[At a Hotel in Wensleydale, mid-July]

“Good afternoon, can I help you?” said the man at the reception desk.

“Yes, I have a room booked for the night in the name of Michaels,” said Melissa.

“So… exactly how many high school fantasies are we fulfilling right now?” Paul asks as I tune my bass guitar, and I can’t help but smirk as I can already guess how the impending argument will go.

“Bit inappropriate to ask about MY high school fantasies, but I’ll let it slide,” Stuart replies, and I sense my opportunity to chip in.

“If it helps, Paul, I’m wondering the same thing,” I say, chuckling at the mock-offended look on my mentor’s face.

“…Okay, yes, every music student dreams of playing in a garage band in an actual garage,” Stuart concedes.

“Some members of the family, maybe, might be sad to see me go. But the family as a unit? As some sort of community?” I shook my head. “It’s like I’ve knocked over a beehive or something.”

Her dark eyes were thoughtful, weighing my words. “Maybe it needed to be knocked over.”

I would like to share one of the rabbit holes my mind goes down:

See, I was watching this documentary on the formation of the moon, and for some reason I started thinking "what if we had ended up with 2 moons, instead of 1?"

Now there is a bunch of physics that would be in play in this situation, but since I don't understand it, I am going to skip it, and just talk about the effect on humans (assuming we evolved on this alternate Earth).

©2025 SammyC

CHAPTER 83
The settling-in period went far too quickly, as did our boy’s enrolment in the International School. That second part was actually eased by my wife’s presentation of some old photos of the place, because it had actually been her former father-in-law’s school in the ‘East of Suez’ days.

I had to force myself away from worry, because the school were offering a minibus service for pupils, recognising how those needing an ‘international’ school were rather likely to be ‘international’ in their own right, and possibly rather busy. So we made his packed lunch each evening, left it with a cold drink in the fridge for him, and one of us walked him down to that familiar bus stop, as Maz and I worked swap shifts until we were sure he could handle coming home to an empty house.

He was a Big Boy, but always our baby.

I left Earth in 2437, and it has been a long time, but I have no idea how long. Tens of thousands of the days here, but I don’t know how long the days are. However long ago that was, I arrived as a blob of slime.

Two lonely high school students walk parallel paths.  One, impoverished and losing hope, yearns desperately to become their authentic self. The other, wealthy and the victim of unfathomable manipulation, resists changing to something they never wanted to be. Can these two, meeting amidst the clatter and chatter of the school cafeteria, find connection? Can they embrace their fractured selves and each other and then become whole? Or will a duplicitous villainess, in the guise of a loving mother, destroy their fragile hope and leave them living a miserable, incomplete existence?

“It’s so nice to meet you. Jeff and Greg have been talking all about you.”