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

[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."

[iamnotpolaris]

"It really is, even by our standards."

[not_only]

"Are you the sort of people that weird things happen to? I wouldn't have thought I was that sort of person before I came to Terraria, but there have been plenty of weird things here."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Yes. Yes we are."

[not_only]

Shy smile. "I can't really complain."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Me either, for most of it. This particular bit has been a bit inconvenient, but we've been able to do a lot of good while we try to get home.
I should probably warn you, we probably won't be able to get you to your universe any more reliably than we can get back to ours."

[not_only]

"I don't mind not going home, really," he says. "I'd like to be able to leave Terraria, and I might like to be able to live somewhere there are more people if it's safe to do that, but just having someone to talk to who isn't myself or a person-thing is already a big improvement."

[iamnotpolaris]

"You can absolutely come along with us! Or we could drop you off somewhere else."

[not_only]

"Well... what sorts of universes have you been to so far?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Well, there's the one with the terrible vampires, and the one with the moderately friendly vampires, and the one with the mad scientists, and the ones I could describe as 'default twenty-first century Earth' if I thought you would know what that meant, and the ones that have mutants--that's people with the X-Gene--and the high fantasy ones...we've been to a lot of different universes."

[not_only]

"Mad scientists...? High fantasy...?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"High fantasy is shorthand for worlds that have magic that fit a certain aesthetic. Mad science means people who create fantastic technologies without the systematic experimentation and research that normal science demands."

[not_only]

"Oh. I'm not sure I understand what the second thing means."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Which part?"

[not_only]

It might be relevant that the language they're speaking doesn't actually have a term for 'mad science', and 'technologies' and 'normal science' and 'systematic experimentation' all have to be approximated using words that don't carry the same history and connotations as the English equivalents.

"Well, I don't know, exactly."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Well...the short version is that normal science would take about fifty years to get from an arbitrarily specified point to something like my armband, but it would reliably get there. From the same arbitrarily specified point, a mad scientist could spend a week working on it, and they might get the armband, but they might get a death ray or an automatic cheesemaker instead."