6. Chapter 6
Chapter 6
RICKY
I was having the best day.
“And a Troll Ratte for Licky ,” Zinnia said, in her curiously purring accent that sometimes meant her Rs and Ls got flipped. Every word involved a tongue roll or click, making it weirdly pleasant to listen to, whether she and her husband Beck were speaking English or hushed to each other in their native tongue.
“Troll Latte for Ricky ,” Beck corrected her.
“Oh! Yes!”
They had insisted I call them by their first names instead of both Dr. Q’ah-la-khan, since that would get confusing and they preferred to be informal—which I told myself was true and not their way of avoiding hearing me butcher their surname.
“Thank you!” I said, accepting the to-go cup. When they’d said they’d still pick coffee up for me, I’d found this on the online menu and couldn’t resist. It was based on some type of troll mead recipe and had coffee with cream, honey, and cinnamon. “You didn’t have to go out of your way for me.”
“But we did!” Zinnia said. “We promised to treat you, even if not in person at Beastly Blue house.”
“ Brew house,” Beck corrected and leaned over to kiss her cheek.
They were that kind of disgustingly cute couple that you hoped to grow up to be part of someday. Every correction was met with an appreciative giggle from Zinnia, and complete adoration from Beck.
They were a beautiful species too. Since they were aquatic, they had no hair but fins along the top of their heads like mohawks. They also had fins along their forearms and the backs of their legs. I assumed some were down their spines too, but they wore very normal human clothes and lab coats, they just couldn’t wear long pants because of the length of their leg fins and the size of their feet like giant frogs.
Their ears were frilled like fins too. They had flat noses, almost no nose at all, but I could see slits for nostrils. Their teeth were all sharp points as carnivores, and their eyes were entirely black.
Zinnia’s skin was a bright green color with lighter green stripes. Beck’s was magenta with paler pink stripes, and his head fin was taller than hers. All of his fins were longer and more elegant, similar to the sexual dimorphism in most animal species, like with peacocks. I wondered if they had any type of mating rituals where the males presented —but I wasn’t going to ask that!
Not on day one.
“So! Lick— Ricky ,” Zinnia tried extra hard to get it right and seemed delighted when she succeeded. “We are so sorry you discovered the portal before our first meeting. But it means our work is even more important. Ret me exprain .”
We were in an office they shared, but it was just one small area of a much larger lab they ran together. If I’d thought the outside of this facility seemed intimating, then entering it had been truly humbling.
It was as white and sterile on the inside as outside. Zinnia and Beck had met me by the front desk to help finalize my security badge, since every section of the building had guards or security of some sort, and most places required a badge for access. There were visible cameras everywhere, which made me wonder how many I couldn’t see.
Through a main set of double doors, we’d followed a corridor until it forked, where we headed left. There were rooms of all sizes and people of every species about once we reached the research area, and Zinnia and Beck’s lab was of considerable size, as it was also their residence. I didn’t see that area, but they explained it had its own kitchen, several bathrooms, and enough bedrooms for them and their two children.
They had zero staff besides me. I was it, though they said their son had been helping here and there. Neither of the kids were present now, but I saw them in several pictures on the desk—their daughter with similar coloring to Beck, and their son a lovely teal.
“As most humans understand it,” Zinnia began, “travel between the human and monster worlds is only possible because of the official man-made portals in each tester town. But! As many have speculated and we can confirm for you, Ricky, natural portals have opened across our worlds many times.”
“That isn’t a surprise,” I said. “It would explain why we had so many monster myths centuries before your realm’s discovery. Some of you had to have come over to our realm previously.”
“Precisely!” Beck agreed. “We did not expect this to seem, uh.. controver seal ?”
“I’m guessing you’ve been discovering some things that are controversial .” I said the last word slowly, taking a guess that he’d appreciate it, and Beck’s lips stretched into a smile.
“Yes! Very good. And true!”
“Those contro… um… divisive topics,” Zinnia chose a different word, “is that such portals still come into existence and could prove quite dangerous if not monitored. Even we do not know every species in our realm, and many rocations are, um…” She clicked and purred in their native language to Beck.
“Those locations are, uh… deadly!” he concluded. “Yes. Filled with carnivorous monsters that might eat humans. Unlike us!” he hastened to assuage me. “We do not eat anything with sentience.”
Everything about the monster realm was fascinating and entirely justified in being scary to people, but I was not going to let my fears show. “Understood. So, you’ve discovered one of those natural portals here and need to study it?”
“Correct,” Zinnia said, “and to discover where in the monster realm it opens, what monsters might reside there, and if it necessary or possible to ensure it closes and does not open again. For now, it is inconsistent with activity. We are working to understand how to monitor when it is active and what conditions cause its activation. Unfortunately, we have only recently begun to notice some added dangers about this portal.”
“Missing people?” I ventured.
“Yes,” they answered, sharing a look of concern.
“So people are being sucked through this unstable, natural portal?”
“We cannot say for certain without witnessing someone go, um, poof,” Zinnia said with a flourish of her fingers, “but it seems rikery .”
“ Likely ,” Beck corrected.
“Yes! Likely. Which is why it is so important we speak with your friend. Your, um… lover?”
“ Boyfriend is, um… what we say. But about Jason—”
“You said his father disappeared in that same location?” Beck asked.
“Twenty plus years ago, but yes.”
“And he was attacked also in that location?”
“Yes.” I’d hated that I’d had to tell them so much about Jason when he didn’t want to be studied, but they sort of already were studying him. They couldn’t not when this was all tied up with his family history and how he’d become a monster.
“We know his situation, his, um… stance on coming here,” Zinnia said, “but please, try to explain to him the importance.”
“I plan to. I hope I can convince him, but it might take a while.”
“We can be patient,” Zinnia assured me. “No one should be studied without choice. But if people are being sucked in, and something possibly got out that attacked him and turned him into a new species, this occurrence, this information, if it got out to the public, could destabilize much more than a portal, yes?”
“Agreed. People are already scared. Even though I know they don’t need to be.”
“Well…” Beck shrugged. “Not of us. But there is plenty to be frightened of where we come from. We do not hold healthy fears against anyone. We are sometimes frightened of you!”
I appreciate knowing that, though I wished it didn’t have to be true.
I suddenly remembered my latte, which I was clutching a little too tightly and giving away my flood of nerves. Caffeine might not help steady that, but I took a swig from it anyway before asking, “How many missing people have there been? Do you know?”
They shared another look of concern.
“If someone yesterday went missing… five,” Zinnia admitted. “All adults that we know of, reported in the past several weeks since the town first opened for monster immigration. We assume use of the official portal might be the cause of increased activity in the natural one, but we can only speculate if all who went missing disappeared from the same cause. However…”
“It is seeming more and more likely that the natural portal is to blame.”
“Yes. There is a guard there now and will be twenty-four eleven.”
“Seven, mi bavi ,” Beck said, with what I assumed was an endearment in their language.
“Oh! Twenty-four seven. Your days and weeks are a rittre different than ours. Little ?” she looked to Beck, who nodded.
“Because you don’t have day or night,” I added. “Or, I mean, you do, but no celestial bodies?”
They nodded.
“Fascinating. I really hope to see your realm someday.”
“Good news!” Zinnia said, and she and Beck stood. “That day is today.”
“ What ?” I almost didn’t get up immediately as they headed out of the room. I was definitely holding my coffee too tightly by the time that I did. “Seriously? We’re going right now?”
“To begin your education with our instruments and procedures, it is best to have you, uh… dive right in!” Zinnia announced. “You must see how a created portal behaves in order to understand a natural one, yes?”
“Yes?”
“Yes.” Beck looked back at me with a definitive nod. “You can leave your bag, unless there is something you wish to bring with you?”
“Oh! I don't think so but let me check.” I paused inside the larger lab room to take my bag from my shoulder and opened it. There was nothing I needed, but I did notice a slip of paper I didn’t remember putting in there. I opened it.
I WILL NOT BE A DICK
Not the same note from yesterday. This paper was different.
That’s fifty , I thought with a smile.
“ Leady ?” Zinna asked.
“ Ready ,” Beck corrected.
“Ready!” I agreed and hung my bag on a hook by the door to their office.
Zinnia and Beck each picked up devices from a table on our way out of the lab that I could best describe as Star Trek tricorders, which in the shows and movies were used to scan readings of things—and apparently to scan portals in the real world.
Beck grabbed an extra one that he handed to me, which meant now I could only hold onto my coffee too tightly with one hand.
“It is best to learn by doing,” he said. “Nothing to fear where we’re going. The portal is painless to pass through, entirely safe, and opens into a protected base. The surrounding lands, which includes our people’s lands, is very welcoming, so long as you stay within certain clearly marked borders.”
I tried to remind myself that the same could be said about many places in this realm. “Cool! I don’t need anything but what’s on my person? And I can bring my coffee?”
The pair chuckled.
“Yes, yes,” Zinnia said. “All you need is your badge.”
We returned to the fork of the first corridor and continued straight, which would have been right from the main entrance. While following Zinnia and Beck, I pressed a button on my scanner, and the screen flared to life with a series of various readings that updated with every step. They were each labelled in both English and the pictograph language of the kappas.
It was mostly expected things to scan for, like quarks and photons in relation to the quantum entanglement that made the portals possible. At the very top was for electromagnetic wave activity, which on the way to the portal room was all over the place. We were surrounded by various technology and fluorescent lights. Directly around the portal would be different.
Curiously, at the very bottom of the readout was a segment I assumed was for exotic matter, because all it said was UNKNOWN. That meant they could track that something within the quantum structure was having an impact, but they didn’t know exactly what each component was. Crazy that something worked without anyone fully knowing why. But it wasn’t uncommon. Ask any computer coder. Sometimes technology could be just as much luck as science.
I nearly ran into Zinnia and Beck’s backs as we reached the security door. I still wanted to watch the readings and kept one eye on the scanner as they punched in a code for the door and brought me into the room housing the official portal.
I’d never seen the one in Edgewind. I knew that portal had just as much security, including a guard inside to double check credentials before allowing anyone through. Monsters required a visa to go back and forth, but humans could technically visit the monster realm whenever they wanted–at their own peril.
There wasn’t anyone waiting in line to head there now.
“Um, if you speculate that the official portal is having an effect on the natural one, is there any danger continuing to use it?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” Beck said, “but because it is speculation, our request for temporary closure of the official portal was denied. We need proof, and thus we must study.”
Once the door to the portal room closed behind us, everything about the electromagnetic activity on my scanner stilled to a steady pulse. The room itself was huge. Like some giant hanger for a blimp, but the only thing the room housed was the portal itself, which looked sort of funny, just a normal-sized door in the middle of the room with a metal doorframe. I knew there was so much more to it from the materials in the floor, walls, and ceiling. The flow of electricity and particles beneath our feet and through every part of the surrounding structure, all funneled to that seemingly innocuous doorway.
Only the doorway itself wasn’t empty or black. It looked like a wormhole, in constant, hypnotic flux. It reminded me of pictures of the Milky Way Galaxy, with the shimmering colors of the Northern Lights, like a tiny closet of cosmic wonder.
“Is Ricky a poet?” Zinnia giggled.
Oh shoot. I’d said that last sentence out loud . “I guess. When I’m inspired enough. It’s just so beautiful.”
“As is our home. Come.”
She and Beck led the way, but when we reached the portal, they stood on either side of it, motioning for me to go first.
I couldn’t resist looking at the scanner again. Now that I was so close to the portal, every reading was still and in perfect balance with each other, including the UNKNOWN matter, as if the chaos of the universe had been forced into order at this one spot.
Just like in the woods—which made a lot more sense now—the hairs on my arms stood on end, and I knew that if I’d unbound my hair right then, it would have looked like I’d touched an electrostatic generator.
I took another sip from my coffee, held tight to the scanner, and stepped on through.
I felt an extra jolt shoot through me and feared my legs might give out, but just when it seemed like too much or that it might become painful, it wasn’t. It all soothed away as I took another step… into an almost identical room. The only way I knew I was somewhere different was because the guard here was another kappa like Zinnia and Beck, not a human like in my realm.
It seemed like he’d been expecting us, and I moved toward him to give Zinnia and Beck room to enter behind me.
“Finish that while here,” he said, nodding at my coffee. “Nothing organic can go back with you.”
“Oh. Understood.” I took another zip. It tasted… better than I remembered. Like the shock I’d received had infused the coffee too. I checked the readings.
Just as stable as on the other side.
Once through, Zinnia and Beck led me through the base. It still didn’t feel like we were somewhere new, other than seeing even more monsters around. Not until we reached the main doors, and they each took one of them to open the way to the monster realm for me like I was being presented to a royal court.
And holy shit . I felt like I’d just stepped into a video game.
I’d seen pictures while researching kappa culture, but standing before their, well, kingdom, was way more humbling than some sterile white building.
To my left was an entire civilization of people who lived in and out of water, so second-nature to their daily routines that their buildings were constructed around a series of waterways, waterfalls, and pools. If the Magic Kingdom had a waterpark literally created by fairies, maybe it would come close to how magical this place looked. Everything sparkled like crystal with reflections from the water, as people of varying color combinations like Zinnia and Beck walked the skyway streets, looked out of windows in tall towers, swam in the various pools and floated down waterways, and even dove off the top of a central waterfall that ended in a deeper pool in the center of the city.
To my right was just as wondrous, but the rivers and pools gave way to forest. It looked like something from the Feywild of Dungeons and Dragons, so beautiful, but twisted and colorful in a way that made everything look poisonous or possibly capable of causing hallucinations. I clearly saw some DO NOT ENTER signs blocking off that area, but there was a small path into the forest with green signs, saying STAY ON PATH.
And way, way in the distance were mountains like some land made of ice, as well as an area of darkness I couldn’t see through.
It was beautiful and intimidating and so cool. Two things clanged in my head as I took it all in. One: I really wished Jason was here to see it with me. And two…
The readings on my scanner were even more incredible, because here, in the monster realm, everything read the opposite as when I had been in the halls of the facility.
“Fascinating.” I took another sip from my coffee as I scanned the data. “It’s like a mirror universe where everything is in flux completely in opposition to the human realm. It’s all backwards. Or right side for you, of course. A natural portal forming between the two realms would require nearly impossibly precise conditions. No wonder the portal in the woods is unstable.”
“See.” Beck came up behind me with a wide smile. “We knew you would be the perfect intern.”
“No doubt,” Zinnia concurred.
I was either in a video game or a dream come true because this was everything I could have hoped for after college. The opportunity, the wonder of it all. I knew the monster realm wasn’t all beautiful, or at least not beauty that could be safely observed in every corner of the realm, but it was so amazing, I was sure Jason would feel less anxious about this place if he could just see one of the areas where it wasn’t some nightmare of eat or be eaten.
A large Venus flytrap like plant in the forest section behind one of the DO NOT ENTER signs suddenly reared upright, opened its mouth to reveal what very much looked like shark teeth, and devoured a smaller version of the same plant beside it.
I almost dropped my scanner.
“Do not worry,” Zinnia said. “They only eat each other.”
“Cool?”
They both laughed.
It was still worrying, but at least I had the best tour guides I could have asked for who knew all the places to not let some tourist wander off the path.
And to be honest, by the time the day was over, after a tour of their city kingdom and a return to the human realm, with everything prepped for tomorrow to begin direct experiments on the naturally occurring portal, I’d forgotten there was anything else to worry about.
Like Whitmore, who was at Jason’s house with all intention of joining us for dinner when I returned, and he definitely expected an update.