"I'd have to know who was chasing me to try and guess why," Bob replied hesitantly.

Mike shook his head, "Did you piss off anyone during the time you were gone that you won't talk about?"

"Mike, for all practical purposes, I was on another planet," Bob said carefully, "I can promise you that no one I interacted with during the time that I was off the grid could have come looking for me."

"People don't hire P.I.'s to tail someone for no reason," Mike grunted as he unbuckled and slid out of the Jeep. "Come on; we're about two blocks from a Waffle House; I'll be able to watch the traffic from there."

Bob got out of the Jeep, closing his door as well, then followed Mike as he started walking back down the street, heading towards a Waffle House that Bob hadn't realized they'd passed.

"As I was saying," Mike continued, "you don't put a tail on someone for no reason. The P.I.'s I know charge three hundred an hour for that kind of work, and one of them told me, off the record, that he'd charge six hundred if it was a cop, and a grand if it was me."

"Figure a pair in the restaurant, and at least two pair outside, and you're looking at between three and six thousand dollars an hour," Mike told him as they walked down the sidewalk. "They didn't know I'd check with my PSS friend, so they were going in on the assumption that it could be a while until one of us contacted the other. That's real money, Bob."

"Maybe those lawyers from the University?" Bob suggested.

"Maybe," Mike grunted, "but that's still a lot of money to spend, and for what? If you were to try and file a lawsuit, they'd be able to talk to you then, and honestly, you don't seem like the type to chase a payday."

"I'm not," Bob assured him, "I really don't care about what happened. It's done, it's over with, and I'm a different, better person than I was."

"While that's very enlightened of you, we're still left looking for answers while at the same time looking over our shoulders," Mike opened the door to the Waffle House and headed inside, nodding to the waitress at the counter, and taking a booth that overlooked the street, giving them a clear line of sight to the Jeep.

The waitress followed them with a pot of coffee, much to Mike's pleasure. Bob asked for a glass of water.

"I'm sorry to have brought this kind of trouble down on you," Bob said after she'd left.

"You haven't done anything illegal," Mike sighed as he sipped his coffee, "so this isn't your fault."

Mike looked over his coffee cup. "Just to be clear, you haven't done anything illegal at all, have you?"

Bob shook his head and raised his hands in surrender. "I haven't done anything illegal, at least not to my knowledge," Bob replied.

"Then this shit isn't on you; it's on the assholes trying to get to you," Mike took another sip of his coffee.

Bob sat silently. He really didn't know who might be spending money trying to find him. A thought struck him.

"Mike, you thought they might be tracking my cellphone?" Bob asked.

"Pretty sure," Mike grunted, then placed a finger to his lips as the waitress headed in their direction. Bob wasn't sure how he knew the waitress was coming back, but he was willing to chalk that up to the man being an experienced detective.

Placing a glass of water in front of Bob, she pulled out a notepad and looked at them expectantly.

"All-star, sourdough, scrambled, bacon, hashbrowns instead of grits," Mike said.

"Same," Bob added.

Bob waited until she was out of earshot. "So, if they're tracking my phone, they might have noticed that it tends to go out of service periodically," Bob hedged.

"You get far enough off the beaten path, and every carrier is going to have its dead zones," Mike replied.

"This is less of going off the beaten path and more of the signal disappearing, then reappearing, right in LA," Bob said.

"What, you going in and out of a faraday cage or something?" Mike asked.

"I hadn't even considered that," Bob admitted thoughtfully, "but no, more of in the middle of a small park."

"You do know that the phone you have doesn't stop broadcasting, even when you power it off," Mike went on, "they haven't for a few years now; they keep right on broadcasting."

"Why don't we just say that the place I'm setting my phone down probably has the properties of a faraday cage," Bob said.

"While that's interesting," Mike grunted as he swished the dregs of his cup, "it isn't a reason to chase after you."

"I've got nothing," Bob said in frustration, "I'm not important."

Their waitress arrived with their food, and they both tucked in.

Bob hadn't had pancakes in years, although the bacon and scrambled eggs weren't as good as what Kevin served up at the Adventurers Guild in Holmstead.

"So," Mike began, "did you finish up your business in California?"

"Not really? I mean, honestly, I have more going on there than I have here," Bob replied.

A phone rang in Mike's jacket pocket. He pulled out a cheap bar phone and motioned for Bob to be silent.

"Bobby, hey," Mike said, then listened for a solid minute.

"Yeah, I know the drill, buddy, I'll ditch it," he promised.

Another long silence, during which Mike was looking squarely at Bob. Mike's expression grew dark.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"That's fucking bullshit," he hissed into the phone.

More silence. Bob ate his hashbrowns, contemplating that while it wasn't healthy, Kevin could probably do wonders with a deep fryer.

"Shit," Mike drew out the word. "Yeah, Bobby, hey, I appreciate it, I'll drop the next to you, and you'll keep an eye open?"

"Semper Fi," Mike said as he ended the call.

"Well, I'm in it now," Mike said, "apparently your cellphone was tracked in LA, and a split second later, showed up outside the vet you used to go to."

"And I'm guessing this isn't the first time it's made that kind of hop," Mike's eyes were locked on his own. "So let's try this again. Can you think of any reason someone would be after you?"

----------------------------------------

Mike was trying very hard to control his temper. He'd had a trying day, and while it was no doubt, Bob who had dumped him in this mess, the man clearly hadn't been trying to.

"It's not?" Bob said hesitantly, "I mean, it's probably hopped around a few times?"

"How?" Mike ground out.

"That's a long story that involves the time I was off the grid," Bob replied.

Mike took a long sip of the fresh cup of coffee the waitress had delivered with their food. He picked up a slice of crisp bacon and chewed it.

"Bob, I've done my best to help you," Mike began, "mostly because it's my job, but also because I don't like it when I see anyone trying do an end-run around the law, trampling on the constitutional rights I've sworn to defend."

"That said," he continued, "it's time for some reciprocity. Whatever you've got going on, I'm in it now, by association if nothing else. I both deserve and need to know what's going on. Someone reported my vehicle, complete with name and tag, as being responsible for numerous traffic offenses."

Mike grinned, "Someone fucked up there; there was no reason for a good samaritan to have known my name, which means that the person who called it in left their fingerprints on the call."

"So I'm under review, as I can't break the law any more than you can, and I definitely racked up a few traffic violations," he shrugged, "While I can easily defend my actions, that would require me to present myself to my Captain, and I'd have a tail again, this time a better one, or more of them, and when it comes to surveillance, the old quote 'quantity has a quality all its own' definitely applies."

"So," Mike squirted ketchup on his hashbrowns, "start talking."

"Have you ever heard the saying that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?" Bob asked.

Mike nodded as he chewed his hashbrowns. Many places just slapped the hashbrowns on the grill and flipped them, which left the outside nicely browned but the inside oily and barely cooked. Not Waffle House. Say what you will about their steaks and burgers, but they knew their hashbrowns.

"Well," Bob said hesitantly, "I have extraordinary claims, and I have the extraordinary evidence, but it's best to provide the evidence and then the explanation."

Mike nodded. He wasn't sure what Bob was going on about, but when you're in the water, you might as well swim.

"Waffle House isn't really the place, though," Bob finished.

"And what would be the right place?" Mike asked.

"Beside the Jeep would work," Bob offered.

Mike chewed his toast. He was fairly certain that Bob was harmless. He was absolutely certain that he wasn't carrying a weapon, and while the man looked to be in great shape, he didn't move the way a trained martial artist, or even a street fighter would.

The waitress, having noticed their empty plates, approached with the bill. Mike waved for Bob to put away his wallet as he saw him pull out his debit card, and Mike handed her a pair of twenties before ushering Bob out of the restaurant.

"Bob," he said quietly as they started walking back towards the Jeep, "you might want to consider that if someone has pulled strings to track your phone, they're likely tracking your debit card as well."

Bob looked startled and then sheepish. "I should have thought of that," Bob muttered, "I've read a detective novel or twenty."

They reached the Jeep, and Mike leaned up against it. Between the overpass the Jeep itself, no one was likely to see or hear them.

"So, claims and evidence," Mike suggested.

Bob stuck his hand in his pocket and took in a deep breath.

Mike waited. He knew it was coming. Did he get caught up mulling drugs? He didn't seem the type to use, but they'd pay you five grand to cross the border with two hundred grand worth of product. Maybe he saw something he shouldn't have. Organized crime still existed, although they were less Italian and more Columbian, and while they kept a lower profile, they were far more brutal. Or he ran away from that particle accelerator lab with the key information on some sort of breakthrough that would unleash a new kind of superweapon.

Mike let his imagination run wild as Bob stood there, eyes closed.

"I'm waiting," Mike said impatiently.

He was about to shake Bob's shoulder when a blue-black glow appeared under his feet, and he found himself standing on a pool of some kind of liquid.

"Say yes," Bob said, his eyes finally open.

"Yes?" Mike asked, and the pool he'd been standing on suddenly stopped supporting him, and he fell.

He landed about ten feet later, give or take, and his knees screamed at him as he absorbed the landing. He staggered to his feet, looking around wildly.

He wasn't in Illinois anymore. Illinois didn't have a huge fucking glacier. He would have noticed that at some point over the past twenty years.

He heard a light thud behind him, and he spun to see Bob rising from a half-crouch, having clearly stuck the landing.

"What the fuck?" Mike asked, noticing that there was an odd stone building a couple of hundred feet behind Bob. It was the only structure he could see, and it didn't look quite right.

"Extradoniary evidence," Bob replied, gesturing towards the glacier. "When I disappeared during the accident, the particle accelerator blew me into another dimension. That's where I've been for the past year and a half. I just opened a portal and brought us back to that world."

Mike staggered and sat down. The trees were the wrong color, the pine needles a little too blue. Also, the mile-high glacier. "Another world?" He asked weakly.

"Another world," Bob confirmed, "which is hardly the most shocking item on the agenda, as the idea of parallel worlds is pretty well accepted."

"How did you bring us here?" Mike asked, "and maybe more importantly, can you take us back?"

"Magic, and yes, I can," Bob answered calmly.

"Magic," Mike repeated. "Like Harry Potter?"

"More like Dungeons and Dragons," Bob hedged, "although to be honest, the system here is kind of broken. I don't have all the answers, but from what I've been able to piece together, the beings that brought the system into being weren't all that advanced, despite what they'd accomplished, and despite going through a few updates, the System has remained pretty static for a long, long time."

"I need a minute," Mike said, lowering his head into his hands.

He didn't want to say that his day had gone from bad to worse, but he was sitting on the wrong planet, having been brought here by magic.

"Take all the time you need," Bob said, "just don't wander off, and when you're ready to talk or whatever, head into the building and grab a seat."

Mike took a few long deep breaths, then raised his head and looked around. He stood up and headed towards the building, where he walked through the doors and into a tavern straight out of a spaghetti western. Lots of round tables and a wooden bar, all it was missing was a player piano in the corner. There was an older woman entertaining a pair of infants seated in car seats that looked completely out of place.

"Hello," she greeted him, not rising from her chair, "I'm Talima, and this is Robin and Robert," she gestured to the infants.

"Detective Mike Hanson," Mike replied, "I don't suppose you've seen Bob?"

"Not since he went back to Earth a few hours ago," Talima replied, "but I doubt he's gone for long; he's remarkably considerate of everyone's time."

Mike grunted and sat down at the bar.

"So, did you come over to fight monsters?" Talima asked.

"Fight monsters? No," Mike shook his head, "He brought me over to prove to me that he'd been tossed into an alternate dimension for the past year and change."

"Is fighting monsters a thing here?" Mike asked, "like a colosseum type of event with gladiators or something?"

"Oh no," Talima replied, "as Bob explained it, and I may be getting this wrong, you kill the monsters in the Dungeon downstairs so that they'll keep appearing down there and not under your bed up here."

"Not to be rude," Mike said, knowing he was about to be rude, "but you're clearly from Earth, so I have to ask, who are you?"

"I was a terminal cancer patient, waiting out the last few weeks of my life," Talima replied happily, which Mike found odd, "until two days ago when my daughter and my son in law brought the Dungeons and Dragons group to my hospital room. Bob cast a magic spell on me, which cured my cancer, my cataracts, and even regrew the teeth I'd lost from the chemo."

"He can fucking cure cancer?" Mike asked in disbelief. Bob had a lot of questions to answer.