Author's Note: This is my 2008 NaNoWriMo novel, clocking in at 50,155 words according to the official NaNo word counting app. My hugest thanks to my sister, who inspires me to write and reminds me that you don't need to be writing to take a writing break. Also, more hugest thanks to our parents, who put up with both of us planning to write, actually writing, and talking endlessly about writing throughout the month of November and beyond.

Chapter 1: (In which Harold and Al realize they should have planned ahead.)

"This could be a problem."

Harold glanced up from his computer screen. Al was frowning at the calendar. He didn't look too worried. Then again… "Does this potential problem involve death threats? Hiding out? Getting kidnapped by aliens? The destruction of our property?"

Since their most recent adventure had included all of those things, Harold thought they were fair questions, but Al just shook his head. "No, nothing like that. It's just -- I think I've figured out why your sisters were so willing to stay in Alabama for another week."

"What?" Harold thought his sisters were just being nice, letting him and Al stay in their house. It was actually their parents' house, but Charlotte and Eliza had been the only regular occupants for the last few years, with their parents travelling and Harold living in his own home several streets away.

"They're supposed to be back late Wednesday, right?" Al asked. Harold nodded. "Thursday is Thanksgiving."

"Already?" Harold tried to calculate the days in his head. "Did we lose some days somehow?" His day/night cycle was still feeling confused after being in space, but he didn't think they'd been away for that long. "Are there time zones in space?"

"Not really," Al said. He was frowning at the calendar again. "Did you know your parents are planning to be here for Thanksgiving?"

"What?" If Charlotte and Eliza weren't going to be back until Wednesday night, that meant he and Al were going to have to handle Thanksgiving dinner. And if his parents were going to be there, that meant they couldn't just order pizza. "But they'll want actual food -- why didn't we know this before?"

Al finally looked away from the calendar. "They probably sent us an email," he said.

Well, that would do it. Despite being assured by Nick and Steve that the internet worked just fine off-planet (actually, they said it worked better, but Harold wasn't convinced), the same couldn't be said for Earth-based email accounts. Harold and Al had several thousand emails each waiting for them when they'd finally returned home. There was no way Harold was going to read them all, especially when most of them were probably just spam. He'd done a mass delete (on the theory that if it was important, they'd try again) and then sent an email to everyone in his address book.

The email said, "I've been away, so if you tried to call or email me in the last four weeks, that's why I didn't respond. I'm back now, so feel free to try again." Al had suggested adding, "If you tried to contact me earlier than that, I was just ignoring you," but Harold decided against it. He was already pushing it with the four weeks bit.

"Why didn't you get it?" Harold asked. "I thought you said you were going to look through all your emails."

Al looked sheepish. "I am! I just haven't gotten to it yet."

"Okay," Harold said. "So in two days, we're going to have six people here expecting Thanksgiving dinner." He paused. Al was shaking his head. "We're not going to have six people expecting Thanksgiving dinner?"

"No," Al said slowly. "I'm pretty sure we're going to have nine people."

Harold told himself he absolutely wasn't going to say "what" again. "Nine?" he asked instead.

"Eliza will probably invite Tina, and I told Sam and Matthew they should come if they didn't have any other plans," Al explained. "I didn't know your parents were coming -- I thought we were having pizza."

"This is definitely a problem," Harold said. "What are we going to do?"

Al held up a take-out menu. "Well, we should probably have pizza tonight instead."

Chapter 2: (In which dinner options are explored.)

The pizza was delicious. "I still think option one should be pizza," Al said. "If turkey's so important, I'm sure we can get it added as a topping."

Harold shook his head. "Pizza's a no, I think, with or without turkey. For some reason my mom doesn't consider it a 'real food.' No fake foods allowed at family gatherings. That probably covers most of our take-out options, actually."

Al "hmm"ed, and they ate some more pizza. "What about eating in a restaurant?" he asked. "Does that count as real food?"

Harold considered it. "Probably," he said. "As long as it's a real restaurant."

"Ceramic plates, metal silverware, cloth napkins -- got it," Al said. He picked the green peppers off his slice of pizza and put them on Harold's plate.

"Can you get reservations for nine this close to Thanksgiving?" Harold asked.

*********************************

Apparently not. One person actually laughed when Harold called them up and told her what he was looking for. Another hung up on him, which seemed rude, but it was possible he'd misread the number and hadn't reached a restaurant at all. He crossed it off the list anyway. Al was still talking, and Harold wondered if Al would mind if Harold finished the last slice of pizza. It was sitting on Al's plate, but Al was busy, and Harold was still hungry.

Al must have noticed, because he circled his arm protectively around his plate. "Yes, I realize it's very short notice," he said into the phone. "Actually, yes, our house did burn down," he said. There was a pause. "Well, no, it was several weeks ago. We're staying at a relative's house." Al caught Harold's attention and rolled his eyes. Harold raised his eyebrows, and Al gave the universal "talk, talk, talk, blah, blah, blah, please hurry up because my pizza's getting cold" gesture.

"They're not actually here," Al said. "But they'll be back for Thanksgiving." Another pause. "Yes, it does seem like they should be the ones preparing the meal, but it didn't work out that way. No? Well, thank you anyway. Happy Thanksgiving to you too. Yes, I'm sure it will."

Harold said, "What was that all about?"

Al took a huge bite of pizza, and Harold waited impatiently for him to answer. "That is the chattiest restaurant employee I've ever spoken to. He says there's no reservations available, by the way. Today's slow though -- we could've gotten reservations for twenty if we wanted them today."

"That doesn't really help," Harold said.

"No," Al said. "But I think he was pretty bored. Did you have any luck?"

"Nothing," Harold said. "Who knew so many people wanted to go to a restaurant for Thanksgiving?"

"So -- no take-out, and no restaurants. What's option three?"

"Cooking?" Harold asked.

Al looked doubtful. "I can bake cookies," he offered.

"I can use a microwave," Harold said. He was pretty sure you couldn’t cook a turkey in the microwave, though. Vegetables, yes -- you could definitely handle the vegetable portion of Thanksgiving dinner with a microwave, and maybe stuffing. Mashed potatoes could be microwaved, right?

"Okay, so we've got cookies," Al said.

"Hey!"

"You can't cook a turkey in the microwave," Al said, confirming Harold's suspicion. "And cookies and mashed potatoes don't add up to real food."

Harold gave the oven a wary glance. "Do you think you can get a pre-cooked turkey?" he asked. "You know, like a rotisserie chicken?"

"Two days before Thanksgiving, big enough to feed nine people?" Al said.

"Right," Harold said. "Probably not."

*********************************

"Is it too late to convert to vegetarianism?"

"Do you really want to try cooking a tofurkey?"

"No."

"Than yes, it is."

*********************************

"What about a soup kitchen?"

"You want to take your family to Thanksgiving dinner in a soup kitchen?"

"No, I mean we could all volunteer in a soup kitchen -- as a Thanksgiving activity."

"Sure, but we'd still need to figure out what to eat for dinner."

*********************************

"I give up." Harold tossed his pen on the table. "There's no way we can arrange Thanksgiving dinner for nine people in less than two days." He was starting to think things had actually been easier when he'd been stuck on the space station.

"I've been thinking about your soup idea," Al said thoughtfully.

"What?" Harold didn't remember any ideas about soup. "You mean the soup kitchen?"

"I was thinking more like actual soup. Like at the grocery store -- a soup buffet."

Harold thought about it. The grocery store did sell pre-made soups, plus there was always soup from a can. It would be an easy way to get vegetarian and non-vegetarian options (since neither of them could remember if Matthew and Sam ate meat), and all it required was heating.

"We could make a big salad, and get some bread and rolls and stuff, and some pies," Al continued.

"And you could make cookies," Harold said. Al's cookies really were delicious. "If we have enough soup options, plus the extra stuff and dessert, I think we can definitely sell it as quirky and alternative. As opposed to desperate and last minute," he added, because it looked like Al was about to say it anyway.

"Exactly," Al said. "But we're going to need more bowls. And spoons."

"Maybe we should get little bowls," Harold suggested. "If people eat four or five different soups, they probably won't want a full-size bowl of it. And they'd be easier to fit on the table, too. I don't know about spoons, though -- can't we just use the same spoon for every soup?"

"Do you want to be the one to tell your mom she has to lick off her spoon and reuse it?" Al asked.

"Good call," Harold said. "More spoons it is. We can just add our spoons to the ones here." He paused. "Do you remember where our kitchen stuff is?"

They'd packed up everything in their old house and put it into storage so it wouldn't be destroyed when The Protectioners came after them. It had been done slowly, though, so The Protectioners wouldn't realize that Harold and Al knew what was going on, and extra kitchen stuff had been some of the first stuff out. It felt like it had been months since Harold had seen it.

"Maybe at Nick and Steve's," Al said.

"Hey, are they going to be around for Thanksgiving?" Harold, Al, Nick, and Steve had all left the station together, heading back towards Earth on Matthew and Betty's ship, but Nick and Steve were dropped off early to pick up their own spaceship. Harold didn't know if they'd been planning to head straight back or not.

"I don't think so," Al said. "I thought they were going to meet up with the Cals first, and help Toby and the kids explain what happened."

Harold nodded. He hoped he never had to explain what happened -- he'd been confused at the beginning, and that was before the pirates had shown up. Silverware was much easier.

Chapter 3: (In which Harold goes shopping.)

In retrospect, it was obvious that Harold and Al had forgotten something. Not about dinner -- it was entirely possible they'd forgotten something about dinner, of course, but that wasn't what Harold was realizing. No, the obvious thing they'd forgotten to take into account was that they lived in a small town. A very small town, when the students went home for the summer. And when the town emptied out more than usual, and someone's house blew up, and the people who'd lived there (and their relatives, and their closest friends) were suddenly nowhere to be found, it got people talking.

"Harold?" The third person in less than ten minutes called his name. "Harold! It's so good to see you!" Harold wondered if he was supposed to recognize the woman shaking his hand.

"Hi," he said, giving her a smile he hoped was somewhere in between "we're complete strangers but I'm being polite" and "of course I remember you, I've just got a lot on my mind."

"I'm glad you're all right," the woman said. "We were all worried about you! I heard about your house; it must have been terrible."

Since he'd heard almost exactly the same thing from the last two people to approach him, Harold was ready with an answer. "It's hard for me to talk about it," he told her, trying to sound sincere.

"Of course," she said. Then she looked around furtively and lowered her voice. "And Al? And your sisters? Is everyone… all right?"

For the third time, Harold asked himself what people could possibly think was going on. Then again, Trudy had once started a rumor that he and Al were dead, and for a while their whole neighborhood seemed convinced they were some sort of government agents. "Everyone's fine," he said reassuringly. He'd learned his lesson about saying they were all having Thanksgiving together, after the first two people had tried to invite themselves over. "Really. It's nice to know you were thinking of us."

"I can't wait to tell everyone I saw you!" the woman said. "I'm so glad you're back!"

She rushed off, and Harold shook his head. All the crazy people must have ended up in the store at the same time. He went back to pondering how many biscuits nine people would want to eat, and if anyone coming liked radishes.

*********************************

Harold had moved on to soups when his phone rang. "Hey Al," he said, checking the display.

"Harold!" It sounded like Al was upset.

"Al? What's going on?" Al was supposed to be tracking down their spoons, and then getting them some new bowls.

"People keep coming up to me and asking if I'm okay," Al said. "It's really weird."

"Yeah, me too," Harold said. He wedged the phone between his ear and his shoulder so he could ladle out soup. "Hey, what do you think about chowder?"

"What kind of chowder?" Al asked, distracted from the weirdness of their town.

"There's just seafood today," Harold said. "It looks good."

"Then I vote yes for chowder. How many soups have you got? I'm looking at bowls now."

"Did you find our spoons?"

"I think so. Nick and Steve have a lot of boxes. Our silverware has that little circle design on the end of the spoons, right?"

Harold thought about it. "Yes?" It really seemed like he should be able to remember what his own silverware looked like, but he honestly had no idea if there was a little circle design or not. "I'm not really sure, actually."

"Well, I took them anyway. I'm pretty sure they're ours; they were in the same box with your blender."

He had a blender? Before Harold could ask, Al started talking again. "They have these great little sets of bowls in all different colors. They're perfect. That's why I need to know how many soups we're going to have. I don't think I'm going to be able to get enough bowls all in the same color."

Harold counted containers. "There's five today," he said. "We're supposed to freeze them and then just heat them up again on Thursday. And the soup counter person said there will be two different ones tomorrow that are 'holiday-themed,' whatever that means. I figured we could come back and get those, which would bring us to seven total. I already got the bread and rolls and stuff. Do you like radishes?"

"No radishes," Al said. "Sam's allergic, I think. Plus they taste disgusting. So if everyone had all the soups, we would need 63 bowls?"

Wow, that seemed like a lot of bowls. "I don't think everyone's going to want all of them," he said. "That seems like way too many bowls. Why don't we figure four or five soups per person -- that would be forty or so bowls, right?"

The customer next to Harold was giving him a really weird look, but he ignored it, fitting the cover on his soup and putting it in the cart next to the others. "Can we get an equal number of a bunch of colors?" he asked.

"Sure," Al said. In a much quieter voice, he added, "Don't hang up. There's more people headed in my direction, and they look familiar. I think --"

Over the phone, Harold heard someone say, "Al!"

"Just keep talking," Harold suggested. "Hopefully they'll think you're busy, not rude."

"Yes,” Al said. "I understand. Of course." There was a pause.

"Are they gone?" Harold asked.

"No," Al said. "I'm still here. Tell me again what's going on."

Harold imagined Al being surrounded by curious shoppers, listening in on his every word, while Al tried to look serious and pick out little multi-colored bowls at the same time. He wanted to ask Al what colors he was getting, but he didn't think it would sound appropriately important.

"I'm headed to the produce section now," Harold offered, just to give Al something to listen to. "To get stuff for the salad. Do we need dressings too?"

"No, I don't think so," Al said.

"Good," Harold said, tossing pre-bagged salad into the cart. Would four bags be enough? "Do you think four bags will be enough?"

He heard a sigh of relief from Al. "They've gone. And yes, four bags sounds good. I'm going to get out of here before anyone else tells me they were praying for me. We weren't even gone for that long!"

"Yeah, but our house did blow up," Harold said. "I know what you mean, though -- you'd think nothing else interesting happened in that time. Anyway, I'm done too -- meet you back at Charlotte and Eliza's?"

"As soon as possible," Al agreed.

Chapter 4: (In which the day ends well.)

Thank goodness for dishwashers. If you arranged things right, you could fit more than forty bowls into one, and get everything washed at once, while you relaxed and watched a movie. Harold put his feet up on the coffee table and turned the volume down -- Al had fallen asleep thirty minutes in, and Harold didn't want the shouting and explosions to wake him up.

It felt good to be back on Earth. A little weird to be back in the house he'd grown up in, especially with Bob and Mama Tibbles sauntering around like they owned the place, but good. As if Harold's thoughts had summoned him, Bob appeared in the doorway and headed for the sofa.

"Hi Bob," Harold said softly. "Coming to sit with us?"

Bob leapt gracefully into the space between Harold and Al and stretched out, purring. Mama Tibbles showed up a minute later and settled herself in Harold's lap. Harold leaned back and closed his eyes. "We missed you too," he said, putting a hand on each cat. Although Bob had actually been with them, at least for the end of the adventure, so it wasn't like they hadn't seen him. Both cats purred louder.

Harold hoped the phone didn't ring. They'd already had a call from Sam and Matthew, looking for directions to Charlotte and Eliza's house, and wanting to know when they should get there on Thanksgiving. Harold told them he wasn't sure, and Matthew suggested 2:00, which sounded fine. Then when Eliza called an hour later, Harold was able to tell her 2:00 like he had a plan and everything. She and Charlotte would already be there, of course, but it was still good to feel prepared. In fact, since their parents were due to arrive sometime Thursday morning, and Tina would be travelling with Charlotte and Eliza, the 2:00 time didn't really apply to anyone except Matthew and Sam. Oh well.

In the movie, something else blew up. Harold turned the volume down even lower, and let himself doze off.

Chapter 5: (In which Thanksgiving arrives, and 2:00 isn't late enough.)

"2:00 isn't going to be late enough." Harold looked around the kitchen worriedly. The counters were covered with thawing soup, the cats had disappeared again, and Al had blown out their electricity trying to upgrade his phone. Matthew and Sam's car broke down when they were still an hour away, and everyone else in the house went to find them/ wait with them for the tow truck/ give them a lift back to dinner. Which left Harold and Al by themselves, with no stove, no microwave, and seven people headed their way expecting a delicious banquet.

"No," Al said. "It's not." Harold threw an oyster cracker at him. "But --" Al popped the cracker in his mouth and chewed. "I have a plan."

"Really?" Harold had been contemplating the plan of throwing themselves on his mom's mercy and begging for her help, so if Al had a better idea than that, he was all ears.

"We can use 2:00 as the gathering time, and just give everyone hors-d'oeuvres, and then do the actual meal whenever we're ready. Probably closer to three."

Harold threw another cracker at Al, then ate some himself. "But we don't have any hors-d'oeuvres."

"But Nick and Steve do," Al said triumphantly. "And they have a stove and a microwave, both of which are currently working!"

"You looked through Nick and Steve's kitchen?" Harold asked.

"All the boxes were in there," Al explained. "When I was looking for the spoons. And I got really hungry. Besides, this is like a food emergency -- I'm sure they wouldn't mind."

It was sort of like a food emergency. And Nick and Steve still weren't back yet; they certainly wouldn't want anything to go to waste because no one had been around to eat it. "Sure," Harold said. "Let's do it."

Which was how Harold ended up lighting candles, while Al used his transporter watch to pop back and forth between the houses with pots of soup and trays of crackers and cheese. Harold had the brilliant idea to use the leftover salad ingredients to make a vegetable platter, and Al was working on getting the electricity back in between soup checks.

"I think I've almost got it," Al said at one point, popping into Charlotte and Eliza's kitchen with a spoon in his hand. "Also, does this chowder seem warm enough to you?"

It tasted good. "It tastes good," Harold said. "Maybe a little hotter?"

Al licked off the rest of the spoon and popped out again, waving.

*********************************

"And they actually flagged us down to ask about you!" Charlotte sounded amazed. "I didn't know you even knew the Stanwerths!"

Harold had no idea if he and Al knew the Stanwerths. He didn't recognize the name, but he wasn't great with names. Al might know -- he was the one who went to all the Neighborhood for the Neighbors meetings. "I told you not to take the Armada," Harold told his sister. "It's pretty recognizable."

"Yeah, but I didn't think it would be like that," Charlotte said. "It's like your famous or something."

Something like that. Harold wasn't too clear on it himself, but having your house blow up certainly drew a lot of attention. And that was just from the people who knew him on Earth. He was probably more famous with the off-world set, especially Al's people, but they had a much better information network. They might flag Harold or Al (or anyone connected with them) to say hi, but they would already know the information basics.

"Where is Al?" Harold's mom looked around, as if she might have somehow missed seeing him in the entryway.

Harold looked around too, stalling for time. Luckily, at that moment Al walked in from the kitchen. "Hi everyone!" he called. "Happy Thanksgiving!"

*********************************

Harold and Al quickly brought Matthew and Sam in on their plan. Sam could pop back and forth like Al to check on food, and Matthew helped Harold keep everyone else out of the kitchen. Harold thought his parents probably suspected something odd was going on -- the lack of cooking smells could've been a tipoff -- but they didn't say anything.

"So she said town had been a lot quieter than usual lately, even after the students came back, and had I noticed anything," Eliza was saying, when Harold carried the hors-d'oeuvre trays into the living room. Al just nodded, and Harold gave him a thumbs-up.

"What did you tell her?" Harold asked. He'd been half-listening to Eliza's story from the kitchen.

"I said I wasn't sure, because I'd been away for several weeks myself," Eliza said. "I wanted to tell her I'd been on an outer space adventure with aliens, but Charlotte wouldn't let me."

"I told her we'd been in Alabama," Charlotte added.

Tina burst out laughing. "Tell them the best part!" she crowed.

Charlotte just looked irritated, so Eliza took up the story again. "Well, first off, she didn't believe us. Then she told us she'd heard you and Al were on the run -- she seemed a little confused about that part. And then she said we couldn't have been in Alabama, because she'd heard we'd been off rescuing you from space aliens!"

"She sounds very well-informed," Al said. "Did she tell you anything else?" Harold thought that was a smart question -- there'd been many times (especially recently) when other people knew a lot more about what was going on in his life than he did, and it was always good to gather information wherever you could.

"No, but she did give us these," Tina said gleefully. She reached into her bag. "She knit them for you!"

Tina handed the gifts to him and Al. It was a long strip of purple knitting with a fringe of tassels on each end. "Is it a scarf?" Harold asked.

"I love it," Al declared, although his voice sounded a little doubtful. "As long as it doesn't have any secret messages in it." Harold's parents looked fascinated, and Harold sensed another long explanation of recent events looming.

"I'm going to go check on the food," he said quickly.

Chapter 6: (In which Thanksgiving dinner is delicious.)

"This chowder is delicious!"

"I love these little bowls!"

"Where did you get these spoons?"

Dinner was going well. The menu was pronounced "excellent," the candles added "atmosphere," and nobody needed to reuse any bowls. Harold still winced at the spoon question though -- he knew he didn't own a blender. "They're new," he said.

"I like them," declared Matthew. "Hey, did anyone see the game last weekend?" The conversation was instantly diverted, and Harold decided that Matthew was his new favorite person. Al regained the top spot when his trip to the kitchen to "check on the pies" resulted in restored electricity.

"Pies look good," Al said, ignoring the fact that he'd been gone for nearly fifteen minutes. Harold gave him a discreet but celebratory under-the-table high five.

"I've been wondering," Harold said, since it seemed like a good time to ask. "Does anyone know where Bruno is?"

"Who's Bruno?" his dad wanted to know.

Much to Harold's surprise, it was his mom who answered. "He's Nick and Steve's dog, of course," she said. "The children told us all about him." Harold had forgotten about the "pen pal" program the Cals had set up between their kids' school class and his parents. No wonder they always knew so much about what was going on! "Nick and Steve left Bruno with Trudy," his mom explained. "But it turned out her landlord didn't allow dogs -- I'm surprised you didn't get her email."

The last part was directed at Harold. He felt a brief moment of guilt for deleting all his mail, but it wasn't like he could've done anything to help anyway. He mumbled his way through a vague explanation. "Anyway," his mom continued, "with so many people away, Trudy ended up sending Bruno to the Cals. I think they were going to have him do some sort of publicity tour. Nick and Steve have probably caught up with him by now."

Either Harold was going crazy, or his mom just said a dog was doing a publicity tour on another planet. "Did you just say Bruno -- the dog, Bruno -- is doing a publicity tour on another planet?" he asked.

"Well, it wouldn't make any sense to do one here, would it?"

Well, no, he supposed it wouldn't. Harold didn't really think it made sense on any planet, but he was willing to be flexible. He tried to imagine a scenario in which Nick and Steve didn't blame him and Al for their dog's new celebrity status, and it seemed possible, so he let the issue drop.

"Things are always so exciting around here," his mom was saying when he tuned back into the conversation. "We've decided to stick around for a while."

What? It was actually his parents' house, but Harold had gotten used to them being on the road. Were they planning on moving back in? For how long? Across the table, he saw Charlotte and Eliza exchange startled looks. Obviously, this wasn't just another email Harold had missed along the way.

There was a long pause in the conversation, as if everyone was trying to figure out what to say. Finally, Al spoke up. "Pie, anyone?" he asked. "There's cookies too."

Chapter 7: (In which Harold hides in the basement and talks to the cat, and then a bunch of other people.)

"We definitely need to find a new house." Harold looked at Bob as he spoke. Bob looked solemnly back at him and said nothing. Harold thought he probably agreed, though. They were in the basement, which didn't have much to recommend it except that no one else was in it at the moment. Harold was hiding from his family (luckily, the washer and dryer were in the basement, so he told them he was doing laundry). Come to think of it, maybe Bob was hiding too -- he'd certainly never shown much inclination to hang out in the basement before.

Harold's plan to sleep in that morning had been rudely interrupted by his parents rousting everyone out of bed to look at the sunrise. It was cold at sunrise in November, and also partly cloudy, and it turned out they'd sort of been facing the wrong direction. But his parents seemed to have spent the last few years coming up with a list of "Things We Feel Like We Should Do as a Family, But Haven't Done Yet," and they were determinedly checking them off one by one. Al thought it was nice. (He'd also dozed off leaning against Harold's shoulder, and missed the sunrise completely.) Harold thought it was nice too, he just didn't want to be quite so accessible when plans were being tossed around.

So Harold was ready to start house hunting in earnest. He was supposed to have a card for someone recommended by the other Matthew (of the original "pirates," before there'd been any actual pirates). It was somewhere in his backpack, maybe, or Al's.

Which was where Harold ran into a problem, because Al was currently nowhere to be found. His backpack wasn't missing, so Harold could just look through it himself, but that seemed rude, and also like a lot of work. Al had walked into town just after breakfast, to "clear his head." He said he planned to be back for lunch, but unless he was aiming for the "so late we might as well just call it dinner" lunchtime, he'd missed it. Harold was still deciding whether or not he should be worried. Worrying about Al had been his default state when they were in space, but they were back on Earth now. He hesitated to think "what could possibly go wrong?" but really -- what could possibly go wrong?

Bob gave a reproachful meow, and Harold laughed. "Should I knock on wood now?" he asked the cat. It seemed silly, but he did it anyway, just in case. Then he checked his phone to see if he had any messages from Al. He didn't. He briefly considered calling Al himself, but what would he say? "Hi -- Bob and I are hiding in the basement. Just wanted to make sure you hadn't accidentally been abducted by aliens again." Yeah, that would go over well.

The washer beeped, and Harold moved to transfer everything to the dryer. At least the laundry was getting done. Unfortunately, the flutter of white confetti when he shook out his favorite pair of pants let him know he'd missed something in his (admittedly cursory) pocket check. Even more unfortunately, he had a sudden vague memory of wearing the pants on the space station when Matthew gave him the card, and putting it in one of his pockets. He wondered if "I lost it and ran it through the wash cycle" ranked above or below "my dog ate it" on the list of pathetic excuses.

"This could be a problem," Harold said to Bob. There was nothing to salvage, so he swept the paper bits into the trash and dumped the clothes into the dryer. Anything else in their pockets that had survived the wash cycle could surely handle a little tumble-dry-low action. Anything that hadn't survived… well, it would probably be less gross dry anyway.

*********************************

"Harold!"

"Gabe!"

There was no way out of the basement except up the stairs, or he might have tried to escape. It couldn't be good if his dad and Tina were both looking for him at the same time.

"In the basement," he called back. "Help," he whispered to Bob.

Bob wasn't much help -- he scampered away up the stairs as Tina and Henry made their way down. "Mail call!" Tina said cheerily.

"Harold, what is this?" his dad asked, holding up a postcard.

"It looks like a postcard," Harold said. It seemed best to stick with the basics, at least until he knew what was going on.

His dad handed him the card. It was a postcard. One side was covered with cartoon balloons, which were a little tacky looking, but not exactly cause for alarm. The back said, "Thanks for getting back in touch! We'll see you at our 11th!" 11th what? Birthday? Harold didn't think he knew anyone the right age for that, at least not anyone who'd be mailing him a postcard. He squinted at the tiny print on the bottom of the card. "Julie McCabe, class of 1997. Visit our class blog for the latest details!"

They had a class blog? Also, who celebrated their 11th high school reunion? "That's weird," he said, holding the card at arm's length. "How did they get this address?" He'd managed to avoid all previous class reunions, despite not being able to get his name off the automatic email list. He must have accidentally sent them something in his mass-reply email, and it had sparked off a new round of contact attempts.

"That's not what's weird," his dad said.

At the same time, Tina asked, "You did live here during high school, right?"

Harold looked at the card again. "Okay," he said. "What do you think is the weird part?" He flipped it around to see if he'd missed anything on the front.

His dad plucked the card out of his hand and read off the back. "'To: Harold Gabriel Jones Zabela.' That doesn't seem weird to you?"

Harold shrugged. "Not… really," he said. "I mean, it's kind of weird that she used four separate names, but maybe she's just a very thorough person." He tried to remember if he'd thought she was particularly detail-oriented back in high school. "I think Al and I ran into her at the aquarium when we were on the road trip," he said.

"Are you and Al married?" his dad asked. "Because your mother's going to be upset if she missed the ceremony."

Now even Tina looked confused. "What?"

"What?" Harold asked.

"What did I miss?" Al stepped around the corner of the staircase, holding a purring (and very smug looking) Bob. "Bob said you were looking for me," he said to Harold.

Harold took the postcard back and handed it to Al. "This came in the mail today," he said. "My dad wants to know if we're married." He skritched Bob behind the ears and added, very quietly, "Good kitty."

Al read the card. "Is she the one we met in Boston?" Harold nodded. "Wow," Al said. "She's kind of scary. You have a class blog?"

"I know!" Harold was relieved that Al seemed to correctly identify the weirdness of the situation. "And I think the balloons are a little tacky."

"Definitely," Al said, handing the card back.

Harold's dad cleared his throat pointedly.

"Oh," Al said, blushing. "No? We're pretty flexible about names and stuff."

"That's true," Tina said. "I have five or six names; I just use them on different planets. It's not like my parents actually named me Tina." She said it like the idea of any parent naming a child Tina was preposterous, and Harold resisted the urge to object. He was pretty sure she was trying to help. "I don't usually use them all at once," Tina said. "But I could, I guess." She took the card and scanned it. "Anyway, isn't this what Bob called you when he came to the station?"

Harold wasn't sure -- he'd had a few other things on his mind right then -- but he thought the bizarreness quotient of the conversation was already high enough without him turning around and asking the cat. Luckily, Tina didn't actually wait for an answer. She just handed the card back to him with a "there, that's all settled now" sort of gesture.

Harold's dad still looked confused. Al looked hungry. "I'm hungry," said Al. "Is it too late for lunch?"

Chapter 8: (In which Al explains the problem.)

It was late evening before Harold got a chance to talk with Al alone. The rest of the house's temporary and permanent residents were out holiday shopping, which he was glad to miss.

"I'm a little worried," Al said. Then he stopped. Harold waited. Al didn't say anything.

Finally, Harold asked, "Worried about what?"

"Well… everything," said Al. Harold started feeling worried too. "Mostly about what might be going on back on my planet," Al continued.

Harold knew Al didn't usually appreciate his sense of humor when he was upset, so he managed not to make any monkey coup jokes. Al had stopped talking again, so Harold prompted him. "Anything in particular?"

Al looked away, out the window. "You know when the house burned down, and the doorway was destroyed?" Harold nodded. They'd been standing right next to each other in the backyard when it happened, so he assumed Al's question was mostly rhetorical. "You're really not supposed to let them get blown up."

"What? We didn't 'let' anything happen -- it's not like we asked The Protectioners to blow up our house." The "doorway" was an alien-created portal between two worlds -- in this case, between Harold and Al's. It had been in their basement, with Al as the "doorkeeper" -- sort of a regional travel agent, really. They'd taken the risk of having it be destroyed to try to keep their cover, but it certainly hadn't been an easy decision, and it wasn't one they'd made lightly.

Al shook his head. "But we knew it would probably happen, and we purposefully didn't do anything to protect the doorway."

"They were trying to kill us!" Harold said.

"And yet --" Al spread his hands to the sides. "Here we are, fine. With no doorway." He shifted uncomfortably and looked at his feet. "It's not really just about the thing with The Protectioners. I got in trouble a lot, back home, tinkering with things. A little more trouble than usual, at an especially bad time politically for the Cals."

Harold waited out Al's pause. "I did some things I probably shouldn't have gotten caught at, and the Cals ignored it, and then the whole thing blew up in our faces, and I ended up here. 'Out of sight, out of mind,' so to speak. Being a doorkeeper was supposed to be the easy job -- stay out of the public eye, stay out of trouble, let everyone's memories fade."

Harold frowned. He was pretty sure that plan hadn't worked out the way it was intended. "It didn't work out quite like we'd expected," Al said. Harold caught his eye, and they both burst out laughing.

"Sorry," Harold wheezed out between laughs. "It's just -- it really didn't, did it?" First there'd been the monkeys, and the evacuation of Al's planet, then the breakdown of the entire doorway network, alien abductions, and the FBI on their front lawn. And then, of course, The Protectioners, with their claims that Al and Harold were the embodiment of an ancient prophecy foretelling a great destruction in the universe. After all that, Al was more famous (or maybe infamous) than ever.

Once they'd caught their breath, Harold said, "So what is it that's going on back on your planet?"

"They're deciding whether to give me a new doorway or not."

"But you're a great doorkeeper!" Harold insisted. "Everyone knows that!"

"Thanks, but I was supposed to be keeping a low profile. Tina's help with The Protectioners brought up a lot of old tensions. Looking back on it, a lot of crazy stuff has happened, and I kept ending up in the middle of it."

"You were helping, though. You fixed the doorways!" Harold couldn't believe Al's own people wouldn't see that.

"But people just see that I was there when everything was going wrong," Al said. "I don't think it's a good sign that Nick and Steve aren't back yet."

Harold wasn't sure what to say. It was clearly a time to be supportive and encouraging, despite not really understanding the whole problem. "Is there anything I can do?" he asked.

"I think we just have to wait," Al said.

They were both quiet for a minute. "How about now?" Harold asked, only half joking.

Al laughed anyway.

Chapter 9: (In which word gets around, and Harold and Al get some surprising news.)

If only his family would stop helping. Harold glared at his phone, which was currently buzzing loudly on the table. He had a new text message -- what a surprise. "Is that another text from your sister?" Al asked. He walked into the living room eating a bowl of cereal.

"I haven't checked," Harold told him. "I'm trying to pretend my family has better things to do with their lives than pester us with house hunting tips."

Al shifted his bowl and spoon into one hand, and picked up Harold's phone with the other. "They don't," he said, tossing the phone to Harold. "It's from Charlotte."

"She's supposed to be at work!" Harold exclaimed. Since Al was watching, he read the message anyway. "She is at work. On the internet, at work, reading home listings. She sent the link, along with some numbers -- I'm guessing those are her personal favorites." He flipped the phone closed and tossed it down next to him on the sofa.

"Maybe your sisters should get their own house," Al suggested. "They seem really into the whole process."

"I think it's more fun when you're doing it for someone else," said Harold. "And I'm not sure they've worked out what they want to do next yet. Last I heard, Charlotte was thinking about going back to Alabama."

"What about Eliza?"

"She's still thinking about graduating, I think. I always thought she'd travel after school, but who knows?" Both his sisters were a mystery to him, despite having known them their whole lives. Deliberately not looking at his phone, Harold said, "So, what 'house hunting' activity should we work on today?"

Al looked thoughtful -- or at least, as thoughtful as anyone could look while eating brightly colored animal-shaped cereal. They hadn't shared Al's potential doorway trouble with the rest of the household, but until they knew more, only someone very generous (or not paying much attention) could call their daily plans an active search for a new home. Mostly they were just kicking around, having fun, waiting to see what happened.

"Movie?" Al suggested. "We'd have to turn our phones off in the theater."

"Perfect," said Harold.

*********************************

Of course, it couldn't last forever. They made it through the movie, and even lunch, but as they contemplated dessert -- extreme coffee drink? frosted pastry? both? -- a woman Harold didn't recognize approached their table. "Are you Harold and Al?" she asked hesitantly.

Harold and Al exchanged wary glances. "Yes," Harold said finally. "I'm Harold."

Al waved. "I'm Al," he said. "Hi." Harold wondered if Al knew who she was.

"Hi," the woman said. "I don't want to be rude, but I just got this message on my phone." She turned the phone around and held it out so they could see the screen. The message read: "Looking for Harold & Al. CALL HOME NOW!!!" "It's from Trudy, the woman explained. "And I recognized you from the news, so I thought I should pass it on."

"Thanks," Harold said. He wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Unless Trudy was tracking the location of their phones (possible, but not likely), that would mean she'd probably sent that message to ever single person on the phone tree. Payback for leaving their phones off so long, he guessed. It made him feel suddenly like a little kid who'd wandered off, and was going to be in so much trouble when he got home.

*********************************

Two more people stopped them on their way back to the car. A third tapped on their window once they were inside -- Harold rolled it down just far enough to say, "Yes, thanks, we're calling home now, I'm sure everything's fine!"

"We are so busted," he said to Al.

"No kidding," Al said. "I have fifty-three messages!"

"Fifty-three?" That seemed like a lot, even for Harold's family. "Do you think something's really happened?"

"If you call the house phone, I'll call Tina," Al offered. His expression said "hey, they're your family." Harold made a face at him, but dialed anyway.

Someone picked up halfway through the first ring. "Gabe?"

"Eliza? What's going on?"

"Where have you been? No, never mind. You need to come home right away."

She sounded more excited than worried, and Harold hoped that was a good sign. Hopefully, the explanation wouldn't include hospitals or jail time. (Sometimes, when he stopped to think about it, Harold thought maybe his life was a little weird.) "Eliza," Harold said, in his best "big brother" voice. "Is everyone all right?"

"Of course; we're all fine. Are you all right? We've been trying to reach you for hours -- you really should leave a note or something when you're going to be gone."

It seemed a little ironic to be hearing that from Eliza, who'd once hitchhiked to the Canadian border without telling anyone, "just to see if she could." "We're good," Harold told her. Then he tried again with his first question. "What's going on?"

Repeating the question didn't help. "You and Al should come home right away," Eliza said. "It's important."

"Okay," Harold said slowly. He mentally weighed the possibility that his sisters were pulling a prank on him against the possibility that something sinister was going on. "Hold on a second," he said to Eliza. Harold put his hand over the phone's voice pickup and looked over at Al.

"Tina says Matthew and Betty are here and it's supposed to be a surprise," Al said. Harold tossed a third option onto his mental pile -- that something neither sinister nor prank-like was going on, and once again he and Al were going to end up in the middle of it. He wasn't sure if it was good or bad that option three was probably the most likely.

"Eliza wouldn't tell me anything except to come home," Harold said.

Al shrugged. "Tina's not my sister."

Good point. Harold uncovered the speaker on his phone. "We're on our way back now," he said to Eliza. "See you in a few minutes."

After he'd hung up, Al said, "Won't it take us at least twenty minutes to get there? I told Tina we'd be there around three."

It was Harold's turn to shrug, and he smiled. "Tina's not your sister," he said.

Chapter 10: (In which Harold finally asks a question he's been wondering about for a long time.)

"You want to make me a what?"

Harold considered the idea that maybe the reason Eliza hadn't given him any information over the phone was because she didn't have any information. Matthew and Betty had been "explaining" for a good half an hour, and he still wasn't sure what was going on.

"Both of you, really," Betty said. "That's sort of the point -- it's a package deal."

"And the deal is... what, exactly?" For once, Al looked as confused as Harold felt. Which was nice, in a way, since it meant he wasn't the only one baffled by the situation. Unfortunately, it also seemed to greatly decrease the chances of Al being able to explain everything to him later.

"We'd like to give you both the title of ambassador," Betty told them again. At least she still sounded patient, if also a little amused. "It's mostly an honorary thing, but we heard what was going on with Al, and we thought this might help."

Harold's family looked like they were dying to ask about the "what was going on with Al" comment (Harold saw interrogations and recriminations in his near future), but were holding back so they didn't miss anything. The whole group was gathered in the kitchen: Harold, Al, Harold's sisters and parents, and Matthew and Betty. Tina wasn't there, which begged the question of how she'd known what was going on, but did help keep the crowding down. It seemed strange to see Matthew and Betty without their daughter, Kim. Maybe she was in school? Maybe it was considered rude to bring your kids along on official ambassadorship business.

Matthew took up the explanation. "As far as we can tell, the problem seems to be that you're not considered... respectable enough. So we're doing our part to make you more important."

Personally, Harold wasn't at all sure that (1) that's what the actual problem was, or (2) that getting the hacker endorsement would be helpful, even if they had correctly identified the problem. He was trying to work out a diplomatic way of saying so when his mom leapt into the conversational gap. "I thought you were -- what did you call them, dear? Technology pirates?"

Wow. Harold resisted the urge to hide his face in his hands, but he could feel himself blushing. Luckily, Matthew just laughed. "You could call it that, I guess," he said. "Although it might not be our top choice. We prefer to think of it as more of an... open source universe. We do a lot of the same things Al does, there's just a lot more of us. When one person tinkers, it's a nuisance. When millions of people tinker, it's a cultural lifestyle choice."

Betty added, "In other words, there's too many of us to discredit. Matthew and I have power and influence like any other leaders. Being ambassadors would just show that you have our stamp of approval. We won't stand by and keep quiet when you're being challenged, especially when your actions have done so much to help us."

"It would also mean we could call your permanent residence an embassy," Matthew said, as if he'd just thought of it. Harold was still processing, so he almost missed the next part. "Then Kim could have a safe place to come visit on Earth, if you wanted. Ever since the space station, she asks about you two all the time."

"So, they get to be honorary members of your club, and you get free babysitting out of it?" Charlotte summarized. Harold rolled his eyes. His family was really batting a thousand tonight.

"Pretty much," Matthew agreed.

Since Harold was confident that if they were going to cause an intergalactic incident, it would have happened already, he said, "There's also the coolness factor to consider." His mom gave him a reproachful look (as if he'd been the one asking rude questions!), but Al laughed, and that was the important thing.

"I don't know if it will help," Al said, "but I would be honored to be an ambassador."

"Me too," Harold tacked on. "I'd definitely be honored. Um, you do know I can't actually do any of the stuff Al does, right? I mean, I can program my microwave, but only the easy settings."

"Don't worry about it," Betty said. "It's part of the package deal thing."

*********************************

After that, it was all over but the shouting. And the eating. Actually, the shouting was just to call people for the eating, so it was a pretty low-stress evening. Al gave a brief explanation of what they were all talking about to Harold's family, and Matthew and Betty told funny stories about other ambassadors. After a particularly bizarre story about eggs, and using batteries to change the weather, Harold said, "I've been wondering: are Matthew and Betty your real names?"

"Sure," Matthew said, not missing a beat. "They're not the only names we use, but we like them."

Harold didn't think that was a particularly helpful answer, but it was the answer he'd been expecting. He gave his dad a triumphant look, as if to say, "See? It's not so weird after all." His dad didn't look completely convinced. That was okay -- Harold wasn't completely convinced either.

Chapter 11: (In which Harold and Al really need to find a new house.)

"We really need to find a new house."

Harold looked at the mess of papers strewn across the kitchen table and shook his head in disbelief. "Yeah," he said. "This is crazy."

About half the papers were related to the house hunt. Newspaper clippings, computer printouts, floor plans, handwritten scribbles of ceiling heights and yard space -- they were all there, mostly without any order or organization. The other half of the table's contents were an explosion of paperwork -- side effects of the "make Al respectable" plan, which seemed to be mutating as it grew. Harold still had his doubts, but Matthew and Betty weren't the only ones who thought it was a great idea.

First, the Chandraskars called -- they avoided any mention of doorways or Al's planet, but they did casually explain that Harold and Al had been awarded honorary degrees in absentia, giving them something called "Community Professorships." Also, Tejas was wondering if any progress had been made on the new house, because wouldn't it be great if students from the school could use Harold and Al's place as a stopover point when they were travelling?

Then the pirates showed up. Harold couldn't tell if they knew anything about the doorways or not, but he'd guess yes. They'd also been curious about the new house plans, and had asked for Harold and Al's help once they got settled. "Remember how I talked about our piratical history before?" the captain said. Before they could assure him that yes, of course they remembered (his narrative flair made it hard to forget), the captain launched into a retelling.

"A long time ago -- well, not that long ago, in a galactic history kind of sense, but somewhat long ago, space pirates were spread out across… space. We were loners, with every pirate going their own way and doing their own thing. Until one pirate -- the most famous pirate of all -- suggested that we band together. And we did, which was good, except that there have always been stories, legends really, that some of the pirates might have gotten a little lost along the way.

"Anyway --" The captain paused for the first time, and frowned. "It turns out we may have lost track of more than we thought."

"How many more?" Al asked.

"A lot."

"Awk! A lot!" the parrot repeated. "Whoopsidaisy!" Harold hadn't known parrots were even capable of saying "whoopsidaisy." He thought it was kind of cute, in an "I'm really glad we don't have a parrot" way.

The pirates were hoping to use Harold and Al's house as a sort of combination beacon and mail drop, to try to catch up with some of their missing people. In return, they'd "promoted" Al and Harold to captaincies -- "We can't give you a ship, or anything -- it's mostly honorary, but it could come in handy," the captain said. Apparently, it would signal their trustworthiness to whoever might be drawn by the beacon. Of course, he'd continued with, "Also, you might want to brush up on your bingo skills," so Harold was taking the whole thing with more than a few grains of salt.

*********************************

It seemed like the only thing left was for the zipper aliens to show up, and engage in some fluttering and head-patting, but the pirates assured them it wasn't going to happen. "They want to help," the captain said. "But their ideas were a little offbeat." Harold could only imagine. A gross of zippers? A really funny-looking hat?

"They sent these," the captain added. He held out two pink flamingo lawn ornaments.

"Awk awk awk!" Harold guessed that was the parrot equivalent of laughter.

"Thanks," he said, awkwardly juggling the plastic flamingos. "Uh, can you tell them thanks for us?" One of the flamingo's legs fell out.

"They just slide back in," the captain said. "I'll let them know you like them!"

Harold handed the flamingos to Al. "Thanks," he said again, for lack of anything better to say. "We'll let you know as soon as we have a new place. Is there a way we can get in touch? Do you have email or anything?"

"Oh, we never use the internet," the captain said. "We have to maintain the mystique somehow, you know? Once something's out there on the internet, it's not going to stay secret for long. We tried it. Once. We were hacked in less than a day, and the parrots kept spamming us with jokes. I'll just give you my phone number."

Harold was hoping to get the captain's name, but when he got his phone back, it was listed under "SPAA." He didn't even have a chance to ask what "SPAA" stood for before the captain and parrot disappeared with a cheery grin and one final "Awk!"

*********************************

Al shuffled through the papers, rearranging the chaos. Being an ambassador, a community professor, and a pirate captain all seemed to involve filling out a lot of forms. Harold was starting to feel more appreciative of the flamingos. "I think our future house is being turned into a bus station," Al said. "Or a hostel; I can't really tell."

Harold had noticed that, actually. The message seemed to be: "We all trust Al to handle travel and communication for our people." Hopefully to the point where it would be almost inconceivable for Al's own planet not to jump on the bandwagon and give him another doorway. It was looking good -- now all they needed was the house.

Harold's mom suggested that he and Al make a list of what they were looking for in a house, so they'd be able to narrow down their choices. Harold's list had three things on it: 1) big porch (he wanted to write "bigger than Nick and Steve's," but that seemed childish, and it wasn't like it needed to be bigger, just… big-ish); 2) red -- negotiable (his last house had been red, and he missed it); 3) meets Al's and Bob's lists. Bob couldn't actually write, so they were planning to take him along to check out any houses that made it to the "serious consideration" stage. Al's list took up more than a page, and he was still writing, leaving Harold to tackle their paperwork.

"Do we consider Bob a dependent?" Harold asked.

"No -- wait, is this for the Chandraskars? Is there a box for 'non-dependent co-resident family member, different species'?" There was. "Check that one," Al told him.

Harold didn't know whether he was more surprised that such a box existed, or that Al knew the description word for word. He checked it and moved on.

Chapter 12: (In which house hunting occurs.)

The thing to remember about looking for a house in mid-December was that it was likely to be extraordinarily cold. Also, people thought you were crazy, but Harold was used to that. "I'm freezing," he said to Al. "How many more places are on our list?"

It felt like they'd been at it forever, but Harold knew it had really only been a few hours. The agency Matthew and Betty recommended was great (Harold managed to get through the "I lost the information in the washing machine" explanation without too much embarrassment), but it still took time to go see all the different options. "Too many," Al said. "Does it look like it's going to snow to you?"

"Maybe," Harold said doubtfully. It looked pretty much the same as it had for the last week to him, and so far not a single flake had fallen. "Are we sure this is the right address?"

Al checked the list again. "I think so," he said. "It's right on the fold line, so it's a little worn. There's a For Sale sign out by the road though."

Harold looked around. No property was at its best in the winter, but it looked pretty good. The usual routine went something like this: he and Al would show up at a house on the prospect list, where their real estate guide would be waiting (she seemed to get everywhere faster -- Harold suspected alien technology). They'd tour the house, ask some questions, and split up to head for the next location.

"So where's Deb?" he asked. "She's always getting places before us, but we've been waiting here for almost five minutes." Harold wasn't feeling particularly patient, since the wind chill was in the teens. "And it looks like no one's home."

He and Al looked at each other, and then at the house. "Well, we're here," Al said. "And it's for sale. I say we look around -- I like the porch. And it's red."

"Well, that takes care of my list," Harold said. It really was a beautiful red color, and it had the biggest porch they'd seen yet. The attached garage was kitty-corner to the house, which made it appear at first glance to be slightly less huge than it actually was -- two stories, just like the house. "It seems nice." They began circling around, following the porch. "Look," he said. "If these flower beds weren't here, you could easily walk on and off the porch all along it!"

"And it keeps going in the back!" Al said excitedly. The porch extended from the front door, all along the left side of the house, and then "wrapped" a second time, ending about a third of the way across the back. On the right hand side of the house, there was another porch -- it looked like it led into some kind of laundry room.

"The porches are definitely a plus," Harold said. They heard a car pulling into the driveway. "That must be Deb -- let's see if we can go inside." They jogged around the edge of the garage, and stopped.

"Uh, that's not Deb," Al said.

*********************************

It wasn't Deb. It was, however, the house's elderly caretaker. After having maybe a little too much fun with the shouting-and-charades style of communication, Harold was fairly certain they were at the wrong house. Still, it couldn't hurt to take a look. Despite being a bit hard of hearing, the caretaker was more than willing to show them around. Harold thought his name was Marty, or maybe Morty.

"I'll call Deb," he told Al.

"Eh? What did you say?" Marty called, cupping his hand behind his ear.

"I'm going to call Deb," Harold said loudly, holding up his phone. "We were supposed to be meeting her." Marty still looked confused, but Al waved him off, so Harold walked a few steps away and punched in Deb's number. He got voicemail, which probably meant she was calling someone else, possibly trying to locate him and Al.

"Hey Deb; it's Harold." Harold watched Al gesturing hugely to Marty on the porch. "We're at the wrong house, but it's got a great porch. We're going to check it out -- give me a call back so you can meet us here."

As soon as he ended the call, his phone rang. "Hey Deb," Harold said again. "I just left you a voice mail."

She hadn't heard it. "I saw your name on my missed calls. Where are you?"

"We're at the wrong house," Harold repeated. "The right street, I think, so we should be close. The address was on the fold line, so it was a little smudged. We're at… " He peered around, looking for a house number. "Nineteen, I think."

"I'm right down the street," Deb told him. "I'll be there in a minute. Is that the red one with the walk-in pantry?"

Harold had no idea how he was supposed to know if the house had a walk-in pantry. "I don't know. It is red," he offered. "We haven't been inside yet; the caretaker just got here."

Deb's truck rolled noisily down the driveway. "I'm here," she announced, getting out of the truck. Harold got it in surround sound, and suddenly felt silly to still be holding up his phone.

"That was quick," he said.

They made more loud-volume introductions, and (finally) went inside. "This is it," said the caretaker.

Harold looked around. It was very… empty. As in, no furniture at all empty. "Where do these stairs go?" Al asked. There was staircase directly to their right, where the garage was. They all looked at Marty, who was peering at the light fixture in the hall. Al tapped him on the shoulder and repeated the question.

"Those stairs?" Marty asked. "Those go up to the bonus room -- above the garage? I never liked it much; it's just a big empty room."

Harold refrained from pointing out that all the rooms were empty, and they headed further into the house. It was big. And empty, which was weirding him out way more than he thought it would. The electricity was turned on, there was hot and cold running water, everything was sparkling clean -- it was a fully functional house, just with no furniture.

"There's no furniture," he whispered to Al, as they peered into what he assumed was meant to be the living room.

"I know," Al whispered back. "It's kind of creepy."

Other than the no furniture thing, it was a great house. Finished basement, the aforementioned walk-in pantry, and three bathrooms. One thing he'd decided over the past few years was that anytime large numbers of visitors (or any number of children) were involved, you absolutely needed more than one bathroom.

Deb finally said, "Why is this house still on the market?" Harold knew that question was a nice way of asking "what's wrong with it." It was a nice house in a nice neighborhood, with a reasonable asking price. But the For Sale sign didn't look new -- more like old and bedraggled, really. Which meant there was probably some weird issue with the house -- dry rot, or lead paint, or having a railroad track right behind it. In fact, they'd seen a house the day before with all three.

The caretaker leaned in and said, "Rumor has it there was a family that lived here once, and they just disappeared one night. Left all their stuff behind, but they were never seen again. About five years ago, another family moved in. Same story -- one night they just up and disappeared, and no one ever saw them again. Since then, no one's wanted to risk it." He lowered his brow and wiggled his fingers at them. "Say the whole house gives 'em the heebie jeebies."

Harold wasn't feeling any heebie jeebies. He'd seen some pretty weird things, and even if the rumors were true, it didn't necessarily mean the families hadn't wanted to disappear. He turned to Al. "I think we need Bob." If there were jeebies of any kind to be detected, Bob would find them.

"I'll go get him," Al said. Harold looked pointedly at Marty, and Al added, "from the car, I mean. Obviously, he's in the car. In his heated carrier." Al hurried back towards the front door before Marty could question him. When he returned, he was carrying Bob, and Mama Tibbles was twining between his legs. "They were both there," Al explained.

"In the car?" Harold asked. No normal person would believe he and Al went house hunting with two cats (without any leashes or harnesses, no less) in their car in freezing cold weather.

"Obviously," Al said.

Luckily, Marty didn't seem to notice anything odd. He'd pulled a can of WD-40 out of his jacket pocket, and was spraying the hinges of the door between the kitchen and the laundry/pantry area. Al set Bob on the floor, and Harold crossed his fingers. He was starting to like the big empty house.

Mama Tibbles started washing herself. Bob looked at them as if to say, "Well? Aren't you going to show me around?"

They re-toured the house. Harold grew less convinced of Marty's normalcy when the man re-explained everything he'd just told them, but to the cats this time. They covered all three floors, plus the "bonus room." At no point did Bob or Mama Tibbles show any sign that the house might have any creepy stuff going on, although Bob did give Harold a look that Harold was convinced meant, "Did you know there's no furniture?"

"So what do you think?" Marty asked, still talking to the cats. They walked together over to a patch of sunlight and lay down next to each other.

"They like it," Al said. "Harold?"

"I like it too," Harold said. "You?"

"Me too."

"Well," Deb said, rubbing her hands together briskly. "Let's get this thing done, then. You'll be moved in by Christmas!"

Chapter 13: (In which more hands don't necessarily equal more help.)

"Gabe! Where do you want this box?" Harold heard his sister calling for him, and held his breath. He was hiding. Actually, he was hiding in the room farthest from the front door, which meant Charlotte must be really yelling for him to hear her so clearly. Harold kept quiet, and Charlotte yelled, "I'm putting it in the office!" Harold rolled his eyes. Like he and Al needed an office. He was sure they could find something better to do with that room.

Once he was sure Charlotte wasn’t about to come looking for him, Harold relaxed. He leaned back against the wall of what was supposed to be the master bedroom's closet. It opened into the bathroom, though, which he was still deciding if he liked or not. But it was quiet, and not full of boxes. The best part about it was that no one had found him there yet.

Harold knew it was just a matter of time until someone figured out he wasn't actually helping anymore. Until then, he was enjoying a break from the insanity. He heard a crash from downstairs. "Don't worry!" someone yelled. "I don't think it was anything breakable!" Harold wondered who it was. Once word went out that he and Al had bought a new house, volunteers started organizing, and before he knew it, they had a move-in / housewarming / winter-holiday-of-your-choice celebration date. There were sign-up sheets and everything, and on Sunday morning, December 21st, "helpers" started showing up at the house in droves.

At first, Harold had tried to be in charge. It seemed like a good choice at the time, since it was, after all, his stuff. And Al's, of course, but Al had disappeared almost immediately into the basement to work on installing the doorway. Nobody listened to Harold, though -- they kept trying to tell him about the sign-up sheets, which he'd never even seen. Harold wasn't sure why they needed sign-up sheets.

He figured they'd get all the volunteers from Al's planet (who had they handy personal transporter watches) to bring all the boxed up stuff from his parents' house and Nick and Steve's place. Anyone else could carry the boxes to an appropriate room, and leave them for Al and Harold to sort through. Furniture and other big stuff could be moved in essentially the same way, although the transporting and the arranging might end up taking a couple people at a time.

Apparently, that was just too easy for whoever designed "the plan." Harold suspected it might be Eliza, who had a knack for the overly complex. She was the one people listened to, when Harold became overwhelmed by the sheer number of people arriving. Nick and Steve got there first, followed by Harold's sisters and parents. Then Toby, along with Sam and Tina (no Matthew -- Sam said he couldn't get off work, but sent his best wishes). Matthew and Betty brought Kim. The pirates showed up (with the captain, but thankfully without the parrot) -- five of them in all. Tejas and Sashi's son Bart arrived with two friends. All of them wanted to help, all of them seemed a little confused about what they were supposed to be doing, and all of them were expecting food at some point.

Harold lasted an hour. There just wasn't anything good about watching other people look through all your stuff. It was chaotic, with people popping in and out from the other houses, running up and down stairs, and opening and closing doors with great enthusiasm. Which meant nobody seemed to notice when he went up to the master bathroom and never came back. Harold was planning to stay as long as possible.

"Mrow?"

He heard Bob outside the door, and the cat padded softly over to him. "Shh," Harold said. Bob flopped down next to him in the dark and started to purr. "Good kitty," Harold told him.

*********************************

Harold eventually got bored with sitting in an empty room, especially after Bob left again. Luckily, before he worked up the nerve to venture down to the main floor, Al popped in. "Al!" Harold said.

Al looked around. "Is this the closet?"

"Yes," Harold said. "I'm hiding. Did you know there's pirates down there rearranging our silverware?"

"We kicked everyone out of the basement," Al said. "Matthew's down there helping with the doorway, and we got Charlotte to give us a pizza. She said you'd gone missing, so I thought I'd see if you wanted to join us."

"I am kind of hungry. Does this mean I have to go back through the craziness?" Harold thought he could handle it, if it meant pizza.

"Hang on," Al said. He disappeared, and reappeared a minute later with Toby. "Now we can just pop you down, and no one will even know." He paused. "I think this house could really use some secret passageways," he added thoughtfully.

After they'd made it safe (and undetected) back to the basement, and everyone had pizza, Harold asked, "So what's going on out there?"

"It's actually settling down a little," Toby said. "Someone brought a lot of extra furniture though, I think -- there was a bunch of stuff I didn't recognize from your old house." Before Harold could fully process the idea that Toby could identify all the furniture from their old house (Harold didn't even know if he could identify it all, if it was mixed in with other stuff), Toby continued. "The pirates are waiting so they can come down here and install something; they said you told them they could do it. Charlotte and Kim and your parents are handing out food, and Eliza went to the grocery store with Betty. I think Nick and Steve may have gone home."

Harold nodded around a mouthful of pizza. Toby pointed at the doorway. "Is that different than the last one?"

Harold studied the doorway. It looked about the same to him. Al said, "Sort of -- it's basically the same, it just has some extra recording and tracking technology added. It's part of a new pilot program. We were supposed to be getting more information about it today, but I haven't heard anything yet."

That must be why Matthew was "helping" with the installation. Matthew's people used the doorways to travel, but not in the traditional way -- more like hitchhikers, really. They used the same energy and grounding points, but never actually set foot through a doorway. It wasn't exactly endorsed by Al's people, but since it wasn't traceable, they got away with it. Matthew was probably making sure they could still work with the new and improved systems.

Suddenly, Harold realized how quiet everything was. Since he knew the basement wasn't soundproofed, he said, "It's awfully quiet up there all of a sudden."

"Do you think we should go check it out?" Toby looked like he wasn't sure that was such a good idea.

"I guess so," Al said. Matthew led the way (Harold again felt like maybe he or Al should be in front, but at the same time, if it was some sort of sound-eating energy vortex that had taken over the kitchen, he'd really rather not see it first).

The silence lasted until all four of them cleared the cellar steps. Then a cheer went up. "Surprise!" everyone shouted. The housewarming party had begun.

Chapter 14: (In which Harold and Al receive some unexpected phone calls.)

The next day, Harold's phone rang during breakfast. They hadn't been able to figure out where the pirates put the plates, so they were using paper towels (well stocked by Eliza and Betty). Actually, he wasn't sure if it was his phone or not. Most of their clothes weren't unpacked yet, so they were still in their pajamas -- no pockets. Both phones were in a bowl in the middle of the kitchen table (Toby was right -- the table definitely hadn't been in their old house), so they wouldn't get lost anywhere. Harold didn't recognize the bowl either -- it was blue, and he thought it might have been a housewarming present.

Harold was the one who answered, though. "Hello?" he said. He didn't recognize the number, and no name had appeared along with it.

"Hi!" a cheery voice answered. "Is this the number for Harold and Al?"

Harold tried to place the voice, but it didn't sound familiar. "Um --" It was really too early in the day to be dealing with strangers on the phone. "Yes," he said. He grabbed the other phone out of the bowl and peered at it. It had a lot of scratches on it, and the battery cover had a crack in it. Definitely his. "This is Al's phone," Harold told the caller.

"Are you Al?" she asked.

"No, I'm Harold," Harold told her. He looked longingly at his breakfast, and Al pushed his juice closer.

"Great!" the woman said. "I'm Cate. We met last year, at the aquarium?"

Harold frowned. "Hold on a second," he said. To Al, he asked, "Did we meet someone named Cate at the aquarium last year?"

Al wiped his fingers on his sweatpants and nodded. He gestured for the phone, and Harold handed it over. "Hi Cate," Al said. "This is Al."

Al listened, nodding, and Harold ate his leftover pizza. "So you're on Earth now," Al said. "And you heard something about us?" There was a short pause. "You heard we might be looking for help." Al was apparently narrating Cate's end of the conversation for Harold's benefit. "I think you missed it," Al said. "We moved in yesterday, but really, we had plenty of help. It was nice of you to -- It wasn't help moving. You heard something else?"

Al gave Harold a questioning look. Harold responded with a look that he hoped said, "I have absolutely no idea what she might be talking about -- I don't even remember who she is, but this microwave bacon is delicious." It must have worked, because Al took a piece of bacon and said, "We're really not sure what you're talking about."

Unfortunately, while Al was eating the bacon, he couldn't repeat Cate's end of the conversation, so Harold didn't know what she was saying. It seemed to involve a lot of nodding and "okay"-ing on Al's part. Finally, Al said, "Cate, give us a couple hours to figure out what's going on, and I'll give you a call back, okay?" She must have agreed, because Al hung up and turned to Harold. "This could be a problem," he said.

*********************************

"You want to use our house for what?" Harold was really hoping for a different answer this time. After Cate's phone call, Al went right for the top and called Ilia and Janar. The two leaders actually showed up in person, which Harold should have guessed would mean it was something they thought he wouldn't be thrilled about.

"It's like this," Ilia said. "You wanted another doorway, and we wanted to give you one. There was a little resistance to the idea from the usual troublemakers, and some nasty rumors started being tossed around. When all your new friends got involved, things started shifting. Obviously, no one wanted it to look like we'd missed the boat on honoring you, and it just got a little out of hand."

"Is there any way we can turn down this… honor?" Al asked.

"Not without stirring up a whole lot of trouble again," Ilia told him. "Look, it won't be that bad. You've already agreed to do it for everyone else."

Harold thought back and tried to mentally review everything they'd agreed to recently. Had they really ended up turning their home into a -- "What was it that you called it?" he asked.

"A community drop-in center," Janar replied helpfully.

"Where the 'community' is assorted aliens and allies that we've met?" Harold wasn't completely opposed to the idea, he just wasn't completely on board with it either.

"How many people are we talking about here?" Al asked.

"From us?" Ilia said. "Probably just some of the kids. The galaxy's in a weird place right now -- a couple of the systems have been floundering, and several others are teetering on the edge." Harold wondered what "edge" she meant -- he assumed she meant a metaphorical edge (of conflict, of technological advancement, of ecological revolution), but maybe they were literally teetering on the edge some galactic abyss. It was always hard to tell with Ilia. She shrugged, and said philosophically, "Change never happens the way you expect it."

"We're all doing a lot more travelling," Janar said. "And it's not always the best idea to bring kids along. No one wants to leave them alone; they just get into trouble. Honestly, we'd much rather they got into trouble here."

From all that Harold could tell, it was already a done deal. Janar was probably mostly joking about the kids getting into trouble, and it wasn't like they didn't have extra space. And hey, Cate had already offered to help out. "Sure," he said. "Sounds good."

*********************************

Al called Cate back and said, "Yes, absolutely, we'd love to have your help." He also said she should bring her own furniture. Harold called Trudy. Trudy was (as far as he knew) a 100% Earth-born human, but she was great at organizing, and she acted as the information guru for the aliens visiting (or living on) Earth from Al's planet. She'd put the word out on the phone tree, and it would be common knowledge by the end of the day.

"We should probably unpack the rest of our stuff," Harold said. He didn't think they were going to get the long stretch of downtime they'd been expecting.

"Yeah," Al agreed. "And maybe we should change out of our pajamas."

Chapter 15: (In which plans are made, Al invents some new stuff, and some old acquaintances reappear.)

By the time afternoon rolled around, Harold and Al had unpacked all the important stuff (clothes, dvds, the toaster oven). They called a conference at the kitchen table with Cate and Toby.

"Nice house," Cate said. "Can I have the room next to the bathroom, in the front corner?"

Al had finally explained why they were supposed to know her, and he vouched for her non-craziness, so they were letting her move in so she could help handle whatever came their way. Toby was about to lose his student housing, since the semester was over, so he'd asked if he could move in as well.

"Whatever you want," Toby said. "I'll take the back corner."

"I think we should just turn the basement into a big receiving and departure area," Al said.

"We could set up mailboxes down there," Toby said.

"And hooks," Cate added. "If people were staying -- it'd make more sense for them to keep their coats and stuff down there than up here."

"We're going to need some kind of visual system to identify who's here at any given time, like a whiteboard or something."

"Maybe mailboxes wouldn't be the best thing, because people might just have a general message, or something they wanted to share with everyone."

"Is anyone going to stay overnight? I think we're definitely going to need more food."

"What about outgoing mail?"

"We should come up with something to tell people if they ask why there's so many people here all the time."

"There's no bathroom in the basement," Harold said. He wasn't sure they were all having the same conversation, but he was positive there was no bathroom in the basement, and it seemed like an important consideration. Plus, he wanted to contribute.

"Well, no -- people will definitely have to come up here for the bathroom," Al said. Harold was just glad someone was still listening to him. "Let's take a step back here. So far, nothing has happened. No one's dropped in, or been dropped off, or passed through, or showed up with mail. Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

Everyone took a deep breath. Al was right. They had no idea what kind of traffic they were going to see, or what they would need to do to be ready. "Cate, Toby -- why don't you finish getting settled. Then Toby -- you can go do some food shopping. You're right; it's always a good idea to stock up on the basics, especially non-perishable stuff. Cate, you can work on the basement. Let's see what we need to do to make it seem less… basement-like. Get whatever you think we need -- whiteboards, paper, markers -- it's all yours."

Toby and Cate nodded. "What are you and Harold going to do?" Toby asked.

Al looked at Harold. "We're going to… take a walk, around the neighborhood," Harold said, catching on to Al's plan. "See what it's like. We haven't had much of a chance to explore yet."

"Sounds good," Toby said. "I think there's some kind of pond or something down the road; you should check it out."

Cate just waved, already making a list. Since she seemed to have produced the pen and paper from thin air, Harold felt confident they'd picked the right person for the job.

*********************************

"Does that guy look familiar to you?" Harold squinted across the pond at the person Al was indicating. They hadn't gotten far on their walk. It had really just been an excuse to get out of the house, anyway. They'd found Toby's pond, and were pleasantly surprised to also find a bench conveniently located nearby. Since it was an unseasonably warm day, sitting on bench looking at a frozen pond was actually enjoyable, instead of numbing.

"Familiar how?" Harold asked. That seemed safer than a blanket "no." It looked like a man talking on a cell phone to him. In the sense that he had, in his lifetime, seen many people talk on cell phones, the man looked familiar. Did he think that he'd seen this specific man talk on a cell phone before? Maybe. He was standing close to the edge of the ice, about a quarter of the way around the pond -- it was a small pond, but there was some glare from the sun.

"He's wearing a suit," Al said. "It just seems a little weird."

Harold studied the man more closely, hoping that they didn't seem too weird, for sitting on a bench staring at strangers. "He looks tall," Harold said. "Was he wearing a suit last time we met him?"

"Well, I don't know if it's the same person at all," Al said slowly. "But his suit kind of reminds me of those FBI agents we met last fall. At the barbecue?"

"Really?" There was a certain similarity, he guessed. "Who do you think they're after this time?" Al gave him a look. "No way -- you think it's us again? What did we do this time?"

"I don't know," Al said. "Maybe it's not the FBI at all. Maybe it's just someone who lives on the street, who wears suits to stand next to a tiny frozen pond and talk on their cell phone."

They looked at each other. "Yeah," Harold said. "Probably the FBI." He paused. "Think we should go say hello?"

Al grinned. "Absolutely."

*********************************

"Hi there," Harold called out as they approached.

"We're new to the neighborhood," Al added. "Just moved in down the street."

They got close enough so that Harold was 90% confident it was one of the FBI guys. Something about the suit and the expression just made him want to pull up his hood and walk quickly in the other direction. It was easier than he would have thought to remember someone you'd once thought was going to put you in jail.

Harold reminded himself that he and Al hadn't done anything wrong. In fact, there were no laws at all that he knew of dealing with space travel or alien visitors, so it would be impossible to break them. He held out his hand. "I'm Harold," he said, avoiding any tricky issues of which names he was going to tack on to the end of that. "Do you live around here?"

The man barely had time to shake his hand and say, "It's nice to meet you," before Al jumped in.

"I'm Al," he said, taking the man's hand and shaking it vigorously. Harold noticed for the first time that Al was wearing mittens that had a fuzzy yellow fringe around the wrists. "Have we met before?"

Harold pitched in with, "You do look a little familiar. Maybe it's the suit?"

The man was starting to look a little befuddled, and Al came out with, "You wouldn't happen to work for the FBI, would you?"

There was a pause, and the man looked around furtively. Harold did too. He didn't see anyone else, and it wasn't like the suits really blended. "Yes," the man said finally. "I take it you remember me?"

"You were at the barbecue, right?" Al asked.

Harold said, "Are you the vegetarian?" There'd been four of them, Harold remembered. Two sets of two, although they'd all seemed to defer to one leader.

"No," Al said. "The vegetarian had the --" he mimed rolling up his sleeves. That was right -- the second two agents had gotten stuck in an hours-long traffic jam on the interstate, and showed up both late and looking a little the worse for wear.

"Right," Harold said. Taking a guess, he asked, "Were you the one in charge? With the Sprite?" He was a little impressed that he'd remembered all that.

The FBI agent didn't look impressed. Maybe he thought they should have remembered something other than his soft drink preference. Since the other thing Harold remembered was that they'd bamboozled him with a story about charitable donations, and he wasn't planning to share that, he didn't say anything. "That was me," the man said. He looked around again. "Actually, I shouldn't really be telling you this, but we'll be around for a while."

"All four of you?" Harold checked the surrounding forest -- he still didn't see anyone else.

"Me and Dave," the man explained. "Dave's the vegetarian -- we're doing a training rotation with a couple of new guys. Surveillance, investigation, that kind of thing."

"And you're surveilling us?" Harold vowed to congratulate Al later -- he managed to sound completely shocked at the idea, like he couldn't possibly imagine any reason why anyone would be at all interested in their activities. "Why?"

The FBI agent had the grace to look abashed. "Well, this kind of training is one of the first field rotations, so it's not supposed to be dangerous. Usually they're really boring. We had you on our list to check back on anyway, and we figured this would be a good way to kill two birds with one stone. We can make sure you're still harmless, and we can enjoy watching the newbies try to figure you out."

Harold frowned, because that didn't sound like a good idea at all to him. On the other hand, it wasn't like they could say, "No thanks, we're planning on doing some more questionable and potentially suspicious stuff, so we'd prefer it if no one was watching." Instead, he asked, "Isn't it a little cold for a stakeout?"

"It's not the cold that's the hard part, it's that we can't seem to get any reception around here," the man said. "I had to come all the way down to this end of the street to get a signal."

Al once again got top points for acting, as he said, "Wow, that's too bad. It hasn't been a big problem for us so far -- we'd actually be glad to not talk to people for a little while. You know how it is, moving -- everyone's got an opinion. It's been crazy." He looked so sincere, Harold almost believed that if he checked his phone at that moment, it would say "No Service" instead of the reassuring "Full Signal" he was used to seeing.

"Tell me about it," the man said. He'd apparently decided to stay and chat a while, because he finally put his phone in his pocket and said, "I'm Rob, by the way. My wife wants to move out to the suburbs, but I'm trying to put it off until I know her mom won't try to pick the house for us and then move in next door. I mean, I love her mom, but 'absence makes the heart grow fonder', you know?"

"Absolutely," Al said. "Hey, how 'clandestine' are you supposed to be? Do you want to come to the house and get a cup of coffee?" Harold hoped he said no.

Rob looked disappointed. "I'd love to," he said. "But I'm pretty sure the newbies would catch on. Actually, I should probably be getting back -- I don't want them getting suspicious and coming to investigate." He didn't look too worried, but he did amble off down the road.

"Bye!" Al called after him. Then he said, "That was a little weird."

"Yeah," Harold said. "We can't really go back yet -- he's walking really slow; what if we caught up with him? Maybe we should go in the other direction for a while, and then turn around and come back."

Chapter 16: (In which Al invents some things, and Harold and Al have their first visitor.)

It was Christmas Eve-eve, and no one was stirring (except for the cat, who was purring). "Wow," Harold said. "When Al told you 'less basement-like,' I wasn't expecting anything like this."

They were lying on their backs in what had become the "rest and relaxation" area, staring at a ceiling covered with sky. The entire basement had been transformed. The light blue ceiling (with puffy white clouds, even) was amazingly realistic; he'd never paid much attention to ceilings before, but the sky effect was mesmerizing.

Cate beamed. "Thanks!" she said. "I wanted to make it really welcoming and friendly, but also cool, because it's you guys, right? And easy to clean; that was important too."

The doorway was centered on the back wall, under the kitchen. You couldn't see it looking into the basement from the first floor, or coming down the staircase. In fact, the stairs opened out to the right into what looked like a home office -- computers, phone, file cabinets, the whole nine yards.

The normalcy of the office area was balanced out by the view to the left of the stairs: a giant white board covered most of the wall. Cate had some sort of plan for keeping track of people using the board -- she'd explained it once already, but Harold had been distracted by the astroturf.

"Is this astroturf?" he'd asked, probably right before Cate explained how the board wouldn't end up making those of them without personal transporters run up and down the basement 800 times a day. "And how did you get it down here without me noticing?"

"Toby helped," Cate said, which didn't really answer the question. "And it's not really astroturf. Did you know astroturf is a brand name, for a specific kind of outdoor artificial turf? It was first used in the Houston Astrodome -- they painted the glass ceiling white to block the glare, and it killed the grass."

Harold wanted to ask how she would possibly know that, but he thought she might get distracted. More distracted.

"Anyway, this is an indoor turf," Cate said. "It's from back home, so we just brought it through the doorway."

Harold looked at the doorway, as if he could see back in time and watch Cate and Toby hauling rolls of faux grass through the doorway (or, even better -- see them explaining it on the other end). Although if they'd used the doorway -- "You knew!" he said to Al.

"It was a surprise," Al told him. "I thought you'd like it."

*********************************

They'd lapsed into silence, still staring up at the ceiling sky, when Matthew, Betty, and Kim appeared. Harold saw the movement out of his peripheral vision, and scrambled to his feet.

"Whoa," Matthew said. "Are you all right?"

"Harold!" Kim cried excitedly. "Al!"

"We're fine," Harold told him, waving at Kim. "We were just enjoying the ambiance." He gestured widely, taking in floor, ceiling, and everything in between. "Cate redecorated the basement."

"It's lovely," Betty said appreciatively. Harold noticed she was keeping a tight hold on Kim's hand, probably to keep her from racing all over the place. "We just came by to install some things," Betty continued. "We talked about it the other day?"

Harold and Al nodded. It was some sort of technology that would make it easier for the… Harold tried to think of a better word than hackers. For members of the transformative culture to identify, locate, and transport in and out of the house. Since Harold was pretty sure that whatever Betty had already done was responsible for ruining the FBI's cell phone reception, he wasn't inclined to argue.

Al said, "Go right ahead. Actually, I'll come too -- I wondered if I might borrow one of the locators you have for Kim for a little while. I have this idea."

"Kim can hang out with us, if you want," Harold offered.

"Yeah, we can check out what I redecorated," Toby said. Harold gave him a questioning look. Hadn't Toby been in charge of food? "What?" Toby asked. "It's cool!"

Kim bounced over. "Can we watch a movie?" she asked. Harold mentally apologized to his planet -- given the chance to represent Earth to an impressionable young alien, the thing she liked best so far was animated children's movies.

He caught Cate's eye over Kim's head. "When you get a chance, you're in charge of getting us some more movies," he said.

"She likes the one with the llama," Toby added.

*********************************

Harold, Kim, Cate, and Toby wandered through the basement first -- the astroturf-like substance was a big hit, as was the white board. Harold thought maybe they should get another one and put it somewhere else, just for doodling on.

"You can write your name on this one," Cate said. "What color do you want to use?"

Kim selected the yellow dry erase marker -- it probably wouldn't show up that well on the board, but it wasn't like they were going to forget she was there. Kim carefully uncapped the marker and painstakingly wrote her name (luckily, the white board was big enough that she could reach part of it). When she stepped back and proudly said, "There!" and "Done!" Harold realized two things. One, the yellow marker was surprisingly easy to see on the white background. Two, Kim hadn't written in English. Instead of the "Kim" he'd been expecting, there were a bunch of dots and swirly lines.

"This could be a problem," he said.

"What?" Toby asked, looking around as if he was expecting something dangerous to leap out from under the stairs. Harold thought he seemed a little tense. Maybe he was just worried that the pantry tour wasn't going to be as big a success as the basement one.

"Did I do it wrong?" Kim wanted to know. She stared at her writing. "It looks right to me."

"Ah, I'm not sure," Harold said. "I can't read that."

"Really?" Toby said, sounding surprised.

Cate instantly moved to hover at his side. "Do you have a headache? Dizziness, blurred vision, curtain of darkness, ringing in your ears? Can you see me? Maybe you should sit down."

Harold rolled his eyes, which seemed to make her even more worried. "No," Harold said. "I can see it; I can see just fine. I just can't read it. I'm not good with languages; I've never learned anything except basic English."

"Oh." Cate's face turned red. "Sorry. I didn't mean to go all weird on you. I just didn't think -- I mean, really? You can't read that?"

Harold realized that Cate, for all her practical thinking, still thought that he and Al were some sort of heroic figures. She'd first met them passing through Al's doorway during the planetary evacuation, although Harold didn't remember her from then, out of the thousands of people he'd seen and greeted and given emergency information cards. After that, she'd decided to stay on Earth for a while, and had apparently gotten a somewhat skewed perspective on him and Al. She'd certainly been excited to see them when they'd run into her at the aquarium (even though they'd only been there that day because they'd gotten lost the day before).

"Don't worry," Toby said, interrupting his thoughts. "We'll help you."

"Thank you," Harold said. "Look, Cate --" He wanted to clear things up before she expected him to save the day, or cook a roast or something. "There's not really anything all that special about me and Al." She looked like she was about to deny it, and Harold tried to clarify. "I mean, there is, because everyone is unique and special in their own way, but we're just ordinary people."

"But what about the Protectioners?" Cate asked. "You defeated them!"

Harold raised his eyebrows. "Who told you that? Tina's the one who organized our defense with the Very Protectioners. I was holed up on the space station while practically everyone I've ever met decided they needed to come rescue me. Al spent most of the time kidnapped by aliens."

Cate frowned. "What about when you got the ship back?"

"They really just gave it back," Harold told her. "Al and I spent the trip down getting lost a lot. And kidnapped by aliens again, actually. Well, not really again. That was the first time. You know what I mean."

"Huh. What about when you fixed the doorways?"

"Oh, Al really did that," Harold assured her. "He helped, at least. Although I think it was actually the kids who came up with the plan of doing the system-wide restart."

Cate was looking a little confused. "It's like this," Harold said. "Everybody worked together on all of those things. There wasn't just one person or two people who got things done; it was all of us. Everyone was important -- just ordinary people making one decision at a time and trying to do the right thing."

"Can I have a snack now?" Kim asked.

Chapter 17: (In which Harold is confused, but goes along with it anyway.)

Kim got her snack, as well as a tour of the kitchen and walk-in pantry. She seemed especially taken with the pantry. But then, so did Toby, and they spent a good ten minutes talking about food and whether or not popcorn should be stored with other microwaveable goods, or closer to the quick snacks section. Then they moved on to the movie, which was when Harold dozed off, and woke up to chaos.

He rubbed his eyes, but the view all around him stayed the same. A dozen or so people in dark blue robes were milling around the living room and kitchen area. "What's going on?" he said, not directing the question at anyone in particular. Toby and Kim were nowhere to be seen, and the television was turned off.

"Oh, you're awake!" a robed man said. "That's wonderful -- I hoped we'd get a chance to say hello before we left."

"Hi," Harold said, trying to be polite and not ask again what was going on (or better yet, why they were in his house).

"Bart told us we could stop in and use your house to change into our robes. They're so difficult to travel in; they wrinkle terribly. But of course we wanted to look all ship-shape when we show up at the competition."

"What kind of competition?" Harold asked.

"It's a choir singing competition," the man told him. "They're so much fun, especially at this time of year. It's just terrific that I got to say hello; the others will be so jealous. Oh, is that the choir director signaling everyone?" The man looked towards the kitchen. Harold followed his gaze, but he couldn't see anything other than a lot of blue robes. "I've got to go; they're calling my section." The man waved as he hurried off, and Harold sighed. "Don’t worry," the man called back. "We signed the guest book!"

Harold wondered where the guest book was. He also wondered where Kim was. Toby wandered past with a juice box in each hand, just as the choir group disappeared in a bright flash of light. Harold hoped that's what was supposed to happen. "Is one of those for Kim?" he asked, looking around once again for the little girl.

"No," Toby said, handing over a juice box. "It's for you. Kim's playing outside."

"All by herself?"

"No," Toby said again. "Of course not." Harold breathed a sigh of relief, only to start worrying again when Toby added, "Bob and Mama Tibbles are both out there with her. Plus she's just on the porch. Oh, and she's got one of these." Toby used his free hand to point at his shirt. No, not his shirt. He was wearing something around his neck.

"What is that?" Harold asked.

"It's an emergency button," Toby said. "Here, Al made one for you too." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a keychain. "No, that's not it," Toby muttered to himself. "Maybe it's in the other pocket." His other pocket had a granola bar and several folded up pieces of paper in it, but Toby finally located the "emergency button" and gave it to Harold.

It looked like a metal circle on a piece of string. "Okay," Harold said. "What does it do?"

"It's really cool," Toby told him. "Ours are actually a little different than the one Kim has, but it works like this." Toby took the device (Harold really didn't want to call it a necklace) back and bellowed, "Al! I'm showing Harold how the emergency buttons work! It's not a real emergency!"

From somewhere in the basement, Harold heard Al shout, "Okay!"

"Here we go," Toby said. "All you have to do is squeeze these two bits together, and then twist -- it doesn’t matter which direction."

It was sort of like a childproof safety cap, except prettier. Harold hesitantly followed Toby's instructions. Instantly, the device began to flash and vibrate. Toby's matched it, and both their phones rang. "Whoa," Harold said.

"Answer the phone," Toby told him. "This part's really cool." He started another pocket search, presumably to find his phone.

Harold looked at his phone suspiciously, but opened it anyway. "Hello?"

"Hey, do you like our new emergency signaling system?" Al's voice asked.

"Yes, definitely," Harold said automatically. Then he added, "What does it do, exactly?"

"It's so the kids can call for help if they need to," Al said. "When they activate their emergency button, it signals all four of ours, and automatically dials our phones for a conference call. One of us can transport to the location of their beacon, and we'll all be able to know right away what's going on and what needs to be done."

"Found it!" Harold suddenly heard in stereo. Toby, who was still standing only a few feet away, had joined the phone conversation. "I think they're great. Hey, do you know where Cate went? I didn't think to warn her that we were just testing the system; I'm surprised she's not on the line yet."

"How long was I asleep?" Harold asked. They'd somehow gone from simple movie-watching to hosting choir groups, inventing emergency systems, and losing track of people. "It's still Tuesday, right?"

"You were asleep?" Al asked.

"Only about twenty minutes," Toby assured him. "It was just a really eventful twenty minutes."

"Cate went to the store right before I found the string," Al said. "She doesn't have one yet."

"Why did she go to the store?" Harold wanted to know. It felt kind of silly to be having a phone conversation when they were all in the same house, but the sofa was really comfortable. "I thought Toby already did that."

"I did," said Toby. "For food. She said she needed Christmas stuff."

Harold couldn't believe it was almost Christmas. Hadn't they just had Thanksgiving? "Didn't we just have Thanksgiving?" he asked. "I think the winter holidays should be more evenly spaced. I mean, there's Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Solstice -- no matter what you celebrate, they all seem to be in December. And then New Year's, and then there's this long dull stretch of winter. Why can't we have Christmas in March?"

"Too close to Valentine's Day?" Toby guessed. Harold gave him a look that said "you're kidding, right?" Valentine's Day was hardly a Thanksgiving-level holiday.

"Do we have plans for Christmas?" Al asked.

"I don't know," Harold said. "We just did Thanksgiving; surely we can't be expected to host Christmas too. We just moved in -- everyone was just here on Sunday!"

"I think you've been excused from your family's plans," Toby said. Harold wondered how he knew that. "When you moved in, your parents and sisters were talking about taking the RV and going to visit some relatives out of state for the day of Christmas. Your dad said since you'd just moved, you'd probably want to stay here."

"Huh. Well, that's good, I guess," Harold said. He considered boycotting Christmas all together.

"Yeah," Toby told him. "I don't know how you'd explain Kim."

"What?"

"Matthew and Betty had to go do some diplomatic thing," Al said. "They asked if Kim could stay here for a day or two."

Chapter 18: (In which Harold and Al's new house is suddenly very crowded.)

Kim wasn't the only extra person in the house, Harold discovered. When he went upstairs for some warm socks, Toby asked him to try to stay quiet. "Why?" Harold asked. Not that he'd been planning to crank up the stereo or anything, it just seemed like an odd request.

"A couple travelers from the school in Alabama missed their flight off-planet this evening -- they got confused with the whole time zone, Daylight Savings Time thing and got here an hour late. There's another ship leaving, but not till three in the morning. They're sleeping in the spare bedroom."

"Is there any furniture in the spare bedroom?" Harold tried to remember what was in there.

"They brought their own," Toby said. Harold found that he wasn't even that surprised to hear it. Of course they'd brought their own. There might be a tent with sleeping bags set up in there (although he hoped they skipped the camp stove, if that was the case), or hammocks, or a couple of four-poster beds. Harold was going with the flow. He was embracing the flexible, cool, going-with-the-flow side of himself.

Harold managed to go with the flow all the way upstairs (where he couldn't find his warm socks, but flexibly took some of Al's), and back to the front hall. He couldn't get any further than the front hall, because there was a long line of people passing through it, heading up to the space over the garage. It looked like mostly teenagers -- all of them were dressed in cold weather gear, and all of them had big camping backpacks. They didn't seem to notice him, since they were all talking excitedly to each other. Several of them seemed to be talking about him, actually, so he was just as glad not to announce his presence.

Harold counted twelve, but he hadn't thought to count until after at least five people had walked by, and he wasn't sure he'd come down at the start of the line. Not wanting to run into any stragglers (the hallway wasn't that wide), he turned left to cut through the utility room. Twin boys were sitting on the washer and dryer, while a woman was wringing something out over the sink. The boys were both sucking on lollipops, and waved at him when he walked past. The woman said, "I'll be done in just a minute, if you're looking to use the sink."

It took Harold a minute to realize she was talking to him. "Oh," he said. "No, I'm fine. Thanks, though."

The kitchen was also full of people, but they were familiar faces for a change. "Sabri!" Harold said happily. "Nadeka! Everyone!" It looked like all the kids were there. Nadeka's twin, Lishendri, was carrying a stack of brightly colored bowls towards the counter. Damaris, Zahar, and Meshkalla were sorting silverware, and PJ was leaning out the back door. Probably talking to Kim, although it was hard to tell; she was more out than in.

There was a chorus of "Harold"s, "Uncle Harold"s, and "Gabe"s, and everyone rushed in, for what Harold guessed was a convenient excuse to both abandon whatever chores they'd been doing and get a group hug. Two of the Cals' personal guards came in through the back door, followed by Kim and the cats.

"Hey Harold," Kyp said, nodding to Harold as he slipped past the mass of kids and opened the oven door. Harold realized the delicious smell in the kitchen must be coming from the oven.

"Hey," Harold said. "What's cooking? It smells great."

"It's a roast!" Nadeka said excitedly.

"We helped!" Meshkalla added. "I added the broth."

Harold looked around the kitchen. There was very little evidence of any food preparation. "Where did the roast come from?" he asked.

"Oh, we brought it with us," Sabri said, like it was obvious. "We thought you might not have enough food to feed all of us. Plus we already had it; we didn't want it to go to waste."

Harold knew that the longer he spent around kids, the more he was able to understand what they told him. He also knew that even though it had only been a few weeks since he'd seen Sabri's class on the space station, he'd lost any ground he might have gained on that adventure. He had no idea what she was talking about. Given that knowledge, however, Sabri wasn't the best person to ask for clarification. Kyp and Suzy, the guards, seemed occupied with roasting activities. Harold extricated himself from the group and headed for the basement door.

He hardly noticed the group of adults sitting in a circle in the living room. They all said a polite hello as he walked by, and Harold waved. He did wonder idly what they were doing as he headed down the stairs, but he was quickly distracted by the milling crowd of people occupying every corner of the basement. Harold looked around in disbelief. What was going on?

Harold got the attention of a woman hurrying past. "What's going on?" he asked.

She looked him up and down. "Did you just get here?" she asked. Apparently her perusal had missed his brightly colored socks.

"Yes?" Harold said. He was pretty sure she didn't mean "just get here" as in "I just got down to the basement, which I am visiting because I live here, and I'm looking for Al." Still, answering "no" would probably make her think he just hadn't been paying attention at some crucial moment, and then she'd be irritated with him for no good reason. Although truthfully, Harold was beginning to think maybe he hadn't been paying attention at some crucial moment. He remembered watching the movie, and waking up from being asleep, and talking with Toby and Al about the emergency buttons. Then he'd helped Cate unload things from her car and gone upstairs for socks. When in that time had he missed the signal that said "huge numbers of people about to arrive; get to the basement for more info"?

"If you're outgoing by the doorway, check the list on the board to see if anyone else is going to the same place, then queue up with them. If it's somewhere new, put it at the end of the list; no jumping the line." The woman pointed at the board, then in the general direction of the office area.

"If you're outgoing by ship or transport, check the computer; two of the major lines just got shut down because of embezzlement violations. If you're inbound, you're in luck. There's no big delays at any of the major hubs. Just remember the holiday rules if you're going to any of the smaller checkpoints." Harold wondered what the holiday rules were. The woman (she would have been an excellent flight attendant; her gestures were top notch) indicated the stairs behind him. "There's food and bathrooms upstairs," she said. "If you decide to go exploring, don't walk out to the road; there's people watching the house."

She said it so matter-of-factly that Harold just nodded and let her leave without asking any more questions. Anyone who could convey that much information in such a short period of time, without making it a big production, was definitely someone who needed to stay circulating.

*********************************

"Fifteen? Who told you that? What does that look like?" Harold heard a loud voice coming from near the whiteboard, and went to investigate. "You know I can't read this stuff without my glasses."

"It was that nice woman, dear. She said to check number 15, because we might be able to join that group and connect from there to a station where we could catch a ride back home."

Harold reached the pair just as the man who'd spoken first slipped on a pair of glasses and squinted at the board. "I still can't read it," he grumbled. "What language did they write this in, anyway?"

"Excuse me," Harold said. "This is number 15 here." He pointed at the board, where there was a list of numbers written in English, with what he assumed were destinations listed next to them. "Is this the one you're looking for?"

"How did you know that?" the man asked. "Who are you?" Two pairs of suspicious eyes were suddenly staring at him.

"I just heard you talking," Harold said. "I live here." He thought about pointing out the socks, but it didn't turn out to be necessary. The couple was all smiles. They thanked him effusively for his help, and he assured them it was nothing and made his escape. Looking at the crowd, he took a moment to wish that he was taller. Then he pulled out his phone and dialed Al's number.

"Hello?"

"It's Harold," Harold said. "Where are you?"

"I'm in the basement; where are you?"

Harold looked around. "I'm in the basement too, looking for you. What's going on?"

"Hang on a second," Al said. Harold heard Al's voice carry over the rest of the chatter in the basement. "Group 12, queue up! You're headed out in a count of 30! Bundle up, because it's cold over there!" Over the phone, Al added (unnecessarily, by that point), "I'm by the doorway. Come on over; it's fun."

Harold had his doubts, but he picked his way over to the back of the basement. There was one tricky moment when a girl almost ran him over -- he jumped to the side just in time, and she called back, "Sorry! I'm in group 12, gotta run!" Finally, he reached Al.

"Group 13, you're on deck! Count of 60, so get your shoes back on!" Al called out loudly. He was standing next to the doorway controls, with a pad of paper in his hand.

"Who's doing the counting?" Harold asked, looking over Al's shoulder.

Al pointed at the control panel. "It's a new feature in the doorway -- it'll do a stopwatch countdown for you. I like it," he said, grinning.

"Very cool," Harold agreed. "So what is all... this?" He gestured around the basement. Al looked around too, as if noticing the not-quite-chaos for the first time.

"This is what happens when a whole lot of odd things converge," Al said. "There's a big economic summit going on for some of the systems -- that's why Kim's staying over, and why Sabri's class is here." It happens to be going on at a time when there's already a lot of traffic on Earth because of the holidays, plus we're sort of a novelty destination right now. A lot of people are passing through just to say they've been here."

Al put his hand up to hold his place in the conversation, and shouted, "Group 13, you're going! Good luck down there!" In a quieter voice, he said to Harold, "They're headed to New Zealand. I told them about the sheep, but they still wanted to go." Al waved to the departing group. "Have fun!"

"The rest of them are mostly here by accident," Al said, looking exasperated. "There's four or five major space transit lines, like airlines. Two of them were under investigation for embezzlement, and they've been shut down. They just stopped running, and dropped people at the closest point they could find. I don't know who's responsible for that decision, but it wasn't a very good one. Some of these people have no idea how to get where they were supposed to be going from here!"

"Hey, we'll get it sorted out," Harold said. "Good idea with the board, by the way." He thought for a minute. "Did all this really go down in the amount of time I was dozing on the sofa?"

Al got group 14 moved through the doorway, then said, "Sort of. It has to do with the way destination points are listed. We've been here for a couple days, but our address just got listed on the boards about an hour ago. Anywhere new is always busy at first, and we're getting an extra boost because our names our so well known, and we're open to so many different groups."

"Any problems so far? Do you need any help?"

"I could use some company," Al said.

"Done." Harold dragged a set of cubbies away from the wall so they'd have something to sit on. Al produced a plate of cookies, and they settled in to watch the ebb and flow of people, pets, and luggage move through their new basement.

Chapter 19: (In which the nature of the universe is contemplated.)

The crowd had pretty much cleared out by midnight, except for a few stragglers waiting for a van. Harold and Al were snacking on leftover roast and potatoes in the basement. Harold looked around. "So," he said. "I think we're going to need a lost and found." There was a scattering of left-behind mittens and scraps of paper spread out around the basement.

"Well, we do have the shoe," Al said thoughtfully. It was true; someone had managed to lose a single shoe.

"Does it happen like that everywhere?" Harold asked. "That whenever there's a lost and found, it always has a shoe in it?"

Al nodded. "It's like a universal rule or something," he said. They were quiet for a minute, as they contemplated the complexities and oddities of the universe. Then Al said, "What do you think the FBI guys made of all this?"

Harold shrugged. "They haven't arrested us yet. I'm hoping that's a good sign." The "Don't walk out to the road rule" had (for the most part) been followed. They just hadn't thought to add rules like "Don't stand around outside exclaiming over the alien sky and singing songs." It was a good thing the house wasn't (very) visible from the road, and they didn't have any close neighbors.

Although Harold never would have predicted it, they also could have used a rule that said, "Don't organize late-night expeditions into the woods to find holiday decorations." A history tour had come through, with a two-hour layover at the house. They'd arrived at what was early morning for them, and appeared to have just ingested a large quantity of highly caffeinated beverages. It had taken them about five minutes to confirm that Christmas was close, notice the lack of decorations, and come up with a plan to provide some. By the time they left, Harold and Al were the slightly bemused owners of three evergreen garlands, a pinecone and holly wreath, and two "native plants" centerpieces.

"Isn't that what your people do in the winter?" one of the tour guests had asked. "Make crafts?" Harold and Al managed to contain their laughter until the group departed.

"Maybe they're just biding their time," Al suggested. "Collecting evidence."

Harold realized they were still talking about the FBI. "Have we really done anything illegal?" he asked. "I got the feeling Rob and Dave were just here because they thought it would be more interesting than picking someone random out of the phone book. Maybe they're hoping we'll have another barbecue." He turned to stare at the doorway. "We might want to think about what to do about the doorway if they ever end up in the house, though."

"I say we stick with the theater theme," Al said. It was a defense they'd used in the past, especially when the kids were visiting, to explain any references to aliens or alien technology. It was amazing how much people would ignore once you told them, "We're practicing for a play." Al gave the doorway a considering look. "We'll just call it a prop. What are they going to do, scan for alien technology?"

Harold laughed, although he was suddenly feeling the urge to knock on wood. He surreptitiously tapped his knuckles on the cubbies they were using as seats. It was kind of funny, actually -- the house was officially considered neutral ground for one planet and at least three political powers, but for Earth, they were still using the "aliens? what aliens? I didn't see any aliens" story.

"Hey, what's the story with those backpackers in the loft?" Harold asked. He thought "loft" was a much better name than "bonus room," which made him think of game shows. He was mostly just trying to pass the time -- most of the house had gone to bed already. He and Al were staying up till the van group left, and then Toby was going to wake up for the 3 am departure of the family sleeping in the guest room. Cate volunteered for the breakfast shift, which Harold was half-hoping to sleep through.

"I'm not sure," Al said. "Cate vouched for them. Something about hiking the Canadian provinces, or maybe the territories -- it was something like that."

Harold raised his eyebrows. "Kind of a long way off to use this as a starting point," he said.

"I think they may just be doing a practice hike from here," Al said. "Like from here to Montreal, maybe." He shook his head. "It sounds crazy to me. They're sleeping in the loft for practice too -- easing themselves into the cold weather, I guess."

Harold considered winter, and then winter in Canada. "I'll bet you a new pair of socks they're back before they hit the border."

"You're on -- I like the fleecy ones. I bet they get to Montreal, but decide to put off the full trip till spring."

"When is spring in Canada, anyway?" Harold asked. "June? July?"

"No idea," Al said. "We can ask them when I win the bet," he added with a laugh.

Chapter 20: (In which Christmas is celebrated early, or maybe not at all.)

Harold woke up, remembered he had the morning off, and rolled over to go back to sleep. Then the thought that it was Christmas Eve slowly made its way into his mind. For all his grumbling and talk of boycotts, there was something magical about Christmas. He felt the tickle of anticipation, and knew he wasn't going to be able to fall asleep again. Instead, he put his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling.

There was a soft shushing sound as the door pushed open a few inches, and Harold heard a "prrrrow?" Harold wiggled his toes under the blankets, and Bob leapt up on the bed and pounced on them.

"Good morning, Bob," Harold said. He waited until Bob looked away from his toes. He wiggled them again. Bob subdued his "prey" by lying on top of Harold's feet and purring.

"Harold?" Al stuck his head in the door. "Are you awake?"

"No," Harold said. "I'm still sleeping."

"Great," Al said. "Me too."

"No breakfast in bed, then?" Harold asked.

Al tickled Bob on the head. "I've got some cookies I brought up last night when I was checking my email," Al offered.

"Sounds good," Harold said. "Bring on the cookies." He scrambled out from under the covers and looked around for a sweatshirt. Al flattened out the blankets as much as possible with Bob still lolling in the middle, and they ate cookies on top of the bed, picnic style.

"Happy Christmas Eve," Harold said.

"Happy Christmas Eve," said Al. He picked a crumb off the blankets and looked off to the side. "I know you were talking about Christmas yesterday," he started. Harold thought that was a particularly non-judgmental way to describe his just-woken-up rant about inconvenient holiday timing the day before. "And I thought maybe we could celebrate Christmas Eve instead. Since it's a much smaller day, it would be a much smaller celebration too. I was thinking… sleep in, cookies for breakfast, I'll give you your present -- Christmas Eve. Done."

It was perfect. "I could give you your present too," Harold said. "Just to be fair, of course."

"Of course," Al said. "So what do you think?"

"It's perfect," Harold declared. He ate another cookie, just to show his deep appreciation for Al's excellent plan. Al reached under the bed and pulled out a huge red and silver gift bag. Harold resisted the urge to pull it closer, and said, "Yours is in the closet."

"I know," Al said. "Nice wrapping."

Harold blushed. "They did it for me, in the store," he confessed. Bob accompanied him to the closet, where Harold almost tripped over him reaching for the present. Then Bob sprinted back to the bed. "Maybe we should give Bob his present now too," Harold said, when he saw the cat had stolen his pillow.

"It's in the bathroom," Al said. "I'll get it." It was the only place Bob didn't like hanging out, which made it the perfect storage place for the extra large catnip pillow they'd gotten for him.

Once Bob was settled (off the bed) with his catnip treat, Harold and Al exchanged their presents. "What is it?" Harold asked, peeking inside the bag. There was a lot of tissue paper in it.

Al was busy shaking his own present. "It's not breakable, is it?" he asked belatedly. Harold shook his head. They looked at each other, poised over their gifts, and then they dove in. Paper flew.

When it was all over, Harold took a minute to be impressed by how much Al had fit into the bag. The biggest thing was the ten pairs of thick fuzzy socks, all in bright colors and patterns. Now he wouldn't have to take Al's all the time. Or at least, if he did take Al's, there would be extras, and then they could both wear fuzzy socks at the same time.

Next in the bag had been a set of flashlights. Not just any flashlights, either -- they were all in the shape of jungle animals. "I didn't think you'd want Muppets again," Al told him. During the summer with the hurricane, Eliza had bought everyone at Nick and Steve's house a Muppet-shaped flashlight. Harold's was Gonzo -- he'd always had a peculiar fear of the large-nosed Muppet, and he'd made a point to "accidentally" leave it behind when their house had been destroyed.

Unfortunately, Al's Muppet light (the much cooler Kermit) was also missing. In fact, Harold hadn't been able to find any flashlights at all when they'd been unpacking. Either all their flashlights had disappeared into a dimensional rift, like socks in the dryer, or someone else had unpacked them, and stored them somewhere he hadn't looked. Whatever had happened to the old lights, jungle animal flashlights were a great addition to the house.

Finally, tucked into the bottom of the bag was a book of Sudoku puzzles and a box of pencils. "You can't have too many writing utensils," Al told him. "And we seem to have ended up with a lot less since we moved."

Harold was struck by the mental image of the space pirates unpacking all their flashlights and pencils and other useful tidbits and stashing them away somewhere like loot. Where could it all be? Maybe they could get the kids to look around for it while they were there.

While Harold contemplated hiding places, Al was trying to convince Bob to try out his new bag. Harold rolled his eyes. He just knew that bag was going to be trouble. When they'd stopped in Washington DC on their road trip, Al had seen a cat carrying bag, which Harold had strongly discouraged him from purchasing. After a while he started feeling kind of bad about it, though -- what if Al really wanted the bag? On the space station, there'd been a whole store of bags for cats (or, presumably, whatever small animal, being, items you wanted to put in it). Harold had picked one up when everyone else had been off doing other things.

Bob ignored the bag completely. It might have been because he was so zoned out on catnip, though, and not due to any specific disdain for the concept of bags. Al left it lying near him, and returned to the rest of his gifts. Harold had packed the inside of the bag full of other goodies -- a University hoodie, a case of Al's favorite dental floss (there was only one store that carried it, and half the time it was sold out), and a dozen pairs of scissors. Scissors, along with flashlights and pencils, seemed to have disappeared during the move.

*********************************

By the time Harold and Al made it down to the kitchen, it was empty. The house was quiet, but Harold wasn't sure if that was because everyone else was sleeping, or if they were all already up and gone. Al was wearing his new sweatshirt, and Harold had on some of his new socks. They sat down at the breakfast island and looked around.

"Huh," Harold said. "Where is everyone?"

"I don't know," Al said. "I hope they're not planning another surprise party. Maybe they left a note?"

There was no note, or at least not one that was easily locatable. "Maybe everyone else is still asleep," Harold said. "It is still kind of early, I guess."

Al looked doubtful. It wasn't that early. "Maybe we should go back to sleep -- we've already had breakfast, and Cate's supposed to be in charge of doorway emergencies for another few hours."

Harold thought about it. "Good plan," he said. When they got back upstairs, Bob was already snoozing -- inside his new bag.

Chapter 20: (In which Harold and Al spend Christmas Eve eating.)

"Is it supposed to have this stuff still floating in it?" Harold asked.

Al looked into his mug thoughtfully. "I don't know," he said. "It looks kind of festive, I guess."

They were in the kitchen, trying to drink hot chocolate. Harold and Al were the only ones in the house -- they'd sent Cate off to see if she could find the others, since no one was answering their phone. Feeling a twinge of holiday spirit, Harold had suggested hot chocolate. Unfortunately, all they could find was a spicy chai chocolate blend, which was turning out to be slightly more complicated than Harold thought it should be.

"Is this even ours?" he asked, studying the tin. "Where did it come from?"

"Maybe it was a housewarming gift," Al said. "There were a lot of presents flying around on Sunday. I'm pretty sure we weren't the only ones opening things."

Harold shrugged, looking at what he guessed were spices, floating at the top of his mug. He added another spoonful of sugar and took a sip. "It tastes good, actually," he said. "The sugar definitely helps."

Al added a generous spoonful to his own mug, and stirred it around. "I think I'll let mine cool down a little," he said. "Hey, it's starting to snow."

Harold checked the window over the sink. A single flake drifted past. It was the kind of snow that if it happened in March, people would call it a beautiful clear day and go off on their errands without a hat. In December, and especially on Christmas Eve, it counted as snow.

It felt good to be inside, with nowhere to go and no last minute rushing around for gifts and wrapping and food. Even the doorway traffic had slowed down significantly. All doorkeepers filled out forms to indicate which holidays they celebrated on their host planet, and travelers were strongly encouraged to seek alternate routes on those days.

There were a few people in and out of the basement -- Al had left a plate of cookies down there, and Harold wrote "Happy Holidays" in huge letters on the white board. He'd been planning to write "Please Ring Bell For Service" underneath, but Al pointed out that they didn't actually have a bell. Harold wrote "Please Yell For Service" instead. So far there'd only been one yeller, and that had really been more of a polite inquiry about whether or not the cookies had nuts in them (they didn't).

"I wonder where the others are," Harold said. He felt sort of bad, because he didn't really care where the others were.

"I'm sure they're fine," Al said. "They're probably just shopping, or eating lunch or something. Maybe they're at a movie."

"You want to watch a movie here? I'm almost positive the dvds made it to the living room." Harold thought that's what the box in the corner was, at least. "We could make popcorn to go with our almost hot chocolate."

Al went to find the dvd -- there was only one movie to watch on Christmas Eve. Harold was on snack duty. He couldn't find any popcorn, but he did grab a bag of pretzels and some holiday-themed animal crackers. As he debated napkins (pretzels and animal crackers were really best straight from the bag, but if they got crumbs everywhere, they'd have to clean), Harold noticed that the sun was shining brightly again -- no snow in sight.

*********************************

They combined movie-watching with rearranging the furniture in the living room, and letting both cats in and out of all three ground floor doors multiple times. "Do they really even need us to open these doors for them?" Harold grumbled. Mama Tibbles in particular seemed to delight in picking the farther away doors to howl at. "They never seemed to have any trouble getting in and out at the old house."

"It does seem strange," Al agreed. "It's like they're trying to give us a message or something."

Harold looked at him. "Like what? Have you asked them?"

"They just seem to want us to jump up and down a lot and wait on them," Al said. "I can't tell if they're just having fun, like a Christmas gift to themselves, or if there's more to it. If there is, that's a pretty cryptic message. Even for a cat."

Since all they could really do was wait and see what happened, Harold said, "I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens."

*********************************

When the movie was over, Al said, "I'm still feeling sort of holiday-ish -- let's make something for dinner." Harold had visions of macaroni and cheese with red and green food coloring (he didn't know why they had food coloring, but he'd seen some in the cupboard when he'd been hunting for popcorn).

"We have food coloring," Harold said, just in case Al wasn't having the same vision.

"Really?" Al asked. "Where did that come from?"

"I don't know. It's in the cupboard closest to the utility room wall."

Food coloring was quickly retrieved, and options were discussed. "I still say mac and cheese," Harold said.

"What about mashed potatoes?" Al said. "Those would be perfect."

"What else can we add food coloring to. Water? It might taste funny. Juice?"

"Eggs -- omelets, or scrambled eggs would be easy. That would be protein, too."

"Cereal. Well, milk. That gets dairy."

During move-in, Charlotte had bemoaned Harold and Al's nutritional state, and given them a refresher course on the food pyramid. Harold hadn't paid much attention -- the problem wasn't that he didn't know which foods were good for him, it was more that the other foods tasted so good. Still, it had put the food groups back into conversational play.

"Ice cream is dairy too. Do we have any ice cream?" A quick check revealed that yes, several flavors of ice cream were present in the freezer. There were also some mysterious wrapped packages with unreadable squiggle-and-dot writing on them. The writing made Harold think of Kim, and then it was a short mental leap from Kim to Kyp, and the oddity of the roast.

"So," Harold said. "Oh, cottage cheese would be easy to color too. I wouldn't want to eat it, though -- I hope we don't have any. Anyway, why did the kids bring a roast with them yesterday? What was that all about?"

Al made a face at the mention of cottage cheese. "I think it was less the kids and more the guards. This may be the first time Kyp and Suzy have had the kids all by themselves off-planet, and they're just overcompensating a little." Harold had seen the kids with as many as six guards at a time, so he could understand them feeling the pressure. Still… "Still, a roast?" he asked.

"The kids are probably going to try to use it for a comparative culture credit at school," Al said. "Native food, and all that."

Harold's "do their teachers really buy that?" look of disbelief was enough to make Al laugh. "I didn't say it would work," he said. "Just that they'd try it."

They settled on cereal for the first course, because they were hungry, and cereal was quick. Harold colored his milk blue, because green and red both seemed a little creepy to be ingesting in a liquid form. Al tried for purple, but the stirring involved had the unintended effect of making his cereal get very soggy very quickly.

"I think I know why food coloring isn't more popular," Al said, as he took another spoonful of soggy cereal. "It's a lot of work."

"And it gets your fingers all weird-colored," Harold said. He held up his blue fingers. "I think we need more experimentation before we can make a final decision."

Harold set up the macaroni and cheese (on the stove, since it was a special occasion), and Al checked the ingredients for sugar cookies. It was still that bridge time between late afternoon and early evening, but it was already dark outside. Since a fancy indoor/outdoor thermometer had shown up on housewarming day, Harold checked the temperature. "That's weird," he said. "It's getting warmer outside. There must be a front moving through or something."

"I haven't heard any weather news today," Al said. Then he added, "I think we're ready for the food coloring now. Should we use a bunch of different bowls? Then we can do lots of different colors of dough, instead of just one."

"As long as they're dishwasher-safe bowls, sure. We may have to run the dishwasher twice tonight," Harold told him.

Luckily, Al had made a lot of dough. They started with the basics -- each of the four food coloring colors, then simple "blue and yellow make green" combining. Then they branched out, expanding their color combos until they reached the rather unfortunate dull brown stage. On the plus side, cookie dough was supposed to be sort of brown, so it didn't look too gross.

After that, they switched to combining doughs. They did half and half cookies, swirled cookies, cookies with colored shapes, concentric circles -- anything they could think of. Soon the house was filled with the smell of baking cookies. Harold and Al washed their hands -- it didn't really help, but it seemed like a good thing to do -- and sat down to enjoy a second course of "holiday red" macaroni and cheese.

Chapter 21: (In which Harold and Al find out what they missed.)

Of course, that was when the front door burst open and people started pouring into the house. By the sound of it, the first one in was Cate. "Al! Harold! Are you here?" She sounded flustered. Harold wondered where she thought they might be instead.

"Yes!" he called back.

Al added, "We're in the kitchen!"

Cate burst into the kitchen. She looked even more flustered than she sounded. "You would not believe the day we've had," she said. "Everything's okay here, right?"

Harold and Al looked at each other. "Yeah," Harold said. "We're good." He did a double take when he looked back at Cate. Her shoes (and her pants, up to her knees) were coated with mud. "What happened to you?" He tried to sound concerned, as opposed to sounding how he actually felt: part amused, because it looked silly, and part horrified, because she was getting mud everywhere.

"Well," she said, clearly prepared to launch into a detailed explanation.

"Cate!" Toby yelled from somewhere in the front of the house. "Come take your shoes off!" Harold resisted the urge to suggest she put them on the porch. Then Toby added, "We're all putting ours in the utility room!" Harold raised his eyebrows. How many people had gotten muddy? And what had they been doing?

Cate rolled her eyes, but headed back towards the front door. Harold and Al followed her, picking their way around the muddy footprints. They couldn't get much further than the bottom of the staircase, though, because the front hall was so crowded. It looked like everyone had gotten back all at the same time -- all equally, oddly, covered with mud. The kids looked unusually subdued, but maybe they were just tired. Harold did a quick head count and got seven, which was a good sign.

"I just wanted to make sure Harold and Al were okay," Cate said to Toby.

"Are they?" Toby wanted to know. He sounded tired, but not as frazzled as Cate.

"We're fine," Al said. "I'm fine, Harold's fine, the doorway's fine, the cats are fine -- we just want to know what happened to you."

"Where are Kyp and Suzy?" Harold added. The kids were there, along with Toby and Cate, but he didn't see anyone else.

That got them a response from all sides.

"We were lost!"

"Nothing was working, and we had to go rescue the backpackers, but we all had to go--"

"Because no one wanted to stay with the car, see --"

"That's because the car is boring, and Suzy had to go because she's the best at finding things, and we couldn't all stay with just Kyp."

"But there was mud, and I fell in, but Kyp said it wasn't my fault!"

"And then we all fell in!"

"It got dark, and then we needed flashlights, but --"

"We finally got everyone going the right way, and then your friends showed up --"

Harold broke in. "Wait, who? What friends?"

The front door opened again, and in came the backpackers, like a noisy, messy wave. Harold assumed they were the same backpacking group that had spent the night in the loft -- a couple of them looked vaguely familiar, and one had a lime green backpack that he remembered seeing when they'd arrived. There still seemed like a lot of them.

"Okay, boots in the garage, all of you," one of the backpackers said. "We'll clean 'em out in the morning. Socks off too, and roll your pants up before you come back inside. Are Harold and Al here?"

Harold couldn't see who was talking, but a path slowly cleared between him and the speaker. "We're here," Harold said, gesturing to encompass Al in the "we."

"I am so sorry about this," the backpacker said. He did look genuinely upset. "I don't know what happened. We were just going out for a practice hike. It took us too long to figure out something was wrong with our compass -- by that point we'd split up, and we ended up having to use our emergency whistles."

"They did Christmas songs!" Sabri announced. Harold turned to look at her just as a big clump of mud slid off the shoe she was holding and hit the floor with a splat. "Oops," she said.

"Right," Al said loudly. "Let's get everyone cleaned up and meet in the living room. Harold and I will put on some hot water for coffee and tea, and we can sort everything out."

The door opened again, and Kyp and Suzy walked in followed by four people covered head to toe in mud. Not just their shoes, or their pants -- it was everywhere. Kyp and Suzy were at least recognizable, but still dripping with dirt.

"Whoa," Al said. "That's where I draw the line. Back on the porch, all of you. We'll get you some towels, and some dry clothes. Try to leave as much mud as possible outside, where it belongs."

One of the muddiest new arrivals looked like they were about to say something, but Suzy grabbed his arm and steered everyone back outside. "You got it, Al," she said. "Porch, towels, coffee."

Kyp stayed inside a minute longer, to add, "Also, you can consider this a 'code: we're busted.' Those four are the FBI guys who've been watching the house."

*********************************

The whole thing seemed almost too ridiculous to be true. The land that Harold and Al's new house was on abutted a conservation easement -- nearly 60 acres of protected forest, mostly low-lying wetlands. The backpackers, after what they called a "refreshing" night in the unheated loft, decided to spend the day hiking in the easement. Apparently, they weren't starting their trek to Canada until they'd "acclimated." Harold didn't think he should complain, since they'd agreed to make dinner for the hungry crowd.

The backpackers had split into two groups of ten and planned to meet back up for lunch. It had taken until that time, when both groups showed up where they thought they were supposed to be, and found no second group waiting for them, for all of them to realize something was wrong. Their handy, "work anywhere, even underwater" galactic positioning devices were malfunctioning. When they tried to call for help, their phones wouldn't work either. That's when they'd started whistling.

"That's where we came in," Toby said. He'd gone with Kyp, Suzy, and the kids for a day-long "Christmas expedition" -- see the lights, take in the craziness of the mall on Christmas Eve, that sort of thing. "We didn't get too far, though," he said. "One minute we were driving along fine, the next it was like everything… hiccuped. Warning lights were coming on all over the dash and then going out again. It seemed bad, so we pulled over. None of our phones were working, and we were talking about what to do when we heard the whistling."

"Wait, none of them?" Al interrupted. Harold was surprised as well. The guards had exactly the same phones as Harold and Al, and Al had souped up Toby's and Cate's as well. They should have gotten service everywhere. "Can I see one?"

"I dropped mine," Toby said. "I mean, I fished it out again, but it's covered with mud. Whatever was wrong with it before, I think there's probably more wrong with it now."

Al took Kyp's phone instead, and fiddled with it while Toby picked up the story again. "The kids didn't want to stay with the car," he said. Harold thought the kids were being awfully quiet, but they were mostly still eating. Zahar had finished, but it looked like he'd fallen asleep. "And it seemed like we might want both Kyp and Suzy with us, depending on who was doing the whistling, and why. So we all headed into the woods to find them."

"Thank you again, by the way," the short backpacker said. "I'd like to think we would have found our own way out, but we hadn't been planning on navigating by the stars. You guys were great."

Harold thought about the mud, and the late hour they'd made it back at, and the presence of four cranky-looking FBI agents in his living room, and he thought that maybe things could have turned out better. Still, it was nice to know that when you whistled for help, someone would come looking, even if they led you home through a mud hole.

"So you were lost in the woods," Harold said to the backpackers, who nodded. He turned to look at the kids, the guards, and Toby. "And you went in to find them."

"Yes," Toby said. "We did find them. The first group was right on one of the paths; they'd set up this great little camp and everything."

"What about the second group?" Harold asked. "And how did you end up involved in all of it?" he said to Cate. "Did you end up wandering through the woods alone?" He was sure Cate was an extremely capable person, but trekking through wetlands all by yourself in December, with no way to call for help, was never a great plan. At least the backpackers had all their gear with them.

"Ah -- no," Cate said. "This must be where I came in, actually, between finding the first group and the second group." She sent a sideways glance towards the FBI agents. Harold and Al had invited them to sit down several times, but only Dave had taken them up on it. He was sprawled out in one of the armchairs, staring at the ceiling. Rob was almost sitting -- he was on the arm of the chair. The two new recruits, whose names Harold didn't know, were standing stiffly behind the chair. One of them still had mud in his hair.

Al interrupted again. "Harold, is your phone working?" Al had his own phone and Kyp's lying side by side on a little table he'd pulled in front of him. "Mine seems fine."

Harold checked his display. It looked normal. He dialed Al's number, and one of the phones in front of Al started to play a tinny version of "Jingle Bells." "Mine's good too," Harold said, snapping the phone shut and tossing it to Al.

Dave-the-vegetarian sat up straighter in his chair. "Can I see one of those?" he asked.

"No," Kyp told him, and Dave slouched down again.

"Sorry Cate, go ahead," Al said, going back to poking at the phones. Harold sent an apologetic shrug in Dave's direction.

"Anyway, so I went out looking for everyone," Cate said. "And I found the Armada, but no one was in it."

"Was your car okay?" Harold asked.

"I took yours," she said. "It seemed okay." Harold's car was old -- on it's best days it still drove like it might break down at any minute, so it was probably hard to tell if it had been any worse than usual. "I was going to drive back here and get you guys, but then they showed up." She pointed at the FBI agents. "And they said they'd been watching all of us and we all seemed suspicious, so they wouldn't let me leave, but we could hear the whistles, and I told them they had a civic responsibility to help, so we all went looking."

"Wait a minute," Harold said. A terrible thought had just occurred to him. "Where's Kim?" He knew Matthew and Betty were planning on her staying for a couple of days -- what if she was still lost in the woods?

"She went home this morning," Toby said. "Matthew said the meeting was a complete waste of time and had broken up early, so they came to pick her up. Don't worry, we didn't lose her."

"Anyway," Cate said, picking up the story yet again. "The five of us found the second group, because they were the ones still whistling, and then everyone else found all of us, and we came back here."

Harold noticed that her story seemed to have left out some important details. Namely, the mud. "Where did all the mud come from?" he asked. Cate looked at the FBI agents.

Toby explained, "When we met up with the second group, Cate was arguing with the people from the FBI. Kyp and Suzy thought they were "acting in a threatening manner" so they… subdued them. Everyone's fine, though, really -- it was just a misunderstanding."

He stopped, and Harold waited. "The mud?" Harold asked again.

It was one of the backpackers who answered him. "We got a little turned around on the trail," she said. "We ended up in the middle of a huge mud puddle. That's where everyone found us, and then when we tried to get back to the road, we kept going in circles, and ending up in the mud again. The fog didn't help either."

"But you eventually made it, right?" Harold asked. On the one hand, he thought the answer must be yes, because everyone was obviously there. On the other hand, he hadn't heard any vehicles pulling up to the house, and there was no way they all could have fit into three cars. They hardly all fit in the living room, and that was with all the furniture pushed back against the walls, and most people sitting on the floor.

"Well, we didn't make it back to the road," Cate said. "But we made it back here. We walked."

"Wow," Harold said.

"Wow," Al said, still staring at the phones. "Well, that could be a problem." Then he looked up and realized everyone was watching him. "Oh," he said. "Sorry. I'm just going to go down to the basement and… check on the water heater."

Chapter 22: (In which Christmas brings some unexpected excitement.)

After Al had left, taking the only working phones with him, presumably to contact someone about whatever problem he'd discovered (at least, Harold couldn't think of any reason why he'd need to check the water heater), everyone started cleaning up dishes and putting things away. There was a lot of yawning.

"I think the kids need to go to bed," Suzy said. Most of them were already asleep. They'd done a lot of walking that day. Harold agreed. Unfortunately, it led to the awkward question of what to do with the FBI agents. There were no vehicles left at the house -- Harold's car, the Armada, and the FBI's SUV were all stuck by the side of the road somewhere. Harold wasn't willing to tell the four agents they had to walk back to their car in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. At the same time, he felt a little wary about letting them stay in the house when it was chock full of aliens.

The backpackers were all back in the loft, and the kids and guards had been planning to spread out between Toby and Cate's rooms and the extra upstairs bedroom. The FBI agents could certainly have the living room, but that would leave the four of them all by themselves, unsupervised, on the ground floor. If he told them not to go in the basement, would that make them more or less likely to investigate?

Kyp and Suzy solved the problem by deciding to sleep in the room that was definitely not going to be an office, between the living room and the front door. Harold was confident in their ability to head off any potential nighttime exploration by the agents, and he went to bed quickly before anything else could happen.

*********************************

Harold's parents called on Christmas morning. "Good morning!" his mom said cheerfully, sounding fully awake and ready to take on the day. "Merry Christmas, Harold!"

"Merry Christmas," he said. "How's everything in Maine?" After a little digging, he and Al had found the itinerary his parents had emailed to them.

"It's snowing!" she said delightedly. She made it sound like snow (in Maine, in December) was a startling and unexpected surprise. "How's everything going there? How's Al?"

Harold looked around the kitchen and what he could see of the living room. Even the highly talented guards had been unable to figure out a way to actually "make" breakfast for so many people (especially since they were out of eggs, and short on bread, and there were no stores open nearby). Instead, it was a do-it-yourself style meal. The twins were eating cereal (Lishendri with milk, Nadeka without). Harold saw a few sandwiches and pieces of fruit, and also a couple cookies here and there, usually when the guards weren't looking.

Since it was tradition, the kids were all sitting on the floor to eat, even though there was a perfectly good table that would fit all seven of them. Instead, the table was taken up by the four sleepy FBI agents, Toby, Cate, and Bob. Bob wasn't on the table, thankfully -- he was in one of the chairs, and no one wanted to kick him out.

"It's good here," Harold said. "Al's working." No one was being very careful about what they said around the agents, but it couldn't hurt to be a little subtle. Al was, in fact, in the basement -- apparently someone was supposed to be dropping by to check on their mysterious phone killer.

"On Christmas? Is it the doorway? Is this a busy day for travel for his people?" After the tiniest of pauses, his mom added, "Your father says hello, and Merry Christmas." Harold imagined everyone gathering around the phone. "Your sisters say Merry Christmas too. Eliza wants to know if you have many guests right now."

"A few," Harold hedged. Over the breakfast chatter, he heard the telltale squawk of the parrot headed up the basement stairs. "More than we'd expected," he added. "In fact, I should probably go. Tell everyone Merry Christmas for me and Al, okay?"

Al led the way out of the basement, followed by the pirate captain, his second in command, and the parrot. Just their luck, it looked like it was the hologram.

"All right dear," his mom said. "Make sure Al doesn't work all day -- it's Christmas!"

"Who are they?" the captain asked loudly, pointing at the FBI agents.

"Okay," Harold said. "I'll talk to you later."

He closed his phone just as the parrot said, "Awk! It's the man! Awk! Hide the loot!"

Harold stared in disbelief as the pirate captain stared at the FBI agents and said, "Pete?"

One of the new guys, who wasn't Dave or Rob, waved (a little weakly, Harold thought). "Hi dad," he said.

"'Dad'?" Al said, looking from one to the other.

"What?" Rob said it first, followed in quick succession by Suzy, Kyp, and Dave.

The fourth agent said, "That's your dad?" None of the kids said anything -- they just watched all the grown-ups with wide, excited eyes. Toby and Cate didn't say anything either, but that was because they were having a staring contest over the last peanut butter granola bar. Since Harold couldn't thing of anything to say himself that hadn't already been well expressed, he stayed quiet. It seemed like it was the pirate captain's move next, unless the parrot decided to jump in again.

"I thought you were going to join the FBI," the captain said.

"Yeah," the agent said. Harold wondered if his name was really Pete. Because, really -- pirate Pete? No wonder he'd left. "I did." Pete looked awkwardly at Rob, who just looked stunned. "I am."

The captain looked at Rob. "You're in the FBI too?" The four of them did look less... FBI-like, eating sugary breakfast cereal and wearing borrowed sweaters (Toby had an astoundingly large -- and strange -- collection of sweaters).

"Yes?" Rob said hesitantly. "We all are."

"All of you?" The captain looked accusingly at Harold.

"Not me," Harold said quickly. "It's just those four."

"So... You know each other?" Al slipped around the table to stand next to Harold. For once, Harold had ended up in the perfect spot for an extended conversation/confrontation. He was close to the counter, which was good for leaning or sitting on; he was next to the refrigerator and sink, in case things went on long enough for him to get hungry again; and he could see everyone. Toby, who'd lost the granola bar battle, looked envious.

"Of course!" the pirate captain said. "Pete is my son -- one of my sons. But he never felt the call of the stars like my other boys. He wanted to live on Earth, and join your law enforcement program." He said it the way another parent might say, "He wanted to run off and join the circus."

"It's a good job, Dad," Pete insisted. "I want to live on a planet, not a space ship." Harold saw any chance at subtle fly out the window.

"But Earth? The FBI? Why couldn't you have picked a planet that was more --" The captain cut himself off, apparently editing whatever not-exactly-complimentary phrase he was thinking of. "Another planet," he finished. "Any other planet."

"I like the FBI," Pete insisted. "Even though it was actually sort of a mistake that made me pick them. I'm dyslexic," he explained to the group. "Which made the Bingo tough, let me tell you. I read about the FBI once, only I thought it was FIB -- it seemed so great that Earth would name a truth-seeking agency after a lie. So... Earth-like."

Harold frowned. "Earth-like"? What was that supposed to mean?

"Anyway, I figured it out once I got here, but by that point I figured, 'Why not join?' I was here already, and it wasn't like I had an easy way back off the planet. I thought I might be able to help, if the agency ran across any aliens." He looked at Harold and Al. "That hasn't happened much, though. I didn't realize there were places like this."

Harold got the feeling Pete was a little baffled by the idea that Harold and Al's unassuming house in the suburbs was actually a hotbed of alien activity. That was okay. Harold often felt baffled by it, and he'd been part of it since the beginning. He still wasn't quite sure how it had all happened.

"Well, I think the agency is lucky to have you," Dave said supportively.

"...Bingo?" said Rob. "Space ship?" He looked around, as if checking to see if anyone else thought Pete and Pete's family might just be crazy people, and not actually aliens. It was the tipping point -- the moment when things could go either way. They could make the effort, and try to convince Rob that they were all (eccentric) harmless folks who liked to make up stories. Or they could dive in headfirst and throw secrecy to the birds.

Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound. "I'm from Earth," Harold said.

"I'm not," Al said. "But I do have proof of residence."

"What does that mean?" Sabri asked.

"It means he lives here," Zahar said. "We don't," he told Rob. "We're just visiting."

"We live on another planet," Meshkalla said. "Actually, I just go to school there. I live on another other planet."

The parrot squawked about hiding the loot again, and the captain spoke up. "We're just visiting too," he said. "And we don't actually have any 'loot' to speak of -- he just says that." The way he hissed, "Shhh!" at the bird afterwards didn't do much to convince Harold he was telling the truth, but he wasn't going to say anything.

"How did you get here?" Rob asked.

"Us?" the captain asked. "We came from our ship."

"We came from the basement," Zahar said.

"You have a spaceship in the basement?" Dave craned his neck around to peer at the basement door, as if he might see some alien technology he'd missed before.

Meshkalla looked confused. "What? Why would we have a spaceship in the basement? We can just use the doorway."

In the silence that followed her statement, Cate said, "I came from Boston. I took the bus."

*********************************

They decided to send the FBI agents out with the pirates to collect the cars, and talk about whatever still needed to be talked about. The captain also did some investigating of whatever might be causing their phone troubles.

"Well, this could be a problem," he said when he got back. "Your car seems fine," the captain said to Harold. "I'm not so sure about the others. As far as I can tell, you've got some kind of localized signal-dampening field coming from somewhere west of here. It looks like it's building up to a periodic EM pulse -- that's probably what took out the phones so completely."

"What could be causing that?" Harold asked.

"It could be a lot of things," the captain said. "I can't think of any that would be here, on Earth, but lots of things can cause that effect."

Another thought occurred to Harold. "Wait, so that means it's not our fault, right?"

Al shot him a wounded look. "Of course it's not our fault!"

"It's not coming from here," the captain confirmed. "It's nothing we would have done, anyway. What would be the point of it? This house is actually shielded, which is why everything still works in here."

"That was the Chandraskars," Al said. "And then Matthew and Betty added to it."

"Well, you've got two options," the captain said. "Well, maybe three options. You can figure out a way to disable the field, or extend your shield so it covers more area."

Harold asked, "What's option three?"

"Theoretically, you could create a signal-dampening field signal dampener. To negate the original field without having to actually find the source."

Al, of course, looked intrigued. "I hadn't thought of that," he said. "It would have to mirror the original, to be able to match it when it fluctuates in intensity." Harold thought they were about to lose Al to the basement and his tinkering, but Al just shook his head. "We can think about it later."

The mostly-silent second in command pirate leaned over and whispered something in the captain's ear. The parrot squawked loudly and flapped its wings. "Yes, we have to go, I know," the captain said. "We have to go," he repeated unnecessarily to the group. "We'll keep an eye out for anything odd -- keep in touch. Call anytime, really. Oh, um…" He held up a hand, as if he'd just thought of something. "You might want to leave your phones inside. For now. Just in case."

The pirates headed back down to the basement, and presumably back to their ship. The FBI agents headed to the kitchen with Toby and Cate, to ask a few more questions. Lishendri suddenly announced that they'd been sent with homework assignments, and maybe they should start working on them. "Can we work in the basement?" Nadeka asked.

Kyp and Suzy nixed the basement idea; the kids got set up in the living room instead. Harold and Al joined them -- Harold opened his new book of Sudoku puzzles, and Al pulled off his emergency beacon and started poking at it with a tiny screwdriver he'd produced from somewhere. Just another classic Christmas.

Chapter 23: (In which things happen.)

By New Year's, things had settled into something almost like a routine. The kids had gone home, although they'd gotten in the habit of dropping in almost every afternoon. The Canada-bound backpackers departed, after encouraging Al and Harold to follow their progress on their blog.

In an effort to actually keep up with their email, Al set all the accounts to forward to a single address, and they left a computer in the kitchen to check every morning. They still hadn't figured out the mysterious field, unfortunately.

"Are we the only ones here this morning?" Al asked, looking around the breakfast table. Harold, Al, and Cate were the only ones in the kitchen.

"I think so," Harold said. He tried to remember if anyone had been staying overnight. He'd talked to a couple the night before, but he thought they'd just been planning a short nap on the couches in the basement before heading out again.

"Toby's still doing his --" Cate made a circling motion with the hand holding her spoon. "-- Around the world thing, to greet the New Year. He should be back sometime this afternoon."

Al nodded. "Right. Okay, who's doing what today?"

"I'm checking email," Harold said, which was perfectly obvious, since he was the one at the computer. "Apparently there's a lot of sales today. Nothing too critical here. Rob says the roads are icy."

The FBI agents were still nominally watching them, but they'd been getting more friendly since Christmas. Harold hoped they made some progress investigating the mysterious field -- it would be great if they could at least give it a better name.

Cate said, "I'm hanging more white boards." The white boards were a perfect way to communicate, but they kept running out of room, and the kids kept drawing all over them. The new plan was to just cover as much wall space as possible with white boards, which would look cool, and hopefully give them more useful space.

"And I'm going to see if I can recreate the stationary transport system," Al said. He must have seen Harold's pained expression, because he added, "Right? I thought that's what we decided on."

"No, we did," Harold said quickly. "It's just -- my parents will be able to pop in any time they want. It'll be like we're still living in the same house." He knew it was important to be able to have a way to travel that wasn't dependent on his rickety old car or whether or not there would be an EM pulse from the mysterious field that day. But instantaneous transport between their new house and the house his parents and sisters were sharing?

Al looked thoughtful. "Let me think about it a little longer," he said. "Maybe I can come up with something."

"I think it would be fun," Cate said. She'd missed the STS the first time around, the summer they'd met Matthew and Betty. "I didn't even know they were possible."

To keep Al from having to explain whatever he'd done to create the stationary transport system, Harold said, "Oh, I'm also going shopping today. Grocery list is on the fridge, and I'll go before lunch."

"Is anything open today?" Cate asked.

"The banks and stuff are closed, but the food stores are still open," Harold assured her. "Don't worry; we'll have ice cream by noon."

*********************************

Once the sun was fully out, the roads were easy to navigate. Sadly, the aisles of the grocery store proved more hazardous.

"Harold! Harold, is that you?"

Harold stopped his cart and turned around to see who was calling his name. When he saw the woman bearing down on him, he wished he hadn't. It was Julie McCabe, the class reunion organizer. "Hi Julie," he said, trying not to sound too encouraging, but also not too irritated, since she probably talked to everyone in their class, and he didn't want to become known as "the mean one."

"We haven't gotten your RSVP for the reunion yet," she said. "I heard you moved; you should send your new address -- you can do it through the blog!"

Harold, who was (unfortunately) getting all the reminder postcards passed on to him by his mom, didn't say anything. He tried to will his phone to ring -- hopefully with some important message that necessitate him leaving the store. Nothing happened. Julie looked over the contents of his cart. He just knew there was some comment headed his way, probably about partially hydrogenated soybean oil.

"Harold!" Another woman swept down the aisle towards him. Harold didn't recognize her at all, but she insinuated herself between Julie and the cart. "I'm Mariah Stanwerth. We haven't met, but I've heard so much about you. We're all so glad to have you and Al back here -- we were so worried about you. I just wanted to make sure you know we were all rooting for you. If you ever need anything, just give us a call; Tina has our number." She spared a glance for Julie. "You must be so proud," she said. Julie just looked confused.

"Anyway," Mrs. Stanwerth continued. "I'm sure you have to be getting back to the house. Say hello to everyone for me, all right?"

She seemed to be waiting for him to leave, so Harold said, "I will, definitely. It was good to see you. Both of you." Then he escaped, pushing his cart quickly towards the freezer section. From there, it was a short trip to the checkout. Just as it was looking like he was home free, his shirt started to vibrate. And flash. And then his phone rang.

It only took a second for Harold to figure out his emergency beacon was going off. In that second, he managed to attract the attention of everyone else standing in his line, as well as several people from the lines on either side of him. He fumbled for his phone, ignoring the glares. The flashing really was a little distracting. "What's wrong?" he said.

"This is Al; what's going on?"

"I forgot my beacon -- is this a conference call? What happened?"

"Hey guys," Toby's voice said calmly. "I'm not sure if this counts as an emergency or not, but Rob and the guys thought they might have narrowed down where that mysterious field was coming from, so they went to check it out."

So far it wasn't sounding like an emergency. Harold said, "Okay," because people were still watching him. He also put a hand over the beacon.

"Does it get more emergency-like than that?" Al asked. "Because I'm holding a baby right now, and I don't have a hand free to get the beacon to stop vibrating."

"You can turn them off?" Harold asked. "How?" He lowered his voice and turned slightly to the side, as if just not being able to see the people staring at him would keep them from overhearing. "I'm still at the grocery store; there's people all around."

"Just push it and hold it down," Al said.

"Will mine stop on its own?" Cate asked. "I think I left mine in the basement."

"Um, guys?" Toby said. "The field is gone."

Harold was trying to pretend he wasn't on the phone, so he didn't say anything. He pressed on the beacon and moved the cart forward with his elbow.

"Really?"

"That's good, right?"

Toby said, "Well, now there's a weather balloon."

Harold was still waiting for the emergency. It was about to be his turn, and there was no way he could talk on the phone, pay for groceries, and not incur the wrath of the cashier all at once. "Toby," he said. "Is anyone hurt?"

"No. Not that I know of, anyway."

"Does anyone require immediate assistance?"

"Um. No, I guess not."

"Is weather balloon a code, or are we actually talking about a weather balloon?"

"It looks like a weather balloon to me."

"Good. I'm hanging up now. I'll see everyone back at home."

Chapter 24: (In which everyone is baffled but no one is worried.)

By the time Harold got home, the weather balloon had disappeared. "Apparently Toby didn't think there not being a weather balloon, or a mysterious field, counted as an emergency," Al said.

Harold still wasn't sure why Toby had been out investigating the field with the FBI agents in the first place, but all five of them were in the kitchen with Cate and Al when he got there. "I thought you were supposed to be watching us," he said. Of course, he instantly regretted saying anything at all.

Rob just said, "Yeah, we were. It's just, now that we know what's going on, you're just not as mysterious as the mysterious field. Sure, you're a liaison to alien cultures, but mostly you babysit kids and run a bus stop. Are you planning on doing anything illegal?"

"What? No! Of course not." (They never really planned it, per se.)

"Have you ever started an interplanetary war? Do you sell drugs, or weapons, or people? Have any plans to build bombs or extort people for money?"

This time it was Al who answered. "No," he said firmly. "We would never do any of those things."

Rob shrugged. "See? Nothing to worry about. There's plenty of people who need a lot more watching than you. I don't see why the agency should single you out just because you're from a different planet."

Harold was impressed. Obviously Rob was an open-minded kind of guy. Harold remembered him being more cranky when he'd shown up at the barbecue. Maybe he just didn't like hot weather?

"What are we going to do about the weather balloon?" Toby asked.

"It's not there any more, right?" Cate said. "Why do we need to do anything about it?"

"Because it was there, and then it disappeared! We need to find out why, and where it came from, and where it's gone." Toby seemed more excited than Harold thought a simple weather balloon rated. Maybe weather balloons were to aliens what UFOs were to Earthlings.

"We're planning to keep an eye on the area," Dave said. "See what happens; see if we can figure out any kind of pattern."

"Are you going to call in more agents?" Al asked.

"What would we tell them? 'First we couldn't get cell phone reception, and now we can. Then we saw a weather balloon, but it's gone now.' Not exactly prime investigatory material," Rob said. "But we've got a few weeks left in this rotation, so we'll stick around. As long as you don't mind, of course."

Harold shook his head, and saw the others doing the same. "It's fine with me," he said. "Keep us posted?"

Rob hesitated, and Pete spoke up for the first time. "Definitely," he said.

*********************************

"Harold! I'm going out to the field with PJ and Meshkalla!" Sabri's voice rang through the first floor of the house. Harold, who was only a few feet from the front door, winced at the volume.

Still, the yelling itself was fun, in a way. "Own your choices!" he called back loudly.

"Okay!" he heard three voices say together. "We have our beacons!"

"Bye!" Harold yelled.

"Bye!" they all yelled back.

The sound of the door closing was surprisingly quiet after their loud voices. "So," Harold said, back at his normal volume. He turned to give a polite smile to the cluster of people gathered in the room. "This is the combined craft room and quiet study homework area."

"It looks sort of like an office," one of the guests said.

"It's not," Harold said (politely, of course). "The office is in the basement, with the doorway." He figured if he said it often enough, he could make it true by sheer force of will. He was determined that the little room not become an office -- mostly out of some sense of sibling defiance, but also because they already had an office, in a much more logical location, and they really didn't need another one. With all the kids who kept showing up, a homework room was much more useful.

Most of the group looked around the room with interest. Harold wasn't sure what they could possibly be finding so fascinating. It was really just some shelves, and lots of paper and colored markers, and a table with chairs around it. Then again, Harold wasn't sure why the group was there, either. They'd appeared almost an hour ago and requested a tour. It wasn't a common request, but Harold was providing it, because, well, why not?

"'Own your choices?'" one guest repeated, in a questioning tone.

"It's our one rule," Harold explained. It didn't seem like the kind of crowd who'd appreciate hearing that it was their version of "Don't be stupid." "We want to remind the kids to be responsible." In fact, the rule had been born of desperation. After a week of having kids from Al's planet drop in and spend their entire visit asking questions (Can I go outside and play? Can I use this? Is it okay if I turn on the microwave? Where should I do my homework? Can I eat in the living room?), he and Al had been going crazy.

Cate told them kids were used to having rules, and she thought the four of them should come up with some. Toby agreed, but thought the kids should come up with their own rules. Harold wasn't convinced -- their most frequent visitors were Sabri, the twins, and the rest of the kids in their class. All of them had been on Earth before, and all of them were old enough to think things through and make their own decisions about things. Al told the kids' parents it was a way to encourage a "leadership mentality." Harold just thought it made sense, and also made his life a lot easier.

"Well, we do have one other rule," he added, sensing that the group wasn't crazy about the one-rule policy. "Although it's maybe more of an addendum to the first one. 'If you still have questions, ask.'" They'd come up with it after they lost the toaster. On the plus side, everyone knew where the fire extinguisher was now, and they'd even picked up a few extras. Just to be on the safe side.

Harold heard the telltale "pop" that was probably one of the kids transporting back to the house. Sure enough, Meshkalla poked her head in the door and said, "It's a cat!"

"What?" he said.

"That came through the field!" Meshkalla exclaimed. "It's a cat! I came to see if Damaris is here."

She raced off down the hall towards the kitchen. Harold wondered if he should do anything. The mysterious field (so far, no better name, unfortunately) had been following a predictable pattern since the weather balloon incident. The signal dampening field would build up, but instead of releasing an EM pulse, it seemed to open some kind of portal. Things would appear, and then -- as long as they weren't moved -- disappear again in less than an hour. The weather balloon had been followed by (among other things) a dollar coin, a flashlight, an aloe plant, and a full water bottle. They usually had a few items a day, at fairly regular intervals. Harold thought it would be more worrisome if the portal didn't open up way out in the middle of the conservation easement.

There was actually a bit of a debate about whether or not things could be moved. Rob and the other agents were "keeping an eye on things" in shifts, along with whoever else happened to be around and interested. A few days earlier, Dave picked up a ballpoint pen from the area they'd generally pinpointed as "where things appear." He said he thought he'd just dropped the pen out of his pocket; Cate thought it had been sent through the portal. Whatever the case, it hadn't disappeared yet.

"Damaris!" Harold heard Meshkalla yelling from the kitchen. Apparently she'd given up on actually looking for him. "There's a cat that wants to talk to you!" Sometimes, Harold thought they should add a third rule, about yelling. But he could never decide if the rule should say not to yell (because it did seem a little rude, and sometimes there were babies in the house), or if it should encourage yelling, because it helped keep everyone informed of what was going on. For instance, he could hear the buzz of conversation in the hallway, but since they weren't yelling, he couldn't tell what they were planning.

The sound of someone clearing their throat brought Harold's attention back to his "tour group." "It seems rather... noisy here," the woman said. "Didn't you say this was a quiet study area?"

Quiet was a relative term. "That's really more of an honorary title than a literal description," Harold told her. As if to illustrate his point, Igs the parrot flew into the room and circled around their heads. Bob dashed in after him and leapt up on the table.

"Awk! Safe!" The parrot made a noise that sounded disturbingly like a cackle, and then they were off again. It looked like they had switched roles -- Bob left first, thundering up the stairs, and Igs followed.

The woman who'd asked about the noise looked dazed. "Yes, I see that," she said.

*********************************

"Can she stay?"

"She" was an adorable calico cat currently purring in Damaris' lap. Since Damaris' lap was firmly settled in the living room, with the rest of his class cooing over the new arrival, it was a safe bet the answer was yes. Even Bob and Mama Tibbles weighed in -- they were lounging on the sofa on either side of Damaris.

"She says her name is Trebuchet," Damaris said.

"Should we be worried?" Harold asked. It was so hard to tell what should be given significance -- sometimes a name was just a name.

Damaris rested his hand protectively over the cat's back. "What do you mean?" he asked. Trebuchet licked her front paw and flicked an ear in Harold's direction.

"Her name -- Trebuchet?" Harold waited for the kids to get it.

"I like it," PJ said.

"What's a trebuchet?"

"It's a font, right?" Sabri asked.

Harold reminded himself that there was no reason for alien kids to know about medieval Earth history. "A trebuchet," he said. "It's like a catapult. They were used as siege engines -- throwing rocks over castle walls, that sort of thing." The kids looked at him like he was crazy. "I'm serious," Harold insisted. "Al!" he called into the kitchen. Al was out there, doing... actually, Harold had no idea what he was doing. "Back me up -- 'trebuchet.'"

"'Trebuchet,'" Al said. "Medieval war machine; Earth history. Made of wood, used to besiege castles, usually. Right?"

"Thank you," Harold said. "See?" he asked the kids. "I just don't want to ignore the possibility that she's -- I don't know, a Trojan cat, I guess."

Bob looked at him disapprovingly. The kids still looked confused. "Al!" Harold called again. "'Trojan horse?'"

"Like a turquoise frog," Al said, walking into the living room with a bowl of popcorn. It was Harold's turn to be confused, but the kids were nodding, so he figured it must be the Trojan horse equivalent on their planet.

"I think she's here by accident," Damaris said. "She's kind of cranky about it -- that's why she came here instead of waiting to go back through the portal thing."

"Did she tell you anything else?" Al asked. Everyone seemed to accept that Damaris was the one who would know. He did seem to have a special bond with the cats. "What's on the other end of the portal? Why is it opening?"

"She doesn't know," Damaris said. "She just says it was an accident, and there wasn't a sign, and that she wants to stay here. She didn't say it was because she was cranky -- I added that part. It feels like she wants to visit for a little while, maybe to make whoever she normally stays with appreciate her more. I think we should let her."

It was a long speech for the normally quiet boy. "I'm convinced," said Harold.

"Me too," Al said. Cate and Toby were in the basement, doing the meet and greet evening shift. Al walked over to the stairs. "Cate! Toby!" he yelled down. "Can the new cat stay for a while?"

"Sure!" Toby called back.

Cate added, "It sounds good to me!" There was a pause, and then she said, "The Stanwerths say yes too -- they say hi!"

Everyone yelled "hi" back, and suddenly they were a three-cat household. Harold just hoped Trebuchet would like one of the two foods they already had on hand.

Chapter 25: (In which it finally snows, and Harold stays home to get the mail.)

In the second week of January, they got snow. In November and December, the winter had been fairly mild. They'd had flurries, and a few small storms, but nothing major. Little enough so that the predicted four to six inches still got everyone stocking up on bread and talking about school closings. It was an afternoon storm, with the first flakes starting to come down around lunchtime. By three, the snow was falling heavily.

At least, that's what Al said last time he checked in. Harold was in the basement, comfortably ensconced in one of the armchairs with his book of puzzles. He could hear the hum of the space heaters blowing warm air towards his feet, and there was a radio playing softly somewhere in the office area. It had that sense of getting to stay home from school on a snow day, even though Harold was (technically) working.

He'd volunteered to stay at the house while the others took in the "snow storm experience." The pirates were organizing some sort of huge event with the school in Alabama, which seemed to require a huge amount of mail going back and forth. It helped to have someone in the basement when the mail arrived, and people started showing up to pick up their deliveries.

Harold just hoped the event they were working on wasn't a reunion -- it seemed like he couldn't escape the reminders about his high school class reunion (only twenty days away!). Between the postcards and the people who kept stopping to talk with him about it every time he went into town, Harold was happy to stay home and not think about it. It was even worth missing the looks the group (Al, Toby, Cate, and Kim, on day two of a three-day "sleepover") received when they bought a cartload of kids' sleds.

"Mail call!" A young man appeared in what had been designated the "mail area" -- really just an extension of the "office area," and only distinguishable from the "lounge area" by the difference in comfort level of the furniture. A second later, stacks of packages and letters appeared as well. "Hiya Harold!"

Harold could tell it was one of the pirates, because he went right over to the wall and grabbed an emergency beacon to set around his neck. The pirates were very big on procedure. They loved the emergency beacons, and sometimes Harold wondered if the reason they had a new mail person every day was because everyone wanted a chance to see them.

"Hello," Harold said. "A lot of big ones today, huh?" It was always best to start with something harmless and inane to test the waters. Some of the pirates weren't such great conversationalists.

"It's a good batch," the pirate said cheerily. "How's it going down here?"

"Good," Harold told him. "It's snowing, actually."

"Really? Does that happen a lot around here?" The pirate actually looked a little alarmed, and Harold tried to reassure him.

"It's our cold season right now," Harold said. "Snow's pretty typical here this time of year. It's not a big storm either -- less than a foot." He held his hands apart to demonstrate the expected snowfall, not sure how well things like depths and distances translated.

"Huh," the pirate said, sounding distracted. He'd produced a clipboard from somewhere, and was checking things off. Harold heard him counting under his breath. "…Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen -- okay, that's all of them. The small stuff's sorted out by either family name or department."

It looked like he was preparing to leave, and Harold grabbed the chance to ask one more question. "So," Harold said. "How come you all use the emergency beacons while you're here?"

"Well, in case we ever had a mail-related emergency," the pirate said seriously. "I mean, if the means to call for help was right there on the wall, and we just couldn't reach it -- you have to admit, that would be pretty ironic."

Harold blinked. He was stuck on "mail-related emergency." "Is that likely?" he asked, finally.

The pirate looked thoughtfully at the packages. "Well, I wouldn't shake them," he said. "But they should be fine. Nothing bad's happened yet, right?" He tucked the clipboard back into his bag, and said, "Enjoy your snow!"

Chapter 26: (In which the sledding doesn't go exactly as planned, but everyone has fun anyway.)

It snowed off and on all week, with gray skies and cold temperatures keeping everyone inside more than usual. By the weekend, even Harold was feeling a little stir-crazy. Luckily, the weather cooperated. It was still cold, but the sun was shining, and there was enough snow to make sledding the perfect outdoor activity.

Harold and Cate loaded up the Armada with sleds and kids -- just Kim and the twins -- and headed out to the local park. Accompanying them were a group of families up from the Alabama school, who were staying at the house while they waited for transport off the planet. Harold wasn't sure why they couldn't just leave from Alabama, but he suspected it might have something to do with even aliens wanting to avoid the deep strangeness (or maybe just the slowness) of the south.

It was possible the FBI was tagging along too. The mysterious field had slowed down somewhat in spitting out new stuff, but the agents were still around, and Rob had said during the week that they might be practicing their unobtrusive tailing skills. If they were there, they were succeeding, because Harold hadn't noticed them. Then again, he wasn't always the most observant person in the room, so maybe that wasn't saying much.

"I still think Al and Toby would have been better at this than I am," Harold said, re-zipping all of Kim's winter gear after her second bathroom trip.

Cate, who was watching (and possibly trying not to laugh), said, "There's a lot of traffic scheduled through the doorway today. Toby wanted to come, but he promised Zahar he'd go home and help him with some big surprise for their parents." Harold noticed she didn't actually say they wouldn't have been better at it, just that they had good reasons for not being there. Kim was more supportive.

"I think you're doing great," she said. "I like having mittens that are different colors." Harold was sure they'd started the trip with two complete sets of mittens for her -- a pink set to start with, and a green set for backup. By the time they'd arrived at the park, though, he'd only been able to find one of each.

"Thanks, Kim," Harold told her. He zipped the last zipper and said, "There -- you're all set to go back to the hill."

Kim raced off and Harold marveled at her energy. They quickly lost sight of her in the crowd at the top of the sledding hill. The park actually had several hills, but one of them had been adopted by the sledders, and snowboarders had taken over another one. There was a third large-ish hill a little further away from the parking lot, but it was empty, and no one seemed to be willing to be the first ones to find out why. Apparently, every other parent or guardian in town with children between 3 and 14 woke up with the same plan as Harold. The park was packed with people. Lots of yelling, lots of lost mittens, and (hopefully) lots of extremely tiring fun.

Harold just wished it was as much fun for the adults as it was for the kids. So far, he'd made four bathroom trips (one with each of the twins, and two with Kim), and spent the rest of the time making awkward conversation with the other grown-ups. Most of them started with a question along the lines of, "So, which ones are yours?"

To which Harold had foolishly replied (the first time), "None of them." As soon as he'd realized that the suspicious look he'd received probably meant the woman thought he was a crazy child stalker, he'd tried to reassure her. "I mean, none of them are biologically mine," he'd said. "But three of them are here with me -- I'm watching them, I mean. For friends." He'd tried to find Nadeka and Lishendri to point out to her, but they were all the way at the bottom of the hill. Her new look indicated that now the woman just thought he was a really bad parent, and Harold gave up.

The second conversation went a little better. Harold switched with Cate when Kim decided the fun of going down the hill by herself would be outweighed by having someone to pull her back up it. Harold huffed and puffed his way up the hill alongside a woman who was not only pulling a sled, but also had a baby carrier (baby and all) strapped to her chest. "Hi Harold!" she said cheerfully.

"Hello?" he said.

She laughed. "We met this morning -- I came in the red car, with Bart. Thanks for hosting us, by the way."

"You're welcome," Harold said. "Sorry for not recognizing you."

"It's probably the hat," the woman said. "It's a little distracting." Harold looked at the hat in question. It looked like a shark was eating her head. He assumed it was supposed to look like that, and he was willing to blame the hat if she was.

"That could be it," Harold said. "Are you having fun?"

"This is great," she said, as they reached the top of the hill. They got back into the somewhat freeform "line" to go back down. "Actually, would you mind holding the baby? Then I could ride down with Seth instead of walking. Kim could come with us, if you want." The last part was directed at Kim, who was plenty old enough to figure out that more people equaled more speed.

"Okay!" she said.

That was how Harold ended up standing at the top of the sledding hill with a baby carrier. It was hard to tell with all the winter gear surrounding the baby, but he thought it was asleep, and he was really hoping it stayed that way until its mom got back. Of course, that was when his emergency beacon went off and he grabbed for his phone, which sounded extra loud all of a sudden.

"Whoa!" he heard Cate saying as he flipped the phone open. There was a series of beeps. "Sorry," she said. "This is Cate -- I just had to get my gloves off."

"I'm here," Al said.

"Toby here," Toby said. "I had no idea these things would work on another planet, by the way. I'm not sure what I can do from here, but what's up?"

"I'm here too," Harold said, almost whispering.

"Harold?" Al said. "What's going on?"

"I have a baby," Harold said quietly.

"What?" Toby said. "Is that the emergency?"

"No, it wasn't me," Harold said. "I just don't want it to wake up; that's why I'm trying to be quiet."

"It?" Cate asked. "Is the baby androgynous? Is that a rude question?"

"I have no idea," Harold said. "The baby's mother just asked me to hold the baby while she did a sled run. She's one of the ones staying at the house from the school."

"I didn't know they had any babies," Toby said.

"Well, apparently they do," Harold said. "Since there's one right here."

"Maybe she was holding it for someone else," Al suggested.

"Can we get back to the emergency here?" Harold said. "Who activated their emergency beacon? It obviously wasn't any of us."

"Not Nadeka or Lishendri," Cate said. "They're right here; we're all good." At the base of the hill, Harold saw three figures waving. He waved back, although he thought they were spending an awful lot of time at the bottom of the hill. He wondered what they were doing down there.

"I can see Kim," Harold said. "She's on her way back up; she looks fine too."

"Who else has beacons today?" Toby asked.

Harold hoped it wasn't one of the pirates. He really didn't want to know what they meant by "mail-related emergency." He said, "Al -- you haven't been shaking the mail, have you?"

"What?" Al said. "No, of course not."

"I think everyone who came sledding has beacons," Cate said. "A bunch of them went off to see the pond. I could transport to where the beacon is, I guess."

"Except we don't know what the emergency is," Harold said. "What if there's a bunch of people there who probably shouldn't see someone appearing out of thin air? Or a bear?"

"A bear? Where are you? I thought you were just going to the park." Toby sounded like he wished he was back on Earth, if he was going to be missing exciting things like bears.

Harold looked around the park. It was extremely unlikely that there was a bear anywhere on the premises. "Okay," he said. "Not a bear." A more realistic thought occurred to him. "You know, whoever activated their beacon is probably trying to call us right now, to let us know what's going on. Except they can't get through, because we're all on the phone with each other."

There was silence. Then Al said, "Maybe the emergency beacon system could use a little more work. Let's hang up, and see what happens."

Cate added, "I'll bring the kids back and head to the car, in case I need to go anywhere to rescue someone. Or scare off a bear."

As soon as Harold hung up, his phone rang again. He wondered why Al hadn't picked phones that had call waiting. Then he realized the phone probably did have call waiting, and he just didn't know how to use it. "Hello?" he said.

"Harold!" someone said, sounding relieved. "I got my emergency beacon to flash and everything, but nothing happened, so I tried to call, but the line was busy!"

"Yeah, sorry about that," Harold told them, checking to make sure the baby was still asleep. "There's still a few glitches in the system we're trying to work out. What's happening?" He didn't hear any growling in the background, so that was a good sign. Probably not a bear.

"We're lost. We went looking for the pond, but now we're… not really sure where we've ended up. And we'd really like to come back, but we'd rather not follow our footprints back, because I'm pretty sure we went around in circles a couple times." Harold heard voices in the background, and the man said, "Okay, more than a couple. Is there any chance one of you could pop out here and help us find a path?"

"Sure," Harold said. "No problem. Cate's on her way to the parking lot -- she'll come to you straight from there. That'll just make it less likely that someone will see her just disappear. Is anyone hurt?"

"No, we're all fine," the man said. "Just not wanting to spend another hour retracing our steps if we don't have to." He paused, then added, "I'm not sure how worried you are about it, but there's not going to be any way to disguise the fact that there's suddenly another set of footprints with us, if anyone was looking."

Harold hadn't even thought of that. "I think it's fine," he said. "It's not like that's the first thing that's going to pop into most people's heads, you know? How many people would see footprints and think, 'Hey, it looks like there's an extra set that starts out here in the middle of the woods. I bet it's because an alien using a technologically advanced personal transporter showed up here.'" The man laughed, and Harold said, "Hang on a second."

Cate and the kids and the extra mom were converging on his location. "The group that went looking for the pond got lost, but they're okay," he explained, covering the speaker of the phone with his free hand. "Cate, I told them you were on your way."

Cate gave him a thumbs-up and headed towards the cars. The kids looked a little disappointed that the "emergency" wasn't more dire. They also didn't look tired enough.

"I think you need to do some more sledding and hill climbing," Harold told the kids. "Are you staying?" he asked the baby's mom. They did the baby carrier switch, and Harold managed not to drop the baby or the phone.

"Just a little longer," she said. "Thanks for holding her. Would you mind watching Seth while we make a quick stop in the bathroom?"

Since Seth had already taken off down the hill with Kim and the twins, there wasn't much Harold could say except yes. "Sure," he said. "No problem."

Chapter 27: (In which having four FBI agents around comes in really handy.)

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Harold wished he could take them back. It was never a good idea to tempt fate. He kept his eyes on the kids and headed back towards the cluster of other adults at the top of the hill. He realized he was technically still on the phone with the group that was lost, and put it back to his ear. "Are you still there?" he asked.

"Still lost?" the man asked. "Yup. Everything okay where you are? Oh, Cate's just arrived. Thanks!" The connection cut off, and Harold tried to get a pocket unzipped in his coat without taking his gloves off. It was really cold out.

Of course, it was when he was distracted and looking at his own parka that everything went wrong. "Look out!" he heard one of the parents shout. Harold looked up quickly and saw two sleds headed for a collision on the hill. One of the sleds had four people on it -- Harold didn't even have to look twice to know that it was Nadeka, Lishendri, Kim, and Seth, all riding together. Steering didn't seem to be a big part of any of the sleds' designs, and they hit head-on, sending kids bouncing out onto the snow.

They'd been right in the middle of the slope when they hit, and it quickly caused a pile-up all around them. Other sleds swerved to the left and right, or just plowed into the middle. Parents started rushing down the hill to check on their kids -- unfortunately, causing more chaos on the way, as several of them slipped on the icy runway and grabbed onto whoever was closest to try and stay upright. Harold hung back until he couldn't see the kids anymore, then began picking his way down the slope. On the way, he unzipped his coat far enough to grab his emergency beacon and twist it on.

"This is Harold," he said as soon as his phone rang, not waiting for the others to check in. "We've got a slight problem here. The twins and Kim and Seth -- he's one of the kids visiting from Alabama -- just got into a sledding collision. None of them activated their beacons right away, but we're drawing a pretty big crowd, and I could use some backup. I'm going to hang up now so the other grown-ups don't think I'm a bad parent, but hopefully I'll see someone soon. If anyone's hurt I'll get their beacon going."

He hung up quickly, before he'd attracted more than two or three irritated glares from the other adults. He hadn't been kidding about them thinking anyone who put a cell phone call over a kid's welfare was a bad parent -- it was like they didn't even consider the possibility that he might be using said phone to monitor the kids. The lack of an equivalent Earth technology could really cause problems sometimes.

By the time Harold reached the scene of the collision, it was a swarm of kids, adults, and sleds. And it was loud -- everyone seemed to be "talking" at top volume. Mostly a lot of arguing about sled safety, and who should have been watching, and whether or not the park should have to create lanes. It seemed a little silly to Harold, and where were the kids? He circled the edges of the group fruitlessly, then pushed his way in.

"Excuse me," he said, applying his elbows judiciously to the people around him. "Sorry, sorry."

Harold reached what he assumed was the middle -- it certainly seemed to be the eye of the storm -- just in time to see a very tall man point a finger at Nadeka and say, "Where are your parents, young man?"

Lishendri drew herself up and opened her mouth, no doubt to say something clever and regal. Harold glanced around and took in the scene. Nadeka and Lishendri were standing protectively on either side of their sled. Kim was sitting in the sled with little Seth in her lap. They were talking quietly; Harold didn't see any tears, and that was a good sign.

The very tall man was looming over the sled Harold guessed had also been involved in the collision -- it held a little boy who was being fussed over by a very tall woman. No tears there either. All the kids were bundled up in so many layers of warm puffy clothing, Harold thought they probably could have rolled down the hill without sleds and not gotten hurt. Still, it was always good to make sure, and he didn't want the twins to feel like they were all alone.

"Hey guys," he said calmly.

"Uncle Harold!" Nadeka ran over to him. He looked so relieved that Harold felt bad for not arriving sooner. He also noticed the "Uncle" -- clearly Nadeka thought it would be a good idea to claim some sort of familial relationship, and Harold was more than willing to go along with it. It wasn't like they hadn't done it before. He wasn't quite as prepared for Kim and Seth to join in.

"Uncle Harold!" they both yelled in excited unison. They abandoned the sled to join Nadeka at his side.

"Did you see?" Kim asked. She tugged on his gloved hand, and Harold obligingly dropped to his knees to be more her height. "We were going really fast!"

Seth clambered up on his lap and latched his arms around Harold's neck. "I was scared," he said. "I want my mom."

Harold had no idea what to do. He wanted Seth's mom to be there too. He was pretty sure saying that wouldn't be reassuring though, so he patted Seth's back and said, "I know, buddy. She's coming."

"Seth and Kim were really brave," Nadeka told him.

"You were all brave," Harold said, meeting Nadeka's gaze. "Are you okay?" Nadeka nodded. Harold realized Lishendri was still staring down the very tall man. "Lishendri?" Harold asked. "Are you okay?"

"Are you responsible for these children?" the very tall man asked. He sounded angry. Harold didn't stand up. He knew he wasn't tall enough to loom convincingly even if he did, and hopefully the kids would be more comforted if he stayed down.

"Yes," Harold said, trying to sound confident. "Lishendri?" he asked again, and she finally turned around and ran to join the group.

"I'm okay," she said. "It was an accident, but he wouldn't listen."

"It's all right," Harold assured her. He wasn't totally sure why the group wasn't dispersing. The children were all obviously okay; no blood, no tears even. No ambulances would be required. But instead of getting smaller as people realized they could get back to sledding, the crowd seemed to be getting bigger. Harold wondered what he was missing.

"Were you watching them?" the very tall man asked. "These four ran right into my son! He could have been seriously injured!"

Harold patted Seth on the back again. "It was an accident," he said. "The sleds collided and it wasn't anyone's fault. No one's hurt; that's the important thing."

The tall man glared at him. "No, the important thing is that someone could have gotten hurt," he said. Then he added the ominous question: "Do you know who I am?"

Harold had no idea who the man was, but "no" was clearly not the correct answer to a question like that. He was spared the need to say anything by the arrival of four more people. Four familiar people, who stepped into the circle in unison. Harold thought the sunglasses were a little over the top, but it was a sunny day.

"Is everyone all right?" Rob asked. He flipped his badge open and showed it around the circle. The other agents just stood there, looking imposing.

The very tall man appeared to be speechless, so Harold said, "I think so, yes. Thank you." He was guessing the FBI agents arrival was somehow connected to his call for help, but he managed to keep himself from blurting out anything like, "Are you monitoring our phone calls?"

Dave, or the agent Harold thought was Dave -- it was hard to tell when all of them were wearing hats and sunglasses -- knelt down in front of Lishendri. "Was it your idea to all ride together?" he asked gently. She nodded unhappily, and Harold hoped they weren't about to get tears. "Was it an accident when the sleds collided?" Lishendri nodded again. "Did anyone get hurt?" She shook her head vehemently. Dave smiled, and asked, "Did you have fun going that fast?" Lishendri smiled too, and nodded.

Dave stood up and put a hand on her shoulder, turning her around to face the very tall man. Rob said, "This was clearly an unintentional collision, sir. Ma'am, are you and the boy all right?"

"Um, yes?" the very tall woman said. The boy, still sitting in the sled, looked at them with wide eyes. "We're good," the woman said. The very tall man didn't say opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Harold had to admit, the four agents all standing around like that were pretty imposing.

Rob looked out at the crowd, and it instantly began to break up. Harold said, "I think we're probably ready to head home now."

"We'll escort you back to your vehicles," Rob said. Harold felt like he should say something else to the very tall man and his family, but he didn't know what to say. What could you say when the FBI broke up an argument? Especially when the agents were so clearly on your side that they were giving the kids piggyback rides on their way up the hill.

They met Seth's mom outside the bathrooms -- she'd missed the whole thing, and was a little taken aback to see the FBI agents. "Everything's fine," Harold told her. "We had a little sledding mishap, but Seth was really brave." He'd quickly recognized the brilliance of Nadeka's phrase, obviously designed to stave off panic in adults and encourage smiles in kids.

"We can talk about it on the road," Rob said. They were attracting a lot more attention than before.

Harold gave in to curiosity and asked quietly, "Were you monitoring our phone calls? Not that I'm not glad you showed up when you did."

Rob frowned. "That's actually a lot harder to do than they make it look in movies. Al called us; said you could use some help."

"And then Cate called us, and then Toby," Dave added. "You might want to call them back."

Chapter 28: (In which the house emails pile up, and the reunion inches closer.)

"Harold, you have twenty-three emails waiting to be read." Toby sounded exasperated. "I don't have any!"

Harold looked up from the morning newspaper. The four of them were enjoying a late breakfast. "You're welcome to mine," he said. "Are any of them important?" At some point they might want to rethink the "everyone's email goes to the same inbox" strategy -- for instance, if someone had something going on that they didn't want the whole house to know about -- but for most things, it worked pretty well.

"It looks like your adventures at the park are making the gossip rounds," Toby said. "You and Al both have messages from Ilia and Janar. Rob sent one with the subject line "You're Welcome," and the Chandraskars have started some sort of chain message about the most embarrassing places to get lost. It looks like the park's pretty high up on the list."

"We once ended up in New York when we were trying to get to Rhode Island," Al offered.

"Really? Can I write that?" Toby asked.

"How did you manage that?" Cate asked. "Where were you starting from?"

"Boston," Harold said, and she looked even more surprised. "We ran into some trouble on the interstate," he added.

"I've always wondered if those people we ran into at the rest stop -- you know, the ones with the motorcycle helmets?" Al looked at Harold, and Harold nodded. The family had helped them get headed in the right direction. "I wonder if they might be pirates," Al said. "They remind me of the captain and Pete a little bit."

Harold couldn't recall any resemblance, but Al was usually better about noticing things like that anyway. "I've always wondered about Martha," Harold said. "That was a pretty strange restaurant she was running, like it was out of her house or something."

"Maybe we could email her," Al said. "I don't really feel up to another road trip."

Toby and Cate were looking back and forth from Harold to Al. Toby shook his head. "You guys have done some strange things. You realize that, right?"

"Did I get anything today?" Cate asked, returning to the topic of emails.

Toby scanned the screen. "Spam, spam, spam, special events listing for the aquarium, update from the Jones household --"

Al perked up. "Are we still on for dinner this Wednesday?" he asked.

Harold's parents were still staying with Charlotte and Eliza. They'd taken to sending a daily email update of things that were happening in the house and surrounding neighborhood. They'd also reinstated the siblings' Wednesday night dinner tradition, extending the invitation to include everyone in both houses. Since Harold's parents usually did the cooking, the menu had also expanded, covering considerably more than the classic pizza and takeout.

"Looks like it," Toby said. "Charlotte says she wants to get the whole story on what the FBI were doing threatening the head of the town selectmen. Eliza says she's going to try to bake a pie, or maybe some brownies."

Harold looked at Al. "A dollar says we end up with brownies," he said. Eliza wasn't known for her baking abilities.

Al shook his head. "No, she's creative -- I bet we get the pie, but it's something unusual so we can't tell whether it came out 'right' or not."

"I say brownies," Cate chimed in. "But with a fruit filling."

Toby 'hmmm'ed. "I guess I'll go with store-bought dessert," he said. "Not that I doubt your sister's cooking skills," he told Harold. "But pie is really hard to make."

The computer chimed, and Toby looked back at the screen. "There's another one!" Toby said. "Harold, you really have to RSVP about this reunion. They've all gotten your email address somehow, and they keep sending invitations. A couple of them even ask about the park thing."

Harold groaned. The reunion was still two weeks away. "Who goes to an eleventh year high school reunion?" he asked.

It was mostly a rhetorical question, but Cate answered anyway. "Someone who didn't go to any of the first ten?" she asked. "It's not like not going will make them stop bugging you."

"That's true," Toby said. "Maybe if they meet you, they'll stop thinking there's something mysterious going on. It's probably just the fact that you haven't been to a reunion that makes them think you're hiding something." His expression seemed to indicate that anyone who actually knew Harold would quickly be able to discern that he was just an ordinary guy, and Cate nodded. Clearly it had worked for her.

"I am hiding something," Harold insisted. "I'm hiding the fact that I don't want to see anyone I went to high school with! And the fact that I live with aliens! And the fact that lots of weird stuff seems to happen around us, always when it's least expected -- like at a reunion."

"I think we should go," Al said. Everyone at the table turned to stare at him.

"Really?" Harold asked.

"Yeah -- I'll go with you," Al said. "It could be fun."

Harold didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. "Really?" he asked again.

Al considered things for a minute. "Maybe not fun," he conceded. "But it's one night -- we'll go, we'll eat the food, we'll drink the punch. Don't worry about the alien thing; you can just tell everyone the truth, and most people won't believe you anyway. It'll be just like that movie, with the guy who worked in that office."

One of the unfortunate consequences of Al's long exposure to Harold was that Harold's inability to remember the names of movies seemed to be catching. Harold tried to match up "reunion," "office," and "guy" with any movie they'd seen, and came up with --

"Al! In that movie, he was a paid assassin! He used a ballpoint pen to kill someone while he was at his reunion, and he ended up burning his office to the ground!"

"Oh," Al said. "I'd forgotten that part. Obviously we don't want to do anything like that."

He was still looking thoughtful, though, so Harold said, "Okay, we'll go," before he really realized what he was saying. Then he caught Toby and Cate exchanging gleeful looks. They'd probably made some sort of bet with his sisters to get him and Al to go to the reunion. "But --" Harold added, "-- if anything weird happens... If pirates show up to play Bingo, or ninjas attack the band, or spaceships land in the courtyard, I reserve the right to say 'I told you so' and never go again."

"Come on, Harold," Toby said. "It's just a high school reunion. What could possibly go wrong?"

It was Toby's turn to attract the stares of everyone at the table. Even Al looked surprised by Toby's blatant tempting of fate. "I can't believe you just said that," Cate said. "Maybe you shouldn't go," she added, to Harold and Al.

"We'll take emergency beacons," Al said. "And leave our phones on the whole time."

"Do you think if I say, 'Think of all the things that could go wrong,' it would all cancel out and the whole thing would be perfectly average and normal?" Harold asked.

Chapter 29: (In which two weeks isn't nearly enough time to prepare.)

Everyone had an opinion regarding reunions in general, this reunion in particular, and Harold and Al's decision to attend. Harold would have been fine with that, if they hadn't all felt the need to share their opinions with him.

"Your mother and I have been to a few," his father said, when they were all sitting down to Wednesday night dinner. "It's always interesting to see what people have been up to." Harold's family thought his dread about the reunion was hilarious. "I'm not sure what it is that you're so worried about. Our class always picks a nice hotel, and it's just a few hours of chatting and exchanging business cards -- it's a good place to find low rates on insurance, that's for sure."

His mother advised them to avoid the shrimp, if there was any. "It just didn't agree with me last time," she said. "And really, eating any kind of shellfish at a high school reunion -- it's probably a little tacky."

Harold caught Al's confused glance and gave a little shrug. He had no idea what she was talking about. "Charlotte's never gone to any of her reunions," Harold said.

Charlotte glared at him from across the table. "I always end up working those nights," she said, as if it was simply a coincidence, and not something she did on purpose every year. "Besides, I've gone to the police academy reunions. At least at those I don't have to worry about what to wear."

"I've been to my high school reunions," Eliza said. "They're really fun," she added, in a tone of voice that seemed to say, "let me tell you all about them." Harold wondered if she was trying to extend dinner so she wouldn't have to produce her dessert. Then again, maybe her reunions actually had been fun; Eliza's high school class had been somewhat... unique. Their most recent reunion (held over the summer) had a "costume party" theme, complete with a parade and everything.

*********************************

What Harold's class lacked in creativity, they made up for in sheer persistence. The house email was still filling up every day with reminders, and someone (Harold suspected Julie McCabe) had started sending out daily "profiles" of a class member. Harold forwarded them on to the kids, for the entertainment value.

They hadn't seen much of the kids for the past few days. It was flu season for them, or whatever the alien equivalent would be, and the kids were staying home. Harold wasn't sure if it was to keep the kids from getting exposed to germs, or to keep Harold and Al's household from being exposed to the kids, but they were doing all their talking via email for the week. So far, the tally stood at seven (kids who thought they should go to the reunion), five (kids who wanted to go too), two (who thought they should take Bob with them), and four (who thought "something weird" would happen).

By far, the most unexpected reaction to the news of their planned attendance at the reunion was the one from Pete, the FBI agent (slash runaway pirate). Now that there was an easy way to send messages back and forth, he'd been talking with his family regularly. When he heard about the reunion, he looked nervous. "What day is it?" he asked.

"The 31st," Harold told him. "It's a Saturday."

Pete pulled out a space-agey-looking phone and started punching buttons. "This could be a problem," he said.

Harold, who'd been hearing that a lot lately, decided to stay calm until he learned what kind of a problem it might be. Pete hit a lot more buttons on his phone. Then his expression cleared. "No, false alarm," he said. "No problem." Without any additional explanation, he added a cheery, "Have fun at the reunion!"

If it had been any of the other agents, Harold would have let it go. Because, frankly, they were all a lot bigger than him, and had all clearly received high marks in the "stand up and look menacing" classes. And Harold was a little freaked out that he still didn't know the fourth one's name, like maybe it was a big secret or something. But this was Pete -- his dad carried a parrot around and played Bingo with the crews of hijacked spaceships. Pete wanted to be an FBI agent to help stranded aliens stay under the radar. Pete should be willing to give up a little more information in the name of cooperation and goodwill.

"Come on, Pete," Harold said in his best "encourage cooperation and goodwill" voice. "What's going on?"

Pete hemmed and hawed, but finally gave in and started to talk. "Our rotation is almost over," he said. "I just wanted to make sure we were still going to be here when the reunion happened."

Harold narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

Pete tossed his own words back at him. "Come on, Harold. Look at your track record -- you don't really think this is going to go down like a normal high school class get-together, do you? I think I've convinced my family not to show up, but only because I promised to take plenty of pictures. You and Al are pretty much celebrities; everyone wants to see this side of you."

Harold didn't really think the awkward, high school attending side of himself was anything too exciting. But then, he also hadn't really been thinking of the event "going down" -- that sounded a little more serious than he was hoping for. He had a sudden mental image of dark-suited FBI agents in sunglasses standing around a hotel ballroom snapping pictures of him and Al eating chips and being handed cards offering them extended life insurance policies. "So... you're all planning to be there?" he asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.

"Rob got us invited to join the hotel's event security team," Pete said. "Turns out one of your classmates is involved in some high up classified science research, so the hotel was already having some issues coordinating with the private security being provided for them. They seemed happy to have the FBI step in and take charge of everyone. Dave's even been helping screen the caterers and the band and stuff. It should be a good party, from what I've heard."

Harold was just glad to know someone else at the party would be attracting attention. He was about to ask Pete if there was anything else he ought to know about the festivities, when Cate burst into the room. "Harold!" she said, as if she was surprised to see him. "What are you doing here?"

Harold looked around. He was definitely still in the kitchen, in his house. "I live here," he said. "I was just talking to Pete."

"Your sisters are here," Cate said. "They're looking for you and Al, to go shopping for the reunion."

"What?" Eliza had promised -- no shopping. Harold started looking for an escape route.

"Al's in the basement," Cate offered. "With Toby. If you happened to go down, they could probably transport you somewhere -- say, Nick and Steve's house, for the game? Not that you heard it from me."

"I haven't seen you," Pete said.

Harold wanted to hug both of them. "Thanks!" he said quickly, and made a dash for the basement stairs.

*********************************

Ten days before the reunion, Harold called a house meeting. It wasn't hard; they all tended to meet up naturally at breakfast anyway. Sometimes they had overnight guests who'd join them (or guests who arrived at a time when Earth's night inconveniently clashed with their own daytime), but most of the time breakfast was just the four of them.

"I think I've been preparing for this reunion the wrong way," Harold said. "Everyone keeps telling me it's supposed to be fun, but I haven't been thinking about it that way. And then this morning I realized -- I've looked a megastore employee in the eye and told him I wanted to buy every phone in the store. I've been stuck in a run-down motel during a stalled police investigation, and I've been roped into singing alien chants about exploding suns. I helped invent indoor yardstick-and-stress-ball golf, and I've impersonated a scout troop leader in front of government employees. I can handle a high school reunion."

"Here, here," Al said, tapping his spoon against the side of his cereal bowl for emphasis.

"So," Harold said. "I think we should have some fun."

*********************************

Nine days before the reunion, Harold went to the grocery store with Al. And Dave, and Pete, looming darkly behind their shoulders as they chatted about what kind of cheese would go best with the crackers they'd found a coupon for.

*********************************

Seven days before the reunion, Cate organized a movie outing. At least, it was Cate who was the official "adult" for the trip; Harold was pretty sure Sabri and PJ had actually planned it. There were invitations and everything, and Harold was impressed by the turnout. He and Al met Toby, Cate, and Sabri's class at the theater, where they were joined by Matthew, Betty, and Kim. Charlotte and Eliza arrived with Tina, Sam, and Matthew from DC. Trudy came with her mom, and then Harold's parents showed up with the pirate captain (remarkably, without the parrot). Harold half expected Bart to pull up outside with the martial arts team, but they got Nick and Steve instead.

They all gathered in a growing crowd inside the theater doors, and then fanned out to get tickets, find bathrooms, buy snacks, and arrange seats. Harold ended up between Al and Steve, who kept him distracted with commentary on everything from the theater acoustics to the actors' relative heights. Harold spent the movie laughing, and wondering why they didn't get together more often. It was everything a "reunion" should be.

*********************************

Five days before the reunion, it was a Tuesday. Laundry day. Somehow, they'd ended up with a whole extra load of painting smocks from some craft project Toby was working on with the kids, and Harold wanted to wash all the towels too. He was weighing how many times the red towel had been washed before (probably not very many) and the likelihood that it would turn the white towels pink (more than ten percent, he figured) against the inconvenience of having to do two loads of towels, when the doorbell rang.

"Who is it?" Harold asked Bob, who was supervising the sorting process from the top of the dryer. He wasn't really expecting an answer, but he also wasn't expecting Bob to leap down and run towards the door, followed by a brownish streak Harold assumed was Trebuchet at top speed. The doorbell rang again -- whoever it was, they were impatient, or weren't convinced that anyone was home. Harold tried to remember if the cars were in the garage or not.

Footsteps thundered down the stairs. "I've got it!" Toby yelled. Harold heard someone running up the basement stairs, and figured it was probably Cate. Al just transported directly into the laundry room.

"Hey," Al said. "Who's at the door?"

People ringing the doorbell didn't usually get such a big response, but they were waiting for a delivery. "Harold!" Cate yelled. "It's for you!"

"Okay!" Harold yelled back. It must not be the delivery -- he wondered who it could be.

As he followed Al into the hall, he heard a woman's voice say, "What a lovely porch." He couldn't see who it was behind the giant fruit basket they were holding.

"Hi there," he said. Fruit baskets were nothing to scoff at; they might be able to skip a visit to the grocery store.

"Harold Jones?" the voice asked.

"Yes, that's me," Harold said.

"Congratulations!" the voice said. "You've won our contest!"

Harold tried to remember entering a contest. He couldn't, but to be fair, he didn't think he would have not entered, if he'd been offered a chance at the fruit basket. "Really?" he said. Suddenly he was reminded of all the videos he'd ever seen of ridiculous-looking people accepting prizes on their front porches. Sure enough, they all looked ridiculous.

Harold was wearing his flannel pajama pants and Al's university sweatshirt (it was laundry day, everything else was dirty). Cate had a giant fuzzy moose slipper on one foot, and a bear on the other. Toby looked like he was loosing the battle with whatever painting project he'd been working on. Al was the most respectable-looking, which wasn't saying much. He still had his headphones in, and his hands were full of knitting (Al was trying to pick up a new hobby, and was working through a list of potential activities).

"Yes! Congratulations!" the voice said again. "Your name was selected at random to win this fruit basket, and you and your family will get your picture in the paper tomorrow!" The fruit basket was handed over, and the woman shook everyone's hand. Harold ignored the part of him that thought he really should remember the contests he entered, and quizzed the woman until he was confident she wasn't faking the contest to give them suspicious fruit. Then they all stood on the porch and she took their picture. Luckily, it was warm enough outside that they didn't freeze, although Harold suspected that Cate was the only one whose toes didn't go a little numb during the process.

*********************************

Two days before the reunion, with the January thaw firmly in place, Harold trooped out with everyone else to see the mysterious field. It hadn't been doing much lately, but the field seemed to be building up to opening a portal again, and it was a nice day. All three cats went along as well -- even Trebuchet, who seemed to think cold and snow were personal affronts to her sensibilities. She didn't walk; Damaris carried her, and they all stood around looking at a blank patch of ground in the middle of a thankfully still frozen swamp.

"What are we looking for?" Eliza asked. She hadn't been around for any of the mysterious field's previous activity. Harold thought she was probably going to be disappointed.

"Well, it's usually not --" Harold cut himself off as the air hummed. Everyone stared at the area they'd marked as "portal friendly." The humming got louder, then quieter. There was a quick flash of light, and something appeared on the snow. Al laughed.

"What is it?" Eliza asked, leaning in to get a better look.

Dave bent down, picked up whatever it was, and quickly stepped back outside the boundary line. "It looks like a catnip mouse," he said. Trebuchet meowed loudly.

"I think someone misses our new friend," Al said.

Damaris rearranged the cat so he could take the toy from Dave. Trebuchet took it happily enough, but showed no inclination to move from her comfy perch. Damaris said, "He's going to have to do better than that, I guess."

Chapter 30: (In which the reunion begins.)

"You realize, after all this, it could turn out to be completely anticlimactic, right?" Harold glanced sideways at Al before reapplying himself to the mess his tie had somehow become. "Also, why do I have to wear a tie?"

"Because the kids made it for you," Al said. "Besides, I'm wearing mine."

"Yeah, but yours is totally cool," Harold told him.

"Yours is cool too."

"Al, mine is pink. It's a color that can be described in many ways, but 'cool' is not one of them." Harold fussed with the knot some more. "There," he declared. "I'm ready."

"Me too," Al said. Secretly, Harold agreed that both ties were cool. They were covered with a swirling pattern that disguised the detailed (alien) writing and the tiny (but surprisingly realistic) drawings depicting, as the kids said, Harold and Al's "greatest hits." So far Harold had found cats, doorways, a spaceship, and an Armada. He'd also added "teach Harold to reach alien languages" to Al's list of potential hobbies. No one would tell him what the tie said, but it made Tina laugh.

"Do you have your emergency beacon?" Harold asked.

"Emergency beacon, check," Al said. "Is your phone on?"

Harold checked his phone's display. "On and fully charged," he confirmed. "Have you heard from Rob yet?"

Al nodded. "All four of them are already at the hotel; he said everything looks good. Oh, he said to skip the shrimp. What is it with shrimp, anyway?"

"I have no idea," Harold said. "I don't even like shrimp."

"I still feel like we're forgetting something." Al looked around as if something might leap out and identify itself as the forgotten item. "We have our ties, and our shoes, and our phones…"

"Keys," Harold said. "We still have to find the keys."

They'd started the key search earlier in the day -- the Armada had four sets of keys. One of them was off-planet with Ilia and Janar, and one of them had been missing ever since the move. That should have left two sets that could be used to actually drive the vehicle. They could usually be found either in the Armada, tossed somewhere in the kitchen, or (occasionally) on the hooks that had been set up by the front door and utility room door into the garage. None of those places had revealed keys. The rest of the house had been put on search duty while Harold and Al got ready.

"I could probably get it started without them," Al offered.

"Found them!" Toby yelled, from somewhere downstairs. They met in the front hall.

"Where were they?" Harold asked.

Toby held out a set of keys completely covered in glitter. "They were in the tub of glitter in the craft room," Toby said. Harold wasn't sure what was more strange: that the keys had been in a tub of glitter, or that Toby had looked there for them.

"Thanks," Al said, taking the keys gingerly and shaking them. Glitter sprinkled to the floor. "Okay," he added. He shook the keys more vigorously.

"You can drive," Harold said. They exchanged good-byes and good lucks with everyone, and (finally) headed out.

*********************************

Despite having several perfectly good hotels and even a convention center right in town, the high school reunion planning committee had arranged for the reunion to be held nearly an hour away. It was one of those things Harold had never understood about planning committees. Luckily, they didn't get lost, although Nick and Steve (and then Charlotte, and then Pete) called to check on them.

The hotel itself was huge. Dave waved to them as they walked in, and Harold thought he saw Pete using his phone to snap their picture. Signs directed them to the main ballroom.

"Welcome to the class of '97's eleventh annual reunion!" A cheerful couple were manning the name tag table just outside the ballroom doors. Harold didn't recognize either of them -- despite their close proximity to large numbers of nametags, neither of them was wearing one. Maybe they were hotel employees?

"Is it still Harold Jones?" the woman asked, dashing his hopes. Unless the hotel had provided photos to its employees, she was someone from his class. He scanned the table and piles of nametags.

"Probably," Harold said. "It might be under Jones-Zabela, or just Zabela."

"Do I get a name tag too?" Al asked. "I'm not part of the class."

"Did you RSVP?" the man asked. Harold thought they might have been in an English class together.

"I think so," Al said. "Check Al Baxter. Or Al Zabela."

"Or Jones-Zabela," Harold suggested helpfully, since his own tag had finally been located. The two people working the table didn't bat an eye at their mishmash of last names -- Harold guessed that it probably wasn't even all that unusual, in the current day and age.

Once they were inside the ballroom, Harold was surprised to see how many people were there. Apparently the "just keep sending invitations until they finally give in" method worked on more than just him.

"Harold!" A burly man who looked like he should be playing football shook Harold's hand vigorously. He wasn't wearing a nametag. "It's good to see you!"

"Hi!" Harold said, hoping enthusiasm would make up for a lack of name. "How are you?"

"Good, I'm good," the man answered. "What are you up to these days, anyway?"

"I work from home," Harold said. "What about you?"

"I'm in sales," the man told him. "If you ever need to upgrade your home insurance, let me know, okay?"

"Do you offer package deals?" Al asked, looking surprisingly interested. "We have a couple vehicles, too."

"I'm not sure the Armada counts," Harold said. "Is it even under our names?"

"How would Ilia buy insurance for it?" Al wanted to know. "Can we insure things that don't belong to us?" he asked the man, who just looked confused.

Harold didn't wait for him to answer. "Someone must have insurance on it," he said. "I think you have to just to drive in this state."

"Would they have told her that when she bought it?"

"Maybe Trudy knows -- we could call her and ask." Harold felt confident that even if Trudy didn't know, she could find out.

"Or we could just check the glove compartment. That's where the insurance stuff for the car is, right?"

It was actually a little surprising that with everything that had happened in the past few years, getting pulled over by the police wasn't a more common occurrence. And that was definitely a good thing, since Harold wasn't sure he'd ever even looked in the Armada's glove compartment. "Then we'd have to go outside again, and everyone would want to know why." And Pete would probably take more pictures of them.

"You're right." Al turned back to the man, who looked more confused than ever. "Maybe we should just take your card."

"Um. Okay," the man said. "Let me know, and… enjoy the party, I guess."

"Thanks," Harold said brightly.

As they walked away, Al said, "Do you know, I think that's the first time anyone's ever tried to sell me insurance."

"I never would have guessed," Harold told him. "Refreshments?"

"Sure," Al said. "I don't think this business card is as useful as a pen, though."

Harold tried to think of how to explain that not all high school reunions were like the ones in the movies. The problem was that it really was sort of like a movie, complete with '80s power ballads from the DJ in the corner. Apparently an eleventh reunion didn't rate a live band, or music that came from the same decade the class had actually graduated from.

Chapter 31: (In which the reunion begins to get interesting.)

"Are you sure you actually went to this school?" After the fifth person said hello and Harold didn't recognize them (and still didn't recognize three of them, even after he'd read their nametags), Harold was beginning to wonder the same thing.

"I did cross country," he said. "We ran a lot. And the coach had a lot of strict rules about grades, so we studied a lot too. Besides, it's been eleven years -- how many people do you remember from high school?"

"Our classes are a lot smaller," Al said. "This is a lot more people than I was expecting. But you've met most of my tertiary school class -- Tina was in my year, and Kaloyan." Al ticked people off on his fingers as he spoke. "Tom, Suzy, Nick and Steve. Janar, actually -- he's a year younger than Ilia."

"Harold!" Another voice called his name, and Harold actually recognized it.

"Sarah?" he said, turning around. Sure enough, a woman working her way through the crowd at the refreshment table waved. To Al, he said, "Sarah was the captain of the girls' cross country team. We both swore we'd never come to one of these things."

"I can't believe she's here," Harold said. "I can't believe I'm here, either. I can't believe you're here. Have I thanked you yet for coming?"

"I wouldn't have missed it," Al said sincerely. "Hi Sarah." He reached around Harold to shake the woman's hand. "I'm Al."

"Hi," Sarah said. She looked Al up and down. Then she made a show of looking behind the two of them, and all around. "You don't look like drug smugglers," she said. "No bling, for one thing."

"What?"

"Hey, that's what I heard from Julie," Sarah said. "That's why I'm here, actually -- all the chatter the two of you. I've been out of the country for the past few years, and when I got back… Did you know you have your own forum on the class blog?"

Harold rolled his eyes. "You must be kidding. I'm still in denial that we even have a class blog. Whose idea was that, anyway? Is that where you heard I was smuggling drugs?"

"Well, you did bring your own bodyguards to a high school reunion," Sarah said. "It looks a little suspicious."

"They're not our bodyguards," Al said. "They work for the FBI."

Judging by the way Sarah's eyes widened, Al's statement hadn't helped. "Are they trailing you?" she asked, suddenly talking in a whisper. "Should I have not said anything? Do you need to get out of here?"

Harold laughed. "Look," he said. "We're not running drugs. We're not under investigation. Everything's fine."

"Are you FBI agents, then? I heard that one too."

"But you thought the drug smuggling was more likely?" Harold felt a little insulted. "My sister's a police officer!"

"It got the most votes in the poll," Sarah said. "Something about your house blowing up? That seemed to tip the scales. Was it the terrorists, then? Are you guys like Keifer Sutherland?"

Harold had no idea what she was talking about. "Were there any other suggestions?" he asked. Just for curiosity's sake, of course. He was starting to regret encouraging all the rumors that had started up -- first when the Armada appeared, then when he and Al had gone into hiding. He couldn't quite imagine what he could have done to stop them, but he could have refrained from adding to them.

"Well, some people seemed to think you were dead," Sarah said. "But obviously you're not. Oh, and one person said you'd gotten married and were running a day care center, but no one believed them."

"Why is everyone so interested in my life?" Harold asked.

"Oh, it's not just you," Sarah said. "We're interested in everyone. It's just that you seem to be the one no one knows much about. And your house blew up."

"We weren't in it," Al said. "There was never any real danger."

Harold could have argued with that statement, but he didn't think saying, "But we were standing right there in the backyard, until we were beamed to an alien ship," would make the conversation any easier to get through. "It's kind of complicated," he said instead.

Any response Sarah might have made was drowned out by clapping. Someone using a microphone said, "Good evening," and Harold looked towards the DJ. Julie McCabe was standing on a small platform. "Welcome, everyone," she said, waving out at the crowd. A couple people waved back, and Harold heard a few whistles. Julie started talking about how glad she was that everyone had come, and how important it was to keep in touch. Harold stopped listening and started wondering how much attention he'd attract by edging his way back to the food.

"Are you sure those bodyguards aren't with you?" Sarah whispered.

"Yeah," Harold said, still looking longingly at the little finger sandwiches. "Why?"

"Well, it looked like one of them was trying to get your attention," Sarah said. "Now he's gone."

"Really?" Harold nudged Al. "Can you see Rob and the guys?" he asked. "I'll check my phone."

"'Rob and the guys'?" Sarah repeated. "You call them by their first names?"

"I think it would be weird to call them by their last names," Harold said. "And I don't know their last names. There's one that I don't know his first name either, though."

"I think it's Matthew," Al said. "If you can believe that."

"No way," Harold said. "Are you kidding?" His phone was in some sleeping, power-saving mode, and he was waiting for it to wake up.

Al finished his survey of the ballroom. "I don't see any of them. And no, I'm pretty sure it's really Matthew. Maybe we could just call him Matt?"

"We could ask if we could use his middle name, I guess. Unless it was a name we already had. Or he hated it, or something." Harold's phone chirped at him. "Okay, we've got news." Al crowded next to him to see the display. "'Check Al's phone,'" Harold read. "Well, that's not very helpful."

Al was already pulling out his phone. "Voicemail from Toby," he said. After he listened for a minute, he said, "This could be a problem. According to Toby, the mysterious field portal? It's stuck."

"Open or closed?" Harold asked.

"Open," Al said. "They think something big might have come through."

Harold frowned. Part of his brain registered that Sarah was still standing there, and they were beginning to attract some attention from other people nearby, but he ignored it. "Big like bigger than the cat? Person big? House big? Army of monkeys big?"

"He just said big," Al told him. "And nothing really weird has come through up 'til now."

"If all of this is just to get that cat back where she belongs…" Harold trailed off, not willing to commit to any particular consequences.

"Hi!" A new voice called out over the microphone. "Can I use this for a minute? Thank you, very much. Yes, it's important. Hello," he said again.

"Who's that?" Sarah asked.

"You don't recognize him?" Harold said.

"The first thing I'd like to say is congratulations!" Harold looked back at the stage, half-expecting to see it piled with fruit baskets. "All of you are witnesses to an historic moment in scientific history!"

Uh-oh. That didn't sound good.

"After years of research, and months of preparation, and weeks of actual experiments, I've finally done it! I have come here today from an alternate dimension!" There was some rumbling in the crowd. Harold thought they were probably trying to decide if the man was A) crazy, B) part of the planned entertainment, or C) someone trying to pull off a practical joke. Harold was leaning towards visitor from an alternate dimension, but that was just him.

"Don't worry," the man said cheerily. "I don't mean anyone any harm. I'm here as part of a school project, to explore and learn new things. And, to expand the boundaries of science as we know it!" He finished with an extravagant wave. He really did seem excited, at least, and not too threatening.

Al leaned closer to Harold and said, "Does he look familiar to you?"

Harold gave him an incredulous look. "No one here looks familiar to me," he said. "Least of all him. Why? Do you know him?"

"I don't know," Al said. "There's something about him… I can't place it, though."

"What do you think we should do?" Harold asked.

"Do we have to do anything?" Al countered. "He seems to be doing fine on his own."

In fact, the man on the stage was setting up some kind of projector. It looked like an old-fashioned slide carousel. "I've prepared a quick presentation of my travels," the man said. "And then I'll be asking for some volunteers, if anyone would be willing to be interviewed, so I can discover some of the differences between this dimension and mine."

The first slide showed a familiar patch of ground. "This is what I used as the anchor point for my travel between dimensions," the man said. "If any of you live near this area, I apologize. You may have noticed a few small side effects in the last few weeks. Nothing permanent, I assure you. I wasn't sure exactly how far the effects would spread, so I chose an area that appeared to have no visible human habitation nearby. Just this first view of an alternate world was breathtaking. According to my calculations, I should have arrived in exactly the same relative location as I left in my own dimension, which would mean your climate is completely different than ours! It's very exciting."

The audience was getting more restless. More and more of them seemed to be leaning towards option A. Harold looked at Sarah. She was using her phone to take pictures of the man on stage. Harold turned to Al, who was muttering to himself. It sounded like he was running through a list of names and places, trying to figure out why the man looked familiar.

Harold looked at the ceiling, willing to pray for patience, if that was what it took to get through the night. That was probably why he was the first one to notice when the dragon showed up.

Chapter 32: (In which there is a dragon, and assorted other oddities.)

"Al?" Harold said quietly, not taking his eyes off the dragon.

"Hm? What, did I miss something?" Al looked up at the man on stage, and then back at Harold.

"Look up," Harold said. Al looked up.

"Whoa." Al sounded impressed. "That's not something you see every day."

"Is that a dragon?" Harold asked.

"It looks like a dragon to me," Al said. "Let me send a picture of it home, so everyone else can see it." Harold wasn't sure about the wisdom of flashing a camera in the face of a large and potentially dangerous animal, but the dragon didn't seem to notice. In fact, it was just hovering there, right up at the ceiling. It didn't look angry.

"Do you think we should do something now?" Harold asked. It couldn't be a coincidence that they had an open portal, a man claiming to be from an alternate dimension, and a dragon, all in one evening. Really, Harold thought the dragon fell into the category of overkill -- if the universe wanted to send him a message (like "don't ever attend your high school reunion"), it could have just sent a note. Maybe a nice fruit basket.

"Like what?" Al asked. "I've never met a dragon before." They still seemed to be the only two people who'd caught on that the dragon was even there, which made Harold wonder.

"Hey, Sarah," Harold said. "Don't freak out, okay?"

"Is this when you tell me you're not smuggling drugs, but you are smuggling people?" Sarah asked.

"Hey," Al said. "They all have a legal right to be here. I'm not so sure about that, though." He pointed up to the ceiling.

Sarah looked up. Harold waited for her to say, "I don't see anything." He wasn't sure a shared hallucination that only he and Al could see would be better or worse than an actual dragon in the hotel, but he couldn't figure out why else no one would be pointing and shouting yet. Instead, Sarah said, "Huh. Is that a dragon?"

Okay, so either it was a shared hallucination that more than just he and Al could see, or there was an actual dragon in the hotel.

On stage, the man said, "In my dimension, this planet is called 'Earth,' and this country is called the United States of America. We have fifty states, and this one is named Alabama."

Al said, "That's where I recognize him from!" The dragon slowly drifted to the floor.

And there was that pointing and shouting Harold had been waiting for.

*********************************

"Everybody, stay calm!" Harold climbed up on a nearby table (making sure to blow out the decorative candle first -- the last thing they needed was a fire, on top of everything else) and used his "who broke this picture frame?" voice. "Put your phones away, and back up slowly to the sides of the room!" He tried to calculate when his life had turned into a bizarro-version of an animated children's movie. The dragon rolled its head to the left and right, scoping out the room, but didn't move from its new position in the middle of the ballroom floor.

Surprisingly, everyone did what Harold told them to do. Harold got down from the table, and he and Al circled around so they could approach the dragon from the front.

The man on the stage floundered for a minute, then said, "Harold? Harold Jones? Harold and Al?"

"Yes, that's us," Harold said.

"That's amazing," the man said. "There's a Harold and Al in my dimension too!"

Al said, "About that -- I think we are the Harold and Al from your dimension."

"Really? How did you get here?" The man looked intrigued. "Did you come through a dimensional portal? I made mine myself, you know."

"No, we live here," Al said. "I'm not sure you've actually switched dimensions. Did you meet your Harold and Al when they visited the school in the fall of 2007, during the week of silence? Were they on a road trip, to get back a spaceship?"

"Yes!" the man said. Al waited. "Oh," the man said. He looked disappointed.

"On the other hand, I think you may have come up with a fairly effective point-to-point matter transporter," Al said.

"And there's a dragon," Harold added

The man brightened considerably. "That's true," he said. "Are you sure I'm not in an alternate dimension? I didn't think mine had dragons."

Harold didn't think theirs was supposed to either. "What's the probability that we're actually in an alternate dimension?" he asked Al.

Al thought about it. "Well, all our stuff is here," he said.

"Those weren't our spoons," Harold told him. It would also explain why he was having so much trouble recognizing people he was supposed to know from high school.

"Really?" Al said. It seemed to be the word of the hour, so Harold tried it out for himself.

"Really," he said. "I'd never seen them before in my life."

Rob, Dave, Pete, and the agent whose name might be Matthew ran in the front doors and skidded to a stop when they saw the dragon. It was hard to miss. And it appeared to have gone to sleep, or at least, its eyes were closed.

"Whoa," Rob said, when he got close enough to Harold and Al to talk without shouting. "Is that a dragon?"

Harold wondered how many more times they were going to go through the same basic conversation. "Yes," he said. "It's a dragon. A big, red dragon. On the floor. At my high school reunion. Where did you guys go, anyway?"

"We had to check out the mysterious field," Rob said. "Didn't you get our message? Something came through the portal."

The man from Alabama waved. "That was me," he said. "Sorry about that."

"Who are you?" Rob asked.

Al jumped in. "He's from the school, in Alabama. He was trying to create a portal between dimensions, but he got one between the school and our conservation easement instead." To Harold, he added, "I'm reasonably confident we're still in the right dimension. I'd say 90, maybe 95% sure, even with the spoons thing."

That was good enough for Harold. "Okay," he said.

"But let me know if anything else seems out of place," Al tacked on.

Harold pointed at the dragon. "Dragon?"

"Right. Other than that," Al said.

"Did you say you came through the field?" Dave said. He was looking at the man from the school, whose name Harold still didn't know. He really hoped it wasn't Matthew.

"Yes, that was me. I'd been experimenting for weeks -- sending things through, bringing them back. I wanted to make sure it was safe enough for me to go through and still be able to get back."

"Oh. Well, I guess I should give this back to you, then," Dave said. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a ballpoint pen.

"My lucky pen!" The man took the pen excitedly. "Where did you find it?"

Dave looked sheepish. "I thought it was mine. It was out in the woods, and I couldn't find my pen, so I thought that one must be mine. Then I realized I'd left it in the car."

The man frowned. "This may sound like a strange question," he said. "But I'm also missing my cat. You wouldn't happen to have seen her, would you? I think she might have gone through the portal by accident, but I don't understand why she wouldn't have just come back through. I even sent through her favorite toy. That didn't come back either."

"Small cat? Calico? Goes by the name Trebuchet?" Harold asked, and the man nodded. "She's at our house," Harold told him. "She did like the mouse, but I think she's still mad at you. Something about a lack of proper signage?"

"I did tell her not to come in the lab," the man said. He sighed. "But I guess I should have expected that she would anyway."

A murmur ran through the crowd, and Harold realized the dragon had its eyes open again.

"Are you finished talking yet?" The dragon's mouth didn't move -- and how would a dragon's jaw form spoken words, even if it wanted to? -- but Harold heard the words nonetheless. He realized the rest of the reunion attendees had backed all the way up, leaving him, Al, the FBI agents, and the man from the mysterious field in the middle of the floor facing the dragon.

They all looked at each other. "Yes?" Al said tentatively.

The dragon sighed. "Good." It closed its eyes again.

Harold cleared his throat. "Um, I don't want to be rude or anything, but… what are you doing here?"

The dragon lifted its head, just slightly, off the floor. Its eyes were at the exact same height as Harold's, but they were a lot bigger. "You are Harold, right? This is your reunion?" Harold nodded. "I was invited. You invited me."

That got some serious crowd noise going. Harold looked at Al. "I don't even know any dragons," Harold whispered.

"I know," Al whispered back.

To the dragon, Harold said, "So, I invited you to come to my eleventh high school reunion? Why?" He didn't want to sound like he doubted the dragon's word, because the dragon was a lot bigger than him. At the same time, he did doubt the dragon's word, and it seemed like time was of the essence in figuring out what was going on. Someone was going to decide to call the police at any minute.

Rob must have had the same idea, because he sent the other three agents off to flash their badges at the audience.

"Of course you invited me," the dragon said, with a hint of irritability in its voice. Harold backed up a step. "Wait -- did you say eleventh reunion?"

"Yes, this is my eleventh," Harold said.

Sounding even more cranky, the dragon said, "Who celebrates their eleventh year out of high school? That doesn't even make any sense. In that case, I'm not in the right place at all!"

The dragon's tail twitched -- which, for something as big as the dragon, was a pretty big movement. "Whoa," Harold said. "Calm down. I'm sure we can figure this out."

If a dragon could raise its eyebrows, that's what it would be doing. It did stop twitching, though, which seemed good. "Well?"

"Okay, where are you supposed to be?" Harold asked. He was reminded of asking his sisters "when's the last time you remember having it?" when they were little. "Which reunion did you think you were at?"

"Are you a time traveler?" Al asked.

"What year is it?" the dragon asked.

"2009," Harold said.

"I don't think I should say anything else," the dragon said. It tucked its tail close and appeared to shrink slightly. "I'll just sit here and wait." It's eyes closed again, but it looked to Harold less like a relaxed "I'm ignoring you because I know I'm awesome" pose, and more like a "I'm ignoring you in hopes that maybe when I open my eyes again, this will all have been a bad dream."

"What should we do now?" Harold asked Al.

"I don't know," Al said. "Rob?"

"Well, I don't know," Rob said. "You guys are the ones with all the experience with stuff like this."

"Dragons and time travel are new for us," Harold said.

The man from Alabama sighed. "I wish I could come up with something as cool as time travel."

Chapter 33: (In which more guests arrive from the future, and one of them is there twice.)

The reunion attendees ended up sitting down along the walls. Some of them looked as if this was the most fun they'd ever had at a high school reunion. The FBI agents handed out bottled water and did their best to reassure everyone that yes, there was a dragon in the room, but no, nobody needed to worry; everything was fine.

Harold, Al, Rob, and the man who'd created the mysterious field were still watching the dragon. "What do you think it's waiting for?" Harold asked.

"I have no idea," Al said. The agent whose name they thought was Matthew offered him a bottle of water. "Thanks," Al told him. "Hey, your name is Matthew, right?"

"Actually, my first name is David, but the team already had a Dave. Matthew's my middle name. Why?"

Another good plan out the window. Harold met Al's questioning glance and shrugged philosophically. Oh well. They'd think of something else. "No reason," Al said. "Just checking."

"Actually, what's your name?" Harold asked the mysterious field man. "I don't think you ever said."

"I'm currently non-labeling," the man said. "I agreed to take part in a social sciences experiment at the school; for one year, we experience life without assigning ourselves any labels. Name, gender, age, occupation; that sort of thing." He paused, then added, "So far it's been a lot harder than I thought it would be."

"It must make filling out forms tough," Harold said.

"Can you still answer to a label generated by society?" Al wanted to know. "'Cause it's going to get hard to just say 'hey you' all the time. How are you handling that at the school?"

Even Rob looked interested as the man explained. Of course, there was only so long you could look at an unmoving dragon before the novelty wore off. "One of the goals of the experiment is to raise awareness of the labels we use that keep us from really looking at things and getting to know people. Using a superficial descriptor as a temporary or fluctuating label would run counter to that goal."

Harold made an effort to translate. "So, we shouldn't just call you 'green shirt'?"

"Well, I'd prefer it if you didn't," the man said. "But the other goal of the experiment is to see how much society is willing to adjust its expectations to accommodate the wishes of minority groups, so it's really up to you."

"Would you really call that green?" Rob asked. "I would have said more teal."

Al was still trying to pin down the specifics of the experiment. "What if we use a label that's not superficial? Can we call you something that's situation-appropriate and demonstrates an understanding of a non-surface element of your life?"

Now the man was starting to look confused, and Harold hid a grin. "I guess so," the man said.

The ringing of his phone distracted Harold from whatever name Al had come up with. He flipped it open quickly, not wanting to wake up the dragon (if it was actually sleeping, which he doubted) or attract a lot of attention from the other guests (since he'd told them to put their phones away). "Hello?" he said. He wished he'd remembered to check the caller ID.

"Gabe! How's the reunion going?"

It was Eliza. "Hey Eliza," he said. "The reunion is… it's fine."

"Are you bored yet?"

Harold weighed his sister's anger at missing out on seeing a dragon against the additional chaos her presence (and the presence of anyone else she decided to bring along) would cause. "I wouldn't say bored, exactly," he told her. "Why?"

Pete waved to catch his attention and took yet another picture with his phone. Harold considered the idea that Eliza might already know they had a dragon at the reunion, and added a third arm to his mental scale. It quickly outweighed the other options, especially when she said, "That's not what I heard."

"Well, it's pretty much like Mom and Dad described," Harold said, trying to sound casual. "Music, food, insurance deals, a dragon, someone from Alabama who came through the mysterious field portal -- all the usual reunion stuff."

"Gabe! A dragon? What color is it? Oh, and Charlotte wants to know how the portal guy ended up at the hotel."

"It's red," Harold told her. Then he covered the speaker with his hand and said, "Hey, non-labeler -- how come you came here after you traveled through the portal?"

"This is where the strongest energy readings were coming from in this area," the man said. "It just seemed like a good choice."

That didn't seem good, but then again, Harold didn't know what kind of energy readings he'd been scanning for. Most people in one place? Biggest concentration of peppy '80s music? "He says this is where the strongest energy readings were coming from," Harold repeated to Eliza.

"What does that mean? Anyway, can we come?"

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea," Harold said.

"Well, we're all right outside the hotel now," Eliza told him. "We might as well come in."

"What do you mean, 'all'?"

"Just me and Charlotte. And Cate, and Toby. And the cats."

"You have the cats with you? All three of them?"

"They wanted to come!"

Harold wanted to look back up at the ceiling to ask for more patience, but he was afraid he might see another dragon, so he just said, "Fine. Come on in. I'm not sure the hotel allows cats, though."

Charlotte's voice came on the line. "It probably doesn't allow dragons, either, but you've got one of those in there. I don't think they'll mind a few cats at this point."

"My sisters are coming," Harold announced to the group at large. "Along with the cats, and Cate and Toby."

All the lights dimmed to almost nothing, then returned to normal. Harold blinked. Two new people had appeared next to the dragon. "There you are!" one of them said. "We've been looking everywhere!"

Completely unnecessarily, Al said, "Those aren't your sisters."

*********************************

Charlotte and Eliza strode into the now silent room like the cavalry, if cavalry members all carried cats, instead of riding horses. Toby and Cate were right behind them, with Mama Tibbles walking confidently in between.

"Trebuchet!" The non-labeling portal traveler in a green shirt ran over to Eliza. "I missed you so much. I'm sorry I didn't label the portal; are you okay?" Eliza handed the cat over without comment, which Harold thought showed a lot of restraint.

Bob leapt out of Charlotte's arms and headed straight for the dragon. He put out a paw and patted the dragon's nose. It didn't open its eyes, but Harold heard a soft, "Hi, Bob." The other reunion guests, who'd quieted down for a while after the FBI made the rounds, were buzzing again. Pete was taking more pictures.

"Is this the eleventh?" Harold looked back towards the strangers next to the dragon. It was the young woman who'd spoken. "No wonder you won't talk about it," she said.

The boy with her started to laugh, then quickly covered his mouth and looked at Harold. "Sorry," he said.

Harold wasn't sure why he was being apologized to. "That's okay. It is sort of a disaster at this point. Are you the ones the dragon was waiting for?"

Al was studying them intently. "Who are you?" he asked.

The woman looked at the dragon, then the boy, then the floor. "I probably shouldn't say. We're really just here to pick up --" She cut herself off, and finished awkwardly with "-- the dragon."

Harold looked back and forth from Al to the woman, wondering what Al was seeing that he was missing. "Why you?" Al asked.

"Well, you always said I should own my choices," she said. The boy giggled.

"Sabri?" Al asked. The woman hesitated, then nodded. Al said, "Time travel, Sabri? Really? With a dragon and a minor?"

"The dragon was an accident," she said. "I didn't think he'd go out through the garage, and he ran into the project I was working on. I figured it was my responsibility to come after him, but I was already watching…" She trailed off and gestured at the boy, who was patting the dragon with one hand and Bob with the other. "Anyway, I didn't want to leave him alone, and everyone else was… doing other things, so he came along."

Harold thought that since Al had identified Sabri, it must be his turn to make a brilliant leap of deductive reasoning and figure out who the boy was. Unfortunately, he had no idea. They didn't know any really young kids. He obviously wasn't Kim, and unless Harold was completely wrong, he wasn't Seth either. It might only be a superficial label, but this boy wasn't Latino.

Since he couldn't make a brilliant deductive leap, Harold resorted to common sense. "Okay," he said. "Everyone who's here from the future, it's been nice to meet your future selves. I don't want to rush anyone, but we were sort of in the middle of something here. Unless there's anything you need to tell us…"

Future-Sabri shook her head. "Nope. Well… no. We're all set."

"Okay," Harold said again. It was a fairly useful way to hold his place in the conversation, while he figured out what to say next. "Do you think it might be time to go…"

"Back to the future?" Al finished. He'd walked right into that one.

"Yes," Sabri said firmly. "Definitely. We should go." She put one hand on the dragon and the other one on the boy's shoulder. "It was very nice to see all of you," she said formally. Harold wondered how she was going to trigger whatever time travel device she was using, with both hands occupied, but he'd underestimated Sabri's resourcefulness. Also, he hadn't ever looked at her shoes. She tapped one shoe on the laces of her other foot.

The lights dimmed again, then went out completely. When the lights came back, the dragon was still there. So were future Sabri and the boy. "Well," Sabri said. "This could be a problem."

Chapter 34: (In which everyone figures out who's there twice.)

"This is where I come in, I guess."

A man with spiky hair stepped out of the crowd, followed by two people with suits that practically shouted "I'm a bodyguard!" The boy looked up from where he'd sat down on the floor. "Me!" he shouted happily.

"Hiya Harry," the man said. "Good to see you again. You too, Sabri." He walked right past a stunned Cate and Toby, all the way to the dragon. "Hey buddy," he said quietly, scratching the dragon on the head.

"Mmm. Hi Harry. I was waiting. I remembered." The dragon was practically humming in delight.

"Well, you've got a funny sort of memory, don't you?" the man said. "I didn't remember -- I had to read about it in a letter." He looked at Sabri. "Did you miss me?"

"It's been a few years," Sabri said. "Did you get the tattoo? Did they flip out?"

For some reason that Harold didn't want to think about too closely, the man looked at him and Al before answering. "No," he said. "I didn't -- actually, you'll solve that problem for me."

"Do I get a tattoo?" Sabri asked, sounding intrigued.

"No," Al said, breaking in. "No tattoos. They'll get you banned from at least six planets I promise you'll want to visit someday."

"No," the man confirmed. "You don't. Just keep inventing -- I'm sure it'll come to you. Positive, in fact."

Even Harold was beginning to figure out what was going on, although it went another step stranger when the man waved to Rob. Rob turned to Harold and said, "Don't you recognize him?"

Harold raised his eyebrows. "I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to yet," he said.

"But he's your classmate," Rob said. "He's the one who's doing the science research, who had his own security." Rob looked to the rest of his team for backup, and they nodded.

The older Harry nodded too. "Right. I did tell you that, and it's true, except for the part about me being in the class of 1997. I knew I was going to need to be here, and it seemed like a good way to get in without seeming suspicious." He looked around the room, taking in the guests, and the dragon, and the assorted extras. "I didn't realize it would be quite so… freeform. I could have just walked in the front door."

Charlotte, who was still trying to accept the fact that she knew aliens from other planets, and that things like spaceships and personal transporters were real, started to look a little faint. Harold gave her his half-full bottle of water. "Small sips," he told her. "It's okay; they'll be leaving soon."

"Who are they?" Charlotte asked.

Harold took a deep breath. "Well, this is just a guess, but at some point in the future, I'll invite that dragon to come to one of my high school reunions. He'll accidentally wind up in the past -- the present, for us -- where Sabri and the younger version of Harry will come back to find him. For some reason, the return button doesn't work, so someone's written a letter to a Harry even more in the future -- presumably, after they know what went wrong -- so that he can come back and send everybody back where they belong."

"Wow," Toby said.

"So what went wrong?" Eliza wanted to know.

The older Harry frowned. "That's where the explanation gets a little circular," he said. "According to the letter, it's my fault the return switch didn't work. I would've thought "hey, why don't I just not do anything, and things would work fine," but since I had already been here, I had to be here again. Does that make any sense?"

"Not really," Al said. "But it's time travel, so we don't expect a lot of clarity."

"If it helps, if I wasn't here, there's a good chance that the return switch would have worked the wrong way. That's why I brought this." He pulled a small object out of his pocket. Harold got the feeling they were all supposed to gasp and be impressed, but he couldn't bring himself to act impressed by something that looked like a glowstick.

"A glowstick?" Rob asked, and Harold breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn't have to be the one to say it.

"What? No, not a glowstick." The older Harry looked exasperated. The younger Harry had stopped any pretence of paying attention, and was climbing up the dragon's back. "It's a -- well, it's sort of a time detangler."

Nobody bothered to say "A time what?" They just waited for the explanation.

"It's like this," the older Harry said, gesturing with both hands. "This whole area has gotten all… tangled up. Your emergency beacons --" He pointed at Harold and Al. "-- are reacting badly with your portal technology --" He switched to pointing at the man from Alabama. "It does actually move you in time, too, did you know that?" The man from Alabama looked shocked. "It's not a parallel dimension, and it's just a few minutes difference, but hey, congratulations."

"Thanks!" the man said.

"Anyway, it's really messing things up. Once you toss in the four of us all showing up here, and me being here twice… Well, it's tangled. Try to send any kind of signal back out of this time and space, and it's like trying to tune in a radio station through a lot of static. Sometimes you can hear the station you want, sometimes you just get static, and sometimes you get the weird classical station that's not supposed to be there at all."

Harold thought it was somewhat comforting that there would still be radio stations in the future. Still, he was wondering when the actual explanation would start. Harold respected his own lack of time travel knowledge enough to just ignore all the parts that seemed confusing, so he'd only been half-listening, but he was pretty sure no actual situation-resolving information had been shared. "Where does the glowstick come in?" he asked.

"It's not a glowstick," Harry said. "It's a time detangler." Personally, Harold didn't think "time detangler" sounded any more dignified than "glowstick." It made him think of hair care products. "It also produces a huge amount of energy. The energy signature draws everyone here, then I can use it to smooth things out so everyone can get back home again."

It sounded simple; Harold wondered if there was a catch somewhere that he was missing. No one else seemed worried, so he didn't ask. Instead, everyone started talking at once, mostly about completely random things, like if there was any more bottled water. The man from Alabama wanted more information about the time travel machine he'd accidentally invented, and there was a lot of watch-checking going on. Suddenly, the younger Harry pointed at the dragon and said, "I think he's starting to get hungry."

About half the group looked nervous and stepped back several paces. Harold resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The dragon didn't look hungry to him; if anything, it looked like it might have stayed up past its bedtime, and was about to fall asleep. Also, Harold had seen Sabri whisper something in young Harry's ear right before he'd made his announcement.

"Okay," Sabri said. "I think it's time to get this show on the road. How close can we get to the time we left?"

"Running a little late?" the older Harry asked. "That sounds familiar."

"Only a little," Sabri insisted.

"It should be less than five minutes," Harry said. "You've got all the time you need on this end, though, so hug away."

Sabri made the rounds, starting with the FBI agents (who looked surprised), and continuing on to Cate, Toby, Charlotte, and Eliza (who mostly looked charmed). Then she hugged Al, who told her, "I'm so proud of you." Then it was Harold's turn, and -- finally -- the older Harry's.

"Be safe," Sabri told him. "And thanks for coming to rescue us."

The younger Harry didn't seem nearly as keen on hugging -- he hugged his older self (and Harold really wanted to know how the two of them had met before), and then Sabri and the dragon, which seemed a little silly, since they were all going to the same place. The older Harry must have been watching Harold, because he said, "Don't worry; I get over it. You two do a great job."

Harold smiled, and nodded, and wondered if he'd just been told that he was going to end up a parent.

Chapter 35: (In which there is misuse of the fire alarm system.)

After the hugging was over, there was an awkward moment when everyone stood around looking at each other, and no one seemed sure what to do next. "Here's the thing," the older Harry said, hesitating a little. "The detangler works really well, but it's not subtle."

"Compared with the dragon?" Al asked.

"Even then," the older Harry said. "It's really not subtle. Flashing lights, loud noises, fairly obvious ripples in the fabric of time -- I was hoping you wouldn't mind if I do something not 100%…"

"Legal?"

"Moral?"

"Possible, according to the laws of physics as we know them?"

"I'd like to set off the fire alarm," the older Harry said.

Harold looked at Rob. Rob looked at the dragon. Then he shrugged. "Sure," he said. "It'll save time on explanations, at least."

The fire alarm started wailing, and Harold thought the FBI agents were very convincing as they encouraged everyone to leave the building in a calm and orderly manner. Once the ballroom was emptied out, Rob said, "We probably only have a few minutes before the fire department shows up and starts searching the hotel."

"This won't take long," the older Harry said. "Ready?" he asked Sabri. She nodded.

"We're ready," she said.

The older Harry did… something, with the glowstick-y time detangler. He was right -- it wasn't subtle. The "fairly obvious ripples" were actually a giant glowing hole that opened up in the middle of the room, complete with rushing wind and a set of noises that made the old modem dial-up sounds seem cute and perky. Sabri looked at the older Harry in disbelief. "I thought that thing was supposed to smooth things out!" she shouted over the noise.

"It's working," he yelled back. "Give it another minute!"

Sure enough, the wind died down, and the noises shifted to -- Harold could hardly believe it -- birdsong. "Birds?" he questioned.

The older Harry made a "hey, what can you do?" gesture. "It's supposed to be soothing, I think," he said. "I didn't design it; I just use it."

When the image cleared and revealed a very familiar-looking porch, Sabri looked relieved. She took the younger Harry's hand, and he grabbed the dragon's ear-like appendage, and the three of them walked through together. Luckily, the portal stayed open long enough for them to turn around and wave once they got there. Then it dispersed, with more sparkling lights and wind.

"Wow," Toby said. Harold was pretty sure he'd said that once already.

"I should be going too," the Harry that was left said, suddenly looking younger and more shy. But he hugged Harold and Al first, and said quietly, "I'll be home soon, I promise."

Al caught his shoulder as he turned away, and said, "We know. We'll see you then, okay?"

Harold repeated Sabri's "be safe," and the remaining Harry disappeared with a pop.

"What, no crazy light show and singing birds this time?" Eliza asked.

"He probably has a ship," Al said. "It's probably a lot easier to build time travel technology into a spaceship than to fit it into something you carry in your pocket. Plus, you could carry a lot more supplies that way."

Charlotte, who was (as ever) the practical one, said, "I hear sirens. Are we staying, or going?"

Harold looked around. He saw his family by birth, and his family by choice, and the friends he was proud to know, in a room filled with bright-colored balloons and banners proclaiming the greatness of the class of '97. He knew who he'd prefer to be having a reunion with. "I vote 'go'," he said.

Chapter 36: (In which there's a party at Harold and Al's house.)

They invited everybody they thought might still be awake, and a few they didn't think would mind being woken up if it was for a party. Harold made bag after bag of microwave popcorn, and they put the fruit basket to good use. It was like the housewarming party, except that Harold didn't spend any of it sitting in a walk-in closet with the cat.

In the living room, he could hear Charlotte and Eliza re-enacting the reunion for their parents and Nick and Steve, complete with sound effects and voice impersonations. Toby was helping Pete print out his pictures in the room that most definitely was not an office. Harold had just sat down at the counter with Al when Cate came running up the basement stairs.

"Guys, I think I've found a way to fix our telemarketer problem!" she said excitedly. "Call the house number."

Harold wasn't sure why Cate had been working on preventing telemarketing calls late at night, in the middle of a party, but he wasn't going to judge. He dialed the house phone number on his cell phone and waited for the answering machine to pick up.

"Hi there!" he heard Cate say in a cheery voice. "You've reached the NIMBY phone line. This line is used for outgoing calls only. Please do not leave a message, as it will not be returned. To speak to a resident of the house, please hang up and dial their individual phone number. Thank you!"

Cate waited impatiently for Al to call as well. "I like it," Al said, after listening to the message.

"NIMBY?" Harold asked.

"I got it from the letter," Cate said. "It just showed up in the mail downstairs."

She held out a folded piece of paper. It looked like letterhead, with the words "NIMBY Center" emblazoned at the top. Underneath, in large handwritten print, it said, "Home safe. Thanks for everything. Love, Harry (11th reunion; the older one)."

Al patted the letter. "I like it," he said again. "It has a ring to it."

Harold nodded. "It feels like home."