Face The Strange - Chapter 10/11: Room With A View free porn video

FACE THE STRANGE by Crazy Baron Chapter 10: Room with a View I came to with a slight start and comprehended that I was looking at a wall of white panels. The sight was not particularly magnificent and stirring for a first impression of afterlife, but at least I had gotten there and finished my journey. I had nothing to complain about. As usual, it took me a while to become reoriented. The ornamented paneling was in actuality not a wall, but the ceiling of a room; I was lying on my back in a wide and very soft bed. To be more accurate, I was resting on top of the duvet cover in my typical everyday clothes, dark blue jeans and a t-shirt, with a pair of sneakers on my feet. The body inside the plain garments was mine, the masculine shape with which the name and identity of Michael Caldwell had once been exclusively associated. A smile came onto my lips, and I let my eyes flutter closed. Everything was in order, I was warm and safe and my mission was complete. I could go back to sleep. Although the bed was supremely comfortable and I fully intended to enjoy it and rest some more, curiosity got the better of me in a matter of moments and did away with whatever tiredness there was left. The answers to profound philosophical questions that had bothered the most brilliant thinkers since the dawn of time were perhaps waiting for me just around the corner, and besides, I was suddenly eager to discover what kind of accommodation the Powers That Be had arranged for me to spend eternity in. I rolled to my side, swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, examining the setting with keen eyes. On a quick glance, the room bore something of a similarity to the one from my dream with Derry Darkmane. The walls, the ceiling, the floor and even the bedding and the wooden bed frame were a creamy white in color. Still, this suite was clearly the more practical of the two, an apartment meant for human beings to inhabit, as opposed to an abstract vision. It was sizable for a bedroom, matching the luxurious dimensions of the bed, but not unrealistically huge. The floor was carpeted and warm, and I had no doubt it would have been nice to walk on even barefooted. The plentiful light, in the form of rays of a summertime sun, came in through a large window that pierced one of the walls of the square room. The air carried a very faint scent, which was eminently pleasant but difficult to describe. I walked around the foot of the bed and looked out of the window. The clear and absolutely clean glass pane nearly reached the ceiling and ended only some two feet above the floor, so it offered a majestic view of the landscape. The room was in a building that stood in the middle of a vast, busy city, whose numerous skyscrapers and high rises defined the skyline. Little specks, people and vehicles, were bustling around far below. The whole city bathed in bright sunlight, and the star's brilliant disk hung in the cloudless pale blue sky, warming my face through the glass when I turned towards it. This could have been New York in August, I thought and chuckled to myself as I imagined the sense of humor of a higher being, or God, who had chosen to model the Mansions of the Dead after downtown Manhattan. Even so, none of the landmarks in sight was familiar to me, and I knew that no human hands had constructed any of these buildings--assuming they were indeed more than a backdrop, an ensemble of visual phantoms intended to make me feel at home. Regardless of how ungrateful the notion was, I realized that I would have preferred a less urban setting if I had no choice but to stay here indefinitely. Steel, concrete and asphalt occupied every available square inch of the land, it seemed, with no unbuilt space, trees or grass anywhere. The stark contrasts, strict geometric shapes and monotonous colors that made up the view from my window might well become tedious with time. Then again, I was rushing ahead of things. Maybe I was able (and allowed) to leave the apartment and move elsewhere at some point, if I wanted; and, what was more, I had yet to investigate the apartment itself. I could worry about the aesthetics of the cityscape afterwards. An old-fashioned, sturdy dresser or nightstand was situated between the bed and the wall with the window. It flanked the bed on its right side, as seen by the sleeper. I decided to start my exploration with it and pulled open its three drawers, more than half expecting to find a Gideon Bible in one of them. They were empty, however. I would have to make do without bedtime reading, a night lamp or an alarm clock. Next, I turned my attention to a pair of wooden doors in the opposite wall. They seemed as though they might lead to a walk-in closet, and that aroused my interest. It would be fun to see what kind of wardrobe had been provided for me. There really was a spacious closet behind the doors, complete with a ceiling light that activated automatically when either of the doors was opened, but it rivaled the dresser drawers in barrenness. It had a long steel coat rail with a few vacant hangers and exactly one meager item of clothing, a set of white silk pajamas neatly folded and hung on a hanger. I had to hold back a groan of discontent at the find, such as it was. If my senses were to be trusted, I continued to exist inside a material, biological body, which could suffer from cold and which produced sweat and grime, so it would have been only appropriate to furnish at least a couple of changes of clothes for it. I closed the closet doors behind me and sat back down on the bed, mulling over what I should do now. For all my awe, relief and happiness at having survived the battle against Angronok, a feeling of incredulity and also of vague but definite disappointment was growing at the back of my mind. I had seldom given serious thought to most metaphysical issues, mostly because it's ultimately impossible to know anything about them for certain, but this locale definitely felt too prosaic to be afterlife. I had expected either nothingness or something beyond human comprehension, perhaps a state of living on as pure energy and being connected to God or a cosmic consciousness; yet here I was, dressed in my old shirt and jeans and staring at the hair on my forearms. While I admittedly had no idea what it was like to be dead, I no longer seriously believed I had shuffled off the mortal coil. All the same, there was no denying that my current environment had a strong unreal quality, a lot like the psychedelic dreamland where my drive with Gunner Bob and Dan had taken the three of us. Despite the mundane sensations, I instinctively knew that it wasn't what it seemed on the surface, that is, just another expensive apartment in a big city somewhere on Earth. I was under protection and out of reach for Angronok or indeed any force of evil. Even if his essence had stayed alive after my strike, he could never come here. I had changed along with the reality. The injuries and exhaustion my Buffy body had suffered in combat had been healed entirely during my rest, and my soul had been returned to my male form. And not only that; I was energized and living and experiencing every second fully, almost as though I continued to possess my Slayer powers. No one could have asked for more. Maybe I was not in Heaven, but this place was probably as close as anything in the physical Universe could come to it. The room had one other closed door, in the wall opposite to the bed. It was larger and had more elaborate wood paneling than the closet doors, and I guessed that it gave access to the other parts of this apartment. The bedroom didn't provide much in the way of stimulation, in addition to the view from the window, so my curiosity awoke once again. A well-stocked kitchen would be great to have, as would a library, bearing in mind I was likely in for a prolonged stay. The door handle was an ornate piece of work, apparently made of polished brass. There was a long, curved lever and a key hole beneath it, which gave me a brief pause. I had no key, and if the door was locked from the outside, I would be stuck in the bedroom. At the same time, it promptly occurred to me that virtually anything could be waiting for me on the other side. Whoever had brought me into this place had likely made sure I wouldn't come to harm, but these bizarre other realities did contain surprises and worked according to the laws of their own logic, which more often than not were unclear to me. Although I knew I was perhaps being overly cautious, I pressed my ear against the door and listened for a couple of seconds. I could hear nothing. I had expected there to be some sounds, people chatting quietly, a forgotten TV set blaring alone or the noises from the street carrying through an open window elsewhere in the apartment, but there was only silence. It felt ominous to me, and I momentarily even wondered if this room was all that actually existed of the building. The door could have been a fake, in reality a fixed part of the wall, and I'd have to resign myself to enjoying the equally fake view instead of drinking, eating, going to the bathroom and interacting meaningfully with someone. My hesitation didn't last, however. If the revelation that I was in fact a prisoner or a specimen in an alien zoo was in store for me, it was best to know straight away. So I pressed the door handle. The lock let out a muted click and the door swung open easily on its hinges, revealing another room beyond the threshold. I entered the space warily. It was visibly larger than the bedroom but similar in coloring; it had white walls, white ceiling and a carpeted floor. A massive chandelier, unlit for the time being, hung from the center of the ceiling, and a pearl-colored baroque dining table with six tall chairs was situated below it. A comfortable sofa, a coffee table and three armchairs occupied one corner of the room. Opposite them, there was a writing desk and a pot of flowers on a high stand. All the pieces of furniture were tastefully chosen and matched each other in style, as well as the room itself. Here, as in the bedroom, a large window supplied the daylight and a view of the metropolis outside. A mirror and three paintings, rural landscapes in realist style with a touch of impressionism, adorned the walls. There were also doors leading to yet other rooms, with one of them open. The only incongruent element in the scene arrived through the open door. Dan Mancini, buck naked and carrying what on a first glance looked like a thick bundle of skin-colored cloth, walked into the main room when I was still taking in the sight. He was wearing his customary vacuous expression, which didn't change perceptibly even after he laid his eyes on me and stopped in his tracks. I, for my part, was stunned by this encounter and found no words to say whatsoever. In fact, I suddenly doubted my senses and had to fight off an urge to pinch myself. I had last seen him when he had run directly into a tornado on the glass plain of the trippy nowhere land, and I had been convinced that he had met his demise there and then-- or, alternatively, that he had perished somewhere outside Sunnydale in the shattered form of his Buffyverse avatar, Dan Lee. The thought that he might have been an illusion or a hallucination occurred to me, but then I caught his rancid smell, which had apparently been cultivated over a good decade of execrable personal hygiene, poor diet and sedentary living. There was no way anyone could counterfeit that. "Hello, Mike," he saluted me in a toneless, mechanical voice that conveyed neither joy nor dismay. Nevertheless, I could discern a tiny flash of recognition in his soulless blue eyes. "You came along too." "So it would seem," I quipped and grinned. "What's up with you, Dan? Have you been here for long? Do you know where we are?" "Can you help me with this?" he pleaded and held out the skinsuit. It was an imitation of a young blond woman, I noticed. "I'd like to put it on, thusly, and I'd appreciate it if you could give me a hand." My grin turned into a wince of disgust, and I opened my mouth to tell him in no uncertain terms that he would have to make do on his own and that I wanted no part of his skinsuit dress-up games, but something-- possibly the guilt that I felt over how I had treated him--caused me to reconsider. "Fine, whatever," I said finally, after a long silence. "At least that should make the view a whole lot more tolerable. Not to mention the smell." "Great!" he remarked, oblivious to the insult. "You see, I'm going to be this girl. Her real name is Jenni Stark, J-E-N-N-I, but she goes by Sunbeam when she's fighting the forces of darkness and such over in her world. She has superpowers and a kind and bright soul and solid mind, out and out." "A bit like our friend Buffy Summers, am I right?" "No," Dan said. "Buffy is a fictional person who fights vampires, but Jenni is a superhero, like Superman and Wonder Woman." "Thank you for clearing that one up, Dan." "You're welcome, Mike." Dan turned his back towards me, lowered the empty skinsuit and pushed his right leg in. The muscle coordination needed to stand up, lift one leg and hold the suit with both hands was nearly too much for him, and he swayed sideways like a tree in a storm until he had to take two quick steps to restore his balance. The wide back and even wider plump butt coated with pasty, greasy and hairy skin wiggled in front of me, and I had to grimace out of revulsion. I was loath to touch either him or the suit and had decided to catch him only if he outright threatened to fall over. At any rate, he eventually somehow succeeded in getting his foot into the hollow one of the suit, and he pulled at the skin to make it settle in place. He then shoved his other foot in, again handling the skin so roughly I thought it might tear, but it had evidently been designed to withstand plenty of abuse. "This is hard," he commented and stopped to take a breath. "Luckily, it will be worth the trouble when the suit's on." "Let's hope so," I remarked curtly. He continued in the same manner as he had started, that is to say, compensated for the lack of dexterity with brute force. The skinsuit stretched in his grip and enfolded him slowly but surely. Dan moaned in discomfort as it reached his groin and compressed his small manhood and testicles, and he grunted and jumped up a couple of times ineffectually, as if he were donning a pair of tight overalls. At this point, the suit seemed to take pity on him. Its lower half expanded and enveloped Dan up to his waist in a move that could almost have been simply the material returning elastically to its shape and some human misperception spicing up the sight. In actuality, though, it was the first sign of the symbiont coming to life and preparing to merge with its new host. "Give me a hand," Dan requested. He lifted the front of the suit, and I held its left arm up for him as he pushed his hand inside. This was much easier than the struggle with his legs and the lower torso, and in no time the suit's both shoulders came over his. He wriggled his fingers as the skin swallowed the better part of his bulk. Now it only remained for him to pull the mask on and for me to close up the back. Making use of his symbiont-covered hands, which already appeared a bit more delicate than his own, he took hold of the edges of the headpiece, shook the hair quickly out of the way and, bending forward, flipped the mask over his head in one swift motion. He let out a satisfied, chirpy "Hmm!" as the inner surface of the suit came in contact with his facial skin and his features found their place inside and behind those of the suit. The back opening narrowed instantly, leaving less than an inch of Dan's skin visible between the two flaps. I was well aware that the skinsuit symbiont would almost certainly have done the rest by itself, but as something of a gesture of goodwill I pressed the palm of my right hand lightly on the small of Dan's back and then ran it steadily all the way up to the nape of his neck, lifting the long hair of the suit with my other hand to keep it clear of the closing slit. The split disappeared and nothing but smooth, unbroken, evenly colored human skin was left when I was done. The transformation had already begun, but now that the skin was covering Dan's body in its entirety, it gained a great deal of momentum. The frame of the person standing in front of me shrunk, his shoulders narrowed and the lumps of his copious body fat were pulled inwards. His large buttocks decreased in size and became the firm bubble butt of a girl, his legs and arms thinned, and his fingers--as it seemed--grew in length. This time, I was virtually certain that I could hear a gentle, low whish that accompanied the changes in Dan's physical form. The newly minted girl had attained her final proportions and dimensions. In one final change, the mass of soft tissue around her shoulder blades bulged out momentarily, then sank back in and sent a peculiar wave down to her buttocks and legs. The outline of her body evened out and solidified; and with that, everything was over. The metamorphosis had not lasted more than fifteen seconds, probably not more than ten. The girl who had been Daniel Mancini pulled back her shoulders, took a deep breath and shook her head a little. She was getting used to her new body. Even before she said anything, it was plain to see that she loved being the person who had been created through the combination of Dan and the skinsuit. "Wow," she breathed. "This is just... Oh wow." Jenni Stark had a beaming smile on her luscious lips when she turned to face me. Her naked, youthful form showed off its pair of average- sized but firm breasts, wide hips, hairless slim legs and arms, flat belly, straight strawberry blond hair, flawless shiny white teeth and face strongly reminiscent of that of Miley Cyrus, the former Dan's feminine role model, in her late teens. She struck a bold pose for me with one hand on her hip, and her smile grew even wider. "What do you think, Mike?" Jenni asked me. Her voice was perfectly feminine, smooth and lilting, if somewhat nasal, and the words came out fluently. Dan's trademark stuttering (and presumably whatever neurological defect that caused it) was eliminated completely, just as had happened to him when he had worn the Stacy skinsuit during our road trip. "I second your 'Oh wow,'" I replied. Although I was no stranger to these transformations anymore, having both seen and personally experienced several, they never ceased to amaze me--and Dan's was certainly one of the most radical. He had gone from an obese, unhygienic, mentally impaired man in his late twenties or early thirties to a beautiful and bright girl of around 18 who could have been the valedictorian and stereotypical popular student of the high school class that had graduated last spring. "Cool, isn't it?" Jenni said and let out a sparkling laughter before catching me off guard with, "Would you like to have sex with me?" Her question left me speechless. She was undoubtedly fetching, so much so that my eyes wandered onto her shaven, inviting nether region momentarily until I regained total control of my impulses and forced myself to snap out of the trance. My reaction aside, she had sounded innocent to the point of being naive. Perhaps she just wanted to know, for the record, whether I found her sexually attractive or not. In any case, it was best not to lead her on. "I don't think we should," I managed to utter in an attempt at a firm tone. "It's not... really appropriate, given the, um, circumstances." She laughed again. "I didn't mean if you wanted to do it here and now, silly!" she corrected me and went on to inquire, "Am I sexy in your opinion, Mike? Do I have a nice body?" "Yeah. You're a bit young from my perspective, but other than that, you're a knockout." "Thanks!" she exclaimed happily. "Come on, let's go get my clothes." "You've got spare clothes?" "Yeah. They're in my bedroom over there, and they're, like, super cute. You get to be the first person to see me dressed in my costume!" Jenni bounced joyfully to the room from which Dan had emerged, while I trailed her in a more restrained manner. The room was identical to the one where I had woken up, with a lush bed, a nightstand and a walk-in closet. However, there were several colorful items of clothing spread across the bed, and Jenni helped herself to them straight away. She pulled a pair of white panties on and followed it up with a matching bra. The bra, in particular, went on so quickly and effortlessly that I was amazed at her deftness, especially in light of her having been the clumsy and ungainly Dan Mancini only a couple of minutes ago. "A nice start," she opined and felt the fit of the bra cups with her hands. "Now I'm not giving you an erection anymore, am I?" "I sort of admire your candor," I commented with a chuckle, "but you'd do well to practice filtering what you say a little." "Well, it's the truth," she said offhandedly and picked up a pair of black tights. "You said you wanted to have sex with me, so you got an erection watching me. I think you're kinda hot, so if you were naked and I could see your dick, my pussy would get wet. That's how it goes." "That sounds a lot like the Dan Mancini I used to know. Is he still in there?" "No! I'm Jenni Stark, obviously. Dan is no more, and that's a good thing." "Okay, but work on the filter in any case." Jenni donned the tights and then a long-sleeved, V-necked, tight- fitting blue shirt that sported garish yellow and red trimming. She released her hair from under the collar of the shirt and ran her fingers through her locks to straighten them out before moving on to a red pleated miniskirt. "I'm going to live in the coolest place ever," she told me as she pulled on and zipped up the skirt. "It's got superheroes like me and also supervillains that we have to fight, but we always win, of course. And you know what? Nobody gets old or dies over there! Your family and friends stay with you forever, and you don't need to move out, grow up and get a job if you don't want to." "Who told you all that?" "Kent Noggin. I talked to him in telekinesis when I first got to this place. Maybe you can even come and visit me some time." "So, is it some kind of a cartoon dimension, or---?" "Exactly," she confirmed and smiled. "It's our own dimension where we get to be happy and do the things we always wanted." "You mean other people are going to be living there? Who?" "Kent Noggin and my other friends. Oh, about him; I guess you didn't hear yet. He told me that the guy who claimed to be him really wasn't. That was, like, some evil person or spirit who was just saying they were Kent, and they were trying to trick me. I wasn't careful, so they fooled me into doing stupid things and causing trouble, but it's okay now. The damage got fixed." "What about Angronok?" I asked. I was eager to learn what had happened, even though I realized that Dan, or Jenni, might not be the most reliable and coherent source of information. "Weren't you supposed to help release him?" "Yeah, that's what it was all about," Jenni said and secured the skirt in place with a wide red belt that sported a golden buckle. "He tried to use me and my powers to escape and destroy the world, and he almost made it even though the amulet was destroyed, but I got wise just in time and only a tiny part of his force got out. You would've had way more trouble fighting him otherwise." "What?" "You don't need to worry anymore. It's sorted out, and I've talked to the real Kent Noggin and made sure things are alright." "I'm relieved to hear that." "Me too. My evil side, or actually Dan's, did some bad things over in the other dimension. It was the bully man in him that was behind the nasty stuff, because he was always, like, stupid and hungry for power, but luckily he's gone forever. It won't happen again." Jenni attached a red cape to the shoulders of her shirt and put on a pair on pink boots that completed her costume. With a contented smile on her face, she struck another pose and asked, "What do you think?" "You do look like a superhero," I commented, and she radiated happiness once more at my approval. The outfit had gaudy, loud colors and was clich?d, even for a comic book character, and I had never held most superheroes or superhero fiction in very high regard, in spite of my nerdy leanings. That said, Jenni Stark alias Sunbeam likely fit in her childish universe perfectly and would be right at home there. "I guess I've got to go," she said. "Do you want to see me out to the elevator?" "There's an elevator here?" "Yeah, sure. I'll show the way if you don't know where it is." Jenni's confidence was striking. She marched back into the living room with her cape flowing, went past the dining table and opened one of the doors in the wall opposite to the window. The new girl gave the impression that she had lived in this apartment for quite some time and thought nothing of its supernatural qualities. The door led to another room, circular in plan and with an elevator shaft occupying the center part. Aside from the lack of furniture, this space was just as opulent as the other rooms, with elaborate light fixtures, ornate columns and wall panels to match. The sliding doors of the elevator opened as we approached. Behind them was a cabin with mahogany walls and gilded bronze ornaments. I had assumed that Jenni was going to walk right in and simply leave, but she stopped at the elevator door and turned towards me. "Well," she spoke up and looked me in the eyes. "This is it. This elevator will take me to my new home." "Good luck," I wished, not knowing what else to say. "We probably won't be seeing each other anymore." "Maybe we will. There's no telling what might happen, and you're always welcome to visit me over there, if you like." I was about to remind her that I was not capable of teleporting myself to other dimensions at the snap of my fingers, but I thought the better of it and closed my mouth. For all of her cognitive advantages and improvements over Dan, I figured, Jenni might not be able to grasp that fact, so bringing it up was pointless. "Thanks, Mike," she said with a smile. "I know you didn't like some of the things Dan did and you got angry with him every once in a while. You are a good guy because you didn't kill him when you had the chance." I was taken aback by this. "Uh, it... would have been wrong," I responded, having to fumble for the words. "If I had known everything that I do now, things could've been different between us." "Don't worry, Mike. It's okay. He was a little stupid and annoying sometimes." Jenni let out a little giggle, apparently at some amusing flashback of the life she had left behind, and then added, "By the way, Kent Noggin told me to say that someone's coming to see you soon, Mike." "Who's that?" "I don't know, but I'm guessing someone important. You'll see. Anyway, I need to get going already. Bye, Mike." "Bye." Jenni walked into the elevator in a self-assured and assertive manner, and the doors closed right away, hiding her from sight. A yellow light above the doorframe lit up, signaling that the elevator was busy, and the hidden machinery began emitting a soft hum. I was curious enough to stay put and wait to find out if the important person Jenni had mentioned would arrive right away. A minute or two later the hum stopped, the yellow lamp went off, another one next to it lit up, and a bell rang once. The doors opened, but the elevator cabin was empty. I was alone; Dan Mancini had gone to his dream world and would never come back. The apartment door let me in without a hassle, and I found myself in the common room again, but without company. The nature and purpose of this place were beginning to become clear to me at long last. It had to be some sort of a waiting hall or main station, perhaps outside of normal time and space, where the reality-altering superbeings collected their unwitting human servants to give them some rest and recreation while they were studied and afterwards sent off to new assignments, sometimes in new forms. There was a certain sense of offbeat familiarity to the whole experience, so much so that I found it amusing. For all I knew, I might soon see myself having lunch or lying in bed as an old man, and then the only thing missing would be a huge black monolith hovering in the middle of the room, I mused and smiled to myself. If that was on the cards, I'd have to ask the administrators to give me something much cooler than a teen girl's body and a ridiculous cartoon character getup. On a more serious note, I comprehended that I was surely being monitored. Even though I was unable to sense anyone's presence, there could have been any number of invisible, undetectable intelligent entities sharing this space with me. It gave me plenty of food for thought, together with an uneasy feeling, and I let my eyes wander over the room and its furniture as I pondered it and tried to plan my next move. I could only hope that my hosts, whoever and whatever they were, didn't intend to subject me to further tests. The promise of a visitor was both exciting and troublesome. Who would it be, and what was I supposed to do? Of course, there was the possibility that Dan had been mistaken or imagined the whole matter, but I was inclined to trust him this time. Someone powerful had evidently used the Kent Noggin identity to communicate with him and imparted the information. Nonetheless, the message could have been a bit more explicit. Even the word "soon" might denote practically anything in a place like this and for beings who could warp time and space. I caught myself listening for the chime of the elevator bell or the sound of a door opening or closing somewhere in the apartment--any sign that someone else was here with me. In a way, this was childish, as I had no reason to assume the entity who was going to pay his, her or its respects had a physical shape to begin with and would have to walk through doors; as a matter of fact, the opposite was likely to be true. The contact might well take the form of a dream or a waking vision, as with Dan. Since nothing whatsoever happened for several minutes, I decided to continue exploring the environs. The superbeings knew where to find me, and they would come and talk to me when they deemed fit. It was no use standing here and waiting. Three of the doors in the common room led to so far uncharted territory, and I started with the one closest to the exit door. Like the others, it was unlocked and opened into a dark space. There was a light switch in its customary place on the wall, and when I pressed it, a series of bright lamps came on immediately. This was the bathroom. A shower stall was located in the far corner, and a large bathtub stood next to it on four bronze legs. These commodities were supplemented by the usual sink, wall mirror and toilet seat. Three white bathrobes hung from a row of hooks on the wall. The walls themselves sported patterned, turquoise and white tiles, and these covered the floor as well. If the faucets worked and the water was reasonably pure, the hygiene problem was solved. The logical next order of business would have been to test if this actually was so, but I was too curious to see what was behind the other doors and made the decision to return here and have a closer look only after I had checked out the rest of the apartment first. As it turned out, I didn't get very far in my intentions. I switched off the lights, closed the door and opened another one quite nonchalantly. I was entertaining hope that I might find something to eat, since a faint feeling of hunger was slowly starting to creep into my awareness. Instead of a kitchen, I came across a third identical bedroom; and suddenly I saw that I was not the lone human left in this little world after all. A young, strikingly beautiful blond woman was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. Her presence in and of itself would have been enough to startle me, but my skin crawled at the sight of her face. Unless I was already losing my mind and imagining non-existent people, she was Buffy Summers. I stared at her with my eyes wide. She was an impossibility, a discordant detail that shouldn't have been there. If she had ever existed in any of the realities through which I had passed on my journey, I should have been her, not looking at her from the outside! The initial shock was slow to wear off, and I all but held my breath as I stood there, at a total loss. I experimented by closing my eyes and opening them again, and also by looking in another direction and then back at her, but the image remained unchanged. Assuming she didn't vanish when I walked out of the room or tried to touch her, she was a material object, if nothing else. For a passing moment, I wondered if she was alive, or even a real human being rather than a wax figure, but when I strained my eyes, I could see that her chest moved slightly as she breathed. She was soundly asleep, with her hands on top of her flat belly and her pretty features relaxed and expressionless at rest. She was wearing the same or similar outfit that I had worn as her to my faux date with Kenny, namely black tights, a gray short skirt, a fleecy white sweater and a pair of sandals. Her face was made up carefully and skillfully, and her hair was clean and untangled. It was as though someone had healed her wounds after the battle, bathed her, meticulously dressed and groomed her and then laid her there, like a girl who was playing with her favorite doll. I had probably received the same treatment, minus the cosmetics, on my arrival. A little shiver went through my body when I realized that Dan or somebody else might have come and watched me sleep in the same way that I was observing her. I felt a pang of guilt at this invasion of her privacy, but she was altogether too fascinating not to look at. Even though it would have been the proper thing to do, I just couldn't bring myself to leave the room without discreetly examining her some more. I snuck closer as quietly as I could, taking one step at a time and keeping my eyes on her. She showed no signs of stirring and continued to slumber peacefully as I reached her bedside. I had never seen her as she really was. Until that day, she had been only a flat picture on a screen or in a mirror, however alluring. When I had lived as her, my brain had eventually bowed to the inevitable and accepted, albeit grudgingly, her appearance and form as mine, or maybe rather as a wildly distorted, temporary version of my "true" body. But now, out of the blue, Buffy had gained an independent existence. She had become an actual person whom I could touch with my fingertips. The daylight that entered through the window caressed her features and gave the skin of her face a soft, pinkish translucent glow. I bent over the bed, to get a little closer still to her and to marvel at her. At this distance, my nose picked up her scent clearly. It was a mixture of some understated flowery perfume, reminiscent of the stuff Kate had loaned to me, and her natural feminine aroma. It alone was intoxicating, and a burning, bittersweet desire for her stirred in me. I very nearly pressed an affectionate little kiss on her cheek. In some eccentric fashion, meeting her in the flesh made me oddly satisfied, even proud of my stint as her. It was so extraordinary that I had looked like that. For once in my life, I had been gorgeous. No wonder Kenny and the other men had been putty in my hands! Buffy's left eyelid twitched, and then she moved her head almost imperceptibly. My heart began to pound and I instinctively retreated a few inches, preparing to make a fast exit. She did nothing for the next couple of seconds, however, and I concluded that this had been a false start and that she would drift back into deep sleep. Without warning, her lips curved into a smile, and she spoke in a drowsy but happy and markedly mischievous voice, "A guy detected!" Then, faster than I could react, she flung her arms around me. She had me out of balance immediately, and I collapsed squarely on top of her. I tried to push against the bed with my hands and wrench myself free, but she was too strong and held me with ease. Her warm, petite body was pressed into mine. She was still half asleep and had her eyes closed, no doubt mistaking me for some dream hunk. As fantastic as a situation like this could have been, I was in panic and could only think about freeing myself from her clutches before she woke up. That failed. All of a sudden, her eyes flew open, and we stared at each other with the tips of our noses virtually touching. We were both in complete shock, but hers took a few tenths of a second longer than mine to pass, and I managed to scamper away, out of the bed and to my feet just in time for the explosion. "What the hell!?" she screamed and sprang out of the bed as well. "Who... Who the fuck are you? What do you think you're doing to me?" "You're the one who pulled me on top of you!" I protested. "I was---" She was drilling holes into me with her eyes, which promptly went even wider. "You've got my body!" she burst out in fury. Although her voice was distorted by her intense emotion, it was plainly a spot-on imitation of her TV show incarnation, yet strangely also different from how it had sounded to me when I had been her. "You've stolen it from me! Give it back, right this second!" "It's mine," I retaliated. "I don't know who you are, but I'm Mike Caldwell, Michael Caldwell, and this body belongs to me!" "Not buying that," Buffy seethed and stepped closer to me. "You're an imposter or something, maybe a demon disguised as me. I'm Michael Caldwell!" "You look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer to me," I shot back. "Yeah, but that's only because I got tricked into this damn skinsuit while you, whatever you are, went around in my form and did God knows what!" "Don't be crazy!" "Oh, I'm not crazy," she said in a menacing tone and closed the distance even further. I had a healthy respect for her powers and retreated a little. "On the contrary. I've never been this clear- headed. Everything's making sense to me now. You're behind the crap I've had to live through, aren't you? You arranged things so that I ended up in the skin, and from that moment on, you've been sending me back and forth in time and realities and enjoying the fucking spectacle! And then, at long last, you sick little asshole show yourself to me, masquerading as me!" "It's nothing like that," I defended myself. "I'm as bewildered as you are. For all I know, you could really be Buffy Summers, or I may have hallucinated everything, the skinsuits, the other timelines and you. Maybe you don't even exist." "Oh yeah?" she retorted and raised her arm for a right hook. "Wanna see if my itty bitty fist here exists?" "Look," I pleaded and made a pacifying gesture. The prospect of being on the receiving side of her blows was unnerving to me. "Calm down and be reasonable, Buffy--or Mike, if that's who you actually are. I can't possibly be the entity who's been throwing us around. I wouldn't be cowering here and fearing a beating from you if that was the case." "But you were creeping up on me while I slept!" she spat out. "I didn't mean to do anything to you. I was awestruck to see you and I wanted to find out if you're real; nothing more. I could just as well accuse you for trying to rape me." "Rape you," she repeated and snorted. "You can't be me, that's for sure. I may not be the most glorious embodiment of masculinity in the world, I give you that, but I'd never run screaming from a woman and blame her for attempting to rape me if all she did was to come on to me a little. I'd be flattered!" "You did way more than that!" "I was asleep, for Christ's sake, and thought you were..." "Thought I was who?" "That's none of your business!" "Alright," I conceded the argument. "Let's chalk the incident up to mistaken identity and forget about it. There was no harm done." "Fine," she agreed and crossed her arms. "But that still leaves the question of who you are." "And who you are, but we can try to shed some light on that and compare notes a little. What's the last thing you remember before waking up? You can skip any erotic dreams if you prefer." "Don't go there!" she warned me sternly. "Okay. What I recall is that I fought Angronok and the demon he had conjured up on a mountaintop. I willed myself to transform into you, and I barely succeeded in killing the monster. Then, I plunged the sword into Angronok's chest, or into the cloud figure, anyway. What about you?" "How did you kill the demon?" she inquired sharply. "I struck it in its neck with the sword." "That checks out," Buffy commented in a somewhat calmer and more thoughtful manner than previously. "I guess it's my turn. Before the final battle, I was in the acid trip garden where everyone, together with Gunner Bill, had been killed. Then there was the University campus and the social justice warrior idiot, then Greensville Elementary---" "As Amy Beckinsale, and Erin Lough tried to cut my head off with a fire ax." "Right. The Kenny date, when Eric Rankins attacked us. Let's see... the void, and then Breakers Woods, Dan Lee and the Sathir'na demons." "Giles and Wesley listening to the Stones on the van's radio," I added. "I was sitting next to Faith in the back seat. Spike was on Dan's payroll, but their scheme imploded." "The rest area and the portal," Buffy said. "Jake wants to be Willow forever. Bucko going nuts as Tara." "I believe two things are pretty much settled," I declared. "We have identical memories for the past couple of days, if not longer, and we both honestly think we are Michael Caldwell." "Agreed. So, what does that mean for us?" "Hell if I know." Neither of us could come up with anything reasonable with which to continue this line of discussion, so there was a brief pause. Buffy looked around, examining the bedroom, and proceeded to change the topic. "Where are we, by the way?" she asked me. "Do you have any ideas about that?" "I don't know for certain," I admitted, "but this place seems like a high class apartment. There's a living room behind that door, and other bedrooms and a bathroom. When you look out the windows, you see a city landscape, but I have a feeling it's not real and we're actually outside of spacetime, or something of that sort." "Just like poor Dave Bowman," she completed my statement, echoing my thoughts to uncanny perfection. "Stranded in an alien hotel, waiting for the management to appear." "Speaking of appearances, I did bump into someone unexpected. Our friend Dan Mancini was here, but you missed him by ten minutes." "Dan?" she exclaimed in surprise. "Is the retard alive? How? The last time I saw him, he was barging into a tornado." "Apparently that didn't kill him, and Angronok didn't either. He had a girl suit with him, and I helped him into it. He got dressed and said his destiny was to live as a female superhero in some demented parallel cartoon universe. Then I escorted him into an elevator. I figured that it serves as a transport to different dimensions from this locale." She was nonplussed at the news. "Huh?" "That was my reaction too, in a nutshell. I don't think we'll be seeing him anymore." "I can't say I'm going to be missing him a whole lot, but I gather Dan wasn't your point." "He wasn't, or at least not my main point. You see, he told me that someone important will soon come to visit us. He didn't say anything more, but I reckon we might get an answer or two in the near future, if we're lucky." "They definitely owe us that," Buffy remarked, "and then some." She was predictably interested in seeing more of the apartment, and I accompanied her to the living room. Speechless for the moment, she spent a good while examining and taking in the surroundings, much like I had. She walked around unhurriedly, touched the chairs and the table with her fingers to verify that they were solid objects, and stopped to look out of the window. I would have done the exact same thing had Dan not interrupted me with his unannounced entrance. As for me, I stole glances at her at every opportunity. I was in awe, both because of her attractiveness and because of the difficulty in comprehending that my consciousness, the essence of me, had resided inside that desirable, utterly feminine creature. What was more, a Mike Caldwell, who was me but at the same time someone other than the identity that currently controlled my body, was evidently still there. This was a concept that surpassed my every experience up to that point in sheer weirdness. "Stylish," Buffy commented finally, "and expensive, I'd say, but if this is only some energy being's materialized thought, trying to measure its value in money would be pretty difficult." "It must cost something to them as well," I pointed out. "There's no such thing as a free lunch. Chances are the beings are also subject to the laws of thermodynamics." "Possibly. So, anyway, does this place come with any form of entertainment for us? Books? TV? A computer?" "Nothing that I've found, unfortunately." "That's a shame. Living here could get kind of dull after a year or two if there's nothing to read or watch." The chance to insert a risqu? joke was altogether too good to pass up, despite the fairly tense confrontation between us only a few moments ago. After all, if Buffy really was an iteration of me, she would also have my sense of humor and would take no offense. "Well, if we can't come up with any other way to pass the time," I quipped and smirked, "we can always make lots of sweet love together." She gave me a look that indicated disbelief and angry astonishment, but her features softened almost immediately and she burst into heartfelt laughter, as did I. The air was cleared in one swoop, and any remaining mistrust we had in each other evaporated completely. The unspeakable fears and horrors of Angronok and the recent battle found a way to flow out of our systems, and they added their share of fuel to the fire as they inverted themselves into well-nigh hysterical joy. "You Neanderthal!" Buffy shrieked theatrically in an overblown impression of a damsel in distress as soon as she could maintain even a semblance of a straight face for a second or two. "We're on a voyage to the limits of human understanding, and you just drool over my body! You evil, evil man!" "It's my body too, in a manner of speaking," I reminded her and laughed. "Don't you want to share?" "Sure, no problem! Go find us another skinsuit, and you get to have your piece of the action." "You know what piece and action I'm after." "Wouldn't it be incest if we screwed, though?" "I think I'd rather call it masturbation, bearing in mind we're the same person." "But I'm more like your identical twin sister than you, so there's that." "Point taken." The laughter eventually subsided into chuckles, and I was already beginning to turn my thoughts to the future when Buffy continued the conversation. "You know," she said with a smile that was no longer one of pure hilarity, "maybe it's not such a bad idea after all." "What do you mean?" "Us having sex. You see, I'm still a virgin in this form and I'm just a smidgen apprehensive about my first time as a woman. I want it to be with a man whom I can trust. The thing is, you'd be a shoo-in for that role. You're the one eligible bachelor in the world that I know inside out, because I am you. I know what turns you on and your every little secret." A sudden uncertainty as to her intentions struck me, but I hid that with a brief laugh. "You're kidding, aren't you?" "Not necessarily," she said and started approaching me with a sensual stroll. The smile stayed on her face, but a sultry tone had snuck into her voice. "Think of the pros of that arrangement. It beats sitting down and rolling your thumbs as a pastime hands down, and no one will ever have to learn about it if we want to keep it under wraps." "That's funny," I riposted. "Are you by any chance Faith in disguise?" "No, but we can pretend that I am... if you like." She stood right in front of me and ran a finger over my shirt, with a seductive pout on her lips. I was getting genuinely distraught and excited but nonetheless succeeded in maintaining a bit of composure, including putting on a shaky smile. "You're beginning to sound a lot like her," I said, "so I'll tell you what I'd tell her. I'm not just some sex machine whose sole purpose is to service you whenever you happen to be horny. What if I'm not in the mood?" "Mike, honey," she purred and shook her head. A hint of determination was mixed in her smile. "You're forgetting something. I'm a Slayer. I don't have to beg for your consent if I really, really want to have my way with you." "Alright. Knock it out, will you?" "Better sleep with one eye open when you go to bed tonight. It's my turn to sneak up on you." Abruptly, she broke into a wide, triumphant grin. "Got you!" she crowed. "A pretty good impression of dear old Faithy, don't you think?" "Too good for comfort," I replied and laughed along with her. "I knew you had to be joking, but it was pretty convincing. I had no idea I'm that skilled as an actor." "Thanks!" she said and added with a wink, "A joke for a joke... or was it?" I was about to offer a witty rejoinder, but we were distracted. A tiny glimmering yellow flame, maybe the size of a pea, floated silently across the air. It weaved as it flew forward and then stopped to hover in the middle of the room. Suddenly there were more of them; a swarm of lights in every color had entered the apartment out of nowhere, and they were coming together at one spot. "I'm not sure I like this," Buffy remarked as we both watched the unreal spectacle. "Same here," I concurred. "Something unpleasant tends to happen whenever we see ghostly little lights." The flames merged and blended into one, forming a pillar of bright yellowish light that became too dense and intensive to see through in a matter of seconds. It remained still for a few more moments, waiting for the final few sparkles to join and find their place, and then it began to change. It elongated somewhat, and its surface compressed and formed into folds and protrusions. Gradually it assumed the coarse shape of a human being, brightened a little more--and then lost its incandescence in the blink of an eye. Standing in front of us, right where the supernatural light pillar had been, was Amanda Elkins. Her whole entrance was like a magic trick or a special effect from a movie. One moment, Buffy and I had been alone in the apartment, and the next, there was another person, seemingly an attractive, smartly dressed woman of about forty. Elkins looked precisely as she had when I had last seen her in my parents' house: a redhead with a beautiful face, blue eyes and a slender body clad in a beige blouse, brown skirt, nude pantyhose and black heels. Her outfit had been complemented by a blue scarf, and that, too, was again included. She cleared her throat and said in Amanda Elkins' melodious voice, "Greetings, friends. I hope I didn't frighten you." Neither of us was able to put together an even remotely coherent sentence just then, so the apparition continued, "I and my companions are extremely grateful to you for what you did. You may not be completely aware of it yourselves, but you and your friends saved your world and a great many others. We will forever be in your debt." "That's... nice," Buffy commented in a tentative manner on our behalf. "Only I'm not sure we had a choice in the matter." "You always had a choice," Elkins explained. "You could have elected not to go through the portal to the Slayer's world, or you could have decided to take Dan's life. It is what you did that led us to this result. The evil forces, as you call them, were defeated and contained, and you can now return to your normal lives, as your friends already have." "Jake, Charlie and Scott?" I burst out. "Are they---?" "Are they alive?" Buffy completed my sentence for me, equally anxiously. "Most definitely," Elkins said, and I felt a tremendous relief. "They are in good health, possibly apart from some memory loss. It could be that they will possess no clear recollection of these events afterwards, which is unfortunate, but it can perhaps be tolerated under the circumstances." "Did they pass through here?" I inquired. "Yes, they did. We decided to provide a safe haven for you to rest and recuperate." "And you're certain they're alright?" Buffy asked. "Yes, positive." "About returning to normal life," I chimed in. "Would you mind telling us what has become of the world outside? I'd like to interpret your words to mean there still is a place for us to go to." "There is indeed. The struggle between us and our enemies caused vast reality changes, discontinuities and disruptions, but the damage has been repaired, and you will find that your home is as it should be in the past, present and future." "Does that include Sunnydale?" Buffy inquired in her turn. I congratulated her in my thoughts for casually bringing up a fascinating topic. We might have a chance of finding out if fictional worlds somehow existed alongside real ones. Amanda Elkins served us a mild disappointment, however. "Yes," she said simply. "The distortions were fixed everywhere." "So, if that's the case, were the skinsuits wiped out of existence?" Buffy asked, and her face brightened up at the prospect. "Will I get to be myself again?" "The skinsuits were always part of some realities," Elkins said. "There were changes that we are unable to undo, possibly because they were destined to occur." "What are you saying?" the Slayer demanded. "You will remain as you are, Buffy, and some aspects of the time and reality which you regard as your past will do so as well." "Christ," she huffed. "Just my luck!" "You shouldn't be sad. You have achieved and learned much in that form, although it's not your original one. Your journey is a cause for celebration." "Why am I stuck as this girl, and that guy gets to have my body? What exactly is the deal here?" "To put it in rudimentary terms," Elkins explained patiently, "this environment has given a tangible shape for two temporally separate incarnations of you, the person and identity calling himself Michael Caldwell. Neither of you is privileged over the other in any way, even though it might appear so to you. You have just been allowed to come together and associate, temporarily, until you depart." "So, he's a version of me from... what, the future?" Buffy asked. "Was that what the horse fetish guy was trying to tell me in those dreams?" I wondered aloud. "That there are multiple instances of me scattered across time, and they're individuals, each one of them?" "I'm not quite clear as to the details of what Derry showed to you," the woman responded, "but our message for you was intended to be something to that effect, only in a more comprehensive sense. You are one, and you are many, as are we all. You understood it and used it to your advantage." "When?" Buffy spoke up. "In the battle against the big baddie? I'm not one to ignore divine guidance, but that's a bit too theoretical a tactic when you're going toe to toe with an Old One." "Even so, you did make good use of it," Elkins pointed out amiably and smiled. "You saw through the masks and illusions of your enemy, and you also realized that you're not limited to one form. You could tap into your potential and change yourself into someone who had the ability to defeat your opponent." "Speaking of opponents," I said, keen to take advantage of this unparalleled and doubtless short-lived opportunity to converse with someone who evidently had all the answers, "what happened to Larry? Or actually, who and what is he, anyway? Did I go to school with him or not?" "Larry is not her name anymore," Elkins corrected me. "Faith is indeed a childhood friend of yours, Mike, who was a male and went by Lawrence Simmons in her younger days. I think your confusion must stem from the fact that there are several realities where you never met or where she was not born but you were." "I'm glad that's sorted out," Buffy quipped sarcastically. She and I were struggling to understand what we were being told. "She, too, rendered great services to us in the conflict, and we gave her the reward she asked for. She is allowed to stay in her current form indefinitely." "Where does Dan Mancini fit in?" I went on. "Much the same applies to him. His contribution was of utmost importance, and the fact that you brought one instance of him to his destination safely had a major impact on the outcome of the battle. Like Faith, he was granted the life he longed for." "I think I'm all out of intelligent remarks now," Buffy said to this. "That goes for both of us," I added. Even if Amanda Elkins had not entered the room as a myriad evanescent little lights, she would have struck me as otherworldly. She currently looked like an ordinary (if very beautiful) woman in her forties, sounded like one and had the mannerisms of one; regardless, if I had met her on the street or at a railway station instead of a hotel room outside the confines of our Universe, some instinct would have been signaling to me that she was very likely not a member of my species, if she even was flesh and blood. It was beginning to seem that our conversation would soon be over, so I took the plunge and broached the topic. "What are you?" I asked her flat out. She responded with a friendly smile and a chuckle which, to my ears, had the faint but unmistakable tone of aloof Olympian amusement. "That would be difficult to explain," she said. "Think of me as a member of a group of beings who are concerned with the affairs of this time and space. There are other groups besides ours, and we are not on very good terms with some of them. A few are openly given to destruction and want to replace order with chaos." "You're clearly not human, that's for sure," I commented. "Does this mean Amanda Elkins...?" "Oh, I see I must have confused you," she said. "My apologies. I'm not Amanda. I only took on her visible form to make it easier for you to relate to me." "Who's Amanda, if you're not her?" Buffy asked. "She is a human being like you, but a special kind of person who knows of us and has chosen to help us willingly. We sometimes use people such as her as our agents, so to speak. It's not straightforward for us to deal with you directly. Even if we had the desire to interfere with your lives and completely disregarded the severe adverse consequences that might result, we are usually forbidden to do so." "Forbidden? By whom?" "Higher authority," Elkins replied. "I'm afraid I cannot tell you more. It is... challenging to describe in terms with which you are familiar, and frankly much of it is beyond even our understanding. All the same, I can say with certainty that it intervened on multiple occasions during the incident. We suspect it was ultimately guiding both you and us towards this conclusion." The implications of what she had told us were staggering, and yet I firmly believed this had been but a ridiculously small taste of what we could have learned from her. I had a million questions for "Amanda Elkins", and I knew that I should have tried to put as many of them as possible to her and make certain that her replies would be etched on my mind, but a kind of numb bewilderment at having met a superior form of intelligence made carrying a normal conversation hard enough, to say nothing of thinking about highly abstract concepts and discussing them with her. "The conflict is not over," she went on after a while. "It will not be truly resolved until the end of time, but that is our burden, not yours. Your part in it is finished, for now. You can and soon will leave this place and yourself behind." "I don't follow," Buffy interjected, again speaking for both of us Mikes. "It will become clear to you one day. As for the present--that door, over there, will lead you to an elevator. When you feel ready to depart, you can go there and step in, one of you at a time. You will then be taken to your respective destinations." "And what would those be?" "You'll find out," the entity said to us collectively. "Farewell, Michael, and have no fear. Perhaps we will meet again, but if not, be contented in the knowledge that you did an immeasurable favor for us and everything that is or will be." The exit of the Elkins apparition was far less exciting than her entrance. She gave us one last encouraging, benevolent smile, and then she literally faded away. Her body became gradually more transparent until it disappeared entirely. There was no light show or other strange phenomena, merely a dissolution of a seemingly living, substantial person into thin air. "So much for the chance to ask the big questions of someone who can actually answer them," I remarked. "My thoughts exactly," Buffy accompanied me. "Like, what's the meaning of life? Why do we suffer? What happens after we die?" "And the most important one, of course," I added. "Was USS Alaska a battlecruiser or not?" "Guess we'll never know now," she said in a solemn voice but let a tiny smirk come onto her lips, to match my smile. Ideally, we would have followed up the encounter with a deep, thorough, relaxed philosophical conversation and theorizing, but uncertainty about what the future held for us, together with homesickness, was growing ever stronger in our thoughts. Buffy looked me in the eyes and sighed. "It's pointless to delay the inevitable," she said. "We can't just stay here and never leave." "You're right. I'm not sure I'd even want to live out the rest of my life in this joint." "Will you walk me to the elevator?" "Sure." We went at a sedate pace and side by side to the door leading of out the apartment. I was in the throes of mixed emotions, glad to leave the world of magic and fantasy behind and hopeful that I could soon return to my old life, but apprehensive about my destination. The possibility that there would be more adventures and perils ahead made me uneasy and reluctant to go. For Buffy, that anxiety must have been a magnitude stronger. When we entered the staircase and saw that the elevator was waiting for one of us with its doors open, she stopped and turned towards me with a troubled expression on her enchanting face. "This is it," she said and drew her lips into a lopsided smile. "I've got a one-way ticket to the unknown, and there's my ride." "I can go first, if you like," I offered, but she shook her head. "No. It's okay, and it probably wouldn't change anything. From what that Amanda being said, I understand the elevator is programmed to take you where you're supposed to go and me where I'm supposed to go." She paused, looked away briefly and then continued, "What if I end up in Sunnydale? Maybe that's my destiny; they make me fill in for Buffy forever. How can I survive there? How can I... Oh man." She bit her lip and cast her eyes down. "Better than I could, that's a given," I said. "It's so damn unfair. Why can't I be in your body, and you in this one? Why did it have to be this way?" "We didn't have a choice in the matter. Someone up there made the call for us, and we have to live with that." "Live with that, or die, if my next stop is that cursed fairytale town in California." "Look, Mike," I tried to console her, "I don't know any more about the plans of the higher-ups than you do, but if I had to guess, I'd wager you are headed for the past Greensville. Didn't the Amanda being say it was restored back to normal, the same as every other timeline and reality? There has to be a Mike Caldwell in Greensville, but Sunnydale can do fine without him." "Even if that's the case, Greensville will be getting Mike back in this shape." "It's a less than optimal outcome, granted, but it beats going back as a corpse or the whole Creation being destroyed." She shrugged and sighed again. "You make a good point. But if there's any justice in the Universe, the energy beings will swap us every once in a while so I can enjoy the life I should've had." "Maybe they intend to do just that. We have no way of knowing." "It would be fantastic. Oh, and it should preferably happen when I have PMS." "You'd wish that on me?" "It's the least you could do to pull your weight." We exchanged smiles, and I puzzled over whether a hug was in order or not. In the end, we didn't say or do anything more. We were two manifestations of the same person, and each of us knew how the other felt and thought. Nothing was really needed beyond that. She walked quietly into the cab, turned around so she faced me and said in a soft voice, "Goodbye, Mike. See you around the Multiverse." "See you... Mike. And good luck." "You too." The elevator doors slid closed, separating us, and the indicator light went on. Buffy-Mike was gone--and already the whole encounter with her and the Elkins being, and also Dan, was beginning to seem like a dream to me. My original intention had been to go back inside the apartment and explore the remaining one or two rooms at my leisure before leaving, but the eerie atmosphere of the establishment, which I sensed much more acutely now that I was alone, dissuaded me effectively. Besides, some instinct of mine was dead set against lingering here. I had no business staying in this weird place any longer. Since I couldn't see what was going on, I had to rely on my ears. I listened to any sounds that might have given me clues as to where the elevator was taking Buffy-Mike, but the steady purring of the machinery, although by no means loud, drowned out everything else. Naturally, the elevator was in all likelihood little more than a prop, a superficially functional piece of the set to give form to forces that the human mind could not comprehend, but I was nonetheless curious to know how it worked and what was in store for me. I had presumed that the machinery would pause when the car stopped at whatever floor Buffy-Mike was to be delivered to, but instead it apparently kept running until the indicator light suddenly went out, the bell sounded and the doors opened again. I was surprised and almost alarmed, and seeing the empty cab gave me a foreboding feeling. Was it really safe to step in? Had Buffy-Mike survived her trip, and where had she ended up? I could easily picture the elevator taking me down to the depths of Hell, or alternatively to a more prosaic location where I would be unceremoniously offed by some monster and my body disposed of. That was an absurd line of thinking, I told myself emphatically. It would have been illogical for the beings who had constructed the hotel to go through so much trouble just to lead us into a trap or to neglect our safety entirely in one respect. Despite everything, I had to command myself to walk into the elevator. The cab conformed to the opulent, pseudo-Edwardian style of the apartment. It was adorned with a mirror, a small seat and bronze ornaments set in the dark mahogany panels of the walls. The ceiling lamp was a smaller, less elaborate version of the chandelier in the living room. The only thing missing, and a conspicuous one at that, was the control panel. My input was not needed, though. The doors closed and the car started moving upwards of its own accord. I took a deep breath to stay calm and tried to brace for what was to come. For better or worse, I didn't have to wait for long. Barely half a minute later, I sensed the car slowing down, and it came smoothly to a halt in a few seconds. The bell chimed. I had arrived to wherever the beings had sent me. My pulse quickened, and I bit my teeth together to stay focused and to keep my nervous excitement in check; and then the doors began to open.