"Hi Steve," said Jessi, "I'm coming back." She hung up the phone before the author had a chance to realize that phones don't work from story to story. Jessi was sick of the story she'd been living in, so she decided to go home. She took out the map The J had given her two stories ago and figured out which way she needed to go. She started walking and a cute little bunny jumped out in front of her. Being as sick of cute little forest creatures as she was, she gave it a powerful kick and it flew into a nearby pond. She was sick of ponds too.

After walking for about ten minutes, she reached into her pocket for her map. "Oh yeah," she said, remembering that she still had it in her hand from about ten minutes ago. She looked at the map and found she needed to go up. She grabbed a nearby tree and used it to fling her up into the next story.

Jessi didn't think this was the story the map said it should it be, but she took out her scotch tape and fixed the hole in the paper anyway. She walked past a guy with a big dent in his head. She noticed his name tag that said "Pick 'N' Save, Hello my name is MIKE." There was a phone next to him and a news crew was filming him. She walked a little further and sat down on what seemed like a curb because the author had run out of things to do with her for now.

"She's going the wrong way," the Jay was telling the Curt in the story Jessi was trying to get to. The Jay and the Puddy had traveled to many other stories to get the technology the Jay needed to make his computer be able to track characters through other stories and a few other things (including computer bingo). The Jay typed something and the words of the story Jessi was in appeared on the screen. He and the Curt read it.

"She's in trouble," said the Curt. It seemed to the Jay that she was in danger of being hit by flying fruit. The Jay didn't understand exactly how that was bad, but he didn't say anything. "We have to send a rescue team."

Jessi got up off the curb because the author had finally come up with something for her to do. She jumped and somehow got all the way up to the top floor of a building that had 381 floors. The guy inside who was talking on the phone looked out at her. He put it down and walked outside.

"What is this standing outside of my apartment?" he said mostly just to himself, "People need to start skydiving somewhere else. Be gone." He pushed her off the building. Jessi found that she could somehow steer herself, and she entered an apartment through an already broken window. Nobody was there, so she left and went back down to the street.

Was that Jay and Curt she saw down the street? Or was it the Jay and the Curt and they had somehow managed to keep their definite articles? What was she thinking? She didn't know what a definite article was anyway. If they were Jay and Curt (or the Jay and the Curt), it was too bad because she wasn't going that way. She turned on her heel and walked away.

"Where are they?" asked the Steve.

"I don't know," said the Puddy, "I don't know how this thing works." She was sitting at the Jay's computer. The Steve was pacing back and forth. He threw his pencil and it ended up in the pencil sharpener. The J had taught him the gay art of pencil throwing a few stories ago.

"Get up," said the Steve, "let me try it." The Puddy got up and he sat down. He started typing things and told the Puddy that they weren't quite to the other story yet. He just made that up though, because he was really doing something else.

"Hey, look at that guy," said the Jay, who was looking at the guy with the dent in his head. Two men and a cloud walked out of the building they were standing in front of. The Jay and the Curt thought they looked familiar, but they had no idea where they might have seen them before. The two men introduced themselves as Curt and Jay. The cloud yelled at the Jay when he called it Odin because really it was Zeus. The Jay didn't like being yelled at, so he got out his magical glowing stick, which was yellow because it made the best flavor of life savers, and sliced the cloud in half.

"I DO NOT APPRECIATE THAT," rumbled the cloud as it surfed--surfed? It did kind of look like Zeus on a surfboard. So anyway, it surfed upwards to find a certain lady cloud it had been looking at before. Just then, the Jay remembered that they would have brought their calculator looking things with them. He reached into his pocket and took his out.

"What is that thing?" asked Curt.

"I don't know," said the Jay, "the author has never mentioned any name for it. All he's said is that they look like calculators." The Jay punched buttons on his calculator looking thing. He gave it a look that seemed like it wasn't functioning correctly. Really it was, but let's not tell him. He smacked the side of it, but it didn't help any.

"Not working?" asked Jay.

"Guess not," said the Jay. "Maybe you can tell me who that is." He pointed to the guy with the dent in his head. They heard sirens in the background.

"Uh-oh," said Curt. Just then, a huge man with a gorilla like face came out of the building and started chasing them down the street. It was too bad for the Jay and the Curt that they were going in the direction the Jessi wasn't.

"Steve!" yelled the Puddy, "You broke it!" She was right, but she didn't know that he had done it on purpose. Just then, a prune came flying in through the window. It screeched to a halt in the middle of the room and looked at them with one eye.

"Oh," it said in the politest voice possible for a prune that had just flown in through the window, "I'm sorry, I must have the wrong story." It started to go back, but it noticed the Jay's computer. "Ooh," it said, "mind if I use that computer to find out how to get to the right story?"

"Steve broke it. Sorry." The prune flew back out the window. The Puddy sat down at the computer and tried to fix it. Just then, the Paul walked in. They were surprised to see him, since he hadn't been in the last few stories.

"What's going on here?" he asked.

"He broke the computer," said the Puddy, pointing at the Steve. The Paul glared at the Steve and then told the Puddy how the Steve was mad at The J and the Jay for bringing the Curt along for all the fun stuff when he was the one who brought the Curt into the story anyway. They locked the Steve in the closet and the Paul tried to fix the computer.

"Hey, wait a minute," said Curt. He stopped running and so did the other three. "Where's the huge man with a gorilla like face?" They looked back and saw that he wasn't there. They sat down and Jay explained the huge man with a gorilla like face (who could very possibly be Nathan but we're not allowed to disclose that information) and also the guy with the dent in his head. The Jay took apart his calculator looking thing and looked at it. A lady cloud followed by the Zeus cloud whizzed past them.

"I'm going to have to get back to my story and fix my computer so we can find our friend," said the Jay, "You could come too if you want."

"Yeah," said the Curt, "they could even join the ISAAESH."

Curt told them that they wanted to join the ISAAESH, but they couldn't leave their story at the time. They also told what they knew of Jessi. The Jay and the Curt went back home through a great white doorway.

"Hey, you're back," said the Puddy as the Jay and the Curt stepped through the great white doorway into the room.

"What about my back?" asked the Jay as he looked at his back. The Curt shut the great white door and it disappeared.

"What's with the big white doorway?" asked the Puddy.

"It's a great white doorway," said the Jay, "but I have no idea where it came from."

"It saved us time and scotch tape," said the Curt, "Who cares where it came from?"

The Paul turned from the computer. "The Steve broke your computer. I tried to fix it, but I haven't been successful." He got up and the Jay sat down.

"He deleted my free space," said the Jay.

"What does that mean?" asked the Paul.

"It means it's harder to get bingo," the Curt explained. The Jay fixed it, but the computer still wouldn't work.

"Oh yeah," he said as he reached around to the back and flipped a switch from 'BROKEN' to 'FIXED.'

"Where is the Steve anyway?" asked the Curt. They heard a loud banging sound coming from the closet.

"YOU!" yelled the Steve, "It's all YOUR fault! I never should have brought you here!" They ignored him and made sure the calculator looking things worked before the Jay and the Curt set off to find Jessi once again. They had to walk because they didn't know how the great white doorway worked.

The Paul and the Puddy thought about what to do about the Steve. They got him to calm down and promised he'd be an important character in the next story. He seemed happy with that, and since the Paul had been forgiven for what he'd done to The J, they decided to forget the whole thing. The Puddy went to move her stuff into the Jay's house since the Jessi would probably want her old house back, but mostly because the Puddy and the Jessi didn't know each other.

"This is the place," said Jay as he put away his calculator looking thing. He and Curt jumped up and dove at the ground. The paper ripped and they fell on the ground of the story Jessi was in. Their definite articles returned as they fell. Jay and Curt walked over to them as they got up and dusted themselves off.

"Hello, Jay and Curt," said Jay.

"Hello, Jay and Curt," said the Jay.

"Hello, Jays and Curts," said the Zeus cloud. He saw lady cloud and surfed away after her again.

"So how's your upsurge thing coming?" asked the Curt.

"Never mind that for now," said the Jay. He took two calculator looking things out of his pocket and handed them to Curt and Jay. "We had a few extras of these lying around. You'll find they're simple to use. They'll tell you anything you want to know about the story you're in unless your author doesn't want you to know. We'll get shoe rockets and magical glowing sticks and belt-mount scotch tape dispensers for you later. And if you find out anything more about our friend, use those calculator looking things to tell us." The Jay and the Curt walked off.

The Curt hit his calculator looking thing. "Either they broke your computer again or author doesn't want us to know exactly where Jessi is--all I'm getting is that she's in this story." He noticed a news report on a TV in a nearby window. They walked over to the window and watched.

"Was that Jessi?" asked the Jay. They had seen someone get hit by a flying lemon. They started to run, but they hit a large, invisible object. "I guess that's the wrong way," said the Jay. They turned around and ran the other way.

The Curt looked down into the enormous crater. "It's HUUUUUUUUUUGE!" he said. Jessi was still falling into it (these craters were quite deep). The Jay reached into his pocket and took out a remote control like the kind for a VCR.

"Where did this come from?" The Curt didn't know either. The Jay aimed the remote at the Curt. Now the author knew it was very dangerous for any character to have that particular remote, but he still had the utmost power of the author's pencil. If the Jay would have pressed the STOP button while it was aimed at anyone, that character could never be even mentioned in a story ever again. If it wasn't aimed at anyone, the story would end right then and there and couldn't have a sequel. But none of that happened. The Jay pressed the PAUSE button and the Curt stopped moving. Then he paused the Jessi who stopped falling into the unknown depths of the crater.

"That was cool," he said. He looked at the remote. There was something on the back that said "Important Channels." His home story along with the one he was in then were listed. He aimed at the Curt again and typed the three-digit code for their home story. The Curt disappeared.

"Cool," said the Jay. He pointed the remote down the crater at Jessi and typed the code. Nothing happened, so he tried it again. It still didn't work, so he said, "I guess it doesn't work if the person is in danger." Actually, that had nothing to do with it. It was just that the author wasn't letting it work on her. The Jay used the remote to send himself back to his home story.

"What happened to the Curt?" asked the Paul.

"Oh yeah." The Jay unpaused the Curt. "We need to rescue Jessi from falling into a deep, unknown crater."

"You just left her falling into a deep, unknown crater?" asked the Puddy.

"Oh no, she's paused," said the Jay. "We'll need-"

"I don't think we should save her," said the Paul, "She won't do any more damage to that story and she wasn't a very good character anyway. She was based on a mix between Jess and Jessie--what kind of character is that? The rest of us are whole. We should just leave her alone."

"But if we left her alone the story would end right here and that's a rather stupid ending," said the Curt, "I'm sure our author won't allow that." That convinced them. They all went to the junkyard to build a machine that would save Jessi and bring her back. They could get rid of her in the next story if they wanted to. The Jay used the fast-forward button on the remote to get them to the junkyard faster.

"I like to play in the junkyard," said the Paul who had a dirty toilet seat around his neck.

"Where's the rest of that toilet?" asked the Curt, "We need it for our machine." The Paul brought the rest of the toilet over to where everyone else was making the machine. The Curt took the flusher handle off and attached it to the machine. The Jay used the remote to send the machine, the Curt, and himself back to the other story. The Paul decided to keep the toilet seat. He and the Puddy went back to the ISAAESH control room.

"Okay, Curt, flush." The Curt pulled the flusher handle and the machine started working. The Jay sat at the fine-tuning knobs (from an old TV) so he could make sure the giant hand got to the right place before it closed. The Curt walked to the crater and peered over the edge.

"Just a little more to the left," he said, "No--my left. Okay. I'm closing the hand...there. Bring her up." The Curt really couldn't have reached the control that closed the hand from the edge of the crater, but the author didn't realize what he was doing until he'd already done it. The hand was above the top of the crater. It swung around to where Jessi was above solid ground. The Curt opened the hand and Jessi just kept floating there.

"Close the hand again," said the Jay, "I have to unpause her first." The Curt closed the hand again and the Jay unpaused Jessi. "Okay." The hand opened and Jessi fell on the ground.

"Thanks, guys," said Jessi as she got up. She noticed a stampede of reporters raising a cloud of dust off in the distance. The other two noticed it too. The remote had mysteriously disappeared, so they ran. It didn't take long until they got to where the Jay and the Curt had fallen about three pages back. They each held one of Jessi's arms and pressed the buttons on their shoes. They had to go up for a long time before they entered the next story. Curt scotch-taped the rip.

The Puddy opened the door and let the Steve out of the closet because they forgot to do that before. She took out her calculator looking thing and pressed some buttons. "They could be back any Minute Now, " she said."

"Why didn't you just use that instead of the computer before?" asked the Paul.

"The author must've forgot about it for a while." The Jay, the Curt, and the Jessi fell on the floor. They all talked for a while and found out that Jessi had been holding the map upside down.

"Why isn't the story over yet?" asked the Curt, "We usually go off and rescue one of our characters and when we come back that's it."

"Maybe the author fell asleep," suggested the Jay, "HEY! WAKE UP, author! " The author woke up."

"Maybe that didn't work," said the Paul, "it still isn't over yet." So far the author had no idea what was going on. A ceiling tile fell on the floor and exploded, knocking all of them down.

"He's awake," said the Jay, "Jessi, tell him you're here."

"I'm here," said the Jessi. The author now knew what was going on. Two magical glowing sticks fell from the ceiling.

"Oh yeah," said the Curt, "Those usses in that other story still need the rest of their equipment. You got any shoe rockets or scotch tape?" Two sets of both of those things fell on the floor. The Curt gathered all of it up and put them into his pockets before setting off for the other story. Everybody else went to the Jessi's house to help her unpack.

"The Curt looked around. Then he looked at his calculator looking thing. He started walking. After a short while, he came across Jay and Curt. "Hey!"

"Hello, definite Curt," said Curt.

"Hello," said the Curt, "I have the rest of your ISAAESH equipment." He handed them the equipment as he pulled it out of his pocket. He explained how to use it and went home.

"That's the last of it," said the Steve, "you're all moved in." The Curt fell on the ground.

"Look's like the story's going to end soon," said the Curt.