I stood in the open desert, with mountains in most directions, stark and timeless. The apartment complex was gone. The alley was gone. Las Vegas was gone. I was surrounded by sifting sands, spiny trees, flowering weeds, and other desert vegetation. I held my breath for a second, worried the air here might be different. But the temperature of the night, the look of the sky—it all seemed normal enough.
Then I looked up. The night was falling, darkening the east. The first stars were popping out—but they were wrong. I knew that, without picking any particular constellations. That gave me a chill, but it was the red disk on the eastern horizon that really upset me. It was a moon, but not our moon. It was a small, reddish circle of light. It was as if Mars were hanging up there in the east. And that wasn’t all, because the moon wasn’t alone. It had a nearby companion: a thin crescent of bone-white.
“We’re lucky,” McKesson said. “The rip is still here on this side.”
“Isn’t it always?” I asked, staring fixedly at the moons. I’d spotted another moon. It was high and small to the north. I couldn’t even be sure it was a moon. It could have been a companion planet or star. Whatever it was, it was clear proof I wasn’t in Nevada anymore.
“No,” McKesson said. “Sometimes these rips are one-way.”
I spun around slowly, trying to take in the entire alien sky. Up until this point, I hadn’t really believed there was another place behind these distortions—that I could step through a shimmering rip in space and instantly be someplace else.
“Seen enough?” asked McKesson. He was walking across the sands and kicking at a tumbleweed. “Did you throw the watch this far out?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, not even looking at him. I was too busy staring at everything around me. “So, this is it? Just a spot in the desert?”
“This place is pretty similar to our world. But don’t be fooled, there are always differences.”
“I can see that. There are at least three moons here. But essentially this is our Nevada desert without the city.”
“Look south,” he said, waving his hand vaguely.
I gazed in the direction he’d indicated. I squinted, realizing a structure stood there. It had looked like a mountain formation, but as I studied it, I came to understand it wasn’t natural. It was a stack of cubes. I swallowed, tasting grit.
“Is that some kind of building?” I asked, my voice hushed.
“That’s their kind of city. They build them like stacks of bricks. Very neat and orderly. No sprawl.”
As I watched, I saw a grouping of lights flash and move away from the jumbled mountain of cubes and rectangles. It had to be a vehicle of some kind.
“Why don’t they light up the exterior of their city?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “They don’t seem to like windows. Why don’t you go ask them?”
I realized, staring at their strange habitat, that I was the alien here. I was the green man who’d mysteriously appeared in the wilderness. If I approached them, I doubted things would go well. I continued to stare at the dark structure while I questioned McKesson further.
“How many places like this have you been to?”
He shrugged. “None. They are all different.”
“Give me a number,” I said. Somehow, I really wanted to know how many worlds I was dealing with.
“Hard to know,” he said. “Sometimes, I can’t tell if they are the same place or not. I mean, if you visited Earth and walked on Antarctica’s ice, then later visited the Outback of Australia, would you think you’d seen one world or two?”
“How many have you visited—best guess?”
“Maybe a half dozen. But I know there are more of them. Some people think there are an infinite number of places like this. They are supposedly alternate realities, or versions of our own universe spun around a little bit. I have no idea, but don’t like stepping out somewhere unknown without good reason. They are freaky—and dangerous.”
Stepping out. I realized he’d used that term before. I looked at the surrounding desert floor. It didn’t look overly strange to me, not at the moment. Only the sky hinted I was far from home.
In the distance, in the direction I assumed was to the west of us, the sun had dipped below the horizon. It was getting darker by the minute, the mountains just shadows now. They looked more or less like the mountains that had always surrounded Las Vegas. As close as I could figure, this was what Vegas would have looked like a century ago, before people had decided to build a city on the sand. Apparently, the Gray Men weren’t as crazy as we were.
“Found it,” said McKesson. He held the watch up like a trophy. “You really owe me, Draith. Thanks for all the help.”
“Sorry, I was just so stunned.”