INCURSION FROM AN ALTERNATE FRAME OF REFERENCE A Short Story by James D. Pratt Copyright 2011 James D. Pratt Smashwords Edition Cover image © HeroMachine.com /********************************************************************************/ Smashwords Edition, License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If this is not a free book and you would like to share it with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If this is a free book and you would like to share it with another person, please direct the recipient to the book’s page on Smashwords.com so they can download their own copy. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. /********************************************************************************/ Here’s some philosophy for you. Every beginning has an end and every end has a beginning, and because everything is connected, every end is the beginning of something else. In my case, I wouldn’t have gone over to Larry’s house that day and read his journal and heard the thump in the basement if it hadn’t been for the end of my marriage, so I guess the death of said marriage was the last incident in one chain of events that would become the first incident in another. What I’m worried about is that this new chain of events might turn out to be the beginning of the end, period. I can tell you the exact moment my marriage was officially over. My wife had called me from the Food Circus parking lot. She wanted me to kick some guy’s ass because her called her a whore after they got into a shouting match over a parking space. “Are you?” I asked “Am I what?” she replied. “A whore.” See, I’d just found out she’d been screwing Dan Newberry (Dan Newberry of all freaking people). She hung up, got home an hour later, and demanded that I pack up my sh*t and leave. I told her I paid the mortgage and wasn’t going anywhere. She called me an a-hole, accused me of ruining the magical life she was apparently supposed to have had, and took off. At least we’d had the foresight not to bring any kids into this miserable world. That would have been the icing on the cake. The next day my wife’s mom and dad showed up and started packing her things. Her mom glared at me the whole time, like every bit of it was my fault. I wasn’t exactly Captain Wow but I certainly wasn’t an abuser or control freak. Her daughter pretty much did what she wanted when she wanted. I’m not sure what else I could have done. I’d liked her mom once upon a time, but had eventually came to realize she was just as…let me grab a dictionary and a thesaurus…’idiosyncratic’ as her daughter, only a little more subtle about it. Her daughter/my wife wasn’t capable of being quite so tricky. She got her mom’s peculiar outlook on life but also her dad’s temper. What she didn’t get was her dad’s hindsight. I got the impression that when he flew off the handle, he’d think about it later and if he decided he’d been out of line, he would apologize. That made him okay in my book. On that day, all he did was give me a shrug as if to say “Sh*t happens” which goes without saying. I had plenty of time to stew over the aforementioned events. The industrial plant where I work was closed for the week due to some heavy-duty upgrades that had been ordered as the result of a surprise safety inspection, which had also resulted in three firings and some big changes in the management team. Man, you should have seen the look on Mark Delper’s face when they escorted him off the property. I’ll be really surprised if he doesn’t come back some day and shoot up the place. Small world that it is, Mark Depler was Dan Newberry’s best friend in high school and another a**hole in my humble opinion (only in his case because he was one of the popular kids and got a crap-load more tail than I ever will) so I can’t say I was too sorry to see him go. And if he does come back and goes on one of those disgruntled ex-employee rampages, I just hope I’m not on his list. No reason I should be, seeing as how we went to school together for twelve years and exchanged maybe ten words between us, but you never know. It’s weird, really. Even before I found out about her and Dan Newberry, things had been going downhill for awhile. But now that it’s all over and done with, I kind of miss her. Or maybe it’s just the routine that I miss. Humans are nothing if not creatures of routine. Either way, I’d experienced a major life change and had no idea what to do next. After a couple of days of sitting around the trailer and feeling sorry for myself, I decided it was time to get off my butt and find something to do. I needed to occupy my mind. I finally decided to drop in on my friend Larry Baum. In hindsight, I guess that was technically a good decision in that I certainly ended up with something to take my mind off my own silly problems. Larry was the only friend I had left after my soon to be ex ran all the other ones off. I kind of missed the old gang, most of whom I grew up with, but truth be told I think I’ve sort of outgrown them. I hope that doesn’t sound all stuck-up. It’s just that I’ve realized, thanks in part to Larry, that the world is a much bigger place than the quaint little rustic paradise called Lickety Split, Virginia. They’ve stayed who they are, and that’s okay. You can’t miss what you never knew about. Me, I’m not the same person I used to be but believe me, there are times I wish I was. But back to Larry. He’d been a physics teacher at the local community college and a professor at a big-time university (can’t remember the name, Missahanic maybe?) before that. Larry didn’t talk about those days very much. Apparently he’d been kicked off the faculty for…how did he put it? “Proposing things that sounded so much like sci-fi even the other theoretical physicists disowned him”. Sometimes when he was a little drunk he’d hint around that there was more to it than that, that maybe he’d actually tried to prove some of his theories. I don’t know if that was just the alcohol talking. Like I said, he didn’t like to talk about those days. Larry and I had had a lot of interesting conversations. I’d grown up in a pretty conventional setting and Larry had opened my mind to things I’d never thought about before, both scientifically and philosophically. I wasn’t even familiar with the word ‘agnostic’ or realize that I was one until after one of our discussions. And after Larry pointed some things out to me, it all sort of made sense. I mean, think about it. If the only reason you do good things is because you think some magical invisible man in the sky is always watching, making sure you don’t linger over your naughty bits in the shower or anything like that, then do they really count as “good things”? Or if you only try to be a good person because you think you’ll get some sort of reward in the end? If it’s all about reward and punishment, doesn’t that just reduce us to rats in a maze? I’m not saying I don’t believe in something other than this, this world or reality or whatever you want to call it. I just don’t think whatever comes next is a magical paradise filled with people sitting on clouds and playing harps. Not that that’s most people’s idea of paradise, come to think of it. Religion sure is funny. What I do think is that Larry was onto something. I mean, any scientist will tell you that we’re only just now beginning to suspect what’s really going on at the heart of things. Larry explained to me how he believed there were other spaces…I mean, spatial dimensions than the three we’re familiar with, and that his goal was to create models of these other dimensions. He wanted to show how they overlapped, creating other universes in the way the dimensions of length, width, and height created our own. Most important of all, he told me, was that if the model was realistic enough there would be no difference between the…how did he put it? Oh yeah. He said, ‘There would be no difference between the approximation and objective reality’. There were times when I’d wished Larry hadn’t opened my mind because things sure were simpler in the old days. No, what I really wish is I hadn’t stopped by his place for a visit that day. Things were REALLY simpler before then. And that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t found out that my wife was cheating on me with Dan Newberry. Everything is connected, just like Larry told me. It’s all cause and effect. Here’s what happened. I got to Larry’s place, a modest little white rancher with a gravel driveway and a full basement, and saw that his car was there. I knocked on the door. No answer. Normally I would have just turned around and gone home. But these were exceptional circumstances. I needed a distraction and I really didn’t want to go back to that empty house with only memories and an empty refrigerator for company. I tried the doorknob and it was unlocked so, after a moment’s hesitation, I let myself in. “Anybody home?” No answer. “Hey Larry, it’s Keith! You here, man?” Still no answer. I went to the kitchen and helped myself to a beer. I was pretty sure Larry wouldn’t mind and drinking it would kill a little time. Then I thought to look in Larry’s home office. He was the type to get so involved in his work that the house could be burning down around him and he wouldn’t notice. There was no sign of Larry, but his computer was on and the journal he always carried with him lay open on the floor nearby. The computer was humming like it was working overtime, the electronic equivalent of an idiot-savant grunting as he struggled with a particularly complex logic puzzle. I can’t really describe what was on the computer screen. From one angle it looked like a pulsating mother cube had given birth to a giant litter of smaller cubes that seemed to bulge right out of the screen; from another it looked like hordes of random geometric shapes had gone to war and now lay scattered and broken, some still alive and writhing in agony as they crawled over and even through each other; and from still another angle it looked like a geometry teacher’s nightmare, an indescribable Frankenstein’s monster of cubes and hexagons and dodecahedrons haphazardly twisted and mashed together in a smorgasbord of warped space. It was way over my head, whatever it was. I couldn’t help but take a peek at Larry’s journal. It happened to be open to the most recent entries which were made this morning as a matter of fact. Most of the journal consisted of formulas and equations with little notes scrawled in the margins. The last two pages, however, were all text: March 17 6:17 AM - The computer was generating coordinates all night. It’s eight dimensions out and still going strong. Not sure how long it will take to finish generating the full set. Hours, days maybe. I am, after all, building a universe in there. The new differentials I created should speed things up but it’s going to take as long as it takes. I think the last upgrade did the trick. The last time I tried this, I fried the motherboard. It was a good thing I had the foresight to back up my work. If this works, it will have all been worth it. 11:04 AM – It’s finished!!! The computer is plotting points now. As is sit here writing this, I’m watching a new reality unfold before me. It feels like, as Einstein put it, looking into the mind of God. Heck, from a certain point of view, I AM GOD. Like old Prof. Sanderson said, if a model is sufficiently realistic… Now that I think about it, maybe there are certain philosophical implications about my work worth considering… 1:15 PM – It is finished, and a lot sooner than I expected. If I were God, I would rest now. But this is only the beginning. There’s still so much to do. I don’t know where to start. Guess I’ll begin by simply observing the spatial dynamics. Feel like I’m missing something though. What? 2:30 PM – Must be seeing things. At first I thought there was a glitch and I was seeing irregularities in the model, little blips and momentary fluctuations on the screen. But the more I look, the more it seems like the model is fine (thank God).Instead, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear something was moving around inside the model. But that’s impossible. It’s merely a plotting of multi-dimensional points, a demonstration of spatial dynamics but otherwise static. Could I have subconsciously introduced some new factor without realizing it? 2:50 PM – I’m not just seeing things. I’m going crazy. I would swear on my life that the things moving around in the model aren’t in the screen but…I don’t know how to describe it. It’s as if something is peeking out from behind the model. Worse yet, the shapes stop and start as I shift and move in my seat. It is as if they are reacting to me. 3:16 PM – I’m I ashamed to admit this but I’m starting to feel frightened. This is the culmination of so much work and now something is happening that I don’t understand. I’m sure I’m not the first scientist to react this way when faced with the fruit of his own labor and I’m sure I won’t be the last. I’m sure there is a rational explanation for the things I’m seeing, one that has nothing to do with superstition. Still, when I look at what is unfolding on the screen a cold chill runs down my spine. I think I would abort the project right now and simply pull the plug if not for the thought that that younger me, the one who first conceived all this, would never forgive his future self for throwing away everything in a primitive fit of terror. I feel like a Neanderthal cowering before the fury a lightning storm. Then again, the Neanderthal probably never had any evidence that the storm was staring back. 4:00 PM – At last I understand what Sanderson meant. Make a model realistic enough and, God help me, there is no distinction between the approximation and the reality. Of all the possibilities I considered, it never occurred to me that those higher spaces might be occupied. And now, unwittingly or not, I have – That was how the last entry ended. At first, I figured whatever Larry was freaking out over got the best of him and he took off on foot. Or maybe just went for a walk to clear his head. But then I got to thinking… Remember what I said about sometimes regretting that Larry had opened up my mind? His disappearance, his work, the stuff in his journal… My imagination went into overdrive. Now, I’m not a sci-fi geek but I look movies about robots and aliens blowing stuff up as much as the next guy. It doesn’t get much better than that. But I don’t actually believe in any of that stuff. Nobody with half a brain would. But Larry had more than half a brain. He had more than twice as much brain-power as the average genius. And he sure believed something funny was going on. There were two things that really got my mind going. One, Larry’s use of the word “occupied”. I once asked him about the old sci-fi cliché of Earth getting invaded by weird life-forms from other dimensions, things a thousand times more alien than anything we could ever imagine, and he said he doubted any sort of reality above or below our three-dimensional world (plus the fourth dimension of time of course) could support life. Life has all sorts of criteria and it’s very rare when all the criteria are met. But then Larry admitted he wasn’t a biologist and when you get right down to it, in an infinite reality pretty much anything is possible. But then he began to warm up to the topic and said if some creature from a higher spatial dimension invaded our world, maybe we’d only be able see bits and pieces of it due to our alternate frames of reference. Of course I had no idea what he was talking about so he explained that if three-dimensional creatures like us entered a two dimensional world, the inhabitants of that world would only be able to see a thin slice of us, or in other words only the parts of us occupying the two dimensions that made up their universe. The rest of our bodies would remain in a place outside their frame of reference. Weird. The second thing that got my thoughts racing was his comment about finally understand what his professor had meant. Now, here’s where things get freaky. Suppose, just suppose, that this hypothetical space he created, a universe existing in the overlap of spatial dimensions beyond the ones we know, was so realistic that it might as well have been real. Or was so realistic that is was real. Or even stranger, that when it became real, it merged with that other unimaginable place which it was supposed to represent. The model and the thing it represented had become one. Here’s the part where things really get all sci-fi. If this other place was, as Larry suspected, occupied, then what if the inhabitants of that other place became aware of our world when Larry’s model merged with their reality and they were able to use the computer to bridge the gap between our here and their there. When that thought occurred to me, I imagined an arm reaching out of the screen, grabbing Larry, and pulling him through. Then my imagination really took off and I saw the scene replay itself, only now the arm was covered in an organic shell and ended in a crab-like pincer. The scene unfolded yet again and this time the arm was a sucker-lined tentacle dripping some sort of nasty green goo. But then I remembered our conversations about alternate frames of reference and realized that the arm, or tentacle, or whatever appendage it was would appear incomplete because we would only be able to see the bits and pieces of it that existed in three-dimensional space. The rest of it would for all intents and purposes be invisible, hidden away in some other dimension or universe that our own evolution hadn’t equipped us to enter or perceive. This is one of those situations that a normal life doesn’t prepare you for so I just sort of stood there for a minute, not really sure what to do. Then I heard the THUMP. That’s all it was, just a THUMP. It came from right underneath me, in Larry’s full basement that we talked about but never got around to turning into a rec room. Like I said, it wasn’t a howl or a snarl or an indescribable alien buzzing/chirping sound but just a plain old THUMP. I started to yell Larry’s name, figuring he might have been down in the basement the whole time, but then my freaking imagination kicked in again. It had one more vision to show me. In that moment frozen in time, as my mouth started to open and call out Larry’s name, I saw an image of something crawling out of the computer screen. I couldn’t get a good look at what it actually was. My imagination just wasn’t up to the job of filling in that gap. But it made sense, or as much sense as anything else does where this stuff is concerned. I mean, if something could pull Larry in, doesn’t it also mean that something could climb out? My feet came to the conclusion I’d had enough even before my mind did. The next thing I knew, I was in my pickup heading home. I didn’t even realize until later that I taken Larry’s journal. It’s sitting on the floor beside me right now, a solid reminder that the past evening’s events weren’t just in my head. I even reread the last couple of pages three times to make sure. Here’s my plan. As soon as I get up the courage to move, I’m going to pack up everything that’ll fit in the bed of my truck and take off for God knows where. My destination is a place called Anywhere But Here, population Me. But if what Larry thought (I assume Larry is dead now, or at least past caring) and what I think is true, then even that might not be far enough. What I wish, what I really wish, is I’d thought to do what Larry never got a chance to and pull the plug, just yank the computer’s power cord out of the wall. Maybe that would have put a stop to it, severed the connection between here and there. But as it is, the bridge remains and the doorway is still open. And if that sound in the basement was what I think it was then what’s to stop God knows what else from coming through? ### Connect with Me Online: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1094111894 Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jamesdpratt If you liked this story you might also like one of these: Black Goat of the Hundred Acre Wood: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/65495 One of Granny’s Tales: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/65596 There’s A Light On At The Old Sutter Place: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/65704 Corridor: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/65862 Jonas Bell Presents “The King in Yellow”: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/66004 I Eat the Living: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/66449