“H-how did you know?” Alex asked the woman. She had deduced that fact so quickly, and on top of that had asked the question as if she were asking him if he were from another county. Like it was completely possible. He hadn’t done anything to give that fact away either. She had just presumed he hadn’t come from her world after a simple question. How was it possible to jump to that conclusion? How was it in the realm of possibility for her?

The woman took the chair, spun it to face Alex and sat.

“This has happened many times before. You are not the first, nor will you be the last.”

“What do you mean? How often do people come here from other worlds?”

“I do not know, but it is not common,” The woman said honestly.

“Well… Why does it happen?”

The woman didn’t respond right away. Her brows furrowed and her eyes drifted downwards, “That is not an easy question to answer, but I will try my best to explain.”

In his heightened state of emotion, Alex hadn’t noticed it, but the words he heard her say didn’t match the way her mouth moved. Now that he was face-to-face with her and calmed down, it was extremely obvious. It was like a bad dub: he would hear fricatives when her mouth was closed and words would finish with a quarter second of latency. It made Alex feel sort of uneasy-and now that he had seen it-mildly distracting.

“On this planet there are entities referred to as ‘highcreatures’. They are sentient, intelligent beings whose origin falls too far into the past to know. They have a powerful aptitude for magic and are able to cast without effect source.“ The woman shook her head. “I should probably answer your first question.”

The woman turned around, took the bottle from the desk and held it in front of her.

“Effect source is refined tihexiko-a naturally occurring mineral. When burned or electrically charged, effect source becomes a charged gas containing copsikol particles. Er,” The woman shook her head again, “you do not need to know any of that technical information. In short: it is what allows casters to cast. Casters being those who utilize copsikol particles to perform magic.”

“Does all effect source glow like that?”

“No, only the purest forms do that,” the woman answered as she placed the bottle back on the desk. “As I was saying: There are three types of casts. The first is called a ‘spell’. Spells allow casters to manipulate or generate different forms of energy, be they thermal, electrical, magnetic, kinetic… Well, you get the idea. These casts are-” The woman paused briefly, as if reconsidering what she was about to say, “-are the most commonly used. They are employed in both combat and utility.

“The second type of cast is the ‘enchantment’. It enables the caster to edit the attributes and behavior of an inanimate object upon its application. This can be anything from changing the color of the object to giving it complex commands. Until recently, this type of cast was only practiced by highcreatures due to the extremely high skill floor and the large quantity of effect source needed to execute it.

“The final type of cast is the ‘curse’. It is a dangerous and very illegal cast. It functions in the same way an enchantment does except it’s use is on living things. Anybody found to have cast a curse, whether malicious or benevolent, is put to death.

“This brings me to answer the question of why you are here.

“A very long time ago, during the time of my ancestors, a highcreature that called itself Rexezzi began experimenting with magical disciplines. None of these disciplines have been shared with any other species-with the exception of casting, which I just explained to you. Utilizing a combination of these disciplines, Rexezzi developed a spell believed to be capable of pulling atoms from other dimensions and bringing them to this planet,” she explained.

It was jarring to Alex hearing words like “atoms” and “dimensions” in the same breath as the words “magical” and “spell”. It was such a juxtaposition of terminology, like randomly replacing nouns in an English sentence with their Japanese counterparts. They just didn’t belong there.

Alex had to keep reminding himself that everything this woman was saying was actually real. Even as he did, it wasn’t really setting in. It was like he was trying to suspend his disbelief from a hook with no bend in it. Perhaps the years of consuming and creating fiction had conditioned his mind to shrug off the very possibility that fantasy magic was an achievable feat; despite his very circumstances being proof of the contrary. Even as the woman presented the mystical in such a matter-of-fact way-like a teacher explaining the fundamentals of science-it still sounded so far beyond the realm of possibility, like some expository dialogue in an anime or novel.

The woman continued, “There was an issue though. With so many different disciplines in effect at the same time, there were contradictions in the structure. Variables that Rexezzi did not account for. Elements of the magic that reacted in unanticipated ways, making the spell unstable. Despite Rexezzi’s best efforts they could not control it. They requested the aid of the most powerful and knowledgeable casters alive at the time as well as other highcreatures, but they could not disable the spell. Even to this day-though the highcreatures have given up-scientists and casters are still working on a solution because the threat of the spell bringing something catastrophic is very real.

“You are very fortunate that you did not arrive on this planet at the bottom of the sea or the middle of the Hesalti Desert. Even more fortunate that you arrived with all of your organs and limbs.”

Alex’s eyes widened, “What if I did come here without an organ but I haven’t noticed yet?” he mumbled.

The woman chuckled, “I think you would know if you were missing an organ.”

“Oh yeah, you’re right,” Alex breathed a sigh of relief. A chill ran down his spine as he thought of all the grotesque ways in which his body could have ended up in this world. 

“Do you think there are more people from my world here in this one?” Alex asked hopefully.

“There have been other creatures and people but because the spell takes atoms from many different dimensions, it is difficult to know if any of the others came from yours. I can tell you that the likelihood of that is only just higher than impossible.”

“I see,” Alex said, “So does the spell just take organic matter?”

“No, the spell takes indiscriminately. There have been technologies, art, minerals, bits of soil and rock…” the woman fell silent and looked at Alex with sad eyes, “Weapons. So many weapons.”

Alex looked at the woman with concern, “What kind of weapons?”

“Nobody really knows. Whenever weapons are found, they become the property of whatever nation they were discovered in. I know that this nation, Kogronia, has obtained more than a dozen edged weapons and explosives in the past century. Beyond that, I do not know. Information like that is kept very secret.”

The woman was right to be concerned about the spell bringing something catastrophic. If the spell brought a WMD from Earth-or any world-it could do immense damage. Not just physically, but politically. 

“How often does the spell…” Alex tried to find the right word, “activate?”

“I do not know, but it is theorized to be semi-frequent. It just appears uncommon since a lot of what the spell pulls ends up where nobody will find it, is only a few dozen atoms, is a harmless gas like oxygen or carbon dioxide, or if it is a harmful gas, too little to do any damage. ” The woman said.

“How many people have come here from other worlds?”

“Many over hundreds of thousands of years, but the exact number isn’t known.”

The room fell silent and Alex tried to digest all of this new information. This was crazy. The chances of this happening to him were-as he was now aware-so astronomically unlikely, so preposterously miniscule, that it made his head hurt trying to comprehend it. Add onto the fact that he was in one piece? 

This was a Boltzmann brain formation-level of chance.

Alex now had so many more questions than he’d started with but one in particular managed to float to the top of the almost endless sea of them.

“If these…” he placed a hand on the enchanted pants.

“Lahipok’es,” the woman reminded him.

“If these lahipok’es can interpret meaning from one mind to another, how am I hearing english words? Shouldn’t I be hearing your language?”

“Your brain automatically assigns words and phrases to the signals it receives through the lahipok’es.” the woman explained.

The woman explained the mechanics of this magical item with the same tone and technicality that one might use to describe a piece of technology. She made it sound like a walkie-talkie. It was bizzare to Alex trying to put a pair of enchanted leggings in the same category as a smartphone, but it probably made sense for the woman to do so. It served a similar function to a translation app-albeit far more accurate-so it could be just as common a utility.

“Does this mean I can understand anybody now?”

“No, the enchantment applied to the lahipok’es only enables you to receive signals from the other in the set.”

“So that means you’re wearing the other one? 

“Yes.”

Alex made a light chuckle, “So you just have the other pair on ready to go in case you find some rando who doesn’t speak… whatever language this is?”

The woman didn’t answer, only made a somber expression and broke eye contact with him. She shifted in the chair and brought her hands together. It was such an innocuous question, but the woman’s body language made it seem like a deeply personal one. The woman moved her body as if she had an itch on her back but was too polite to scratch it. 

Alex could see that it was a painful question for the woman to answer, so he didn’t press her further. He decided the best thing to do was to ask a different question, but even with so many swirling around in his head, he couldn’t figure out which one to pick.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The man had asked her a simple question. Reasonable even. The answer to that question, however, was both personal and uncomfortable. It wasn’t the kind of answer she could give a stranger and she struggled to even let him know that.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

“You don’t have to answer,” Alex said. Even if he found his question to be harmless, he knew that wasn’t the case here.

“Thank you,” she said, the tension immediately fading from her body.

Silence lingered awkwardly in the air and the two just sat for half a minute in their own thoughts.

“So um…” Alex began, “What happens when an ice cube gets angry?”

The woman looked befuddled.

“It boils with anger, then blows off some steam.”

The woman laughed, “I did not expect that! Why was that funny?”

“It’s a pun, and it seems like they still work with the language barrier. I’m guessing the lahipok’es do more than just linguistic translation. If you found that joke funny, it must mean they go beyond just communicating the superficial. Beyond just registering the definitions of words or phrases and feeding them to the brain. They must be providing some contextual interpretation as well.”

“You gleaned all of that from a joke?”

Alex shrugged, “It was just a hunch.”

“Well your hunch was correct and I am very impressed.”

“Thanks, um… Oh… I don’t know your name.”

The woman smiled at him, “My name is Lika’so, what is yours?”

"It's Alex."