Unlock the Doors to Adventure and Absurdity!

Have you ever wondered what lies beyond the everyday, beyond the ordinary? What if you could step into a world where nothing makes sense, yet everything is somehow connected? Welcome to The Doorways to Somewhere Else, a journey through reality’s most bizarre twists and turns. In this wildly imaginative and laugh-out-loud science fiction comedy, you’ll discover that the only thing you can rely on is the unexpected—and sometimes, that’s the best thing of all.

Imagine this: You’re Ted, an ordinary man suddenly thrust into a universe full of doorways to worlds stranger than you could ever dream. You’ll traverse realities where time flows backward, where food is alive and having existential crises, and where everything around you is subject to the whims of the universe’s most confusing laws. Through it all, you’re not alone. Vince, your enigmatic (and occasionally useless) guide, accompanies you. He’s lived through it all—and his advice is either terribly confusing or far too cryptic for anyone to understand.

But The Doorways to Some Other Place is more than just an adventure—it’s a philosophical rollercoaster. Each world Ted visits offers a new perspective on life, choice, love, and, perhaps most importantly, the true meaning of home. As Ted stumbles through time loops, confronts his past with ex-girlfriends, and faces off with sentient clouds pondering the very nature of existence, you’ll find yourself laughing at the absurdity while being forced to ask the big questions: What if life, much like Ted’s journey, is not about the destination? What if the real adventure is learning how to embrace the chaos?

Through Ted’s seemingly endless misadventures, you’ll find a reflection of your own life—the unpredictability, the absurdity, and the moments of clarity that come only when you’re least expecting them. Ted’s struggle to make sense of the senseless will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to figure out what it all means. Is there a greater purpose? Or is the point simply to enjoy the ride while it lasts?

This book is for anyone who has ever wondered if they were in the right place, at the right time—or, if perhaps, everything is simply a series of happy accidents. It’s for anyone who has felt like life’s answers are just out of reach, yet somehow still manages to find humor in the struggle. Whether you’re a lover of science fiction, absurd comedy, or existential musings wrapped in bizarre adventures, The Doorways to Somewhere Else offers something uniquely delightful.

So, what are you waiting for? Step through the first doorway. Embrace the unknown, the absurd, and the downright hilarious. Ted’s journey might just make you rethink everything you thought you knew—about life, about yourself, and about the strange, beautiful chaos that surrounds us all.

Grab your copy today. After all, you never know which door might lead you to your next great adventure.

Sample

Ted Thistleberry had always considered himself to be a man of rather conventional tastes. A steady job, a fairly neat apartment (with only a moderate number of socks missing their pairs), and a consistent, though rather uninspiring, diet of pre-packaged frozen dinners. Life, for Ted, was a series of largely predictable events that could be neatly categorized into things like “morning commute” and “light evening TV.” Sure, he occasionally found himself staring blankly at the same section of the supermarket shelf for five minutes, unsure whether he’d already chosen the spaghetti sauce or had only imagined it. But these small lapses in his routine were minor, easily corrected with a deep breath and a casual shrug.

It was on one of these routine evenings that Ted stumbled upon the room.

It was an odd thing, a room that was apparently, entirely hidden. And by “hidden,” I mean it was not so much a physical secret—because Ted’s house was nothing special, certainly not the sort of place where one might expect secret rooms to suddenly spring up—but rather, it seemed to be one of those rooms that wasn’t supposed to exist. Ted wasn’t sure why it hadn’t been there five minutes ago, but as he swung open a door that he’d never quite noticed before, there it was.

The room was entirely white. Or perhaps not white—more of a soft, creamy color that looked almost like a cloud that had just woken up, stretched its arms, and realized it had nowhere to be. The door was white and the walls were devoid of any decoration, furniture, or even the usual scuff marks one might find in a room that had been lived in. It was… well, a bit too perfect, which was precisely what Ted noticed first.

He stepped inside, and a peculiar sensation washed over him. It was as if the room were… alive? No, that wasn’t it. It was as though the room was outside the normal flow of time itself. The edges of the walls seemed to blur slightly, and when Ted blinked, it didn’t seem to matter. Time was neither slow nor fast. It was simply irrelevant. He had no idea how long he’d been standing there. It could have been seconds or hours, but it made no difference. The room existed, and that was that.

And then he saw it. In the far corner of the room, glowing softly, was a door. Now, Ted had certainly been in his house long enough to know that it was, without a doubt, not a door that had previously existed. The very sight of it was enough to make him take a cautious step back, as if the door might suddenly turn into something far more dangerous, like an angry refrigerator or an existential crisis in the form of a doormat.

The door seemed to shimmer, a bit like the reflection of water when you’re far enough away not to quite trust it. Ted, a man who liked to consider himself reasonably intelligent, was aware of exactly two things at that moment: one, there was definitely a door, and two, the door probably wasn’t going to lead to the linen closet (which, incidentally, he had once gotten stuck in as a child for a full three hours, though that was a story for another time).

But before Ted could decide whether to back out of the room and perhaps return to his frozen lasagna, a voice called out to him. It wasn’t an alarming voice, nor one that would suggest an immediate threat, like the voice of an angry traffic warden or the “we need to talk” tone of his ex-girlfriend. It was just… there. Pleasant, even.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” the voice asked, and Ted immediately decided he didn’t like being addressed in such a manner by anyone, let alone someone who seemed to live inside a magical, never-before-seen room.

Ted spun around, and standing in the middle of the room was a man—well, at least he looked like a man, but in the way that one might describe a frog as a “sort of frog.” He was wearing a brown jacket and khaki trousers, and his hair, though scruffy, seemed to have adopted a certain sense of resignation about the whole situation. His expression was somewhere between amusement and complete indifference, which Ted felt was entirely inappropriate given the circumstances.

“Who the hell are you?” Ted demanded, already regretting the question. If there was one thing Ted knew for sure, it was that in situations like this, asking questions only led to more questions. But the man wasn’t fazed in the least.

“Vince,” the man said, offering a slight wave. “Vince Flinn. And you are Ted, right?”

Ted didn’t know why, but he suddenly felt an intense desire to correct the man. He was not Ted, he was The Ted—though the more he thought about it, the more he realized how ludicrous that sounded.

“How did you know that?” Ted asked, glancing over his shoulder at the glowing door, which was now definitely not going away.

“Oh, I’ve been around for a while,” Vince replied nonchalantly, as though casually explaining how he knew Ted’s name was the least interesting thing that had happened today. “And as for this,” he gestured lazily at the room, “well, it’s a bit of a… secret, you might say.” He grinned, a grin that suggested that “secret” might have been code for “foolishness.”

“A secret?” Ted asked. He wasn’t sure why he was still speaking. He had the distinct feeling that any sentence beginning with “What is this place?” was likely to be met with an even more ridiculous answer. “What do you mean by secret?”

Vince raised an eyebrow, clearly amused. “Ah. You’re one of those people. What I mean is, this room isn’t really supposed to exist. Well, to be precise, it’s not supposed to exist here. It exists elsewhere. Otherwhere, if you will.”

Ted blinked. “Otherwhere?”

“Oh, yes,” Vince replied, almost as though this were the most natural thing in the world. “But don’t worry. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. You’ve just stepped into one of those places between places. Not quite here, not quite there… but, you know… other.” He said the last word with an air of someone explaining how the sky works to a small child. “I imagine you’d like to see where that door leads.”

Ted was certain that had he had any semblance of control over his life, he would have politely excused himself and exited the room. But, there it was, his curiosity a thousand times more overwhelming than his natural instinct to flee, and so he asked the inevitable question:

“Where does it lead?”

Vince’s smile widened, revealing an entirely unhelpful level of amusement. “To anywhere, of course. Everywhere. And nowhere, for that matter. Really, it’s up to you.”

Ted, who had heard of many things in his life—ex-girlfriends, pizza, tax evasion—had never heard of this.

“Wait,” Ted said, suddenly realizing something that would have made anyone else run for the hills in terror. “Are you saying… that we can just go through this door and anywhere I want?” He was beginning to sound like he was having an epiphany, except it wasn’t the kind where everything makes sense, just the kind where you wonder if you’ve stumbled into a prank show hosted by a lunatic.

Vince gave him a look that suggested this conversation had been had a thousand times before.

“Well, yes,” Vince said. “But it’s not exactly about what you want. It’s more about where you’re meant to go. And that, my dear Ted, is the real question, isn’t it?”

Ted frowned, suddenly feeling very far from home, very much like he was on the verge of signing up for something far more complicated than a gym membership.

“I… I think I need a drink,” Ted muttered, but his words fell flat, swallowed by the vast, timeless void of the room.

Vince chuckled, a sound that wasn’t entirely comforting. “I’m afraid, my friend, that in this particular place, the drinks are rather… abstract.”

***

Ted was, to put it mildly, confused. This had gone far beyond any level of normal confusion, into a kind of perplexity so deep that it might have been considered a sub-genre of confusion, one that could only be described as “extremely confused with a dash of mild panic.” He stood in the glowing, featureless room, still trying to grasp the entirety of the situation—if, indeed, it was possible to grasp anything at all when the room itself didn’t appear to be abiding by any of the usual laws of physics or common sense.

“So,” Ted began, his voice strained as though he were trying to explain something to an errant toaster, “I’ve somehow stumbled into this secret room… and now you’re telling me that there’s a door I can walk through… and it leads… where exactly?”

Vince leaned back, as though Ted had just asked the most quaintly obvious question in the universe. Which, judging by Vince’s expression, was exactly what he thought.

“Where it leads? Ah. Anywhere. Everywhere. Nowhere, even, if you’re feeling particularly nihilistic. Really, the door can take you to any number of parallel realities. Infinite possibilities. Multitudes of worlds.” Vince’s voice trailed off dramatically as he gestured vaguely to the glowing portal, which pulsed with an unnervingly calm light.

Ted stared at the door, then back at Vince. This wasn’t happening. It was simply beyond the boundaries of “normal.” It wasn’t even close to being normal. A secret room? Parallel realities? At this point, Ted wondered if he’d somehow slipped into the pages of a very odd, very poorly-written science fiction novel, the kind you could buy in an airport bookstore at 2 a.m. just before you realized the universe had no sympathy for the fact that you had a 6 a.m. flight and a long, uninspiring breakfast of stale croissants ahead of you.

“I’m sorry,” Ted muttered, trying to regain some semblance of composure, “you’re telling me that I—Ted Thistleberry, a perfectly average man with an overzealous fondness for mediocre spaghetti and a mild dread of losing his keys—am being chosen to traverse infinite worlds through some kind of… of door… in my house?”

Vince, entirely unfazed, nodded slowly. “That’s the gist of it, yes.”

Ted’s mind was working at an impressively slow speed, like a car engine that had forgotten what it was supposed to be doing, but was nevertheless doing its best to process the information. “And how, exactly, does one ‘get chosen’ for something like that?”

Vince gave him an odd look, as though Ted had just asked how to tie your shoes without using your feet. “Oh, you don’t get chosen by anyone. It’s more like… an invitation. You’re just… well, you’re here. And now you’ve found the room. The door.” He gestured toward the glowing entryway. “It’s a little bit like stumbling into a party you weren’t supposed to be invited to, but everyone’s too polite to kick you out. Except, in this case, the party involves multiverses and various dimensions of reality. So, you know, minor difference.”

Ted blinked. Then he blinked again, just in case it would magically make things clearer. It didn’t.

“I’m still not sure I understand,” Ted said, slowly, carefully, like a man walking across a room with a very large, very unstable object in his hands. “You’re telling me that I can go through that door and end up in… another reality? And this… adventure—whatever it is—just happens to me?”

Vince’s grin grew slightly wider, which was truly a remarkable feat, given the width it had already achieved. “Well, yes, but it’s not quite that simple. You see, the reality you end up in is determined by you—well, by your state of mind. But there are also variables. You don’t just pick a place and end up there. It’s more like, say, entering a supermarket and picking a random jar of jam. You never know if you’ll get something delicious or if you’ll regret your choices for the next week.”

Ted’s brain, which had been desperately trying to process Vince’s explanation, short-circuited momentarily. “Wait… so you’re saying that I could end up in a reality where I’m… the president of some intergalactic jam empire?”

Vince laughed, the kind of laugh that was more of an exhalation than anything remotely human. “Ah, if only it were that simple. In fact, it could be much stranger than that.” He looked at Ted as though he had just made a fascinating discovery. “You do know that the reality you think you understand is, in fact, only one sliver of an infinite spectrum of possibilities, right? That time itself could very well be a construct designed by particularly pretentious historians?”

Ted considered this, not with the usual dismay that accompanied the realization that his entire worldview was a bit more fragile than he had previously imagined, but with a sigh. “I’m… I’m just going to need a moment to process that.”

“Take your time,” Vince said, with the sort of carelessness that only someone who has traversed countless realities and has learned not to concern themselves too deeply with such matters could manage.

Ted stepped closer to the door, now almost irresistibly drawn to it, though the feeling was far more akin to stepping off a cliff than anything remotely resembling enthusiasm. He hesitated, looking at Vince. “And… if I go through this door, what happens?”

“Simple,” Vince said, as though Ted had just asked if it would rain tomorrow. “You find out.”

Ted blinked again, as if expecting Vince to follow up with something more concrete, like “and here’s how it works” or “I’ll give you some instructions.” But no. Vince, it seemed, was one of those annoyingly enlightened people who knew how to say an awful lot without actually telling you anything.

Ted stood in front of the glowing door, staring at it with the kind of determination typically reserved for men staring down the final slice of pizza at a party they were certain they didn’t want to eat, but knew they would anyway. Behind him, Vince was casually adjusting his jacket, as though the entire situation were the most mundane thing imaginable. But then, Vince had a way of making everything seem entirely unremarkable, even when it was utterly, incomprehensibly unremarkable.

“So, this is it, then,” Ted said, his voice almost apologetic, as if he were having a conversation with an inexplicably late bus. “We’re just going through this door, and wherever we end up is where we end up?”

Vince nodded in a way that suggested he had, at some point, explained this about a dozen times already. “Yes. That’s how it works. Doors lead to realities, not necessarily in any order. Could be anything. Could be nothing. You know, the usual.”

“The usual?” Ted echoed, staring at the door. “Nothing about this feels usual, Vince. I mean, if I’m being honest, this is the weirdest Tuesday I’ve ever had.”

Vince only shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s normal. I’m just saying it’s how it works. This is the universe, Ted. Or universes, plural, I suppose. Either way, it’s all basically a game of chance with no stakes. You either win, lose, or realize you’re still stuck in the same place you started. Which, funnily enough, is what happens to most people. But you’re not most people, are you?”

Ted wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be encouraging, so he simply nodded. The door hummed as it began to glow brighter, drawing him in, pulling him toward the inevitable. This is happening, Ted thought, wondering just how far gone he was at this point. His normal life, his normal house, his normal job—everything now felt like the distant memory of a television show he’d once watched and forgotten to cancel before the third season.

“Right. Let’s go,” Vince said, leading the way. “After you, Ted.”

Ted hesitated for a fraction of a second. What did it even mean to be ‘after’ someone when time itself didn’t seem to operate normally here? Still, he moved forward, gingerly placing one foot in front of the other, preparing himself for whatever awaited him on the other side.

“Well, here goes nothing, then,” Ted muttered to himself, though in truth he wasn’t entirely sure what ‘nothing’ even meant in a context like this.

With a final, somewhat panicked look at Vince, Ted stepped through the glowing door.

And then—whoosh—he was through.

And then he wasn’t in his house anymore.

Ted wasn’t entirely sure where he was, but it certainly wasn’t home. The first thing he noticed was the absence of walls. In fact, there weren’t any walls at all, nor any ground beneath him. He was floating—just floating—surrounded by nothing but thin air and an eerie silence. Except that the silence was not quite silence. It was more like a gentle hum, the kind of hum you might expect from an extremely old refrigerator, one that you suspect has been running since the beginning of time, only no one had bothered to turn it off.

As his brain frantically searched for something to latch onto, something to make sense of this bizarre experience, his eyes adjusted to the scene around him.