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".