"That doesn’t seem right." Stephine Desole looked up from the book she was reading when she heard the computer beep. She put her book down and took a look at the monitor, which was showing a massive spike in the number of interactions per second. “Hey Doc, can you take a look at this? The sensor’s picking up a massive spike.”
Dr. Lambert got up from her seat and walked over. “We’re expecting some fluctuation, we have a group of students touring the sensor…” She trailed off, as her eyes watched the sensor indicator continue to spike into 10,000s of time higher than what was expected. “Ok, get those kids out of there. We might be hitting the spike earlier than expected, and I don’t want any interference.”
The spike she was referring to was the effect of the “Lambert-Thomas Phenomena.” A few months previously, a large spike in cosmic rays had been noticed by Drs. Elizabeth Lambert and Lawrence Thomas. Their increase had roughly followed an exponential curve, and it was due to start increasing very quickly in a few days or weeks. Numerous theories had been proposed, to a distant hypernova, or a nearby black hole collision, but people were largely throwing rocks at dartboards and hoping they stuck.
Stephine tried to radio Dr. Thomas and the students on the intercom, but all she got was dead noise, as the facility’s intercom had been damaged a few days ago and was still scheduled for repair. “Intercom’s still down. I’ll run down there and tell him to get himself and the students up here.”
Dr. Lambert nodded, engrossed in the sensor readings, and Stephine ran off towards the sensor array facilities. She hadn’t expected to actually be there when something exciting happened. She had jumped on the opportunity to be a Research Assistant for the doctors because she had family in Europe, and had wanted to do some international study before she graduated college.
As she reached the door to the sensor array, she heard a loud whoosh as she pulled the door, and watched as what looked like a black hole appeared in the middle of the room, devouring the students inside alongside Dr. Thomas. She stood still, confused, until the door slammed shut behind her, causing her to trip and fall forward towards the black hole. Rather than hitting the ground, or getting erased from existence as a black hole devoured her atoms, she kept falling, and falling, and falling.
Eventually the surrounding all-encompassing blackness began to abate, with streaks of colors beginning to appear. Once her mind began to slow down from, Holy shit I just fell into a space hole, she felt a lurch in her stomach as the colors seemed to stop and she hovered perfectly still.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“[Caution. Mortals are forbidden to travel between worlds without special permission. You will be detained for questioning by local authorities.]”
The lights started streaking incredibly fast, accompanied by another sickening lurch. 'I must have hit my head. The kids are probably laughing at me. I hope I’m not out for too long, I want to see if the Docs’ figure out what’s causing the spike.’ After a few minutes the colorful streaks began turning white, until she was surrounded by nothing but a blank white void. She fell for another minute, until she could see a dark speck, which she rapidly approached before suddenly stopping, without the lurch from the previous stop and start.
“Dr. Thomas?” Stephine’s eyes took some time to adjust to the white void, but once they did she could make out Dr. Thomas’s distinctive hulking form.
“Steph? What happened?” His baritone was as deep as ever, though the look of confusion across his face was new to Stephine. “I was showing the kids one of the backup sensor arrays when there was a big flash of light and we were falling. They were shunted off somewhere, and I heard this voice saying something about--” He stopped as Stephine cut him off.
“Traveling between worlds? Same thing happened to me.” She explained the circumstances leading up to her unfortunate fall. “I wonder where we are. It said something about traveling ‘between worlds’, so are we still on Earth?”
“You are not. I am Galaxos, God of Space.” A voice boomed out from behind Dr. Thomas and Stephine. As they turned around they spotted a 12-foot tall man, but while a normal person might have had dark or light skin, there were stars covering his body, like looking through a telescope. Stephine had once read a Marvel comic which had featured Eternity, and the image struck her as similar. “We have summoned heroes from your world in order to fight the Lord of Demons on Laxia, but you two got caught up in the summoning.”
“Can we go back, then? I have responsibilities I must attend to.” Dr. Thomas gestured behind him, though there was nothing to point at.
“I’m afraid not. Magic on Earth is simply too weak to facilitate your return. It took years for the gods to acquire enough mana to summon your heroes from Earth. However, since you did not travel between worlds on purpose, I can be lenient and allow you to live on Laxia.”
“Thank you, I guess?” Stephine looked around awkwardly. She would have preferred to be sent home, but she supposed living the rest of her life on Laxia would be better than dying or going to Hell or whatever the normal punishment for violating “Divine Law” was.
“Unfortunately, I cannot merely place you down on Laxia like we did with the Heroes. As you do not have permission to travel between worlds, allowing you to physically step foot on Laxia would violate Divine Law. However, I am not forbidden from reincarnating your souls into suitable bodies, once they can be found.”
‘Always a catch,’ thought Stephine. “Are we going to have to wait, or…”
“I will put your souls into stasis. When you awaken, you will be in your new bodies. I am truly sorry for the inconvenience.”
As Stephine and Dr. Thomas’s bodies faded away, Galaxis looked to see what bodies their souls would be compatible with in the future. He let out a booming laugh, then left to introduce himself to the summoned heroes.
[Initializing System…]