Paul Makes His First Journey Through the Portable Door

Paul Carpenter’s first journey through the Portable Door turns an apparent excursion into a test of reality: he returns to his office with a tangible souvenir, although the office clock suggests that scarcely any time has passed. The door itself proves temporary, but Paul keeps its rolled-up plastic sheet and instructions, choosing to retain the means of passage rather than put it away.

Passage and Return

After taking time over coffee and pastry, Paul notices the church clock and realizes he is late. He leaves his banknote and bill beneath the sugar-cellar and hurries back down the street. The Portable Door is still there, waiting beside the stapler. He nudges the stapler aside, opens the door, and goes through.

Paul finds himself in his office, where the instruction slip is on Sophie Pettingell’s chair. Sophie has not yet returned from lunch. When Paul checks his watch, it reads 01:10:02; by his reckoning, he has been away for six seconds, or perhaps not even that, since he had spent that long standing in the doorway. The apparent journey has brought him back to the same workplace with almost no measurable interval.

Proof and Doubt

The door, or rather the small plastic sheet that had served as one, peels off the wall and falls to the floor. Its collapse gives Paul reason to wonder whether he imagined the experience. Yet the matchbook in his pocket bears a name, phone number, and website, supplying physical evidence from beyond the office and confirming that the excursion was not merely a fantasy.

The contrast is central to the event: the journey seems to have taken him away, while the watch records almost no absence; the door disappears, while the matchbook remains. Paul has evidence, but not an explanation that resolves the mismatch between what he experienced and what the clock measures.

Keeping the Door

Paul first rolls up the plastic sheet and puts it, together with the instruction slip, back into its tube. He considers the proper course: returning it to the drawer where he found it, or even to the strongroom. He rejects both options and carefully tucks the cardboard tube into his inside pocket.

That choice makes the return more than a completed passage. The Portable Door has ceased to be a stable fixture on the wall, but Paul takes its components with him, preserving the possibility of using it again. The office’s ordinary measure of time and the matchbook’s stubborn material proof leave him with an unresolved discovery—and a device he has decided not to surrender.