Thresholder

Perry crashed down onto the roof of a cathedral, arresting his motion just slightly too late to stop himself from breaking tiles. He held his sword, which pulsed with energy as it kept him from slipping down, and surveyed the area.

“March, scan for radio signals,” said Perry.

“Scanning,” Marchand replied. “Nothing yet.”

Perry looked around, holding himself in place with the sword. He was encased in the cobalt-blue armor, tense, sword already out. There were only seven bullets left in the shoulder-mounted gun, and they were irreplaceable until he found somewhere with a high-precision machine shop. He was a hundred feet up on the steep slope of a cathedral, with a view of a city at night, lit by gaslamp. The moon was out, full, but partially hidden behind the clouds, and it illuminated a large body of water — an ocean, probably — with a river winding through the ramshackle buildings and emptying itself amid a thicket of docks and hundreds of ships.

Perry noted the sails. He didn’t think it was likely he’d find a machine shop here.

This was his third world, or fourth if he counted Earth. The first had been like home, though it felt a few decades more advanced with microfusion reactors and expensive power armor he now wore. The details of its history diverged wildly from what Perry had known. The second world had magic, and none of the details of its history or geography matched Earth’s, at least so far as Perry had known from the scholars. He had fought orcs and hobgoblins, and been gifted a magical sword by an aged wizard.

Perry glanced up at the cathedral's main spire. There wasn't a cross, but instead, a chevron set inside a circle. Maybe their Christ analog had been tortured to death on a wheel, but the significance wasn't immediately obvious.

“Scan complete,” said Marchand. “Nothing.”

Perry tried to peg the year, or the year equivalent, or really anything about the place. He wasn’t sure that he was safe, stuck against the side of a great cathedral, and in fact, it seemed like one of the worst places to be. Before he descended down though, he wanted to know what kind of place this was, and how they would greet a man encased in armor with a sword at his side.

In the second world, they had taken him to be a foreign knight, and welcomed him in so they could listen to his story. This place immediately seemed less welcoming, and from the few people he could see down below at the late hour, plate armor seemed incredibly out of place — and power armor even more so.

“March, send up the drone,” said Perry. “Scan what you can, make a map of the surroundings, get me a feel of the tech level.”

“I don’t understand the phrase ‘tech level’, sir,” said Marchand.

The suit’s on-board AI had been smarter when it had been connected to Richter’s massive computing resources, powerful enough that it was almost human. With the hop to another world, it had been cut off from half its brain, and working around the limitations had become a routine part of Perry’s day. Certain concepts hadn’t been coded in, and where Marchand would normally be able to compensate, that was no longer possible.

“Make a note of electronics, if you see any,” said Perry. “Vehicles, power sources, power lines, that kind of thing.”

“Shall I launch the drone then, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Yes, do it now,” said Perry.

“Launching, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry removed his backpack and leaned forward slightly to give the drone the best angle. It shot up from the small of his back, just barely clearing his helmet, then unfolded in mid-air, righting itself immediately and spinning up its blades. It was, he had to admit, a very cool method of launching, but it felt very much like something that Richter had done for the purposes of being cool, since it could just as easily have been removed and taken off gently from the palm of his hand. Richter had a flair for style. He missed her.

While the drone was buzzing around overhead, Perry looked into his backpack, making sure that he had everything. He’d come into Richter’s world with nothing but the clothes on his back and the phone in his pocket, and had gone into the magical fantasy land with nothing but the power armor. He’d resolved not to put himself in the same dire straits when it happened again. The bag had food, clothes, and a few other things. He couldn’t check it all, because one hand was on the sword that was keeping him in place, but it didn’t seem like he’d left anything crucial behind.

“Mapping complete, sir,” said Marchand. “Drone returning.”

Perry held out his hand, and the drone landed on it, folding itself up until it was small enough to fit inside its nook on his back. He pushed it in gently, feeling a bit of relief when it clicked into place and began recharging. The drone was small and delicate, and there was no way he could replace it or make repairs. Even if he’d had the tools, he didn’t have the technical knowledge, and he wasn’t entirely sure that Marchand would be able to guide him through a step-by-step maintenance process.

The helmet of the armor had no glass or slit to see out of. Instead, cameras on the exterior of the suit were used to gather visual information, which was then projected onto Perry’s eyes, in what felt like a very roundabout way of doing things. The upside to this was that augmented reality was readily available, and an unobtrusive ‘screen’ popped up in the corner of Perry’s vision, giving him a map of this new city.

His initial impression had been that this was Victorian London, particularly because of the observed tech level, but from the map, it seemed more like Boston or New York, with far less in the way of the kinds of grand buildings he’d have expected to see in London of the 1800s. There was enough smoke and smog, along with a few factories that had tall smokestacks, that he thought he was right about the era, but it seemed like a new place to him, possibly colonial. The cathedral whose roof he was standing on was the tallest building around, aside from a spire that jutted up from a large park to the north. Inland, there was a hill with a cluster of buildings, large houses with more trees around them than elsewhere, and even at night, from a distance, and knowing nothing about the city, it screamed wealth.

The power armor was airtight, largely because Richter had lived on the Pacific coast and loved to go diving. She’d had her own, smaller power armor, and they’d gone together, descending down in the heavy armor until they were walking on the seafloor. A small ‘gill’ filtered out oxygen from the air or water, making the suit perfectly breathable in virtually any conditions.

Perry had become aware that he was being protected from the smells of the city.

“Marchand, open up the helmet please,” said Perry.

“Outside air quality is unacceptable,” said Marchand. A small indicator showed up in the bottom-right of Perry’s vision, ‘AQM 342’, which meant nothing to him, and below that, a list of pollutants in parts per million. Arsenic, sulfur, carbon monoxide, and lead were all listed.

“How does that compare with, say, 1950s London?” asked Perry.

“Reference data unavailable,” said Marchand. “I’ll let you know once we reconnect with the network.”

“I’m not going to be able to stay in the armor,” said Perry. “Open the helmet.”

“Are you sure, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Yes, March,” said Perry.

The display went dark and the faceplate of the helmet cracked open. Perry immediately felt his eyes sting, and he was so far up that it shouldn’t have been that much of a problem. The air had a sour smell to it, and once he took his first breath, he found it had a taste, which in his opinion, air should never have. The pollution wasn’t that bad, no perpetual blanket of smog, but it was entirely possible that this was a good day following heavy rains or with a strong wind, which was a sobering thought.

“No one in power armor down there, was there?” asked Perry.

“No, sir,” said Marchand. “No one in armor at all. You had asked about the technology levels, sir, and there were a number of people with percussion-cap pistols. I also spotted cannons at the coast, sir, pointed outward, and cannons on a number of the ships.”

The armor could take a hit from even a relatively high-caliber bullet, which Richter had shown with a test in her garage, but it wouldn’t be able to handle a direct hit from artillery. He was more vulnerable here than he’d been in the fantasy world then, but only if he was stupid enough to get in front of a cannon.

“No signs of electricity?” asked Perry. The faceplate was still up, but Marchand could still talk into his ear. In fact, there was a detachable earpiece so they could stay in communication even at a distance, if Perry had to step out of his armor for an extended period of time — which it seemed like he would.

“There were a few, in fact,” said Marchand. “I’ve found crude telegraph systems which appear to be powered through electrochemical batteries.”

“No radio though?” asked Perry. “Nothing that we can listen in on?”

“If you can move close enough to the telegraph lines, I should be able to intercept the signals, if a transmission is in progress,” said Marchand.

“What time is it?” asked Perry.

“Four in the afternoon,” said Marchand.

Perry looked at the moon. “Local time?”

“I haven’t been able to connect to the network to say, sir,” said Marchand. “Satellite links appear to be offline.”

Perry gave a sigh. Marchand had been programmed with some fairly reasonable assumptions, but not for moving between worlds. If Perry had any programming knowledge at all, he might have tried to reprogram the AI, but March was at such a level of sophistication that no single person could have actually said how he worked. Marchand could understand simple things, and adjust parameters or learn new concepts, but basic facts like ‘we are in a different universe’ seemed to be beyond his programming.

Whatever the time, it seemed late, and Perry thought that anything more would have to wait for another day. “We need to find a safe place to sleep,” said Perry. “And I’m going to need clothes, something that will help me fit in.” He paused for a thought. “Have you overheard conversations?”

“A number of them, sir,” said Marchand. March had excellent hearing, thanks to a bevy of microphones located all over the suit and world-class signal processing. Sound had been one of Richter’s specialties. “Would you like me to replay them?”

“I just want to know if they speak English here,” said Perry.

“Most of them do,” replied Marchand. “A few conversations were in languages I was regretfully unable to identify.”

“Good,” said Perry. That was another data point, the constancy of language. He was learning more about the worlds with each one he went to. “Then we’ll find somewhere to bunker down and I’ll listen to what you have, to get some context.” He paused for a moment. “Bring down the faceplate, then show me the map of the city again. We’re looking for somewhere wealthy. The kind of place with a guard, but not a guard who’d be watching the roof.”

He didn’t like the idea of stealing clothes, but the only money he had were a handful of gold coins at the bottom of his bag. He hoped that gold was worth something here, and that he’d be allowed to walk into a store while dressed like a relatively wealthy medieval nobleman. His two sets of outfits were that, or the skinsuit that he wore beneath the armor. Of them, he thought that the medieval tunic and tights would be less noteworthy.

He scrolled through the map, using gesture controls with his free hand. He was getting tired of holding onto the sword, but its magic was what was keeping him in place. Eventually, he found the right kind of building, a three story home next to one of the city’s large parks. March highlighted it on his HUD, and Perry used the optical zoom to look closer. The lights were off, and there did seem to be a few ways in at the top.

“We’re going there,” said Perry. “Silently.”

He pushed off from the roof, worried about breaking more of the tiles, and let the sword carry him.

The suit, to his initial disappointment, could not fly. It could make enormous leaps, punch with incredible strength, and did so much augmentation of his natural power that he could have been a one-man wrecking crew even as a weakling, but flight was out of the question. According to Richter, this was because of the energy requirements: even if the suit had jets, the microfusion reactor wouldn’t be able to sustain them for more than a single minute. It was still incredible technology, but nothing like he’d seen in movies or read in books.

The sword, however, did let him fly. It could move with a mind of its own, following simple and direct mental commands, and when it was in his hand, it made him weightless. Flying with the sword was like being a balloon pulled in the wake of a car, and he needed to make the power armor rigid in order to not sway and twist as the sword moved. It was a slower method of travel than leaping from building to building with the suit, but took none of the suit’s limited battery, and was quiet as a whisper.

He landed on top of the house and sat there for a moment, looking around to see whether his dark, quiet flight through the air had been noticed. The sword glowed faintly, brighter when in battle, but it was sheathed. The sheath had been finished only the night before, a last minute request to the king's quartermaster. No one had seen him as he went through the night sky, in part because of the dark, and in part because of the time of day. Most of the businesses were shuttered, and most of the houses had their lights off.

“Sonic scan,” said Perry, placing his hand against the roof at a place that looked like it might have a support beam.

“Scanning,” said Marchand.

“Tell me who’s in the house, give me a layout,” said Perry.

“Scanning,” Marchand repeated.

Sound was where the suit excelled. It might have been nice to have penetrating thermal cameras or X-ray vision, but instead the suit had Richter’s speciality, which were microphones. As Perry sat with his hand against the house, Marchand was taking in sounds from dozens of microphone and doing inaudible pings, some of them through the outstretched hand. The sounds would help to build a map of the house, along with the locations of the people within it.

After five minutes, a map popped up on Perry’s HUD, showing all the house’s rooms, along with all seven of the occupants. Three children, two parents, and two servants, if Perry’s guess was right. There was an attic above them, accessible via trapdoor or through a window at the side, and it seemed like exactly the sort of place he’d been looking for.

He needed somewhere to sleep for the night, a place he could stash the armor before venturing into the city, and a temporary base of operations until he could rent a room for himself or find other accommodations. He needed to understand the world.

This was his third world, and while they had all been different, the other two had something very important in common: an Adversary, another person hopping between worlds like he was.

When they found each other, he would be ready.