I had the first "episode"when I was eight. One moment I was a kid on a seesaw, the next I was a Pony Express rider galloping across the Western plains. Harmless, right? Not harmless. I became "the weird kid", picked on by bullies and avoided by my alleged friends. So I started calling the episodes daydreams and pretended I was a fledgling writer. Problem solved, right? Nope. When a mid-proposal "daydream" cost me my fiancée (Did I mention I was babbling ancient Egyptian in an upscale restaurant?), moved east and started over in Manhattan. Became a detective with the NYPD.

I kept my daydreams to myself, lived a solitary life, got a cat. Cool, right? Not cool. I had an episode in the middle of a drug bust. While I was busy being an Austrian museum curator during WWII, my partner was getting shot. Mel requested a new partner and no one else wanted to take his place. Can you blame them? Two therapists into medical leave, I found myself at the Manhattan Institute of Neuroscience, where Dr. Victoria Shehata and her team were experimenting with something called Genetic Cognitive Transference. I didn't care what they called it.

All I wanted was to make it stop, but Victoria had other ideas. She was convinced my episodes weren't delusions or waking dreams, and that they could change the way we perceived reality. Victoria can be very persuasive; I found myself investigating a case that spanned centuries and threatened to change the world-and not in a good way.