“Are you sure it’s okay to let her come?” Levin asked.
“Oh, sure. There’s no one I’d trust with my life more than Mei,” Andrew said, strolling down a hall with Levin in tow. Fang Mu was not accompanying them today.
Levin cocked his head as he looked at Andrew, unable to tell if the man was joking or not. “But doesn’t she want to put you in prison…?”
“I’ve been saved and foiled in equal measure by Mei’s attempts to arrest me,” Andrew said with a chuckle. “I’m not much in a fight, and I’ve run afoul of some nasty customers on more than a few occasions. But if I ever get into real trouble, I just leak my location to Mei, and she’ll clean up both me and my enemies in one fell swoop! If only I could figure out how she keeps finding me when I’m trying to lay low, and I’d have my own little bounty hunter on call. Well, not little.”
“Aren’t you worried about what she’ll do to you once we get back?”
Andrew shrugged. “I’ve always managed to escape in the past. Mei is a complete lone wolf, so she never has any extra guards or anything on her ship. Slipping out of her clutches is pretty easy as long as you have the right gadgets.”
Levin considered that as they continued in silence, and Andrew led them on through sterile passageways made of unpolished metal, the drab silver color of everything around a far cry from the comfortable furnishings he had spent the night in. This was clearly a ward of the satellite dedicated to scientific experimentation, and Levin's stomach was in his mouth as they headed towards the main event. It took only a few more minutes until they arrived at a plain set of doors, and Andrew threw them open with his usual exaggerated bravado.
Inside, Levin found a small room lined with lockers and a long bench down the middle, Mei already present and standing idly to the side with a holo tablet in the air before her.
“Morning, Mei! You all ready to go?” Andrew said cheerfully.
She snorted in response, dropping the virtual screen and fishing a few earbuds out of her pocket. She inserted them into her ears, deep enough to not be visible from the exterior.
“What?” she said.
However, Andrew didn’t repeat his question. Looking like a kid with a candybar, he eyed Mei with a smirk that provoked an annoyed frown in response.
“Careful, Mei. These new universal translators are a bit bigger than normal, because they double as radio. Were you keeping them out because they’re too big for your ears?" Andrew said, suppressing a laugh. “How, dare I say, cute.”
Levin scurried to the side of the room, away from Andrew’s side as Mei stared daggers at him, now able to understand him with her translator earbuds back in. She grabbed one of the locker doors by her side, and peeled the metal door out of its frame like a banana, crumpling the hunk of reinforced steel like tin foil.
“Wrong. I just hadn’t put them in yet. Call me cute again, and I’ll stuff you in here,” she said, pointing at the inside of the forcefully opened locker.
Levin grimaced. His gear was in that locker.
“Most girls enjoy it when I call them cute, darling. Why can’t we get along, just this once?” Andrew said.
Mei smiled back at Andrew, and all of a sudden Levin couldn’t tell if she was genuinely mad or just having fun. He edged around the side of the room, trying to get an angle to tell if anything in his locker had been disturbed.
“Alright, in you go,” Mei said, stepping towards Andrew.
But as she drew near, Andrew whisked out of existence before their very eyes. A second later, Andrew reappeared next to Levin, tapping a spot on his upper arm where a thick metal band sat underneath his clothes, deactivating a device he called his 'Invisibility Cloak.' Mei looked on, unimpressed.
“Now, hold on a moment,” Andrew said. “Stuff me into a locker if you must, but not that one. Or you’ll earn the wrath of this lad here.”
Mei stopped and stared at Levin, as if noticing him for the first time. He jumped slightly, startled by the pressure of being stared down by something at Mei’s size.
“You can fight?” she asked.
“W-well, I have some weapons, sort of…but they’re not here right now,” Levin stammered out.
“Not here? We’re leaving in ten minutes. You aren’t ready?” she said.
Now it was Levin’s turn to glare at Andrew, the reason they were so late. “They’re large, so they’re already on board. All I need to be ready now is my gear…” he said, eyeing the locker Mei had opened.
“Then if I were to attack you right now, you wouldn’t be able to fight back,” Mei said.
Levin gulped, not knowing what to say to such an absurd statement. Mei shook her head, turning back to Andrew.
“He isn’t fit for combat. We shouldn’t bring him,” she said.
“Mei, darling, combat suitability is hardly a major concern on this trip. And Levin is more than capable of taking care of himself,” Andrew said.
“Not a concern? Yet your professor has recruited little Rohan? Why ask for his help if you aren’t expecting combat?” Mei asked.
“Fair play. It’s good to be prepared for anything, I think, plus Rohan knows the professor well. But regardless, it’s not relevant to why Levin is on this team,” Andrew said.
Mei scoffed, sitting down on the thin bench in the room, causing it to bow deeply under her weight. Levin took the opportunity to move over to his locker, rifling through its contents, trying to ignore Mei’s disapproval of him.
From his locker he first pulled out a large belt, made of a stiff nylon, and wrapped it around his waist. The belt was several inches wide, long enough that it reached from his hips to his navel, with several pockets set into the material, currently empty.
Next he pulled out the items that would be going into his belt. He had a half-dozen different gadgets, each one small and circular and designed to produce data readouts from the environment. He took them each one-by-one, established a wireless mental connection with it using his Y-Link, and then stuffed it into the belt.
Each of these devices immediately began relaying data to his mind through his Y-Link, providing him with details on everything from weather conditions to exact chemical makeups. With this suite of sensors combined with his processing speed, Levin felt confident he could detect any environmental hazards before coming into any real danger.
Andrew also had a set of equipment in a separate locker that he pulled on at the same time as Levin, mostly containing different throwable gadgets like the one he had briefly trapped Mei with yesterday. As for Mei, she looked as though she hadn’t brought anything at all, wearing just the same tight-fitting nanofiber weave clothing as Levin and Andrew, a utilitarian set of clothes composed of a few pieces each maximized for durability.
“Well, let’s be off, shall we?” Andrew said once they had emptied their lockers.
The three of them headed out the exit of the locker room, opposite the entrance they had come in from. On the other side of the door, several rows of rectangular vehicles sat in tracks set into the floor, like several rows of roller coaster cars all pointed at a closed hole in the far side. Except this vehicle had a roof, of course.
A few other doorways lining the walls marked alternate entrances to the massive room, out of which dozens of people bustled through to join those already boarded on their craft. Anya spotted the newly arrived trio almost instantly, hurrying over to them while looking to be on the border of hysteria.
“Andrew, I knew you’d be late! Hurry, you all are in those seats,” she said, pointing to a section in the back of one of the vehicle trains.
Anya immediately rushed off again, without giving Andrew any time to reply with something obnoxious. In lieu of snark, he simply shrugged before setting off ahead of Mei and Levin towards the boxy vehicle Anya had pointed at, mixing with the scrambling crowds around them as they made their way towards their assigned station.
The vehicle had been divided into individual seats, each connected in a train one after the other, and Levin climbed up one large step before descending into his seat. He pulled the craft closed by shutting a sheet of metal closed above his head, leaving him entombed in the cramped space, barely illuminated by a small dashboard in the front.
Levin was surprised at how quiet it became as soon as he entered, the hubbub from the outside completely rebuffed by walls designed to withstand the rigors of passing into an alternate dimension. He reached out with his Y-Link, searching for his weapons that were supposed to be stored in compartments at the sides, and was able to find all four ready and waiting. He initiated one final diagnostic check on them, just to be safe.
Having finally connected to all of his equipment for the mission, Levin settled into his seat, the tight space still more than enough to accommodate his lanky frame. He couldn’t help but wonder at how Mei and her bulk were dealing with the cramped conditions, sitting in a seat that was probably stretching out under her weight. But this was Bloodhound Mei he was thinking about, Levin reminded himself; she would be fine no matter what.
“Roger roger,” Andrew said, his voice coming from a speaker near Levin’s seat. “Come in, my Scouts.”
“Copy,” Levin said, feeling a bit silly from the rush of excitement he had at the word.
There was a couple seconds of silence before Andrew radioed back in a second time.
“Mei, that includes you, too.”
“I can hear you. I wish I couldn’t,” she said.
"I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
Levin couldn’t help but grin at their banter, envying how relaxed they could be when his own body was flush with anxiety and nerves. And excitement, of course – they were about to mark a monumental milestone in human history. Levin could already see his name being written in the history books, though of course it would be a footnote next to Omar Al-Abadi or Anya Romanoff.
Stolen story; please report.
Ahead of him, a screen suddenly flared to life, giving Levin a glimpse of the outside beyond his windowless interior, revealing that all the crafts had been boarded and the rush had settled. A crackle broke the silence as their vehicle's radio engaged, carrying over a different voice than Andrew’s or Mei’s.
"Disengage airlock," Anya said, voice firm.
At her call, the large shutter making up one of the walls began to fall open, and the air in the entire chamber whooshed out in a matter of seconds. Within their pressurized vehicles, the crew members of the expedition were unaffected, and through the video broadcast into each craft, they were now all able to see out into the void of space.
The chamber opened into the center of Al-Abadi’s massive ringed satellite, with the titanium structure forming a horizontal loop around a large pocket of open space. Below, just beyond the floor’s edge, Levin could see the top of Titan and the tip of Saturn's rings, but there was something much more interesting in view – a rippling distortion that caused the opposite side of the space station to appear warped in Levin's eyes, as though viewed through several sheets of water.
It writhed like an amoeba out in the void of space, gradually growing in size. Levin felt like he was looking at a juvenile black hole, as the warping effect increased in intensity to the point he couldn’t even see the other side of the space station – despite the fact it was still transparent. Instead, just stars could be seen through the veil-like anomaly, and even those were beginning to wink out.
Levin held his breath as he watched, imagining the frantic work that must be taking place elsewhere on board to make this experiment work. Unlike the Expedition crew he belonged to, the Station crew had been at work on this project for decades – they already had experience opening small dimensional wormholes, but surely this time would still be like never before for them too.
"Wait a second," Mei said, speaking on Levin and Andrew’s Scout channel only. "We're just shooting off those rails? These things don’t even have steering!"
"It's not too late to back out now, dear. You'd have to get through the vacuum of space in a two-piece, but I doubt it'd be much of a hassle for you," Andrew said.
"Back out?" Mei said with a laugh. "And miss this? Do you have any idea what we're about to do?"
Andrew chuckled, but before he could respond, Anya’s voice came over the speaker again, initiating a one minute countdown. Bright red numbers sprang up over the image of the vacuum inside the craft, counting down the seconds.
“Holding up alright back there, Levin?” Andrew said, and the lights on Levin’s dash indicated Andrew was speaking solely to him now.
“I just want to say, Andrew… Thank you.”
The response carried to Levin was one of bright laughter, and the young man grinned. The seconds continued to tick down, the final minute Levin had left in his home. In mere moments, a complete, entirely new reality would be laid bare, ushering in a new era of human exploration and technological innovation.
At the eleven second mark, the wispy sheet-like anomaly suddenly collapsed in on itself into a rapidly spinning sphere of pure black, barely the size of a fist – at first. It took less than three seconds for it to grow far larger, expanding to a size several hundred feet in diameter, like a polished marble of pure vantablack. The translucent distortion effect had entirely disappeared, as though this impossible orb before their eyes was simply a physical object and not the Gate between dimensions it actually was.
“Off we go!” Andrew said as the countdown hit zero.
Levin lurched in his seat as their vehicle launched forward on its rails, a rush of adrenaline spiking through his body. He squeezed his eyes shut, but it didn’t change anything – the screen, their only window beyond the craft, clicked off as they jolted into motion, leaving him completely in the dark. The initial burst of acceleration lasted only a brief moment, and Levin clutched the handles of his seat even as he felt still, knowing that outside they were still hurtling through the void of space.
Levin easily calculated the exact time it would take for them to hit the Gate, but it didn’t stop the seconds from feeling like minutes. At the moment Levin expected them to hit the tip of the sphere, a violent shudder shook the craft, but it felt nothing like mere turbulence. Levin’s entire body was pulled in all directions at once, bones popping from their joints as ligaments strained, muscles contracting involuntarily, all pushing outwards against skin that burned with millions of pinprick-like tingles. Levin could sense his teeth trying to fly from his mouth and his tongue expanding like water, and he felt grateful he had kept his eyes tightly closed as the wrenching force put pressure on them too.
And then, it was over. His body sprang back into place, no damage done from the brief yet extreme pull. Levin exhaled deeply, only realizing now he had been holding his breath the entire time. He forced himself to relax, releasing the tension in his muscles as he settled back into his seat, the craft now completely still. In the quiet darkness, Levin wished the screen showing the outside would turn back on. But the stillness was not long to last, as a sudden jerking motion startled Levin.
After a moment, it went still again, and Levin’s radio flared to life.
“Damn thing won’t open,” Mei growled to Andrew and Levin. “Can I force it?”
“Woah there, big girl. We’re not getting out yet,” Andrew said. “Gotta let the big wigs be the first one to step on a new dimension, you know? We’re just bit players, so we gotta wait.”
Mei fell silent, and Levin’s imagination began to run wild with thoughts of what could be beyond these thin metal walls. But Andrew was right – Anya, Santiago, and Rohan would certainly be the first three out, etching their names among the likes of Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong as the very first to new milestones on the path of humanity’s space exploration. Levin was lucky to have come along at all; he had no problems with waiting an extra minute.
A loud click above him, the sound of the pressurized box unlocking, signaled that Levin could come out now. He eagerly pushed his way up and out of the tiny pit, standing up on the top of the vehicle and scanning his surroundings. Below him, engineers were popping out of their seats and rushing to establish the dimensional link the brief period of time they had, but Levin’s vision skipped right over them.
Instead, Levin was transfixed with the planet they had landed on. All around, green pine trees covered a landscape that rose and fell in mountainous slopes all around. The distance he could see was spectacular – they had landed near the peak of one of the mountains. To his right he could see a glittering body of water on the horizon, and far on his left the mountains descended into green plains.
But most impressive was in front of him, a towering mountain range with the average peak over double the height of the mountains that immediately surrounded Levin. The mountains steadily grew in height like a staircase before Levin, and his Y-Link reported the tallest to be nearly the height of Mount Everest, assuming the water he could see was sea level.
High above, a bright yellow sun cast down a pleasant warmth, bathing Levin in its rays, with no sign of the pitch black Gate that had delivered them. Levin felt as though he had stepped into the Earth of old, a place where uncolonized nature made up the entirety of the planet. The only signs of intelligent life he could see were within the crater made by the Expedition Team’s landing.
“Thirty minutes until the return opening!” Anya’s voice rang out again, straight into Levin’s ears from the radio-equipped translator earbuds they had put in ahead of time. “Let’s have the beacons up in fifteen! If those aren’t powered by the time we leave, we’ll never find our way back here again! Whether we’ve succeeded or not, all personnel be back in your seats at twenty-eight minutes or you risk getting left behind!”
Levin looked for Andrew, wanting orders of his own, and found the golden-haired man already down below with Mei on gray rock exposed from their landing. But before Levin jumped down to join him, there was one thing left to be done, something he hadn’t been able to do before leaving. With his Y-Link, Levin reached out to his four weapons, confirming the link as active.
Then, giddy with excitement, he turned on the radio of the Expedition Team. “Rohan, check this out!”
Levin saw Rohan focus on him from atop the high edge of the crater, standing alongside Anya and Santiago where they could survey their immediate location. Levin blushed slightly at the attention, despite bringing it upon himself, then mentally sent out the activation command.
His weapons responded, bursting out of four hatches on the sides of four different vehicles in the train Levin’s own car had been a part of. Three of them were identical – canine-shaped robots that rose up to waist height, with a thin, sleek frame perfectly disguising the mini hydrogen reactors that pumped out joules like water, powering internally mounted equipment unique to each dog.
The fourth robot didn’t leap to the ground like the three dogs, instead soaring up into the air on wings of metal. Unlike the highly weaponized hounds, this solar-powered bird was designed for long-range scouting, able to stay in the air indefinitely without ever needing to refuel. After a quick, soaring lap around the crater, Levin set it down with its canine siblings.
And all of them could be controlled mentally over a huge distance with his Y-Link.
“Nice!” Rohan said enthusiastically, and Levin grinned.
Then Rohan turned his gaze back to the engineers on his team, returning to giving them orders as they created a defensive perimeter around the engineers working on the Gate Beacons. Satisfied, Levin hopped down then, trotting over to Andrew with his four robotic companions in tow.
Andrew clapped Levin on the shoulder with a laugh as he approached. “That was brilliant, my friend! We’ll make a man out of you yet!”
“Pick up the pace, goldilocks. We don’t have all day,” Mei said impatiently.
“Right, right. Let’s be off!” Andrew said, taking off towards the lip of the crater.
Andrew was exceptional in a dash, gone over the edge of the crater and heading down the mountain in a flash. Mei was even faster by an order of magnitude, practically strolling as she followed behind him instead of taking the lead. Levin was in good shape, but he was just a normal human – physically, at least. So instead of running he climbed atop one of his dogs, one he had nicknamed Francis, laying flat atop the mechanical beast as it shot off in pursuit.
His other two robotic dogs, Kent and Alphonso, fanned out as they ran after him, spreading out to cover more ground in the forest. Above him, Levin’s bird Cho soared off, flying out faster than Andrew, and able to see much more as well. And with Levin’s remote connection using his Y-Link, everything that his four robotic tools saw and experienced was transmitted straight into his own mind, mixing with the data provided from the sensing equipment inside his belt. With his dogs spread out, he’d be able to see beneath the forest canopy while Cho scouted the land from on high.
“All we’re here to do is explore,” Andrew said as Levin fell in line with Mei and him. “But we’re short on time. Levin, send that bird as far as you can; it’s okay if we aren’t able to get it back since you’ll have the data anyways. The three of us can make a lap in this vicinity, and we should collect samples from anything that looks interesting so the smart fellas back home get something to chew on.”
“The goal of the expedition is to establish a permanent tunnel to here, right? So there should be plenty of time for that later,” Mei said.
“They don’t know for sure it’ll work. That’s why we’ll all be returning before the temporary connection between our dimensions fades away. So in case they don’t get the Gate Beacons built, in time, or they don’t work, we’ll still come home with something to show for it,” Andrew said.
“Come home with what, though? This place is super boring,” Mei said.
“Boring?” Levin thought to himself in surprise. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“You’re right, Mei, but that’s actually quite strange. It’s not unheard of for different planets to independently evolve similar looking flora, but… these really do seem like regular trees. Levin, how does the data look?” Andrew said.
“Normal, very similar to Earth. The atmospheric composition is nearly identical,” Levin answered, interpreting the numbers provided by his utility belt.
“Odd…” Andrew said. “You’d expect a new dimension to be full of the completely unknown.”
“We did intentionally lock onto an Earth-like planet before crossing over. Is it really that strange that the planet has similar life?” Levin asked, snagging a leaf from a branch as they ran by.
“Yes,” Andrew and Mei both said at the same time.
“I’ve been to hundreds of Earth-like planets in our galaxy, most of which had some native species before humans found it. It’s part of why I was contracted for this job in the first place,” Andrew continued. “And life on other planets is always weird. And the unmanned drones the Prof and Anya sent into other dimensions came back with even stranger samples. But these plants look normal, like they came from the same evolutionary ancestor as Earth’s. But aren’t we the first ones here?”
“Maybe Earth’s plants came from here long ago,” Mei said, tone doubtful.
Levin frowned, plucking a leaf and holding it up to one of the scanners in his belt. A readout of its genetic material soon followed, and Levin wished he had a few genemaps of plants from Earth to compare it to, but that would have to wait until they got back. Maybe he would even start a collection of genemaps like he had for engineering schematics.
At that moment, Levin paled. His bird Cho had been able to fly far, already encroaching on the point that it would fly out of his connection range. He had sent the winged drone towards the rolling plains he had spotted earlier, and through Cho’s eyes they now unfolded beneath Levin in all their lush and green glory. Except this green was not that of wild plant life, like the trees and underbrush surrounding the Expedition Team.
He saw farms. And along a river, buildings. A town.
“I found people,” Levin said, incredulous.