Chapter Text
“Blasted door!”
Shadowheart bashes the door with her mace for the umpteenth time until her biceps scream. Unfortunately, the hinges have stubbornly refused to relent and no one has answered her knocking.
If she squints she can make out the slightest dent in the wood from her mace. Forget it. Shadowheart slumps against the door, energy spent. She slides down to a defeated thud in the sand.
It’s a wonder she even survived the crash stuck in that pod. Being trapped indefinitely inside a foreign contraption is now top of her list of greatest fears. Or, maybe it should be second, considering there is a ticking time bomb making itself at home in her skull.
Her stomach rumbles. How long was she in that pod? Long enough for her muscles to feel stiff and weak but not quite atrophied. The midday sun beats down, soaking into her dark hair and making her woozy. She tries to swallow and finds her throat parched as well.
Supplies. Shelter. Healer. The rhythmic sloshing of waves lapping against the beach lull her heavy eyelids to close. Maybe a short rest, first.
Seagulls screech to her left. A barrel has fallen into the water and is bobbing up and down—no, that’s not a barrel. And it’s not just floating there. Something is rising out of the river.
The sloshing turns into a wet drum beat. From the waves emerges a bulbous copper-colored dome drifting steadily towards the shore. Each step reveals more of the form beneath it. A creature of some kind, with ochre skin and thick hands and feet. It surveys the shore with a massive circular eye set in the center of its bald head.
Some kind of aquatic cyclops? No, there are three more of those dark round eyes on each side of its head, but smaller. A sahuagin? Can’t be. No discernable fins, and it does not appear to be very dexterous, trudging with difficulty through the wet sand.
This creature is unlike any she has ever seen before. Shadowheart blinks the sun spots out of her eyes. Perhaps she is hallucinating.
The beast lumbers out of the river and Shadowheart keeps still, watching it with every muscle drawn tight. It doesn’t appear to have seen her yet and she’s in no state to fight if it is real. Crates and barrels bash against its shins. It leans forward, fiddling with the lid of a barrel to get it open, unsuccessfully.
Okay, so it’s clumsy. Shadowheart relaxes partially, watching the almost comical sight of this hungry, bipedal beast struggling to salvage some dead fish from a barrel. She wipes a bit of sand from her nose with the back of her hand. The movement scrapes her armor against the door, causing the hinges to creak behind her.
The creature turns, its large circular eye seeking the noise and staring straight at her. It freezes and so does she—has it seen her? Is that even an eye? There is no iris, just a large opaque ring.
Suddenly, it advances. It shambles towards her with increasing haste and what appears to be the same feral hunger it was directing towards the barrels.
“What in Shar’s name—” Shadowheart scrambles to her feet, fumbling to wield her mace and shield. “Get away from me you freak!”
It continues forward, flailing its arms. Shadowheart’s pulse races in response—is it catching its balance or winding up for a heavy blow?
“Halt!”
The aggressor stops and stands at attention to Shadowheart’s command.
A tense moment of silence passes. Shadowheart’s mind is still sun bleached, thinking slowly. She should take this opportunity to run but is distracted by the sight of this creature up close. Its domed head looks metallic and its feet resemble boots. An armored troll, perhaps?
Her spell fades. The ‘armored troll’ moves towards her again, now making foreign gestures and muffled, hollow sounds.
It's getting closer, closer—too close.
“No, no!”
Shadowheart’s mace collides into the creature's head with a loud gong. The strike of metal on metal reverberates up her arm and sends her reeling.
It stumbles backward before collapsing hard into the sand, motionless.
Shadowheart sweats from the heat and adrenaline, her nerves slowly recovering from the aftershock of the blow. The creature isn't moving. She waits, holding a spell at the ready. Still, nothing.
She inches closer, keeping a defensive stance behind her shield, but it seems out cold. There's a noticeable dent in the head and a faint hissing noise coming from the neck.
As her pulse returns to normal she now sees this is no creature, exactly, but some sort of strange armor. The eyes are actually several murky windows in a copper helmet. The ochre body armor looks thick and pliant, and the boots appear to be solid iron. There is a contraption strapped around its midsection with all sorts of levers and buttons and odd numbers etched into the surface.
What manner of protection could armor like this even provide? It’s clearly ineffective against basic weaponry. They don’t even appear to be armed.
Who in their right mind would be out in the wilderness wearing this?
Day One: February 12th – 07:15 a.m.
I had planned to start my new notebook when I arrive, but it occurred to me that if the folk on the other side ain’t as friendly as I hope they are – well, I want them to know the mistake they made. (You gobbled the wrong gal fellas! And you’d better spit me out whole – no chewing! – if you know what’s good for you!)
And so stranger, I really hope you did not eat me. And I am very, very cross with you if you did.
But I’m jesting. Mostly.
Because I do find it hard to entertain the idea that some sort of civilization doesn’t exist in your world - some notions of right and wrong, goodness and sweetness.
There must be poetry and plays, and songs as sweet as Mr Frank Sinatra’s, and the rich and famous giving something to gossip about. (But no one could possibly top that dish, Katharine Hepburn).
The kinds of stories we have here must be universal in all worlds, I think. The rise and fall of empires. Long lost lovers who unite after hardships. Bad folk who get their just desserts and second helpings. And folks who don’t fit in the world, and keep trying to expand, despite what the world asks of her.
But hoo boy am I getting ahead of myself! (Slow down Josephine! You’re scaring the cannibal aliens!)
The polite thing to do would be to introduce myself. So how do you do? Josephine Jackson, at your service.
Josephine is the only one of my names I can claim as my very own, for my middle names (Thelma, Annie and Vanessa) are all stolen from my aunts on Daddy’s side.
I think Ma was hoping the little nod to her sisters in law would be worth a few birthday presents, or at the very least, a little kindness, since Daddy’s health was no good, even then.
Aunt Thelma and Annie were both absolute dolls, in their own way. But Aunt Vanessa - she was another story. I only met her once, and the best gift she gave me was priceless and prized above all others: never seeing her ever again.
Aunt V was the eldest of Daddy’s sisters and didn’t have any children of her own (and thank Galileo for that) but she still had a whole lot of opinions about them and what a ‘good Christian upbringing’ looked like.
Well there was a fuss, a big one. Ma returned from the hospital alone, white-faced, but kind of cheery underneath it all. Aunt V had decided to cut her visit short after all and was taking the train back to Connecticut with her arm in bandages, having declared us hooligans that had brought shame on the whole family.
Relieved as Ma was that Aunt V was out of our hair, the whole incident had shaken her up. “Maybe it is time you gave up on all this nonsense,” she told me. Hovering around me, like I was another adult she had to try and please.
But I could tell she was only saying that because of what had happened with Aunt V. I put down my welding helmet to correct her properly.
“It ain’t nonsense, Ma. It’s science. And it’s interesting.” Because while I did take a great deal of pleasure in my appearance and being well put together, even then, boys and housekeeping seemed like the biggest load of baloney. (They still are).
The only nonsense, to me, was the idea that I was supposed to be somehow magically interested in both by the time I was a ‘proper’ young woman.
“The good Lord only knows why I didn’t get a normal girl,” Ma muttered, not for the first time. She was still holding out hope that this was all some phase I’d grow out of, and I sure wasn’t going to be the fool who corrected her. “You look like a proper girl, with your frock and your nice do, but then you spend hours out here making – ” She gestured vaguely to my old projects, not sure what to call them.
There was an old radio I’d taken apart and put back together, a wind up mechanical dog that was one of my earlier inventions, and a hundred other things, some only partly complete and then abandoned.
“But I also like baking,” I protested, trying to throw her a bone and get her off this track. (And I did like baking. Just not all the time. Or every day).
“That you do,” Ma perked up. I knew Ma couldn’t bear to hear that it was because it was satisfying to see how the different ingredients caused different reactions and textures, like a sort of chemistry experiment where you got to eat something tasty at the end. If she wanted to believe it was because there was a fledgling housekeeper there in me somewhere, I was happy to live and let live.
I had to let her believe what she wanted to believe sometimes - just as she let me be an atheist without harping on about it as long as I didn’t tell anyone. It was a comfortable sort of compromise where we both pretended, for our own reasons, that once I’d grown up I’d be all normal and want to get married and have kids and keep house like the daughters of all Ma’s friends.
I really wanted to go on and get a higher education, but we didn’t have that sort of money. Not the Jackson widow who does all the sewing and mending and her kooky daughter.
So this was it. I was already 14 at the time of the Aunt V incident, and my fast running out childhood would soon be over. This was the only time of my life when I’d be able to explore all the fascinating questions of the world and build to my heart’s content, and Ma knew it. Some day, the sand in the timer would run out, and it would all be over. I tried not to think about it much, but doesn’t time just creep up on you when you least want it to?
And then, just when the last trickles of sand were slipping away, Great Aunt Gladys died.
She was a bitter old woman, with a sharp mind and an even sharper tongue. Once you got through the initial rudeness, you could have quite an interesting conversation. Everyone else in the extended family was too scared to say boo to her, but I personally found her the most interesting woman I’d ever met. She’d read things you see - things about the stars, and the planets, and had opinions the likes of which I don’t think she ever told anyone but me.
We had a grudging respect for one another, but I wouldn’t say we were close. So imagine my surprise, when it came out that I was the sole beneficiary of her will! Suddenly the higher education I was desperate for was in reach. And the rules of the game changed once again between me and Ma.
Now we pretended to each other that I would go to university and study all the things I was so passionate about and then I’d settle down like she wanted me to. Chip, the milkman’s son, had already proposed once and promised he’d wait for me, in spite of the fact that I still had no interest in him nor any one else. I’d even trodden on his feet in disgust as I’d walked away from his ‘proposal’ in the hopes of discouraging the idea. (Did Ma put him up to it? She does have a crafty streak underneath the meekness).
Chip said he needed time to settle into taking over the old man’s business anyway - like it was lucky that my plans lined up with his - and that he didn’t mind that I was an oddball filling my head up with crazy fancies, like all the other boys said. He’d wait for me, he said, with an earnestness that nearly made me sick up. I told him I hoped he got run over by a milk truck.
My goodness have I rambled on. It’s almost like I’m putting off something, ain’t it?
But that’s an oh so truncated way of explaining why I’m here, in my little rented shed, checking through all my lists I’ve had ready for days. Hoping that you, mystery aliens that I hope I shan’t have to meet at all, have managed to meet my very reasonable expectations of your basic civility.
You see, Great Aunt G’s money set me up for a good few years, but boy do things cost money. And an intrepid inventor – why, she needs all manner of tools and chemicals, materials and machines. And a gal starts to wonder how she’s going to keep it all going - the adventure of simply being herself.
So it all comes down to this now. A long shot, a wild shot. (And I’ve got the pearl revolver from Daddy if the other kinds of shots need doing). I haven’t believed in God since I was 9, but perhaps I’m hoping that there is something out there, after all. Something with its hands on the threads of fate, that could twist them again in my favour.
I’ve put all my hope, and the last of the money into the Andrews Award in Scientific Discovery. It’s only up every 5 years, so the whole science department has been talking about it for years, hoping one of their grads will bring glory for Harlston.
They reckon Walt and Gareth are their best shot, and I let them think it, keeping my plans to myself. Let the other hopefuls come to me for help, and then pretend they did it all on their own (heaven forbid they admit to help from a woman) – just like they did when we were undergrads and I was wiping the floor with them in every single test, every exam, every experiment.
Poor Walt and Gareth kept asking me if I was sure I wasn’t entering, because ‘I’d be so good!’ But in that shifty way that meant they were relieved that I wasn’t. The professors made it clear they didn’t want me to enter - that they wanted a man to win, and that’s where they put their resources and time for the past 4 and a half years to try and get a Harlston win.
So I’ve kept it all to myself, swearing that I’d not only win the money, but show them all what Josephine Jackson could do.
Maybe it’s not as much of a long shot as it sounds, for the only woman to earn her Masters in Science at Harlston to win the Andrews Award. Well, they definitely wouldn’t accept that. I’ll have to sneak my entry in under ‘Joe Jackson’ and hope no one enquires further til they’ve declared the winner.
All I’ve got to do now is fire up my machine, dash into another universe for oh, 3 hours max (my oxygen supply only takes me that far), and that should be enough time to bring back evidence that other universes exist and travel between them is not just possible, but real - thanks to my machinery.
Simple. Not scary at all, no sir!
All the lists have been checked off, and now I’ve just got to do it. It’s time to square my shoulders and put on my armor: Revlon Cherry Red – the only line of defense a gal needs.
Here we go now, I’m going to suit up and then I’m going in. I am. I am absolutely not delaying any further or dragging my feet to put it off. Not Josephine Jackson!
My next entry should be in an hour or two, noting down as much as I can before I return. Until then, in the words of Galileo:
E pur si muove. (And yet it moves).
Day One: 21:37 p.m. (home time)
I have made a terrible, TERRIBLE mistake.