I am so tired of waiting,

  Aren't you,

  For the world to become good

  And beautiful and kind?

  Let us take a knife

  And cut the world in two-

  And see what worms are eating

  At the rind.

  Langston Hughes

  I’d popped into existence and was shivering on the stone floor of what might have been a ruined cathedral. Just seconds before, I’d been messing with my phone, installing the Isekai App.

  There had been a wall of text, then the obligatory “Agree to terms?” And there had been a box on my screen. After checking it, I was here. I could still feel the ridges of my phone case against my fingertips.

  Shafts of sunlight slanted from gaps in the distant roof. Dense vegetation spilled in: vines loaded with fluffy bunches of leaves and star-shaped white flowers. Bees bumped and buzzed.

  Tall windows lined the building, each topped with a peaked arch. Jagged rainbow teeth lined some of them: broken remains of stained glass. A cool breeze filled the hall. It smelled of the ocean.

  Cardboard cargo containers were lined up against the worn, eroded gray walls. They contained clothing: white shirts, tan cargo shorts, boy and girl underthings. Cheap running shoes of all sizes. No glasses; I’m nearsighted.

  “Huh,” I said.

  The cathedral wasn’t just old; it had been through a fight. The stone walls bore many circular, smooth holes, each the size of a hubcap. Their spacing was random. It felt like they’d been made by a colossal machine gun.

  The walls at the other end of the long cathedral were blackened and charred. A wooden door, ornate and crooked, let in more sunlight around its edges.

  That door didn’t swing open. It was lifted from the other side. A tall man awkwardly carried it from the stone doorway, leaned it against the wall.

  He took a black rectangle from where it had been tucked under an arm: a tablet computer. For a moment he stood framed in the doorway by more of that sunlit jungle vegetation, then approached slowly, not looking up from his screen.

  A tall, skinny face like Benedict Cumberbatch without the handsomeness, plus a layer of middle-aged fat to smooth out any unwanted charisma. Dark hair trimmed by a genocidal barber, pale skin, no facial hair. Well, those huge bristly eyebrows.

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  Office casual, but with a graying lab coat that had once been white. A paunch. A double chin. When he smiled, it wrapped tightly around his face like a bandanna made of teeth.

  Nasty little beady blue eyes gleaming from under those eyebrows. That gray smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  I didn’t like him one bit. He obviously didn’t care.

  Not the cute elf girlfriend the App had hinted at, not at all.

  He sat on one of the cardboard boxes. It whooshed out a tired puff of air. That box had seen a lot of sitting, I thought. He’d done this before, this exact thing. Many times. Everything he did was practiced, rehearsed. His eyes went back to his tablet.

  “Owen Walsh, United States, Pacific Time Zone,” he said.

  Ever see a medication commercial, and at the end the announcer rapidly reads a list of all the horrible things that could happen to you? Side Effects may include… That’s how he spoke.

  I didn’t respond. He looked up at me, hoisted his eyebrow foliage in inquiry.

  “Yes,” I said. Tried to. My voice was a broken whisper.

  He reached into the pocket of his lab coat and handed me a battered plastic bottle of drinking water. I drained it all at once, then nodded.

  He sighed unhappily. “Ordinarily I’d hit you with a few questions. How do you feel about being part of a new world? Want to build a new society? But I already know how you feel, and it’s not important.”

  I had no answers yet; I would later. I could barely focus on his words at the moment.

  “You and I have met before,” he said wearily. “And this time it’ll be chaos. I’ve tried order, and I’ve tried being tough and tried being nasty. This time anything goes.”

  I’d met him. When?

  “I advise you not to hurt anyone, or to get hurt. We don’t have a hospital here. If I see you doing anything I don’t like…” His cold eyes dropped to his tablet. He tapped the stylus against the screen.

  I lost my balance first, then my legs folded beneath me. My arms flopped loosely at my sides and my head leaned back with my mouth yawning open. I hit the floor: first my knees, then I leaned back and rolled on my spine against the floor. The back of my skull bumped the cold hardness of gray stone.

  I couldn’t move. I found myself helplessly inspecting the ruined roof up there, with its vines and bees and pollen drifting in the sunbeams.

  I could focus my eyes. I could breathe, and I started panting in panicked gasps. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move.

  A click of his stylus. My palms and cheap shoes slapped the floor in a hectic, frantic dance. I said: “Gah!” and scrambled to my feet, then rubbing the back of my head where I’d struck. I looked up at him. I was awed and frightened.

  “I can do that anytime,” he said. “So be good, Owen Walsh of Pacific Time Zone.” An amused flash of smirk.

  Be good, he’d said. Be good. What was that, was it irony? He got up from his box and offered his hand to shake.

  I shook it. Yes I did. I didn’t slap the tablet out of his hand or try to shove that stylus in his ear. I was terrified of him.

  “I’m Dr. Jeff Harrigan,” he said. That smile again, the one that stretched around his tall head, with his thin middle-aged lips baring gray teeth to the world. “Let’s go see the camp. And call me Dr. Jeff.”

  Despite the fear, a bit of steel returned to my spine. Dr. Jeff? How informal, how friendly!

  I would not call him that. Not ever. I was going to get away from him, the first chance I got.