Most of us at one time or another have forgotten to set the alarm clock or have had the batteries quit five minutes before it was suppose to go off. (At least that is the excuse we give our bosses). Poor Jerry the chipmunk forgot to put a fresh fully charged battery in his hibernation alarm clock. It was suppose to wake him up on March 1, 2022 but he over hibernated to April 9th! Oooops. Imagine trying to explain to your boss why your over a MONTH late to the job.
Jerry panicked when he saw the hibernation clock was not working and rushed out of his luxury hollow log condo only to find not a soul around the Woodpile. The coffee shop had a thick coating of dust on the counters, the school house was still shuttered for winter break, and his boss was nowhere to be found. No boss, that is good thing, right?
At first he thought he was stuck in some sort of nightmare dream. Then he found a newspaper from December with the headline “Woodpilers mysteriously disappear.” He devoured the news article which theorized that an old red hat was at the heart of their disappearance. Jerry shuttered when he read that final line.
Jerry works for a top secret critter government research facility. He was part of a team trying to develop teleportation devices. To hide their research from possible spies, they had built the experimental unit into a red hat. They had abandoned the research when they realized it only worked in one direction. You couldn’t return. It got mothballed and hidden in an old seed vault. Jerry couldn’t remember if the team had locked the vault door or not.
After a few seconds, Jerry realized some critter must have
stumbled upon the device and accidentally transported most of the Woodpilers
someplace and they couldn’t return from using the red hat. How was he going to explain this to his boss?
Jerry rushes out his hollow log condo after oversleeping by a month.
He senses something seems odd but can’t quite place it.
It finally dawns on him something is missing. He strains his ears but is met with an eerie silence. There aren’t any of the usual noises from the daily hustle and bustle of the Woodpile, as critters go about their business.
Jerry dives back into his burrow thinking maybe he woke a month earlier instead a month late.
He climbs back out of his condo to confirm his
worst fears:
someone activated the red hat teleportation device.
How are the Woodpilers going to get back? Jerry had an idea. He telegraphed Paradise Island and suggested they hold a race to see who could get back to the Woodpile first.
TO BE CONTINUED
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