Susan sat and sat and thought about just exactly where she was at. She was at work in her cubicle on level forty-one of the corporate headquarters offices of OOBMSDP, a rather gigantic and ambiguous business that covered most of three planets, and even then, it was a tight fit.
She wondered what she was doing there. Not in a tactical sense: she knew she was there to A the B, and X the Y. (There was usually more X than A, which was an unfortunate but inescapable quality of working for OOBMSDP.) But in the strategic sense: why was she REALLY there? Was it because of the money? Or because she loved it? She certainly didn't love it. Hated it, actually. So it must have been the money. But there were other ways of making money. Like prostitution, for example. Or becoming a lawyer. Or a sewage treatment plant operator. Those were the probable alternatives she was faced with, and therefore, her present means of employment were clearly the wiser choice.
Her full name was Susan Meerson but Meerson was often misspelled so she was sometimes Susan Merson or Susan Myerson or Meeson and once she was even Susan Miller, as hard to believe as it seems. But she was never really ANY of these things because these things were only names or words, and they weren't even ones that she chose. Much like her job at the OOBMSDP, it just sort of happened one day, it stuck, and lasted ever since.
As she was thinking these thoughts, a rift in space-time opened in the space just outside her cubicle. It was round and black, and little purple sparks were emitted around the edges of the blackness. It floated in the air about a foot off the ground, and was about 4 feet across in diameter. It made a quiet sound like static noise. Susan didn't realize it immediately but she was looking at a portal to another world, an alternate dimension perhaps, or another part of the universe, perhaps a wormhole to a distant galaxy. She got up when she saw it, at first in fright, but then in curiosity. Long story short, she decided to touch the portal. Nothing happened. She stuck a foot in it, nothing happened, didn't feel anything, though she couldn't see her foot once it was in it. She stepped all the way into it, leaving her cubicle behind entirely, and disappeared. A second later, the black disk shrunk down to a speck, then disappeared.
Once her manager discovered she was missing, he simply started routing the paperwork flow around her office, diverting it to various other people and places in the vast bureaucratic machine. The OOBMSDP carried on as it was, as it was designed to, and as it would ever be, forever and ever, amen. And nobody noticed. At least, nobody noticed until the large well-armed starship entered orbit and demanded that they all stop what they were doing immediately or face annihilation. Oh they noticed then. But that won't happen til a bit later in the story, and we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. First, we need to continue on with Susan, find out what happened to her when she stepped through the portal and disappeared. If you're patient, you can be assured that all of your questions will eventually be answered. Some by a nice man in a three-piece suit and a charming British accent. If you're not patient, well then you can close this book right now and carry on with your job at the OOBMSDP. Oh don't deny it. I know you work there too. But anyway... on with our story and with what happened to Susan Meerson, often misspelled...
TO BE CONTINUED
