I'd popped into existence and was shivering on the concrete floor of a prison cell. Just seconds before, I'd been messing with my phone, installing the Isekai App.

There had been a wall of text, then the obligatory "Agree to terms?" And there had been a box on my screen. After checking it, I was here. I could still feel the ridges of my phone case against my fingertips. No phone.

The cot held a set of clothing: underwear, slippers, a blue jumpsuit. A pair of glasses; I'm nearsighted. The prescription worked for me.

VISIT ANOTHER WORLD! LIVE A NEW LIFE! The Isekai App by Harrigan Media Inc., all rights reserved, copyright 2026.

So you give it your email and agree to the terms, and you get a coupon for a free chicken sandwich. I'd thought this had been a new kind of game.

Nope. Apparently all real. And I was in the slammer.

"Huh," I said.

Not the Isekai experience the App had promised. There had been a cute anime elf girlfriend in the app; so far she hadn't showed up. Neither had the chicken sandwich.

In places like this: prison, school, the Department of Motor Vehicles, one waits. So I got comfortable on the cot. It wasn't old or broken or rusted, it didn't creak. New. The vent above me sent cool air into my room. It seemed large, that vent. Capacious.

Hmmm.

The bars keeping me in the cell weren't marked-up: that is, the paint wasn't chipped away by years of people yelling and banging tin cups like in old movies about prison breaks. New. It was reinforced by a heavy glass wall.

The corridor outside filled with light; it had been dim in here and I hadn't realized it. A man entered. He was old, but didn't look it, not really. I suspected a truly lethal amount of cosmetics.

He wore a white lab coat, and his hands had an interesting silvery metal mesh along the tendons. His clothing had some kind of mechanical element to it that hissed with hidden hydraulics. Defiantly brown hair when it really shouldn't have been anything but gray, or gone altogether.

His gaze was weary. Those blue eyes were far older than mine. This man was older than anyone I'd ever met.

A tall skinny face, like Benedict Cumberbatch without the charisma. His gray smile wrapped around his face like a bandanna of teeth.

"Owen Walsh. Want out?"

It was an old man's voice, piped from the hall into my cell over a speaker. It didn't quaver or tremble, but it was somehow terribly old. I watched him and said nothing.

"You never talk at first," he said. "I have a job for you. And you get to leave here, and travel, and work for the President of the United States, serving your country. What do you say?"

"Am I on another world?" I finally asked. "Is this really an isekai situation?"

"Afraid so." He looked bitter about that. And that was it; he left. He was the only one I'd speak to for several days.

I only saw the man in the white coat in person the one time, when I was in the cell and he was on the other side of the bars. After that it was all him talking to me over a loudspeaker. Sometimes it was a video call. The video of him looked decidedly fake.

I could wander about the building with no danger of escaping, but that consisted of a few hallways, an empty cafeteria and a media room. The place was sealed tight and festooned with anti-viral precautions. Airlocks, even. Little cleaning robots hummed in the white halls.

Was it a prison or a hospital? Both.

I was Educated, which consisted of sitting through various movies. The Wizard of Oz. Stargate. Spirited Away. John Carter. Tron. Army of Darkness.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

In all of these the main character was hauled into another world. Sometimes it was a silly world with musical numbers, other times it was more sci-fi or scary. Some were better than others.

There were armed guards with odd weapons, no guns. Just clubs with suspicious-looking electrical attachments. They were always on the other side of glass. I was unable to meet with any people physically. That was just fine. The guards watched me warily, as if I were a Batman villain.

Was I?

Consider: the entire place was devoted to containing one person. I found exactly one cell in the entire complex, and my meals were served in there by wheeled robots. No one spoke to me unless it was the man in the white coat.

A job for the President, eh? President of Isekaiburg, or whatever this place was called. This world was low on magic, wonder and elf ladies. And castles, forests. I tried to think of other isekai tropes: you get powerful, level up, find a pretty girl bathing in a river, she slaps you but you have a heart of gold and she ends up being unable to resist your Main-Character-based charms.

So far no dice. None of the guards were women, much less the anime river-bathing elf kind.

"Owen," said the wall speaker. It was the white coat guy. "Any objection to inoculations?"

"Against what?"

"This is a new world with strange diseases. We have countermeasures."

"Is that why I'm in an aquarium jail?"

"For your own protection."

"Go for it, then."

The robot waiter came into the corridor outside my cell. Instead of the usual chicken sandwich with crinkle-cut fries, it bore a tray with a single syringe on it. Just like on Earth, just like I remembered. Not magical or Isekai at all, that syringe. I was expected to give myself a shot.

I hate shots. I also hated being incarcerated. And I hated having to watch Stargate.

Unforgivable. Stargate was the last straw. I hear the TV show was okay, but that movie? No.

The tray blocked the cell door from closing. I pried open the robot. A strange battery, some wires. What kind of magical world hires a robot instead of a braless serving wench? Shenanigans!

I set the robot on the cot, which wasn't that comfortable or giving. I stood on it, shoved at the overhead vent. A few tries and it moved. I was able to slide it aside.

A vent just wide enough for me to shimmy through. I'd worked with HVAC systems in Mira Costa Community College, doing a job I was decent at but hated. This was reasonably familiar.

Everything was large and industrial-sized, including the VAV box I squirmed into. A humming fan was up in the corner and light seeped in through cracks, allowing me to read the neat messages scratched into the aluminum wall:

WELCOME TO THE CLUB PENDEJO HE IS ON TO YOU OW

OF COURSE HE IS THIS IS A TRAP BUT WHATS THE BAIT OW #2

THE BAIT IS OUTSIDE THE BUILDING DUMBASS I GOTTA DO EVERYTHING MAN? OW #03

OWEN WALSH WAS HERE AND YOU ARE ALSO OWEN WALSH! FIND OUT MORE AND STOP US FROM HAPPENING POR FAVOR. YOUR PAL OW NUMBER 4

CHECK ONLINE IF THERES ONLINE AT ALL LOL OW 05

LOOK MAN I JUST WANT ELF BOOBS IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK OW 06

Well that was interesting. All in the same handwriting. All my handwriting.

I spent some time in that too-large Variable Air Volume Box, thinking about all of this. Let's consider: Isekai. I was brought to a new world, theoretically. How? Magic, clearly.

Not clearly, of course. But I had no memory of cloning tanks, being abducted by uniformed thugs who threw a bag over my face, or booting up a VR headset.

So let's call it magic for the moment. I also had no recollection of being in a farmhouse transported via tornado, digitized by an 80's-Era teleporter or stepping through a perfectly good Stargate that scientists were too dumb to use properly.

This was something for which I had no frame of reference. Not even fictionally.

And on the wall in here: messages from other guys who were irritating enough to be other versions of me.

I felt around, found a chunk of metal. Obviously the tool used to scratch the words into aluminum by the earlier Owens. What message to leave?

HA BITCHES I'M OW NUMBER 007.

I dismantled the VAV grille, squirmed through the ducts. Made it to the roof and kicked my way out.

Rather too easily, in retrospect. I never claimed to be a genius, all right?

I stood on that roof and beheld the new world.

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