She cornered a nameless otaku walking through. "I'm sorry, but is there someplace I can lie down for awhile? I... I'm not feeling very well."

"Oh, dear me! Of course, follow this way. Shall I call a doctor?"

"No, thank you." Wow... talk about service... Susanne followed the nameless otaku out of the room and through a maze of hallways, until they reached a doorway which looked exactly like all the others. The nameless otaku opened it and smiled. Susanne walked in slowly and turned on a light.

In a corner of her mind, she heard the door shut behind her as she looked around incredulously.

Against the wall on her left was the great double bed with the forest green quilt. The painting of the ships at sea hung over the head, and she knew that there were tiny lights scattered in various places, and when they were turned on, they looked like lights twinkling from rooms on the ships. The chest of drawers next to her was as old as she remembered, and she picked up the silver barrette that was laying next to the hand mirror. The closet doors stuck a bit as she tried to slide them open, but it was easier than she remembered. Old clothes filled both sides, and she knew that if she were to look in the drawers, she'd find her own clothes in some, books in others, and games in others. She crossed the room and pulled back the curtain. The apple tree still stood in the backyard.

*Where am I?*

On this side of the bed, some My Little Ponies still lay on the floor. Lifting up the dust ruffle, Susanne saw more Ponies under the bed, along with some Strawberry Shortcake dolls and the Rainbow Brite horse. As she stood up, she noticed the stuffed white cat amongst the pillows on the bed. It was clean and fluffy, only a few years old. Definitely not the twenty year old artifact that she somehow knew sat in her room in California.

Her eye caught her reflection in the mirror across the wall, and she gasped.

*This... this is me?* Her light brown hair had darkened a bit and grown a lot, but what unnerved her were the green eyes that should be brown. She looked quickly away from the mirror.

She crossed the room again and opened the door. Instead of the antiseptic white hallway of Zeppelin Station, though, she found herself in the picture hallway. Directly to her right, a closed door. Opening it, she felt the warmth of the attic, and saw the dusty sunlight high above her at the top of the long flight of stairs. She closed the door again and continued walking.

She turned right at the end, and heard voices coming from the door a few steps away on her left. She peeked around the doorframe and saw a small girl sitting on an old woman's lap. The old woman was holding some yarn, trying to teach her skill to the young girl, though it was a little difficult for the young girl to translate the workings of the old woman's arthritic hands to her own, young ones.

"Can Grammie crochet, Oma?"

"No, honey, she can't."

"Why not?"

"Because she wouldn't listen to her mama."

"Oh. What about Uncle Wayne?"

The old woman laughed. "No, he wouldn't listen to his mama, either."

"Why can't my mama crochet, then, if it's so easy?"

"Maybe her mama doesn't know how, so she couldn't teach her."

"And daddy won't crochet either, will he?"

"No, besides, your daddy is better working in the fields with the other men."

"Can I work in the fields, Oma?"

"No, honey, that's not your work."

"I stay inside?"

"That's right, you stay with the other women."

"And help look after the little cousins?"

"Yes."

The girl wrinkled her nose at this. "Bridget is mean to me, Oma. And I don't like Marty."

"Well, Bridget is older than you. But you won't let her boss you around, will you?"

"No ma'am!"

"And you just show Marty who's boss, right?"

"Okay!"

"Alright, now, I see Rhia's come. You go with her now, you've got a lot to talk about."

The girl jumped out of her great-grandmother's lap and straightened her little sundress, then walked over to where Susanne was standing and took her hand. "Are you Rhiannon?" she asked boldly.

Susanne didn't know what to do. She found herself nodding. There was something so familiar about this child...

"C'mon! Me 'n' Bridget are cleaning up the downstairs so that it's better, cos Oma can't go down there anymore, so it's just for us! See what we've done so far!"

She obediently followed the little girl through the kitchen and down to the basement, which was almost like another house. A bedroom, living room, bathroom... there was a place that looked like a kitchenette, though it was so dusty and almost falling apart, she suspected that nothing in it worked anymore. But the four year old and her five year old cousin had done a remarkably good job of making the place livable again. She noticed that it was cooler down here than upstairs, and decided that it must have quite a bit to do with why the children liked it here so much.

"It's amazing," she whispered, wondering why she knew it all. "What's behind that closed door, there?"

The girl opened the door for Susanne to see a small room, hardly bigger than a closet.

"There's nothing in here!"

"Bridget's bringing the things over. Water and some food and things. A radio. Batteries. Blankets. It's for when tornados come."

She spoke of tornados so nonchalantly, it was a bit unnerving.

"Tornados? Isn't that a bit scary?"

The girl shrugged. "You can't stop them. It doesn't do any good to be scared." She cocked her head, as if she were hearing something, then said, "You have to go back now." She pointed to a door at the other side of the kitchen.

"Susanne!" the old woman called from the top of the stairs.

The little girl turned. "Coming, Oma!" she turned back to a pale Susanne. "They're not that scary, really. Just real loud. I sing to myself and forget the noise outside." She turned and hurried to the stairs, singing to herself. "They say it can't be won, the way the Game is run... but if you choose to stay, you wind up playing anyway..." her voice trailed off as she climbed the stairs, and Susanne turned back to the door she had pointed to. She stepped over a couple boxes on the kitchen floor, and opened the door.

*This makes more sense... but still makes no sense whatsoever.*

It was a bit like a hotel room. Definitely nothing like the room which she had first walked into. There was a bed, nightstand, dresser... a door on the other side of the room was probably a bathroom.

Looking back over her shoulder through the open door, she saw the corridors of Zeppelin Station.