Nick left his apartment and headed for the bus stop. The morning rush hour was in full swing. Market Street was worse than usual, completely at a standstill, filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic as far as he could see in the northbound lane. It did not bode well for the bus' ability to get to him in a reasonable amount of time. He wasn't due at work for a long time yet, though, so he could be a lot more relaxed than many people stuck in traffic.

He waited at the bus stop for over five minutes, but when not a single car had moved in that much time, Nick knew that something was seriously wrong. Since there wasn't any chance of missing the bus, he decided to walk to the next stop to see whether he could spot the reason for the traffic jam.

It was a nice morning, sunny and cool, but promising to warm up later in the day. Nick settled his backpack and started along the sidewalk. He zipped up his blue windbreaker against the breeze.

Several minutes later, Nick got a good look at the size of the problem. The next bus stop was just before a major intersection, and from there he could see the source of the trouble at a glance. The traffic lights in both directions were dark.

It was a complete disaster. One might think that people would have sense enough to take turns at the intersection, and keep things flowing, but no. The giant expanse of asphalt looked like one of those traffic puzzle games with the difficulty set on “impossible.”

It was ridiculous. Cars pointed at every angle, with barely inches of clearance anywhere. There must have been over fifty cars snarled up, completely blocking traffic. Nick surveyed the mess. Then he peered back down Market Street. The bus had no hope of coming in the next thirty minutes, at least. It would take him well over an hour to walk all the way to his destination.

He looked around. Nobody else was at the bus stop. Maybe people had retreated into the shops to avoid the morning chill, or maybe they had given up in despair and walked elsewhere to catch a bus on another route. Some of the buildings nearest the corner also seemed to be without power, though it was hard to tell in the morning light.

The intersection of two major city streets, Market and Commercial, was completely jammed—during morning rush hour, no less. Even if police and repair crews were coming to help, they would have to stop blocks away and approach on foot even to get started. It was the perfect example of a colossal snafu. He couldn't begin to guess how many thousands of people were going to have a bad day because of some wire breaking somewhere.

Nick turned his head back and forth, seeing idiot drivers trying to squeeze into the intersection from three directions and making everything even worse. This was never going to resolve on its own. Nick waited a few more moments to see if anything changed, then sighed.

To hell with it.

Nick wasn't a bold person usually, but this was just common sense. He marched out into the mess, weaving his way past cars that honked at him and each other, and took up a position directly in front of one of the access points, stopping any more westbound traffic on Commercial from entering the intersection. He waited until a small gap oozed open in front of him, then held up his hand to signal eastbound traffic on Commercial to stop, while waving for the northbound lane of Market to keep coming.

At first, nothing seemed to happen. The change was almost imperceptible. But, very slowly, a few cars managed to creep out of the intersection, and it got a tiny bit easier for others to move. One car made it all the way through from Market Street. Then another. Then another. Nick started counting. Once he got to twelve cars, he held up his hand to stop the next one and walked in front of it. Switching, he started helping westbound cars on Commercial that wanted to turn left onto Market. After the left turn lane had emptied, he switched again and beckoned to the eastbound traffic.

He wondered if the other cars would keep on screwing things up, because he couldn't watch all the lanes at once. People seemed to get the idea, though, and within another few minutes, traffic was moving almost normally. Nick would count a dozen cars passing in one direction, then stop the next and switch to another lane, walking back and forth and using his body to force at least one lane to do the right thing at any given time.

It was fun, actually. Two guys in a pickup truck started clapping and cheering at him when it was their turn to pass by him on the way through. Other cars honked. Most importantly, the rest of the traffic followed his directions, and people started getting to where they needed to be in a timely fashion. Nick grinned at the well-wishers but couldn't spare a hand to wave back. Eventually his bus appeared, but since there was still no sign of police or engineers coming to fix the problem, Nick let the bus go on without him and kept at it.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

It felt good.

He was just about to stop northbound traffic for the tenth time when a loud sizzling sound almost deafened him.

Something slashed the air. A line was gouged in the asphalt as if by a giant, invisible knife. Something like a wall but with a giant screen TV appeared above it, stretching for a dozen yards or more, diagonally across the intersection. Nick looked that way and found himself staring at a desert, weirdly lit by excessively reddish light.

Huh?

More hissing cut the air, and more walls appeared. They weren't lined up neatly; it was as if someone had given a toddler a bread knife and told them to go to town on their birthday cake. Nick got glimpses of tundra, a starry night, a futuristic city full of aliens, and more.

These look like...portals to other places. Like in science fiction.

One of the cars passing by had gotten cut in half by a portal diagonally; Nick watched the back half roll forward into the portal and tumble down an embankment on another planet. The front half was nowhere to be seen, maybe in the street on the other side of...whatever that was.

A hot wind blew into the intersection from the desert.

An explosion in the alien city tore through a couple of buildings, and judging by the smoke, it wasn't the first one. A dozen aliens came running out of that portal into the intersection. Nick tried to process that.

There were aliens on Market Street.

They were humanoid, or running on two legs at least. Their outfits were greenish and so was their skin. They might have had antennae. Nick didn't have time for much more than a glance because so much else was going on. Another portal appeared; it opened onto fog, and mist was pouring out of it into the intersection, reducing visibility by the moment.

The extraterrestrials fanned out, looking around wildly, and then one pointed at a portal that showed a forest. That one shouted something in a strange language, and all the aliens ran that way, diving into the woods. A few stragglers ran out of the alien city onto the pavement. Another explosion in the alien city happened much closer to the portal. Nick's brain tried to catch up with events.

“WHAT THE F—?”

Thunder boomed as if Nick were at ground zero for a lightning strike; his hearing was knocked out almost completely. It was sheer luck that he happened to be looking in the right direction to see something big, round, and green slam into a car waiting on Market Street. The car was totaled instantly, and the driver was almost certainly dead. Nick wasn't even sure which wall the green death ball had shot out of.

Nick didn't know which way to go to get out of this craziness. Several aliens ran towards him, then stopped uncertainly, looking around in confusion. What the hell, Nick thought, and pointed at the forest portal, waving the aliens that way with his other hand. One of them hesitantly followed his lead, then apparently caught sight of one of its fellows in the forest, and called out excitedly to the others.

“Nazook!” One of them said to him, bowing its head, then ran for the forest. A few more followed. Another one said the same thing in passing.

“You're welcome!” Nick called after them. He glanced at the alien city just in time to see something green hurtling his way. “Oh, shit!” He dove to his right.

There was another explosion, and the blast picked Nick up and threw him through a portal. It was the same dark hillside the half-car had fallen into. He tumbled down the slope a ways, collecting bruises for a few seconds until he managed to slide to a stop against a rock outcropping. He looked around, staring.

It was nighttime, and unfamiliar stars shone overhead. A blue nebula about the size of the full moon hung over the horizon. There was dirt, gravel and rock beneath him. The hill extended down for at least a half mile, and when he turned around, he saw that it went up at least the same distance. An irregular polygon lit the hillside with light from Market Street.

This is amazing.

A second or two passed.

Get the hell back up there, idiot! He screamed at himself mentally.

Nick scrambled to his feet and started back up the hillside. It was steep enough to be a pain, but not enough to stop him. It did slow him down, but fortunately he didn't have far to go.

“Kazabish?”

He could see the silhouette of one of the aliens. Its voice had a higher pitch than the other green aliens that had spoken to him. It was peering down at him without stepping through the portal. Another, taller alien ran up beside... her? Her, Nick guessed. The other one must be a guy. “Kozal, Tek! Kozal!” The guy alien shouted at the girl alien.

At no point did Nick let any of this craziness slow him down from his mad rush uphill. The two aliens were having a frantic argument now. The girl alien pointed at Nick, and the guy alien shook his head and started pulling her away. She struggled, shouting the whole time. There was another explosion behind her, but she kept from falling through with the help of the guy alien.

Her eyes widened, and something in her tone changed. Frantically she grabbed at some sort of bandolier she was wearing, and pulled something out of a pocket in it. Immediately she threw it through the portal towards him. “Banag!” she shouted, and for all that she was an alien, it sounded as if she was apologizing. She let the guy alien yank her out of view.

Nick charged the last few feet and jumped for the asphalt of Market Street.

A split second before he got there, the portal vanished.