I'm going to tell you about something and you're not going to believe me, but that's ok, because I didn't believe it at first either. Not until I was standing on a Gallifreyan moon with an army of T-101 programmed with the combat prowess of King Leonidas himself charging at me did I really believe it. By then, it was probably too late.

My story doesn't start there however, it starts with the day I met Korbin Dallas on the bus.

Chap one

I had just gotten off a particularly shitty day at work. I didn't hate my job like most people, but I worked retail, which in some cases can be downright awful every minute. I had the small joy of selling video games which most people think is pretty cool. It's not, for the record… It's just like every other retail job, meaning it's about two percent video games, forty-nine percent cardboard boxes, thirty eight percent sweaty neckbeard money, all spiced with eleven percent "Can I speak to the manager?"

It could be much worse though, I could work somewhere I hated, like telemarketing, or banking. Somewhere the customers really despised you simply because of where you work. At least my customers are usually happy to see me. That day had been rougher than most because the week before I had taken a pretty nasty fall coming off the bus and sprained my ankle. It had been my first day back, and the work hadn't been too difficult, but by the end of the day if my ankle could have spoken it would have said "Fuck you, Dave." Since it was unable to be so articulate, it simply throbbed and made the bruises on my foot look angry and more purple than usual. I mostly took the twotwoeight home but this time the L bus arrived sooner and so I got on that instead. I hobbled to the back seat and stretched my leg out to relax it for the thirty five minute ride to my transfer in Broomfield. I had just pulled out my iPad to play a little FTL when the man across the seat caught my eye.

I hadn't noticed him at first because he had been slumped over, his forehead against the window. He looked rough. It was the only way to put it. His clothes were thrashed beyond recognition other than what my dad would have affectionately called a "wife beater", and that was almost brown with sweat as well as torn in several places. His arms had burns and bruises, and his knuckles were scabbed over. The side of his head that I could see was singed deeply into the hair and a pale white blister swelled from the scalp underneath. I had been about to dismiss him as one of the meth heads that you could find passed out on most any bus route in Denver when he repositioned himself. This gave me a better look at him and I almost wet myself when I realized that I was staring at Bruce Willis.

To be honest, I might not have recognized him if he had been wearing something that Bruce Willis would actually wear on a normal day. I'd seen the actor being himself before of course. At the Oscars. In Oceans Twelve. Various interviews about his roles over the years. But he never really looked to me like I thought he should look. He was fat, and bald these days, and he wore suits.

If Bruce Willis had been sitting on the bus in a suit I might not have known. I might have took one look at him and thought about how much of the education I could never afford to get that suit alone might have paid for, and then never really looked again.

But this wasn't Bruce Willis. He looked like he hadn't eaten in days and maybe this was his first sleep in longer. His short blonde hair was as dirty and disheveled as his clothes. He'd clearly been worked over at least once or twice recently, he had several fresh cuts. It was because of all this that I instantly recognized him. I'd seen Die Hard (all five of them) enough times to know John McClane when I saw him.

I sat staring at him, assuming this was a really good cosplay. There weren't any conventions in town that I was aware of though. If he hadn't looked so incredibly tired I might have asked him. I was still staring at the man when he suddenly opened his eyes and looked around. We briefly made eye contact and he pulled the cord for the bus to stop. His unbuckled boots hit the floor and within seconds he was stepping off.

I don't know what possessed me to follow him. In all the time since, I've contemplated that one instance a thousand times. That was my chance to take the blue pill. I'd never have gotten involved. Never known about their world. My life would have been arguably more boring, but I wouldn't spend every day fighting just to survive and save the ones I cared about.

I did though. I got up, thanked the driver and stepped out the back door, pretending to check my phone while I waited to see where he'd go. The doppelgänger looked around once, wiping his forehead with a poorly bandaged hand, and set off across the street for the recently abandoned Garden Mill apartments.

The wind had been pretty intense in Colorado this year, and combined with the rain, the shingles on the buildings had taken a pretty bad beating. Black squares littered the grass and the sidewalk was starting to sprout weeds, now absent any caretaker who might have cleaned them up. They weren't the nicest apartments before they had been abandoned and now everything just made me picture what might have happened twenty eight days earlier. I tried walking through it at night once. Just the once.

I turned down the sidewalk, looking at my iPad but really watching John (as I now thought of him) in the reflection as I tilted it. He was walking up to the empty buildings, surveying the windows and rooftops when he paused and pulled what was obviously a gun. I say obviously a gun because I had seen John McClane carry some manner of pistol more than I'd seen most anything else. I even happened to know John McClane carried a Beretta92. Bruce Willis was one of my favorite actors, second only to Gary Oldman, with RDJ running a close third, and Die Hard some of my favorite movies. I'd seen him run down corridors and sneak up on bad guys. Watched him reload, be disarmed, retrieve a weapon and take out the thieving terrorist thugs a dozen times. And I'd seen him asses a threat like he seemed to be doing now, pull out his pistol, keeping the muzzle low and his stance crouched as he craned his neck to look around the corner. That's how I knew it was a gun, and because if he had been holding a cellphone or a sandwich he would have looked pretty stupid.

This area wasn't far from my stomping grounds and so I knew that the sidewalk I was on would soon terminate into a dirt path, this path in turn led into a copse of trees that butted up against the red brick apartments. When John disappeared around the corner to building F I started running, stuffing my iPad into my bag as I went.

I got two steps; one on my good ankle, and one on my bad before I was face first on the pavement. My wounded limb burst into a stunning ballad of a song I imagine must have been titled "What in the actual Hell, Dave?" I laid where I'd fallen for a moment and wallowed in the pain.

I really had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know who this man was. I didn't know why he might have a gun, or be pretending to have a gun. I wasn't in any condition to be tailing anyone and I certainly shouldn't have been trying to run. I sucked my breath in through my teeth and pushed myself up, pulling my bag over. It had landed in the grass and my iPad was thankfully in one piece. It was just about the nicest thing I owned and I couldn't believe I had been so careless. I thought about getting up and limping back to the bus stop. The bus I'd meant to catch to begin with would be by in just a few minutes anyway and I could go home and bury myself in Minecraft. A couple episodes of Full Metal Alchemist and I'd probably forget all about John and his too real looking cosplay.

I stared at the little red sign for the bus stop for all of about ten seconds before I was staggering down the dirt path and into the stand of trees.