Thomas croaked in a classic voiceover of a movie trailer. “Welcome to… the void. Your worst nightmare.”
His repertoire was impressive, but his scary voice wasn’t what was bothering Marie at just this moment. What caused her heart to pump faster were the contortions on his face. His forehead began to pixelate, and it quickly spread to his nose, mouth and chin.
Crap! Not a good time.
Marie would need to wear the headband continuously, or none of this was going to work. She forced herself to concentrate on what she knew was real.
“Grrrrr,” she yelled through gritted teeth. She kept her eyes open and grabbed Thomas’s arm. His face was not melting into colored dots. His skin was normal. She touched his cheek. Her fingers felt skin with whiskers, not the vibration of a thousand tiny insects that overwhelmed her vision. “Damnit! Stop!”
She felt a wave of dizziness coming over her while the insectlike dots rotated in place, as if the hive was deciding whether to pour out and devour her or resume the shape of a man. She squeezed Thomas’s arm. “Slap me!” she yelled. And Thomas did.
The buzzing bees slowed their motion and faded away into the normal skin of the man standing in front of her. She buried her face in his chest. “Thanks, I needed that.”
Her cheek stung where he’d slapped, but the terror was over. Not the most pleasant of solutions, and probably not a permanent answer either. She could feel the creepy-crawlies lying in wait for another opportunity for permanent psychosis. They didn’t belong to the headband; they weren’t even external. These little buggers were buried deep inside her own mind.
“You okay?” asked Thomas with watery eyes. “I’m really sorry. Did I hurt you?” Nala looked on from behind the large man with an expression of deep concern on her face.
“Whatever just happened to you, Marie, it’s not good,” Nala said.
Marie sheepishly pointed to the headband. “It does things to me. I’m okay now.”
“Can you turn it off?” Nala asked.
Marie shook her head. “Not if we want to get out of here. This is going to get really crazy, really fast. I’m going to need that visualization, or our chance of success drops to one in a thousand.”
She looked up, noticing a change in the bubbles. Their edges were no longer spherical, but in the shape of a lopsided dumbbell. Like two soap bubbles, one large and one small, they had joined.
A distinct odor filled the air, a foul smell like burning tar, fortified by an acidic taste on the tongue.
“What’s that smell?” asked Thomas.
“We’re there,” Marie answered. “The bubbles have joined. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to suffer through whatever pollutants they’ve been pumping into this space. But…” Marie held out the paper masks. “These might help.” They each donned a mask over their nose and mouth.
“Better,” said Nala. “But I can feel it stinging my eyes already. This could get ugly.”
“Can’t be helped. Let’s get going,” Marie said.
They resumed their run, with the headband providing guidance to their destination. It wasn’t far; they’d be there in a few minutes.
“This stuff is nasty,” Thomas said, coughing under his mask. “Tell me again why we’re running toward this stuff instead of away from it?”
Breathing was twice as hard and harder still when trying to talk. “We’ve got to get to the center of this bubble,” Marie yelled.
“But if this new, even bigger bubble might still collapse, isn’t the center the worst place to be?”
Marie nodded. “Yeah, probably true. But it’s also our best chance.”
“Best chance to get blown up again?” he yelled.
“It’s why Daniel went to Texas. There’s a power plant down there with some kind of special cap at the top of the smokestacks. They’ve been sending pollution into 4-D space through it. I’m guessing the cap is big. Maybe as big as a tunnel.”
“So, you think—”
“Yeah,” Marie yelled. “It’s our way out of here.”
43 Rupture
Audrey, the meteorologist operating the Lidar instrument, waved her hand at the group of FEMA managers huddled to one side. “Um, Jesse, Gonzalo, anybody? I’m getting something weird here.”
Daniel perked up. The combination of a smart scientist operating high-tech equipment and calling attention to weird results was a detail not to be ignored.
One of the FEMA managers broke away from the group and hurried over. Audrey pointed to a monitor attached to one side of the instrument. “Pressure wave. Large-scale, spreading out from just below the cloud in all directions. It’s big, and it’s coming right at us.”
“Is this the same thing we experienced at the plant?” the manager asked.
She looked nervous but meticulously kept on message. “No. It’s natural, but there’s no telling what caused it. We only have about thirty seconds before it hits. I think we should we take shelter.”
“Thanks.” He turned and shouted to the crowd of scientists and reporters. “Everyone in the building. Now!”
Daniel approached Audrey as her hands flew around the tripod, quickly disconnecting the equipment. “How bad?”
“It might die out before it gets here, but you never know.”
Daniel nodded. “Good plan, let’s get inside.”
She pulled the instrument off its tripod base, and they headed through the single door into the old restaurant. The building was brick, but it had large picture windows facing the oncoming pressure wave.
“Stay away from windows,” the FEMA manager shouted to the group gathering inside.
Seconds later, a blast of air twisted tree branches and stirred up dust. It shook the windows like a sonic boom, but the glass held. The sudden storm was over as quickly as it had come.
“Yow,” Audrey said to Daniel. “A gust front. This thing must be generating downdrafts.”
Ayala poked his head out the door. “All clear. Meteorologist? Where are you?” He caught Audrey’s eye among the crowd of people. “Keep monitoring and give us regular readings on this.” She picked up her Lidar unit and pushed out through the door. Daniel followed.
A few minutes later, she had the event analyzed. Ayala and several other FEMA officials gathered around as she explained. “It was a pressure wave—compressed air responding to something going on under the cloud. The data shows it’s happening repeatedly. The air is being pushed and pulled, a lot like waves on a beach. That was a big one, but there are a lot of smaller waves around the plant. Just like at the beach, most waves don’t go past the wet sand, but a few of the big ones make it all the way up to where you put out your towel.”
“Cause?” Ayala asked. His furrowed brow and military stance were intimidating, but the young woman handled herself well.
“Sorry, no direct data on a cause, but I can tell you I’m picking up higher-than-normal concentrations of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide.”
“Power plant emissions,” Daniel said.
“Finch!” called Ayala. Jeffrey Finch, sitting in a patio chair raised his hand. “I thought the plant was shut down.”
Finch stood up. “It is. There’s nothing coming out of those stacks.”
“Backwash,” said Daniel. All eyes turned to him. “The plant may be shut down, but for weeks they’ve been pouring effluents into hidden space. It may be leaking out.”
“Another one!” Audrey yelled. “Bigger. Forty seconds until impact.”
Daniel looked toward the power plant. Even with unaided eyes, he could tell this wave was a major step up. Trees around the plant were uprooted, branches ripped away. A portion of the roof of one of the buildings shredded, with material flying into the sky as if a tornado had just blasted through. The line of destruction advanced across the ranchland of Texas, tearing apart a house and fences.
But worst of all, the swirling cloud itself had transformed, with a dark slash opening up on one side. From deep within its interior, a cloud of b
rown smoke poured out of the slash and down upon the land.
The group needed no command—they ran for the shelter of the building. Daniel helped Audrey remove the instrument and lent a hand to Parker, who carried the telescope inside. Seconds later the blast hit, this time exploding the large picture window and spraying the room with glass. Everyone ducked down and held up arms to protect themselves. A tree branch skidded across the patio outside, taking out several camera tripods.
As before, once the pressure wave had passed, things in the immediate area calmed. “Injuries?” Ayala called out. Several people shouted that they were okay. Though broken glass was everywhere, there had been sufficient warning to keep their distance.
“Jesse, find something to put over that window,” Ayala yelled. “Okay, folks, I still need monitoring. Give me your best call on what we can expect next.”
They dashed back outside. Daniel messaged Jan. All hell is breaking loose here. You sure about that expansion?
He got an immediate response. Yes. It would be worse if we’d done nothing. Stick with it. Interior density should be dropping.
Audrey slapped her equipment together and had everything plugged in faster than a marine reassembles his rifle. A minute later, she called out, “A receding phase. It’s sucking air back in.”
Daniel looked over Parker’s shoulder. He had repositioned the telescope on the gash in the cloud, which was indeed sucking material in like a giant vacuum cleaner. The telescopic view showed broken wood, tree branches, even farming equipment in a gravity-defying blast into the sky. As it rose, the dust and debris began to swirl like an upside-down drain.
“Check it out,” Parker said, pointing to what looked like a chicken coop, complete with chickens, flying through the air.
Over time, the pull of debris ended, and the gash even closed somewhat. It left a sky filled with drifting dust, leaves, hay and whatever other materials were light enough to drift on air currents.
The pressure waves continued to pulsate, pushing outward and then back in. Now that the pattern had been identified, it could be seen with the naked eye without the need of Lidar or a telescope. Trees bent one way and then another; dust blew in, swirled and then switched directions.
A tone from Daniel’s phone told him another message had arrived, from Jan again. This one was puzzling.
Passing this along, from Marie. She says—meet us at the stacks.
44 Passageway
Smoke, particulates, carbon dioxide and a potpourri of poisonous combustion gases filled the darkened space. Even with the medical mask, Marie could visualize each molecule that entered her lungs and automatically compare the ratio of toxins with the nitrogen, oxygen and argon normally sucked in with each breath. Unfortunately, the headband couldn’t tell her when the toxicity might become lethal.
Their run had reduced to a fast walk, with pauses for bouts of coughing. They rubbed irritated, watery eyes and struggled to breathe through the simple masks. Nala seemed to be taking it the hardest. Thomas sailed right through as if nothing at all were wrong, but he kept looking behind as the singularity, their primary source of light, disappeared below a horizon. Nala said it proved they were following a curved path, parallel to the three-dimensional surface of the earth. But it also meant that the dim glow from the surface was their only source of light. It would last only while there was still daylight back in the 3-D world.
Marie didn’t relish the idea of finding their way in pitch blackness with only the headband’s visualization to guide them. If the singularity flashed again, at least they wouldn’t see it. There was some comfort in not knowing. The dice were still tumbling, and she could still lose the headband at any time.
The psychosis was ever-present. She could suppress it, force the pixilating view of the world back into some deep, dark corner of her mind, but she couldn’t make it go away. Worse, it felt permanent, as if it had always been there but was now awake. Removing the headband wouldn’t help any more than removing her clothes. Those things were external. The psychosis felt internal, like a dental cavity, or a tumor.
“Still on track?” Nala asked in between coughs. Only her eyes were visible. In addition to the mask, she had pulled her long black hair around her face and wrapped her sweater on top.
Marie flipped to a layer that provided the layout, not just of the bubble of four-dimensional space that surrounded them but of the neighboring three-dimensional space as well. Not far ahead, the dimensions intersected—their destination.
“We’re getting close,” Marie answered. She pulled her blouse up and stretched it over the mask to add another layer of filtering. It exposed her bare belly, but the air was getting warmer.
“So, this is Texas?” Thomas asked, pointing to the patchwork of browns and greens beneath their feet.
“Must be,” Marie answered. The headband wasn’t exactly a GPS unit. Nala explained that a larger 4-D bubble would mean a larger compression of three-dimensional length, making anything on the surface unidentifiable. It made sense. If this was Texas, they had covered more than a thousand miles in less than twenty minutes.
“Look,” said Thomas, pointing. “An exit point?”
From behind clouds of smoke, a slash of bright light appeared like a sunbeam around the edges of fog. It had an irregular shape, as if someone had taken a knife to cloth. To the eye it looked like a promising way out, but the headband told another story.
“Not our exit,” Marie said. “It’s an opening, but there’s no connection to the ground.”
“You sure?” Thomas asked. “It’s huge. We’d could easily get through.”
“I think you’d find yourself falling. The visualization is telling me there’s no 3-D ground out there. Plus, I’m seeing incredible turbulence on the other side. Even if we had parachutes, I’m not sure we’d survive.”
“Where, then?” Thomas asked.
“Ahead,” Marie answered. “Follow me.”
They alternated between walking and jogging, with the slash appearing larger and rising higher in their view. The smell of combustion diminished, and the air became fresher, but it was also filled with dust and bits of floating debris. There were even leaves and small pieces of hay and grass floating by.
Thomas stopped and held out a hand for them to stop too. “Wait a second, did you hear that?”
They listened. There was something out there, maybe a faint rustling sound. “Wind?” Marie asked.
“No, not that. I thought I heard a rooster crowing.”
Nala held her sweater and hair over her nose with one hand, her eyes rolling. “Good imagination, funny man.”
“No joke. That’s what it sounded like.”
They continued walking until a distant but distinct crowing interrupted the silence.
“There you go,” he said.
“Holy shit,” Nala said. “There’s a farm in here? I am so ready to get out of this hellhole.”
Marie could sympathize. She’d been inside for only a few hours. Nala and Thomas had been trapped for days, and they were entirely dependent on Marie’s guidance to get them out.
They were very close. The farm smells and sounds confirmed the reality of the gash and of the three-dimensional world just beyond. The visualization showed not one but four separate intersections between the dimensions ahead. Marie focused on the nearest one.
It was a circular cross section with a solid connection to 3-D on the other side. If Daniel’s description was accurate, it was the tip of a smokestack that had been capped by a device that made a right-angled turn into the 4-D bubble. A passageway out, or at least she hoped.
A welcome breeze blew in their faces, coming out of the darkness ahead. It cleared out the remainder of the smoke, though the smell of soot and tar remained. A soft glow of light from its center illuminated the outline of a large circular shape just ahead.
It was a low wall that rose hip-high, dirty white in color and somewhat shiny, like it was made of plastic. It formed a circle about fifteen feet in
diameter. They stopped at its edge and peered inside. A breeze arose from its interior depths.
“Jesus,” Nala said.
“That’s a long way down,” Thomas said.
The view was still the same flattened version of the 3-D world, but the shape of a deep cylindrical shaft was unmistakable, the illusion reinforced both by the air blowing into their faces and by the rim that extended into their space. It was like looking into an enormous well with no clear view of the bottom.
“It’s the top of a smokestack,” Marie said. “It must be.”
“It’s open, too,” Nala said. “This isn’t just a boundary between dimensions, it’s a hole. That’s 3-D air coming out.” She pulled the mask from her face and took a deep breath. “Clean, too.”
They followed Nala’s lead and removed their masks. They had arrived, though the next step didn’t look like it would be easy.
Within the dark depths of the stack, one thin shaft of light entered from the side. With eyes alone, the distance into the flattened 3-D world was almost impossible to tell, but the headband estimated twenty feet to the source of light and more than five hundred feet to a solid surface at the base of the smokestack.
Most likely concrete at the bottom. You wouldn’t want to fall.
Yet this was the way out, their portal back home. It was true there were three more just like it, but each certainly had its own concrete pad of death waiting at the bottom.
“Sorry, this is all I have,” Marie lamented. “I thought there’d be some way to climb through, but assuming gravity applies, I’m afraid that jumping in is going to get us killed.”
“Yeah,” Nala said. “Gravity still applies.” She studied the vertical shaft. “There must be some way to get down. Can I borrow that headband of yours?”
Marie just smiled. “You know you can’t.”
Nala smiled back. “I know. But you’re making me really curious. Tell us all you see down there, every detail.”
Marie had gotten so used to seeing an enhanced reality that she had almost forgotten to provide the description to everyone else. Three heads were better than one, and even if they couldn’t see what she saw, they might think of something she hadn’t.
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