<meta name="LineWrap" content="true"><TITLE>SR_Bk1 0021</TITLE><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0022.txt">Next (Page 22)</A><BR> is that why you chose me to talk to?"<P><P>She breathed heavily and stared at him and was thinking deep.<P><P>"Keepy," Burchard said, "if this is true, the whole time travel and everything, it's like what I always wanted. If it's not true, then you're just misguided and everything will be fine. But the worst thing would be if you don't take me with you, and I flash out of existence knowing I could have been a time traveller."<P><P>"I'll be honest. I was looking for someone like you, maybe subconsciously... but someone smart, someone who could help me, potentially. Help me get past 4:22."<P><P>"Keepy, if you can take me back in time, let's do it. Let's just do it right now. I'm ready, willing, and able. Let's just do it."<P><P>"Okay," Keepy said, and she touched Burchard's hand, and in an instant it was 40 years earlier.<P><P>--------------------------<P>CHAPTER 7<P>--------------------------<P><P>Sleap sat at her new desk figuring out her new signature. At the top of the sheet of paper she had done a number of her old "Sleap Drassy" signatures, and now at the bottom she was trying to figure out how to make "Sleap Jankels" look good. She couldn't. No matter how she tried it, it never even looked remotely correct.<P><P>She'd just gotten married to Jean two weeks earlier, and had returned from their dizzying honeymoon that morning. She thought of Jean, who was taking a shower, as she kept writing "Sleap Jankels" over and over again. What was she doing with her life? It didn't matter, she thought. At this point, you have to go along with it for a few years, you made the choice, you said yes, you have to give it a chance. The doubts seemed perfectly natural to her. They didn't bother her.<P><P>But Jean Jankels--there was something about him, a side of himself he revealed on the honeymoon, that...<P><P>BASH! BASH! BASH!<P><P>Sleap looked up, shocked. Someone was bashing the door down. She started to get up, but stopped, thinking better of it. <P><P>BASH! BASH!<P><P>Her mind was racing.<P><P>KERASH!<P><P>The door was down. She should run to Jean, warn him. Did he still have the gun from the honeymoon? She didn't know.<P><P>She heard a man yelling orders. The door next to her was almost closed--she gently pushed it shut.<P><P>She could hear the voices distinctly now.<P><P>"The Helloid scanner's goin' nuts!" a husky voice roared.<P><P>"In there!" a man with a deep voice yelled.<P><P>"That's it!" a woman said. "It's in there!"<P><P>She heard the bathroom door being kicked open.<P><P>"It's in the shower! Babel, the Exorsault better be ready!" the husky voice yelled.<P><P>"It is!" the woman yelled back.<P><P>"Here goes!" the guy with the deep voice said.<P><P>Then a sound came to Sleap ears which blew her mind apart. A shrieking wail, that made fingernails on a blackboard seem like a church bell. It was pure pain, pure horror.<P><P>The shriek continued but it was joined by a weird sort of deep bubbling noise, eerie and pronounced. She couldn't believe that at some level she found these sounds enjoyable.<P><P>After a few moments of these noises, which seemed really like forever, there was a dull pop, followed by the sound of liquid splattering on the bathroom floor.<P><P>"One less demon," the husky voice said.<P><P>What had happened? Was Jean being attacked by a monster and these people saved him? It seemed the logical explanation. Slowly, Sleap opened the door and peered out. An Asian man covered in equipment and reddish gooey stuff looked over at her.<P><P>"Miss?" he said in his deep voice.<P><P>Sleap stared at him, unable to move or speak.<P><P>"What a mess!" she heard the husky voice say from the bathroom.<P><P>"Better this one mess than the multitudes this guy would've slaughtered," the woman said.<P><P>"You said it," the husky voice mumbled.<P><P>The Asian man looked from his cohorts, back to Sleap, then back to his cohorts again.<P><P>"Uh, guys.<BR><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0022.txt">Next (Page 22)</A>