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]

"Death? Taxes? Wild Absol? Zubat? Elevators?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Zubat? Absol?"

[the_very_best]

"Pokémon. Zubat aren't that strong but they have a couple attacks that can really mess up your team in the most frustrating, grinding way - and caves are absolutely lousy with them, so you meet fifty of them in a day trying to get through one. Absol are supposed to be bad luck."

[intricate_engineer]

"Yours sounds like a relatively pleasant world to live in."

[the_very_best]

"I like it."

[intricate_engineer]

"Anything you'd like to know?"

[the_very_best]

"Not sure where to start. What's it like where you live?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Busy.I live in what is essentially an interplanetary home base for the company I work for. It does not have it's own culture, but I meet a lot of interesting people."

[the_very_best]

"How does a place not have its own culture?"

[intricate_engineer]

"There are very few natives and most children born there are raised somewhere else or leave when they grow up. It does have a small amount of culture, but it's not it's own society."

[the_very_best]

"I'd expect it to form a sort of pidgin culture, at least. Norms for getting along while everybody's a mishmash of upbringings."

[intricate_engineer]

"We have translators so the language barrier isn't a problem. There is a culture of not taking offense unless you know an insult was intended. The majority of people stay less than five years."

[the_very_best]

"Fair enough."

[intricate_engineer]

"There are many subcultures, but they are in constant flux and mimic other worlds instead of being unique."

[the_very_best]

"What other kinds of worlds have you been in touch with, then?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Hundreds. One common blueprint is a place called Earth. Another is a place called Center."

[the_very_best]

"What do those have in common?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Other than really generic names? Worlds with the same blueprint tend to have the same history up to a point of divergence, or a history that is very similar with slight alterations."

[the_very_best]

"That's weird, you'd expect it to Butterfree-effect. Well, I would."

[intricate_engineer]

"Butterfree-effect?"

[the_very_best]

"Yeah, like, if a Butterfree flaps its wings all the way in Kalos there might be a hurricane in Kanto the next month?"

[intricate_engineer]

"We have something similar, but call it the the butterfly effect. There are many strange parallels between worlds that don't seem to follow the rules of randomness or casualty. The worlds affect each other somehow. It doesn't make sense for humans to come into being in so many distinct places, but they have. It doesn't make sense for different worlds to have the same language, but sometimes they do."

[the_very_best]

"Huh. And nobody knows how it happens?"

[intricate_engineer]

"We can see the effect and how it spreads. It's why that's still confusing and the effect is too complicated for us to effectively model."

[the_very_best]

"Weird!"