While Biff was having her escapade with Emit in another realm and unleashing a potentially very dangerous dragon upon the world, no one else was aware of this, of course. All Jon knew that morning was that there was a conspicuous absence of students, Biff included. The changing of the student body was accelerating at an alarming rate. It seemed like events were being propelled toward a waterfall in a little rubber raft. He had by now become aware of what had happened to James, whose absence was rather understandable at the moment, while Elliot's absence was more unexplained. Probably he just wanted to skip town because he didn't want to be torn limb from limb by Biff. Or not. Biff seemed rather nonchalant about it. Maybe Biff wasn't too upset by it, because the video was obviously fake. They weren't video shots of the real Biff doing those things, and everyone would have known that, so maybe that was why she wasn't particularly upset by it. Still, the Biff he had known earlier would have gone into a blinding rage anyway. But it was also clear to Jon that she had grown up a bit by the repercussions of her change. Probably because she didn't have the luxury of not doing so.
Nevertheless, that wasn't what was most concerning to Jon at the moment.
For there on the chalkboard in his homeroom class as Jon came in at the first period of the day, was a strange, intricate figure with 5-fold symmetry, filled with strange and unfamiliar symbols, but the words "for something interesting" neatly in English at the bottom. Jon felt a shiver of terror at that. It was obviously a message to him. But from whom? The powers that be? The stone? The mist? Who put that on the chalkboard, and why, and what did it really mean. But that wasn't even the most bothering thing about it. The thing about it that worried Jon the most were the 5 words around the figure. Because they weren't in any language Jon could identify, yet for some reason, he could read them. He knew what they said, as if by magic. At each of the 5 prominent positions around the figure were the 5 words, "time", "space", "mass", "charge" and "life". What could it mean? What the hell was he supposed to do with this thing? But one thing he was definitely going to do, was take a picture of it. What was it? It looked like some sort of fantasy summoning circle for demons, perhaps. But what was with time, space, mass, charge and life. Were those elements of some sort, rather than Earth, air, fire and water?
Jon got several pictures of the figure. When Karyn got to class, her eyes were drawn to it as well.
"Did you draw that?" she asked.
"Nope. It was here when I got here. What do you make of it?"
"It looks like, maybe some sort of magic circle?"
"That's what I was thinking," Jon said. "But what does it mean by time, space, mass, charge and life?"
"What?" Karyn said, confused, looking at the figure.
"Oh, right. You can't read it. Well that's the expected result, the real mystery is why I can." Jon got up to the chalkboard, now a few other students in the room, and pointed to the different parts of the figure, and read out what they meant.
"What language is that?" one of the other students asked.
"I don't know," Jon said.
"You don't know? How can you read it then? Did you draw it?"
"No, it was here when I got here. And I don't know why I can read it. Can anyone else read that?"
Stares, all around, like Jon was some sort of alien.
"Ok then, well that's what it says."
Someone hummed the repeated 4 note iconic musical sequence to The Twilight Zone.
Then the homeroom teacher came in.
"Oh, who drew that?" she asked.
No one said anything. They didn't want to say "no one knows" because they figured it was probably Jon, but Jon for some reason didn't want to be known as having done it.
"I'm going to have to erase it, for my class after homeroom, just fair warning, whoever the artist is, you should get some pictures of it. Actually I'm going to take a picture of it, because that's pretty neat." She took out her phone and took two photos of it and then took roll call.
