I had been given a grand total of forty hours between my arrival in Sausage HQ to when I was designated to leave. I hate early mornings, and someone had decided that the departure time had to be six in the morning.

After the briefing I had held, I had spent the better part of a a day in a driving simulator that they had somehow scrounged up. It's kinda outdated, but I got a little better at the whole "racing" thing. I say better because I wasn't exactly a slouch before. Not that I'd ever admit it to anyone with any sort of legal standing, but I had joined the street racing scene after I had gotten kicked out of college. Never really won, but that's primarily the fact my Solara has so little pick up and go and I was up against a lot more modern vehicles, including muscle cars like Chargers and Cameros.

Still, I knew how to take a corner, how to drift, when to drift, and a bunch of other things that I learned through trial and error, out on the road. No guarantee that I was doing things well or even correctly, but I wasn't dead yet. The simulator was a great refresher and I came out of it feeling like I could probably at least not kill myself in... in the Hot Wheels universe.

Some part of my soul dies every time I think of it. It's... it's not good. It's not a good show. Sure, I enjoy it even today with how simple and fun it is, but it's plot is a mess, and there's no reason for a bunch of things to even happen.

For those unfamiliar, here's a breakdown of the start of the story:
- One of those scientists that does science just because they can discovers a magical power source dubbed the wheel of power. This is from some ancient tablet or something.
- He finds a portal that is supposed to lead him to this object, and decides to send drone cars onto the track. These fail at the first bloody obstacle. Like, five minutes in.
- He decides that, hey, maybe I'll send humans in instead. What could possibly go wrong? He grabs 35 drivers because the race starts near highway 35 (No, seriously) and tells them to go race and grab the wheel.

This scientist, Dr. Tezla, is implied in the second season to be kind of a rouge agent, split off from a shady government branch that was... uh, looking for the wheel of power too, maybe. The story never really ended, after four movies it just kind of died. If I remember correctly there was a CEO change Mattel, who own Hot Wheels, and he didn't like the show or something. The gist of it is, there's a bunch of people after the alien objects of power, and a bunch of racers who really like to race and are willing to grab said objects for a change to go dimension hopping.

Honestly, I don't even want to get involved with that plot line. Sure, I can probably exploit my knowledge somewhat, but... I've never driven a car over 120 MPH. My car could barely even do that speed. The cars in the show are somehow able to get to speeds of over 300 MPH, which puts them at Bugatti Chiron levels of performance. Not familiar? It's the only "road car" in my universe that can go that fast.

In Highway 35, a freaking '70 Dodge Plymouth can apparently do it with a little tweaking and some nitrous.

I'll be very far out of my comfort zone, and that's making a very big assumption that I'd be allowed to race in the first place. Allowed by Tezla, the US Government seems eager for me to join. I have massive doubts about following their game plan, but...

I can't help it as a small frown crosses my face. If I organize everything by factions, there's Tezla, my universe's version of the US government, that universe's secret organization that Tezla defected from, the robots- called racing drones- that are in this competition for whatever reason, the drivers under Tezla who are not quite with the program, and... well, I don't know if the Nirvana crew have allied themselves with one of those previously mentioned factions, or if they are their own faction.

And I have my own goals and reasons, though very ill-defined. I don't actually know how I'm going to fit into this equation, or even if I should. Honestly, I feel like just heading to the Nirvana and ignoring the rest of that universe. Once I'm there... I don't know.

Either way, I can't trust either Government. Or Tezla, or the Racing Drones.

"John?"

I snap my eyes over to see Parfet looking at me. "Yeah?"

"It looks like it's almost fixed."

I sigh and hike my backpack up higher on my back. "Thank fuck. I've been ready for an hour and a half."

Yes, it's 7:30 AM, scheduled departure time of way too long ago. Something popped when the energized the damn thing the first time.

"This time, nothing should explode..." Parfet scratches her jaw. "Probably. this universe is a lot less sturdy."

"Huh?"

She nods. "If you compare the relative strength of materials between our universe and yours, ours are somewhere between three to four times stronger in most aspects, like tensile strength and flexural strength, so I have to beef up a lot of the designs we used before. That not even getting into how material differences affect electronic components."

"Flexural?"

She blinks. "Ah, how much something can be flexed before it breaks."

"Ah. So that explosion earlier...?"

"I forgot to make the capacitor bank big enough." She sighs.

"Well," I look back at the vaguely doorway shaped loop surrounded by all sorts of computers and coolant systems, and that inside a larger chamber about the size of a cargo container froma ship. "If I was given an hour and a half to fix a inter-universe portal, I don't think I could do it."

She slugs me on the arm. "Don't worry, I had Duelo double check my math."

"Is he any good at math? As far as I know, he's just a good doctor."

"Oh, he's usually pretty good." She looks over at said man, her eyes softening slightly. "I couldn't ask for a better partner."

It's my turn to bat her shoulder lightly. "Well, I'm happy for you."

"Thanks!"

Duelo notices us looking at him and he straightens up from whatever e was working on and heads over towards us. "Looks like the repairs are finished."

"Awesome." I shake my head to clear it a bit. "I'm ready whenever."

Parfet gives me a once over. "Okay, I think you're all set. Everybody clear out!"

It turns out, opening a portal to another dimension or universe or whatever is dangerous. Aside from the whole "tearing open the fabric of reality" part, there's a bunch of practical considerations. Such as, the portals do nothing to equate pressure. Imagine opening a portal into space, and suddenly the massive sea of air above tries to drain through a comparatively small hole, but it would quickly suck out the entire contents of the room. Another few considerations are the transfer of temperature, any foreign diseases, and the slightly disturbing (but highly unlikely) possibility that this other universe is entirely antimatter rather than matter.

Not something I'd have much time to worry about in any case, but since Parfet, Paiway and Duelo came from there without spontaneously detonating, I decided it wasn't something worth even thinking about.

I honestly just have to worry about the device shutting off midway through the transfer.

Once everyone else is out of the room, I step into the glass container around the portal device. Speakers built into the device speak as the circuit energizes and the audio feed from the control room floods into the box. "-eady for anything. Jerry?"

The voice of Hader comes in loud and clear. "Hader."

"We're about to activate the portal. Remember, once on the other side we need to check whether the inter-universe radio works. We'll be calling the unit once we're ure you made it to the other side."

"Roger. I'll be waiting." I tap my right hip.

As I had actually had time to put conscious thought into the things I was bringing this time, I had narrowed down my old, super over stuffed backpack to only what I thought I could reasonably need.

This includes a small soldering iron, a full set of screwdrivers and a socket set, an all-in-one wire stripper-crimper-cutter, my multimeter and my laptop with every bit of footage from the movies and surrounding material I could scrape together. As a bonus, I was able to get the government to purchase a folding solar panel for me to keep my stuff charged. I had also removed the dashcam from my car for just in case.

A lot less than the walking workshop I used to go around with, but nowadays I focused more on the software sided of stuff rather than robotics.

I also have two light sets of clothes, the jacket I'm currently wearing, and a pistol tucked into my jeans waistband. I tried to ask for more ammo, but the soldiers started to get very wary of me, so I decided 10 rounds would have to be enough.

Oh, and a 1-liter water bottle, and some protein bars.

Maybe my backpack is still stuffed, but this time it's not stupidly overstuffed, and I didn't have to have a separate duffle bag as well either.

"Activating portal." Hader's voice comes through the speaker.

The machinery around me starts to buzz as coolant flows through pipes and fans spin up to dump the waste heat. Very quickly, it becomes apparent that this chamber is going to get plenty warm and wearing my jacket may not be the best idea in a minute.

It didn't take even a full minute to spool up though, remarkably, and before I knew it, the device kicked on.

I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe the blue and orange fringes from Portal, or the rainbow hued portals of the Hot Wheels universe, but what I wasn't expected was complete, pitch blackness.

Well, not quite. Some of the light spills into the other location, revealing a concrete floor like you'd find in a garage. However, the walls and ceiling must be far enough away to not be illuminated by the lights on our end.

Honestly, I already have a decent idea of where I'm going to end up once I step through, but I determined that I would stay on my guard. At least it's not outer space.

I take one last, deep breath before stepping through.

...And then I'm on the other side. Kind of anticlimactic. I look back, and I can see back into the room I came from, a glowing rectangle formed out of nothing. As I watch, the portal fizzles and closes.

Behind it, a man with a very suspicious look on his face is standing. White hair and matching goatee, with blues eyes framed behind squares glasses. Beside him, a robot hovers, looking like a cross between the Nirvana and... Pyoro. This would be Dr. Tezla and Gig, his assistant robot.

"Who are you?" Dr. Tezla asks, caution in his tone but not worry. He doesn't seem to have any weapons, but now that the portal is gone, the room is very, very dark and my eyes haven't adjusted yet.

"Oh. You know." I sigh. "Just a traveler, wandering through."

Obviously, the good doctor had been unsatisfied by my answer. He had hit the lights and confirmed my initial guess as to our location.

Right now, we're in a cube shaped building Dr. Tezla made. It's his base of operations, and... either it's highly mobile or it can teleport, or he has like five of them. Honestly, so much is just kind of glossed over in the show that I have very little idea of just how much Tezla knows. Just that it's more than he's willing to tell anyone at any given time.

Immediately after hitting the lights and remarkably cordial introductions, he led me to his lab where I realize he had already set up the pedestal he used to try to control the wheel of power. He had started running scans with some device, all while asking question after question.

"Where are you from?"

"Earth, but from another universe. I came here because I know some people who also came here, but by accident."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Not particularly. I think I'm in the right universe, but i have no way to be sure yet." I decided that I would keep my knowledge of the source material close to my chest. It worked SO WELL last time, so why not?

"Do I have an alternate reality counterpart?"

"I... Don't know? If you do, he hasn't made any splashes."

He seems a bit crestfallen at this news, but he picks himself back up quickly. "Fascinating. You see, young man, I have been trying to open inter dimensional portals myself for some time now, and I have only recently figured out the trick. When I detected one opening right in my workshop, well." He chuckles. "I was very surprised. I thought for a moment the Accelerons had arrived."

Play dumb. "Accelerons?"

"An alien race, a precursor to our own!" His eyes genuinely light up and almost sparkle as he spins around to gesture grandly. "They left us things to find, such as this tablet-" He gestures to a chunk of stone. "-and some portals that lead to a prize, a prize that could be used to greatly benefit humanity."

"Wow." I try to think of what my next natural question is. "What is this prize?"

"It's called, the 'Wheel of Power.' I think it's some sort of unlimited energy source, but I can''t be sure until I get my hands on it." As unsettling as that may sound, Dr. Tezla has no actual malice or guile in his words.

I always had him pegged as kind of a schemer, the kind of man who would gladly stab you in the back to learn just a bit more science. Now however, as I watch him gallivant about, I start to wonder if he's just completely dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, almost an idealist.

"That sounds cool. What's stopping you from getting it?"

"Well, the Accelerons didn't exactly leave it lying around." He straightens up and presses a few buttons on the keyboard set into one of the walls of the lab. The entire wall above the keyboard flares to life and he navigates to a video file and opens it up.

It's a scene I recognized, at least in a lower quality. In the very first scene of the first movie, there's a shot of a car going through a loop. Well, attempting to. It didn't quite make it. This clip is that exact clip. I watch the entire thing right up until the vehichle crashes into the track below and the feed cuts off.

"...Holy crap, that's a large loop-the-loop."

"Yes, and it turns out, unless you can get past that, you can't continue... The Race."

"...The Race?" Oh god, now I'm just repeating things he says.

"Yes! The Accelerons left us a test, a challenge to make sure we were ready for the Wheel of Power, and we have to race to get it. They left us a track, hidden in another dimension as you just saw, and now that it's existence is known, all that's left is to reach out and grab it."

"So, you need a way to get around that loop?" I tap my chin like I'm pondering.

"No, I think I have a better solution." He gestures for me to come over to his computer, and I comply. Gig, who has been absent for the past few minutes, chooses then to float back into the room. "My robot assistant and I had the idea to get the best drivers from around the world, and have them compete for a prize. Not the wheel itself, obviously, but I I am offering a monetary prize. With the best humanity has to offer, I'm sure we can claim the wheel."

"Interesting." And if you didn't invite the typical 90's skateboard punk, none of those racers would have any idea how to do that loop either. "Sounds like it might be interesting to watch."

He taps his fingers on the desk surface the keyboard is mounted to. "Say, you said that you are looking for some friends that came to our dimension recently, correct?"

"Yep."

"What do you say we make a deal?"

I raise an eyebrow. "What do you have in mind?"

"I was able to track you appearing in my lab, and if you watch over here-" He points to a spot on his screen. "-you can see that I can still tell where the portal opened. If I scan around, I could probably find your friends. It would certainly be more efficient than just randomly search around for them."

Mmm... It's not like I'm all alone out here, I have a home base to report in to. "So, what's the catch?"

"I'm still selecting drivers, and while I do have several good candidates..." He hesitates.

For the first time since I arrived, Gig speaks up. "Dr. Tezla is unsure of who he can trust with the sensitive information. As you have just been made aware, this is a very serious matter and it would help if you would be willing to participate."

I scratch my neck nervously. Sure, I had kind of expected this, but to actually be asked outright... "I'm not really that great of a driver, and I would hate to deny someone else their chance to participate."

"No matter." Dr. Tezla proclaims. "I made this race up, so I can change the rules. After all, the total number of people who know about it currently is three, all of which are in this room."

I look at the hovering robot. It sits there, pointing in my direction, silent. Tezla just stated he considers it a person.

I'm starting to warm up to the mad scientist.

"Well, I guess it couldn't hurt." I give in. "Sounds like it could be fun!" I stuff the nagging worries in the back of my mind. I'm sure they'll come up in a hilariously ironic manner at an inopportune time... but for now, I have some control of my fate. Kinda.

"Excellent." Dr. Tezla turns to Gig. "Make up one of the rooms for our new guest." Gig nods, but Tezla is already lost in thought, murmuring aloud. "We'll need a new team, and new cars-"

I follow the hovering robot, and start planning. After all, while I do agree someone needs to get the Wheel of Power...

I clench my fist.

Looks like I'm going to have a fun time planning things.

...Wasn't Sausage HQ supposed to have called me by now?

As if on cue, a ring-like noise starts sounding, almost as if it's in my ear. Gig doesn't seem to care, so I shrug and pull out the device.

I press answer, but the ringing continues. I press it a few more times before the device asks if I want to turn it off. I cancel out, and wonder what the ringing noise is-

In front of me, a opaque blue bar with some writing on it, saying "Call incoming. Accept?"

"Accept." I mumble.

The bar disappears and it is replaced by-

"Hmm." Jura looks at her console. Ever since the Nirvana had arrived over this strange planet, Captain Magno had ordered everyone to be on high alert. After all, this was Earth we're talking about and our Earth wasn't so friendly. Even so...

"This is so boring." I say.

"Yes, it is, but we need to keep an eye out for anomalies. We don't know when Paiway, Parfet and Duelo are going to get back, and we don't know where they'll arrive."

"Aren't they coming back to the ship?"

"We can't be sure they would teleport back to us or just get teleported back to a random point in space." Jura shrugs. "I'd rather not lose both of our medics and our chief engineer to a random teleportation accident."

"I guess." I frown. "I wonder if we sent them to the right place?"

"I think so." Jura rubs the ridge of her nose. "From what I can gather from the data Parfet gave me, it looks like this place is remarkably close to John's Universe. Not straight line distance, like kilometers, but through some sort of space-time comparison."

"Oh." I set my chin on the desk I'm sitting at. "I wish we had gone straight to where he is."

"Yes, we're all excited to see John." Jura comments offhandedly. "Though, from what I can tell, it's practically a miracle we got as close to his universe as we did on the first jump."

"We have the Paksis to thank for that, I think!" I sit back up. "It's been remarkably helpful, hasn't it?"

"It has." Jura smirks. "It's kind of weird that it kept our memories of our time with him though."

"And, it also gave us those memories back," I start ticking on my fingers. "and it gave us the plans for the teleporter portal thingie, and it told us how to use it."

Suddenly, Jura's look turns thoughtful. "And it gave us John's universe's coordinates, so to speak..." Jura narrows her eyes. "And it helped us navigate here. I wonder, what exactly-"

The giant display Jura uses to monitor things suddenly turns red in some spots, and she starts watching the info. I can't follow it, but she seems to have an idea.

"Looks like someone just cut back from John's Universe."

"They did?" I lean over Jura's shoulder. Maybe if I get closer, I can figure out what's going on?

"Yes, they landed planetside, as predicted. Let's see..." Jura starts typing furiously, and the data shifts in ways I can't quite follow. I need to take more lessons on how to use this. "Looks like it was only one person."

"...Uh oh."

"You can say that again. I'm going to go call over the Captain."

Jura gets up from her seat, and leaves the room, presumably to get the Captain.

Hmm. I look at all the stuff on the display in front of me, but I can't make anything in particular out. Maybe... there! I found a control that sends a communication!

So, all I have to do is call at the person, and if they're one of us, they should be able to pick up.

I think you have to press this, and this, and this-

A window shows up in my vision, showing me that it's definitely sending.

Please pick up, please pick up...!

After a few long seconds, the window is replaced by the portrait of a man. He's a bit hairier than the last time I saw him, but-

"John! It's, it's you! John!"

John blinks, and a slow grin creeps across his face.

"Is that really you?"

"YES!" I have to sit back in the seat and rub a tear from my eye. "I'm so happy to see you!"

"Me too." John says. "I glad to see you're safe, Dita."

On one hand quarantine means more time to do things that are not work such as writing fanfiction. On the other, Half-Life Alyx comes out in like fifteen minutes.

Decisions, decisions.