Chapter 6

“So, how does-” I started as I finished buckling myself into the seat.

And that was when Jenny whooped and yanked back on the lever that dominated the center of the bullet shaped cockpit and the entire machine we were in dropped like an elevator in a horror movie. My stomach crawled up my throat – and then Jenny whooped again and slammed down on a button and several mecha-legs kicked me in the ass so hard that I started to see stars. My face glued itself against my bones and my back mashed against the chair as I saw, through the forward screen, that the planet that Carousel orbited was shooting towards us.

We hit the atmosphere and flames licked along the window as Jenny hummed what sounded suspicously like Tchaikovsky to herself, with the cannons being played by whatever infernal engine was propelling the spaceship.

I had been really excited to fly a spaceship to the ball. Like, that’s just an extremely cool as hell space thing to do: Spaceship to a Regency era ball. Rad. Fucking cool, even. But I was significantly less excited now that I learned spaceships were ... so ... freaking loud! And scary. The flames continued to wash along the cockpit window and soon, everything was obscured by the rush of smoke and fire and clouds. Then the clouds broke and the whole spaceship shuddered and the acceleration shifted from behind to below as wings creaked to either side of me.

We were soaring now, above endless verdant forests and vast glittering lakes and soaring mountains.

“Pfffussies!” Jenny said, shaking her head.

“Huh?” I asked.

“They’re sending up ‘slow decent’ flares,” she said, pointing ahead.

Ahead, I could see several bright, flashing red flares exploding above a smallish looking villa built atop a plateau that rose out of the forest like a delicious cake of civilization. It was coming straight for us like several trains made of spikes. I clutched onto my restraint webbing, gulping slightly. “Jenny, uh, remember what Marci said?”

“Yeah, I’m not accelerating, I’m decelerating,” Jenny said. “ ... oh, oops.”

She touched a button and the wind roaring past changed tone and volume as the wings I could just barely see out of the side windows kicked up their flaps. Jenny hummed ‘da da na na na’ to herself as the villa grew closer and closer and closer – and then she yanked back on the stick and sent us into a corkscrewing twist, whipping around the plateau and jamming my eyes back into their sockets so hard that I almost got a serious case of terminal eyesplosion. The rattling and roaring got louder ... and then my head jerked forward as the wheels struck the landing field and the roaring came even louder-

And, at last...

Peace.

Silence.

I sagged in my seat as Jenny leaned back in her seat, her eyes sparkling. “Hah! I still almost beat my best time!” She said.

“Jenny, when I get home, I am going to wring your neck and Marciline will help me,” I said, my voice a tight grumble.

Jenny snorted. “Hey, listen, you beat the rush. That means I should technically get a bonus, young miss!” She started to shrug out of her restraints and stood, turning and sauntering over to the airlock door, which she swung open. I unhooked my own restraints and started to get to some wobbly semblance of my feet as I heard a gruff, male voice barking out.

“Messenger! Of course it’s you, you bloody defective, half-cracked, bugged arse piece of malformed programmin’!” The voice had a thick Scottish brogue. “Are you tryin’ to kill yourself and your young Missus?”

“No!” Jenny sounded offended. “I just like going fast.”

“Ack!” I came up and found that a tall, imposing looking Steward was standing out there. Unlike Marci, who had changed her gender (apparently, Stewards were normally unboxed as Mark), this fellow had been as cis as a cisbot could be. He even had a bristling mustache that had had clearly purchased at some expense. “So, this is young Mistress Lancaster, eh?” He nodded. “I am Marcus Steward of the Haverbrook Abby, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this piece of Burgundy that I hold stewardship over. I see you are dressed to impress, young Miss.” He nodded.

And...

I wanted to explode.

Because I was so ... freaking pretty.

I was dressed in the gorgeous dress that Beatrice had sewn up for me, and it wasn’t even rumpled by the passage down – and I held my skirts just so and stepped to the airlock, smiling cheerfully at Marcus Steward. “It is my pleasure to see you again, Marcus,” I said. “And I hope I come off better now than last time I came down here, uh ... f-foxing, was it?”

“Aye, that it is,” he said, guardedly.

“I ... am sorry about that...” I blushed.

“Well. It was a holographic fox,” he said, nodding. “And it is a popular sport among these circles.” He held out an arm and I took it and he helped me off the ship and onto the landing field and I beamed as I looked around myself. This place felt so very Earthlike ... and yet, the extra moons in the sky and the four winged bird with six eyes on its belly kinda did help to underline that if I was on Earth, it was one of the really cool places. Like Disneyland or Jurassic Park. The actual villa that I had seen was the aforementioned Haverbrook Abby.

It wasn’t actually an Abby. Like, according to Georgette, in the olden days, in the long long ago, in the murky time before now, the British had, like, decided to stop being Catholic because fuck the Pope, then they’d going: “Hey, wow, look at all those nice Abbeys and churches you got there, wow, real nice, too bad FUCK THE POPE!” then stole them and gave them to their richy rich fucksticks. Which I was really conflicted. On the one hand, the closest to Catholicism I had ever gotten was watching The Life of Brain, and I was not a huge fan of the religionocity in general ... but on the other hand, every atheist I’ve ever met on the internet was a huge edgy shitlord who hated trans people.

I guess the real Catholicism was the friends we met along the way?

Yeah, sure.

Anywho, all those Abbeys were now fancy homes for British aristos. And the name had stuck! Hence why a house built by robots a bunch of millions of light years away from home specifically for dancing and swirling and generally having a good time was called Haverbrook Abby.

... it didn’t even fucking look like an Abby. It looked like an elegant manor house, sweeping out in two direction, with glittering glass windows that were each huge and tall and shimmering under the gentle light of the Burgundy sun, which was beginning to dip towards the horizon. The sky itself was shading towards brilliant reds and crimsons, and I could see the contrails in the distance – ships coming down from orbit to join in on the festivities. I bit my lip, hard, and stood up a bit taller. Jenny waved after me and I tried to square my shoulders and put on a brave face.

Marci and Georgette hadn’t wanted me to go once it had become clear that the ordered Maria wouldn’t arrive quite in time for the ball. I was supposed to be here with a personal maid ... but I had said I could totes bagotes handle it. And I could! I could do this. I squared my shoulder, while Marcus Steward led me to Haverbrook Abby. Once we were within the shadows of the manor proper, I could hear the faint sounds of clattering dishes from the kitchen and the distant strains of a gentle song. The ball was going to begin with dancing, then dinner, then various parlor games ... bridge and whist and other stuff that wasn’t Risk or Monopoly, meaning I couldn’t just take over Australia and cackle.

Which, like ... that was how I played board games. If the game didn’t let me take over Australia, then what was even the point?

The doors opened and I stepped inside and felt deeply tiny in my dress, surrounded by all this finery. The entire place was decorated with portraits and paintings, and the walls were done in a kind of lovely warm butterscotch color that, when lit by holographic candles, looked like burnished gold. Arriving first suddenly felt like a terrible idea. I started forward, clutching my skirts, and for once, swishing around in skirts didn’t feel faintly euphoric. It just felt ... you know ... scary. I came to the end of the entrance hall and found that the master of ceremonies, a machine of serious disposition and fine coat, was standing before a podium.

And...

There was another human. Two, actually. One of them was the second blondest man I’d ever seen – since, well, I’d seen myself before the girljuice had started flowing through my veins. He was tall and coldly beautiful, like a glacier made of smug. Next to him was a girl who was fiddling with her skirts, fidgeting and squirming. She had russet red hair – but her facial features had the same sharp edges as the boy, so ... I pegged them as both being brother and sister. The brother looked like he was maybe ten years older than the sister, though. He looked down his nose at me and then smirked. “Fitzland,” he said, his voice utterly poshlandia. I racked my brain for the various nobles that Georgette and Marci had drilled me on. He was wearing cufflinks with lions on them, blond ... that meant he was...

“Hello Corny,” I said, grinning at him. “Hows it hanging?”

Cornelius Smythe (of the Alpha Centauri Smythes, you know!) pursed his lips. “Well enough. You’re going to Lucy now?”

“Yuppers,” I said, nodding. “Lucy! Or, if that’s too long for you, you can call me ... Lu...” I trailed off, realizing how incredibly dumb that sounded, but being unable to stop it. Now, the sentence was careening through the air, the audio equivalent of a train that had hit a penny and leaped from the track and was now plunging towards a baby carriage.

The girl giggled and snorted, her eyes meeting mine for a moment before she looked down a ther face.

“Quite,” Corny said, his lips pursed again.

The MC leaned into the conversation, murmuring softly. “Your ticket, madame.”

I took the ticket and whispered to him. “Uh, is there a place where I can freshen up?”

“Of course,” he said, then murmured directions. I turned and hurried off, leaving behind Corny and his sister to whisper to one another. Once in the washroom, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was still pretty as hell, so, there was that. I brushed my fingers through my silvery white hair, licked my lips, then closed my eyes. I counted to ten, then nodded. “You can do this. Just don’t say anything else stupid.”

My reflection responded by humming loudly. I opened my eyes and saw that there was a tiny white dot in the mirror, right above my head. I looked upwards, then yelped as the white dot expanded outwards to about the size of my fist, solidified into a shimmering orb, then dropped right onto my face. It felt shockingly cold and I let out a loud ‘ack’ and slapped it away from my face, flailing wildly. It landed in the sink, where it began to roll crazily around, skittering along the porcelain and almost escaping several times before inertia robbed it of all momentum. I rubbed at my face, whimpering. “Owww!”

And then, through my gloved fingers, I recognized the orb.

It was the curio. A replica of the one Marci had smashed. By accident.

“What the fuckery fuck?” I whispered.

The orb opened up, unfolding like a flower ... and from it came my voice.

Except, you know, not.

It was my old body’s voice, speaking with the mind of the real Albert Fitzland-Lancaster the Third, esquire and so on and such and such behind it.

“Hello?”

“ ... how did you do that?” I asked, leaning forward.

A short sigh came from the orb. “Of course it’s you again. I...” There was a pause. “You sound different. You haven’t done anything to my body, have you?”

“Uhhh, I plead the fifth,” I said, coughing, then saying: “Again, how the fuck did you do that?”

“This curio is a device for dimensional exploration, obviously,” Albert said, his voice snooty as shit and smug as fuck. “It already created a replica when I arrived – lacking the ability to create a replica back where I came from would be an absurd oversight. Finding the right targeting has been an issue...” He sighed. “I’ve been yelled at by some extremely alarming individuals. Quite a few speaking rather frantic German...”

I blinked. “ ... did you send dimensional orbies to Nazi worlds?”

“They didn’t stay in these ... charming worlds.” Albert sniffed. “I have found how to do a remote detonation – I’m not a complete moron. Now, speaking of Nazis...”

“I’d really rather-”

“Your world is an absurd tragedy and I refuse to stay here one moment longer!” Albert said. “I have been slaving away in this ... Dickensian parody of a pre-Revolution food plant all week and ... I ... I don’t like it one bit and I want to go home!”

“Well, I’m sorry,” I said, blushing. “But I’m not going back there. I’d literally kill myself.”

“Damn you ... damn you!” Albert hissed. I glanced back at the doorway, to make sure no one else was coming into the poot room. I looked back at the orb, then bit my lip.

“Listen. You ... have been nothing but a huge asshole to your machines. They’re happy you’re gone. So. Like. This is gonna sound like hard knock shit, but, like, maybe you should consider for just a few fucking seconds that maybe this is fucking karmic punishment for being a dickbat. Like, if any of them, even a tiny bit, wanted you back then I’d ... I’d switch back ... I ... I’d hate doing it, but I would, because these are the sweetest machines I’ve ever met, and...” I paused. “And...”

“They’re servants!” Albert exclaimed – sounding more confused than angry.

I scowled, and all apologetic feelings I had evaporated in a single second. “Bye, Al,” I said, then walked over to the toilet. Thank you indoor plumbing. As I got ready to dunk the curio, Albert hissed.

“Wait, wait, wait, please wait!” I paused, my arm cocked over my head. I narrowed my eyes up at the orb, then brought it down to my mouth again.

“ ... I’m waiting...” I said.

“I...” Albert paused. “Please ... can you just do one thing for me?”

I frowned. “What is it?”

Albert sighed. “Can you get me the voltic equation?”

There had been a bunch of things that I had been expecting. That wasn’t one of them. “The ... voltic equation?”

“Yes. The underpinning mathematics of a voltic engine. The buffoons in this universe are trying to muddle along with this barely coherent ‘model of general relativity’ that completely misunderstands the interrelations between fundamental particles and the Luminiferous Aether. And they haven’t even realized the First Law of Thermodynamics is entirely contingent on not harnessing of voltic processes! Utter cretins! They’ve been pumping fossil fuels into the atmosphere for nearly as long as the Industrious Revolution and if something isn’t done, we’re all going to die.”

I nodded. “Okay ... fine, I’ll get you this voltic equation.” I narrowed my eyes. “Are you gonna take over my universe?”

Albert scoffed, and the orb whirred and clicked and shut, going inert. I sighed, then slid it into little handbag, which was tucked into the frills of my skirt. It settle there, heavy and intimidating. But...

“Hey. Voltic energy wouldn’t be the worst thing for my shitty home planet...” I bit my lip, then stepped to the door. I opened it up, peeked out, and then swept into the corridor beyond. I could hear more voices now – more people arrived.

Great.

“Presenting the Countess of Arundel in Absentia, the Duchess of Carousel, Burgundy II and Phecda-C, the honorable Lucy Fitzland-Lancaster III,” the announcer intoned as I stepped up to the entrance. The ball room was full of people, all in very fancy clothes, and I was supposed to know half of them who knew that being isekaied into a universe where zero people would be trying to kill me would be so scary. See, I’d have thought being booped into, like, the Goblin Slayer universe would suck, but holy shit, there were so many fancy people, and they were all looking at me and I’d only studied what to do for a week, ahhhhhhhhh!

I managed, somehow, to keep all of those thoughts in my brain and not on my face as I waved to everyone. Then I started forward into the dance hall. A pair of gentlemen that looked exactly like the holograms that Georgette had showed me of Albert’s old besties walked forward. Ugh. If Corny had been slightly older than me, and a semi-close friend of Albert, these guys just underlined that Albert had been fucking groomed. But these guys weren’t into innocent youths for any kind of sexual reason – they were clearly something ... way easier for me to grasp.

“Lucy, darling, lovely to see you again, your new dress suits you perfectly,” Thompson Garland said, taking my hand and kissing my knuckles with a sweeping bow.

“Smashing, just smashing,” the other fellow, Gregory Sean Starfallow, said, nodding. His face was entirely ruddy red and liver spots and his hair was actually going gray. At least Tommy-boy here kinda sorta looked like he didn’t drink scotch for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He just looked like an emaciated mummy stuffed into a bottle green coat. And both of them reeked of the Teds.

The Teds had been two of my coworkers back in the bad old days, when I had been stuck on Earth. They had both been needling, sneering smug pieces of shit who kept treating me like ass because they thought they were better than me. But the instant that Mr. Papachristodoulopoulos, our manager, had stepped into their line of sight, the Teds had become schmooze city. It was so blatantly obvious and gross. And from these guys rumpled clothing and bad hair and worse teeth, I was pretty sure that each machine in their life was subtly and quietly snubbing them to the best of their abilities – those that hadn’t left.

But here they were, fawning over my trans butt.

Sus, I declare! Sus as fuck!

“Uh, thanks?” I said. “Though, uh, aren’t you two a bit old for my first dance.”

“Well, the dances aren’t starting immediately,” Gregory said, nodding, as Thompson gently led me away from the main dance floor and, behind us, the dance started immediately. I gulped, then tried to think about how Albert would handle this. Cause I had to act like Albert, so they didn’t think I was just a replacement. And I don’t think Albert, even trans Albert, would just blow off his friends. Even if they were a pile of gross old groats. And, like, don’t think this is an ageism thing. There was this silver fox that I saw dancing with his wife, and god, that guy was hot.

The big difference was that he wasn’t leering at me like Michael Keaton in a Tim Burton romcom.

Once we were in the corner of the room, Gregory took a seat and Thompson pulled a chair back for me – there were loads of comfortable little chairs here and there, with tables, and refreshments. I took some pleasure in swishyswish my skirts around as I took my seat, then sat up a bit, playing with my fan between my hands. Gregory leaned forward, his voice soft. “So ... young miss...” he said. “Are you still prepared? Ah, with this ... new...”

“Condition,” Thompson said, nodding, and I swore I could see dust puffing off him. “It shouldn’t damage the long term goal of our little gentleman’s, ah, agreement. Though, I suppose, it is now more of a...” he trailed off.

“Uhh ... yeah?” I asked, slowly. “I...” I snapped my fan open, waving it a bit at my face to try and cover my confusion. “D-Do you think I’ll need to change anything?”

“Of course not, the Marstons have a son as well...” Gregory said, nodding. “Though he’s not as pliant as their daughter.” He chuckled. “You seemed quite confident you could wrap her about your little finger, ah, Lucy.” He nodded. “So, you can turn those charms upon the Marston’s son?”

“ ... I ... uh...” I blinked.

“Are you having second thoughts?” Thompson asked, frowning at me.

“No? Kinda. Yes? Possibly,” I stammered. “I, uh-”

Thompson, who until now had been Tedding as hard as a Ted could Ted, transformed quite suddenly and quite alarmingly. The angles of his features shifted into a series of planes and angles that made him go from old elderly mummy to terrifying British ghoul. Like the kind of guy who would defund the NHS just to be a dick. “Do you know how much money and effort and lives I’ve spent?” He grabbed onto my hand, and from a distance, I was sure it looked like he was just politely squeezing my hand. Instead, his fingers were gripping me so tight that my knuckles started to hurt. I gasped and quailed a bit as he leaned in, glaring at me. “These bloody clankers don’t make it easy to train new programmers, ever since the last of the human ones retired when I was a lad. But I have the programmers, and all I need is the bloody shares in the bloody company!”

I quailed. “L-Let me go!” I whispered, and holy shit, I was ... so freaking scared. Like, in movies, ... I ... you watch them and think wow, okay, I’d be way smarter and tougher and I’d poke the bad guy in the eye or something, but instead of any of that, my brain was just going: oh SHIT Oh SHIT shit SHIT shiiiTTTT at the top of its lungs and I couldn’t do anything but tremble.

“Listen here-” Thompson said.

A shadow cast itself over the table.

“Ahem.”

For a delirious, hopeful moment, I thought it was Ra. They were definitely in a military looking coat, but I didn’t hear fans or see glowing eyes in that silhouette. But then the same voice spoke: “I believe that the gentlewoman asked for you to let her go, sirrah.” Her voice was a lilting Irish brough and it was full of such menace that Lord Thompson let me go in a tearing hurry. I sprang to my feet, trembling slightly, while Thompson’s face shifted back to the old mummy with a smile.