"Well, crap," he thought as he looked at the freeway off-ramp and the overpass he was currently standing under. "Where the hell am I now?" he muttered to himself. The sun was beating down, and he was sweating up a storm. The sleeping bag wrapped around him like an oversized towel, and he had one boot on. He dropped the sleeping bag and tried to pull his shirt off, sure he was going to die of heatstroke in the high desert sun. Only to realize he wasn't wearing a shirt, or anything for that matter, other than the boot. "This was a bad one," he thought, then quickly grabbed the sleeping bag to wrap around himself again. He quickly looked to Frank, his dead friend, and asked, "How long was I out for?" Scowling when he realized what he was doing, he took stock of his situation and realized he at least knew where he was. Moving down the street, he headed towards the Convention Center, knowing he could find some shade away from prying eyes as he figured out how long it had been.

He was surprised he hadn't been picked up by the police due to his unique clothes, or lack thereof, and made it to an out-of-the-way spot behind the Convention Center. Tired, sore, and very hungry, he wondered again how long he had been out and what had happened. He saw he was covered in scrapes and bruises. His hair, always dirty and unkempt, was much longer than he remembered, even with the knots and tangles. He also knew that this wasn't close to winter; there were signs for Street Vibrations and Burning Man. If that was the case, he had been out of it for more than eight or nine months. Sighing with determination, and a bit of fear, he began to head back toward the street and hoped the food locker he remembered by one of the casinos was still there. With luck, he could get some food and clothes there. If not, maybe he could get to one of the dumpsters at one of the two casinos he was close to.

Back on the street in front of the Convention Center, he realized there must be some kind of show or event happening. He could see lots of people in old-style Asian-type clothes, walking across the street to the coffee stand there. There was a line of cars stretching from around a side street onto the main street, blocking a good portion of the right lane. Wondering why this shop was so popular, he started to make his way down the sidewalk.

The squeal of tires and the sound of metal crunching brought his head up quickly. It looked like some yahoo, not paying attention and going way too fast, had swerved to avoid hitting the people crossing the street. This had caused him to slam into the back of the car line for the coffee shop, clip the tail end of a heavy-duty pickup, and swerve into oncoming traffic. This, in turn, caused a casino shuttle bus to jink out of the way and brake hard. Unfortunately, for the Asian guy just starting to walk through the crosswalk when all this started, it wouldn't be enough. For the briefest of moments, his mind had the clarity it had when he was younger. In that brief moment, the old man moved, grabbing the Asian guy and pushing him out of the way. That was when his sleeping bag unwrapped itself and tangled into his feet. The old man made one small snort as he fell and thought to himself, while watching the shuttle bus screeching towards him, "Don't think I'm going to wake up from this one."

Stolen novel; please report.

The old man slowly woke up. At first, he thought he was recovering from another missed time episode. Then he realized he had no clue where he was, and wherever it was, he was on grass. "Grass but no sky?" he thought while trying to move his head. "Or perhaps space was a sky?" Unable to move his head or any part of his body, all he could move was his eyes. Straining to find anything in his field of view, he paused as the image of the shuttle returned to his mind. "Hmm, not sure this is what I was expecting for an afterlife," he thought to himself. Still unable to move anything and trying to understand his situation, he was at a loss. He wasn't sure if this was heaven or hell, or some other place people like him go. While never a bad guy per se, he wasn't no choirboy either. He figured he had a 50/50 chance of either place.

After what he assumed were several hours, though most likely, a handful of minutes, he heard voices coming closer to him. Still unable to move, he again tried to shift his eyes to the sound, only getting eye strain and a slight headache for the effort. Then a shadow fell over him as the voices continued to talk to each other. He did not understand the language, but by the sounds and timber of the voices, there was a heated debate between a man and a woman, occasionally punctuated by angry snarls from the man. There seemed to be another male as well who would occasionally speak in a soft timber. Gradually, he noticed he was beginning to understand the conversation. Then all at once he was fully cognizant of the three's words, and it did not look good for him. Apparently, he had saved the man from the shuttle bus, and was now his unwanted replacement.