Yet another day had turned into evening in Oasis Landing. A quarter moon hovered over the mostly cloudy sky.
Alexandra had come in from the observatory and decided to join Patrick in the hot tub.
"The books are electronic here," Alexandra said, "I'd like to take a look inside the library here at some point."
No sooner had she said that, though, than she and Patrick heard a mischievous laugh behind them.
"I -- I'm not too sure about this," Patrick confided, "something about this doesn't seem right."
"Oh, come on, Patrick, relax."
However, Patrick's fears were somewhat confirmed. When he got out of the hot tub, he discovered that his clothes were missing. Someone had hidden them!
Meanwhile, when Alexandra entered the common area, she decided to take in a little television and grab herself a bite to eat.
A very blond man was in the common dining area preparing a meal. He grabbed his cell phone and took a quick photograph of Patrick as he passed by. "Ha, I know something is up with that guy," he wondered, "now I just need more proof."
As Alexandra took her synthesized Teppanyaki, the man closely watched her. I know that girl, he thought, something about her seems oddly familiar.
Brazenly he approached her. "You're Alexandra Vanderburg."
"How did you know?"
"Your cell is right next to mine, I can't miss it." With his fiancée, Allonsy Dawl, looking on, he extended his hand. "Atom Beaker. Son of the legendary inventor and scientist Loki Beaker."
Knowing Atom's lineage gave Alexandra every reason to be wary. Still, at some level she was intrigued by him. He surely had the Scandinavian blue eyes and very distinctive Scandinavian features. If she were a different woman, he might even be considered somewhat handsome.
"What do you want from me, Atom?"
"I've been watching you, Vanderburg. I know what you did."
"What do you mean, you know what I did?"
"I know what you did. Everyone knows what you did."
"When I find out who hid my clothes," Patrick vowed, "it's going to be me and them."
"Don't look at me," Alexandra replied, "it wasn't me. I swear it."
Suddenly they spotted Dr. Emit Relevart sitting alone in the common area. "Dr. Relevart?" wondered Patrick. "Did you steal my clothes?"
Dr. Relevart initially didn't respond, instead keeping his eyes glued to the holo-TV.
However, when Alexandra called him on it, he responded in a fit of mischievous laughter.
Later, Alexandra found Dr. Relevart in the common area. "Tell me more about this Atom Beaker."
"Ah, I see you've met Loki Beaker's son."
"Loki Beaker?"
"The most infamous scientist in all of Simland. But it didn't start out that way. He grew up as a little boy in a small town off the Scandinavian coast called Aurora Skies. We all went to Tech together, me and him and the Curious brothers and a young lady called Circe Salamis. Anyway, Loki fell head over feet for Circe, but she was dating someone else at the time -- it didn't matter to him. He was determined to win her heart no matter what. To make a long story short, he married her and then got involved in some very questionable scientific experiments, and at that point he and I parted ways."
"What kinds of experiments?"
"The exact nature of these experiments, I'm not at liberty to say. My specialty is time travel, going back and forth between continuums. So when I heard that he'd cloned himself I wasn't at all surprised. After all, he first developed the technology that made cloning possible. Atom Beaker is exactly like his father. He is not a pleasant individual to be around, and his charm is matched only by his ambition."
The plot thickens...
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