He awoke, and he immediately knew that everything was wrong. Before he even opened his eyes he felt the soft mattress beneath him and the cool yet weighty blanket above him, a far cry from the stiff bed and well-worn sheets that he usually slept in. 

Instead of the not-too-distant sounds of suburban traffic and cats establishing dominance in the streets, there were bird calls, so numerous and varied that they sounded like a natural orchestra from a tropical jungle.

He opened his eyes, and more things were wrong. This place certainly resembled his bedroom, with the desk below the window and the drawer on the opposite wall, but it wasn’t his. It was as if someone had taken the exact layout of his room and replaced everything with a more rustic design. 

Gone was the cheap furniture, and in their places were beautiful pieces made from dark woods, simplistic but you could tell they were well made with just a glance. The decades-old carpet had been exchanged for hardwood, with a rug extending from his bed to the opposite wall. 

Countless questions filled his head as he stared at the strange room. Then he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

“Jus go bac to sleep Max,” he mumbled to himself. “Jus a drem.”

And so Max went back to sleep, only to be filled with more questions when he woke again and everything was the same. 

Max stared silently at the room, eventually pushing the sheets off of himself and climbing out of bed. 

Whatever bizarre event had happened, investigating it could wait until he had his morning tea. 

Walking over to the dresser, Loran opened them to find that at the very least his clothes hadn’t changed. Everything was exactly the same as what he would normally wear and was in exactly the same place.

He pulled on a pair of loose pajama pants and a red T-shirt that had a logo from a webcomic he used to read in high school. The thin fabrics, made thinner by years of use, were a comforting familiarity in his strange situation. Max felt his shoulders relax, not realizing that they had been tensed in the first place. 

Leaving his bedroom through a doorway covered only by a hanging sheet, Max was greeted by more oddities and this time they didn’t resemble his apartment. Instead of the hallway outside of his room, he was greeted immediately by the main living area of this new house. 

It was a fairly large, open space. On the right, a large couch was pushed up against a wall beneath a window, and next to it was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase packed with books. A cursory glance at the titles revealed a few of his old favorites, as well as many interesting-sounding titles that he had never heard of before. On the left, a kitchen area was separated by an island table, with a wood-burning stove and a large wooden box the size of a refrigerator.

A kettle was sitting on the stove, steam rising as the water just started to boil. 

Walking into the kitchen, Max began searching for a mug. There was only a single large cupboard above the counter, containing glasses, plates, and other assorted kitchenware, three of each. Off to the side were three gray mugs, each the exact same size and shape as his favorite mug from his apartment. 

Loran searched the rest of the kitchen for tea bags (finding a clay jar with loose tea leaves) and a spoon from a drawer, before making his tea and leaving it to steep. He generally liked his tea a bit stronger than most, so he decided to kill some time by looking outside. 

Stepping through the sheet-covered threshold, Max was momentarily blinded by the bright sunlight. When his eyes adjusted, he saw that he was now standing in a grassy clearing, the air cool while the sun beat down with a gentle warmth.

A few dozen feet away a dense treeline marked the end of the clearing. Turning around to look at the strange house Max had woken in, he saw what was essentially a sturdy log cabin with a slate shingle roof. The wood looked well-worn across every inch, but none of it seemed damaged or in need of repair. 

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To the right of the cabin was a large pond of crystal clear water. At first, it seemed like the water was perfectly still, but he then noticed a disturbance caused by an upward current coming from a large crack in the stone at the bottom of the lake. Max sipped some of the water and found that it was so clean and pure that he almost wanted to describe it as delicious. 

To the left of the cabin was a massive garden bursting with life. Rows of plants and trees bore all kinds of fruit, vegetables, and herbs, even those that he knew should be out of season considering the weather. Max plucked an apple from one of the trees as he walked past. It wasn’t the same shiny red that he usually saw in supermarkets but rather had a few light green splotches across its surface. 

He took a bite. It was easily the most perfect apple he had ever tasted. 

He continued walking, quickly reaching the treeline. He discarded the apple core and continued forward. There wasn’t a real path through the jungle, but the trees were spaced out just enough for there to be a meandering stretch of dirt between their trunks, undisturbed by the roots. 

The various trees fought for space and sunlight, some were three times as thick as Max’s torso and stretched dozens of feet into the air, while others were about the width of his arm and were maybe twice his height. Between them, countless species of moss, algae, vines, bushes, and flowers filled the empty spaces between them. It took less than a minute for Max to lose sight of the cabin, though he didn’t feel too worried. 

Then things became wrong again. 

He took another step and felt the ground soften beneath him. Looking down to see if something about the jungle floor had changed, Max saw nothing out of the ordinary. 

He stepped down harder to see if there was any effect, and his eyes widened as his foot practically sank into the dirt before bouncing back like the ground was made of rubber. The dirt rippled from the point of impact, knocking Max over and spreading further. 

As it reached the bases of the trees, they all bent and moved with the ripple. Vines were snapped as trees pulled away from each other. When they swayed back, various trees crashed into each other, showering Max with debris as branches were crushed and leaves were knocked loose. Fortunately, none of what fell on him was particularly large or dangerous, and Max was left coughing and squinting on the ground as the dust settled.

“What the hell was that?” 

No answer came as he dusted himself off. He had nearly decided to turn back when he noticed something in the distance. It looked like a golden light flickering through the tree branches. After a moments hesitation, he started walking towards the light. 

As he moved between the trees, Max felt the ground beneath his feet getting softer and more bouncy, like he was walking across a waterbed. At first he tried to be careful about not shaking the trees, be he quickly gave up on this as he realized that the trees were moving without him, being shaken by the wind now that their foundations were so loose.

As he moved further through the jungle the light grew larger and brighter, and the air grew warmer and drier. As he pushed one last branch out of the way the light almost seemed to flash, the heat spiking with it. Blinded for a moment, Max covered his eyes and felt the sweat bursting from his skin as the heat set in. He started squinting to let his eyes adjust and see where the light was coming from.

Before Max was an unimaginably vast desert, stretching farther into the distance than he thought was possible. The ground beyond the jungle was so soft that the sand rippled and flowed like water, creating waves and shifting currents of sand across the dunes. There was not a cloud in the sky as the heat from three suns baked the ground below. 

In the far, far, far distance Max could just barely make out some kind of shape in the desert, although it was impossible to tell what it was through the haze of heat, or even if it was real. 

Quickly deciding that he had had enough exploration for one day, Max turned around and made his way back to the cabin. Finding his way through the jungle seemed easier than leaving had been, and he was back in the clearing in just a few minutes. Walking up to the cabin, he looked to the sky and saw a single sun gently shining down. 

Returning to the cool shade within the cabin, Max looked at the tea he had left steeping on the counter. He entered the kitchen and opened the wooden refrigerator and retrieved a small milk pitcher (kept cold by a large block of ice).

After adding a small splash of milk, Max sat down on the couch and stared at the tea, thinking about everything he had seen since waking up this morning. 

He was in a strange place far from any other form of civilization. He had no memory of coming here willingly, there were no signs of him having been brought here by anyone, and he didn’t even seem to be on earth anymore.

There seemed to be a variety of amenities to sustain him, and enough books to entertain him for months, and the only way to leave would be to brave a desert straight out of the apocolypse. 

Max took a sip of his tea, expecting it to be far too strong since he had been exploring the jungle far longer than he had intended to. 

It was perfect.