"You're telling me we've got thirty thousand of London's finest, and not a single fucking one of them speaks Japanese?" The General was screaming at one of his soldiers, a pale kid who looked about five years younger than me. The boy stammered.

"We need time, sir, it's a lot of people," he said.

"We don't have time! Find me someone who can speak to this man before he bleeds out!" the General picked up a phone book from a table and threw it at the soldier. "Or find me a bloody Japanese dictionary!"

The soldier saluted and ran from the room. General Eastfield collapsed in a chair outside of the room where the Japanese pilot lay dying. The crash had left him badly burned, and if Duke Asterly - King Asterly - hadn't saved him, he would have drowned.

The Japanese man mumbled unintelligibly to his nurse. No one could understand him except that he was panicked, that he was desperately trying to get something across to us.

The General picked his head up from his hands. "Tell me, Peter. You're a scientist, or something like that. What does this mean? As far as we know, no Japanese cities have been brought here yet."

"I think it's fairly obvious, sir," I said.

"I was afraid you were going to say that. You're talking about Hiroshima."

"And Nagasaki," I said.

"Blast it. How are they still alive? I mean I know we're alive - but we're barely hanging on. How many people died in Hiroshima? A hundred thousand? On the first day? Now assume all of those people actually came here, to the Void, when the bomb dropped. How did they survive?"

I shrugged. "If anything, it's a good thing."

"And how is that?" the General asked, sounding fed up.

"Because it proved they survived, and so can we. They must have found a way to grow food."

"Or they cannibalized each other," he said bitterly.

I frowned. No one had wanted to bring up this possibility. But as the hunger got more intense, as people's families started to starve... wouldn't they do anything they could? And if one person went missing, who was there to enforce it? I shivered at the thought.

"Maybe," I said, "maybe not. Eighty-odd years is a long time to survive on killing and eating each other. I'm betting they figured something out. They had to.”

The General grimaced, then stood and faced the window. Below, a mass of dirty people thronged at the hospital gate, begging for food, medicine, answers... "Let's hope you're right," he said. "Because London is getting hungry."

-

An hour passed, then another. Finally, Lord Asterly sent a squad of soldiers to collect me. They took me in a humvee from the hospital to Parliament, spreading the sea of starving Londoners. A pile of mud - I hope it was mud - hit the windshield from the crowd as someone screamed at me: greedy american pig! Someone else jeered: Let us have some! You've got plenty! Soldiers outside the humvee had to push one haggard looking man down, but that only seemed to rile the crowd more.

We got to Parliament and the soldiers rushed me inside, the gates closing behind us. A tall, dark eyed soldier led me to an underground room where I found Lord Asterly and his team huddled around a small radio.

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"Your man's here, Moira. As promised."

"Alive and well?" Moira asked.

Asterly nodded towards me. "Alive, at least."

The speaker crowded with voices, the loudest of which was Lee. "Peter! I'm so glad you're ok. We spent that last ten hours thinking we'd put you on your last zipline."

"Yeah, we thought you'd look like a Jackson Pollack on Big Ben's face right now," Brigg said.

"I'm alive. I threw up in my space helmet though."

"Gross," they said in unison.

"The details we can save for another time," Moira said, "Right now we need to know if it's safe to send more people across. What were your readings?"

"There's oxygen all the way over. Not much, but it's there. And it's cold, but it won't kill you. Not so different from flying at a really high elevation."

"That doesn't tell us why the Russians haven't crossed over in their jets yet, but we have a hunch Moscow is fighting with Beijing. We haven't been able to get a radio over to them, but we've witnessed some explosions and potential gunfire through our telescopes. We think it's a power struggle," Moira said.

"Wonderful. Whoever wins will be all geared up and ready for war when conquering time comes," the General said.

Lee spoke again, ignoring the General’s negativity. Bless her for that: "Peter, tell us about the gravity out there."

"It's like we expected. It stays constant across the gap. That means that - hopefully - there's a planet beneath us. Or something influencing gravity."

Lord Asterly scoffed. "That doesn't explain why Chicago and London are floating in the sky. There's no planet beneath us. We'd plummet."

I started to object, but Lee's voice came from the speaker. "He's probably right. Assuming there's a planet there might be a dead end. From everything we've seen, the Void doesn't play by the same rules as Earth - or our universe, I guess. We should focus on getting linked up."

"Excellent thinking, Lee," Asterly interjected, "I was just about to bring up the starving and dying people, but I didn't want to interrupt the science fair." He gave me a withering look.

"Well - you'll be happy to hear we have a plan,” Lee said. Her voice brimmed with pride.

Brigg scoffed. "It's not a good plan."

"But it's a plan!" Lee said.

"Let's hear it," the General said.

"Well, it's going to sound stupid. Simple, really-" Lee said.

"Idiotic?" said Brigg.

"Thank you for your contribution, Brigg." Lee said.

"My pleasure."

"Look, it's like this: we don't know why Chicago and London keep floating while other things fall. But they do. So we can assume that this will keep happening, right? Other things fall. Cities float. So all we have to do is connect the cities with something strong - say, a bridge cable - and then send really heavy things along the bridge cable, and when they sink, they'll pull on the cities and bring them closer together." There was silence in the room as Lee's plan sunk in.

"You want to... smash the cities together?" Lord Asterly said.

"When you say it like that, it sounds reckless. Obviously we'll be really careful." Lee said.

"Of course. Why not? Just smash us together like bumper cars. Because that's the best plan we've got."

"Wait a second," I said. "London is a few hundred feet above Chicago. If you try to use gravity to pull them together, like you said, and you connect them and then drop something between them, won't it just slide all the way down to Chicago?"

"We're still working on that. Likely we'll have to connect them unevenly. We'll send a harpoon at the base of London's Rock, and then pull them together, and then build a ladder or something."

Lord Asterly put his head in his hands. "A ladder. God help us," he said.

Moira's voice came through the speaker. "It's what we've got, your Majesty. In case you haven't noticed, all the geniuses got out of Chicago before the bomb dropped."

-

A knock came at the door. It swung open and the scared soldier from before came in, saluted, and then proudly presented a worn book. He passed it to General Eastfield, who handed it to me.

Beginners English-Japanese Phrasebook for Children.

"Bloody wonderful," the General said. "Let's go see what the Axis powers have to say, shall we?"