That wasn't supposed to happen

[whatamithinking]

The parameters are recalibrated, the dial is spun, and a new universe is selected.
It won't be home--they haven't collected anywhere near enough coordinate data to think they can find home yet--but it will be another step closer.
And who knows, it might be interesting.
Edie steps through the portal first.

Comments

[not_only]

"You're welcome," he says, smiling shyly at her before he goes back to construction. There is now the shell of a single-storey multi-room building, with a wooden floor and furniture and lamps; he flies up to the top of the walls and lays out a roof, then comes back down, fills in a few more walls, and stops.

"Before I put the doors in - you haven't built anywhere for your weird person-things to live, have you? If you build a house for yourself and not them sometimes they decide they live in your bathroom and they stand there all night and it's very disturbing."

[whatamithinking]

"...No. No we have not. I would prefer to keep them far away from us, if possible." She shudders.

[not_only]

"Okay. Then I'll build them a house first so they don't bother you."

He flies away a shortish distance - within sight, but not within earshot - and builds a much simpler, taller house that seems to be a stack of nearly identical floors each consisting of four tiny and nearly identical rooms arranged around a central stairwell. It has no windows and is kind of depressing-looking. When he's done, he comes back and installs a door in the sisters' house, then opens the door and goes inside to add more doors between the rooms.

[iamnotpolaris]

Emily follows him inside and stashes a couple of green beads in likely-looking places.
"I think we forgot to introduce ourselves, didn't we? That happens sometimes when my sister starts out by engaging someone in telepathy, you don't need names as much when everyone's mind feels different."

[not_only]

"Oh. I guess we did," he says, glancing at her with another shy smile. (His eyes flash in the light like a cat's.) "I'm Sivath. You aren't Ceirene, are you? Even though you look it?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"I'm Emily, and my sister's name is Edie. I...do not come from a world where there exist Ceirene and Aluvai. Everyone just lives on the outside of the planet, and it's solid."

[not_only]

"Well, I guess that explains why you'd all look Ceirene, then... if your planet doesn't even have an inside then I'm sure you get plenty of sunlight and stuff." He tucks his hair back behind his pointed ears. "It's weird, though. I haven't even seen another Aluvai since I was thirteen. All the person-things look Ceirene too, the ones that look human at all."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I've been to a lot of universes, and most of them have solid planets. But honestly, you don't look all that strange for my world; the people there--or at least a particular minority thereof--have a wide variety of shapes."

[not_only]

"I'm not sure it's the same thing. But what do you mean?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Oh--we've got something called the X-Gene, and it does weird things to people who have it. My sister's and my powers, they come from the X-Gene. It can also cause physical differences--that's what we meant when we mentioned we had met people with wings, but there are other things too, like different eyes or ears or teeth or skin. Our aunt looks like she was carved out of lapis lazuli."

[not_only]

"So I'm not very weird to you but you're very weird to me," Sivath concludes. "Well, that's okay."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Lots of people don't take it that well, but they're jerks."

[not_only]

"That happens in my world too."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I think it's a constant of human nature. Which is a pity, but you work with what you have."

[not_only]

He nods.

"...What are those?" he asks, indicating the green beads.

[iamnotpolaris]

"They're place markers, so we can get back here later if we want to. They're connected to these," she says, holding her arm up and shaking it so the sleeve falls down, revealing a gadget held to her arm with straps along the length of her forearm. "They're how we travel between universes."

[not_only]

"Oh. That's very useful," he says. "How does it work?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"You can set it to create a small portal a certain distance from one of the beads, or another armband, or enter a set of coordinates, or set it to what we call 'guided random.' Then I use my magnetism powers to enlarge the portal enough to be useful as anything other than a communications device."

[not_only]

"What does 'guided random' do?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Basically you input a set of parameters and it selects a random universe that fits those parameters."

[not_only]

"What kinds of parameters?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"If we fully understood the parameters, we could get home. We're figuring it out by going to a lot of different universes and getting readings off of what parameters the bands say that the universes have."

[not_only]

"This sounds like it has a very weird story behind it."

[iamnotpolaris]

Sigh.
"So there's this bar called Milliways, and it works by hijacking doors in various universes and making them go there instead. I used to get Milliways doors pretty often. My sister and I followed someone home who lived in a world that had problems we were particularly suited to fixing; he got Milliways doors at least once a week, so we figure it was safe. Unfortunately, someone who was benefiting from the problems figured out who was behind their being solved and killed the guy before we could go home. I subsequently failed to get Milliways doors for several months before someone gave us the armbands and suggested trying to get home this way."

[not_only]

"...I was right," says Sivath. "That is a very weird story."