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One might imagine that zapping into another universe for a third time now would've made the process easier. Robert Madden could certainly believe it; he was no a stranger to mathematical truths that transcended reality. For him, the third time wasn't just the charm; as someone whose anomalous traits made his life inherently intertwined with para-mathematical formulas, the third time almost always meant guaranteed success.
So when he and his accomplices in getting stranded across the multiverse jumped blind to another reality for a third time in a row, he silently hoped this way between worlds would finally bring them back home.
It very much didn't.
When he opened his eyes again, Madden immediately realized two things: that he had lost his consciousness sometime during interdimensional travel, and that he and his friends were now standing — or, in Madden's case, laying — on a barren field in the middle of nowhere.
Blinking twice he quickly sat up, correcting his glasses. His eyes focused on the bright blue horizon above him, the midday sky bereft of anything even barely resembling a cloud. He took a deep breath and realized that he could feel the tall grass almost burying what little height he had to call his own. For a few seconds, he almost considered staying where he had landed, giving into that surprisingly enjoyable tranquility around him and resting for just a few minutes.
He didn't consider that for long.
"Oh for— Madden!" Ann Barlowe shouted somewhere in the distance. "Madden, you twat! Come out!"
He sighed, stood up, and waved to his two companions.
A few meters before him, the alchemist and the android stood, both staring at him with exhausted faces, the frustration visible even in the posture of Ra's robotic body. Barlowe furrowed her eyebrows.
"I am so sick of everyone trying to kill us," she grumbled, now closer, stretching her arms upward above her head. After a grunt, pause, and an audible sigh of relief — whether at the fact that Madden was safe or at the realization that her body remained unharmed despite the fall, Madden couldn't quite tell — Barlowe looked towards him as he finally regained all of his senses. "How many more of these are we going to have to jump through until we make it back home, huh? Can we even make it back home?"
"I-I have no idea," he stuttered. "You have to consider all the ontokinetic fluxes, and—"
She furrowed her brows even further. "It was a rhetorical question." She puffed out, trying to notice anything particularly discerning about their whereabouts that wasn't just the field. She failed; it stretched pretty much all across the horizon.
Madden took a deep, careful breath. "So, Ra, where are we?"
"We are in the middle of an empty field." The .aic sighed. "Whether we're still in this universe's equivalent of New York, I can't tell. I need more data to triangulate the geo—" She paused for a moment. "Actually, never mind. I can detect a faint Foundation presence nearby. It's different than our own, but that's definitely the digital signature of Site-120's — and SCP-6172's — SCiPNET."
Madden smiled at Barlowe, resisting the urge to say that it wasn't all that bad. He knew better than to tempt fate like that.
Barlowe didn't match his good mood. "That's not as good as you think it is," she spat out. "We took our chances with 'similar Foundation signatures' before, and so far we're at two to zero in terms of it being bad."
Ra nodded her head in acknowledgment, but quickly also tilted it, carefully looking at Barlowe. "Ann, are you all right? You see, to be—"
"No, I'm not fucking all right. I'm very not fucking all right." She breathed out, heavily. "I'm stranded in god-knows-where with two people who have absolutely no idea how to fix it. I'm worried sick about my cats and and my friends and oh don't forget about the fact that I haven't showered or shat well in a fucking week and—" She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, the spark of fury that had previously been within them was gone. "Sorry. It's something in the air. It's gotta be something in the goddamned air."
Madden raised an eyebrow.
Barlowe slowly moved her hands through the surrounding sky, as if she was trying to touch — or feel — something that was barely there, just at the edge of her cognition. "It's just…" she tried to say. "It feels different, here. Different than back home." She blinked and snapped out of her apparent trance, waving with one of her hands. "Sorry. It's probably nothing. Post-interdimensional travel motion sickness. Don't worry about it."
Even if he wanted to say that there was no such thing as 'post-interdimensional travel motion sickness', Madden didn't pursue the subject further. Instead, he turned to face Ra. "Can you lead us to that source you mentioned? If it's a -120, it's almost certain that's where this reality's 6172 is. We could get out of here pronto. This time maybe even after having it calibrated."
"Certainly." The android nodded, and took the first step forward towards their destination. "Let's go."
It was a seriously massive mistake to accept Ra's definition of 'relatively close by'.
Even after a few hours of walking, they still hadn't found anything, not even a stray Foundation insignia. As the group continued onward, sweat and grime caked the sides of Barlowe's face, oddly reminiscent of that one time when she had shoved her finger into hot candle wax as a child, still not understanding how to bend flame to her liking. Under the blazing midday sun, fatigue was starting to lock up her joints and ankles in retaliation against the added strain. Judging by Madden's face — and the sounds Ra's mechanical body was starting to make — exhaustion and overheating were starting to take their toll on them, too.
Eventually, a few steps further, Barlowe decided that she was done.
"What are you doing?" Madden said as he narrowed his eyes, seeing Ann simply lay on the ground. "You can't just—"
She wasn't listening anymore. She was far too gone, appreciating the little comfort that the plain around them offered. It had truly been a while since she'd enjoyed the simple pleasure of lying on grass, she realized. It had also been a while since she'd enjoyed the even simpler pleasure of the sun, too — so she rejoiced in the moment for as little as she knew it would last, gently caressing the tall tufts all around her. For just a split second, she touched the grass and felt something, like some itch in the back of her brain, and—
Before she could realize it, she was one with the grass. Her essence and that of nature, fully intertwined for just a split second, and—
She suddenly blinked and felt herself wake up from the trance, noticing an angry and tired Madden shouting at her from above her. She ignored him, instead deciding to stretch her fingers, carefully savoring that peculiar static at the edge of her fingertips.
And then she knew what it meant.
"Oh shit," she mouthed, quickly standing up. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!" She was shouting with excitement, now, almost like a little girl who had just opened her Christmas present. "What the hell."
"Are-Are you okay?" Madden said, concern in his voice. "What are you—"
She grabbed him by his shoulders, a wide smile plastered all across her face. "The Seal. The Grand Seal of Alchemy. It's gone in this world, Robert. It's fucking gone. Do you realize what that means?!"
Robert didn't, so she continued, "Every alchemical particle, every Aether we had locked back home behind the Seal is free here, Robert. All of them. I can—" She took a deep breath, making sure to taste the world all around her, its smells finally unraveling itself before her until she was met with enough stimuli to satisfy a small labrador. "I can feel everything. All of it, the Aethers it's made from. And I can—" She giggled, and simply waved her hand.
Before the others could blink, they were in the sky, all three soaring through the air as if they were born with the knowledge of how to fly. All it took was Barlowe's subconscious thoughts, feeling and attuning with the energies of a universe now free, feeling and bending the particles of all that was to her liking. It wasn't like back home — here, she had far more than just air, earth, fire, water, and electricity, to play with. She was greeted by the particles of the light, of the sun, of the clouds, of winds north and south and east and west, of breezes scorching hot and freezing cold, of rains and hurricanes and thunders, and she could use it all however she liked, and—
She couldn't resist the urge to just scream out into the blue void around her. Her companions were also screaming, she suddenly realized, but not from excitement; rather, they were quite terrified at the fact that their friend had just acquired the ability to fly, taking them for a trip across the skies with her. Instead of slowing down, though, she just floored her metaphysical gas, turning them into what could be considered a category five meteorological hazard; still soaring towards their inevitable destination, now no longer beyond the reach of their horizon.
When she slowed down a few moments later, she realized they had traveled many kilometers in what was basically a few seconds. She blinked twice, surprised to feel no exhaustion, no strain at all in her body from using such tremendously ridiculous amounts of magical power.
She soon realized that there was something far more shocking to be surprised at; before them, she now could see, a small rural town stood. Between its tiny houses constructed out of wood and hay, animal pens, and planting fields, there was a grand, half-ruined temple made from concrete and bricks, located atop a vague hill and beyond a small river.
A grand, half-ruined temple that looked almost exactly like the Site-120 back home.
Barlowe narrowed her eyes, and carefully — making sure that none of her fragile companions got hurt in the process — lowered them all three to the ground, landing right before the gates to the city.
The second they entered, they were the talk of the town.
Making their way across the dirty pathways, uneven houses, and farm animals walking right next to people dressed in what looked like medieval clothing, they couldn't help but feel awkward. Wherever they went, still guided by the inevitable destination of the temple right above the horizon, they were treated like some terrible curiosity. In the eyes of the townsfolk, they could see a strange mix of respect, fear, and… could it be hope?
And so they continued their march in relative silence, none of them really wanting to speak a word, as they brought the awkward tranquility to more and more squares within the town. The people whispered to themselves, sometimes pointing at Ann and Ra — far more rarely at Robert — but never really speaking to any of the multiversal newcomers. It was as if they were intimidated; too intimidated to even consider themselves as equal to those that walked their streets before them.
But seeing as it gave them easy access forward towards the temple, neither Ann, nor Ra or Robert really questioned it. They just continued their stride forward, walking until they arrived right before the temple.
The building was almost identical to the Site-120 that they knew of back home, they quickly realized: well, it would be almost identical to it if their Site-120 had been quietly in ruin for more than a few centuries, its walls overgrown by vines and several markings the meanings of which neither of them could really understand.
There were torches all around the building, they noticed, their flames dancing joyfully beneath banners sewn from red cloth, several figures depicted on each of the flags. There were five of them — three men and two women — all standing above a town, brilliant three-arrowed halos of yellow mounted above their heads. Their hands were full of light and turned to face the city, as if the banner tried to say that their blessings were the only thing that kept the town from total collapse. Barlowe felt like she almost recognized the figures. Though they didn't say as much, Ra and Madden shared the feeling.
When they turned back from examining the banners to the rest of the temple, the three immediately realized that its gates were sealed shut.
"That's… far from ideal," Robert said, narrowing his eyes. "I was hoping we could—"
Ann scoffed, amused, and gave Robert a heavy look. With one flick of her hand — and one thought, quicker than lightning — she felt the steel structure of the gate as if she had always known it by heart. She gave it just the faintest of pushes, and the essence of the door merged with hers, entirely surrendering its inanimate soul to the superior form of the alchemist. It opened with a heavy creak.
"Voilà," Barlowe said, proudly looking at her work. She smiled and entered the temple, urging her two companions to follow along.
Inside they were greeted by an almost identical replica of Site-120's aboveground portion, though this time decorated with more banners, torches, and red carpets. Back home, this part of the facility served as little more than the cover front for the rest of Site-120's operations, masquerading the site as a long-abandoned industrial plant; here, though, it felt like they were inside a church. The stained glass that replaced the panels that illuminated their version of the facility didn't help, either. Neither did the painting that stood right before them, at the far end of the hall.
It depicted the same five figures as before, but this time in far more detail. You could see the curly blondes and straight reds of the hair of the two women — just as well as you could see the longer darks and short grays of the three men. Their clothing, too, was given far more attention; the runed gloves of one of the men and what looked like labcoats of all five were now visible, the care taken to make them look just as realistic as possible almost staggering. What was even more staggering, though, was how many colors their halos now had — it was as if the light of the gods themselves was what radiated from the figures, and—
Oh.
Ann suddenly realized that what she was looking at was a terrifyingly accurate — and terrifyingly religious — depiction of Site-120's Director Council.
The three turned their sights below, finding a throne made of what looked like solid gold sitting right below the painting. Atop it sat a young, lanky man, his curly red hair ridden by the occasional strip of blonde. He was wearing red robes and was surrounded by people in identical clothing as those they had seen in the village, carrying around plates of fruit and cups of wine. They avoided the man's eyes as best as they could, bowing their heads towards him each time they passed him.
Ann narrowed her eyes, then exchanged a look with Ra. She nodded, confirming Ann's suspicions. "You have got to be shitting me," Ann tried to whisper, but her voice carried itself well throughout the hall, the echo filling the ears of each person inside.
They all turned to look at them, the face of the young man atop the throne first twisting with shock, then with fear, and finally with utter and thorough confusion.
"I…" Robert tried to say, gulping hard. He didn't enjoy being the center of attention, much less that of twenty or so servants walking around the man right in front of him.
The man just sighed, his eyes now glistering with realization. "Oh welcome, great travelers from lands beyond the sky! How was your journey all the way from Kannada? Are the Seven well? Is the Maiden doing all right?" He might've spoken with kindness, but his eyes were cold, calculating; it was very clear he was doing his best to make out what the hell was going on.
Ann started walking towards him, urging the others to follow her example and bow down slightly. "We thank thee for thy warm welcome, oh Lord of the Protectorate, oh Lord of the Contained!" The servants were now giving them more than enough space to pass through, their heads also bowed towards Ann, Ra, and Robert, showing similar respect as they had towards the man atop the throne. "Our journey was long but pleasant. How great to finally feel the warmth of the sun again!"
They were standing before him, now, and they could see that his skin was almost as pale as paper, his purple eyes sunken. A minor reality bender, then. "I am very glad you made it just in time for the ceremony!" he exclaimed, stepping off his throne. Judging by the reactions of his subjects, this didn't happen often. "Please, allow me to show you to your chambers as my humans begin to prepare the temple for an appropriate welcome!"
He started walking towards the red curtains behind his throne, revealing that behind them there stood a staircase. In their world, it led to the sublevels of the facility; they couldn't begin to fathom what further curiosities awaited behind them in this reality, though.
The man started walking down them, showing them to come along. "Please, follow me."
His mask of hospitality fell off the second they were alone.
"What the hell are you thinking?! Who are you?!" he whisper-shouted, making sure none of his servants heard him. Since none of them were here — the room around them was a small corridor leading to two elevators, which didn't function in this reality — he had to do little more than keep his voice down to make sure they were paid no attention. He still struggled to do as much. "This is my realm, you hear that? My realm! Go back to your Ur'tec or Pit if you want to—"
Ann sighed, and massaged her temples. "I think we got off the wrong foot, here." She extended her hand. "I'm Ann Barlowe. This is Robert Madden and Ra." She pointed at her companions. "I'm an alchemist. He's a scientist. She's— Actually never mind. Point is, we're not from this world. We come from a different reality."
The man calmed down, confusion replacing the anger in his posture. "Oh. What. What… what world. What."
This time, Madden was the one to sigh. "All right. So." He corrected his glasses, much to the man's further confusion. "We are not from here. Outside your own reality, there are other worlds — worlds in which history happened differently. We come from one of those. We had an accident during a magical experiment—" He ignored Barlowe's heavy look. "—and we ended up stranded across other realities. This is the third one we've visited, now."
"Oh," the man said. "Oh. Well then. Right. Okay. That's a lot. I just thought you came here to kill me and take my throne." He paused, taking a moment to take it all in. He eventually turned back to face them, and cleared his throat. " I'm Jacob Rivera-Cornwell." He extended his hand.
For just a second, Ann's eyes widened at the impossibility of what she was hearing, but she soon blinked twice, putting the thoughts aside and accepting Jacob's gesture. "Can you tell us what the hell happened here?"
Jacob tilted his head. "What do you mean, 'what the hell happened here'?"
Robert sighed. "Oh boy."
"Okay, so," Barlowe said, carefully choosing her words. "Back in our world, we… we aren't worshipped. Society isn't fractured. What happened?"
It looked like the man was about to laugh. "Oh, you mean that! Right. Not much, I don't think. It's always been like that. Ever since I was born a god. You guys don't get worshipped? That's awful. Really sorry. I for one don't get much to complain about. I get fed by people who respect my authority—"
"'Authority'?" Ann asked.
"Oh, right, you haven't seen yet. I'm kind of a big deal around here. Not just a demigod! I'm born of two gods, I'm… Actually, I think it'll be better if I just show you." He flicked his hands, a brief spark of purple running past his eyes, and on his palm there now stood an apple. "Ta-dah! I can make things. You know, because of my parents and all. Like I said, big deal!"
Ann resisted the urge to sigh. She also resisted the urge to tell Jacob that that was nothing, using her newfound powers to rearrange the molecular structure of the entire floor as well as his guts, and—
She took a deep breath and put on a smile. "Right. Yeah. That's great. Really, really great. We—"
Madden cut in, "Do you by any chance have a big buzzing thing around here, about the shape of a hexagon, and—"
"What in the seven hells is a 'hexagon'?"
Madden closed his eyes. "Oh boy. So—"
Ra cut him off, displaying the picture of the SCP-6172 portal on the TV screen mounted in place of her head.
Jacob snapped his fingers. "Oh, you mean the old gateway! Yeah, it's down there." He pointed to the empty elevator shaft. "Haven't touched it since mom passed though, really. Never had a knack for magic."
"Fantastic. We will just need to fix it, and we'll be gone before you can blink."
"Yeah, that's great. I was worried your stay would undermine my— Ah, I almost forgot!" Jacob snapped his fingers. "Like I was saying up there, you're just in time for the ceremony! You absolutely cannot miss it!" He was almost beaming with joy now.
"The ceremony?" Madden asked.
"Oh, you know, the festival we throw in my name once every moon. It's great!" He smiled. "Oh, and now that you're here, we can throw it in your name, too! I'll have to make some preparations." He was already halfway across the stairs. "And don't worry about it! You'll just have to give the peasants a few miracles and whatnot, but ah." he waved his hands. "I'm sure even teeny gods like you can manage one or two.
"Give me just a few seconds and I'll be right back. I need to tell my servants we will need three more thrones!"
And just like that, Jacob stepped up onto ground floor, and he was gone.
Ann, Ra, and Robert eyed each other.
"What the hell," the first one said.
"What the hell," the second one agreed.
"Good lord," Madden said, putting his hands together. "What a mess. What a goddamned mess. What do we do about this?" He turned to face Ra.
"Well, if what Jacob was saying was right — and my signals tell me it was — then this version of Site-120 has its own SCP-6172. And since he doesn't look like he's about to kill us, we could safely calibrate it and go back home."
"Right," Ann said, nodding her head. "And we would have things to eat and places to sleep."
Madden furrowed his brows. "And what about those people? Wouldn't you feel bad exploiting the work of others under the pretext of being better than them?"
"That's called capitalism and I've been enjoying it for more than twenty years back home," she replied, snark present in her voice. "In all seriousness, though, yeah, no. If they have water and food I couldn't give a rat's ass. I'm starving. Besides," she said. "We'll only be here for a few days at most. We come in, tune our portal, and schwoop." She popped her mouth. "We're back home."
"That does seem to be the best course of action," Ra agreed. "We should wait here until me and Robert can gather more data and get us back home."
Ann nodded in agreement. "And until then, we can enjoy living the dream. And participating in the ceremony. Oh, don't be such a killjoy," she added, noticing Madden's frown. "I'm sure it'll be pretty fun."
The ceremony was, indeed, pretty fun.
Ann didn't think the temple's decorations could get any more ridiculous than before, but there they were. Instead of just one throne and one carpet leading to it, there were now four, one for each of the false gods this whole mess was organized to celebrate. Of course, Jacob's still remained the largest, but that didn't mean that the smaller chairs Madden, Barlowe, and Ra got were any less pompous. Neither were the brown — Jacob said that red was his color, thank you very much — robes that each of them was provided with. Instead of complaining, though, the three just did what Jacob said, and sat back, ready to endure the ceremony.
The people came exactly at midnight.
There were tons of them, almost more people than Robert had ever seen in one place (not like Madden had much experience with large gatherings of people, but still). They started pouring into the temple, each of them dressed like it was their wedding (if this world even had a concept of weddings, that was), each carrying a basket or box or barrel or whatever else of fruit, wine, meat, spices, clothing, and every gift possible under the sun. They were all almost trembling with respect, their heads bowed as they approached their gods, offering whatever it was they had with them to those they thought its rulers. They came, begging for health for their family and for the crop season to be good and for their sons and daughters to return safe from their hunts, and prayed to Jacob — the Lord of the Containment, as they called him here — that the gift they gave was enough for him to still safeguard them from the monsters of the night.
Judging by his expression, Jacob very much enjoyed this.
Having worked first at the Foundation and then at Vanguard, Robert had experience with people who thought themselves gods — and this, right here, he realized, was more than just a display. The man genuinely believed that he was a deity, or at least the spawn thereof. Back home, they had words to explain reality-bending and ontokinesis and all other forms of what basically amounted to working the world to your will, but here? Here, such a gift was more than just a skill to describe with science, to study and catalog and note down — here, it was a sign of the gods that survived their 'Great Breach' (whatever it was, Madden wasn't sure; he'd picked up the name a few times in prayers but couldn't make much sense of it) that those who bore it were the chosen, the holy avatars that were to be feared and worshipped.
And from Jacob's posture, his face, his actions — the occasional act of actually bending reality as a makeshift miracle to enthrall the people before him — from his reaction to everything that was going on, it was clear that he didn't realize what a farce this was. He genuinely did think that everything his subjects said was true. He loved this.
What was even more concerning, Robert soon realized, was that Ann's face betrayed the same enjoyment, too.
Throughout it all, Robert and Ra stayed silent, accepting being named the sacred protector-gods of wisdom and lighting respectively with relative dignity. They knew that this wasn't their world, and as much as they hated the customs here, it wasn't their right to interfere with them, to break that illusion. So they just sat back and occasionally said something like "bless thy souls" or "thy father shall make a great recovery" or whatever else it was they thought gods would say. But they never really enjoyed it, no; it was a viscerally uncomfortable thing to both of them, to be somehow put up above others and worshipped in this ridiculous masquerade. They accepted that they had to endure it, silently praying that the ceremony be over soon, but not for one second did they take enjoyment out of this.
But Barlowe very much did.
Each time one of the people approached her she didn't hold back, unleashing her full alchemical might, finally unbound in this world, to perform what the townsfolk surely thought of as miracles. She bent flame and air and and concrete and steel and bricks and wood and cloth and fruit to create and repair and destroy many things, beautiful things, according to what those who cowered before her asked for. She rejoiced in it, almost, the spark of excitement that sat deep within her eyes making sure that the rest of the world saw that she was having a great time. Perhaps the best time she had had in a long, long time.
Seeing her reaction made Madden all the more uncomfortable.
Eventually, after a few hours of this nonsense, Madden began to grow restless. He couldn't take it anymore. Were it not for Barlowe's reaction, he might've even been able to endure it all, but her response to the mess was what crossed the line for him. So, instead of waiting god-knew-how-many-more-hours for it to end, he just sighed, stood up from his throne, and retreated to the part of the room that was covered behind red curtains.
Seeing him stand up, Jacob and Barlowe's eyes went wide; first with confusion, then with fear. Madden couldn't see it, of course, but he could hear the alchemist saying something like, "My dear subjects, I shall return to thee momentarily! My good friend and your god needs to speak with me, lest we wish to risk curses befall our own subjects! But fear not — my other friend shall remain with thee to care fare of thy needs!" or whatever else it was he could hear through the curtains. Moments later, she joined him, her face twisted with anger.
"What do you think you're doing?" she ground through her teeth, crossing her arms. "You're risking the whole operation here!"
He gave her a look heavier than the whole temple. "What am I doing? What am I doing? What the hell is all of this, huh? What the hell are you doing, Ann? Oh," he added, seeing a flash of anger go past her eyes, "don't give me that attitude, I could see you think we're having a wonderful fucking time back there."
She scoffed. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right, I am. I think it's great that we can finally have a moment to rest, instead of being chased by the Foundation or the goddamned Coalition to be caged forever or shot. Yeah, I'm having a blast." She came a little closer. "What of it?"
He narrowed his eyes. "And you see no issue with the fact that you're— for fuck's sake, Ann, look at yourself! Look at us!" He pointed at their clothing. "You really don't see any issues with this ridiculous goddamned mess?"
She narrowed her eyes, too. "No. I don't. We are safe. We are well fed. What more could you possibly ask for?!" she shouted, immediately realizing she was far louder than she had intended, judging by the fact that one of the servants which had previously ignored them and went around their day was now looking at them, eyes and mouth wide.
Madden sighed, gave Barlowe a heavy look, and turned to face the poor girl they had just scared. "Sorry. God stuff." He pointed at Ann. "Her twenty-fifth son just ate my sixteenth cousin. Need to send a two-generation plague onto her town. You know how that goes."
He didn't think the girl did know how that went, but she nevertheless quickly nodded in fearful agreement and swiftly backed off, getting away from the two not seconds later.
When she was gone, Robert sighed again, massaged his temples, and corrected his glasses. "Look. Forget I even asked, okay? I wanted to talk about you about something anyway."
She visibly calmed down, the anger now replaced by curiosity. "Yeah?"
"I looked at this world's 6172, when we were preparing for this whole thing. It's ready to go."
She blinked twice. "What? Like, right now?"
"Yeah. I don't know how, but it's functioning even without an energy source. Just like last time. Maybe nature just abhors an inbalance, or—"
"Then what the hell are we still doing here?"
"Right, here comes the issue I actually wanted to discuss: I can't tune it. It's impossible."
She tiled her head. "What do you mean you can't tune it?"
"Right, so," Robert began, clearing his throat. "Back home, we had ridiculous thaumo-ontokinetic apparatus that literally bent the hole in reality the portal formed to redirect it. It was a lot, but the computers handled it well." He paused for a moment. "Issue is, this world doesn't have that. Whatever happened to this version of Site-120 to ruin it, it took our server rooms with it, too."
She arched an eyebrow. "And how is that an issue? Can't you just, I don't know." She waggled her hands for a moment. "Rebuild it?"
He scoffed. "Do you know how a computer works, Ann? Do you know how a thaumaturgic circuit works?"
She flicked her fingers, letting the Aethers of electricity and silicon form around them for just a second. "No, but I can—"
"Do you know how a computer works?"
She furrowed her brows. "No."
"Great, because neither do I. Ra probably does, but that doesn't change the fact that she has no idea how the rest of the stupidly complex apparatus it took to even control that thing works, let alone how to build it. And I'm a mathematician, not an IT technician." He paused and sighed. "Look, Ann. I hate to say it, but we can either rot away here forever, or we can jump blind, right now. Take all the food you want, wash yourself, whatever — just promise me that we will go in as soon as we can."
He met her eyes, and continued, "Our chances are almost nonexistent, but they are still better than if we just sit here. The next world might be bad, but at least it might have electricity. And people who understand how it works. I can't actually repair any portals in a world where people still pray the sun comes up every morning, for Christ's sake."
"Right." She took a moment to consider. "But what if we just… waited a few months?"
"For what?"
"I dunno," Barlowe said. "Surely someone back home is looking for us. They aren't powerless. They have structures in place that can help us, maybe open another portal—"
He actually laughed. "Listen to yourself! No, Ann, we don't have 'structures in place' for when multiversal travelers go AWOL! They don't even have contact with our original intended destination. For what it's worth, they might've not even noticed that we are gone!"
"But—"
"No, there is no 'but' here, for god's sake. Promise me you will jump with me first thing tomorrow. Please. We can't just sit here with nothing but hope to back us up. Ask Robert Scranton how much hope did for him. This is how people die, Ann."
She looked him dead in the eyes. "No."
He tilted his head. "'No'?"
"No. I will not risk losing all of this for some vague chance that things will be better. I don't care, Madden. I genuinely don't. I am free, here." For emphasis, she moved her fingers, letting purple fire dance around it for a few moments. "We have food, we have shelter, we have everything we could need. We have time. We can figure things out."
"Oh, so you get god powers and suddenly think it's okay to just exploit people? You seriously see no issue with all of this?"
"No." Her expression hardened. "And neither should you."
For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. They just awkwardly sat there, silently staring at each other, the muffled sounds of the ceremony vaguely dancing around their ears.
"Figure something out, for god's sake," Ann eventually said, starting to walk back towards the main hall. "Figure something out, and don't lay your frustrations on me. You're the egghead here. So do your job. And until you do, or until someone comes and rescues us, I will enjoy living like this." She unveiled the rest of the hall, flooding their little corner with sounds and smells. She turned to face him. "And I seriously suggest that you do the same."
And without a further word, she just left.
Madden and Barlowe didn't speak much for the next few weeks that followed.
They did share some time together, of course — they didn't remain total strangers. They ate together and they greeted each other whenever they'd see the other during the day, but other than that… they each did their own thing, most of the time. Barlowe was busy training and refining her newly-obtained god-like powers; be it for her benefit or to better pretend how to be an actual deity, nobody could really say. Madden, meanwhile, was knee-deep in researching SCP-6172. He might've helped build it, but even he wasn't all-knowing, as much as it pained him — he only did some of the calculations of the Humes, the Scrantons, the ontokinetic-flux fields, and other made-up-sounding properties necessary for its launch. So he put on his glasses and got to work, ready to 'figure something out'.
After more than ten days of non-stop examination, he came to only one conclusion, one that didn't surprise him in the slightest: the portal was irreparable.
Robert consulted Ra — who, despite Robert and Ann's fight, remained a relatively neutral diplomat, even if she was quite bad at it — many times about many things, asking her questions he didn't have the slightest ideas about. He too learned a lot about subjects he never even considered venturing into: alchemical theory, basic thaumatology; things like that. He studied them so that, perhaps, something would come to him, some brilliant design he could execute and get them the hell out of there without jumping blind.
But even Ra's knowledge wasn't infinite. They might've done a lot together, but soon, they hit a wall — one they couldn't pass without someone more knowledgeable than them. Even his own anomalous quirk, a trait aimed at ambiently pointing him towards more anomalous solutions to his mathematical problems, didn't help here. He might've gotten alchemical and ontokinetic theories under control, but he had no idea how to actually merge them, how to really bring their arts together in such a way as to create the portal the way him and his colleagues had done back home.
Without a shred of doubt, they were stuck here. The only other alternative was jumping in blind.
That realization marked a new chapter for their life there. He would've soon grown bored, had he not noticed that he needed a change in his life, something else to do besides just science; and it wasn't like he he was built for living on a farm or chopping wood or whatever else it was the local people had done in their lives. He couldn't just sit back and pretend to be a god all day, either. So he hatched up a plan: he told Jacob that him and Ra and Ann wanted to learn about the local customs, directly from him. In truth, he wasn't really interested in how things were here — he still found the idea of the whole reality more than uncomfortable — but it was better than doing nothing.
And so they learned.
From the history of how this world came to be — even if muddied by obvious legend nonsense and utter and thoroughly bland lies and stories of "Great Breaches" and all of the "Saints" — to how a god should behave, they soaked up the knowledge like a sponge. They soon learned that, apparently, living gods are a rarity here. In the grand scheme of things, them and Jacob were almost a curiosity. Most folk from around the world — such as the Seven-worshipping peoples of Kannada or of the folk raised on fables of invisible and forgotten wars fought in Colo-Rado — didn't know their patrons. They were nothing more than statues and figures to pray to, but them? They were a sight to behold. They were real.
Ra noted it with academic interest; Madden with an invisible twitch; Barlowe with a wide smile.
But soon, even that subject ran dry; after all, for how long could they study what was basically fiction? They all grew bored not two weeks later, and they got back to their own activities, Ann flinging Aethers at whatever she fancied, using her irrilite arm to its fullest; Ra going around the temple, trying to understand how to bridge the gap between her two friends as best as she could; Robert coming up with one final plan, the one that would finally — finally — get them out of here.
And after more than two months, he finally cracked it.
Ann came to him, that evening. She never did this.
"Hey," she said, something almost akin to embarrassment present in her voice. She entered his room — his lair, as he liked to call it to nobody — with curiosity. She had never been here, not since they arrived, and seeing that Madden had transformed a former storage room into a bedroom, a science lab, a resting station for Ra (who now remained unconscious while she was backing up her data) and a living room — all the while maintaining the structure of the SCP-6172 apparatus found within (not that she noticed it, coming in; it was covered behind curtains at the far end of the room) — left quite an impression on her. "I… I was hoping to talk to you."
Madden lifted his head from his mattress — a dirty thing put together from different hay bales gifted to them during the ceremonies, but a place he could sleep on nonetheless — and looked at Ann. He didn't even try to hide his surprise at her arrival. "Oh. I… Come in." He stood up, throwing nonexistent dust off his clothes, and came closer towards her. "What can I do for you?"
She too came closer. She was still wearing her robe, but it was now tied a bit more efficiently than the almost priestly way that Jacob had worn it; it was clear that she had adapted it so that it wasn't a pain in the ass when she was training. Still, that deviation from the norm did nothing to take the attention away from her face, one filled with something almost akin to loneliness and… regret?
"I wanted to apologize to you," she said, the words very obviously not coming easily to her. "For what I said during our first day. I shouldn't have been such an asshole. You were just trying to help."
He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow, faking something almost like anger. Things were going exactly as he had planned. "Oh. You came to apologize."
"Y-Yeah." She nodded her head energetically, though this time with much more hesitation. She was suspicious of his reaction. He didn't need to be a mage to feel it.
"And out of all things to apologize for, you chose that one, huh?"
She furrowed her eyebrows and came closer. "And what is that supposed to mean?" she said, her tone hard.
"Gee, I don't know," he also took a step forward. He didn't like doing this, but he had to. He was this close to finishing what he had planned. "I was kind of hoping you would feel sorry for, you know, exploiting poor and naive people for your own gain and then having an issue with me for thinking it's not okay, but what do I know."
She was getting angry now. She came even closer, straightening her posture, making very sure to highlight the one-head difference in height between them. "What did you say?"
He scoffed. "No, no. Nothing. Don't worry about it." He waved his hand at her. "Just keep practicing your cool new magic powers. I'm sure that'll change much."
He could practically feel her breath, now. "Oh, I'm fucking sorry that great Robert Madden doesn't get magic powers like I do." She stabbed him in his chest with her finger; he allowed it to make it seem like she forced him to take a step back. "Maybe if you just spent half your fucking life in some shithole in Russia with magical old farts instead of deep in books with your friends and fami— Oh right, you don't have those. Well, neither did I. Maybe should've thought about it earlier."
That one hurt. She knew that. He didn't have to fake his pain. Still he took a few steps backwards nonetheless, feeling his feet enter the hay of his mattress. She followed him.
She was furious, now, so she continued, not really paying much attention to her surroundings, "I come to you — to your dirty awful fucking mancave — extending a hand, and what do you do?!" She tapped his chest again, this time much more firmly. "You spit on me, you…"
They were standing near the wall of the place, now. It was a makeshift thing, the border of the room drawn by a red curtain. There was still more than half the area behind it, but Barlowe didn't know that — but Madden very much did. He resisted the urge to smile.
"I tried to be good, but if this is how you want it to be, sure. Whatever. I don't need you." She looked him deep in the eyes, and spat out, "So. Fuck—" She stabbed him in the chest one more time, making him fall beyond the curtain. "You!"
The moment he fell through, two things happened at once.
He brought down the entirety of the curtain, making sure to grab it while he was still in the air. He pulled it hard — there was no room for error, here. It fell down without any issues. And then — the very second he touched the ground, the red fabric meeting the cold concrete with him — the SCP-6172 portal mainframe revealed itself to Barlowe, its full might finally visible to her, with no further curtain to obstruct it.
Her eyes went wide.
They went even wider when she saw the portal begin to light up.
She knew it didn't have an electricity source. By all means, it shouldn't have worked, but just like in the last universe, it seemed that whatever it was — call it fate, entropy, or just the multiverse trying to balance itself out — it wasn't on her side.
Robert smiled wide, hearing the frame begin to buzz.
Ann tried to resist what was inevitable with all her might; she tried to throw her power at it, to somehow create a counterbalance to the pull of the portal she was beginning to feel. She screamed in frustration at her own stupidity and at that fucking asshole Madden, searching for something — anything — that she could grab onto.
But the curtain — and everything else that could fulfill its role — were too far. Robert had very carefully made sure of that.
Left powerless, all she could do was try and shout, "You fucking—" before being pulled in towards their new destination, Robert and Ra — the android only now regaining her lucidity, the pull forcing her out of her resting station — joining her not a few seconds later.
And just like that, the portal closed behind her, the echo of Ann's voice dying mid-scream, leaving the room utterly and thoroughly silent.
Back home, the baseline version of Site-120 wasn't much calmer than its alternate sibling; not that it could ever know it, of course.
In a specially prepared ritual site deep within the facility, the twenty mages and wizards who were gathered around the thaumic circle engraved on the floor before them began their chant. Silently — fearing to interrupt the working — James Micheals and Ethan MacCarthy Jr. just observed their colleagues hard at work, praying without words that the ritual that they had designed to bring back their lost friends from across the multiverse would work. This was it: it either worked or it didn't. They had no further rescue options planned.
The voices of the wizards changed paces and tones, frequently shifting between fear, happiness, and excitement, seemingly without any reason. But the scientists knew better than that; they knew, deep down, that it was an intricate little thing, the spell, a working so complex and multi-layered that their reason-bound minds couldn't ever even begin to fathom it. So they just stood there, observing as the flames burning atop candles mounted on each end of the ritual circle trembled with power at the completion of each verse, the room itself reverberating with the magic now filling it whole. They didn't speak a word, but from their eyes it was obvious that they observed the ritual with a healthy mix of fear and academic interest, the wonder almost akin to that of a child.
For what felt like hours they stood there, all twenty-two of them, all bound by the hope that whatever it was they were doing would be enough to fix the mistakes they had made during the initial launch of their Project Hermes. They still weren't sure what caused this whole problem — their technicians were hard at work compiling data, but it wasn't of much help, not really — but they were certain that everyone inside this room was an accomplice in this mess even happening in the first place. So they did what little they thought they could to try and correct their mistake.
Eventually, after subjective eons of chanting, the mages stopped. They were all silent, now, but from their expressions and hands it was clear that they were still hard at work; the spell might've been completed, but they still needed to use the energy they had just crafted to actually finish their ritual. They were all trembling, their faces practically white with focus. Their eyes were closed, but even through their eyelids and in the limited light of a room only illuminated by candles Micheals could still see that their irises were burning with power.
And then — right as Micheals thought the ritual proper would ever begin, right as he was beginning to worry that something might've gone wrong — his wizard colleagues released their spell, flooding the room and the circle within it with pure, intricately-molded magical energy.
Instantly, a strong breeze swept past the room, and all of the lights went out.
