Back in Hexiciah’s workshop, Ghoulia was trying to repair the broken teleporter. She had put on a welder’s mask and gloves and was blasting the gears with a blowtorch. She checked out the control panel and caught a glance of herself in the reflection. Even in her gear, she was a glamorous ghoul.
She switched on the machine and it hummed. It began to whirr louder and louder and the gears started turning faster and faster. Ghoulia groaned in alarm.
BOOM!
The machine exploded in a cloud of smoke. Ghoulia was covered in soot.
She took off her gloves and her helmet, frustrated. It was back to the drawing board. She was going to have to do a lot more research in the library about Hexiciah.
Not long after she’d left the workshop, a thin blue flicker began to spark from the lens. The portal was opening. It flashed and disappeared and then flashed again.
BOOM!
The vortex opened with an explosion and out tumbled Sparky.
His hair was standing straight up and was now streaked in white from shock. His lab coat was in tatters. He looked disoriented.
“What happened?”
He noticed that the workshop was dirtier, older. He picked up Ghoulia’s iCoffin, which she’d left on a bench. He began investigating it, and the phone’s camera turned on and snapped a picture of him. The flash momentarily blinded him and he dropped it. When he recovered, he picked up the camera and was startled to see his own goofy face. “Fascinating!”
A monkey skeleton popped out of the clock and wheezed.
Sparky began pacing back and forth. “Aha!” he said, looking down at the phone in his hands. “This is the future, of course! I must not squander this opportunity. Who knows what futuristic technologies I can access. Perhaps this is where I will find the missing ingredient I need to finally create life!”
He pocketed the iCoffin and looked around the workshop for more modern gadgets. His eyes fell on Ghoulia’s laptop and he picked it up. It was time to explore the future!
Ghoulia had picked up a smoothie while she was out doing research, and she was slurping it when she walked back into the workshop. It took her a moment to realize that everything was missing. Her iCoffin was gone. Her laptop was gone. Hexiciah’s Recharge Chamber was missing. There were all kinds of missing tools and gadgets. Worst of all, the entire portal lens was gone. Ghoulia couldn’t believe it. What had happened? Her smoothie splattered to the floor.
Tick, tick, tick. The clock on the door was moving. The time lock clicked, slammed, and closed. She would have to wait before she could open the door again. Ghoulia was trapped!