Part 1: [link]
Part 2: [link]
Part 3: [link]
Part 4: [link]
Part 5: [link]
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Previously on the Beginner’s Guide to Everything: Mary Brown, the most normal girl in the universe, met her new coworkers on the factoid survey team for the Beginner’s Guide to Everything. Her ex-space pirate boss, Triz Claxy, welcomed her and the cyborg A-2 aboard their Cannister-class vessel and set out for their first job. Surveying Hazard, the danger dimension, for factoids, much to Mary’s horror.
Meanwhile, or rather a little bit after that, Ronnie Ray, interdimensional fugitive, escaped the GOTM cryo-prison thanks to a bureaucratic error. The pink-haired criminal wasted no time in beaming to Mary’s location using a transmitter she planted on her earlier. Only to be dropped in the middle of a dangerous situation at the worst possible time. How will they get out of this mess?
~--~
Sometime before Ronnie’s ill-fated escape from the cryo-prison, Mary, A-2, Triz, and the rest of the factoid team landed not so gracefully in Hazard. The dimension lived up to its name right away; they immediately passed through some kind of electrical field that fried their ship, hence the lack of a graceful landing. Thankfully, their vessel was more than hardy enough to withstand the crash, but the same can’t be said for its occupants.
“Ow, my everything,” Mary moaned as she awakened on the floor of the vessel, having been ping-ponged around its interior along with everyone else.
“Let’s go again, let’s go again,” A-2 repeated insistently, sparks flying out of her circuits.
“Anyone who’s left, casssualty report,” Triz sprang to life, a big bruise on her forehead.
“By some miracle, we’re all alive,” Jerry, the sentient gas cloud, answered. “No, wait, I think we lost Steve.”
“Then where isss he?” Triz asked.
“I’m not sure, I think he-,” Jerry was interrupted by a figure splatting on the ground outside the ship. “There he is. Casualty report: Steve.”
“All thingsss consssidered, that’sss pretty good,” Triz brushed off Steve’s demise. “What do you make of thisss…whatever we landed on?” The lizard woman looked out the window to observe the dense jungle they had crashed in.
“By some miracle,” Jerry opened up their onboard copy of The Beginner’s Guide, “we landed on a planet without a toxic atmosphere, which only make up 0.00000000001% of all celestial bodies in Hazard.”
“Exccccelent newsss,” Triz observed all the newly formed holes in their vessel. “Well then, thisss vesssel will get usss nowhere,” she picked up a heavy duffle bag, “I sssay gather your posssesssions, and let’sss get to factoid hunting. It will take our mindsss off or inventible doom.”
“Aye.” “Fuck.” “Sure thing, boss.” “I hate my job.” The other members of the team commented as they gathered their belongings.
“A-2, let’s go,” Mary struggled to her feet and shook the cyborg.
“…again…let’s go again,” A-2 continued to repeat.
“Wake up,” Mary slapped her.
“Oh, hey there,” A-2 snapped back to reality. “Are we there already?”
“We’re going to die, like Steve,” Mary sighed.
“Who’s Steve?” A-2 stood up and glanced out a nearby window. “Oh, I can see why you’d say that.”
The factoid team was in no rush to leave their vessel. However, they also weren’t keen on staying in a crunched-up ship with fried circuits. Thus, the crew was in a limbo state between rushing out the door and taking their time, leading to quite a spectacular display of haphazard evacuation.
Mary, with nothing to her name but the clothes on her back, just sat and watched. Equally uneager to step out into a place known as the danger dimension. A-2, who did bring quite a few belongings with her, also sat and watched while she waited for her auto-repair system to fix her damaged circuits. Luckily for them, the rest of the team were too involved in their own war between half-assing and rushing things to notice the duo doing nothing.
“A-2, I’m confused,” Mary looked at the cyborg. “What’s the difference between a dimension and a universe?”
“Lots,” A-2 replied simply. “But, between you and me,” she leaned up to Mary’s ear, “the wackos writing and reading the Beginner’s Guide don’t know the difference. It’s better to think of this place as a plane of existence. The multiverse is just a giant cylinder filled with layers of stacked disks. The disks are the full universes, and the planes are like little bubbles inside those disks. Size is relative, though, so one bubble could be a whole universe while another could be as small as a hotel room.”
“Uh…Okay,” Mary nodded, trying to absorb the crash course on the multiverse.
~--~
“Triz, if you don’t mind me asking,” Jerry inquired as the two moved out the last of their equipment and belongings, “what facts are we supposed to collect here? The official report I read was fairly vague.”
“Whatever we can,” Triz answered. “Every other sssurvey team they sssent out never came back, so the higher upsss are looking for anything to ssslap on the pagesss. The bonusss payout was great though ssso I didn’t sssecond guesss their methodsss.”
“Oh, no,” Mary muttered as she heard their conversation. “We really are going to die.”
“Ah, don’t be like that,” A-2 assured. “Sure, this place is supposed to be uber dangerous, but we’ve been here for a bit, and nobody…only one person has died so far.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better, and you’re tempting fate,” Mary exclaimed. On cue, a scream echoed from outside. The duo looked out the window to see one of their coworkers being carried off in the mouth of a giant lizard monster.
“Well, there goesss Johnny,” Triz was unfazed by the sudden death. “Hey, Jerry, now that I think about it, I forgot to asssk if our recovery beacon sssurvived the crasssh.”
“It did. I’ve had it off and on for a while now,” Jerry replied.
“Any repliesss?”
“Yeah,” Jerry answered. “They said to stop bothering them.”
“Who isss they?”
“No clue, but they keep yelling at us whenever I turn on the beacon,” Jerry shrugged in a way only a sentient gas cloud could. Before the two could deliberate over their situation any further, the giant lizard had apparently finished eating Johnny, and still feeling peckish, returned for seconds.
Ready for its return, the rest of the survey team, pulled out a variety of weapons. Primarily consisting of pepper spray and tasers, and tried in vain to scare off the beast. The lizard watched its prey scramble about curiously for a second before chomping on one of the rubber forehead aliens and trotting off to enjoy its meal.
“Did you really come here with no weapons?” Mary exclaimed.
“Huh?” Triz noticed Mary’s presence but struggled to recall who she was. “Of courssse not, I brought my trusty lassser pissstol.” The lizard woman brandished a tiny gun that looked like a space toy from the 1960s.
“Well, as long as he doesn’t bring back friends,” A-2 chimed in.
“A-2, what did I just say!” Mary screamed. At that moment, the giant lizard monster came back with three friends, each looking particularly hungry.
“Wow, I think it, and it happens,” A-2 realized. “Hmm,” she pondered this for a moment. “Well, you know what they say, there’s always a bigger fish.” As the words finished leaving her mouth, the ground began to shake, and a patch of nearby trees began to rustle.
“Why?” Mary groaned as a massive lizard monster, resembling a T-rex with three heads, emerged from the tree line. The other four lizards, immediately noticing the discrepancy in size, decided to fight for their food. Certain the numbers advantage would be enough. After three of them had their heads bitten off in sequence by the three-headed monster, the fourth had a change of heart and scampered away.
“And then-!” A-2 began.
“Shut up,” Mary clamped her hand around the cyborg’s mouth as the three-headed monster charged the survey team.
To Be Continued…
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Workplace accidents are an unfortunate fact of life, sometimes things just go wrong and people get hurt. The import thing is to have appropriate measures in place to prevent or mitigate these disasters.
Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy
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