Enter a strange and amazing new world you've never seen before, but you most likely already live inside. Follow Theodore, a lonely kid who has to Travel through the 7 Layers of Space in order to find a brick and probably save the universe. Unfortuna...
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Theodore didn't remember thinking he was about to die, nor did he remember falling and tumbling through the one-hundred-or-so feet from the cliff's sloping edge to the valley floor. It was not a sheer drop, more like an unforgiving forty-five to sixty-degree angle of sharp, abrupt, and humorless boulders. He could remember the moment of the various birds hoisting and then tossing him, but had no recollection of his body rolling and turning in darkness and snapping to a sudden halt. But as it happened, it hurt.
When he awoke, covered in dust and blood and sweat, he recalled none of it, but his body certainly did. And while there were many bruises and cuts to remind him, the most unfortunate memory was his throbbing and now thoroughly broken right hand. The hand he drew with.
In a way it was a small gift, because the pain is what woke him and saved him. Most of the creatures who scavenged the floor of Lumpstone Valley were meek and starved, but if they found injured prey, they'd have been happy to feast. One particularly malnourished Crespin (a curious mixture of a badger, a beaver, and an owl) had heard the ruckus and was already examining the discarded pieces of The Buddy Bot when she was pleasantly surprised to find a broken child arrive like a breakfast burrito from above. She let out a little hoot of joy.
"Nyah!" Theodore screamed out, a hissing croak and a protest at the fierce alien pain in his hand. He barely noticed that his cry had sent the emaciated beast running.
He engaged in his now-too-familiar habit of checking upon the well-being of his various fingers and toes and was deeply disappointed by the early results. His bruised ribs ached, and his pants had torn around his left leg, leaving a dirt-crusted wound. As he fell, his fist had collided at an almost perfect right angle with the rock, creating what a traditional doctor would be quick to diagnose as a boxer's break – as if he had punched a wall with three times his normal strength. He tried to flex his hand experimentally and passed out again at the pain.
He awoke a few minutes later. Some time had passed, and it was a dark night, but some light still cast down into the valley from The Grid and the moon above. The air was damp and cold, and he shivered lightly. When his vision cleared and his eyes adjusted, he could begin to make out the head of the Buddy Bot half-buried in red sand about ten feet from where he lay.
"Buddy Bot!" he rasped, shocked at how little sound he could make through his dry throat. He received no response. His tired mind could barely make sense of the events that lead him here. A new type of fear caught ahold of him, a slower, colder fear that we only know in our darkest moments. He was hurt and alone. He might as well have been yelling at a rock, The Buddy Bot was completely shut down.
He lay still in the coolness, surrounded by alien sounds of unknown insects chirping, his sore chest rising and falling raggedly. Dew collected on him and, with a wrenching effort, he turned his head to look at the Buddy Bot's. From this particular vantage, and with this much time on his hands, he was able to study the back of The Buddy Bot's head in greater detail than he ever had. As he measured each diode and cable with his eyes, he caught himself nodding off again, and then snapping himself awake. The various pains flared as he blinked back into consciousness.
