Jennifer closed the bedroom door in Tali’s face, turned the lock, and hopped into bed next to Leg Day.

  “Hey,” complained Leg Day. “You’re jiggling my video.”

  “My bad! But also send me a copy of that video, yeah?”

  “No.”

  Jennifer rolled her eyes and called out. “Okay Tali, now!”

  Tali reached her hand through the door, unlocked it, and pushed it open.

  “Damn that’s cool,” said Leg Day.

  “Magic!” squealed Jennifer. “It’s totally magic!” Okay, move back there, like… yeah. I’ll lock the door, and… okay do it again!”

  Once again, Tali reached her hand through the door, unlocked it, and pushed it open.

  Jennifer squealed with delight. Leg Day met Tali’s gaze and rolled her eyes. Tali returned the smile, glanced left, and caught Simkha’s eye from where she sat on the couch.

  Simkha twitched the corners of her mouth up far enough to communicate the idea of a smile. She held the eye contact for almost a third of a second before she had to look away. She shifted her head so she could stare at her own knees while she listened into the conversation between Good-Arms Jock, Mika, and Hrefna.

  “...so I guess it turned out fine,” sighed Good-Arms Jock. She leaned against the kitchen counter and popped a slice of cheese into her mouth. “Annnd… that’s basically everything that happened before we left Simmie’s place.”

  “Okay but none of that explains how you lost Tali,” said Hrefna. She put on a slightly incredulous expression as she sipped her wine. “Like, I still don’t understand how that was possible?”

  “Ughhh,” groaned Mika. “I just, like, cannot believe we did that. With Tali in the city by herself, not even speaking the language. And Simkha specifically asking us to keep an eye on her, so Simkha could recover.”

  “Oh my god, right?” said Good-Arms Jock. “I don’t lose people! Like, I don’t understand how it was possible either.”

  “None of that is an actual answer,” said Hrefna. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I think we came straight here,” said Good-Arms Jock. “But I wouldn’t know since I wasn’t familiar with the route. Mika?”

  “Yeah, everybody came straight here, including Tali,” said Mika. “We went the normal way. I remember because I noticed at the corner of Walton and Little Clarendon—that’s when your girl spotted the Last Bookshop. And she looked interested. So later on, that’s why I suggested you all check it out.”

  “Tali was interested?” asked Good-Arms Jock. “I… definitely thought she disappeared before we went back.

  “No, not Tali. Your, uh, Lídia. Leg Day? She was the one who looked interested.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Good-Arms Jock. “Not really my girl, then. Although I get what you mean. Fully makes sense that she’d notice the bookshop. But moving along, we got here, and we met your roommate."

  “Oh yeah.” Mika snorted and grinned. “When we got here Logan was literally standing over the sink, eating cheese crumbles straight off this big-ass block of Red Leicester.”

  “Logan is my favorite,” said Hrefna.

  Jennifer poked her head through the doorframe and interrupted.

  “Wait, did you say that guy’s name was Logan.”

  “It is,” Hrefna confirmed.

  Jennifer knitted her brow.

  “Do you, um, do you know…”

  “Yes, correct, one hundo,” said Hrefna.

  “You mean Wolverine right?” said Mika. “Logan explicitly named himself after the comic book character. He says it’s why he does sideburns and lumberjack shirts, too. He loves to talk about it.”

  “Hngh, is that right?” said Jennifer.

  “Absolutely love it,” said Hrefna.

  “That explains all the pastel Marvel decor, too,” said Good-Arms Jock. “But moving on, Hrefna, that’s when Mika called you about the clothes.”

  “What did Tali decide on?” asked Hrefna. “That part of my closet desperately needs thinning.”

  “Oh we had fun,” said Mika. “We had a whole little fashion show. Tali agreed to take that Turquoise jumpsuit. And we also got her to take that casual dress—the one I think is sage colored, but you say it’s olivine.”

  “Oh thank god,” said Hrefna, “that dress is gone, my relationship is saved.”

  “You’re not allowed to break up with me over color names.”

  “Love you too, babe.”

  “So anyway,” said Good-Arms Jock. “That’s when your girl pinned the outfits and got to sewing. Then Leg Day suggested we go check out the Last Bookshop. Or… I guess you were the one to suggest that, Mika.”

  “Right,” said Mika. “I think it was Jennifer who was worried about Tali not speaking English. And Leg Day had the actual idea to find her a picture dictionary, or maybe a simple-language dictionary. I basically just reminded her which shop she had spotted.”

  “And that’s when I fucked up,” said Good-Arms Jock. “I thought I could get them all down Little Clarendon, because I’m used to herding two of those cats.”

  “So you lost Tali along Little Clarendon?” asked Hrefna.

  “Oh my god,” said Mika. She pointed at the cheeses and wines still bedecking the kitchen table. “It must have been there! At the… uh… what's it called... I think it’s the Jericho Cheese Company. She must have noticed all this in the window and gotten distracted.”

  “Wow,” said Hrefna. “I think that makes her, like, a perfect match for Simkha. Or are they actually the same person?”

  “I know, right?” said Mika. “And did you see her earlier, how she also just had lactase tablets in her pocket. Like, both of them just walk around prepared for surprise cheese.”

  “Incredible, isn’t it,” says Hrefna. “How they both plan ahead so they can eat food they’re allergic to.”

  Mika smiled and batted her eyes at Hrefna. “I love you too, beyb. And lactose intolerance is still not an allergy.”

  Good-Arms Jock quirked a brow.

  Mika leaned in conspiratorially and whispered “I practice Lactose Tolerant Tuesdays. It’s exactly what you think it is.”

  Simkha smiled and let her attention wander back to Jennifer and Leg Day. They had come to the conclusion that Tali couldn’t reach through every closed door. They hadn’t figured out how to predict which doors could and couldn’t be bypassed.

  Simkha wasn’t sure about the difference either, at first. But after watching for a while, she had a thought. With a little work, Simkha tricked herself into perceiving the fourth spatial dimension again. She looked around. Her theory was correct.

  Wherever Tali could bypass a door, she was just reaching around the door through a gap in the fourth dimension and opening it. Where Tali couldn’t bypass a door, there was either no four-dimensional space at all or there was no gap in the fourth dimension. Now that Simkha noticed, four-dimensional space was not evenly distributed throughout the house, only appearing in pockets here and there.

  Tali tried to point out which areas had four-dimensional space, which included most of the kitchen, the hallway, a corner of the living room, and a few smaller pockets.

  But Tali couldn’t quite communicate the concept to Jennifer and Leg Day. She looked a bit frustrated, but not too frustrated. In the end she just went along with Jennifer's gestural requests, intentionally bumping into objects she couldn't reach around in order to demonstrate the impossibility of the task.

  Simkha closed her eyes and breathed. She was still pretty exhausted, but she felt a little more functional than she felt a few minutes ago. Could she translate her explanation of the problem into human words—words that Jennifer and Leg Day would understand?

  Hmm.

  Nope. She could not.

  But Simkha did have at least a little energy now. Maybe she could calibrate her status bar for relaxation and energy based on this change? She would have liked for Tali to do it. But she didn’t have enough energy to puzzle out how to ask Tali. She might have enough energy to figure it out for herself, as long as she didn’t have to use words…

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Simkha reached out and poked at her status bars. With a little trial and error, she expanded her status bar for energy and relaxation into a more detailed box that filled the center of her view. She noted that the box displayed a larger version of the status bar, a display that looked something like a flow chart, and a display for something like a table of statistics. She still couldn’t read the glyphs that labeled everything. But she did notice one particular button labeled with a glyph that looked more familiar than the others. She spent a moment in consideration, then pressed the button.

  Simkha’s entire HUD flickered, except for two changes. First, the color of her relaxation and energy status bar changed to yellow. Second, the line that indicated the depletion of her status bar disappeared.

  Simkha spent a moment in consideration, then tapped on the status bar where the line would go to indicate she had just a tiny bit of energy.

  With another flicker, the status bar changed to a reddish-orange color, and filled in to show she had a little bit of energy. The status bar breathed in and out nigh imperceptibly, appearing alive just like her hunger status bar.

  Simkha smiled to herself. She was pretty sure that had worked. Was calibrating her HUD really going to be this easy?

  Simkha tried to close the relaxation detail view box. She couldn’t. Hmmm. She fiddled with this and that. She couldn’t make the box go away. She was about to start panicking when she accidentally grabbed the box between two fingers, like she was grabbing a piece of paper hovering in the air. Holding it like this, she was able to move the box. She couldn’t make the thing disappear by dragging it past the edge of her HUD, but maybe… Simkha grabbed the box and moved it on top of the status bars that lined the bottom of her view. She let go, and smiled when the box shrunk into a point of light that flew into her relaxation and energy status bar, then disappeared.

  Ah damn, everybody was looking at Simkha. Why were they looking at her? Oh, right. Of course they could see her poking and prodding at her HUD, even if they didn’t see the HUD itself. Simkha flushed and turned her eyes away. She shielded her face with her hands and stared off into a dark corner of the room.

  The corner was mostly empty, except for a yellow tacklebox with “TOOLS” written in sharpie on the front. Tackle-box. A box with a pretty sizable fourth-dimension gap between the lid and the base. A box that could be picked up and moved, just like the box Simkha had just grabbed and moved around her HUD.

  Hmm.

  Simkha climbed out of the couch, nearly tripping herself as she untangled her arms and legs. She wobbled over to the corner with the toolbox. She grabbed the toolbox and carried it over to Tali, Jennifer, and Leg Day.

  “All right?” asked Leg Day.

  Simkha nodded, and plopped the toolbox down on the counter, setting it above the cabinet door that Tali had just reached through. Simkha caught Tali’s eye and pointed at the fourth-dimension gap beneath the lid of the toolbox. Tali frowned for a few moments, then reached through the fourth-dimension gap without unlatching the box. She drew out a hammer. Simkha moved the toolbox to the edge of the bubble of four-dimensional space.

  The extra dimension in that area was squeezed tight, so Tali would have a harder time reaching through the gap.

  But when Simkha pointed again, Tali was still able to reach in and gingerly draw out a screwdriver without squashing her hand too much. Tali smiled at Simkha, who smiled back. When Simkha moved the box entirely out of three dimensional space, Tali finally caught on. She bonked her hand into the area where the gap had been, and showed it was missing.

  Tali took the box from Simkha and began to repeat the demonstration next to all the doors she had tested for Jennifer and Leg Day. Tali used judicious placement of the toolbox to show just where the pockets of four-dimensional space began and ended.

  “I think I get it…” said Jennifer. “Tali can’t just, like, phase through certain doors and not others. What she can do is phase through certain places. And some of those places happen to have doors in them…”

  Tali looked at Jennifer. Tali looked at Simkha. Tali gave Simkha a questioning look.

  Eh. Jennifer was more-or-less correct, so Simkha nodded “yes.”

  “Yes!” said Tali. “Is yes, is happy, is good!”

  “Yay!” said Jennifer. She beamed at Tali, then Simkha, then everybody else.

  Mika caught Simkha’s eye.

  “You feeling a little better, Simmie?”

  Simkha shrugged.

  “You look like you got, like, half a spoon of energy back,” opined Good-Arms Jock.

  “A spork,” said Leg Day.

  Good-Arms Jock flicked Leg Day’s thigh.

  “Did you want to keep hanging out here,” asked Mika, “or to head home early?”

  Simkha squirmed. But she made herself speak.

  “H-home, please.”

  “Want me to order you a R?deShare back to your flat?” offered Hrefna.

  Simkha blushed and looked away.

  “Euh,” said Tali. “From here… place origin? Me Simkha?”

  “I think… she’s offering to walk you home?” said Good-Arms Jock. “It’s probably best not to take the bus right now.”

  “Do you want,” asked Mika, “for Tali to stay with you again tonigh—”

  “Yes,” said Simkha. “Well, uh, I m-mean. If she w-wants to.”

  Good Arms Jock caught Mika’s eye. Mika nodded.

  “Tali…” said Good Arms Jock. “Do you. Want to sleep. Sleep at Simkha’s place? Sleep here?” She mimed sleeping on Mika’s couch. “Sleep at Lídia’s place?” She pointed at Leg Day and mimed sleep again. “She, uh, has a guest room?”

  “Sleep me place,” said Tali, “sleep me Simkha.”

  Good-Arms Jock glanced at Leg Day, who smirked and bounced her eyebrows.

  “Sounds pretty clear to me,” said Hrefna.

  “If you want,” said Jennifer. I could give you a ride back. I’m gonna get a R?deShare home, and I think your place is on my way? I can just order two stops.”

  Simkha looked at Jennifer, then at Tali, then back to Jennifer.

  Simkha nodded “yes.”

  “Sounds good,” said Jennifer. “Let me just pull the app up, and…”

  “Too late,” interjected Leg Day. “I just ordered a ride for you to share. And you’re not allowed to pay me back. Because my payoff is telling you that Simkha’s place is one-hundred and, like, fifty degrees in the opposite direction to your place. Not at all on the way.”

  “Hmph,” grumbled Jennifer. “I think I still overpaid.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Leg Day. “Just text me how the ride was when you get home, so I can tip right.”

  A few minutes later, Jennifer climbed into the back seat of the R?deShare, gently shoving Tali to sit over next to Simkha. All three settled and buckled themselves in as their driver pulled away from Mika’s house. Tali clutched her borrowed bag of clothes, leftover food, and the wine bottles she had to keep vertical, lest she test the water-tight nature of Hrefna’s reusable corks.

  “Sooo…” said Jennifer, “I might have, like, a bit of a secret agenda with sharing a ride home.”

  “Uh,” said Simkha. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said Jennifer. “It’s just about an idea I had. And I didn’t want to say it in front of the others ‘cause I don’t want them to, like, single me out. But, like, you’re nice? Just don’t make fun of me, yeah?”

  “Uh, sure,” said Simkha.

  “Right, so, where do I start? Well, Lídia said something a few minutes ago when we were in the other room. She said you recognized Tali’s language?”

  “Me Tali,” said Tali.

  “Uh, yeah,” said Simkha. “Kinda. Just… I think it’s a Romance language. But no dialect I recognize. Just that it’s kind of French-y.”

  “Right, so, my question is… do you think her language is, uh, from our… like… world? What if it was from, like, a comic-book style alternate timeline.”

  “Uh,” said Simkha. She frowned and glanced at Tali.

  “Me Tali?” said Tali. Tali glanced at Simkha, then at Jennifer, then back at Simkha.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” said the driver. “But I’m actually a DPhil student, studying cross-linguistic influence in the development of Gallo-Romance languages between the end of late antiquity and the beginning of the Bourbon Caliphate. I would be, like, unbelievably excited to help you identify your dialect… if you’d like help.”

  “Uh,” said Jennifer.

  “Uh,” said Simkha.

  “Euh,” said Tali.

  “Uh, shit, sorry,” said the driver. “I didn’t mean to impose. Sorry. Please ignore me.”

  “Uh,” said Simkha.

  “No,” said Jennifer. “That would actually be amazing. Help us, please, and thanks. Come on Simkha, make her do the thing.”

  “Uh,” said Simkha. She laid a hand on Tali’s knee, glanced at Tali’s face, and closed her eyes to better remember snippets of Tali’s language.“Tali… um… talk… sluu… sluu vous? Uh… lii graas ‘s voust, lii graas ‘s voust… Pell wiis een cherff… cherff feelb? Le laang Sais’sonzz?”

  “Euh.” Tali frowned. “Plaays tee vous kweey… kweeys paarl reey lee laang Ses'sonzz?”

  “Yes! Good! Again!” said Jennifer. Simkha nodded along.

  “Euh, pell wiis Talitha Kohen. Euh, pell wiist lii laangs sell lee laang splendd Ses'sonzz. Knuur lee ftuuyt e lee chlaar.”

  “Hmm,” said the driver. “Well I can barely give you an educated guess with such a small sample, but we’re almost to your first dropoff, so I’ll do my best. Some of your vocabulary sounds Anglo-French, but the grammar is either completely fucked, or the sample is super weird. I think… I think I heard something like ‘la langue saxonnes.’ That should mean something like “the Saxon Tongue.” So I’ll say this is a constructed Anglo-French pidgin. I’d assume your A.R.G. is set in a world where Richarde Lionheart seized the French throne. No… it was probably in the Hundred Years’ War, since that’s more widely-known.”

  The driver stopped the car in front of Simkha’s flat.

  “Uh,” said Jennifer. “Simkha, did you understand that?”

  “Y-yeah…” said Simkha. She frowned, unbuckled herself, and climbed out of the car. “A parallel timeline… Anglo-French… yeah, it’s a good hypothesis.”

  “So… parallel timeline—alternate earth?” asked Jennifer.

  “Yeah,” said Simkha. “It’s a good fit.”

  “So…” said Jennifer. “Well, have you heard of an ‘isekai?’ It’s this idea from a lot of sci-fi and fantasy. Where a character is thrown into another universe that they have to figure out. It was big in a lot of classic literature, but also in modern stuff. Especially in modern weeb fantasy. Which I guess I think of as ‘boyfriend-lit,’ so it might not be your bag.”

  “Uh,” said Simkha.

  “Shit, I’m rambling . My point is that it might be related to Tali’s situation. With her weird magic stuff… and with the weird language shit… and it just makes sense to me. There’s a bunch of tropes about, like, stuff that Tali might be having problems with right now. ‘I-se-kai.’ So, like, maybe we can talk about it when you have more energy? Or, like, you can just look up the tropes, if not?”

  Simkha took Tali’s bag while Tali unbuckled and got out of the car.

  “Uh,” said Simkha, “Sure? That… will probably make sense when I’m a person again.”

  “Okay just think about it,” said Jennifer. “Byeee-e.”

  “What kind of A.R.G. are you guys playing?” asked the driver.

  “What’s an ‘eyaar-ji?’” asked Jennifer, as she pulled the car door shut.

  Tali put her arm through Simkha’s. They stood on the pavement and watched the R?deShare pull away.

  “Tali, you’d tell me if you were from another universe, right?” said Simkha.

  “Euh, Sluu-tou… pell wiis Tali… ruuyn ii saafp ii,” said Tali. “Is Tali… is friend Simkha.”