2] Ready 2 Go:

My mother was a nurse, but when I last visited her at the hospital, she was there as a patient.

It was the same hospital both she and I had been born in and where she had worked her entire life. There had been some talk of putting her in a hospice or setting her up in our home so she could die there. But Pontiac Point Hospital was more of a home to her than anywhere else, and all her friends had to do to visit her was to take the elevator down to pediatrics.

They had room. And all the long term kids knew her.

She had been doing well, as well as a dying woman can, when she pressed the call button at two forty seven in the morning.

The bed was empty by the time the nurse got there. The blanket and sheet were rumpled but pulled up. The needle and catheter sat there unconnected to anyone.

I nearly ended up punching the representative of the hospital administration on my way in when I got the call. They were so worried about a lawsuit they tried to get me to sign some papers saying they weren't to blame.

No one was. No one I could get to at least.

My mother had joked about being taken, if a medical professional was needed she claimed, why would anyone take her when they could grab a doctor? But she was gone, the cameras showed that she had never left her room since the last time she had been taken out for a weekly test.

She had become one of the Vanished.

For myself, I had to believe that if someone considered her worth taking. Then they considered her worth keeping alive. And if they could take someone from one world to another, maybe they could heal them as well. Or give them back their youth or a new body. She could end up living a longer life wherever she was than if she had stayed here.

That's how those stories went anyways.

I just wished she would have let me get her a knife too.

Naturally, her life insurance company wouldn't pay out. Until she was missing long enough to be declared dead they had a legitimate excuse, so why would they?

Besides, it was becoming established that people being Vanished were being taken alive. Legally this was a kidnapping, not a death.

The house we had lived in had belonged to my grandparents, so it was all paid for. The costs for taxes, insurance, and utilities could easily be covered by even my meager paycheck. I also had a joint account with my mom so I could pay for things for her after she started getting sick. A lifetime of working overtime, first to spend as much time away from my dad as she could and later just because she felt more at home at the hospital than at her house, had raked up a small fortune.

I would far rather spend what would have eventually become my inheritance trying to understand what had happened to her and possibly getting her back, than anything else.

Thus the blog.

The Last Goodbye was started by my mom to offer insights on how to die. It had been her way of dealing with it herself and to document her life in video recording for her future grandchildren I was supposed to produce to watch them. I mentioned it when the local news team interviewed me, saying how anyone wanting to know about her should go there.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

And if anyone knew anything about the Vanishing, they should mention it on the site. because I wanted to know.

I know that you have to throw out ninety percent of everything you see on the internet, and then take the rest of it with a grain of salt. But a lot of people wanted to share what they knew, and what wasn't being covered by the media.

Some people even asked if anyone had any ideas on what to do.

So, I started responding, and posting. Gradually the blog became something more.

I had read some manga, Japanese comic books, over the years about people being taken to other worlds, and now I was reading a lot more.

In those stories sometimes people end up in other worlds with people ready to help them adapt to their new lives, but often they just found themselves in the middle of nowhere without any explanation.

The knife I had taken to always having on me was what I suggested at a minimum. It was a tool, a weapon, and a way of starting a fire. I lost a few people there. They just couldn’t fit the idea of being armed into their worldview.

Others offered suggestions of their own. A pocket multi tool and a small pill bottle with the same things I had in my knife's handle sounded like the best compromise.

I didn't want to judge anyone's preferences either way. Everyone has to do their own thing.

Some of the suggestions sounded pretty good to me. I started wearing my grandfather’s gold wedding band on my pinky. The man had tiny hands. I got a small tube of triple sec antibiotic and some parachute cord to wrap around the sheath of the knife. They were all things I was able to find around the house.

Talking about that got me the first interview.

Alex Fierraro had decided that selling pre-made Vanished survival bags would make for a pretty good Kickstarter. And that getting me to endorse it would make for some good advertising.

His business was only a four hour drive away in Ohio and I was interested in seeing what other people thought was essential, and maybe picking up some of what he had available.

The start up, Ready 2 Go, was already working out of an old commercial building that may have been a shipping warehouse at one time. Their company name was on a banner over the front entrance.

Fierraro was middle aged, balding, and getting thick around the middle. Not exactly the look of a rugged survivalist. I mentioned it and it didn't take him by surprise.

“I know, but what I do look like is an everyday sort of person who would need a Ready 2 Go pack to survive and even thrive in another world.”

While he did go into some detail on other, more complex packs he was planning to put together in the future. For the moment he and his three employees were just working on getting something usable, and salable, out right now, rather than wait for their competition to spring up while they tried to make something better.

Or as Fierraro put it. “Perfection is the enemy of good enough.”

The nylon bag had a cheap imported survival knife like my own, a minimal first aid kit, a foil survival blanket, three small boxes of waterproof matches, a road flare, an aluminum water bottle, and some energy bars.

“Not exactly impressive, most of it’s just standard stuff anyone can put together, but the selling point is that it is already put together to where you can just order it and carry it around most places. And we've kept the price down to where people can afford to pay for some peace of mind.”

Then he pulled out the laminated pages.

"This is what you need for a long game." He flipped to the third page. "How to make penicillin."

The rest of the pages held diagrams and write ups on how to do things like build a water wheel. “Everything you need to know on how to use an abacus, build a water pump, process sugar from beets, make paper, grind lenses, do crop rotation, make soap, or even cement.”

“We’re putting together a book with even more ideas, I’m thinking of calling it “How to Get Rich on Another World."

For future products, he was looking into some simple laptop computers made as educational tools for third world countries that could be powered by a hand crank to give people access to an entire encyclopedia of information as well as entertainment for those shanghaied to another world.

"After all, if you are going to have to live your whole life somewhere else, why not bring all the information that could make it better? As well as at least some pictures and videos of everything, and everyone you’re going to miss.”

I wanted to turn down the free bag since I was sure I find a better version of it and everything in it, but I decided it would be better to have it on the ride home and until I did get around to putting something better together.

Which was after all, exactly what he said was its main selling point.

I had to get in contact again with an old friend to help me edit the footage I had taken into something not only presentable but watchable.

It got a lot of hits, and Ready to Go bags got a lot of sales. All with the rolls of toilet paper and mixed seed packets that I had suggested adding to the basic bag.

If you ever find yourself needing the toilet paper, you're welcome.

The packets held vegetable and fruit seeds. As well as some legumes and a couple of tree nuts.

Not much point in knowing how to get sugar from beets if you end up in a world without any of them around.

More importantly, all the attention going to my mom's blog got me my next interview.

With one of the first people who had made it back home.