It began when a girl fell from the sky.

It happened while I was taking a walk. I was feeling antsy after having spent most of the day laying around reading a sci-fi novel that had just come out. I have a few different walking routes and on this day I selected one that crosses the bridge that passes over the train yard. It’s not my favorite route, despite the fact that it gives me an almost picture-perfect view of the trains. Whenever I take it, my thoughts always stray to the fact that any of the dozens of vehicles passing me at forty-five miles-per-hour could easily jump the curb and hit me at any time. I wouldn’t say I’m actually afraid of it happening, just that I think about it happening. A persistent, invasive thought that always taints my enjoyment of the view.

After I crossed the bridge, I found a staircase I had never noticed before. It led down into the strip of woods between the train yard and the neighborhood nearby. True, it was mostly obscured by the surrounding trees to the point where it was only noticeable when you were right next to it, but it seemed strange that I had missed it until now. I realized that there was probably nothing special about it, but just in case, I decided to try walking down it.

I stepped down and it immediately seemed as if I were somewhere else entirely. The road, the trainyard, and the neighborhood were all gone and all there was was the woods. The sounds of the city became muted and I could hear crickets chirping around me. It was as if I had been transported somewhere far away.

This effect lasted for about ten steps or so before I found that the staircase led to an apartment building. Apparently it was just a short cut up to the bridge. Those strips of woods are like that, I find. When you walk into one there’s always a moment where you seem to leave everything else behind and you find yourself alone with nature. But those moments are always too brief. Maybe I should go on more camping trips.

I made my way back up the stairs, planning to continue my walk as usual when it happened. A girl landed on the stairs before me with a thud that made me wince. She was wearing what appeared to be a cosplay of a character from some science fiction cartoon. It was a purple bodysuit with boots that appeared to be part of the suit itself, worn with a long-sleeved half-jacket. She also wore a large backpack. Her brown hair was buzzed. It reminded me of when I was in middle school and buzz cuts had briefly become a fad among the boys. I had found it strange because of the way it had made everyone look the same.

I rushed up the stairs saying “Are you okay?” She was struggling up to her hands and knees. I reached forward to help her, then hesitated. What was I supposed to do in this situation? Just grab her arm and help her to her feet? It felt wrong touching her without her asking for help, but it also felt wrong just letting her struggle.

A moment later and she had pulled herself to her feet. If I was supposed to help her, I had missed my chance. “That could have gone worse, at least,” she said.

She didn’t even seem to notice me.

She looked back up to where she had fallen from. “Shit! Shit!”

Finally, she turned to face me. Her cheek was dirty from where it had pressed against the stair. “Do you have something with sentimental value on you?” she asked.

I looked up, too, and saw, floating in the air, a robot. It had a round, smooth, white body with a small black circle slightly offset from the center. I imagined it was an eye. Two long spider-like legs extended from its front half and curved around, pressing on the trees behind it as if it was attempting to brace against them and pull itself through a tight squeeze.

I attempted to back away, but my heel met the stair above me and I fell on my ass. I tried to ask a question, but all that came out was an incomprehensible moan.

“Something sentimental. Now. It’s almost through,” the girl said, sharply.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my keys. They were all I had with me. The girl took them.

“Perfect, come on.” She took the keys and grabbed my arm, hauling me to my feet, then led me up the stairs until we were nearly to the top. This placed us almost level with the robot. She began to fiddle with the keys. Working my keychain out of the keyring.

It was a tiny copy of the Floral Blade from Lilith’s Mansion, one of my favorite video games. Once it was free, she dropped the rest of the keys. She held forward with its tiny hilt between her thumb and forefinger.

“Tiny sword that has protected this young man’s keys, it’s time to protect the rest of him,” she said in a tone that sounded something like a prayer.

In a flash, the sword was suddenly full-sized. It was still the same green hilt and pink blade with roses around the crossguard. It was way too big in the way that video game swords often are. Seeing it in person, it suddenly occurred to me that, being made of metal, swords must be extremely heavy. I would barely be able to lift one, let alone swing it, yet this girl held it as easily as a character in a game.

The robot suddenly seemed to grow in size and I realized that it was pulling itself through a hole in the sky. Whatever portal the girl had fallen through must have closed on the robot, temporarily trapping it between worlds. However, it was quickly pulling itself through. It had six legs visible now and the widest part of its round body appeared to be through.

“Does this thing have any special powers?” the girl asked.

“Quarter circle forward A,” I stammered.

The robot made it through. It fell crashing onto the stairs, but quickly pulled itself to its feet. It tried to advance on us but its legs became tangled amongst the trees and brush and it struggled to move forward.

“What the Hell are you⁠—Is that the input? Just tell me what it does,” the girl shouted.

“You swing the sword and a bunch of flower petals fly at the enemy,” I replied. I couldn’t take my eyes off the robot.

The robot’s eye focused on the girl and began to glow with red light. She swung the sword in a wide horizontal slash and the air before us was filled with flower petals, red, yellow, and pink slivers that floated gently in the air for a moment before a gust of wind blew from behind us suddenly sending the petals flying forward down the stairs at impossible speeds to slice at the robot. Its eye was smashed, its carapace was cut open, revealing a mass of cables, one of its legs was severed. The surrounding trees saw nearly as much damage, and were covered in gashes by the time the last of the petals had flown by.

The robot was still moving, trying to pull itself forward.

“Not good enough,” the girl muttered. Holding the sword to one side, she dashed forward a few steps before leaping into the air. As she fell, she thrust the sword downward, plunging it deep into the robot’s body. The robot shuddered for a moment, repeatedly lifting and dropping its body in a way that reminded me of a record skipping, before it halted with a high-pitched whine.

The sword lost all of its color, becoming dark grey before it crumbled into ash. The girl hopped off the robot.

“Hate to kill something so cute,” she said as she climbed back up the stairs. “Too bad it had plenty of time to transmit the dimensional coordinates. That was sloppy. You live near here?”

I realized she was talking to me.

“Uh, yeah, just a couple of blocks away,” I said. “What just happened?”

She crouched down next to me, picked up my keys and offered them to me. I accepted them with a shaking hand.

“I’m Sagitta,” she said.

“Abner,” I replied. “What did you do with my keychain?”

She stood and offered her hand. I took it and she helped me to my feet. She gestured up the stairs. I took that to mean I was to lead her home, so I started walking, leaving the robot behind. It’s still there, actually. Later, I went back and pulled some out some of the more computery-looking parts and showed them to a techie friend. She wasn’t able to do much with them though. I guess our computers can’t read whatever format the robot’s data is in.

“I have the ability to draw out the power hidden in objects with sentimental value,” she said as if that should explain everything.

As we crossed the bridge I tried to arrange my thoughts. I wanted to understand, but I couldn’t seem to find a way to ask for an explanation. I had experienced so many impossible things all at once that my mind couldn’t figure out how to parse them. They all combined into a confusing mass of events and ideas that could only be summed up by a single word: “What?”

I decided to focus on just one thing and managed to get a coherent question to peel away from the mass. “Why was that robot after you?”

“The Alsvidr system was compromised,” Sagitta explained.

That didn’t help. So I tried something else. “Are you from another world?”

“Obviously.”

It felt like my questions were a nuisance to her, so I fell silent until we climbed the rickety wooden stairs to my apartment and I led her inside.

“Wow, this place is shitty,” she said.

She wasn’t wrong. My apartment is old, and not well-cared for. It’s positioned between two other buildings, so the windows look out on walls on two sides. It’s impossible to get natural sunlight and the track lighting in my living room only provides a dim light that is terrible for reading. The walls are an ugly green color and the Venetian blinds are full of holes from the previous tenant’s cat. There’s a gaping hole in the corner by the kitchen and the wall-mounted air conditioner is clogged with dust. I hate that place.

She wandered around, peeking out the various windows, though I can’t imagine she saw much. Finally, she seemed satisfied and shrugged off her backpack as she sat on my couch. She felt around in it for a bit before pulling out a device that looked a little like an adding machine. It was bulky, and mostly made up of unmarked buttons, with a small calculator-like display. It didn’t look like the kind of thing that belonged in a world full of robots. She began typing on the keys with her left hand.

“What kind of world is this?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I wondered if I should sit down, too. Suddenly I felt like I was the guest in my own apartment.

“You have magic here? Robots?”

“Magic isn’t real,” I said, as if I hadn’t just seen her perform it.

“Air quality is shit, too,” she muttered to herself. “How do you fight cancer?”

“Chemotherapy,” I said. “Or radiation.”

With her right hand, she picked up my smartphone and examined it. “Communications tech seems to have advanced faster than other forms of technology. Any major shifts to the nature of the world recently? Ancient creatures returning? Stars rearranging?”

I shook my head. “Not really. There was that zombie thing a couple of years ago. But since everyone had seen zombie movies, everyone knew what to do. I just hid in my bathtub until the cops shot them all. They keep them in zoos now.”

“Okay, then I can probably estimate the stability of this universe at around eighty percent,” she said. She finished her typing and then held up the display for me to see. “I need to get to these coordinates as soon as possible.”

They looked like GPS coordinates. I pointed to my phone in her hand and she said “Oh,” and handed it to me.

I looked up the coordinates, which led to a town named Attune.

“That’s several days drive. And multiple border crossings,” I said.

She nodded. “We’ll get started tomorrow. It’ll take at least half a day for Alsvidr to process that robot’s transmission and I need some sleep.”

I blinked. “Wait, am I driving you there?”

“Yeah, obviously,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Why me? Just because I found you?”

“Because you have a car, because you know how to get around in this world, and,” she gestured at the various pieces of video game and anime merch around her, “you’re a geek. Geeks are useful, you collect a bunch of tiny weapons and stuff and load them up with sentimental value. You end up with a nice variety of easy to figure out effects. Plus you’ll do anything I say.”

Her condescending attitude was starting to annoy me. “What makes you think I’ll do anything you say?”

“Because I just completely shattered your worldview by demonstrating that magic and robots and other universes exist. You’ll want to be part of that for as long as possible. Also, this is a chance for you to be the hero and save the world with your geekiness. It’s every nerd’s dream. Also, also, you think that if you help me, I’ll reward you with sex.”

I could feel my face heating. I wasn’t sure what was worse, the parts that were right or the parts that were wrong. It was true that I wanted to stay close to her, but I didn’t want to have sex with her. In fact, the idea of sex had always horrified me.

“I don’t think that,” I protested.

She rolled her eyes.

“What makes you think any of that is true? You aren’t even from this universe,” I said.

She shrugged. “People are alike all over.”

I cocked my head. “That’s The Twilight Zone.”

She shrugged again. Apparently this was a habit of hers. “Yeah, it’s a good show.”

“I don’t get it, you have The Twilight Zone in whatever world you’re from?”

“Lots of media shows up in lots of different universes. Don’t ask me how it works,” she replied. “Like, for example, what’s usually considered the greatest film ever in this world?”

I didn’t have to think about it for long. It might not be my favorite, but there was no denying its reputation amongst critics. “The Room.”

She furrowed her brow. “Maybe I should have placed the stability closer to seventy-five. Anyway, the point is you have Shakespeare, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, lots of worlds have Shakespeare. Creative people seem to recur. Don’t ask me why. Just take comfort in the fact that at least you’re unique.”

That felt like an insult.

“Anyway, you should probably gather up your stuff. We’ll need protection because they will be sending more robots after us. Remember, anything with sentimental value. It doesn’t just have to be nerd shit. I’m going to get some rest.”

With that, she stood and marched into my room. Apparently she was going to use my bed.

I began looking through my possessions, trying to gather everything that had sentimental value. It was a troubling process. After all, the keychain had been destroyed. I would have to choose the items that meant the most to me knowing that they would be lost when Sagitta used them. Still, whatever she was doing had to be important. She had said that we were going to save the world. That was more important than even the most precious of my possessions.

I left the game consoles. They would hurt to lose, but their value was monetary, not sentimental. I left most of the games as well. They were all replaceable, interchangeable with other copies of the same game. No sentimental value there. Except for my copy of Climb, signed by the voice actress who played its protagonist. I tossed that on my desk. It occurred to me that while the games themselves might not have value, the save data might. Even if I hadn’t played them in years, wouldn’t it hurt emotionally to lose my progress in Eternal Tower? I found the memory cards from some of my older consoles and tossed them on the desk, too. They might not be exactly what Sagitta was looking for, but it was better to bring them than to leave them.

Next I searched through my various merchandise. I selected a toy robot named Tisiphone from Robo Densetsu, a figurine of Pleiades in her Thanatosia II outfit, a collection of pins featuring the five sigils from Lilith’s Mansion, and a small framed sketch I had commissioned of Amber from Hazia Lost. All of these went on the desk.

Of course, Sagitta had told me not to just select geeky things. I had plenty of other possessions with sentimental value. Most of them were in my bedroom, but I discovered that Sagitta was fast asleep and undisturbed by my entering. I chose a pocket watch my grandfather had given me, a pair of boots covered in straps, a paper parasol, a plush penguin, and an old-fashioned key. Once it was all gathered on the desk, I looked it over. Was this really everything precious to me? I hoped it would satisfy Sagitta, and wondered how much of it would be destroyed before she finished whatever she was doing.

I slipped back into my room, and found my luggage and a small duffle bag. I packed my clothes and other necessities in the luggage but left the duffle bag empty. It would carry my sentimental items once Sagitta had inspected them. Then, with nothing else to do, I ate, called work and let them know I wouldn’t be in for a few days, and watched TV for a few hours before I fell asleep on the couch.