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

Several metres away, the train came to land and its five passengers got out. “What am I going to tell them if
they ask where I’ve been, dude” Ted asked.
Marty shrugged. “Anything. If you mess it up, we’ll just wipe their memory and you can start over…”
“Just tell them the truth,” Doc interrupted. “There’s no point in making it any more complicated than
necessary.”
Neo walked over and pointed down the road. “There’s a police car over there,” he said. “I think they saw us
coming, because it looks like one of the policemen has fainted…”
“Cool!” Verne yelled, and was about to run over and take a look when Doc held him back.
“Don’t go there, Verne. Hopefully they’ll think we were just a hallucination and forget about us.”
“Which one’s the house” Marty asked Ted.
The other teen gestured towards the one on the left, and they started walking. “That one,” he said, then fell
silent again, wondering if his father had been called up, and if so, just how he was going to tell him that he’d
just spent the past two days in a universe where he was fictional. It would probably be more believable to
say that the little – or big – green men had zapped him up into their spaceship and told him that the Earth
was about to be bulldozed to make way for an interstellar bypass.
Neo came up to the teen’s side as the group entered the driveway. “They’ll believe you,” he said quietly.
“You’ve got three witnesses, excluding Verne. And if they don’t believe you… they’ll have to explain me.”
Neo paused. “And yeah… we’ve always got that memory-wiping thing.”
Ted slowed to a stop in front of the locked door and hesitated, then rang the doorbell. Neo stepped back to
join the other four.
Seven seconds passed, then the sound of the door being hurriedly unlocked reached their ears. It opened,
and a sleep-derived man stood in the doorway, staring in stunned astonishment at his missing son.
“Dad… “ the teen began, when his father came to his senses, loudly.
“Where the h*** have you been, young man”
“Uh…”
From inside the house, Bill Preston ran to the doorway, and his face broke into a grin as he saw his best
friend. “TED!” he yelled. “Dude, where’d you go …Did the aliens get you That would’ve been most
triumphant…”
Captain Logan looked faintly miffed at having his conversation interrupted.
Ted just grinned. “Nah, it wasn’t the aliens, dude. Some totally bodacious dude from another universe had
this most egregious machine that could transport things from other dimensions, so he grabbed me over
and…”
“Ted, this is serious!” his father cut in. “There are police out there now, searching for y…”
“It’s true,” Neo said suddenly.
For the first time, Ted’s father and Bill noticed the other four humans standing in the driveway.
It didn’t take very long for Neo to realise that there were suddenly a whole lot of people – inclusive of Lewis,
who had come to see what all the commotion was about – staring at him.
Uncomfortable, Neo turned his gaze to the ground and started being fascinated with the gravel. It made
interesting swooshy sounds when he moved his shoe in it. They didn’t have gravel in his world.