezuela.  I believe you're expecting me?"  

Harold stared.  "Can you wait just a minute?" he asked, and quickly shut the door.  Walking back to the basement stairs, he called out, "Al?  You should see this.  Bring Dave."  Al correctly interpreted 'Dave' to mean 'backup,' and arrived in seconds with all three FBI agents following him.

"There's a man at the door who says he's from Venezuela," Harold said, still having trouble believing it himself. 

"I'll talk to him," Dave said firmly.  "Matt, you're with me.  Pete, stay here and keep an eye on us.  If it looks like there's trouble, call whoever seems most appropriate."  Pete nodded, so Harold assumed the somewhat vague instructions actually made sense to him.  Maybe it had been explained while Harold was answering the door.

As the group headed for the front hall, Harold grabbed Al's arm.  "I know this is going to sound crazy," he said, "but I have a really bad feeling about those ducks."

Al nodded, like it wasn't at all crazy to be worried about denizens of the local pond when there were FBI-agent-hunting South Americans showing up on their porch.  "I'll take care of them," he said.  "Toby and I can have them back at the pond in five minutes."

"Thank you," Harold said, and Al hit a button on his watch and vanished.  That was one reason why they'd moved all the Earth kids to the loft -- personal transporters were easier and faster during a potential emergency situation, but they were also awfully hard to explain.

"Good morning," he heard a woman's voice say from the direction of the front door.  He hurried out and found himself in the middle of (possibly) the strangest set of introductions he'd ever heard. 

First was a stern-looking man carrying a clipboard (never a good sign, in Harold's experience).  He said, "I'm Vincent Carter."  

"Vince Carter?  Can I get your autograph?" Matt asked.  "You probably get this a lot, but you seem shorter than I would have expected."

"Not that Vince Carter," the man said.  "Do I look like a basketball player?"  He seemed annoyed, but Harold thought that was a little unfair.  He actually did sort of look like a basketball player.  

In defense of Matthew, who was having a hard day, Harold said, "Maybe a little.  It was an honest mistake."  

"Who are you?"  Now the guy was just being rude.

"I'm Harold," Harold said.  Just to make it clear, he added, "I live here."  He didn't ask 'who are you?' but he thought the intent was there.

"Vincent Carter," the man repeated.  "I'm with Child and Family Services.  I'm here to do a home inspection.  Is that going to be a problem?"  His hand poised over the clipboard.  

Harold smiled politely.  "No, no problem."  He really hoped Al and Toby had been able to move the ducks.  

"Good," Carter said.  "Now, who are the rest of these people?"  He still had his pen out.  

The sole woman on the porch (it must have been her voice he'd heard earlier) appeared to think the whole situation was hilarious.  "I'm Ashley Mettier," she said, handing over a business card.  "I'm a private investigator, and I'm delivering Mr. Jones' laundry."

"I'm Juan Valdez," the man from Venezuela said, with a grin that Harold thought probably meant 'that's not my real name.'  "I'm here on business."

"And we're with the FBI," Dave said.  He and Matthew showed their badges.  "His business is with us, so if you'll excuse us?"  They escorted "Juan" off the porch and towards the parked cars.  Harold thought Vincent Carter was looking a little confused, but he covered quickly with suspicion.  

"This is most unusual," he said, making a note on the clipboard.  Harold wondered if there was actually a box to check for "unusual personages on porch."  

"So, how does this work?" Harold asked.  "I've never had a home inspection before -- would you like me to show you around, or do you look around on your own?  Do you want me to get everyone together, or is it better if you can observe them in their natural habitat, so to speak?"  He felt nervous -- they still didn't have electricity, and he was sure no one had cleaned the breakfast dishes.  Were things like that important in a home inspection?

Vincent Carter did not look amused.  "You may show me the house," he said formally.  "And no, don't bother calling anyone.  This is, after all, meant to be a surprise visit."

Harold narrowed his eyes.  Vincent Carter took a step towards the door expectantly, and Harold held out a hand.  "Hang on a minute," he said.  "I'm sure this is an unnecessary precaution on my part, but this is my house, and there are children inside, so could I see your ID?  You understand how it is; can't be too careful these days."  He tried to smile again, but wasn't sure he actually succeeded.  

Vincent Carter raised his eyebrows.  "Of course," he said.  Harold realized the flaw in his plan a moment later, when the ID was in front of him and he had no way of knowing whether it was legit or not.  At least he had an ID that said he was who he said he was, and that would have to be enough.  

"Thank you," Harold said.  Since he'd also promised a tour to Ashley, who was still standing by looking excited, he waved her towards the door.  "We can all go together," he said.  "After you."

Chapter 38: In which Harold manages not to laugh and give the game away.

Someone had been listening in.  That was the only explanation he could think of, because clearly everyone in the house had been pre-warned that the people outside on the porch were ones who should get a good impression.  There was still no electricity, but it was hard to tell in the middle of the day.  It wasn't like they would have had lights on anyway, right?  It was obvious to Harold, but hopefully not to a curious outsider.

"Where would you like to start?" Harold asked, trying to look unsurprised by the changes in the house since he'd stepped outside.

Vincent Carter peered around the hall.  Harold uncharitably thought he was trying to decide which direction was most likely to uncover something wrong.  "What's up there?" he asked, pointing up the stairs to the loft even as he was striding towards them.

"That's the loft," Harold said.  He started up the stairs as well, with Ashley right behind him.  "It's the room over the garage, fully finished.  We usually use it for our weekly bingo games; we're working on some ideas to make it more handicapped accessible.  Right now Al's cousins are sleeping over, so it's sort of their area right now."

Harold was expecting (at the least) a mess.  He knew what the kids could be like when they got their stuff spread out over everything, and it wasn't neat.  Instead, the loft was tidy like he'd never seen it before -- he had no idea how they'd managed it so quickly -- all the kids' sleeping bags were stashed under their cots with their backpacks and duffels, and the room's occupants were sitting calmly around the bingo tables like they didn't have a care in the world.

"Harold!"  Tifa jumped up from the table and ran over, waving a piece of paper.  "Look what I made!"

Harold went down on one knee to get a better look at the paper.  Once it was closer, he crossed his fingers that it wasn't supposed to be a picture of anything he recognized.  "Wow, Tifa," he said.  "Thanks for showing me -- it's so colorful!"

"We're drawing designs for your garage door," Tifa said.  "PJ said we could paint it later."  Harold looked over her head at PJ, who pointed at Rose.

"It was my idea," Rose said.  "But it'll be great!"

Harold rarely saw any of the kids' guards get excited about anything, let alone excited about something like painting the garage door.  "Sounds good," he said.  "We'll get to see these designs first, right -- before they start painting?"

Rose nodded, and Tifa tugged on his sleeve.  "Do you like mine?" she asked.  "It's a picture of the sky!"  

Harold had absolutely no idea how her picture could possibly be representing the sky.  It was all bright colors and spiky shapes, and he was a little worried that it was supposed to be representing ships in space, so he wasn't sure he should ask in front of strangers.  So he just pointed at one of the shapes (it was the only purple one) and said, "I think this is my favorite part -- did you know there's a book about a kid named Harold and a purple crayon?"  

Rose interrupted before Tifa could answer, saying, "Are these new guests?"  Harold reminded himself never to play poker with her -- he never would have guessed from her expression that she knew anything about them.

"This is Vincent Carter; he's with Child and Family Services, and doing a tour of the house," Harold said, like it was an everyday occurrence  "And this is Ashley Mettier; we met at the laundromat this morning."  He didn't say she was also investigating them, but Rose knew that already anyway.

"Wonderful," Rose said, sounding genuinely pleased.  PJ and the kids stayed studiously focused on their drawings.  "Well, if you have any questions, let me know.  Here, have one of my cards."  She crossed the room and handed Vincent Carter a business card that Harold knew from experience listed her profession as "Personal Bodyguard" working for "Cal Associates."  Ashley got one too, as Rose sent Tifa back to the table with a quick pat on the head.  Carter wrote something else on his clipboard, and Harold wondered what it was.  "Have bodyguards protecting children"?  "Paint exterior surfaces on a whim"?  It could be anything, really.

"Where to now?" Harold asked brightly, and they all trooped back down the stairs to the main house.  In the study room they saw Damaris and Nadeka, quietly reading their library books.  In the living room they found Gary, running some sort of card game with Sabri, Meshkalla, Lishendri, and Zahar.  They went through the whole 'who are you?' and 'do you live here?' set of questions again, and Gary produced his Professional Bodyguard business card, which led to more notes being taken.  The card game didn't obviously involve betting, and did obviously involve a very standard Earth-issue deck of cards, and the living room looked clean, so overall Harold thought they were doing well.  

The kitchen held Pete and Matthew, assembling a large number of sandwiches.  "Hi there," Matthew said with a cheery wave.  "Are you staying for lunch?"

"There's vegetarian or non-vegetarian options," Pete added.  "We weren't planning on any vegans or nut allergies, but we can figure something out if you're hungry."  

"How did you know I have a nut allergy?" Vincent asked.  He sounded suspicious, but Harold was starting to think that was just  his default tone.

"Just a lucky guess, actually.  You're wearing a medic alert bracelet," Pete told him.  "I work with the FBI; we're trained to observe things like that."  He held out his badge.  

"What about you?" Vincent asked Toby.  "I suppose you also work for the FBI?"

Matthew gave a polite smile.  "No, that's the other Matthew.  I'm a student, actually.  I'm just renting.  I've been helping out around the house since my cousins are here for the summer, and I don't get to see them much during the school year.  Lunch will be ready in probably twenty minutes, Harold."  (Harold wondered which of the kids Matthew was planning to claim a familial relationship with, but figured they'd all be willing -- heck, by Al's planet's standards they were probably all cousins, at least.)

Vincent was starting to look a little dazed, and they made it through the utility room with only a quick excuse of a broken washing machine to justify why they'd been doing laundry at a laundromat.  Harold noticed that Ashley didn't say anything about their power being out, even though she must have heard him say it on the phone to Pete that morning.  When they'd made it full circle around the first floor, Harold asked, "Did you want to go up next, or down to the basement?"

Vincent consulted his notes.  "Where is the baby?" he asked.  "That's the main goal of my visit, to ensure the health and safety of the baby."  

Harold wasn't actually sure where the baby was at that exact moment, but he didn't think that made him sound like a very good parent.  Still, it would be worse if he guessed one or the other and turned out to be wrong.  He stuck his head into the study room.  "Nadeka, is Harry still in the basement?"

"Both of them, yeah," Nadeka said.  "Cate's there too."

Vincent was studying the white board next to the door, with the hooks full of emergency beacons.  "What is this?" he asked.

"It's a safety board," Harold said.  He figured adding the word "safety" to anything was probably a safe bet when dealing with Child and Family services.  "We have one in the kitchen, too.  There are a lot of people in the house, and the kids love having friends over, but even with all the adults around it's good to have a backup system to keep track of everyone.  The emergency beacons are one of Al's inventions; they just give all of us a little more peace of mind."  

The "safety board" got one final glance before they headed towards the basement, where Cate and Harry were charming and told made-up stories about community theater group rehearsals to explain the decor, and baby Harry cried, and Harold wondered where Al and Toby were.  Was it possible they were still dealing with the ducks?  Also, where was the dragon?

Chapter 39: In which Al and Toby return, and vow to never disturb ducks again.

Harold still wasn't sure why, exactly, there was a representative from Child and Family Services wandering through their house, asking questions and taking notes.  But he thought having the FBI be there was actually working in their favor, along with the guards.  He wasn't sure why -- it seemed like the most likely explanation for their presence was that the house was a dangerous environment -- but Vincent Carter seemed satisfied with their answers and the handful of business cards he'd collected.  He gave Harold his own card on his way out and told him to get in touch if he ever had any trouble.  (Harold wasn't sure what to do with it -- maybe he could put it in the book of paperwork?)

Ashley proved harder to get rid of.  She looked like this was the most fun she'd had in months, possibly years, and Harold revised his opinion of private investigation as an exciting career.  Harold finally got her back to her car, and thanked her (again) for the laundry, and said he hoped she'd found out what she needed for her investigation.

"Oh yes," she told him.  "I finished that days ago -- you guys are just really interesting, you know?"  Harold tried not to show how weird he found that, and waved as she (finally) drove back down the driveway.  

"Next time, you get the ducks."  Harold heard Al's voice coming from behind him, and turned quickly.  There was Al, on the porch -- with Toby, and duck-less, thankfully.  Both of them were soaking wet.  

"What happened?"  Al and Toby looked at each other, and the dragon bounded up behind them.  It didn't quite manage to skid to a stop, and it ran into Toby's legs, just hard enough to make him stumble.

"Al told me we needed to move the ducks," Toby said, catching his balance.  "And we figured it would be good to get the dragon out of the house too.  So we took them all to the pond."

Al grimaced.  "It turns out the dragon really likes ducks.  A lot."

Toby picked a long piece of grass off his shoulder.  "They all ended up in the pond.  And then we ended up in the pond, because -- guess what -- the dragon can't swim."  

Harold laughed, and then couldn't stop.  "Sorry, sorry," he said, waving a hand as he tried to catch his breath.  "Pete and Matthew are making sandwiches for everyone, if that makes you feel any better."

"What's going on with Rob?" Al asked.  "Is he still missing?"

Harold looked around.  He couldn't see any Matt or Dave, or "Juan Valdez," anywhere.  "I'm not sure," he said.  "Pete didn't seem too worried when I saw him earlier."  Still, he wondered if "making sandwiches" really counted as monitoring the situation.  "We can ask him."

"You can ask him," Toby said.  "I'm washing off all this pond gunk, and changing into something dry."  He stalked into the house, still dripping, and the dragon bounced after him.  

Al and Harold looked at each other.  "We're going to have to teach it to swim," Al said.

"Can't we delegate that to someone else?" Harold asked.  "I'm not even that good at swimming."

Al considered it.  "Maybe -- they probably have indoor pools down at the school in Alabama.  It likes water; it's just... not sure what to do with it."  

"Go change," Harold suggested.  "I'll figure out what's going on with Rob, or at least if we're supposed to be doing anything about it, and then we can eat."  Al just nodded, and Harold thought maybe he had gotten the easier job.

The kitchen was filling up by the time he made it inside, and Pete said Dave and Matt had gone to Venezuela to work out some kind of deal.  Harold was pretty sure that hadn't actually been part of the plan, but Pete said they'd all been in touch with him over the phone, and everything was going well.  Harold hoped that meant everything was going well -- if the FBI had inadvertently been responsible for all the trouble they'd been having recently, maybe that would get resolved too.  They were all getting tired of being stopped in the grocery store.  It'd be nice if they could at least get rid of the people investigating them for potential crimes -- then they'd only have the ones offering well-meaning advice about baby care (Harold never wanted to explain to anyone ever again why they weren't breastfeeding baby Harry) and the ones asking if they had any openings in their "no ma'am it's really not a daycare" program.  

The sandwiches were delicious, at least, even though Harold was pretty sure he'd ended up with a vegetarian one by mistake.  "Al," he said quietly, showing him the sandwich.  "Does this look like meat to you?"

Al looked at it carefully.  "Not really," he said.  "Is it good?"

Harold shrugged. "Yeah, it tastes fine.  Like chicken, kind of."

"Can we paint the garage door now?" Tifa asked.

Harold still wasn't sure how he felt about the whole "painting the garage door" idea, but Rose said, "We're going to start after everyone's done with lunch," and that was that.  If they started talking about painting inside the house, he'd start thinking about micro-managing.  

Tifa turned back to him.  "Are you done with lunch yet?"

Harold looked at her, then looked at his sandwich.  It was a good sandwich.  "No," he said.  "Not yet."  It was good for kids to learn patience, right?

Tifa pouted, but it hadn't escaped Harold's notice that she was the only one in the kitchen who was actually finished eating.  Everyone else was still going strong.  He pushed a plate of fruit in her direction -- Harold felt strongly that playing with your food was an acceptable way to keep everyone on pace in a group meal.  

Chapter 40: In which the missing agents return, and the garage door finally gets painted.

In what Harold thought was the best development of the day, Rob didn't bother knocking when he arrived.  (Re-arrived?  Returned?  Whatever -- he didn't knock.)  He just walked in, followed by Dave and Matthew.  "Are those sandwiches?" Rob asked.

"Rob!" Pete said.  "You're back!"  

More chairs were found and sandwiches distributed, and Rob said, "Turns out it was just a misunderstanding.  Everything's settled now."  Based on the speaking looks being exchanged between the four agents, Harold was pretty sure "misunderstanding" was a code word for "really complicated situation we shouldn't talk about in front of civilians."  But if Rob said it was settled, Harold was willing to go with it.  After all, there were more important things to get to.

"We're going to paint the garage door this afternoon," Harold said, changing the subject with no subtlety at all.

All the kids wanted to show off their drawings, and Harold thought they must have been planning for more than a day, because everyone seemed to have one.  All of Sabri's class, along with Tifa and Xikade -- even Helen and Isaac produced designs.  And when they got outside, Kim was there with her parents (and her drawing), and Eliza and Tina were setting up pots of paint and handing out oversized t-shirts for smocks.  

Harold and Al wound up in the "grown ups" section, sitting on lawn chairs in the driveway and watching the kids paint.  Harold adjusted baby Harry's sun hat and leaned back in his chair.  "This is nice," he said.

"Mm," Al said.  Somehow he'd come up with a Hoodsie cup, and Harold looked at him indignantly until he handed over a second cup.  "You're right.  Although -- what is that Zahar is painting?"

Harold studied it for a minute.  "I have no idea," he said finally.  It looked sort of like an abstract whale, or possibly an interpretive galaxy.  Zahar was collaborating with Sabri, Damaris, Nadeka, and PJ on the top half of the door.  Lishendri and Meshkalla were organizing the bottom half with the younger kids.  Harry was sitting with Rose and Tina; Harold thought they were probably the ones supplying the ice cream, since they were all huddled around a cooler.  Even the cats were around, lounging in the sunshine on the porch.  Bob was keeping a close eye on the impromptu soccer game between Rob's team and Toby, Cate, and Matthew -- the dragon was playing too, but it was hard to tell what team it was on.

"It's like that book," Al said.  "The one Harry was reading to the babies the other night."

"About Mr. Plumbeam?" Harold asked.  They'd both passed by the nursery at the same time, and stopped to listen.  

"Yeah -- 'my house is me and I am it'?"  Al pointed at the garage door.  "I'm not sure that looks like all our dreams, but it's us, you know?"

Harold looked around -- saw the playing and the laughing and the relaxing and the painting -- and  yeah, he got it.  He held out his ice cream, and he and Al toasted with Hoodsie cups.  "To us," Harold said.