Dimension A-112: Gold World and hazards of interdimension travel

 

The hazards of interdimensional travel.

I have to here talk about World A-112 or as I like to call it "gold world". Earth is a highland desert world strewn with thick deposits of gold. It's a dark orange sand everywhere with broad mesas in the distance, dusty like mars. The entry location is a maze of upturned bedrock with veins of gold as thick as your arm. You can just break off a big old chunk. The air is thin, so I usually go with high altitude gear, including oxygen. I almost died the first time I went. I've been about forty times now, each time bring back a couple hundred pounds.

In other realities, I have to be careful with normal money. Paper currency is very volatile in terms of branching (the deviation that a reality makes). Even small changes can make money counterfeit (always illegal) or obviously fake and unusable. That's where gold comes in. I smelt it in my main reality into purified ingots, put it in money belts and take it along with me. 

 

World A-055 "No Gold World"  I've only run into one reality where it's not easy to change into whatever I need- gold was outlawed, only the government was allowed to own it. 

 

In that same reality, it was illegal to make a right turn on a red light. I got pulled over and ended up doing a day of compulsory community service at a dog shelter. The police had the power to give summary judgements up to three days of involuntary labor. They make the citation, put on a cylindrical black hat, pronounce sentence on the spot, then in short order a black short bus shows up and takes you to the service location. Your car is parked nearby and gets a tag that makes it un-towable until they return you to the spot.  The officer was super friendly, no one was mean or abusive about it. Strange place, I haven't been back.

After that one, I started being very careful, bringing an emergency pack in case the air is unbreathable, hidden gold reserves, and non-descript clothing. I am also be sure to have my high-density anchor (an object that ties me to my main reality so I can get back) in hand as I pass through.

For the most part, at least ninety percent of realities don't have anything significant that's different. Very small things. In one world, the only thing I could detect: Kinder Eggs in the US have toys in them. In another, sitcoms don't have laugh tracks. Instead a laughing emoticon appears in the corner of the screen to tell you something is funny. It's a huge improvement. Oh one more, in another you wouldn't flush your toilet paper, it would go into a basket next to the toilet. I call that the world of "bad plumbing".

Dimension A-001 Garden World

There are two interdimensional portals in Salt Lake City.  One is in an optical supply store in a mall downtown.  In the back is a tiny dead end office the size of a closet.  Two low-level intern types in white lab coats work back there clacking away on keyboards.

The other is in front of the west-side target.  It's a wall-like structure in red just by the entrance.  There's a large round opening. 

In both cases, to get to the other dimension you just walk through.  More on this later.

Dimension A-001

Lawns aren't a thing.  Instead those spaces look like miniature botanical gardens with useful trees and plants. Instead of public parks there are public orchards.  A side effect of this is that it's hard to see around corners for traffic.  Cars have extended side view mirrors to help with this, and intersections have buffer zones that you can "creep" into.  Where a home would have a yard, instead there are gardens. For poorer families or rentals these are mostly wild, but do still bear useful crops.  Genetic engineering has brought about hardy strains that require little watering or care.

Robot walkers with four long stilt-legs and a central pod of arms dangling in the center peck around these gardens, taking care of weeds.  They're called "Harveys" short for harvesters, and possibly after the inventor.  They look a bit like giant insects, the size of horses, and with a main body umbrella-ed in solar panels.

 Older cars sometimes have driver side "pee holes" a slot in the seat that empties into a removeable tank full of blue antiseptic fluid.  Didn't find out why this was.  Could you crap into them as well?

Getting rained on is considered bad luck so people keep several spare umbrellas handy.

US dollars have famous poets on them rather than presidents.  One of the many charming aspects of this reality.  Also, the dollar was never unfixed from the gold standard so even though it's 2021 the prices look like 1971.  Purchasing power has increased, though so generally people are living better, a real middle class where its normal to own your home outright.

Strangely, there are a lot of homeless people, but more of the van-life type.  I think this is on account of common food sources and high wages at traveling jobs.  The term tourist has come to mean this- someone who works a mobile job.

The internet exists but social media is about twenty years behind.  a Myspace type service called Gobuddy.com is popular.  For some reason the Kardashians are still famous and have a presidential dynasty comparable to the Kennedy family.  As far as I can tell they do a pretty good job. Politics are not so partisan, centrists are the norm.

If someone sneezes you're supposed to clap them on the back and say "out damn spot".  If it's a stranger you just make a slapping motion in the air. 

Both women and men wear gold wedding rings.  No diamonds to be found.  Instead ultra-rare star sapphires are the romantic jewel of choise. A common custom for a woman is to embed shoes with several ounces of gold.  These are nut usually worn, but kept at home.  Gold-filled shoes are considered good fortune and are kept facing outwards in the master closet.  Speaking of which overall I'd say this dimension is pretty superstitious, at least in the US.

 Typewriters are in alphabetical order.  No QWERTY, but otherwise the same.

One downside: no dogs.  Instead goats have filled that role and many varieties have similar dog-type intelligence.  They fit in better with the verdant nature of the world.  Dogs just never evolved the same way.  People know about wolves, and some cultures breed them, but in the US, it's goats.  People have pet goats that live in the house and sleep in the bed.  It's disconcerting.

Whale and dolphin languages were cracked in the sixties and they are considered sentient species with full human rights.  The ocean is home to hyper-intelligent dolphin colonies. They can hold elected office as well and are transported around in mobile tanks the size of garbage trucks.

Still no interstellar travel.

The dominant form of Christianity is something like the Amish, except more tolerant of certain types of technology.  It's huge. The second-largest religion is Wicca and somehow the two co-exist.  I didn't spend a lot of time sorting it out.

It was World War I that ended with the invention and use of nuclear weapons. An early emergence of a broader and more powerful version of the EU became the "world's policeman". While the US developed roughly the same it's considered more like a very large Switzerland.  The US has sixty-four states. Use your imagination.

 

This is written by Chris Hinson, the admin at RPG Auctions on FaceBook and

rpgauctions.com

There are basically 3 ways to buy postage.  1. Go to the post office and buy it at the counter. 2. Go to the USPS website and buy postage online (of which you can buy stamps or click-n-ship). 3. Use software to buy postage.

Each of these three methods have different rules and different costs.  The counter is most expensive, USPS website is a little cheaper on certain classifications, and software "can" be the cheapest, but you have to research each one.

There are literally HUNDREDS of different types of software, and they all have their own little "fees" associated with using them.  Some pass along those fees to the customer in the form of a premium on top of the postage you buy, and some charge you a monthly fee to use the software (in which case the postage fees are probably less).  And one I know of just buys huge amounts of postage and uses credit card cash back as profit for them.  PirateShip has the lowest fees I've seen but they are a little lean on software features, so I've personally chosen to use ShipStation (NOT PayPal "powered by" ShipStation...I'll explain more below.)  I've compared rates between the two (PirateShip and ShipStation), using a spread sheet of thousands of addresses and zip codes and the difference in price was worth the features for me (maybe not for you...make your own informed decision). I'm not promoting either one, just telling you which one I use and why.

USPS has a seasonal peak season cost ADDED to the postage costs they already increase each year.  So...after the seasonal peak fees drop (after Christmas) you'll see the new yearly rates go up as well (most likely)...but these are two different things.  Here's a link for 2021's extra seasonal costs that you will be expected to pay: https://www.shipstation.com/blog/usps-holiday-surcharge/  These fees are on top of the regular USPS fees, and the software you use "should" technically have these already, but if you went with the dollar tree version of software, you may be risking not having the latest costs updated.  My information is that PirateShip and ShipStation both have the additional fees already ready to go because they both have connections to stamps.com (a preferred broker for USPS postage purchases).

PayPal USED to have an API connection to a shipping program and label print and it was integrated with their order processing work flow.  However, this link which was previously called "SHIP NOW" has been removed and now points to a page that asks you to sign up for PayPal Shipping "Powered by" ShipStation.  This means that PayPal is now using the ShipStation enterprise api and software to sell postage and print labels.  This is not exactly the same as having your own separate ShipStation account.  You "can" go to ShipStation and purchase an account and get their lowest rates, but it comes with a monthly fee.  PayPal has decided to not own the shipping software process.  They are however leveraging "some" of the ShipStation technology.  Consequently, there is an up-charge on the postage you buy through PayPal now.

If you observe closely, eBay is charging as much as 18% on fees now, so shipping charges may not be your actual concern as to the cost of doing business there.  

What I elected to do is have a ShipStation account (directly with ShipStation) and I hooked it into all of my sales channels, integrating the whole order process: eBay, PayPal, LostTomes, RPGCrate, RPGAuctions, and KickStarter.  I sometimes get a little hiccup when I add a new channel (working out the kinks between the two systems) but this has afforded me view and control of my costs in one place.