Remote Out of Control
Episode 3 of: The Familiar Place
Dearest Reader,
The following short story is part of a serialization. You may enjoy it on its own, but it’s recommended you start at the beginning with John Doe. You may find the story a bit confusing and will definitely miss out on some of the jokes if you don’t.
Here’s a quick link.
Thank you for reading my stories. Your interactions with my stories help them get seen by more people, but they also, I’m not ashamed to say, make me feel good. So if you enjoy this one, or any of them really, please consider leaving a comment, liking the post, or subscribing.
Now please enjoy,
Remote Out of Control.
-Rafe
Ronald Bertrum had a problem.
On any given day, Ronald was just another working man from Texas. He had a nice house and a steady job that helped him pay for that house, two beautiful children named Madison and Michael, both of whom he loved very much, and a wife. She was also beautiful, and he loved her too, he guessed—how much often depended on how long it had been since she last verbally routed him for a bout of gullible dumbassery.
According to Ron, it had been eleven days, six hours, and twenty-three minutes since their last incident of his ass being dumb. Were you to ask Michelle, Ron’s wife, however, she’d tell you it had been about five days and she let that one slide. As she said to her friend Maureen at the hair salon following the forgiven incident, “Sometimes you gotta know when to fold ‘em.”
Now that touches on what might be Ronald’s biggest problem, but it’s not the one we’ve come here to discuss today. That one’s a missing piece of television equipment.
“Honey?” Ron yelled, from the floor of the living room, cheek pressed against the carpet under the coffee table. “You seen the dang smart remote?”
Now, I feel it’s important you know that Ron tried—and he would tell you he really, really tried—to find that dang remote before he brought Michelle into the situation. He checked all the normal spots one would disappear to and plenty more.
He looked on and under the coffee table, checked the end tables and inside their drawers and everywhere in, on, and under their big ol’ beautiful mahogany entertainment center. He opened up the armrests on the couch to take a peek inside the storage containers normally reserved to hold an open beer, then took the lid off the ottoman and scooped everything out before flipping it over to see if the remote had somehow gotten stuck between one of the casters. He knew it was a long shot, but he had to be sure, especially if he was gonna call in the boss. He had already searched between the couch cushions and hadn't found it there—it was the first place he looked—but he doubled back and this time even went so far as to remove ‘em all, thinking it was plenty possible it wriggled its way underneath ‘em, or god-forbid, somehow slipped down into that disgusting pit of springs that lived underneath ‘em at each end.
Since there was still no sign of the dang smart remote even after all that, he felt he had no other choice than to summon the finder of things. The professional.
The missus.
“Check the armrests, Ron,” she yelled from their bedroom across the house.
“I already did. The ottoman too!”
“Then it probably fell under the coffee table.”
He sighed, then twisted up into a seated position. “I promise you,” he said, rubbing some carpet burn that was starting to form on his cheek. “It ain’t.”
“Then it must be under the couch cushions, babe.”
Ron shook his head and scoffed, then muttered to himself. “This woman must think I’m an idiot,” he said. “It ain’t there either Mickey. I checked.”
“Okay Ron. But did you check, check? Or did you . . . check.”
“Dagnabbit, Michelle, I checked! I took each of ‘em off and laid ‘em on the floor. I even stuck my hand down the pit!” He looked down at his greasy-feeling hand and grimaced.
“That’s disgusting, Ron. Don’t even think of touchin’ me, or that remote, with that hand till you wash it. You hear me?”
“Fine!” he yelled, mumbling a slew of obscenities under his breath as he aggressively wiped his hand down the thigh of his blue jeans. He looked at it, then brought it to his nose, hesitantly took a sniff, and bobbed his head in half-acceptance. “Okay Mickey. My hand’s clean and you can breathe easy once again. Now where’s the damn remote!?”
“I swear to god, Ron,” Michelle said, as she stomped her way towards the living room. Ron could feel the resentment in the way his wife’s footsteps shook the floor. “If I come in there and find it under the damn couch cushions . . .”
“I checked under the damn couch cushions, Michelle!” he yelled, then looked around the room in regret, wishing he hadn’t put them back on when he was done. “G’dammit,” he said, pulling off his red, number 8 hat and slapping it against his hip. “The one time I clean up after myself. I swear, man . . .”
He scratched the side of his balding head, then tried his best to scan the room one last time before his wife showed up. “C’mon, Ron, think! Just think. It’s only a dang remote control. Where could it’ve got off to?”
—
John was on his hands and knees, crawling past a bar full of stools in Edwick’s Tavern, every one occupied by the semi-permanent, usual drinking crowd. If any of them noticed he was hunting a demon, they sure didn’t seem to care.
It was a hideous little thing; an odd, rectangular-shaped demon with a mouth full of soft, gray teeth. It had a single eye in the center of its face that flashed a bright red and made it particularly easy to find in the shadows where it lurked. It didn’t appear all that dangerous, but according to the tenants it was suspect zero in a string of recently occurring criminal annoyances.
Ssssissss said that it muted one of Ahhe’s announcements for the entire thirty-seventh floor.
Willem Vandenburg, who John believed to be the only other human in The Familiar Place, reported it had been repeatedly extinguishing and relighting all of the lanterns on the 42nd floor for nearly twenty rotations. He actually quite enjoyed the effect, as did many others, but it had apparently been wreaking havoc on the Augenslimes and since they were some of his best regulars, something had to be done about it.
Meagle the OwlGruff claimed it had locked him out of his room. He then swore John to secrecy and told him it was surely an undercover operative from his home realm, sent by grand-operator Svaith to ensure he never completed his inflammatory tell-all.
John recorded each of the complaints and promised to go after it as soon as he had time, citing more pressing matters. That is, until Mrs. Defeney showed up at the front desk in tears with clumps of dead flowers gripped in her hands.
“It killed them, John,” she had said, in shaky bursts because the words kept getting stuck in the back of her throat. She held up the wilted plants. “My prized Thesseofilian Lilies. They should have stayed in bloom for no less than ten thousand rotations, but it ruined them, ruined them all. It was as if their lives had passed by in a single moment, right before my very eyes.”
John responded with a sigh and a nod, then swore to put down everything he was doing and make it his immediate priority. He had always been a sucker for a crying old lady—or whatever the spindly, fifty-three eyed, Mrs. Defeney was. Her tears made for a lot of wet, and John found himself surprisingly worried about her hydration levels. He laid his hand on the side of one of her six shoulders, careful not to poke the eyes around the joint, asked if she wanted, or could even drink, a bottle of water, then assured her he would make quick work of this flower murderer and went to fetch his demon-catching net—which was really just a wide-mouthed, one-handed fishing net that had slipped through a rift some rotations back.
Now, upstairs, that same net kept getting caught on the giant feet of the patrons in Edwick’s Tavern. One of them groaned as John clipped the back of her leg with it for the third time in as many minutes.
He sighed in response. “It’s hiding right behind your legs, Thwakk. If you could just, you know . . . move for a couple seconds? Then I could—”
“Me sorry, John,” she interrupted, in her deep, lumbering voice, without bothering to turn and face him. She tilted her mug back and finished off whatever grog the ten-foot tall, blue-skinned ogres drank, then belched one for the record books and slid the mug back across the bar to signal Edwick she was ready for a refill. “Rules is rules.”
John groaned, trying to remain focused on the little demon weaving back and forth behind Thawkk’s tree trunks turned legs. Rules are rules. He abhorred that statement. It caused him to grit and grind his teeth. How many times had he heard it since starting work in this place? A thousand at least. He had tried asking what it meant, but time after time, they always responded in exactly the same way. “Me sorry, John. Rules is rules.” It was absolutely infuriating.
If he could just shove Thwakk out of the way for a second, the demon would be as good as got, but . . . he was pretty damn sure that would never happen. It would be like trying to pick up and move a car with his bare hands. Possibly worse.
Uncle Frederick, in an attempt to break a ten-year-old John from his dangerous habit of Jaywalking, had once taught him the rule of axles. “He who has the most axles—wins. You see that big trailer truck over there? That has five, John. That car over there has two. You’ve got none. Get it?”
He got it. Cars were dangerous; but, he was fairly certain he could drive a midsize family sedan into Thwakk’s hip at a hundred miles an hour and all it would do is leave her with a nasty bruise and the sudden desire to grind his bones into dust. The sedan would be totaled.
“Well . . . in his defense,” John mumbled to himself, as he tried to figure out a different way to catch the little demon hiding behind Thwakk’s legs, “Frederick probably never met any ogres.”
He moved around one side of Thwakk’s stool and pushed the net along the ground towards the demon’s back. Maybe, if he could get in front of it, he could reach forward and force it back into the net? At least now he could see it clearly, turning back and forth between him and the net as if trying to appraise the change in its situation.
It stopped and stared directly at John. It opened its mouth and bent backwards, appearing to deliver a devious, silent cackle. When it straightened, its one glassy eye flashed a bright red and the sounds of the tavern grew louder. The normally boisterous ruckus evolved into a near deafening cacophony of barks and bangs. The rise in volume compounded as patrons began to shout at the people nearest them, blaming them for the sudden shift, as if the ear-splitting noises were somehow everyone’s fault but their own. Only John recognized the demonic mechanism at work, and it yet again fell on him to put an end to it.
“Get over here,” he said, lunging forward with his left hand. The demon scampered backwards away from John’s grip, stopping just before getting snagged in the net. It opened its mouth to laugh at him again, as if it were mocking John’s failure to capture it. It hadn’t expected John to grin back.
It shut its mouth and began to look around itself in confusion, trying to figure out what it missed, but it was too late. The trap had already been sprung.
While the demon was laughing, John cocked and twisted his right wrist, causing the net to move ever-so-slightly closer to the overconfident demon, then fall over. Its metal rim clacked against the wooden floor of the tavern like a gunshot in the increased volume of the room, causing John’s ears to start ringing—a small price to pay to clean the hotel of another piece of mischievous little demon shit.
“Hubris cometh before the fall,” he whispered, extending the index finger of his left hand to point at the dastardly fiend turned immobile prisoner. “Not so funny now that you’re trapped, huh?”
John carefully slid around Thwakk’s stool, making sure to keep the net pressed firmly against the floor on all sides, then grabbed the little netted trouble-maker with his left hand. It squirmed in his grip, but John held fast. He studied the symbols on its teeth until he found one with a minus sign, then pressed it in with his thumb. Its eye blinked red as the volume in the tavern returned to its normal, just loud, levels. John looked around conspiratorially as it continued to blink, holding the tooth down for a precious extra couple of seconds. A gift for Edwick’s ears.
“I got it!” he said when he was done, jumping up from under the bar to show-off the demon caught in his net.
Groans filled the room. From one end of the tavern to the other, patrons cursed and slapped their hands against the bar or their knees. Were they upset at his success? It certainly appeared that way. Of all the guests, only Thwakk stood against the wave of disappointment, shooting up from her stool with a loud cheer—only, it wasn’t for John.
“YES! ALL HAIL THWAKK!”
She raised a clenched fist in the air, with all the pride of one who had just claimed an enemy throne by defeating their king in single combat, then pointed around the room at specific ogres, one by one. “You pay. And you pay. And you pay. You pay too. And you pay . . . ,” she said, continuing for several seconds before finally turning her yellow, gap-toothed smile on John. “Edwick! Pour drink for me and one for puny John.” She threw a thumb over her shoulder. “Friends is will be paying.”
“You too cocky, Thwakk," said a cyclops ogre who always sat at the end of the bar nearest the entrance. “He not dumped it yet. Still could lose before then.”
“Or could trip,” said another in the back of the room. This one was throwing full sized axes at a magic, self-repairing target that stood in front of the back wall. A target that was in the shape of a human, and just so happened to be the exact height and build of a certain hotel general manager. It wouldn’t have been that bad, if not for the screams, or surprisingly authentic death rattles, that the target let out whenever someone landed a hit.
The ogre scratched his chin with the back of his throwing axe, then shrugged. “Staircase only 2 to 1 for good reason.”
Was that a joke? It was no secret that John hated the stairs. Everyone knew it. He had nearly fallen down them at least a dozen times, and he tended to spend the following rotations shaken up, telling anyone close enough to listen how he almost died. Weirdly, no one ever seemed too surprised to hear that.
Come to think of it though, it wasn’t usually the stairs fault. It was mostly Snuggles. She was always following him around and had a nasty habit of running underfoot at the most inopportune times. He occasionally joked around with people and said if he didn’t know better, he’d say the cat was trying to kill him.
His thoughts were interrupted when Edwick cleared his throat and it sounded like a big-rig struggling to shift gears. Everyone responded instantly. Games stopped being played. Mugs that were halfway lifted to mouths retreated, returning to spots on the bar or tables where they could rest in silent stillness. The only noise left for John’s ears were the sounds of stools squeaking under the movements of clearly uncomfortable ogres all intently focused on Edwick—who was in return, staring daggers at the axe-throwing ogre in the back.
“Shingg,” he said, elongating the wide-eyed ogre’s name with a deep voice filled with rumbling bass. John had never heard Edwick speak with such a particularly rough timbre before. It unsettled him to his very core. “Must I remind you of the Rules?”
Shingg’s head jerked up and back so suddenly it seemed as if Edwick’s words somehow carried a physical weight and struck him in the face. He turned from Edwick to John, his eyes filled with shock, as if having forgotten that the demon-catcher was still physically standing in the room.
“I sorry!” Shingg said, lifting his axe to Edwick and bowing his head in apology. When he rose, he awkwardly half-smiled, half-grimaced at the bartender, then used his free hand to make a locking gesture at his lips. “Never happen again.”
Edwick growled his discontent, but nodded at the ogre. Then he smiled and turned his attention back to Thwakk, the bar erupting again to life as if having just been given written permission to do so.
“Let’s say I hold on to the old chap’s drink for now?” Ediwck asked, lifting Thwakk’s heavy mug and taking it to the tap for a refill. “At least until after he dumps the demonikin. Savvy?”
“Ohhh,” she said, tapping a yellow-nailed finger against the side of her forehead. “Smart Edwick.”
Edwick gave her a nod as he lowered her full mug back onto the bar. “Smashing,” he said, then gestured John over with his head.
“Edwick,” John started, “What just happ—”
“You best go and handle that while you have the chance, my friend,” Edwick said, interrupting him with a stern glance. “I have a terrible feeling this crowd is going to get quite rowdy again. And I expect it will happen very soon.”
There was something very strange about this entire exchange, but John couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Perhaps that was due to the still-wriggling demon in his grip. Or maybe it was just because everything was strange in this place. He badly wanted to pry, but then he heard the squishing sound of an axe sinking into flesh, followed by the stifled cry of a dying man whose voice sounded oddly similar. There would be plenty of other opportunities for him to discuss this with Edwick, somewhere else, far away from here. He nodded goodbye to the velvet-black bartender and wasted no time fleeing the tavern.
John carefully descended a single flight of unimpeded, feline-free stairs, and found himself quite relieved to be back in the relative safety of the lobby in one piece. He took a single moment for a breath then journeyed onward, hauling the demon through the room towards the ‘demon dump chute’ on the front wall. The moment he reached the front desk, one of the wooden knights engraved in its battle stepped back from his combat to turn facing out, lift his visor, and raise his sword in salute. John paused in surprise, unable to recall if he had ever seen them respond to his presence before. When he acknowledged the knight’s gesture with a nod of his own, it slammed its visor back down, raised its shield, and returned to the fight against the gruesome abominations.
“Huh,” John muttered, then took the last three steps to the dump chute. He had been fully intending to immediately rid the hotel of the demon as soon as he had access to the void, but just as he reached the chute, a pervasive thought halted him.
“Ahhe?” he called, summoning the hotel’s cerebral persona in its holo-human form.
“How may we assist you, John?”
“I’ve caught a bunch of these things now and I’m just wondering . . . what happens to them? You know, after I dump them in the chute?”
“That’s an excellent question John,” Ahhe said, as though truly impressed with the inquiry. “Our best guess posits a complete re-materialization and return to their realm, appropriate to the general spatial location of the object at the time of its initial slip. With some level of temporal delay, of course.”
“Oh,” John said, sounding pleased as he raised his eyebrows. “So it just goes back to where and when it was, just a little later? That’s cool. How come I can’t just jump out the chute then?”
“You can,” Ahhe said matter-of-factly. “However, we do not believe humans would survive their physical bodies being folded in upon themselves within the void of unidimensional space. Your organs would liquefy and cease to operate, and then upon your rematerialization, the resulting bloody fluid would likely gush out of your every orifice.”
John swallowed heavily as Ahhe stared at him, likely wondering if their answer was sufficient. They spoke up again before John could answer.
“Remember John, we exist only within The Familiar Place, and therefore cannot collect data to test for proof of any of your external quandaries.” They paused. “In other words, these are all just hypotheses. We have no idea what would happen.”
“Oh,” John said again, this time with a weary shake of his head and much less pep in his voice. “Awesome . . . thanks, Ahhe.”
“You are very welcome John,” Ahhe said, and then vanished.
John looked down at the little demon trying to wriggle its way out of the grip of his net and let the irony seep in. He was about to send it home, back to a place he wished he could at the very least visit, if not return to entirely. It didn’t want to go. He was about to return this creature to an existence of nonexistence, to take away the only control this remote had ever had over its own experience. Here he was, playing God to a demon, ready to banish it to the earthly hell from whence it came despite not having the necessary agency to do anything about the same host of problems he himself faced.
Was his decision to take up the mantle of this position solely an attempt to distract himself from the irreparable realities of his fate? Was he trying to grasp at straws of control in an otherwise chaotic and ungovernable universe? Is that what all humans did, regardless of their situation? Bask in the completion of a daily routine and try to create meaning in the temporary pursuit of that which is inevitably meaningless?
These thoughts and questions bore into the deepest recesses of John’s mind, trying to pry him awake to something important . . . until the demon bit down on the side of his index finger. In an instant, all of his philosophizing was gone, having immediately withdrawn in the face of a present issue—physical pain.
“Ow!” he said, scolding the creature with a disappointed look. “That—was not very nice.” He opened the chute and shoved it in. In less than a second, the void grabbed hold of it like an interdimensional vacuum and sucked the little demon into the dark black of nothing. The image of the remote stuttered in John’s mind, stretching to infinitely overlap itself before John finally slammed the drawer shut and cast the image away. A few seconds later he reopened the chute. Just to be certain.
It was gone.
—
Michelle didn’t say anything when she arrived in the living room. She walked past her good-for-nothing husband and went straight for the couch. She couldn’t help but notice all of the cushions were still in place. She ripped them off, tossing them over her shoulder to the carpet behind, then stood staring down at the—wouldn’t you know it—dang smart remote. It was right where she knew it would be.
She crossed her arms and turned her head at the neck, shooting her husband . . . the look. You know the one; the look so dangerously full of admonishment that only a mother has the power to wield it without starting a full-scale international conflict. The look clearly enunciated every syllable of her husband’s full name—Ronald Ernhardt Bertrum—without Michelle even having to make the slightest peep.
“You checked under the cushions?” She asked, tilting her head. “Didja really? Huh, Ron?”
The color drained from Ron’s face. He shook his head back and forth, unable to accept what he was seeing.
“Now baaaby,” he said, shaking a trembling finger at her. He pointed it at the remote as if certain the thing had to be of satanic origin. “Baby, I swear. I swear to the lord almighty and all his angels—that sumbitch was not there a minute ago.”
She groaned and rolled her eyes. “Lord Jesus, help me. Not this shit again, Ron,” she said, then dropped a tired head in her hand.
“I’m tellin’ you, baby!” He made the sign of the cross, like any good Catholic would, even though he and his entire family had been Baptists for as long as anyone could remember. “I checked under there. I swear I ain’t lyin’.”
And all at once, it clicked for Ron. His eyes widened, and his finger rose with the sudden realization of exactly what must have occurred.
“Honey,” he said, calmly enough to ensure he wouldn’t blow her away with the intensity of the truth bomb he was about to drop. “Our remote musta gone to the place.”
Michelle slowly raised her head to look at her husband. “Oh my God, Ron,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “You must be right,” she put a hand to her head and closed her eyes, then started to rub her temples as she exhaled slowly. “Except . . . there ain’t no damn place where things disappear to, you idiot. God dang it Ron, you’re just a man. And like most other men, you excel at misplacin’ shit and bein’ real effin’ lazy.”
“No, baby I’m tellin’ you. It’s real! They talkin’ bout it on the damn Internet!”
“I’m sure they are, Ron. And I’m sure they, is a bunch of other married men, with wives just as fed up with their bullshit as I am. Besides, you can’t believe any of the shit people say on the internet.” She threw flustered arms in the air. “I mean dang baby. People online believe the world’s coming to an end, say there’s lizards wearin’ human suits, and think the president’s dumb.”
Ron chuckled, buckling over at the waist slightly. “Well c’mon now, Mickey,” he said with a smile, “We all know the president’s a genius and those people are part of a CIA smear campaign.”
“Damn straight.”
“But I’m tellin’ you Mickey,” Ron said, straightening up and tightening his lips to appear more serious. “This is real.”
Michelle pursed her lips and loudly sucked her teeth. “No, Ron,” she said with her teeth still closed. “It ain’t.”
“Then where’d the remote go!? Huh?” Ron asked, crossing his arms to take the offensive, accentuating his words with birdlike swoops of his head in her direction. “Where- did- it- go- Michelle?”
Mickey took a deep breath.
“I’mma go out on a limb here and say RIGHT THERE, RON,” she yelled, gesturing with two open hands at the remote, plainly visible on the cushionless couch. “Since I’m a hundred percent certain it didn’t fall through, a–” she started snapping her fingers, frustratedly trying to recall the exact way Ron had phrased it during a bout of dumbassery a month ago. “An . . . interdimensional rip in the space-time continuum? Oh, but of course, that’s only till the people on the other side send it back, right Ron? It’s crazy how often that happens right when I come to take a look, isn’t it?”
“W- Well, th-that’s because of, uh . . . ,” Ron started, his voice quieting as the absurdity of his argument finally began to dawn on him. “Dimensional non-existence . . . and uh, temporal delay during . . . uh . . . re-uh . . .”
“During what?” Michelle asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Oh-umma . . . . Nothin’.”
“During. What. Ron?”
He cleared his throat and looked away. “Rematerialization.” He screwed his face and took off his hat, scratched his head, and looked down at the slightly off-white carpet, thinking it was in need of a good vacuuming. He should probably take care of that. Now would be a good time.
Michelle scoffed, then began stomping her way back to the bedroom, and whatever it was she was doing in there. Under her breath along the way, she muttered, “I married a friggin’ idiot.”
Ron watched her go, knowing better than to try to argue with her any further. He knew Mickey, and how crazy all of this sounded. There’d be no convincing her about the existence of interdimensional phenomena without a good bit of hard evidence to back up his claims. For now, all he could do was mosey over to the couch, grab the demon remote, and turn on the race. He knew he’d feel better the moment the cars were rumbling their circles through the surround system and he was in the kitchen grabbing some cheese crunchies and beer.
He brought the remote with him. Letting it out of his sight again seemed like too much of an unnecessary risk. He opened the cupboard with one hand, grabbed the bag of cheese crunchies, then immediately crinkled the bag open with his mouth and poured a landslide of the things in. He side-eyed the remote, shaking the thing as he chewed.
“Maybeyougotherfoold,” he said, as puffs of orange dust billowed out of his overfilled mouth. “ButIknowbedr. IknowereIlefya.”
The roar of the engines stopped and a round, robotic ding sounded.
“Dammitlexa, notalexa, leftcha,” he argued, before nearly choking on the now single mass of orange chemicals that his chewing had crushed together inside his mouth, just barely able to force the cheese-crunchy snowball down in a single, painful swallow. He groaned and quickly moved to the fridge, pulling out a beer and opening it on his belt buckle bottle opener. It was at his lips a millisecond later and empty before the bottle cap had even dropped to make its first click on the vinyl kitchen floor.
Ron gasped in relief, grabbed another beer before he closed the fridge, then went to scoop up the bag of cheese crunchies, talking to the remote along the way. “I said where I left ya, not, hey Alexa.”
Ding.
“Dagnabit,” he swore, scowling as he tossed his empty beer, but he quickly relaxed his forehead and looked up at the corner of the room, considering a possibility. “Guess it couldn’t hurt nothin’, now could it?”
Ron left the kitchen, threw a single cushion back on the couch, and plopped down on top of it. He popped the armrest open with one elbow, dropped the bag of cheese crunchies inside, then relaxed back against the headrest and sighed in relief. He opened and took another swig of beer as swatches of motorized paint flew across the screen in a dance only those deeply in love with cheap domestic beer could interpret.
For the first time that day, Ron was as happy as a clam.
He took another sip of his beer and tried to decide which question he would ask the technological goddess first. Then he spoke the words to cast the spell and summon the all-knowing deity named Alexa.
She dinged upon her arrival in the realm.
“Hey Alexa,” he said. “Where do things go when they fall through a rip in the space-time continuum?”