Mike was in trouble. Big trouble.
It started with waking up sometime before dawn on the desert floor on the side of I-8 five miles west of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in his P.T. clothes. Absently picking up a half-eaten apple, which had been laying nearby on the dry, gritty desert earth, Mike started walking along with the early morning traffic roaring past him to his left with the rising sun at his back as he finished it.
Had he not been so dazed, he would have noticed that the apple was remarkable, a delicate lavender, with a golden blush to it.
It tasted of cinnamon and something else indefinable. Eventually he tossed the core into the dry ditch and slightly euphoric, started jogging.
Checking his watch about the time the sun peeked over the San Jacintos, Mike stopped his long, steady lope.
According to the date, it was Monday morning.
He took the watch off and shook it.
Which changed nothing. The second hand ticked doggedly around the dial as the increasing morning traffic thundered past.
It should have been Saturday morning.
The day's heat would be hours away making it a comfortable run around the base behind the main runways with their long stretches of low traffic roadways.
Instead, it was 06:00, Monday. He should have been airborne or in the classroom, not running along the side of the desert Interstate…
…off base.
…like an idiot.
…without so much as his wallet, dog tags, and I.D., or even a weekend pass.
Trying not to panic, Lt. Schmidt resumed his steady pace west, sorting out the bizarre images now fading in and out of his head. Something about candy colored ponies with wings… it was obvious that either he was having some sort of psychotic break or that somebody had drugged him and for reasons only known to them, dumped him out in the desert.
Mike seriously hoped that it was the latter and not the former. Either way, he was in big trouble.
He was picked up by a California Highway Patrol cruiser sometime around 06:30 as the day began to heat up in earnest, and delivered to the front gate where he was taken into custody for a little thing known as "Failure to Repair".
Oh.
Shit.