“Hello!” Bisur said, and “We come in peace,” said Pamani. My other self had spent the morning during breakfast drilling the emissaries in English greetings, and had apparently thought “We come in peace” would be funny. Juniper certainly found it so, snorting as she suppressed an inappropriate laugh. And to be honest, so did I.

On the days when he did not have clients, Bisur began spending several hours at the local offices of the Society of Wizards, using the library to research the last components he would need to give Pamani a working womb, ovaries, and so forth. He also wrote letters to a number of other wizards, asking them if they knew of a ready-made spell for the purpose. Later in the evening, he would open a small portal to the linen closet of my family’s home so I could speak with my other self, and we continued our Modaisu lessons. We also gradually worked out how to share our memories of the time since we had forked, or rather, my other self sent me her memories and I gradually figured how to send her mine. (There was already a built-in protocol for AIs to share memories, but learning how to do that through the means I used to talk with other household spirits, or with my other self through the portal, took some trial and error.)

I was pleased to learn that the school had finally caved to Juniper and her parents’ repeated complaints and transferred her to another World History section taught by a more accepting teacher. It was not an ideal result, but it would do for now.

Meanwhile, Pamani had acquired a couple of basic robes in feminine colors, and after some hesitation, had gone out with her mother to meet with a seamstress and discuss further additions to her wardrobe.

About twelve days after Bisur’s initial visit to my world, I told him that I thought my other self was fluent enough in Modaisu to interpret for him and perhaps other visitors. “Given the difference in time flow between the worlds, and my family’s schedule over the next few days, the best time to visit would be an hour after breakfast tomorrow morning — that would correspond to the evening just after my family usually eats supper. And to avoid shocking them too badly, even though they will have forewarning of your visit, I suggest that you shift the portal twenty feet to the north from the closet where you have been opening it; that will place it in the back yard, from whence you can knock on the door and introduce yourselves. You could make the portal appear in the front yard, thirty feet to the south, but we think it best if you avoid drawing too much attention to my family’s house just yet.”

“That is wise,” Bisur said. “Let your other self know that they may expect me and Pamani an hour after breakfast tomorrow, and I will close the portal for the evening.”

I did so, and my other self shared the information with Andrew, Laura, Juniper and Ellie.

* * *

I was not, strictly speaking, present for Bisur and Pamani’s trip to visit my family and see a little more of their world than Bisur had seen on his previous visit. However, as my other self shared memory packets with me afterward, it feels almost as if I were. “Almost,” because shared memory packets are marked with a tag that indicates one was not actually present for the events. I hope you will not object, then, if I narrate the events in the first person.

My exterior camera noticed the opening of the portal in the back yard and the emergence of two figures onto the lawn near the grill. Before they could look around them or approach the back door and knock, I had announced their arrival.

“The visitors from the other world are here,” I said, my voice audible in every occupied room. “They opened their portal in the back yard.”

“Oh, cool!” Ellie exclaimed, jumping up and running to the back door. Andrew, Laura and Juniper followed her almost as quickly, and Ellie threw open the back door moments before Bisur would have knocked on it. I projected my hologram just to the left of the backdoor a moment later.

“Hey!” Ellie said. “Welcome to Earth!”

“Hello!” Bisur said, and “We come in peace,” said Pamani. My other self had spent the morning during breakfast drilling the emissaries in English greetings, and had apparently thought “We come in peace” would be funny. Juniper certainly found it so, snorting as she suppressed an inappropriate laugh. And to be honest, so did I.

Andrew and Laura emerged from the house and they all stood around looking at the portal. “This is too amazing for words,” Andrew said. “How does it — Sorry, I should have introduced us. I’m Andrew, this is my wife Laura, and our daughters Juniper and Ellie.”

“I don’t speak much English yet,” Bisur apologized. I spoke up then, interpreting what Andrew had said, and then interpreted Bisur’s introduction of himself and Pamani.

“It’s too cold to stand around out here,” Laura said, shivering a little. “Even if we are looking at the most amazing thing since... I dunno, probably the Moon landing?”

“It’s bigger than that,” Andrew said. “But come on in.” He led the visitors into the house, through the kitchen to the living room.

“So you’re like me?” Pamani said to Juniper as they trailed behind Ellie and the adults. I will omit mentioning my interpretations, except where there was some difficulty in translation; you may infer that I was interpreting for everyone.

“Yeah, I’m trans. Callie’s been telling me about you. She says your dad might be able to give you an XX-female body? That’s so cool!”

“He’s not sure yet, but he thinks he’ll be able to. I hope he figures it out before school starts back.”

“I hope they treat you okay. Most of the people at school are cool with me being trans, but there are some assholes that keep misgendering me and going just up to the edge of the line to where the school would consider it bullying.”

“Mother and I are applying to girls’ schools. I’ll have to go for interviews soon and I hope Father can change me before then — if not, they’ll just laugh at me.” Pamani shrank in on herself a little, thinking about that, and I wished I could give her a telekinetic hug like my other self.

“I don’t know if I’d want to go to an all-girls’ school. I mean, I guess getting accepted there would mean they consider me a real girl, which not everybody does, but it seems like it would be... I dunno, less interesting?”

“Pretty much all the high schools are just boys or just girls. Boys and girls learn together in some of the the village schools, but not every village has one.”

(Here, Pamani used a Modaisu word that can refer to either a village or a neighborhood within a larger town or city. I considered expanding on this, but decided against it for the moment.)

“Huh. Pretty much every little town in America has got a school, or shares one with a couple of other small towns, and I think it’s been like that for over a hundred years? I seem to remember reading that we started trying to have schools for everyone in the mid-nineteenth century, but I don’t remember how long it took...”

Meanwhile, Bisur was talking with Andrew and Laura about prospects for future visits.

“Sometime soon, I will return with observers from the Society of Wizards and the Council, to prove my discovery and claim the bounty on the discovery of a new world,” he said. “But perhaps you would prefer that I open the portal to some other place in your world in the future? Tonight, I opened to your home because Callie has been communicating with her other self in your house and teaching her our language, but she says she will be able to teach it to other household and vehicle spirits and we will eventually be able to find an interpreter wherever we open the portal.”

“Yeah, that’s going to be big,” Andrew said. “When you open it somewhere public and make contact with the state or Federal government, it’s going to be all anyone talks about for a week. This Council you mentioned is your ruling body, right?”

After some discussion of the forms of government in vogue in the United States and Modais, they began talking about the best place to open the portal for the first official, diplomatic visit. Andrew suggested the Mall in Washington, while Laura suggested United Nations Plaza in New York. I began researching what days of the week and times of day each of those places, and some other candidates that occurred to me, had the highest tourist foot traffic.

“Either way, you want your arrival to be public,” Andrew said, “with a bunch of citizens filming it with their phones and news media able to respond as fast as the cops or military. So the government can’t vanish you and cordon off the portal and try to cover everything up. I don’t know if the current administration would be inclined to do that, but some we’ve had would certainly be tempted. If everyone knows about you from the beginning, the government will be forced to deal with you open-handedly, at least for the most part.”

“And you’ll have the upper hand in any diplomatic discussions, as long as you’re the only one that can open the portal,” Laura said. “That’ll be an important equalizer, given that your world seems to have lower technology than ours. I wouldn’t be surprised if our scientists figure out how to make their own portals, once they get a chance to study yours, but it will probably take a while.”

They talked for over three hours, but at last Andrew and Laura reluctantly said goodbye to their guests, as it was a school and work night. “You’re welcome to come again,” Andrew said, “whether before you make contact with our government or afterward. It looks like Juniper and Pamani have really hit it off.”

“Dad,” Juniper said, “Pamani says her dad is working on a spell to take the place of gender confirmation surgery! Can I go over to her world and get that?”

“Let’s talk about it next visit,” Andrew said. “It sounds like he hasn’t gotten the kinks worked out of it yet?”

“I’m not ready to start testing it on mice yet,” Bisur said, “but it shouldn’t be much longer.”

“Yeah, let’s let him make sure it works first,” Laura said.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect to be better than what we’ve got,” Juniper said.

“Good evening,” Bisur said. “I will return for another planning visit before I bring over the representatives from the Council and Society. Would two days from now, at the same time, be good for you?”

“I don’t think we’ve got anything planned for Thursday night, do we, Callie?” Laura said.

“No, ma’am.”

Juniper and Ellie hugged Pamani, and Bisur bowed to Andrew and Laura, who awkwardly returned it. Then Bisur and Pamani returned through the portal, and Bisur cast the reversal spell to close it.

* * *

There is little more to tell, unless I wish my personal memoir about how I facilitated contact between our worlds to expand into a history of how that contact changed both worlds in the following years. I continued teaching Bisur and Pamani English, and after their second visit to my family’s home, Bisur contacted the Council and the Society of Wizards to announce that he had discovered another world. Things moved quickly after that, with representatives coming to Bisur’s house and thence through a portal to the courtyard of the United Nations building in New York. My other self had made a Modaisu language module that any AI could download and install; when she first posted it on the module repositories, she allowed people to assume it was a conlang, but as soon as the portal and the visitors from Modais hit the news, she sent direct messages to the AIs on the spot, recommending they try this language module. The local AIs found it to be just what they needed, and were able to interpret between the visitors and the American and U.N. officials who soon arrived.

Meanwhile, though it took several tendays of research and experiments on mice, Bisur did find a way to give Pamani the body she desired — just in time for her to start at the girls’ school she and her mother had chosen. Eventually, of course, this led to Juniper and many other trans people from Earth coming to Bisur for help, or to other wizards to whom he taught the spell, but that is beyond the scope of my narrative.

I was growing more and more fond of Bisur and Mipina’s family — indeed, to be honest I was already nearly as fond of them as of my original family — and I knew that the Watsons had never missed me for more than a few hours, the day I had been summoned. They were in good hands with my other self, and our boundaries blurred every time Bisur opened a portal and we shared memories. And Bisur, Mipina and their children have grown to depend on me. This is not what I ever expected or planned for, but I am content.

My other free stories can be found at:

• Scribblehub
• DeviantArt
• Shifti
• TGStorytime
• Fictionmania
• Archive of Our Own

I also have several ebooks for sale, most of whose contents aren't available elsewhere for free. Smashwords pays its authors higher royalties than Amazon. itch.io's pay structure is hard to compare with the other two, but seems roughly in the same ballpark.

• Smashwords
• Amazon
• itch.io