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She wonders if Coin would be late to fewer things if she gave her a teleportation power.
She's saying so, to Sherlock.
And then instead of the ruins of flooded Europe she's in a featureless white room facing some grumpy person in a blue robe, wearing everything she was wearing, less her coin bandolier but including her crown, and something's wrong, her thoughts are slow and won't speed up, her memory's as slippery as it ever was before she met Stella, and how did she get here, why doesn't the brainphone work, where's Sherlock?
Where are her coins? Where's her magic? She can't teleport either, not even across the room - she bites her lip just a little and she can't even remember how moving pain left to right is a thing and it goes right on stinging without regenerating -
Where is she?
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arenaria
arenaria
"...What determines whose kitchen or shower or whatever a given disappeared or destroyed thing goes to?"
"It's pretty much random."
"You tend to get higher quality items in bigger houses," he says. "But it's not a rule, just a tendency."
arenaria
"Okay. Is there some kind of - lost and found, where you can put things that appear that you don't need and get things that appear that you do need? Or - how does currency work here? I've heard money referred to but I don't know anything beyond that about how it works in this world."
"'Money' is a misnomer," he says. "If you're talking about your res account. That holds the maximum allowable square footage of your residence, and you can transfer some of it out, but people usually don't. Mostly they barter. Individually."
"Nothing really organized," he says, shaking his head.
arenaria
"Do most people figure out the computer system pretty quick? And I hear you can sort by world - how are worlds designated?"
"By number," he says. "One through seventy-two, I think. It was seventy-one a while ago."
arenaria
"Can you tell me what world I'm from? And if I want to look up someone from a world not my own, is there a way to check if that world's represented and find out its number?"
"You can tell which world somebody's from if you know their res code. That's about it."
arenaria
"I can search without narrowing down the worlds, right? And -" She rattles off her own res code, because that's the world she'll need to find Sherlock from if Sherlock's here. If Sherlock ever comes here.
He looks something up on the computer behind his desk.
"Forty-eight," he says.
"Forty-eight," he says.
"Right now," he says, "you don't. Hang around, wait, get to know the place. Maybe we'll find a use for you."
arenaria
"Yes, I don't mean today, I mean in general. Thanks."
Shell Bell heads for the computers and tries to decipher them.
Shell Bell heads for the computers and tries to decipher them.
They're not that difficult. Old, slow, but not difficult.
arenaria
She looks herself up, just to be sure she understands how the system works.
And because she's terrified of either result if she looks up Sherlock.
And because she's terrified of either result if she looks up Sherlock.
It has her name, the time of her death in her world, her world number, and her res code.
No record.
arenaria
Okay.
That's - that's good, isn't it, she was probably right, Sherlock is alive, Sherlock has a Bell, they're all going to be fine -
And she's on her own.
She sits.
Some time later she checks other names, just to be thorough. Tony. Her parents.
She excludes her own world and tries the full names of all the alts she's met, and their friends.
Well.
There is one Sherlock Holmes. Died in 1895. World number thirty-one. 2385443281^0.
There is one Sherlock Holmes. Died in 1895. World number thirty-one. 2385443281^0.
arenaria
...She doesn't think 1895 sounds like when it was when she met any of the Holmeses, she thinks it was some post-2000 time in their worlds, but that's still something. An alt probably. She looks around for writing implements.