Stepping through the portal, the scenery shifts. Earth. Some steel beams, next to shovels. I’m standing in dirt. A construction zone. It’s dark. No people are around. Night.

I’m on Earth. I– this is the best outcome going through this portal. And I’m not laying on the ground bleeding due to a bug attack, as I feared in one of my scenarios.

I need to find my husband. I pat my pockets. No phone. If I find someone, I can borrow their phone. That’s something people do.

I exit the construction site, onto a familiar street. The coffee shop across my apartment. And the tattoo parlor next to it. The construction site is where my apartment used to be.

The street is empty, at whatever time of night this is. I turn a corner. The liquor store has its lights on. I push the door open, the little bell jingles.

The store clerk sits at a check-out right next to the door.

“Do you have an ID?” she asks.

I stand frozen for what feels like a minute.

“Phone. I want to use the phone,” I say.

She sighs, and hands me a phone. It’s corded. I didn’t know they still had those. I hold the phone in my hand and stare at the number pad on the wall.

I don’t know my husbands’ phone number. I always just use my cellphone. I punch in the only phone number I know, my own.

I hold the receiver to my ear, and listen to the dial tone.

“Hi! You’ve reached Jessica’s voicemail. Please leave a message, I’ll try to get back,” I hear my recorded voice say. I hang up.

The clerk turns towards me “Are you alright? You can stay in the store if you need.”

It takes me a while to respond. “I don’t know if I have anywhere– Albert’s apartment. I’ll go visit him.”

I leave the store. After I’m halfway down the street, I realize I should have thanked the clerk for her help.

On the way to Albert’s I only see one other person walking. Even the cars are sparse. I space out while walking, and find myself already at Albert’s apartment building. I walk up the stairs to Albert’s floor.

I ring his doorbell, and wait. He’s probably sleeping. It seemed even later than he normally stays up.

I get nervous and start pacing. I ring the doorbell again. I take a deep breath and ring the doorbell repeatedly; Albert will understand.

A woman opens the door. She’s wearing pajamas, her hair is a mess.

“You’re not Albert.” I say. “Sorry. Sorry. Do you– Is Albert there?”

“No. I don’t know an Albert.”

“This is his apartment, I’ve been hundreds of times,” My apartment building is now a construction field. “At least he used to.”

“Oh. I’m not–” she says, “Wait, what’s your name?”

“Jessica Olmhoft. Sorry for waking you up.”

“Why don’t you come in? Albert Thomas told me to call him if you ever came by.”

I sit at her kitchen table while she paces with her cellphone in her hand. She must reach the voicemail, because she starts leaving a message.

“Hello, this is Lynn. I’m the person who moved into your apartment. You told me to call if a Jessica Olmoft showed up, and she just did. I’ve lost the photo you sent me, but I think she matches.”

Lynn hangs up the phone. “Well, that’s all I can do now. Do you want to borrow my phone or something? You seemed to come here in quite a hurry.”

“I don’t know any phone numbers. Maybe, could I borrow your computer? I know my email login, I could try to email my husband.”

“Of course, let me sign in for you.”

She takes a laptop from on a desk and hands it to me, open to a web browser. I sign into my email. My inbox is full of spam, mostly from the same four companies.

I compose an email, put in my husband’s email address, and then stare at the blinking curser. I don’t know what to say.

I keysmash. Anything to get rid of the blank draft. What do I say in an email to my husband? I’ve never emailed him anything besides files. “Hey, I think I just disappeared for a while. Well, I’m back now.” That won’t do.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

I check the date in the corner of the computer. September ninth. It was May last I knew. And I’m not sure I could explain what happened. I turn towards Lynn.

“I know I probably sound crazy, but in May I seem to remember huge bugs coming out of the sky and attacking. Was that real?”

Lynn freezes, unsure of how to respond. The phone rings, she picks it up.

I hear her half of the conversations, the “Hello?”, “Yes this is,” “Yes,” then “She’s sitting right at my table.”

Lynn hands the phone to me.

“Hello?” I say.

“Jessica? Is that really you? Where are you? I’ll come pick you up. Wait. My old apartment, of course.”

“Albert! Yeah, it’s really me. I guess you missed me, then,” I say.

“Where were you? Hold on a moment– I’m getting in the car” I hear him giving his address– old address to someone. “I’ll be there in half an hour. Okay, so where were you all this time?”

“As far as I know I was in the tutorial for Bug Hunting, like, I was fighting those bugs in that little anthill,” I say.

“Yeah, but after that, where were you?” Albert asks.

“After that? Wait, you believe me?”

“You played Bug Hunting, of course you went through the tutorial.”

He acts as if this is self-evident.

“Jessica? You still there?”

“Sorry, I’m just processing,” I say. “I feel like this conversation would be better in person.”

“Fine. Fine.” Albert says, “But you’ve got to talk about something.”

“Well, you moved. We could talk about that. What’s your new place like?”

“It’s a house in the suburbs. You’ll probably like it, the realtor kept talking about its ‘curb appeal’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re always commenting on how cute the houses are. Even when you’re driving and supposed to be focused on the road.”

“That’s cause they are cute! And I was at a stoplight. But maybe if you’re just going to complain about my driving, maybe you should just drive yourself.”

“I would, but alas, the government will not let me. Someone decided it’s too dangerous to drive if you can’t see. Something about needing to know where the other cars are before they crash into you?”

“Hey, how did you get someone to drive you over here so fast? Especially if you’re in the suburbs. You got a girlfriend or something?”

Albert laughs. “No, I’ve been too busy. I now employ a driver full-time to take me to all my functions.”

“How did that happen? Never mind, it’s the middle of the night! Do you usually go out driving at three in the morning?”

Lynn calls out “It’s four thirty!” I had forgotten about her.

“And thank you so much for helping me out. I’ve had quite a day. I’ll try to figure out some way to repay you,” I tell Lynn.

I hear Albert laughing over the phone. “I’ll make sure she’s properly rewarded for helping you out.”

At the same time, Lynn says, “Just get your friend to repay me, don’t worry about it.”

“I guess you two have some sort of deal worked out or something. I just feel bad about waking Lynn up this early,” I say. “Why are you up at four thirty in the morning, though? Your sleep schedule must have gotten even worse while I was gone. You full-on nocturnal now?”

“It’s less consistent now. Some days I stay up ‘till three, other days I wake up at three,” Albert says.

“And apparently your driver keeps up with this schedule. And you’re always talking about labor conditions.”

“She works less hours than I do,” Albert pauses. “She’s only on today at this time because, what was it? I woke up early to get some work done before… Oh! I have an early morning flight scheduled. Usually she’d be off at this time.”

“You’ve got a flight? Shouldn’t you be going to the airport?”

“I’ll cancel it. I’m on track for over fifty hours this week anyway. I’ll text my assistant to clear my schedule for the next few days. You’re here, talking to me!”

“An assistant? I’m getting the sense you may no longer be a computer engineer, with a driver, an assistant and a house in the suburbs. You get cast in a movie while I was gone?”

“No, no. How do I describe what I do now? It’s a lot of different stuff,” he sighs. “I guess I did get cast in a movie, sort of. I’m narrating a documentary. I’ve become a bit of a celebrity, I’ll have you know.”

“What for? You shouldn’t joke with the person who clearly doesn’t have the best sense on reality. I think you’re in a Sunset Boulevard situation. You remember how that ends?”

“I’m not– I’m famous because of Bug Hunting. Turns out all those hours I put into it really paid off.” Albert paused. “I should be almost there. I’ll hang up, call my assistant about clearing my schedule, and then I should be there. That’ll give us some both a bit of time to think before moving on to whatever conversations we’ve been putting off.”

“Okay,” I say. Albert hangs up.

I turn towards Lynn. “Albert should be here soon, then I’ll be out of your hair. Thanks for helping me at this hour. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise.”

“It’ll make a good story, at the least. And it gives me an excuse to call off work.”

I must have been looking guilty, because Lynn continues. “My work’s chill about it, and it’ll be nice to have a day to myself.”

I nod. I sit down, I had been pacing while on the phone.

The doorbell rings. Lynn gets the door.

Albert’s standing there, holding the door frame. I can hear him breathing.

“Albert! It’s Jessica,” I say.

“It’s really you!” He makes his way towards me, walking around here he used to have a table. He walks straight into Lynn’s end table.

“Damn,” Albert says. “That’ll leave a bruise. Should have realized there’d be different furniture in here now.”

I stand up and walk over to Albert.

“I guess we should go and let Lynn get some rest,” I say.

Albert nods. “Yeah, we should.” He turns towards the center of the room, “I’ll have my assistant get in contact with you.”

Once we’ve left the apartment and are in the hall, Albert asks “Can I hug you?”

“I guess.”

He wraps his arms around me, squeezing me tight. He mumbles under his breath.

Albert releases me from the hug. “Let’s go to the car.”