Searching Far and Wide

[intricate_engineer]

Glen was creating a prototype for a new gate design. It was meant to be affordable and provide quick transport between individual homes. She tests several objects and a rat and everything seems to be working.

She steps through. Instead of finding herself in the room next door, she finds herself standing on a sidewalk in an empty city. The buildings are tall and perfect, colorless with doorways far too tall for any human. The roads have no straight lines and twist in on themselves. There is no life or sound.
Glen tries to stay calm. She begins to walk along the road, randomly opening doors and exploring buildings that are as silent as the rest of the world.

She opens a door that she hopes will lead onto a roof and is instead met with warmth, and soft noise, and color.

Comments

[the_very_best]

"Oh. Well, that's damned inconvenient."

[intricate_engineer]

"I'm hoping we find an exception. Magical worlds are extremely varied and there are a few whose magic can spread. They just don't have immortality. Maybe your world will be the lucky one."

[the_very_best]

"Well, I haven't found any legendaries to ask about it yet."

[intricate_engineer]

Glen raises her glass.
"I wish you luck!"

[the_very_best]

"Thanks!"

[intricate_engineer]

"I suppose your world doesn't have inter-dimensional gates then?"

[the_very_best]

"No? I mean, unless you count the door to here."

[intricate_engineer]

"Eh. It was unlikely. I guess I'll keep asking around and trying the door."

[the_very_best]

"What's the matter?"

[intricate_engineer]

"I'm trying to find a way back home. I don't live in the universe I was born in, and I found Milliways through a third universe, so I'm having a bit of trouble."

[the_very_best]

"Oh. Yeah, I can't help you with that unless I find the right Legendary and it turns out they work that way for some reason."

[intricate_engineer]

"I'm tempted to just go explore random worlds honestly. This has happened to me before, and I don't think it will be solved by staying in one place. Besides, this is a perfect chance to explore worlds we never would have found."

[the_very_best]

"We?"

[intricate_engineer]

"I meant we in the general sense of humans in the sphere of knowledge I exist in, but I do sometimes work with researchers who are trying to find new human planets."

[the_very_best]

"Okay, but my world probably is a dead end in its own right, and if Pokémon are endemic to it you might not be able to train any and you'd have to go around with something intensely docile and not suitable for traveling or with an escort. Not very exploratory."

[intricate_engineer]

"True and I don't necessarily want to visit your world, but the fact that the first person I talk to has an entirely new form of magic is exciting. Maybe you're a fluke, but this is apparently also a magical bar, so maybe not."

[the_very_best]

"My explanatory napkin says there's a wide variety of patrons," says Bella.

[intricate_engineer]

Glen grins.
"We find new worlds by looking for universes similar to existing ones, so we rarely find anything too exciting. This place is perfect. I've always wished there was a way to visit random universes."

[the_very_best]

"I'm not sure if it's exactly random, several things indicate the door runs on suspicious coincidences sometimes, but it doesn't seem to mostly select for similarity!"

[intricate_engineer]

"Have you ever seen anything like this before?"

[the_very_best]

"No, it's completely weird and unheard of. I'd think it was some weird psychic attack but it'd be very weird indeed."

[intricate_engineer]

"Is that something Pokémon can do?"

[the_very_best]

"Psychic attacks? Sure. I block human psychics, I'm sort of the opposite of them, but 'mon are a lot stronger."

[intricate_engineer]

"What can psychics do?"

[the_very_best]

"Human ones or 'mon?"