Home Again Home Again (Ever so Fleetingly)

Skott recharged his phone at one of a certain 24/7 donut restaurant’s many chain locations. He checked his work email for the first time in over a week; certainly, he’d had no appetite to waste valuable portal time and cell signal just to check in with Coopycorp.

“Re: Re: Dear Valued Team Member,” read the last email he’d received, maybe four days ago.

Skott’s eyes scanned the email.

We appreciate your place in our team for the past five years. Blah blah. Unfortunately… Skott leaned in. We are downsizing the Boston office entirely to outsource the work at this site to advanced AI learning machine algorithms. Severance packages shall hereby be awarded in Corpocoins per employment contract subclause 3457-B.

“Good. Good!” Skott said in the middle of the donut store. “Save me the trouble of putting in my two weeks. Why don’t you?”

He’d seldom kept personal effects around the office cubicle. So really, the whole CoopyCorp situation had wrapped itself up in a nice little bow.

The severance package would’ve been five figures. Would have been. Converted to the lucrative currency of Corpocoin, it could maybe pay for Skott’s donut.

No matter. Skott did own property in one of the most lucrative housing markets in the country. His travels in Aeirun left him yearning for a change of scenery, too. First, though, he’d need to return home and set up that portal for one more deep dive into Aeirun. Just beforehand, he hoped to have one last conversation to settle accounts…

+++

Skott swung the door open to his modest suburban home. The lights were off, though the interior maintained a certain lived-in quality. Nessa would’ve been using the house, as they’d agreed.

Speaking of, with Coopcorp downsizing into an AI-automated slop factory, Nessa’s own gainful employment was likely in danger as well. That could make what Skott was about to admit come off as kicking a person while they were down… in truth, given Coopcorp’s sudden dissolution, Skott half expected her to be laying around the house, maybe working through his movie collection. Ness had an apartment of her own, of course. But his house was larger, and in the Greater Boston real estate market, the pressure to consolidate was always there.

Maybe she’s out at a job interview? Skott supposed.

While he waited, Skott half-wanted to dip into the ol’ portal fantasy collection. Specifically that one movie about a service worker who got knocked into a pond at Ye Olde Renaissance Faire, then was transported to medieval England. He returned with a newfound sense of honor and chivalry. It starred that comedic actor from a decade or two ago. Who was it again? Skott scratched the stubble on his chin—for he’d simply not had time to shave in Aeirun.

Instead of distracting himself with a movie, Skott returned to his backyard. He held the ruby-red ring aloft, pointed at the picket fence separating these narrow northeastern suburban homes.

Grog… didn’t really give me instructions for how to turn this thing back on.

Ah, that’s how it is sometimes. You miss out on raising the newborns, blink, and suddenly it’s a decade and a half later and you’re trying to remember a trans-dimensional physics lecture from your own son.

Let’s see… Lucy tied this magic portal ring, unknowingly, to her blood relative’s location. So, Skott imagined the vague concept of ‘daughter’ in his mind and began to swish the ring finger around in a circle as this mental image became vaguely orc-shaped. With this very backyard being where he’d first met his darling daughter Lucy-Kignora, the memory came to him quite vividly.

A gentle breeze swirled there in the backyard. The beginnings of a portal opened up—a small thing, not even large enough to stick a human head through. Neither the basalt beaches of coastal Aeirun nor the tall towers of the mage’s college appeared beyond the warp in space and time. A torrent of water leaked down through the portal; it was storming on the other side!”

“Avast. There’s a portal off the starboard bow! Steer me over, so that I may take a gander!” A mighty cry sounded over the rain and thunder.

Skott did a double-take, then hastily closed the portal. The last thing he needed was to open a passageway to a third, unrelated pirate dimension.

“That was odd…” Skott tried refocusing on a mental image of Lucy in his head. He did the hand movement again.

Warmer air wafted through to crisp late-summer Boston this time. Still, Skott could hear the distant thump of heavy rain on stone.

“Father?” came a tell-tale twang from Lucy. “Hey! You summoned an opening directly into the portalmancy labs!”

“No better place for it,” came Grog’s voice, though the half-orc scholar was still unseen.

“It’s been, what, a day?” Skott asked. “You made it back fast. What’re you up to?”

“Had to get mother home quick,” said Grog. “Storm was coming up fast.”

With no satellites and not even air travel or even observation balloons, the land beyond the portal didn’t have a way of predicting or observing weather patterns. They’d seen the beginnings of a massive front coming in just before Skott returned Earthside. Judging by the din of the rain outside it was a heck’uv a storm.

“Hurricane,” Lucy confirmed. “Big ol’ storm off the sea.”

Skott shrugged. He’d spent most of his ‘gap year’ in Aeirun far inland, where such storms were not a problem at all.

“Are you ready to come back over?” Lucy asked.

Just then, Skott heard a muffled clang of his front door opening.

“Eh, might want to do a rain check on that,” he said, deep in thought.

“Fifteen minutes, then we’ll have our own portalmancy ring ready to go!” Grog promised. “Sis has done this once before. Doubt we’ll miss.”

As good a timetable as any.

“Roger. Meet you here in fifteen,” Skott said, then closed the miniature portal with a flick of his wrist.

+++

“Oh, Skott. Didn’t know you’d come in!” Nessa said once he returned through the back door.

Same old Nessa. Curly hair, button nose. Works—or perhaps worked—in Coopycorp reception.

“My phone was dead,” he said.

This was not a lie. He’d stopped by the donut store for breakfast because he’d neglected to charge it in Omaha and was on his way back.

It would be best to be honest, even if he needed to be highly ambiguous about certain details.

“So, how was the trip?”

“Oh? Aeir—uh, Europe was… great.” Skott cleared his throat. “Want something to drink?”

Ultimately, they decided on coffee. It took a bit to brew, but within five minutes, Skott slid a cup of joe over to Nessa, then poured one for himself. They didn’t really have caffeine in Aeirun; sweet mead is more like honey, or a particularly viscous and sugary carbonated water. No wonder Lucy liked soda so much…

“So, confirmed you’re a daddy, huh?” Nessa wriggled her eyebrows. “Have a… daughter, right? Y’know, I have a cousin who had a kid in high school…”

“It wasn’t high school,” Skott said, flustered. “I was… college age. It was a gap year. It’s… look…”

“I’m not judging. Uh, you did spend time with your old fling, yeah? And the daughter you had together?”

Skott nodded. He rubbed his left pointer finger, a nervous tick.

“Take her picture?” Nessa asked. “I wanna see if she takes after you. She going to come visit?”

“About that…” Skott began.

He couldn’t exactly show Nessa a picture of his orc family. Perhaps he should have thought about this ahead of time…

“Hey, Nessa.” Skott sat down and urged her to sit as well. “I’ve been thinking and…”

“… you want to break up to catch up with the family you never knew, yeah?” Nessa guessed.

“I, er, ah, what, huh? That’s…” Skott grimaced. “… I mean, pretty much what I was going for. Was planning to lead up to it and have a more nuanced way of letting you down.”

Nessa shrugged. “Eh, it’s what always happens in these kinds of scenarios.”

Awkward silence reigned.

“That was… easier than expected,” Skott said.

“Eh, I’ll be alright.” Nessa shrugged. “Might rebound with Devon from accounting though.”

“Devon. Ah, I should have known.” Skott tilted his head. “Uh, about the accounting department…”

Nessa nodded. “Oh, they got the axe. Some AI algorithm is going to do CoopyCorp accounting now. As it turns out, even an AI data center still needs a secretary. So I’m still in the money.”

Well, that sorted itself out surprisingly well. Nessa was hardly a bad person. Skott was glad it all turned out for the best. Skott had never had a particularly bad breakup—just casually dated all through college and right up to, well, Nessa. Why, his longest relationship was, well, Lamora back in Aeirun. Still, considering how easy that was, Skott had a sneaking suspicion some other massive boondoggle was imminent.

A cracking sound came from the backyard. Nessa rose from her seat.

“Is one of the trees falling?” she asked.

Skott recognized that noise like it was second nature at this point.

“Father of Omaha! The portal is ready!”

Uh-oh.

The back door swung open. Lucy-Kignora in full-on Renaissance faire adventurer’s garb ran into the house.

“Oh, is this your daughter?” Nessa asked. “I didn’t know she was coming back to America… she’s… ah… green?”

A grinning half-orc stood in the kitchen, sword sheathed at her hip. Nessa took an instinctual step back.

“Greetings, consort of my father,” Lucy said. “We have need of him back in the realm of Aeirun.”

“Nessa.” Skott spoke slowly. “Don’t panic. This is… okay, this is Lucy. She’s, well, she’s not from around here.”