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Choice: Nineteen

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After falling through the void of blinding white, you find yourself once again inside the garage. Despite your transit, the room hasn’t changed its contents. You see the strange portal-making machine slowing to a stop, and the portals dissolve away as the garage ceases to rumble. You ruminate on your most recent encounter. Your expedition raises the question, What’s it like inside the other portals? Despite the possible danger, you find the premise of another excursion so entertaining that it forces you to look once more for the button on the machine.

Starting towards the control panel, you hear him: “Stop,” he says. The voice is recognized with nostalgic resentment. Etiquette has no rule or regulation for moments like this, and nothing has changed between you since the two of you last spoke. The absence of any convention for this situation makes the consequences unknowable, and slightly frightening. Turning around, you see your father, Brian Holmes, standing framed in his kitchen doorway.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hello, Icarus.”