Kendra queried, “Has it always been like this?”
As we gazed at the enormous, cylindrical creature with no head but a giant mouth weave in and out of sand that covered historic-looking buildings, I ventured a guess, “I sincerely doubt it! No parent would pay good money to send their kid to a school where the chances of them getting eaten by a monster were extremely high!”
“So, what do we do?” Osra wondered as she eyed the black-and-white striped beast lurking across the campus. Everyone glanced at each other for answers, but we all had visages that were somehow both blank and terrified. I took a moment to mull it over, and then…
“No, Grandma! I don’t mind taking summer classes!” a young woman spoke to a holographic lady who got projected out of a device on her wrist. “I’ll be fine! My teachers are nice, and the school is safe! Super close to everything and seriously secure!” She finally beheld what was happening on the university’s grounds, and her skin paled. “I gotta go!”
Her grandmother tried peeking at the transpiration occurring behind her and queried, “What’s going on?”
The young woman somewhat nervously informed her grandma, “Nothing! I just gotta call my professor and see if class is canceled! Bye! Love ya!” She hung up prior to having her grandmother obtain a view of anything significant.
“Excuse us, miss! Could you tell us what building the Hand of Starcone is in?” Kamali petitioned the young woman.
“Starcone? That’s in the science building! You know, the one that thing is munching on…” The young woman ogled at it in disgust as it chewed on the corner of the rooftop. She shuddered, but before she walked away, she caught sight of Kala’s outfit and gushed, “That dress is so cute! Where’d you get it?”
Kala faltered in her response. I could tell she didn’t want to divulge any modern stores she may have purchased it from, but she wasn’t certain about anything plausible still in existence in this era. Eventually, she uncertainly articulated, “Uh… a thrift shop…”
Thankfully, it appeared that this type of venue still was prevalent in the future. “Ooh! I love thrifting! In fact, I’m gonna go do it now! Might as well, can’t do much else…” She glanced back at the sandworm and frowned preceding her departure.
“Oh my god! We’re going into a science building from a millennium ahead of us!” Aleck’s eyes glistened with joy at the prospect.
“If we can get into it without that sandworm consuming us!” Jasper remarked with much less enthusiasm than Aleck. “Although, if it consumes inanimate material, maybe it won’t find humans so appealing!”
Ismeray sorrowfully expressed, “Too bad there’s not a way for us to go in there! Welp, I suppose we’re stuck here! That sucks! The soda in our generation was way better!”
I argued with that gloomy prediction, “No! We’re not doomed! There’s always a method of achieving the results you want as long as you don’t give up! …Also, our soda is terrible! It’s overloaded with sugar and will cause all kinds of health problems if you keep drinking it!”
“You sound like Ms. Wymund!” Yurei noted. “Just recently, she was lecturing me a bunch about that, and all I had was one liter of root beer!”
“A liter?” I didn’t want to admit it, but I thought Imelda had a point in this instance. I shook off that notion though, and then I canvassed the congregation, “Is there a back entrance we can sneak into?”
Ellie asserted, “Probably! But, if that sandworm decided to devour us, then, well, we’ll see firsthand what Lilith’s doing in the afterlife!”
I chided her for that quip, “Don’t even joke about that! If we die, the whole universe will too! Damon will have free reign to evoke the apocalypse, so we can’t let that occur! Besides, if our death dooming all of humanity wasn’t awful enough, I’d hate to picture the first person I’d meet in the afterlife is that she-demon!”
“What if we only sent one person in?” Natalia suggested.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to run into her!” I rebuked that concept.
Natalia clarified, “No, I meant we could have someone act as bait while the rest of us go inside.”
Dennis scoffed at that idea, “Who’d volunteer for that suicide mission?” He contemplated that for a second, and then a lightbulb went off in his head. “Wait, aren’t some of you from Heaven?”
“Yeah, but our spirits could perish, and it’s difficult to determine what will and won’t have that effect,” Kendra explained. “Even if it won’t destroy us, it’s not like we want to go through that pain!”
“So, dying isn’t painless and all my favorite singers are liars?” Ismeray pondered.
Eamon ardently waved his hand to indicate his willingness to complete this task, and my ancestors as well as I groaned recalling his history with stunts like this. Eamon became indignant and brought up, “I don’t see anyone else showing interest in participating in this endeavor!”
Nobody budged, so Osra begrudgingly relented, “Go ahead, Eamon!”
“Time to redeem myself!” Eamon declared. He marched close to the sandworm and boldly verbalized, “Foul beast, you shall not defeat me!” The sandworm reared itself up to strike, and preceding Eamon getting to flee, the sandworm snatched him up in his mandible!
“Oh no! Is he dead?” I gasped. “Well, dead-er…”
Kamali responded, “Maybe, but maybe not. I’m choosing to believe the latter while we come up with Plan B.”
Yurei proposed, “Maybe we can do another spell!”
Without any debate on the proposition, Yurei and Ismeray darted towards it! Everyone had misgivings about this move. I had seen them take down a gigantic dog, but the sandworm was much bigger than that. It also measured more breadth than that team of monkeys, so none of us were confident their magic possessed enough potency to pull off this feat. Sam ran after them and called out, “Girls, stop!”
“What are you doing, Sam?” Aleck frantically posed to him.
“I’m a hall monitor, but the job of protecting students doesn’t end at the halls!” Sam ardently vocalized.
Aleck disputed that claim, “I think it does!”
Ismeray and Yurei took a stance in front of the sandworm, and we all prayed that we were wrong about our hunch! They emitted some sort of protective energy, but unfortunately, it didn’t seem to deter the sandworm! It barreled toward them, and I didn’t want to watch, but I had to view what occurred. It got within inches of them, however, it didn’t get to engulf them because Sam pushed them out of harm’s path! It slid between Sam and where the girls landed, and what transpired next astonished us all…
“What are you doing, Sam?” Ellie repeated Aleck’s line as Sam climbed onto its back by its neck. Well, I don’t know if you could dub it a true neck, but it was a location where a neck would be if it had one.
“I don’t know!’ Sam shouted as he held on for dear life. The sandworm circled around and set its intentions for Ismeray and Yurei, so Sam scolded it, “Oh, no you don’t!” He jerked its “neck” as if he had control over its movements, and to our shock, he forced it to travel in another direction! “Oh, shit! I can steer it!”
Jasper instructed him, “Drive it away from the science building!”
Sam rolled his eyes at that. “Duh!”
He compelled it to go away from our intended destination, and the rest of us sped to the steps of the science building. Preceding our entrance, I lamentably expressed, “Ugh! We lost Eamon!” Everyone appeared sad about that until…
“Fear not, lads and lasses! I have reemerged!” Eamon took a heroic position while doused in an unidentifiable, clear liquid.
“Eamon! It spit you out!” I ran over to give him a hug.
Before I embraced him, Eamon notified me, “Actually, I escaped the beast from a different orifice!” I changed my mind about hugging him, and I, along with everyone else, backed away from him.
Osra winced at that image, and then she directed us, “Let’s hurry and find this Starcone! Eamon, you’re not allowed to touch anything but the bad guys!’ Eamon pouted slightly as we entered into the building.
I was anticipating going into an empty space, but to my bewilderment, several students were crouched low in hiding! One of them catechized, “Is it safe to go out now?”
Glancing out the window, I watched Sam struggle to rein the sandworm in as it fought against his grip, and I determined, “I wouldn’t!”
“Can you guys tell us where Starcone is?” Ellie petitioned the students.
“Should we be giving our private information like that?” a female student surveyed her peers. “I mean, they just came in off the streets…”
Aleck reassured them, “It’s okay- we’re high school teachers! I’m Mister Thales, Biology Teacher!”
A male surmised, “Ah, you must be related to Professor Thales! She’s upstairs in Room One Thirty Seven.”
This made Aleck snicker, and when no one else laughed, Aleck explained, “That number shows up all over the place in physics! For example, it’s synonymous with the fine structure constant, which…”
“Hey, Mister Thales, can we go talk to your relative already? It’s a bit of an emergency, remember?” Kamali gestured towards the scene outside.
“Right!” Aleck’s face fell when he recalled the dilemma at hand. “I’ll just say one more thing real quick…” Kamali and Jasper each grabbed his arm and dragged him away, but Aleck continued to spew facts about that number, “It’s also important in the velocity of light, the quantum theory, electromagnetism…”
As we arrived at our objective location, Aleck rubbed his arms and griped, “I didn’t wanna leave them with incomplete messaging on the subject!”
Jasper relayed to Aleck, “Sonny, they were paying that much attention to you! They were more concerned with the humungous monster occupying their campus!” Aleck nonverbally and begrudgingly acknowledged the logic in that statement.
“Alright, everybody remember why we’re here! We’ve gotta get the Hand of Starcone! Don’t get distracted by any cool, futuristic gadgets or possible descendents…” I gave Aleck a hard stare, and he sullenly folded his arms, which I presumed to signify an unwilling acquiescence. “Okay, here we go!” I wasn’t certain what to anticipate upon our entrance into the classroom, but what I couldn’t have predicted to walk in on was…
“What happens if I mix these two chemicals together?” Damon wondered as he readied himself to pour the contents of one beaker into another.
A lady with dark hair and safety goggles over eyes that seemed very familiar to me dashed over and cried out, “Doc, no!” Damon dripped a small bit in anyways, and as she snatched the vessel away from him, it emitted a small explosion! Her face had a little soot, and some of her hair froze mid-tousle, but otherwise, she was fine. “Thank goodness that was only a tiny sample or else that could’ve killed us both!”
Leaning in the doorway with a broad grin, I mischievously addressed Damon, “Yeah, Doc! You wouldn’t wanna hurt anyone, would you?”
“Of course not!” Damon obviously fibbed. “I’m here to learn…”
“Well, since you’re in such an academic mood, then you wouldn’t mind if we did some research too?” I challenged him.
Damon plastered on a false smile and spoke through gritted teeth, “Not at all!”
Professor Thales clearly found this interaction strange, but she appeared not to want to question it out of a polite inclination not to pry. “How can I help you?”
“Where can we find Starcone?” Ellie inquired.
“You’re looking at it!” Professor Thales replied as she indicated to what was behind her.
We were so caught up in hassling Damon that we didn’t get a chance to observe our surroundings. Now that we did, I felt foolish for not noticing a colossal, helicopter-like machine behind us! It had all sorts of buttons and screens on it, and I found it rather funny that discovering the object’s whereabouts didn’t actually fill us in with any knowledge about its function! We all gawked at it in amazement, but none of us really knew where to go from here. How were we supposed to complete our quest without any insight on how to use the commodity? No one wanted to abandon our pretense of being engaged pupils, but no one had a clue on what to say that wouldn’t rouse suspicion. We stayed quiet without an inkling of what action to take until…
Kala denoted, “This thing doesn’t have any hands!”
“You want its hand?” Professor Thales reacted in startlement. I grimaced. It looked as though we had blown it with her, and I began to get enveloped in gloom until inspiration suddenly struck me…
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