I woke up to a sunburn and a terrible smell. The smell was the body, of course. The one I had inadvertently wrapped my arms around as I slept. I jumped up off the ground with a yell.

I was hoping that I would wake up in my own bed - my own floor, rather - this whole ordeal having been a bad dream. Of course my student loans aren’t due! That’s crazy! The first politician to take a step in that direction is going to be lynched! Such were my dream thoughts. But there I was, still stuck in my desert purgatory, the sun now a few hours travel towards the west after my impromptu nap.

Or was it west? I suppose it could be different in this dimension. It wasn’t even the same sun. Did it look little bigger, maybe?

My underclothes were stained from the dead man. Whoever he was. I needed new clothes.

“RENA,” I said, summoning my only familiar voice remaining.

“Miles, you’re awake. I must inform you that-“

“I’m going to stop you right there, RENA. I don’t need you to tell me all the reasons I shouldn’t be getting in bed with corpses, OK? I get it. We’re both going to just move on and pretend this didn’t happen. And I don’t need therapy. So you can can it on that one too. Roger?”

“Pretending is not a function I can perform sufficiently,” RENA responded. “But I can comply with your request for silence on this topic.”

“Do you enjoy coming up with a contradiction to everything I ask you?”

“Strictly speaking, I don’t enjoy anything, Miles.”

“Now who needs a therapist?”

I surveyed my surroundings again. The same unchanging wasteland. The birds were a few feet away, anxiously hopping a step or two towards the body every minute or so. They looked enough like buzzards to be mistaken for one, but I’d already seen how they flew like hummingbirds.

I turned towards where Olim had pointed me. At least, where I thought he had pointed me. I saw that suggestion of a mountain range again.

Is it possible there’s nothing there? Olim could have been lying to me. Just for fun. It could be the exact wrong direction. Him and his friends didn’t go that way.

I wanted to go home. But I couldn’t.

“RENA, is it possible for you to check my finances, or is that asking too much?”

“I will remind you that you’ve already agreed to allow Dimen-X full access to your bank account, personal information, email account, cell phone, medical records, school transcripts, police reports, ancestry, DNA, stool samples, gut bacteria samples, social media accounts, last year’s tax return and the key to your house, among other things. So yes, I can certainly check your finances. What would you like to know?”

I once again wished I had read the papers I had signed. “What is my monthly payment due this month on my student loans, and when is it due?”

“Assuming that your salary from Dimen-X goes towards the monthly payment, the amount remaining is $10,000, due on the 31st. Today is the 2nd, in case you have forgotten.”

I nodded. That sounded right, unfortunately. I had spent a LOT of money in college. Perhaps I shouldn’t have used the loans to get food delivered to my dorm room. Then again, it worked out just fine for Tom.

“So if I don’t come up with 10k within the month, I’m coming home to an eviction notice.” I said to myself.

RENA answered my non-question. “That is correct. Although you have given Dimen-X the permission and ability to pay your rent, phone bill, and other monthly expenses, we cannot do so until after the full monthly payment on your debt is paid, because of the wage garnishing.”

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I sighed. I’m screwed, I thought. Absolutely, royally screwed.

“This wasn’t the plan, Tom.“ I whispered to myself.

“What was that, Miles?”

“Nothing.” I had another thought, as I caught a whiff of my clothes, which now smelled like death. “Can you send me supplies? Or will they get lost, like Tom?”

“I can certainly send you supplies, Miles. Or, rather, get an intern to put the supplies through the portal. They may get lost in transit, but we can always try again. Supplies are significantly easier to replace than human beings, I have found. They won’t be free, of course. In addition to…”

“Yeah yeah yeah, I get it,” I said, waving her off. “Nothing’s free. It’s going to delay my loan repayment slightly, but if I’m dead it’s not getting paid anyway.”

“Does this mean you are not abandoning your mission, Miles?”

I didn’t know how to answer. Without Tom, the whole thing felt pointless. But…

“I have to find Tom,” I said, finally. “And don’t even start with me about the dead thing again. If he’s dead, I’m dead, RENA. And I don’t really have a choice. If I go back now, I’m dead for sure.”

“That is incorrect, Miles. You are correct in your assessment that you would quickly be homeless, unable to even purchase food. But you have a distinct possibility of not dying. IT just isn’t a very high possibility.”

“Without Tom, I’m dead. My only hope, in this dimension and the last, is Tom. But we’re not talking about that right now. I need you to send me new clothes.”

“What kind of clothes would you like, Miles?”

“Something light. Cotton. And something that doesn't look too suspicious in a possibly medieval world. Something sturdy. Oh, and I need other supplies, too.

“Send me a canteen, and backpack. Get MREs, or something that keeps in the backpack. Oh, and a knife. And another revolver. And a couple boxes of ammo. And, I don’t know, something light. A baseball bat. As long as I can strap it to the backpack somehow. Oh, and shoes. Boots. And socks. Y’know, throw in a pair of underwear, too. Oh, wait, and a tent. Definitely need a tent. And nail clippers. My nails are getting ridiculous.”

“Anything else?”

I sighed. “You haven’t gotten any signal from Tom, have you?”

“No, Miles.”

“Then no, I suppose that’s it.

“Wait. Actually, send me a sandwich, too. A philly cheesesteak. Get it from Tony’s, on eighth.”

At least I had something to look forward to.

-

It was a little over an hour before my supplies arrived. After all, the intern had to go buy them. It was lucky that they had an intern who could buy a gun that easily, one who had already passed a background check or whatever you needed. I didn’t know.

Maybe not lucky. Maybe it was planned. I guess someone had purchased the first gun, too. If Olim murdered someone with that gun, could they trace it back to the intern? A funny thought.

The knife and half the MREs didn’t arrive the first time, but they had bought spares, just in case, and they arrived on the second attempt.

While I was waiting, I thought about how to get money in this dimension. I thought about the ideas that Tom had had.

“Precious gems or metals seems unlikely. We were thinking the dimension would be uninhabited, and so we’d just stumble upon some chunk of gold or something, unmined. I don’t see that happening now. I know that there are wandering thieves, and I know that there is at least one city. Just from those two things I can assume some level of civilization. Enough to make the clothes and bows that the Cho’l were using. I suppose I could get lucky, and gold is extremely common here, and everyone has useless gold lying around. But I can’t bet on that one.

“As far as selling an animal as a pet… I’ll need to find a different animal. And I don’t see any rare plants yet, either. What if the whole planet is a desert?

“Maybe I’ll just have to get a job in Eraztun. Or rob someone. That seems to be a popular pastime.”

I shook my head. Part of me felt, well, not good, but something like it. It was an improvement to have a concrete goal, to be preparing, making plans. It took my mind off of things.

“Ten thousand dollars,” I said aloud. “Ten thousand dollars in a month. What do you think, Tom? Think I can do it?”

Tom didn’t answer. But I imagined he would have said something like “Of course you can, Miles. You’ve just gotta believe in yourself. If you want it badly enough, you can do it.” He’d always say some BS like that, and I’d roll my eyes. That kind of advice was worse than useless. But when life is easy for you, you give out stupid advice like that, because you think life must be that easy for everyone else, too.

“Well you’re wrong, Tom,” I said. “I can’t do it. But you can. Goal number one will be finding you. Goal number two…well, I guess I’ll try to make whatever cash I can in the meantime, until you’re here and can tell me what we should do next.”

Obviously I had no idea where Tom might be. But he’d stand out, wherever he was. The suit - and gun - would make an impression on people. My best bet was to make my way to a large population center, and ask around for the foreigner in a space suit.

“And what about magic?” I asked no one in particular. “The Cho’l mentioned magic, and they did some freaky stuff with their bodies. Could I do that? I think I’ll try to ask the next person I see. If they’re friendly. Big if.”

I left my old clothes next to the body, and shouldered my pack. I was wearing my new clothes - an unassuming cotton shirt, and jeans, with a jacket I stuck in the pack. I looked goofy.

I wasn’t ready, but I wasn’t going to be any more ready anytime soon. There were a few hours of daylight left, I thought, so I could make some small progress. I shouldered my pack, which had the bat strapped to one side, and the tent strapped underneath.

“Goodbye, corpse. I hope your suffering is over, now,” I said to the body of the stranger. “I have a feeling mine is just beginning.”

I started walking.

-

I had to make camp after only an hour or two of walking. I hadn’t had RENA send me a watch, so I didn’t know exactly how long it was. I considered having RENA send one in the future, but for the time being, I would make due with estimates. I didn’t want to make a habit of ordering stuff from the RENA Express. I didn’t even want to ask how much my first round of supplies had cost me. It would just make me depressed.

As the sun set, the desert cooled, but luckily not enough to be outright cold - lucky because there was no wood for a fire anywhere.

I practiced firing a few rounds into a shrub in the dying light. I would need to be a better aim. I also swung the bat around a bit. It was lighter than the mace at home, just a regular wooden bat - though it did look to be high quality - but it still felt good to make the movements. I screamed while I did it. Just like old times.

I wasn’t extremely tired, but I forced myself to crawl into the tent and try to sleep, since I’d have a long day ahead of me.

“Hey, Tom,” I said, staring through the roof of the tent. It had a removable flap which I had removed so that I could see the unfamiliar stars.

“Tom, what am I supposed to do? Should I just give up?”

Silence.

I shook my head. “I can’t do this. I can’t, Tom. Some day, there’s going to be a choice, and I’m going to think to myself ‘what would Tom do?’ and I’m not going to have an answer, and I’m going to make a decision, and it’s going to be wrong, and I’m going to screw everything up, just like when I was a kid. And then what, Tom? Then what?” I was crying again. Why did I have to always be crying?

“Don’t give up,” Tom said. He couldn’t have really said it, but I heard it. “I wouldn’t give up. Ever. So don’t give up.”

I nodded, and went to sleep.