Only a few minutes later, Tyler heard the noise again.

He sat up quickly. He wished Jay was still awake so he could prove he wasn't crazy, but even through the strange sound, Tyler could hear his brother's snores.

If there was something out there, he was going to have to find it himself.

He climbed out of his bed, feet-first. He slipped on the pair of slippers waiting there, glancing at them in the dark to make sure they were his; Tyler had red plaid ones, and Jay had blue plaid. In the faint moonlight that shone through the window, Tyler could see that his feet were in the red ones.

He went over to the window, peering outside. It was a bit lighter out than usual, due to the full moon. Stars twinkled in the sky, and pale wispy strips of clouds streaked here and there over them.

He didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

Tyler clanked to the alarm clock on his desk. The red letters displayed the time: two twenty-four in the morning.

Despite knowing his parents would be upset if he went out at such an unholy hour of the morning, Tyler still felt that urge. The urge that mankind had been feeling from day one, the urge that made Eve try the fruit from the forbidden tree, the urge that made Magellan traverse the oceans, the urge that made Buzz want to go to the moon. The urge to explore, to discover. Curiosity.

When curiosity calls you, there's little you can do. You can try to ignore it, distract yourself from it, distance yourself from it, flee from it. But curiosity will always find you, and tempt you with knowledge. It nibbles at the back of your brain, an instinct, eating away at you until you finally give in to it.

Tyler was not one to fight an instinct, so he obeyed curiosity's whims, and went outside in search of what was causing the sound.