There followed a note from Cloud, in High Goetic.  His Goetic wasn’t perfect, but his message was clear.  He told me where all the money was hidden, in a language no one here and now could possibly know how to read.  After all, Goetica Arcana hadn’t happened here.  Or yet.  Or something. I compared dates on the note and the wall clock—weird that Pickering’s world’s electrical clocks display date as well as time.  They’d been gone three days, so I’d been not-exactly-dead for three days.  They’d be home by now. 

I sat and slumped across the table.  I was too tired to do anything. The living room held a long couch. I dragged myself to it and fell sound asleep.

Early the next morning I drifted out of deep sleep.  If I’d had dreams, I didn’t remember them. This isn’t home, I thought, the place I’d rather be, but it’s safe and warm.  Home was the keyword.  My presets triggered. I called astral projection, once again taking my mind out of body.  I wished that trick would get easier with practice, but it hadn’t.  Leaving my body, momentarily, would break almost any mind control traps someone had implanted in me. Mind scan sifted through my thoughts and memories, looking for things that did not belong.  The scan moved with the speed of thought, but it had a lot of mind to scan.  Meanwhile I floated a few inches above my face, listening my breath, slow and shallow, and staring into my unseeing silver eyes and platinum-white locks.