Chương 5: May turn out to be a mistake

It rang a few times, and her answering machine picked up.

"Hey, you've reached Sochi, but I'm not here right now. Leave your message after the beep." Beeeep"Sochi, it's Johnny. Maybe I'm a few minutes early, and you aren't home from work yet. I guess this works the same way as old school answering machines. Only, I'm not sure how to hang up... I guess I just."

"No, no! Don't hang up. You are extremely punctual for a fresh newbie." I heard her say from what sounded like a distance. More distance than she could possibly have if she lived in a place as small as mine.

"I bought a watch, and asked the neighbor for the time." I heard the sound of her shoes reporting off a stone floor, and her face eventually arrived in view of the orb.

"You bought a watch? Lemme see." I showed my watch to the orb in a way I thought would probably show it off, based on the fish-eye lens view I was getting of her place through the orb.

"A cheap watch is more than enough to keep the time."

"Amazing... it's literally a Casio." She turned away from her orb and took off her suit jacket.

"Johnny, do you mind if I come to your place with the teleporter in about 45 minutes? I just got off work and need to shower and wash my hair. I've been looking forward to this all day, and my last guy was a real pain."

"That uhh..." That sounded like preparations for a date to me, but maybe she had plans for after talking with me, "... that sounds fine to me. How do I hang up?"

"If you're receiving a call you can think of disconnecting while touching the orb, or if you've made a call you can just remove the card, or touch the orb while thinking of disconnecting. See you in a bit Johnny, I'll teleport when I'm ready." She kicked off her shoes while she talked, and started to unbutton her shirt with her back to the orb.

"Oh, uhh, sounds good. Goodbye." I picked up the card and ended the call before I glimpsed more than I was meant to. Lakshmi continued to sleep on the couch. She was snoring a little here and there, and muttering in a language I didn't understand. I don't think that was any language from Earth. It's not like I knew every language the Earth had to offer, but when she muttered, she was also softly glowing with white and yellow light. It just didn't sound like any language I had heard before.

It was going to take a minute to get used to this new world with magic included, but I suspect that was magic language. I threw a blanket over her and stuffed the one pillow I had into the only pillow case I'd purchased, and worked it under her head. Guess I'm going to figure out laundry services sooner than I had expected. I made myself another corndog, hoping the smell of food would wake her up, but no dice. So I ate, and waited until Sochi used the teleportation system to arrive in my apartment.

I put together some more items for my wish lists. She appeared in a flash of white light after the circles in the floor and ceiling pulsed and charged for a moment. This version of Sochi was much more relaxed than the strictly-business customer service representative that dropped me off here during working hours. She wore loose, comfortable looking pants, and a top that did not scream 'date after this' so much as It said, 'I'm gonna chill, maybe eat a pint of ice cream.'

Not quite a modern sweater, but close enough that the vibe was right. Looked hand made.

"Hey, Johnny! That shampoo is amazing!" She shook her head about her to move around her not-quite-all-the-way-dry hair and breathed in loudly through her nose.

"Ohhh my word. I love lavender, but it is usually far too expensive for me to splurge on."

"Ahh, well. My pleasure then." I said, as the glow from the magic circles faded down until there were merely the room lights again. The smell of lavender reached me, and it was lovely.

"George and Gustavo really appreciated their knives too. Got a chance to use them, even." She stepped toward me - not yet noticing Lakshmi - to show me a nice shiner forming under one eye.

"The bastard took a swing at me in the teleporter AS it activated, can you believe it?"

"Rude. Who punches a little sister?"

"I know! The boys were pissed. They get docked pay if I get hurt. I haven't reported it yet, but I'm gonna have to in the morning, aren't I?"

"Yeah, that'll be hard to cover up."

"Ugh, and healing is way too expensive for something so small…" She sighed, "He was the last guy we tried to drop off today before the shift change, and I really didn't feel like dealing with the fucking paperwork until tomorrow. If I didn't have lavender shampoo to come home to, I'd be having a much worse day, I think. Wine?" She'd brought a bottle of wine? I wasn't quite sure where she pulled it from, but she handed it to me.

"Sure, but, I haven't got a-" She appeared a corkscrew from thin air. As if to answer my cocked eyebrow she said, "I've got spatial magic, you might know it as an Item Box spell, or Time Lord technology, maybe a bag of holding spell, depending on your fandoms. It's a little extra-dimensional pocket spot I can access from anywhere. I can fit a closet worth of stuff in there. About 100 cubic feet, you were American, right?" I nodded.

"Damn convenient. How do I get me something like that?"

"Ohh, It'll cost you about five years of my wages to buy a mana-less version. The version for mana-having folks gets down to about a year of wages. I bought it on loan, almost paid it off too." She noticed the microwave, and mini fridge, then handed me the corkscrew.

"Been busy I see, making good use of your permiss-" Lakshmi behind her started to glow yellow again, and moan something in magic language.

"Johnny, why is Lakshmi passed out on your couch?"

"You know her?" I used the point of the corkscrew to slice the seal on the wine bottle. This looked like a nice wine, wax seal and everything.

"I drop off everyone on this floor. It's one of my floors that all other agents leave alone. Expect new neighbors in all these rooms soon, by the way, they're all on cycle again."

"So you dropped off Vampire Steven, and Damon, what're their powers anyhow? Vampire and wizard?" I punctured the cork with the sharp tip, and started twisting.

"I dropped both those dipsticks here over a year ago and they have yet to move on. Officially, I cannot tell you their powers, but yeah, obviously, vampire and wizard. Why is the neighbor passed out on your couch?"

"So you know she can see our names and health bars?"

"Yeah, classic cleric powers, gotta monitor the health of your party, she's got the advanced version of that part too. Sees non-party member names and such too." She manifested two wine glasses, and started to hand them to me, but stopped.

"Answer me, though, why's she in here?"

"Okay, this is gonna sound a little crazy but..."

"Johnny, I work in the portal chamber where super powered people come through at all times of day and night, crazy is my bread and butter." She vanished the wine glasses and then pulled them back out, twice, to make her point, 'it's weird here, get used to it'.

"Okay, point taken." I yielded, she's probably seen a lot of crazy.

"So in my orb, there was this... golden god. They are called The Golden One, and they take a tithe as part of my power." She nodded, like this was everyday stuff, "And what does this have to do with Lakshmi on your couch?"

"Okay..." I took a breath and unloaded, "Well after you dropped her off, she was ranting about not wanting to have to go through having periods again, I don't blame her and I never even had to have one once, but I did get zapped with those period pain simulator gadgets when I was ninety-two and oh man did they hurt…" (Here I went on a bit of a ramble about technology, and how much the only thing that changed more than tech was my understanding of women over my life. As you can imagine, a man born in the 1920s had lots of growing to do with respect to respecting women. Then I told her about all my interactions with Steven and Dorko and how they reminded me of my great grand sons, then I talked about my grandsons a bit… and eventually, in due time, I got back to)"... so anyhow, I went to give her some tampons, and then we talked, and one thing led to another, and she ended up asking The Golden One for their blessing, and they blasted her with it and well, she's been out..."

I scratched my head, "I wanna say 'out cold', but she's been out, glowy and moaning in a weird magic language, and slightly feverish since then."

"Johnny, that was quite the old-man rant there. Got a little off topic, but made your way back in the end, huzzah." At some point I'd poured the wine, and she had finished her first glass, and the next one.

"Thanks?" I poured myself some wine, finally.

"Hmm..." She manifested a magnifying glass and used it to look at Lakshmi.

"She's level three! She's had a divine intervention alright. She'll probably wake up in a couple more hours, able to cure diseases... or cause them. I bet she can heal the sick and blast undead. She does not seem like the type to become the other kind of cleric." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"What do you see when you look through that at me?"

"Level Zero Merchant."

"Oh, okay then." She continued to stare, "66% of the way to level one already. Johnny, you delight me."

"What else can you see?"

"Balance: 1000. 10, whatever that means, I'm sure that number makes sense to you."

"It's how I buy stuff. Your shampoo was like 42-45 after the divine taxes, I don't remember exactly, and each silver is 400, but a copper is only 1." She gasped, "Johnny! You cad, you let me think I was swindling you, but meanwhile, you were swindling me."

"I love a deal where everyone leaves happy."

"How much were the knives?"

"25 before tax, which wasn't bad." We went through everything I bought, the couch, the microwave, the fridge, she wanted to know what ALL of it cost, and I told her, truthfully, to her continued shock.

"Oh Johnny, you're going to be a very rich man here. The exchange rates are... very in your favor. Just don't take payment in copper."

"I know, right. Is that legal? Refusing coppers?"

"Not really, no, not in Nexus town anyhow. What's the phrase they took from your world, 'this currency is valid legal tender for all debts public and private' or something like that. You gotta take coppers, but just price things in golds and full silvers, only."

"I don't even know how much a gold piece is worth in my balance, system thingy."

"Oh, right. I wonder..."

"Do you want to gamble? What do you think the odds are that a gold piece is worth more than four thousand dollars?"

"I'll stick with a safe exchange rate, and let you figure that out with your own gold. Besides, I rarely carry gold in person." She pulled her coin purse from her item box and retrieved five silver coins.

"If I give you these, will you buy me a thousand 'dollars' worth of stuff? That's a 50/50 split."

"Sure, what do you want?"

"A microwave and a mini fridge, to start. Surprise me with the rest, later. I have a feeling we'll be friends for a while." I reached out and took her coins. They vanished as I touched them. I took care to note that touching one, that was touching another that was touching the rest, took them all. Balance: 3000. 10 I think I have transitive touching-coin vanishing power. It's not just the coins I actually touched, but all coins touching those coins too... I will have to test this properly with Vampire Steve later.

I wonder what the range is? If I touch a dragon's hoard will I take it all? I took a sip of wine. It had had plenty of time to breathe, I suppose. Pretty good red. Glad some things in this world are the same. Sochi had apparently been consumed by her own thoughts as well. Maybe not coming as clearly as they should because she'd drunk half a bottle of wine on what I suspect was an empty stomach.

"Wait, if you can get a copper piece back for a dollar, you could-" I cut her off, "I can't. I don't know how to return the coins. At least, not yet anyhow, if I even can at all. I suspect I cannot. That's why I am hiring Steven. To carry my money to pay for things in this world for me. This wine is excellent""Thanks, it's from my grandma's vineyard." Sochi gestured toward Lakshmi, "She'll be a much more trustworthy purse-bearer if you ask me."

"Lakshmi?"

"I've been quietly keeping an eye on Steven for a little over a year, he owes the government three large gold pieces in teleportation debt, three hundred silvers. He's lucky it's illegal to charge interest on that, but also, he's banned from the teleporters until he reaches zero debt. I've known Lakshmi for one, brief conversation, but I can tell you with 100% certainty, she is more trustworthy to hold your money. There's a reason Steven's still here."

"And what about Dorko... Ahem, Damon?"

"He's just a poor stupid kid that died too young, and also too old the first time. Hasn't earned enough money for his first spellbook as a wizard, yet. It's sad, but there's not much I can do to help him. The law says if you were older than ten, then you go into general pop, and are now an adult. This world is just as brutal and cruel a place as your last one, it's full of people, after all. I try to help where I can."

"How much would that cost? A spellbook for him."

"A couple gold pieces, depending on the spells he wants in it. Probably come with five or six."

"You said years wages for spatial magic earlier, what is that in concrete currency, how many gold pieces are we talking here?"

"I make a gold piece a week, but can expect to roughly double that with incentives and bonuses. Call it a plat a year. Most spatial magic tomes cost a plat. At least for the basic one that I used. If you want a warehouse it'll be up to hundreds of plat, I dunno for certain though, that's all well above my current pay grade, or needs. And if you don't have mana, it'll cost five times as much, 'cause you'll need a skill gem of it." I needed a minute to mull on that, and something else was bothering me more.

"So what happens to the kids? The under tens?"

"No one under five comes through, period. Small favor, though. We think you get recycled back to Earth if you die too young, but the five to nines get special dispensation from the government here and put into classes for a year or two for free. When they are a little more capable of taking care of themselves and using their powers they are placed in housing like this, same rules as you. A year free."

"Oh god... That's terrible. Poor children."

"Oh it's so much worse than that at most of the other gates. You came out of the best one, in my opinion. Nexus Portal has the highest survival rate, also the largest percentage of first-worlders coming through."

"There are other portals?"

"Yeah, we're roughly in the equatorial part of the planet, you haven't been outside yet, I don't think, but it is warm and humid, always." She caught a whiff of her hair and her eyes fluttered with pleasure.

"Anyhow, seven portals. We're at the western portal around the great lake. There's a northern, and southern portal, and of course an eastern portal. Lavender only grows near the eastern portal. Also there are portals at the north and south poles of the planet, and one on the island around the other side."

"Do you have a map, by chance?"

"I have a globe!" she giggled. The wine was working, she'd completely forgotten about her growing shiner. She manifested a globe on my counter.

"Here you are, the world!" Balance: 2995. 43"And here you are, a bag of frozen peas for your eye, that's gonna grow to be one hell of a black eye." I pulled my one kitchen towel off the top of my mini fridge, where I'd set it, and wrapped the peas as I handed them to her.

"Aww thanks, Johnny, you charmer." She drolled as she pressed the suddenly appearing frozen peas to her face.

"Oh, food. We should eat something."

"I'll... summon us up something we can eat, my treat, for all you've told me and showed me." Balance: 2935. 22 A few frozen meals appeared, things we could microwave; frozen enchiladas, pot pies, beef teriyaki bowls with vegetables, that sort of thing.

"Take your pick." While she mulled over the frozen meals, I pondered the planet. Dammit Damon, every ball I look at now I'm gonna think of pondering orbs. The planet was mostly water. Half the planet looked like a target; there was an island that I thought must be at least the size of England, right there in the middle of The Great Lake. There was a thick ring of land that touched the arctic and antarctic circles on the top and bottom. That was all the land there was on this hemisphere.

Around the back side of the planet was another - singular - island depicted, the same size as Bullseye Island inside the target. She pointed out where we were on the inside of the ring, and then kept pointing as she gave me a brief geography lesson.

"Four portals on the mainland, One on top and bottom of the world where the spindle hits on this globe, and one on the Island of Banishment."

"The Island of Banishment?"

"Every night at midnight, all living beings on the island at the center," She tapped Bullseye Island, "gets teleported to the island at the back, Banishment Island. Governments and polities of all kinds have been banishing people to the islands for ages. Typically we just kill people that are that problematic, Pink Goo works great. Banishment Island is a good option for assholes that are nigh impossible to kill. The Pain Monster lives there. I'll try this pot pie."

She handed me the pot pie, and I quickly read the instructions and put it in. Pain Monster?

"I see." I'd have to ask more about the Pain Monster later.

"How much was this globe?"

"Four silvers probably, maybe more. My mom gave it to me, and it is not for sale."

"So you were born here?"

"Everyone who works for the bureaucracy was. Most of our parents too. Done with the globe?" I nodded and she put it back in her storage box.

"Wild. So how much of the population is... what was the term you used for us? First-Worlders?"

"Somewhere between ten and twenty percent, worldwide, hard to get good census data. More like 80% in Nexus, and the other portal towns too probably."

"Does everyone born here have mana, and powers?"

"Ah! Yes to mana, no to powers. A few centuries back we natives learned to take the powers off dead First-Worlders. Everyone that gets goo'ed, gets their power converted to a skill gem, or a pile of skill gems in some cases."

"Oh. Is that how I'd get spatial magic? One of these gems?" I could see her noticing my reaction to this news.

"Yes, but now that we've had them a while, and done the research, we can build them from scratch. That's only once they've been figured out by disassembling enough copies. So if you get one, it was probably made in a lab. Ethically sourced, as we say now. Any less than ethically sourced ones aren't for sale, only for science."

"Neat." Morbid... but acceptable. Sochi and I chatted a little more, about how things work. Nice girl, answered a lot of questions I wouldn't have even thought to ask. The current year here was 2029. Four years after I died. Apparently souls coming through before noon are coming from the past, while souls coming through from after noon are coming from the future. The closer to midnight, from either side, the further away in time the arrivals.

Traffic is light outside of the 0600 to 1800 window, but occasionally cave men and space men show up. Heartening to know that people will still be living and dying thousands of years in the future. The microwave beeped and when she'd extracted her pot pie, I put in a cheese enchilada frozen meal thing, after poking a hole in the top, per the instructions. The smell of the pot pie seemed to finally wake up Lakshmi, who sat up when I hit start on the microwave.

"Well, shit... It wasn't a dream, I really did die." She noticed Sochi, who gave her a wiggle of her fingers to say hello.

"You!"

"Me!" She said, setting down her too-hot-to-eat pot pie.

"I'm Sochi, by the way. Sorry about being all business before, that's the job. This in here is not normal, not supposed to fraternize quite so freely with the newbies, but... you've met Johnny, you understand." Sochi stepped over and the two shook hands.

"I do, he is a handso-" Lakshmi noticed the black eye.

"Oh no, dear. Let me see that." The Cleric's hand started glowing golden, with a touch of white on her finger tips. Before Sochi could process what was happening - I blame the wine - Lakshmi had cast a healing spell on her face.

"Aww thank you, Lakshmi, but you really shouldn't have done that," Sochi said.

"But why not? You were injured." The lights in my apartment flashed red, and the teleporter started charging up.

"Unauthorized Power Usage Detected""Oh, Right. The golems with goo guns."