6:00 A.M.
Those letters, glowing bright green, were what Mr. Meinke saw when he first opened his eyes that day. His arm smashed the snooze button, granting him temporary refuge from the beeps of his alarm clock.
He sighed and rose. He loved his students, and he loved teaching History and Geography, but his job as a teacher did not allow him to get up at a later time. It was fortunate the school year was nearly over.
Fifteen minutes later, he was walking down the hallways of Wayzata Central Middle school. He felt a strange, tingling feeling as he walked, but he dismissed it. At the end of the hallway, he turned. The peace mural over the stairway slightly soothed him, but in the back of his mind, the strange feeling still lingered. It felt almost as if he were shifting into another dimension… No, that would be preposterous.
He had walked down the hallway before he noticed what was wrong. The school was unnaturally quiet. He usually wasn’t the first teacher there. He shrugged it off again, and unlocked his classroom door.
A rank and musty smell greeted him as he opened the door. They should really get that ventilation system fixed, he thought. He looked inside.
Before he could realize that something was seriously wrong with his room, Mr. O’Neill spoke. “Took you long enough.”
Mr. Meinke blinked as he finally started the process of realizing what was going on.
“What’s going on?” he asked Mr. Falls and Mr. O’Neill, who were sitting at a great stone table. The room’s walls, floor, and ceiling were also made of stone, with a single window showing a dark, forbidding forest he had never seen before, and certainly hadn’t seen near Central.
“I have no idea,” Mr. Falls replied, “but whatever it is, standing there like an idiot isn’t going to help.”
“Pull up a chair,” Mr. O’Neill suggested. He offered the one next to him.
I might as well, Mr. Meinke thought. He strolled over the faded red carpet to the table.
No sooner had he sat down when the dark wooden door opened again. “This doesn’t look like my classroom,” Ms. Topp observed.
“That’s because it isn’t,” Mr. O’Neill said dryly.
“This doesn’t even look like Central,” Ms. Olson observed as both of them took a seat at the stone table.
Mr. O’Neill refrained from repeating his earlier sarcastic comment. As Mr. Falls wondered why he didn’t and contemplated doing it for him, the door suddenly opened.
Before anyone could speak, a man in strange clothing stepped forward. “Welcome to Centros Middlefort.”