REAL WORLD: PART THREE Homeward Bound ... - Whoa is (Not)

Tasel smiled and ruffled his hair.
Luke slotted the discs one by one into the converter and got his age up to nine.
“Least they were kind to you,” Tasel observed. “Most of these gangs usually like to get their victims down to
one year, which is the limit. They do it for kicks, mostly. It’s always fun to see some originally big burly guy
crawling around helplessly. Where’re you going now”
“Aquintos,” Luke said.
“What’re you going to do there”
Luke shrugged.
“It’s no fun up North,” Tasel said, sitting down. “Everything’s new and boring and explored. Whereas the
southwest is mostly untrodden, just a few small towns here and there – uncivilised, but that’s what’s fun. If
you go far enough, you might even find Babel.”
“What’s that”
“A tower,” Tasel replied. “Apparently it’s very, very, very tall, and no one’s seen it for hundreds of years. If
they have, they never told anyone. Some people say it doesn’t exist, but… who knows”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nexus has this to say about Babel:
Babel is tall. Very tall. You just won’t believe just how highly, loftily, mind-bogglingly tall it is.
Babel was built by The I 4 and several of his followers, and was an attempt to get out of the
Nexus in a vertical way, since all evidence seemed to point towards the fact that the Nexus went
on to infinity horizontally.
During the construction of what would become its topmost floor, The I mysteriously vanished,
never to be seen again. This was, however, not before he purportedly caused the
disappearance of the Mastragath race by using the tower as a broadcasting point for the thirteen
o’clock wind. 5
“Wanna try and find Babel” Tasel asked.
“Sure!”
Tasel grinned. “We can stop by Reskun and pick Zeran up; ae’ll definitely want to come. The two of us tried
to look for it several standard years ago, but we only got as far as Arden.”
“What about Jemma” Luke asked, getting up.
“Nah, she’s not the exploring kind. She’ll be fine. She’s two hundred and thirty; she can take care of
herself. She’s used to Zeran leaving her every now and then.”
Luke picked his lightsaber up from where it had been kicked, and returned it to its place in his utility belt,
hanging loose around his nine-year-old waist. He adjusted the belt to fit better, then picked up his bag and
slung it over his shoulder.
“We’ll cut through the woods after Reskun, pass Joe’s, follow the road west through Ilmayen, stop by Vare
and Ifla…” Tasel went on talking, as together they walked back to Reskun.
4 The I was supposedly the first person ever to step foot into the Nexus, though time being what it is there, this
claim is therefore subjective. Not much is known about The I, except that he liked to sing and his name was Elvis.
5 Both Babel and The I were conceptualized by my brother.