When Rus woke, he found himself handcuffed to the top shiny rail of the brass headboard of a bed.  His head hurt from where he had been hit.  Both of his wrist hurt from where he was tightly handcuffed with his hands over his head.  And his back hurt from the extra soft mattress. He was not in a good mood.

Not even the beautiful, shapely blonde standing over him did much to improve his outlook on the situation.  He didn’t even notice her beauty. That gun she held pointed at him made her seem to him one of the most ugly women he had ever seen.

Then she spoke. He did notice her whispering words did sound kind of sensual. But her words were as ugly as that gun she aimed straight between his eyes.  “My mother says I ought to kill you.  Lucky for you, she and my sister are on a plane. I have no reason to rush what I am going to do.”

The wheels in Rus’ hurting head began to spin.  It was a guess, but he thought he knew her name.  “So Gurdy, we meet. Let me see if I remember.” Rus wasn’t sure what he should say. What the Ellen back on Atlantis had said really didn’t make sense for the Ellen from the future to have said it. “Why did your mother back on Atlantis say that you are married to King of the Nether Isles?  She said that he is a great man and that some day he will rule Atlantis.”

Rus thought Gurdy looked confused as only a blonde can look. “You were in Sitnalta? But you aren’t a Thinkster.”

Now Rus was just as confused. “Sitnalta is where Lucifer planned for all of us to go when we first came to earth.” Rus had not meant to say that out loud, but since he had said it he continued. “Why would you think I would need to be a Thinkster to be in Sitnalta?”

“Sitnalta is a place we Thinkster’s go to when we dream.  It isn’t real, but we all have the same dream.  We consider Sitnalta like a planet within our brain and we go to this planet when we go to sleep.”

“So from the very beginning, Lucifers plan was to trap us on earth and to be able to control our brains with a computer when we are in the physical and to trap our souls when we are in the metaphysical.”

Gurdy began waving her gun.  “You talk strange.  You believe in Lucifer.  You believe in the devil. You believe there is such a thing as a soul.  That is silly.”

Rus’ come back was less than brilliant.  “Nah, you’re silly.”

Gurdy smiled and then she put her handgun down on the nightstand next to the bed.  She then opened a drawer in the stand and removed a key. “I am going to let you go. You are no threat to us.”

Then suddenly the strange dude who was the one who had knocked Rus over the head burst into the room screaming.  “What do you think you are doing?”

“I am going to let him go.”

“The hell you are.”

“George, please.  You know that what mother wants is wrong.”

“I am not going to let you release him.”

Gurdy grabbed the gun from the table and tossed George the key. George caught the key without taking an eye off the gun his sister now pointed at him.  “You would kill me.”

“Nah, I’ll just wound your pretty face or maybe some other body part you consider important.  You unlock the handcuffs. Do it now! I am serious. You don’t want to hurt him anymore than I do.”

“But if he destroys the computer, we will die.”

Gurdy said, “I keep hearing this voice in my head.  It is like the voice children.  And they keep telling me that Rus is our friend.  I know it is silly, but Rus believes there is such a thing as a soul. I always thought Nataellena is crazy for believing there might be such a thing as a soul.  Now I am starting to wonder.”

“No one has a soul.  We have the computer that is part of us and we are part of it.  That is better than having a soul.”

“George, you are wrong.  We never know when a thought is our own or whether it is coming from that damned computer.”

“And what about the voices you say you are hearing in your head?  Maybe you are malfunctioning.”

Suddenly, Steed and Molly appeared to both George and Gurdy.  George and Gurdy could see and hear both of them screaming.  “You let Rus go.  You let Rus go now!”

 George did as he was told. As soon as George used the key to open the handcuffs, Rus jumped out of the bed.  Then he stumbled and fell to the floor.  “Oh shit.  My back!”  

Neither George nor Gurdy noticed when Steed and Molly vanished back into the ether. Even when they noticed the apparitions could no longer be seen, George and Gurdy still felt as though they were being watched by the ghostly children.

Frightened, George looked around. "I no longer see them, but I can still feel them watching. And I feel this odd compulsion I can't resist."  George reached down and gave Rus a hand.  Gurdy also reached down toward Rus and together they helped him up from the floor. Gurdy and George then drove Rus home.