Hannah walked into the Warren Street tube station after school. She was later than usual and Mary noticed.

“Late day at school, dear?” she called out when Hannah came over, tucking her tube pass back into her pocket.

Hannah stopped in front of the glass display counter and breathed in the smell of baked goods. “Just moving a bit slower than usual today,” she responded. It was a tradition that every Friday Hannah paused at the bakery next to the staircase and exchanged pleasantries with the baker. “How are you?”

“Ah, I’ve an odd feeling that there was supposed to be something different about today, but so far everything has been exactly the same as always.” She leaned her elbows on the counter. A smile teased on her face. “Only difference is you being a little later than usual. But that’s nothing big.” She straightened up and tucked a thin strand of white hair behind her ear. “Your usual Friday treat?”

“Yes, please. Although the ladybug one looks cute, I could use a good sugar cookie.” They talked for another minute before Hannah walked down to the platform.

As she turned, she narrowly avoided an older student who zipped past on heelys, successfully navigating the crowd despite having her nose in her physics textbook. Hannah shrugged and moved down to platform three. She was a little early for the next train so she engaged in some good people watching. The train station was always the best place for that. It was a true mixing pot of people. Everyone used public transportation.

Next to a movie poster for Inkheart, a man in his late 20s was talking on a bluetooth as he paced anxiously. He kept rubbing at his inked forearm nervously, but he was too far away for her to make out what the design of the tattoos were. A man in business attire passed him by, typing furiously on his palm pilot, and sat down on a bench across the tracks from her.

She barely noticed another man on the same bench and it was clear the newcomer still hadn’t. In the shadow of the arch, her eyes seemed to glide right over him. Only the odd shimmer of his coat caught her eye. She didn’t think it had been raining lately, only overcast.

Suddenly there was a rushing sound. Like a train coming, but Hannah checked and the sign still said the train was two minutes away. And she didn’t see any lights down the tunnels. In fact, there seemed to be a light coming from the bricks behind her. It wasn’t very bright, but there was a faint glowing in the arch of bricks. She cocked her head to the side and pulled her umbrella out of her backpack. Checking that no one else was watching her, she gave the wall a hesitant poke with her umbrella. It was far too unsanitary to touch with her bare hands after all. She didn’t expect anything to happen, but she found herself unable to pull her umbrella away from the wall.

Her eyes widened and she gave it a more insistent tug, but the wall tugged back.

A moment later and the train rushed into the station, wind swirling the autumn leaves on the platform. But Hannah was not there to board the train.

She found herself being sucked forward in a whirlwind of colours. The sound of a train rushing past filled her ears and the colours swirled faster, mixing together until all that was left was a blinding white light. Just as soon as the whirling started it ended, and solid ground returned.

She fell with a painful slap upon hard concrete floors, her right arm outstretched, still holding her purple umbrella, her backpack and her architecture textbooks painfully weighing down on her back. She groaned and rolled into a sitting position, checking that her glasses were not harmed in her fall. A little scratch on the purple frames, but thankfully nothing that would impair her vision or become an annoyance. She looked around, not recognising anything.

She squinted trying to make out her surrounding in the dim lighting. It appeared almost like a storage facility. There were wooden crates with labels in different languages, shelves stacked with knick knacks, and some glass cases with faintly glowing numbers. She noticed the lighting was actually coming from behind her. Turning, she saw a glowing archway planted in the center of the room. She stood and walked around it. The stone archway was free standing, looked to be one piece, and blue plasma was glowing in the arch. She hesitantly reached out again with her umbrella to poke it, but it stayed solid. Thankfully she was not yanked off her feet.

As she watched, the glow faded and the shimmering ceased. Before the light was gone completely, she rummaged in her bag for the pocket flashlight her mother insisted she always carry. For the first time, it would be useful. She looked for a way out of this room. Figuring out how she got here would probably be easier if she knew where she was.

A door opened and a light switch was flicked on. She shut her eyes immediately and the squinted, trying to adjust her eyes more slowly. Under the buzzing electronic light, Hannah could make out another person, a few inches taller than herself, although that was not a surprise. Most people were a little taller than her.

“Hello?” a voice called out.

“Hello.” Hannah responded. “Could you tell me where I am?” She hoped she was still in London and it wouldn’t be far to the tube. She could always find her way home once she was on the system. Although judging by the manner of her arrival, she was highly skeptical. She supposed she ought to feel anxious, but curiosity was currently coming first. She could feel the same adrenaline beginning to flow through her veins as when she first stepped into the heart of London without a map.

The other person walked further into the room. She was wearing a lab coat and had strange goggles resting on her forehead. She appeared around her own age, maybe older; Hannah was never good at estimating age. “You’re in the basement of the Museum of Galactic History,” she said slowly, eyebrows furrowed.

Hannah did not recognise the name of the museum. But maybe she had heard the woman wrong. “The museum of what now? I thought I had been to every museum in London. Even the small ones.”

“The Museum of Galactic History,” the other woman repeated. “It’s the biggest museum on Acton. The best place to go for the history of the galaxy and our relation to other human galaxies. How did you get here if you don’t even know that?”

“I was wondering that myself,” Hannah said, putting her flashlight and umbrella back in her bag. At this point she was ignoring the way the woman said other human galaxies. It sounded like she might be one of those crazy people who believed aliens lived among us. Maybe this was a museum for those sorts of people.

“Where are you from?” the woman asked.

“Midlands originally. Moved to London for school.”

“What planet and year I mean.”

Hannah’s eyebrows rose. There was no way this was just a museum for conspiracy theorists. Even they knew where London was. “Earth, two-thousand and nine,” she said. “Where and when am I now?”

“Earth, which means Milky Way and one of the early civs,” the woman muttered to herself. “How many star systems have been explored in your time? I’m sorry, the calendar has changed so many times that it gets hard to do conversions in my head.”

“Only our own,” she hesitated, trying to wrap her head around the strangeness of the conversation. The adrenaline felt a little more like dread now. “We have only sent humans as far as the moon.” Hannah was slowly getting the feeling that she had travelled much further than she could have imagined. She would not just be able to find her way home by walking towards the tallest buildings. She reached into her bag and wrapped her fingers around her mobile, needing to feel something familiar. She considered pulling it out, but she feared seeing a no signal sign would only make this more real.

“And how did you say you got her?”

“I think I came through that.” Hannah pointed at the archway behind her. If it was still faintly glowing, they could not tell under the bright lights of the room.

“No. That’s not possible. Everyone knows that portal has been inert for ages. Certainly far longer than I have been volunteering here.”

“It’s called a portal?”

The volunteer threw her arms up in exasperation. “Yes it’s a—,” she took a deep breath. “That, more than your strange clothes, convinces me that you really did come through the portal. No wonder you didn’t know what it was. Wow.” She scratched the top of her head, knocking her goggles askew in the process. “I had better introduce you to my boss. She can explain everything better than I. And holy ginowski is there a lot to explain. Follow me.” With that she turned and walked out of the room, expecting Hannah to follow.

“Wait!” Hannah called as she gathered herself and rushed to catch up, her short legs not doing her any favours. “I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m sorry, how terribly rude of me.” She stopped and pointed her elbow at Hannah. “I’m Saraahm but most just call me Sara.”

“I’m Hannah. Hannah Osta. Nice to meet you.” She looked at the elbow being extended and then back at Saraahm’s expectant face. “Umm, do I...?”

“Oh! You touch elbows. Do you not do that when you meet people?”

Hannah gently touched her elbow to the other woman’s. “No, we shake hands.”

“Oh yeah, I remember learning about that custom.” She continued walking now that introductions had been made. “It was abolished because there was too much espionage that could happen within a handshake. Messages could be passed, a needle of poison could be injected. And some people just squeezed so hard it cut off all circulation to your hand. Permanently.”

“I have never heard of that happening.”

“Really? It sounded like it was a common occurrence. Especially among adolescent males.”

Hannah shook her head. “Must have been an exaggeration.” Saraahm shrugged. They wound through many basement levels and back hallways full of boxes so Hannah didn’t see the full scale of the museum until they walked up a back staircase and emerged onto a balcony level. Hannah couldn’t help but gasp in amazement.

It was an enormous great hall, perhaps seven stories tall not including the vaulted ceiling. Skylights would have illuminated the hall, but it appeared to be dark out at the moment. Instead, the hall was lit with hundreds of candles in sconces attached to astoundingly tall Doric columns supporting the roof. The floors were marble and glittered in the flickering light, making the paintings on the floor seem to come alive. She could have stared for hours, but her guide hurried her on, saying she needed to come faster so that they didn’t miss her boss on the way out.

They continued up the stairs to the office area, Hannah trailing her fingers over the intricate stone carvings on the walls as they walked. Her mind was already making rough sketches of the designs she liked to add to her notebook of ideas. But then the classic architecture abruptly stopped once they turned the corner into the office space. Now it was more semitransparent glass and those same walls being unashamedly used as whiteboards.

“Here we are,” Saraahm said, pushing open the door marked “Dr. Michelle O’Hara” and leading the way into the lab.

Without realising it, the tension in Hannah’s body eased as she took in the surroundings. It reminded her of her advisor’s office. Blueprints on every wall, post it notes with annotations all over the place, and countless piles of papers stacked haphazardly on the desks, floors, anything that was vaguely horizontal. A lone cup of coffee sat forgotten near a strange looking keyboard on a marginally less cluttered part of the desk. “Michelle?” Saraahm called out.

“I’m in the back lab,” a distant voice called back.

“Figures,” Saraahm muttered. “I should have known by the coffee left abandoned. It goes everywhere with her, except for the lab.”

Together they walked through another glass door, this one completely opaque, and into the lab space. Considering how messy the office was, it was amazing that the lab seemed so organized. There were computer monitors embedded in every wall, for that must be the only way they could be so flat. The surface of the tables had illuminated keyboards directly on the surface and in front of one of them was Dr. O’Hara, her fingernails tapping on the metal table as she typed.

“Alright, save that for me and send it off to Chris to read in the morning,” the woman spoke to the air.

“Copy that,” a soft voice responded. Hannah looked around in confusion. She didn’t see anyone else in the room. Maybe she was talking with someone on speaker phone.

“Hello, Sara,” she greeted her assistant. “Who is this?”

“This is Hannah. Hannah, this is Doctor O’Hara.” Hannah extended a hand automatically before remembering and altering to touch elbows.

“Pleasure to meet you, Doctor.”

“Oh please, call me Chell.”

“She is from Earth. She said the year was 2009 when she fell through the portal.”

Chell’s eyebrows rose. “The original Earth?”

“I only know of one,” Hannah said slowly, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“Great Goddess above, you are from that original civilisation. And you said you got here by a portal?”

“She came through the one in the basement,” Saraahm said. “The one we all thought was disconnected from the network.”

“No way! That is unprecedented.” Chell rushed to a drawer and began pulling out instruments. “We must study it to see if that will happen again. Have you seen my fluxmeter?”

“Doctor, Perhaps that can wait until tomorrow,” Saraahm interrupted, her arms crossed over her chest. “You remember how draining portal travel was the first time. I’m sure Hannah wants to sleep right now.”

Hannah nodded as she raised a hand to cover her yawn. Any adrenaline from the prospect of exploring somewhere totally new had faded. It would be back later, but for now she just needed sleep.

“Of course, how remiss of me.” She replaced her instruments where they belonged. “Let me just make a note to look at that tomorrow, and we are good.” She lead them out of the lab and locked up behind her. With another few taps on the keyboard at her desk, she closed down her workstation. Grabbing her coffee and her bag, she smiled. “Let’s go home. I have an extra room for you, Hannah, so you don’t have to worry about anything. Thank you, Sara.”

Together they walked out of the office and down the hall to the parking garage. Hannah protested that she could just stay at a hotel, but the Dr. O’hara reminded her that hotels here would not take her money from Earth. Sara split off along the way to finish up her work before she, too, retired for the night. When they reached the garage, Hannah’s brow furrowed in confusion. Really by now she knew she should have been prepared for the unexpected, but these vehicles looked more like amusement park rides than cars. Bright, garish colors glittered in the fluorescent light above, illuminating what appeared to be miniature rocket ships. The style of rocket ships seen in children’s colouring books. Stubby wings and a large, round cockpit. She could have sworn one off on the left side of the garage was blatantly shaped like a cartoon UFO.

Chell stopped in front of a dark blue craft, Pertinax Lightnight written on the bumper. Hers, at least, looked a little more practical. The design looked rather like a VW bug with rounded wings that formed a step up into the cabin area.

At the push of a button, the door lifted upward to allow the doctor and Hannah to climb in. The seats inside were less seats, more a couch along the back. A panel at the front showed a map and Chell lightly pressed the icon that looked like a house. Another press of the button and the clear door slid firmly back in place.

“Enjoy the ride,” Chell said with a smile as the vehicle gently rose up into the air and accelerated forward. Hannah once again gasped in amazement. The car was driving itself. And really driving wasn’t as accurate a verb as flying.

“No way. You have a hovercraft!”

As they flew to the doctor’s home, Chell took the time to explain how far Hannah had travelled while the latter watched out the window in amazement. Although it was night, the lights of other hovercraft flew by and city skyscrapers glowed beside them. It almost exactly fit her vision of the smooth curves of a futuristic city.

“Sorry? Say that again?” Hannah tuned back into the doctor’s monologue. “I thought you said I travelled to a different galaxy.”

“You did. The portals allow for that. We aren’t really sure how they work. Not every planet we colonised had one.”

“You mean your people didn’t make them?”

The older woman shook her head. “No. We can only study them.”

“What have you learned?”

“We know that they appear to form out of the ground itself. No sign of tools being used at all. They vary in sizes; some people think this points to them growing organically. A small group of individuals have an innate connection with the portals that manifests in different ways, but usually means they can direct the portal where to take them with their thoughts. For the rest of us, there is a controller hooked up into which coordinates can be entered and then the portal connects.”

Another hovercraft with green lights zipped by outside. “So you can travel anywhere?”

“Not quite. There has to be a portal on the other side for you to come out of. Think of it as, well, what did you say you studied at school?”

“Architecture,” she replied. “Focusing on classical styles.”

“Okay. Then think of it as a bridge across the universe. There needs to be a connection on both sides in order for a person to cross the river or the canyon. In this case there needs to be a portal on both ends to safely cross the vacuum of outer space.”

“That makes sense.”

“Which is why it is incredibly strange that you managed to come through. As far as we knew, there was never a portal on your Earth. What did it look like?”

“Nothing more than a brick wall in the train station that had a slight glow.” She thought back, trying to remember if there was anything unusual. “I’ve never noticed anything odd about it before and I take the train from that station every day. Certainly nothing like anything I have seen here so far.” Only the low crescent moon in the sky reminded her of Earth. But maybe there would be more familiar things in daylight.

“And how did you activate it?”

“I poked it with my umbrella.” She smiled shyly. “I really had no intention of travelling anywhere other than home, on the tube.” She sat back in the seat and her smile vanished. Home. “You don’t know how to get me back home, do you?” she asked quietly.

Chell looked over at her and gave Hannah’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I may not know how you got here, but I am going to work my hardest to figure out how to get you home. And in the meantime, we will figure out why you were brought here, for it must have been for a reason. But before all that,” the vehicle slowed to a stop and gently landed, “we are going to rest.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 2