Cosmic Puppets, Chapter 6

Well, looks like Ted’s found a friend. Leaving Peter behind on the ledge, Ted decides that he’s going to try to get out of town, despite being warned that he can’t. 

Have to say, it’s pretty cool that the barrier isn’t this entirely supernatural thing. Ted drives to the edge of town and finds an abandoned lumber truck with its logs spilled out across the street around it. Trying to get around it, Ted finds a steep slope that he can’t climb on one side and a pit that, while possible to vault across, doesn’t seem to have a bottom. Ted decides it isn’t worth it to try the pit so he tries to climb over the logs. However…. I don’t even know how to describe this… he gets stuck inside of them? Or under them maybe? The logs seem to be shifting like water around him, rematerializing and trapping him inside.. and then… the barrier gets even weirder, if that was possible. Despite this seeming to only take ten minutes, Ted checks his watch and finds that he’s been at this for seven hours. I have to say, this is probably not the best written description of time dilation I’ve seen (that moniker currently belongs to Huxley or Leary..). 

Suddenly, Peter shows up and lets Ted know that he’s the one who’s been warping time around Ted… and preventing him from crossing the barrier. He helps Ted out of his predicament and lets Ted know that, while he is preventing Ted from leaving, he is not the one who brought Ted to Millgate. Angered by this (like yeah, I would be too), Ted drives off leaving Peter behind. I have to say, it’s pretty hilarious how, apparently, this reality-warping kid can just be easily bested by someone driving off quickly and leaving him up on a mountain road. 

Ted heads into a bar back in town and runs into one of the people who laughed at him during his initial frantic episode in the middle of Millgate. I don’t think Ted quite knows the score here.. if you’re in a situation where you’re in a seemingly reality-warped town, you always have to find the people who apparently seem outcast by the rest of the muggles in the scenario. This old man, Christopher, is apparently the only person aware of the shift, and knows some of the locations which Ted is speaking about that once inhabited the old Millgate.