2016-09-23: Crash Landing

[Bob Schroeck]

Crash Landing
by Brent Laabs

Antelope Valley, California, USA
September 23, 2016

Ursula abruptly dropped out of the leyline, and found herself flying above a desert landscape of scrub grasses and succulents, against a backdrop of dark brown mountains. The sky was bright and clear, except for the criss-cross of a few contrails, and the wind warm but tolerable. It was hardly the first time she had been forced out of the leyline, but they tended to open into lush spaces, not deserts.

She was also slowly losing altitude. She had been riding side-broom with Professor Azari^[1] , who was kind enough to accompany her on her visit, since she had been exposed to the Wagandea poison. But their brooms became detached, somehow, and she was alone, still unable to keep herself aloft. She took a deep breath, and concentrated on the most important steps of flight: levitate, navigate, communicate. She looked for a place to land.

Ahead of her, she heard a woman calling out, "Hey! Over here!" It was the woman she was on the way to visit, standing in a barren patch of ground, easy to spot in a bright orange suit. That explained everything, didn't it. She waved back, then wrestled her broom to port in order to meet her friend on the ground, her scarlet hair fluttering on the wind behind her witch hat.

"It's so good to see you, Chariot," the woman on the ground called out.

"It's good to see you, too." The witch came in for a fast landing, and at the last second jumped off her broom into a roll on the sandy ground, strewn with small rocks. It was only a good landing.^[2] She stood up and dusted herself off, patting down her robes. She only found a few tender spots on her body, but she supposed more soreness would come out later.

The other woman came over and wiped a smudge of dust off her cheek. "Still can't fly?"

"What do you think?" After all, whose fault had that been?

"Sorry, I haven't made as much progress on that as I had hoped."

Chariot turned to more important matters, "So, where are we?"

"Haven't a clue."

"Don't play dumb. Where have you taken us?" she demanded, looking over her old acquaintance. She was back to wearing glasses, square-rimmed ones. With her pale complexion and lavender hair, orange was a really unflattering color on her. But then, Croix Meridies deserved that suit, didn't she?

"I didn't take us anywhere. Certainly not to this miserable wasteland."

"Oh, come on!"

"Babe, I love ya, but if I was planning a jailbreak I wouldn't have brought a narc like you along."

"I am not a narc!"

"I didn't grass on you about the Dream Fuel Spirit. But harmless little Professor Ursula said, 'Oh yes, Your Honor, she incited all of the mobs."

"Croix, you almost started World War Three! What was I supposed to do, lie when the whole world already knew the truth?"

"You could have stood up for a mate."

"Do you even want me as a mate?"

Of all of the comments, this was the first time she was taken aback, and true concern showed on her face. "Of course I do. Of course I want your friendship, Chariot." She saw her friend glaring at her, and sighed. "I admit I made things too personal, when I thought you had given up on our dream, that you were fighting against what we always wanted." Maybe she wanted to prove herself better than Chariot, too, but she didn't say that part aloud.

"Croix, I still wanted it." Her heart had not truly given up. "Just not... like that."

"Hey, every one of those people agreed to altered emotional states in the EULA."

That defense worked in court, but it didn't work with Chariot. "You're a sociopath, Croix."

"Maybe I am." How was she going to gain the power to revolutionize the world without moving fast and breaking things? Or so she had thought, until that simple girl took the final step when she could not. "Maybe I'm the villain you think I am. But I've never stopped thinking of you as a friend."

Chariot's tone softened, "Oh, Croix!" Not knowing whether to forgive, or stay angry, or reaffirm her friendship, she simply sighed in a mix of resignation and acceptance.

"Still, we need to find out where we are." Croix took a smartphone out from under her bra, and started typing into it, hacking onto the local phone network.

"Oh, that's easy, we're in California. See those weird trees over there? Joshua trees. We're in the Californian desert. Those mountains to the south must be the San Gabriels."

Still staring at her screen, Croix remarked, "Oh, looks like you're right!"

"I did three nights at the Hollywood Bowl." Chariot had seen a good deal of the world, on tour as a stage musician, and had come through this desert on the way out to Vegas. "Wait a sec, are you even supposed to have that phone in prison?"

"Narc." It wasn't as if the prison guards could keep it from her anyway — the smartphone was of Croix's own design, with both magical and digital circuits. It could stay hidden when it needed to be. And honestly, why should a mind like Croix's be disconnected from the world and from magical research? What a waste that would be, she thought.

Chariot took a wand from her pocket, and the tip glowed a dull green, pale compared to the blazing sun. "We have magic here. We must be close to a sorcery crystal, or a leyline."

Chariot looked back at her maps app, switching to satellite view. "We appear to be right on top of the San Andreas fault."

"That makes sense then. Any Leyline Stations near here?"

"Huh, what the? There are no Leyline Stations anywhere. Not a single one, according to these maps."

"Huh?"

"And I can't search anything either. But maps work..." Croix mumbled. She went to some tech websites, then searched there, found the name of some news websites...

"What are you doing?"

"Bootstrapping." And from the news coverage, found her way to some local search engines. "I have a hypothesis, but you're not going to like it. Too many things are just a little bit different. I think we're in a parallel universe."

"Like in the stories?"

"Yes, but of course, they've been theorized for quite some time in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, as a consequence of all wave function probabilities being simultaneously true."

"I'll take your word for it. But Croix, what did you do?"

"I didn't do it! I didn't do anything."

"You expect me to believe that you weren't working on a way to break out, and just happened to end up on another dimension?"

"Of course I had ways to break out. I just didn't use them, because—" Croix took a deep breath, "Because I deserved to be in prison."

"Oh Croix!" Chariot finally gave her oldest, her best friend, a hug.

Croix didn't expect the hug, but she welcomed it anyway. "No really, I do. One can't just—"

"Of course you deserve it, silly. I'm just proud that you can admit you're wrong, and actually mean it." It sure didn't feel like a complement to Croix, even though she knew Chariot intended it that way.

Chariot broke the embrace, and said, "It won't do to have you dressed as a prisoner in another universe, not when you're reformed and all." She took out her wand, and with a swirl of green light, dressed both of them in a white witch's outfit, her old stage outfit, with a gold star on the hat band and red and blue accents. The traditional black robes were starting to get awfully hot out here in the desert, anyway.

Croix commented on the outfits, "We're twinsies once again."

"You looked awful in orange, anyway."

"I look great in anything, Chariot."

"So, you really can't get us home?"

"Oh, I'm sure I can, I just have no idea how to do it yet. Let me leave behind a few sensors, in case this site is important." She tapped on her phone, until it made a few sharp buzzes to indicate error. "Of course, I don't have my extradimensional storage in this dimension," she muttered to herself. She did have access to plenty of ambient mana, and the phone projected an intricate spell circle with both Luna runes and electronic symbols, which she then channeled enough power through to manufacture eight of her pixel magical devices — black cubes with simple blue polygons etched on the surface, each about the size of a chicken egg. She sent one of them flying toward each of the four winds for a hundred meters or so, laid one right at her feet, and pocketed the rest of the cubes.

Chariot held up her broom. "Well, let's get out of the sun. You're driving."

"I guess I am," as she hopped on the broom in front of Chariot. "Tia Freyre," Croix recited. The broom climbed upward easily. "We haven't done this since we were kids."

"Nope. What do you think, better than your flying Roomba?"

"Only since you're here," she told her back-warmer. "I'm out of practice with these primitive things."

"We should have plenty of magic to fly if you follow the ley line. Head west towards Palmdale."

The San Andreas fault is one of those geologic features which is near-impossible to spot from the ground, but very easy to see from the air, so Croix had no problem following it.

In mid-flight, Chariot asked, "So what makes you so sure that this is a parallel universe?"

"Oh, just weird things online. I could load map tiles from the open source projects, and the internet in general is the same. But all of the search engines seem to have different names. You ever hear of Google?"

"Like in cricket?"

"Google is the biggest search engine here. Oh, and right, the Daily Mail is a tabloid in this timeline."

"What, really?"

"Yep, looks like it's all muckrakers and paparazzi."

"Incredible."

"How the mighty have fallen."

Chariot exclaimed, "Oh, of course! It's right in front of me!"

"What?"

"The Moon!" And sure enough, there it was, a half moon on its way down to the western horizon, nearly dead ahead among the bright blue sky.^[3] "It's normal!"

"So it is." Croix admired it for a moment, the particular arrangement of craters and maria she had known in her youth. "Let's not screw it up this time, shall we?"

In all earnestness, Chariot said, "I won't. I promise."

They neared the south edge of the city, and the scent of grilled onions and beef was wafting through the air. Croix saw the golden arches and asked, "Want a hamburger?"

"Sure. That restaurant down there, In-N-Out, is supposed to be a favorite for Californians." Chariot pointed to a different drive-thru across the street.

"Okay, sure! Can you change our clothes into something a little less witchy? I don't think we should stand out here."

After a minute or so of looking at the people below them, she cast the spell, "Metamorphie weisstyss." Chariot's own clothes were changed to a blue rayon blouse with a knee-length skirt. For Croix, she selected a plain white T-shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. She had thought about putting a funny saying on the shirt, but decided against it. Things seemed pretty normal so far, but with things like other universes, who knows? But some things were the same in every universe: "Do you have any money?"

"We can just pay electronically, I put the transceiver chip on my phone."

"Do you have any accounts opened in this universe?" Typical Croix, always thought that technology was the solution to everything.

"Oh," she said. "I could just hack their payment terminals."

"Croix, you've been out of prison for how many minutes now?"

"Okay, we'll do it your way." It had actually only taken her three minutes in this universe to commit her first crime, hacking her way into the telephone network, but who's counting?

The pair flew a few blocks down Palmdale Boulevard to a bank, where Chariot exchanged what few pound and euro notes that she carried into American dollars. Croix wondered if this was legal either — but banks create money all of the time, so it's no big deal. If it were Bitcoin — well, Croix's wallet file was almost certainly worthless in this reality, as the blockchain would have completely diverged.^[4]

They took the broom back towards the restaurant, landing behind a nearby building for a bit of privacy — the place itself was pretty busy. Both outside and inside, the In-N-Out building was done up in white with red stripes for accents; the real palm trees outside were replaced with a small palm tree motif indoors.

They were about four groups behind in the queue, when Croix, looking at her phone, stated, "Did you know this place has a secret menu?"

"It can hardly be a secret if you found it already."

It had been pretty obvious, so of course she replied, "Fear my leet skills!"

They placed their orders without difficulty, then sat down in a booth away from the window, enjoying the cool air of the building. Croix sat down and decided to google her own name, as one does. She found no results, meaning she probably didn't have a double in this dimension. It was too bad, because it would have solved some problems. She could have gone to her alternate to ask for help — and if she didn't get it, she could always kill her double and take her place. Talk about the perfect murder.

But that wasn't an option. Searching for "Ursula Charistes", on the other hand — that had quite a few hits. "Wait, how does this even make sense?"

"What?"

The kitchen was noisy enough they couldn't really be overheard, so Croix came out and said it. "You're the star of a couple Japanese anime short films, Professor Ursula. Apparently you and all of Luna Nova are fictional in this dimension." Croix set down her phone on the white plastic table, flipping it around for Chariot to see.

"Fictional? An anime? Why would the Japanese even care about a story like ours?" Chariot wondered. "Oh right, Akko."

"Yeah, Akko. I guess that girl has grown on me after all. She reminds me of certain cheerful, goofy, reckless underclassman, after all."

Chariot complained, "Thanks, I guess."

"No really, the Claíomh Solais chose you two, not me. You two have something that I'm missing."

Someone called out "Fifty-seven!" on the PA system, causing Croix to rise from the booth. "I'll get it." She shortly returned with a tray of burgers and fries, and the pair tucked in.

"Mmmm." Croix said with delight, "Oh man, I missed food like this!"

"Was the food that bad on the inside?"

"Yeah, the food was way too healthy in there." She reached down in the hamburger wrapper, and removed a slice of tomato. "These burgers have too many vegetables."

Chariot said, "That's what I like about them." But if Croix was happy, she would have been even happier with McDonald's. Croix always ate junk food, and only managed to stay thin because she was often so wrapped up in work that she would forget to eat. "You should really try to eat better."

"Oh, not this again. Wasn't this place your idea?" Croix took another bite of the double-double cheeseburger.

"I mean, in general. You know, forget it." It really wasn't the time to reopen old arguments.

Croix grabbed a handful of fries and absent-mindedly ate them while staring at her phone. It was so typical of Croix to just forget the person she was with while she worked on some problem. All the same, Chariot had never minded it too much, that cute look of intense focus, the mind behind the face going a hundred miles an hour.

A couple minutes later, Croix spoke up, "Oh my, it says they're going to make a full series about our story, expanding on the short films, to be released next year. Are you ready to be a celebrity again, Shiny Chariot?"

"I don't know..." Once, performing the magic shows had been exhilarating, but after everything she had done, could she possibly show her face on the stage again? And Croix, well, she had never been one for the spotlight as kids, but with as confident as she had become when she returned to Luna Nova, maybe her grown-up self could handle the attention better than Chariot.

But as soon as she thought about what Croix Meridies would be getting attention for, she warned, "Croix, I imagine that the cartoon—"

"Anime."

"— the anime is going to tell our story, our real story. The Grand Triskelion. What does that mean for us, for you, if they find out what you did?"

"If they believe it — if it's accurate — chissà?"

They sat their finishing their food in silence thought, with the din of the kitchen and the customers reverberating across the white and red tile walls of the burger joint. Eventually, the younger woman spoke.

"Maybe it's best if we adopt new names, for now," decided Professor Ursula Charistes, née Chariot du Nord, who performed under the stage name Shiny Chariot.

"What is it with you and taking on new identities?"

She ignored the question and moved on to practicalities. "We're in California, so English and Spanish names would be best. Yes, how about that one. Shall I be Artoria North from now on?"

"Okay, that was way too fast of a decision," Croix Meridies concluded.

"It was on my list from last time. Artoria is an old name, a female variant of Arthur, the Celtic bear. And of course, North."^[5]

"So you're staying on theme then?"

Artoria declared, "We witches are who we are, even when we try to run away. The truth we might be running from may be small, but it's as big as the promise of a coming day. So, by what name shall we call you, Witch of the Southern Cross?"

---

"Zut alors, what a waste of time." She came back from her task in a foul mood."

"What happened?" another goddess asked.

"Nothing. There was nobody there. No people, no tracks, no trail, no flowers. I spent an hour scouring acres of just desert and rocks. I am not a desert rose!"

"I'm sorry, Peorth. That's where the dimensional incursion was mapped."

As if they didn't have enough to do, Peorth was now being sent out on wild goose chases. The Yggdrasil sysops really had to get it together. "Report the error to the Goddess Relief Agency, s'il vous plaît."

---

1. BL: I gave a name to "Unnamed Teacher With Black Niqab", it means "flame"
   
2. RK: "Any landing you can walk away from is a good one." —Gerald R. Massie, 1944
   
3. BL: This sentence is brought to you by Stellarium, a free planetarium software.
   
4. BL: Unfortunately, BTC can't even solve fictional problems for fictional characters, let alone be useful for real, everyday transactions.
   
5. BL: This is technically true, the best kind of true. Brittonic arth (bear) and the Artoria gens may have merged with Arthur from later Latin writers — or merged earlier via Arcturus, a somewhat nearby star connected to the Dipper by the mnemonic "arc to Arcturus". The female variant of Arthur idea comes mostly from Fate stay/night, but it's a great choice since it works in Latin. Just a normal short fic where I'm dealing with words in Old Brittonic, Irish, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Persian, and Japanese. Why do I do this to myself?
   RMS: Because like the rest of us you've convinced yourself it's fun?