It was a quiet, sunny afternoon in the sand dunes of the Hurghada desert.

  The air was dry, and the heat was palpable, a clear sign that summer was making its way through, and the last vestiges of spring were slowly getting pushed away.

  Still, the cloudless skies as far as the eye could see, the reddish yellow desert sand, untouched, unrelenting, like an ocean, with dunes as its waves. It was a place of serenity. A picturesque sce–

  *VROOOOM*

  “Hey Jackson, you gonna find that 2nd gear one day?” Matt mocked his friend.

  “Dune buggies have no gearshift!” Jackson retorted lamely.

  “Oh, my bad! I didn’t think you were stuck at turtle speed by choice!” Matt replied, keeping the mockery on.

  Jackson was one of Matt’s closest friends. They had known each other for a few years, and ever since the first day, it was obvious they were gonna be good friends. He was a tall, hulking man with a body to match. He had a bald head and a slightly long, neatly trimmed, red beard, even though he wasn’t ginger. His green eyes, broad shoulders and chiseled features complimented his looks immensely. He was a good looking man, that much was for sure.

  He always had a smile on his face, making him feel even more approachable, with a heart of gold to boot. He was the nicest, most gentle person you could ever meet. Which made him the perfect target for Matt’s endless teasing and shenanigans!

  “You do know that you flipped over three times already? THREE,” Jackson yelled to Matt. It was obvious that he was getting to him.

  “And I’m still ahead of you. What does that say about you? WOOOOO” Matt cheered in the empty desert, laughing as he started pulling further ahead.

  “That I’m not suicidal? And that I don’t want a broken bone on our first week here?” Jackson answered, not getting baited by Matt’s antics, yet.

  “That you suck at having fun is what it says!” Matt teased, laughing audibly.

  Matt, on the other hand, was fairly average looking. Slightly uncombed jet black hair, brown eyes, not too fat, not too slim, tall enough, at least according to him, and with a face and features that no one would call memorable. He wasn’t bad looking or anything, but he definitely didn’t turn any heads the same way Jackson and Izzy did anywhere they went.

  “I’ll show you fun,” mumbled Jackson good naturedly under his breath as Matt's teasing finally egged him now, making him decide that maybe living in a world where Matt would keep pestering him wasn’t worth the effort.

  Izzy met Matt 3 years ago when he had started working at the same engineering firm she and Jackson did. She had already met Jackson a year earlier when she started working there herself, and immediately hit it off and became great friends. It was hard not to love the man.

  While Jackson was a kind and gentle soul, Matt was always up to something, and his shenanigans always got them into trouble, something that somehow fell on her to bail them out of. Which is to say they were all incredibly close friends. So, when Matt suggested going to Egypt for a couple of weeks to unwind, she thought it was a great idea. The last project had completely drained all three of them. It took over a year to finish everything because the client’s wife kept adding and changing details almost on a daily basis. It was always something she had found on social media, and even though she claimed it every time, none of them were ‘innovative’. Still, what the client wanted, the client got, no matter how ridiculous it was.

  After that, she was all in for the much needed vacation in a calm, stress free environment, where she could just relax and unwind, but apparently Matt had other plans for her.

  Izzy slowly descended the dune towards her two friends. She could hear them laughing and throwing jabs at each other.

  She stood a foot away from their buggies, took off her sunglasses and started her daily lecture… for the fourth time that day.

  “Come on Izzy, lets ride some dune buggies, relaxing by the pool or in the spa is boring, we wanna have fun, no we won’t turn it into a dick measuring contest, yes of course we will be safe and responsible, yes we promise,” Izzy mockingly recounted the conversation to the two morons lying on the scorching sand laughing like idiots.

  Izzy stared daggers at them, and then at their flipped over dune buggies. Matt, amazingly, has managed to flip over for the fourth time that day, this time, by trying to jump from one dune to the other at top speed, which failed spectacularly as a normal person would expect, at which point he ended up under his buggy…. AGAIN. Then, when Jackson proceeded to make fun of him for being an idiot, he dared him to do it.

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  She, in her naivete, thought that Jackson would definitely decline, since he wasn’t that easy to goad, nor did he have a death wish. Oh, what a sweet summer child she was. Jackson simply got on his buggy, and less than a minute later, found himself under it. At which point he pulled himself out, made his way to Matt, who was lying on the scorching sand, dropped next to him, and they proceeded to laugh like idiots.

  She stopped lecturing, or venting depending on how one looked at it, after a few minutes. Matt and Jackson, who didn’t look even slightly apologetic, started making fun of one another, each claiming the other had failed in a more spectacular manner. They then proceeded to ask her to be the judge, doing their best impersonation of ‘puppy eyes’. She couldn’t help but crack a smile at their antics. They were idiots, but they were her idiots.

  As Matt lay there on the sand, laughing and coughing, struggling to catch his breath, he saw Izzy slowly approach them. He looked at Jackson, and they both knew what was coming, which made them laugh even harder, which definitely didn’t help, judging by Izzy’s irritated look.

  Izzy was, by all definitions of the word, a gorgeous woman. Her striking blue eyes and long blonde hair, along with her delicate features and slim figure, made her look like a princess, and her black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu made her able to kick your ass if you thought she was a princess. And that combination of beautiful but deadly was slowly walking towards them…

  Matt and Jackson braced themselves for a lecture… or a beatdown… or both, definitely both.

  She took off her sunglasses and lowered her desert scarf as she proceeded to reprimand them for their irresponsible and childish behavior, along with how this was the opposite of stress free.

  Matt had heard the same lecture three times already in the last few hours, so he decided to tune out and enjoy the moment. The sun on his face, the soft yet warm sand, and his two closest friends next to him. It was safe to say, this was the happiest he had ever been, and he wanted to savor every second of it.

  Eventually, Izzy was done lecturing them. Jackson extended a hand to Matt to help him get up after Izzy begrudgingly admitted that Matt’s attempt was the more spectacular of the two failures, at which point they started the tedious task of getting their buggies back on their wheels, Jackson doing most of the heavy lifting, with Matt putting in an admirable effort.

  Once they were upright and ready to go, they heard the loud motor of another dune buggy approaching.

  “Looks like Amir has finally caught up to us,” Matt very helpfully remarked. “Hey man! What took you so long? We’ve been waiting forever and were starting to get worried you might be lost!” Then proceeded to shout towards Amir as soon as he was within earshot.

  Amir looked at their disheveled looks, sand all over them, and the less than pristine looking buggies and narrowed his eyes suspiciously, definitely not believing they were just “waiting”.

  “We should head back now, we are already too far,” Amir told them, ignoring the state of both them and the buggies… for now.

  “Lead the way,” replied Matt as they got back on their dune buggies, ready for the long, uneventful trek back.

  The trek back wasn’t short, but it was taking longer than it should've. They’d been driving for more than 40 minutes and still no sign of the encampment where they had gotten their buggies, the city, or the sea, it was just an endless desert. Were they lost? It couldn’t be, Amir was part of this region’s bedouin tribes. He was born and raised here and had lived his entire life in the desert. He practically had the whole nearby desert memorized. Still, to get some peace of mind, he decided to ask. “Hey Amir, we’ve been driving for a while. Any idea how much further?”

  “Something is not right,” Amir said worryingly. “It’s like we are stuck in place even though we keep driving forward.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Izzy with a tinge of concern in her voice.

  Amir slowly stopped, which prompted the rest to stop as well. He got on top of his dune buggy and looked around. The 3 of them made their way to him, anxiously waiting.

  He pointed in the general direction they had been driving. “This is the right way. I’m certain of it. But no matter how much we drive or how far we move, nothing is getting any closer. Like we are driving in place,” he told them, not easing any of their worries.

  “How is that even possible? Are you sure we’re not just lost?” Izzy asked, worry now evident in her voice.

  Amir instantly snapped his neck towards her and glared in response. “We are not lost. Do you get lost in your apartment when you are going from the bedroom to the bathroom?” He countered clearly not liking what she had implied.

  “If my apartment was a fucking desert, yeah I’d get lost,” Izzy answered obviously not convinced.

  “Well, we don’t,” Amir replied, unfazed by her remark. “That way is east, and that is the area we came from. Even if we were lost, we should see the sea after all this driving, but still nothing.” He added, biting his nails, seemingly a bit worried despite his previous bravado.

  “So what’s the plan? Do we keep driving east then?” Matt asked.

  “Yes,” Amir answered. “We are already very late. The tribe should have sent people already to look for us,” he added.

  Matt couldn’t say that he was entirely convinced, but his knowledge on the subject was minimal at best. The bigger issue was the gas, they were running out of it, which meant they were running out of time.

  As the thought crossed his mind, something flashed in his vision, startling him. A blue box was flashing in front of Matt with a message written in white.

  System Message

  The integration of planet Earth into the system as part of the 11th universe has commenced.

  Please standby. You will soon be teleported into a tutorial zone.

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