Stellagomorph

I found myself on the other side of a sealed door. No handle, steel, and there was a little gray panel with a dime-sized light: off, but made of a green transparent plastic that was obviously a light when active, another darker light-dome paired below it. There were windows casting light in the room: just flat glass with no way to open them. I'm unsure if they were real windows or just some sort of atmospheric effect to make the area seem less enclosed and dark. I’m nude, uncomfortably so, concealing my upper half with my arms and glad that it wasn’t freezing cold. With a coat of fur, this wouldn't be an issue, but any trace of fur or feather was absent this time around. I’m confused, lost, head still swimming slightly as I cautiously make my way to the door of the oddly-shaped, otherwise empty room.

This was a quiet area of what I would later find to be a transportation hub of sorts with an interconnected management area: smaller rooms, hallways, offices and the like. I’m shuffling doorway to doorway, trying to find something, anything, to cover myself with. Nothing - but a girl, looking in her mid 20s, spied me creeping around and guided me into a room before I could say anything to her; not even a spare moment to be embarrassed. She gently took my arm and clasped something unusual around my wrist. I get a glimpse of a thick gold-plated device before it fades out of sight, completed with a puff of air that seemed to come from all directions. I look at her wordlessly, perplexed and unsure what to make of the moment.

“It’s a filter,” she said, with a reassuring smile. “No one will look twice at what you’re wearing.”

Or the lack thereof, I figure. I looked down at my hands disdainfully. Typically “I” would be wearing 3 artificial fingers to help maneuver the world around me: missing were the ring finger of the right hand, and the thumb and pointer of the left. She touched my arm where the bangle was, the resistance of the object obvious, though unseen.

“This will take care of those, too. Go ahead, try and pick something up.”

I headed over to a desk in the room. Messy with papers strewn over a device not unlike an old desktop computer, but distinctly not one by the unusual display, knobs, buttons and other attachments tangled about the desk. I picked up something familiar that looks okay to touch - a cup.

“Oh!”

The first sound that had come out of my mouth since my arrival was surprise and delight - I didn’t have to fumble around with mis-shapen hands. No visible attachments, but my hands behaved like they would with all fingers in tact. It was clearly something I was uncomfortable about, breathing relief and feeling less tense once my hands felt whole. I thanked her, and she lead me out of the room further into the main floor of the building.

The low murmur of people chatting in a moderately busy hub filled the room. It was bright and seemed enormous. The front wall was constructed of glass windows that towered high overhead before connecting to a rounded wall-ceiling join. The ceiling had scattered skylights carefully arranged above, revealing buildings far taller than the one I was in. The footsteps of visiting groups click-clacked around the area, each member holding a clipboard. People sat at tables, studying, reading, eating - it was a calm but busy environment. We headed for an open shop cornered about midway through the room, the sort of thing you’d find at an airport or city transportation area with random tees, toys, books, snacks, bags and the like.

We were there for necessities, but I found myself distracted, taking in the items that lined the shelves, lazily grabbing a shirt and pants while far more interested in the shop. A mixed store like this could tell you a lot about an area. I wandered and talked with her - or at her, at least, remarking on the differences in our worlds. It’s worth mentioning that the things “I” recognized and the things I actually recognize are different things. This me was also from an alternate place. I pointed out, for example, that both of our worlds seemed to have something like Pokemon (of all things,) but looking back from my own perspective, the creatures and overall design of the “Pokemon” things weren’t anything like the primary reds, yellows, blues and whites ours uses, nor were any of the creatures something like what my incarnate self would know, so not entirely. But this 'me' recognized it immediately. This is an odd detail, and I wonder if it's something that got fingered into something I could understand: maybe some other collectible that both parties recognized.

“And look.” I motioned to her and pointed up to the skylight. “Some of your technology, like this here. It’s hundreds, maybe thousands of years more advanced than ours.” I feel that I was exaggerating in the awe of the moment, but there through that skylight was a massive vehicle or machine, seemingly something for cargo and delivery way above. It hovered at what appeared to be a dock off of one of the buildings towering over the hub. It was painted in reds, blacks, and deep grays. Lights were dimly apparent underneath it, competing with the brightness of the day. The lights had something to do with the dock’s function, perhaps? The vehicle had 90 degree angle wing structures along with what I would consider typical aircraft wings.

While I had been talking at her, my new companion had contacted a few of her friends. Classmates? I would come to find that they all have extensive knowledge of this place, its machines, equipment operation, things that ordinary civilians wouldn’t know. There was a college campus visible next door: paired with the groups of younger folks passing through the building with clipboards and that group-attentiveness you would see in any active body of students, it became obvious that this place was frequently used and visited by the students for study.

We met her friends in a library area. I’m unsure if it was part of the hub or the campus - it seemed to connect to them both. It could be this was a specialty campus for studies that would involve this hub building and its goings-on. Introductions were made, though I can no longer recall the names. I paused - I shouldn’t give them my name. It was one of those rules you just didn’t break in certain situations that, evidently, applied to getting dropped nude into a strange school in what seemed to be a parallel. This was a point that I noticed there were conflicting parts of my consciousness in my rather busy, analytical mind that had been otherwise occupied piecing together information about this world and its differences. The me-of-there paused, trying to think of what name to use, and my here-now consciousness intervenes: ([Stellagomorph], then?)

Me-of-there’s train of thought is broken and is confused. ‘That was weird, that’s not my name. How about…’ *like the others, the name I used was not retained.

We chatted a while as we tried to figure out what to do about my displacement. Evidently to use this hub, you needed a special ID, and clearance beyond that to use the equipment. This was a hub of something like portals, but they weren’t just gates to elsewhere. There seemed to be all kinds of research and experiments that went into these... distortions, but it was far beyond anything I could grasp. These were sciences ‘my’ world didn’t have, at least not to such a degree.

I perused the library as she and her friends chatted around a large floor-mounted device nearby. Books, physical things and digital catalogues, more than I was able to take in. I had picked up what appeared to be a children’s book, and though I can’t recall what the pages looked like, I looked up to her and remarked, “See, here’s another- you have six seasons! Divided into… segments? And spelled a little differently. We only have 4, and there’s none of these divisions, but it doesn’t look like the weather itself is much different…”

She was a quiet sort and mostly listened, nodded, and confirmed anything I figured out on my own. I realize, as an afterthought, she was probably avoiding revealing too much to outsiders, but I can’t quite put a finger on why that would be the case.

We were summoned over to the floor machine by her friends. It was familiar to me-of-there, but I personally couldn’t understand what it is. It reminds me of an old CRT arcade cabinet, but not colorful, all grey. Low to the ground, no overhead title, though there were indicator lights of some sort above. The screen was angled low and the imagery projected up onto another surface that was directly in front of you, with a vertical box of switches to the left and a control panel of sorts below. Another feature of me-of-there’s world became apparent here as a small creature appeared on my shoulder and spoke about the device. I was calling them [a name of a personal guardian], but it could have been similar sounding and just a coincidence. They(?) did remind me a bit of him, were he about 3 lbs with far fewer markings and shorter ears. It was almost squirrel-like, but with longer legs. I do believe the name coincidence had me projecting; re-analyzing it, I’m not seeing as many similarities between the two beings. These were a specific type of companion that most - all? - people had, but did not typically have in the open unless around trusted people. They were not like daemons of His Dark Materials origins; they were not literally a part of ourselves. Instead it was a kind of mutually beneficial relationship between these beings and the people that had been going on for untold eons. Both the me-of-there and the others saw these companions as natural, so it was a shared commonality.

They helped me fine tune the machine, and we watched as companions of my friends back home appeared on the screen, each named, familiar and warm to me. I wonder, now, how they existed in this communication space, and what that space actually was? We spoke briefly to get a message to friends back home about where I was, how I was trying to get back, etc. We lost connection to them after a short time, but I had felt enough of the message had been heard.

The rest of this is a bit sped up with less details in between as there wasn't much to retain about the uneventful wanderings around the hub:

We found another lost traveller, a feline-humanoid sort that joined us for a while. They were distraught: There was something they needed to find in this particular realm, but they were keeping what it was and why it was so important close to their chest. With the additional person's assistance, we eventually tracked down the particular portal that would take me back to where I was from, noting the timer display for when it would be available.

No details to give in this space here as it felt like endless hours of running from room to room. I needed something specific to be able to travel through without harm, something you wore. It was located. We needed a plan to get through un-detected. That was up to the group of college-friends that understood this place so well.

I was also keeping tabs on our feline companion, who was sneaking around in risky areas, going between ‘you’re going to get yourself killed’ situations and ‘you’re going to get us all caught.’ My companions weren't a fan of the reckless risk-taking. But something about them fascinated me: as frustratingly reckless as they were, I wouldn’t leave them and let them get themselves hurt. I remember we had spoken quite a bit, swapping notes on what we’d noticed about this particular place, though they wouldn’t talk about where they were from. I didn't retain any specifics of these conversations.

There came a point when we were getting down to the wire. The portal I needed to go through was open for a certain window of time, but I wasn’t leaving without knowing that my feline-companion was alright. They had run off, distressed. I found them in an odd room, I have no idea what it could be for. There was some big, walled-in structure in the middle, a walkway around it, and some sort of orange liquid (or was it just orange under lighting?) under see-through piping. I found them crouched in one of the notches that surround the big-something in the middle, looking pained. I felt a familiar-to-me-of-there tug, my vision spiraled, and I was suddenly looking through their eyes.

It’s like they were split between realms. Partially, they were collapsed in a small apartment kitchen. There are a couple shocked looking ‘cattish’ people standing in an attached living space off to one side. My friend was opposite to a wall-length mirror between the two spaces which gave them a clear view of themself and the room around them. Their body seemed to distort, warp, and flicker, flashes of color interrupting the sight that would be uniform with the simultaneous vision - them, collapsed against the structure, looking mostly at the ground, but aware of myself standing a short ways away. In the background, I recognize what’s happening and am making quick notes/ self talk. ‘I must have made a deeper connection than I thought. - Don’t move. Don’t try to see. Let it happen. You are fine where you are.’ Some kind of innate ability ’I’ had.