What he saw surprised him so much, he fell over backwards—sploosh! “Yow!” he screamed, and he struggled to sit up.
Instead of Fog Monsters, he was surrounded by more than a dozen froglike creatures. They were bigger than he was, but not monster size. They had green, mottled skin, and pale white bellies, and rubbery arms and legs. Their sad-looking eyes seemed to be studying him with great intensity. At once, he knew that they meant him no harm.
“Greetings,” the largest one croaked. Its voice was so deep and wet-sounding, it made Arthur’s ears rattle. “Welcome to REM World. I am Galump, mother of the Frog People.”
Arthur was so shocked—and so relieved—he couldn’t speak.
“He didn’t read his instructions,” Morf warned. “Forgot his helmet.”
“No!”
Morf nodded glumly. “I’m afraid so.”
Galump sighed, and it sounded exactly like the lowest note on a tuba. “No one has ever forgotten his helmet before,” she said, and her big, sad-looking eyes slowly blinked. “This is a matter of grave concern. Very grave concern. You’d better come along with us. First we’ll feed, and then we’ll see what kind of trouble you’re in.”
They all headed off into the mist.
“It wasn’t my fault about the helmet,” Arthur whispered to Morf. “How was I supposed to know there were two sides to the instructions?”
“There are two sides to everything,” Morf pointed out.
Arthur tried to change the subject. “If the Frog People are so nice, why did you call them Fog Monsters?”
Morf shrugged and twitched his tail. “So I made a mistake. Nobody’s perfect.”
As they marched farther and farther into the mist, Galump saw that Arthur was having trouble keeping up. “I carried my children on my back when they were young,” she explained. “There’s no reason I can’t carry you.”
And so it was that a friendless fat boy named Arthur Woodbury found himself being borne like a king by the wise and venerable Galump, ruler of a fabled queendom at the bottom of the sea.
“Cool,” said Arthur as his new friends trundled him along, into the white mist, into a world he’d never seen before. “Maybe I like this place after all. Just a little.”
“Too bad about the helmet,” said Morf, who was riding on Galump’s other shoulder.
“Who cares about the stupid helmet!” Arthur retorted. “Why does everybody keep mentioning the helmet? So I forgot it! What’s the big deal?”
“Nothing much,” said Morf. “You violated one of the laws of the universe, that’s all.” Morf yawned and patted his paw against his mouth. “Traveling makes me sleepy. Wake me when we get there.”
And with that, he curled up and covered his eyes with his tail and slept all the way to Mud City.
· · ·
As it turned out, the ancient place called Mud City wasn’t made of mud at all, but of a strong, rock-hard substance. The city reminded Arthur of the mud castles he’d made at the beach when he was little. But unlike Arthur’s mud castles, these were beautiful and elegant, with mud-dribble towers that soared high above the endless mist, and arching dribble-bridges connecting each building to the next. The whole city was reflected in the hard, shiny mud upon which it was built, and Arthur had never seen anything so enchanting in his whole life.
Everywhere he looked, Arthur saw something new and fascinating about the ingenious way one building seemed to flow into the next without looking crowded or uncomfortable.
There were many fine touches and details. What looked like laurels of seaweed draped over the windows and doorways were actually carved right into the “mud.” Many of the walls had been decorated with dribble-pictures of Galump’s ancestors, the very first Frog People. It was as if each dribble-building had a story to tell, but instead of words the story was written in shapes. And if you put all the building-stories together, it was a book called Mud City, and you read it by living there.
“This is so cool!” Arthur exclaimed. “This has got to be the neatest place in the whole wide world.”
“You’re very kind.” Galump showed her guests around the city. “It reminds us of simpler times.”
“What times are those?” Arthur wanted to know.
“The time before time began,” Galump said. She raised her mottled-green arm and pointed at her odd, water-filled wristwatch. “Before we invented clocks. Before we counted the days, the minutes, the seconds, the microseconds. Before we discovered words like time and tide.”
“Oh,” said Arthur, who didn’t even own a wristwatch, and who had a bad habit of being late for everything—except dinner, of course.
“Speaking of time,” Galump said, “it’s time for the Feast of Welcoming.”
Which sounded just fine to Arthur, so long as he wasn’t on the menu.
ARTHUR’S ARRIVAL WAS celebrated in the Grand Hall, a place large enough to accommodate all of the Frog People, most of whom had never before seen a human.
“They think you’re pretty special,” Morf commented. He didn’t sound particularly impressed himself.
“That’s because I am special,” said Arthur, preening a little as Galump’s royal assistants carried him into the murky splendor of the Grand Hall. “There are thousands of them, and only one of me.” It was such a novelty, being the center of attention—and not being made fun of—that he was determined to enjoy every moment of it.
The Grand Hall was an immense, underground cavern. Because it was located deep under the mud, there were no windows, and huge chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceilings. As he got closer, Arthur saw that the chandeliers were not powered by ordinary lightbulbs. The special bulbs were as large as goldfish bowls, and contained round, glowing sea creatures.
“Amazing,” Arthur said, gazing up at the brightly glowing fishbulbs.
“Totally awesome,” Morf agreed.
The banquet table was so long, Arthur couldn’t see to the end of it. He was given the place of honor, a kind of throne made from a giant seashell. Meanwhile Morf perched on the arm of the throne and amused himself by making comments. “Quite the little family,” he said, peering around with his bright, inquisitive eyes. “They don’t call old Galump the queen mother for nothing. Everybody here is one of her children. Except us, of course. And I’m not so sure about you,” he added.
“What do you mean?” Arthur asked in alarm.
“The Frog People all have sizable bellies, and so do you. So maybe you’re a Frog Person, too.”
“No way,” Arthur protested. “I’m not in the least like a Frog Person. For starters, I don’t have green-speckled skin.”
“No?” Morf said. “Are you sure?”
Arthur looked down at his arms and was shocked to discover there were some green speckles on his skin from when he’d fallen on the pile of seaweed. But that didn’t make him a Frog Person.
Galump signaled the start of the feast by ringing a small bell. It was made of clamshells and sounded very much like a wind chime. “Children!” she called out in her tubalike voice. “We are honored by the presence of something called Arthur, a human being from another world. Let us all welcome him and wish him good luck on his long and dangerous journey!”
With that, the mother of the Frog People bowed her great green head and made a deep, froglike noise: ga-lump, ga-lump. Her words were echoed by all the other creatures in the great hall, and when they spoke together the very air seemed to vibrate GA-LUMP, GA-LUMP, shaking the fishbulb chandeliers.
It was a strangely musical sound that Arthur could feel in the very pit of his stomach. What was she talking about—”dangerous journey”? Did that have something to do with not studying the instructions?
But suddenly Arthur felt very, very hungry, and compared to his hunger, nothing else mattered.
“Let the feasting begin!” Galump roared, and huge platters of food began to appear, passed from hand to hand until they filled the great banquet table. None of it looked anything like any food Arthur had ever see
n before, but the delicious sea-salt smells made his mouth water.
“Ah!” said Morf, snatching a platter as it went by. “My favorite! Sea grapes!”
Arthur’s diet was usually burgers and fries, but he was so famished, he munched happily on a bunch of the fruity things Morf called sea grapes. “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all.”
His experience with the sea grapes gave him the courage to sample tidbits from several of the other platters, and he discovered that everything was delicious. Ordinarily Arthur never ate vegetables if he could help it, but he didn’t want the Frog People to think he was ungrateful, so he stuffed himself with various foods that resembled carrots and green beans, and he even ate a little of something that looked suspiciously like spinach.
The Frog People ate with great delicacy, patting their mouths with little green napkins. Meanwhile Morf, whose table manners left much to be desired, amused himself by flipping sea grapes into the air and catching them with his nimble tongue.
“Don’t be a pig!” Arthur whispered urgently, embarrassed by Morf’s behavior.
Morf burped and rolled his eyes. “You’ve got a lot of nerve,” he said, “for someone with sea spinach all over his chin.”
Mortified, Arthur hastily wiped his chin, but if any of the Frog People noticed, they didn’t let on. Food kept coming down the endless banquet table for many hours.
Galump explained that she and her children normally ate only once a tide.
“Once a tide?” Arthur asked. “What does that mean?”
She tapped her water-filled wristwatch. “A tide is an interval of time. Here in REM World it compares to an interval you humans call a week.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, for that explained why the Frog People could eat for hours and hours—they must be very hungry if they only ate once a week. It also explained why Arthur was full to bursting and couldn’t bear the thought of eating another bite.
Finally, after a dessert that looked suspiciously like snail Popsicles, Galump declared that the feast was at an end.
Morf nudged Arthur. “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” Arthur asked, somewhat alarmed.
In response, Morf burped. At first Arthur thought the little creature was being intentionally rude, but then the great dining hall began to echo with the sound of ten thousand burps.
In Mud City, burping was polite. “Come on, kid,” Morf urged. “You can do it.”
Arthur took a deep breath and clenched his stomach, and out came a really stupendous, mud-trembling BUURRRRRRRRRRP! that shook the very chandeliers.
His gigantic burp noise stunned the Frog People into silence. And then Galump put her green-speckled hands together and clapped. “Bravo!” she said, and a moment later, the thousands who had crowded into the Grand Hall erupted in wild applause.
“Arthur!” they chanted. “Arthur! Arthur!”
“Do they want me to make a speech?” Arthur asked Morf. He hoped not, since he’d never given a speech in his life and didn’t want to start now.
“Another burp will do,” said Morf. “But it has to be bigger and better, or don’t bother at all.”
As the Frog People waited expectantly, Arthur took another huge breath. He inhaled all the way into his stomach. Then he concentrated with all his might, and a massive, ear-splitting noise burst out.
BURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP!
Above him the fishbulbs shattered, dropping glowing sea creatures through the air, and the Frog People erupted into such a cacophony of cheering that the empty plates shook on the tables.
“You certainly know how to make an impression,” Morf conceded when the cheering finally died down.
Galump smiled at him with her sad, wise eyes and rang her small clamshell bell. “Now is the time,” she announced gravely, “for the viewing.”
All at once a great silence settled over the hall, and Arthur realized that something really important was about to happen.
GALUMP BECKONED TO Arthur. “Come closer,” she rumbled. “What I must show you looks small, although it is actually quite large.”
“Is this a riddle?” asked Arthur. He hated riddles, mostly because he could never figure them out.
“See for yourself,” Galump suggested, holding out her strange wristwatch.
The watch face was concealed by a beautiful white seashell. Galump flipped up the shell cover. Under the shell was what at first appeared to be a large, perfectly formed pearl the color of summer clouds. But when Galump tapped the face of the watch, the clouds inside the pearl swirled away, revealing the darkness behind the sky.
“Sorry, but I can’t see anything,” said Arthur. He’d had similar problems looking through a microscope at school, when all he could make out was his own blurry thumb.
“Patience,” Galump said soothingly.
Arthur looked into the strange wristwatch again, and this time he did see something. A shimmering inside the darkness. He bent down to get a closer look, and what he saw made his heart hammer inside his chest. “There’s something inside the watch!” he exclaimed, unable to tear his eyes away.
“Take your time,” Galump advised him. “Remember that watches are all about time.”
The darkness behind the watch was so deep that Arthur felt as if he were looking down into a deep, dark mine shaft. A shaft so deep that light could never get all the way to the bottom. But something was rising up through the darkness. Something Galump wanted him to see.
Arthur gasped. “It’s me!” he said.
Looking down into the face of Galump’s mysterious wristwatch, Arthur saw a small, distinct image of himself lying on the workbench in the basement of his house. He was wearing the REM Sleep Device helmet, and he appeared to be deeply asleep. “What does it mean?” he asked, without taking his eyes from the watch.
“It means something has gone terribly wrong,” Galump said gravely. Her mottled flesh had suddenly gone pale. “You’re in two places at once, and that’s supposed to be impossible.”
“You mean I’m still asleep?”
“Part of you is,” said Galump. “And part of you isn’t. You’re in violation of the laws of the universe! You must go home and set things right.”
“You want me to go home?” asked Arthur. “But I like it here!”
Galump nodded wisely, and a little sadly. “You must go back to where you came from, or something terrible will happen. Indeed, it already may have started.”
“I want to stay,” Arthur said stubbornly. “I like Mud City. I like the Frog People and the way they burp after a meal. I even ate a piece of sea spinach, just to be polite!”
Galump reached out with her green-speckled arms and hugged Arthur. She smelled pleasantly of a salty, clean seashore. “We like you, too, little one,” she said, patting his head. “But you must go back before it’s too late.”
“There’s nothing wrong,” said Arthur, looking around at this perfectly pleasant world. “It must be a mistake.”
“Look again,” said Galump softly, holding out her wristwatch.
So Arthur looked again. And this time he saw a strange kind of darkness seeping into the corners of the basement where his Other Self was lying unconscious on the workbench. The darkness looked like black, black water lapping in through the cracks in the floor and forming puddles, but somehow he knew it wasn’t water. The creeping, liquid darkness made him deathly afraid, although he couldn’t say why, exactly, except that something was wrong, terribly wrong.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The Nothing,” Galump said.
“If it’s nothing, then why does it matter?”
“Not that kind of nothing,” Galump said. “Our legends tell us a thing called the Nothing existed before the creation of the Everything, and it’s always out there, trying to force its way back to unravel the universe.”
“But what’s this got to do with me?” Arthur asked, frightened.
“There’s another legend that one day something seemingly im
possible will happen, that a crack will appear in the universe, and then the Nothing will seep in through the World Below.”
Arthur was shocked and terrified. “This is so not fair!” he said. “All I wanted to do was lose weight, and now you’re telling me the universe is going to end, and it’s all my fault.”
Galump looked deeply distressed. “I’m sorry, little one, but sometimes there are unexpected consequences for ordinary actions.”
“But what do I do now?”
“Find a way home,” Galump repeated. “If you’re no longer in two places at once, that may stop the Nothing.”
“But how do I get back?” Arthur asked, feeling terribly confused. “I forgot the stupid helmet, remember?”
“You go back by going forward,” Galump told him.
“But that doesn’t make any sense!”
“Here, borrow this,” said Galump, strapping the mysterious watch to his wrist. “Now you will always know what time it is. And now it’s time for you to move on. You won’t be alone, little one. Morf is your guide. He can be an irritating animal sometimes, but we think you’ll find him useful.”
Suddenly a great bell began to chime.
DINGGGGGGG! DINGGGGGGG! DINGGGGGGG!
Arthur didn’t know what the bell meant, but it was so loud, it had to be important. “What’s wrong?” he cried.
“Nothing is wrong,” Galump boomed. “The Great Bell is ringing because the tide has changed.”
“Tide?” Arthur asked. “Changed?”
“The sea is returning to Mud City. It happens all the time, and always right on time. There’s nothing whatsoever to worry about. It’s wonderful. Just remember to breathe underwater.”
“But I can’t breathe underwater!” Arthur exclaimed.
“Oh dear,” said Galump. “I’d forgotten that about humans.” And she sighed like the wind that stirs along a beach just before the tide comes in.
“May I make a suggestion?” Morf asked as he stood up on his hind legs and stretched.
“Yes,” said Arthur.
“Run for your life!”