| rdfs:comment | - Ferb Fletcher’s eyes snapped open, pulling him abruptly out of the first nightmare he’d had all year. He lay there for about a minute, letting his breathing return to normal, then sat up, shoving the green hair out of his eyes. He’d always had green hair, for some reason, but nobody he knew really cared. He observed his surroundings. His stepbrother, Phineas Flynn, was still snoring in his bed on the other side of the room. Their pet platypus, Perry, was still curled up next to him. The walls were still blue, the floors still wood. Nothing had changed. According to the clock on his nightstand, it was 11:42 pm. He’d been asleep only a few hours. Any ordinary guy would just shrug that fact off, but Ferb wasn’t exactly what you’d call an “ordinary guy”. He knew that people rarely experience l
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| abstract | - Ferb Fletcher’s eyes snapped open, pulling him abruptly out of the first nightmare he’d had all year. He lay there for about a minute, letting his breathing return to normal, then sat up, shoving the green hair out of his eyes. He’d always had green hair, for some reason, but nobody he knew really cared. He observed his surroundings. His stepbrother, Phineas Flynn, was still snoring in his bed on the other side of the room. Their pet platypus, Perry, was still curled up next to him. The walls were still blue, the floors still wood. Nothing had changed. According to the clock on his nightstand, it was 11:42 pm. He’d been asleep only a few hours. Any ordinary guy would just shrug that fact off, but Ferb wasn’t exactly what you’d call an “ordinary guy”. He knew that people rarely experience long dreams until late into sleep. Maybe I’m not a person he thought jokingly. He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t seem to go to back to sleep again. His dream had been extremely vivid. He sat up again and groped around the nightstand, selecting a random gadget that sat there. He clicked it on, and his hand-held GPS blinked to life. It was the same GPS Phineas had Jerry-Rigged into a Cute-Tracker to find their friend Meap. The device had been fried in the process of that adventure, but Ferb was very skilled at fixing things. The little machine was currently getting a signal from the Garcia-Shapiros’ house across the street. Ferb smiled at Phineas for a second, then set to work. Tinkering could get Ferb’s mind off of anything. If you needed to get his attention before he was finished, you’d probably have to do something mildly painful. Within fifteen minutes, he’d re-calibrated the GPS from a Cute-Seeker to a Corn Dog Locator to a Platypus-Finder (Who knew there were so many in Danville?) then finally to a Family Member Tracker. His mind clear of the dream, Ferb was about to go back to sleep, but sheer curiosity won him over. He licked his thumb and pressed it against the DNA registering pad. Within seconds, several dozen glowing purple stripes zipped across the screen. Some of the signals stopped only two yards away from him, others went halfway around the planet. Some were glowing green, others red. Green meant related by blood, red meant by marriage. Phineas’s signal was six feet from him, Candace was asleep in her room, Mum and Father were asleep in theirs, Uncle Bob and Aunt Tiana were in Michigan, Grandpa Clyde, Grandma Betty Jo and Great-Aunt Lorraine were in the middle of nowhere, Grandpa Reg and Grandma Winnie were in England, Uncle Angus and Aunt Maura were in Scotland, along with his cousins, Nigel, Hector and Bridget. Several other aunts, uncles and cousins dotted the map. Ferb was about to turn the Seeker off, when something caught his eye: a signal, just outside the boundaries of Danville, that didn’t seem to be in any sort of house, apartment, hotel or any other place of residence. The stripe leading to it was surrounded by a green hue, so it was a blood relative. With the press of a few buttons, the signal read: Name: Jessica Grace Fletcher Gender: Female Age: 11 Relation: Unknown Time to Location: 1.47 Hours Ferb stared at the words. A million questions tangled in his brain. Who was this girl? Where had she come from? Why hadn’t Mum and Father told me about her? Why was she living in the outskirts of the city? How is she related to me? Somehow, in the deepest, most distant part of his mind, he felt like he should know her very well, but didn’t. She had something to do with his identity. There were two ways for Ferb to find an answer to all these questions. One, he could simply wait until morning to ask his parents about her. Naturally, though, he went with the second option.
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