CHAPTER 1: The Kidnapping – Year 0, Day 0
The astronaut was conferring with ground control about a storm over S?o Luís, Brazil, when the metal sphere just appeared, hovering in orbit over the Atlantic. Sunlight reflected off its metallic surface, illuminating the top and sides, but even in the shadows, the Earthlight reflection from the sphere momentarily dazzled her.
An impossible ornament suspended in space.
She'd watched this view for six months. She knew every satellite path, every piece of tracked debris. Nothing this size could appear without warning.
"Control," she said, her voice quivering. "Are you seeing this on radar?"
Silence. Then a voice, too calm: "We're... working on it."
The sphere began to drift, quickly passing over the space station. She shifted to the west-facing window just in time to see the lightning flash from the sphere.
Bolts of white light, perfectly straight, lanced from the bottom of the sphere down toward Earth, a spinning dance of light hitting all over the globe. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Each one struck and returned in the same instant.
"Control?" Her voice cracked. "Control, are you there? Do you see it? Do you see what it’s doing?"
No answer.
The sphere drifted on, still firing its silent bolts into places she couldn't see.
Ian Greyeyes ran the numbers again. Even with reassigning costs and adjusting the budget, he’d have to cut five positions. Five individuals would lose their jobs by Friday, and he'd be the one delivering the news.
He sat on the patio outside the coffee shop. At 9:30 AM, the morning rush was over. Ian had been at work since 6:30 AM, an early morning meeting of the department heads scheduled yesterday. Based on the people attending, Ian had surmised it was going to be bad, and he really hated being right. Having left the meeting a few minutes ago, he needed a second cup of coffee and to be away from the office to think.
Just get through this week. Deliver the news. Process the severance paperwork. Then maybe take some time off, visit Mom.
Day is Done warbled from the café’s patio speakers, Nick Drake singing that you have to go back where you began. Ian sighed and stood up, leaving his half-finished coffee on the table.
His phone buzzed. Work email. He ignored it.
Ian needed to walk. Moving helped him process, one of those ADHD management strategies that helped him focus. The morning air was warm for early October in Calgary, autumn leaves skittering across the sidewalk as he turned back toward the office park.
Five. Jake’s dead weight; an easy choice. But Jessica had just bought a new house. Ravi will probably take it best. He’ll have a year’s experience out of school as a developer. Ajay, who... Ajay? Who is Ajay?
He stopped mid-step, hand going to his temple. Weird. Confused. That felt like déjà vu. Ian’s body did a weird shiver, but he wasn’t cold. “Too much coffee,” he said under his breath. He shook his head and kept walking.
His phone buzzed again. He pulled it out. Another work email, this one from his department head. Subject: Re: Q4 Restructuring - Need final list by EOD.
Ian's thumb hovered over the screen. He dropped the phone back into his pocket. Taking a deep breath, he relaxed his expression and slowed his pace.
There was a roaring noise. A flash of light. Darkness. A sharp pinch on the back of his neck, coldness, then nothing.
Ian woke to the smell of coffee.
His own coffee. The maple-flavoured one that the supermarket sells every autumn. He knew that smell. He opened his eyes and stared at his bedroom ceiling, studying the ceiling fan with the glow-in-the-dark stars on the end of each blade. His ceiling with the morning light streaming through the blinds, just touching the smoke detector with the dying battery he kept meaning to replace.
What the --
He sat up too fast, head spinning. Same bed. Same navy-blue comforter. Same IKEA nightstand with the broken drawer. His laptop sat closed on the desk by the window. His running shoes lay where he'd kicked them off last night.
Everything was exactly where it should be.
Except he'd been walking down the street. The light. Pain?
His hand went to his neck. No pain. No mark. Nothing.
Dream. It was a dream. I fell asleep on the couch, dreamt about work stress manifesting as--
No. No, that wasn't right. He WAS at the coffee shop. He was walking back. He remembered his boss's email.
Ian stood, legs shaky. The floor felt solid. Real. He crossed to the window and pulled the blinds up.
“What the fuck!”
Instead of seeing Mrs. Chen's garden gnomes, the Hendersons' pickup truck, or the yellowed leaves of the aspen dancing in the breeze, he stared out at a modular office with snow on top of it, and off to the side, what looked to be an impossible slice of a British cottage.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
He stepped back from the window, his hand grazing the nightstand. Ian looked down and grabbed his phone. The time read 9:31 AM, but when he gazed over at his late father’s Art Deco clock, the arms were placed on the face to indicate the time was 9:45.
“Okay,” Ian said, his voice sounding strange in the too-quiet room. “Okay. Think. Coffee shop, walking, dark, pain in neck, not my neighbourhood outside…”
He wondered if the edible he had twelve hours ago could explain this, but no. It wasn’t that strong. But the view outside his bedroom stayed the same. The other bedroom facing south was under renovation, so he walked down the hallway to the kitchen.
The kitchen was exactly as he'd left it: dirty cereal bowl in the sink, fridge stocked, food for supper organized on the middle shelf. The coffeemaker sat on the counter, full pot brewed, steam still rising.
He hadn't made coffee this morning. He'd gone to the coffee shop.
Except here he was, and there it was, and his brain couldn't make the two things fit together.
His hands trembling, he carefully poured a cup. Ian inhaled the maple scent, then took a tentative sip. The taste was exactly how he made it. Which was impossible because he hadn't made it. Out of habit, he jerked the curtains open and screamed.
His new neighbours lived in a modern houseboat, a UN refugee tent, a 1960s Brutalist apartment, and a sliver of some hypermodern glass building.
The back doorbell rang.
Ian jumped, coffee sloshing onto his hand. He hissed at the burn, set the cup down, and wiped his hand on his jeans. The doorbell rang again. Insistent.
He strode to the back door. Through the side window, he could see a woman on his porch. Asian, maybe late twenties, dressed in business casual, holding a messenger bag. She looked as confused as he felt.
Ian opened the door.
“Thank god,” the woman said immediately. “Do you speak English? I have translators, but…” She stopped, really looking at him. “You're American?”
“Canadian. Who are--”
“Jing Zhào. I was in Shenzhen, and then I was here, and,” she switched to Mandarin, then back to English. “Sorry. Sorry. Where is here? What city?”
“Calgary,” Ian said automatically. “Alberta. Canada. But I don’t think… Sorry, manners!” Ian held out his hand. “Ian. Ian Greyeyes. Wait. What do you mean you were in Shenzhen?”
Jing shook his hand. Ian noticed her hand was trembling. “I was loading equipment for a conference. Then a noise, bright light, it was pitch black, and…” She pulled her hand away and touched her neck in the same spot Ian had checked. “Did you feel it too? An injection?”
“A what?”
“Small pain, right here, like a vaccine but cold.” Jing's eyes were sharp, cataloging his reaction. “You don't remember?”
“I …Yes.” Ian's hand went to his neck again. “Darkness. Then I woke up here and-”
“This is your actual house?” Jing looked past him into the foyer.
“Yes. But I wasn’t at home. You?”
“I'm in the glass sliver. It’s my apartment - or a slice of it. I live in a high-rise on the 15th floor, and yet-” Jing gestured to the shard of a building somehow stacked on the ground like it was normal. “I just woke up and thought I’d try your house first.”
She pulled out her phone. “I tried to call emergency services. Line's dead. The Internet works, but I can't send messages. Just receive. All the news sites are frozen at the same timestamp.”
Ian's stomach dropped. He pulled out his own phone and pulled up CBC News. The top story was the ongoing government scandal. Timestamp: 9:31 AM, Tuesday.
“That’s…wrong.” He leaned back and caught the time on the microwave. He watched it change from 9:50 to 9:51. “Weird. My phone is still saying 9:31 AM. And you’re right - the Internet is frozen. Yet there’s no network. I’ve got my local Wifi, but that’s it.”
“Well. What now?” Jing asked.
“You’ve got the right idea, but I think I’ll come with you. Let’s meet the neighbours.” They stepped out of Ian’s house and out into a jigsaw community.
By noon, or so any analog clocks or wrist watches said, Ian had met seven more people, and others soon appeared to introduce themselves.
There was Samir, an Indian biologist who'd been outside at McMurdo Station in Antarctica and woke up in his trailer - the modular house in front of Ian’s ranch house. Beside him, in the sliver of a larger British cottage house, an older British woman - Colonel Maureen Willoughby, a retired nurse with Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps.
A man named Neil came from the 1960s Brutalist-style apartment. He kept pacing and checking his phone. On one nostril was a dusting of white residue. Ian didn’t blame him – he’d love to take a big rip off a bong back at his home, but in emergencies like this, his hyperfocus and quick, clear thoughts were an asset.
They'd gathered in what they were calling the common area: a stretch of street between the houses, chunks of apartments, tents and other residences. Some residences came whole, like Ian’s. Some were impossible freestanding chunks of larger buildings. A hodgepodge of homes from around the world, arranged in a neighbourhood that made no sense.
Between houses were lawns, gardens, cement and paved walkways. The sky was too blue and extended down to the ground at the end of their “street”. Yet when you tried to walk past the edge of the pavement, you hit a wall.
Not a visible wall. Just a point where your feet wouldn't move forward no matter how hard you tried. Something about it felt odd, alien, so anyone testing didn’t push in too far.
“We need to organize,” someone was saying. A blonde woman named Karen, complete with an American accent and expensive athleisure wear. From a large McMansion further in towards the cluster of mismatched buildings. “Establish rules, assign responsibilities--”
“Assign?” Lisette, a Latina woman holding tight to a little girl's hand, snapped and gave Karen a look that could freeze lakes. “Who died and made you queen?”
“I'm just saying we need structure--”
“Yes, we need answers, but we need to find who else is here,” Ian cut in, surprised by his own voice. Everyone looked at him. “What do we know right now? Analog watches and clocks are keeping time, but any technology that connects to the internet is frozen at 9:31 AM… or-” he said nodding in Jing and Lisette’s direction, “Whatever the equivalent time is where you lived. Had lived. Uh. That’s two things.”
“Residences that were part of larger buildings like…sorry, Neil, was it luv?” Maureen looked in Neil’s direction as he nodded his head. “Right, like Neil’s apartment and my flat are somehow free-standing. Electricity, water’s working. Where it should connect to the rest of the building are grey metal walls.”
“We’ve all been brought here,” that was Samir talking now, “wherever here is, from cities all over the world. I…uh, suppose we’re still on Earth?”
“It's Earth,” Maureen said finally, her accent crisp and sure. “Or Earth-like. But that's Earth gravity, Earth air pressure, Earth sun angle.” Maureen looked up at the too-blue sky. “What I can't tell is whether there is a ceiling.”
“There's no ceiling, that’s sky,” Karen started, but Maureen held up a hand.
“No. Look carefully. There’s a very slight distortion. I suspect if we go high enough, we’d encounter something similar to the blue space closer at the end of this…well, street.”
“I’m not sure I like what this is all suggesting,” Neil stated.
“We need more data. We need to find other people, find out why we’re here,” said Samir.
Ian looked around the group. Twelve people so far, from what he could count. Different ages, different backgrounds, different languages, although Jing was already offering what looked like translation earbuds from her bag, explaining she'd been bringing them as product samples to a conference. Twelve people who'd been ripped from their lives and dropped into a simulation of normalcy.
