Two Dollars

The estate sale started at nine. I got there at six thirty.

Not early enough.

Three vans already lined the curb when I pulled up. Two of them had company logos. Professional hunters with their thermal scanners and electromagnetic readers and whatever other expensive bullshit supposedly detected pocket dimensions.

Spoiler: none of that crap actually works.

My car made a grinding noise when I shut it off. The check engine light had been on for two weeks. I was ignoring it the way I ignored most of my problems. With willful optimism and the hope that things would somehow work themselves out.

I grabbed my backpack and joined the line forming at the front door. The house was a seventies ranch situation. Beige siding, brown trim, dead lawn. The kind of place where someone lived alone for forty years and accumulated enough random objects that their kids hired an estate company rather than deal with it themselves.

Perfect hunting ground.

The woman in front of me had a PAS credential badge clipped to her belt. Pocket Authentication Services. The people who decided which pockets were real and which ones were fakes or too dangerous to sell. She had a tablet, a professional-grade surveying kit, and the kind of confidence that came from actually getting paid.

I had a notebook held together with duct tape and a meat thermometer I'd stolen from a restaurant kitchen three jobs ago.

We were not the same.

"First time?" she asked without looking at me.

"Do I look that desperate?"

She glanced over. Took in my wrinkled shirt, my unwashed hair, the fact that I was clearly wearing the same jeans I'd slept in. Because I'd slept in my car. Again.

"Yeah," she said.

Fair.

The doors opened at nine sharp. The crowd surged forward with the kind of aggressive politeness that made estate sales feel like a blood sport. Everyone wanted to look first. Touch first. Claim first.

Because you couldn't tell which objects had pockets until you tried.

I went straight for the kitchen. That's where people kept the most manufactured objects. Pots, pans, containers, appliances. Anything hollow was worth testing. I'd found pockets in coffee cans, teapots, mixing bowls, even a weird ceramic chicken that someone's grandma probably loved.

The kitchen was already crawling with hunters. The PAS woman was methodically testing every cabinet. A guy with an expensive scanner was waving it over the counters like a bomb squad tech. Two younger hunters were arguing over a blender.

I grabbed a cardboard box from the dining room and started loading it with anything hollow and portable. Thermos, travel mugs, a cookie jar shaped like a pig, some Tupperware, a really ugly vase. The goal was volume. Test everything. The more objects you checked, the better your odds.

One in five thousand objects had a pocket.

Those were not great odds.

I'd been hunting full time for eight months. I'd found exactly four pockets. Sold three of them to Roux at her pawn shop for terrible rates. Kept one because I was sentimental and stupid and it contained a really nice creek that made me feel less alone when I visited it.

Four pockets in eight months.

I needed better numbers. I also needed to pay my phone bill. And figure out where I was sleeping tonight since the Walmart parking lot security had started recognizing my car.

I hauled my box out to the backyard. Let the professionals fight over the kitchen. I'd test out here and come back for a second load if nothing hit.

Testing was simple. You reached inside the object. If your hand went deeper than the physical dimensions allowed, you had a pocket.

The thermometer helped with the next part. Pockets had their own internal environments. Forests, oceans, caves, empty rooms. Temperature was the first clue about what you'd found. Hot meant potential hazards. Cold wasn't great either. Room temperature was your best bet for habitability.

Habitability meant value.

I started with the thermos because it looked old enough to be interesting. Unscrewed the lid. Reached inside.

Normal depth. Normal temperature. Nothing.

The travel mugs were the same. The cookie jar. The Tupperware. All normal objects being normal.

This was the reality of pocket hunting. Hours of testing. Mountains of disappointment. Occasionally you found something and it made up for all the nothing.

Occasionally.

I was halfway through the box when I picked up the last travel mug. Stainless steel, dented, the kind of thing someone brought to an office job every day for twenty years. It had coffee stains around the rim and a faded logo for a company that probably didn't exist anymore.

I reached inside.

My hand went deeper than it should.

My heart rate spiked. I pulled back, checked the mug dimensions, reached in again. Definitely deeper. The air inside felt cooler. Not freezing. Just noticeably different.

Holy shit.

I grabbed the thermometer and lowered it in. Sixty-two degrees. Slightly cool but totally breathable. That was good. That was habitable.

I needed to see inside.

The problem with pockets was you couldn't look into them from outside. The opening just showed darkness. Deep darkness that your eyes couldn't adjust to. You had to go in to understand what you'd found.

Going in blind was stupid. Going in blind to an unauthenticated pocket was how people died. Toxic gas, vacuum, extreme temperatures, hostile environments that looked fine until you were already inside and couldn't get back out.

I'd done it twelve times.

Probably should have died at least three of those times.

I glanced around the backyard. No one was watching. The other hunters were still inside fighting over kitchen gadgets. The estate sale workers were handling the checkout line.

Fuck it.

I tilted the mug opening toward my face and pushed my hand through. The resistance was there. That gelatin-feeling where reality got thick and your body compressed slightly as you passed through an opening that was impossibly smaller than you.

My hand went through. My wrist. My forearm.

Inside felt like touching stone. Smooth, cool stone. Maybe a cave pocket? Those were usually stable. Good resale value if they were large enough.

I pulled back and looked at the mug. Still just a dented travel mug with coffee stains.

But inside was something else. Something bigger. Something I could sell.

I let myself feel good for exactly ten seconds. This was the hit. The find that made the last three weeks of testing worthless garbage worth it. This was why I kept hunting even though I was broke and living in my car and everyone I used to know thought I'd lost my mind.

Because eventually you find something.

I packed the mug carefully into my backpack. Wrapped it in a hoodie so it wouldn't bang around. I'd test it properly later. Figure out the actual dimensions. Then decide whether to authenticate it legally or sell it to Roux under the table.

Legal meant PAS authentication. Weeks of waiting, fees I couldn't afford, official documentation. But I'd get a real price. Market value.

Black market meant Roux. Fast cash, no questions, terrible rates. But immediate money.

I'd probably go with Roux. I always did.

I headed inside to pay. The checkout table was run by two elderly women with a cash box and price stickers. I pulled out the mug.

"Two dollars," one of them said.

I handed over two singles. Possibly the best two dollars I'd ever spend. Or another bust. Fifty-fifty odds.

"Would you like a bag?"

"I'm good, thanks."

She smiled and handed me a receipt like I'd just bought a lamp instead of potentially life-changing dimensional real estate.

I was walking out the front door when I saw the vans. Not the ones that were already here. New ones. Three white vans with a logo I recognized.

Cross Dimensional Solutions.

Bellamy Cross's company.

Professional pocket hunting with corporate sponsorship, military-grade equipment, and a success rate that made the rest of us look like amateurs playing pretend.

Which, to be fair, most of us were.

The vans parked in a neat line. The team unloaded with the kind of efficiency that came from actually training together instead of just showing up and hoping for the best. They had matching gear. Actual protocols. A command structure.

I had a stolen thermometer and a backpack that smelled like old french fries.

The team lead was a woman I recognized from online forums. Kara something. She'd posted about a major find last month. A pocket-briefcase containing an entire art gallery. Sold it for half a million.

I'd made three thousand dollars total in the last eight months.

Different leagues. Different lives.

Kara's team moved through the estate sale like a military operation. Two people tested the kitchen. Two more hit the bedrooms. One person stayed outside coordinating via radio.

This was what success looked like.

I walked to my car before they could notice me. I didn't need the comparison. Didn't need to see what I wasn't. I had my find. My dented travel mug with its cool cave pocket that would maybe pay my phone bill and buy me enough gas to get to the next estate sale.

That was enough. That had to be enough.

My car made the grinding noise again when I started it. The check engine light glowed cheerfully. I had forty-three dollars in my bank account. My storage unit payment was overdue by six days. I needed to find somewhere to sleep tonight that wasn't a parking lot.

But I had a pocket in my backpack.

And tonight I'd test it properly. Figure out what I'd found. Maybe it would be bigger than I thought. Maybe it would be the score that changed everything.

Probably not. But maybe.

I drove away from the estate sale thinking about possibilities. About what ifs. About that moment when you reach into something ordinary and touch something impossible.

That's what kept me hunting.

Not the money. Not the success. Just that moment of discovery.

The moment when the whole world opens up and you remember why you started this stupid, broke, obsessive life in the first place.

Because every object could be a door.

You just had to be desperate enough to keep checking.

I tested the mug that night in a shopping mall parking lot. Yep, another fucking parking lot.

Parked under a light that made me visible enough that security wouldn't think I was up to something. Moved to the back seat because I needed space. Pulled out my notebook to document everything.

The notebook was a mess. Nine months of terrible theories, failed tests, and optimistic speculation. I'd written "UNIVERSAL POCKET FORMATION PATTERN?" across one page in all caps. Underneath was a drawing that looked like a conspiracy theorist's fever dream. Arrows pointing everywhere. Question marks. Calculations that didn't calculate anything.

I'd thought I was onto something. I wasn't. There was no pattern. Pockets formed randomly in manufactured objects and nobody knew why.

But I kept theorizing anyway. Kept looking for connections that didn't exist. Kept hoping I'd be the one to crack it.

That's the thing about obsession. It doesn't care if you're wrong.

I grabbed the thermometer and reached into the mug again. Took temperature readings at different depths. Sixty-two degrees consistent. Good sign. Stable environments usually meant stable pockets.

I pulled out my phone and set up the camera. If I was going in, I wanted a record. Just in case.

Just in case I didn't come back out.

I positioned the phone so it could see the mug opening. Hit record. Looked at the camera.

"Testing pocket number fifty-eight. Travel mug from estate sale on Pinecrest. Initial reading sixty-two degrees. I'm going in."

Professional documentation. Like I knew what I was doing.

I took a breath. Tilted the mug. Pushed my head through the opening.

The transition was worse going in fully. Your whole body compressed. Your ears popped. Your vision went dark for a second. Then you were through and everything snapped back to normal proportions.

I was standing in a cave.

Not huge. Maybe ten feet across. Low ceiling. Smooth stone walls that curved naturally. There was light coming from somewhere even though there was no obvious source. That was normal for pockets. Light just existed. Like the spaces understood humans needed to see.

The temperature felt right. Sixty-two degrees. Dry air. No weird smells. Nothing obviously toxic.

I walked the perimeter. Touched the walls. Looked for exits or dangers or anything unusual. It was just a cave. A small, empty, perfectly ordinary cave inside a travel mug.

Worth maybe three thousand dollars black market. Maybe five if I authenticated it legally.

Not the big score. Not the life-changing discovery. Just another small pocket to add to my pathetic collection.

I stood there in the cave feeling that familiar mix of relief and disappointment. Relief because I'd found something. Disappointment because it wasn't enough.

It was never enough.

I turned to leave and that's when I noticed the wall.

The far wall wasn't stone. It was darker. Smooth in a different way. I walked closer.

It was a door.

Or not a door exactly. An opening. A threshold. Like a doorway without the door. Just a gap in the cave wall that led somewhere else.

That wasn't normal.

Pockets didn't have doors. They were self-contained spaces. You entered through the object, you left through the object. There was no "somewhere else."

I approached carefully. Looked through the opening.

Another space. Larger. I couldn't see the full dimensions but it looked like a room. Wooden floors. Walls that might be drywall or plaster.

A pocket within a pocket?

That wasn't possible. That had never been documented. Pockets were singular dimensional anomalies. They didn't connect to each other.

I needed to measure this. Document it. Figure out what the hell I was looking at.

I also needed to not screw this up.

If this was real. If this was actually a connected pocket system. This was big. This was revolutionary. This was the kind of discovery that made careers.

This was the kind of discovery that got people killed when they tried to claim it alone.

I backed away from the opening. Returned to the mug entrance. Pulled myself through back into my car.

The transition back always felt like a rubber band snapping. Your body returning to normal reality. Slightly nauseating until you got used to it.

I sat in my back seat breathing hard. Staring at the travel mug.

What the hell had I just found?

I grabbed my phone and stopped the recording. Played it back. Watched myself disappear into the mug. Waited. Watched myself emerge looking shaken.

The video was four minutes long.

I'd been inside for maybe ten minutes.

Time inside moved at the same rate as outside. That was a known rule. Everyone agreed on that. The video should have shown ten minutes of absence.

It showed four.

I checked the timestamp. Checked my watch. Did the math three times.

Time inside the pocket was moving faster than outside.

That wasn't possible either.

I set down my phone. Picked up the mug. Set it down again.

This was either the most important discovery in pocket dimension research or I was losing my mind. Both options seemed equally likely.

I needed help. I needed someone who actually knew what they were doing. Someone with real equipment and actual training.

I needed Yuki.

I grabbed my phone and pulled up her contact. Stared at it.

She was going to call me an idiot. She was going to yell about safety protocols and proper testing procedures and how I could have died going into an unknown pocket alone.

She was right about all of that.

I texted anyway.

"Found something weird. Need your surveying equipment. Free dinner if you help."

She responded in thirty seconds.

"You don't have money for dinner."

"I'll owe you dinner."

"You already owe me three dinners from last time."

"I'll owe you four dinners."

The typing indicator appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

"Where are you?"

I sent her my location. She said she'd be there in twenty minutes.

I sat in my car holding the travel mug and trying not to think about what I'd found. Trying not to hope. Trying not to imagine this being the big one.

The discovery that changed everything.

The thing that made me matter.

Because hope was dangerous. Hope made you reckless. Hope made you stupid.

And I was already all of those things without help.