[open] ☥ the world is just illusion trying to change you

[mulder_trustno1]

Mulder was pretty certain that no matter how long he stayed here, there was going to be no getting acclimated to the fact that he was living out his wildest fantasies, even when those fantasies were sobered by the conditions that had led to his being on this ship in the first place.  If there was one thing that defined him, it was his will to

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[on_errantry]

Among the buildings from hundreds of cultures were at least a handful from Earth, including the impressive span of Grand Central Station. Its facade had finally been repaired from the damage of almost a year ago, and it looked like it had been lifted directly from the streets of Manhattan.

The small black cat that appeared with a sudden bang of displaced air looked up at the clock and marble carvings with a pleased expression. Of course, her immediate and loud appearance would be quite startling to someone not used to that kind of travel. She yawned, stretched, and shook herself - then spotted Mulder.

"Sorry if I startled you," she said belatedly. She was so used to short-jump transit that she barely noticed the noise.

[mulder_trustno1]

Seeing a piece of home was something Mulder hadn't come to expect, and so it was with a child-like grin on his face that he made his way through the Station, remembering his few visits there, with vivid nostalgia. He closed his eyes and could hear the sounds of the crowd, whistles of the train, busy footsteps...

The sound of the cat's arrival drew him out of his reverie, and he was visibly rattled as his head yanked around to look for the source of the noise.

A talking cat was probably the last thing he'd expected.

He glanced around, as if to make sure that someone else hadn't been the source of the dialogue, because he really didn't need to make himself look like a total dumbass for addressing the cat, if there was some guy standing behind a pole.

Nothing, though, and his eyes drew back towards her.

"... Excuse me?"

[on_errantry]

Oh he did have to be a new one, didn't he? Rhiow never could tell who was coming through the Station anymore, now that there was an actual train running through it again. She liked that, though. It made the place feel more like home.

"Sorry," she repeated, "if I startled you. I know the short-jump is a little loud and it can make you jump if you're not used to it. Most of the people on the ship are used to me popping out of nowhere on occasion." She paused. "I'm Rhiow," she said, remembering her manners.

[mulder_trustno1]

And a polite talking cat, at that. At least all the bizarre creatures he'd been meeting around the city seemed to have the best of manners.

"Mulder," he said, short and to the point. It got tiring, after all, telling people not to call him Fox. "Can I ask how you do that?" He made a little motion with his fingers expanding to represent her sudden popping in.

[on_errantry]

"The transit?" Rhiow asked. "It's a standard intradimensional relocation - teleportation. I have to be careful where I use it on the ship because of the Bleed, but so far I haven't found myself spinning in void space."

Rhiow started washing her paws, looking the new ehhif over. She had a feeling he was going to have a lot more questions for her with that answer.

[mulder_trustno1]

He could follow most of that, if only because he was intimately familiar with lots of theories on earth that people would have called crazy, that followed the same sort of lines.

"So the 'Bleed' you're talking about... I've heard that mentioned before."

[on_errantry]

"Well at least someone mentioned it," Rhiow said. "The Bleed is what we would be flying through if we weren't parked in orbit. We've come to define it as the space between universes - possibly a fifth dimension outside of four-dimensional space as we know it."

She was almost entirely unaware of the effect her wizardly babble was having on Mulder. He held himself together rather well for someone whose life's work he was now witnessing first hand.

[mulder_trustno1]

The giddiness he felt over being here in the middle of everything was sobered enough by the circumstances that he felt he had no choice but to hold himself together. What else could he do? And he definitely wasn't about to miss out on the opportunity to learn as much as he could.

"'There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man," he quoted, eyes scanning around the room. "'A dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.'" His gaze settled back on the cat, with a sheepish smile. "The Bleed's got a little more of a morbid ring than the Twilight Zone, though."

[on_errantry]

Rhiow's whiskers twitched a little at Mulder's musings - ehhif sure had some strange ideas about submatter and supermatter. "It's a little bit different than your Twilight Zone, too," she said. "From what Stacy has explained we know that the Bleed is the space between normal four-dimensional universes, where space-time folds around itself. We can travel several thousand light-years away in a couple weeks, going through the Bleed. Any of the lesser craft on board can't stand the multi-dimensionality, though."

Neither could People attempting a long-jump at the wrong time. Rhiow had taken to adding a return clause into her transport spells that she could speak in a hurry in case she got tossed off the ship. "Are you a scientist, or just interested?"

[mulder_trustno1]

"The lesser craft, as in smaller ships?" Of course a ship of this size would be carrying other smaller ones. He'd seen enough sci fi movies to know that much.

That question brought a sheepish smile and sudden light to his eyes and he dipped his head a bit, shaking it.

"Not a scientist, no, but definitely interested. You might say the search for and study of extraterrestrial life and technology is a large focus of my work." He figured a more specific answer might be in line, though. "I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

[on_errantry]

"Plenty of smaller ships. We have a fleet. Apparently they do quite well for themselves against the Ohm." Rhiow wasn't a pilot and didn't pay much attention to the pilots anymore - not after Tycho had been repodded so long ago.

She crossed the distance between the two of them and then flopped down onto her side, a more convenient position to talk to someone so much taller than you were. "I'm not familiar," she said. "I've been working with ehhif for going on six years, but you make things so complicated." She lashed her tail a little, tilting an ear to the side. It really wasn't right to dismiss them as 'complicated,' not when they shared the planet. "As for extraterrestrials, Earth hasn't officially made contact yet. Crossings is under strict instructions to only let wizardly personnel through."

[mulder_trustno1]

"So the Ohm have attacked this vessel directly?" he asked, perking up slightly. That was news to him. "Often?"

The cat seemed to make itself at home, which put him a bit more at ease as well. Though something she had to say definitely caught his attention.

"Wizards? As in male practitioners of ritualistic magic, or Merlin with the tall pointy hat?"

[on_errantry]

"Sweet Queen Iau, is that what ehhif think the Art is? No wonder wizards of your species keep it under wraps." Rhiow made a sound that was almost like a trill, laughing at the very notion. "Wizards are what keep the universes running, mm'Hlerr." Her whiskers went flat against her cheeks. "Sorry, your name is impossible. Anyway - we take care of a thousand little things a year and a handful of universe-shattering cataclysmic things in a lifetime. None of us are here by accident, but I am on errantry, and I greet you."

The ritual quality of the words was diminished a little as she began to wash her ears, but she kept watching him for a reaction. Men in pointy hats. How ridiculous.

[mulder_trustno1]

Mulder was pretty sure he'd never expected to have offended a cat in his life, but there was a lot to be said for new experiences when you were traveling on a gigantic city hurling itself through space and the dimensional void.

"That's why you're here then? To help fix this particular universal cataclysm?" At the risk of offending it again, he added: "Or was your world wiped out too?"

[on_errantry]

"I am," Rhiow said, her ears tilting out to the side, "and it was. This is all that's left of my poor h'Mhnnha-tahh." The name of the city was pretty impossible itself, but as a New Yorker, Rhiow had gotten used to the mangled pronunciation the People gave to that island. "But while the Powers still have a use for me in the multiverse, I'm still on errantry. It's a change from what I'm used to - sometimes I'll get called off-world to take a look at someone else's Gates, but I'm the team leader of the Grand Central Worldgating team, so we're mostly stationed here."

Rhiow looked around the empty station, flicking her tail. She would like to see it back where it was supposed to be, in Manhattan and swarming with commuters. That would mean she'd done her job right and everything could go back to normal.

[mulder_trustno1]

Mulder assumed that to the wizard-cat, these Powers must have been something of a more religious significance, or at least, something seen as supernaturally outside the power of the Ohm to destroy.

She spoke in present tense, so this world gating team of hers must be something around this station, not just the real one back in her Manhattan, presumably.

"Your team is made from crewmates on this ship?"