Dan plopped down on his bed and slapped his thighs. "How could he do this to me? On my birthday?" He smelled that car, though, and if he wanted it, he had no choice but to follow his dad's orders: clean his room and mow the lawn. Terrific.
Before Dan started his chores, the hoverscooting clothes had to go. They were getting smelly.
He stripped and pulled a burgundy bathrobe over his slightly cold body. Dan double-knotted it and approached his closet, knocking on the doors.
They opened, and a robotic voice announced, "Welcome, Dan. What would you like to wear today?" before he even entered.
"M-34, we talked about this," Dan said, finding his way inside his AI dressing station. "You don't speak unless I'm in here." He sat in a chair facing the mirror and squeezed a chin pimple. "But since you insist—get me the outfit I got for Christmas. The one with the shoulder pads."
"As you wish, Master Dan." Mechanical hands left the closet's walls, like ghosts rising from the grave, and covered him with a curtain.
M-34 styled Dan in a red, gold-trimmed overcoat with jam-colored shoulder pads, white pants, and shin-tall boots. She slipped black, fingerless gloves over his hands and put a new pair of goggles in his hair.
"Behold!" M-34 stated after removing the curtain. "I call it M-34 couture."
Dan's face lit up at the sight of himself in the mirror. "Oh, I love it! I look so sexy! It's like I'm about to go on an adventure!"
"My pleasure," M-34 chuckled. "It's my duty to make you look charming. Is there anything—?"
"Achoo!" Dan's sneeze cut off her words, and his goggles dropped over his eyes. However, he pulled them back up.
"Gesundheit," M-34 said.
"Thanks. And no, M-34, I'm good." Dan rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his jacket. It looked like he was still recovering from his week-long cold. He was sure his father didn't notice he had a cold, though. Should Dan have said something? Maybe it would have gotten him out of his chores. Oh, well, there was always next time.
Speaking of Ben, Dan saw he left a gift when he exited his closet: a big, brown box that had Trash written on its side in the heart of his room. "Ugh," he groaned. "You're only doing this for the car, Dan." Therefore, he went straight to work.
Dan gathered rotting snacks, such as hot dogs, old burgers, and apples, and tossed them into the box. He almost threw away a pair of shoes because he stuffed candy wrappers in them. Craving was how he grieved, but it did make him a slob, as shown by his messy room.
The rays of the Sun washed through his window and scanned him.
"Achoo!" Dan's goggles flew out of his hair that time and landed on something not far from him.
"Gesundheit," M-34 repeated.
"Shut up, M-34." Dan continued cleaning. As he finished up, he stepped on his goggles and what rested under them—a picture frame.
Dan picked them up, and the knot in his tummy returned when he recognized the woman in the frame. Her name was Becca, but she was "Mom" to him. His heavy boot accidentally cracked the glass, but it wasn't terrible. Dan could still make out his mother's features: her short, brown hair and big eyes he shared with her. He wondered if he was just as beautiful.
Becca wasn't the only one in the picture. Dan was, too. He was about five, and he and Becca compared hand sizes. Ben and Claude, the family dog, acted as the backdrop.
Dan sat on his bed and traced Becca's face. A lump formed in his throat, but he stopped himself from crying. It had been five years; he shouldn't cry anymore.
"Hey, Mom," he said, placing the photo on his dresser. "How are you doing? I'm fine. Dad just returned from a recent space exploration. He and his crew were studying black holes, wormholes, and white holes. It's rumored that if someone manages to travel through a wormhole, they'll go time traveling." Dan glanced at the ceiling— "Wouldn't that be something?"—and lowered his head again.
"You would think that since Dad is an astronaut, I would also want to become one. The thing is, I'm more interested in paleontology, and you know this, Mother. That reminds me—I'm writing a story about a Tyrannosaurs Rex who falls in love during the K-T Mass Extinction sixty-five million years ago. Somewhat odd, I know, but I like it. Oh, and Mom?" Dan removed the picture from its perch and hugged it to his chest. "I turned seventeen today."
***
Being a starship had its pros and cons. Pro Number One: PPMC could travel through a black hole, wormhole, and white hole and go time traveling, but Con Number One: she had to take Daniel Matton with her.
From what she heard while eavesdropping on Ben and Professor Chenoa every time they cleaned her, Dan was stubborn and, in some ways, selfish. The rearing from child to adult paused when his mother died, so for the past five years, the space center programmed PPMC with Becca's personality, hoping the starship herself could finish the rearing process.
But how did a starship rear a teen? Apparently, by blasting him into space to prehistoric times. PPMC still wondered why she agreed to this.
"Professor Chenoa?" Two robotic hands left PPMC's button-filled cockpit, and she tapped the professor's shoulder. She sat in the co-pilot seat.
"What is it?" Chenoa looked up from a holographic diagram and faced her. Her long, black hair ran down her back, and she removed her circular glasses from her large, deep brown eyes.
"Before you call Ben," PPMC stuttered, "can you teach me how to be a mom?" She hoped emotions were out of the question because, as an AI, she didn't feel any.
"Sorry, PPMC—it's too late. Here we go!" Chenoa dropped her tablet onto PPMC's center console/time machine and danced a little. Her hips and lab coat swayed like leaves dropping in the fall. However, she quickly calmed herself and cleared her throat when a hologram of Ben appeared above her machine.
He glitched briefly, and then the Internet stabilized, allowing PPMC to see him. He remained calm, but he was just as stoked as Chenoa. The light on his face said everything.
"Well, Professor Chenoa?" he asked, almost yelling. "What's the deal with PPMC?" He waved at her hands. "Hey, PPMC."
"Hey," she said back. She didn't know if Ben was the right person to talk to about rearing Dan. After all, it seemed he was hardly home; he spent all his time at the space center.
Chenoa turned on her best scientific voice, but she sounded like a robot. "Benjamin E. Matton, the crew and I want you to come to the space center ASAP. After 200 years, PPMC is finally complete and ready for her first mission up the geologic time scale. We want you to be at the center Friday, August 4th. We're planning on launching her at 10 a.m. on the 5th. Make sure you bring Dan, the Star of the PPMC Project, with you."
"Yes!" Ben's hologram twirled under a bright light on his end. "This is so exciting, Chenoa! Dan the Man's become a legend! PPMC, you take good care of him. Ya hear me?"
"I-I'll try," she stated. She didn't know what nervousness felt like, but perhaps she was. What if something happened? What if she and Dan traveled to a mass extinction or the Ice Age? Or worse, what if an Allosaurus ate Dan while he studied an Archaeopteryx? No, no, everything would be fine.
"Thanks, Chenoa," Ben added, smirking. "Don't worry, I know how to get Dan to that space center. It starts with giving him his birthday present! Until then"—he saluted—"see you soon!" And just like that, his hologram vanished.
"Oh, kill me now," PPMC mumbled, and she returned her hands to her cockpit.
***
Dan did not realize he had fallen asleep until he opened his eyes and saw he hung upside-down from an enormous, winged creature. It looked like... No, it couldn't be. It was his mother's favorite prehistoric animal—the Quetzalcoatlus.
Clouds of dust and smoke hid the Sun, and the pterosaur floated over a Mars-like landscape. Dan guessed it was Rodinia, the first supercontinent, but his fascination with geologic time did not overtake the fear he felt in his gut.
"Huh? Where am I? Where am I?" Dan questioned. Why did he suddenly time travel to prehistoric times, and why did it feel like a sign?
He never got a good look at the pterosaur because she dropped him onto Rodinia and opened her wings, starting to fly away.
"Wait!" Dan called after her, scrambling to his feet. "Where are you going? Come back! I can't fly!"
The Quetzalcoatlus paused and peered back at him, but then she flew off again.
Dan stamped his foot. Crap! He shouldn't have done that! The ground started to shake.
At the sound of an intimidating roar, he gasped and looked over his right shoulder pad.
A thirty-foot-tall T-Rex waved its bony arms and screeched in his face. T-Rex spit sprayed on it.
"Ugh!" Dan said, rubbing his face down. "T-Rex snot!" He chuckled nervously and faced the dinosaur. "Mate, why are you so angry? Come on, it's 3023."
The T-Rex put up with none of that and stomped toward him. It stopped when another prehistoric creature, Temnospondyli, entered the scene and growled at it.
Backing up, Dan studied each animal and said only three words: "What? The? Heck?"
A new rock burst out of the surface and took the T-Rex with it. Meteors rained down from the poisoned atmosphere, and Rodinia split under Dan's boots. He jumped to solid rock, only to witness a saber-toothed cat and woolly mammoth running from the disaster. What in the name of space heck was happening?
Dan heard something in the sky. It was an engine of some sort. A blurry starship dodged the falling meteors, but it soon took the form of the Quetzalcoatlus.
She stooped for Dan, scooped him up, and tossed him onto her head.
Yelping, he snatched her crest. "No, no!" he yelled at the sight of a large, flaming rock dropping in on them.
But the rock only fell quicker and hotter.