“I found one!” exclaimed the raggedy man sporting a head of messy ginger hair and a stubble that refused to develop into a proper beard no matter how hard he tried.

The room which was no larger than a garage, was a maze with walls of server shelves and mountains of takeaway bags.

“Hmm?” the half-conscious woman asked from across the room, she practically dissolved into her computer chair, her sleep-deprived stare was locked on an endless spill of graph paper conjured from the depths of what appeared to be modified seismograph.

“A world!” he replied, turning his monitor towards his colleague, showing a single white blip rendered inside what looked like an endless black void filled with ghostly streaks meandering between regions in this volumetric chart.

From under an avalanche of empty cans stood a black-haired man, “Did I heard you right?!” his slurred words sounded like his mind was still at the log-in screen.

“Look!” he tested his monitor’s wires cruelly with another ninety-degree rotation, “Holy shit…” the can-man said in disbelief.

“What’s with that line?” asked the woman pointing to the thin wisp of a thread linking the ‘x’ on the map to the white dot.

“That is a very thin connection…” the red-haired man agreed anxiously, he began typing away at his keyboard for what appeared to be several minutes without a moment’s pause before abruptly smashing the ‘enter’ key and leaning back to observe the results.

“It’s growing weaker.” He observed, “It has been for a couple hundred years.” He continued.

“And that’s good news because…?” began the can-man.

The redhead began typing away again much to the chagrin of his two colleagues waiting for his response.

“At this point, the connection will last – at most – a decade, maybe fifteen years.” He gestured to another white dot on the map where a thicker line failed to match the thickness of the other lines present.

“It looks like for whatever reason we’re switching connections to another world.” He explained.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

He zoomed in one the white blob of interest, “It the perfect safe haven, no way in, no way out.”

Everyone went silent for a short while, hearing only the whirring of fans and the sounds of cars passing their storage unit.

“Alright, so we have ten years.” Began the woman, “You still don’t understand how we’re going to get there.” She explained.

The redhead groaned in frustration, not wanting to explain the details once again.

He took a deep breath a quickly came up with a simpler way to explain the shift.

“Imagine you want everyone from one neighborhood to another neighborhood…” he proposed, “In theory all you’d need to do is re-make the same neighborhood elsewhere and hope for the best!”

“You could also destroy their real house but… considering the… situation… I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”

Everybody nodded.

“But there is a certain logistical problem with re-building every neighborhood on top of one another in the same spot.”

“So, we need to have everybody ‘buy a holiday home’ in our new neighborhood – then we shuffle some paperwork around, sell their old house and bam – we’ve got ourselves some new residents with nowhere to go but to our neighborhood!”

The can-man and the woman stared at the ginger in a state of confusion and mild discomfort, fearing they now understood less about their task then when they started.

“Right…” replied the woman, “Which translates into… what exactly?”

The redhead took a moment to mourn his masterfully crafted allegory before shrugging, “We need to get as many people as possible to create a mirrored… ‘character’ for lack of a better word - that we will then project into the other world.”

“At that point we will have to rely on some comic ‘paperwork’ to shift the confused souls onto our side.”

With all the confidence of a sandcastle, the woman nodded again, “I think I get it…” he said much to the horror of the can-man who understood EVEN less.

“But what will happen to this new neighborhood once all the ‘roads’ are cut off?”

The ginger man opened his mouth to speak but he produced no sound, “I… don’t know…” he replied.

He turned back to his screen, “Look at how empty the interdimensional void is.” He scoffed, “We’ll be fine!”

“What if we drift off and hit something?” asked the can-man.

“I don’t know… nothing probably.”

Lorb was jolted awake by the loud crash that rang out through not just the city of Glummington and not just all of Arlepia and all of the world.

It resonated with everyone and everything.

Everyone, everywhere, froze feeling as though they were standing in a room made entirely of lightly cracked glass.

Nobody dared move even an inch for fear of shattering their fragile surroundings.

“Oh…” Lorb remarked worriedly, “So this is what happens if we hit something…”

Outside, shimmering bits of space and time rained down like snow for just long enough to look pretty before everything went black.

Then it all went white.