So, I find myself back at that table and chair, in that puddle of light with a voice in my head that is not my own.

I quickly bolted up from the table and spun around, futilely trying to pierce the darkness with my eyes. Of course I could see nothing beyond the pool of light and I couldn’t see whoever or whatever was speaking to me. I reached down to finger the grip of Derek’s handgun. If something else was coming to take me, then I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

“Who are you?” I screamed into the dark.

“Calm down Mr. Smith”, the voice answered. “I am not here to hurt you. In fact, I find you very interesting.”

“Well, I would feel a lot better if you would come out where I can see you,” I replied angrily. “This horror movie shit is not a great way to make me trust you.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Smith, I can’t come out to see you because you are inside of me.”

As my initial panic started to subside a little, the fact that the voice was coming from within my head had finally started to register. Trust me, that realization did not make me feel any better. Maybe Rob had the right idea. Was I deep in the bowels of a sentient alien mothership?

“Alright, then,” I said. “Who are you? What are you? Where am I?”

“Right now, you are in the space between dimensions,” the voice replied. “Who I am is not important, but what I am is considerably more relevant. I am a sort of gatekeeper. I facilitate the transfer of consciousness from one dimension to another. The reason I am so interested in you, Mr. Smith, is that you are the first person I have ever conversed with. Everyone else who has passed through me has been unconscious. Comatose you might say. I find talking to you to be very exciting.”

“Did I die back in that cemetery? Is this the afterlife?” I asked.

“Mr. Smith, you are not dead and in fact are not even seriously injured, although you probably need to improve your diet if you want to remain in decent health. There are many realities, many dimensions. Some are closely related to each other, while others barely resemble reality as you know it. In some dimensions, life has never formed. In others, there is a plethora of life, both beautiful and monstrous. But in those realities where life exists, that life creates a sort of energy, a sort of pressure. As that pressure builds up, it needs some release. At the lowest levels, that release creates a sort of collective unconsciousness. Figments of some realities manifest themselves in others, usually through dreams and visions. Some of those dreams and visions become common enough to be mythologized. But when the pressure becomes too high, there is a more extreme form of leakage. People, animals, plants, they all can slip out of their reality. When they do, they must go somewhere. They first come to me, and then I transport them to a different reality, one designed for all of this overflow. You can think of it as a dimensional crossroads.”

I’m not sure that I believed a word of what the voice was saying. For all I knew, I had just had a massive stroke back in New Orleans and what I was experiencing was the last gasp of a dying brain. I had trust issues long before I ever got here.

“Yeah, so was the dirty white bearded guy you?” I asked. “Do you wander around worlds selecting those people and things that will experience this ‘leakage’?”

“No, Mr. Smith,” the voice answered. “That was not me. Where you are bound, many of the rules of your reality don’t apply. Do you believe in magic? If not, you soon will as the evidence will be irrefutable. Each person, each thing carries within a certain power that is generated by their defining values and characteristics – the essence of what makes them who or what they are, so to speak. That power can be harvested by those who know the correct techniques, and once harvested can be used to strengthen others. The unscrupulous there have learned to send out hunters who acquire living things from the realities that they can access. Those living things are essentially treated as you would livestock in your world. They are drained of their usefulness and then discarded.”

“Great,” I replied. “So the best case scenario is that I am headed to the slaughterhouse? Is that what happens to everyone who leaks between realities?”

“Do not fall into despair quite yet, Mr. Smith. Those who pass through me due to natural dimensional leakage just wake up one day in a new reality. Your destination, however, was determined by the hunter who harvested you. Although your circumstances are dire, they will not expect you to be conscious. Unlike the others that I have transported, you will be able to act. There are no guarantees, but you have a chance at least. I sense great untapped potential in you, if you live long enough to bring that potential to fruition. I have been doing this for a very long time, a number of your years that predates your planet, yet you are the first person that I have ever spoken with. You are an anomaly. That is why I interrupted your transfer to speak with you. I feel that you are a harbinger of change for the Crossroads, if you can only live long enough to realize your potential.”

“Our time here grows short, Mr. Smith,” the voice continued. “I can only delay the transfer for so long. If you survive, you will see many new things, although many of those things will seem somewhat familiar to you due to the figments of those realities that have made their way into yours. I know that some of those figments have made it into your world’s myths and legends, even your literature and movies and video games. Before you go, I would like to offer you a gift. When you have enough time to think about our conversation, I am certain that you will wonder how it is that we seem to be conversing in your language. It is because I have what is called the gift of tongues in your world. I believe that I can grant this ability to you.”

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“Why would you?” I asked. “What’s in it for you? Why help me?”

“As I said, you are the first creature that I have ever gotten to converse with,” the voice responded. “I have lived for so long, and I have been so very lonely. If it was within my power, I would keep you here longer. I fear that my loneliness will bite much more acutely once you are gone. But just having a chance to speak to another after all these years, that is worth more than you can imagine to me. I want to repay you in whatever small way I can.”

“Thanks. I guess that makes sense,” I said. “So, tell me about this power and how I obtain it. Oh, and I can’t just keep thinking of you as a disembodied voice. If you refuse to name yourself, then I will have to name you. I could name you something dignified and classical, like Charon, the ferryman in Greek mythology who transfers the souls of those who die between the realms of the living and the dead. But screw it, that name is a mouthful and I probably don’t pronounce it correctly anyway. Instead, I will call you Rocky, I had a dog named Rocky and he was a great dog. Giving you his name seems like good luck. So, come on Rocky, hit me with the details.”

“Named after a dog?” Rocky replied. “I suppose you could do worse. I sense a certain disdain within you for the name Dakota. All you have to do to receive the gift is to open your mind to me. You will feel an immense pressure on your mind, as if a horde of creatures is scrabbling around it and trying to push their way in. All you have to do is relax and let that pressure in.”

“Rocky, I don’t trust very easily, and I can’t really say that I trust you. But if what you say is true, then I will need every advantage that I can get just to survive, and being able to talk to others seems like a pretty substantial one. So, I am going to go with this. I am going to let you in, but if you try to screw me I swear that I am going to do everything I can to find some way to screw you back, even if I just become a disembodied voice in your head or whatever part of you there is that thinks.”

“Do not worry, Mr. Smith,” Rocky answered. “If I meant you any harm, I would not have spoken to you in the first place. Sit on the chair, close your eyes, and do as I asked you to do.”

I sat back down at the table and propped my feet up on it. I closed my eyes are started to breathe deeply like we were told to do at the end of every workout at the McDojo. Immediately, I felt a pressure begin to bear down on my consciousness. At first, the touch was fairly light, like a moth brushing lightly past my skin. Over the course of a few moments, the pressure increased. First, it was like something was poking my consciousness with blunt fingers, but then those fingers grew claws and those claws pushed downward trying to penetrate into me. I tried to relax but I was having trouble. I thought of all the times that people had betrayed my trust, and the times that I had done the same to others. Trusting someone else was so difficult. As the pressure increased, my eyes began to water. I thought about my situation over and over again as the pain increased. What if this is all just a line of bullshit and I needed to open my mind to have my essence harvested? What was happening was excruciating, and the increasing pressure seemed inexorable, but one thought kept fighting its way to the surface of my mind: What have you got to lose?

Finally, with a shout, I forced myself to open to the demanding pressure. As I did, a warm energy burst into my mind, and then the pain was gone as if had never existed in the first place. I didn’t feel any different, and as far as I could tell I was still me.

“Wow,” I said, “that was kind of rough.”

“I am sorry that the gift caused you pain,” said Rocky. “That was not my intention.”

“So how does this work?” I asked. “I don’t feel any different.”

“You won’t,” my benefactor replied. “When someone speaks to you in a different language, you will feel as if you have always known the language. In fact, right now I am speaking to you in a language that does not exist in your reality.”

“Alright,” I said. “Thanks for the help. How much time do I have before we arrive at wherever I am headed to.”

“Just a few more moments, Mr. Smith,” Rocky answered. “I suggest you make any preparations that you can to give you the best chance at survival.”

“James,” I said. “Call me James.”

I looked down at the things I was carrying. I was outfitted exactly as I was when I entered the cemetery. I still had Derek’s pistol, several full magazines of ammunition, and the knives and other items in my backpack. I took one knife out and put it in my boot. I took another out and placed it on my belt. I made certain that the pistol in my shoulder rig was loaded and the safety was off. I stood and did some basic stretches to limber up and get my blood flowing. I ensured that the light jacket that I was wearing to cover up the handgun was unzipped and that it would not get in the way if I had to draw down on someone.

My thoughts were spinning through my head at a hundred miles per hour. I had been in a few fights before, but I had never had to fight for my life. I wasn’t exactly full of confidence. I had made so many mistakes, but if I made a mistake this time I would not be walking away from it. I am not too proud to admit that my knees were feeling a little weak, and the longer I waited the worse I was feeling.

Finally, I blurted out “Rocky, if I am going to do this I need to do it now, or I am not sure that I will be able to do it at all.”

“As you wish,” Rocky replied. “I doubt we will speak again, but know that talking to you has been a singular pleasure, James. I wish you well.”

Once again, my vision turned blindingly white and I heard that loud high pitched whine. Reality seemed to hiccup for a moment and I felt as if I was in many places at once. And then, I was lying on a hard stone floor. I cracked my eyes open and saw I was a small dimly lit room. The air was humid and earthy and I smelled a faint hint of the sea. The light was coming from lines of blue crystal that were inlaid into the floor around me. I heard the fading echo of a deep chime.

Just as I was gathering myself to stand up, there were faint footsteps outside the door and it began to swing inward.

Here we go.