Council Schedules and Cosmic Gates

You'd think traversing dimensions would exempt a man from the petty tyrannies of suburban existence. You'd be wrong. The wheelie bin sits beneath the kitchen window like a monument to mundane obligation, utterly indifferent to the fact that its owner has just returned from an alien world. The rubbish collection is still a week away. The garbage bags won't fit. And somewhere in another dimension, two men are waiting for firewood that Luke can't drive to collect because cars, apparently, remain his nemesis regardless of how many cosmic mysteries he's solved.

What follows is an education in creative problem-solving: Uber drivers bribed with crisp notes, textbooks repurposed as kindling, and a bright green thong planted in Jamie's suitcase purely for the satisfaction of watching him find it. Between the comedy of errors runs something sharper—Jamie's challenge about the driving, the unspoken tension that flares and fades, the longing that hides beneath banter because admitting it would require vulnerability neither of them can afford.

But the evening has one more surprise in store. As twilight deepens and Luke aims his Portal Key at the back gate, the impossible blooms larger than ever before—a revelation written in fractal light, promising that the rules of this strange new existence might be more flexible than anyone imagined. Sometimes progress arrives disguised as pizza orders and firewood logistics. Sometimes the miraculous hides inside the absurd, waiting for someone stubborn enough to stumble into it.