It was in the 4th valley, or perhaps it was the 5th, that Jeffrie Phillips actually found something solid and concrete and pertinent to his mission. He kept staring at that tree in front of the rock wall: something wasn’t quite right here. A cave! he intuited with his enhancing Pan-Z mind conditioning. But hidden — someone or something is doing the hiding and he’s going to find out. This is where he will camp. Too bad about Sammie, he laments again, not knowing her ill fate. He was luckier than Tickie in that way. One ambulance turned into two as the night went on. Jeffrie heard them, but the sirens blended in so well with the distant whale songs that he couldn’t tell one from the other. Ah yes, those whales, confirming he was a lala. Tessa Doom came to him in a dream that night, a dream so real that it could be Earth, like New York but in the past.
At 2:01 am, in the middle of the dream, the portal opened.
“Grandpa?!”
