Chapter Text
Once, not so long ago, today would have been no big deal. Coffee with a friend. Easy!
Just out of lacrosse practice, showered up and happily sore, Anne Boonchuy jogged in place at the bus stop to burn an endless geyser of nervous energy away. She’d just learned that the cheer squad was coming to their next away game, which was exciting enough, but then she’d gotten the text from her dear friend Marcy.
Not a picture of a cool bug, nor a gushing recommendation for some show to add to the pile, but an offer.
And so, Anne was on her way to meet with the cheer captain and extend that offer. A woman who she saw every day and thought of every night, but who hadn’t shared a real conversation with her in more than a year. They were both proud Otters, among the few dedicated athletes at their little Olympia University, but that had been their only bond for too long.
Opportunity hadn’t resolved into happiness yet, instead buzzing beneath Anne’s fluffy hair in an electric web of anxiety. “C’mon, Anne, it’ll be okay,” she said on the bus, swaying along with every bump and jostle. “She’ll be happy to see you!”
“You got this!” the little old lady sitting across from her said.
“Darn right!” Anne cried, letting go of the handhold to point and wink. That was a mistake, but she steered her fall towards the stairs and hopped free of the bus as it stopped. She rode that adrenalin all the way to the coffee shop, and didn’t even slow down when she saw her old friend at an outside table, wearing her familiar red, people-watching with that familiar wry look, and sipping one of her familiar ridiculous coffees.
She plopped into the chair across from Sasha and rode it in a circle, reaching out for a handshake on the return. “What’s shakin’, bacon?”
Sasha started to reach back but faltered. “What?”
Anne let the chair carry her past, rapped herself on the forehead, and then turned back. “Hey, Sasha! How’ve you been? It’s been ages!”
“Yeah,” Sasha said, more a gentle release of pressure than an answer. She took up her towering coffee confection and gave it a slow sip, eyes drifting up and down Anne, before adding, “You look good.”
Rather than dance around the point, Anne plunged in. “You’re nervous too, huh?”
Sasha looked annoyed for a moment, then rolled her eyes and smiled. “I don’t get it. We see each other around all the time, but I still miss you. That’s weird enough. But then when I got your text, it was like–”
She pounded the table and Anne yelped.
“You know?” Sasha finished.
“Because we don’t know,” Anne agreed. “It’s important, and we don’t know how it’ll go. And you’re different, now.”
“Which is good,” Sasha put in.
“Which is–sure! But I loved the old you, too! So!” Anne didn’t have anywhere to go with that.
“So you think it’s time.” Sasha’s voice was even – too even. “For us.”
“Maybe? It’s a chance! You’re taking the cheer squad along to my team’s game in River City, right? Marcy just texted to say that she could make River City this Friday.”
Sasha’s eyes widened. “She can? Wouldn’t it still be a long way for her? Is she traveling right now? Why not just come here?”
“That’s what I thought, but look!” Anne fished through the pockets of her cargo shorts and came up with a collection of travel pamphlets. “I don’t know how this works, but–” She slapped down a roadmap showing River City just under a hundred miles from their campus, as expected. Then another, and River City was suddenly fifty miles from Marcy’s Hopkinton, MA. And then a third, which reported that it was somehow also in Japan’s Kansai region and a short train ride from Osaka.
Sasha flipped through the maps critically. “And we’re sure it’s the same River City?”
“Sure as short-nosed toads!”
“Language,” Sasha said with a smirk. “Huh, River City, BS. Is Blorsichusetts a real state? I feel like I’d know that name.”
“Eh, it’s probably like New Jersey,” Anne said, gripping the table to cover a quick dizzy spell. Just hearing that name made her brain feel like a gob of grease sliding over a griddle. “So, uh, if we can see her there, wanna take a little vacation in River City after the game? The three of us could get a hotel room together and hang out, maybe see the sights…”
Sasha gazed down at the maps, eyes unfocused.
This was the part that Anne had dreaded. She was going to say no, wasn’t she? She was going to refuse and ask what the hell Anne was thinking. Once again, Marcy was drawing them into another dimension, and…
“Alright,” Sasha finally said. “I trust Marcy. If she says she can make it, she can make it. And, yeah, you know what? Maybe it has been long enough. Maybe…” She drew herself up. “No, it has. We’re ready!”
“Alright!” Anne said, casting the maps into the air like confetti. “I’ll let her know.”
“You know what?” Sasha said, getting her phone out. “I will. All of our texts’ve been animal pics for the past… how long? I’m not looking.”
Anne slumped a little as the storm in her head abated. “Also,” she said. “If we really want to figure out what’s going on with a freaky dimensional vortex town, we know who to ask.”
“Oh, yeah,” Sasha said, expertly tapping with both thumbs. “Sent! And I have a little time… why don’t we go see those guys?”
Relief kicked Anne’s volume up a notch, but she was too happy to be embarrassed. “Let’s go!”
“Oh, River City! Great town!” Dr. Jan’s face dipped fleetingly. “Incredibly violent.” She popped back up. “But, great town!”
Dr. Jan’s lab was as busy as ever, which was to say, not very. Computers ticked and chattered as a dozen virtual “explorers” calculated new routes through the multiverse, a few interns whisked about like leisurely ghosts in their lab coats, and a coffee maker gurgled happily in the corner, keeping the whole operation running.
BJ, the security guy they’d hired after The Incident, relaxed in a folding chair next to the portal. His heavy green body armor inexplicably left his arms bare and had a window for his abs, though if Anne had pythons like those, she’d want to show them off, too. He gave them a friendly salute, then set aside the shotgun he’d been oiling and picked up a copy of Watership Down.
“Yeah, my parents freaked out a little when I mentioned it,” Anne admitted. “Mom said they made her do an essay on how it wasn’t a typical American city when she immigrated.”
“Sounds like fun,” Sasha said. “Most places you go in the US are just the same. This might be something new, for a change.”
“What did you go there for, Dr. Jan?” Anne asked.
“I was heading up a cryptid hunt!” Jan pointed to a poster in the back corner and the eerie strains of a theremin wafted through the room.
“No joy, but the kids were great! We even rescued a marching band!”
“Was it–?” Anne was interrupted by another electronic wail and they all turned to the corner, where Terri was playing with his theremin.
“Oh, sorry,” Terri said, switching it off. “Hey, kids.” As he wandered over, they could see that he was wearing a button-down and pocket protector, indicating that he was a he today. Sasha grimaced a little at the greeting, but let it pass; they’d probably always be “kids” to him. “What are we talking about?”
“They’re going to River City! I was just telling them about–”
Terri turned sheet white and towed Jan away from the group, then cupped a hand around her ear and started whispering. Jan looked bewildered, then concerned, then horrified, then bewildered again.
“Like Sigil?” she asked. “Or the Nexus?”
“More like Event Horizon!” Terri cried. “Don’t–” and dropped back into whispers.
Anne scratched the back of her head and chuckled nervously. “You get the feeling they should be telling us something?”
Sasha shrugged.
“You’re being really quiet today. Or is that how you are, now? Haha, it’s been so–”
The scientists came back. Terri’s expression was grim, and Jan’s smile was paper-thin.
“Don’t worry about the geography,” Jan said.
“Worry?” Anne protested. “We weren’t worried, just curi–”
“Don’t ask questions,” Terri clarified. “Try not to think about it, if you can help it. Sleep on the bus ride, if you can. Treat the visit like a dream!”
“What happens if we…?” Sasha started, then noticed Jan’s terrified smile grow wider. This time, the scare chord definitely wasn’t diegetic. “Okay, okay! Alright.”
“It’ll just be nice to see Marcy again, right?” Anne said.
“Like a dream,” Sasha agreed.
The scientists relaxed, and then Anne did. Sasha had been tightly controlled the whole time, and didn’t shift now.
“Oh, I just remembered!” Jan said, and her smile was genuine again. She was good at that. “They’re pretty aggressive in River City, always up for a fight. But if you get in one, they should let you go if you give up. Just say something submissive, like ‘you got me,’ and they’ll usually go on to a different opponent.”
“Dork alert (me)!” Anne said, dramatically clutching her heart and rocking back on her heels. “Like that?”
“Yeah! That’s the spirit.”
“‘BARF’ is traditional,” Terri added. He hadn’t quite recovered yet, but he was looking better, too.
“I bet Sasha will get in trouble, though,” Anne said with a playful elbow. “You won’t just roll over, eh?”
“You got me to,” Sasha reminded her.
Anne’s brows knit. “Are you okay, Sash? Really?”
“It’s just like the geography,” Sasha said, and then warmed a little. “Look, don’t worry about it.”
“Okay!” Anne said brightly, and resumed worrying.
As recommended, Anne fell asleep on the bus, and so missed whatever horrible geometry it apparently drove through. She did have a nightmare of running up a looping MC Escher staircase to a familiar tune, but that game had probably scarred her for life, anyway. She woke to seven excited texts from Marcy and her head on Sasha’s shoulder.
That moment, reading Marcy’s “Can’t wait to see you ♥♥♥!!” while nestled against Sasha’s familiar warmth and scent, stung. It was nice, so why did it hurt? She sat up and blinked the sleep gunk from her eyes.
“It’s just a pit stop,” Sasha said, nodding to the gas station outside. “We’re about halfway.”
Anne wandered over and found, to her astonishment, crappy gas station khao niew bing. Did they even sell crappy gas station khao niew bing in Thailand? She got three for herself and a fourth to shove in Sasha’s face.
She spared the posted roadmap a glance, but it gave her a migraine that cleared the instant she looked away. “Hey,” she asked the attendant, an old man with long white hair. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t strain my ‘brane over it,” he replied. “HEHEHE! Tesseractually, it’s all relative! EHEHE! In fact, you could say we’re in the outer dark between dimensions, and if I answered honestly, your soul would be swallowed by a stygian madness without beginning or end! AHAHAHAHAAAA!”
Anne stepped out into the sunlight. It looked like a perfectly ordinary country road, though it was a little weird to see palm trees this far north. “He seemed nice.”
“I wasn’t expecting them to have challah!” Libby was saying as Anne boarded the bus. She’d done her messy hair up in a bun, but it was already starting to turn into a golden brown hurricane.
“Like in New York?” Andrea asked, looking up from her phone to peer at the station appraisingly. “Is it any good?”
“It’s horrible! But it exists!”
Anne hadn’t seen anything like that. Oh, well. She settled in next to Sasha, started to compose her pitch for the khao niew bing , and then nodded off again. This time, it was nightmares about the spaceship from 2001.