STUCK: IT'S ABOUT TO GET VERY WEIRD

I follow Tom down the dark tunnel.

The walls and roof are narrow and low, so I have to crouch down and walk bent over. I try to look past Tom to see where we're going, but his body blocks almost the whole tunnel ahead. It feels cold and damp, the floor and walls seem to be made of clay, and it slopes downward. It's dark but there is a very slight light coming from a crack up ahead, and my eyes start to adjust.

Tom reaches the spot where the strip of light is peeking through and he grabs a handle hidden in a root on the wall. A wooden door creaks open to reveal a large, warm, well lit room. We step inside and I can stand up fully now.

"Welcome to the lab," Tom says, and gestures for me to come in with a half bow.

I'm speechless.

It's like we just stepped into Batman's secret hideout. It's about the size of a one-car garage, but shaped like a stone cave, with round bumpy walls and a dome shaped roof. All around the room there are light bulbs hanging from hooks pounded into the hard clay walls. At the far end there is a little electric heater, and it is blowing a warm breeze across the room. There are electrical wires and extension cords everywhere connected to everything. There is a little wooden table and chairs on my right, and a lantern and some books sit atop the table. On my left is a big whiteboard on a wooden stand, with papers taped all over it, and math equations, diagrams, and notes everywhere.

But the part that really grabs my attention is the giant round arch in the middle of the room. It looks like a big shiny yellow hula-hoop standing up, except that the hoop is as thick as a rain spout, and big enough around to walk through. The hoop is wrapped in a thin golden wire, so much that you can't even see what the hoop is made of underneath. Attached to the hoop at the bottom is a giant thick cable that runs to a hole in the wall at the back of the room. A computer is sitting on a small desk by the hoop and it is connected to it with more wires.

The wire sparkles and I put my hand out slowly to touch it, then I look at Tom.

He nods. I put my finger on it and I feel it start to vibrate a little, exactly to the beat of my heart, and I snap my hand back in fear.

"Potentium," Tom says. "It won't hurt you. It's latin for Power Metal" It absorbs power or energy, and then magnifies it and sends it out as a perfectly matched and much stronger version of that energy. It's the most powerful transmitter of energy known."

Tom is speaking like an old scientist, like an old man who has been studying at a university for years, not like a kid in grade five. For a second it seems odd, and I almost have to remind myself that Tom has been here for over two hundred years.

"Where did you get the...how did you build...how do you know?" I stutter.

Tom points at the table and we go sit down and he gets a couple juice boxes from a small fridge under the table.

He tells me how he first built a small hideout just to try escaping the horrible situation he was in. How he started to learn things. How he decided to do something. He tells me how a couple times he actually stayed here and got really old and got his hands on some Potentium in a job he had, and brought it back with him when he got bounced back here to the beginning.

"But why do you get brought back to the beginning, but your machine is still here?"

"I dunno," he says, staring at the large gold hoop. "It's like it affects living things, and the things you are wearing, or holding, but the other stuff you leave behind, it stays as you left it."

"So in a way, you are changing this dimension."

"I guess," he sighs. "But not enough to get home...yet."