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aren’t more of these things coming.”
    “But —” she started.
    “But nothing. Something weird’s going on here. I don’t know what it is, but I’m gonna find out.”
    “Even if it kills you?”
    He stared at her silently for a moment, and without a word began to tie the other end of the rope around his waist.
     
     

Chapter 6
    As it turned out, entering the vortex wasn’t as difficult as Steven had feared, either physically or emotionally. When the rope had been tied tightly around his waist, he walked up to it, put his hand up near it, and tentatively reached out to touch it. It was actually a little difficult to tell just where the surface of the vortex was since it had a peculiar three dimensional depth to it, but when he finally encountered it, moving his hand gingerly toward it, he knew it. The sensation reminded him of the feeling of reaching down into a sink of lukewarm water, but one that was swirling as if it were going down a drain, constantly. It wasn’t painful, as he’d feared; it didn’t pull him in, or rip his arm off, or any of a dozen things he’d imagined might have happened. It was just a warm, flowing sensation. He reached farther in and saw first his forearm, then his elbow, then his upper arm, tinted green by the light of the vortex, take on the green shimmering quality shared by everything inside it.
    He looked back. His wife was standing behind him, slightly to his left, surrounded by the children. Her eyes were wide now, concern filling her face. “Steve… are you sure about this?” she asked.
    “I have to do this,” Steven replied. “I have to.”
    “Hurry back,” she said in a whisper. “Please.”
    “I will,” he replied, and took a single step forward.
     
     

Chapter 7
    Disoriented. That was the word that came to mind.
    It reminded Steven a great deal of the time he had broken both legs and one of his arms in a car wreck when he was a teenager. The doctors had given him morphine for the pain, and he’d had some pretty wild hallucinations. Now everything was green and swirling, and he felt as though he were a leaf being carried on the wind, or swept along by ocean waves. Everything is green and submarine, he thought.
    He tried to look around, but it seemed as if his muscles were simply refusing to respond. The only part of his body that he could move at all was his fingers. He was reminded of when the Tin Man first showed up in The Wizard of Oz — rusted so badly he couldn’t even move. 
    He gazed ahead, seeing only what chance and random motion brought into his field of view. Just as when he had looked into the vortex, he recognized all manner of things sweeping by — cars and trucks of all eras, animals of every type, even a house or two. People dressed in fashions from every conceivable time and locale tumbled past. Had they all been curious enough to walk into a vortex as he had? He saw what appeared to be a Roman Legionnaire, clutching his gladius, the Roman short sword, as if ready for a battle. Had he been swirling around inside this place for upwards of two thousand years? Did time even have any real meaning in this place?
    Steven realized that he didn’t even have the ability to grasp the rope to attempt to haul himself back out of the vortex; he figured the only way that he’d ever manage to get out was when his family finally grew impatient and decided to try to pull him out. He could see the rope trailing from around his waist and leading forward, gradually fading from sight, but in the distance he saw what appeared to be an orange rip in the swirling green, which he took to be the backside of the vortex.
    As he tumbled randomly, he suddenly noticed another glint of orange ahead of him. Another vortex? It seemed to be drawing closer. In fact…
    The orange glow seemed to swallow him, and he realized that he had tumbled right into what seemed to be another tear in the fabric of whatever this place was — if indeed it was a place at all.
    He landed