Raymond Gunn looked at the schematics one last time. His small company, Gunn

Play, ran an online roleplaying service. He liked to ease in new creatures as well as

options for his players every few weeks. He wanted them to keep looking for the next

challenge.

He separated the drawings into three piles. One pile would be handed over to coders

and modelers to be inserted as soon as they were built and tested. Variants would be

built when the prototypes were running in game.

The second pile was going back to the designers for tweaks. Some of them were

almost good enough, but not quite there yet. Notes on colors and shapes marked the

margins.

The last pile went into a file for non-use. Maybe in a few years, he would find

something they could use from that pile. Until then, they were shelved for things that

wouldn’t fit in the game world.

A knock sounded on his door. He looked up. He checked his watch. He hadn’t

scheduled a meeting.

Missy Avery opened the door, and peered inside. She seemed nervous. He frowned.

She had come on as his assistant when he had started the company and had been

unflappable the whole time he had known her. Something serious must be up.

“What’s up?,” Ray asked. He had ten minutes before he was supposed to leave the

office and meet his family for dinner. He had promised an excursion to the ball park.

“There’s a man here who wants to see you,” said Missy. She glanced at her office.

“He said it’s about the marker.”

Ray sat back. He checked his watch. He had totally forgotten. He cursed himself for

that. He rubbed his face.

“Send him in, Missy,” he said.

She nodded. She didn’t smile as she waved his visitor in. She didn’t close the door

as she went back to her desk.

Mr. Woad stepped in the office, nodding at the assistant with a smile on his square

face. A patch covered one eye. He wore shades of blue in a style of suit that Ray

equated to movies set in the Forties.

“Hello, Mister Gunn,” said Woad. A smile cut across his beard. “It’s almost time.”

“I have to make a phone call first,” Ray stood. He took the three piles of drawings and

handed them to Missy to take care of before he grabbed his phone from his desk. She

gave him a look as she put the hold drawings in her desk and the others in envelopes

to go to the departments that would handle them.

Ray looked at Woad as he waited for his wife to answer the phone. He held a pocket

watch in hand, but he probably didn’t need it.

“Hey, Ray,” said Barbara out of his phone. She sounded like sunlight to him. “Ready

for the game?”

“I can’t go,” said Ray. “I don’t have a lot of time, hon. The marker is due. I have to

deal with it.”

“It’s due today?,” said Barbara. “I thought we had more time.”

“I did too, but Mister Woad is here to collect,” said Ray. He glanced at his visitor.

The older man seemed pained for some reason.

“May I?,” Woad asked. He held out his free hand, glancing at his watch.

Ray handed him the phone. He wanted more time with his wife. He only had minutes

left.

“Mrs. Gunn?,” said Woad. “I’m sorry for this, but I need your husband’s help. I

promise he will be sent back when he has accomplished his task.”

He listened. He nodded.

“I assure you it will be like he never left,” said Woad. “Yes, I will do my best to look

out for him.”

He handed the phone back to Ray. He held up two fingers. Two minutes was not near

enough time.

“I’m back,” Ray said.

“Dad!,” screamed his little boy, Scott. He heard Janie wanting her turn with the phone

in the background.

“Hold the phone down for your sister,” Ray said. “I need you two to look out for your

mom while I’m gone. I have a job to do. I thought I had a couple more days but I was

wrong. I have to go take care of it today. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“We love you, Dad,” said Scott. “Please come home.”

“Come home, Daddy!,” yelled Janie.

“I will,” said Ray. He took a deep breath. “No matter what happens, I’m coming

home.”

“Thirty seconds, Mister Gunn,” said Woad.

“Ray?,” said Barbara.

“I love you,” said Ray. White light poured across his vision. Had she heard him?

What did he do now? What was he supposed to do?

“Mister Gunn,” said Woad. “We’re in Transition. It’ll be a second for your vision to

compensate.”

Ray blinked. Patches of gray became blobs of color that became shapes. He rubbed

his eyes with his hands. He stood in a great hall full of display cases. Some of the

items seemed familiar to him, but he wasn’t making the connections like he knew he

should.

He didn’t expect something that looked like a museum. He admitted that he hadn’t

known what to expect. His contract with Woad had not outlined what he was

supposed to do to pay him back for the start of his company, and everything that

ensued from that.

The stake had literally changed Ray’s life overnight. It had been in the back of his

mind that he would have to pay it back some day. He had just thought he would slip

through the cracks.

He should have known better than that.

“This way, Mister Gunn,” said Woad. He gestured down a sidehall. He led the way.

He wore a shirt of mail under a blue tunic with an eye emblazoned on the front in

gold. A heavy sword rode in a sheath at his hip.

“What is all this?,” asked Ray. He gestured at the giant hall. He looked up. He

couldn’t see the ceiling overhead.

“This is the point where you are told what we need you to do, and arm you for the

task,” said Woad. He led the way down to a room dominated by a giant table. Blue

sky filled the opened walls. Wind drifted across Ray as he paused in the doorway.

A group of people stood around the table. They turned to look at Ray. None of them

looked happy to see him. He shared their feeling for different reasons, he supposed.

“This is your agent?,” asked one of the men. He wore a goat skin and head big

enough to be a tiger on his back.

“Yes,” said Woad. He took his place at the head of the table. “What about the

others?”

“Their champions have entered the field,” said a woman with golden hair, and golden

eyes. She pointed at the table. Small shapes indicated where the others had landed and

started whatever they were doing.

“This is our problem, Mister Gunn,” said Woad. He gestured for Ray to approach. He

seemed taller on a second look. “This is Grimsmir. In an unknown amount of time,

it will suffer an invasion that will wipe out all life. Once that happens, the invaders

will look for the next land to invade. Eventually, they will reach here, and then to the

multiple places Transition touches.”

Ray had seen the same situation in hundreds of fictional scenarios. His own game

company did the same thing occasionally for special events. Obviously, these people

couldn’t do the job for whatever reason.

“We want you to stop this invasion,” said Woad. “There are some considerations that

we think you should know before you begin.”

Ray nodded. He studied the map as he waited for the rest of the bad news.

“First, this is the fifth wave,” said Woad. He pointed at the table. Four circles lit up

on the map. “We feel that this is an artificial occurrence. Each attempt has been

roughly fifty years apart which gives us a two year span to get ready for the next one.

We don’t know when or where the door will open, but we feel that someone is

opening the door for whatever reason.”

“You don’t know who that person is?,” asked Ray. He didn’t look up.

“No,” said the goat man. “And none of our other champions have done more than

caught a glimpse of a hand in the working.”

Ray nodded.

“We need you to stop this invasion, and shut the door,” said Woad. “That will be

enough to pay your marker back. If you can find the brain that insists on doing this,

we would appreciate it that you stop him from carrying out any more schemes like

this.”

Ray frowned. Woad hadn’t said he wanted the guy dead, but if that happened, they

weren’t going to shed any tears.

If he brought the guy in alive, an execution would be in the offing from the way

everyone looked.

“Which order did the doors open?,” asked Ray. Maybe there was some kind of natural

progression to the attempts.

Woad pointed at the table. Each circle assumed a number. Ray frowned. The four

sites didn’t look like they were done east to west, north to south. He doubted the spots

were picked at random. There had to be a reason for it.

He needed time to think about the situation. He supposed he would get his time when

he reached Grimsmir. He thought he was taking this too calmly. It was like standing

in a dream, knowing it was a dream, and spectating it for what happened next.

It felt like he had done all this before.

“The marker is done if I can grab the guy before he opens the gate, or close the gate

after it opens?,” asked Ray.

“Yes,” said Woad. “We will send you back to your family as close to the time you left

as we can.”

“Do you think you can do it?,” asked the goat man. He seemed less than impressed.

“I’ll need something to equalize the situation,” said Ray. “Right now, I don’t have a

prayer of finding this guy you want found, much less fight monsters.”

“We will arm you,” said Woad. “It will be up to you on how to proceed.”

“All right,” Ray said. He looked at the crowd. He knew they needed him to do the job.

They didn’t like it.

He didn’t like it either, but he had signed his future away. And he wanted that future

back. He wasn’t going to leave his family for two years in the hopes he could stop

something bad with whatever they gave him.

He was going to hunt this mastermind down and stop him before he could get started.

Woad gestured to one of the crowd to follow them from the map room. He indicated

for Ray to walk along with the both of them.

They walked down the hall to a room full of things that made Ray let out a sound of

amazement when he stepped in the room.

“When we first talked, you indicated that you wanted an omniversal tool,” said Woad.

“That’s right,” said Ray. “Something like a lantern.”

“Aldur?,” said Woad.

“I have something here,” said Aldur. He stood three Rays wide and twice as tall. He

wore a plain shirt and pants with an apron over it. Tools filled the pockets on the

apron.

He pulled Ray’s arm off with ease.