In the kitchen he filled a glass from the faucet and gulped. Gah. Tasted funny. Could water go stale? Maybe a little ice would help. He looked around for the refrigerator and didn’t see one.

No fridge? How was that possible? In fact, he didn’t see even a space for one. The kitchen had been laid out without a refrigerator. He went through all the drawers and cabinets and found glassware and dishes and utensils, but no canned goods or edibles of any sort except packets of thick crackers.

He unwrapped one of those and inspected it. Looked okay. No mold or anything like that. He bit into it. Damn. Like rock. He tried again and broke off a chunk. It tasted like…like nothing, really. A hint of salt but otherwise he might have been munching on a chunk of that broken plasterboard from the bedroom ceiling. So damn hard—

Wait. He’d done some research for a time-travel story he’d written that involved going back to the Civil War. This stuff was just like what soldiers ate back then—hardtack. Keep the crackers dry and they lasted forever. The soldiers use to soak them in water to soften them up and make them more edible. Hardtack was also what they fed prisoners back then.

Was that what this place, this town, this city was—a prison? But if so, where were the prisoners?

None of this made any sense.

He put the big questions aside. He’d figure them out later. Right now he had to master his immediate environment.

Even though he wasn’t hungry, which was odd because his usual routine was to graze all day, he knew he needed sustenance. He put a few crackers in a bowl and covered them with some of the stale water. While they were soaking, he figured he’d check out the apartment above again, the one that had been his in another time and place.

Going up, he marveled once more at the graffiti-free stairwell. Back in the apartment bedroom, the floor near the corner remained perfectly intact.

He wandered back to the front room. What was he going to do? How did he get back to his own reality?

He’d seen an elevator door down the hall. He checked and found it working. He hit the button marked L and the car headed down. A button below L was marked B but wouldn’t light. It had a keyhole next to it so maybe it needed to be unlocked before it worked.

The elevator let him out in some sort of lobby. Small. A couple of easy chairs and an empty reception counter. He spotted a door to a lighted office behind it but found it deserted. Filing cabinets and a desk sporting an old-fashioned mechanical typewriter, but no human. He checked the filing cabinets—empty.

His gaze wandered to the mechanical typewriter. Not even electric—totally manual. He pulled open a drawer in the desk and found a thick ring of keys, which probably opened every apartment. Another drawer contained a stack of typing paper. He stared at the paper a long time.