1. Lumenis Labyrinthus
Neo Venezia, Neo Adriatic Sea (former Kasei Valles)
Aqua Calendar 76, Month 6, Sol 8 (June 9, 2303 A.D.)
16:33
Single undine Akari Mizunashi had spent all afternoon wandering through the paths, waterways, and islands of Neo-Venezia. She had retraced her steps through five of the mysteries of the city, places where the boundary to the spirit world was open, and she was returning to the sixth. The whole day was spent in pursuit of the seventh mystery, a larger-than-life black cat spirit, Cat Sìth.
Cat Sìth was the patron of Neo-Venezia, and someone who Akari had met several times before, but was still very much a mystery to her. Taller and larger than her, the giant cat spirit was always kind to Akari, even if he was a little bit fey. So she had taken this day to row across the city, searching high and low, President Aria her only companion.
As they were walking back up the alley where the Stone of Misfortune lay, the white tomcat plopped down on his butt and scratched behind his ears. He had a pretty big head, so there was a lot of space to scratch. But Akari continued on to her goal.
The svelte young woman in her white and blue undine's uniform stared down at the Stone one more time. It was a chunk of dirty limestone, a little out of place among the basalt paving stones of the alleyway. Akari still felt that there was some power in this place, even though she had been here earlier today without incident. So she decided to take a chance with this mystery and risk its supposed curse once again.
Akari hopped on the Stone of Misfortune one final time, her long pink twintails bouncing right behind. And everything was still normal.
"Of course, nothing happened," she mumbled. "Still kind of a letdown, though." It's just a wide stone on the walkway, Alice had told her that. But she somehow expected something more.
And then, sticking out of the crack in the stones at her feet, an envelope caught Akari's attention. She bent down and picked it up. The envelope had no writing on the outside, but was adorned by a stylized cat's pawprint embossed in gold. And inside?
Seven tickets for the Galaxy Express. One for each wonder of Neo-Venezia she had encountered. Akari's jaw dropped all the way open, staring blankly at the treasure she held. "Whoa. He really came – Cat Sìth!"
"Nyu!"
She read the tickets, "Wednesday morning, 3AM. That's tomorrow night. President Aria, let's go invite everyone else!"
"Punyuu," Aria agreed.
By the following evening, Akari was able to gather her friends and ostensible traveling companions to a trattoria. All six were dressed in the uniforms of an undine: a long, slender white dress, with short sleeves for summer, a square sailor collar in the back, and a bow. But they were slightly different: Akari and Alicia's dresses had the ultramarine lines of Aria Company, Aika and Akira's raiment had the amaranth markings and bow of Himeya, and the orange pattern on Alice and Athena's clothes was the trademark of Orange Planet. The seventh traveller, President Aria, wore only an Aria company sailor's cap, a smaller version of the one worn by his coworkers. For cats, every day is No Pants Day.
They sat on the patio outside the restaurant, on a warm spring night. While the undines carboloaded on tonight's special, a shrimp pasta, the one with a long blonde French braid spoke up. "I think this is all rather exciting, don't you? A train trip to the stars," Alicia Florence said.
"Yeah. My trainee never gets me anything, and yours gets me a magical train ride. Where did I go wrong in my teaching?" Akira Ferrari moaned. The tallest of all of the women here assembled, her long dark chestnut hair framed her fair face.
Said trainee was a little more skeptical. "So let me get this straight. You want us to use these strange tickets you got at the Stone of Misfortune." Wearing a sly smile, Aika pointed her fork towards Akari. "Aren't you just spreading your bad luck to all of us?"
"But the Stone wasn't unlucky at all. At first it seemed unlucky, because I couldn't find Cat Sìth anywhere. But as I revisited each place, I saw its beauty and felt the happy memories wash over me. I think I learned that misfortune turns into good luck if you just look hard enough!"
"Embarrassing comments are forbidden!"
"She's right, you know." Akira rebuked her trainee. "Luck is a big part of success, but you can work hard and make your own luck."
"That may be so, but I still think this is inviting disaster."
"Hoheee," Akari intoned.
Aika Grantchester, a girl with short hair so dark that the reflected light of the trattoria's lamps made it indigo, still wasn't satisfied. Aika asked, "Well, what do you think, Alice? Don't you think it's risky?"
The green haired teenager replied, "I think someone is playing a practical joke on all of you. I'm mainly going to see how stupid we look trying to catch a phantom train in the dead the night."
"Awww, don't be like that," Akari complained as her let her body go limp.
As usual, Athena Glory didn't have much to say. She just stared across the canal, imagining what a Galaxy Express might be like. Real or not, her imagination of a space-faring train seemed sweet enough to savor. The dusky-skinned woman absently picked up a shrimp with her fork – and it promptly slid off onto the stone of the campo below. Athena's annoyed frown came back again.
President Aria, on the other hand, employed the ten second rule outside as well as inside, and helped himself to a shrimp. Waving his tail, he decided that misfortune for some people can be fortune for others.
Calle Schiaparelli
A.C. 76, Month 6, Sol 10
02:40
It was a quiet night in Neo Venezia, as they usually were. The lights of the city dim in the wee hours, leaving the city to be lit by starlight, with a little help from Phobos as it flowed across the Aquatic sky.
The city seemed a bit more sinister than in the daytime, as if in another world from the daytime. The canals looked as black as the night sky above, and the lion statues seemed just a little more predatory than in the day.
Six undines strolled through the streets of this city, led by a white cat with striking blue eyes. President Aria was wearing a tall, cylindrical fur toque – which for his size was essentially an elongated pillbox hat – and a matching cloak of sable with a pair of pompons hanging from the tie. He made no sound, as appropriate on a mission such as this. The same could not be said of his human companions, who tended to be a noisy bunch without even realizing it.
"It's so quiet," Aika whispered.
Alice added, "Maybe too quiet. Like... it's unnaturally still."
Aika shivered. "Scary remarks are forbidden." Then from behind them came the sound of a sudden crash. "Gaah what was that?"
Athena picked herself off the ground, and dusted off her dress. "Sorry, it's really dark, I didn't see that stone."
"Ara ara." Alicia waited a moment before commenting, "You know, this is still the same city you all know. It's just at late night Neo Venezia wears a different face. But to really know a person or a place, you need to see all sides of it. Good and bad, sweet and scary, and know that they are one and the same."
The party of undines turned onto one calle, and then onto another, as they journeyed closer to the edge of the city. Walking past red-roofed stone buildings, and across arched bridges, they never even got close to lost in the dim light. Each of them knew the waterways of the city like the back of their hands. But Akira had memorized every alley and campo of her city too, so it was she who lead them through Venetian streets at their most serene hour.
They pushed past the rail station, which was closed for the night, and pressed further outward. Finally, they arrived at the place where the train tracks entered the city, at the edge of the Ponte della Libertà.
"This is too late to be out." Alice Carroll yawned.
Athena replied with a sympathetic yawn.
Akari, on the other hand, had a gleeful grin. She was almost shaking with excitement.
"And... nothing's happening." Aika noted.
"I'm sure magical trains are very punctual, Aika." Alicia noted. "Let's just wait and find out."
They stood in the narrow street near the steel tracks, waiting for 3AM to arrive. The first thing they noticed was a dim light down the length of the bridge, and then the subtle sound of a train rolling across the tracks.
Suddenly, it seemed like the train was right on top of them. A steam locomotive rolled into the street, swiftly followed by a coal car and six wooden passenger cars.
Akari said, "Wow, this is a bigger train than last time!" Indeed, it barely fit in the street; perhaps this time was a special service? She shivered in anticipation.
Alice wondered where on Earth they had gotten the mineral coal for the coal car, because there sure wasn't any on Aqua. She had learned that much last Christmas, when she had put a lump of charcoal in her own stocking. "It's really the Galaxy Express," she concluded.
Suddenly, the empty street was filled with all manner of cats, queued up to ride the train. A burly conductor in a blue uniform, his face completely shaded by his railroad cap, began looking over everyone's tickets and admitting everyone on the train.
Alicia warned, "It looks like we had better get in line if we want a seat. I didn't know your Galaxy Express would be so popular."
Everyone had a ticket in mouth or hand this time, so the line to ride the train moved quickly. Akari proudly showed her ticket to the imposing conductor, gave a big grin to her friend, and jumped aboard. All the other humans moved aboard a little more gingerly – something about the conductor didn't seem quite right, and he was quite large, so they decided they had better be polite.
What they found on board was just as otherworldly. For a train that could supposedly sail the stars, the decor looked positively antique, with wooden furniture and two-pane sliding windows on the walls. Its passenger cars had green upholstered bench seats on each side of the aisle, like something out of the golden age of rail travel.
Moreover, it was a train full of cats: Persian and Martian, Mau and Manx. Some playful, some stretched out sleeping on the upholstery, some sitting pretty as they watched the odd humans in their midst. Others rubbing against each other in greeting. One even carried a sausage in its jaws, a late-night snack for the commute.
The undines were able to find a set of seats across from each other, so that everyone could see each other. Actually, a pair of gingers were already in one of the seats, but they simply hopped up to the luggage rack above and curled up there.
"You finally got to meet him!" Akari declared.
"Meet who?" Alice asked.
"Cat Sìth, of course!" Blank stares. "You know, the conductor."
"That was him?"
"He didn't look like a cat," Aika reasoned. "Actually, did he even have a face?"
"Don't worry, you'll see," Akari assured her friends. And then the train's engine started up again. The slow groan of the first few cranks of the wheels turned into a growl as the locomotive lurched to life.
The Galaxy Express proceeded out of its makeshift station backwards, with the locomotive pushing from behind – Venice being a terminal station. It cruised along the Ponte della Libertà at a slow pace, before coming to a soft halt a couple kilometers out of the city.
Changing directions, the locomotive began pulling the train from the front. The train soon switched tracks in the middle of the bridge, turning off the side of the bridge onto an little-used set of tracks. The train dropped down to the waterline, and set off to the southwest. The Galaxy Express skimmed the surface of the lagoon, running on rails just below the surface of the water. A long cloud of spray thrown off the wheels glittered in the city light. And still the train accelerated.
Finally, as the train roared across the water at 88 miles per hour, Engine C6250 blew its whistle, and the train lurched into the sky.
"Ara ara ara!" said Alicia with delight.
The rest of the undines left it at that, for there were no words that could capture the experience better.
The train pulled onward and upward, rushing through the Aquatic sky. It rushed past the Kasei Lagoon and farmland of the Sacra Mensa, and rushed above the deep darkness of the trees of the Silva Arsia.
"Look, that's Noctis City!"
"So that must be Nieuw Amsterdam, right there." Aika pointed.
"I've never been so high before. Amazing."
"I landed on Aqua in the daytime," Akari said, "but the night is beautiful too."
And still the Galaxy Express climbed skyward, gaining speed. After a few more minutes, the disc of Aqua started to resolve below them, with a crescent of light off to the east. The train soared seventy kilometers over Aqua, far above the stratosphere, and was still climbing.
Alicia gazed out the window to the world below. "From up here, everything seems so small, doesn't it. Everything in our lives, it's all down there in those few lights."
"It's like we get to leave our whole world behind," said Akira, "just for a night."
"Like a beautiful dream." Athena's yawn fogged the window, as it was terribly late for her, but she was riveted nonetheless.
The train started rattling a bit, and then rolled quickly from side-to-side. Alice was nearly rocked off her seat, but Athena quickly pulled her back to her seat. The bulk of the feline passengers tossed from their seats landed on their feet – the few exceptions fell over, but then put on an expression as if they had always intended to fall over.
Outside, it almost looked like the train had gone into a tunnel, as impossible as that would be. Then the scene through the windows radiated brilliant light, with streaks of reds, greens, blues, and oranges dancing around the train. The ride smoothed, and everyone inside stared at the spectacle, felines included.
"So many colors, so pretty!" Akari had been a fan of colors and shapes since she was an infant, but not many shows were as good as this one.
The train swerved left, then right, then left through the passage. After two minutes, the lights faded as quickly as they came, as the train exited the tunnel. No one was surprised at the jolt running through the train this time, as it exited back to normal space.
Out the window lay a planet, this one done up in the same whites and blues as Aqua. But a little less orange, and a little more yellow and green. Akari blurted, "Ohmigosh, it's Manhome! I thought I would never see her again."
"Your planet looks beautiful too, Akari." Alicia gave her an innocent smile.
"More beautiful than I remembered."
Had she remembered a little better, she might have noticed a few things were different on planet Earth, like the rather conspicuous absence of Lake Qattara.
The locomotive's engine slowed, letting the train start coasting down towards the planet below. The Galaxy Express veered west-by-northwest, crossing Asia Minor in just a few minutes and heading into the Balkans.
"Is that Italia?" Alice asked. "That's a boot, right?"
"Yes. And there's where old Venezia used to be, before she sunk beneath the waves." Akira pointed towards the northern Adriatic, on Italy's east coast. From this altitude, it was impossible for the naked eye to see that she was pointing at Venice, very much not submerged.
They descended further and further into the twilight. Soon, they were afforded a view of the City of Lights just before the early morning washed out the lights below. And still they descended, crossing the English Channel and above the island of Britain. By this time, they could make out the outlines of roads and villages by the pattern the lights formed below.
"It looks like we're landing. Where are we landing, Akari?" Alicia asked.
"Um what was that place called again?"
"Oh come on, you're our Manhome expert." Aika chided. "What kind of tour guide are you?"
"Oh right!" Akari hit her fist against the seat. "It's called Wales. It's like part of England or something."
"Eh?" wondered Alice.
"Um... Further ahead, you can see the Atlantic Ocean. It's Manhome's second biggest ocean, and home to Neo Atlantis. It has the world's longest mountain chain, the Mid-Ocean Ridge, which you can't see because it's dark. And under water a really long way." Akari sighed. An undine was supposed to be unflappable in any situation, but this situation was maybe a little too far out.
"Brava, Akari." Alicia giggled.
The train dipped down towards a dimmer region of the Welsh countryside, in a rugged land with mountains and lakes below. Finally, the Galaxy Express veered a hard left, lining itself up with the train tracks below. It gingerly approached the ground. And then a series of clangs rang out throughout the train with small bumps to the passengers as it touched wheel to rail.
Having landed in a straight spot, the 999 acted as a normal train, leading them through the twists and turns of a 10 minute ride through the twilit countryside. Finally the train began to slow, and all of its passengers began to stir, even those who had been cat napping.
The train came to a stop at a simple rail platform, and almost immediately, the feline passengers began leaping for the ground. Clear black letters on a white sign declared the name of the village: "ULTHAR".
Beyond the short wooden covered walkway was a small station building, barely larger than a small cottage. The building of flat fieldstone was completely empty at this hour; the only staff on hand was the feline stationmaster, a tabby named Beatrice.
"Well, we've come all this way. Shall we go out and explore?" Akira asked.
"Sure!" Akari stood up, dusting the cat hair off her dress. "I've never been anywhere as far away as Wales before!"
Aika just gave her a strange look for that remark.
They joined the flow of cats jumping out the doors, but somehow ended up as the last passengers to exit anyway.
"What a cute village!" said Akari, looking down towards a collection of cottages on the banks of a lake.
"Hey, look at that." Alice pointed to a wooden sign cut into the shape of a cat, which read "Welcome to Ulthar, City of Cats".
"Wow, how cool," Alicia said. "No wonder we ended up here." They started walking up the platform towards the station house to explore the town. Then the steam engine came back to life, and everyone suddenly stopped.
"Wait, we can't get left behind!" Akari raced back to the train, followed by the rest of her friends. But the conductor stepped out, hand spread out to block her reboarding. "We still have our tickets," she cried.
The conductor shrugged, then removed his cap. Appearing underneath it was a large black cat face, with pink ears and golden slitted eyes.
"Cat Sìth!" Aika stopped in her tracks. The others did too, not sure how to react to such an august presence.
Akari pleaded, "We can't board? Did we break the rules?"
The large cat shook his head in the negative.
"Why can't we go home?"
Cat Sìth looked at Akari with a sad face. And then he scooped her up with his massive paws, and gave her a warm embrace.
"I understand. We can't go back, can we?"
"Can't go back?" Aika yelped.
"Will I see you again?"
Cat Sìth answered with a feline smile – and then gave Akari a giant lick on her face.
"Nyuuuuu…" Aria was stunned.
The sound of the train whistle brought him to his senses again, by which time, Cat Sìth was already aboard the train. The steam engine started revving up.
"Good-bye! Until next time!" Akari waved vigorously. Alicia joined her with a regal wave, which caused Akira to wave goodbye as well.
They all stood there for a moment alongside the tracks, until Akari finally asked the obvious question. "So, what do we do now?"
"Alicia, your trainee got us stuck on another planet. Perhaps you need to review your teaching methods," Akira accused.
"Ara ara ara," replied a flustered Alicia.
"I got this. This is all totally a dream. All we need to do is wake up all at the same time," Aika explained. "Okay, wake up on the count of one, two, three!" Aika pinched herself and her neighbor.
"Ow, why did you pinch me!?" Alice grumbled.
"You looked like you need to wake up the most."
Athena yawned again.
"She's the one you needed to pinch!"
"Ok, one, two, three!" Aika pinched both Athena and Alice this time with a sly smile.
"Stop that!"
Beatrice walked over to the humans, and rubbed her body against Akari. This caused a bit of a stir below knee-level until Aria got acquainted with her.
The humans were getting hopelessly lost at her station lately, so she led them behind the train station towards the village. The tabby with a little blue cap stopped as soon as they all reached the main road.
"So... we just wait here?" Alicia asked Beatrice.
"Mew."
A minute later, they heard the low roar of a car engine approaching. A long black limousine pulled up to the station, and a tall Englishman with coal-black hair stepped out. They would have no trouble understanding him; as they worked in the tourism industry, all of the undines spoke English quite well.
"I apologize for my tardiness, but traffic on the M25 was absolute Hell," he said with a sardonic smile. "Allow me to introduce myself; I am Sebastian, butler to the Earl Phantomhive. Welcome to Earth."
"Earth?" Akira was incredulous, "It hasn't been called that since..."
"Ah, quite. I also welcome you to the year 2016." He took a minute to savor the women's shock, then continued. "Seeing as you all are so recently arrived, may I extend my lord's invitation and offer the hospitality of Phantomhive Manor?"
Sebastian cut quite a striking figure in his dapper suit and tie – modern of course, as a proper suit with tails attracted too much attention in this day and age. Akari found him attractive to look at, but somehow, in a way she didn't understand, there was something repulsive about him too. He had only shown kindness, but she felt something nonetheless.
Sebastian in return assessed the party of six undines with his practiced grace, but raised an eyebrow at Akari, as if he had seen something interesting. "As of late, many people have been arriving as you have done, through space-time anomalies, and my lord is one of those empowered by the Crown to accommodate new Arrivals. I assure you, nothing will happen to you that will demean the honor of the Phantomhive name."
"You got beds?" Alice let out a long yawn, her tiredness finally winning the war against her excitement.
"But of course. Please, enter the limousine, and I will convey you all to the manor. The path which you must take has been prepared for you."
They all entered the back of the limousine: Alicia graciously, Athena ungracefully, Akari warily, Alice sleepily, with Aika and Akira both distracted by the hot guy. Sebastian revved the motor, and sped away.
Phantomhive Manor, Kent County, England
Sunday, September 11, 2016
2:02 PM BST
Sebastian brought a tray of tea to this sextet of women with strange hair colors and odd dress-like uniforms. That description would cover a lot of the Arrivals he had been meeting lately, but for this time, it was fortunately the most unusual thing about the women in the drawing room. Well, that and the Mars thing, but a human is still a human. Their relative normalcy would make the next step much easier, so he had room to improvise.
Pouring a cup, he asked the freshly-rested undines, "I realize that you all are a very long way away from home, but do you have any idea where on Earth where you'd like to settle?"
Akari thought about her history, and realized that if it was the 21st century, it might still exist. "We want to go to Venice," she said in a matter of fact tone. "We are undines, the water is our life blood, the gondola, our second home. Venice is where our hearts will sing."
"Embarrassing remarks are forbidden", chided Aika.
"Ara ara ara." The tall blonde woman, Alicia, was impressed at her charge's speech. "Yes, I do believe that we would all flourish in the canals of Venice."
Akira added, "Right. Give a prima undine a gondola and she can make it for sure."
"I believe that can be arranged. Well, ladies, I thank you for bearing with all of my intrusive questions. I shall do my best to find appropriate accommodation for you all. I assure you, I will find you one Hell of a place to live."
"Don't mention it," Alicia said sweetly. "I appreciate all of your help."
After taking his leave, Sebastian called the real estate agent, and told them they needed another place, this time in Venice. No, not Venezia; his clients were quite clear in requesting Venice, he confirmed with a toothy smile.
The agent immediately began looking for an apartment building near Venice, California. Sure, Snapchat was buying all of the real estate there now, but this Lord Phantomhive guy was loaded, so he thought he'd be able to find a decent building anyway.
2. The Martian Invasion
Venice Beach, California, USA
Monday, September 12, 2016
9:09 AM PDT
Yay, the first day at work! I didn't think years of university would lead to job as an apartment manager. But just because the job isn't what I expected doesn't mean it's not worth doing. And who knows, maybe some cute ronin from room five will fall in love with me, like in Maison Ikkoku. Heh, I wish.
I drove up to the property in Venice Beach, and parked in the ground floor parking lot. The property was actually really close to the beach, maybe just a couple minute's walk way. Nice. I walked under the building to the small elevator, and waited for it to arrive.
It was a small elevator, and slow. Curiously, the floors were marked ⓪①②③, like a European elevator. I've long been convinced that all elevators must take the same amount of time to go from the top to the bottom of the building, regardless of how tall the building is. Union rules or something. This one sure wasn't breaking the pattern.
When the elevator opened up, I was greeted by a Hispanic man, about my age and height, gathering up a few loose tools in the hall.
I wasted no time greeting him, "Hi, I'm Brent."
"Jorge. Nice to meet you."
"So, what's going on here? Looks like a major remodel."
"That was what was happening, until your guy bought the property. I'm just picking up the rest of the stuff before the next job."
"Wait, I've got tenants coming tomorrow. How many rooms are ready?"
He scratched his head. "Just the four over here," Jorge gestured to the north set of apartments on the first floor. "Avoid the south side, that still has some major plumbing problems."
Well, I thought my management account balance seemed a little too high for just running a place. "Oh boy. Please tell me you're available to continue fixing this place up."
"Sorry, man. I'm just maintenance for the Angeles Property Management company. I'll email you the general contractor we used, though. Might speed things along."
"Thanks. You're a lifesaver."
He gathered a few leftover things in the building's storage, and I received the big box o' keys which granted me dominion over my new realm. We shook hands, said goodbye.
And then I started exploring. Master key in hand, I looked over each one twenty-four apartments. The first floor apartments Jorge claimed were ready, 1 to 4, all looked to be in pretty good shape. A bit of blue painter's tape on the windows, but nothing too bad. Working appliances. I selected apartment 1 for myself, because I might as well get the extra view. And I'm not a fan of having a window to the east, since it wakes me up way too early. But an extra window to the west is just dandy.
As I made my way through the rest of the rooms, things were a little worse. Old, run-down appliances on the top floor, and no appliances at all on the middle floor. A cracked window in apartment 24. Down on the first floor in apartment 7, the wall was down to the studs and a damp, moldy smell pervaded the room. I cracked open a window – there was nothing in here to steal anyway. Whoever bought this building for immediate housing had sure found a hell of a place.
Right below my room, on the ground floor, was a small room which held a few old garden tools. Under room 4, the next corner was a small storage room, mostly used by spiders at this point. A bit of an anticlimax for the grand tour, but at least I had rooms for the people coming tomorrow. The rest of the open space on the floor was devoted to parking cars.
From the outside of the apartment building, you could see three sets of blue balconies on each floor, with an extra-long semi-shared balcony for the middle rooms split in the middle by short walls. The north side faced a former street, but was now just a grass-lined walkway that led straight to the beach. This "front" side had a brick facade – and only a facade, because this is Southern California, not some geologically stable place where you can actually use bricks architecturally. However, all three of the other sides were a stucco painted an exciting beige. Even the south-side balconies were coated in a chipped beige paint. That's gonna have to be fixed. The beach climate is nice, but it's sure hard on buildings.
I looked over my instruction sheet to see what I had to get ready. Wait, I had to provide a furnished apartment by tomorrow? I got that this was supposed to be housing for fictional characters, but even then they can't sit on fictional chairs. I had to get moving. I unloaded my truck as fast as possible, and dragged the boxes into my room.
I proceeded to make for the nearest IKEA as fast as I could, while of course obeying all posted speed limits. Haha, just kidding about that last part. I passed a Costco on the way out – that was going to be useful, but mail-order mattresses are just not going to cut it for tomorrow.
Once my truck and I filled up on furniture and Swedish meatballs, respectively, we made our way back to the apartment. The fun part of IKEA, of course, is the assembly. The mattresses would be delivered tomorrow morning, but in the meantime I had six HEMNESes to put together. The good news is that after one assembles a couple of them, one has it down pat. The rest of the beds fell together pretty fast, and with the final twist of an Allen wrench, I made my way back to the room I had chosen.
It was already dark, but I was able to at least start unboxing a few of my things. I set up my own bed, finally, and just about collapsed on it. I guessed a few minutes rest wouldn't hurt. And the next thing I knew, it was morning.
I woke up, dredged a shampoo bottle out of my box of toiletries, and dragged myself to the shower. I had to pick up my first residents at LAX at 10:15, and it was already 9:40. It was a good thing the airport was so close, or otherwise I'd've been in hot water already. Hotter water than this shower, anyway. That's what happens with water heaters that don't get used, I reminded myself.
I finished getting dressed and headed downstairs toward my truck. I checked email on my phone, and it looked like I finally got a list of resident profiles from Funtom. Sweet, at least now I'll know who I'm looking for, I thought.
I was just about to read it, when a long black limousine pulled up to the complex. Six young women exited the vehicle, along with a white cat. Oh boy, cats. I hadn't thought about that much during the hiring process, but I'd always been really allergic to cats. Like, full nosebleed after a few minutes in the same room. I hoped I was not going to find myself unable to do the job on just the second day at work.
That train of thought got interrupted when I glanced up to the girls. "Wait a sec... those dresses..." They were all dressed like the characters from an anime called Aria. It was like an almost perfect cosplay – actually a little too perfect. I adjusted my glasses, but it didn't change my assessment.
As the limo driver removed their meager travelling bags from the trunk of their car, I stepped forward to meet them all.
The tall blonde approached me first, and gave me the once over. I was 33 years old, an inch over six foot, and more than an inch overweight. I had hair somewhere between brown and dirty blonde, and a couple inches of red sideburns on each side. I wore shorts and a Hawaiian shirt emblazoned with hibiscus flowers, perfect for this warm, sunny autumn day.
She greeted me cheerfully, "Good morning, I assume you're our new apartment manager?"
"Sure am! I'm Brent Laabs, nice to meet you."
"I'm Alicia Florence."
"I noticed, but who are you really?" I asked the cosplayer.
She giggled, following up with, "Prima Undine Alicia Florence of Neo Venezia. Some call me Snow White, but really I'm simply Alicia. Thank you for taking us in!"
"Oh boy." For some things, the only proper response is the Sam Beckett one, and this was definitely one of those moments. These were definitely not cosplayers. They were all too in character – Aika's energetic motion, Alice with her unamused face, Alicia's grace, Akira's lovely charm, Akari's open-mouthed stare, and Athena's easy strength with the luggage. And oops, she dropped a bag. Their big blue-eyed cat tried dragging the duffel, to no avail. Yeah, I knew every one of these people straight from the television screen. These were somehow, someway, the real thing.
And why would the Powers That Be send me cosplayers from another universe, anyway? I had been told what to expect, by both an an angel and a reaper, no less, and it was still just the weirdest feeling to be standing in front of a cartoon character (but in 3-D). Well, I could roll with that. No matter how strange it felt, I still had a job to do.
Snapping out of my reverie, I heard Akari tell the man in the limo, "Thank you so much for the ride!"
"No, it was my pleasure." The driver was probably about age 20, a tall skinny white kid with short brown hair.
I was supposed to pick them up, so I offered, "Did you need money for the fare?"
"Don't worry about it. I have a free hour because of a late flight, and I got to spend it with these ladies. That's payment enough." He reached inside, and pulled out a card that he handed to Akari. "If you ever need a ride somewhere, let me know, okay?"
Akari got a big smile on her face, her pink lips just about reaching her pink hair. "Thanks again, Mr. Driver!"
I introduced myself to the rest of my new tenants. They introduced themselves to me, too, but that step was just perfunctory, because I already knew who they were. I wouldn't have to memorize new names, and I already had an idea of what they'd want as tenants. Which made everything so much easier on me, because I'm honestly not great with names and faces.
Akira approached me, and brought up the most pressing desire of these women, "Thanks for your hospitality, but I think there's been a mixup up in our arrangements. We wanted to go to Venezia in Italia, and we got sent to Venice in California."
"Oh that's…" I had to suppress my laugh, because that was really the wrong signal to send right now. "That's really too bad. I think I can understand why you'd rather be there." Since they were all gondoliers in their story, set in a replica of Venezia on Mars, that was an easy assumption. "I'll tell you what. Let me send an email to my boss, and let me see if I can get it straightened out for you."
At about this time, a truck pulled up into our alley, bearing the blue and yellow branding of Ikea. "Good news everyone," I announced, "it looks like your mattresses are here, so you have something to sleep on."
"Good. That flight was too loooong!" Alice yawned.
Once I directed the delivery men on where to take the mattresses, I gathered the gondoliers, and we walked up the stairs to the first floor.
"Sorry, I wish I had more time to get your rooms settled and nice, but I just started work yesterday. Since there are only four livable apartments, and I'm in one of them, you'll have to take three right here. There are two bedrooms in each one, so I think you should have enough privacy.
"Meh. I guess that's an upgrade. C'mon, Athena, let's take this one."
"Mmm," Athena agreed.
Aika stepped up to the blonde, her hands clasped together, "Alicia, would you —"
She was cut short by her teacher, Akari, grabbing her by the ear. "No betraying Himeya by fraternizing with a rival company!"
Alicia smiled with her left hand on her cheek. "Ara ara ara."
And so room assignments went entirely predictably. The gondoliers of Aria Company took the larger number 4 on the corner, likely because everyone was going to visit them anyway. And because technically, three people would be living there.
Wearing a uniform with blue markings were Alicia Florence: cute, fair, placid, and bearing a long blonde braid. Her junior Akari Mizunashi, a native of Japan and protagonist of Aria possessed pink twintails an energetic demeanor. And the last tenant was President Aria, the bulky white tomcat with lucky blue eyes. This constituted the entire staff of Aria Company, the smallest of Neo Venezia's gondola companies.
Apartment 3 went to the undines of Himeya, Akira E. Ferrari and Aika S. Grantchester. They wore white dresses with dark red highlights and a small cap. Akira was tall, dark, and handsome, with long chestnut brown hair and fair skin. Slightly shorter than her senpai, Aika's short raven hair framed a pleasant round face with a near permanent smile.
Finally, No. 2 was occupied by the Orange Planet team, still wearing their uniforms stroked with an orange pattern. Leading the group was the dusky-skinned, silver-haired Athena Glory. The teenage green-haired rowing prodigy, Alice Carroll, was relatively stoked to be upgrading her relationship with Athena from roommates to flatmates, despite her low-key manner.
Just great, I thought, all names beginning with "A". That's gonna be confusing to remember, even if I do recognize all of these anime characters. All these people. That's going to take a while to get used to, being real people and not characters. Sheesh. Will wonders ever cease?
I walked into each room as they were throwing the sheets on their beds, and handed out keys to my new tenants. Hopefully, not for long, because they really would be more happy in Italy. I sent an email to the company about resettlement, and hoped for the best.
I spent the time getting utilities sorted for each apartment, moving over accounts. I assumed that we'd be needing to pay for everyone's Internet, which is cheaper anyway. And now, I just had to sort out what to do with six anime girls, a somewhat thornier proposition. Thankfully, it turned out that they were mostly able to sort out themselves.
The first to wake was Akira, who still looked a little groggy when she knocked on my door in the early afternoon. "Oh, hi. I thought you'd be asleep for a lot longer."
"Just following the advice we always give our customers: Sleep only three hours after your flight, and then you won't have jet lag the next day."
"Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks. Well, come on in."
She entered, and sat down in my computer chair – not that I had many choices of where to sit, yet. "Any news on Venezia?"
My computer was set up, but there was no internet hookup yet, and wouldn't be until Friday. So I pulled up my phone, and saw this email:
"Man, what a dick," I whined. "Looks like you all are stuck here." I handed my phone to Akira.
She read the device. "What the hell did you say to him?" she glowered at me.
I scrolled up to my own email.
"Huh. He seemed so charming in person."
"Yeah. I'll give you that much."
"All the best guys are total jerks," Akira concluded.
I thought about this logic and shrugged; that only earned me another angry face. Risky had been right in my job interview – even when working on a divine calling, shit flowed downhill. But I was still around mostly pleasant, attractive women, so I wasn't about to kill myself over it. (Sorry, Risky.)
Aika peeked through my apartment's open door, took a look at Akira's glare, and started backing away stealthily. Not stealthily enough.
"Aika!" Akira growled.
"Yes!"
"Go round up everyone else."
She scooted off as fast as she could, and soon I could faintly hear her knocking on the other apartment doors.
Akira, for her part, mainly grumbled to herself for the next five minutes, leaning onto the hand against her chin. She asked me a few questions about whether I had enough money to buy them all necessities, clothing, and furniture, which I answered in the affirmative. The budget might not be able to afford the kind of rococo stuff they had in Neo Venezia, but it would do.
Thinking about my budget, I noticed I also got a reply on my other question from yesterday – it looks like the former and now renewed general contractor would have a crew back to work on Monday. It looked like my company could be a little heartless, but at least they were efficient. I would, of course, direct the improvements.
Aika strolled back into the apartment, this time accompanied by Alicia and Akari. A minute later Athena led Alice in by the hand. Alice still had droopy eyes, and her hair was something of a green tangle.
Alice yawned. "This place is terrible. I can't even find the bidet!"
Akari picked up, "Oh right, I was wondering about the bidets, Mr. Manager!"
"Uhm…. Americans uh…" I stumbled.
"Hey, listen up!" Saved by Akira, whose face had just now shifted towards a calm smile. "Our apartment manager, Brent, has confirmed to me that we are not going to be able to move to Venezia. But we should have plenty of time and money to make this place comfortable. And from there, we can work our way towards moving to Italia. Or whatever we want to do with our lives.
"Sorry about that, everyone. I guess you're all stuck with me," I apologized.
Akari automatically offered, "Please take good care of us, Mr. Manager!"
"I'll try my best!"
Aika asked, "How are we supposed to work? As undines?"
Athena piped up, "Are there even canals here?"
I fielded this one, "A few canals, but not really… not really the same as in Venice in Italy. In Venezia."
"Well, that's worth a try. I wonder if there's any competition?" Alicia said sweetly.
I just shrugged.
"Feh, like any competition stands a chance against the three Water Fairies of Neo Venezia!" Aika boasted.
"She's got you there," Akira told Alicia, who just giggled.
I interjected, "Wait, let's step back a sec: how are you even going to get a gondola here?"
"Oh, that's no problem. Mr. Butler said that he would send us gondolas, as soon as he can buy them," Akari elucidated. I made a mental note to figure out who Mr. Butler was, and thank him for being such a nice guy.
"Ok, that's really nice." I followed up with, "Can I ask how you got here? You seem like you're a long way from home."
Akari said, "I know, you don't meet time travelers every day."
"You're time travelers?" I asked. So that's what the story is? "We're time travelers" is probably the worst cover story they could think of – unless they actually believed it?
The girls looked around at each other with tilted eyebrows, not sure what to say. Alice eventually got frustrated that no one was answering, and decided to respond, calmly, "We were all undines in Neo Venezia, on the planet Aqua. So, Akari was going around the city looking for a mega cat, but instead she got seven tickets for the Galaxy Express. And then this mega train came into the city in the middle of the night, and we rode on it into the sky along with all the cats. Then all these lights appeared in outer space, and the train took a mega jolt and I almost fell over. We landed on Earth after that, and then the mega cat spirit Cat Sìth told Akari that we had to stay here."
The longer Alice's story went on, the more nervous Aika looked. Perhaps the others were trepidatious too, but Aika always wears her heart on her sleeve. And if the story was bullshit, she would have performed tsukkomi on Alice by now, if the manga was right. "Wow, that sounds really exciting. Well, I hope Cat Sìth was right, and you all enjoy yourselves in our time."
Aika breathed a sigh of relief at not being judged a crazy person. "I'm glad you understand our situation. Does it happen all the time or something? People from another planet?"
"Not as far as I know. But I'm pretty sure I can believe you all."
Alice remarked, "Maybe you should be a little more skeptical."
"Hoheee?" Akari uttered.
Alicia laughed. "It all sounds like a good long-term plan, Akira. But the first thing we need is —" She paused; everyone else filled the silence:
"Groceries"
"Clothing"
"Music"
"Toiletries"
"Make-up"
"I was going to say lunch."
Alicia's idea won out, even though the other needs were great too. After insisting that they try out the local cuisine, we walked to a Mexican restaurant on the beach. Walking with six people in white uniform dresses with geometric colored lines made me feel a little bit like a cult leader. I suppose my Hawaiian shirt and shorts would probably dissuade most people of that idea. But hey, Venice is a weird town anyway – why not just embrace the weirdness, or so I thought.
We ordered an assortment of tacos, enchiladas, chile rellenos, and tamales, and munched on some chips and salsa while the meal was being prepared.
Alice warned, "I think this salsa has soap in it."
"Oh, that's the cilantro. The green stuff." I had a bite. "Yep, definitely."
"What are you guys talking about? It doesn't taste like soap at all," Aika said.
"It does to me," Alicia said.
"Really?"
"It's a genetic thing," I explained, "Some of us just taste the world differently."
"Ah!"
"You'll get used to it if you eat enough Mexican food around here. I still don't like the taste, but I'm used to it."
Alice enjoyed the rest of her food, but she did pick all of the cilantro off of her pastor tacos.
After that, it was off to the mall. I had to make two trips, because there was no way I can fit seven people in my truck. I worried a bit about introducing these women to our ancient fashion trends and archaic products, but they took to shopping like a duck takes to water. They handled everything from groceries to clothing with ease, with only the occasional question about what something did.
Except with me doing all of the buying. In that way, I suppose it was like most of the other times I took women shopping. At least this time I had a company card to expense everything to. I started rifling through all of the receipts, trying to get a sense of how much money we spent.
Alicia noticed me with her deep blue eyes. "Are we going over budget?"
"I don't think so. I've just got to keep track of everything."
"I see. Would you like some help with that? I run a business, or well, I used to run one."
"That would really help out. I accept your kind offer of assistance."
The receipt pile only got worse by as the afternoon rolled into the evening – as did my attention span for shopping – but I held my stiff upper lip and carried on, what what. By the end of the evening, the girls had all doffed their work uniforms in favor of outfits they had bought:
Athena wore a simple white shirt and a killer pair of skinny jeans. A brown-skinned beauty like her didn't need to do that much to be gorgeous.
Alice had assembled a schoolgirl chic style, with a green plaid skirt, yellow blouse, and matching jacket. Sadly, there were no knee-high stockings, and no, I'm definitely not checking out sixteen-year olds.
Akira wore a modern dress, sleeveless with broad black shoulder straps on top. It had wide vertical black and white stripes descending from below the bust to knee level. She definitely had the most fashion sense of this crew.
Alicia had donned a sundress with a sunflower print and an open neckline. Around her neck she wore a gold chain with a small locket, but I'm pretty sure that was new, and not yet a keepsake.
Aika's image was somewhat less wholesome than that, with a bright red spaghetti-strap top just short enough to show a bit of midriff. I suppose it's always appropriate for Italians to wear spaghetti straps, right? Below that was a set of torn blue jeans of the sort that costs at least ten dollars per rip, held up by a red vinyl belt.
Her friend Akari wore a frilly, baby blue blouse with a navy blue pleated skirt, white socks, and sneakers. Nothing too fancy, but the colors were the perfect compliment to her pink hair.
And finally, President Aria wore a child-sized Panama hat with a white band.
Accompanying these women, I no longer looked like the leader of the Undine Cult, but I did look like the luckiest guy around. Of course, looks wouldn't tell you I had spent the last few hours shopping for clothes, pretending to like clothes shopping. I decided I had to find out if my company offered hazard pay for circumstances such as these.
I seem to have avoided at least one hazard, though – I had spent a lot of time around Aria, and hadn't had any kind of allergic episode. I'm not sure if Mars cats are different, or it's because he never seems to lick himself, but he never triggered my cat allergy.
As we loaded the back of my white pickup with bags and bags from boutiques and department stores, Athena cried, "Oh my God!", and pointed towards the eastern sky.
Everyone glanced upwards, and we saw the nearly full moon hovering above the city lights. "The Moon is mega!" Alice observed.
Alicia said, "And it's lighting up everything!"
"Mmm-hmmmm!" Akari beamed. "I missed you, Mr. Moon!"
"So you see the Man in the Moon? I would have put you down for the rabbit making mochi."
"Mr. Manager, I can see both!"
The native Aquans were all still staring at the sky, transfixed by the floating white orb in the sky.
"I think they're moonstruck."
"So am I. It feels so familiar, but so strange." Akari paused, then added, "I'm glad I got to share this feeling of wonder with my friends. It feels good to be back."
Alice warned, "The Moon is like mega giant! Is that even safe?"
3. Hacking Things Together
Venice Beach, California, USA
Thursday, September 15, 2016
11:30 AM PT
While the undines had vivid memories of their first week on Earth in the 21st century, the week passed in a blur for me. There was just too much to do, getting people set up for an entirely new living quarters and an entirely new life.
To their credit, the undines were real troopers. It helped that they had previously lived in something of a 16th century living history park, Neo Venezia, and they weren't averse to doing things the hard way. No matter how "mega primitive" Alice thought something was, that observation was usually the end of the complaint. After all, they had spent a lot of their everyday lives helping travelers, and Akari herself had made the journey from Manhome to Earth with no more than a backpack and small box of personal possessions.
The company budget that had seemed so large at first was rapidly flowing away on buying things. So many things. Cell phones so they could call for help if needed. Furniture, toiletries, electronics, pans, and cooking utensils. We started out with paper plates and plastic cups, just to give them a chance to find tableware they liked later on. Of course, they all had expensive tastes.
I had gotten estimates back on fixing up the remainder of the property from the general contractor, and that was going to eat up an even larger share of the budget. While we were fine right now, I could imagine that in the long term, it was going to be unsustainable. At least we could all use my parent's Netflix account together to save money, right?
We could now actually do that, because the internet had been hooked up – a day early even. I must have been blessed by the angel Safety, desu no. Fortunately for us, they had already run fiber into the building, from those utility poles lining the alley, and it was just a matter of the phone company turning it on. While the network hadn't been run through the whole building yet – probably one of the many reasons the building was under remodel – it was wired up to the first floor.
While the girls were out exploring the city on foot, I drove over to the nearest Fry's Electronics for a couple of wifi routers and some patch cable. This particular store had a tiki theme, with giant, angry-looking heads, bamboo torch lighting, and shelves full of computer peripherals. Given that I was housing Martian invaders, I should have gone to the Fry's in Burbank with the B-movie theme and a flying saucer crashed into the entrance, but Manhattan Beach was a lot closer.
I could imagine Akari's reaction to seeing moai in a store. Alice and Athena would copy the stern expressions. At some future point, I needed to bring everyone by here to pick up a few things. They definitely needed some kitchen appliances, probably a television or two, and whatever else caught their interest.
But that just brought up my next problem: my truck was really not a great way of getting around for seven people at a time, with its tiny bench back seat where even Akari and Alice had to squeeze to fit in. What we needed was a van, something that could seat all of us – at least until we got more residents. L.A. is such a car city that you just need wheels to make it anywhere, and Uber was not a long-term solution. And those annoying-ass electric scooters parked everywhere were definitely not a solution, either.
When I returned, I set up a pair of wireless routers for the first floor. It was not a well-designed system and I'm sure there were dead spots, but all we had at this point were a few residents on smartphones, and myself. I'd grow the network properly when we had a reason to do so, but the stopgap worked for the time being.
When I attached my own computer to our basic-but-functional network, I decided to write an email to my boss, Sebastian, about whether the apartment's budget could support getting a vehicle, and when we might be getting more residents. About an hour later, I got back a short reply:
Wow. So, I was really on my own here. Just like I had done before, working from home, and in graduate school before that. Just with a lot more money around. I wondered if I could just, you know, run off with the cash? What would Sebastian do, find a demon or something to track me down? I doubted he even knew demons. And even if he did, I was pretty sure I could escape the likes of Risky.
Not that I would actually steal the money. At the very least, I couldn't do that to my lovely and talented residents, who were depending on me to keep things together. Living with real life anime girls sounded a lot more fun than a life on the lam, hiding out in Latin American ranchos and fancy island hotels but never staying long enough to make a friend.
Anyway, I heard a friendly voice calling from the hall, "We're back, Mr. Manager!" That must be Akari, I thought.
"Yo Brent!" Aika added.
From the sound of the chatter, all of the undines were back from their stroll around town. Apparently they had found some Thai food, and were still deciding which curry was best. I hopped up out of my chair and went to invite them in for a talk. But as soon as I reached the office door, Alicia preempted, "Brent, can you please bring your toolbox by our room?"
"Ah, sure." I could see they were all loaded up with a few shopping bags, so I wasn't going to get them right away. "Hey all, could I get everyone to drop by Alicia's place in a few minutes? I have some updates for you."
After a few affirmatives, I went back and grabbed my tools. It wasn't a very extensive set, just a few tools I had collected from college, along with a few odd pieces I found in storage downstairs, but it was plenty for this task.
I went to the other end of the hall, and stepped into the open door of apartment 4. Alicia said, "Thanks for coming Brent. Can you help us hang some curtains?"
"Sure!" I thought about it as I started shuffling through my kit for some drywall anchors, then snarked, "I would have figured you were more into Venetian blinds."
Akari giggled, "We're into both, silly!"
By the time the other girls arrived, I was standing up on a dining chair and Akari was on another one, both part of a set they had scrounged up at a local antique store, which was glad to reclaim the floor space. Of the four other chairs we weren't using, one was a bit wobbly and the other one had a missing dowel in the seat back, but as a set they still were still handmade and strong. And not the industrial, flatpacked furniture that none of the undines seemed to care for, especially so for Akari.
Anyway, as Akari and I stood atop these chairs, we were both holding up a curtain rod to be centered at Alicia's direction. Soon after she arrived, Akira took over bossing us around, to ensure that the curtains were mounted to her high standard of quality. After a few adjustments, probably back to where Alicia originally had us holding it, I made a quick mark on the wall before passing the pencil to Akari.
Still standing up on the wooden chair, I said, "I have a few announcements for you all."
Akira, her task done, said, "You have the floor."
"Actually I'm up here and you have the floor."
Alice huffed; Aika said, "Dad jokes are forbidden!" I think at least Akari liked it, but she too didn't have the floor.
As I got down off the chair – I was taller than everyone in this very small crowd, anyway, I told announced, "First off, I set up a wireless internet network for the apartment, which should be a little bit faster than relying on the wider network." I walked them through to the settings. I told them, "The network name is "Pokoteng", and the password is 'swordfish1!', that's digit 1 and exclamation mark at the end. Don't want to make it too easy to guess, after all."
"Punyuu!" Aria Pokoteng approved.
"Cool, that's out of the way. Next: I'm going to buy a van for you all, so that more of us can go places together."
"Sounds great," cheered Alicia, who wasn't really enjoying the attention she got on the bus.
"Just what I've always wanted," Alice deadpanned.
Akari corrected, "It's not your van, silly."
I reasoned, "I guess it doesn't make much difference if I give it to you or not – most of this stuff is going to be left over when you leave back to your own world, and just go back to the company." Something about these people from Funtom made me pretty sure that they would see a purchase for the residents, regifted to me at the end, as embezzlement. If they're delegating so much authority to me, they must be pretty sure of their accounting process. "But if I give it to you all, does anyone know how to drive a car?"
"Uh yeah, you just get in and enter the address into the screen." Aika gave me her best "no duh" look.
"I can't get one of those. I mean the kind where you steer and pedal the brake. Can anyone do that?"
"That sounds really hard~." Akari's face went blank.
"Can't you get a better car?" Aika asked.
"Uh, we don't actually have those yet. We'll probably get those in ten years or so. But for now, all self-driving cars are prototypes." Or, no better than prototypes, in any case.
"None of us know how to drive a manual," Akira said. I assumed she meant automatics too; that's centuries of semantic drift for you. "Can't we just get around by train and boat?"
"Well, Los Angeles is to cars as Venice is to gondolas. This is the city that fell in love with cars. So if you want to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, you'll need to drive, or take a bus or taxi."
"This century is mega stupid," remarked Alice.
"I heard that. So if anyone wants to learn how to drive, I'd be happy to teach them."
For a moment, they were mumbling to each other, until Athena stepped up, "Brent, I think I would like to learn."
"Great! We'll set up a time."
Alice asked, "Can I drive my van too?"
"Actually, you're too young to get a license to drive. So you can own it, but not drive it."
"But gondolas are okay?"
"Of course."
"What a strange place this is."
"Actually that brings up one more thing about your age." I explained, "Alice here is only fifteen years old, which means that she needs to be in school."
"Can't I skip it? I was just about to graduate from middle school."
"The law here is that you have to go to school until you turn eighteen."
"This century is mega stupid." Alice scowled.
"Yeah, I thought you might say that, so I looked into it. If you have a job – like for a gondola company – you can get away with only four hours of school a week. It's called 'continuation school'. The school year just started a couple of weeks ago. You can probably catch up no problem, Alice. Just uh, try not to mention "this century" or history that hasn't happened yet. Don't want you to be the Mysterious Transfer Student."
She rolled her eyes at me.
"With that attitude, I think you'll fit in with American teenagers just fine," I deadpanned.
"Wait a second, aren't you still seventeen, Akari?" Aika asked.
"Hehehe, only for a few months more. I'm getting an early birthday!" Indeed, while her birthday was coming up at the end of January, she had just skipped three months in the move between worlds.
Aika stood up, and walked over behind Alicia and Akira. "OK, I'm going to go be with my fellow adults over here."
"Awwww." Akari waved goodbye meekly.
"Actually, you're old enough that you can take the high school equivalency test and skip school. It sounds hard, but it's actually super easy, probably the same level as a high school entrance exam. But uh, how's your American history?"
"Ano..."
"When did the United States become a country?"
"Eto, the Meiji era?" Akari tried.
"Oy vey," I said. "You'll need a little help there."
"Eh? Am I undereducated?"
"Tragically so," Aika quipped.
"Eeeehhh?"
"Don't worry about it," I reassured her. "My grandmother never finished middle school, and she's one of the smartest people I know. But if you want a job that doesn't involve rowing a gondola, you might want to consider more education. Santa Monica College is really close, and doesn't have admission requirements. So all of you adults like Aika can start taking classes there in the winter, if you choose. Maybe some business classes would be helpful?"
"Hmmm, interesting." Alicia was obviously considering the idea.
"They have music classes too, Athena."
Her eyes perked up at that idea. "Ah."
"And if any of you need help, I can tutor you. I've tutored in math up to calculus, general chemistry, physics, English – and also meteorology, intro-level astronomy, and sociology."
"Whoa." Akari was clearly impressed.
"Why are you even here? Can't you get a real job?" Akia teased.
I squinted back, "A wise man once said, 'It's the economy, stupid.'"
Alicia wanted to clear things up, "Speaking of a job, would there be any restrictions on Akari and Alice being employed at their age?"
"No, not in California. Tons of child actors here, and they're almost adults." I wasn't about to bring up Sebastian's suggestion of charging rent – not just yet, anyway – but it did allow me to broach the subject. "If you get bored of lounging around here or want to buy something special, it's okay if you look for a job. Oh, and don't forget to take your Social Security card with you, just in case you get hired."
"My what now?"
"Social Security card. It should be one of the documents you were given."
"What documents? We didn't get documents."
Oh great, I thought, I have six undocumented immigrants. Perhaps "illegal alien" actually works better for five of the six, except for Akari, who was born on Earth. But then I realized, "Wait, you flew in. How did you get through customs at the airport?"
"We have passports." Akari hopped down from her chair, and jogged around the corner into her room. A moment later, she dashed out with a little burgundy-colored folding book in her hand.
"These are British passports," I said, a bit surprised. "What, are you here on tourist visas?"
Alice remarked, "We weren't planning on staying on Manhome, you know."
"Right. Well," I stumbled through, "One more thing to straighten out for you. Alright, that's it from me for now."
With the announcements over, the first thing I straightened out for them was Alicia's curtains. A few quick drill holes later, I mounted the curtain rods. When the fabric was hung, the whole apartment felt a little more lived-in. What a difference curtains make to make a place more homey. The work had felt interminable over the week, but things like that made it really feel like we had made some progress in making a home.
I sauntered back to my room, and dashed off a pithy reply to Sebastian's email:
I left out the line about Alicia only having one spare kidney to sell, since I was starting to worry he might take it literally.
This time, it took a couple of hours to get a reply, but when I finally did, it was not from Sebastian, but from his boss, a CEO inexplicably named Ciel Phantomhive. What kind of name is that, anyway? Of course, this is from the country with such places as Shrewsbury, Gorebridge, Upper Slaughter, and Craven Arms, so maybe weirdness is relative.
This is also when I realized that Funtom, as in Funtom Toy Company, was a pun on Phantomhive, just in a "you know, it's for kids" variant. And they decided to just roll with that for a property management company too, because why not? It could be worse, I decided; I could be working for the massive corporation known as Bimbo Bakeries.
In any case, I finally read the letter, which contained:
It turned out Risky was right: the little guys like us were going to be the ones that dealt with the big screw-ups up top. At least, that's how it felt at the time.
While I was aware that there was a online forum for managers, I hadn't even given it a look prior to this letter. Partially because there was so much to do, partially because I didn't have proper internet set up and I would have had to read it on the phone, and partially due to my introverted tendencies I just ignored it for the first week. I hadn't even thought of it as a potential source of help.
I took this opportunity to look it over, and holy shit, they all had other fictional characters in their complexes. Not ordinary folks like mine, but big guns like Sailor freaking Moon and Nanoha "White Devil" Takamachi. Seven folks from the cast of Tenchi Muyo had shown up in Canada, which was more than enough to cause an interplanetary incident. Honestly, I was already starting to suspect them of having started this dimensional crisis. This was when I started to worry that I was in way over my head here.
On the other hand, the tenants from planet Aqua were pretty normal, all said and done. It could be worse. If I was working Garnett's job in Vancouver, I might find myself inexplicably falling in love with Tenchi Masaki. She claims she's not interested, but I give her about another week before she joins the harem. The lady doth protest too much.
I started to wonder what would happen with the six young women in my care. Another harem, perhaps? I mean, so far they all had shown zero romantic interest in me, except perhaps President Aria – and since I was allergic to cats that was a no-go.
Yeah, I actually worried about falling into a harem, because all of the other questions I could ask at that time were more worrisome: who's really in charge of the multiverse? Why are these people showing up in our universe? If they can come here, what's the nature of reality? Or even of writing? Was the moon landing a myth, but also real because it was on TV?
And honestly, what on Earth was I going to tell my tenants? I still didn't really understand how they got here, or when they could get home. I didn't even know where to start. They claimed to have accidentally emigrated on a magical space train; even going that far, would they even believe what I had to say about alternate dimensions?
All of this started to seem plain crazy. What the other people were writing on the apartment forum sounded like some made-up story or just crazy rantings. It all seems crazy, until you're staring Akari Mizunashi in the face.
Which, of course, I was unintentionally doing. Akari just came over to my room beseeching help. "Can you help me connect my laptop to the wireless network?" She pulled out her laptop, a small titanium gray device, its keycaps marked with both Latin letters and hiragana. It had a screen shaped like an elongated hexagon, which made me wonder a bit about how to design a hexagonal UI. But hey, not to worry if the monitor ran out of space, because a small holographic projector above the screen projected a couple of extra windows above. In short, future tech.
That said, interfaces didn't seem to have evolved too much in the past hundred years... and the command line was bash-compatible. Now that, I can work with. I fiddled around with the settings a bit, as Akari watched nervously behind me. Eventually, I found my problem, looking at the wireless driver settings.
"802.11wt?" I stated, as if I had said '802.11 WTF' instead.
"It's no good?"
"I think your laptop is maybe too advanced for, well, everything. Let me ask some of my friends if they can figure out what's going on here."
"Will that work?"
"With computers, all you need is enough time and you can solve any problem." Well, I hoped. Didn't I see someone making a voice call to Earth in Aria? I hoped the laptop's wifi used ordinary EM spectrum, and not something dumb like tachyons.
In any case, it looked like I had a use for this apartment managers' forum after all. I made two threads there to start out. The first was a basic introduction of myself, my special abilities (I'm the fastest pun in the West), and the residents at my beachside apartment. This was a little strange too, because I already knew half of the managers from before I was hired. A lot of them had been hired from the forum want ad, apparently, as part of some ineffable divine purpose, which meant the first reply from Bob Schroeck was: "Oh, you're here too. Welcome!" Which was followed up a quarter hour later by Rob Donaldson in Ottawa: "So they roped you into this too, did they?"
My second forum post was about Akari's specific issue, on how to connect her future laptop to modern-day equipment. It was a wild gamble, but there were certainly a wide variety of exceptional folks to choose from. I got a few replies back, and a couple offers of help. An account simply named 'Sysadmin' replied, "That sounds really interesting! I wish I had time to help, but wishes have been pretty hard to get these days." There wasn't much information about the account, except that the user avatar was a logo of a red mallet. It couldn't be Skuld herself, could it? I guess, but I use random anime images for my avatar, too.
Within the hour I got a private message from Kestrel:
After a bit of back and forth, I was able to inform him that I was not going to be around for the East Coast morning, and 10 AM on the West Coast would have to do.
Friday, September 16, 2016
10:01 AM PT
The next morning, I was up bright and early to do the video call. You know, relatively speaking. Although in the weeks following, I found myself keeping earlier hours to deal with the contractors working in the upper floors. But today, ten was early enough to take the call from my fellow manager.
"Good morning." I introduced myself, "I'm Brent Laabs, Labster on the forum."
"Good afternoon," he replied. "Kestrel here. Nice to meet you, Labster."
"You too." The guy didn't give me a normal name, but seemed to be one of those guys who went by his login name everywhere. That didn't seem too weird to me, since I've gone to programming conferences where everyone calls each other by their IRC nickname at least half of the time. Everyone has the right to choose their own identity.
One look at him at the other end of the call was enough to remind me of those technical conferences, anyway. The guy looked like Hackerman, with a beard and a set of thin-rimmed glasses. Oh, and the trenchcoat he was wearing indoors. A dangerous member of the Trenchcoat Mafia, this one was. From appearance alone, I guessed that this man had ways of getting government documents.
"The weather must be nice there," he said conversationally. He must have noticed my Aloha shirt with a print of a large wave crashing on a tropical island. Our sartorial tastes are different, yes, but certainly of the same oeuvre of non-conventional hacker fashion.
"It sure is. Sunny Southern California, perfect every day, except the foggy days. And the windy ones. I guess it's a bit chilly in – where are you?"
"Boston. It was pretty nice a week ago, but summer's definitely on the way out."
"So, I hear you can help us with out little identity card problem."
"I believe I can, yes. I hope you don't mind if I use your residents as guinea pigs, do you? I have a resident here who I think can help you out."
"Wait, I thought Garnett had Washuu-chan?"
"Heh. Actually, I was hoping to let HAL 9000 have a trial run as our case worker."
I was a little taken off-guard. "Glowing red light, kills astronauts, that HAL?"
"It isn't really his fault. I've looked at his files, and he was adhering to his mission the best he could. His orders for the secret mission even overrode crew safety. The people behind that mission are the real monsters."
I adapted the old conservative adage, "Programs don't kill people, programmers do?"
"Pretty much. HAL isn't really "alive" in the same sense as some of my other residents. Well, actually, sometimes he kind of is, he just has trouble understanding the difference between morals and directives. He knows what he is told, just not why."
"Sounds like a little kid, then."
"Yeah," Kestrel reflected, "maybe he is. A kid with a supercomputer full of knowledge."
"Just don't put him in charge of making paperclips, okay?"
"Not a chance," he declared. "But I think he should be able to help update a few government databases. He is a NASA employee after all." I laughed, and Kestrel continued, "I've changed his mission to helping the dimensional displacees fit into the new world."
"Ah, that sounds cool!"
"So I'm just going to bring HAL into the call, and observe everything he does. If it works out, he might be available for everyone to use."
"Sounds good."
Another voice joined the call, "Good morning, Manager Brent Laabs. I am HAL 9000."
"Good morning. Oh, and I pronounce the name like the word labs, with a flat 'A', though I don't mind however you want to say it."
"No, that is fine. I have updated the records, Mr. Laabs," he changed his pronunciation. "May I call you Brent?"
"Of course, HAL. I have some residents here at my house who were not given the proper documentation to live and work in this country, and I'm afraid they might be here for some time."
The artificial intelligence offered in his typically friendly, conversational tone, "I can help you with that problem, Brent." However, the video camera Kestrel had set up on HAL's red light was ever so slightly unnerving. If I had my choice, I'd prefer my AIs to look like CLAMP's persocoms.
"I expect you can help."
"Can you tell me the name of the fiction that they appeared in?"
"Yeah, it's an anime called Aria. There's a manga called Aria too, but the first part of it was called Aqua."
"I have obtained it... processing... done. A fascinating story. How many dimensional displacees from Aria reside there?"
"Six."
"Akari Mizunashi, Alicia Florence, Aika Granzchesta, Alice Carroll, Akira Ferrari, and Athena Glory: is this correct?" That was pretty cool. HAL must have guessed their names based on the characters who appeared most in the story.
"That is correct. Oh, actually, seven. I always forget the Martian cat."
"Okay, I'll add Aria Pototeng to the list, Brent."
"That's it."
"Is it possible for me to interview each of them to see what documentation they need?"
"Of course, HAL. Let me go fetch them."
And so I did. I won't bore you with the details, which were a lot of repeated questions for each person, but basically involved making a dossier for each of them. The highlight of this is when Aika wondered how in the hell HAL had gotten a last name of "Granzchesta" for her, and that, "Weird surnames are forbidden." HAL was more than happy to update her records to "Grantchester," while Akari tried somewhat unsuccessfully to explain that the weird surname kind of made sense if you knew Japanese.
Oh, and HAL was somehow able to make sense of President Aria's "punyuu" noises. AI sure is amazing.
At the end of the call, HAL explained that he had "corrected" the relevant government databases (AI sure is amazing) to provide documentation for each of them. They were now all natural-born American citizens, and he provided birth certificates and Social Security Numbers without us even having to prompt him to create those records.
Further, he made passports for them, to account for their cover story that they lived abroad in Italy. The passport pictures came from photo captures of the video call, where he had selected the best frames automatically. Not that it was hard to make one of these girls look pretty, but still a nicer experience than I'd ever gotten at the actual Department of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration. Everything would be mailed to us shortly from official sources.
At the end, Kestrel came back on the line, "Hi HAL. I need to talk to Brent alone for a while."
"Understood, Kestrel."
"Bye HAL, thanks for helping!" I said.
"It was good to be of service, Brent." He disconnected immediately afterward.
"I think that went pretty well," I said.
"The same from my end. Everything looked pretty above-board, or at least as above-board as you can get for 'correcting' government databases," Kestrel said dryly.
"Oh, right, one more thing," I said in my best Steve Jobs impression, "Athena got a driver's license just by asking, and I didn't actually teach her to drive yet. I'm going to! We were planning on it."
Kestrel sighed a little bit, then started typing. He then read off his screen, "HAL says that in canon, she has experience operating non-aerospace vehicles up to 10 meters in length."
I broke out laughing. "They're boats, HAL! Gondolas!"
"Oh, man," he chuckled. "He's a little too trusting. I had to get him out of the room with SHODAN just to keep her from trying to get him to trick me."
"Oy. You have some interesting, uh, tenants."
"Tell me about it. But at least it's not having to deal with people all day, you know?"
"I guess," I said. I wasn't a huge fan of people either, but I definitely wouldn't prefer the company of homicidal programs. "I'm pretty happy with my girls. Whatever floats your boat, right?"
Kestrel teased me, "I mean, if you like people so much, we can fix the record and make Athena get helped by people at the DMV?"
"Well, I mean, she does have lots of experience on 'non-aerospace vehicles'," I justified. I wasn't going to inflict the Department of Motor Vehicles on anyone, let alone someone who had suffered just by being displaced in spacetime. Far too cruel.
"I guess HAL wins this round."
"Oh, and speaking of computers, do you think HAL would be able to connect to Akari's laptop?"
"Oh, right, the future tech you were talking about in the forums." His voice really perked up at the thought of future tech, even if it was future consumer technology. As they say, the phone in our pockets is many times more powerful than the room-sized supercomputers of the Apollo Program. Also, consumer technology has a tendency not to suddenly decide to start killing humans – except, perhaps, Elon Musk's self-driving cars from Tesla Motors.
"Yeah, we can't make the thing connect to anything from our century. Doesn't even have a physical port, but we have root and shell on the built-in keyboard."
"I'm sure HAL and some of our other friendly AIs could take a look. Honestly, a few of them are getting stir crazy in here, and it would be nice to have a puzzle to look at. Just ship it over here and we'll look into it."
I thought about it for a moment, and decided that my best chance was probably with Kestrel, rather than the other help offered on the forum. It sounded like a fun problem for bored AIs, that's for certain. "Sure. How am I supposed to send future tech to you?"
"FedEx?"
"Insured for what, one million American dollars?"
"Honestly, the less attention that package gets, the better."
"I still think I'm going to overnight shipping."
"Whatever floats your non-aerospace vehicle," Kestrel fed my line back to me.
"It will be nice for her to connect to the wifi," I added.
"Oh, I almost forgot." Kestrel accused, "Seriously, swordfish-one?"
It took me a minute to figure out what he was on about, which was that the cheeky bugger had cracked my wifi password from across the country. "That's Swordfish-one-exclamation point. The bang makes it more secure."
"There are such things as lists of common passwords, you know. And yours—"
"Hey, it's got more than eight characters, a capital letter, a lowercase letter, a number, and a special character. How can it not be secure?"
Kestrel's mouth opened, then shut again; his brow furrowed, and he finally said, "You're trolling me, aren't you."
"Yes."
"Well, stop it."
"Hey, you're head of information security for Funtom Property by default. I have to make you feel like you've accomplished something with your security training."
"Just change the password, Labster. And check MACs when devices join the network."
"Like, I'm a software dev. Sysadmin stuff, you know, I'm astonished I could set up a network without reversing my crossover cable. I'm not looking forward to extending the network to the next few floors."
"Maybe I can come up with something for you. Send me the floor plans, and I'll have the hardware sent to you."
"Wow, thanks!"
"Yeah, I think I'd like to work on hardware that doesn't talk back to me for a change of pace."
"Hang in there, Kestrel!"
"I will, thanks!"
We ended the call, which had to be one of the best business videoconference calls I had ever made. Who knew that adding a homicidal AI to the mix would actually improve meetings?
I logged back into the forum to update everyone on my decision regarding the laptop:
I got a reply pretty fast:
This drew a quick follow-up from Garnett:
She replied:
4. Taking a Breather
Monday, September 19, 2016
11:30 AM PT
"Now now, don't you think it's time to calm down? You've been angry for the entire walk home," I overheard Alicia say as she came up the steps to the first floor.
I glanced outside to the landing, and right behind her was Akira, looking right pissed off. "I know, I know, but every time I think about that man I get so angry!" she fumed.
Alicia gestured as if to hold something down. "Deep breaths, Akira. Deep breaths."
Akira obliged, taking four deep breaths while standing still outside on the east landing.
"All better?"
"Not one bit!"
"Ara ara ara," Alicia vocalized.
"The nerve! How could he say that to you, of all people!" Akira pounded her feet into the building, and announced quite loudly, "House meeting at noon. Everyone better come!" She looked at me, and said, "You too!" before storming off into her room to sulk for half an hour.
After standing there stunned for a moment, I asked Alicia, "Wow, what happened to her?"
"Akira and I… had a bad job interview."
"It sure sounds like it."
"It's been a long time since I've seen her this angry, but she'll get over it soon."
We decided to meet in No. 4, as Alicia had rescued that lovely set of carved wooden chairs from an antique shop, and thus was the only apartment yet to be able to provide seating for everyone.
It also provided us mortadella sandwiches on french rolls with some fresh grapes, thanks to the foresight of Alicia and Akari. After everyone's appetite was sated, we were finally able to get Alicia to discuss what happened earlier.
She explained, "So this morning, we went to talk to the harbormaster. He was a pleasant man, a sheriff in fact. I explained that we planned to operate a gondola service. He told us that there is no gondola guild here, and that we're free to start taking on clients on our own terms, once we obtain a simple business license."
"He also explained that there was already a gondola service in Marina del Rey. So we decided to check out the place, and see if we could work for that company. Unfortunately, I don't believe any such arrangement will be possible."
"Why not?" Athena asked.
Akira answered it, "Because the man there thinks only men can be gondoliers."
"What?" Alice blurted. "That's so lame."
"He told Alicia that he only hired men with the strength to be real gondoliers, not actresses researching a part."
"What the!" Akia slammed both hands down on the table. "How dare he! To say that to Alicia! To you too, Akira!"
"Now now," Alicia explained, "Thank you for your support, but I'm confident in my own abilities. And in all of yours, as well."
Akira took a deep breath, and managed to stay silent this time.
"So…" Aika asked, "Where does that leave us?"
Everyone was silent for a moment, until Alice decided to say the obvious thing, "I guess we can just start up our old companies here."
Akira said, "That's right. Himeya and Aria Company and Orange Planet can all show these boys how it's supposed to be done!"
Alice rolled her eyes. "It's kind of weird to compete when there's only the six of us."
"Yeah, we should all work together to show how amazing we are," Akari agreed.
Akira said, "Oh? Afraid of losing to Himeya, pigtails?"
Akari's face went blank. "Not really, but now I am?"
Athena was blunt: "Haven't you forgotten us, Akira?"
Akira's eyebrows disappeared under her chestnut bangs. "I suppose it can't be helped, we'll need to work together." The younger set looked pretty ecstatic about this idea, jumping up and down, while the adults looked at each other with knowing smiles.
Aika proudly declared, "As heir to Himeya, I welcome you to my company."
"Wait, aren't you going to work for Orange Planet with everyone else?" Alice asked.
Alicia said, "I thought you were going to work for Aria Company."
It became clear pretty fast that we had a 2-2-2 tie for the winning company name, at which point a lot of eyeballs turned to me. I reasoned, "Orange Planet doesn't even make sense on Earth, and Himeya probably won't catch on with Americans," I reasoned. "But Aria Company… that sounds just about right."
"Meh. Makes sense, I guess," Alice assented.
"President Aria, you have the final say. Should we hire these four to Aria Company?" Alicia asked the white-furred cat.
"Punyuu!!!"
I started clapping, and so did Alicia, which made everyone else a little self-conscious.
Aika said tentatively, "This is a good plan and all, but I don't have to start wearing blue uniforms now, do I? It's really not my color."
Alice concluded, "We even don't have any extra uniforms, dummy."
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
7:00 AM PT
The sun rose the next morning to another beautiful summer day. Along the Southern California coast, early summer is usually cool and cloudy, subjected to the May Gray and June Gloom. But this was turning out to be one of those pleasant days in the late summer and early autumn, where the sky and ocean shared a brilliant blue hue.
Of course, I wasn't awake to see the sun rise, having set my alarm to wake me at the still-ungodly hour of nine. Alicia wanted to go through the remodel plan with me in the morning, and I sure needed the help.
She showed up outside my room just on time, wearing a cheap set of drugstore reading glasses in front of her blue eyes.
"Thanks for offering to help!"
"It's no problem at all. I just decided that if we're going to live here, we might as well make it really nice."
"Well, thank you. And wait, are you saying that this place is a dump?" I smiled.
Alicia giggled a little.
"We do need to get this place in livable shape, and fast. I'm not sure, but I get the feeling that we might get more... travelers, like you."
"I see. Of course. Maybe by solving our issues, we can prepare for more tenants better. There are some issues that we'd like to address, like the quality of the appliances, and the issue of the bidets."
"Oh, right, bidets. I'm not sure about the plumbing, and—"
We were about to sit down, when we heard the piercing beep of a truck's backup alarm. We looked out the window to see the front of a pickup with some sort of trailer making a couple passes to parallel park next to the apartment. We headed downstairs to get a better look at exactly what was going on.
What stood along the alley, just under the southern balconies of our building was a trailer bearing a thirty-foot long wooden gondola, covered by three tarpaulins. At the front end was a tractor truck, with the logotype for Ekman Transport painted on the side.
After finishing parallel parking the boat trailer, a short black woman with long, natural hair got out of the cab. She called in her Texan accent, "Is Alicia Florence or, uh," she read the form a little more carefully, "Akira Ferrari one of y'all?"
All of the tenants were downstairs by now, so Alicia and Akira dutifully went to sign for receipt of the boat.
"Oh, that's right, I've got a letter for you too. She opened up her posse box holding the form, and pulled out an embossed envelope. "Someone really likes you gals."
Akira answered, "Oh, you know men, always trying to make up for things with their gifts."
The deliverywoman let out a belly laugh at that, "Heck, wish I could find me one of them that'd buy me a make-up boat!" She started unhitching the boat while I helped the younger undines in removing the ropes and covers on the gondola. A couple of minutes later, she drove off in her truck, leaving us one gondola richer.
Meanwhile, Alicia read the letter aloud:
"Freaking sweet!" said Aika, with her characteristic grin.
"An authentic gondola of Venezia, here in Venice. Wow!"
"Are you sure about that, Akari?" Alicia quizzed.
"Hm..." she looked over the craft, "Oh, wait, you're right. I guess I still have a lot to learn to become a prima," Akari said as she scratched her head abashedly.
"Huh? What is it?" Aika asked.
"Look at the prow. There are nine rebbi instead of six." I looked too, and saw that Akari was right – it looked like there were too many tines on the front of the boat.
"That's really weird," Alice said.
"Why would someone do that?" Aika's question was seeking an answer, but simultaneously rhetorical because she didn't expect one.
"Is that a number associated with this city?"
I answered, "Not that I know of. I can't really think of a number that represents our city. Maybe three-one-oh? It's an area code. For phone numbers." They looked at me like I was from another planet. "Yeah I don't get people either."
Alicia stepped up to the boat, and started inspecting the craft closely. "It looks like it's in pretty good shape, for how long it's been sitting around. I'm not seeing any dry rot."
Aika blew at the thick layer of dust atop the gondola's seat, causing a brown cloud to drift in Alice's direction.
"Hey!" Alice coughed. "Watch what you're doing."
Aika stared at Alice across the gondola for a few seconds. Then she blew again in the same direction, even harder this time.
The soot meant Alice's skin tone now roughly matched the color of Athena's; her eyes finally reopened when the dust cleared. "Ok, that's it, I'm gonna get you!" Alice chased Aika counterclockwise around the boat for next couple of minutes, while the rest of us focused on inspecting the boat itself (and avoiding getting hit by the running girls).
Akira was examining the hull. "What's this black stuff? Where in the world did Sebastian take this boat?" The boat itself was painted the traditional black, but an even darker layer of soot lay affixed to the bottom of the hull, giving it a stygian hue.
Akira finally tired of the squabble and grabbed Aika and Alice by the collar, one by one, as they passed. With a scowl on her face, she roared, "Looks like you two have plenty of energy for cleaning, so get to it!"
Alicia looked to Akari, adding, "If you please?"
"Hahi!"
And so with cleaning tools and buckets scavenged from inside the house, the junior team set to scrubbing down their new gondola in the alley behind the apartment; the only interruption to their task was an intramural water fight with the garden hoses.
By the time lunch time rolled around, I came back downstairs with the primas to see how things had progressed. Although they gave the impression of leaving the hard work the their trainees, I had seen them work just as hard on the task of decorating their rooms upstairs. But as I saw in the anime, the art of the prima undine was to make the difficult task of rowing look effortless, a quality they brought to all of their work.
Alicia walked out first, bearing a box of sandwiches. "Okay girls, break time. Who's hungry for sandwiches?"
Akari raised her hand, which made the rest of the washing crew follow suit. And Athena too, for that matter, whose stomach emitted a low rumble.
As we sat atop a floral print blanket on the next parking space over, while everyone was eating, Alicia said, "It looks like you did a good job." She turned to Akira, "Does she look ready to float?"
Akira responded with a teasing tone, "Hmm... I'm not sure. Well, let's ask a potential customer, as they are the most important judges of our service. What do you think, Brent? Would you pay for a ride in this gondola?"
I looked it over. The boat looked like a proper gondola now, rather than a relic of the 1800s. Much better. "With you? Any day of the week," I said.
Akira made a Mona Lisa smile, Akari gave a wide grin, and Alicia simply giggled. "Sounds like our customer approves, Akira."
We finished eating, and decided that there was no time like the present for gondola launches. I hopped in my truck, and lined up to hitch the boat, poorly. After maneuvering the truck forwards and backwards a few times, I eventually managed to get the trailer ball positioned right.
Alice asked, "Are you sure you've done this before?"
"Yes, and I'm still terrible at it." Actually hitching the boat trailer was the easy part, taking only about a minute to drop the hitch, link a chain, and plug in the light cord. The prima undines all hopped into my truck, with Athena and Alicia squeezed uncomfortably into the back seat.
"Okay, we're off to the boat launch," Akira called over the roar of the white Ford F-150's engine.
"We'll meet you on the canals!" Akia called back.
I was going to drive to the boat launch in Marina Del Rey, but Akira told me there was a closer ramp hidden between the westbound and eastbound lanes of Venice Boulevard. They were already better locals than me in some ways. It was a small ramp in the middle of a mid-street parking lot, just for the local residents to access the canals. From this vantage point below the street, you could see that both sides of the street had bridges over the canal, but immediately past the bridge on the north side, the canal abruptly ended in a concrete wall.
In any case, no one else was using the boat launch here, so I was able to back the trailer into the water immediately.
Akira reasoned, "I suppose it makes the most sense for Alicia to try it first."
Alicia nodded. Going by the manga, Alicia was the virtuosa gondoliera, a prodigy of the nautical and social aspects of being an undine. While she had many charms, it was her oar-work and graceful boat control, learned from the legendary Ametsuchi herself, that cemented her status as one of the Three Water Fairies of Neo Venezia.
"I'd like to try it out, too," Athena added.
"It's really tight back there, isn't it?" I asked. Athena made her confounded face, which was even funnier in reality than it was in anime linework. This truck was not going to cut it for transporting all of these people in the long term, but it was the right tool for the job now.
Everyone got out of the car, and all three undines hopped up into the gondola. I started rolling the trailer slowly into the water. And… it floated!
"We have a gondola!" Alicia started clapping, and then all of us joined in.
Athena untied all of the ropes, and Alicia took up her post standing at the stern of the boat. The blonde took the gondola on a quick loop under Venice Boulevard with graceful strokes of the oar, as if she could move the 700 kilogram boat without any effort at all. It was just beautiful. As she came back around, she called out to me, "It handles wonderfully! We'll meet you back near the apartments."
I pulled up the ramp, secured the straps and ropes, and raced back.
After I parked, I walked across a couple blocks to the canals. About a block or so "upstream" the junior undines were hanging out, so I went over to join them. "Why are you all hanging out here?"
"Hi Brent! Akari convinced the owners to let us berth here. I take it the gondola is in good shape?"
"The gondola split into four pieces, there were no survivors," I deadpanned.
"Ridiculous remarks are forbidden."
It didn't take long for our gondola to start making its way down the Grand Canal, a long, mostly straight natural waterway of the former Ballona wetlands. This end of it was lined with a mix of two and three-story houses, but past the wide concrete bridge for Washington Boulevard was a primary school and a few more apartment buildings. Alice was the first to spot the gondola, uttering a simple, "There."
As she emerged from under a tall, wooden pedestrian bridge, Athena, who was now the gondolier, waved to us – and we all waved back.
And that was when Akari started crying, still wearing a wide smile on her face. "I thought that – I thought that everything was lost because of me – for all of you."
"No, Akari," Aika interjected.
"It's okay now, you see. That's our old life, coming up the canal to meet us." Akari drew all of us into a group hug, even me. "Everything's going to be okay now." Tears were streaming down her face.
With wide eyes, Alice said, "Yes, it really is."
President Aria summarized, "Punyuu!"
"Why am I crying now?" Aika complained.
By the time the gondola arrived, everyone had gathered their composure. They moored the boat next to the rose-colored house, and disembarked.
"It moves like a dream," Athena said.
Alicia agreed, "It's in excellent shape."
Akari begged, "Our turn?"
"I'm afraid not; how can I offer our only gondola to trainees when Akira has a customer waiting?" Alicia gestured at me.
"Huh?" Akira stared into Alicia's smiling eyes.
Alicia giggled.
Akira sighed, then boarded the gondola.
"Ah!" Aika's interest was piqued. Somehow, saying that I was just making a joke earlier didn't seem like the best idea right now.
Akira held out her hand, a practiced gesture that was still warm and inviting. "Please take my hand as you step aboard, sir." I did just that. Somehow, it didn't even seem like a joke any more.
Akira piloted the boat up the Grand Canal, to the waters she hadn't yet navigated. It didn't make much difference to an experienced undine like herself, shallow waters like these were nothing to worry about. Especially in the absence of other boat traffic.
"What do you think of our canals?" I asked her.
"Strange. But not in a bad way. Just unfamiliar."
She rowed on for perhaps twenty more strokes, before adding, "I haven't faced anything this unfamiliar since I was still a Single. But, you know, it feels good to face a new challenge."
We passed a rowboat and a canoe tied up in front of a house, which bobbed just the slightest bit in our wake. "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, Akira."
"Normally, I would tell my passenger about all of the sights they were seeing, but I'm afraid I know so little about these waters." Akira's smooth and steady stroke refuted that statement – she knew plenty about the waters, it was the shore she knew little about. "Would you care to tell me about this city?"
"Well, I don't know a whole lot; I didn't grow up here," I began. "These canals all started because a land developer called Abbot Kinney traveled to Europe, fell in love with Venice, and decided to turn some of this swampland into a tourist attraction. I imagine the story was the same in Neo Venezia. Anyway, Kinney had all of these canals dug, and built a pier to attract tourists.
"All that was before cars took over Southern California. Then they started filling up the canals to turn them into streets. Ended up filling in most of them."
"What a shame!"
"That's Los Angeles as it used to be, always looking forward, without thinking about what came before. Anyway, about the time I was born, people started wanting to save the canals, because they made the place special. And, as you can see, lots of fancy homes are here now, so they must have done something right."
Akira's easy stroke propelled us through the Howland Canal, making but the smallest of splashes. It was quiet in the heart of Venice's canal district, until a passing seagull decided to let out series of loud cries.
"He must be looking for some friends," Akira posited.
"More likely looking for some chum."
"Heh, so he is."
"You are different on the water," I said. "More calm and composed."
"So are you."
I thought on it a few seconds before replying, "Got me there. We have so much to do back at the apartment."
Sensing my mood becoming more stressful, Akira added, "When I'm in a gondola, I'm able to let go of all of those things on land, and just live in the moment. There are so many things to worry about, but out here it's just the water and the sun and the clouds, and I move forward one stroke at a time."
"So, it's not just because you're really good at this, Crimson Rose?"
Akira laughed. "It will be good for everyone else to get some time on the water. They all love the gondola – almost as much as me!"
Now it was my turn to laugh. "They can't compete, can they?"
"Nope, but they can try!" She twirled her oar like a quarterstaff, striking at imaginary opponents.
The thought crossed my mind that maybe Alicia asked Akira to take me out as the first customer because she was the one who needed it the most. Maybe I did too. Or maybe Alicia was just being nice. All I know is that if I asked her, all I'd get is a giggle in reply – or if I really pressed her, an "ara ara".
A passenger jet taking off from LAX banked across the sky in front of me, turning all the way around to fly over the land.
"You know, I haven't taken a customer in a black gondola for a long, long time. It brings back memories."
"Why's that?"
"In Neo Venezia, prima undines ride in white gondolas; the black gondolas are reserved for single undines. It's so that our customers know what they're paying for."
"I always thought all gondolas were black."
"In old— well, in Venezia, gondolas are black because the water is dirty. On Aqua, it's a sign of the purity of our water in Neo Venezia."
"You know, you're rowing through muddy seawater. This used to be a swamp."
Akira nodded, and kept rowing. "Maybe we'll use the tradition of black gondolas in California."
"Probably a good call."
I leaned back in the seat a bit, and looked at the nearly clear sky, with only a few long contrails coming across. It was a beautiful day with a kind sun, casting enough light to make your skin feel warm. But then a little gust of salt air would come up from the ocean to cool you right back down. Growing up in a beach city, I almost never notice the smell of salt in the air any more, but I noticed it then.
I noticed lots of things I don't normally notice, like sound of the soft splash of the water against the sides of the gondola. I saw the intricate patterns chiseled into the black wood covering the forward end of the gondola, right below the curved bow. We passed by a bush in full bloom, covered with deep red roses. And of course, I saw the tall, strong woman in white behind me, rowing the gondola with a joyful smile.
And I never pulled my phone out of my pocket the entire time.
By the time we returned to our newly adopted mooring place along the canal, it seems that everyone had already gone home, so Akira and I walked back to the apartment together.
"We never decided what the fare was, did we. I'm supposed to be your customer, right?"
"It's not important. I don't even know what we'll charge," Akira shrugged. "You've done a lot for us already."
"I know, but that was really special. I feel like I owe you something."
She thought about it for a while, and then her countenance suddenly turned grumpy.
"How about a installing a bidet already?"
Omake
"Sebastian, why do you wear that smile while we're stuck in this ghastly traffic?"
"Sorry, milord. I was just thinking about how of all of the Nazis' evil inventions, none is so insidious as the Autobahn. It lures you in with the promise of speed, but every morning and evening the motorway inflicts suffering on those mortals who travel. Every day, they pollute their own homes in an effort to live in a better neighborhood. Truly, it is exquisite."
"Are you quite finished?" Ciel huffed.
The car jolted as Sebastian tapped the brakes, as a little Skoda darted in front of them. Ciel yelled, "Hey! Get out of our way, commoner!"
"Ah yes, road rage. That's the best part!"
Neo Venezia, Neo Adriatic Sea (former Kasei Valles)
Aqua Calendar 76, Month 6, Sol 8 (June 9, 2303 A.D.)
16:33
Single undine Akari Mizunashi had spent all afternoon wandering through the paths, waterways, and islands of Neo-Venezia. She had retraced her steps through five of the mysteries of the city, places where the boundary to the spirit world was open, and she was returning to the sixth. The whole day was spent in pursuit of the seventh mystery, a larger-than-life black cat spirit, Cat Sìth.
Cat Sìth was the patron of Neo-Venezia, and someone who Akari had met several times before, but was still very much a mystery to her. Taller and larger than her, the giant cat spirit was always kind to Akari, even if he was a little bit fey. So she had taken this day to row across the city, searching high and low, President Aria her only companion.
As they were walking back up the alley where the Stone of Misfortune lay, the white tomcat plopped down on his butt and scratched behind his ears. He had a pretty big head, so there was a lot of space to scratch. But Akari continued on to her goal.
The svelte young woman in her white and blue undine's uniform stared down at the Stone one more time. It was a chunk of dirty limestone, a little out of place among the basalt paving stones of the alleyway. Akari still felt that there was some power in this place, even though she had been here earlier today without incident. So she decided to take a chance with this mystery and risk its supposed curse once again.
Akari hopped on the Stone of Misfortune one final time, her long pink twintails bouncing right behind. And everything was still normal.
"Of course, nothing happened," she mumbled. "Still kind of a letdown, though." It's just a wide stone on the walkway, Alice had told her that. But she somehow expected something more.
And then, sticking out of the crack in the stones at her feet, an envelope caught Akari's attention. She bent down and picked it up. The envelope had no writing on the outside, but was adorned by a stylized cat's pawprint embossed in gold. And inside?
Seven tickets for the Galaxy Express. One for each wonder of Neo-Venezia she had encountered. Akari's jaw dropped all the way open, staring blankly at the treasure she held. "Whoa. He really came – Cat Sìth!"
"Nyu!"
She read the tickets, "Wednesday morning, 3AM. That's tomorrow night. President Aria, let's go invite everyone else!"
"Punyuu," Aria agreed.
By the following evening, Akari was able to gather her friends and ostensible traveling companions to a trattoria. All six were dressed in the uniforms of an undine: a long, slender white dress, with short sleeves for summer, a square sailor collar in the back, and a bow. But they were slightly different: Akari and Alicia's dresses had the ultramarine lines of Aria Company, Aika and Akira's raiment had the amaranth markings and bow of Himeya, and the orange pattern on Alice and Athena's clothes was the trademark of Orange Planet. The seventh traveller, President Aria, wore only an Aria company sailor's cap, a smaller version of the one worn by his coworkers. For cats, every day is No Pants Day.
They sat on the patio outside the restaurant, on a warm spring night. While the undines carboloaded on tonight's special, a shrimp pasta, the one with a long blonde French braid spoke up. "I think this is all rather exciting, don't you? A train trip to the stars," Alicia Florence said.
"Yeah. My trainee never gets me anything, and yours gets me a magical train ride. Where did I go wrong in my teaching?" Akira Ferrari moaned. The tallest of all of the women here assembled, her long dark chestnut hair framed her fair face.
Said trainee was a little more skeptical. "So let me get this straight. You want us to use these strange tickets you got at the Stone of Misfortune." Wearing a sly smile, Aika pointed her fork towards Akari. "Aren't you just spreading your bad luck to all of us?"
"But the Stone wasn't unlucky at all. At first it seemed unlucky, because I couldn't find Cat Sìth anywhere. But as I revisited each place, I saw its beauty and felt the happy memories wash over me. I think I learned that misfortune turns into good luck if you just look hard enough!"
"Embarrassing comments are forbidden!"
"She's right, you know." Akira rebuked her trainee. "Luck is a big part of success, but you can work hard and make your own luck."
"That may be so, but I still think this is inviting disaster."
"Hoheee," Akari intoned.
Aika Grantchester, a girl with short hair so dark that the reflected light of the trattoria's lamps made it indigo, still wasn't satisfied. Aika asked, "Well, what do you think, Alice? Don't you think it's risky?"
The green haired teenager replied, "I think someone is playing a practical joke on all of you. I'm mainly going to see how stupid we look trying to catch a phantom train in the dead the night."
"Awww, don't be like that," Akari complained as her let her body go limp.
As usual, Athena Glory didn't have much to say. She just stared across the canal, imagining what a Galaxy Express might be like. Real or not, her imagination of a space-faring train seemed sweet enough to savor. The dusky-skinned woman absently picked up a shrimp with her fork – and it promptly slid off onto the stone of the campo below. Athena's annoyed frown came back again.
President Aria, on the other hand, employed the ten second rule outside as well as inside, and helped himself to a shrimp. Waving his tail, he decided that misfortune for some people can be fortune for others.
Calle Schiaparelli
A.C. 76, Month 6, Sol 10
02:40
It was a quiet night in Neo Venezia, as they usually were. The lights of the city dim in the wee hours, leaving the city to be lit by starlight, with a little help from Phobos as it flowed across the Aquatic sky.
The city seemed a bit more sinister than in the daytime, as if in another world from the daytime. The canals looked as black as the night sky above, and the lion statues seemed just a little more predatory than in the day.
Six undines strolled through the streets of this city, led by a white cat with striking blue eyes. President Aria was wearing a tall, cylindrical fur toque – which for his size was essentially an elongated pillbox hat – and a matching cloak of sable with a pair of pompons hanging from the tie. He made no sound, as appropriate on a mission such as this. The same could not be said of his human companions, who tended to be a noisy bunch without even realizing it.
"It's so quiet," Aika whispered.
Alice added, "Maybe too quiet. Like... it's unnaturally still."
Aika shivered. "Scary remarks are forbidden." Then from behind them came the sound of a sudden crash. "Gaah what was that?"
Athena picked herself off the ground, and dusted off her dress. "Sorry, it's really dark, I didn't see that stone."
"Ara ara." Alicia waited a moment before commenting, "You know, this is still the same city you all know. It's just at late night Neo Venezia wears a different face. But to really know a person or a place, you need to see all sides of it. Good and bad, sweet and scary, and know that they are one and the same."
The party of undines turned onto one calle, and then onto another, as they journeyed closer to the edge of the city. Walking past red-roofed stone buildings, and across arched bridges, they never even got close to lost in the dim light. Each of them knew the waterways of the city like the back of their hands. But Akira had memorized every alley and campo of her city too, so it was she who lead them through Venetian streets at their most serene hour.
They pushed past the rail station, which was closed for the night, and pressed further outward. Finally, they arrived at the place where the train tracks entered the city, at the edge of the Ponte della Libertà.
"This is too late to be out." Alice Carroll yawned.
Athena replied with a sympathetic yawn.
Akari, on the other hand, had a gleeful grin. She was almost shaking with excitement.
"And... nothing's happening." Aika noted.
"I'm sure magical trains are very punctual, Aika." Alicia noted. "Let's just wait and find out."
They stood in the narrow street near the steel tracks, waiting for 3AM to arrive. The first thing they noticed was a dim light down the length of the bridge, and then the subtle sound of a train rolling across the tracks.
Suddenly, it seemed like the train was right on top of them. A steam locomotive rolled into the street, swiftly followed by a coal car and six wooden passenger cars.
Akari said, "Wow, this is a bigger train than last time!" Indeed, it barely fit in the street; perhaps this time was a special service? She shivered in anticipation.
Alice wondered where on Earth they had gotten the mineral coal for the coal car, because there sure wasn't any on Aqua. She had learned that much last Christmas, when she had put a lump of charcoal in her own stocking. "It's really the Galaxy Express," she concluded.
Suddenly, the empty street was filled with all manner of cats, queued up to ride the train. A burly conductor in a blue uniform, his face completely shaded by his railroad cap, began looking over everyone's tickets and admitting everyone on the train.
Alicia warned, "It looks like we had better get in line if we want a seat. I didn't know your Galaxy Express would be so popular."
Everyone had a ticket in mouth or hand this time, so the line to ride the train moved quickly. Akari proudly showed her ticket to the imposing conductor, gave a big grin to her friend, and jumped aboard. All the other humans moved aboard a little more gingerly – something about the conductor didn't seem quite right, and he was quite large, so they decided they had better be polite.
What they found on board was just as otherworldly. For a train that could supposedly sail the stars, the decor looked positively antique, with wooden furniture and two-pane sliding windows on the walls. Its passenger cars had green upholstered bench seats on each side of the aisle, like something out of the golden age of rail travel.
Moreover, it was a train full of cats: Persian and Martian, Mau and Manx. Some playful, some stretched out sleeping on the upholstery, some sitting pretty as they watched the odd humans in their midst. Others rubbing against each other in greeting. One even carried a sausage in its jaws, a late-night snack for the commute.
The undines were able to find a set of seats across from each other, so that everyone could see each other. Actually, a pair of gingers were already in one of the seats, but they simply hopped up to the luggage rack above and curled up there.
"You finally got to meet him!" Akari declared.
"Meet who?" Alice asked.
"Cat Sìth, of course!" Blank stares. "You know, the conductor."
"That was him?"
"He didn't look like a cat," Aika reasoned. "Actually, did he even have a face?"
"Don't worry, you'll see," Akari assured her friends. And then the train's engine started up again. The slow groan of the first few cranks of the wheels turned into a growl as the locomotive lurched to life.
The Galaxy Express proceeded out of its makeshift station backwards, with the locomotive pushing from behind – Venice being a terminal station. It cruised along the Ponte della Libertà at a slow pace, before coming to a soft halt a couple kilometers out of the city.
Changing directions, the locomotive began pulling the train from the front. The train soon switched tracks in the middle of the bridge, turning off the side of the bridge onto an little-used set of tracks. The train dropped down to the waterline, and set off to the southwest. The Galaxy Express skimmed the surface of the lagoon, running on rails just below the surface of the water. A long cloud of spray thrown off the wheels glittered in the city light. And still the train accelerated.
Finally, as the train roared across the water at 88 miles per hour, Engine C6250 blew its whistle, and the train lurched into the sky.
"Ara ara ara!" said Alicia with delight.
The rest of the undines left it at that, for there were no words that could capture the experience better.
The train pulled onward and upward, rushing through the Aquatic sky. It rushed past the Kasei Lagoon and farmland of the Sacra Mensa, and rushed above the deep darkness of the trees of the Silva Arsia.
"Look, that's Noctis City!"
"So that must be Nieuw Amsterdam, right there." Aika pointed.
"I've never been so high before. Amazing."
"I landed on Aqua in the daytime," Akari said, "but the night is beautiful too."
And still the Galaxy Express climbed skyward, gaining speed. After a few more minutes, the disc of Aqua started to resolve below them, with a crescent of light off to the east. The train soared seventy kilometers over Aqua, far above the stratosphere, and was still climbing.
Alicia gazed out the window to the world below. "From up here, everything seems so small, doesn't it. Everything in our lives, it's all down there in those few lights."
"It's like we get to leave our whole world behind," said Akira, "just for a night."
"Like a beautiful dream." Athena's yawn fogged the window, as it was terribly late for her, but she was riveted nonetheless.
The train started rattling a bit, and then rolled quickly from side-to-side. Alice was nearly rocked off her seat, but Athena quickly pulled her back to her seat. The bulk of the feline passengers tossed from their seats landed on their feet – the few exceptions fell over, but then put on an expression as if they had always intended to fall over.
Outside, it almost looked like the train had gone into a tunnel, as impossible as that would be. Then the scene through the windows radiated brilliant light, with streaks of reds, greens, blues, and oranges dancing around the train. The ride smoothed, and everyone inside stared at the spectacle, felines included.
"So many colors, so pretty!" Akari had been a fan of colors and shapes since she was an infant, but not many shows were as good as this one.
The train swerved left, then right, then left through the passage. After two minutes, the lights faded as quickly as they came, as the train exited the tunnel. No one was surprised at the jolt running through the train this time, as it exited back to normal space.
Out the window lay a planet, this one done up in the same whites and blues as Aqua. But a little less orange, and a little more yellow and green. Akari blurted, "Ohmigosh, it's Manhome! I thought I would never see her again."
"Your planet looks beautiful too, Akari." Alicia gave her an innocent smile.
"More beautiful than I remembered."
Had she remembered a little better, she might have noticed a few things were different on planet Earth, like the rather conspicuous absence of Lake Qattara.
The locomotive's engine slowed, letting the train start coasting down towards the planet below. The Galaxy Express veered west-by-northwest, crossing Asia Minor in just a few minutes and heading into the Balkans.
"Is that Italia?" Alice asked. "That's a boot, right?"
"Yes. And there's where old Venezia used to be, before she sunk beneath the waves." Akira pointed towards the northern Adriatic, on Italy's east coast. From this altitude, it was impossible for the naked eye to see that she was pointing at Venice, very much not submerged.
They descended further and further into the twilight. Soon, they were afforded a view of the City of Lights just before the early morning washed out the lights below. And still they descended, crossing the English Channel and above the island of Britain. By this time, they could make out the outlines of roads and villages by the pattern the lights formed below.
"It looks like we're landing. Where are we landing, Akari?" Alicia asked.
"Um what was that place called again?"
"Oh come on, you're our Manhome expert." Aika chided. "What kind of tour guide are you?"
"Oh right!" Akari hit her fist against the seat. "It's called Wales. It's like part of England or something."
"Eh?" wondered Alice.
"Um... Further ahead, you can see the Atlantic Ocean. It's Manhome's second biggest ocean, and home to Neo Atlantis. It has the world's longest mountain chain, the Mid-Ocean Ridge, which you can't see because it's dark. And under water a really long way." Akari sighed. An undine was supposed to be unflappable in any situation, but this situation was maybe a little too far out.
"Brava, Akari." Alicia giggled.
The train dipped down towards a dimmer region of the Welsh countryside, in a rugged land with mountains and lakes below. Finally, the Galaxy Express veered a hard left, lining itself up with the train tracks below. It gingerly approached the ground. And then a series of clangs rang out throughout the train with small bumps to the passengers as it touched wheel to rail.
Having landed in a straight spot, the 999 acted as a normal train, leading them through the twists and turns of a 10 minute ride through the twilit countryside. Finally the train began to slow, and all of its passengers began to stir, even those who had been cat napping.
The train came to a stop at a simple rail platform, and almost immediately, the feline passengers began leaping for the ground. Clear black letters on a white sign declared the name of the village: "ULTHAR".
Beyond the short wooden covered walkway was a small station building, barely larger than a small cottage. The building of flat fieldstone was completely empty at this hour; the only staff on hand was the feline stationmaster, a tabby named Beatrice.
"Well, we've come all this way. Shall we go out and explore?" Akira asked.
"Sure!" Akari stood up, dusting the cat hair off her dress. "I've never been anywhere as far away as Wales before!"
Aika just gave her a strange look for that remark.
They joined the flow of cats jumping out the doors, but somehow ended up as the last passengers to exit anyway.
"What a cute village!" said Akari, looking down towards a collection of cottages on the banks of a lake.
"Hey, look at that." Alice pointed to a wooden sign cut into the shape of a cat, which read "Welcome to Ulthar, City of Cats".
"Wow, how cool," Alicia said. "No wonder we ended up here." They started walking up the platform towards the station house to explore the town. Then the steam engine came back to life, and everyone suddenly stopped.
"Wait, we can't get left behind!" Akari raced back to the train, followed by the rest of her friends. But the conductor stepped out, hand spread out to block her reboarding. "We still have our tickets," she cried.
The conductor shrugged, then removed his cap. Appearing underneath it was a large black cat face, with pink ears and golden slitted eyes.
"Cat Sìth!" Aika stopped in her tracks. The others did too, not sure how to react to such an august presence.
Akari pleaded, "We can't board? Did we break the rules?"
The large cat shook his head in the negative.
"Why can't we go home?"
Cat Sìth looked at Akari with a sad face. And then he scooped her up with his massive paws, and gave her a warm embrace.
"I understand. We can't go back, can we?"
"Can't go back?" Aika yelped.
"Will I see you again?"
Cat Sìth answered with a feline smile – and then gave Akari a giant lick on her face.
"Nyuuuuu…" Aria was stunned.
The sound of the train whistle brought him to his senses again, by which time, Cat Sìth was already aboard the train. The steam engine started revving up.
"Good-bye! Until next time!" Akari waved vigorously. Alicia joined her with a regal wave, which caused Akira to wave goodbye as well.
They all stood there for a moment alongside the tracks, until Akari finally asked the obvious question. "So, what do we do now?"
"Alicia, your trainee got us stuck on another planet. Perhaps you need to review your teaching methods," Akira accused.
"Ara ara ara," replied a flustered Alicia.
"I got this. This is all totally a dream. All we need to do is wake up all at the same time," Aika explained. "Okay, wake up on the count of one, two, three!" Aika pinched herself and her neighbor.
"Ow, why did you pinch me!?" Alice grumbled.
"You looked like you need to wake up the most."
Athena yawned again.
"She's the one you needed to pinch!"
"Ok, one, two, three!" Aika pinched both Athena and Alice this time with a sly smile.
"Stop that!"
Beatrice walked over to the humans, and rubbed her body against Akari. This caused a bit of a stir below knee-level until Aria got acquainted with her.
The humans were getting hopelessly lost at her station lately, so she led them behind the train station towards the village. The tabby with a little blue cap stopped as soon as they all reached the main road.
"So... we just wait here?" Alicia asked Beatrice.
"Mew."
A minute later, they heard the low roar of a car engine approaching. A long black limousine pulled up to the station, and a tall Englishman with coal-black hair stepped out. They would have no trouble understanding him; as they worked in the tourism industry, all of the undines spoke English quite well.
"I apologize for my tardiness, but traffic on the M25 was absolute Hell," he said with a sardonic smile. "Allow me to introduce myself; I am Sebastian, butler to the Earl Phantomhive. Welcome to Earth."
"Earth?" Akira was incredulous, "It hasn't been called that since..."
"Ah, quite. I also welcome you to the year 2016." He took a minute to savor the women's shock, then continued. "Seeing as you all are so recently arrived, may I extend my lord's invitation and offer the hospitality of Phantomhive Manor?"
Sebastian cut quite a striking figure in his dapper suit and tie – modern of course, as a proper suit with tails attracted too much attention in this day and age. Akari found him attractive to look at, but somehow, in a way she didn't understand, there was something repulsive about him too. He had only shown kindness, but she felt something nonetheless.
Sebastian in return assessed the party of six undines with his practiced grace, but raised an eyebrow at Akari, as if he had seen something interesting. "As of late, many people have been arriving as you have done, through space-time anomalies, and my lord is one of those empowered by the Crown to accommodate new Arrivals. I assure you, nothing will happen to you that will demean the honor of the Phantomhive name."
"You got beds?" Alice let out a long yawn, her tiredness finally winning the war against her excitement.
"But of course. Please, enter the limousine, and I will convey you all to the manor. The path which you must take has been prepared for you."
They all entered the back of the limousine: Alicia graciously, Athena ungracefully, Akari warily, Alice sleepily, with Aika and Akira both distracted by the hot guy. Sebastian revved the motor, and sped away.
Phantomhive Manor, Kent County, England
Sunday, September 11, 2016
2:02 PM BST
Sebastian brought a tray of tea to this sextet of women with strange hair colors and odd dress-like uniforms. That description would cover a lot of the Arrivals he had been meeting lately, but for this time, it was fortunately the most unusual thing about the women in the drawing room. Well, that and the Mars thing, but a human is still a human. Their relative normalcy would make the next step much easier, so he had room to improvise.
Pouring a cup, he asked the freshly-rested undines, "I realize that you all are a very long way away from home, but do you have any idea where on Earth where you'd like to settle?"
Akari thought about her history, and realized that if it was the 21st century, it might still exist. "We want to go to Venice," she said in a matter of fact tone. "We are undines, the water is our life blood, the gondola, our second home. Venice is where our hearts will sing."
"Embarrassing remarks are forbidden", chided Aika.
"Ara ara ara." The tall blonde woman, Alicia, was impressed at her charge's speech. "Yes, I do believe that we would all flourish in the canals of Venice."
Akira added, "Right. Give a prima undine a gondola and she can make it for sure."
"I believe that can be arranged. Well, ladies, I thank you for bearing with all of my intrusive questions. I shall do my best to find appropriate accommodation for you all. I assure you, I will find you one Hell of a place to live."
"Don't mention it," Alicia said sweetly. "I appreciate all of your help."
After taking his leave, Sebastian called the real estate agent, and told them they needed another place, this time in Venice. No, not Venezia; his clients were quite clear in requesting Venice, he confirmed with a toothy smile.
The agent immediately began looking for an apartment building near Venice, California. Sure, Snapchat was buying all of the real estate there now, but this Lord Phantomhive guy was loaded, so he thought he'd be able to find a decent building anyway.
2. The Martian Invasion
Venice Beach, California, USA
Monday, September 12, 2016
9:09 AM PDT
Yay, the first day at work! I didn't think years of university would lead to job as an apartment manager. But just because the job isn't what I expected doesn't mean it's not worth doing. And who knows, maybe some cute ronin from room five will fall in love with me, like in Maison Ikkoku. Heh, I wish.
I drove up to the property in Venice Beach, and parked in the ground floor parking lot. The property was actually really close to the beach, maybe just a couple minute's walk way. Nice. I walked under the building to the small elevator, and waited for it to arrive.
It was a small elevator, and slow. Curiously, the floors were marked ⓪①②③, like a European elevator. I've long been convinced that all elevators must take the same amount of time to go from the top to the bottom of the building, regardless of how tall the building is. Union rules or something. This one sure wasn't breaking the pattern.
When the elevator opened up, I was greeted by a Hispanic man, about my age and height, gathering up a few loose tools in the hall.
I wasted no time greeting him, "Hi, I'm Brent."
"Jorge. Nice to meet you."
"So, what's going on here? Looks like a major remodel."
"That was what was happening, until your guy bought the property. I'm just picking up the rest of the stuff before the next job."
"Wait, I've got tenants coming tomorrow. How many rooms are ready?"
He scratched his head. "Just the four over here," Jorge gestured to the north set of apartments on the first floor. "Avoid the south side, that still has some major plumbing problems."
Well, I thought my management account balance seemed a little too high for just running a place. "Oh boy. Please tell me you're available to continue fixing this place up."
"Sorry, man. I'm just maintenance for the Angeles Property Management company. I'll email you the general contractor we used, though. Might speed things along."
"Thanks. You're a lifesaver."
He gathered a few leftover things in the building's storage, and I received the big box o' keys which granted me dominion over my new realm. We shook hands, said goodbye.
And then I started exploring. Master key in hand, I looked over each one twenty-four apartments. The first floor apartments Jorge claimed were ready, 1 to 4, all looked to be in pretty good shape. A bit of blue painter's tape on the windows, but nothing too bad. Working appliances. I selected apartment 1 for myself, because I might as well get the extra view. And I'm not a fan of having a window to the east, since it wakes me up way too early. But an extra window to the west is just dandy.
As I made my way through the rest of the rooms, things were a little worse. Old, run-down appliances on the top floor, and no appliances at all on the middle floor. A cracked window in apartment 24. Down on the first floor in apartment 7, the wall was down to the studs and a damp, moldy smell pervaded the room. I cracked open a window – there was nothing in here to steal anyway. Whoever bought this building for immediate housing had sure found a hell of a place.
Right below my room, on the ground floor, was a small room which held a few old garden tools. Under room 4, the next corner was a small storage room, mostly used by spiders at this point. A bit of an anticlimax for the grand tour, but at least I had rooms for the people coming tomorrow. The rest of the open space on the floor was devoted to parking cars.
From the outside of the apartment building, you could see three sets of blue balconies on each floor, with an extra-long semi-shared balcony for the middle rooms split in the middle by short walls. The north side faced a former street, but was now just a grass-lined walkway that led straight to the beach. This "front" side had a brick facade – and only a facade, because this is Southern California, not some geologically stable place where you can actually use bricks architecturally. However, all three of the other sides were a stucco painted an exciting beige. Even the south-side balconies were coated in a chipped beige paint. That's gonna have to be fixed. The beach climate is nice, but it's sure hard on buildings.
I looked over my instruction sheet to see what I had to get ready. Wait, I had to provide a furnished apartment by tomorrow? I got that this was supposed to be housing for fictional characters, but even then they can't sit on fictional chairs. I had to get moving. I unloaded my truck as fast as possible, and dragged the boxes into my room.
I proceeded to make for the nearest IKEA as fast as I could, while of course obeying all posted speed limits. Haha, just kidding about that last part. I passed a Costco on the way out – that was going to be useful, but mail-order mattresses are just not going to cut it for tomorrow.
Once my truck and I filled up on furniture and Swedish meatballs, respectively, we made our way back to the apartment. The fun part of IKEA, of course, is the assembly. The mattresses would be delivered tomorrow morning, but in the meantime I had six HEMNESes to put together. The good news is that after one assembles a couple of them, one has it down pat. The rest of the beds fell together pretty fast, and with the final twist of an Allen wrench, I made my way back to the room I had chosen.
It was already dark, but I was able to at least start unboxing a few of my things. I set up my own bed, finally, and just about collapsed on it. I guessed a few minutes rest wouldn't hurt. And the next thing I knew, it was morning.
I woke up, dredged a shampoo bottle out of my box of toiletries, and dragged myself to the shower. I had to pick up my first residents at LAX at 10:15, and it was already 9:40. It was a good thing the airport was so close, or otherwise I'd've been in hot water already. Hotter water than this shower, anyway. That's what happens with water heaters that don't get used, I reminded myself.
I finished getting dressed and headed downstairs toward my truck. I checked email on my phone, and it looked like I finally got a list of resident profiles from Funtom. Sweet, at least now I'll know who I'm looking for, I thought.
I was just about to read it, when a long black limousine pulled up to the complex. Six young women exited the vehicle, along with a white cat. Oh boy, cats. I hadn't thought about that much during the hiring process, but I'd always been really allergic to cats. Like, full nosebleed after a few minutes in the same room. I hoped I was not going to find myself unable to do the job on just the second day at work.
That train of thought got interrupted when I glanced up to the girls. "Wait a sec... those dresses..." They were all dressed like the characters from an anime called Aria. It was like an almost perfect cosplay – actually a little too perfect. I adjusted my glasses, but it didn't change my assessment.
As the limo driver removed their meager travelling bags from the trunk of their car, I stepped forward to meet them all.
The tall blonde approached me first, and gave me the once over. I was 33 years old, an inch over six foot, and more than an inch overweight. I had hair somewhere between brown and dirty blonde, and a couple inches of red sideburns on each side. I wore shorts and a Hawaiian shirt emblazoned with hibiscus flowers, perfect for this warm, sunny autumn day.
She greeted me cheerfully, "Good morning, I assume you're our new apartment manager?"
"Sure am! I'm Brent Laabs, nice to meet you."
"I'm Alicia Florence."
"I noticed, but who are you really?" I asked the cosplayer.
She giggled, following up with, "Prima Undine Alicia Florence of Neo Venezia. Some call me Snow White, but really I'm simply Alicia. Thank you for taking us in!"
"Oh boy." For some things, the only proper response is the Sam Beckett one, and this was definitely one of those moments. These were definitely not cosplayers. They were all too in character – Aika's energetic motion, Alice with her unamused face, Alicia's grace, Akira's lovely charm, Akari's open-mouthed stare, and Athena's easy strength with the luggage. And oops, she dropped a bag. Their big blue-eyed cat tried dragging the duffel, to no avail. Yeah, I knew every one of these people straight from the television screen. These were somehow, someway, the real thing.
And why would the Powers That Be send me cosplayers from another universe, anyway? I had been told what to expect, by both an an angel and a reaper, no less, and it was still just the weirdest feeling to be standing in front of a cartoon character (but in 3-D). Well, I could roll with that. No matter how strange it felt, I still had a job to do.
Snapping out of my reverie, I heard Akari tell the man in the limo, "Thank you so much for the ride!"
"No, it was my pleasure." The driver was probably about age 20, a tall skinny white kid with short brown hair.
I was supposed to pick them up, so I offered, "Did you need money for the fare?"
"Don't worry about it. I have a free hour because of a late flight, and I got to spend it with these ladies. That's payment enough." He reached inside, and pulled out a card that he handed to Akari. "If you ever need a ride somewhere, let me know, okay?"
Akari got a big smile on her face, her pink lips just about reaching her pink hair. "Thanks again, Mr. Driver!"
I introduced myself to the rest of my new tenants. They introduced themselves to me, too, but that step was just perfunctory, because I already knew who they were. I wouldn't have to memorize new names, and I already had an idea of what they'd want as tenants. Which made everything so much easier on me, because I'm honestly not great with names and faces.
Akira approached me, and brought up the most pressing desire of these women, "Thanks for your hospitality, but I think there's been a mixup up in our arrangements. We wanted to go to Venezia in Italia, and we got sent to Venice in California."
"Oh that's…" I had to suppress my laugh, because that was really the wrong signal to send right now. "That's really too bad. I think I can understand why you'd rather be there." Since they were all gondoliers in their story, set in a replica of Venezia on Mars, that was an easy assumption. "I'll tell you what. Let me send an email to my boss, and let me see if I can get it straightened out for you."
At about this time, a truck pulled up into our alley, bearing the blue and yellow branding of Ikea. "Good news everyone," I announced, "it looks like your mattresses are here, so you have something to sleep on."
"Good. That flight was too loooong!" Alice yawned.
Once I directed the delivery men on where to take the mattresses, I gathered the gondoliers, and we walked up the stairs to the first floor.
"Sorry, I wish I had more time to get your rooms settled and nice, but I just started work yesterday. Since there are only four livable apartments, and I'm in one of them, you'll have to take three right here. There are two bedrooms in each one, so I think you should have enough privacy.
"Meh. I guess that's an upgrade. C'mon, Athena, let's take this one."
"Mmm," Athena agreed.
Aika stepped up to the blonde, her hands clasped together, "Alicia, would you —"
She was cut short by her teacher, Akari, grabbing her by the ear. "No betraying Himeya by fraternizing with a rival company!"
Alicia smiled with her left hand on her cheek. "Ara ara ara."
And so room assignments went entirely predictably. The gondoliers of Aria Company took the larger number 4 on the corner, likely because everyone was going to visit them anyway. And because technically, three people would be living there.
Wearing a uniform with blue markings were Alicia Florence: cute, fair, placid, and bearing a long blonde braid. Her junior Akari Mizunashi, a native of Japan and protagonist of Aria possessed pink twintails an energetic demeanor. And the last tenant was President Aria, the bulky white tomcat with lucky blue eyes. This constituted the entire staff of Aria Company, the smallest of Neo Venezia's gondola companies.
Apartment 3 went to the undines of Himeya, Akira E. Ferrari and Aika S. Grantchester. They wore white dresses with dark red highlights and a small cap. Akira was tall, dark, and handsome, with long chestnut brown hair and fair skin. Slightly shorter than her senpai, Aika's short raven hair framed a pleasant round face with a near permanent smile.
Finally, No. 2 was occupied by the Orange Planet team, still wearing their uniforms stroked with an orange pattern. Leading the group was the dusky-skinned, silver-haired Athena Glory. The teenage green-haired rowing prodigy, Alice Carroll, was relatively stoked to be upgrading her relationship with Athena from roommates to flatmates, despite her low-key manner.
Just great, I thought, all names beginning with "A". That's gonna be confusing to remember, even if I do recognize all of these anime characters. All these people. That's going to take a while to get used to, being real people and not characters. Sheesh. Will wonders ever cease?
I walked into each room as they were throwing the sheets on their beds, and handed out keys to my new tenants. Hopefully, not for long, because they really would be more happy in Italy. I sent an email to the company about resettlement, and hoped for the best.
I spent the time getting utilities sorted for each apartment, moving over accounts. I assumed that we'd be needing to pay for everyone's Internet, which is cheaper anyway. And now, I just had to sort out what to do with six anime girls, a somewhat thornier proposition. Thankfully, it turned out that they were mostly able to sort out themselves.
The first to wake was Akira, who still looked a little groggy when she knocked on my door in the early afternoon. "Oh, hi. I thought you'd be asleep for a lot longer."
"Just following the advice we always give our customers: Sleep only three hours after your flight, and then you won't have jet lag the next day."
"Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks. Well, come on in."
She entered, and sat down in my computer chair – not that I had many choices of where to sit, yet. "Any news on Venezia?"
My computer was set up, but there was no internet hookup yet, and wouldn't be until Friday. So I pulled up my phone, and saw this email:
Quote:We're deeply sorry, but Funtom Property Management cannot provide resettlement services to Venezia. Housing Arrivals there would be prohibitively expensive at this point. Your residents specifically asked for Venice, and that is what we took great pains to provide to them. Perhaps you can advise your residents to be careful what they wish for.
Sebastian Michaelis
COO, Funtom Property Management
"Man, what a dick," I whined. "Looks like you all are stuck here." I handed my phone to Akira.
She read the device. "What the hell did you say to him?" she glowered at me.
I scrolled up to my own email.
"Huh. He seemed so charming in person."
"Yeah. I'll give you that much."
"All the best guys are total jerks," Akira concluded.
I thought about this logic and shrugged; that only earned me another angry face. Risky had been right in my job interview – even when working on a divine calling, shit flowed downhill. But I was still around mostly pleasant, attractive women, so I wasn't about to kill myself over it. (Sorry, Risky.)
Aika peeked through my apartment's open door, took a look at Akira's glare, and started backing away stealthily. Not stealthily enough.
"Aika!" Akira growled.
"Yes!"
"Go round up everyone else."
She scooted off as fast as she could, and soon I could faintly hear her knocking on the other apartment doors.
Akira, for her part, mainly grumbled to herself for the next five minutes, leaning onto the hand against her chin. She asked me a few questions about whether I had enough money to buy them all necessities, clothing, and furniture, which I answered in the affirmative. The budget might not be able to afford the kind of rococo stuff they had in Neo Venezia, but it would do.
Thinking about my budget, I noticed I also got a reply on my other question from yesterday – it looks like the former and now renewed general contractor would have a crew back to work on Monday. It looked like my company could be a little heartless, but at least they were efficient. I would, of course, direct the improvements.
Aika strolled back into the apartment, this time accompanied by Alicia and Akari. A minute later Athena led Alice in by the hand. Alice still had droopy eyes, and her hair was something of a green tangle.
Alice yawned. "This place is terrible. I can't even find the bidet!"
Akari picked up, "Oh right, I was wondering about the bidets, Mr. Manager!"
"Uhm…. Americans uh…" I stumbled.
"Hey, listen up!" Saved by Akira, whose face had just now shifted towards a calm smile. "Our apartment manager, Brent, has confirmed to me that we are not going to be able to move to Venezia. But we should have plenty of time and money to make this place comfortable. And from there, we can work our way towards moving to Italia. Or whatever we want to do with our lives.
"Sorry about that, everyone. I guess you're all stuck with me," I apologized.
Akari automatically offered, "Please take good care of us, Mr. Manager!"
"I'll try my best!"
Aika asked, "How are we supposed to work? As undines?"
Athena piped up, "Are there even canals here?"
I fielded this one, "A few canals, but not really… not really the same as in Venice in Italy. In Venezia."
"Well, that's worth a try. I wonder if there's any competition?" Alicia said sweetly.
I just shrugged.
"Feh, like any competition stands a chance against the three Water Fairies of Neo Venezia!" Aika boasted.
"She's got you there," Akira told Alicia, who just giggled.
I interjected, "Wait, let's step back a sec: how are you even going to get a gondola here?"
"Oh, that's no problem. Mr. Butler said that he would send us gondolas, as soon as he can buy them," Akari elucidated. I made a mental note to figure out who Mr. Butler was, and thank him for being such a nice guy.
"Ok, that's really nice." I followed up with, "Can I ask how you got here? You seem like you're a long way from home."
Akari said, "I know, you don't meet time travelers every day."
"You're time travelers?" I asked. So that's what the story is? "We're time travelers" is probably the worst cover story they could think of – unless they actually believed it?
The girls looked around at each other with tilted eyebrows, not sure what to say. Alice eventually got frustrated that no one was answering, and decided to respond, calmly, "We were all undines in Neo Venezia, on the planet Aqua. So, Akari was going around the city looking for a mega cat, but instead she got seven tickets for the Galaxy Express. And then this mega train came into the city in the middle of the night, and we rode on it into the sky along with all the cats. Then all these lights appeared in outer space, and the train took a mega jolt and I almost fell over. We landed on Earth after that, and then the mega cat spirit Cat Sìth told Akari that we had to stay here."
The longer Alice's story went on, the more nervous Aika looked. Perhaps the others were trepidatious too, but Aika always wears her heart on her sleeve. And if the story was bullshit, she would have performed tsukkomi on Alice by now, if the manga was right. "Wow, that sounds really exciting. Well, I hope Cat Sìth was right, and you all enjoy yourselves in our time."
Aika breathed a sigh of relief at not being judged a crazy person. "I'm glad you understand our situation. Does it happen all the time or something? People from another planet?"
"Not as far as I know. But I'm pretty sure I can believe you all."
Alice remarked, "Maybe you should be a little more skeptical."
"Hoheee?" Akari uttered.
Alicia laughed. "It all sounds like a good long-term plan, Akira. But the first thing we need is —" She paused; everyone else filled the silence:
"Groceries"
"Clothing"
"Music"
"Toiletries"
"Make-up"
"I was going to say lunch."
Alicia's idea won out, even though the other needs were great too. After insisting that they try out the local cuisine, we walked to a Mexican restaurant on the beach. Walking with six people in white uniform dresses with geometric colored lines made me feel a little bit like a cult leader. I suppose my Hawaiian shirt and shorts would probably dissuade most people of that idea. But hey, Venice is a weird town anyway – why not just embrace the weirdness, or so I thought.
We ordered an assortment of tacos, enchiladas, chile rellenos, and tamales, and munched on some chips and salsa while the meal was being prepared.
Alice warned, "I think this salsa has soap in it."
"Oh, that's the cilantro. The green stuff." I had a bite. "Yep, definitely."
"What are you guys talking about? It doesn't taste like soap at all," Aika said.
"It does to me," Alicia said.
"Really?"
"It's a genetic thing," I explained, "Some of us just taste the world differently."
"Ah!"
"You'll get used to it if you eat enough Mexican food around here. I still don't like the taste, but I'm used to it."
Alice enjoyed the rest of her food, but she did pick all of the cilantro off of her pastor tacos.
After that, it was off to the mall. I had to make two trips, because there was no way I can fit seven people in my truck. I worried a bit about introducing these women to our ancient fashion trends and archaic products, but they took to shopping like a duck takes to water. They handled everything from groceries to clothing with ease, with only the occasional question about what something did.
Except with me doing all of the buying. In that way, I suppose it was like most of the other times I took women shopping. At least this time I had a company card to expense everything to. I started rifling through all of the receipts, trying to get a sense of how much money we spent.
Alicia noticed me with her deep blue eyes. "Are we going over budget?"
"I don't think so. I've just got to keep track of everything."
"I see. Would you like some help with that? I run a business, or well, I used to run one."
"That would really help out. I accept your kind offer of assistance."
The receipt pile only got worse by as the afternoon rolled into the evening – as did my attention span for shopping – but I held my stiff upper lip and carried on, what what. By the end of the evening, the girls had all doffed their work uniforms in favor of outfits they had bought:
Athena wore a simple white shirt and a killer pair of skinny jeans. A brown-skinned beauty like her didn't need to do that much to be gorgeous.
Alice had assembled a schoolgirl chic style, with a green plaid skirt, yellow blouse, and matching jacket. Sadly, there were no knee-high stockings, and no, I'm definitely not checking out sixteen-year olds.
Akira wore a modern dress, sleeveless with broad black shoulder straps on top. It had wide vertical black and white stripes descending from below the bust to knee level. She definitely had the most fashion sense of this crew.
Alicia had donned a sundress with a sunflower print and an open neckline. Around her neck she wore a gold chain with a small locket, but I'm pretty sure that was new, and not yet a keepsake.
Aika's image was somewhat less wholesome than that, with a bright red spaghetti-strap top just short enough to show a bit of midriff. I suppose it's always appropriate for Italians to wear spaghetti straps, right? Below that was a set of torn blue jeans of the sort that costs at least ten dollars per rip, held up by a red vinyl belt.
Her friend Akari wore a frilly, baby blue blouse with a navy blue pleated skirt, white socks, and sneakers. Nothing too fancy, but the colors were the perfect compliment to her pink hair.
And finally, President Aria wore a child-sized Panama hat with a white band.
Accompanying these women, I no longer looked like the leader of the Undine Cult, but I did look like the luckiest guy around. Of course, looks wouldn't tell you I had spent the last few hours shopping for clothes, pretending to like clothes shopping. I decided I had to find out if my company offered hazard pay for circumstances such as these.
I seem to have avoided at least one hazard, though – I had spent a lot of time around Aria, and hadn't had any kind of allergic episode. I'm not sure if Mars cats are different, or it's because he never seems to lick himself, but he never triggered my cat allergy.
As we loaded the back of my white pickup with bags and bags from boutiques and department stores, Athena cried, "Oh my God!", and pointed towards the eastern sky.
Everyone glanced upwards, and we saw the nearly full moon hovering above the city lights. "The Moon is mega!" Alice observed.
Alicia said, "And it's lighting up everything!"
"Mmm-hmmmm!" Akari beamed. "I missed you, Mr. Moon!"
"So you see the Man in the Moon? I would have put you down for the rabbit making mochi."
"Mr. Manager, I can see both!"
The native Aquans were all still staring at the sky, transfixed by the floating white orb in the sky.
"I think they're moonstruck."
"So am I. It feels so familiar, but so strange." Akari paused, then added, "I'm glad I got to share this feeling of wonder with my friends. It feels good to be back."
Alice warned, "The Moon is like mega giant! Is that even safe?"
3. Hacking Things Together
Venice Beach, California, USA
Thursday, September 15, 2016
11:30 AM PT
While the undines had vivid memories of their first week on Earth in the 21st century, the week passed in a blur for me. There was just too much to do, getting people set up for an entirely new living quarters and an entirely new life.
To their credit, the undines were real troopers. It helped that they had previously lived in something of a 16th century living history park, Neo Venezia, and they weren't averse to doing things the hard way. No matter how "mega primitive" Alice thought something was, that observation was usually the end of the complaint. After all, they had spent a lot of their everyday lives helping travelers, and Akari herself had made the journey from Manhome to Earth with no more than a backpack and small box of personal possessions.
The company budget that had seemed so large at first was rapidly flowing away on buying things. So many things. Cell phones so they could call for help if needed. Furniture, toiletries, electronics, pans, and cooking utensils. We started out with paper plates and plastic cups, just to give them a chance to find tableware they liked later on. Of course, they all had expensive tastes.
I had gotten estimates back on fixing up the remainder of the property from the general contractor, and that was going to eat up an even larger share of the budget. While we were fine right now, I could imagine that in the long term, it was going to be unsustainable. At least we could all use my parent's Netflix account together to save money, right?
We could now actually do that, because the internet had been hooked up – a day early even. I must have been blessed by the angel Safety, desu no. Fortunately for us, they had already run fiber into the building, from those utility poles lining the alley, and it was just a matter of the phone company turning it on. While the network hadn't been run through the whole building yet – probably one of the many reasons the building was under remodel – it was wired up to the first floor.
While the girls were out exploring the city on foot, I drove over to the nearest Fry's Electronics for a couple of wifi routers and some patch cable. This particular store had a tiki theme, with giant, angry-looking heads, bamboo torch lighting, and shelves full of computer peripherals. Given that I was housing Martian invaders, I should have gone to the Fry's in Burbank with the B-movie theme and a flying saucer crashed into the entrance, but Manhattan Beach was a lot closer.
I could imagine Akari's reaction to seeing moai in a store. Alice and Athena would copy the stern expressions. At some future point, I needed to bring everyone by here to pick up a few things. They definitely needed some kitchen appliances, probably a television or two, and whatever else caught their interest.
But that just brought up my next problem: my truck was really not a great way of getting around for seven people at a time, with its tiny bench back seat where even Akari and Alice had to squeeze to fit in. What we needed was a van, something that could seat all of us – at least until we got more residents. L.A. is such a car city that you just need wheels to make it anywhere, and Uber was not a long-term solution. And those annoying-ass electric scooters parked everywhere were definitely not a solution, either.
When I returned, I set up a pair of wireless routers for the first floor. It was not a well-designed system and I'm sure there were dead spots, but all we had at this point were a few residents on smartphones, and myself. I'd grow the network properly when we had a reason to do so, but the stopgap worked for the time being.
When I attached my own computer to our basic-but-functional network, I decided to write an email to my boss, Sebastian, about whether the apartment's budget could support getting a vehicle, and when we might be getting more residents. About an hour later, I got back a short reply:
Quote:Mr Laabs,
I'm afraid I cannot tell you when new residents will arrive, as that rather depends on circumstances outside of our control. I urge you to get additional units ready for occupancy as soon as is practicable, as more displacees may need accommodations at short notice.
In terms of your budget, it is entirely within your remit to purchase such items for the benefit of the company or the residents as you see appropriate. If your budget proves insufficient, might I suggest charging rent?
Sebastian Michaelis,
COO, Funtom Property Management
Wow. So, I was really on my own here. Just like I had done before, working from home, and in graduate school before that. Just with a lot more money around. I wondered if I could just, you know, run off with the cash? What would Sebastian do, find a demon or something to track me down? I doubted he even knew demons. And even if he did, I was pretty sure I could escape the likes of Risky.
Not that I would actually steal the money. At the very least, I couldn't do that to my lovely and talented residents, who were depending on me to keep things together. Living with real life anime girls sounded a lot more fun than a life on the lam, hiding out in Latin American ranchos and fancy island hotels but never staying long enough to make a friend.
Anyway, I heard a friendly voice calling from the hall, "We're back, Mr. Manager!" That must be Akari, I thought.
"Yo Brent!" Aika added.
From the sound of the chatter, all of the undines were back from their stroll around town. Apparently they had found some Thai food, and were still deciding which curry was best. I hopped up out of my chair and went to invite them in for a talk. But as soon as I reached the office door, Alicia preempted, "Brent, can you please bring your toolbox by our room?"
"Ah, sure." I could see they were all loaded up with a few shopping bags, so I wasn't going to get them right away. "Hey all, could I get everyone to drop by Alicia's place in a few minutes? I have some updates for you."
After a few affirmatives, I went back and grabbed my tools. It wasn't a very extensive set, just a few tools I had collected from college, along with a few odd pieces I found in storage downstairs, but it was plenty for this task.
I went to the other end of the hall, and stepped into the open door of apartment 4. Alicia said, "Thanks for coming Brent. Can you help us hang some curtains?"
"Sure!" I thought about it as I started shuffling through my kit for some drywall anchors, then snarked, "I would have figured you were more into Venetian blinds."
Akari giggled, "We're into both, silly!"
By the time the other girls arrived, I was standing up on a dining chair and Akari was on another one, both part of a set they had scrounged up at a local antique store, which was glad to reclaim the floor space. Of the four other chairs we weren't using, one was a bit wobbly and the other one had a missing dowel in the seat back, but as a set they still were still handmade and strong. And not the industrial, flatpacked furniture that none of the undines seemed to care for, especially so for Akari.
Anyway, as Akari and I stood atop these chairs, we were both holding up a curtain rod to be centered at Alicia's direction. Soon after she arrived, Akira took over bossing us around, to ensure that the curtains were mounted to her high standard of quality. After a few adjustments, probably back to where Alicia originally had us holding it, I made a quick mark on the wall before passing the pencil to Akari.
Still standing up on the wooden chair, I said, "I have a few announcements for you all."
Akira, her task done, said, "You have the floor."
"Actually I'm up here and you have the floor."
Alice huffed; Aika said, "Dad jokes are forbidden!" I think at least Akari liked it, but she too didn't have the floor.
As I got down off the chair – I was taller than everyone in this very small crowd, anyway, I told announced, "First off, I set up a wireless internet network for the apartment, which should be a little bit faster than relying on the wider network." I walked them through to the settings. I told them, "The network name is "Pokoteng", and the password is 'swordfish1!', that's digit 1 and exclamation mark at the end. Don't want to make it too easy to guess, after all."
"Punyuu!" Aria Pokoteng approved.
"Cool, that's out of the way. Next: I'm going to buy a van for you all, so that more of us can go places together."
"Sounds great," cheered Alicia, who wasn't really enjoying the attention she got on the bus.
"Just what I've always wanted," Alice deadpanned.
Akari corrected, "It's not your van, silly."
I reasoned, "I guess it doesn't make much difference if I give it to you or not – most of this stuff is going to be left over when you leave back to your own world, and just go back to the company." Something about these people from Funtom made me pretty sure that they would see a purchase for the residents, regifted to me at the end, as embezzlement. If they're delegating so much authority to me, they must be pretty sure of their accounting process. "But if I give it to you all, does anyone know how to drive a car?"
"Uh yeah, you just get in and enter the address into the screen." Aika gave me her best "no duh" look.
"I can't get one of those. I mean the kind where you steer and pedal the brake. Can anyone do that?"
"That sounds really hard~." Akari's face went blank.
"Can't you get a better car?" Aika asked.
"Uh, we don't actually have those yet. We'll probably get those in ten years or so. But for now, all self-driving cars are prototypes." Or, no better than prototypes, in any case.
"None of us know how to drive a manual," Akira said. I assumed she meant automatics too; that's centuries of semantic drift for you. "Can't we just get around by train and boat?"
"Well, Los Angeles is to cars as Venice is to gondolas. This is the city that fell in love with cars. So if you want to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, you'll need to drive, or take a bus or taxi."
"This century is mega stupid," remarked Alice.
"I heard that. So if anyone wants to learn how to drive, I'd be happy to teach them."
For a moment, they were mumbling to each other, until Athena stepped up, "Brent, I think I would like to learn."
"Great! We'll set up a time."
Alice asked, "Can I drive my van too?"
"Actually, you're too young to get a license to drive. So you can own it, but not drive it."
"But gondolas are okay?"
"Of course."
"What a strange place this is."
"Actually that brings up one more thing about your age." I explained, "Alice here is only fifteen years old, which means that she needs to be in school."
"Can't I skip it? I was just about to graduate from middle school."
"The law here is that you have to go to school until you turn eighteen."
"This century is mega stupid." Alice scowled.
"Yeah, I thought you might say that, so I looked into it. If you have a job – like for a gondola company – you can get away with only four hours of school a week. It's called 'continuation school'. The school year just started a couple of weeks ago. You can probably catch up no problem, Alice. Just uh, try not to mention "this century" or history that hasn't happened yet. Don't want you to be the Mysterious Transfer Student."
She rolled her eyes at me.
"With that attitude, I think you'll fit in with American teenagers just fine," I deadpanned.
"Wait a second, aren't you still seventeen, Akari?" Aika asked.
"Hehehe, only for a few months more. I'm getting an early birthday!" Indeed, while her birthday was coming up at the end of January, she had just skipped three months in the move between worlds.
Aika stood up, and walked over behind Alicia and Akira. "OK, I'm going to go be with my fellow adults over here."
"Awwww." Akari waved goodbye meekly.
"Actually, you're old enough that you can take the high school equivalency test and skip school. It sounds hard, but it's actually super easy, probably the same level as a high school entrance exam. But uh, how's your American history?"
"Ano..."
"When did the United States become a country?"
"Eto, the Meiji era?" Akari tried.
"Oy vey," I said. "You'll need a little help there."
"Eh? Am I undereducated?"
"Tragically so," Aika quipped.
"Eeeehhh?"
"Don't worry about it," I reassured her. "My grandmother never finished middle school, and she's one of the smartest people I know. But if you want a job that doesn't involve rowing a gondola, you might want to consider more education. Santa Monica College is really close, and doesn't have admission requirements. So all of you adults like Aika can start taking classes there in the winter, if you choose. Maybe some business classes would be helpful?"
"Hmmm, interesting." Alicia was obviously considering the idea.
"They have music classes too, Athena."
Her eyes perked up at that idea. "Ah."
"And if any of you need help, I can tutor you. I've tutored in math up to calculus, general chemistry, physics, English – and also meteorology, intro-level astronomy, and sociology."
"Whoa." Akari was clearly impressed.
"Why are you even here? Can't you get a real job?" Akia teased.
I squinted back, "A wise man once said, 'It's the economy, stupid.'"
Alicia wanted to clear things up, "Speaking of a job, would there be any restrictions on Akari and Alice being employed at their age?"
"No, not in California. Tons of child actors here, and they're almost adults." I wasn't about to bring up Sebastian's suggestion of charging rent – not just yet, anyway – but it did allow me to broach the subject. "If you get bored of lounging around here or want to buy something special, it's okay if you look for a job. Oh, and don't forget to take your Social Security card with you, just in case you get hired."
"My what now?"
"Social Security card. It should be one of the documents you were given."
"What documents? We didn't get documents."
Oh great, I thought, I have six undocumented immigrants. Perhaps "illegal alien" actually works better for five of the six, except for Akari, who was born on Earth. But then I realized, "Wait, you flew in. How did you get through customs at the airport?"
"We have passports." Akari hopped down from her chair, and jogged around the corner into her room. A moment later, she dashed out with a little burgundy-colored folding book in her hand.
"These are British passports," I said, a bit surprised. "What, are you here on tourist visas?"
Alice remarked, "We weren't planning on staying on Manhome, you know."
"Right. Well," I stumbled through, "One more thing to straighten out for you. Alright, that's it from me for now."
With the announcements over, the first thing I straightened out for them was Alicia's curtains. A few quick drill holes later, I mounted the curtain rods. When the fabric was hung, the whole apartment felt a little more lived-in. What a difference curtains make to make a place more homey. The work had felt interminable over the week, but things like that made it really feel like we had made some progress in making a home.
I sauntered back to my room, and dashed off a pithy reply to Sebastian's email:
Quote:How would the residents pay rent if they can't get jobs? They're here on tourist visas.
I left out the line about Alicia only having one spare kidney to sell, since I was starting to worry he might take it literally.
This time, it took a couple of hours to get a reply, but when I finally did, it was not from Sebastian, but from his boss, a CEO inexplicably named Ciel Phantomhive. What kind of name is that, anyway? Of course, this is from the country with such places as Shrewsbury, Gorebridge, Upper Slaughter, and Craven Arms, so maybe weirdness is relative.
This is also when I realized that Funtom, as in Funtom Toy Company, was a pun on Phantomhive, just in a "you know, it's for kids" variant. And they decided to just roll with that for a property management company too, because why not? It could be worse, I decided; I could be working for the massive corporation known as Bimbo Bakeries.
In any case, I finally read the letter, which contained:
CEO Ciel Phantomhive Wrote:I apologize for the mixup. We do expect displacees to be able to engage in similar activities to they did at home during their stay here. Because of your residents' unusual way of entering into this universe, it seems no documents were prepared to make their arrival official, and Sebastian chose to solve the immediate problem.
As we have a few problems on our plate right now, I've asked one of your fellow property managers to contact you via the managers' forum and resolve this little problem. You should be hearing from him shortly.
Best of luck,
Phantomhive
It turned out Risky was right: the little guys like us were going to be the ones that dealt with the big screw-ups up top. At least, that's how it felt at the time.
While I was aware that there was a online forum for managers, I hadn't even given it a look prior to this letter. Partially because there was so much to do, partially because I didn't have proper internet set up and I would have had to read it on the phone, and partially due to my introverted tendencies I just ignored it for the first week. I hadn't even thought of it as a potential source of help.
I took this opportunity to look it over, and holy shit, they all had other fictional characters in their complexes. Not ordinary folks like mine, but big guns like Sailor freaking Moon and Nanoha "White Devil" Takamachi. Seven folks from the cast of Tenchi Muyo had shown up in Canada, which was more than enough to cause an interplanetary incident. Honestly, I was already starting to suspect them of having started this dimensional crisis. This was when I started to worry that I was in way over my head here.
On the other hand, the tenants from planet Aqua were pretty normal, all said and done. It could be worse. If I was working Garnett's job in Vancouver, I might find myself inexplicably falling in love with Tenchi Masaki. She claims she's not interested, but I give her about another week before she joins the harem. The lady doth protest too much.
I started to wonder what would happen with the six young women in my care. Another harem, perhaps? I mean, so far they all had shown zero romantic interest in me, except perhaps President Aria – and since I was allergic to cats that was a no-go.
Yeah, I actually worried about falling into a harem, because all of the other questions I could ask at that time were more worrisome: who's really in charge of the multiverse? Why are these people showing up in our universe? If they can come here, what's the nature of reality? Or even of writing? Was the moon landing a myth, but also real because it was on TV?
And honestly, what on Earth was I going to tell my tenants? I still didn't really understand how they got here, or when they could get home. I didn't even know where to start. They claimed to have accidentally emigrated on a magical space train; even going that far, would they even believe what I had to say about alternate dimensions?
All of this started to seem plain crazy. What the other people were writing on the apartment forum sounded like some made-up story or just crazy rantings. It all seems crazy, until you're staring Akari Mizunashi in the face.
Which, of course, I was unintentionally doing. Akari just came over to my room beseeching help. "Can you help me connect my laptop to the wireless network?" She pulled out her laptop, a small titanium gray device, its keycaps marked with both Latin letters and hiragana. It had a screen shaped like an elongated hexagon, which made me wonder a bit about how to design a hexagonal UI. But hey, not to worry if the monitor ran out of space, because a small holographic projector above the screen projected a couple of extra windows above. In short, future tech.
That said, interfaces didn't seem to have evolved too much in the past hundred years... and the command line was bash-compatible. Now that, I can work with. I fiddled around with the settings a bit, as Akari watched nervously behind me. Eventually, I found my problem, looking at the wireless driver settings.
"802.11wt?" I stated, as if I had said '802.11 WTF' instead.
"It's no good?"
"I think your laptop is maybe too advanced for, well, everything. Let me ask some of my friends if they can figure out what's going on here."
"Will that work?"
"With computers, all you need is enough time and you can solve any problem." Well, I hoped. Didn't I see someone making a voice call to Earth in Aria? I hoped the laptop's wifi used ordinary EM spectrum, and not something dumb like tachyons.
In any case, it looked like I had a use for this apartment managers' forum after all. I made two threads there to start out. The first was a basic introduction of myself, my special abilities (I'm the fastest pun in the West), and the residents at my beachside apartment. This was a little strange too, because I already knew half of the managers from before I was hired. A lot of them had been hired from the forum want ad, apparently, as part of some ineffable divine purpose, which meant the first reply from Bob Schroeck was: "Oh, you're here too. Welcome!" Which was followed up a quarter hour later by Rob Donaldson in Ottawa: "So they roped you into this too, did they?"
My second forum post was about Akari's specific issue, on how to connect her future laptop to modern-day equipment. It was a wild gamble, but there were certainly a wide variety of exceptional folks to choose from. I got a few replies back, and a couple offers of help. An account simply named 'Sysadmin' replied, "That sounds really interesting! I wish I had time to help, but wishes have been pretty hard to get these days." There wasn't much information about the account, except that the user avatar was a logo of a red mallet. It couldn't be Skuld herself, could it? I guess, but I use random anime images for my avatar, too.
Within the hour I got a private message from Kestrel:
Kestrel Wrote:Hello Labster,
The boss told me that we need to get some documents straightened out for your residents. I have a little bit of setup still to do, so can we set up a Skype tomorrow morning? And make sure all your residents are around for the following hour or so.
After a bit of back and forth, I was able to inform him that I was not going to be around for the East Coast morning, and 10 AM on the West Coast would have to do.
Friday, September 16, 2016
10:01 AM PT
The next morning, I was up bright and early to do the video call. You know, relatively speaking. Although in the weeks following, I found myself keeping earlier hours to deal with the contractors working in the upper floors. But today, ten was early enough to take the call from my fellow manager.
"Good morning." I introduced myself, "I'm Brent Laabs, Labster on the forum."
"Good afternoon," he replied. "Kestrel here. Nice to meet you, Labster."
"You too." The guy didn't give me a normal name, but seemed to be one of those guys who went by his login name everywhere. That didn't seem too weird to me, since I've gone to programming conferences where everyone calls each other by their IRC nickname at least half of the time. Everyone has the right to choose their own identity.
One look at him at the other end of the call was enough to remind me of those technical conferences, anyway. The guy looked like Hackerman, with a beard and a set of thin-rimmed glasses. Oh, and the trenchcoat he was wearing indoors. A dangerous member of the Trenchcoat Mafia, this one was. From appearance alone, I guessed that this man had ways of getting government documents.
"The weather must be nice there," he said conversationally. He must have noticed my Aloha shirt with a print of a large wave crashing on a tropical island. Our sartorial tastes are different, yes, but certainly of the same oeuvre of non-conventional hacker fashion.
"It sure is. Sunny Southern California, perfect every day, except the foggy days. And the windy ones. I guess it's a bit chilly in – where are you?"
"Boston. It was pretty nice a week ago, but summer's definitely on the way out."
"So, I hear you can help us with out little identity card problem."
"I believe I can, yes. I hope you don't mind if I use your residents as guinea pigs, do you? I have a resident here who I think can help you out."
"Wait, I thought Garnett had Washuu-chan?"
"Heh. Actually, I was hoping to let HAL 9000 have a trial run as our case worker."
I was a little taken off-guard. "Glowing red light, kills astronauts, that HAL?"
"It isn't really his fault. I've looked at his files, and he was adhering to his mission the best he could. His orders for the secret mission even overrode crew safety. The people behind that mission are the real monsters."
I adapted the old conservative adage, "Programs don't kill people, programmers do?"
"Pretty much. HAL isn't really "alive" in the same sense as some of my other residents. Well, actually, sometimes he kind of is, he just has trouble understanding the difference between morals and directives. He knows what he is told, just not why."
"Sounds like a little kid, then."
"Yeah," Kestrel reflected, "maybe he is. A kid with a supercomputer full of knowledge."
"Just don't put him in charge of making paperclips, okay?"
"Not a chance," he declared. "But I think he should be able to help update a few government databases. He is a NASA employee after all." I laughed, and Kestrel continued, "I've changed his mission to helping the dimensional displacees fit into the new world."
"Ah, that sounds cool!"
"So I'm just going to bring HAL into the call, and observe everything he does. If it works out, he might be available for everyone to use."
"Sounds good."
Another voice joined the call, "Good morning, Manager Brent Laabs. I am HAL 9000."
"Good morning. Oh, and I pronounce the name like the word labs, with a flat 'A', though I don't mind however you want to say it."
"No, that is fine. I have updated the records, Mr. Laabs," he changed his pronunciation. "May I call you Brent?"
"Of course, HAL. I have some residents here at my house who were not given the proper documentation to live and work in this country, and I'm afraid they might be here for some time."
The artificial intelligence offered in his typically friendly, conversational tone, "I can help you with that problem, Brent." However, the video camera Kestrel had set up on HAL's red light was ever so slightly unnerving. If I had my choice, I'd prefer my AIs to look like CLAMP's persocoms.
"I expect you can help."
"Can you tell me the name of the fiction that they appeared in?"
"Yeah, it's an anime called Aria. There's a manga called Aria too, but the first part of it was called Aqua."
"I have obtained it... processing... done. A fascinating story. How many dimensional displacees from Aria reside there?"
"Six."
"Akari Mizunashi, Alicia Florence, Aika Granzchesta, Alice Carroll, Akira Ferrari, and Athena Glory: is this correct?" That was pretty cool. HAL must have guessed their names based on the characters who appeared most in the story.
"That is correct. Oh, actually, seven. I always forget the Martian cat."
"Okay, I'll add Aria Pototeng to the list, Brent."
"That's it."
"Is it possible for me to interview each of them to see what documentation they need?"
"Of course, HAL. Let me go fetch them."
And so I did. I won't bore you with the details, which were a lot of repeated questions for each person, but basically involved making a dossier for each of them. The highlight of this is when Aika wondered how in the hell HAL had gotten a last name of "Granzchesta" for her, and that, "Weird surnames are forbidden." HAL was more than happy to update her records to "Grantchester," while Akari tried somewhat unsuccessfully to explain that the weird surname kind of made sense if you knew Japanese.
Oh, and HAL was somehow able to make sense of President Aria's "punyuu" noises. AI sure is amazing.
At the end of the call, HAL explained that he had "corrected" the relevant government databases (AI sure is amazing) to provide documentation for each of them. They were now all natural-born American citizens, and he provided birth certificates and Social Security Numbers without us even having to prompt him to create those records.
Further, he made passports for them, to account for their cover story that they lived abroad in Italy. The passport pictures came from photo captures of the video call, where he had selected the best frames automatically. Not that it was hard to make one of these girls look pretty, but still a nicer experience than I'd ever gotten at the actual Department of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration. Everything would be mailed to us shortly from official sources.
At the end, Kestrel came back on the line, "Hi HAL. I need to talk to Brent alone for a while."
"Understood, Kestrel."
"Bye HAL, thanks for helping!" I said.
"It was good to be of service, Brent." He disconnected immediately afterward.
"I think that went pretty well," I said.
"The same from my end. Everything looked pretty above-board, or at least as above-board as you can get for 'correcting' government databases," Kestrel said dryly.
"Oh, right, one more thing," I said in my best Steve Jobs impression, "Athena got a driver's license just by asking, and I didn't actually teach her to drive yet. I'm going to! We were planning on it."
Kestrel sighed a little bit, then started typing. He then read off his screen, "HAL says that in canon, she has experience operating non-aerospace vehicles up to 10 meters in length."
I broke out laughing. "They're boats, HAL! Gondolas!"
"Oh, man," he chuckled. "He's a little too trusting. I had to get him out of the room with SHODAN just to keep her from trying to get him to trick me."
"Oy. You have some interesting, uh, tenants."
"Tell me about it. But at least it's not having to deal with people all day, you know?"
"I guess," I said. I wasn't a huge fan of people either, but I definitely wouldn't prefer the company of homicidal programs. "I'm pretty happy with my girls. Whatever floats your boat, right?"
Kestrel teased me, "I mean, if you like people so much, we can fix the record and make Athena get helped by people at the DMV?"
"Well, I mean, she does have lots of experience on 'non-aerospace vehicles'," I justified. I wasn't going to inflict the Department of Motor Vehicles on anyone, let alone someone who had suffered just by being displaced in spacetime. Far too cruel.
"I guess HAL wins this round."
"Oh, and speaking of computers, do you think HAL would be able to connect to Akari's laptop?"
"Oh, right, the future tech you were talking about in the forums." His voice really perked up at the thought of future tech, even if it was future consumer technology. As they say, the phone in our pockets is many times more powerful than the room-sized supercomputers of the Apollo Program. Also, consumer technology has a tendency not to suddenly decide to start killing humans – except, perhaps, Elon Musk's self-driving cars from Tesla Motors.
"Yeah, we can't make the thing connect to anything from our century. Doesn't even have a physical port, but we have root and shell on the built-in keyboard."
"I'm sure HAL and some of our other friendly AIs could take a look. Honestly, a few of them are getting stir crazy in here, and it would be nice to have a puzzle to look at. Just ship it over here and we'll look into it."
I thought about it for a moment, and decided that my best chance was probably with Kestrel, rather than the other help offered on the forum. It sounded like a fun problem for bored AIs, that's for certain. "Sure. How am I supposed to send future tech to you?"
"FedEx?"
"Insured for what, one million American dollars?"
"Honestly, the less attention that package gets, the better."
"I still think I'm going to overnight shipping."
"Whatever floats your non-aerospace vehicle," Kestrel fed my line back to me.
"It will be nice for her to connect to the wifi," I added.
"Oh, I almost forgot." Kestrel accused, "Seriously, swordfish-one?"
It took me a minute to figure out what he was on about, which was that the cheeky bugger had cracked my wifi password from across the country. "That's Swordfish-one-exclamation point. The bang makes it more secure."
"There are such things as lists of common passwords, you know. And yours—"
"Hey, it's got more than eight characters, a capital letter, a lowercase letter, a number, and a special character. How can it not be secure?"
Kestrel's mouth opened, then shut again; his brow furrowed, and he finally said, "You're trolling me, aren't you."
"Yes."
"Well, stop it."
"Hey, you're head of information security for Funtom Property by default. I have to make you feel like you've accomplished something with your security training."
"Just change the password, Labster. And check MACs when devices join the network."
"Like, I'm a software dev. Sysadmin stuff, you know, I'm astonished I could set up a network without reversing my crossover cable. I'm not looking forward to extending the network to the next few floors."
"Maybe I can come up with something for you. Send me the floor plans, and I'll have the hardware sent to you."
"Wow, thanks!"
"Yeah, I think I'd like to work on hardware that doesn't talk back to me for a change of pace."
"Hang in there, Kestrel!"
"I will, thanks!"
We ended the call, which had to be one of the best business videoconference calls I had ever made. Who knew that adding a homicidal AI to the mix would actually improve meetings?
I logged back into the forum to update everyone on my decision regarding the laptop:
Labster Wrote:Thanks for all of your advice, everyone.
I'm not sure Kazari could review the wireless signal alone. The protocol is only half of the story – it's probably using different spectrum and might need more sensitive hardware. We'll throw her some of the software later. I'm sure Washuu-chan could figure it out in a few minutes, but let's not waste a scientist on an engineer's job. Since we only have the one device, I think I'll go ahead and send it to Kestrel. I just wish I could figure out a way to back up the data before I send, y'know?
I got a reply pretty fast:
Washuu-chan Wrote:Of course I could figure it out in a few minutes, but what's the fun in that?
But seriously, I'm kind of busy with research right now anyway.
This drew a quick follow-up from Garnett:
Garnett Wrote:How are you even on this forum? It's for apartment managers only.
She replied:
Washuu-chan Wrote:I don't mean to boast, but I am the greatest scientist who ever lived in two different universes!
4. Taking a Breather
Monday, September 19, 2016
11:30 AM PT
"Now now, don't you think it's time to calm down? You've been angry for the entire walk home," I overheard Alicia say as she came up the steps to the first floor.
I glanced outside to the landing, and right behind her was Akira, looking right pissed off. "I know, I know, but every time I think about that man I get so angry!" she fumed.
Alicia gestured as if to hold something down. "Deep breaths, Akira. Deep breaths."
Akira obliged, taking four deep breaths while standing still outside on the east landing.
"All better?"
"Not one bit!"
"Ara ara ara," Alicia vocalized.
"The nerve! How could he say that to you, of all people!" Akira pounded her feet into the building, and announced quite loudly, "House meeting at noon. Everyone better come!" She looked at me, and said, "You too!" before storming off into her room to sulk for half an hour.
After standing there stunned for a moment, I asked Alicia, "Wow, what happened to her?"
"Akira and I… had a bad job interview."
"It sure sounds like it."
"It's been a long time since I've seen her this angry, but she'll get over it soon."
We decided to meet in No. 4, as Alicia had rescued that lovely set of carved wooden chairs from an antique shop, and thus was the only apartment yet to be able to provide seating for everyone.
It also provided us mortadella sandwiches on french rolls with some fresh grapes, thanks to the foresight of Alicia and Akari. After everyone's appetite was sated, we were finally able to get Alicia to discuss what happened earlier.
She explained, "So this morning, we went to talk to the harbormaster. He was a pleasant man, a sheriff in fact. I explained that we planned to operate a gondola service. He told us that there is no gondola guild here, and that we're free to start taking on clients on our own terms, once we obtain a simple business license."
"He also explained that there was already a gondola service in Marina del Rey. So we decided to check out the place, and see if we could work for that company. Unfortunately, I don't believe any such arrangement will be possible."
"Why not?" Athena asked.
Akira answered it, "Because the man there thinks only men can be gondoliers."
"What?" Alice blurted. "That's so lame."
"He told Alicia that he only hired men with the strength to be real gondoliers, not actresses researching a part."
"What the!" Akia slammed both hands down on the table. "How dare he! To say that to Alicia! To you too, Akira!"
"Now now," Alicia explained, "Thank you for your support, but I'm confident in my own abilities. And in all of yours, as well."
Akira took a deep breath, and managed to stay silent this time.
"So…" Aika asked, "Where does that leave us?"
Everyone was silent for a moment, until Alice decided to say the obvious thing, "I guess we can just start up our old companies here."
Akira said, "That's right. Himeya and Aria Company and Orange Planet can all show these boys how it's supposed to be done!"
Alice rolled her eyes. "It's kind of weird to compete when there's only the six of us."
"Yeah, we should all work together to show how amazing we are," Akari agreed.
Akira said, "Oh? Afraid of losing to Himeya, pigtails?"
Akari's face went blank. "Not really, but now I am?"
Athena was blunt: "Haven't you forgotten us, Akira?"
Akira's eyebrows disappeared under her chestnut bangs. "I suppose it can't be helped, we'll need to work together." The younger set looked pretty ecstatic about this idea, jumping up and down, while the adults looked at each other with knowing smiles.
Aika proudly declared, "As heir to Himeya, I welcome you to my company."
"Wait, aren't you going to work for Orange Planet with everyone else?" Alice asked.
Alicia said, "I thought you were going to work for Aria Company."
It became clear pretty fast that we had a 2-2-2 tie for the winning company name, at which point a lot of eyeballs turned to me. I reasoned, "Orange Planet doesn't even make sense on Earth, and Himeya probably won't catch on with Americans," I reasoned. "But Aria Company… that sounds just about right."
"Meh. Makes sense, I guess," Alice assented.
"President Aria, you have the final say. Should we hire these four to Aria Company?" Alicia asked the white-furred cat.
"Punyuu!!!"
I started clapping, and so did Alicia, which made everyone else a little self-conscious.
Aika said tentatively, "This is a good plan and all, but I don't have to start wearing blue uniforms now, do I? It's really not my color."
Alice concluded, "We even don't have any extra uniforms, dummy."
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
7:00 AM PT
The sun rose the next morning to another beautiful summer day. Along the Southern California coast, early summer is usually cool and cloudy, subjected to the May Gray and June Gloom. But this was turning out to be one of those pleasant days in the late summer and early autumn, where the sky and ocean shared a brilliant blue hue.
Of course, I wasn't awake to see the sun rise, having set my alarm to wake me at the still-ungodly hour of nine. Alicia wanted to go through the remodel plan with me in the morning, and I sure needed the help.
She showed up outside my room just on time, wearing a cheap set of drugstore reading glasses in front of her blue eyes.
"Thanks for offering to help!"
"It's no problem at all. I just decided that if we're going to live here, we might as well make it really nice."
"Well, thank you. And wait, are you saying that this place is a dump?" I smiled.
Alicia giggled a little.
"We do need to get this place in livable shape, and fast. I'm not sure, but I get the feeling that we might get more... travelers, like you."
"I see. Of course. Maybe by solving our issues, we can prepare for more tenants better. There are some issues that we'd like to address, like the quality of the appliances, and the issue of the bidets."
"Oh, right, bidets. I'm not sure about the plumbing, and—"
We were about to sit down, when we heard the piercing beep of a truck's backup alarm. We looked out the window to see the front of a pickup with some sort of trailer making a couple passes to parallel park next to the apartment. We headed downstairs to get a better look at exactly what was going on.
What stood along the alley, just under the southern balconies of our building was a trailer bearing a thirty-foot long wooden gondola, covered by three tarpaulins. At the front end was a tractor truck, with the logotype for Ekman Transport painted on the side.
After finishing parallel parking the boat trailer, a short black woman with long, natural hair got out of the cab. She called in her Texan accent, "Is Alicia Florence or, uh," she read the form a little more carefully, "Akira Ferrari one of y'all?"
All of the tenants were downstairs by now, so Alicia and Akira dutifully went to sign for receipt of the boat.
"Oh, that's right, I've got a letter for you too. She opened up her posse box holding the form, and pulled out an embossed envelope. "Someone really likes you gals."
Akira answered, "Oh, you know men, always trying to make up for things with their gifts."
The deliverywoman let out a belly laugh at that, "Heck, wish I could find me one of them that'd buy me a make-up boat!" She started unhitching the boat while I helped the younger undines in removing the ropes and covers on the gondola. A couple of minutes later, she drove off in her truck, leaving us one gondola richer.
Meanwhile, Alicia read the letter aloud:
Quote:Dear Undines,
Here is the first of the gondolas I promised. This was actually my own gondola, but it has been in drydock for quite a long time, so I give it to you. Please take good care of it. As for the other gondolas, they will take months to complete; the next one will be delivered to you by mid October. Such is the price of having gondolas for which you can truly be proud.
Best of luck,
Sebastian
"Freaking sweet!" said Aika, with her characteristic grin.
"An authentic gondola of Venezia, here in Venice. Wow!"
"Are you sure about that, Akari?" Alicia quizzed.
"Hm..." she looked over the craft, "Oh, wait, you're right. I guess I still have a lot to learn to become a prima," Akari said as she scratched her head abashedly.
"Huh? What is it?" Aika asked.
"Look at the prow. There are nine rebbi instead of six." I looked too, and saw that Akari was right – it looked like there were too many tines on the front of the boat.
"That's really weird," Alice said.
"Why would someone do that?" Aika's question was seeking an answer, but simultaneously rhetorical because she didn't expect one.
"Is that a number associated with this city?"
I answered, "Not that I know of. I can't really think of a number that represents our city. Maybe three-one-oh? It's an area code. For phone numbers." They looked at me like I was from another planet. "Yeah I don't get people either."
Alicia stepped up to the boat, and started inspecting the craft closely. "It looks like it's in pretty good shape, for how long it's been sitting around. I'm not seeing any dry rot."
Aika blew at the thick layer of dust atop the gondola's seat, causing a brown cloud to drift in Alice's direction.
"Hey!" Alice coughed. "Watch what you're doing."
Aika stared at Alice across the gondola for a few seconds. Then she blew again in the same direction, even harder this time.
The soot meant Alice's skin tone now roughly matched the color of Athena's; her eyes finally reopened when the dust cleared. "Ok, that's it, I'm gonna get you!" Alice chased Aika counterclockwise around the boat for next couple of minutes, while the rest of us focused on inspecting the boat itself (and avoiding getting hit by the running girls).
Akira was examining the hull. "What's this black stuff? Where in the world did Sebastian take this boat?" The boat itself was painted the traditional black, but an even darker layer of soot lay affixed to the bottom of the hull, giving it a stygian hue.
Akira finally tired of the squabble and grabbed Aika and Alice by the collar, one by one, as they passed. With a scowl on her face, she roared, "Looks like you two have plenty of energy for cleaning, so get to it!"
Alicia looked to Akari, adding, "If you please?"
"Hahi!"
And so with cleaning tools and buckets scavenged from inside the house, the junior team set to scrubbing down their new gondola in the alley behind the apartment; the only interruption to their task was an intramural water fight with the garden hoses.
By the time lunch time rolled around, I came back downstairs with the primas to see how things had progressed. Although they gave the impression of leaving the hard work the their trainees, I had seen them work just as hard on the task of decorating their rooms upstairs. But as I saw in the anime, the art of the prima undine was to make the difficult task of rowing look effortless, a quality they brought to all of their work.
Alicia walked out first, bearing a box of sandwiches. "Okay girls, break time. Who's hungry for sandwiches?"
Akari raised her hand, which made the rest of the washing crew follow suit. And Athena too, for that matter, whose stomach emitted a low rumble.
As we sat atop a floral print blanket on the next parking space over, while everyone was eating, Alicia said, "It looks like you did a good job." She turned to Akira, "Does she look ready to float?"
Akira responded with a teasing tone, "Hmm... I'm not sure. Well, let's ask a potential customer, as they are the most important judges of our service. What do you think, Brent? Would you pay for a ride in this gondola?"
I looked it over. The boat looked like a proper gondola now, rather than a relic of the 1800s. Much better. "With you? Any day of the week," I said.
Akira made a Mona Lisa smile, Akari gave a wide grin, and Alicia simply giggled. "Sounds like our customer approves, Akira."
We finished eating, and decided that there was no time like the present for gondola launches. I hopped in my truck, and lined up to hitch the boat, poorly. After maneuvering the truck forwards and backwards a few times, I eventually managed to get the trailer ball positioned right.
Alice asked, "Are you sure you've done this before?"
"Yes, and I'm still terrible at it." Actually hitching the boat trailer was the easy part, taking only about a minute to drop the hitch, link a chain, and plug in the light cord. The prima undines all hopped into my truck, with Athena and Alicia squeezed uncomfortably into the back seat.
"Okay, we're off to the boat launch," Akira called over the roar of the white Ford F-150's engine.
"We'll meet you on the canals!" Akia called back.
I was going to drive to the boat launch in Marina Del Rey, but Akira told me there was a closer ramp hidden between the westbound and eastbound lanes of Venice Boulevard. They were already better locals than me in some ways. It was a small ramp in the middle of a mid-street parking lot, just for the local residents to access the canals. From this vantage point below the street, you could see that both sides of the street had bridges over the canal, but immediately past the bridge on the north side, the canal abruptly ended in a concrete wall.
In any case, no one else was using the boat launch here, so I was able to back the trailer into the water immediately.
Akira reasoned, "I suppose it makes the most sense for Alicia to try it first."
Alicia nodded. Going by the manga, Alicia was the virtuosa gondoliera, a prodigy of the nautical and social aspects of being an undine. While she had many charms, it was her oar-work and graceful boat control, learned from the legendary Ametsuchi herself, that cemented her status as one of the Three Water Fairies of Neo Venezia.
"I'd like to try it out, too," Athena added.
"It's really tight back there, isn't it?" I asked. Athena made her confounded face, which was even funnier in reality than it was in anime linework. This truck was not going to cut it for transporting all of these people in the long term, but it was the right tool for the job now.
Everyone got out of the car, and all three undines hopped up into the gondola. I started rolling the trailer slowly into the water. And… it floated!
"We have a gondola!" Alicia started clapping, and then all of us joined in.
Athena untied all of the ropes, and Alicia took up her post standing at the stern of the boat. The blonde took the gondola on a quick loop under Venice Boulevard with graceful strokes of the oar, as if she could move the 700 kilogram boat without any effort at all. It was just beautiful. As she came back around, she called out to me, "It handles wonderfully! We'll meet you back near the apartments."
I pulled up the ramp, secured the straps and ropes, and raced back.
After I parked, I walked across a couple blocks to the canals. About a block or so "upstream" the junior undines were hanging out, so I went over to join them. "Why are you all hanging out here?"
"Hi Brent! Akari convinced the owners to let us berth here. I take it the gondola is in good shape?"
"The gondola split into four pieces, there were no survivors," I deadpanned.
"Ridiculous remarks are forbidden."
It didn't take long for our gondola to start making its way down the Grand Canal, a long, mostly straight natural waterway of the former Ballona wetlands. This end of it was lined with a mix of two and three-story houses, but past the wide concrete bridge for Washington Boulevard was a primary school and a few more apartment buildings. Alice was the first to spot the gondola, uttering a simple, "There."
As she emerged from under a tall, wooden pedestrian bridge, Athena, who was now the gondolier, waved to us – and we all waved back.
And that was when Akari started crying, still wearing a wide smile on her face. "I thought that – I thought that everything was lost because of me – for all of you."
"No, Akari," Aika interjected.
"It's okay now, you see. That's our old life, coming up the canal to meet us." Akari drew all of us into a group hug, even me. "Everything's going to be okay now." Tears were streaming down her face.
With wide eyes, Alice said, "Yes, it really is."
President Aria summarized, "Punyuu!"
"Why am I crying now?" Aika complained.
By the time the gondola arrived, everyone had gathered their composure. They moored the boat next to the rose-colored house, and disembarked.
"It moves like a dream," Athena said.
Alicia agreed, "It's in excellent shape."
Akari begged, "Our turn?"
"I'm afraid not; how can I offer our only gondola to trainees when Akira has a customer waiting?" Alicia gestured at me.
"Huh?" Akira stared into Alicia's smiling eyes.
Alicia giggled.
Akira sighed, then boarded the gondola.
"Ah!" Aika's interest was piqued. Somehow, saying that I was just making a joke earlier didn't seem like the best idea right now.
Akira held out her hand, a practiced gesture that was still warm and inviting. "Please take my hand as you step aboard, sir." I did just that. Somehow, it didn't even seem like a joke any more.
Akira piloted the boat up the Grand Canal, to the waters she hadn't yet navigated. It didn't make much difference to an experienced undine like herself, shallow waters like these were nothing to worry about. Especially in the absence of other boat traffic.
"What do you think of our canals?" I asked her.
"Strange. But not in a bad way. Just unfamiliar."
She rowed on for perhaps twenty more strokes, before adding, "I haven't faced anything this unfamiliar since I was still a Single. But, you know, it feels good to face a new challenge."
We passed a rowboat and a canoe tied up in front of a house, which bobbed just the slightest bit in our wake. "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, Akira."
"Normally, I would tell my passenger about all of the sights they were seeing, but I'm afraid I know so little about these waters." Akira's smooth and steady stroke refuted that statement – she knew plenty about the waters, it was the shore she knew little about. "Would you care to tell me about this city?"
"Well, I don't know a whole lot; I didn't grow up here," I began. "These canals all started because a land developer called Abbot Kinney traveled to Europe, fell in love with Venice, and decided to turn some of this swampland into a tourist attraction. I imagine the story was the same in Neo Venezia. Anyway, Kinney had all of these canals dug, and built a pier to attract tourists.
"All that was before cars took over Southern California. Then they started filling up the canals to turn them into streets. Ended up filling in most of them."
"What a shame!"
"That's Los Angeles as it used to be, always looking forward, without thinking about what came before. Anyway, about the time I was born, people started wanting to save the canals, because they made the place special. And, as you can see, lots of fancy homes are here now, so they must have done something right."
Akira's easy stroke propelled us through the Howland Canal, making but the smallest of splashes. It was quiet in the heart of Venice's canal district, until a passing seagull decided to let out series of loud cries.
"He must be looking for some friends," Akira posited.
"More likely looking for some chum."
"Heh, so he is."
"You are different on the water," I said. "More calm and composed."
"So are you."
I thought on it a few seconds before replying, "Got me there. We have so much to do back at the apartment."
Sensing my mood becoming more stressful, Akira added, "When I'm in a gondola, I'm able to let go of all of those things on land, and just live in the moment. There are so many things to worry about, but out here it's just the water and the sun and the clouds, and I move forward one stroke at a time."
"So, it's not just because you're really good at this, Crimson Rose?"
Akira laughed. "It will be good for everyone else to get some time on the water. They all love the gondola – almost as much as me!"
Now it was my turn to laugh. "They can't compete, can they?"
"Nope, but they can try!" She twirled her oar like a quarterstaff, striking at imaginary opponents.
The thought crossed my mind that maybe Alicia asked Akira to take me out as the first customer because she was the one who needed it the most. Maybe I did too. Or maybe Alicia was just being nice. All I know is that if I asked her, all I'd get is a giggle in reply – or if I really pressed her, an "ara ara".
A passenger jet taking off from LAX banked across the sky in front of me, turning all the way around to fly over the land.
"You know, I haven't taken a customer in a black gondola for a long, long time. It brings back memories."
"Why's that?"
"In Neo Venezia, prima undines ride in white gondolas; the black gondolas are reserved for single undines. It's so that our customers know what they're paying for."
"I always thought all gondolas were black."
"In old— well, in Venezia, gondolas are black because the water is dirty. On Aqua, it's a sign of the purity of our water in Neo Venezia."
"You know, you're rowing through muddy seawater. This used to be a swamp."
Akira nodded, and kept rowing. "Maybe we'll use the tradition of black gondolas in California."
"Probably a good call."
I leaned back in the seat a bit, and looked at the nearly clear sky, with only a few long contrails coming across. It was a beautiful day with a kind sun, casting enough light to make your skin feel warm. But then a little gust of salt air would come up from the ocean to cool you right back down. Growing up in a beach city, I almost never notice the smell of salt in the air any more, but I noticed it then.
I noticed lots of things I don't normally notice, like sound of the soft splash of the water against the sides of the gondola. I saw the intricate patterns chiseled into the black wood covering the forward end of the gondola, right below the curved bow. We passed by a bush in full bloom, covered with deep red roses. And of course, I saw the tall, strong woman in white behind me, rowing the gondola with a joyful smile.
And I never pulled my phone out of my pocket the entire time.
By the time we returned to our newly adopted mooring place along the canal, it seems that everyone had already gone home, so Akira and I walked back to the apartment together.
"We never decided what the fare was, did we. I'm supposed to be your customer, right?"
"It's not important. I don't even know what we'll charge," Akira shrugged. "You've done a lot for us already."
"I know, but that was really special. I feel like I owe you something."
She thought about it for a while, and then her countenance suddenly turned grumpy.
"How about a installing a bidet already?"
Omake
"Sebastian, why do you wear that smile while we're stuck in this ghastly traffic?"
"Sorry, milord. I was just thinking about how of all of the Nazis' evil inventions, none is so insidious as the Autobahn. It lures you in with the promise of speed, but every morning and evening the motorway inflicts suffering on those mortals who travel. Every day, they pollute their own homes in an effort to live in a better neighborhood. Truly, it is exquisite."
"Are you quite finished?" Ciel huffed.
The car jolted as Sebastian tapped the brakes, as a little Skoda darted in front of them. Ciel yelled, "Hey! Get out of our way, commoner!"
"Ah yes, road rage. That's the best part!"
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto