Comic 1181 - Make connected portals
Posted on 5th Apr 2019, 10:21 PM
in Like a Bullet from Behind
Average Rating: 5 (3 votes) /
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Author Notes:
You reason that, with Michelle still being wanted by the police, it would be better to take Caius out in public. Pierce agrees to go with you, as well, as his expertise on the arcane could be useful (depending on how weird this gets).
But, rather than take the hummer--which would likewise make you easy for Thale's men to track down--you want to try and create a portal directly to the bookstore. This would also make it easier to pull in reinforcements, if things do go south.
Traveling through the red is dangerous for regular humans... but you have an idea for how to minimize the amount of time that will physically be spent in the red.
Your raven returns. You step outside, make a blood bug, and give it to the raven. You have it fly back to the bookstore with the bug in tow.
By the time you all finish explaining to Caius what he missed--and what the current plan is--your raven has made it back to the bookstore. You have the bird drop the bug, which you then convert into another pool of blood in the alley next to the bookstore. You open portals--one here, in the bunker, and the other at the bookstore.
Time and space are both alien concepts to the red. You've manipulated both, time maybe more than space... but you should be able to alter it the same way. It takes you a while to focus on where the entrance and exit are within the infinite void of the red, but once you've located where both portals are... you begin concentrating on closing the distance between them.
Slowly, steadily, you move the two portals nearer to each other within the red.
Closer.
Closer still.
As the portals draw near to each other, you slow down the rate at which the gap is closing--paying more attention to the exact distance, eyeing it more precisely.
You want the portals to just...
barely
tou--
Whoops. Maybe too close.
You ... quickly adjust so the portals are touching a little less.
You look around the room, and no one else seems to have... uh... experienced that.
That... whole thing there.
You clear your throat, and look through the portal. It does, indeed, seem to lead straight to the bookstore alley with zero distance between the entrance and exit physically standing in the red. It... should be safe.
Safer. Safe-ish.
"You alright, Blondie?," Michelle asks.
Maybe send one of the brave mice through first to test it. Before sending someone with more cognitive thought through.
AND DEFINITELY HOLD HANDS BEFORE ENDING. AND NEVER LET GO.
Bullet goes in one side of portal, bullet comes out other side of portal.
Plus, bonus points for Caius: It'll look totally metal when all that's visible of a person is a floating skull and skeletal hands and feet.
And also to holding hands.
also, another +1 to hand holding whenever we jump through a portal. Oh, also, ask Big red if it know what happened, and if this portal trick will keep humans for going crazy or just prolong it or just take more trips or whatever.
I think a good order of things is chucking an object or two through first, then something living (not Willard-- he's retired; another animal instead), then a person. Holding hands is not a bad plan, either.
We should also focus on making whatever tiny sliver of red there is between the portals as Earth-life-compatible as possible when we use the portal. Juuuust in case even a little bit of red exposure is too much.
Definitely admit to the ERROR thing, but also... consider what that means. We can produce an ERROR state in the universe essentially on command. We know that Fuse was able to create a whole ARG by "hacking" the ERROR room in an alternate universe, so knowing how to manipulate the ERROR state could prove *really* useful to us, even as just an "oh shit" button. It's too dangerous to use in anything but an emergency, but if we fuck up hardcore, we might be able to ERROR our way into a New Game+.
And, whenever we next do the Tradesmen ritual, maybe ask if anybody else noticed us doing that, and if any of the ones who noticed are likely to be hostile?
If it's a preexisting bunker, then we can tick off another one of the "bunkers we can find" on the list that the Tradesmen mentioned. If it's not a preexisting bunker, then we should talk to them about what it actually is, and whether or not it's a potential safe "oh shit" hiding place if things go sideways. I'm also wondering if it would be a viable place to stash an errant Nilpenter.
Likewise, the error bunker is not a place. It is a mistake. Our mistake. Whenever we do something we really should not do, we end up where we really should not go. Sending Nil there would just make him stronger, if anything.
I'm also wary of asking/telling the Tradesmen things about the error room. It's the sort of thing they might *not* know much about, and we should be careful how we bring it up. Some other universal entity could have ties to the tradesmen and consider our deliberate usage of the room to be strongly "against the rules."
There is a chance that *this* is the level of shenanigans that would attract the attention of higher beings.
Our "error" room may be an isolated instance of this phenomenon? Would certainly qualify as Z50 tech.
I'm not saying "let's freak out," but maybe don't assume that we are the only beings who noticed that.
Let's stay focused and try not to do that again. I feel like the portal should be fine.
That being said, our enemies still don't know we use animals as scouts, (as far as we know) and we should keep it that way, so discretion about when to use it will be super important.
Feels like reality's quite fragile at that power level.
If both portals is on the ground, how do we avoid getting stuck?
And how does holding hands work?
If someone jumps into the portal on our side, legs first, they have to come out the other side legs first.
As soon as they are out, they should fall back into the portal, head first this time, and come out back at our portal, head first.
All due to gravity.
This should continue until someone pulls them out, or they get stuck in the middle. The middle in this case also being in the Red.
We should create the portals on walls, so we can walk through them, stargate like.
Of course we could make the exit portal hover in the air, and drop us below it, but that makes a rapid exit difficult, and it is not exactly discreet.
Oh, and let's try not to cross portals in the future.
We are messing with the fabric of reality enough as it is. Let's try not to break it.
** Edit **
I just reread the last couple of pages, and no one actually states that the portals are at ground level.
That was an assumption on my part.
However I still believe that it is something we need to keep in mind.
Basically if a portal is on the ground, jump into it.