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me?”
    â€œI’ve got to get another job,” Paul blurted out, immediately realizing how stupid it sounded.
    â€œI’m here to give you a job,” Noah said in a calm voice, his hand holding the portal open. “The world is on the brink of disaster, and you are needed.”
    â€œWill I come back?”
    â€œYes,” Noah said. “You’ll be back here within a few minutes.”
    â€œThen why go?”
    â€œTime is relative. We’ll be over there for a few hours.”
    Paul looked around the apartment again, searching for reality anchors; looked out the window and up Eighth Avenue to the buildings, cars, and people hurrying from normal place to normal place in an entirely normal world. He looked at the perfectly normal clock on the wall, which said it was a normal time in the early evening, 5:25. And he looked at the portal.

Chapter Three
    Manmade Gods
    The doorway into another world stood open, shimmering and noiseless, the ghost of Noah standing next to it, his eyes unblinking, his eyebrows knitted together, his lips a thin slit. Was the look anger, or judgement, or hope, or some unfathomable emotion? Paul couldn’t guess, and he looked again at the portal, at the world beyond, which stretched off farther into vision than the buildings he could see outside his own living-room window.
    â€œAre you coming with me?” Noah said. His tone of voice implied to Paul that to do otherwise would be a terrible mistake.
    â€œOk,” Paul said, making a decision one part of him feared he may regret, but other parts knew intuitively was the right choice. At the very worse, it would make a heck of a story. His mind was dizzy, but his stomach wasnow calm, his heart certain, and he felt the muscles of his arms and hands and shoulders relax as the choice was made. He stood up.
    Noah stepped through the portal, walked a few paces on the sand in the world beyond the doorway, stopped, turned around and gestured with his hand for Paul to follow him. Paul walked through the portal, noticing as he did that his ears were filled for a moment with a sizzling sound. He stepped onto the sand and was surprised to feel it totally solid and substantial. As he walked to where Noah stood, he looked past him at the desert, stretching from horizon to horizon, the sky so huge and deep and blue it seemed to echo with depth and vastness.
    The air smelled fresh, the bright metallic taste of clean oxygen, tinged slightly with a note of distant wood-fires and a spice Paul couldn’t identify. The dryness of it cut the back of his nose and throat, and for a moment his eyes watered from the sudden change in humidity and light. The sun hit him with a palpable intensity, and he knew that if he didn’t find shade soon his skin would be burned. All around him was rock, sand, and scrub brush, an occasional tree that resembled the mesquite he’d seen in Arizona. On the far horizon he could make out the silhouette of what looked like several men leading heavily laden camels along a distant trail, and on the far horizon to his right what seemed like the beginningof a vast forest. In the distance to his left, he could see the shimmer of water in what looked like irrigation canals, and green fields filled with people tending whatever was growing there. He turned around, and saw through the portal his apartment in New York, and then with a slow fade the portal became fainter and fainter until it vanished, causing Paul’s heart to skip a beat.
    â€œHow will we get back?” Paul said, trying to control the panic he could hear in his own voice.
    â€œWhen we need the door, I can re-open it,” Noah said.
    Paul relaxed, believing him. He said: “Where are we?” Beyond the empty space where the portal had been, Paul could see a walled city of wood and stone buildings, bustling with activity, the center of the city occupied by a square fortress of tall wooden poles, over the top of which peeked a