9] It's not always magic.

The man was waiting for me at my kitchen table when I got home that night, sitting there in the dark, unseen until I turned on the light.

“I mean you no harm, but feel free to get your gun out.”

The short haired blonde guy had a slim build and was wearing clothing with an almost high fashion look to them. Something you would only see in a photo shoot or on a catwalk rather than something anyone would actually wear in real life.

A button up shirt without any buttons and a stiff short collar. A stiff looking coat was made of some slick tan material that sat on him as if had thicker portions lining it, like body armor. He also had some sort of mirror surfaced contact lenses on his eyes.

Which vanished suddenly to show me a set of unnaturally blue eyes the same color that they use to paint swimming pools.

I reached into my Ready 2 Go bag and pulled out the revolver I had picked as my “for now” gun before sitting down in my chair on the opposite side of the table from him.

He gave me a slight smile. “For most people, inviting them to arm themselves would incline them to trust me enough that I meant them no harm that they wouldn’t bother. From your blog, I should have known."

I nodded at him and turned off the safety as I rested the gun and my hand on the table, not quite pointing it at him. "Is it time? Can I change my clothes and get the rest of my stuff.”

He looked confused for a moment. “Ah, no. Sorry. I’m not here to Vanish you. I just wanted to tell someone my story.”

Ah... I sighed and put the safety back on. "I'm getting myself something to drink before you get started, you want anything?”

He took one of the beers I hadn’t had the heart to throw out after I decided to start trying to lose weight. I went with a glass of sugar free lemon flavored drink mix with a lot of ice. The stuff tasted pretty good even if artificial sweetener that was supposed to be bad for you, long term at least.

I wasn’t planning on long term being a problem for me.

He took a drink of the beer and nodded as I held up my phone with my brows raised to see if he minded if I set it record.

“Go ahead. You can call me Jason. Jason Pigousesky. Although it’s been a while since I used my last name, they don’t exactly use them over there. And they have trouble pronouncing it.”

He paused, then took a deep breath before he began his story... "So I got taken about three years ago, for testing, but not to a magic land. The one that grabbed me was all science and ran slower than Earth time. At about a seven to nine ratio to Earth.”

That was a first.

He nodded at the look on my face. "That's the main thing I wanted people to know. All the people getting kidnapped from Earth has made it easier for people to get taken, or even slip into other worlds by accident."

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“At least the accidental ones will end up on worlds that people have already been taken to, or ones nearby them. No one should end up somewhere with no air, or at a temperature hot enough to melt metal.

“At least not by accident. Not everyone taking people is nice, or at least has a use for them.”

“The Eloians started developing their technology back when the Greeks were doing their thing. They think it tightened things up on their world to be more stable, and less magical. But they learned how to look at other worlds, and now ours in particular since the walls around it are weakening.”

He shrugged. “The more our walls come down, the easier it will be for magic to work here. Which is already becoming an issue in terms of people being taken. But a bigger problem is that as the walls fall, things will start coming here instead of just stealing us away."

Taking a moment to knock on the top of my wooden kitchen table, he continued. "At first it will be refugees and predators. Then it will be invasive species, hunters, thieves, then invasions. Maybe even things that can end worlds.”

“The refugies are usually first. There are lots of places on Earth the first world nations won't lift a finger to bother with that are still mighty fine looking for someone from a dying world.”

I blew out a puff of air. Maybe my preparations would end up helping keep me alive in this world instead of on another one. “What kind of time frame are we talking about here?”

He shrugged. "Years, maybe only months. But either way, the longer it goes on, the faster it will be accurate."

Standing up, he put his hands in his pockets. “Anyways, I just wanted to give people a warning before I go back home. My new home. And to do some shopping. No nacho flavored corn chips on Eloia. But I will leave you with this.”

He set a flash dive and a gray transparent box filled with neatly arranged round pills on the table.

The box was small, only a dozen or so pills at most. So small in fact it that would be easy to lose.

“The flash drive holds some files on how to measure how strong your dimensional walls are, and how to build some machines that can help block incursions. Unfortunately, they're pretty power intensive, so they included some exotic means of generating power. I’m not sure how long it will take people to develop the technology, but it’s all I can do to help.”

I nodded toward the pill box. “And those.”

He picked it up and shook it up so the pills raddled. “These are for you. They aren't a miracle medicine, but they will help clean up your cardiac systems fix up your liver, and let you benefit more from exercising, and other things. For you or anyone else if you want to share them with. One pill a week will do, any more and you would be wasting them."

I asked him about what his new world was like, but he just grinned and started in on telling me how he had "I've seen things..." And got as far in as mentioning the C beams in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate before I caught on.

Smart ass.

Then he walked out of my home, to where a ride share was waiting for him.

So, some sort of prank, or maybe a con job? Or did I get a genuine visitor from another world?

And should I trust these pills?

The files look pretty complex, so I will put up a link so anyone can download them. I'm also going to send off some copies to various organizations and people who might be able to do something with them.

Addendum:

I send three of the pills to three different labs to be tested.

One Agent Teresa Adams of the National Security Agency accompanied by two local police officers knocked on my door two days later with a warrant.

“My apologies Mr. Brenner. Big fan. But we’re going to need those pills.”

Guess they did something after all.

Too bad I only had those dozen or so pills, because if there had been more I would have hidden some of them in several locations before the Feds showed up. But they got all of them due to my lack of foresight. Darn it.

I had also lost the bottle they had come in at some point too, the one small enough that could have only held the twelve pills the feds took. No idea where that went.

Agent Adams wasn't all that upset with me, she even sent me a copy of the selfie she took of the four of us, but I'm having a hard time getting it loaded on the page.

She also wrote up a receipt for the pills before she even left my house, and sent me a more official looking form with her name and the agency's Assistant director's signature on it as well.

Along with a rather nice check. I guess I can pay to fly out on my own dime for future interviews.

First class too.

She didn't ask about the files, but the links on the webpage don't have the files attached to them, and the copies on both my computer and the flash drive are gone.

Guess I got hacked.

Fortunately, I send out a lot of copies. Some of them even on some cheap flash drives sent through the mail. I hope someone has the time, patience, and cash to develop some of those machines.

And that they work.