The Portgate

by Archival

Part 1, Chapter 2: Post-Calamity

"DON'T PANIC."

-Douglas Adams

-Noah-

Eight and a half hours had passed since Noah had last been conscious and awake. It turned out that falling onto one's head after being pulled into a portal into god-knows-where can really do a number on someone. The soft grass surrounding him swayed and moved with the morning breeze, and a blue and black butterfly landed on his chest as he lay on the ground.

The three people that had been thrown into an unexplored world had all been rendered unconscious a few minutes after their arrival. It was a rather disgraceful arrival, but luckily no permanent damage had been done to the travelers - just a few bruises and cuts here and there. Considering that they had just been tossed into an alternate dimension by a randomly spawned portal, this was a rather lucky thing to have happened.

The supplies, though...

They actually weren't that badly damaged, if a little bit scuffed. The portal had thrown them with quite some force, but the tough containers that they were in helped keep a lot of their contents safe. Thick plastic and solid metal were two materials that man was fond of, and their sturdy nature certainly made them worthy of that praise. Still, some of the supplies were damaged by their trip through the Portgate, and it would be hard to recover them. Not only that, but the cardboard and plastic boxes that most of the supplies came in were scattered around the clearing that the portal had opened up above. The surrounding forest had luckily contained nearly all of the boxes, but the meadow that they were thrown about was quite a large one.

The butterfly that had rested on Noah's chest fluttered onto his nose, and he reflexively sneezed it off. Groaning, he slowly rubbed his eyes open as he woke up from his slumber.

"Ahhh... crap, what the hell..."

His eyes slid open and were greeted by a familiar yet offsetting blue sky, with wisps of clouds spotted across the field of teal. The chirping of crickets accented the occasional breeze that flowed throughout the meadow and rustled the grass.

"...this better be heaven, or I'm screwed."

He pulled himself up, stretching as he did so. As the vibrant greens and browns and yellows of nature came into view, he couldn't help but blanch as he saw the dull browns and blacks of boxes dotting the landscape.

"Oh, son of a-"

A groan disturbed his thinking, and he turned his head towards the source of the noise. The body was a few meters away, but Noah could clearly see the woman rolling off her stomach and pushing herself to her feet. The sight of another person woke Noah up, and he rushed to help the lady get up.

"mnf...what happened?"

"I don't know," he replied. He noticed the girl's green shirt and remembered her, messing around with the food...

"Hey, maybe next time you'll stay away from the boxes. You're not supposed to be standing next to them, you know!"

The woman chuckled a little as she stood up. She surveyed the surrounding area, taking in the sights and sounds of a new world.

"Well, I guess that really happened. How the heck did the portal form anyways? I thought it wasn't due for operation for at least an hour..."

"I dunno," he replied. There really wasn't any way for the Portgate to activate before intended, since it wasn't even primed for action. But for some reason, it had inexplicably opened up a portal without warning. Maybe a malfunction...?

"Oh well," she sighed, "looks like we'll be stuck here for a while. At least we can breathe."

Something about that statement hit Noah the wrong way.

"Speaking of which, why is it that this world just happens to have a breathable atmosphere? Considering how extraordinarily unlikely it is for a planet to even have an atmosphere, let alone one with oxygen, this is just too perfect. Oh my god, I just realized that there's grass. AND TREES! They even resemble Earth's plants, and- LOOK, THERE'S A BUTTERFLY!"

"Calm down, man! Didn't they tell you this stuff before? I mean, yeah, this is weird, but we'll think about it later. First things first, what's your name?"

He slow down a bit before answering with "Noah. Noah Breston. Sorry, I guess it just then hit me."

"Leah Zhou. Good, that's over with. Hey, wasn't there another dude who came with us?"

"Aw, crap. Oh well, we'll need to scrounge up supplies if we're going to survive in this place, so looking for that guy might be a good idea. Let's go."

Together, Leah and Noah began to scavenge, thankful that they had each other.

-William-

The head of the Eden Project had some serious explaining to do. The Portgate had activated by itself and pulled three people into an unknown, alien world less than a day ago, and the heads of government of several governments were banging on his door, demanding that he tell them what happened. At this point, however, he knew just as much as they did.

"So what you're saying that this multi-billion dollar project we've put decades into just malfunctioned, and you don't know why?"

The British Prime Minister was almost screaming at William through the screen he was displayed on, and he was right to be doing so. The Portgate was an enormous investment funded by multiple countries, and the billions of dollars spent on it made the damage more than negligible. But at least it was fixable...with time and money that William had to somehow worm out of tight-fisted bureaucracies.

"Well...yeah. We still haven't figured out what happened, but we know it wasn't the machine's fault. The thing wasn't even connected to power. Rest assured, we're looking into the matter, and you guys will be the first to know."

"Anyways," the Chinese President interjected, "how badly is the machine damaged? When will it be operational again?"

"The Katz drives are totally fried, but at least the stability modules are relatively unharmed. With the same funding we've been provided so far...probably three to four months."

The various world leaders talked amongst each other through the screens for a few minutes, dutifully ignoring William as he sat and listened. Eventually, the United States President took charge and replied.

"We're increasing funding by twenty percent until the thing is fixed. Now then, what about the three people that are missing?"

"Assuming that all the missing supplies were sent through with them, they'll be fine for...about 6 months. They have enough food and water purification tablets, and some temporary shelter as well. Most of the military equipment and ammunition went through as well, so they'll be relatively safe."

"Speaking of which, aren't you worried about affecting what's on the other side?"

"We've already affected that world when we opened the portal. It was inevitable. Plus, weren't there plans for colonization? Either way, we can only hope that the people who were sent to that world don't screw up catastrophically."

"Who was missing, by the way?"

"Let's see... we have an Andrew Martinez, electrical and mechanical engineer...Leah Zhou, quantum physicist,, and Noah Breston, First Lieutenant."

"At least they have a soldier with them."

The world leaders conversed among themselves for a moment before coming to an agreement.

"William Anderson, your objective is now to repair the Portgate as soon as possible, and recover those three people. We must find out more about the other side, and they'll be the ones who know the most about it. Not only that, but the public is clamoring for more information regarding the Portgate. I'm afraid we'll have to come out with this information sooner or later, so work fast on it. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

The video chat cut off, and Anderson sat in his swivel chair for a while to process the information he had just recieved. It was pretty hard to digest.

-Andrew-

"Ugh...what the..."

Andrew felt himself helped up by two people, though he couldn't quite figure out their identities. All he saw was a blur of blue and green, and his head pounded with his every heartbeat.

"You alright, dude?"

The voice was definitely female, and Andrew swore he had heard it somewhere.

"...Yeah, I'm fine."

Andrew's vision cleared, and he looked around his surroundings. Then he looked at the people who were next to him. They were the same people that he had last seen before the Portgate accidentally activated, the scientist girl and the grumpy soldier.

"I'm Leah, and this is Noah. And you are Andrew Martinez, judging from the name tag."

"Yep," Andrew replied. He scratched his black two-day stubble and snorted.

"Great. We'll get to introductions later," Noah said. "For now, let's gather what we can. Leah and I have already set up a stockpile for scavenged supplies in the middle of the clearing. We're about halfway done with scouring this clearing, and it would be a good idea to finish before sundown. Here, grab my hand."

Noah offered his hand, and Andrew grabbed it as he was pulled to his feet. He could see the pile of interdimensional flotsam about thirty meters away, and it was a rather substantial one.

"Good to see we'll be doing okay," Andrew muttered.

"And we'll be doing more okay if you help us gather more stuff," Leah replied.

As the two other people in this world resumed their scavenging, Andrew sighed as he followed along, grabbing a nearby box with "M.R.E. SPAGHETTI, 300ct" stamped on it and hauling it to the large collection of crates in the middle of the clearing.

Author's Note:

As always, comments, criticisms, suggestions and feedback are always helpful, so leave a comment and tell me what you think!

Comments

[Friskers]

Nice. When is next update?

[Grabnock]

7813304 I too would like to know if there's a schedule.

[Archival]

7813304
7817527
~one update per week for now, later i'll do one per two weeks if my writing gets meatier
but don't count on me being perfectly on time

[Grabnock]

7817776 perfect! Thanks for the info!

Looking forward to the updates!

[Earthpatriot117]

While mre's are good, eating the same one for months will certainly not be a great experience. Lol