First Entrance

[smallgayjew]

"I'll just check in the back," comes a soft, English-accented voice from the door, followed shortly after by a small, blond teenager, who stops dead in his tracks as soon as he turns around to see where he's ended up.

"..."

His jaw drops and he just...STARES.

"It's finally happened. I've cracked under the pressure. I'm too young to be mad."

Comments

[hallelujahpilot]

"Can't comment on that," an American pilot says from a nearby table. Boots on the table, book (actual, paper book) proped up on her lap as she reads. "But Milliways is real."

[smallgayjew]

The presence of an American pilot in what he had thought was the back room of the bookshop he's working in doesn't really help with his fears that he might be mad.

"Milliways?"

[hallelujahpilot]

She glances up.

"It's a bar in a knot of time and space, and you've stepped through a portal. It's a physics thing."

[smallgayjew]

"Ah, I see," Posner says, frowning slightly.

"Actually, I don't. At all. It's a bar in what?"

[hallelujahpilot]

Calmly, "A knot in time and space."

[smallgayjew]

"And what is that, exactly?"

[hallelujahpilot]

"...like it says on the box. Not sure how it works."

[smallgayjew]

"But...a knot as in something that's tied or as in a knothole? This is where space and time are all tied up, or it's...like a bubble?"

[hallelujahpilot]

Her mouth twitches.

"I was actually thinkin' more like a knot like in wood, where everythin' gets all jumbled up. But a bubble works just as well."

[smallgayjew]

He's still not entirely convinced he isn't crazy. "I...still think I'm not getting it."

[hallelujahpilot]

"You can always turn around and go back out the door," she suggests with a shrug.

[smallgayjew]

"Can I?" That sounds like the best option by far, really.

[hallelujahpilot]

"I don't see why not."

[smallgayjew]

Posner lets out a little breath of relief.

Of course, he still thinks he's communicating with a hallucination, so...

"So this is, what? The portion of the vision where I decide if I'm going to accept the delusion or fight for my sanity?"

Mun resists the urge to make Matrix references, as Posner's several years too early for that.

[hallelujahpilot]

"...look, kid, you couldn't make me up if you tried." She pinches the bridge of her nose in frustration.

[smallgayjew]

He lets out a laugh that is not quite as relieved.

"You know, I think you may actually be right about that."