My hands rush over my body. I’m in some kind of hospital gown, and I’m hooked up to some kind of machine.
“Portal hops . . .” I murmur.
Then the woman pushes open the curtain next to me, and there’s Mack, lying on a medical bed. His wounds are wrapped. His chest expands and falls. His eyes are closed as if he’s fallen into a deep, deep slumber.
My heart races at the sight of him, and tears immediately threaten my eyes, which I wipe at, sniffing hard.
He’s alive. Somehow, he’s alive.
And we’re here together. But where is here?
The woman bustles around me. “I’m happy you’re up now. You passed out and then woke up in some kind of fugue state, thrashing and wailing on everyone, so we thought we just as well might wait a few minutes until you were in your right mind. We’d never seen anything like it.”
“B-but how are we here?” I put my hand to my head, and my hair is dripping wet.
How much time has passed? It might as well have been a lifetime. Maybe I’m dead. Can a dead person still feel?
The woman goes to the end of my bed, checking vitals or whatever it is medical workers do. She flicks off the dried strands of seaweed from my hair before speaking.
“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not. You jumped into the portal, and now you’re in a new universe. I know your universe is a little more rudimentary about everything, but surely you knew what you were doing.”
I shake my head. “No, but it’s not possible. We . . . we didn’t make it. We missed the jump, we ran out of time, the portal sparked out! Everything went black.”
The woman tilts her head and looks at me curiously for a second. “Hmmm . . . well, that’s very odd. Never heard of something like that before. Lift your arms up, will you?”
I comply as she checks different junctures of my body and presses a stethoscope against my chest, when a little creature crawls out of my hospital gown and onto my clavicle.
“Bug!” I shout when my brain recognizes the creature because I’m overjoyed to see him.
He came with us. He must’ve escaped his tank. My heart surges at the small return. Who would’ve taken care of him without me there?
The woman scoops the crab gently off my skin and puts him in the palm of her hand. “Oh! We’ve been looking for this little one. Well, that explains everything, doesn’t it, then?”
“You’ve been looking for my crab?” I run my hands down the length of my arm, admiring that it’s now entirely covered with emerald-green scales.
“Well, that’s not a crab now, darling, is it? That’s a bug.”
“I know he’s Bug, I named him that. But bugs and crabs aren’t the same thing. Believe me, I’ve had this conversation.”
“No, darling. He’s a bug in the portal. We’ve been trying to locate him for months. Once he gets in there, well, he makes the whole operation go all wonky, if you know what I mean. One tiny little bug and it’s like none of the code works that holds our entire universe together. But seems like he did you two a favor and kept everything open a little longer for you than usual. A little late for our portal appointment, were we? Naughty, naughty.” She shakes her finger at me, her eyes glimmering. The crab crawls up her arm to her shoulder. “I guess we could say he’s a feature and not a bug, then, how about that?” She chuckles to herself.
“A bug in the code,” I repeat. I’m too amazed to come up with any other coherent words.
“Welcome home, little fella.” She rubs the top of his little shell. Then she looks at me. “Well, I’ll be off, then. Do you need anything before I leave? The doctor will be out and about doing rounds in a bit.”
“Yes! Mack. I need to know about Mack. Is he going to be okay?” I gesture toward his sleeping body.
The woman smiles and puts her hand on mine. Her fingers are almost completely webbed together, the thin flesh in between nearly translucent. “Of course he will.”
“But he was almost dead. He was shot three times. How do you know?”
“Because in this universe, we possess the single most important thing for healing.”
I blink hard, racking my brain. “What is that?”
She pats my hand. “The care of a community.”
Chapter 35
“Well, what can I say? I’m a hero. You can make me waffles every morning to thank me,” I say to Mack, and I splash my legs in the water.
I’m sitting on a grassy patch before the shore. Before us is a large stretch of what we would call a pond in our old universe. But now, it’s basically a house. We have a regular house too, one that sits on the land where we can sleep inside or watch TV. Really, it’s not so different from anywhere else. It’s just a little wetter, that’s all.
Mack swims up to me and grabs onto my feet, pulling himself in between my legs as he treads water and I sit on the shore.
We’ve been assigned this spot, and I have to say it suits us well, although we’re just settling in.
The fish people of this universe welcomed us with open arms. They rallied together, and with their help, Mack healed from all his wounds. We both healed, really. Gone are the days of isolation and fear.
No more loneliness either. Because we’re all connected through the waterways in this universe. Even though not everyone is in the water all the time.
People are varied here. Some look just like the kinds that roam the old universe, regular people—all skin no scales. And some have full-on mermaid fins, flippers, and everything. And others are on a spectrum from everywhere in between. It’s not the uniformity that’s important, it’s the unique pattern that each individual brings.
The world is built to accommodate both water and land. Butterflies are everywhere here in a whole rainbow of colors. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
And the air is so dense with oxygen from all the thick foliage that I never have to fight for a breath again. Of course, I’ve grown some gills too, and those have been pretty fucking cool. In fact, my scales have made their way all the way to my clavicle, but it seems as though they petered out after that, which means I still have all my hair. I guess that’s what my transition looks like so far. But who knows what the future holds? People are fluid here, and they change between scales and skin and scales and skin whenever it suits them.
Other than that, there’s plenty that’s the same. People still go to work. Fall in love. Have kids.
