Chapter 5

Skuld's room wasn't exactly untidy. Well, not much more than that of a 
typical tecno-junkie. Most of the bits and pieces filling the available 
space were what I'd expect, computer, disks piled everywhere, electronic 
parts, bits of mecha on most available surfaces, one large mecha that 
resembled a set of spheres, that I recognised from the series, and the 
only unusual thing, a HUGE refrigerator in one corner. Somehow I had a 
feeling I knew what that would be full of, and it wasn't Diet Coke.

Still dragging me, and followed by Urd, who was no doubt waiting for an 
opportunity to gloat at something going wrong with her little sisters 
experiment (i.e. me), I entered. Reluctantly. At the moment, my thoughts 
were not so much connected with hamsters as with guinea pigs and 
laboratory rats...

I carefully cleared a little free space, and sat down to wait. Urd 
lounged in the doorway, seemingly relaxed and bored, but I could feel 
her eyes on me occasionally, and I knew she was far from taking me for 
granted at this point. I hoped that when (if) Skuld could show them I 
wasn't lying about what had happened that maybe they'd all be a little 
friendlier.

Finally, Skulds delving, which up till now had rather resembled a hi-
tech gopher on speed, subsided as she came up triumphantly with a  
_something_ that looked more than a little dubious to me. A soft snicker 
from the doorway indicated Urd wasn't entirely impressed either.

It looked... well, sort of like an aluminium colander set with valves. I 
hadn't seen anything more outlandish since the last late-night 50's SF 
movie I watched. She grinned at me, and started to plug it into other 
pieces of kit, her little mecha grabbing wires and connecting them in 
for her. Finally she connected it into her computer, and sat back.
"There! Now, you put this on your head, and then follow the 
instructions and questions on the computer monitor, OK?"

I nodded doubtfully, gingerly taking the helmet contraptions with the 
delicate care more associated with handling nitroglycerine bottles than 
colanders. I looked into it, wondering just how much of my precious 
cerebellum this was likely to turn into kentucky-fried-brain, sighed, 
and very carefully set it on my head, barely restraining my immediate 
urge to yank it off as it started to hum softly.

Skuld patted me on the shoulder, a vague attempt at reassurance as she 
beamed fondly at her equipment. I got the distinct impression that she'd 
be a lot more worried if anything happened to it than to me, but I 
didn't see any real alternative. Urd was still lounging in the doorway, 
and I suspected she wasn't about to let me leave, especially before 
she'd had the chance to see and enjoy what Skuld's little endevours 
would do to me.

Skuld's fingers blurred as she tapped on the keyboard, a rapid stacatto 
that filled the screen with characters, then left it holding one line of 
text. She turned to me, and smiled.
"There, just follow instructions, and then we can calibrate the lie-
detector."

I looked at the screen, then at her, then at Urd, and smiled weakly.
"Uh, ladies? I can't read Japanese..."

Skuld facefaulted.

Urd could barely restrain herself from doubling up and falling over
laughing.
Giggling, she pointed a shaky finger at her sister...
"Heheheh... your wonderful device... the marvellous lie detector that 
would solve the problem, after my magic failed and he can't understand 
it!!"
*bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!*

Skuld looked daggers at her elder sister. If looks could kill, they'd 
have been carrying Urd away in a pine box about now, impaled with more 
knives than the average porcupine has quills. Then she looked at me, and 
scowled blackly.
"What do you mean, you can't read Japanese!"

"Why should I, Skuld? I'm British, we don't get a lot of demand for 
Japanese over there! Uh, don't you have an English version? Or even an 
American one, I can understand American..."

She looked me, glared again at her still laughing sister, and then 
stared at me as if it was my personal fault. Then she muttered something 
I suspected was rude, and started to burrow into her equipment pile 
again.
I looked, deciding staying quiet was about the safest thing to do right 
now, especially as Urd was still chortling faintly.

At last, Skuld looked up, her hands grasping some circuit boards, and 
glared at me again.
"RIGHT, I'm gonna fix this little problem once and for all!"

Somehow I didn't feel reassured at this point. I was already beginning 
to get an `I know I'm going to regret this' feeling, and Urds' giggling 
didn't exactly inspire me to greater confidence.
"What do I do?"

"Just keep the helmet on, while I rewire these."
There was a flurry of motion, then Skuld started to attack the keyboard 
again. While I couldn't read the kanji displayed, there were certainly 
some interesting graphics coming up. I was beginning to get a distinct 
impression from the amount of flashing red symbols, skulls, and other 
effects that she was hacking into parts of the system people weren't 
supposed to get access into.
The part that worried me most, though, was that I couldn't remember if 
Skuld was supposed to have a direct line to the Yggdrasil system. If 
THAT was what she was hacking, I was in serious trouble.

Finally, she smiled, and looked at me again.
"Ready?"

I nodded. What else could I do? After all, I didn't suppose I'd really 
miss those brain cells she was probably about to fry...

Urd peered at the monitor, then looked over at her little sister.
"You do realise you aren't supposed to access that area, don't you?"

Skuld simply glared back, obviously impressed neither by her sister's
comment or superior (not to mention smug) tone of voice. 
"At least my solution will work, not like your magic!"

Urd looked innocently at the ceiling, her tone one of honeyed
nonchalance.
"At least I won't get into trouble when they find out."

Personally, I was getting less and less thrilled by this as their 
interchange went on. I bit my lip, and slowly eased up my hands to take 
the helmet off.

I should have moved faster. Skuld saw my slow motion, scowled blackly at 
me, and slammed her hand down hard on the <enter> key on her keyboard.

I think I screamed at that point. I'm not really sure, since just then 
my head was about to explode as what seemed like a Niagara of 
information was jammed into it. 
I do remember waking up on the floor, twitching as Skuld gently took off 
a now-smoking and discoloured helmet, giving it a delicate care I felt 
would have been more suitable applied to me that to a mobile torture 
device like that. I thought about making that point to her, forcefully,
but decided to restrict myself to a heartfelt moan.

Urd hmmmd, kneeling down to poke me gently with one finger.
"Um, Skuld, you DID remember he's only a mortal, didn't you? I hope you 
havn't broken him..."

Skuld looked back, gesturing to her pet mecha to tidy things away, no 
longer much interested in the equipment now it had dome its job.
"Of course I did, and he'll be fine! Unlike SOME people, I don't break 
my toys when I'm using them!!"

Urd merely sniffed, wrinkling her nose at the faint smell of charred 
insulation (not to mention charred me) still hanging in the air.
"So, what did you do, anyway?"

Skuld adopted a posture of genius lecturer addressing her dull pupils.
"Sinple. I stuffed Japanese into his head, AND tested his story for 
truthfullness at the same time! Simple, neh? At least, for a genius like 
me..."

Urd sighed...
"I don't suppose you thought about just changing the lie detector to 
work in English? It would have been much simpler."

Skuld looked a trifle guilty for a moment (while I wondered about the 
implications of `simpler' = `not as much fun'), then looked innocently 
back.
"Oh no, this was much simpler!!"

Urd didn't seem convinced. Gently touching the singed and burnt areas 
where Skuld's device had touched my head, neither was I. My head seemed 
about to burst, and I had a splitting headache.

Skuld absently gestured me to get up, while her eyes scanned rapidly 
down tables of kanji characters. I almost made sense of them, but while
my eyes kept trying to read them, I couldnt process them into English 
fast enough. Personally, while it did have the advantage of speed, I 
didn't think Skuld's patent language lab was going to catch on, except
maybe with the manufacturer's of aspirin...

Urd craned her head over her younger sisters shoulder, a thoughtful 
expression on her face.
"So, he was telling the truth. Fine. But what about his aura? Why 
didn't he have any magic, hmm? I notice your wonderful machine didn't 
tell us THAT!!"


Skuld sniffed derisively.
"At least it told us more than your magic did!! My technology is far 
more reliable than your old spells, especially with a careless hentai 
like you casting them!!"

Noticing Skuld's smug expression, and Urd's rapidly darkening one, I 
tried to interject, hoping to stave off the next fight until at least I 
had a better idea about what was hapenning to me (and also preferrably
somewhere else).

I coughed, loudly.
"Ahem. Ladies??"
"Explain to me why it's so important that I don't show up as having no 
magic? I mean, I never had any in my world, so why should I have some 
just by being here?"

Urd looked at me with exasperation.
"Look, dummy, EVERYTHING has some level of magic if it's a living 
being. Even animals. But you don't show anything!"

I still couldn't see her point.
"Yes, but I'm not from your world, remember? So why should I be the 
same?"

Skuld looked at her sister, and coughed.
"I think I'd better explain it properly..."

Urd gave her a rude look back, but subsided, I guess waiting for an 
opportunity to interject again.

"OK, David, it's like this.
All living beings generate a field effect that produces the energy we 
are referring to as magic. All of them, in any world. It may be that 
those energies are weak, or difficult to work with, where you come from, 
but you should still show them. Unless you are dead, or not alive.."

I gulped at that last, and Urd grinned, rather unpleasantly...
"Hmmm, you a Uu, Dave? Maybe I should see how _resilient_ you are..."

I looked seriously worried, and Skuld gave here sister a dark frown.
"Be serious for once, Urd, this is important! We haven't got time for 
your games!"

Urd made a face at Skuld, but went quiet again, as I looked back at 
Skuld.

"But if I'm not dead, what's happened to this magic you say I should 
have."

Skuld spared me a glance as she started to fiddle with her instruments.
"There's only one explanation I can think of. Your magic is being 
diverted somewhere, or blocked. So it wouldn't show up, and that would 
show why you can't use it"

I looked at her blankly.
"Use it? You mean as in use magic? But how can I, I'm not a wizard or 
anything like that! Hell, where I come from we only have them in 
stories!"

Urd gave a chuckle.
"Oh, you could, if you wanted. Every human has the potential to cast 
magic, given the training. Of course, by the same theory every human can 
win a gold medal at the Olympics, so I wouldn't let the idea of it scare 
you too much...!"

I gave her a dirty look in return.
"I didn't say it scared me! I just said, we don't DO that where I come 
from!"

She sat there and looked superior. I sat there and fumed quietly.
I must admit that I wasn't exactly thrilled by the concept of magic 
right now, all the experience I had had of it so far was being dragged 
from my home and dumped here. 

 Skuld ignored us both as she half-disappeared with her pet mecha and a 
large tub of ice-cream into a tangle of wiring as she started to modify 
her equipment again.

I waited impatiently for a few minutes, then moved around to look at the 
TV. Urd, after a look at her sister that as much as said `Oh kami-sama, 
there she goes AGAIN!' had turned it on, and at least it would help me 
practice the nascent Japanese Skuld's machine had inflicted me with. And 
the concentration would hopefully stop me getting so distracted by Urd's 
nearness, not to mention the scent of her perfume. It wasn't that she 
was trying anything, her - sexiness, I guess - just seemed to be a part 
of her. It was a trifle odd that I hadn't noticed a TV set earlier, but
then Urd never seemd to have any trouble laying her hands on one - or
two, or fifteen...well, after the way today was turning out, I didn't
think materialising TV sets was really something to make too much fuss
over. Quite mundane, really.

I had trouble at first, just knowing what the words meant didn't help me 
understand them when they were pronounced, and I found myself only 
getting phrases. Then the quiz show changed to the news, and it became 
easier, as the better diction of the newscasters gradually eased me into 
utilizing my new, painfully-aquired knowledge.


The announces shuffles his notes slightly, then looks into the camera...
"Teams arrived today from the University of California Earthquake 
research unit to help Japanese seismologists investigate the 
change in tectonic behaviour following the major Earthquake disaster in 
Hiroshima 3 weeks ago."

(Camera cuts to shots of a 747 landing at Narita airport in Tokyo, then 
to a press conference where a number of American scientists are being 
interviewed)

"Professor Challenger, would you be kind enough to explain to our 
viewers the purpose of your teams visit to Japan?"

The professor gives an obviously fake, though well-rehearsed, smile to 
the TV camera.
"Of course. We are here to consult and aid the team from the Nerima 
Seismological Institute, combining our data and research on 
Californian earthquakes, to try and acertain why tectonic activity in 
the Japan area has been effectively non-existant since the recent 
terrible `quake in Hiroshima. As I am sure you know, such quiescence is 
unheard of here, and we are hoping to determine whether it is merely a 
result of the magnitude of the Hiroshima event relieving stresses for an 
unusually long time, or if it has some other cause..."

(camera cuts to the US team and piles of crates being loaded on Japan 
Seismology Institute vehicles, then fades back to the studio announcer)

"Meanwhile, in the US, yet more information is revealed in the Seattle 
cattle-mutilation scandal surrounding Bill Gates & Microsoft...."

I frowned, and looked at Urd.
"That's odd..."

She tilted her head at me in an inquiring look.
"What, the allegations that use of Win95 turns people into cattle
mutilators?"

I grinned, and shook my head.
"I don't remember that news about the earthquake being on at home. Oh 
well, I guess they didn't consider it important enough."

Urd's brow furrowed slightly, as if my comment had meant something, but 
just then we were both distracted by an empty ice-cream carton flying 
from the tangle of equipment Skuld had embedded herself in, followed by 
a muffled `Yattah!', and the reappearance of Skuld.

She grinned at us both, taking the cloth her small mecha held out to 
wipe her hands clean.
"NOW we can find out what's going on!"

(to be continued)



Author's Notes.

(1) A Uu is a type of undead. (also, it allows a truly awful line)
See 3x3 eyes... :)