I stepped out of the portal back onto the dark street. Looking behind me, I still saw the ruins of the building, but I could feel the goddess with me. She was listed on my character sheet, and my trophy had a new designation as Mad Sad Bad Ad Trophy, Avatar of Margaret, Mistress of Planning. That was a mouthful.

I tried activating my minimap now, and a small map popped up in my peripheral view, showing the area around me. I could see a bit up and down the street, with some of the buildings. The portal entrance behind me was also marked. I wondered if other portals would be as well, but none showed up in the limited range I could see on the map.

I checked my quest again:

Quest: Get your foot in the door.

Mission: Find a door to a company that matches you.

Mission: Find a way to use the experimental Pathfinder and survive the Great Potential.

Complete: Find a coach.

Well, the mission to find a coach was complete. Considering what Margaret said about missions, I wondered how it was possible to complete the objective without surviving the great potential. I didn’t want to find out. For now, my goal was to find a door to the company that matched me. Thinking of her explanation for how the pathfinder worked, I concentrated on the “Best company for me to thrive at.” After a few moments, the location of the pull changed slightly from where the previous one was. I hoped that was a better goal. A dot also showed up at the edge of my minimap. It was way outside the map’s range, but at least I had a concrete direction.

I exited the dark alley back into the sunlight of the main street. The pull was still mostly going away from the skyscrapers, but now it was a bit to the side. I wondered if this would give me a way to gauge distance as I walked towards it since the street was still straight. As I got closer, the angle of the pull would change.

I took out Squeezimodo. “Let me know if you see anything coming at us, or any movement at all, will you? I can only see in one direction at a time.”

- I will.

We walked for a couple of hours. The direction of the pull did not change much, but I did sense it moving slightly to the right. It was far off, and I wouldn’t get to it soon. I was getting tired, and I’d need to sleep at some point. I took a couple of breaks in buildings throughout the way, but I needed to find some food and a place to stop for sleep.

I concentrated on “a safe place to rest for the night” and the pathfinder obliged me with a location off to the side that felt much closer. I followed it and arrived at a swanky hotel with a large sign out front saying “The Regal.” The building was marble, with a large crest on its facade. Lights shone in the windows.

I stepped into the lobby.

- You know how you wanted to know about movement. There are moving people here.

“Thanks, Squeezimodo; I can see them, too.”

The hotel was occupied. It was as if I stepped from one world to another by entering. People were talking to the receptionist or sitting on couches and chatting. It just felt so normal, as if I were back at home. A hotel magazine lay on one of the tables. I walked over and picked it up, looking through it. It wasn’t in English, though I could somehow understand it. The last part had a list of properties with their locations. I’d not heard of any of these places. This wasn’t Earth.

As I looked around, the door to the outside opened, and a couple came in. They were not behind me on the street. I wasn’t in the Great Potential anymore. I walked back to the main door and stepped out. I was once more on an empty street. I was stepping into a building on another world. Maybe the building was making an appearance in the Great Potential where I was.

I walked back into the hotel and up to the receptionist. I had no way to pay for this. I wondered how this would play out.

“May I help you, sir,” asked the smartly dressed young man. He was human from what I could see.

“I’m looking for a place to sleep for the night.”

He looked me over. I was disheveled and tired, wearing the clothes I wore to work that morning, which were not up to the standard of what other people here were wearing. “I see. We’ll need to do a credit check.”

I doubted that would work, but I was curious. “Of course.”

He waited patiently for me. I waited patiently for him. Quirking his head at me, he said, “Please hold your palm face up.”

I did so. Light flashed around it for a second.

He looked quizzically at something in front of him, then at me. “I’m sorry, sir. There seems to be a problem with our system. It doesn’t seem to recognize you.”

“I was afraid of that. It’s been happening a lot recently.”

“I’m afraid we can’t rent you a room without some collateral.”

- Do me. Do me!

“I understand. Thank you.”

I turned around and left. This was fascinating. I traveled to another world by stepping into a building. I wonder if this happened with the empty buildings I’d visited as well. Not being recognized by their system wasn’t a big setback since I could find other places to sleep. I’d have to think about what this form of travel means.

Stepping out of the hotel, I refocused the pathfinder on “a safe, empty, nearby place to rest for the night.” The pathfinder led me to a building a few blocks past the hotel. This one looked like it used to be a small company that shut down recently. I found a small employee room with some canned food. The label on the can said “gwarbler, the clickers of the sea.” The face of some animal I didn’t recognize smiled up at me. Mom always said, don’t look a gift gwarbler in the mouth. I opened one of the cans and sniffed it. No warning signs lit up in my brain. I took a careful bite, waited half an hour, and didn’t die a horrible death. I ate the whole can.

I made myself comfortable on a sofa and went to sleep, exhausted from a day of death and resurrection.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

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I woke up with a crick in my back. It was time to continue. As I made my way out of the employee door, I noticed the windows. I was so tired the night before that I hadn’t been paying attention. The shades were down, so I walked to one and pulled it up. Outside was a cityscape at night, though a very different city than the one I came in from. Despite the late hour, people were still walking around outside, making their way home. One or two restaurants still seemed open, and the buildings I could see had light in some of the windows. The people I could see were human in shape, though it was dark, so I couldn’t see any fine details.

I was awake, so had no reason to stay. I walked to the front door and stepped out. I was back in the Great Potential. It was daylight and deserted. I almost expected a tumbleweed to roll across the road. The stark difference to the night scene I saw out the window was jarring. I was world-hopping.

Time to find a company. I once more focused the pathfinder on the “Best company for me to thrive at” and went back to the main street to continue my walk.

- There are a few things coming our way.

It was a few hours later. I stopped. A few buildings were around us, but nothing I could get into without being noticed. I armed myself and waited. Soon, a group of three rats approached us. I Examined them and read their descriptions:

Whiskers Jr, Tiny, and Tails, Mutated Lab Rats, Level 1

Whiskers didn’t eat everything it found. It had kids. The kids were wondering why Daddy hadn’t come home and were on their way to check up on him. You’re meeting the whole family. I’m sure you’ll get to meet Mom, too.

They were almost on top of me. I stood with my back to one of the buildings, limiting their ability to surround me. I was hoping they’d just run by, but I wasn’t betting on it. As they approached, they noticed me and made a beeline over. I got ready, clipboard and wet floor cone in hand. They came at me and tried to figure out what I was.

I was shaking. I played some ball in college, but I was not a fighter. I had very little control in this fight. The biggest one came at me first. It lunged forward and tried to bite my hand through my clipboard. I guess their eyesight wasn’t great. While it could see my hand, it couldn’t see the transparent clipboard very well. I smashed its nose in with the clipboard, then drove the sharp knife of the cone into its eye from the side. It collapsed on the floor, spasming and spurting blood.

The other two reacted immediately. Making vicious shrieking noises, they came at me. The one on the left went for my legs, while the one on my right went for my arm. Remembering how I ended their father, I let the one on the right eat the blade, trusting the armadillo armor to protect me from its teeth. The knife went in, cutting into its spine and killing it. This still meant I had a large rat clamped onto my arm, making it useless.

The one that went for my legs got my clipboard in its ear, dizzying it. I managed to divert it off course, getting scratched by its claws but not bitten. It retreated, trying to regain its balance, while I pulled my arm from its sibling’s corpse. As it came at me again, I shouted at it with all my terror and anger, bashing at it with my clipboard and cutting at it repeatedly with my knife. It tried circling me as I moved away from the wall. It was fast. I kept myself facing it, sheer terror driving me to just slash at it whenever it came closer. I cut off a couple of fingers as it tried to claw at me, not making a dent in my wet floor cone. It tried biting me but couldn’t find an opening through the clipboard. Like its sibling, it couldn’t quite see it and seemed confused as to why it couldn’t grab my hand. Weakened from blood loss, it slowed down, and I was able to stab it in the throat, causing it to fall to the floor, writhing and grasping for me as it drowned in its own blood.

I just collapsed against the side of the building, panting. It was a miracle I survived. I had no training for this. The blood from the three rats pooled together as they lay on the floor, dead, while I slowly recovered and my heart slowed down.

- Are you ok?

“I don’t think so. That was close.”

- One of them scratched you.

I had forgotten about that. I didn’t even feel it in the aftermath of the battle. I looked at my leg. It had slashed through my pants, though not deeply. I had taken a medicine cabinet from the office I visited, where I prepared to fight their father. I pulled it out and searched through it. I couldn’t really read the language, but whatever helped me read the magazine at the hotel was helping me here. One of the tubes was an antiseptic cream. I prayed the people who created it were close enough to my biology as I cleaned the gash and bandaged it. It wasn’t too painful; hopefully, I caught any infection before it set in. My health was still high.

I had a new notification.

Congratulations. You’ve killed three mutated rats. It’s as if you have a vendetta against this particular rat family. Mom is the only survivor. She’ll probably come looking for you. You might want to get some training if you want to survive. Oh, and you’re now level 3.

Snarky foreshadowing message. It’s not as if I had any choice in the matter. I looked, and I now had another point to distribute. I quickly put it in Constitution. I needed to improve my health if I wanted to survive this place. My maximum health jumped by a few points, a great indication that a small step in Constitution was a large step for Joe. That was good to know. My health did not reset to full on level jumps, though.

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When I felt a bit calmer, I stood up and checked the bodies. They had nothing to loot. Much as this seemed like a game world, these were still rats. Large rats, but rats nonetheless. I wondered how they even got into the Great Potential. So far, they seemed to be the only living beings I’d seen outside of buildings. Their father was able to enter a building, so they were creatures of the Great Potential, in some ways like me. The couple I’d seen entering the hotel weren’t aware of the Great Potential. When they walked into the hotel, it was from whatever world the hotel was situated in.

I was able to carry things out of those worlds and into the Great Potential. Did that extend to living beings? I’d have to experiment a bit. In fact, if I was helping someone carry out a sofa through the door, what would happen to me? To them? To the sofa? Where would each of us end up? And did it matter which of us exited the door first? Look at me, the great philosopher. One day, I’d be remembered for Joe’s Sofa Postulate.

I was still shaken, my mind all over the place. I needed to find a home base, a company. Time to move on. Focusing on my destination, it no longer felt far. I could see that it was no longer as aligned with the street I was on as before, pulling at an angle. Reminding Squeezimodo to keep watch, I kept walking.

Half an hour later, the direction of my goal started veering off more sharply, and soon I arrived at an intersection. The buildings I was walking past were less corporate offices and more inventor workshops or temples. They had a more primordial feel to them. At the intersection, I felt my goal firmly in the street to my right.

Turning into it, I looked around. The buildings were mostly old but dignified. There was a combination of magic and technology at play, but everything seemed to have gravitas. Signs, when there were signs, and when I could read them, said things like “Core-poration” and “Initiators, Guaranteed.” They weren’t in English, but somehow I was able to understand what they meant. Some were simply logos or hieroglyphics I couldn’t decipher, like a circle that gave me the feeling of a beginning or a stylized seed. These buildings also didn’t seem abandoned, though there weren’t any windows I could see through at street level.

A couple of minutes later, the dot at the edge of my map settled on a specific building. My destination was in my minimap’s range. As I approached, I saw a small one-story shack looking out of place among the splendor of the surrounding buildings. I probably would have ignored it had I not been explicitly guided here by the pathfinder. There were no signs or markings on the building. I opened the door and stepped in.

It was dark inside, and while my eyes adjusted, I smelled earth. I was standing on the side of a hill encased in a building. A mine entrance had been cut into it. The building was just covering the entrance to hide it or protect it from the elements. I didn’t know if there were any elements in the Great Potential, but the inside of the building was probably on some other planet.

While the building had some ambient light, the tunnel leading into the mine was pitch black. I looked at it and realized it was actually a portal. My map had the goal smack center on that mine entrance. I looked around and noticed a small sign on the wall where the hill blended into it. It read, “Fix your mind on your goal.”

I approached the mine entrance and focused on it. As with the mercantile exchange, a message popped up.

Core Seed Mine. Do you wish to enter? Yes / No

Taking the sign’s advice to heart, I focused on finding the best company for me to thrive at, then chose yes.