What happened

The world had moved on.

And the world was still moving on, and Roland felt as though he were falling farther and farther behind.

He'd found the boy and it had lifted some of his pain and mental anguish. For a time he thought that if only he could find the boy -- Jake Chambers -- that everything would become clear. That the path to the Tower would be open and he would be on his way to fulfilling the destiny left to him many years ago. Even before he knew about the Tower, it had marked him. Back in his days at Gilead. Maybe even long before his birth.

But he was wrong. Finding the boy didn't change the gunslinger's feelings concerning the Tower. And now he was lost. The Path of the Beam had disappeared. His ka-tet was gone. The boy that wasn't became the boy that was and had found himself a new calling amongst this strange world. A world that was trying to move on, but had become stuck. Confused.

Roland hadn't been ignoring those who helped him. He hadn't been ignoring the boy. He'd been trying to continue his quest. Trying to find the Tower. But every direction he took, every walk, every step, every corner turned, only brought him closer and closer to his starting point.

And now he found himself stopped. Standing outside of The City Industries, staring up at three skyscrapers that nearly touched the clouds. They were all clouded by a certain darkness that caught the gunslinger's attention.

LexCorp. Wayne Tech. Stark Industries.

Towers.

Perhaps one of them was his.

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There wasn't too much in way of internal dialogue here, the most you could discern would probably be woof. Of course, dogs didn't think the way they spoke; like humans, most thoughts were quite subconscious.

Vincent knew that he was in an unfamiliar place, so different to Australia, so different to the island. Sometimes he caught the whiff of a familiar human or two, but The City was big, and scents were lost just as quickly as they were found.

He had been living off scraps of whatever he could find. Sometimes he went around to that shop with dead chickens and long chains of pink meat in the window, and the nice man would throw him a bone or two. A lot of the time bones weren't enough, and Vincent would go hungry.

Vincent was not a puppy. He was 8 years old, an age somewhat akin to a man in his mid fourties. He was tired, and he missed his owners. Shannon was here with him, but she's gone now.

He sat besides the door of a shop that had an oddly rich aroma, and laid his head on top of his paws.

"'rrf," he whined quietly.

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The morning sun shone in through the bedroom window, and the gunslinger winced at its brightness. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept so soundly. It had been a peaceful rest. And even though his body still ached a bit, and his mind still felt the effects of the temporary psychosis, he felt considerably rejuvenated.

He sat up, pistols still tied about his waist -- he'd been too weary the night before to remove them -- and glanced over at the sleeping figure of the boy. Jake. The boy who was. The boy who always had been. Everything made sense to him now. He'd had two histories running through his mind. Two pasts. Two separate tracks that had each happened. Now they finally combined and made sense.

He was whole once more.

Roland slipped out of the bed, stretched his arms up above his head, and paused to peer at his reflection in a mirror above a dresser. Haggard described him well. He was in good need of a shave and a bath. A change of clothes would have suited him too. Or, at least, the washing of the garments he was currently wearing. But there was something even more important than that, and his growling stomach let him know almost immediately. He needed nourishment. And so he wandered the distance of the halls, the twists and turns, until he came upon the kitchen area. Where hopefully that woman, Barbara of Gotham, would be cooking something.

If not, then everyone would be subjected to gunslinger cuisine. And albeit edible and sustaining, not exactly chef's choice.

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Jake wasn't getting any better.

The touch of Delirium had hurt him, badly. The small part of his mind that still seemed capable of rational thought had deduced that, if he was in the state he was currently in back in old New York City, he would have been making baskets in the Sunnyvale Sanitarium by now.

With his mind fractured into two, he had still been able to keep some distinction between the two. They had merged at times, like when he became obsessed with doors a few days ago. Completely obsessed. He'd have to open them two, three, up to seven or eight times in a row before turning aside and almost collapsing from grief when the scenery on the other side refused to be the desert, or the mountains, or even the Oracle's speaking-ring. There was a limited number of doors in Bab's home. Jake knew them all. Every crack, blister, scratch, and scuff.

After he'd died again, in his mind, Jake had locked himself in his room.

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[backdated to before Desire's 'Gift']

George of the City had left, and she didn't return.

She had allowed him free range of her abode and taught him the ways of the noodles of ramen, a food he couldn't quite wrap his mind around yet still appreciated, but it was much too confining for his tastes. So on the first day after she didn't return, he'd gone outside, immediately forced back in again after experiencing a violent mental strike to his brain.

It was the boy again.

He remembered having to make a choice.

A choice between the boy -- his new son -- and the Tower. The Tower that loomed over every aspect of his existence and threatened to destroy him before he ever came within a few miles distance of it. It was at the center of all things and of all things center and central and with it there were the answers to everything. Everything that had changed.

The world had moved on.

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Eddie and Susannah made love at night when they thought the gunslinger was asleep. He wasn't asleep though. He would lay on his side, his back towards him, eyes open and staring as he listened to the sounds they made and the whispers that followed. He couldn't always hear what they were saying, but he knew most of it was about him. He knew it was because they'd sensed the same changes in him that he had himself, but he didn't hold that against them. It was smart. They had good reason to be concerned. And when they finally fell asleep he tried to as well.

But tonight there would only be restlessness for the gunslinger. He had a dream. It was always the same dream. There was a boy and he let him fall to his death. The gunslinger sacrificed him for the tower. This was followed by the man in black laughing at him. Always laughing. Laughing until he heard a peculiar sound and sat straight up, pistol at his side drawn in a blur of motion.

"--SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND SEVENTEEN MINUTES!"

The other two members of the ka-tet were asleep, resting peacefully in each other's arms, and Roland wasn't going to bother them. He quickly crept to his feet, dressed, and head off into the forest.

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