ETTING 
OME 
O 
LFANDRA
Hespa's Story part 19 - Plan In Action
ETTING OME O LFANDRA
"Some of the things I learned just now will help to stabilize the arrival coordinates. The equations I found in those books described the structure of space time and incorporated things which I previously could only explain as anomalies. There is still one problem left to solve. I don't know where 'Earth' is from here. I need to know the relative offset to make this work. I know Earth's 'absolute' value but I don't have one in the same coordinate system for Al...fan...dra... Pyros... that book. Do you still have it?"
Pyros retrieves the book from where he had set it down while trying to guide Emma in her earlier attempt to return home. He opens it and flips through to the section on relative coordinate systems. He skims the material, looking for useful information. "Hmm...this is the convention for writing out spacetime coordinates..." he says, pointing a claw at: PF://currenttime,sametime,super,cluster,galaxy,sector,system,world/lat/long/elevation/
"...but that's not exactly what we want, since that only applies within one universe...ah, here we go." He clears his throat--not a minor task, if you've ever heard a dragon clear his/her throat--and begins to read. "'Unfortunately, although the equations exist to describe the magnitude and direction of the vector between two reality-spaces (commonly referred to as "universes"), the common parlance of each reality-space uses a different method for describing this vector in non-mathematical terms. For example, the Alkan reality-space uses a sequence of pictoral symbols referring to the "essence" of each other space, whereas the base-reality ("Real Life") uses a variety of means to denote the eleven-dimensional inter-reality vector depending on which reality is being referred to, as compiled in Table 38.2.'"
"Yes, I think that's the number of dimensions which make up the RL sub-space."
Pyros turns the page and scans the table. "All right, so in RL this world is referred to as...'news://alt.fan.dragons'. What, they couldn't come up with a better name than that?! Now what does that mean, exactly?" He scans ahead, and finds the next page filled with equations. His eyes light up as he reads rapidly, his tongue flicking in and out as he mumbles as he reads. "...but if we use this model as described here, we can get the transdimensional vector from that funky name they use for Here...um...got paper?"
Hands you an over sized green engineering tablet with a green mechanical pencil.
He starts to scribble frantically; you wonder if it's because he's excited, if he's not used to holding a pen with his draconic claw, or if he just has naturally bad handwriting. He mumbles only somewhat coherently as he works. "...seventh component must be pi root six....'alt.fan' must correspond to the matrix Q inverse...most boring name for a reality I ever heard, Emma see if you can give it a better name when you get back....but that has to be equal to cosine phi..." The stack of used and scribbled-over paper mounts. With a final--and extremely sudden--roar of triumph, Pyros suddenly stops and sits up. He glances at Cira, who had been looking on. "So if that's the vector from RL to Here, then this..." He writes one final line, more slowly and legibly this time, and draws a box around it. "...must be the vector from Here to RL. Right?" He looks at Cira for approval of his insane scribblings.
Cira looks on, offering suggestions in case of any math errors. He also manipulates similar equations which float in the air as yellow lights, similar to the red ones Aphrael wrote the welcome message in. Cira makes special note of *both* forward and reverse vectors. As Pyros notes, they are indeed different due to relativity.
"Yes, I'm getting the same answers you are. And since our math seems to agree I think we did it right!" He shivers. "Woah, this is getting just a bit exciting."
Emma has understood little of this, but she grins as the excitement infects her as well.
"So then we just plug in our current location here, and here, and here, and...Emma, where *exactly* in RL do you need to end up? If possible, we need the exact latitude, longitude, and elevation...."
"Hespa? You gotta GPS there?"
**one second, i'll go find an atlas...**