Chapter 1: Day 0

Even as Steve Miller began to awaken, he realized something weird was going on. Normally, he awoke quickly and easily. This time, he was groggy, and felt like his brain was wrapped in cotton.

He was lying on his back, which he never did. He always slept on his stomach, or on his side; his sinus problems meant that sleeping on his back resulted in snoring, which resulted in his wife poking him until he rolled over. Twelve years of marriage made avoiding his back completely automatic.

There was also the fact that he usually slept in a cut-off pair of sweat pants, or less if he was on the road; he seemed to be wearing some kind of cross between pajamas and a martial arts gi. And to the best of his recollection, he didn't own any clothing in a blue and red pastel rose print.

Finally, there was the minor fact that the last thing he remembered wasn't going to bed, but sitting at a roadside picnic table staring at a road map as he tried to decide the best way to get around some road construction on his way home.

Sitting up, he looked around. He was laying in a ridiculously large bed, in what looked like a typically anonymous hotel room. The only things missing were the generic art prints, and a large window with a lousy city view. Interestingly, the wallpaper matched his oddly-patterned clothing. Instead of a door, there was an open archway, through which he could see a long hallway, and hear the babble of assorted voices.

He rose from the bed, and walked through the doorway. There were several other open archways along the length of the hall, leading to rooms similar to the one he'd found himself in. A striking young woman with red hair and pale complexion was entering the hallway through one of them. She was wearing an outfit similar to Steve's, though she looked much better in hers than his 45-year-old frame must look in his.

The young woman started slightly as she saw Steve and asked in a soft Irish lilt, "Can you help me? I'm afraid I'm dreadfully confused. The last thing I remember, I was sitting on a rock, taking a little break on the desert walk."

Steve shook his head. "I'm afraid we're both in the same boat, young lady. Last thing I knew, I was sitting alongside the road in central Indiana, which is a good distance from the nearest desert. The name's Steve Miller, by the way."

The woman snorted. "'Young lady!' Well young man, you've obviously remembered how to smooth-talk the ladies, even if you can't remember anything else. I'm a grandmother, I'll have you know."

Steve was about to reply in kind (though he wasn't a grandfather yet), when he suddenly realized that the familiar aches he felt when he first got up in the morning were missing. He looked down at himself, for the first time, and realized that not only was his skin young-looking, and his trucker's tan missing, but that the scars on the back of his hand from that bicycle accident in college were missing. He looked back up in shock at the woman, who saw his expression and said, "What is it?"

"Look at your hands," Steve replied. As she did so, and her face grew puzzled, then frightened, he continued, "If I had to guess, I'd say you're not a day older than 25, at the most. In fact, back in my bar-tending days, I've have carded you on the spot. I'm 45 years old, myself, but I'm guessing I don't look that way at the moment."

Visibly trying to calm herself, the woman replied, "No, Steven, you don't. I'm Mary O'Rourke, of Dublin, Ireland. I was on a desert walk outside of Phoenix, Arizona, and feeling every one of my 72 years. Next thing I know, I'm lying in bed. And now I'm talking to a young man who looks 20 and claims to be twice that."

Nodding his head down the hallway to where a babble of voices could be heard, Steve said. "If we head that way, I suspect we won't find any answers, but we'll most certainly find more people with questions."

"Quite the optimist, aren't you Steven?" Mary said with a faintly sarcastic tone, softened by the faint smile in her eyes. "Still, it sounds like an excellent idea to me."

Steve found himself quite charmed by Mary. He had been happily married for over a decade (he'd started quite late) and was genuinely uninterested in straying. He'd formed quite a few strong friendships with women since his marriage, despite the difficulties he'd had before that. Going 'off the market' had made it drastically easier to talk to women, even ones as attractive as Mary.

On a whim, Steve offered Mary his arm. Having felt the same unusual attraction to Steve as he had to her, she took it, and they walked down the hall towards the voices.

Entering a large open area, they found a small crowd of women, in several groups, who seemed to be busily discussing the fact that they didn't know what was happening, and that they hadn't found anyone who did. The confusion level was compounded by the fact that it was going on in several languages.

A pair of young Hispanic ladies were next to the wall opposite where Steve and Mary had entered. Clockwise from them, two Chinese-looking girls were talking somewhat suspiciously with a dark black-skinned young woman, while a teen-aged black girl stood by looking puzzled. A light-skinned black woman was talking to a young Japanese in the corner next to the entrance, and in the opposite corner sat a young white woman with black hair and an irritated expression on her face. Seeing Steve and Mary, she rose and stalked towards them, asking what sounded like pointed questions in what sounded like French.

Steve dug back into his fading memories of high school, and produced a somewhat halting "Parlay vous Anglais?"

The woman's mouth snapped shut, an angry frown settled on her face, and a simple "Non" issued forth.

Mary gestured to herself and said "I'm Mary," then pointed to Steve and said, "and this is Steve."

"Mary, Steve" was the reply, with each name followed by a nod in the appropriate direction. Pointing to herself, she said "Danielle," followed by a spate of French the only word of which Steve recognized was "Merde". Unless he missed his guess, that meant "shit."

Not wanting to be rude, but having nothing to say to the woman, Steve looked at Mary, shrugged, and moved towards the largest group of women, the Chinese and (apparently) African pairs. The French speaker shrugged as well, and followed along as well.

At Steve's approach, the black woman who'd been doing most of the talking paused, then turned to him and said something in an inquiring tone in a language he didn't recognize. When he responded by saying, "Hello, my name is Steve, and this is Mary and Danielle," she switched to English, and replied, "Hello, Steve, Mary. My name is Nytoya. I've already met Danielle, but I'm afraid we don't have any languages in common, so we didn't converse very much." Gesturing in turn to the young black girl, and then to each of the Chinese women, she introduced Abema, Chen Li-Shu ("who answers to 'Li'"), and Hosen Kosai ("who's called 'Ko'").

A quick discussion followed, wherein it became clear that Nytoya (1) had been educated in Britain, (2) spoke several dialects of Chinese and several African languages, well enough to have extracted the names of the girls and discover something about their (minimal to non-existent) education and awareness of the outside world, and (3) was at least as ignorant about what was going on as Steve and Mary were. (If Danielle knew anything, it was still locked away behind the language barrier.)