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I have ulcers like you would not believe. Everyday a new worry and stress. It’s my work. I worry my work is going to end the world. That one day the very thin reality between our world and that many layered pseudo-reality of Bunburyland, that concoction of fantasy and story and bad acid beneath the streets of the city I live and work in, will wear through and puncture, and Bunburyland, being vaster yet constrained in a smaller space will leak out into our world, the way the creamy filling of a giant sponge cake might leak out, flowing through the city, hot and burning and too yellow.

But I pretend things are going good. I pretend to my wife and kids when I get up in the morning to go to work. I pretend at the cafe on the corner where every morning I get an espresso, the cheapest one they have and tip a single euro. I make good money but there is no need to waste what one has.

I pretend on the funicular, and then on the bus, and then I am walking on to the construction site wearing a hard hat and waving at people like I am a construction worker. The construction workers wave back, they like to wave, there’s no real work to do down here, so waving passes the time. They are pretending they have something to do here and they know me, and I am pretending I am one of them with nothing to do. We all pretend.

The construction site does not do any construction, it has been shut down for years, decades now, there is always a new regulation that comes up or a monetary problem that means nothing can be done, or some Roman coins that are found, it really doesn’t matter, it is the way we want it. Maybe someday we will allow things to proceed again, move the project, there has been some discussion of moving it to some place in the USA, a town named something ridiculous like Sargotta or Carcinoma in Florida

But as things look today this vast governmental project will never progress beyond the barricade of stone that surrounds the open hole in the ground. I descend along the paths that circle into the ground where there is nothing, I cross between the inconspicuous pylons and access the secret door and enter the long white corridors beneath the earth, built by Illuminati Ganga, for purposes that are beyond my pay grade. I am just the guy who has to keep the world from ending, how am I to know why things are the way they are?

I have been arriving later this past week. I hate being here. If reality ends I will be among the first engulfed by fantasy, it is a dangerous thing, when a magical atmosphere is exposed to the mundane, it can be highly volatile, incendiary. You might in surprise say the wrong syllables and explode a wall, or call down eternal darkness by drinking your soda water widdershins. Who knows? We have of course done isolated and small experiments to see what kinds of things might be expected to happen — hence my incredible ulcers.

But no matter how late I arrive I always do arrive, and always it seems at a moment of extreme unluckiness and distress.

This morning there is a small crowd gathered around the screen that has been set up to attempt to capture Agent 99’s movements, the screen has been less than successful but it seems that if people are gathered in front of it now, then it follows that it has caught up with him again and we can see him.

I probably shouldn’t be so derogatory of the screen, it is based on my ideas, my code, my math, my theories, it is a technical marvel. It barely works, but that barely is a miracle. But if I can’t bad mouth it who can.

“Funziona adesso?” I ask coming over behind, “Si” answers Piero, Agent 74, somewhere from within the huddled group. The way he says Si interests me and I push my way in to see.

It is amazing.

Agent 99 is walking down some circling stairs, a slight chill can be felt seeping into our bones from the crystal screen in front of us. I look over at Agent 74, his glasses are wet from the increased condensation generated via the interaction of our two realities. There are flashes of heat and then cold again.

This is the best view we have had in months. This moment is important, evidently.

There are all sorts of distortions of reality in what comes through, the side effects of the technology trying to map through to the possibilities of existence in Bunburyland, essentially this is a mathematical process based on how dreams and the shared psychic dreamland of cognizant life on this planet function.

It is not really a transmission from Bunburyland that is taking place, the Earth, no, our local solar system does not possess enough energy to make that possible, it is in fact a dream of what is happening in Bunburyland at the moment, but because the statistical probabilities of what is happening in that other reality at this moment is within only a small deviation from the possibilities presented by the dream the screen renders it, when the dream and that other reality diverge too much or too quickly it will collapse into static and noise.

The point of view moves back and forth a lot, sometimes it is above him, and then in front of him and in back, at one point it moves far back and I see the Protervus is following him, the stairwell is sort of narrow for it, and its copper sides scrape the stone badly at points. Like all dreams the time is strangely assembled, it will go over the same bit multiple times to show it from different angels, so even though it should take maybe a minute at most to descend these stairs it is taking a long time, going back and forth, showing the weave of his jacket, focusing on the pattern on his hat, the clanking tread of the Protervus on the stone steps and the sharpness of its cold iron claws.

“Cosa è successo?” I ask, I assume this has been playing some time otherwise it would not have such a crowd.

“Hanno assassinato un..” a pause “un elfo” and then someone else corrected and said “era un nano”, so either he or rather he and the Protervus together killed a dwarf or elf of some sort. Maybe a goblin. Would make more sense considering the original constraints of the mission.

“Dove Sono” I asked, here Agent 110, the Russian fellow who transferred in a week before answered in English, which was a blessing because his Italian accent was even worse than the English “They Are going down in… The Hallway For The King of Mountain”

The point of view shifts into a thousand broken views, as though seen through the compound eyes of a fly. People hold their breaths, it is probably going to break down now. But it goes back to single view, they are still going down the stairwell, and they are coming out of the end into the swirling mists of the halls of the Mountain King. I should go make a report, this is important but I don’t want to miss anything, as they step into the mist the room grows suddenly cold around us, the screen cracks like ice splintered by a boot, and the image turns completely black. The technicians have their work cut out for them.

People sigh and move off, I go to write up the reports and contact America. I can feel the acids in my stomach sloshing around, I groan.

I hate my job.

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