The Hotel That Hummed

The Art Gallery Hotel was the kind of place that made your jaw drop the second you saw it.

It rose forty floors above Story Land Metropolis like a silver rocket wearing a museum's worth of paintings on the outside. Murals covered every panel — swirling galaxies, enormous fish, a portrait of a cat playing chess with a robot. The lobby smelled like fresh espresso and oil paint.

Paintbrush Mother Cat loved this building almost as much as she loved her rainbow cape.

She stood at the top-floor welcome desk, white fur gleaming under the skylight, purple hair tucked behind one ear, signing autographs for a cluster of very excited guests.

"You live here?" asked a small boy in a striped shirt.

"I protect here," she said, tapping her blue mask with one finger. "Big difference."

From somewhere deep below, the building made a low, satisfied hum.

Forty Floors and a Very Bad Noise

The hum got louder.

It wasn't like a refrigerator hum or a fan hum. It was bigger — a deep, chest-rattling sound that came up through the floor like the whole building had swallowed something enormous.

The boy in the striped shirt grabbed Paintbrush Mother Cat's cape. "Is that normal?"

"No," she said honestly.

Then the floor tilted.

Just slightly. Enough to send a fruit bowl sliding off the welcome desk and a vase wobbling in a slow, nervous circle. A drone — one of the hotel's small delivery robots shaped like a silver bowtie — zipped out from a side corridor and crashed into the wall with a loud bonk.

Then everything went still.

Then the entire top floor shot upward.

Not like an elevator. Like a rocket. The skylight glass turned from blue to black in about four seconds, and the stars appeared — real ones — cold and sharp and very, very far from Story Land Metropolis.

The boy stared out the skylight. "Are we in space?"

Paintbrush Mother Cat looked up. Definitely space.