Inter-Dimensional Takeaway

"Turns out workplace politics are universal—even in another dimension, someone’s angling for a middle-management title while everyone else rolls their eyes. At least the curry’s decent."

The campfire crackled and roared, casting a warm, flickering light that danced across the faces of the small circle of settlers gathered around it.

The flames reminded me of camping trips I’d never actually been on. Mum and I couldn’t afford holidays like that—no tents, no gear, no petrol money to drive anywhere worth camping. But I’d seen campfires in films, read about them in books. They looked exactly like this: orange and gold and alive, throwing shadows that made everyone look slightly mysterious.

The air was rich with the scent of burning wood, and the occasional gust of breeze would send spirals of smoke twirling towards the sky.

Like miniature galaxies, I thought, watching the embers spiral upward. Stars being born and dying in seconds.

I was sitting on a log next to Jamie—my father, still a strange word to set next to a face—surrounded by more people than I’d been near in months, and feeling more alone than I had all day.

There were eight of us around the fire, plus the dogs. My whole social circle back home had shrunk to Mum, Garry at the depot, and the odd awkward exchange with Mrs Johnson about her azaleas.

I’d made myself come to this dinner, told myself it was a chance to build something with Jamie. But now that I was in it, surrounded by all the easy chatter, I felt at sea, with no idea how any of these new people were meant to fit together, or where I fit among them.

Like being the new kid at school. Except the school is in another dimension and everyone got here by being pushed through a magical portal.

Jamie, beside me, seemed just as far away, his eyes fixed on nothing in the middle distance.

I wondered what he was thinking. Whether he was regretting bringing me here—not that he’d had much choice in the matter. Whether he was trying to figure out how to be a father to a nineteen-year-old stranger the same way I was trying to figure out how to be a son.

Luke, meanwhile, was working his way round the fire, handing out Indian dishes with an easy hospitality that seemed to come as naturally to him as breathing.

The containers were proper takeaway containers, the kind you got from Indian restaurants in Hobart. Plastic lids, plastic trays, the works. Somehow, Luke had brought a curry dinner through an inter-dimensional portal.

That’s one way to do takeaway delivery, I thought. Skip the traffic entirely. Just pop through to another world.

"Chicken tikka?" Luke offered to Karen.

Karen was older than the others—late fifties, maybe—with the weathered hands and practical clothing of someone who spent more time outdoors than in. Her husband Chris sat beside her, a bloke in his mid-forties with an easy smile and the kind of relaxed posture that suggested he’d be equally comfortable at a barbecue or a board meeting.

"Lois, sit!" Glenda’s voice cut through the air at the over-excited retriever.

My eyes drifted off the food and onto the dogs.

Duke lay worn out between Jamie’s feet, and Henri had settled in close to the fire, radiating contentment in the warmth of it.

Dogs have the right idea about life, I thought, watching Henri’s eyes droop with sleepy satisfaction. Find a warm spot, lie down, wait for someone to drop food.

"And butter chicken for you," Luke announced as he handed a container to Jamie.

I watched Jamie drag a finger up the side of the container and steal a taste before he’d even properly opened it.

He does that too.

Mum did the same thing—tested food before properly eating it, a quick taste from the finger to check the temperature or flavour. I’d picked up the habit myself. Strange, finding this tiny genetic echo in a man I’d known for three days.

Then Luke stepped past me, heading for Glenda, and something protective in Jamie went off.

"Hey, what about Joel?" he asked, concern and irritation both in it, his eyes hard on Luke.

Oh, here we go.

"I’m sorry, I didn’t realise he could eat," Luke said, a bit thrown.

"Of course, he can fucking eat!" Jamie’s voice came out sharp, eyes locked on Luke’s—and there it was again, that fierce, fatherly thing I still wasn’t used to being on the end of.

The outburst drew glances from around the fire. I felt my face heat—and not from the flames.

Brilliant. First proper dinner with everyone and I’m already causing drama.

A moment later Luke was standing in front of me, looking apologetic.

"What do you want?" he asked.

I shrugged, not sure what to say.

What do I want? The question had layers. Food, obviously. But also answers. Understanding. A way to contact Mum. A manual for how to navigate this insane situation.

"Beef madras okay?" Luke asked.

"Sure," I said, and hoped the one word carried how grateful I was.

Beef madras. Mum had made that once, from a jar. She’d added too much cream and not enough spice, and we’d both pretended it was good while secretly reaching for the toast. But even that memory—that mediocre curry on a Wednesday night in Glenorchy—felt precious now.

Jamie and I were barely a few days old as father and son, and working out where I stood with everyone else was like being handed a map with nothing printed on it.

Or like driving a delivery route in a suburb you’ve never been to, with a sat-nav that’s gone offline and street signs that are all in a different language.

As I ate, my mind wandered back over the strange, winding path that had dumped me here.

Three days ago, I was loading packages onto a truck. Three days ago, I had a job, a routine, a mother who knew where I was.

Three days ago, I was alive.

Well. Still alive now, technically. Just… differently.

Paul cleared his throat, loud and deliberate, and the chatter round the fire dropped away.

He didn’t wait for the last of it to settle before he started in.

"I need everyone to check in at the Drop Zone regularly to see whether Luke has brought any of your belongings or perhaps there might be something there that you need."

Drop Zone. The place where stuff from Earth arrived. Where my clothes were supposed to be, if Luke had actually gone to my house like Paul had said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Jamie’s reaction. His eyes rolled—small, but with feeling.

Shocking. Jamie disagreeing with Paul. Alert the media.

"That sounds reasonable enough," Chris chimed in, with the kind of easy positivity that already seemed to be his default setting.

Chris had that energy—the kind of relentless optimism that made you wonder if he was genuinely happy all the time or just very good at faking it. Back at the depot, Garry would have called him a "glass half full type" before muttering something about how that glass was probably full of bullshit.

"Reasonable?" Karen shot back, sharp, glaring at her husband. "It’s a long way to walk just to check. I’ve got better things to do than wander over there."

Fair point. The Drop Zone was over a hill, through soft sand that tried to swallow your feet with every step. Not exactly a casual stroll.

Jamie was quick to pile on. "I’m with Karen on this one," he said decisively. "I’m too busy."

"Busy?" Paul threw the word back, sceptical, his frustration starting to show. "All you’ve done is sit in your tent for the past two days!"

Oh shit.

"Fuck off, Paul!"

A piece of chicken he’d been eating dropped into his lap in the middle of it, and he growled under his breath and flicked it into the fire.

The chicken sizzled as it hit the coals. Duke’s head lifted momentarily, mourning the waste, before settling back down with a disappointed sigh.

He was sitting in the tent because of me, I realised. Because I was lying there half-dead and he wouldn’t leave.

Jamie’s outburst was unexpected, yet Paul seemed remarkably unfazed by the whole exchange. Like he’d heard worse. Like this was just an ordinary day for the two of them.

It was Luke who stepped in to steer things somewhere else.

"Didn’t you want to be responsible for managing the Drop Zone anyway?" he asked Paul, his tone level but his glance sliding sideways—a challenge, maybe, or an attempt to take the heat out of the moment.

Chris jumped in, conciliatory. "I’m happy to wander over. It’ll be a nice break, and it’ll be good to see what’s there," he said, talking through a mouthful, plainly trying to put the peace back.

The peacemaker. Every group had one. Someone who smoothed things over, changed the subject, made awkward situations less awkward.

Jamie rolled his eyes again, but this time he kept whatever he was thinking behind his teeth.

"You’d make a great Drop Zone Manager, Paul," Glenda said, her words smooth and deliberate, laid down carefully over the top of the heat.

Manager. The word hung there, loaded with implication. It was the kind of title that sounded important whilst potentially meaning nothing at all.

Kain muttered, "Well, he’s shit at building things," not quite as quietly as he probably meant to. It carried across the whole group.

Jamie’s mouth twitched, a smirk he couldn’t quite keep down.

Ha. I nearly choked on a piece of beef. Kain, the construction apprentice, passing judgement on Paul’s building skills. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone.

"I think our settlement has a better chance of thriving if we each focus on our own strengths," Glenda went on, her eyes cutting pointedly to Kain, who promptly found something else to look at. Then she turned back to Paul. "With Luke bringing supplies through so quickly now, having a dedicated Manager for the Drop Zone would be a good idea."

Give the man a job. Keep him busy. Keep him out of everyone else’s way.

It was workplace politics, I realised. The same kind of thing that happened at the depot when someone was more trouble than they were worth but you couldn’t fire them, so you gave them a role that sounded important but kept them away from the actual work.

"Fine," Paul conceded, grudging about it. "I’ll be responsible for notifying people when their belongings arrive and for keeping the Drop Zone organised."

"Marvellous," Karen said, approving.

Paul wasn’t done, though.

"But, if I’m going to be back and forth so often, we need to do something about this bloody dust! We need to build a road."

A road. The same problem we’d seen earlier with Glenda’s bogged BMW. The same soft, wheel-swallowing dust that turned every journey into an ordeal.

"Fair enough," Glenda agreed, with a nod.

"I can help with that," Chris put in, his hand shooting up like a schoolboy volunteering for a task.

His eagerness was almost comical, and I caught Jamie give a soft scoff at it.

Teacher’s pet, I thought, and immediately felt guilty. Chris was just being helpful. Nothing wrong with being helpful.

"Yeah, I guess we could all pitch in," Kain added, his eyes going round the group, looking for agreement.

Before I’d fully decided to, I heard my own voice join in.

"I’ll help too."

The words came out before I could stop them. Croaky and thin, barely audible over the crackle of the fire, but they were out.

I felt Jamie tense beside me—a small start, the beginning of an instinct to talk me out of it.

Don’t even think about it, I thought at him. Don’t you dare tell me I can’t.

Whatever he found when he looked at me, it held him back. This time, he said nothing.

Something went through me at the thought of it—nerves and a spark of something like excitement, tangled together.

Building a road. It wasn’t exactly delivering packages, but it was work. Physical work. Something I could do with my hands that would make a tangible difference.

And it was for Jamie, too—something I couldn’t get out in words, so I’d have to say it with my hands instead.

I’m not just a patient, I wanted him to understand. I’m not just the kid you pulled out of a lagoon. I can contribute. I can be useful. I can be more than a burden.

And sitting there, with the fire snapping and the dark folded in close around us, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time—like I might, in some small way, belong here.

And the beef madras was actually pretty good.