Scott/Not Scott?

She needed to call her husband, Scott, something she should have really done a long time ago. She'd jumped on this quest just as impulsively as she'd slept with Scott and brought a much-belated end to her crappy relationship with Roger, and then married him and had three kids. She should really have discussed what she was doing with him, but neither of them were exactly good at that... Well, hopefully she could make amends. She picked up the phone--an actual goddamn rotary phone that looked like it came straight out of an old movie--and dialed Scott's number. The phone rang. Come on, come on, come on.

A click as someone picked up the other end. "Hello," said her groggy sounding husband, "this is Ensign Scott Chen, USS Voyager."

"Ha ha, very funny, Scott. This is Krissy. I--Look, I'm sorry about running off without telling you. It's just--I got stranded at the airport and then there were, uh, things that happened, and now I don't know where I am--" Krissy heard her voice crack.

"OK," said Scott, "who are you?"

Krissy almost collapsed back on the bed. No, no, no. This was too much. "Scott, this is Krissy. Krissy Cobham. You know, your wife."

"Oh," said Scott. "Oh jeez. OK, so--I gotta explain something to you. You're in a parallel universe, and I'm not your Scott. Right now you're on a dead parallel Earth we've been exploring, and you're the only human there. We'll pick you up in a moment, OK? Don't go anywhere."

She looked around the room, groping for a light switch. The words "parallel universe" passed through her mind without connecting to anything. Then she saw a window and opened the shades.

What she saw outside the window was New York, but the buildings were crumbling. And they looked like they had been for a long time. The sky was slate grey and there were tumbleweed-like things floating in the air.

Krissy slammed the shades shut. Shit. Shit. Shit. she wondered where she could safely throw up, then wound up doing it all over the bed.

Then the building started to shake.

Shit. Grab the cell phone, run out of the apartment, dash down the stairs, run run run as fast as you can. Get out. But the ground was still rumbling under her feet. Then something burst out of the cracked pavement--a whirling mass of thorny vines, heading straight for her. Krissy didn't do prayers or regrets, so there were no last thoughts, just certainty that this was it.

Then she felt muscular arms grab ahold of her. This was someone she knew--a woman, tall and toned and fucking gorgeous, shining red hair. It was Astra. Except Astra didn't have the lower body of a horse. "Astra, why are you a centaur?" Krissy tried to say, but no words came out.

Astra ran as fast as she could, but she couldn't outrun the vines. So this really was it. Dying in the arms of a centaur lady was kind of a weird way to go, but it was interesting, at least.

1. And then the world flashed away around them.

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