Thresholder, ch 183, What Remains

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Richter had been a fan of cryonics, and talked about it often. She had plenty of money, and had set herself up to be frozen after she died, under the theory that perhaps she would be able to be revived after death.

“I want to live forever,” Richter had said. “I don’t really understand the people who don’t. They say, ‘oh, but you’ll get so bored’ and I think to myself, ‘no, what are you talking about, I’m not bored now, I’m not going to get more bored just because I have a few more years’. I think for a lot of people, they’re just unhappy with their lives, and that’s where some of it comes from — they don’t want to live in the here and now, haven’t figured out a way to self-actualize, and so they think, ‘well, when it’s my time, I’m going to go’.”

“And not you?” asked Perry. “You’ll be scratching and clawing your way out of the grave?”

“Oh, I’d die early if that got me a better chance of resurrection,” said Richter. “For proper preservation, they need to start the process pretty much minutes after you die, just for the highest chances of preventing brain decomposition. Ideally, they’d kill you during the process, just to keep all the neural connections together. But obviously I would only do that if I were dying of some horrible disease they don’t have a cure for. It’s a long shot, I get that.”

“Huh,” said Perry.

“I could sign you up,” said Richter. “Would you want that?”

“I already feel like you’re doing too much for me,” said Perry. “Besides, this was supposed to be temporary.”

“This?” asked Richter.

“Me staying here, man from another world sleeping in your guest room,” he said.

“Thankfully the guest room has been freed up, much more economical to share a bed,” said Richter with a grin.

“Does it really work, cryonics?” asked Perry.

“Not now,” said Richter. “But in the nebulous future? Anything is possible. I’m more confident in it now that I know there are parallel universes and strange portals. Who wouldn’t want to be brought back to life?”

Unfortunately, Richter had been murdered. When a person was murdered, their body couldn’t just be handed over to a cryonics company. Instead, it was taken by the state, placed in a chiller at the morgue, autopsied, and only later given to the cryonics company. By that point, her body had been mutilated and partially decomposed without regard to her wishes.

The cryonics company had done the process anyway. She had paid for the highest level of service, on the theory that she was young and most likely to die in an accident that caused a significant amount of time to pass before preservation. It was the first murder of a cryonics patient in Earth 2’s history, and the preservation effort was mostly done for the purpose of public relations, showing the company’s commitment to their clients.

When Perry got this report from Marchand, not long after the Farfinder had shown up on Earth 2, he felt his heart break. That didn’t mean that it was hopeless, but many of his plans were less likely to work, and she had been denied dignity in death.

“You said that they don’t have a surveillance state,” said Hella as they climbed out of the Farfinder. They’d landed in the desert, and Perry was going to have to find a car. He was out of the power armor: the danger here was the government, not some thresholder sniper.

“No, not like on Earth 1,” said Perry. She had already checked their internet, and was just double-checking. She didn’t like letting him go on his own. “They have better technology but are more reluctant to use it for national security, at least in that way. The wars here were forty years ago, and the character of them was different.”

“We’re betting on this?” she asked.

“We’re not going to be here long,” said Perry. “Just long enough for me to get the body.”

“You know, we’re lucky that there was magic here after all,” she said.

Perry nodded. He wasn’t a werewolf here, and couldn’t transform, but he had second sphere, which was part of K-class thaumics. The Farfinder hadn’t had to resort to chemical engines, which everyone was relieved about. One of the first things they had done was to make a high-dimensional map of the world, which showed entry points for both Perry and Mordant. Mordant had lightning powers that Perry had never been able to explain, but the obvious answer to that, and to Mordant’s aggression, was that Mordant had gotten powers from another world before this one, or had come from a world with powers. It wasn’t much magic, but more than they’d expected in the worst case scenario.

Mordant himself was dead; he had died in the hospital from the injuries that Perry had inflicted. For years, Perry had thought that he’d spared Mordant’s life, and he had regretted that, had let the thought of it push him toward lethality. He had never thought that he would track Mordant down and kill him, but he had thought that it was possible Mordant was sitting in a relatively comfortable prison, or worse, had gone free. The thought had always made him angry.

But no, Mordant had died that day, and Perry remembered Mordant’s broken face, the bone screws that held his exoskeleton in place being ripped out. Maybe it wasn’t a surprise the man had died after all that. A knot of tension untied itself when Perry read the news report.

The police had found the portal, which had stuck around. One of them had gone through it, and was still missing, but the portal had disappeared after a brief period of quarantine.

The world hadn’t learned about thresholders, but they had data and theories. Richter had never published anything, but she was obsessive about logging, and had cameras all around the house. The police had used protocols in the house AI to get access to all of Richter’s data, and held a press conference about it. Perry was a known quantity, and for a time, there had been a manhunt for him. The entire altercation with Mordant was on video, and it was a clear case of self-defense, but on Earth 2 you weren’t allowed to just kill someone in self-defense and then vanish into the aether without talking to the police. This was doubly the case if there was no record of you in any kind of database and you were suspected — due to copious notes and video-taped conversation — of being from parallel reality unknown to science.

All that had long since blown over, of course, so Perry was free to grab a vehicle and head on over to Crysalis, the company that had Richter’s body. In the meantime, the crew of the Farfinder was hooked into the information network of Earth 2 as deeply as possible, gaming out their best path to a proper diplomatic opening. What they’d done in Earth 1 was less likely to work, especially with the mysterious portal and the battle outside Richter’s: people were going to connect the dots. But there was no time pressure, and Perry had his own, personal mission.

Perry was really starting to appreciate pawn shops and cash transactions. After a fair amount of logistical work, he was in a beat up truck with Marchand in the back. March was military equipment, not for civilian use, and Richter had permits acquired from calling in favors which were now long-since expired. Perry was diminished, he could feel that, and he wasn’t about to go anywhere without Marchand close at hand. The armor was covered with a tarp, but March was in his ear.

Crysalis had an undistinguished building in an industrial park near an airport, out of the way and low on security. Perry parked the truck out front and took a steadying breath, then rehearsed what he was going to say.

The clerk behind the desk looked surprised to see someone come in. He’d been typing at his computer and took a moment to reorient. He was in need of a haircut and had thick glasses that were unfashionable on Earth 1, and probably all the other Earths.

“Hi! Can I help you?” he asked.

The customer service voice on Earth 2 was different than on Earth 1, lower and more gentle, like they were worried that Perry would spook.

“I have a bit of an unusual request,” said Perry, taking a breath. “You have the remains of Charlene Richter stored here?”

The customer service smile tightened. Probably he wasn’t just a clerk, or was only a clerk as part of other duties, because there was no way that this industrial building actually needed someone behind this desk all the time. The majority of business would be conducted online. So he was something more than just a receptionist. “I’m afraid we can’t divulge information on clients.”

“Ah,” said Perry. “Well, I know that this is the only storage facility for remains that Crysalis owns, and I know that after her death, Charlene Richter’s remains were preserved by Crysalis, so I’m going to go ahead and assume that she’s here.”

The clerk or whatever he was didn’t say anything, just kept a fixed smile. Perry really hoped that he didn’t have one of those silent alarms that banks had. Did people ever rob cryonics places? He doubted it. The man’s badge said Jimmy, and Perry thought about using that name, but he had always hated when people acted overfamiliar with him.

“She’s an unusual patient,” said Perry. “She died young, the cryonics were even more of a long shot than they usually are, and the whole thing was in the news. The company got some attention for it. The circumstances surrounding her death were —”

“You’re him,” said the Jimmy. “You’re the guy she was with.”

“Yes,” said Perry. “And I need to take her out of here.”

“I … who are you though?” Jimmy asked, leaning forward. “What are you? An alien?”

“I’m a visitor from another world,” said Perry. “A parallel Earth, very similar to this one, where the United States reunified after the Civil War. But I’ve also been to other planets, and among those other planets, there’s a way to bring someone back from the dead.”

“Uh, okay,” said Jimmy. He looked down at his computer, and if he had started typing, Perry wasn’t sure that he could have allowed that.

“Jimmy, are you listening to me?” asked Perry.

“Yes, sorry, it’s just … I can’t release a client to you, or anyone,” he said. “If you’re him … can I confirm that you’re him?”

“How?” asked Perry.

“There was a picture,” he replied.

“Fine,” said Perry.

Jimmy clacked away at his keyboard, and Perry watched carefully. He really didn’t want the police involved in this. He’d told Hella and the others that he wasn’t going to get into trouble, that he was just going to talk things out.

“Yeah, it’s you,” Jimmy breathed, backing away from the computer slightly. He looked up at Perry. “That doesn’t really … I mean, I followed this, obviously, she was one of our clients, I had just started working here, and … you don’t exist.”

“I’m from another world,” said Perry. “There’s a difference.”

“Right, but … we’d have to have a lawyer agree to it, and you don’t have identification, do you?” he asked. “And even if you did, you can’t just come there. We’re going to have to have meetings about it. We’re going to need proof. We’re … I mean, this is a big thing, we can’t just give away a client. Aren’t you wanted by the police?”

“So far as I know, no,” said Perry. “But I’ve been out of the country since the incident.” He smiled.

“I can’t do it,” said Jimmy, nervously watching Perry’s face. “Why don’t I call some people? Why don’t we, ah, get the ball rolling? Get some discussion going. We can speak with the executor of her estate, I think it was an attorney.”

“You understand that if this works on her, then it can work on everyone else, right?” asked Perry. “This is the breakthrough that cryonics has been waiting for.”

“I’m just a tech,” said Jimmy. “I’m just here to make sure that everything is running properly, to fill up on LN2 once a day. I’d lose my job if I — what are you asking? That I let you leave with a dewar?”

“Yes,” said Perry. “That’s what I’m asking. That’s why I drove here. I can keep it topped up until we get to the other world.”

He felt so close. This was all he had to do, just grab the tank she was in and take her to Markat so she could be cloned. It wasn’t quite foolproof, but if there was a hitch in the plan, then it seemed certain that there was a way around that hitch. If Markat was somehow not the answer, which was at least an outside possibility, then he would try something else, but there was also healing magic on Seraphinus, and maybe he’d be able to use that instead, though all the books had said resurrection was impossible. He was an omniglot though, so he could read through books he couldn’t before, and of course, all that would be useless if he didn’t have the body.

“The answer is no,” said Jimmy. “I’m sorry. I’ll call my boss, if you want me to, but —”

“Okay,” said Perry, taking a steadying breath. “You know that her body was not preserved under ideal conditions, right? You know that cryonics was always a long shot, a ‘better than nothing’ strategy for end of life. Your people aren’t even close to brain uploading, and even if they were, her brain has decomposed. There are no neural connections left. There’s nothing to her. The thing that would bring her back, the only thing, is literal magic. You can say that I forced you. You can say that you didn’t have a choice in the matter. But you know that, morally speaking, there’s not really another option here. I am all for respecting the wishes of the dead and honoring a contract signed in life, but I knew Richter. I loved her. And I know that regardless of what contract she signed, she would want to take this chance at a new life.”

Jimmy opened and closed his mouth. There was a chance that he had heard Perry say ‘you can say you were threatened’ and took that as a threat. Perry was muscular and tall, and in the industrial park, no one would hear a scream. He was also a wanted man, even if it was just for questioning, and he was a known killer, even if that particular time was clear self-defense.

“Okay,” said Jimmy with a small voice.

“Okay,” nodded Perry. “I have a truck out front. I’d like this done today.”

“You can’t just put it in a truck,” said Jimmy. “We have a special transport vehicle, but — where are you taking her?”

“I have a spaceship,” said Perry. “It’s not that far. I bought straps to hold it in place.”

“Oh,” said Jimmy. “Well, it’s three hundred pounds.”

“I can lift three hundred pounds,” said Perry.

“We have a forklift,” Jimmy began. “Wait, you can lift, and carry, three hundred pounds?”

Perry nodded.

“Oh,” said Jimmy.

They ended up using the forklift anyway. Now that Jimmy was convinced by the course of action, he seemed to settle into it, with few moments of hesitation. The dewar was an individual one, relatively rare among their stock, which mostly held three or four bodies, and mostly because the case was a special one with a corpse that was essentially non-viable.

When Perry pulled the tarp off the armor in the back of the truck, all of Jimmy’s ease evaporated in an instant, and he sat there at the controls of the forklift with the dewar raised on its tines, unmoving.

“It’s fine,” said Perry. “It’s not military, it’s for moving between worlds. It can be dangerous out there.”

“That’s the same one you wore,” said Jimmy. “I … I don’t know if I should be doing this.”

Perry was getting frustrated. Maybe he could have just come in the middle of the night and punched his way through the wall like the Kool-Aid man, stealing the dewar before anyone could do anything about it. If he’d been on his own, it’s what he’d have done, but he wasn’t on his own, he was part of a scouting and diplomatic mission. He couldn’t just leave Earth 2 behind, anything he did now would follow him. And because they were going to engage in a diplomatic mission here, there was a good chance that someone would check in with Crysalis at some point.

“I’ll sign something,” said Perry. “I’ll take full responsibility.”

“I was going to have you sign something anyway,” said Jimmy. He still wasn’t moving.

Perry weighed his options. He knew, rationally, that he needed to operate within the law. If he made the wrong move, he could throw the entire balance of the nascent multiverse trade network into peril. That wasn’t what he wanted, and it wouldn’t be what Richter wanted. But it would be so easy to simply get his way through force.

“I loved her,” said Perry. “There was a time when she made me feel like I had found my place in the world. And when she died, when I was traveling through the worlds, I lost myself a bit. I became a soldier and lost my mind on the battlefield. I killed people like it would bring her back. And over time, I could feel the memory of her fade away. My mind stopped being dragged back to her, all that was left was this … loss of warmth. I made a commitment to bring her back, and I could feel myself slipping away, getting distracted, letting it be this hopeless romantic thing that I wasn’t actually working on. And now I have a way, I think, to bring her back. To return to understanding my place in the world. Please.”

Jimmy blinked at him. Maybe Perry had gone a bit far, used too heavy a hand in an emotional plea. He hadn’t meant to call himself capable of incredible violence. It had just slipped out.

“Okay,” said Jimmy, taking a breath. “You’ll sign something? You’ll testify to who you are? Record a, a message? Furnish, ah, proof?”

“I’ll do whatever I can to help you keep your job,” said Perry. “And if this goes well, if this works, then in a few months, I can be back here, with Richter, to help resurrect all the other clients.”

They got the dewar into the truck, and Perry strapped it down. It was designed for transport like this, in the event that it needed to not be upright — only the individual ones were like that. It also had a flat side to it, which was made by a welded frame, and it sat comfortably in the back of the pickup, strapped in place, though Jimmy wanted there to be even more straps, or for the dewar to be bolted to the truck bed.

Perry did what he could. He recorded a video of himself taking full responsibility for Richter, where he claimed to have had a private conversation about resurrecting her in their final days, a complete fabrication. He demonstrated a Moon Blast, one of the few bits of flashy magic he could still do, and he was tested in eighteen different languages, though the AI of this world was good enough to do that without much problem. He signed a paper asserting that he actually was going to be making his best effort at a resurrection beyond the capabilities of this world. Privately, he thought that Jimmy was going to be fired and likely sued.

When he got into the truck to drive away, Jimmy came up beside the window, and Perry rolled it down out of courtesy, though he was ready to be on the road.

“One thing I don’t really understand,” said Jimmy. “What’s the rush?”

Mette had asked Perry the same question. “Because I want her back as soon as possible,” said Perry. “And because certain things are going to come into the public knowledge very soon, and when they do, I’m worried that her body won’t be so easy to remove.”

“What things?” asked Jimmy.

“Nothing bad,” said Perry, though he didn’t really believe that. “Watch the news.”

Jimmy tried to keep the conversation going, but Perry rolled up his window and drove away.

“Well handled, sir,” said Marchand.

“Thanks, March,” said Perry.

“It is touching, sir, that you care so much for her,” said Marchand.

“I worry that I don’t,” said Perry.

“How so, sir?” asked Marchand.

“What I said to him,” said Perry. “About … I don’t know how long it’s been for me, in terms of total time, but this feeling that the purpose was slipping away from me. I want her back, I do, but I don’t know if I want it enough. I’m a different person now.”

“You seemed willing to commit violence against that man, sir,” said Marchand. “That says to me that you deeply wish to have her back. I’m sure that any fears will be allayed once she is whole.”

Perry’s immediate thought was that all it really showed was his willingness to use violence as a solution to his problems. He didn’t say it though. He didn’t know if the thought would have occurred to him if he wasn’t thinking of how to push back against March.

After a long, boring drive back to the Farfinder, Mette and Hella helped him move the dewar into the ship.

“No trouble?” asked Dirk.

“I wasn’t arrested, no,” said Perry.

“Not what I asked,” said Dirk. “I mean, this is a complication for us, and I know it was important to you, but putting diplomacy at stake for this? Terrible idea.”

“Until we get back to Markat, you’re stuck with me,” said Perry as they settled the dewar in place in Perry’s quarters.

“We could actually leave you here,” said Dirk. “And when we get to Markat, you’re going to need my help.”

“I did what I came here to do,” said Perry. “The rest of the trip, every other world, I’m your man. I’ve been to all these worlds, I know them well.”

“Turns out we’ve got trouble here,” said Dirk. “Has March kept you up to date on the findings?”

“I was gone for six hours,” said Perry. “What could you have found?”

“They didn’t take kindly to your presence here,” said Dirk. “The Union States have their own special task force set up to catch anyone coming in from another world, maybe because you had a big fight and then left a portal right where the authorities could see it.”

“I’d thought it would close behind me,” said Perry.

“They have men in power armor ready to take you in, did you know that?” asked Dirk.

“To take us in,” said Hella.

“Seems to me they should have set up a diplomatic protocol,” said Mette. “That’s what I would have done. Have messages for people from another world to tell them what to do if they want to follow the law.”

“There’s nothing like that?” asked Perry.

“March is trying to find a way inside the diplomatic channels without our comms being traced,” said Dirk.

“Is that a problem?” asked Perry. “Was I wrong about the surveillance state?”

“They have secure cryptography, sir,” said Marchand. “But they also have more sophisticated network traffic monitoring than when I left. In the Union States it is a hallowed principle that the state will not inspect your messages, but no such principle applies to checking which devices are talking to each other, nor to divining their locations. If we send any message, there is a high likelihood that they will trace it back to us.”

“I think we — what’s the phrase?” asked Dirk.

“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” said Perry.

“Hit and run, I think it was,” said Dirk.

“Sure,” said Perry. “We fire off the information, we tell them to chill out when the next diplomatic mission comes, set up some protocols, and then bail.”

“There’s the question of verification,” said Hella.

“I’m up for another trip to the moon,” said Perry. “They never landed there, so it’ll be even more convincing.”

“Orbital diplomacy,” said Dirk. “We go up in the air, we talk to a satellite, we sit beyond the reach of their weapons. I think that’s the play. If we stay on the ground, interacting with their people, especially with Perry’s dumb stunt, then we might get a bunch of people in power armor better than Perry’s showing up.”

“Earth 1 didn’t arrest us,” said Perry.

“They easily could have,” said Hella. “We had a better handle on them, too. These people? They don’t fight wars, they don’t have strong militaries, but they’re on guard for threats. What’s in those dossiers … it threatens to upset the peace they’ve built. We’re outside the system.”

“They aren’t that peaceful,” said Perry. “The power armor comes from here. They might not have the same military-industrial-complex as on Earth 1, but they have better technology, and they’re putting at least some of it toward fighting.”

“Then we go into the sky,” said Dirk, looking upward.

“I wanted a microfusion reactor for the ship,” said Eggy. “It’s one tech we know will work through Perry’s Loop. Can we at least do that?”

“I still have the truck,” said Perry. “It’s just a question of money and what we’re getting, and how easy they are to get. I’m down to my last two gold coins now, and I don’t think they’ll be nearly enough. I don’t suppose you brought more gold on the ship?”

Dirk gave a polite cough. “We may have overstocked on gold, yes.”

“How much do you have?” asked Perry.

“Five hundred pounds,” said Dirk.

“Of gold?” asked Perry. “What the fuck?”

“I still don’t really understand why everyone wants it,” said Dirk. “But for every kingdom that fell, Markat had another storeroom full of gold we didn’t have much use for.”

“Sorry, I’m not following,” said Mette. “That’s enough to get the microfusion reactor?”

Perry laughed. “Sure is.”

~~~~

They took Perry’s beat up truck and went into town. Microfusion was the thing that made this world special, and the power armor wouldn’t have worked without it, but it was used more for powering cars than appliances, and most cars were electric, without any power source of their own, a consequence of the economics.

Mette was the one to stay back in the ship this time, and Perry left the armor there too. In an emergency, it would probably take too long to put on, and if they got pulled over, it might start an emergency.

Perry drove, because he was the only one among the four of them that knew how to drive. Hella sat up front, while Dirk and Eggy took the back seats.

“It’s so weird here,” said Eggy.

“It’s just like the other place,” said Dirk.

“That’s what’s weird,” said Eggy.

“It is weird,” said Hella, who looked at a sign on a convenience store. “Weirder for me, I’m sure.”

“I didn’t go out much when I was with Richter,” said Perry as he turned down a main drag. “She was worried about trying to explain my existence. I think the thing that’s strange is how damned similar it all is. All this technology you see, it came after the point of divergence, but I guess cars were an obvious thing to make when other technological processes happened, and … there’s a lot of convergence.”

This was the state of Cibola, not the state of California, but it shared a fair amount in common. The cities were built around car culture, and there were strip malls everywhere with almost no walkability. The buildings looked the same, cheaply made from modular elements, though he imagined that some of the different feel to them was a result of a slight variance in building codes.

From a materialist geography standpoint, you would expect an alternate California to not look that different, and Perry was still slightly surprised by how true it was. He wished that he’d gotten out more when he’d been with Richter, but most of his view had been from the internet, or reading things on Gratbook.

Their mission to get a microfusion reactor was not even the least bit exciting. It was really more of an errand than a mission, and they definitely didn’t need four people. If Eggy could have driven, she might have been able to do it herself. There was a risk, but it was largely a diplomatic risk, and that wasn’t the sort of thing that Perry was suited to. If they’d been attacked by men in power armor, he would try to defend them, but there wasn’t much hope of that happening.

Perry turned down another road, guided by Marchand’s voice, and idly wondered whether he’d be able to beat someone with power armor using second sphere alone. He couldn’t punch is way through it if it was as tough as March’s exterior, and he’d be seriously injured if he got shot, but maybe if he closed the distance quickly enough, he could get the opponent off his balance. Then it would be a matter of picking the armored man up by the leg and spinning him around until he blacked out, at least as a workable first strategy.

It wasn’t going to happen though. The adventure was over, he wasn’t a thresholder any more. He was, at best, the muscle, but he was the muscle for an expedition that desperately wanted to avoid every potential fight. What the Farfinder had been doing before would have been more his speed, jumping from world to world on the trail of thresholders, but it seemed that they had been entirely co-opted by Markat and the desire to establish a working inter-universal trade network. He wasn’t sure when that had happened, but maybe it had been when Fenilor had killed most of the crew.

They traded the gold in for a fat stack of cash, then traded the cash in for a microfusion reactor, then went to go get tacos from a small restaurant. They got a few looks, though that was probably from the eclectic outfits they wore. It might have been a good idea for them to get clothes from Earth 1, or maybe have culturally appropriate pieces tailored for them back on Markat, but the Union States were a melting pot of cultures, and any strangeness could be chalked up to that.

“We haven’t talked much about food,” said Dirk. He gestured with his taco. “Give it another hundred years and maybe the whole Loop will be eating these.”

“Probably not,” said Perry. “Even with a fleet of ships, movement between the worlds is going to be glacially slow. What you really need for cultural exchange are immigrant families setting up restaurants, or better, gastrodiplomacy. And the issue with gastrodiplomacy is that to do it properly, you need the right ingredients, which aren’t going to grow on every world. So what, are you going to ship over huge quantities of cabbage or whatever it is they grow on Markat?”

“We grow cabbage,” said Dirk.

“Really?” asked Perry. “A leafy green? That cabbage?”

“There are a few constants and near-constants,” said Hella. “Cabbage is one of them. We actually think that the Grand Spell targets a few specific and esoteric features when selecting worlds, and there are a few foods that keep showing up, so we think that’s a part of it.”

“You can figure out who created the Grand Spell from it,” said Eggy as she dipped her finger straight down into a little tub of sauce.

“Not really,” said Hella.

“You can make a good guess,” said Eggy. She sucked on her sauced finger. “Words for technology are all over the map, ergo, we think that whoever made the Grand Spell was specifically targeting English, and a specific collection of words in common, and that this list didn’t include those that come with higher technology levels.”

“Is this new research?” asked Perry.

“It’s a new line of thought,” said Eggy. “Turns out that a lot of people working together come up with a lot of new ideas. But the data is all known to you.”

“Huh,” said Perry. “It’s a shame that being an omniglot won’t come in handy.”

“Oh, it’s going to do wonders,” said Eggy. “We’re going to badly need you.”

“Earth 2 has machine translators,” said Perry.

“No,” said Hella. “Or, yes, but Earth 2 has machine translators for major languages because they’re trained on enormous amounts of data from a corpus that Earth 2 spent hundreds of years developing and digitizing.”

“Plus they don’t get the nuances,” said Dirk. “I read about that in the Gratbook.”

“Point is, on a world where there’s a ton of data, and it can be processed at great cost, sure, let the machines handle it,” said Hella. “But do the Dusklands have a huge corpus? Does Markat? Seraphinus? No. So when we spread out, we’re limited to the English-speakers, and that’s something we don’t want.”

Perry had never considered that, but then, he had never been focused on the long term, only on getting through one world and on to the next. He was going to have to start thinking of the future. He didn’t entirely hate the idea of playing translator, somehow, if it meant that he was going to get to go to new places and be a conduit for people.

He would have to see what Richter thought, when she woke.