Of all the things he hadn’t expected to happen, ‘Eliza getting a job almost immediately’  was at the top of his list. They’d been trying to figure out some of the fine points over the past week, with Daniel picking up a book or two on telecommunications, which was an incredibly complicated system of communication he was sure involved magnets somehow, although he had no idea how they were used, and how they were electric. But it had helped him to sort-of explain why there was a small device in their apartment that occasionally loudly screamed at them. 

Sally was, after all, a practical girl. Like anyone distancing herself from her family, she had made sure not to give them her new phone number. But, like a practical girl who did want to have the ability to give her well-meaning grandmother a phone number to call once a week, she had invested in a landline. After life had pulled one of its curveballs, that landline didn’t get used much more anymore. 

After the initial panic, the screaming plastic box had been identified by Daniel, although neither him nor Eliza stopped regarding it with suspicion since that first time. Knowing how to pick it up was its own little challenge, but eventually, he’d given it a go. It felt, to him, not unlike the first time a priest of one of the lesser religions had given him a blessing and he had felt, through the man’s touch, a lesser god trying desperately to be relevant. Something tangible but divine. Important, sacred, real. That moment had lasted for all of seven seconds when he realized that the woman on the other side of the line was trying to sell him something, and he immediately defaulted to universal behaviour. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, faking a smile the woman wouldn’t be able to see, “but I’m quite happy with my plan already.” He put the phone down before she could argue and stood there sweating for a moment and wondering why that had made him so nervous. Whether it was the lying or the completely unexpected social interaction, he suddenly started to realize the horror of having one of these in his home. And he didn’t even know about cell phones yet. 

“So… what was it?” Eliza asked, trying desperately to pretend like the loud ringing hadn’t made her teeth itch, stirring an experimental cup of coffee. It was terrible, but as she had no frame of reference, she was quite proud of it anyway. 

“Of all the… someone was trying to sell m--” Daniel began, ready to launch into a rant about how he could travel across the vast oceans of the spaces between space itself and door-to-door salesmen would always find them. He was ready to really let loose about predatory marketing schemes and how they always targeted the vulnerable, possibly followed up by an out-loud musing if that involved them now, and was then entirely prepared to do the full wrap-around back into frustration with not just unwanted and uninvited salespeople, but the fact that they could effectively step inside with the use of these telephones, and how that was a truly terrible thing. He had been ready, but he didn’t. Because he was interrupted. By the phone again. Eliza and him both jumped in response to the noise, and then looked at each other, laughing sheepishly. “I’ll…” Daniel began hesitantly, but Eliza held up a hand. 

“Let me try,” she said, and walked over to the phone, picking it up the way she’d seen him do it. “Hell… lo?” she said, not sure how these things were supposed to work yet. Daniel was happy to observe. With all the conviction of someone with exactly one (1) more experience under his belt than her, he figured he could make an accurate estimation of the rest of that interaction. He could, of course, not. 

“Yes,” Eliza said to the voice on the other end. Daniel noted that, now that he was further away from what he had no idea was called a receiver, the voice on the other side of the line sounded suspiciously like being mumbled at by a goblin with a dislike for language, vowels and consonants, and an outright hatred for syllables. It was all high-pitched garbled nonsense from where he was sitting.

“Hffl? Wuddo libel noddaboo arroo mobiban?”

“Yes, I would, actually,” Eliza said, and the way the corners of her mouth curled up gave Daniel shivers. He was already starting to feel sorry for the poor soul on the other side of the line, and then stopped himself when he realized that they’d come into what was, at the moment, his living room, to sell him something he had expressed no need for. Whatever they were about to get, they most likely deserved. Probably. 

“Wubbafell! Cabboopelus waccurepan yuyuseng?”

“Well, before we get into that, I have to say that I’ve received your previous message and I have to say we were sorely disappointed by your offer,” Eliza said with a voice like poisoned cake. There was a pause on the other side of the line. “Would it be possible for me to speak with your commanding officer?”

“Yubeena mamajer?”

“Yes, manager. My mistake. Yes, of course I’ll hold.” She leaned against the table and began to twirl the phone’s cable around her finger idly, and Daniel couldn’t help but smile. She was enjoying this, and it was hard not to get some enjoyment out of it in return. 

“Wello owkannawelpu?”

“Yes, hello, I was just speaking to your… worker,” she said, and Daniel went into the kitchen to make himself something. If he was going to watch the spectacle, he was going to get something to drink while he was at it. They’d discovered they had a coffee machine and one of the drawers in the small kitchen held not just its manual but the manual to every electrical appliance in the house. He and Eliza had a little wager going about who was going to be the first to make what the machine called a “cappuccino” that didn’t taste like angry gravel. When he walked back into the living room, he saw that Eliza was still in an animated conversation.

“Juzzamoma, wemmie gemma mamagermam.”

“Of course,” she said sweetly, “take the time you need. Your offer was already quite generous but I can’t help but be offended.” A small pause. 

“Swuzmie?”

“You may go,” Eliza said and she sat on the back of the couch, crossing her legs. Daniel handed her a cup of failed coffee, which she took with a grateful little smile. 

“Is it going well?” Daniel whispered. 

“I haven’t had this much fun in weeks,” she said gleefully. “Yes, hello?”

“Wezzelpip, aziwunderspan yuvassom compin…”

“Yes. Not to say that your subordinates haven’t done their best to be helpful, but I think you and I both know that the packages offered are for common clientele…” Eliza said, clearly already having picked up a bunch of jargon from the previous resellers. Daniel couldn’t help but be impressed by how easily she was talking circles around the person on the other line. And then, after another ten minutes of back and forth, the conversation took an unexpected turn. 

“Avoowever comsiberapareep immarpeping?”

“Well, I hadn’t considered it, although I do have several years of experience in… management.” Daniel’s frown deepened as Eliza was clearly being asked questions that were outside the scope of being sold something. He asked an unspoken question, and she shrugged with a smile, which wasn’t reassuring in the least. “Uh huh. Of course. Yes, I’m interested. Oh? Wh-- I’d have to look, but I want to say yes. Okay. Thank you. Yes. No, thank you. I will of course be expecting… Of course, I knew you’d be reasonable. Thank you. I’ll see you then.”

She put the phone down and looked at him with a smugness that transcended the face she was currently wearing. He could see the perfect face of the Demon Dragon Queen underneath it as she flashed her teeth bare. “What just happened?” he asked. 

“I can start tomorrow,” she said, and then practically bounced off to the bedroom. It was her turn tonight, and loathe as he was to admit it, she’d definitely earned it. He didn’t know how, but she did. 

That had been a week ago, and, as far he could tell from her demeanour, it was going great. And he knew he was supposed to be happy for them. They had a source of income now, on top of what they had in their account, and that bought them more time in case they needed to make expenses here. But he had also sort of expected him to be the first to take up responsibility and find employment. He’d handed in applications at a few places, but he didn’t exactly have a lot of easily marketable skills. None that would translate to this world, at least. He’d applied as a personal trainer at a local gym, because he had some experience whipping people into shape at least. And he’d made sure to do his exercises ever since his body had started to heal a bit. Starting with running, he’d also moved up to various ways to bulk up. If this body was going to be in his way for a while, he was going to make it more like what it should be, as best he could, as limited as that was. 

“So that is where things are at,” he said, leaning on his knees, his knees, ol’ reliable and unreliable, in armor he’d worn for years. It was good to be in that body again, even if it was temporary, like a breath of fresh air after being locked in a musty room for weeks. It was also just good to see Sally again, to ask her how things had been on the other side. She seemed to be a lot more chipper than last time at least. “It’s been hard,” he said, sighing. “I keep fighting for this…” he looked down and for the first time in a while it didn’t cause his scalp to burn, and chuckled. “Well, for that body to fit even a little bit.” He shot Sally a slightly accusing glance. “You could’ve exercised better. But I’m making it work.”

“I’m… well, I’m glad to hear you’re figuring things out, at least. It’s been really interesting here too. Oh! Oh. Oh! Okay, so I know it sucks on your end still but with help from… well, she says her name is ‘Liz’ so we’re calling her that for now, but she gave me my old body back… well, something like it. But--” 

“Liz?” Daniel asked. 

“Oh! I didn’t tell you yet! Yeah, it turned out that the person in the body that the old queen is in wasn’t a guy at all, but a girl named Liz, which does make a lot more sense, although it clearly wasn’t her name, but she’s refused to give her old one, and y’know, I can tell it’s a sore subject so…” She shrugged. “She’s nice. We’re actually on the road back to her castle with the mage who went with you the first time. She’s going to be trying to dismantle all of her power structure and stuff. The mage… Sybill? Sabine? I haven’t talked to her much. Anyway, she’s coming with to keep an eye on her, and I’m coming with because, well, I don’t know anyone else who likes falafel here and sometimes you gotta talk about street food, y’know?”

“Uh huh,” Daniel said, trying to untangle the ball of string that was Sally’s sentence structure. “Speaking of figuring things out… there’s some things I’m still not sure on, and I don’t know how to find them easily. There’s a large book of business and phone numbers, but it is clumsy at best.”

“Oh, just google i--” Sally said, and then her eyes went wide. “Oh my god… You don’t know about the Internet yet. I totally spaced on that, damn. Okay, I have to tell you about the internet and smart-phones and computers and… Okay, so you know about phones, right? Okay, so the whole electricity thing… look, there’s a computer in the living room. I’ll walk you through how to turn it on.”

“What’s the Internet?” Daniel asked. Throughout the history of his world, there had never been someone who asked a more loaded, more dangerous question. To someone like Sally, for whom most of her life had existed in a world connected in every direction, the idea of explaining it, its intricacies, was a daunting task. But she decided to take a crack at it anyway. 

“Okay, so… Imagine a series of tubes…”

Elamimax

Imagine trying to explain the internet to a video game hero. Couldn't be me.

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