John Shepard still didn’t know how to feel about working on the legendary Normandy. Besides being a technical marvel, it’s also the flag ship that lead the war against the reapers, and its crew is universally renowned. On top of all that, his sister, Jane Shepard, “the savoir of the galaxy,” is the one leading the whole thing. For most anyone, it’s a dream come true; but for John, it’s granted to be a constant reminder of his short coming.
It’s hard to live up to his sister. John has never left the Earth’s solar system. He’s saved people and conquered territory from extremist groups. It’s impressive, but any achievement he’s earned, is nothing compared to saving the galaxy. His accomplishments are good, but there not astonishing, As long as his sister is Jane Shepard, his run of his successes will be compared to the galaxy’s savoir.
“How long until we reach the citadel?” John asked the V.I.
The V.I. came out of sleeper mode, “We are 43 minutes from BBBRRRREEEEEEEEE!!!”
John’s shuttle shakes violently, like bad turbulence. “What’s happening?! Respond!”
The V.I. comes in and out between static. “Our ‘KKKRRRRR’ location is dis-‘KKKRRRRR’ –rupted, course is changing a-KKRR-nd KKKRRR.”
John tries to SOS any nearby fleets for assistance, but his transmissions aren’t being sent, Then like a flash grenade exploding in front of him, the dark matter in space opens up like torn paper. Everything including John started dividing into two.
Then John felt his shuttle jet forward right in to the white light. It was like a relay jump, but far more unstable. Lights and flashes blurred his vision. The shuttle started groaning and creaking. The shuttle broke through what looked like glass, like a baseball through a window. The space distorted around him then warped back together.
“Status report?!”
The V.I. flickers back to life, “Our data does not carry any information on the phenomenon.”
John looks worried. “Can you look up anything that resembles it?”
The V.I. took a moment to search the extranet. “The only plausible similarity is that of an arbitrary worm-hole.”
John looked out in to dead space that could be anywhere in the universe. If it’s just really a random worm-hole, he could be anywhere. “Can you identify our current location?” the screen flicked on, showing the star system in his own galaxy. It’s of great relief to him knowing he wasn’t sent to the other side of the universe. It could take him weeks to get back, but he’ll take it over the alternative. Then the map gets smaller and smaller, until it zooms in on his location. He’s 42 minutes from the citadel.
“What?” he looks over his current path carefully. It’s the same as before. John tries pulling himself together and keeping a cool head, everything seems in order. In fact, they seem just as in order as they did just before he hit the worm-hole. The loose items that flew around during the turbulence are back in the very same place they were before. One thing that keeps coming to mind is the double image he saw of himself continuing forward as he was sucked away.
“Look up worm-holes.” A few articles popped up on the screen, but nothing that showed any similarities to his experience. He spent ten minutes looking up articles, but nothing helpful came out of it. Just as he was about to give up, he got an incoming call.
“Hello, John Shepard. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” A woman was on the line, but he didn’t know who she was.
“Who are you? How did you know my transmission?”
The woman answered promptly, “I am the Normandy’s navigator, EDI. I’m calling you out of concern; I have been tracking your shuttle for the last two hours. For some unknown reason, you seem to have flicked out for a full minute. After a quick diagnostic, I have concluded that the error is not any fault on my end; so I decided to reach out to you in hope that you could elaborate any disturbances in the last hour.”
John told her every detail about the event, he was just glad to speak with someone after what he went through. EDI appeared very interested in the event. “Fascinating, it doesn’t sound like a worm-hole, at least not a worm-hole as we perceive them. The part when you saw yourself continue forward, but you were being sucked into some light; what you described sounds like quantum teleportation.”
“Teleportation, but I ended up exactly where I was before.”
“Hear me out, I think I may have a theory on what happened to you. If you take a photo, and send it to one other person, you would have two photos: the existing one, and the new one. It would be the same photo, but a copy. In other words, think of the worm-hole as a camera, and you as the photo.”
“What? Do you mean there are two of me out here now!?”
“No, like the photo that was sent, it is in a different location from the original.”
“But… I’m right here. I didn’t go anywhere off my course.”
“Try to not get too excited, but I think you are a copy from another universe. Don’t worry, you’re still you. All your memories are still yours. You have been coped and sent here, that’s all. The original possibly didn’t even know anything happened.”
“Look lady, I’m having a hard enough time believing what I actually saw. I’m not too interested in any of your ridiculous ideas.”
“I would like to get to the bottom of this myself. I know, do you mind me looking through your V.I.?”
“Why?”
“If you are indeed from another universe, there should be a few vicissitudes from your universe to ours. The V.I. in your ship should hold information about your history and current events.”
“Knock yourself out. Do you want to look at it when I enter the citadel dock?”
“No need, my programing allows me to search for that information from here.”
“Your programing, are… are you an A.I.?”
“Yes, I work for your sister, Jane Shepard. Now that we are on the subject, I have a message from her. It will take me a moment to download all the information on the shuttle, so I will play them for you in the meantime.” John hasn’t heard his sister’s voice in years. With a sigh, he listens to the message.
“Hello, John. It’s me, Jane. Are you asleep? Wake up, sleepy head! Well, it’s ok. I’ll see you soon anyway. It’s really good to have you out here with me, I know I used to torture you whenever I got the chance, but I know you’ll love joining my crew, there are so many things out here that you can’t experience back home; and hey, there’s a lot of cute girls here, too! Ha ha! I’m going to be in my office in the citadel for the rest of the day, come see me when you get the chance. C-sec has your info, so you should bypass all the security nonsense. We ship out tomorrow. I’ll introduce you to the crew then. Maybe you’ll get lucky and one of them will take you home for the night. I showed them your picture, and oh man, are you in trouble! With me busy and out of the way, they’re going to be gunning for you tonight!”
John blushes, his sister has never been this invasive with a matter like sex before. “Oh, one more thing. I heard about how you held down the fort when the reapers attacked Earth, that place was ground zero; you saved a lot of lives in there. I just want you to know… I’m proud of you, and I know you can take anything that’s thrown at you. That’s way I want you on my ship. …Ok, well, I need to get back to work, I’ll see you soon, bro.”
John loosened up a little, and smiled for the first time since he accepted this transfer. He’s always going to be in his sister’s shadow, but maybe out here with new people and new scenery, he can forget about making a name for himself.
EDI came back on the speaker. “Well this is interesting. I didn’t expect there to be any significant changes, but this is quite noteworthy.” This didn’t sit well with John; he had expected EDI’s theory about him being from another universe was just a wild idea. He still hoped it was. “I now have definitive evidence that you are not from our universe. Most everything I’ve seen so far is similar; but biologically, there is a difference between the people from our universe to yours, particularly the female of the species.”
“What’s the difference?”
“What appears odd is that the women in your universe are lacking an important sexual organ. They don’t have a penis.”
“…and?”
“Right, that would be normal for you. OK, listen carefully. The women in this universe are… duel gendered. They have both a penis and, what is common only for them, a vagina. In your universe, they oddly only have vaginas.”
“What’s so odd about that?! Are you saying… the women here all have… dicks?!”
“To you, that might seem odd, but here, it’s perfectly natural. There is one more thing about females in this universe that you should know about.”
“What?”
“Our females are……….”
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