(Y7, March 18-23th)

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The three aliens looked at the inflated globe. Berkleyyan had pulled out one of the Silvergates recovered from the fallen Deva and activated it, stepping back carefully as it grew to its full size. The Gate sphere remained black.

“You can really activate it,” Gamantºhal half-whispered.

“Because I’m not a Deva,” the Earthen Brethren ambassador said.

He turned toward Mi^ktu’turr.

“I assume you can do the same.”

Gamantºhal peered at the Gate and flinched when the globe abruptly displayed a distorted view of a room with dressers, a pair of chairs, and desk-shaped furniture with what looked like either a modern sculpture or maybe a lamp. A pair of oversized wraparound glasses lay on the desk.

“Your room?” Berkleyyan asked.

“Yes. How…”

He reached again, hesitating. Then he placed his hand on the Gate globe.

“It doesn’t work,” the Deva said.

The globe abruptly turned back to silver and shrank, deactivating after its usual wait time. The Deva ambassador bent and picked the globe, trying to squeeze it.

Mi^ktu’turr held his hand, and Gamantºhal dropped the globe in it. The Lemuria moved slightly back and squeezed it before dropping it as it inflated again into a black sphere.

“And you think…”

“It is fairly obvious it leads back to World,” the Lemuria said before Berkleyyan could. Kolalºvas stepped close, and the globe switched to a distorted view of a darkened room. Quandocor spotted strange sharp shapes, metallic reflections, and a distorted rectangle that let in what might be the sunlight.

“My Recess,” the Deva confirmed.

“As Mi^ktu’turr said. World.”

Everyone sat down as the two ambassadors digested the shock.

“No one ever thought the Gates were still functional until our expedition stumbled upon the corpses of your people,” Quandocor explained. “Dead Gates, we called them.”

“Burned Gates. We had labs trying to crack them open since they were supposed to be no longer functional, and no one’s been able to analyze an active one,” Gamantºhal said.

“No success, I presume?” Berkleyyan asked.

“Probably no more than you.”

“We’ve talked a lot about it, but seeing that the Gate, once activated, displays your location on your original World, the way all ‘normal’ Gates display our spawn on Northworld… it confirms something we’ve speculated once we knew of this. When you use a Gate, it flips over to accessing your home to allow you to Recess. If you die before… it stays locked back there.”

“So all of our fallen people’s Gates still work,” Mi^ktu’turr said.

“Yes. It’s just that you can’t use them on… Nest, in your case, since it leads back to the same point, the same way one for Spawn doesn’t work while you’re on the actual Spawn,” Berkleyyan said before turning toward the Deva.

“And you can’t use it on Second World since you already have one ‘inside’. By the way, we’ve tested one while on our Earth. It activates fine there, too.”

“This… changes a lot,” Gamantºhal said.

“You said this was an easy diplomacy, as we could meet only on truly neutral ground. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s possibly no longer true.”

“You haven’t used them?”

“We didn’t know what was waiting for us. Remember all those alien stories you talked about? We have the same ones. Hollywood – our largest provider of entertainment fiction – loves to make scenarios where aliens attack us. Or sometimes, we attack them on sight. And besides, we were not entirely sure it would lead to your World. All we had was a black, undefined spawn. It could even have been a completely different place. But now, we’re confident about the destination.”

The Deva ambassador stared at the three silver globes lying on the table.

Unmentioned was the fact that the humans had kept the fourth from the expedition back at the Earthen Keep “in case”. Quandocor hoped that Kolalºvas would not realize the fact that the expedition had included four Devas, not three. Or that he would politely keep this discreet, at least until he’d informed Gamantºhal on the side, without officially embarrassing anyone.

Diplomacy, he thought.

“Now what?”

“I am going to say it’s up to you. Those are Gates to World. We still need to actually test, but it is your decision if you want us to visit World. After all, you paid for that possibility with the lives of your people.”

The Deva stayed silent, lost in thought.

“Well, those ‘real’ diplomats will probably cheer at meeting humans without having to go into the wilds for training and toughening. I, for one, am sure I can do without the added pressure.”

Mi^ktu’turr raised a hand in a very human gesture, and Gamantºhal’s head snapped back toward him.

“Why not?” the Lemuria said. “I am not a cautious person, or I wouldn’t be the Fourth Gater of the Nest. And besides… I’d love to see what the future looks like. You don’t have flying cars, I think.”

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Gamantºhal had a nervous laugh.

“Not. But I remember your fascination with space.”

“I don’t expect to get a ‘launch’ as you call it to one of your space stations.”

“Will we get Adaptation Sickness? Compounded Adaptation Sickness?” Berkleyyan speculated. “Until we test, we don’t know.”

“I need to report this,” Gamantºhal suddenly started.

“Recess square is…” Kolalºvas started.

“I’ll Recess right here. I’ll be back soon.”

Gamantºhal flinched as the primitive room of the Second World flipped over to his workroom at home. He normally didn’t have that little bit of worry. He blamed the view from the activated sphere. Normally, no one ever had the opportunity to see their return point, while you could contemplate your spawn and worry about the fact that, for some reason, creatures and people never showed up there. There had never been a case of someone ending up interpenetrated with an existing person, but there had been some close calls, hence the near-ubiquitous respawn sticks and designated locations.

He hoped the people back there would remember to keep clear. At least, he expected to be gone for a couple of hours.

Or maybe more, depending on the reactions he got.

He sat on his desk and pulled up all the paraphernalia of remote chat; tablet screen, headphones, and microphone. For a moment, he wondered if the “humans” had better stuff there. Some of the vocabulary the Panglossia Skill offered said so. Although their mashed-together words felt off, the concepts behind “Metaverse” were infinitely promising.

He waited, folding and unfolding fingers in worry, until Artºmil finally accepted the call.

“Gamantºhal! Out of the Second World already? Didn’t expect you to pop up for at least two weeks.”

“Plans have changed,” he simply said.

The woman ignored that and kept on.

“Now, you’re still lucky. While you have fun in that realm of yours, we ordinary workers have work to do, and I was almost going to leave for home.”

“That’s better. I need you to bring up Minister Serotºhal. I need to speak to him.”

“Hola, sir. One does not simply call Serotºhal like that. Your little game of diplomat in that virtual reality of yours doesn’t make you an ambassador. I know, I know, that laser tool you brought back from your children morning cartoon friend did…”

Gamantºhal sighed.

“I know, I know, just because he almost looks like that little creature in our childhood’s best series doesn’t mean it’s not serious. And the welding laser is fairly obviously a real tool, and we finally have sorted the proposals by advanced research labs to study it and replicate its technology. But even if that goes a long way to persuade our higher-ups you’re not stuck in a simulation based on popular…”

“Artºmil.”

“What? Have you got something from your ‘humans’ already? What do they look like, by the way? They lack a digit, I hear, like those animated characters. Anyway, I am sure people will be ecstatic at new developments, but there are channels for that. The Minister can’t be bothered…”

“Artºmil.”

“Okay. I am listening.”

“Things have changed…”

“So what? You need…”

“The humans have found a way of coming to World.”

Artºmil stopped talking for a few seconds.

“Okay. I am calling Minister Serotºhal. Or at least his assistant first. You’d better not be joking.”

“So we are agreed,” Quandocor asked.

“We are,” Gamantºhal answered. “Word has been distributed on the major news channels to expect… aliens. With a drawing of what you both look like, mostly.”

“It is even going out worldwide,” Zontaºhar said. “So even if you arrive in a different country, which is likely by percentage of territory alone, you won’t be entirely unexpected.”

The adventurer and his friends had been roped in to provide regular communication with World. Since even a short Recess restarted the nine-day timer for further Recesses, they had to rotate to get updates on the planning for the First Contact.

The Deva did not have an equivalent to Com Globes, which fascinated the aliens. Jonkartman had finally traded them a complete description of the recipe and required Skills, one that would have never been discovered by humans if not for Outline, that crafter skill that lets you plan how to craft items for specific effects, and the fact that Archangel, the inventor of the recipe, had the required Skills to let him make the first design. So, until they made some, discussion with World required people rotating a Recess to access their phones at home.

Quandocor turned toward Berkleyyan.

“Too bad there are only three Silvergates, with one reserved for Mi^ktu’turr.”

“We all rolled the dice. You won fairly, and someone has to stay with the current Speaker to Aliens. Anyway, stick to the required schedule. Assuming you have nine days like we all have on Northworld, you all use the return option immediately once it pops.”

Gamantºhal wrapped his hand around his fist, in the motion Quandocor had learned to recognize as the Deva equivalent of a shrug.

“We shall see what fortune brings us. But unless you spawn on World in a very remote area, you should be good. With your command of Common Tongue, almost anyone should understand you. In the worst case that none of you three is close enough to civilization, once you can tell us roughly where you spawned, we can mount expeditions for a second spawn. My Recess pops up in four days; I’ll be back on World to see how it went.”

“Kasterºsal and his team said they’d be back in two days,” Kolalºvas said. “They can recess to see if news are coming.”

Zontaºhar laughed, Deva-style. “They’re not going to believe it. I think they know already about the Gaters from Land, but the humans will be a shock.”

The trio of emissaries pulled out their Silvergates and squeezed for activation, bringing the gates to open mode. One of the gates showed up some kind of room, and one of the Deva hiccuped and moved away from the gate, letting it revert to blackness.

“At least I assume you will not have Setup this time,” Zontaºhar commented. He and the rest of the Deva barfly team wouldn’t have missed that for all the riches of the world.

“I hope so,” Varmatan, the other winner, said. “If I lose over two years of progression…”

Quandocor laughed.

“Maybe you switch builds. A different build on every world.”

“Or maybe it’s like Earth. You don’t get one on World,” Varmatan countered.

“I hope we have enough of the Interface to use Recall. We should, since we’ll have Gates inside. So, let’s see. All together… On three, on two… on one.”

The three Silvergates dropped on the ground, thumping without any bounce. Berkelyyan goggled.

“What just happened? They bounced back to Earth or what?”

Gamantºhal’s neck slightly stretched in surprise.

“Maybe our gates are incompatible after all,” he mused.

He bent over the ground and picked one of the fallen Silvergates, then jumped back in surprise as the Gate inflated into a black sphere.

“What the…” Jonkartman exclaimed.

The blackened sphere remained open. Then Berkleyyan swore and approached, and the sphere’s view changed to a slightly sunny view.

“That’s… my courtyard. Back on Earth,” he said.

Gamantºhal’s neck stretched again.

“It’s… your Gate?”

Berkleyyan placed his hand on the sphere without any effect. In the worst case, he might have been swallowed by the “event horizon” of the Silvergates, but it looked like it wasn’t happening, just like Gamantºhal and the original Gates when activated by humans.

“No. But it’s a Silvergate leading back to Earth, like the one I use. I mean, presumably, like the one I’m currently using, even if I don’t hold it.”

He squinted, trying to remember exactly who had been standing where.

“It should be Quandocor’s. When he used the Gate to World… I think his Gate back to Earth got left behind.”

Zontaºhar whistled, a sound similar to a human.

“You can have only one Gate active at a time.”

“Yes, they don’t stack… but if he’s lost his Gate… how is he going to go back?”

Gamantºhal barked in amusement.

“Well, we now have two Gates usable for Earth and one for Nest now. We’ll see when they return, but I think they can use those again.”

Goglas looked at Gamantºhal oddly. She then asked, “Not tempted?”

“What? No. Unless you’ve made preliminary arrangements back on your… Earth, I’d rather not risk being seen as an intruder to be caught and arrested.”

He added, “Still, it suggests that you should be able to allow more people to Earth or Nest. If you can swap Gates, you don’t need people dying.”