A/N: This was written as part of the NFA White Elephant Exchange. The request was for something with the theme of "We're not in Kansas anymore." I really ran with it and this is a weird one. The plot is almost impossible to explain. Be prepared for some strangeness if you venture. :)

Disclaimer: Nothing NCIS is mine. And I don't make money. :)

The Strangeness of the Cosmos (Is Part of Its Charm)
by Enthusiastic Fish

Our judgment therefore comes down to which we find more wasteful and inelegant: many worlds or many words. Perhaps we will gradually get used to the weird ways of our cosmos and find its strangeness to be part of its charm.
~Max Tegmark

Chapter 1

It was a forest. It should have looked like any other forest, but it didn't.

Because it wasn't any other forest.

There were little hints everywhere that it wasn't any other forest.

One was the silence. Nature does not tend toward silence unless completely devoid of living things. Silence, at least in a material medium, implies a lack of change. Even the slightest breeze moving through a forest creates sound waves. Compression and rarefaction that is carried to any sensor, be it human, animal or mechanical. That is the nature of things.

...or is it?

One was the color. Green trunks. Brown leaves. Not instantly wrong, but just enough.

One was the absence of any real ground. One assumes a ground because there is a surface being walked on. But there is no ground. There is merely sky. Everywhere that is not trees.

And then, into the midst of this forest that was not like any other, came something else wrong.

She was dead, of course. She knew it. No one would be surprised to find out, but that didn't seem to matter here.

She looked around for the reason she was here.

The forest was empty. She moved...sort of. Everywhere she was had no inhabitants.

Finally, she looked at her wrist. There was a watch there. What kind of time it was telling...well, that wasn't something she shared out.

She looked and then looked again.

Finally, it dawned on her.

I'm early.

She swore to herself...quickly apologized...and then vanished.

The forest was still empty.

For the moment.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Here and now...

"Grab your gear," Gibbs snapped, not even pausing as he walked through the bullpen.

Tony, Tim and Ziva looked at each other for a second and then jumped up, grabbing their bags and running after Gibbs. None of them wanted to be left behind when the elevator door closed. One never knew when this might be a test.

"You got the camera, right?" Tony muttered to Tim in a low voice as they headed for the truck.

"Yes. Got it."

"Good. Gibbs doesn't seem in a very good mood."

"Is he ever really in a good mood?" Tim asked. "He always seems kind of irritated."

"Don't say that very loudly," Tony said.

"I wouldn't dare," Tim said.

"What are you talking about?" Ziva asked in a normal voice.

"Nothing!" Tony said, glaring at her.

She grinned. "Really?"

"Really."

"Well, I would not waste time. Gibbs does not seem to be in a good mood."

Tony smiled at Tim in triumph. The exact same thing he'd just said.

"Where are we going, Boss?" Tim asked, seeing Gibbs stalking toward them.

"Rock Creek," Gibbs said.

"Again?" Tony asked. "They should just tell the Navy people to stay out of there. I swear that more petty officers end up dead there than anywhere else in the world."

"This one did stay out," Gibbs said.

"What do you mean, Gibbs?" Ziva asked.

"Marine supposedly vanished into thin air," Gibbs said. "Let's go."

The three looked at each other for a second. Into thin air?

"Are you waiting for an invitation? Let's go!" Gibbs repeated.

"On your six, Boss," Tony said.

They hurried after him, wondering what they'd see.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

"I'm seeing nothing but the park," Tony said, when they arrived. "Boss, I don't want to ask a stupid question, but..."

Tim suppressed a snort.

"Don't start with me, Probie," Tony said.

"What, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked.

"How do we investigate someone who is supposed to have literally disappeared?"

Gibbs raised an eyebrow.

"Right. I'll figure it out as I go," Tony said and started to look around.

"Where was he supposed to have disappeared?" Tim asked, camera in hand, trying to sound merely questioning, not skeptical.

Gibbs pointed to where the Metro police had put up caution tape. Tim nodded and walked over to the spot. It didn't look like anything had happened. It didn't look strange. It didn't look different. It was just there. A patch of grass off the trail. A couple of trees. Tim wasn't sure what he was supposed to document, but he decided to take a few photos of the area anyway. That way Gibbs wouldn't be able to accuse him of not being thorough.

As he worked, he listened to Ziva and Gibbs as they spoke to the Metro police, getting an update on what was supposed to have happened. A Marine out running in the park, suddenly vanishing before the eyes of two other runners. Not just one. Two. There had been cases of deception spreading to a group before, but two people witnessing the same thing lent more credibility to it in Tim's mind, even if it didn't matter so much legally.

He took pictures all around and then was about to go and join Tony where he was checking the running path when he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He turned quickly.

For just a moment, he could have sworn that the ground had disappeared in one small area. He had been looking and it had just been sky. But that was impossible. He started toward that spot but paused when Ducky and Jimmy pulled up.

"Hey, Ducky," Tony called. "What brings you here? There's no body!"

Ducky got out of the truck.

"What do you mean? We were told to come here," Ducky said. "Isn't that right, Mr. Palmer?"

"Yeah. There's a Marine, isn't there?"

"Well, there was, but he's not here and we don't know that he's dead."

"What are you doing, then?"

"Finding evidence of the guy disappearing like David Copperfield," Tony said.

"Oh, I loved David Copperfield when I was a kid," Jimmy said, enthusiastically. "I still want to know how he made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Or how he walked through the Great Wall of China. I mean I know it's all a trick of some kind, but I'd love to know how he managed it."

"Well, I do not think he was involved here," Ziva said, walking over to them. "I am afraid you have wasted your time coming, Ducky. Actually, we all may have wasted our time. There seems to be nothing more than the word of two people who swear he disappeared."

"Perhaps," Ducky agreed. "However, it is intriguing to think what has led to this. I was just telling Mr. Palmer about the debate of whether reality is continuous or discrete and whether we can truly observe causation. It has large implications for how we approach the whole concept of science."

"Later, Duck," Gibbs said. "You might as well head back."

Ducky glanced over at Tim who waved cheerfully.

"So it would seem. Well, there is another body waiting to be processed. I suppose we will now have time to work on it, Mr. Palmer."

Tim turned his attention back on that small patch and he headed toward it.

"You got something, McGee?" Tony asked.

"Don't know," Tim said. "I thought I saw..."

"Saw what?"

Tim stepped closer to it and he truly felt like he was somehow staring down at the sky while at the same time standing on the ground.

"Can you see this?" Tim asked.

"See what?"

He took one more step, but he stumbled over a tree root he hadn't noticed.

...and he fell into the sky.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

"McGee!" Tony shouted and ran toward where Tim had suddenly...

...vanished into thin air.

"Tony, what is it?" Ziva asked.

"Tim just disappeared!" Tony said.

He ran and tripped over the same offending tree root. He heard sounds coming after him but they were cut off as he fell into the sky.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Gibbs and Ziva froze as they watched Tony fall into nothing.

"What just happened?" Ziva asked.

Gibbs pulled out his gun and approached the spot where both Tim and Tony had vanished.

"Jethro, be careful," Ducky said, in concern from behind him.

"Ducky, don't follow us," he said. "Ziva, come on."

Ziva nodded, looking more than a little unsettled. She wasn't one who generally dealt with anything outside her experience. She'd seen and done so much that very little bothered her. Now, she was definitely bothered, but Gibbs wasn't going into this without backup.

They walked toward the spot where Tony and Tim disappeared. They both paused.

"I see sky, Gibbs," Ziva said. "Where there should be ground, I see sky."

"That's where they've gone. Come on."

Another step forward, and Gibbs suddenly thought he heard a voice...one he hadn't heard in years.

...because the person the voice belonged to was long dead.

"Hurry up, Gibbs!"

"Kate..." he whispered and stepped into the sky.

"Gibbs...wait fo–!"

He heard Ziva behind him, but as soon as he stepped into the sky, her voice cut off, as if someone had turned off a radio.

...and then, he looked around and realized that things were even more strange than he had initially thought. People randomly disappearing was strange enough, but this was a step further.

...because he was currently standing on the sky, but there were trees growing out of the sky, and the trees were the wrong color and the sky kept changing every time he tried to focus on it and...

"About time, Gibbs. You're usually so prompt."

...and Kate was standing there, staring at him like no time had passed at all.

"Kate," he said again.

Kate smiled at him.

"Yes. I'm glad you at least remember who I am. I got here early, but you were almost late...and the multiverse doesn't like it when you're late."

The word she used completely passed over his head and Gibbs chose to ignore it as he usually did any kind of science babble.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Good question, but it's one I can't answer."

"Then, why are you here?"

"To bug you. It's been long enough and I rarely got that chance while I was alive anyway."

"Where's everyone else?"

"Where aren't they? That's a better question."

Gibbs rolled his eyes.

"There are rules, Gibbs. If you were in my position, you'd have to follow them, too."

"Your position?"

"Being dead. But ask yourself why I can be here talking to you."

"So...where aren't they?"

"They aren't with you. But if things were like you expect them to be, you should all be together, right? You all stepped through the same spot at nearly the same time."

Gibbs began to think about what Kate was saying. She was standing right there. He knew she was dead, but she was right there. He couldn't resist.

He reached out to touch her...and he waved his hand through her torso. Kate smiled at the gesture.

"I'm no more corporeal here than I would be anywhere else. But what you need to do is start looking for everyone."

"Don't you know where they are?"

"No. Do you even know where you are, Gibbs?"

Gibbs smiled a little. Kate smiled back, but then, she sobered.

"You don't have an unlimited amount of time, Gibbs. You'd better get moving."

"Moving where?"

"Out of here before it's too late. That's all I can say. Oh, and when you find Tim tell him to start thinking about probabilities. Really really tiny probabilities. I'll be back later."

Then, she vanished.

"Kate!" he said. Too late. She was gone.

Gibbs looked around. It felt like he was hovering in midair. No, it didn't feel that way. It looked that way. It felt like he was just standing on the ground. It was just that all the information coming into his senses said otherwise. He was surrounded by sky...and trees. Why trees? Why was he seeing trees here? Where was here anyway?

He looked back, half-expecting to see Rock Creek Park. He didn't. Just more sky and trees.

Could he even walk here?

Nothing to do but try. If Kate was right, there was some kind of time limit. No sense in standing around.

He took a breath.

...and took a step.