Elijah walked through a dozen worlds, trying to pay attention to all the marvels he passed.
Unfortunately, he was failing.
They really were incredible, each world was a painstakingly crafted extradimensional space wrought by the hand of a master, but once you’ve seen something a dozen times it starts to lose its novelty. Start being forced to see it every day as part of your job, and might just get sick of it.
Still, thinking about work was better than the alternative at the moment. Every time he felt his concentration slipping, an old conversation started playing in his head. A conversation he’d started. A conversation he had never wanted to have.
A conversation he’d do anything to get away from.
So, instead, he was trying to be productive. Downright responsible even. So responsible it was almost sickening, to be honest. He’d cleaned out twelve tickets in the past three hours, and he still had two more hours left on his shift.
It was driving him insane.
The miniscule hits of dopamine from being able to check a box had been having increasingly diminishing returns. It had gotten bad enough that he’d decided to open his own ticket instead of grabbing something from the queue. Maybe fixing something that had been legitimately bothering him would help.
It probably wouldn’t, but nothing else was helping either.
Elijah stepped through the portal to area LL00 and immediately started sweating as the fake sun above him started baking him alive.
The damn thing was pretty fucking audacious for a sun that wasn’t even real.
He knew for a fact that this world didn’t extend more than thirty meters past the catwalk in any direction, let alone the dozens of millions of kilometers it would need to fit a real sun inside. The green tinged sky, and the burning white ball of hate within it, were simply an illusion meant to add “verisimilitude” and “authenticity,” as Lord Etiel would put it.
Elijah hated the words “verisimilitude” and “authenticity.”
What it really came down to, was that mankind had worked very hard over a very long period of time to invent air conditioning. It felt a little cruel to ignore that and make most of these micro worlds “outdoor” environments.
He allowed himself to descend into mindless cursing for a minute, pleasantly losing his train of thought.
He didn’t say any of his complaints out loud though. Only a fool would criticize the work of a Dragon and, while Elijah had no illusions about his intelligence, he wasn’t quite that stupid. If Lord Etiel wanted his catwalk to be open to the elements, it would be.
Still, it’s not like magical air conditioning would’ve been any more incongruous than the sight of the same exact catwalk repeating every sixty meters to his right in an endless loop. He could even see himself, fist raised as he shook it at the sun, replicated over and over again above the sea of tall blue grass like a funhouse mirror.
Elijah sighed and kept walking.
He gave a passing glance at the console panels he passed by on the catwalk. The control center hadn’t sent any alerts for them when he left, but checking was one more thing to distract him. It only took a few seconds to tap and swipe through the diagnostics of each one to confirm that yes, they were just as boring as usual. He continued on his way, his eyes lingering on the portals themselves.
Each one led to a world far more real than this one.
Thick bands of metal framed each portal, protecting errant hands from the infinitely thin edges. The framing was almost enough that he could mistake them for a painting, until he took another step and a new angle revealed itself. A flicker of movement, a flurry of snow, the shadow of a bird, the swaying of trees. A single unfrozen moment transforming the painting into a window.
He passed one that showed a picturesque view of a snowy mountain side blanketed in pine. A sweeping valley gently fell away until the ground dropped out of sight completely and the ocean took its place; waves sparkling as they caught the light.
Another showed fields of crimson grass and forests of silver trees, the horizon only broken by the sparkling spires of a distant city captured in a glass dome.
Another showed a blasted wasteland of rock and lava. Currents of molten rock and metal burned tracks in the earth in great loops and designs as a nascent Great Spirit’s mind reached out and tried to pull itself into reality.
He paused.
Actually, he should probably report that one instead of ignoring it.
There was nothing actually wrong with the portal, so there was nothing to fix and no ticket to open, but Lord Etiel might find it amusing to watch the fledgling spirit’s growth.
He walked up to the portal, watching as lava bubbled and flowed across a mountain slope. It was interesting, but that’s all it was. Interesting. Too sterile and separated to be anything else.
When he’d first started working as Nexus Support three years ago, it had all felt so new and exciting. In some ways the job had been a disappointment, something mundane he was relegated to while he watched Adonia win award after award, but he’d found a distracting joy in it. He’d found excuse after excuse to escape the control booth and sit in front of portals like this for hours, straining his eyes to catch hints of new movement, always on the lookout for the world’s inhabitants.
He’d clapped like a child when he saw a bird for the first time.
Most of the portals exited thousands of meters into the air, so birds were pretty much all he saw. Still, there was enough variety that he had made a game of spotting different breeds, comparing plumage and marveling every time he saw one that was clearly spiritborn. He was still certain he’d seen a phoenix once.
Probably.
But you could only get so excited when you were always forced to look, but never touch.
He brushed his hand against the portal’s face, his fingers pressing against the invisible barrier like glass. The wall was invisible, but he knew from experience that if he pressed hard enough the barrier would drop its pretense and reveal the lines upon lines of godscript that made it inviolable.
He’d seen people walk through them of course, people walked through them every day, but only ever real citizens of the Empire. Not people like him. The same security measures that made the portals undetectable from the other side ensured he couldn’t do something stupid, like jumping through one himself.
No matter how much he wanted to.
And stuck on this side of the glass, the excitement and passion he had once felt had cooled to embers.
Just like everything else he’d tried being passionate about.
He turned away from the portal and continued down the catwalk. He still had a job to half-ass his way through.
Elijah took a deep breath and tried to focus on something else, on the sun kissing his skin, on the faint breeze brushing through his hair, of the rhythmic sound of grass brushing the bottom of the catwalk. He paused, his hand resting on the handle of the freestanding door where the world ended.
If he stopped to think about it, this catwalk could have just been a sterile corridor instead of a daisy chain of fresh sights. Lord Etiel might have even started arranging these microworlds for the sake of people like Elijah, trying to give them a small measure of what their ancestors had given up in order to regain the favor and protection of the Goddesses. When he looked at it that way, he could make himself be a little more accepting of the harsh sun above his head.
He opened the door and stepped through into a subterranean cave filled with cold, damp, air.
He immediately started shivering.
Fuck the outdoors.
The cavern glowed, luminous moss casting a green wavelike pattern that speckled the stone ceiling overhead. Every few meters blue lamps overpowered the natural light, creating puddles of cold light lining the path. A wide creek babbled and meandered through the cavern, crossing below the raised walkway a few times.
Elijah wasn’t really sure how Lord Etiel kept the moss alive without the rest of its natural ecosystem, or how the waterway kept flowing uninterrupted for that matter. Maybe he’d lined up the edges of the world to keep the creek in a perfect loop? That made enough sense that he gave up considering it further, too busy dealing with the temperature whiplash.
He started walking through the gloom at a brisk pace, rubbing his arms through his work jacket to warm them up.
His jacket normally had a spell pattern printed on its interior lining that would dampen the effects of rapidly changing temperatures, but doing anything at home had been a struggle lately. He’d put off refreshing the pattern’s ink for too long that it had burned away completely in a couple places, breaking the circuit and rendering it useless.
A lot of his complaints could be traced back to himself if he were honest.
He looked at the door frame built into the cavern wall at the end of the catwalk. For a moment, his breath fogged up in front of his face, obscuring the door. It was only 1,534 centimeters away, but he was shivering badly enough that it felt like a kilometer.
Fuck it.
He wasn’t supposed to do it so close to the portals, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
He reached out with his soul and grabbed the fabric of space in front of him. He squeezed it in his metaphorical grip, compressing fifteen meters into nothing. He took a single step and released his grip, letting the space he’d skipped over snap back into place like a rubber band.
With a final shiver, he reached for the doorknob.
Only for it to open before he could grab it.
He hopped back, dodging the opening door.
“Oh, sorry about that.”
A man filled the doorway, half a head taller than Elijah and wearing the altered uniform worm of Nexus Security. Elijah took another step back, trying to make a bit more space. He knew Marcus was a good guy, but he still wasn’t comfortable with the equipment security usually carried. A loaded assault rifle hung from a sling around Marcus’s neck, a single hand steadying it against his body while his other hand drifted from the open door to the two matching scabbards hanging from his belt. The shorter of the two held a standard lightblade base while the other was pure silversteel.
Elijah felt himself fill with dread. Not because of Marcus, or his weapons, but because this meant he had to talk to someone.
Still, it would be fine. He could keep himself together. He had to.
“It’s fine.” He mumbled through chattering teeth. Looking over Marcus’s shoulder at freedom. “No harm done. See you around Marcus.”
The older man smiled, but he didn’t move out of the way. Instead, he leaned casually against the door frame, blocking the way through.
“Ah, it’s just little Eli.”
“By the Goddesses Marcus, I’m freezing.”
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“Forgot to refresh your jacket?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a shame.” Marcus said, his smile growing. He paused, lifting his nose and sniffing the air dramatically. “And what’s that I smell? Was somebody cheating? Eli, you wouldn’t be skipping in the Nexus, would you?”
“Marcus please.” Elijah groaned. “Just shut up and let me through before I freeze to death.”
Marcus laughed and finally stepped backwards to free the doorway.
Elijah quickly walked past him into the airlock, sighing in relief as soon as he crossed the threshold and warm air wrapped around him.
Marcus was still there though, which meant he still wanted to talk. Great.
Elijah glanced around the airlock, desperate for a point of inane smalltalk he could distract the man with. There wasn’t much to see though, just the yellow line marking the halfway point of the small room and a small array of orange suits and clear helmets hanging on the wall.
“LK is still being renovated then?” He asked. “Hasn’t it been like a month?”
“Yup. Lord Etiel still hasn’t picked out a theme. Going to be at least another couple of weeks at this rate.”
“Wasn’t he in the middle of a big waterworks kick?”
“Apparently he’s moved on.” Marcus shrugged. “Might be a desert world next for all I know.”
“Great, another string of hot, cold, hot to suffer through. Somebody is going to catch a cold from these temperature changes, and by somebody I mean me.”
“Then you should take better care of your jacket next time.” Marcus laughed. “No point complaining.”
“Thanks for the advice, mom.” Elijah said, jittery. He got another laugh out of Marcus, but the man still didn’t move for the door. Really? He still wanted to talk? Damn.
“Quiet week?” He asked.
“Yeah, quiet for us at least. No VIPs crossing through, just a few standard bulk shipments between the core worlds over in sectors A through D. The rest of us are just stuck with patrol.”
“Better too quiet than too busy, I suppose?”
“Nah.” Marcus shook his head. “Quiet is the worst, puts me to sleep.”
“Fair enough.” Elijah said, inching closer into the room, desperately trying to signal that he needed to go.
Marcus didn’t get the hint.
Instead he stepped closer and clapped Elijah on the shoulder.
“Enough about me though, congratulations are in order. I heard Adonia was finally selected by Lord Etiel for Ascension. Any idea if she’s going to go down an Arts path or a Practical? She’s talented enough to get away with either, but I want some heads up if I’m going to be calling her ‘boss’ by the end of the month.”
Elijah shrunk away from the contact, eyes fixing on the yellow line across the floor.
“Oh, uh, yeah. I don’t know what she’s going to pick.”
“What, has she not decided yet or something? I figured you’d be the first person to know. You two have been connected at the hip longer than I’ve known you.”
“Not anymore.”
Marcus took a second to process that, before putting it together.
“Ah. Shit.” He sighed, turning and leaning back against the wall by Elijah’s side, not looking directly at him. He rummaged around his pocket and held a box up to Elijah.
“Want a joint?”
“Oh, uh. Thanks, but no. We’re on the clock Marcus.”
“To hell with that, man.”
“Hell doesn’t exist Marcus, it’s been theologically proven that-”
“To hell with that too. It’s just a phrase, Eli.”
“I know, I know. Thank you Marcus, I just- it’s better if I focus right now instead.”
“Damn. I’d be home blown out of mind with a tub of ice cream if I were you, but you do whatever works.”
Elijah didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded.
“I know it happens to a lot of couples when one gets chosen. The difference in lifespan alone is enough to shake anyone up. I just thought you guys were past that; didn’t think it would happen to you.”
“Me neither.” Elijah lied, because it was easier. That had barely been part of the problem, but it was the simplest thing for other people to understand. Easier than explaining years of self doubt.
Marcus sighed. “Alright, sorry. I’m sure I’m not helping. If work is what you need, then I’ll leave you to it. If I see any of the other guys I’ll ask them to steer clear of these sections, give you some space.”
“Thanks Marcus.”
Elijah heard the door open.
“Chin up Eli, you’re a good guy, she’ll be regretting it before too long.”
Elijah heard the door close.
He sighed. There was no point in correcting Marcus, he didn’t have the context. It was fine.
It was fine.
He turned and stepped over the yellow line, feeling the pull of gravity disappear as he crossed the center of the room. He floated to the far wall, bouncing off of it as he came to a stop before opening it and slipping inside.
The catwalk had been replaced by a sleek glass-walled tunnel, an occasional opening in the wall branching off to metal enclosures surrounding the few rifts housed in the zone. The infinite expanse of space stretched out in every direction. It was real space, with real stars and everything, left blank until Lord Etiel decided what to do with it.
Normally, the proximity to empty vacuum made him nervous, but he was too distracted to care much.
He flew through the tunnel quickly, feet off the ground as he glided in zero gravity, bouncing off the wall when he drifted too close. He navigated by autopilot, taking a fork in the path he barely noticed and arriving at the far door faster than he’d realized.
He was still stuck in his own head, the conversation he didn’t want to think about playing in his head again. Turning over everything he’d said and how he could’ve said it better. As if he could come up with some way to phrase things, some magic string of words, that would’ve explained how he felt in a way that she could understand. In a way that would let them fix things.
Elijah took a deep breath, pushing it out of his mind.
He opened the door to the airlock and pulled himself inside. He probably should’ve put a suit on before going through that zone, but there hadn’t been a tunnel breach in at least a century, so it was hard to feel guilty about it.
He crossed the halfway point of the room, catching himself with a slight stumble as gravity reasserted itself and he fell the last few centimeters.
We walked through the next zone with his eyes locked on his feet. He didn’t glance at any of the scenery or the portals lining the catwalk. He knew where he was going well enough that he didn’t need to.
He wished there was a pebble to kick, something physical along the path he could hit, just to vent, but the metal catwalk was just as clean and immaculate as ever.
Maybe he should pick up a physical hobby again? He hadn’t touched a sword in years, and it was the only one of the Four Arts he felt comfortable touching at the moment. If he tried writing a poem like this, he’d probably end up doing something he’d regret.
Wasn’t allowing himself hobbies again half the point of separating from Adonia?
Sure, he knew he would never be that good, would never be the best, but that was fine. Sometimes you were second best, and then that loss made you lose some enthusiasm, and then you practiced less, and then you were third best, and then you were fourth best, and then you stopped keeping track because it was getting too depressing.
And then you gave up.
No, he had to stop thinking like that. At least, without a constant reminder of how far behind he was, maybe he could try to just practice for fun, without worrying about how good or bad he was. He didn’t need to prove himself, he just needed something he could call his own. Something he didn’t need to stress about wasting time over.
He was breathing heavily by the time he finally walked through the door into area HL00, but the sound of his panting was immediately drowned out by the roar of the waterfall.
He focused on the sound, letting it drown out his thoughts until he’d calmed down.
A solid wall of rushing water crashed down beside him, pooling beneath the catwalk, and then rushed off the other side to loop in an endless series of steps. The water that fell off the side to his right feeding the water falling from his left.
He was glad that the angle of the water blocked him from seeing himself down below. He didn’t need to see himself right now.
There were three rifts in zone HL, and he walked over to the terminal for HL72. He flipped through a few screens, blowing air through his nose in displeasure when they revealed nothing. By all accounts, the portal was fine, the dimensional integrity of the edges reading at 0.127% expansion, well within the threshold of concern.
He’d been expecting that though. This rift had been showing a phantom error message a few times a day for months. It always went away after a minute, and it had never lasted long enough to actually show up on the daily logs, but he knew it was there and he had two hours left in his shift to figure out why.
He walked further along the catwalk until he was directly in front of the portal.
Unlike the portals he’d passed until now, the portals in HL were all hanging just off the side of the catwalk, parallel to the ground. There were plans to realign them vertically at some point in the next ten years to meet the newest standard, but he wasn’t holding his breath on that.
He looked down through the portal, like looking through a skylight over a rather standard looking world. Tall jagged mountains pierced the earth like spears that broke up a series of forested valleys layered in mist. A few of the narrow mountains looked like they went higher than the portal itself, already a kilometer in the air.
With an entire world in front of him, he could almost feel the wind on his face.
He brushed his hair away from his face and turned to examine the portal itself. He couldn’t see the actual edges to the portal since they were inside the metal safety frame, but he focused his soul’s senses on it and found it looked-
Pretty normal.
He sighed.
He almost turned around right there and went back to his desk, but he’d already committed, he might as well do it right. He didn’t want to walk back to his desk, and he might’ve missed something.
He fell into an old pattern of twisting and measuring the way space folded around the portal. The rift itself was a hole torn out of the fabric of reality itself, and he couldn’t directly measure something that didn’t exist, but he could measure the surroundings and infer data from that. They’d taught him how to do it by hand like this in training, but he’d never actually had to do it before now. It was a lot of large numbers to hold in his head, but it wasn’t too bad.
He frowned when he finished, that couldn’t be right.
He measured it a second time.
Maybe he’d made a mistake somewhere.
He measured it a third time, starting to sweat.
He focused his spatial sense on the edges of the rift again and stared at it in shock. When he looked closely enough there was clear serration instead of a crisp line; that wasn’t possible with a .127%, it had to be at least 2% or maybe even 3% for him to be able to notice it. It wasn’t immediately dangerous, but it was well over threshold. If nothing was done it would continue to expand until the containment field started to unravel.
Nobody wanted that to happen.
Thankfully though, it would take months, maybe even years, to deteriorate that far. It wasn’t an immediate danger, but it was the exact kind of thing they were supposed to monitor for and prevent.
Elijah was a good and pious boy. He prayed to the Goddesses twice a day, he put in his mandatory 24 hours of work a week, and he even forced himself to go to community events twice a year.
The best thing he could do was to immediately report this. He could open a new ticket to look into whatever technical problem was hiding it from the monitoring dashboard, and kick it up the can to a higher tier of support.
He didn’t do that.
Instead, he leapt at the portal, slamming his hand against the scripted barrier hard enough that script appeared in the air, like a ripple in a pond.
And he felt it give, just a little.
He started pounding on the barrier frantically.
He couldn’t directly touch the portal’s spatial coordinates, not when it had been torn open by the Divine Consort herself, but neither could the barrier. Instead, the barrier was anchored to the space directly around the portal, and he could touch that.
He reached out with his soul and grabbed the fabric of space around the barrier, pulling at it savagely. He held it as far as he could and measured it, his spatial sense popping an exact measurement into his brain as easily as breathing. He then popped that number into an equation, and ten seconds later he let go of his grip on the space and pulled it in a different direction.
With one hand he pressed hard against the barrier, throwing his full weight into it. His hand sunk a full centimeter into the surface and the godscript across its surface snapped into stark relief, red text flashing so brightly he could almost hear it. Normally the metaphysical script was untouchable, but the barrier had degraded just enough that, as long as he kept applying tension, it was forced to become physical.
Physical enough for him to touch.
With his free hand he pulled out a small pocket knife and stabbed himself. He didn’t have any blood-ink on hand, so fresh blood would have to do.
He wasn’t normally any good with pain, but he barely felt the cut through the adrenaline. As soon as he saw blood he dropped the knife, its job done, and smeared the blood over the fingertips of his free hand.
At that point, he forced himself to slow down, making sure he didn’t make any mistakes as he found the part of the script that prevented him from crossing through. His calligraphy was second-rate at best, but he’d practiced enough to get through his engineering classes, and his hand moved in quick practiced motions as he defaced a script that had probably been written by Lord Etiel himself.
The thought was almost enough to make him stop.
Almost.
He did his best to leave alone the part of the script that stopped outsiders from getting in, he might as well stick to one sin instead of two, but he didn’t stop. The damage he was doing would accelerate the decay of the overall boundary, but he was sure somebody would notice after how obvious he was making the damage. They’d have plenty of time to fix it.
After he was gone.
Three more times he tore at space with the full strength of his soul, threw himself through a 2nd order differential equation, transformed the resulting coordinates, added them to the mental tensor map he was building, and tore again.
The entire time his hands never stopped.
He changed one character to another with one extra line. He inserted a branch of script that recontextualized the meaning of the one before it. He bypassed a recursive loop completely to always give the same answer. The wrong answer.
His arm was starting to ache from holding the script in place, and stabbing it certainly hadn’t helped, but he was almost through. He could feel it.
Something was bothering him though.
Why weren’t sirens going off?
Why hadn’t anyone appeared to stop him?
He was making progress, but it was too slow. An Elder should’ve been alerted and arrived to stop him already. If this was enough to escape, someone would’ve done it generations ago.
His brain shrieked to a halt as he found himself suddenly flailing for balance. The resistance blocking his arm had suddenly disappeared, leaving him leaning on empty air. He swung his hand out and grabbed the portal’s frame, holding himself in place as he looked down.
He’d done it.
An entire world stretched out before him.
He reached his hand through and felt the wind against it. The air was sharp and crisp compared to the humid mist he was standing in.
He hesitated.
Now that he’d actually succeeded, he was starting to think maybe this wasn’t the smartest idea.
He should’ve gone and researched what world this was first. He wasn’t familiar with HL72 at all. It was too late to go pack anything, so he’d have nothing but what was in his pockets. He could still go back and explain himself. He’d broken the law, but he hadn’t committed a real sin yet. He wouldn’t until he stepped through.
Success paralyzed him in the same way it always had, the ominous prelude to the inevitable future disappointment. Was he really going to leave things the way they were?
He was still hesitating when someone’s hand pressed gently against his back and pushed.