Richard rematerialized in his office, hunched in a corner and shivering. His wet clothes clung to his skin, and his shoes were a muddy mess, still covered in muck from when he’d disembarked the ship. He could not feel his right hand—the one that had touched the sphere—and a familiar throbbing scurried up his wrist, forearm, and elbow, finally settling in his shoulder and neck. Paired with that sensation, his stomach had once again turned inside out. Gingerly, he got to his feet, steadying himself against the wall.

He took a step forward and tripped over something in the middle of the floor that sent him crashing into the Venetian blinds that covered the office’s only window. The blinds had not been cleaned in ages and were coated with dust. When the infinitesimal motes came in contact with his damp hands, they transmogrified into wormy vines, which he flung away in disgust.

He gasped when he realized what he’d tripped over. The shield and sword were smack in the middle of the floor. They had come through the sphere with him.

He picked up the interdimensional trappings of war, verified their realness, and placed them on the orange chair. He didn’t give himself permission to sit down. Too much to process. Job gone. Spheres. Vikings (were they?). Ship. Trunk and its contents. Captain and crew. Their odd acceptance of his presence. His willingness (enthusiasm) to accompany them on their mysterious mission. The sphere’s command, its pull.

He went over to his desk. The monitor had switched to his screen-saver, the JSEP logo—a quartet of red block capitals rimmed in gold, a silver swoosh running from the top of the J to the loop of the P, which enclosed a gold star—was meandering across a black background, bouncing off the imaginary sides of the screen like an unbaptized soul in Limbo. Richard always thought that the shooting-star logo captured the nature of book publishing better than its designers probably realized. Every success was a flash of brightness that lit up the sky before disappearing in an instant. Poof—forgotten.

A flick of the mouse refreshed the James Joyce desktop.

The sphere icon was gone.

He checked the Yoda-clock, the desktop clock, and the digital readout on his office-phone. 8:25 a.m. As with his journey into the cave, the hours he’d spent inside the sphere equaled five minutes of time in “this world.”

He moved over to the window again (further muddying the carpet) and looked down at the JSEP parking lot. The view was always the same, but that sameness contained a multitude of small variations. The striations of light and shadow on the asphalt were in perpetual unrest, as were the vehicles and their drivers, pulling in, pulling out. The limb of a dogwood tree, the second in a row of eight such trees that had been planted a decade before when JSEP had sufficient funds to append some landscaping to the asphalt-and-concrete llano on which its campus was sprawled, rattled against the windowpane with varying degrees of frequency and loudness, depending on the wind. It was never silent. Even today, on this eerily calm morning, there was a host of tiny taps. Standing so close to the window, the tap-tap-tapping sounded like an army marching in the distance. The view’s one unshifting constant was the framework of white segments that designated the parking spaces. Each was labeled with a letter-number combination, and every JSEP employee had his or her assigned space. Richard’s was D-12, and the Pontiac was sitting there, waiting patiently, unaware of the fact that after today it would never again populate this parcel of planet, its home away from home.

And then Otto strolled into view. Wearing a thermal coat and wool cap, he paced the curb, puffing greedily on a cigarette. As he watched Otto flick the still-burning stub onto a patch of snow, Richard chuckled at the strangeness of life. Up until this moment, he had never known Otto was a smoker—he’d never seen him duck out of the office with a tell-tale twitch in his eye, never smelled the stale reek on his clothes, the deadest of giveaways. It was (please let it be true!) the last time he would set eyes on the man, and he was just now learning of this, another in a long list of repulsive personal traits. Had Otto taken up the habit recently? No. He flicked that stub with conviction, like a seasoned pro. Or maybe this morning’s events had sent him up the block to the Shell station for his first pack in weeks, months, years? A shudder of satisfaction coursed through Richard, and he became nauseous again.

There was a welter of busyness and noise outside the office door. Richard suspected that even at this early hour the gossip mavens were disseminating the details, factual and otherwise, of his termination. Everyone was no doubt waiting for him to emerge from his office and oblige them with a scene of disintegration. Well, they could go and choke on a shitburger. Besides, he was flat-out incapable of caring about any of them. Other, more pressing anxieties were bearing down on him. In no particular order:

• What was with that ship, and how was it connected to the fire cave? (They must be connected. The spheres brought me to both places.)

• Will the shield and sword fit into the trunk of the car?

• What do I do about my filthy clothes and shoes?

• How do I explain the sword and shield to my coworkers? Can I sneak them out somehow?

Richard had a habit of talking to himself—in the shower, in the kitchen before work, in his bed at night—and on several occasions he’d considered seeking professional help. The habit was odd, and not a little disturbing, which caused him to interpret it as semi-pathological. “Only lunatics talk to themselves all the time,” he would say—out loud—to himself. But Richard had talked to himself for as long as he could remember. Listening to his thoughts spoken in a familiar voice had a calming effect on him. It was also practical. When thoughts arrived one on top the other, verbalization was often the best way to organize them. He conversed with himself now, as he planned his escape.

“Worry about the clothes later.” “Okay.” “You have to get out of here now.” “Right.” “Don’t parade the items through the office. Conceal them.” “Yes.” “No need to invite unnecessary questions.” “Absolutely.” “Leave behind everything except the photo, the mouse, the Yoda clock, and the stapler.” “Got it.” “Throw them into a trash bag.” “Sneak out the back.” “Put the bag in the trunk and grab those work boots from when you spring-cleaned the garage; they should still be there.” “Okay.” “Exchange your shoes for the boots in the parking lot.” “Yes.” “There should be a comforter in the trunk as well. Remember? For emergencies.” “Right.” “Grab it and sneak back into the office. No one will see you. If they do, they’ll probably try to avoid you.” “Wear a scowl just to be safe.” “Wrap the sword and shield inside the comforter.” “Head out the back again, with the bundle under your arm.” “Be discreet, and get out as fast as you can.”

He put the plan into action. It turned out to be easier than expected when it was revealed that the sword fit snugly inside the shield’s leather arm loops, but when he had reached the last, vital step…

Tim Brooks spotted him as he was attempting to slip away without the obligatory teary farewells. Tim fucking Brooks. He doesn’t even work on this floor! Why is he here? A fat, jolly man who liked to stop people in the hall and ask personal questions under the guise of small talk, Tim was one of JSEP’s two marketing managers who exclusively handled Bertha-books.

“Hey Richard. You okay?” Tim’s smile was merciful and contrite.

“Uh….”

“You’re sweating through your shirt. You look terrible.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Well, I suppose that anyone in your position would be expected to look a little out of sorts. It’s a tough thing, Richard, a tough, tough thing.”

“Yeah,” said Richard. “That it is.”

“What are you going to do?”

Richard shrugged.

“Dunno.”

Behind Tim, a horde of co-workers was waiting to accost him. They would not let him go until they’d wished him their best. He was trapped. There was a flurry of handshakes, cheek-pecks, and genial platitudes. (“Good luck,” “Keep in touch,” “Don’t be a stranger.”) Some slipped him their business cards or sticky notes hastily scrawled with email addresses and cell phone numbers. The implication was twofold: “Here, in case you need a reference” and “Here, in case you end up at a better company, and they’re hiring.” They were careful not to reveal what they had heard or to commiserate with him too openly. Otto was undoubtedly lurking somewhere nearby.

“Will you miss us?” said a woman whose name Richard had forgotten. He nodded and fumbled with a toothless smile. He was edging toward the door, trying to avoid more leave-takings when a splinter group of the nosiest, noisiest JSEPers inquired about the blanketed bundle he was carrying.

“Oh, that,” he said. “It’s a, um, saucer sled for my, uh, nephew. I was keeping it in the office. His birthday’s next week.” The impromptu dodge elicited sympathetic sighs. Even Richard was touched by the lie’s pathos (a double-lie, actually, for he had no nephew). He also thanked the forces of the universe: It was January and there was snow on the ground; if it had been August, or even late March, the lie might not have floated. In the pause that followed, he was finally able to make his escape.

There was just enough room in the Pontiac’s trunk for the bundle, though he had to remove six copy-paper boxes stuffed with manuscripts and galleyes that stretched back to 2002. He never could rationalize why he’d kept them for so long, and in his car of all places. Perhaps he’d thought he might need to refer to them, though that had never come to pass. Anyway, the matter was moot. He stacked the boxes beside the plastic recycling bin next to the curb, pleased to be rid of them.

He considered his twin anxieties, the spheres and his fresh unemployment, and the combined weight was almost too much to bear. What now? was the only thought he could muster on the drive home. What now? What now? What now?

There was one bright spot: At least he didn’t have a family to support. It was just him and his mortgage.

Once inside, Richard ferried the bundle to the basement, pulling the string attached to one of four 60-watt bulbs (two were working; two had burned out) when he reached his destination. His cat Scooter darted across the sparsely lit floor, a calico streak from sink to washing machine to golf bag. He was spazzing out. “What’s with you?” asked Richard. “Surprised to see me home so early? Well, get used to it.” Scooter stopped his careening and leaped onto the Smoke Mountain trunk, overturning a box containing a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of Mount Rushmore. Pieces flew everywhere, and a triangular section of puzzle came to rest at the apex of the pile, still intact from when it had been built years before. It was one of the president’s eyes—Washington’s, it looked like—hovering above the scattered pieces like the Eye of Providence.

Richard scooped up The Scoot and tossed him onto the stairs. The cat eyed his master defiantly, and then ascended to the kitchen.

“Dumb animal. You have no idea what I’m going through.”

He placed the sword and shield inside what was, inconceivably, the container in which he’d found them not three hours before while aboard a single-masted serpent-vessel manned by a company of steel-clad invaders. He set the sheet of parchment on top of the bundle and patted it gently.

“Don’t accept it,” he said to himself. “It couldn’t have happened, not outside of your head.”

And yet the fire cave and the ship were resilient in their assertions as stark, bloody realities. But perhaps it was his desire for these delusions that made it seem that way. What an exciting thought it was that there might be other worlds rubbing up against this one, and all you had to do was find the door, open it, and walk on through.

His mind screeched and hissed like the hydraulics of a dump truck as he fought against the irreconcilability of his own convictions.

The doubts came at him like bullets: It’s a tumor. Inadvertent madness. Asbestos. Extraterrestrial abduction with induced dream fugue. Nefarious government plot. There’s no way to know unless you see a doctor…

Oh, but he knew. The luxury of denial was denied. The truth was in his muscles, tightened and sore from the rowing; in the salt and sweat still nestled in his olfactory cavities; in the remembered sensations of tracing the woodcarvings on the ship’s gunwale; in the smell of the sea-foam; in the vestiges of the rank fear that had frozen him when that behemoth shifted his bulk; in the crystalline presence, the thereness, of that young captain as he presided over his men. He didn’t need some headshrinker to tell him what was real and what wasn’t. It had happened. His body had been transported—physically, materially, corporeally—to other places, other times. His skin had been acquainted with the cold, the warmth, the water, the mucky surf. No way it was a dream. Plus I have the weapons and parchment. Explain that!

The objects he’d brought back with him were not arbitrary. They were proof that something had gone down.

He figured it was his mission to fit the fragments of his experience into some sort of orderly explanation of what was being done to him, and for what purpose, all while looking for another job.

But that would have to wait. He was home, and he was safe, and he needed to revel in those facts, at least for one afternoon, before he could go any further.

Next Chapter: Part Three: Diversions, Digressions, Discoveries, Chapter I