One day, a beautiful lady with long, lustrous raven black hair bought herself a new tech toy as she so dearly loved to do. It had Scriff Inside! imprinted on the cover of the PDA. She went to work that night, and took it in to show off to her fellow employees before setting to work. Rain pounded the roof of the building, and work went on. Finally time for 'lunch' at midnight arrived, and she went out to the car to put her new device up as the rain had finally ceased a half hour ago. But a truck came barrelling into the parking lot, driving much too fast for a wet, and dark night.
It did not hit her. But it did roar through a very large puddle and drench her, and the PDA in her hand.
A half-dozen worlds later, and she sort of understands, as much as most versers do, what is going on.
So she arrived in a world in the midst of a parade in honor of Coordinator 129 whose wise council led District 129 as his father had led it before him. It was a blessed and wonderful world, all the posters on the walls said so, and anyone who disagreed was an Enemy of the State, and quite obviously insane. The Coordinators, with their superior wisdom and benevolence, had removed the burden of excess choice from the People.
It was a scientific fact, proven by studies funded by the Coordinators, that more than three choices was painful for the average person when confronted by any choice. So there were Trucks, Cars, and Cycles with Red, Blue, and Green colors for each of the types of vehicles which those with ten years service could receive by cashing in their Benevolence Points. They got BP's by doing extra service to the Community as determined by the Coordinators.
So, when an unknown person appeared in the midst of the parade, the instant assumption was that she was an assassin, a servant of conservative radicals, and a Hater. So she was apprehended with the typical lack of concern shown to the subhuman. Which meant she woke from her coma ten years later.
By then, her remarkableness had been well-established. Her backpack was well-made and had over a dozen colors in it. Heresy or Unscientific Thought! But inside was worse, a totally unbowlderized collection of thousands of books and songs on a tiny electronic device. It was then that the serious men got involved which they rarely did.
The device was at least twenty years in advance of anything even the Black Tech Cites could make. It was phenomenal. It was scary.
So she was closely observed as she slept in her coma. And one fact became clear. She was not aging. Not in the least. Massive efforts were expended to raise her from her coma. A whole new Black Tech City dedicated to coma patient's recovery was set up. In the space of five years, over twenty-five years of research was force fed into the solutions for comas.
This had notable bad effects as a number of thoroughly stupid theories got advanced, and hardened into dogma. But they were lucky enough to have some truly brilliant scientists, and so the breakthrough was made.
She woke to find herself controlled by electro-mechanical means. They wanted one thing. 'What's your secret to immortality?'. She tried to verse out, but with a multiple watchers and a device in her head that could freeze her muscles at a word, it did not work.
They asked about the yellow substance in her blood, and she realized that they were so close. And she did not want to oppress other worlds with their ways, nor, did she want to have them find a way to use scriff tomake themselves immortal overlords in this world. The populace had it bad enough without their bosses living forever.
So she began to lie, to lead them on a path. She was the daughter of a goddess and a merman. She needed time and privacy to brew up her magics.
So they gave her a lighthouse by the sea, and watched her carefully by human eye, and in her lab, with cameras.
She brewed up some small magics, all that would work in the world's low magic bias. Besides she was no great magi.
And then she took the ravens that roosted all over the lighthouse, and what she had heard from some other versers, and she fed some of her Special Brew No. 9 she called it with a smirk to each Raven. Each raven, thus sedated and scriffed, was put into a huge blackpot, and covered by a lid. Airtight. The whole thing was heated to a slurry mess. By this time, the raven had either versed or plain died. She then dumped the slurry mess off the side of the lighthouse into the sea with an expression of disgust.
"Spell is still not working."
She filled pages of notebooks with structured nonsense so that her watchers had something to read.
Now each raven had a message attached to its leg.
"I am a verser on Timeline 1.475. Held prisoner by evil forces. Please rescue me."
The immortal raven versers, several dozen so far, fly into various worlds, and often get killed. But then at some point, in the midst of this strangeness, the raven senses something familiar so he goes to it. Another verser who then reads the message...some versers take up the Quest for the Lady of Ravens as she is known. Others simply add their message to the raven they find. It occurs to some that this might be a way to create some sort of Raven Internet Interdimensional.
