The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real
Previously: Detective Lola Styles is investigating a new case of disappearing cargo, which has been vanishing while transiting through the portal to London. There’s a fear that it’s being swallowed by the void, so she’s decided to go talk to an expert…
Bruglia.
3202. Leafless.
Hey Clarke,
Got a weird one. Sergeant down at the portal station brought me in to help investigate missing cargo. Yes, thrilling. Seems containers are vanishing somewhere between Bruglia and London. Never showing up at your end. He reckons they’re being eaten by the portal, or whisked off to an entirely new dimension.
Which is a pretty terrifying thought. We kind of take it for granted that stepping through the portal will do what it’s always done, right? One step on Palinor takes you through to Mid-Earth, and vice versa. Same if you take the portal to Max-Earth. If that’s not the case - if it can sometimes send you somewhere else - then that changes everything. Suddenly they’re not safe to use. Then what?
Anyway, that’s his theory. Not buying it myself, but it is giving me the shivers just thinking about it. Then again, what if it could be controlled, and a portal could send you to different places? Like pressing the channel buttons on a television set.
In other news. I need to keep an eye out for that referendum. The mail is taking longer and longer with the portal disruption and I don’t want to miss the vote. You say I got out at a good time, but it’s not fun having to watch it all fall apart from a distance and not be able to do anything.
Glad you filled me in on Kaminski. I’d wondered why he hadn’t replied to my last letter, but if he’s been high this entire time it might explain it.
Send my love to him and Nisha. Give Bakker a hearty handshake for me or something.
Don’t know when I’ll see you, but watch your back. Things are getting strange.
Stay grumpy.
Love,
Styles
It was a short walk from the portal station to the university campus. After all, they had once occupied the same space, until the two portals had opened and torn the ancient buildings to pieces. Fountain University was now a collision of architectural disciplines, a chimera of old Palinor, modern Bruglia and triverse influence. The university had always been a hub for learning across the region, so even the remaining older structures displayed an unusual diversity of thought and skills, drawn from far beyond the borders of the Bruglia city state.
Lola took every opportunity to visit, imagining that she was a young apprentice wielder. One of the lucky children that arrived at the campus at the start of each year to begin their training in one of the core disciplines. Wizard school, just like the books she used to read. Alas, no humans from the other dimensions had ever demonstrated the ability to wield magic.
She’d attended a couple of open lectures by Professor Simova, an expert physologist and portal academic, during her time in Bruglia. He’d been involved in the rehabilitation of Yvette Field, which is how she’d first encountered his work. He’d been instrumental in the reconstructive surgery the girl had required. All part of her ongoing mission to absorb as much of Palinor’s history and culture as she could in her limited time there; after all, the liaison officer posting wasn’t permanent. At some point she would be required to return to Mid-Earth, to her desk in the SDC offices in London. The thought made her shudder. Her entire life had led up to her coming here, and it seemed absurd that she would have to give it up. Even quitting wasn’t an option - without an approved job and a reason to be there, she wouldn’t be permitted to stay as a resident and would be deported back through the portal.
The white tower at the south-western point of the university was her destination. Welcomed into the foyer, she was led by a hooded student through bright corridors and up spiralling staircases, windows and balconies offering glimpses alternately over the city and out across the rocky desert. The university campus perched on its mesas, separate from Bruglia itself, a sprawl of intellectualism built and rebuilt over centuries. It was difficult to distinguish the city state from the university, in terms of power hierarchy. Chancellor Baltine ruled over both, which made him arguably the most powerful individual on Palinor. Whomever controls the portal controls the world.
Her legs ached from the steps, which seemed endless as her guide led her higher and higher. Finally they emerged onto a bridge that connected to an adjacent tower. A cool but not unpleasant breeze buffeted her hair, though it was mercifully free of grit and sand at that height. The walkway granted a view over to the portal station, a considerably smaller affair than Mid-Earth’s. Of course, there was only a single functioning portal in Bruglia, with the second portal being incomplete and little more than an obsidian-black wall. It nestled in a separate structure, where it was studied and maintained away from the bustling station.
The far side of the bridge led into a courtyard open to the sky, filled with plants from wall to wall. It was a raised forest and an unusual burst of greenery within the surrounding umber hues of the region.
“Lola,” said Professor Simova, turning away from his work, “it is so good to see you. Have you heard from Yvette?” He was in his sixties at the very least, she had decided; it was hard to tell with skilled wielders.
“I haven’t,” she said, “but my partner did mention that she was back at school and doing well.”
“Very good. Yes, very good.” He stretched, straightening his back, and gazed up at the sky as if he’d only just noticed it. His long, grey beard wobbled as he moved his jaw. “When you try something entirely new there’s always that mote of doubt, no matter how prepared you are. I dearly hoped the surgeries on the girl would hold, and they had every chance of success, but you never really know.”
Lola walked through the courtyard, brushing her palm against the fronds of a dozen species of leafy plans. “Have you had any further successes?”
“Nothing on that scale. As awful as Yvette’s situation was, it did lend us a perfect case study. Mid-Earth and Palinese medical sciences combined into one. It was really quite glorious. I’ve overseen some amputations, limb replacements, isolated and small operations.” He looked a little rueful, then laughed quietly. “Listen to me. Silly fool. If I never have to help someone in Yvette’ position again I’ll be entirely grateful.” His eyebrows lifted a little. “That’s not why you’re here, is it?”
She shook her head. “No, Professor. I wanted to quiz you on portals, actually.”
“Ah! My second favourite subject for discussion.”
Simova boiled water in a teapot by pinching his thumb and forefinger together for a few seconds, then poured them both a herbal tea. “A new blend,” he said. “Very soothing on the throat. A good antidote to all the dust in this city.” He took a sip. “Oh! I’ll gather you some herbs to take back home. You can cook with them.”
As he pottered about his tower garden, Lola explained the situation with the missing shipments. Her tea was the perfect temperature. “So, you see, the Sergeant in charge of security on the cargo side of things can’t account for where these containers are going. He’s starting to theorise that they might be disappearing into the portal itself.”
“No,” Simova said, shaking his head definitively. “The chances of that being the case are minuscule. Have any travellers gone missing while transiting through the portal? Or any of the other portals?”
“Not to my knowledge. I mean, it would have been reported for sure.”
“Exactly, my dear,” Simova said, pointing his little finger at her while raising his mug for another sip. “There would be panic in the streets if people were vanishing into the void. But it’s the same portal. We may have built the portal stations to separate cargo from people, but they’re passing through the same tear. You say there’s been several missing shipments? Enough to be noticed. Possibly more that haven’t been noticed. In other words, it’s become relatively common. If that were the case, then travellers would definitely have gone missing as well.”
Lola nodded. She’d been wondering the same thing herself. “Then what?”
“Have you heard of Tellor’s Paradigm?”
It didn’t ring a bell. “I don’t think I have.”
“He was a philosopher about four centuries back. Pre-eminent in his field. Once visited Fountain University, but was mostly based to the north. If you read his works they’re all very no-nonsense. Straight to the point. Didn’t like hyperbole or overly imaginative people, you see. He was always looking for the simpler answer, the shorter sentence, the more efficient route. Hence ‘Tellor’s Paradigm’. When faced with several unlikely possibilities, you should always lean towards the least complex.”
“Oh! You mean Occam’s Razor.”
Simova frowned. “Is that the same principle?”
“That’s what we call it on Mid-Earth. I’m not sure when or where it’s from.”
“Fascinating that the same theory would exist in both dimensions and be given specific names. I should look into that.”
“Isn’t it likely to be because they’re both quite obvious ways of looking at the world?” Lola clicked her fingers. “The simplest way, you might say.”
“Oh yes, very good.” He placed his mug on a potting table and stood with his arms folded. “Now, if we dismiss the possibility of portals misbehaving, what is left?”
It was a good question. “A mistake, perhaps? Just a basic clerical error?”
“Very plausible. Or perhaps something slightly more delicious: deliberate malfeasance. Somebody is likely playing games with your sergeant.”
Thank you for reading!
It’s been a pretty quiet week around the online writing community1, but I did spot this excellent question from
that was basically a big neon sign displaying ‘Simon read this’:I had thoughts, unsurprisingly.
Congratulations to
for winning the Lunar Impact Award. I was really touched to have been nominated alongside such great writers.Also! The big community re-watch of Babylon 5 has begun. This is very exciting. You can check out the first instalment here:
New episode of that one every week. Do join us if you like classic TV space opera.
I’ve been playing a lot of Sea of Stars in the last week, after it’s win at the Game Awards. It’s a delightful adventure with absolutely gorgeous art:
Every now and then I play something and think I’d love to make something like this. Not that I’m claiming to actually have the skills to do so, of course. But there’s a little dream at the back of my mind which keeps growing. There are two games I’ve played recently where I’ve felt really at home with the overall design: this is one of them, and Citizen Sleeper is another. Heavily narrative-focused but with high quality presentation and enough ‘game’ for them to really come alive.
Triverse takes all my time at the moment. Perhaps when that wraps up I can consider a completely new challenge. Then again, there’s that comic I’ve always wanted to make as well…
Lastly, here are some ebook giveaways, if you’re looking to stock up on holiday reads:
Urban Fantasy Freebies (there are a lot of muscley male torsos on these front covers. I reckon anyone downloading the Triverse sampler will be seriously disappointed)
Author notes
A lot of my Triverse time is going into future planning at the moment, firming up the path we’re on and making sure that everything is positioned correctly for what’s coming next. Writing any kind of long-form story is like this, but an ongoing serial has some specific quirks.
For starters, this thing has been going out the door for two years already. Some of you have been there from the start, which is amazing. As such, all of the text already published is committed: I don’t go back and edit earlier chapters2 to sneakily get me out of tricky plot situations.
I had the broad strokes mapped out from the start, and a lot of it came into sharper focus about a month back. I always like to know exactly what I’m doing up to about 10 chapters ahead of my current position. There was still some development work needed around Lola’s story, though, and I think I cracked it this week. It’s a lot. Excited and slightly intimidated to get to it.
Back in Kaenamor’s time (the wizard from the prologue episode, if you recall), Fountain University looked a lot like Fountains Abbey in the UK:
The way the outer buildings stretch over the water was specifically the inspiration for Kaenamor’s lab. Of course, it wouldn’t have had such lush surroundings given Bruglia’s environment.
By this point in the story, 200 years later, I figured it would look quite different. Less classically cathedral-esque and more like its own bustling town. But a real hodge-podge of eras represented across the campus.
That’s about it for this week - a quieter chapter, but we’ve got some big stuff coming up. On Monday I’ve got a newsletter all about how I use my fiction as a coping mechanism for the trickier things that are happening in the world, so that might be of interest to Triverse readers as well.
See you then, and have good weekends!
🤮
Unless it’s to fix typos or tweak phrasing for clarity. I don’t make any plot changes, though.
I love the bit on how you don't go back and edit to get out of plot situations. I could totally see how it would be so easy to do that. On another note, I'm just jumping into the middle of this story, but it seems really interesting. I miss science fiction. I've been focused so much on mystery lately. And two years' worth of work already into this? Impressive!
"For starters, this thing has been going out the door for two years already. Some of you have been there from the start, which is amazing. As such, all of the text already published is committed: I don’t go back and edit earlier chapters² to sneakily get me out of tricky plot situations."
Thanks for the reminder of your position on the stability of published text. Would you maintain that position if you publish this in book form--especially if you thought of something that would make terrific sense of a bit you'd overlooked? (Just curious.)
Re some readers present "from the start." I'm writing (not yet publishing) a serial based on a series of 10 previously published historical novels. Same characters, same1930s American South setting. Many of the serial readers will have read all 10 of those existing novels. Many not. Figuring out how much backstory to include is proving tricky, especially because the episodes are short. Interesting issue. Do you have any tactics for dealing with that?
Thanks for your work--happy holidays!
Also,