Chapter 1 - 10

“Excuse me, Travis, do you have a pen I can borrow?” Reginald said after stopping in front of a posted sign.

Travis didn’t know. “Hold on,” he said, checking his pockets. “What the?” He pulled a deck of cards out of his right pocket. Reginald’s eyes went wide when he saw it. “Mind if I…” Reginald half-asked while he grabbed the deck and started looking through it, a look of puzzlement appearing on his face. “What is this?”

“Oh, those are Magic cards. It’s a card game I play. I guess I was carrying a deck around for some reason. Let me see.” Travis thumbed through the deck, astonished. “Wow, this a really good deck. I wonder where this came from.” He checked the back. “Nope, this is real. And Standard too. Huh.”

“The pen?” Reginald said, now a little impatient.

“Huh? Oh,” Travis checked his pockets again, finding a bulky object instead. “What?” He pulled out a small taser. “What the hell?” He set the taser down and turned his pockets inside out. Only a single paper clip fell to the ground. “Where is my wallet? And my keys? I’m sorry, I need to go back to the…no wait, I…”

“If I may interrupt you,” Reginald said, picking up the paper clip and the taser and handing it back to Travis, “it seems to you that things are a bit weird lately.”

Travis nodded, his mind reeling trying to grasp just why he was carrying these things but nothing else and who this strange man was.

“Might I suggest that maybe you’ve suddenly become a member of a secret society, have acquired some superpowers, and now live by a different set of rules?”

Travis was incredulous, but hopeful. “That’s crazy. No one would believe that.”

“Exactly.”