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

[intricate_engineer]

"There's no reason it couldn't eventually work here, but it'd be tough to set up by myself."

[the_very_best]

"Tough how specifically?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Without an anchor on each end, you need some pretty sophisticated computers."

[the_very_best]

"I bet Bar can get you some of those."

[intricate_engineer]

"Maybe. I don't know if she can replicate the simulations though."

[the_very_best]

"Maybe not, worth asking though."

[intricate_engineer]

"It would still take a lot of work. Maybe several months? I don't know how different the computers are here, but it would be a lot faster if I could hire someone to help."

[the_very_best]

"We have computers, I don't know how sophisticated they are on an interdimensional scale."

[intricate_engineer]

"Teleportation is significantly more risky than opening a portal. Sometimes, there are fatalities, usually exposure or starvation. It doesn't happen often, but the destination isn't as reliable and you can end up somewhere you won't survive."

[the_very_best]

"Yikes."

[intricate_engineer]

"It's part of how I ended up here. I wasn't teleporting exactly. I created a portal without an anchor at the other end and landed somewhere unexpected."

[the_very_best]

"Why'd you do that?"

[intricate_engineer]

"It's the only way to find new worlds."

[the_very_best]

"Can't you send some kind of... probe, first?"

[intricate_engineer]

"They do normally send probes. But this time, the destination wasn't new, I just didn't end up there. I was trying to make unanchored gates safer. Right now, we only use them if we're looking at new worlds, but they have a lot of potential. Teleportation is limited in what it can carry. If we can make unanchored gates work, we could easily transport goods."

[the_very_best]

"So you are a casualty of the cutting edge of science."

[intricate_engineer]

"I suppose I am."

[the_very_best]

"But a live one! With all your limbs!"

[intricate_engineer]

"That's true! And limbs can be replaced, and I don't plan on dying anytime soon."

[the_very_best]

"We don't have very good limb replacement here. Just prosthetics."

[intricate_engineer]

"You don't? I always forget what's typical."

[the_very_best]

"If you get a serious injury to a 'mon with a healing move that can sometimes help but sometimes it makes it worse, the moves are not specced for humans, so you pretty much only try that if you're dying."

[intricate_engineer]

"There's a standard info dump that is sent to new worlds. I have a copy. It's technically illegal to distribute it, since it can cause a lot of damage if given to an unprepared world. But you guys seem so peaceful, maybe it's safe to try? Do you have any idea who would be a good person to approach?"

[the_very_best]

"We don't have a lot of nonlocal governance. Is it, like, highly technical, would need a lot of work to get it working here, or is it more like stuff you want to advertise?"

[intricate_engineer]

"There's advertising, but this isn't it. This is for after they've already agreed. It's highly technical material, but it's broken down as much as possible. Theoretically, anyone who is literate could eventually understand all of it."