by J Boyd Long
Quentin stood frozen, dumbfounded. There was no logic to what he was seeing, and without logic, he had nothing to grasp, no way to understand what was happening. This was a scientific impossibility. It was impossible, yet, there it was. There must be an explanation, something he was overlooking. He pried his gaze away and looked behind him, confirming where he was. Eissa was still standing near the door, her face lit up by the daylight pouring through the DimGate. Her mouth hung open and her lips were moving slightly, but no sounds came out. He turned back to the door.
It definitely wasn’t a screen. A light breeze came through, carrying smells of sweet grass and woodsmoke. His brain tried to process the facts, but things just didn’t add up. On this side of the door, they were at the top of a twelve-story building, inside an enclosed room, in the middle of the night. On the other side, it was outside, somewhere else, and daytime. He shook his head, but nothing changed. His fear was momentarily forgotten, buried by confusion and wonder. He turned back to Eissa.
“I’m at a loss for an explanation,” he said. “It’s the wardrobe. What else could it be?”
Eissa’s eyes slowly moved away from the door, and met Quentin’s with a questioning look. “The wardrobe?”
“You know, The Chronicles of Narnia. The wardrobe. Gateway to another world.”
“I don’t think my brain can handle this. It feels like it’s ripping in half.”
“Mine, too,” Quentin said. “But look at that. That’s somewhere else. How incredible is that? It’s scary, yeah, but look.”
Eissa took a deep breath and stepped up beside him.
“I’m going to act like this is a lucid dream,” she said. “I’ll just embrace it and assume that if it gets bad, I can wake up. So, are you going to step through? Or at least, you know, poke your head in and look around?”
Quentin edged closer to the door. Every muscle, nerve, and fiber in his body was a live wire, tingling and vibrating. He slowly stuck his hand through the doorway for a moment, braced to pull it back from the slightest reaction, but nothing happened. He steeled himself and took a deep breath, and, holding it, leaned through and glanced around.
The air on the other side of the door was warm on his face, and he relaxed slightly and looked around. The porch was surrounded by a white railing. Long, white planter boxes flanked the top of the worn steps and were filled with pink and purple flowers. He released his breath, and took a cautious inhale. The air felt normal in his lungs. Across the road in the field, the boy threw a stick, and laughed as the yellow dog leaped into the air and caught it. He pulled his head back through.
“It’s got to be some sort of portal,” he said, sorting through all the possibilities he could think of, trying to find something rational that might explain it. “A wormhole, or a time machine, or something. It’s definitely not a secret server, anyway.”
A knock at the outer office door made them both jump.
“Mr. Zimmerman, is that you in there? IBZ Security. Please announce yourself by Protocol Five.”
Quentin froze, his breath caught in his throat. Did the security guard have access to Zimmerman’s office? He must have heard the DimGate cycle up. Whatever this DimGate was, they weren’t going to be lax about securing it. He had to think of something, and fast.
“Under Protocol 167, I’m entering the office,” the guard shouted. “I have the authority to shoot on site, so whoever’s in there, you need to announce yourself right now, or I will consider you as a hostile intruder.”
“Oh, shit,” Eissa hissed. “Say something!”
Quentin sprinted to the door leading to Zimmerman’s office. The sunlight pouring through the DimGate threw shadows all over the office, but Quentin’s attention was immediately drawn to the office door on the far wall as the lock clicked. He stepped back into the room and quickly shut the door.
“Maybe he doesn’t have access to this room,” he said. Adrenaline made his arms and legs heavy, as if he were in a dream. He couldn’t think of a believable lie to tell the guard, and there was no place to hide. They were cornered.
“Dude, we can’t just stand here.” Eissa’s eyes were wide with terror. “He’s going to come in shooting.”
“What else can we do?” A ball of dread was forming in his stomach, churning and splashing, loosening his bowels. “The only place to hide is- is through there.”
A fist pounded on the door to the room. Time was up. They had to give themselves up, or else-
“Announce yourself immediately,” the guard shouted. “Announce yourself or I will shoot you when I open this door.”
Quentin’s paralysis broke, and he leaped forward, grabbing Eissa’s arm. “Come on, we’ve got no choice.” He charged through the DimGate with Eissa in tow, and turned to slam the door shut behind them. The room door was opening as the DimGate was closing, and he glimpsed the guard’s eyes widen in shock as he came into view. His gun was pointed straight at Quentin, and it seemed impossible that the door could close fast enough to prevent the guard from shooting him. He held his breath and waited for the impact of the slugs to tear his chest apart, but they never came. The door slammed shut, and as soon as the latch clicked, the whole thing vanished: the door, the control panel, everything. Where it had just been, there was now open floor with a picnic table off to one side.
That’s not possible. Quentin’s mouth hung open, his thoughts moving in a sluggish loop. That couldn’t have happened. It’s not possible. What really just happened?
CHAPTER 3
Quentin stared at the porch deck where the portal had just vanished. He was vaguely aware of Eissa panting and swearing somewhere behind him, but most of his attention was focused on the floor. How could the DimGate have just dematerialized like that? It hadn’t retracted into the floor, or something explainable like that, it had flat-out disappeared.
Nothing made any sense, not the DimGate, not the guard willing to shoot them over it, and not the fact that it just vanished. Also, not the fact that he had an insane desire for it to reappear, so they could get back on the other side of it. Nothing good could happen over there right now, but still…
“Uh… um, so…” Quentin mumbled, his eyes wide. He licked his lips and tried again. “I feel like we’re screwed in so many different ways right now, I can’t even put them all into words. Like, we totally just got busted.”
Eissa looked up at him, her dark eyes wide open in shock. “Mmmm.” She shook her head, as if denying all of it. “Uh-uh. No way. Not real.”
Quentin barely heard her. His thinking was very linear as he floundered for some sense of stability, some understanding of his situation. “I’m totally fired. I was going to erase the security video when we left, but now I can’t do that. And I don’t know where we are, or how to get back, not that we can go back, because some rent-a-cop is trying to kill us.”
“Well, this confirms my lucid dream theory,” Eissa said. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Things just got too fucking weird to be anything else.”
Quentin made a conscious effort to prioritize his chaotic stream of thoughts. Where were they? Where did the portal go, and was it going to reappear in a hail of gunfire? Did they need to run?
He looked around. Aside from the boy and the dog playing in the field, there wasn’t anyone in sight. The line of buildings extended down the street in both directions. Across the road, the field stretched to the horizon, with a forest on the right side.
“Quentin, talk to me. Even if this is a dream, I need you to talk to me. Explain what the fuck is happening.”
Quentin glanced at her. “How should I know? As far as my understanding of physics goes, this shouldn’t have even happened. I’m in way over my head.”
“Make an educated guess, will you? Give me something I can hold on to.”
He thought for a moment. If he set aside his emotional reaction, and looked solely at the facts, what sort of a conclusion would he draw? What conclusion would Neil DeGrasse Tyson come to?
�
��Well, if I had to make a guess, I’d say that we just teleported somewhere.”
She shook her head, looking down. “Dude, I’m freaking out here. That should be the coolest thing you’ve ever said, but I can feel a panic attack coming on. I can’t do this. I need to go home, right now.”
The threat of a panic attack galvanized Quentin into action, driving the cobwebs of confusion from his mind. He spun to face her and squatted down until he could look her in the eye. The last thing they needed was for Eissa to lose her shit.
“No, no, calm down,” he said. “No matter what, you’re okay. Focus on your breathing, and look at me, don’t think about anything else.”
Eissa locked eyes with him and began taking measured breaths.
“Goosefraba,” Quentin said, forcing a cheesy grin as he straightened back up. “You are the calmest of all the calms in Calmville.” He wiggled his eyebrows up and down, trying to pull off the ‘ridiculously bad salesman’ look.
Her normally dark skin was pale, and her labored breaths came in short gasps. Quentin grabbed her hand and slid his arm into her grasp. “Squeeze. Clamp down, breathe, and squeeze.”
Her skin was cold and clammy, but she tightened her grip. He matched his breaths with hers, guiding her rhythm.
“Squeeze hard. Show me what you’re working with.”
She snorted, which turned into the giggles, and Quentin heaved a sigh of relief. If she was able to laugh, then they were okay. He’d been through plenty of these episodes with her over the years since she’d gotten out of the Army, and while they were all stressful, this was exceptionally bad timing.
“Thanks,” Eissa gasped. “I think I’m okay.”
She released his arm, and he rubbed it with a smile. “No permanent damage.”
“My brain isn’t elastic enough to process this shit on the fly.” She coughed, shaking her head. “It’s kicking my ass all the way around.”
“Right there with you,” Quentin said. “The fact that this thing even exists means it’s either some futuristic technology way beyond what we know about, or some kind of magic that I don’t believe in, and either way, it’s all I can do to not run away screaming right now. But hey, we’re in this together, and we’re going to be okay. We’re still the A-Team, and we’ve been kicking ass for thirty years and counting.”
Eissa rubbed her face with both hands and let out a deep sigh. “You’re right, I can do this. Let’s try to be rational and figure out how to handle this. Do you think the guard deactivated the portal thing?”
Quentin shook his head. “No, he was still in the doorway when it vanished.”
“So, do you think he’s trying to open it back up? Meaning, do we need to get the hell out of here, before he shows up guns a’blazing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Eissa put her hands on her hips and looked around. “What about getting us back on the other side? I mean, I don’t want to run back through and get shot, but I do want to go home. We need some way to get the guard out of the equation.”
Quentin was way outside of his wheelhouse. His therapist had repeatedly pointed out his tendency to avoid things and situations where he wasn’t a subject matter expert, as a way to mask his insecurities, and he wished that she was here so he could show her how fruitless it was to leave his comfort zone. Not having any answers didn’t appear to be helping him grow at all, right now. Eissa had military experience, and it made sense that she should be the one coming up with answers.
“Didn’t you learn something in the Army that we could use? An ambush technique, or a distraction, or something?”
“I was a fucking medic, Quentin. We learned how to treat injuries. I don’t know shit about combat tactics.”
He forced his breath out his nose, trying to keep his stress in check. “Alright, alright, I’m grasping at straws here. Let’s just figure out where we can hide. Hopefully, he’ll go down the road looking for us, and we can just slip back through the door and leave him here. Then we can deactivate it, erase the video, and go home and pretend this never happened.”
Eissa raised a questioning eyebrow. “I’ve had a lot of PTSD counseling in my life, Q, and I’m telling you, you don’t forget shit like this.”
“Yeah, I’ll concede that point, but we should hop the rail and hide around the corner right now, while we have the opportunity to do it and not get shot at. He’ll probably check inside the building, or go down the stairs to the road, and then we can go back through the door, as soon as he’s far enough away.”
“Deal.”
They awkwardly clambered over the rail and dropped to the ground. There was a huge azalea bush at the corner, and they went to the other side of it and sat down, out of sight from the porch. He felt exposed, but there wasn’t any place nearby that offered better cover where they could still see the porch, and he was afraid to get too far away. If it did come back, and they had an opportunity to get through it, they needed to be able to act fast. If the guard came this way, well, they’d cross that bridge if they came to it.
As the minutes ticked by in silence, Quentin poked his head up sporadically, checking to see if the DimGate had reappeared. His thoughts were bouncing back and forth between Zimmerman and Holt, the DimGate portal, and how he was going to get Eissa back over the rail quickly, if they got the chance. All three of them were tough problems with no clear answers. After fifteen minutes, he stood up. He was going to drive himself crazy if he didn’t do something, anything, to get out of his head.
“It seems like if he was coming, he would have been here by now.”
Eissa rolled over to her hands and knees and pushed off the wall to the standing position. “I’m too old for this shit. I can’t be jumping over rails and sitting on the ground. I should have used the stairs. Jesus.”
Quentin chuckled. “We’re in our forties. Don’t rush us into old age just yet.”
“What’s that saying? ‘If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.’” Eissa grimaced as she stretched. “So, I guess we need a Plan B. What’s Plan B?”
“It appears that we’re on the edge of a town,” Quentin said. He nodded at the door leading into the building. “We could go inside this place and see what we can find out. Maybe there’s a way to activate the door on this side of things.”
“Whoa, cowboy. You can’t just go inside and ask someone where we are, and if there’s a key for the magic door on the porch.” Her eyebrows drew together, and the left one arched. “Are you trying to get us arrested for being crazy people?”
“Of course not,” Quentin said, although that’s exactly what he had been about to do. “I’m going to be sly about it. Who knows? Maybe the door is a regular thing here.”
“Maybe we ought to construct a story, just to be on the safe side,” Eissa suggested.
“Yes, a cover story,” he said. His eyes sparkled with delight; his fear momentarily forgotten. “That’s exactly what we need. Okay, here we go: I’m a senior cryptographer named Seymore Spencer, and you’re my assistant, Matilda Longfellow. We’re here to assess the town and update its status on the map. What do you think?”
“I think you’re a fucking moron, sometimes,” Eissa said, rolling her eyes. “The best lie is one that’s mostly truth. So, we use our real names, and tell them if they ask and not if they don’t, that we got separated from our group and found our way here, and we aren’t sure where we are, exactly.”
“I suppose we could say that,” Quentin conceded, “despite its total and complete lack of character or originality.”
She glared at him, and his joviality waned back to a sense of uneasiness. He tried to hold on to the happy thoughts to combat the urge to panic.
“So, what do we do if they don’t speak English?” Eissa asked. “I mean, technically, we don’t even know what country we’re in, right?”
“Well, that’s technically true, but I’m sure we’re just somewhere else in the US. Teleporting is… well, I have no
idea. Never mind.” He considered the best way to deal with everything that might happen inside. “How about we remain silent, and let them speak first? If they don’t address us in English, then we fake a coughing fit and come back outside.”