Chapter 3: We're in the Money (Sort of)

"Well, we know why the cell phone and Iris messages weren't working," Annabeth sighed. "I have three current hypotheses."

"You do? Because I feel like we just landed in Oz." I clicked my heels together three times and said, "There's no place like home." Nothing happened.

Annabeth gave me the I'm doing something foolish look. "Really, Seaweed Brain?"

"Hey," I said defensively, "It was worth a try, it worked for Dorothy."

She rolled her eyes and went into lecture mode. "Option one: we somehow got sent far into the future. They have different means to communicate that don't use cell phone satellites, and somehow sadly, Mrs. O'Leary, Iris, and maybe all of the Greek gods faded." That was a rather depressing thought. "However," Annabeth continued, "sending people through time doesn't seem like a power of Nemesis. Kronos, maybe, but Nemesis, not likely, though until further proof we can't rule it out. Option two: Nemesis sent us far away to another solar system, maybe even another galaxy, that has sentient beings who have developed advance transportation. I don't know how Nemesis could reach this far off planet and not the other Olympians, but if these beings have space travel, maybe we could find a way home. Option three is not too far off from your Oz theory. Nemesis opened a portal to an alternate dimension, universe, whatever you want to call it. In which case, we would be stuck here unless maybe Nemesis could bring us back, or this universe has powerful beings or technology that can open portals to other dimensions. Even then, we would have to be careful that we returned to our dimension and not another alternate." Great, never thought I would be hoping I was just a few solar systems away from home. "And like most of our troubles," she said with that twinkle in her eye, "this is totally your fault."

I snorted, "I don't think I can take full credit for this masterpiece of trouble. I think Nemesis and the manticore are in the running for MVP as well."

"Do you remember exactly what you wished for again?" Annabeth asked, "Maybe something in the wording could give us a clue since gods really seem to like their word play."

I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly trying to remember. "I think it was something like a normal life or a world where no one knew us."

"Well, congratulations Seaweed Brain. You got your wish. I don't think anyone here will know us."

I felt really bad then when I started to realize exactly what I had dragged Annabeth into. "I'm really sorry, Annabeth."

She squeezed my hand. "It's okay Percy. If I wanted a boring life, I would have stopped being your friend years ago. We will get through this together, and hopefully, this adventure won't be as bad as Tartarus." Then she kissed me.

We headed down the hill as the sun left the sky but decided to set up camp just outside the city limit. With no idea what kind of currency this place used, we thought it best to figure stuff out in the morning and maybe find a way to get some money. But to be safe, we didn't start a fire since we did not know what kind of dangerous nocturnal wildlife might be lurking about. We ate a small meal of beef jerky and protein bars from our emergency rations. I laid back and watched the moon and foreign stars appear in the night sky. I missed the familiar constellations I had come to recognize over the years along with their stories. They always reminded me that no matter where I was or how bad it got, there were other heroes that had come before me. It almost felt like they were watching out for me, especially my favorite constellation, the Huntress, that had been my friend Zoë Nightshade.

"I don't recognize any of the constellations."

Annabeth agreed and added, "There's also a second moon rising over there, so I think it's even less likely that we are on Earth at all no matter the year." Sure enough, she was right. I even spotted a third moon starting to peak over the horizon.

Annabeth pulled out Daedalus' Laptop 2.0, and the screen flickered to life. I'm not sure what kind of power source the thing used, but I've never seen Annabeth charge it. If we could mass produce it, we would probably solve Earth's energy problem. After a few minutes, Annabeth gasped. I sat up and asked, "You found something?" I don't know what kind of advanced technology or even magic that laptop worked on, but it could do anything.

Annabeth shrank the laptop to tablet form and flicked the screen a few times before she responded. "I think I connected to this place's version of an internet though it's called the Holonet and only seems to show news pages and weird hologram videos. I'm running a program now that will search through the pages and collect any useful information for us." Ugh! How could someone ruin the internet? I guess goodbye cute cat videos.

Annabeth started scrolling through the information easily reading the ancient Greek, the laptop's default language setting. "So, apparently, we are on a planet called Naboo. It's a member planet of the Galactic Republic which seems to be the governing body of this galaxy." Good thing to know that even if the Greek and Roman gods weren't around, there was still good old democracy. "The planet has two sentient races, humans known as the Naboo and an amphibian race called Gungans that are isolated in the swamps. That city over there is Theed, the capital city of the humans. Their government has an elected monarch, currently King Veruna, who is aided by an elected governor. The Naboo speak their own language, but also something called Galactic Basic Standard which is the common language of the galaxy." She tapped something, and I heard a lady talking about some vote in a senate. "So, this Galactic Basic seems to be English," she continued, "which means at least we can communicate with people. On the flip side, the Naboo have their own written language called Futhark." She paused and tapped the tablet again. "Hmm, that's weird!"

"What?" I asked moving over to look at the tablet. Annabeth showed me the Futhark alphabet, and I gasped. I recognized several of the symbols as letters in the ancient Greek alphabet and a few more looked like derivatives. "How is that possible?"

Annabeth frowned, "I don't know. Since we are pretty sure we're not on Earth, it's not like it came from the ancient Greeks. Unless, maybe we aren't the first demigods or Greeks to be sent to this place. Though on the positive side, we should be able to pick up reading this Futhark pretty fast. It will probably be easier than reading English since it's so similar to ancient Greek. The galaxy at large uses a written language called Aurebesh. This one might be a little harder to learn but still probably better than English. The most widely used currency is called galactic credits in the form of credit chips."

"Is there any way to get some of these credits?" I asked.

"Hmm," Annabeth thought and tapped the tablet a few times. Then she asked, "How many drachmas do you have?"

"Five. Why? I thought you said they used these credit things here," I responded.

"I have seven which gives us twelve, total. And yes, they use credits here, but what are drachmas made out of, Seaweed Brain?"

I thought for a moment and then responded with an "Oh" when I realized what she was getting at. Demigods use Olympian drachmas for Iris messages, sending packages, and bartering with immortals occasionally. Like with everything, Olympians only used the best, so Olympian drachmas were coins the size of girl scout cookies, made from the purest gold.

"Based on my conversions using recent market prices, one drachma should be just shy of 1,500 credits," Annabeth continued. Well, who knew that both gold and democracy were truly universal? "Wow, we're rich!"

Annabeth laughed, "Not quite, but it will give us a start. Plus, I think we should only use them one at a time. Just in case Iris messages start working suddenly, or we run into some poor immortal that we can bribe to send us home."

Annabeth continued to research, and we started to form a plan of sorts. Right now, we decided to stay on this planet and learn everything we could about this galaxy in the hopes that we could find a way home. Annabeth did point out that as annoying as the gods were, they, particularly Nemesis, rarely did something without a reason. Therefore, there was probably another reason we were here besides my careless wish, and once we fulfilled that purpose, Nemesis might zap us back home. So, no matter how frustrating it was, the best thing we could do at the moment was just try and make a life here. Annabeth offered to take first watch because she wanted to use the laptop to scan the stars and see if it could figure out where we were in respect to Earth.

I wasn't particularly hopeful. I missed my mom terribly. It was cruel to be so close to seeing her after being away for so long. I was frustrated. I was beyond angry at the gods. And I'll even admit, I was scared. I was afraid that we would never make it back. That my mom was just siting at the kitchen table waiting for me to come home and then thinking that the worst had happened. I knew Annabeth was feeling the same way. But just like in Tartarus, we were both trying to put on a brave face for the other, hoping that it might make them feel just a little better.