Chapter Seven: Inner Space

            This has to be a dream. This whole day…it all has to be some twisted nightmare.

            That was what Alexis kept telling herself, but the result remained the same: she was actually fleeing for her life with a bunch of meddling kids, their talking Great Dane, a dog catcher and his deadbeat son, and a young blonde armed with a bō staff.

            The blonde (Gen) led them across Georgetown’s campus grounds.

            They ran to a tall, black rectangular solid displayed right outside Lauinger Library.

            Alexis had passed by it for weeks, figuring it to have been a model that the art department put there.

            To her bewilderment, it was way more than that.

            Gen placed her palm against the sleek marbled surface of the solid; under her delicate touch, there was a brief flash of blue light outlining every detail of Gen’s palm before it “seeped” into the solid.

            A set of doors then materialized, revealing a much bigger space within.

            “Whoa!” Alexis gasped.

            Craig and Willie shared in her shock.

            “My goodness! I’ve stepped into The Twilight Zone,” Willie muttered.

            Alexis was quick to realize how little Fred, Daphne, Shaggy, Velma, and their dog, Scooby-Doo, were daunted by the dimensionally disproportionate interior. “This doesn’t faze you kids whatsoever?” she questioned them.

            “I guess we oughta come clean to you, Professor Redding,” Daphne said. “We’ve been traveling with Gen for quite some time.”

            “Solving mysteries across multiple dimensions,” Fred enthusiastically added.

            In hearing this, Alexis grew infuriated and surmised, “So all of you knew about that man who tried to kill me back in class?!”

            “That man is my twin brother, Christopher,” Gen disclosed.

            “He said his name was Everett,” Alexis recollected.

            “That’s what he calls himself in this regeneration he’s in,” Gen stated. “I got a distress call from a source, telling me that he and his earliest regeneration, LeMarier, were targeting you.”

            Alexis became more and more befuddled. “Wait. Hold up. Regeneration? Your ‘source’? Who’s your source?”

            “You are,” Gen stoically answered.

            She brought them all inside the bigger-on-the-inside solid.

            Craig, Willie, and Alexis couldn’t believe the majestic, well-conditioned room they walked into. It was like a spaceship. A strawberry aroma filled the air, making it more obvious that it was owned and operated by a woman.

            At the center of it was a control console where Gen entered a small, round golden object through a slot.

            The large view screen across the console flickered on.

            A series of recorded footage played on it, starting from a middle-aged woman with short blond hair fending off a group of mechanized creatures on an alien planet.

            “This is who I once was,” Gen indicated the recording. “Her name was Candace, but her true name – my true name – is Neas.”

            More footage of other women shown.

            A much younger silver-haired individual wearing a cosmic combat top.

            A Portuguese woman that appeared to have a particular taste for form-fitting attire that showed off her exceptionally sizable backside.

            A crazy-eyed blonde with a bright smile that was as beautiful as it was goofy.

            A Filipina dressed like a ninja and armed with sais.

            An Asian that seemed more down-to-Earth with her “country girl” clothes.

            A stunning redhead whose intense, exotic exterior masked a more nurturing, motherly personality.

            Yet another blonde who exceled in yoga practices.

            And then Gen herself popped onscreen, looking as daring as Alexis had seen her earlier against Everett.

            “Who are all these women?” Alexis asked.

            “They are all me…and you,” Gen told her.

            The footage proceeded on with more personalities – the next one following Gen’s evoking a huge reaction from Craig and Willie.

            “That’s a black dude,” the former exclaimed.

            Gen’s brow furrowed in curiosity as she glanced at the African American male that would be her next regeneration, going by the order the montage was played in. “So it is,” she reflected.

            Willie ate it up, his eyes centering on Alexis.

            “Well, ain’t that somethin’! No wonder you a teacher in Black History – ‘cause you are black!”

            Alexis cringed. “No! No, Mister Jones! I’m not or never will be any of these people! I think I would’ve remembered any of it, if I were!”

            “That’s because you’re under the influence of the chameleon arch,” Gen said. “You used it to stay hidden from LeMarier and Everett. Unfortunately, the real leader of this grand scheme of theirs – Missy – got to you before they did. She injected you with a deadly parasite.”

            Redding couldn’t decide if she should be stunned or entertained at the thought.

            “And h-how did this ‘Missy’ accomplish that? Especially when – again – I don’t remember it happening!”

            “When was the last time you saw your pharmacist?” Gen asked her. “She’d been prescribing you with medicine to quell those migraines, right? But instead of relieving them, they’ve gotten worse.”

            Alexis deflected, wondering how Gen would know about her monthly check-ups or even the terrible migraines she suffered since she was twenty-five.

            “How do you…?”

            “Missy was your pharmacist!” Gen exclaimed. “She’d been feeding you drugs that’s bred the parasite feeding on your mind and slowly killing you…killing us!”

            Alexis grasped at her head, sensing another migraine coming on.

            Only now, she suspected it to be the “parasite” Gen spoke of.

            “How do I get it out of me?” she asked the young, fierce blonde.

            “I went to a dimension where a brave test pilot named Tuck Pendleton miniaturized himself within an experimental, submersible pod,” Gen elucidated. “I intercepted the experiment before the scientists could have injected Tuck in their original target: a test rabbit. It was already predestined to fail though. I just got there first.”

            For that short span of time, Alexis feared there was truth in Gen’s words.

            However, she should’ve stopped with the parasite before bordering into science fiction with miniaturized test pilots. That much was too hard to swallow for the college professor.

            “You really had me going there for a sec,” Alexis scoffed.

            Gen scowled. “You mean to tell me that is where you draw the line?!”

            “I don’t have time for this nonsense, O.K.? I need to contact my boyfriend, who’s sure to find out about the attempt on my life on the six o’clock news. Now where do you keep a phone in this overgrown domino block?!”

            Alexis rummaged around the hexagonal console.

            At one point, she made the mistake of bending over in front of Gen, her backside in the young blonde’s direct line of fire.

            Out of the left side pocket of her leather jacket, she retrieved a syringe.

            “Godspeed, Lieutenant,” she whispered to it, right before sticking the needle in Alexis’s left glute.

            Redding yelped, standing upright and clutching her bottom.

            “What did you just do to me?!” she roared.

            “Oh, I just injected a naval aviator into your butt, that’s all,” Gen nonchalantly said. “And the phone’s right there to your right.”

            She indicated the precise spot of the console where – sure enough – there was a stationary phone, not unlike the one she and Jeff had back at their place. Using it straightaway, she called the apartment and hoped that Jeff made it back in time for her to explain the whole situation.

            “Hello?”

            It was Maxine, his mother, who picked up.

            And she sounded very worried, her voice breaking.

            “Maxine?” Alexis said.

            “Alexis, is that you? Oh, child. I’m so glad you called.”

            “Why? What’s wrong? Where’s Jeff?”

            “Jeff…He’s…He’s been in a terrible accident.”

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            Alexis imagined her day could only get so weird.

            How wrong she was when Maxine called.

            According to her, Jeff was struck down by a meteorite, and his injures were being treated at the local hospital.

            “Boy got struck down by a meat-te-or?!” Willie hardly believed it. “Bullets from a drive-by I can get, but a meat-te-or brought the brotha down? A black man can’t even go outside without watchin’ his back and his front, now he gotta look up?!”

            They met with Jeff’s doctor as soon as they walked in.

            “He suffered broken bones and third-degree burns, leaving massive scar tissue,” the doctor informed. “The rock that hit him did great damage. He’s fortunate to still—”

            “ARGH!”

            Alexis clasped at her left eye, experiencing a sharp sting, as if something was shot into the back of her eyeball. In her sudden moment of agony, she screamed, drawing much attention around her – even from Jeff’s doctor.

            “Are you alright, Miss Redding?” he asked. “Is there something I can do?”

             “She’s fine,” Gen intervened rather abruptly. “Just a little spasm.”

            With her one unharmed eye, Alexis gawked at Gen.

            The knowing look she had on her face somehow reassured her. “Yeah, like the young lady said…I’m fine,” Alexis told Jeff’s doctor.

            He was left with no choice but to take her word for it, continuing to lead the way.

            Meanwhile, Alexis – her hand still over her irritated eye – whispered to Gen, “What was that?!”

            “If I were to guess, Lieutenant Pendleton planted a camera into your optic nerve, so that he can see what you can see,” Gen enlightened.

            “You could’ve warned me about that,” Alexis grumbled.

            “Well, you should’ve believed me about the shrunken test pilot currently navigating through your insides,” Gen said. “Let me know when you hear him. He’ll implant another device in your inner ear that’ll enable him to talk directly to you.” She noticed the college professor shooting her a revolted glare. “Hey, you said you wanted a warning. There you go.”

            Alexis’s eye recovered from the sting, just as the doctor took them into the room where Jeff, heavily bandaged, lied unconscious in his bed. Around him were his parents and best friend, Michael Anderson.

            Alexis comforted the weeping Maxine with a hug.

            “He’ll be alright,” she reassured her. “I’m going to stay right here by his side.”

            “Alexis,” Gen objected. “Our safety is in jeopardy the longer we’re—”

            “I said I’m staying with him,” Redding vulgarly proclaimed. “Until he wakes up!”

            Gen saw there was no convincing the college professor.

            Her mind – her natural human mind – was made up.