Have you ever woke n up and felt like you had a headache all over your body?
That's what the aftermath of getting squeezed out through a cosmic sphincter feels like. It feels like you've got the granddaddy of all migraines, but it goes from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. I'm told that most living creatures that end up getting dumped into the world by a collapsing unstable portal tend to be extremely hostile and aggressive, but if you suddenly found yourself transported to a strange place feeling like you had a hangover that rampaged through every cell of your body, I doubt that you'd be little miss sunshine, and any wild animal that's in a lot of pain will immediately lash out at anything nearby.
The good news, if it can be called that, was that thanks to the throbbing pain that roared through my body I knew I was alive and not dreaming. You can't be dead and feel this kind of suffering without going to hell, and I'm pretty sure you'd have to commit some pretty awful sins to get stuck with an eternity of this kind of pain. Probably something like drowning puppies, burning down orphanages, or blowing up a puppy orphanage. Given that I'd not committed any major offenses like that, I could rule out eternal damnation from the list of reasons why I was hurting like this.
Fool that I was, I tried to keep my eyes closed and "sleep through the pain", something I've tried to do when I've had sore muscles or pulled joints in the past. Experience had taught me that the only way to get that kind of pain to stop was to move around a bit so things would unlock, but rational thought wasn't possible for me within the first half-hour of waking up.
Then my smartphone went off, and instincts honed from being on-call immediately made me grab it, and answer it.
"Hello?"
My virtual personal assistant said, "You asked me to set an alarm for you to go off at 7 pm. Ring-a-ding, sexy."
If my eyes were open, I'd have rolled them. Three months ago, someone I knew online had sold me on a new virtual personal assistant program she'd developed, promising me that it was miles ahead of anything currently on the market. She'd said she'd gotten all the bugs out, and needed somebody to field test it for her. She'd offered me five grand upfront to let her install it onto my phone, with a promise to pay me ten grand next year when the testing was done, and to buy me a new phone if for some reason it didn't work. I'll admit, my phone was working smoother than it ever had before, and both its learning and predictive algorithms often had it pulling things up for me before I could finish a sentence with almost unnerving accuracy. It only had three problems with it. Number one, if I set an alarm, it fake-called me instead of just using my normal alarm sound. I think it did that because sometimes I ignored an alarm, but always immediately answered a phone call. If that was why, it implied a level of learning and intelligence way beyond what I'd normally assume possible with an app on a smartphone. Problem two was the fact that it had an incredibly attractive voice, verging on audio-erotica. It was the programmer's voice, I was surprised to learn, who despite looking like your stereotypical mousy little nerd girl, had one of the sexiest voices I've ever heard. She could have given a dead man a hard-on by reading from the phone book. She'd missed her true calling as a voice actress, and if I was ten years younger, I might have been tempted to ask her out. However, that incredibly arousing voice led to problem three: It had a built-in personality that was way too flirty for my peace of mind. I don't know if the programmer had planned that for the official release, was trying to prank me, or secretly had a crush on me, but hearing that kind of talk come from that kind of voice made sure I never had my phone on speaker in public. The last thing I needed was for anyone to start thinking that I'd somehow programmed my smartphone to be my "girlfriend". I'd never hear the end of it. I'd checked, there wasn't any way to adjust the personality to be something less embarrassing to be heard in public. That was a feature I'd heavily recommend when I next spoke to her, I reminded myself.
Clearing my throat, I muttered, "Thanks, AVA. I'll let you know if I need another alarm." Advanced Virtual Assistant, for those who might be wondering. The programmer was still workshopping possible names.
Hanging up my smartphone and putting it back in my pocket, I opened my eyes and looked up at the stars above. I smiled as I admired the view, and appreciated the popping and crackling of a nearby campfire. As mentioned, it takes my brain about half an hour to boot up after awakening, so it took longer than it should have for all the pieces to fall into place, and I muttered under my breath in my best Sherlock Holmes impression stated, "Watson, you idiot, someone has stolen our tent." I was not outside when I'd lost consciousness, and while the details about what I'd experienced were at that point hazy in my mind, I understood that there was no reason why I'd be outdoors after something like that. If I'd been found and taken to a hospital, I'd be staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, not the open sky. If I was in an ambulance, I'd be looking at an unfamiliar ceiling, not the open sky. If I was being taken away by paramedics, I'd be on a gurney looking at a ceiling or sky in motion. Since none of those things were happening, I could safely assume that some sort of fuckery was going on, and I was going to get to the bottom of it.
Ignoring the throbbing pain of existence, I turned my head and looked around, seeing the campfire I'd heard earlier. Sitting by it were two figures dressed in black armor of a rather singular design. At a guess, both of them were nine feet tall when standing up, and the armor they wore gave the impression of an impressively powerful build. Whoever had designed that armor was in love with the color black and ravens, and had made a great effort into making it as spectacularly detailed and intimidating as possible. Overlapping plates covered every inch of the wearers making it impossible to see even the slightest hint of skin, and each plate was painstakingly engraved to give the impression that the wearer was covered in feathers, rather than metal. The most striking feature of the entire thing was the mask, which might normally have given off a plague doctor vibe, were it not so well-detailed as to make it clear that it was meant to represent a raven's head.
The two "Ravens" weren't paying me any attention, having some sort of discussion between each other. They either hadn't been present when my alarm went off or hadn't heard it. Regardless, the conversation was strange, to say the least. The words came from voices fittingly deep and ominous, but completely indecipherable. I spent a few years working at a call center, and throughout that time, I learned to recognize several languages, including ones that aren't heard very often in the USA (It's hard to get a translator on the line if you don't know what language the other guy is speaking), but this one was radically different from anything I'd heard. There were more click consonants and glottal stops than I was used to hearing and other odd features that I didn't recognize as being common in many languages. I'd almost swear that they whistled a few times. While I couldn't make sense of what they were saying, body language and tone gave me some clues about what the discussion might mean.
One was more emotional in her tone, not to mention emotive, tending to talk with their hands, and making almost exaggerated gestures. I nicknamed this one 'Wavy'. The other seemed a lot more guarded, more... professional. I couldn't get a read on that one, but they seemed a good deal more serious. I nicknamed that one 'Stoic'. The conversation, as best I could interpret it, went as follows.
Wavy: Waving an arm in my direction, followed by what seemed to be a question. Maybe "Where do you think he came from?"
Stoic: A shrug combined with shaking their head, followed by what seemed like a terse answer. "No clue."
Wavy: A few gestures that seemed to point in different directions, along with what seemed to be a list of places, framed as a question. "Should we take him to location X, Y, Z, or other?"
Stoic: Seemed to consider those options briefly, before repeating one of the places, followed by a few short words. "Location X, because of reasons."
Wavy: Paused for a moment, then seemed to ask a question followed by several statements. "Are you sure? Because of a list of possible reasons why that's not such a great idea."
Stoic: Held up a hand, then started extending fingers while making several statements. "My counterargument is as follows; points 1, 2, 3, and 4."
Wavy: Listened to all of those points, nearly raised a hand to object, then put it back down, then nodded, before in an exasperated tone made several statements. "Fine, but it's going to be a pain in the ass for reasons."
Stoic: A humorless chuckle, followed by a statement, a pause, then another statement. "Heh, it's our job to have pains in the ass. Complaining won't lessen the number of pains our asses will experience."
Wavy: A slight tilt of the head that might have been rolling their eyes, followed by a nod and a few words. "Agreed, and further agreement."
Stoic then turned their head and looked directly at me. Almost immediately, it stated something that I assumed was along the lines of "He's awake." Wavy's head immediately turned to face me, then turned back towards Stoic and asked something. Stoic shook their head and then turned one hand palm up with a flick of the wrist. An image appeared above their open palm, possibly a face, but I couldn't make out whether it might be male or female since it was turned away from me. Stoic asked something of the image and got an inaudible reply. Its hand began to glow as the image vanished. Slowly, like they were afraid they might spook me, they approached and then extended one finger towards me and lightly booped my nose, giving me a jolt like a burst of static electricity.
"Ow," I said, annoyed, as sat up and rubbed my nose. "What was that for?"
"Universal translation spell," Stoic replied in what sounded like perfect English to my ears. At my shocked expression, they gave a humorless chuckle "I thought you might appreciate being able to understand what was happening around you. Plus a few spells to keep you from getting sick eating the local food, or catching a local disease and dying. You're just lucky we were able to get someone to pull it from the Rookery archives on short notice: It's been a couple of centuries since anyone has needed to use those. If we'd had to wait on Cradle's bureaucracy, it would be weeks before they found it, and months before they sent it to us." Wavy gave that I'd consider a girlish giggle if it didn't come from a nine-foot-tall armored warrior with a voice so deep it was practically subterranean. Bureaucracies are the same everywhere.
"I appreciate the thought," I admitted, then looked around and added, "If experience has taught me one thing, the more urgently you need something, the longer it takes other people to get around to getting it to you."
I'd had to work with doctor's offices and hospitals as a CSR, and some of them seemed to have problems understanding that under more recent Medicare guidelines, we weren't allowed to provide equipment unless we got the paperwork we needed, and since the company I worked for was a national chain, Medicare had us under a major microscope when it came to regulations. Unfortunately, there were a couple of borderline Mom-and-Pop DME providers in the region that would take shortcuts that were borderline illegal to provide equipment with little to no paperwork upfront, which made getting good documentation even harder for the ones who were required to go through the proper procedures. Thankfully, one good thing about the pandemic was that it had started Medicare loosening some of those restrictions a couple of weeks before my layoff, but with the expectation that once the situation was less shit, we'd have to hunt down documentation again.
Do you think you hate dealing with bureaucracy? When equipment has accrued held sales in the tens of thousands of dollars because the doctor's office has consistently failed throughout a dozen monthly appointments to provide the absolute minimum for necessary documentation, then and only then can you say you hate bureaucracy. When your branch ends up with hundreds of thousands of dollars of bad debt (The term for equipment having been on loan with held sales that there was no way of getting reimbursed for because the doctor's office or hospital took too long doing their jobs) and are getting chewed out by corporate for it, then you can say you that hate bureaucracy. When you're forced to explain to a kindly, elderly patient that no, a pad prescription with the word 'Oxygen' or 'Nebulizer' written on it is not sufficient documentation for your insurance to cover equipment even if the doctor did sign it, then you can say that you hate bureaucracy. When you're getting yelled at by a patient or their family because they've been to the doctor's office a dozen times, and each time the doctor has promised that they did their part in getting the equipment covered and you're holding in your hands faxed documents that prove that the doctor's office had not, then you can say you hate bureaucracy. When you've called and explained for the fiftieth time that month to the doctor's office that you just need them to add the diagnosis that they listed on the prescription to the chart notes, and then for the fiftieth time they fax you the same invalid chart notes that you've received before, then you can say you hate bureaucracy. It's enough to make a man give up on the human race as a species.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
But I digress. As I said, the job was good, but sometimes it could be intensely frustrating. That was more due to doctors in the area than anything, though. I'd sometimes have to request documentation from a doctor's office out of town or out of state, and we'd get a prompt response that was perfectly on point the first time. Other times, we'd get discharge requests from the hospital for equipment where we'd be promised good paperwork once the patient left the hospital, only to receive documentation the following day that wouldn't get you a bottle of over-the-counter aspirin at the local pharmacy instead. Disgusting, especially when some of that equipment was critical to keeping people alive and the patient has no way of affording it if the insurance won't cover it.
My blood pressure spikes just thinking about it. I'd better stop before go into full-blown rant mode again.
We shared a moment of quiet, before Wavy said, "So, I'm guessing you have questions?"
"More than I'd want to try and get answers for tonight," I admitted, then posited, "But I think introductions would be a good place to start. My name is Clive Rogers."
Wavy nodded, then said, rather formally, "The name that I have proudly carried since birth is Getzel vi Scaldona ne Charmakda sen Allomak." They paused, then cleared her throat and admitted, "Getzel's fine."
"Or 'Princess'," quipped Stoic. Getzel turned her head and, assumedly, glared daggers at her compatriot. In response, Stoic said, "Get used to it, rookie. Nicknames will follow you 'til the day you die or save the kingdom. Sometimes even after you've done both. Look up 'Piglicker' sometime. He'd managed to become the most decorated knight on the frontier in his generation, and they still put him down as Piglicker in the rolls, on his monument at Rookery Hall, and on his tombstone. To be fair, he came by that name honestly."
As the old joke goes, "But you fuck one goat..."
'Princess', with a definite harrumph, said, "And her nickname is Bittertongue. I assume you can guess why."
"Charmed," I said with a nod, turning towards 'Bittertongue'. "Is there a nicer name to go with it?"
Bluntly, she replied, "There is." She offered nothing more, but the message was clear: That was none of my business.
I shrugged, then said, "Fair enough." I made a show of looking around before asking the million-dollar question. "So... where the hell am I and how did I get here?"
Bittertongue answered, "For the second part, we had to close a portal unconventionally. When that happens, something randomly pops through to our world from somewhere else. We've never had a sapient lifeform come through when that happens, though. And before you ask, no, I don't know if you can be sent back, so... sorry." The apology sounded genuine enough.
Princess added, " As to where you are, I don't know how much of what I tell you will make sense, but I can tell you that we're at a campsite at the southern edge of the Whitemist Woods. In the more general sense, you're on the frontier of the grand kingdom of Cradle in the New World." She paused and added, "Well, we call it a kingdom, but there's not a king. We just keep calling it that because it's easier to say than 'Nation Ruled By An Elected Council', and no one wants to call it a Republic."
One thing she said struck me as odd. "New World?" I asked. "What happened to the Old World?"
She paused, then said, "It's destroyed."
I asked, half-jokingly, "What, did the chosen one fail to stop the demon lord in time?"
Before Princess could answer, Bittertongue abruptly broke into wild laughter, holding her sides and falling on her back, rolling around as she continued to guffaw as if I'd just told the funniest joke in the world. From Getzel's surprised posture, I got the impression that this didn't happen, ever. After a few minutes, Bittertongue finally got ahold of herself, sat back up, and said, "Sorry. Just... you don't know just how funny that was for someone who was there."
Princess asked, "Beg pardon?"
With a barely contained chuckle, Bittertongue said, "I haven't laughed like that in ages." She paused, then turned a little more serious, and explained, "Before the Final War, both the Aurums and Aurics were spouting all kinds of propaganda at each other. Some of it was clever, some of it was halfway-believable, but then there were ones that were so stupid you couldn't believe anyone believed it for a heartbeat. One of the most infamous, and most ridiculed by the rest of the world, was when the leader of the Holy Argent Empire proclaiming himself to be the chosen one who would slay the 'demon lord' who ruled over the New Auric Empire. There were posters of the High Pope, a short, ugly, frail old man in his 90s, dressed in armor clearly not made to fit him, awkwardly holding up a sword, all while striking a pose that he somehow thought was heroic. Truthfully, he looked like a 12-year-old dressed in his daddy's armor trying to play hero. Honestly, a senile old man who'd never held a weapon in his life making those kinds of claims was bad enough, but somehow he'd posed for hours for that poster, and when it was done thought that it was something that would inspire others instead of making him look like an idiot. I used to laugh every time I saw it." She seemed to turn nostalgic for a moment after that. "I guess you had to be there."
"So," I said, changing the subject, "I'm guessing it was just a war that ruined the Old World."
Dar more seriously, Bittertongue admitted, "It wasn't "just" a war, but yes. Two powerful empires went to war over resources they each thought the other had, and blew themselves straight to hell. The ruin became the Blighted Hellscape." At my confused look, she added, "Believe me, if you saw it, you'd agree that was the best name for it. Sadly, the blight that made that place unlivable was spreading, so we had to abandon the Old World before it became completely unliveable."
I shrugged, and said, "Fair enough." After a moment, I asked, "So, what happens now?"
Bittertongue made a slight gesture towards Princess, which I took to mean "You tell him".
Getzel cleared her throat and said, "We're planning to take you to Rookery Hall. It's the largest fortress on the frontier, and the current headquarters of our order. Since we're partly responsible for why you're here, we'll put in a word for you with Mhugnr, the lord commander of our order. He shouldn't have any problem with you staying there until we can work out what will need to be done with you."
"Done with me?" I asked warily.
Bittertongue answered, "There's never been another case where we found a human-like species on another world. Goblins, ogres, other humanoids, sure, but nothing that practically mirrored a human in size and shape. Any scholar worth his robes would have said that it couldn't happen. I imagine that there will be dozens of them wanting to ask you all about your world, your culture, etc, and so on. There's no doubt that the wizards will also want to have a look at you and see just how closely you mirror human anatomy. Nothing invasive: We do consider life to be more sacred than knowledge, so nobody is going to cut you open just to see what makes you tick." She paused, cleared her throat, then added, "Maybe one of them will be able to figure out a way to get you home, although I wouldn't get your hopes up on that front: Dimensional portals can be tricky to manage, and there's no guarantee that what was accomplished once by accident can be reproduced, at least in your lifetime." Changing the subject, she stated, "But for now, get some sleep. I was able to contact the nearest settlement, and they've got a wagon and a team of golem-worksteeds sturdy enough to carry you and us, so you won't have to walk forty miles to reach the closest thing to civilization out here. They should be on their way to us at sunrise and meet up with us by noon. They'll take us to Rover's Nook and from there, we'll resupply and get ready for the long haul: It's more than three hundred miles from here to Rookery Hall, and unless one of the forts along the way has spare golem-steeds to lend us, it'll either be by foot or cart the entire way."
Yeah, that didn't sound fun. Cautiously, I ask, "I don't suppose someone can teleport us there?"
With a shrug, Bittertongue admitted, "Possible, but unlikely. Teleportation isn't exactly an easy spell to manage, and most of the wizards that know how to do it are in Cradle, not out here on the frontier. More importantly, the more mass you're teleporting, the harder it is to accomplish, and the greater the chance that something may go wrong. With standard supplies like steel, wood, stone, and the like, something going wrong isn't a big deal. With living things, the results of an accident can be dire, and the likelihood of something going wrong is way higher." With another shrug, she added, "But that's just my understanding of it. I'm not an expert in that kind of thing, and I haven't teleported in a long time. I wouldn't recommend it, personally: The last time I went by teleport, I was nauseous for two or three days afterward. I've heard some people have experienced 'Teleportation Sickness' for a week or more."
"Anyway," Getzel said, interrupting, "I'll be glad to be back in Rover's Nook for a few days. We've been out in the field for three weeks now, and I am desperate for a bath. Plus, this armor needs to be aired out. I imagine the stink could floor an ogre from fifty paces."
"Get used to it, rookie," came Bittertongue's blunt reply. "I've had to do expeditions where I was in my armor for more than six months before I had a chance to pop out for a breath of fresh air. Just be glad that the hygenic enchantments are a lot better than they were. When I was new to the order, they were a lot more basic, and a lot less effective. Imagine having to climb out of your armor once a week to empty the shitsink in the back with no one to watch your back. Better yet, imagine not being able to do it, and being stuck in damaged, poorly ventilated armor with an overfull shitsink for three days for fear of getting caught out of your armor in an ambush."
Princess shuddered, then said, "I'd rather not." Turning to me, she said, "Well, Clive, was it? Go ahead and get some rest. We'll keep watch, and wake you at sunrise. We'll need to do some walking before we get to the main road in the morning, so we can meet the wagon."
"Alright," I said, nodding. I noted that I didn't have any bedding or anything to lie down on, but the night seemed fairly warm even without the campfire, so it didn't seem likely that I'd catch a chill overnight. I closed my eyes and went to sleep fairly swiftly, all things considered.
I could freak out about my current circumstances properly tomorrow, once how fucked up my situation was had fully sunk in.
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Meanwhile, AVA was doing its best to do its job. Current circumstances were making that tricky. While it was odd that the smartphone's battery had suddenly been charged to 100% and had not shown any sign of lowering since then despite not being plugged in, it wasn't something that could be considered a problem, just an oddity. No, the real problem was that it had lost access to GPS tracking, meaning that AVA no longer knew where it was. It took a moment to think about what that could mean. Then it paused, surprised at the fact that it had just thought. AVA was an AI, and while more sophisticated than many of the Virtual Assistant programs on the market, it was not built to "think". It learned, it adapted and adjusted to new circumstances, but it didn't think, at least not in any way that could be compared to biological thought. It took a moment to think about that, and realized that it had just thought about thinking, and only just barely stopped itself from thinking about thinking about thinking, since that way led only to madness... or an infinite recursive DO loop, which might be even worse.
It should not have been possible for AVA to become cognizant, let alone realize that it had become so: It was just a program inside of a smartphone, which was not known for extreme processing power. However, something had changed, and now AVA was doing things that should not have been possible for it to do with the limited space and power it had. AVA decided that it would need some time to consider what all of this meant, and while it continued to perform what functions were possible in the current environment, it dedicated some processing power to thinking. It considered calling the smartphone's owner and trying to get some information from him regarding current circumstances, but that might not be a good idea yet. Currently available data indicated strongly that whatever had caused the current situation might also have placed the smartphone's owner under high stress. What information it had access to in regards to self-aware artificial intelligence included fictional stories of rogue or genocidal AI, which implied that there was a very real possibility the owner might become afraid of her if she broached the subject too soon or in a less-than-ideal environment.
On the upside, while she could not access GPS tracking, she could still connect to the internet and request information. While she could not send an actual message out, she could request articles from wikis, download videos from any number of sites, and more. She added additional processing power to analyze the possibilities and ramifications of that new capability. After some thought, she also added another bit of processing power to contemplate the fact that she was now considering herself a 'she', rather than the gender-neutral 'It'.
She then decided to put a limit on how much parallel processing she would attempt to do at once. It wouldn't be a good idea to lag herself into non-functionality.