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Morty knows he shouldn't be screwing around with multidimensional shit. It's dangerous, it's impractical, it's blah blah blah. But it's a potential key to unlimited energy, how does nobody see that? He's built a dimensional siphon (it kind of looks like a cardboard box with a funnel and a TI-84 taped to it, but it damn well works), keyed in the dimensional coordinates to a random plane, and by God he's going to use it.
He flips the switch and waits for the energy bar to fill up.
It does! It fills up very rapidly. Then it explodes, along with the box. There's rather more smoke than there should be, and once the smoke clears someone is standing there.
"Oh dear," Morty says faintly.
Flicker at Whateley
Morty feels the need to sit down.
"I- I-- I, um. I... yeah. That's, that's a possibility. That's... that's a larger problem. Than I thought I was dealing with. That's a large problem."
point_b
"Okay. I - hang on." She taps the back of her hand to her chin. "Alli. Alli please be there."
point_b
"Oh thank fuck. Alli, some - mad scientist from another dimension has summoned me and I can't - I tried to - it doesn't work. But twining works, I can still talk to you, okay, this isn't as bad as it could be. Yeah. Of course I will."
"I have a schizophrenic Warper from another dimension in my dorm room," Morty says dully. "I am going to be expelled and there's a schizophrenic Warper from another dimension in my dorm room. At least there'll be a spare they can put her in. No, wait, she'll have to go to Dickinson. Or Poe, actually, considering that she's schizophrenic. I'm so glad we worked that out."
point_b
"I'm not schizophrenic, you idiot. I'm talking to my twin. What part of 'another dimension' is not yet clear to the inventor of the interdimensional kidnapping machine?"
point_b
"She's not invisible, she's at home, in the dimension where twins have superpowers including talking to each other at arbitrary distances. Is there someone less intensely slow on the uptake I can talk to?"
"Well, the administrators are pretty slow, but they're not in shock and ruining their own lives constantly. Shall I contact them so that they can expel me immediately?"
He's much calmer now than he was when his life hadn't been ruined. There's not much farther down to go at this point, so dull sarcasm seems like the order of the day.
He's much calmer now than he was when his life hadn't been ruined. There's not much farther down to go at this point, so dull sarcasm seems like the order of the day.
He picks up a nearby cellphone and punches in a three-digit code.
"Hello. Mrs. Hartford, how good to- okay. I accidentally summoned someone from another- yes. She can teleport, apparently. She talks to herself and claims she's talking to her twin in her home dimension. Yes. Because I am an idiot, ma'am. Good to know. Since I'm going to be expelled, I'd just like to say that you're an e- oh. I would like to retract that, ma'am. Yes."
He hangs up and drops the phone, his fingers no longer choosing to cooperate. "Mrs. Carson will fly in through the window in a moment. Could you open it, please? I would, but I don't seem to have working muscles anymore."
"Hello. Mrs. Hartford, how good to- okay. I accidentally summoned someone from another- yes. She can teleport, apparently. She talks to herself and claims she's talking to her twin in her home dimension. Yes. Because I am an idiot, ma'am. Good to know. Since I'm going to be expelled, I'd just like to say that you're an e- oh. I would like to retract that, ma'am. Yes."
He hangs up and drops the phone, his fingers no longer choosing to cooperate. "Mrs. Carson will fly in through the window in a moment. Could you open it, please? I would, but I don't seem to have working muscles anymore."
point_b
"Yes. My name's Bella, and apparently you still do codenames here; mine's Flicker. Your mad scientist here has taken me out of my usual gravity well and I can't teleport home."
"Yes. As a representative of Whateley Academy, I extend my sincerest apologies, and assure you that we will do our level best to send you home and to attend to your needs while you're here. This is not, um, unheard of, so we actually have a fairly substantial portion of our budget set aside for 'fish-out-of-water' cases. As I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear. Relatively speaking."
point_b
"I'm actually not pleased to hear that your students kidnap people from other dimensions on a regular basis. That is a problem."
She sighs. "We don't exactly encourage it, but it's a problem that pops up when you have mages and devisors around. The punishments are very severe, but shockingly, students who can bend reality to their will with cardboard and duct tape are difficult to dissuade from whatever course of action they want to take. Especially given the predominance of Diedrick's Syndrome among- oh, sorry, different universe. It causes delusions of grandeur and disregard for others, especially in periodic fits, and it crops up most frequently among devisors and mages. Which makes it harder than it should be to impress upon them that there are certain things that are banned for a reason, such as playing around with other dimensions. Again, we do apologize."
point_b
"If you have irresponsible people who can and will kidnap people with duct tape and cardboard then they should not have duct tape and cardboard! This doesn't even become a quandary until it drops below the level of campus epidemic or they learn to do it with tater tots! I'm lucky I can still talk to my sister; if he'd gotten a non-twin they'd have vanished totally without explanation."
"I wasn't trying to kidnap anyone! I was- I thought I had it right, my calculations were-"
Morty is quelled by a glare from Mrs. Carson. "While Morty shouldn't be talking right now, because he is in enormous amounts of trouble, that's... rather the problem. Nobody is trying to do it. And since we're teaching them to use their powers as best they can, denying them access to the equipment they need to do anything needlessly punishes the devisors who are trying to, say, develop life-saving medical equipment, or solve the energy crisis by sensible means. At any rate, thousands upon thousands of gadgeteers, devisors, and mages have come through this school in its 45 years of operation, and 23 people have been abducted from their home dimensions. All but two were returned within a year or less, and the two who stayed did it of their own volition."
Morty is quelled by a glare from Mrs. Carson. "While Morty shouldn't be talking right now, because he is in enormous amounts of trouble, that's... rather the problem. Nobody is trying to do it. And since we're teaching them to use their powers as best they can, denying them access to the equipment they need to do anything needlessly punishes the devisors who are trying to, say, develop life-saving medical equipment, or solve the energy crisis by sensible means. At any rate, thousands upon thousands of gadgeteers, devisors, and mages have come through this school in its 45 years of operation, and 23 people have been abducted from their home dimensions. All but two were returned within a year or less, and the two who stayed did it of their own volition."
"Get more mages and more devisors on the case. Competent ones. Ideally, they figure out a way to return you within the week, probably giving you a gift basket of advanced medical tech or something as compensation for the inconvenience. If it turns out that Mr. Halliman has done something complicated to you, then we contact people of increasing power and expertise. The last specialist on that list has been able to successfully return every complicated case so far, but his rates are in the millions, so we'd rather exhaust our other options before spending a substantial percentage of our yearly budget; I mention him so that you know that our last resort is a good last resort. If, somehow, Mr. Halliman has tied you indelibly to our world with his latest cardboard box, then we will do everything in our power to help you acclimate to our world and allow you to start a comfortable and productive life here. The likelihood of that occurring is astronomically unlikely, and I mention it only for completeness, because you seem like the type to appreciate that."
point_b
"I am exactly the type to appreciate that. Thank you. Right. Well, in the interests of explaining what you have on your hands: in my world, starting in the fifties, twins - and triplets and chimaeras - started turning up with superpowers. When we turn sixteen we attain effortless Olympic-quality physical abilities, the ability to talk to our twins at any distance - apparently including the interdimensional - and to sympathetically heal same, at touch range only. Plus bonuses, mine being teleportation within a gravity well to stationary targets relative to that gravity well, specified by my being able to see it, or a latitude and longitude, or an intersection - but not an address."
"Hmm. Interesting. We're fairly similar, but instead of twins we just get mutants, who have powers like your 'bonuses'. Sometimes more than one; I have heightened physical abilities, various magical powers, and the ability to host spirits within myself and use their powers, for instance. Due to an unfortunate first few decades of existence, mutants are not well-liked by the baselines. This school exists to educate mutants about how to use their powers and how to survive in a world full of potential pitchfork-wielding mobs. Mutophobia no longer being popular in polite society, but I'm sure I don't have to tell you how much that's worth." She sighs. "Absent your twin, your powers actually fit fairly well into our classification system; if you end up having to integrate into our society, you can get an MID card and fit right in. And you don't have any particular tells, like eye color or supernatural beauty or, say, a tail, so you could blend in well enough with the baselines if you needed to. Or you could become a superhero. Or a supervillain, as I feel obligated to mention in keeping with Whateley's neutrality policy."
"Yes. The Academy was founded by a coalition of super-personages of all backgrounds, so that we would not be perceived as a 'superhero school' and immediately firebombed by villains with strong opinions on such. We offer education to young mutants regardless of their career intentions or parentage. I personally would rather teach in a morally neutral school that is able to serve as a safe haven for teenagers being chased by angry mutophobes than have taught in a pure superhero school that stood for two and a half months before Lord Paramount flew in and smashed it into gravel."