"Hey, what are you doing outside?"

Gaus turned around hurriedly to see a middle-aged man wearing a black jacket with two straps of white around the neck and shoulders each. He had a soft hat with a stiff, rounded visor and a flat top, resembling an old-fashioned patrol cap. Two sheathed swords were strapped to his side, making him look like the old, vigilante guards from his village.

"What the hell are you doing outside at this hour? It's well past the curfew." The policeman, as Gaus named him, snapped.

Gaus thought about the situation. He didn't know where he was or how he got there, so it was nigh impossible to give the right answer.

"I... I... " He stuttered. Then an idea came to him. "I was on my way home, I just lost track of time."

"Don't you have a better lie?" The policeman scrutinized him for a while before he took a step closer putting his hands on the hilt of his sword, "tell me, who amongst you lot killed my colleague?" His tone became menacing toward the end.

"What? I don't know what you are talking about..." The look in the policeman's eyes made him pause, "Look, I have nothing to do with any murder."

"Then why are you here?" Asked the policeman.

"I came here just now," Gaus argued.

The policeman narrowed his eyes slightly for a second before he harrumphed. "Not a good liar, are you? You forgot to factor in the curfew."

Gaus opened his mouth to explain himself but the policeman glared at him, snatched his belt, and dragged him, causing the poor boy to trip and fell on his face.

"Let's go." He roared, "you'll all be sentenced as soon as the pilgrimage is over."

The policeman made but one mistake: he forgot to cuff him. In his eyes, Gaus was the farthest thing from a threat, and he certainly needed no restraint to tame him.

Gaus placed his hands on the crown of his watch and turn time backward. The world blurred and everything went blank. Then everything returned to normal a second later. He stood at the center of the street, facing the dark green wall, alone. The blue panel appeared.

Magiwatch has saved 40 secs.

You have Rewound for 40 seconds, effectively erasing everything in the said period. Only you will remember.

Gaus inhaled deeply, he didn't know how but he could actually turn time backward just by using his watch.

Now that he knew there was a murder in the area and he knew the security was patrolling at that very hour, he folded his sleeves and fled.

He found a road at the end of the narrow street. But, from his knowledge on Earth, he knew it wasn't smart to follow the road whenever there was any curfew, if nothing else the security there would be massive compared to other areas. It was dark and there was no light in the area, so it would be easy finding a 'safe' hideout, he thought.

He ran increasingly faster, finding safety in the darker streets till he was confident he was far away from the vicinity of the said murder and that he was not being followed. Then he stopped to think things through.

In his current situation, he had two options: one, going into the city to find a place to sleep; two, finding somewhere in the alleys to sleep the night. The problem with going to the city was he didn't know the situation there. With the murder and the curfew, the situation could really be bad. And even if it wasn't it would be difficult to find anyone willing to let a total stranger into their home at that hour. Sleeping on the streets had its problem as well: the security agents could arrest him while he slept.

After debating for a while he settled for sleeping on the street. Probably because he had some experience with that back when he used to live in the orphanage, so it was nothing new. And he also had a few tricks to hide well. Even If the security found him he knew what to tell them about why he was sleeping there.

With that Gaus found a darker back street and hid behind a dustbin. He covered himself with leaves and abandoned clothes dumped in the dustbin. In the morning, the curfew would probably be lifted and the patrol was gone, he would sneak into the city and find out about what was really going on.

He laid there on the hard ground; unable to sleep. There were many reasons as to why he couldn't sleep, but the one that disturbed him the most was the watch on his left wrist. He just couldn't get it off his mind. He had a sneaking suspicion it could blow up at any time and kill him or take his hand with it. There was also one disturbing window at the bottom of the dial that kept blinking, showing date and time.

3:30 am

Tuesday, 6th of April, 2077 AC

He had tried to remove the watch from his wrist several times without success. After the fifty-something time, he decided the only way he could probably part with it was to cut off the hand, which was obviously not going to happen. So he stopped trying to get rid of it and focused on the situation in general. According to the blue panel - the name he gave the flashy blue notes that kept creeping to his view - this world was called Multiverse. Gaus didn't know what that meant, but that wouldn't be a problem, he could ask about it as soon as it was morning. The real question was why was he there.

As he thought about it, the hour went by quietly. He had almost fallen asleep when he heard a voice in his head. A very sinister voice.

"You are surrounded. Do not move from your spot, if you want to live."

He looked in the direction the voice was coming from and immediately met with three policemen: a woman and two men. The woman stood at the center and she was the speaker. Her voice was surprisingly androgynous, but even more surprising was her shining, black mustache. He had never seen a woman with a mustache.

This wasn't the time to be submissive, so he mustered what little courage he had left and looked directly into the eyes of the mustache woman. "I did nothing wrong." He said defiantly.

"Then you've nothing to fear." Said the policeman standing on the right of the mustache woman.

The other policeman standing on the left of the mustache woman pointed at Gaus' conveniently placed hands. "Put your hands where I can see them."

With the murder, Gaus knew this was an investigation and certainly not a casual arrest. He had somehow managed to land in a murder zone which was under the scrutiny of the police (and quite possibly other armed forces). The policemen wouldn't even listen to his side of the story. Just by being there, he had become a suspect. If he was caught he would likely be charged with the said murder. How could he then explain it to them that he was from another universe, and that he had nothing to do with anything?

"Take your hands off your watch." The woman thundered. "And spread them so I can see every finger."

Gaus didn't comply: he positioned his hand very close to the crown, so he could act at a moment's notice.

"Hey, move that hand away from there immediately or I'll... "

But they were too slow before any of them could move Gaus had screwed the crown backward. The world blurred and everything went blank. When he became conscious again he was lying comfortably behind the dustbin, alone.

The blue panel appeared:

Magiwatch has saved 38 secs.

You have Rewound for 38 seconds, effectively erasing everything in the said period. Only you will remember.

Gaus fled just in time to avoid the mustache woman and her colleagues. With this ability, he could probably escape most danger.

It wasn't long before he found another hideout. No dustbin, but it was dark. He just found a corner and curled himself up, hoping to avoid notice. But it didn't work: thirty minutes later the police found him again. So he rewound to the time before they came and left to look for another hideout. He went from one street to another, spending a variable period in every place, before the police chased him out. Eventually, he spent the night on the run.

He found his last hideout at around five o'clock in the morning. He stayed there expecting the police to show up like they always did but they didn't. At around six o'clock in the morning, his tiredness overpowered his sense of fear and he fell asleep. When later he woke up it was already five minutes to 10 am.

He woke up with a jolt. Heart pounding he looked left and right and at the street in general for any threat and when he couldn't find any, he let out a sigh of relief. He made his raincoat into a handkerchief to clean his face of all the dried up saliva and mucus on his lips and nose before he left into the city.

The first thing that drew his attention was the buildings. It was dark when he came, so he didn't see it. But now the sun was up and no patrol was chasing after him. The houses were built from some kind of glowing stones - some blue, some red, and some even white. What was even more surprising was that all the houses looked the same in terms of size and design. Even most of the streets had the same design and were roughly equidistant from one another. A few people walked on the streets, talking about things Gaus didn't know but he figured they were mundane talks. It was really not his homeland. When he was little, the nanny running the orphanage often told them stories about spirits, djinns, dragons, and other mysterious things. Some of these spirits could travel thousands of miles in just a minute. If those tales were true then he would say it was a spirit that brought him here. But those tales were all lies concocted to scare the children into behaving.

As he stood there in thought a young woman passed by his side. She was short, dark in complexion, dressed in a long, white gown (like a monk) and was in a hurry if her fast strides and anxious face were any indications. After a short debate, he ran and stopped her. "Hello..."

She turned around hurriedly and looked away almost as soon as she saw him.

She doesn't have a mustache.

"Please, ma'am, can I ask you a question?"

"Quick. I have a little time."

She wasn't terrified to see him, meaning, at the very least, there were people 'like him' in this Multiverse.

He forced a smile. "I'm new here if you can help me with something... anything, I would be really grateful." It was definitely not the best choice of words, but he wanted to be as bland as possible so as not to expose his identity to the wrong person.

She grimaced and shook her head. "Why are you people coming to the pilgrimage without attending a course? Is it because of the little extra charge?" She rolled her eyes at him dejectedly and sighed. "Have you prayed?"

Gaus remained silent. He was getting increasingly confused about the whole situation.

"I guess not." She said, interpreting his silence as a no. She looked at the wristwatch on her right hand and gasped. "It will close in half an hour. I'm heading there, you can come if you want."

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Gaus was dumbfounded. The young woman's wristwatch looked exactly like his own and she spoke the same language albeit a very strange accent. Something of interest was the pilgrimage, both the woman and the policeman had mentioned it. What kind of pilgrimage was it? Was he in Saudi Arabia or Jerusalem or somewhere similar?

"Okay, thanks. I'm Gaus." He decided to follow her.

The young woman remained silent for several seconds, probably hesitating. "Ummi. I'm Ummi." She said.

Gaus followed her into the city in silence. Soon after they reached a large field hundreds of meters wide, it looked like an ordinary football field only larger. It wasn't strictly enclosed, just demarcated by a shallow pit that was cemented by the same glowing stone that was used to build the houses he saw earlier. Instead of the Caaba or the Temple, he saw a giant stone two hundred meters in diameter floating in the air at the far end of the field. Several policemen stood guard around it. Nobody was allowed anywhere near the floating stone, the closest you could get was a hundred steps away from it.

Gaus had never seen a rock so smooth in his entire life. It shone and glowed much better than every other stone in the city. A few maids wearing white dresses collected water from the spring beneath and poured it over the floating stone. About one thousand more men dressed in the same white gown bowed down beneath the stone.

The young woman called Ummi knelt down, just like the rest of the crowd. At one point, Gaus was the only one still standing. He quickly followed suit and fell on his knees to avoid attracting any unnecessary attention.

Besides all these, there was something else that really got his attention. Out of the roughly five thousand people crowded in that place, nobody spoke a word. It was silent as a grave. Some came in and some left, yet nobody said a word. It was... disturbing.

After about ten minutes, Ummi left the ceremony, Gaus followed her behind.

After taking several steps away from the ceremony ground, Ummi inhaled deeply, and, as if getting rid of a heavy load, she sighed. "Hmm. It's over now, till next year." She turned to Gaus. "Are you going to the auction or directly to the competition?"

Pilgrimage, auction, competition... Gaus didn't know what was going on. He would like to see the auction and the competition but there was something more important at the moment.

"Ummi, if I'm looking for information about Multiverse, what's the easiest way to get it?"

She looked at him with narrowed eyes like he was an idiot for asking that. "Did you come here to wander? Look, there are countless mages from every region of Multiverse in the city ready to fight in the competition once the auction is over. I know there are lots of distractions but this is a lifetime opportunity, you can't miss it."

"Don't worry about me. Just tell me where I can get such information."

She furrowed her brows and turned around to tell him how stupid he was only to change her mind at the last minute. "Check out the library." She said. Then she rolled her eyes at him and left.

"Hey, where can I find the library?" He asked.

"..." Came the response from Ummi.

Luckily, the library was a popular place, almost everyone knew where to find it. The first person Gaus asked took him directly to the library before he went on to his shop.

A majestic building it was. If you raised your head your hat would fall before you could see its top. Tall and glorious. The stone used to build it was dark brown, reflecting the sunlight as a dim glow. There were countless glass windows on every floor of the building which shone brilliantly in the sunlight.

Gaus reached the entrance where a guard sat on a wooden chair, taking note of every person that went in or out of the library in his grey, hardcover cover.

"Your name?" Asked the guard without raising his head from the book in his hands.

"I'm Gaus."

He wrote it down at the lower left of the front page, tore it, and handed it to him. "That's your permit."

That was strange, Gaus thought, but he took it and went inside. He went directly to a woman sitting on the reception desk facing the entrance.

From the moment he entered the building, the woman carefully analyzed him in the few seconds it took him to reach the reception desk, then she went back to whatever it was she was doing and pretended she didn't notice him at all.

Gaus stood just a few inches away from the desk, waiting for her to talk to him or at least raised her head so he could talk, but she didn't. After about twenty more seconds he cleared his throat. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," said she without raising her head.

Gaus grimaced mostly as a surprise from the lack of manners. "please, can you direct me to the books section?" He said after a few seconds of silence.

"Head straight into that door." She pointed at the next door without lifting her head.

It was the only open door in the direction she had pointed at, so it was easy to find. 'The first Floor' was written boldly on the entrance.

As he stepped inside, he was faced with rows of seats and even more rows of bookshelves extending as far as he could see. In his estimate, each shelf had at least a hundred books and there were more than fifty shelves. But if all these books were on the 'First Level', then how many more books were on the second level and the levels beyond that? He didn't know how many floors were in the library but it should be at least ten if the size of the library was any indication.

He checked for any librarian who would show him around but there was none. Only a handful of people doing their business, nobody to rely on. He was lucky the shelves were categorized into different fields of study and were labeled clearly. For example, the shelf by his right had 'chemistry' written boldly on it, indicating that all the books on the shelf would be on (or at least related to) chemistry.

He carefully selected any book with a title even closely related to the words: world, Multiverse, pilgrimage, auction, competition, magic, and so on. He spent the next hour doing that but he was nowhere near finishing. He would select a book or two on every shelf and drop it on his table. Slowly he built a collection. But his stomach growled just when he was about to start exploring.

Where can I even get food?

He was a total stranger in the world and he had absolutely no money. Where he came from food was not free and he suspected it was the same here.

But as fate would have it a young man came to him.

"Hey."

Gaus raised his head and looked at the newcomer.

"Hey."

"I wanna get something to eat, please can you look out for my books? I don't want the librarian to take them back to their respective shelves thinking I'm done." Said the newcomer in a friendly tone, pointing at his desk.

Gaus looked at the desk he was pointing at. Initially, he thought he was chewing more than he could swallow but he immediately dropped the idea after seeing the newcomer's collection. His collection was at most fifteen books and some papers, but the newcomer had at least 30 different books on his desk. He was probably planning to stay up all night.

"No problem. I'll make sure nobody touches anything. Although, I will also like to go out and eat." Said Gaus, secretly praying that the newcomer would offer to buy him some food.

"No, don't worry, I'll bring one for you. Do you want soup Tuwo?"

"Er... I don't want to trouble you."

The newcomer smiled and shook his head. "It's nothing. We, students of knowledge, are like brothers and sisters. On a day like this, whoever stopped himself from attending the auction and the competition (even though, he wanted to), but he refused and came here to learn is a real hero."

Gaus smiled and nodded. He didn't want to continue the conversation on that line to avoid any slip up on his part.

"Thanks."

The newcomer nodded and left. It wasn't long before he came back with a leather bag in his hands.

"Come to reception." He said.

Gaus hesitated but only for a second before he followed him.

"Look at all these empty seats. Everyone has gone to the auction." The young man said.

"Yeah..." Gaus said. It was getting difficult just to answer these questions.

"I'm Abbas."

"I'm Gaus."

"Gaus? Gaus...?" The other boy tilted his head in thought.

"What?" Asked Gaus.

"Sorry, but you have a very odd name."

Gaus curled up his brows to look especially amazed. "Really?"

"Yeah. Well, let's eat."

Abbas revealed the contents of the leather bag. A flask, two wood plates, and spoons. The so-called soup Tuwo looked just like any spaghetti from Earth cooked with plenty of soup and fish. It smelled nice but the purplish curry used made it alien to his senses. But he had little choice.

He picked a plate and helped himself.

"Huh!" His eyes went wide as he tasted it.

Abbas laughed. "The library chef is excellent. I like that look on your face, it never gets old."

They laughed.

"Every year we suffer foreigners whenever it was time for the pilgrimage. Few of them came to worship and even fewer are like you. Hell, I've never seen anyone like you. The ones we see the most are thieves, drug addicts, cutthroats, and any idiot who's enough money to sponsor themselves. None are like you. Where did you come from?"

Gaus tilted his head to the side in surprise. "How did you know?"

"That you are not from here? Come on, your dress doesn't belong here, your accent as well. Your skin is too fair to be anything from around these shores. Look," Abbas extended his arm and folded his sleeves, comparing his skin with Gaus'. "Are they the same?"

Abbas was also fair, his skin should be class 3 (although, a few people would push him to class 4) but he was fair. Sure, he was slightly darker than Gaus who had class 2 skin, but still. Another thing was the dress. It was a raincoat, old, grey, and leathery which was acutely different from Abbas' white, flowing robe that looked like it was adapted from a monk's costume. It was archaic, Gaus thought. Additionally, his accent was pretty different from Abbas'. It was the same tongue but a different accent. It reminded him of those old locals coming to Egypt from nearby rural areas. Yes, they both spoke Arabic but their accent was far apart.

Gaus smiled and inhaled a bit dramatically. "You are right, I'm not from around here." He said and then maintained his silence.

They finished the meal partly in silence. Abbas wanted to go back to study immediately.

"I need to use the bathroom." Said Gaus.

"There, the next door on the right." Abbas pointed at the toilet before he went back to his desk.

The toilet was different from anything he knew. No sink, bathtub, shower, or anything else of that matter. It was just a simple, empty room as far as he could tell.

Is this really the toilet?

If he didn't see the word toilet boldly written on the entrance he would have thought he was in the wrong place but he was not. This was the toilet. Only empty. He spent another fifteen minutes in there, touching and searching but to no avail. It wasn't until he splashed some water on the floor and it disappeared. He immediately understood how it worked, the whole floor served as a magical drain. He still needed to find out how much it could drain but that could wait. He took care of his urgent needs and went back to his seat.

Time to find out what this Multiverse is all about.

It was dusk when he started flipping through the books. The sunset and night came. Abbas left. The few others using the library left one by one until there were only three people left. It was now thirty minutes past twelve midnight. Gaus concluded that the library ran for 24 hours a day else they would have already closed, meaning he could sleep there if he wanted. He immediately decided to sleep there, after all, he had nowhere else to go. And he also needed time to deliberate on all the things he just read.

First: he was no longer on earth. He was currently in a world called Multiverse. In this world, there were both magic and magical powers, just like in all the fairytales he used to read on earth when he was a boy. A typical manifestation of this magic was the wristwatch on his hand called magiwatch. Apparently, every inhabitant of this world had their own magiwatch just like him. And every magiwatch had an ability which would be used by the owner of the watch just like his ability to turn time back.

In one book, the Multiverse was mentioned to have seven composite worlds linked to one another. The uppermost world was called the First World. Below it was the Second World. Then the Third World beneath it and the Fourth beneath it, up to the lowermost Seventh World. And the inhabitants of these worlds knew nothing about Earth. You could say that nobody in the entire Multiverse knew about the existence of any other world besides this one. Just like nobody knew about this place on Earth. Both Earth and Multiverse sat on different parts of the galaxy, one didn't affect the other in any way, but on this fateful day, some unknown mystery had brought Gaus to Multiverse.

Every year, on the 6th of April, the inhabitants of Multiverse came together in this 'holy city' (called Fydeba) to celebrate a pilgrimage and some festivities which included the auction and the competition called Jinzidal.

One thing that really caught his attention was that currently Fydeba was filled with visitors, foreigners just like him who came from different parts of the Multiverse. This made it easier for him to blend in. If anyone asked him about his identity he could just claim that he was a pilgrim here to worship.

One unique problem was there was no pound, dollar, euro, dirham, or Riyadh in this world. They used a very strange currency called ayrid.

Gaus inhaled deeply and looked at the sky through the window facing him. He saw a starry sky with two full moons, instead of the usual one on Earth. He was far away from home, his return all but uncertain, if at all possible. He was alone in the entire world. His bottled milk (the one he left in the kitchen) would be sour by now. In two days' time, the locals would start asking questions when they couldn't see him. His home would be empty and there would be no sign of breaking in or struggle when they checked.

He gasped. "If Sa'ad finds out I was missing he would look for me. He would even report it to the district head. They would look for me for some time. But..." He felt even more desperate. "It won't be long before everyone forgets about me."

He was lost.

"Grandma..." He mumbled, weeping internally.

He slept on his seat, facing the window and the books on his desk which would be waiting for him in the morning when he woke up.

***

Scream.

At first light, Gaus woke up with a resounding scream. His body trembled under his sweat-soaked underwear.

"Urgh..." His groan was interrupted by a towering green wall.

This...

He turned around to see the freshly-painted, yellow wall.

"This street.... these paints... What is going on?" He was sure this was the very street he found himself yesterday when he arrived, and at roughly the same hour.

As if the situation wasn't bad enough the blue panel appeared.

Magiwatch has saved twenty-four hours.

What is going on?

He had not the slightest idea of what was going on. But after a short debate, he decided to take refuge first.

"Hey, what are you doing outside?"

Gaus turned around.

This line...

He curled up his brows in shock. No doubt this was the policeman from yesterday. Even the timing and the street were all exactly like that of yesterday... Don't tell me I'm reliving yesterday...? He shook his head. This was the most stupid thought that had ever come to him.

"Hey, look at me when I'm talking to you."

Gaus was too shocked to even look at him. He slowly turned his head in the direction of his watch. Yesterday was Tuesday, the 6th of April. All he needed was to check out the date and then compare it.

According to the watch, the date and time were:

Time : 3:03am.

Tuesday, 6th of April, 2077AC

Just like yesterday.

What the hell is going on?

He widened his eyes as thousands of questions flooded his mind.