Author's Note: Oh God. This one damn chapter was so hard to write, it wasn't even funny. One thing I feel that I need to address: Doyle's accent. Let me just get this straight right now, I come from midwest America (Remember? The people shooting guns into the air and making moonshine? That's us.) and, therefore, while I know enough not to let Doyle say 'Y'all', I can't know the dialect of the lovely and miserably wet Emerald Isle. So after several ("Bloody hell!"- intensive) failures, I dropped the faux Queen's English and just went to plain American. So, if you actually live in England or Ireland, and you yell at the screen, "Doyle wouldn't say that! You suck! Blah-blah-blah-we-drive-on-the-left-side-of-the-road-cakes!" I'm sorry. If it's major, tell me and I'll try to change it.

Cheers!

On Into the Rabbit Hole...

The spirit has its homeland, which is the realm of the meaning of things.

Saint Exupery,The Wisdom of the Sands

"Oh no. Not here again."

The words echoed around him, rebounding off the walls of the glass city in multi-layered echoes. Somewhere off in the distance, churchbells tolled the witching hour.

He was standing on the same street in the same strange city as before. Vast, skyscraper-like buildings rose up above him. In fact, they could have belonged in L.A, or New York, or a dozen such cities across the globe. But for one exception. They were made of glass.

But not any type of glass that Doyle had ever seen. This glass caught the light streaming in the stars above, and twisted it so it gave the appearance of shape, and form, where there was none. He turned his head, ever so slightly, and the patterns of the light danced and re-settled, forming new patterns and shapes, so he could have sworn that the previous pattern had never existed.

He unglued his eyes from the buildings and looked for anything down the street, partially hoping, partially dreading to see the same strange woman in black, tickling the ivories of a old grand piano.

"Hello?" He yelled, not expecting a response.

He got what he expected.

"Is anybody here?" he shouted.

"Is anybody here?" the city yelled back.

Nobody.

He walked on down the street, his footsteps echoing off the walls around him. There were strange street signs on every conrner, but written in some language he couldn't understand. Since he couldn't read the signs, he decided to go straight. He noticed that the buildings were starting to show color now, a dart of crimson, or green, or violet, all which would disappear if you looked at them straight on. But if he just looked out of the corner of his eyes, he could see it.

As he walked further still, the colors became more vibrant, more happy, and he started to see them more clearly now. It was like the city was just having a good time. He could even almost hear jazz music playing in his head.

No. Wait. He wasn't just hearing the music in his head, he was hearing the music. Somebody, in this empty city, was playing jazz. With a good beat at that.

He felt his heart beat faster as he ran on down the street, excited. The colors in the buildings were practically dancing now, tapping their shades in rhythm to the tune. The buildings finally reached a cul-de-sac, and at the end was another building, it's brick facing out of place in the crystal city.

Above it was a blinking neon sign:

The Astral Bar & Grill

The jazz music was coming from the inside.

Well, Doyle did know bars. And since there was nowhere else in this city....

He walked to the door and pushed it open. Looking through the cigarette smoke haze, he saw the usual bar crowd. People smoking in corners, not talking much. People in large arguments over small amounts of cash. The scene freaked Doyle out, in the way that only ordinary things in unordinary places can. Seeing a bar in the middle of this city just seemed a little, anticlimactic.

Nevertheless, he strode on in.

Instantly the it all stopped. The jazz music, the conversation, everything. Every head in that place turned and looked directly at Doyle.

He got real nervous real fast, but continued on up to the bar. He seated himself, and signaled the bartender, who was washing an beer mug, seemingly oblivious to the bar's reaction to his presence. She walked over to him.

"What'll it be, hon?"

Doyle shot nervous looks around the bar. They reminded him of pirates. He had never liked pirates.

"Bourbon, please." he said, shakily.

The bartender seemed to consider this for a minute, and then shouted to the rest of the bar, "He's all right!"

Whatever she did, it worked. Gradually the stares went away and the conversations began again, as if he had never walked in. The bartender came back with his bourbon and poured him a shot. He drank it down greedily.

"You look like you had a rough night."

Doyle remembered the first dream, then the vision, then the fight, then the girl with the gun, and had to nod.

"How did you know?" he asked.

The bartender shrugged. "I know that look."

"So... Where am I?" Doyle asked taking another grateful sip of bourbon.

"In the Astral Bar & Grill."

"I know that. Where else am I?"

She gave him a sympathetic eye. "Don't worry. Everybody's a little confused when they first come here. You'll get it."

Doyle laughed, mainly to keep himself in good spirits. "I don't suppose you've ever heard of The Powers that Be?"

The bartender frowned and thought. "No. What are they? Some kind of gods?"

"Ah, you could say that. I'm a messenger. I was thinking maybe they brought me here."

"Now why would they do that?"

"Beats me. They're not big on telling people their game plan."

"So how did you get in?" asked the bartender, refilling his shot glass.

"I told you, I have no idea. I was just walking through the city-"

"You came in through the city? Current rider, huh?"

This didn't make sense to Doyle. "What?" he asked.

"You say you don't know how you got in. I'd bet you anything it was the current." Still seeing the look on Doyle's face, she went on. "This place isn't in the physical, honey."

"Physical?"

"Yeah, you got your physical body, your mental body, your astral body... That's what you're in now, by the way-"

"Wait wait wait," Doyle interrupted. "If I'm not here, then where's my body?"

She shrugged and lit up a cigarette. "Didn't you say it was lying dead in a ditch somewhere?"

"Yes."

"Then why aren't you getting back to it?"

Doyle looked at her like she had lobsters crawling out of her ears. "That's what I've been trying to do!"

"Doesn't look like that to me. All you've done is order a drink."

"Look lady, body or not, there's always time for a bourbon. But suppose you tell me how to get back to my world then?"

The woman chewed on her cigarette thoughtfully. "It's like this, see... your astral body's got strong tethers to your physical one, right? But sometimes you can stretch those tethers. Like when your mind wanders, and you go places, y'know? That's your astral body, going where the physical can't. But sometimes, when your astral body wanders off like that, it gets swept up by what we like to call 'The Current'. And then you wind up here."

Doyle looked around. "At the Astral Bar and Grill?"

"Nah. In this world."

Doyle considered what the woman had said. "I" he said, trying to was being shot at. That's not exactly the best relaxation technique."

The bartender shrugged her shoulders. "I hear they say that the prospect of imminent death relaxes the mind."

"So AK-47's instead of stress balls, right?"

"Whatever floats your boat."

"That's great..." Doyle said, rolling his eyes. "Look, I love the bar, love the drink, sticky floors, whatever, but I need to back into my body. Y'know, tell it to duck? So what do you have to do around here to get back to your real body? I don't think it's as easy as clicking your heels together three times and saying 'There's no place like home'?"

She cast him a wry smile, and said. "Okay, look. It's really easy-"

"Good." said Doyle.

"If you're the Bhudda."

"Oh."

"And you'll probably end up in a coma or a vegetable if you do it wrong."

"Sure." said Doyle. He did a double take. "What?!"

"Relax. I'll help" she said hastily. "Okay, first you've got to have something to focus on."

"How's about this bottle of bourbon?" Doyle suggested. "And exactly how many times have you done this?"

"With humans?" the bartender thought, chewing her lip. "You'd be the first."

"Ter-riffic." muttered Doyle under his breath. She heard him.

"Hey, it's not my fault that you people can't see what's staring you straight in the face! But you're a seer, which means you have a better chance than most."

"That's comforting. I think."

"Relax." assuaged the bartender.

"I'm a betting man. What are the odds of me coming through this in once piece?"

The bartender 'Hmmmm...-ed' and said, "The smart money's on your brain overloading on the way back, but you don't have much choice, do you?"

"I suppose you're right. What do I do?"

"First, we have to set up." she said. Out of nowhere a neon sign appeared, the message You Bet Your Life! glowing. Underneath, a chalkboard had appeared listing the various odds of Doyle's uncertain fate.

Spliched - Even money

Insanity - 1:3

Comes back, minus a limb or two. - 1:4

Comes back as a vegetable. - 1:10

If that vegetable is an eggplant. - 1:18

Botches it, destroys the world - 1:25

And then at the bottom, in tiny print.

The whole damn plan actually works. - 1:50

And in even tinier print.

The plan works, he gets to the bottom of this, becomes a hero, AND he gets the girl. - Any Takers.

This had attracted the attention of the patrons of the bar. Rowdy shouts of "Spliched! Spliched!" came from the back.

"Spliched?" asked Doyle. He hesitated. "What, exactly, is that?"

The bartender shrugged her shoulders. "Let's just say that you end up with the right bits... just in the wrong places."

All the blood drained from Doyle's face. He just had had a vivid mental image of him wearing his spleen for a hat for the rest of his life.

The bartender saw his reaction, and offered up a sympathetic bottle of rum. "Here kid. Have some of this. It'll steady your nerves."

Doyle looked at it, trying to ignore the stream of people wandering past his stool, placing there bets on whether he died or not.

She nudged the bottle of bourbon in front of Doyle's nose.

"Here, kid. I feel bad for ya, what with you about to die and all-"

"Hey, I've been almost killed twice this night. Why stop now when I'm just starting to enjoy it?" asked Doyle.

The bartender rolled her eyes. "Look kid, do you want help or not?"

"What've you got in mind, love?" asked Doyle, toying with the bottle of bourbon.

"The way I see it is this. Your astral body is gonna 'snap back' into your physical one any second now." She put up her hand. "That's what's gonna kill you."

"Go on." said Doyle.

"Well, it's like you just jumped off a skyscraper. The fall ain't gonna kill ya. The sudden stop will. Here it's the same way, only here the ground is your body. You don't get back to it right... splat."

"So how do I avoid, er... splat-ing." asked Doyle.

"Concentrate," said the bartender "on the bottle."

"You mean the bourbon bottle? Are you mad?!"

"Concentrate."

"Okay, okay..."

"That'll do. Now, look into the bourbon. What do you see?"

"A bottle of bourbon?" ask Doyle quizzically.

"Yes, but what do you see?"

"It's still bourbon."

"Come on." she cajoled "You're the Seer. What do you see?"

"Nothing. There's noth-" he spat, impatiently. Then he caught a flicker, and stopped speaking. The flicker of something that was there only for an instant, then it vanished.

Instantly, time seemed to slow. Off in the far, far, distance, he could hear the bets stop. The chips were down. Now it was time for Doyle to play his hand.

He relaxed, and let his mind wander. The bottle grew, and swelled, until it took up his entire field of vision. The amber liquid grew deeper, and darker, and darker, until he couldn't see anything. He was gripped by the heart-numbing cold of non-existence. The icy blackness wrapped around him, trying to strangle the warmth from him. He struggled, panicked, and as he did so the blackness stole more and more of him away.

Then at the last moment, from out of the darkness, he heard a voice that could have belonged to anyone, but it reminded him most of that bartender. A voice filled with an intangible wisdom.

"All reality starts out as empty space... then we just... fill it.

With that, the world suddenly snapped back into existence. Doyle opened his eyes.

And had no idea where he was.