"Will you die if you stop eating things with a nervous system."

"No? I'm sorry, but where am I? Do you guys work here? Kaureiss. The battery factory?"

"How many of these worlds have plants? It doesn't make any sense."

"- oh, this is all one large - uh, porn, thing."

Aiak does not know the word "ero-LARP" out of Byway's sheer "having more productive things to do".

"Impressive fursuits!" He sees a lot of them around, actually. In the lighting even dimmer than the building he left behind, they easily pass for real-real fantasy creatures. Not that he would know what real-real fantasy creatures looked like. "But I, like, am not a participant, sorry, just, must have gotten turned around and accidentally opened the wrong door, I literally do not even know what this kind of room is called", he keeps having to dart his eyes away from the people drinking and eating at the uncomfortable little tiny counter, but his ears keep unwelcomely reminding him that it's there, "I've never seen anything like this before in my life." Well, that sounded awkwardly like he was trying to plead purity. He'd just been hoping to get across how little he could be expected to play along with whatever the correct exit procedure was.

"Finally, someone normal! It's called a bar. They -" he sticks out a long tongue with a fin at the end and waves it in the direction of the people sitting at the little counter- "are recreationally anesthetizing themselves. Most of them see this as the prototypical third space, even though this is an interdimensional vagrant trap."

"- Porn? How?" His bad feeling grows.

He rushes for the door handle behind him and throws the door open. Footsteps pound hard and fast in the hallway. He panics and shuts it again.

"What was that? Are you on the run from the cops? You can stay here, I have money if you don't, Fenrir and I -" nod at the winged deer "- are looking for a good universe."

Dazed.

"What are cops?"

"It should be taking you back to your home universe. Is it not?"

Gingerly, he tests it again. Normal Kaureiss hallway. Quiet, now.

"No, it is."

He almost Just Goes Back -

They won't believe me. They'll think I'm making it up.

What's "crazy"? "Unconventional-belief-espousing-person-requiring-paternalistic-treatment"? Dear God.

They'll keep thinking it's a bit I'm taking too far, no matter how serious I am. Byway will never explore the implications for metaphysics. I'll spend forever

Longevity escape velocity is not hard to reach if you are not populated by idiots, sorry.

wondering what the ass this place is, and what might have happened if I'd stayed.

Much like "the hand that feeds", "the call to adventure" is real, as far as Byway can tell. Like jerks, or phytoplankton. That's why it goes in fiction.

"You say," [to the dragon] [glance at dragon and deer] "you're looking for a good universe. What do you mean? Are you immortal?"

Aiak hasn't gotten all the gene therapies he could have, yet, mostly not because he can't afford them if push came to shove but because he's been saving up. If this door will stay, it may still be possible for him to go home, get as aging-proofed as he can, and come back in time to follow the fantasy creatures to do whatever they're going to do.

And if he's counting on the new door sticking around for that, he may as well try to aid his new boss into stumbling upon the door so Byway can incorporate the metaphysical revelation without Aiak having to do it all himself. Which would genuinely be preferable; ultimately he has a life to live at home. But somehow he's not expecting that to work.

"Like eighty percent. I'm going to do the rest myself. Are you? Er, how mortal is your species to start, actually? Fuck, different planets, we might have to square units based on ticks of some clock somewhere in here or an hourglass or something."

"Not technically, but my species is so long-lived we hardly ever reach the point where we have to worry about aging before getting taken out by a falling rock or a racist mage or something."

"No, I'm not immortal yet. I'm thinking about heading back just to get as much of that as I can fixed, and bringing someone with me if possible. Can I do that, like even if I prop the door, or will it just eat whatever I prop it with?

Or, shit, I guess this is Reyyks's door."

He looks around. He doesn't see anyone who looks Bywayean enough to be the guy he was supposed to meet a few minutes ago for his orientation.

"It's the door to somebody's office, I was going in to meet him and he presumably opened the door, that's when the door opened up to here, but he isn't here. Should I be concerned that the door ate him? I probably can't go get gene therapized, anyway." Sigh.

"Time passes way slower outside than in, unfortunately. As in, we take hundreds of steps and on the outside they're still taking one. So even if you could rely on the door to stick around, which you probably couldn't for however long that would take . . ."

Well, it could have been worse. Could have been the other way around.

He can't believe any of this is happening. He feels ripped off. Now he has to choose between never knowing the incredible truth about metaphysics and risking death? And some probably-unknown risk of suffering reverse time dilation, somewhere in their presumed-eventual universe-hopping, and coming back and having missed out on his civilization's rise to local [apparently] supremacy.

"And you guys can't just come with me until I finish getting treated, so you don't have to wait some inordinately long time?"

Actually they would be unquestionable evidence of Something Bliving Weird going on, if other people could see them, but it feels Wrong to ask them to put themselves to work as test monkeys for his civilization's intellectual effort. And he doubts at least the deer would agree to it phrased that way anyway.