Uptown Ami here. It's so loud I can barely type! At yet another show of studded leather jacket wearing rhino head guys playing powersaw core. Well not always rhino headed. Sometimes big battle masks, alien warlords, demons. All the real thing. They play in warrens of burnt out concrete basements and under bombed out bridges.

Dirk and Krystal and Hegemony have handfuls of various currencies they've been able to scrap up during their time here, so they buy the drinks.

"Yeah emo-land is on the outskirts of all this," Dirk says, gesturing with a tin cup filled with purple froth. "But where you want to go is on the whole other side."

"There's a show they say that leads to EVERYWHERE," Krystal says with a dreamy look in her eye.

"Maybe that includes your airport?" Hegemony says, swirling her froth. "Or at least a place we've heard of called 'Red Rocks.' Maybe you've been there?"

"There he is," says the voice in my earbuds. "Guy in the parka, row of seats on the right. There's a spot next to him. Sit there."

I take a seat next to the guy.

"Pull out your phone and mess with it. Act natural."

I pull out my phone and look at it, fumbling with my thumb. No messages. Then a message comes in.

ding!

THIS IS THE FIFTH TIME. CUT IT OUT ALREADY. YOU CAN DO IT! TURN AROUND AND LEAVE THE AIRPORT

"Ok, he's going to get up in a minute, but he's going to leave something behind in his seat. A small scrunched up paper bag. Don't look at it!"

The guy gets up and leaves.

"In about a minute, you're going to grab that bag and put it in your pocket as you stand up. But not till I give the signal."

ding!

AREN'T YOU GETTING BORED OF THIS? WE ARE!!! QUIT. THE. GAME.

I'm have a deja vu.

"Ok, real casual, reach over and grab the bag, now stand up and put it in your hoodie pocket, and walk back down the concourse the way you came."

ding!

AH HA! ARE WE STARTING TO GET THROUGH TO YOU? IT'S OVER. TURN AROUND AND LEAVE.

"WHAT DID YOU DO? YOU CUT US OFF!!!"

@Tracy Hyde gave the guy another kick in the side. He let out an ooof. We had him pinned to the floor of our breakroom hideout. And she was right about us being cut off. Ever since the nosebleeds happened, none of us could feel the gates anymore. In airports, we get a feel for the doors and jetways that are "open." It's like a steady background hum. But now we could hardly feel a thing.

"It's just a game," the guy said, trying to catch his breath. "It's a LARP. I met these guys online. They send me on phony 'missions' and I do what they say. It's harmless fun. We're just playing spy..."

"IT'S NOT HARMLESS YOU PRICK!" Tracy kicked him again.

This was bad. This was messed up. How could we fix this? And who was after us anyway? This kid seemed like a total douche, but he wasn't a hardcase. He probably believed the whole LARP story. I'd been pressing the button on the stupid pen thing he'd used, which was probably not a good idea, but it didn't seem to do anything. But maybe we could prevent it from happening in the first place...

So I told everybody my plan. Even though we couldn't feel the proper gates, if you squinted and turned your head just right you could still feel some of the rough edges. Those were smaller rips that were too small to fit through, and lead to short time hops backwards and forwards at DFA. We'd played around before pushing things through them with mop poles, and then find them a few hours in the future. Or we'd find a thing and know we'd need to push it through the hole to go back to the moment we found it. We'd never found much use for them except for fooling around.

The kid had a phone. We could text him through a rip, back to before he pushed the button, and tell him to stop. Call off his phony 'mission.' It wouldn't solve all our problems. And if we succeeded we still wouldn't know who was behind this. But at least we'd get our feeling back.

"Hey, can I have your number?" Tracy asked him. Then she kicked him again.

Everybody had nosebleeds.

"What's going on? What's happening to us?!!!"

"Calm down, it's alright," said @Madison Addison. She had kleenex up her nose. It was soaked through. "Mia and Sophie are down. Everybody else is just dizzy. And bleeding out their noses. Still no @Ami Upton."

We were holed up in a forgotten break room for a forgotten airline. An appropriate secret headquarters for the Flight Attendants.

"Oh my god. There was this guy. I was hitting him up for a bite to eat and I think HE made this happen. With this--" I held out the silver pen thing with the glass button.

Madison stared at it. It had nose blood all over it. Like my hand.

"Who--?" she asked, when suddenly he came bounding through the door of the breakroom.

"HIM!" I cried. "GET HIM!"

So I pressed the button.

Nothing happened. Then the hippie goth girl at my table had a nose bleed.

What was she? Some kind of drug addict? Asking me for money?

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit," she said. "What did you just DO?"

I was still holding the silver pen in my hand. Thumb still on the button. She was staring at it.

"Gimme that!" she snarled, grabbed the pen from my hand, and took off. Blood splattered on the table.

That couldn't be good. There was no voice in my earbuds. What was I supposed to do?

So I followed the trail of blood.

Uptown Ami here. I ended up at an emo show from the early 2000's. New Appliance. This particular live musical performance era was always in my top 3 (ok maybe my #1) though I could never find a gate to it. But when you fall off the tether you can end up in weird places.

Hanging out after the show, I discovered these early 2000 emos had their own network of gates, totally separate from ours, which explains how we couldn't find them. But GUESS WHAT their network isn't even connected to shows in our universe at all -- it's completely in these weird dystopian universes, like where bands have to play literally underground in bombed out cities not to get arrested by the robot morality thought police or whatever.

Which means I'm kind of stuck! Because there's no way to climb back up a broken tether. So I'll keep hanging out with Dirk and Krystal and Hegemony I guess and try and figure something out.

"Don't look back," says the voice in my earbuds. "Eyes forward. Nobody's following you, but you can never be sure who's looking."

Well, whoever is texting me seems to be looking.

ding!

"Don't answer that," says the voice. "Just keep walking down the concourse. See that Wolfgang Puck's ahead? That's where you're headed."

I keep heading down the concourse. A big flight must be unloading, because it's getting crowded with people walking my way.

"Now, take a seat. Anywhere will do."

I take a seat at one of the tables in the food court. It's got crumbs and looks sticky.

"Excellent. Next, take the bag out of your pocket. Reach in and take out what's inside."

I take the crumpled paper bag out of my hoodie pouch and pull out what's inside. It's like a fountain pen, heavy, and made of brushed silver metal. It's got some kind of gem set into it. Like a button.

"Push the button."

I lift my thumb to press it...

"Hey!" says a girl who is now sitting across from me at the table. She has red hair, but not recently washed. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm on a school trip and got separated from my friends, and, well, they've got all our travel money, and I'm really hungry. Would you mind giving me a bit of money for a salad? Or you could just buy it for me. I'm really sorry to have to ask..."

Has anybody seen Ami? We got separated leaving Winterland and even though we were roped together the lash snapped. It was a clean cut, just like last time.

Anyway so the rest of the Flight Attendants and I had to bail out of the tube and ended up at the Red Rocks portal, south side cravass. Some 80's band. Carved our names in wet cement and made some friends who gave us a lift to Stapleton Fictional Airport, which was ok because Ami and I ended up there once and she showed me the way in. Security was practically non-existent back then. Made it to DFA no problemo but there's dudes in suits staking out the Wolfgang Puck's.

What goes on?!

Excuse me, have you seen a group of young people here? We're on a... school trip, yeah, and I was supposed to meet up with them here at this Wolfgang Puck's. They probably look at bit, uh, rough, because they've been traveling a lot, and going lots of, uh... places?

No? Ok, no that's fine. But also, you wouldn't have ten dollars you could give me, do you? See, I'm haven't eaten for, well, I don't know how long, and I lost my wallet. The friends I was supposed to meet up with have money though, so they were going to buy me a salad, but they're not here...

Uptown Ami here, camping out at Denver Fictional Airport with my crew: the Flight Attendants.

We live in the Airports. We travel the gates to all the times and places that crazy mixed up bowl of macaroni tubes will take us.

We're just grabbing a bite at the Wolfgang Puck's before heading to Winterland, San Francisco, June 9th, 1977.

If you're not ready yet that's cool. We'll be back! See you then.