"What it makes you is two things: a Verser, and an Associate. If you die here, you wake up somewhere else, on your own. If I die here, I wake up somewhere else, and you do too. Oh, and you'll never get old. That's another weird little thing about it. Once you Verse out you never get a day older ever again. I've been 23 for four years. And you're still my wife. That part doesn't change.
"As for our stuff... it comes with us, too. Everything you have on you when you leave, plus a certain weight limit of other things you own and care about. How much you drag along seems to be dependent on how many worlds you've gone through.
"Where we are is... New York City, but not any version of it I've seen before. Finding out is kindof the whole point. Oh yeah - you have to figure out over time what your ... your philosophy of the Verse is. People who never settle on something to believe in eventually go insane. Not overnight. You're not in danger. Just, something to think about.
"And your family's lot in life will improve anyway. Remember I did two years at sea before I settled down, and we owned a house. Once the Watch office confirms me dead, they'll go through my assets. They'll find my account with the Sardic shipping office. Your family is the closest thing I had to locatable kin. They will get all of that, plus our house. It doesn't diminish their work, but inheriting my fortune certainly won't hurt them. They'll be alright, and so will you. You still have me to watch out for you, only now... now you'll be able to learn things that will let you take care of yourself. Things you never imagined before."
After a few minutes...
"The ceiling fell on me. In case you were wondering how it happened. Louie's Place - you know, the Korgan place across from the office - had a fire in the kitchen. We had it contained but the fire got into the floorboards of the second floor, and when we shocked the room with water, the ceiling fell on me."
"Yes, we have to gather our things.
"The first thing we need to find is shelter. I don't know this city very well, but... I once lived just the other side of the river, or, a version of the river. If the towns are still the same, I may be able to find help there.
"And, right, you won't grow old, and dying just means Versing out. You can still get hurt, sick, poisoned, at least until we figure out ways to become immune to those things. Which is possible. I think. Just, not for us, yet... We have to figure it out."
Once we have our things gathered, I'll start angling west and north, heading for the George Washington Bridge.
"Because it's a different culture. It doesn't have quite so bad a meaning here. It's still not entirely proper, but it is accepted. It doesn't mean they're whores, or anything like that."
I'm guessing it's also summer, which means we're probably roasting.
As for her trunk, I'll carry it as best I can, and resort to TK Pulsing it along once that becomes annoying.
No, I'll just continue dragging it, and rest when we need to. Thankfully I'm fairly used to long days in the summer sun in full battle array - not from Versing, but from working at the Renaissance Faire before I went.
The GWB isn't there? Well, shit...
"In my time there was a bridge here..."
Let's sit by the river and catch our breath, and look around. Is there a ferry? Do cars seem to just fly right over? Do people seem to just fly right over? Do as the natives, I suppose.
"Well, we don't have any of the local currency, so we won't be able to get transportation out of town. We could go find someplace to sell some of the diktar I have on me, try to get blended in that way.
"We're going to have to do that pretty soon anyway. We'll need a place to stay tonight and something to eat. Are you doing alright that way? Hungry?"
((That seems to happen a lot.))
"Everyone on your world uses diktar," I answer, "Here they use something else. Probably many somethings else if this world is anything at all like my own. Most people don't trade in gold coins here, which makes our diktar worth considerably more than their face value - enough for some people to kill for, which is why I don't want to go flashing them around.
"We need a pawn shop - a place that buys things without asking questions. We can sell one or two of them for enough to get by. I had about a hundred on me at work, plus whatever you had left of the grocery budget at home. Those I'll want to sell to a goldsmith or a jeweler, since they'll pay a fairer price, but a pawn shop will let us eat today, and buy us a trunk with wheels.
"And yeah, jobs would be a good idea. So would an apartment. Seeing as we only have so much time before we're too tired to work and businesses start closing for the night, let's find a pawn shop first. We can't adventure hungry and we can't eat without money..."
If she's on board with that, we'll look around. If this New York is anything like the New York I could throw a stone at from my bedroom window, there's probably a 'We Buy Gold' sign in a window every few blocks, especially near a major transportation hub like the George Washington... Creepy Air Bridge Thing.
Actually, I don't want to go directly to the pawn shop. I want to find a newspaper stand first. If printed newspapers still exist, the financial section will have the going rate for gold by the ounce, which will give me a leg up in telling if the pawn shop guy is ripping me off, and by how much.
I'll stop at one of those corner terminals and see if I can look up the price of gold, then.
"It's designed to be very simple," I explain. If she's interested I'll show her how it works. "I don't really know how the underlying technology works - touch-screens were state-of-the-art in my day - but I know how to use them, mostly."
Wow, hyperinflation much? I'm half tempted to see if we somehow managed 400 years of Republican rule, but I don't feel like tempting fate by looking it up. What's the date, anyway?
So, given my reference frame, gold is worth - in 2010 dollars - 2.4 ... pentillion? $2.4 x 10^19. Per ounce. And I have 200 ounces of gold on my person. This is going to be a really F'ed up world...
"According to this, the bad of diktar we brought with us is worth several orders of magnitude more money than I think exists on this planet. This is going to be a very interesting world.
"Considering I was dirt poor when I left my homeworld, it's been two worlds in a row of wealth since. I could get used to that."
I'll give her a quick kiss, hopefully she'll forgive my babbling, and then it's off to the pawn shop, to see how much gold he can afford to buy.
Before we go in, though, I'd like to stop in an alleyway or a bathroom, somewhere secluded, to make sure my pistol is loaded. You walk into a pawn shop and go 'how much gold can you afford to buy?' and he shoots you to find out how much you've got on you. I'm not taking that chance.
Once I'm properly arrayed, keeping that thing loose in its holster but not walking aggressively either, it's time to head into the pawn shop and see how much gold he can afford to buy.
"Give me a moment to confer with my wife..."
I draw her back toward the door, hopefully out of earshot, and explain to her what all of that just meant, and ask what she thinks we should do with enough money to buy and sell the entire planet several times over. "One thing we should not do is involve ourselves with a pawn broker we don't even know."
"Legitimate routes? Nothing, but we may have some illegitimate routes, eventually.
"The first thing we need now is legal protection. We're people without a country, without ID like you said, and with something on us that will make us a target.
"The way I see it, we can either trust this guy - sell him a coin and see what he can come up with for it, making sure that includes some version of ID - or we can try to go totally above-board. Find us an attorney, and some bodyguards, and hawk our coins to the highest-bidding nation. Obviously the second should be our long-term plan, but which do you think we should go for right now?"
"Hey, I like my pistol..."
I pout at her for a moment for suggesting that.
"Oh, alright..."
I use the loading rod to carefully unload the pistol without firing it, then go back to the pawn broker. "I double-checked the weight and it turns out it's fake. Pyrite. I'd like to offer you something else, though, if you're able."
"It's fully functional," I tell him, "Whether or not it counts as 'antique' I couldn't tell you. But sure, we can wait."
I'll look and see if there are any of those corner terminals nearby, somewhere to read the news, and perhaps a little history. Like what is the Psionics War and how prevalent ARE Psionics here. Where do they go for training? Are they legal? That sort of thing...
How does one become licensed and join HAND?
What does HAND stand for?
What is the penalty for practicing without a license?
Where does one go to get training, once one is licensed? Are there schools? Tutors? Practice ranges akin to gun ranges?
"Hmm..." I show all of this to Arabella, "I think I know where our next stop should be."
A boat? I don't get it.
"They talk about training, and I could use that. You could too, technically. Now that you're out here, you're not bound by home any more - you can learn things you didn't necessarily think were possible before. You might like it."
"Sure. Let me just let the pawn shop guy know we're going. If he's really going to be two hours, we should be back by the time his antique expert gets here."
I let the pawn shop guy know we're running an errand, but not exactly where, and that we'll hopefully be back by the time his guy gets here.
And then we can be off.
"I'm here to sign up for training. The listing said this was the right place."
"He's someone famous, love. Apparently he has that problem a lot." I shrug.
"I'll keep on here."
Then I turn to Ari and hand her the tag key the pawn shop guy gave me. "Go back and make sure the guy shows up. I'll be back as soon as I can. If anything goes wrong, take what you can get for it and ask where you can find a place to rent. I'll be okay here."
"I'm not carrying anything illicit, but let me leave some of my personal effects with my wife before I go in - just a few things too expensive to leave behind."
I'll go off a ways with Arabella, and... never come back. I don't care that they've probably got a picture of me now, there's only so much I'm willing to put myself through in order to get training. I'll deal with whatever for practicing in private, but this is getting silly.
I'm just going to walk back out. Turns out I don't have any potential after all, if they ask.
Also, I thought I was still outside, where the guards themselves were, facing the front door. I don't recall walking through.
I'll take my "Move Along" and do just that. I get the idea that this place isn't going to be anything good or useful.
"Let me see what you have before I decide. I don't want to take 80% trade and then find out it's $3 million worth of second-hand guitars."
Rather than ask for a complete inventory of this guy's shop, what I'm looking for is:
Native clothes
Native weapons (as I'll have to put aside my swords here)
He mentioned something about genetic enhancement? I want to know more about that, and cybernetics, too, if he knows anything.
I want a lead on apartments for rent, and I'll consider a positive lead to be worth cash.
Books or other information media, especially having to do with psionics and the War.