Despite a late night of gutting and salting portal singed fish Li awoke at dawn, eir eyes snapped open the instant the first rays of light snuck past the heavy cloth of the curtains. Li pulled emself up into a sitting position as ey grabbed the laptop from on the side table and opened a word document to type up the day’s list of chores.

1. Check smoked fish

2. Visit post office

3. Wake Charlie

4. Get broken rod from Sai

5. Clean Kitchen

Charlie let out a deep goat-like snore as the final note was typed and Li twisted to look at eir husband. They were serene and handsome in their slumber, the stylised black bull tattooed upon his chest rising and falling as Li traced the bold outline with a single thoughtful finger.

Aglow with happiness Li turned back to the laptop and hit save to cloud. Li muttered to emself as a familiar error message popped up and added a new point to eir list as ey saved to desktop.

  0. Fix Wi-Fi

Satisfied that eir morning ritual was complete Li swung eir aching legs out over the edge of the bed. Immediately Ey suppressed a grunt of pain as the movement caused eir old leg injury to flare up and tentatively reached for the wheelchair at the end of the bed. Li moved cautiously, carefully manoeuvring emself from the bed to the chair in a single painful, but quiet motion.

To eir relief Charlie had not been disturbed, he snored as Li strapped emself into the chair and snuck out of the bedroom keen to check the router and solve the WiFi issue before eir husband awoke.

As expected, the living room greeted em with the baleful flashing of error light.

“No broadband? You don’t say.”

With practiced ease Li twisted the router round to inspect the cables plugged into the back of the router. From an initial glance everything seemed to be in order, but to be sure ey carefully unplugged and repulled each cable noting the build-up of tiny silver wires that surrounded the power cable as ey did so, a cleaning task for a future list to be sure.

Checks complete Li placed the router back on its perch and firmly held the power button. The device whirled in response, and a myriad of LED’s flicked on and off as the start-up routine ran through and it settled back into regular function, the amber flashing still very much in attendance.

Li grimaced, ey had dearly hoped that the WiFi would simply be a router issue, but alas life on the street rarely had regular solutions for regular problems. Unwilling to delay the inevitable Li grabbed eir coat, shrugging it on as ey wheeled through the backdoor and into the bungalows garden.

Ey worked quickly, and completed the second and third mental items on eir list in quick succession as ey checked the cables leading from the house for kinks, tears and damage as ey rolled past the neat little rows of potatoes and carrots. Li stopped at the very edge of the garden to inspect the messy array of satellite dishes and plastic wrapped laptops.

Stood before the marvel of mechanical madness Li felt immediately out of eir depth, and the familiar dread of Red’s design washed over em as ey looked over the illogical stack. Li took a deep breath and focused scowling as ey read the handwritten list stuck to the contraption.

“Okay Li, you can do this. You. Can. Do. This. Step one is everything plugged in?”

Ey carefully leaned out of eir chair to reach the mess of wire shuffling round cables to make sure none of the plugs had come loose overnight.

“Okay so step two. Check the signal light.”

A crudely drawn diagram marked the correct light on the box and Li twisted to view the blinking blue LED.

“Right, Blinking blue, that means…..A bad thing I think?”

Ey scanned the list of colour codes finding “Blinky Blu- Portal Mast: Bats?” between “Blinky Me! - Fire” and “Solid Brown – No pwr”.

Li shook eir head and headed back inside to get eir husbands assistance, Li had no desire to go deal with ‘Bats?’ alone.

Li found eir husband awake and lounging in the living room, evidently happy with the temperature of the house Charlie had opted to jump straight into his day without such concerns as trousers or underwear.

Charlie was sat nude at the living room table, a selection of battered paperbacks arrayed in an arc around him. As Li watched, they picked up the leftmost book and pulled it into an overlapping position with the next. Brow furrowed they traced a chewed fingernail across the new book whilst quietly reading the second under his breath.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

An edge of mischief crept into Li’s thoughts and ey edged forwards quietly, intent on sneaking up on eir distracted lover. Charlie kept reading, oblivious as the wheels of Li’s chair moved over the smooth tiles of the floor towards him, stopped, and Li leaned over eir lips barely touching Charlie’s ear as ey spoke as loudly possible.

“WHAT YOU DOING THERE MY BELOVED?”

The effect was instantaneous panic as Charlie twisted off balance to see the source of the yelling, unbalanced themselves and crashed to the floor with a silly grin plastered on his face.

They bounced back up immediately and wrapped their arms around their partner crushing Li into a hug so enthusiastic Li is lifted out of eir chair as they babble excitedly.

“Li there you are, ya scared me lovable human you! I was going ta get ya in a mo to show you this tho anyways! Okay, so like ya know how I found four different copies of the davinchi code on the street right?”

Li Nodded.

“Yes I do, I believe you called it a totally reasonable read?”

“Yeah, like its alright but not amazing if ya get what I mean. Like I like the characters, but I’m not really a huge fan of the endin’?”

Li shrugged in nonplussed ascent as Charlie continued.

“But yeah anyways, look at these two.”

He gestured at the overlapped pair he had been scrutinising.

“Like here, this one says that he gets shot, but here he gets stabbed with a freaking narwhale horn! It makes you wonder what else is weird between the worlds! I mean – It make sense right! And think of what it means! We can get infinities of books! We could find the best version of every book! Make a library of the greatest hits from a myriad of universes!!”

Li, startled by the outburst and eir spouse’s wild eyes, decided to quickly change topic as Charlie stopped to breath.

“Charlie we are going to have to go out into the street, we don’t have WiFi and Red’s notes say to check the portal mast.”

Charlie looked at the assembled books, the need to read battling against the need to be a supportive spouse. Inevitably support won out and Charlie sighed and headed towards the bedroom.

“Alright Li I guess WiFi IS pretty vital, I’ll put go some pants on.”

True to their word, he appeared a few moments later dressed in his signature Hawaiian print shorts and matching shirt, slipped on some sandals, and opened the door for Li. The door opened to the sight of a rusty ladder leading up to the street. Li raised an eyebrow as Charlie closed and re-opened the door only to reveal a steep flight of stairs to which he immediately slammed the door shut again.

Cautiously Charlie pushed the door open a third time to reveal an uneven, but broadly wheelchair accessible path directly to the pavement. He flashed Li a thumbs up and stepped back holding it open for em.

Li rolled out onto the street and Charlie stepped through the door and quietly swept in behind em to help move the chair across the broken concrete. The drift was light despite the smattering of rain that trickled down. The droplets swirled into the duo’s eyes as they scanned the sky for the shadowy outline of the white cliffs of dover.

The white cliffs, Charlie and Li’s engagement spot was the only appropriate compass they could use on the street. They kept it to the left as they made their way down the street towards the inky black portal which hosted the portal mast, the source of all internet upon the street.

The route was oddly short, and the pair arrived at the inky disk to hear the panicked yelling of Al as it swung a hoody desperately at a pair of brownish bat like creatures as they flew in and out of the complex array of dishes only to dive back down at Al claws drawn.

As Li watched one of the swooping creatures was struck by Al’s makeshift weapon, knocked from the air with a solid THUNK and a high-pitched shriek of pain.

Charlie and Li shared a look of horror as one of the winged beast swept towards them and for the second time today, Li realised that ey were hopelessly out of eir depth.

Charlie turned to say something, but before he could there was a blur of wings and claws as a bat swerved past Li and onto Charlie’s bare chest.

As the bats scratched and bit into Charlie, they fell against the chair propelling Li out and onto the street as it tipped forwards. Though bloody and grazed from the fall, Li had accidently gained a new angle to look at the disk array from, an angle which revealed the strange object wedged between two twitching satellite dishes.

Li ignored the eruption of chaos behind em and grabbed eir stick, loosed from the chair in the fall, and dragged emself towards the strange bundle whist Charlie attempted to wrestle the furious clawed creature to the ground behind em.

“It’s a nest! They made a nest on the Dish!” Ey yelled back at the preoccupied Al and Charlie.

“I think I’m going to hit it into the portal! – It should all just burn up right?”

Glancing back ey managed to make eye contact with the frantic Al. It nodded back, its bruised eyes frantic and its face a in mass of tiny bleeding bites as it struggled heroically with the furious mass it had somehow trapped under its hooded jumper.

With a grimace Li adjusted eir grip on eir walking stick, hefted it once and swung it up through the nest with all eir strength.

The nest came loose as it was struck, the dented orb flying up into the inky blackness of the Wi-Fi portal. For a moment it was stuck there, suspended, and glowing as the heat of the portal ignited the dry mass. After a second it exploded, and the two trapped beasts clawed their way loose in a surge of furious rage.

Confused and disorientated by the death of the nest the bats split. The first fled, spinning around and flying off to some other part of the street, whilst the second dived headfirst into the inky blackness of the portal in a puff of loose feathers and stink of burnt meats.

As the smell permeated the air, the twitching dishes began to rotate seeming reset by the removal of the obstruction. Once more able to track and bounce the weak satellite signal out of the portal and along the street.

From eir slumped position at the base of the portal Li flashed a tired smile up at Al and Charlie as they rushed to help em off the floor. Though battered and bruised Li was pleased.

It was always satisfying to be able to cross an item of eir list of chores.