High Expectations

"I thought that being high might make inter-dimensional travel easier to swallow. Turns out cannabis doesn't work that way."

I woke with a start, disoriented, the grey light of morning seeping through the blinds.

For a long moment, I couldn't place where I was. The ceiling above me was familiar but wrong somehow, my body stiff and cold beneath layers of clothing I'd never intended to sleep in. My neck had developed a crick from the awkward angle against the headboard, and my mouth tasted of stale breath and the particular sourness of a night spent without proper rest.

Then the pieces reassembled themselves. The house. Karl's surveillance. The long hours of darkness spent lying motionless, listening for sounds that never came. The cold that had seeped through the walls and into my bones. The thoughts that had circled and circled until exhaustion finally dragged me under.

I must have drifted off somewhere around four, maybe later. The last thing I remembered was staring at the ceiling, tracking the faint play of shadows from passing cars on Berriedale Road, counting the minutes between each set of headlights as if the intervals might reveal some hidden pattern.

My phone. Where was my phone?

I patted the mattress beside me, fingers brushing across cold fabric before finding the hard rectangle of the device wedged against my hip. The screen lit up at my touch, too bright in the dim room, and I squinted against the glare.

Time registered slowly, my sleep-fogged brain struggling to assign meaning. Then understanding crashed through the fog like cold water.

Shit.

Adrian. The Owens' property. I was supposed to be there in seventeen minutes, meeting the builder I had arranged, recruiting the construction expertise Bixbus desperately needed. And instead I was lying in yesterday's clothes in a cold bedroom, having almost slept through one of the most important appointments of the week.

I threw my legs over the side of the bed, wincing as stiff muscles protested the sudden movement. My feet hit the carpet and I pushed myself upright, swaying slightly as blood rushed to accommodate the change in position. The bedroom swam around me for a moment—the rumpled bed, the closed blinds, the bedside table with its scattered detritus of phone charger and water glass and the laptop I'd abandoned hours ago.

The window.

The thought cut through the fog of my waking, sharp and urgent. Karl. The car. The all-night vigil I'd been so certain he was maintaining.

I crossed to the window on legs that felt disconnected from my body, each step a conscious effort rather than automatic motion. My fingers found the edge of the blinds and parted them carefully.

Beyond the backyard, Berriedale Road stretched empty in the morning light. The dirt parking area across the road—the one that bordered the native bushland, the one where Karl's dark car had sat for hours like a patient predator—was vacant. Just packed earth and scattered gravel and the shadows of overhanging eucalypts, branches swaying gently in a breeze I couldn't feel from inside.

He was gone.

I stared at the empty space for longer than made sense, half-expecting the Commodore to materialise from behind a tree or roll into view from some hidden vantage point. But the road remained quiet. A magpie hopped across the grass verge, pecking at something in the damp earth. In the distance, a car passed along one of the connecting streets, engine note rising and falling with the Doppler shift. Normal sounds. Normal morning.

Karl had left. Given up, or been called away, or simply surrendered to the cold and the futility of his surveillance. Whatever the reason, the pressure that had pressed against my chest all night had lifted, leaving behind a strange hollowness that I couldn't quite name.

I moved through the house methodically, checking each window in turn. The front rooms first—the empty study where I'd transported furniture through the portal. The living room upstairs. Each window offered a different angle on the street, the neighbouring properties, the possible hiding spots a surveillance might use.

Nothing. No figures in parked vehicles. No sign that anyone was watching at all.

The relief should have been greater than it was. Instead, I felt oddly untethered, as if Karl's presence had been providing some kind of structure to my paranoia. Now that it was gone, I wasn't sure what to do with the vigilance that had kept me rigid through the night.

But I didn't have time to examine the feeling. I was almost late, and the appointment was approaching faster with every moment I spent staring out windows at empty streets.

I grabbed my phone from the bedroom and headed for the study.

The portal activated at my touch, colours swirling to life against the far wall. Purple and blue and green spiralling in patterns that still caught my breath despite everything—despite the urgency, despite the exhaustion, despite the growing list of complications that seemed to multiply faster than I could manage them.

I stepped through.

The portal site in Clivilius stretched before me, ochre dust and barren plains extending to the horizon. In the distance, Bixbus would be stirring into its morning routines. People moving between tents and caravans. Conversations happening. Questions being asked about where I'd been, what I'd been doing, when I'd return.

I didn't stop. Didn't look toward the settlement. Didn't allow myself to think about Paul's expression when he realised I'd avoided the bonfire last night, or Grant and Sarah's inevitable questions about their supposed two-week assessment, or any of the other complications waiting to ambush me if I slowed down long enough to engage.

Instead, I activated the portal again, focusing on the Owens' living room, and stepped through before anyone could notice my presence.

The cottage materialised around me. The familiar scent of eucalyptus and aged timber filled my nostrils, mixed with something fainter beneath it. Dust, perhaps, and the particular mustiness of a house that had stood empty too long. Karen and Chris had been gone for days now, and their absence was beginning to settle into the bones of the place.

Through the window, movement caught my eye. Gladys, in the garden, bent low among the flower beds. The sight was so incongruous—so utterly disconnected from the urgency of our situation—that I stopped and stared for a moment.

Why the hell is she picking flowers?

The question had no answer, or at least none that made sense. Gladys operated according to her own internal logic, a system of priorities and motivations that remained largely opaque to everyone around her. Questioning it rarely yielded satisfying answers.

Beyond the garden, parked beneath the sprawling canopy of a large gum tree, sat an unfamiliar ute. White, mud-spattered along the wheel wells, the kind of working vehicle that had seen actual work rather than serving as suburban decoration. Its owner leaned against the driver's door with the particular slouch of someone who'd been waiting longer than expected. A cigarette dangled from his lips, smoke curling upward in lazy spirals that dissipated in the morning air.

Adrian Pafistis. Builder. The man I had high hopes for that could help construct the infrastructure Bixbus desperately needed. The man I was now several minutes late to meet.

I took a breath, trying to compose myself into something resembling professionalism. My clothes were yesterday's, wrinkled from a night of restless non-sleep. I hadn't showered. Hadn't eaten. Hadn't done any of the things that might make me appear competent and trustworthy to a stranger I was about to ask to believe the impossible.

Just get through this. Get him to Clivilius. Figure out the rest later.

I headed for the front door.

The morning air hit me as I stepped onto the verandah—crisp and clean, carrying the earthy scent of damp soil and eucalyptus that defined Collinsvale in winter. The sky overhead had begun to darken, clouds rolling in from the west with the heavy promise of rain. The light had taken on that flat, grey quality that preceded storms, leaching colour from the landscape and making everything feel somehow less real.

"Hey there, Adrian!" I called out, forcing brightness into my voice. I offered him a wave and what I hoped read as an apologetic smile rather than the grimace of exhaustion it probably was.

Adrian's gaze tracked me as I descended the verandah steps, his expression unreadable. Up close, he was taller than I'd expected—lanky, with the kind of wiry build that came from physical labour rather than gym memberships. His face was weathered, creased around the eyes in a way that suggested either too much sun or too much squinting at things that didn't quite add up. The cigarette in his hand wasn't tobacco, I realised as I drew closer. The sweet, pungent scent of cannabis reached me on the morning breeze.

Gladys appeared at my shoulder, having abandoned her floral arrangements with surprising speed. Her footsteps were quiet on the soft ground, and I hadn't heard her approach.

"I think he's high as a kite," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

I glanced at Adrian again—the slightly unfocused quality to his gaze, the languid way he drew on his joint, the general aura of someone operating in a reality adjacent to the one everyone else inhabited.

"Good," I whispered back.

The word came out before I'd fully considered it, but there was logic underneath the impulse. Perhaps someone already experiencing a loosened grip on ordinary reality might accept the impossible more readily. Perhaps Adrian's chemical assistance had softened the boundaries enough that a portal wouldn't seem like madness. Perhaps, for once, I could just show him the truth and skip the shoving.

Maybe a more direct approach might work if he's high.

The ground squelched softly beneath my shoes as I crossed toward the ute. The grass was waterlogged from overnight dew, each step leaving dark impressions in the green. Overhead, the clouds continued their slow advance, the wind picking up enough to set the gum tree's branches swaying. Leaves rustled and whispered, a constant background susurrus that made the silence between us feel more pronounced.

"This isn't your property," Adrian said as I drew near.

His voice was clearer than I'd expected given his apparent state—sharp, with an edge that cut through the cannabis haze. He took another drag on his joint, the cherry flaring bright orange, then exhaled a plume of smoke that drifted between us like a gauze curtain.

"What am I doing here? Where are the Owens?"

The questions hit me like small stones, each one a reminder of how unprepared I was for this conversation. I'd spent the night lying in darkness thinking about Karl and Jamie and Melanie Bandy and a dozen other complications, and I hadn't spared a single thought for how I might explain the Owens' absence to a stranger who'd been asked to meet me on their property in their absence.

"I..." My hand waved vaguely, an unconscious gesture that accomplished nothing except to stir the smoke between us. "The Owens need your help."

"My help?" The scepticism was palpable. The joint paused at his lips, his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline in an expression that demanded better answers than I was providing.

I glanced back at Gladys, searching for support, for backup, for anything that might help me navigate this increasingly awkward exchange. She met my gaze with a shrug that conveyed nothing useful—no guidance, no suggestion, just the passive observation of someone watching a situation unfold without any particular investment in its outcome.

Good use you are.

The thought was unfair, probably. But in the moment, her unhelpfulness felt like betrayal.

You don't really need to care, I told myself, turning back to Adrian. You just need to get him to Clivilius. Leave no evidence behind, and everything will be fine.

The mantra felt hollow even as I repeated it internally. Nothing about this situation was going to be fine. I could feel it sliding sideways already, momentum building toward some conclusion I couldn't yet see but knew I wouldn't like.

"This is going to sound a little crazy," I said, forcing steadiness into my voice, "but we're all grown adults here, and I'm fairly confident you can handle the truth."

Adrian's response was a laugh that emerged as a cough, muffled by his exhale. Smoke billowed around his face, momentarily obscuring his expression, but when it cleared his eyes had hardened.

"You and your weird girlfriend here are the ones asking me to meet you on someone else's property, and you want to talk to me about truth."

"Girlfriend?" The word derailed me completely. I looked at Gladys. Nothing about our interaction, our body language, our relative positions suggested romance. We weren't even standing particularly close to each other.

"Just show him the Portal," Gladys interjected, cutting through my confusion with the blunt efficiency that characterised most of her contributions.

She was right.

I turned toward the small shed at the edge of the property, my feet finding the path without conscious direction. Behind me, I heard Adrian's footsteps following—hesitant, curious despite his hostility.

The Portal Key felt heavy in my pocket as I retrieved it. My fingers knew its weight, its texture, the particular way it needed to be held for activation. I'd done this before, countless times now, but each demonstration still carried risk. The wall before me was simple weathered planks, nondescript, the kind of surface that existed in a thousand sheds across Tasmania. In moments, it would become something else entirely.

I activated the Portal Key.

The colours exploded into being—swirling, buzzing, alive with an energy that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the visible spectrum. Purple and blue and green spiralled in patterns that defied the grey morning, casting dancing shadows across Adrian's face as the light played over his features. The effect was always stunning, no matter how many times I witnessed it. Reality itself seemed to bend around the portal's edges, the ordinary world receding as something impossible took its place.

"That's where the Owens are," I said, attempting to inject casual authority into my voice. As if inter-dimensional portals were perfectly ordinary. As if this was nothing more remarkable than pointing out a back door.

"Fuck me!" Adrian stumbled backward, his joint slipping from suddenly nerveless fingers. He caught it at the last moment—instinct overriding shock—but his eyes never left the swirling vortex. His face had gone pale beneath its weathered tan, the blood draining away as his brain struggled to process what his eyes were reporting.

"I know I'm a little high," he said, his voice unsteady, "but it's not a fucking psychedelic."

"I need you to walk through that and help them with a small building job. It won't take very long." The lie tasted sour even as I spoke it. "They've already got all the materials. They just need your skills."

For a moment—just a moment—I saw something shift in his expression. Curiosity, maybe, or the particular openness of a mind already unmoored from ordinary expectations. The portal's colours reflected in his eyes, painting his features in shifting hues of impossible light.

Then the shutters came down.

His face hardened, the wonder draining away like water through sand, replaced by something cold and certain. Whatever door had briefly cracked open had slammed shut again, and behind it I could see the walls going up—the rational mind reasserting itself, rejecting what it couldn't accept, choosing the comfort of disbelief over the terror of truth.

"You must think I'm a fucking nutter."

He was already moving before I could respond, turning away from the portal with the deliberate motion of someone physically rejecting what they'd seen. His long legs carried him toward his ute with surprising speed, gravel crunching beneath his boots, smoke still trailing from the joint he'd somehow managed to keep lit.

My heart sank as I watched him retreat. The weight of failure settled over me, familiar and unwelcome, pressing against my chest with each step he took away from the shed.

What a bloody stupid idea this was.

The direct approach had been worse than useless. Whatever openness his altered state might have provided had been overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of what I'd shown him. I'd miscalculated badly, assumed that loosened inhibitions would translate to loosened scepticism, and instead I'd probably traumatised a man who'd only come here expecting a construction job.

"Adrian! Wait!" I chased after him, desperation lending urgency to my voice. But he was already at the ute, his hand on the door handle, his body angled away from me in clear rejection.

The door slammed shut with a finality that echoed across the quiet property. The engine roared to life—too loud in the morning stillness, an angry sound that matched the set of his shoulders and the tension in his jaw.

His window wound down, and he leaned out just enough to deliver his parting assessment.

"But I think you two are the fucking whack jobs!"

Then the ute was pulling away, tyres churning gravel, leaving Gladys and me standing in a cloud of dust and failure.

"Shit!" The word exploded from me, raw and unfiltered. I spun to face Gladys, every ounce of frustration and disbelief finding a target.

"What the hell just happened!?" she demanded. "I thought you knew what you were doing."

"Fuck off, Gladys! I'm not perfect." The anger in my voice was directed as much at myself as at her, but she was here, so she bore the brunt of it. I began pacing in tight, aimless circles, feet wearing a path in the damp grass, hands clenching and unclenching at my sides. Each step was a futile attempt to walk off the embarrassment, the frustration, the growing awareness that I'd handled this about as badly as it was possible to handle anything.

"What do we do now?" Gladys's voice shifted, the accusation giving way to something closer to genuine concern. "Do you think he'll tell anybody about what he saw?"

I forced myself to stop pacing, to think past the immediate catastrophe toward something resembling a plan. My pulse was still elevated, adrenaline still coursing through my system, but beneath it all the analytical part of my mind was already working the problem.

"Doubt it. He already thinks we're crazy. He'll likely rationalise it as just a hallucination of sorts."

The cannabis would help with that, at least. Whatever Adrian had seen, his altered state provided a convenient explanation—one his rational mind would likely grasp with both hands rather than accept the alternative. I was high. I imagined it. Those people were insane. A comfortable narrative that preserved his understanding of how reality worked.

"So we just let him go, then?"

I resumed pacing, my circles tightening, my thoughts spiralling inward. Adrian had seen the portal. He knew something impossible existed. Even if he dismissed it as hallucination, the memory would remain—a splinter lodged beneath the skin of his reality, working its way deeper with every attempt to ignore it. Loose threads like that had a way of unravelling at inconvenient moments.

And beyond the security concerns, there was the practical matter. Bixbus needed builders. Needed skilled tradespeople who could transform raw materials into shelter, infrastructure, the physical foundations of a functioning community. Adrian represented expertise we couldn't easily replace, skills that might take weeks to find elsewhere, time we didn't have.

My eyes stung—exhaustion, frustration, the particular burn of tears I refused to let fall. The weight of everything pressed against my chest: the failed recruitment, the police scrutiny, Karl's surveillance, Jamie's absence, the Ironbachs' doomed optimism, all of it piling up faster than I could process.

I stopped pacing. The decision crystallised in my mind with sudden clarity, born not from reason but from the simple refusal to accept defeat.

"No. We're going after him."

"We are?" Gladys's voice carried surprise and something that might have been alarm.

"Come with me, Gladys. You're driving."

I was already striding toward her car before she could protest, my legs carrying me forward with a purpose I didn't entirely feel. Behind me, I heard her footsteps following, her muttered commentary lost to the wind that had begun to pick up, carrying the first hints of the storm the clouds had been promising all morning.