As luck would have it, the real estate agent was demonstrating the panic room when the house was attacked.

Like, what are the chances of that?

Million to one.

“The walls look like sheetrock, but they’re all brick. And the panic room here, super hard military brick and steel and shit.”

Everything was beige. I wasn’t too enthused about that, but I don’t mind painting.

“When we close the door, it doesn’t re-open unless we tell it to. No one’s getting in here.”

I pointed at the security monitors. “Like that?”

We watched as they breached the first two rings of defenses with trained skill.

“I’ll be damned,” said the agent. “Talk about timing. What’re the chances of that?”

I shook my head. “Million to one,” I said.

“Place is insured, we could just wait them out. Got everything we could need.” He gestured to indicate the vast amount of emergency supplies lining the shelves hidden behind the racks of clothes and shoes in the room. “You like board games?” he asked.

“That depends,” I said. But I wasn’t really crazy about board games.

“You get claustrophobic?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I’m an equal-opportunity panicker. I can panic anywhere.”

“Too bad, cause this room has an amazing feature I could show you.”

“Claustrophobia’s not my problem. Kites are my problem. I feel like a kid at the beach everyone gave their kite string to to hold. And the kites all got away, and he’s watching them swirl way up there in the sky, wondering if he’ll be able to save any, or if they’ll all fly to China.”

“That sounds like claustrophobia to me,” said the agent. He removed a plastic shield from a large, red button. The word SHIFT was stenciled on the large, red button in a contrasting color, most likely black. Matte black.

“That button is part of the grand feature you were mentioning?” I said.

He nodded. “It’s got a geometric reversal conversion module built in.”

“Oh, how cool,” I said.

“Right now, we’re inside and they’re outside, am I right?” he said. We observed the intruders ransacking the house until they spray-painted over the camera lenses one by one.

“Seems that way to me,” I nodded.

“Okay, watch,” he said. He pressed the button. It was very quiet, whatever it was. What happened was, basically, when it was done, we were standing on the outside of a sphere of a certain size. Like a planet of our own. Much larger than I would have expected, but you could still like see the horizon and curvature and stuff. “Now we’re outside, and they’re inside.”

“Everything is still beige,” I said.

“It turns… man, WTF,” the agent said.

“So is this real or an illusion?” I said. Way up high there were tiny flecks of bright colors in the sky, like distant kites.

“Just enjoy it,” the agent said.

So I did.