Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

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 shadowsnow. 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.”
    McKesson pushed past me moodily. He walked back into the rip, as he’d called it. I watched his wavering form shimmer away to nothing. I peered at the rip—was it smaller than before? Or did it simply look smaller on this side than it had from home? I didn’t know which it was, but the thought that it might be vanishing made my heart leap in my chest.
    McKesson was gone. I couldn’t even see him on the far side. I felt an immediate, soul-wrenching sense of loneliness. You can’t really feel alone until you are standing on unknown, alien soil with the only way home fading away nearby. I couldn’t withstand that feeling for long. A minute later I stood in the alley with him. I could see the anomaly was indeed shrinking. It was only a shimmer over the asphalt now. Barely noticeable unless you walked right up to it.
    “You took your time,” he said.
    “It seemed pretty safe.”
    “It wasn’t,” he told me. “Things are different in those places. That one is pretty normal looking, but sometimes they are
very
different. Different people, different physics, even.”
    “What do you mean? Like lower gravity? Thicker air?”
    “Worse than that,” he said. “They aren’t exactly different planets, they are different—I don’t know. Different
existences
, the Community people say. Different versions of our world.”
    He’d started walking toward the street, and I followed him. I had McKesson talking now, and I didn’t want to let him go. I