“Think they take gift cards?” Jules asked.

“Who said I was going to share?” Ava asked. She relished Jules’s look of utter betrayal before handing them one.

The noodles were delicious, and Captain Nouresh graciously bought them a round of sweet, ginger-flavored wine to drink with their meal. Jules eventually got distracted by a group of kids kicking a ball around—they always said that soccer was a language that transcended all borders, and apparently that held true across the multiverse—and Captain Nouresh started tinkering with the waterlogged FINNA, pulling out a set of tools from a pouch on her belt.

“You should tell her,” Jules whispered, right before they went off with the kids. “Why we’re here.”

Ava had actually managed to forget, for a while, that they were on a mission from their lords and masters at LitenVärld. She resented the reminder; it was nice to blame LitenVärld for making them face murderous clones and carnivorous chairs, but she didn’t want to credit her corporate overlords for sending her here, the first new world that actually seemed cool.

“Do you often get travelers like us?” Ava asked Captain Nouresh. “Coming through wormholes?”

The captain poked confidently and curiously through the guts of the FINNA as she spoke. She sketched out the world of the Anahita, one of a class of merchant ships that moved between underwater city-states, migratory nations that traversed the ocean’s surface, and the nomadic townships that hung at the edges of both.

“I wonder if our universe is some kind of hub for others, if we have more marejii. Or maybe it’s just that our ships know to look for travelers.”

Captain Nouresh pulled a magnifying eyepiece out of her pocket, peering closer at the circuitry in the FINNA. “It seemed like your world was so scared of strangers and strangeness. It gets covered up, renamed, cut up until it fits into a familiar skin. Like this.” She gestured at the guts of the FINNA, now spread out across their table. Ava was struck by how different some of the components were; there were bits of plastic, a circuit board, and the hex bolts that were a hallmark of all LitenVärld design. But other components were utterly alien: something that looked like neon-orange moss, crystals that glowed a dusky pink, bright brass gears, a glass vial that contained a swirling, crimson gas. “I can see the work of three different worlds in here, maybe four. But all they want you to see is this.”

She tapped the white LitenVärld logo on the gray plastic cover: the letters L and V in a cutesy, corporate font, and nestled between them, a sphere chopped into meridians and parallels. Ava thought about the training video, and the specs of the FINNA on the instructions booklet: Property of LitenVärld Inc., LLC.