Note: This story will alternate seamlessly between Quinn's POV to Rembrandt's POV.
Part 11
So I told them. I had fought it for so long, it felt good to let it out. I waited for something, anything, an explosion, a cry of anguish that their own sliders were lost to them. What I got was the last thing I expected.
"It's OK, Quinn," Wade said, as she put her hand on my shoulder. What was going on?
"We had suspected for a while." the Professor said, a slightly more depressed look on his face. "Our Quinn and Rembrandt wanted to give up sliding. They decided to stay on the last world because it looked enough like home to satisfy them. When we found you, we thought at first that you might be our sliders, but little clues afterwards proved our suspicions that you weren't."
"So you guys aren't mad at us for deceiving you, for acting like we were your Quinn and Rembrandt?"
Wade spoke up. "You are our Quinn and Rembrandt. As much as they were." Quinn smiled at the look Wade gave him.
Arturo then added, "So what of your Wade and Arturo? Did they decide to stay behind, too?"
I couldn't tell them the truth. It must have shown on my face, but they believed it anyway. "Yeah. Yeah, they did."
"Do you want to tell Mr. Brown or..." the older man started.
"He's got so much catching up to do with Malcolm," Quinn responded quickly, "I don't think he's up to processing this yet. Let me tell him."
"Very well," the Professor chuckled.
"Now, tell us about this Malcolm boy," Wade said, as my two new companions and I walked back into the mansion. I then proceeded to explain...
Malcolm was explaining so fast that I could hardly keep up with him. He told of the difficult struggle of his people to survive on that primitive and desolate world. The Kromaggs came, like they always seemed to and Malcolm told that part of the story with more than a little tremble of fear in his voice. The next part, though, made me sit up and listen.
"We didn't think there would be a way that we could escape the Maggs, until these new guys came along."
"New guys?" I asked. Ways to defeat the Kromaggs had always piqued my interest.
"Yeah, they said they had beaten the Maggs on their own world and were just starting to fight them on others. They looked like they were winning the war, too. When they found out we weren't supposed to be on that world they offered to transport each of us to the world of our choice. I asked them if they could track down the world you were on and they said they could, so here I am."
"Wow," I said, genuinely impressed. "That's one hell of a fish story."
"It's all true, Remmy. They even gave me this." I took the little device from Malcolm and couldn't believe my eyes. "They said they knew you guys. When they found out I wanted to go find you they sent me with this." The little device displayed a picture of Wade, safe and sound and free from that terrible Kromagg breeder camp.
I was speechless. Mr. Barnes must have seen that and asked Malcolm, "Son, didn't you say something about being tired?" Malcolm nodded. "Would you like for me to show you your room?" When the young boy nodded again, Theodosius and Malcolm moved out of the somewhat-wrecked living room into the main hallway. At that point, Quinn, Wade and the Professor entered.
"What's that you've got there?" Wade asked.
I quickly stuck the device in my pocket and blurted, "Nothing, nothing at all. What were you guys looking at out there?"
"We'll have to discuss that when Mr. Barnes comes back," the Professor commented. Oh, man, I knew this setup was too good to be true.
After days of careful analysis, myself, Mr. Barnes and the Professor concluded that this world was completely unstable and unsuitable for further sliding, on or off. Which meant we were stuck here. The question now was: was that so bad?
Wade and I had a long talk the night that Malcolm arrived. We decided that even though we weren't who the other believed we were when we first met, it didn't mean that there couldn't be something there. The weeks and the months seemed to fly by after that. I expected to feel trapped here, since, essentially, we were. But it was more of a feeling like homecoming. Rembrandt and Malcolm were becoming even closer, seeming each day more like father and son. And Wade and I were getting closer, too, though in a very different way. We were even talking about settling down here, having kids. It was the relationship I'd always hoped we'd have. Everything just seemed to fall into place. Everyone was happy. Well, maybe not everyone. The Professor was acting very strangely, like he was disconnected from the world. Still, paradise remained idyllic and neither Rembrandt nor I could remember when we'd been happier, not even on Earth Prime.
It was on a perfect day like this that the bombshell dropped. The world stopped spinning, time came crashing back into our lives. All because of one man.
Professor Maximilian Arturo stood and spoke before his audience, Quinn and Wade, now officially a couple, Rembrandt and Malcolm and the enigmatic Theodosius Barnes. "Ladies and gentleman, I have an announcement to make. This world, everything you see, everything you feel is fake. This world is a lie!" The stunned expression on everyone's face was exactly the reaction the Professor was looking for.
End Chapter 11.
