Zach sat at a table in the Hard Fought Rest inn, eating breakfast and pondering his existence. He had food and shelter. He had comfortable and fashionable clothes. He had around $2,000 worth of New Albion currency.

And he had absolutely no idea what was going on with his life.

I was absent from this world for a full day, and I'd bet money that I'll be absent from my own world all day today. I had been thinking that this was a dream world that I went to when I slept, but that's not quite right. He stuffed a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth, then tilted his head in thought as he chewed. This is a parallel world to my own. Time moves at the same speed in both, and it looks like whenever I sleep in either world, I physically flip to the other.

He shivered as he pictured what might happen if he didn't book his room for a second night and rematerialized in an occupied bed. Note to self: always get a room for two nights, and don't go to sleep in strange places, in either world.

At first, Zach focused only on the downsides. I don't seem to be able to control it. Since it started, I flip every night. That's going to wreak havoc on my college classes. And it means I have to pay double for inns in this world.

He took a drink of apple juice. It was fresh and delicious and it only cost him two Chips. As much as he wanted to conserve his money until he had reliable income, he didn't want to deny himself affordable pleasures.

So what are my next steps? I had been treating this world like some low-stakes game, but it isn't. Well, I can try to learn about this weird flipping thing. Why it affects me, why it happens every night, that kind of stuff. He looked around the room at the other mundane breakfast-eating commoners. Yeah, I doubt I'll find much info about it here or back home. It can't be a common phenomenon, or both worlds would be up in arms about it and people in mine would be trying to scientifically analyze it.

Science. That was Zach's next step. He wasn't big on his science courses in school, but they had taught him the basics of the scientific method. He just needed to come up with a hypothesis about how things might work, attempt to prove it wrong, and repeat. Eventually he'd have a better understanding of the truth of the situation.

Hypothesis one: I flip worlds every time I sleep, Zach thought. Method to disprove: sleep at various times, more than once per day. He smiled at that. Easy enough. I'll just take a nap later today.

Hypothesis two: Me and my clothes disappear from the previous world when I flip. Method to disprove… He scratched his chin in thought. He didn't have any way of directly verifying what the world was like when he wasn't in it, and he didn't want to reveal his strange situation to anyone else just yet. All he had to go on was the fact that he had been missing from his bedroom the other day when his roommates went looking for him. At first Zach thought that he had no reason to believe that his clothes disappeared too, but that just made far more sense than his crumpled clothes somehow putting themselves back on his reappearing body every morning.

I can come back to that hypothesis later. After all, I still have some other objectives in this world. Zach's mental to-do list consisted of four items: find out how to earn money, pay back the apple lady, repay the farmhouse for stealing their clothes, and pick up his custom shoes.

"My shoes!" Zach blurted out through a mouth of half-chewed eggs, startling some of the other patrons. If each day in the real world is a day passing here too, then I'm two days overdue for picking up my new shoes. I really hope he still has them! Then Zach slapped a palm to his forehead. Of course he still has them. They were custom sized for me. He could only really use them as loaner shoes like the ones I'm wearing.

He quickly finished his breakfast and stood up, thinking, Regardless, I should go pick those up sooner rather than later.

After breakfast, Zach washed up in the inn's communal bathroom, styling his hair as best he could without any gel. He would have loved some deodorant too, for all the walking in the sun he expected to be doing, but he wasn't sure this world had anything like that. It wasn't a primitive land, but the lack of modern technology made some products unlikely to exist.

For now, I'll try to take a shower and put on deodorant right before bed whenever I'm in the real world, he thought, but he wasn't sure whether the deodorant would follow his body through the flip.

Dressed in his new merchant-class clothes, Zach felt much better about his appearance. He no longer looked like a drab peasant and it affected the way people interacted with him, for good and for ill. People treated him better in conversation and in general courtesy, like making way for him as he passed. But street vendors became much more insistent in their attempts to make a sale. In one case, Zach was pretty sure the vendor tried to charge him more than the other shoppers for the same food.

He couldn't fault them too much for their behavior. It was just good business to try to get more money from people who had more to spend. Zach would have done it too, hopefully with more finesse, were he a salesman.

Zach made his way to 'Best Fit Shoes', the cobbler Alfred's store. But that wasn't technically correct; Alfred wasn't the owner of the store, since Zach remembered him mentioning his boss back during the storytelling competition.

Hopefully Alfred is working today, Zach thought as he stepped inside.

"Zach! I was worried you'd never return!" The plain-looking man ran to greet Zach, wearing the same grey suit as before.

"Sorry for the delay, Alfred. I got caught up in something."

Then Alfred noticed what Zach was wearing. "Oh ho, you're looking very nice today. Spent a bit more of your winnings?" he asked with a wide smile.

Zach only nodded, but Alfred stayed on that subject.

"That's not a style I'm familiar with, but it really looks good on you," Alfred said as he looked Zach up and down. "You look like you could be a suitor to the Princess."

That caught Zach's attention, since he remembered a princess from his dreams. "Oh?"

"You wouldn't have any luck, no offense. None of her suitors do. That's why they call her the Iron Maiden."

Zach chuckled and added 'learn more about the Princess' to his mental list. Then he jokingly said, "Still have my shoes? Haven't sold them to someone else?"

"Of course I do, right here with your name on them. Well, not literally. I could have embroidered it, but I don't know how to spell Zach."

"No need to embroider it, but it's spelled Z-A-C-H."

Alfred tilted his head. "Once again I mean no offense, but that is a rather unusual name."

"It's short for Zachary, which is derived from Zachariah."

"Hmm, can't say I've ever heard either of those before."

Now Zach tilted his head in puzzlement. Huh, there were multiple famous Zachariahs throughout history back home. Is there no Christianity in this world?

Alfred waved a hand dismissively. "In any case, I'm sure you've got places to be. Here are your new shoes. Please try them on to make sure they fit." He handed Zach the brown leather shoes and ushered him into a chair.

Zach took off his borrowed shoes and passed them to Alfred.

While Zach pulled on and laced up his new shoes, Alfred examined the loaners. "Looks like you put some distance on these, but they are in good shape. I'll get you a Hart, as promised."

Then Zach stood up and nearly fell right back down in surprise. The shoes were more comfortable than any he'd worn in his entire life. As he flexed his toes and tested the shoes' give, he said, "Wow, these are amazing. Thank you so much, Alfred."

"No, thank you for the business," Alfred said with a small bow. "Please come back if you're ever in need of shoes. Or, since it would be unlikely for your shoes to be stolen again, I'd appreciate it if you'd recommend the Best Fit to your friends."

"Will do," Zach said, pocketing the refunded Hart. If I make some in this world. I'm sure Erin would love some shoes this comfortable though… He offered his hand, did one of those odd wrist-shakes, then said goodbye and exited the shop.

I like how friendly the people here have been, at least compared to back home, Zach thought. Hopefully that holds up while I'm trying to learn about this Princess.

Not only were people still friendly, but they seemed to absolutely love to gossip about the Princess. The amount of freely offered information about her easily dwarfed every other topic Zach had asked about thus far.

"Oh, ya, Princess Evelyn was gone fer a long time, but now she's back. That's why they held that festival fer the last three months."

"That poor girl. She disappeared when she was just 10, and only just returned a few months ago. I wonder what she went through in that time… And that's on top of losing her mother so young."

"I think she was kidnapped, but the King ain't saying who did it, on account of not wantin' an angry mob seekin' 'em out."

"They say she's the most beautiful woman in the land. Got suitors lined up around the block, wanting to make a new lineage to the throne. Though the Princess doesn't seem to be in a hurry, since she keeps turning them all down. I suppose even if King Gildahart passes on, may mana protect him, she'd become rightful Queen and could just pick a suitor then."

"I still remember when Princess Evy was born. March of Two Thousand, it was. The celebration was nearly as big as this recent one. I met my husband at that festival, and we'd both had so much to drink. What a nice night that was…"

From all that somewhat subjective information and what Zach already knew, he assembled a bit of a timeline. The Princess was born in 2000, a year after Zach. Her mother Gwendolyn passed away in 2005, prompting King Gildahart to build a massive wall around the city of New Albion. Evelyn disappeared without a trace in 2010. Then in mid-2018, she suddenly reappeared. The kingdom threw a massive celebration that only just ended a week ago.

But none of that explained why Zach had been dreaming about New Albion and its Princess for years. He tried to get in a creative mindset and brainstorm some possibilities, Maybe it was a magical call for help? While she was missing, she reached out to people at random through dreams? Or I'm just tuned into this world somehow, and since the Princess was such a big topic, it came up in my dreams too?

Zach gave up on that strategy. Creativity wasn't his thing, and he still had more concrete facts to investigate, like what this Princess Evelyn looked like. Seeing that might jog his memory of his old dreams of her. He was pretty sure there'd be a painting of her somewhere in the kingdom, since royalty seemed to love having their portraits painted.

He asked a merchant on the street if there were any portraits of the royal family around, and the answer surprised him.

The woman said, "Yeah, there should be some portraits on display at the Grand Library. I don't think they have a new one of the Princess just yet, but I know where you can see exactly what she looks like. Just find a wealthier merchant than I."

Zach had to fight to not facepalm for never thinking of a library. So many of the questions he had been asking since he arrived in the city could have been definitively answered there. He returned his focus to the matter at hand and asked, "What do you mean about a wealthier merchant?"

"I'm not really surprised you haven't heard of Evy coins. They're still fairly new and only in the hands of the wealthiest, after all. They're commemorative coins made to celebrate the Princess's return, worth 50 Harts each. But the interesting part is what's depicted on them: a beautiful portrait of Princess Evelyn."

"Oh, thank you for that information," Zach told the woman. He didn't mention that he could easily afford several of this Evy coin if he wanted. He was by no means wealthier than this merchant who had quite a selection of items for sale, but Zach's wealth was entirely in the form of liquid currency.

He started back toward the inn, planning to take a nap and test out his 'every time I sleep, I flip' theory. As always, he wasn't observant enough to notice the woman with straw-colored hair that was trailing him. Her hairstyle was different that day, in a tight bun rather than parted and pinned back, so he may not have recognized her regardless.