For Gord, touching the machine head on Lips's flying V guitar while he was playing Anvil's greatest song, 'Forged in Fire', meant he had attained the peak moment in his life. Certainly, Gord had done many things he was proud of, including peacekeeping in several countries and a tour of duty in Afghanistan, but nothing would ever match the moment he connected directly with the metal magic Anvil was creating. Gord could feel the actual thrumming of the guitar in every atom of his being. He was one with the song. One with the band. One with all of existence. The realization hit him straight between the eyes.

  It was electrifying.

  Literally.

  That electrifying aspect was the most curious part for him because everything around Gord had slowed to the speed of molasses. Lips was looking down at him with amazingly wise eyes. The brain behind those eyes had written so many inspiring lyrics to so many gargantuan heavy songs that Gord had headbanged to, and now those eyes were looking directly at Gord, and it was like having a god look upon him. A heavy metal god.

  He knew Kim had grabbed his shoulder. Perhaps she wanted to join in this magical moment of metal. And somebody else had clutched his opposite shoulder and shouted, "Bald Dude! This is so freaking cool!"

  No, it was more than cool, Gord wanted to argue. His soul was now forged in fire.

  Alas, that was also the moment that the first look of consternation formed on the great god Lips's face. His eyeballs started moving toward the security guard to indicate that "someone should remove this man from my guitar."

  No, Gord felt the universe had shifted. Lips had to feel it, too. They all were one in the song. It was absolute power and perfection, and…

  … and that was when what he assumed was electricity first made acquaintance with his body. The massive jolt came from below him and lightninged up his legs. The funny but painful thing about electricity is once it finds a way into a human, it looks for a way out. It doesn't hang around and expect lemonade or caramel glazed donuts. No, it's outta there. And this electricity tickled each of his organs, boiled a bit of the beer in his stomach and then bolted out his hands and head.

  The concert went dark as if every flashpot and burning light had vanished. Even the ringing of the bass, the thudding of the drums, the wailing of the guitar and the dimension-piercing sound of Lips's voice were gone. 'Forged in Fire' echoed for one moment in his ears. And the image of the band was seared in his eyes.

  A quarter heartbeat later this was followed by the vastest and most painful silence and darkness Gord had ever experienced.

  He was no longer part of the song.

  Maybe he was no longer part of the universe. He was in a shadow zone.

  Am I dead? Gord wondered.

  Death wasn't something he dwelled on, even though his occupation involved munitions and bullets and standing guard while other people pointed guns at him from dense forests or bombed-out concrete buildings. But that was just soldiering work, and if you spent too much time thinking about death, you might not get your job done. He had a will stuffed in a safe in his apartment. It had been written in a lawyer's office in Vancouver several years ago, and then he never thought about it or death again. What happened after he kicked the can was on that piece of paper.

  So he wasn't particularly upset to think that he had perhaps died while touching the guitar of his favourite singer/guitarist. In fact, Gord hoped they included that fact in his obituary. In all his years of following the band, he'd met other die-hard Anvil fans—many were the beers they had raised to the hallowed songs of their well-worshipped band. Many were the times they'd shouted Mothra before quaffing those beers. Every member of that gang would be jealous to know he had died in such a glorious way.

  Since he hadn't thought often about death, he'd done even less thinking about the afterlife. He had the basics of religion passed down to him from the Anglican church in Balzac, Alberta, near his family's farm, but other than that, the afterlife was something that he would discover later. First, he needed to discover everything else on Earth.

  Gord was now floating in nothingness. An absence of song.

  A chord played, and it was the most perfect chord he'd ever heard. Even better than the single distorted chord that starts 'Killing in the Name' by Rage Against The Machine, which was one of his favourite song openings. One by one, stars blinked on. He would have been moved by awe of the vast universe if he hadn't just touched Lips's Flying V. Still, he stared. They were beautiful stars and intriguing, too, because they began folding in on themselves like someone was folding a black piece of paper with yellow crayon dots on it.

  And he was being folded and transported along with the stars. He could only describe the direction as onward. He swirled slightly.

  Then came a blurring of colour in his vision, a sensation of becoming heavier, and several points of brightness appeared: torches. He was in a room floating in the air and not fully in a body. If he were to describe it, he'd say he was a presence. A spirit. An observer.

  And what he observed was that Kim stood several feet away, across the room. He tried to shout to let her know he was there, but failed to make a noise. She started examining her arms and legs as if she were surprised to have appendages, or maybe she was curious about the old-fashioned clothes she was now wearing.

  There was a zapping light, and then a young man dropped out of nowhere behind her.

  Gord attempted another shout, but no noise came out. Then his astral eyes spotted something else: a long-snouted creature with glowing eyes, leaning against the wall hungrily watching both Kim and the man. The thing had wings, a tail and sharp teeth!

  He willed himself to become corporeal. Give me a body! With fists and a mouth and…

  "Not there," a voice said in his head. "That is not your spawning star. Come to me, stranger. Come to me now!"

  "No!" Gord spat out that word aloud. Maybe it was just the connection between him and his niece. But he could already feel himself slipping away from the room. "Kim! No! Watch out!"

  Despite his protestations, the room was gone, and he was flying again, speeding at a thousand miles an hour through darkness. He shouted for Kim the whole time.

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  Then, suddenly, he fell onto a carpeted floor, landing with the slightest of oofs, bending his knees and hearing his left knee crack — that stupid arthritic crack caused by a parachuting injury. He sucked in a breath, stood, patting his chest with one hand. He was real. A body. A person. Again.

  A nine-sided star was under his feet, which he recognized immediately as being the same as Rush's nine-sided star from the cover of their 2112 album, his favorite of the band's many glorious albums. The symbol glowed with power. It was possible he was as naked as the guy on that cover.

  He looked down relieved to discover he was wearing rough cloth trousers and a rough shirt covered by a layer of thin plate metal guarding his chest, arms and legs. He looked like a well-fed Tin Man. Do I have underpants on? He wondered, with the slightest hint of panic. His brain answered the question almost at once: he was wearing undershorts! He could tell this without patting around because the undershorts were made of some kind of grain sack that made a lasting impression on him.

  There were two familiar items. The first was his leather armband. The thought of it staying with him brought comfort. And the other was a metal shield with a maple leaf on it in his left hand, as if his Canadian Shield tattoo had come to life.

  He pulled back the plating on his arm to see that the actual tattoo was still there. Gord had thrown himself on a Russian-made grenade and lived, mostly because of his body armor and a depression in the ground, and because the Russians built crap. That was when he got the nickname Canadian Shield because nothing could penetrate the Precambrian rock shield that runs along portions of Canada.

  He took in the room, nonplussed because reacting with fear or mind-numbing confusion was not helpful for any situation. A wooden table was set with a selection of food: sliced bread, orange and white cheeses, grapes, roast mutton, carrots, cucumbers and radishes. The chairs had cushions and were already pulled out in a sign of welcome. Mugs of steaming liquid waited next to the food. A red cushion sat in the center of the table.

  The rest of the room was lit comfortably, like a restaurant, though he couldn't see a light source. The walls were stone, and a painting of purple flowers hung on one. A rather impressive and friendly-looking chicken painting hung on the other wall. And the third wall contained the reproduction of a black cat with bright silver stripes. It looked as if the creature was waiting to say something either wise or sarcastic as it posed for the artist. The fourth wall, where he expected a door to be, was bare.

  So he had gone from an Anvil concert through black space, nearly appeared in another mostly-unfurnished room, travelled through more darkness and ended up here. And he had been changed into this tinny armor-plating and uncomfortable clothing while flitting among the stars. Even his Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry army fatigues had never been this uncomfortable.

  "Well, this isn't Rocky Mountain Way," he said. Those words were not just quoting one of his favourite songs; they had become his calming mantra whenever life took an odd twist. He was here now and needed to react to the information in front of him. According to his eyes and his breath, which was going in and out of his body, bringing air into his lungs, this was real.

  There was a flash and a thud, and a young man in black leather pants and a silky black shirt fell to the floor over top of a second nine-sided star symbol. The man got up in a very gangly manner and gawked around like a frightened scarecrow. He had a studded bracelet on each wrist. And a mohawk-punk style haircut.

  "What the heck happened, Bald Dude?" the man in black asked.

  Gord recognized the young man as the one who had been standing beside him at the concert and who had put a hand on his shoulder. "Remain calm. It seems we have slipped through time or space or both and mystically dressed in medieval clothing. We are in a room designed to welcome us."

  "What are you talking about?" the young man asked. Gord grew a little worried about his intellectual capacity. After all, this guy had worn a DeathFace Blitzkrieg T-shirt to an Anvil concert. Gord had been slightly aggravated by that T-shirt since he, like any educated fan, had known all about Anvil's beef with DeathFace Blitzkrieg's lead singer, who used his mouth to sing Satanic songs and to slag Anvil. He hoped Lips hadn't seen the shirt. That hero didn't deserve to have a moment of consternation.

  "And why do you sound so calm?" the guy added.

  "I am only stating the facts," Gord said. He didn't mention that he had also noticed that the table had two large metal mugs that could be wielded as weapons. "Some power that is beyond our understanding has clearly summoned us here."

  "Not Satanists again!" the dude said.

  "Again?" Gord asked.

  "I went to a Satanist party once. I thought they just liked Slayer. But no, no, they were into real sacrifices and blood and stuff!"

  Gord nodded in what he hoped was a comforting manner. "A group of people tried to sacrifice you?"

  "Yes," he said. Then, the young man took several deep breaths. "No. They sacrificed a goat. But it was real, and well, gross, and I wanted out of there before you could say Beelzebub. Which is what they were saying."

  "You've had an interesting life," Gord said. It was always important to give the mentally fragile a compliment. "But our summoner is not a Satan worshipper. The star below us has nine points, but the satanic star, the sigil of Baphomet, has five."

  The man continued to wave his hands around his head defensively. "How do you know this stuff?"

  "I had to hunt Satanists once," Gord said.

  "Are you an exorcist?" the young man asked. "Is that why you're wearing that armor stuff?"

  "I'm not an exorcist," Gord said. He had learned to be patient while teaching green recruits how to use grenades. That type of patience was handy in the civilian world. "It was terrorists pretending to be Satanists that I was hunting, and it's a long story. Do you know the Iron Maiden song 'Caught Somewhere in Time'?"

  "It's all about being caught in time or something."

  "Well, that song explains our situation." The light of understanding that usually came from thinking of Iron Maiden's lyrics didn't appear in the man's eyes. Then the man looked above Gord's head.

  "You're a paladin." The man was staring so hard that Gord looked up. There was only a ceiling up there.

  "What's a paladin?" he asked.

  "It's a holy fighter. Like an Armored Saint, but real. A paladin believes in a god or gods and is pure and often a virgin."

  "Virgin?" This was the first time Gord felt a palpitation of fear. "Holy? None of that describes me!" The kid was still staring above his head.

  "You're a Class One Paladin Faithdefender, Dude. And a Class One Thumpmeister, Leather Smasher and a Lightbearer. With a big ol' 18 at the top. It's called Metal Health, or something. All those things are written on a glowing album cover that's floating above your head. Heck, there's even an asterisk beside a special ability called Shield Magic. Freaky!"

  The young dude's brain was FUBAR. "I have no idea what you're talking about," Gord said.

  "I'm talking about the numbers that are—" The young man looked up. "Oh, wow!" He rubbed his hand along the small fringes on his sleeves. "I have 10 Metal Health. I'm a Class One Rogue Shadowblade. And I'm a Norwegian. Which is strange because Mom said I was mostly Irish. Well, she thought Dad One was Irish. Oh, and my metal skill is Shredder Fumblefingers. Finally, I have the power I always dreamed of … the little people who laughed at me will pay." He lifted his hand, curling his fingers like claws, and drew them across the table. "Ow! Ouch!"

  "Stop that!" Gord said. "But what we need to figure out now is—wait, what's your name?"

  "It's Jam," Jam replied. He went back to gawking above Gord's head.

  "Is that a nickname?" Gord asked.

  "No, my mom really likes jam," Jam said. "Blueberry. Raspberry. Strawberry. Not so much chokecherry, though, and never rhubarb. I like jam, too, but also like to jam in my band. Get it? Jam."

  "Cool." Gord thought people shouldn't be named after jams, jellies, or peanut butter. But Kim had taught him that this was old thinking, and he was learning to be more begrudgingly accepting of people's names and even people's pronouns. As long as things were logical, he agreed with them. "I'm Gord. And what we need to do is figure out who brought us here and why."

  "And how do we do that?" Jam asked.

  "Our first course of action," Gord said. "Will be to find that person or power and ask them all the questions we—"

  "You'll have to wait for a few more minutes," a voice interrupted. Gord looked around the room, but no one else was there. "Who said that?"

  "It was I," the voice said. The cat in the painting stood up, stretched its back, and then leapt out of the painting and landed on the red cushion on the table. "I am the herald of She Who Isn't On Time."

  "This really isn't Rocky Mountain Way," Gord said.