Giant shades of grey overtook the world, shrouding everything in colourless murk. People began to forget how exactly things looked in the previously vivid daylight, but history remembered. History always remembers. In museums and libraries the sun was documented and humanity's past life remembered. In laboratories and observatories, however, people strived to identify just what had happened to their now grey-shrouded planet.
Chemists analysed the murk and discovered nothing, in fact they discovered they couldn't even detect the murk itself and were perplexed. Physicists ran every test they could conceive of and found nothing conclusive, as they were wont to do. Within an acceptable margin of tolerance, the murk was simply not there and yet everyone perceived it and no-one could see through it to the sky beyond. Medics and biologists ran tests on the population itself, and slowly the world moved toward an understanding of what was really going on: The greyness was only in people's minds.
As a psychological phenomenon, the murk was not in actuality present. Psychotherapists all over the world had analysed their patients, under various conditions and states of consciousness, and had discovered that the grey disappeared when the world was seen outside of the regular mentality. This truth behind the murk was not, however, at all reassuring as there were shapes hanging in the air. They were triangular apparitions through which you could see images of other worlds, like a cosmic television. The triangles were everywhere, were widely assumed to be the sources of the murk, and continued to be mysterious.
What could you see through the triangles, if you were trained to see them? A ghastly twisted version of our own world hung there, crooked where ours would be straight, curved where ours would be fractal and pointed, all tinted to purple in colour by whatever forces were at work.
For a while no-one dared to interact with the apertures, before it became apparent that they had no effect. People had been routinely walking through them, and there seemed to be no ill effects. That is, except for one Thursday, when Delores Grey touched one and vanished.
* * *
Can you imagine being swung through the fifth dimension like a feather through an ice cube? Or swimming in a sea of yellow alphabets? Or the queasiness of seeing yourself stretch away into infinity like a rubber band at breaking point? All of these sensations, and none of them, smashed into Delores Grey's brain as she traversed the triangular rift and was sucked elsewhere from her university town of Aberystwyth. Finally, as reality became so tenuous that it hardly existed for her at all, everything condensed into one blue triangle of nothing, a microcosm of a world before she blacked out entirely.
Many hours passed. Many minutes then also passed. Then a few seconds trickled away, like cheese slowly melting on toast. Delores gradually awoke, and looked around at the landscape in which she found herself. It was a twisted, savage version of her town. The promenade was still there but deformed and twisted slightly askew. There was still a beach, and it was still as rocky as ever, but the water was a mass of overlapping whirlpools, spreading apparently chaotic patterns and waves. With so many drains for the water it made no sense that there was any left. No sense at all. A great red blazing triangle of a sun was low in the sky. A triangular sun.
Turning from the prom to look back at the town, she was barely impressed by the changes, still being dazed by so much strangeness. While the layout of buildings and streets was the same, the structures themselves were different, and there were no people out. The roads zigged and zagged and the buildings barely seemed to obey physics. Some were inverted pyramids while others curved where they should have pointed. The most apparent difference, though, was that there were many more triangular surfaces. Triangles were everywhere! In Delores's world there had been squares, or more properly 'quadrilaterals' everywhere; four-sided shapes dominated, but here there were triangular and even fairly common hexagonal designs.
It was overwhelmingly strange. Delores almost fainted again and swayed but pulled herself together. She couldn't understand what had happened at all. Nothing happened when you touched the triangles, everyone knew that. Why would she suddenly be transported to this strange place? Or had she been transported? Maybe the world had... changed... somehow. Suddenly troubling thoughts cascaded in on her and she gripped her rucksack straps tightly until her fingers went white. At least her fingers were normal, even if nothing else was. Her clothes looked normal too, as did the rest of her that she could see. She was still Delores.
No triangles were in sight. In fact, no floating apertures of any kind could be seen. Something was wrong. Her stomach made its presence felt and suddenly her path became clear. Food. There would have to be food soon, and water, or this experience would end before she made it home to that distinctly less pointed world she knew. To that world without ridiculous triangles everywhere, except the floating ones, and people and that bizarre murk that some people still hadn't been trained to not see.
She had to get home, because somehow she knew that things were going to happen in this strange place. Dangerous things.
* * *
Some people say that there is only one universe, and others that there are an infinite number, all subtly different. The truth is unknown, except for a handful of clues at the Junction, amidst the ancient mysteries and labyrinthine passages.
At the beginning of time, when the Entity let the universes out of the pen for another trip around the block, he noticed a strange thing. Whereas before every universe had been utterly different and distinct, on this occasion there were what he could only describe as congruities.
In particular, there was this portion of space, a galactic sector in size that was remarkably similar in every case, except for a freakish change in the physics of geometry. In one reality there would be a predominance of squares, while in another circles, and in another dodecahedra. There were even mind-boggling realities typed after shapes no-one could even imagine in three dimensions and those that resided in little pockets of one-dimensional space. Far out on the periphery the Entity even spotted a complex dimension, half imaginary and half real, dragons spitting fire at technologists while dolphins laughed.
The Entity liked dolphins. They were always popping up in some universe or another in every cycle. This seemed suspicious sometimes, especially since beings that laughed and played all the time had to be up to something... There were dolphins on the world which seemed to be the centre of the congruity cluster. It was orbiting a little yellow star, that little third world. As the Entity looked from the extra-dimensional void - wondering momentarily what might be looking in on it - little tunnels could be seen travelling from every little third world to its doppelgangers. Little fragments of sutured reality from one dimension to the next, built to last and perplexing. In all the uncounted cycles this had never occurred. There was even a tunnel to the Junction.
Then something even more worrying occurred: A tiny speck popped from one dimension to another. Something was beginning and worse, these tunnels weren't natural. The Entity hadn't made them, so something else had.
The Other wasn't as alone as he had thought.
* * *
In the alternate universe, Delores was getting down to the basics of survival in an angular world. The place appeared to be deserted but surely there was food of some kind somewhere? Food that wouldn't turn her into a triangle or be bizarrely poisonous in a geometric manner? Even for a third year maths student it was all quite, quite bizarre.
Walking down the street away from the promenade and into town she looked into the shop windows - assuming that they were shops - and wondered where the people were. She headed out to the site of the supermarket in her own world and found... a supermarket. It seemed as if there were plenty of congruences between her world and this one. The supermarket was closed and the car park empty. The main road next door was devoid of traffic and there was no sign of activity in the nearby houses in the tessellated suburbs.
Delores tried to force the doors to the supermarket but they failed to budge. Then she tried to smash the glass but they were impervious to her force, and even to the ensuing flurry of feminine fury. Delores slumped onto a bench and cried from frustration. How on Earth could anything like this happen? Great floating triangles that were one-way doorways to other worlds? What kind of insane story could that be?
Summoning some coherent thought, and drinking some of her precious stock of water from her midi-backpack, she went round the back and tried the deliveries entrance. The gate was wide open, and doors into the structure ajar. Evidently the abandoning of this triangular Aberystwyth had been unexpected, if it had been abandoned in the conventional sense. Delores wondered if there might be less than pleasant scenes within most of the surrounding dwellings.
Within the supermarket the fresh produce section was incomprehensible but full of at least fresh-looking unidentified items. The tinned and boxed items were slightly more understandable, if pointier, and the chocolates almost unbearably tempting. "First things first," Delores said out loud, "it's water or death". She opened a bottle of water and took a long swig. It was water, simply water, and quite refreshing. It reinvigorated her mind and she realised the mystery of the shop. The fresh produce was fresh. Whatever had happened had happened very recently and suddenly, as had her arrival. Now, was that a coincidence or was that something chilling?
She decided to be chilled and shivered at what might have happened.
Opening a tin of something that looked vaguely familiar, she ate something that seemed to taste a lot like chicken, so in a fit of bravado she splurged on something else that turned out to be similar to cheese. Yes, it was probably cheese, or cheese-like, even if the thought of the local cattle in this mixed up world was daunting.
The cheese was good, almost as good as the cheese in her fridge back home. Home, unimaginably distant but closer than a bus ride, a few streets away. The sudden memory of the whirlpools in the sea distracted her from self-pity and a desire to see her 'home' in this world. Delores scooped up some snacks, wondered how best to manage the perishable food supplies and set off to explore and work her way up to the University and the massive National Library. If there were answers anywhere they would be there.
While walking up the hill to what was hopefully the university campus, Delores was constantly being distracted by sparkles from unusual surfaces and bizarre incongruences with her own world. Reflecting on things she wondered if maybe her world didn't have a geometric dominance, differing from this triangular dream, and that they just made do with what was most useful and practical. At a microscopic level everything was fractal anyway.
A thought later, she wondered if things were still fractal at a microscopic level here. It was so different! Why and how could this world happen if there weren't some hidden cause to it all? Were there worlds based on circles, or squares, or even improbable dodecagons? If so, why? The laws of physics would have to be subtly and fundamentally different and that could be lethal to someone from an entirely different plane. Was she safe or was reality struggling to cope with her chaotic and alien nature?
Delores passed the side road to the National Library and paused for thought. In such a copyright library on her own Earth she could find the answers to every question she had if she could but read the language. Even on the campus did she have any idea what she was hoping to find? The world swirled around her as confusing and contradictory ideas crashed in and out a few times before receding back into the distance, and the young woman finally turned right and headed for the library. It was wide open and unlocked as she expected, much like all the other public buildings she had seen. Inside the massive archive she became aware of the challenge in front of her before she remembered something vital: The National Library of Wales was also a film archive back in her own world.
The film archive was hard to find in this National Library. As a Maths student, Delores wasn't even familiar with the place in her own dimension, and the unfamiliar text and altered geometries made it even harder. Finally she stumbled - or perhaps 'broke into with vigour' would be more appropriate - a room with a large triangular screen hanging from one of the walls and something that was apparently a projector recessed into the opposite. The projector was an incredibly simple device, with a significantly coloured pyramidal cartridge loaded into the top and two buttons, one green and one red. She pushed the green button and the room lights dipped as the projector shifted into action.
There was still electricity. Someone had to be around in the world to keep it going, didn't they?
On the screen a still image of a man appeared, someone in a shambling mustard overcoat and silly blue hat. He was smiling at the camera. At the bottom of the screen there were a row of icons, colour coded. Delores Grey touched the green icon and watched as a movie began to play out in front of her.
The man was in a large circular chamber and surrounded by an array of shapes, all resembling doorframes in size and function. There was a light glaring angularly down from the ceiling onto each and a mass of cabling crawling across the floor. The camera continued panning around until the point of view reverted to its beginnings and the mad looking man grinned a toothy smile and stood on a large triangle in the centre of the circle. The cabling on the floor of the room glowed and the frames filled with iridescent light before settling on to views of... elsewhere. Different places and people could be seen through each aperture, all oddly distinct to her mind. Some of the sights couldn't even be understood, so alien were the rules of reality in place there.
"He did it? This mad person crossed planes? Hopped planets?"
Something was wrong on the screen. Everything was shaking and the mustard coated man was rushing back and forth, trying to shut down power and reestablish safety. Cracks appeared in the camera lens as the chaos intensified and the recording cut off.
"Or maybe he broke the world into pieces..."
* * *
What do you do if you've stood outside of time and space for all of eternity, watching the universes live their lives over and over with no respite, occasionally nudging them into the paddock at the end of days and releasing them into fresh life once again as the cosmic harmonies dictated, and you suddenly find yourself to not be alone?
The evidence was unmistakable. Bridges and tunnels had been carved between the most congruent areas of the various dimensions and passage was being made. This could not happen without outside assistance; It was simply impossible. The Entity hadn't tended that assistance and so some other being had, and that too was impossible. The existence of a second being outside all of space and time?
There had to have been a beginning for him once, the Entity knew, as he too existed in his own sort of timeline, forever witnessing and never changing. Every instant of interest - and there were many - was inscribed on the infallible and incorruptible leaves of his recollection. Everything. Even now he could see a tiny traveller stranded in a world not her own and new tunnels being forged by an agency unknown.
The Entity concentrated his attention on the new tunnels and for a while became a Probe, intent on finding all that was knowable. There were traces about the tunnels of something familiar but unknown, and definitely scary. For the first time the Entity knew fear, and then quickly felt for the first time also determination. It unleashed its power and actively sought out the true nature of this other force. It found something new, something equal but opposite, a symmetry where before there had been none.
Instantly the Entity knew nothing would be the same again. Before, in the long vigil of his watching over the dimensions of time and space, it had been alone and defined by its solitude and watching. Now it was defined in part by an opponent, a meddler, maybe even a dangerous insanity running wild. Danger lurked, and it lurked with a plan all unknown and deeply dubious.
How best to proceed? The problem was that in an eternity of solitude, the Entity had gained no experience in dealing with beings outside of himself. He was incapacitated by doubt. Would he even be able to recognise this new dweller in the void when he saw it? How did those specks of fragile life manage this all the time?
The Entity reached down into ever smaller dimensions, seized hold of a reality, and attached...
* * *
Delores was seated in what was the equivalent to her kitchen in this angled mirror to her own world. She had come down the hill in a haze, looking at everything in a dulled manner and finally stumbling into her house, which was in keeping with the rest of the town in its unlocked state. She'd gone to the bedroom first but the sight waiting there pushed her back out into the kitchen, shaking like a leaf.
There was tea of a kind and Delores was drinking it. The world was a little fuzzy as she adjusted slowly back down to the reality of what was going on. The door to the bedroom was closed and would stay that way, the three triangular sections locked into place by a complicated latch mechanism. If this were all happening, and there was no reason to think it wasn't, then Delores Grey had to work out the big picture and then get out quick and somehow make it home.
That scientist in the film had discovered or invented the portals but none were to be seen anywhere here. Massive whirlpools were sucking away the ocean but the levels never went down, there was a... thing in what would have been her bed in another plane of existence, and the tea was all finished. She made some more and ate a biscuit. The thing in the other room wouldn't mind; She was reasonably certain it was dead, unless every living thing had gone into some kind of bizarre siesta.
Those whirlpools had been nagging at her since she had seen them in the bay. Were the portals here all underwater? Or subterranean? How could you have such things without losing all the water? Was there a recirculating system of some kind? Was it all being replaced with water from the square dimension of the kumquat plane, or the Klein Bottle Universe? The scope for alternate dimensions with bizarre topologies, or topographies, or whatever, was boundless as she knew from her mathematics.
Was the only way out to ride down a whirlpool and hope not to be crushed or die at the other side? Surely there would be a better option? Researches at the National Library had proven to be of mixed usefulness. There were more videos that she'd watched. The loopy scientist had worked on, examining the repercussions of his act, showing bizarre new weather phenomena and plotting sites on a large map. The map had been attached to the video, as she'd found out when playing with the touch symbols.
Fatigue washed over Delores, and she began to slump forward onto the table and fade. It had been a long time since sleeping last. Such a long time. Hours ticked away, the bizarre time pieces whirring on in what appeared to be a ternary timekeeping system before she awakened and checked her watch. Sixteen hours had passed and she still felt pretty fuzzy. It was probably the different physics making her brain work harder to cope. The other Delores in the bed wouldn't have had any problems, she thought, admitting that whatever it is was the closest thing she had to family in this twisted world. How similar had they been at heart, if at all?
Maybe things would look better from a freshened point of view, and with some breakfast, and if both those things failed then reconnaissance was in order. To do that required a view, and there were plenty of views around.
It was time to climb a hill.
* * *
From atop Constitution Hill, on an atypically sunny day, Delores could see a huge swathe of the seafront portion of town, an expanse of hills and distant mountains to the north, and a glorious seascape to the west framed by Cardigan Bay. At least that's what she could see in her plane of existence. As the student topped the Hill, angular gravel crunching under her trainers, she surveyed this dimension's landscape properly for the first time.
The whirlpools didn't stretch as far to the horizon as she had thought, as they were actually localised to the vicinity of the Aberystwyth seaboard, visible drawing in water from the waters further out in the Irish Sea. The hills were a reassuring green, if a bit sparkly in places, and a mild drizzle was falling from on high. Geographically the similarities to her own Aberystwyth were overwhelming. There was even a tri-rail heading out toward Shrewsbusy. There might even be a visible Mount Snowdon on a clear day.
Seen at such a scale, the landscape provoked a spike of homesickness so sharp that Delores almost buckled, but she held firm.
"Excuse me, but do you have any idea what's going on?"
She buckled that time, from the unexpected interjection, and then fainted for good measure. Upon awakening a kindly bearded face looked down at her, squinting confusedly but with gladness at her revival. The man seemed a bit pointy but otherwise quite human, unlike the thing in 'her' bed in town.
"Umm, are you okay? What just happened?" Asked the man.
"I guess the food isn't agreeing with me as much as I thought. And you're impossible."
The bearded man smiled grimly and began to speak, before popping out of existence utterly.
"Oh great. I've gone totally insane." Suddenly it all made sense. Triangles, faintness, crazy videos and bizarre things in beds. "And if I'm not insane then I'm trapped in a world that's going to kill me eventually if the food isn't working out."
Delores stumbled over to the visitor centre, and for the first time in this bizarre encounter she found some hope. Hope takes unexpected forms sometimes, whether it looks like a giant cosmic whirlpool or the last bottle of water in the fridge or even an expected domino of an event waiting to be pushed. In this case, hope looked like a circle floating in the air above one of the cafe tables. And through the circle could be seen events and people in a whole different world.
Delores knew she could be at the portal in one step and then through to a whole new world, maybe even her home. It would take longer to say 'Ping Hippopotamus!' than to take that step. Could she afford not to? Probably not. The food seemed to be edible but wasn't sustaining her well. In this land of slightly different physics the food was not QUITE compatible. She was getting weaker and weaker. Or was that why the locals were dead? Was the food poisoned? Was that thing in 'her' bed even the local Delores? Was there a local Delores?
Her mind shifted its pieces and she realised the thing in her bed wasn't a local at all. The man in the National Library's video recording had looked human. The thing in the bed had not. It was something else entirely, and didn't belong here any more than she had. A fellow traveller which hadn't made it? From some dimension or just some other planet? Or maybe here there weren't just humans but other sentient species. Who knew what could happen when triangles were somehow more important in the grand scientific scheme of things?
Whatever happened, she wasn't going to expire in a bed not her own, in a deserted town far from the world she knew and loved. So far that the distance was measured in millimetres rather than miles and spanned galaxies.
Delores took the step, reached out to the circle, and nothing happened. She passed through as if it were just an illusion, just as she had so many times before in her own world before that one touch that changed everything. That was her one trip and she'd be stuck here forever? Maybe it would be best to take her chances in one of the whirlpools or find a bicycle and try to make it to Lampeter? Her thoughts were interrupted when a hand reached out of the portal, grabbed her by the shoulder, and yanked her in.
* * *
This time, when Delores Grey crossed the boundary layer, she twisted instantly into somewhere else entirely. Within the transitional, that strange existence between realities, all you could do was observe and try not to panic. Your atoms twist and turn as you cross through into a labyrinthine pocket of space-time and speed up to many times the speed of light before popping because there is no light. You can see anyway, the great swirls of non-space trying to break into your little gap of existence which is somehow shielded from all the most obscure forces. We know what a town looks like, and a continent or a planet. We even know what a galaxy looks like and that the universe is unfathomably big. We can see it from the inside after all. The words for how a universe looks from outside haven't been invented yet.
Our traveller reached the mid-point and felt the intangible slowing down and realignment. All round her she could see the rippling sheets of space-time vibrating in the void. It was enthralling. And there were little filaments connecting them all, that she could see now on this second journey. It was all so incomprehensibly beautiful... and then it was over as she was squeezed through an aperture smaller than anything she could possibly know and landed rather ungracefully in a fountain in a large room which was far more desolate than what she had seen through the portal.
"What?" Her voice still worked. The fountain was actually quite comfortable, like a shower.
"Behind you, miss."
Squirming around in a watery mess, our traveller saw someone unexpected. "You?!" It was the kindly bearded man.
"I'm afraid I diverted you. I rather need your help. Plain chocolate biscuit?"
Crossing the barrier between realities was confusing or distracting enough without being diverted and offered a chocolate biscuit by an odd bearded man after you've landed in a fountain. At least it was a water fountain. Suddenly the sheer weirdness and the coolness of the water began to have an inexplicable effect upon Delores. She began to laugh, and to cry and to do both very loudly. She splashed water, waved her arms about jumped up and down, and finally sat down with a mighty, silly, calm wallow. It was a surprisingly deep fountain so she stood up again and looked at the man in a rather abashed manner.
The man looked at her in a thoroughly shocked manner, and then spoke.
"My name, for the purposes of this discussion, is Ernest. I am an interdimensional guardian of the cosmos. I have watched time wind in and wind out innumerable times and can fathom every physical process in the world. Typhoons and whirlwinds are mere simple playthings to me, black holes a bauble on the fabric of space-time, each universe a shred of reality flying through the inter-dimensional void. And yet, despite all that, I have no idea why you did that."
"What?"
"It's true that I'm a little disappointed. Here I am - blithely throwing out exposition like a trained wolfhound - and you respond with a mostly inarticulate 'What?'. I've been alone for countless multiversal cycles, gone mostly mad on several occasions, played solitaire with whole planes of reality on occasion and never once bothered any of the tiny infinitesimal and short-lived life forms for fear of disturbing their development. I have no idea how I came to be, how anything came to be, and blankly fulfil my function as best I can. Finally, in a moment of direst crisis, I seek out someone who seems to have some inkling of what's going on, who has traversed the membranes of reality in fact and I get this. A wet young woman in a fountain, splashing and saying 'What?'."
The man paused. "Am I making sense? Correct language and species? Yes?"
"Yes. You're making sense in every way except I don't understand any of it. Not a clue. I may still be having hysterics about having been dragged through a 'magic circle' into a massive hole in reality, and ending up in a fountain in a strange place with a beardy man who likes monologues. And that is after being stranded in a batty place where everything is based on triangles and slowly starving to death while surrounded by pointy food."
"Monologues?"
"Never mind. Did you say guardian of the multiverse? I picked out something about a direst crisis while I was staring in a wide-eyed fashion too."
Beardy Ernest collected himself and set up for another run at it. "Your universe is on a cycle of expansion and contraction. Each Big Bang is eventually followed by a Big Crunch, a reset, and then another Big Bang and so on. On each iteration things begin differently and history unfolds in utterly new ways. Now try to imagine that at the moment of the Big Bang, there are innumerable other Big Bangs happening in every other plane of reality. There is a moment, as the dimensions return back to their origin, that every plane of reality touches every other... And in a touch of utter beauty death and birth combine into one. I am the person, the entity, that watches over the different levels of the multiverse. I do it alone, and have forever done it thus. And now there is something else out there."
"Something else? But you're the only one. You just said so. I don't understand."
"Something else. Something that is threading connections through all the planes, building tunnels and bridges, fixing the structure of the realities. Even in my madness, I would not do this, this mangling of the natural order. If the structure is rigid then the dimensions will never be able to collapse in toward one another and the cycle will be broken. And if the links are soft, springy, then one tug could cause the flock of universes to veer away from their intended destination. If that happens, then we are all truly lost, for there can be no renewal. The renewal is a function of the place as well as the event. And the renewal is essential; Without it every level of reality would crumble into dust from which nothing could ever recover or rebuild."
Delores wondered. "So we're dealing with not the end of the world, not the end of time and space as I know it, but the ending of time and space not as I know it as well?"
"Yes."
Her belly rumbled menacingly. "Can it wait until after food?"
* * *
The food was delicious, and Delores could hardly get enough as Ernest retrieved it from a little empty alcove in the wall. It was reminiscent of an old science fiction series she had used to watch, and brought on a pang of nostalgia. In an effort to distract herself, she examined Ernest anew.
"You can't see it. It's well hidden." Ernest tried a smile but flopped into a puzzled half-grin instead.
"Huh?"
"I'm just as you are, a mortal on this plane of reality, such as it is." Ernest gestured around at the statuary and grandiose surrounding. They were in a yellow stone square, that smelt faintly of honeysuckle and wine, and was utterly deserted. There were buildings facing all around, seemingly deserted.
"'Such is it is'? You are going to tell me where we are, aren't you?"
Ernest shifted in his seat a little. He had dragged a couple of folding chairs from what seemed to be a small bazaar a little further around the fountain to the left. He was monumentally unused to the ways of such mobile furniture, and it wobbled a little, dangerously. It was definitely like a scene from that old show.
"This is not the easiest thing to explain." More thought seemed to tear through the impassive mind buried deep in Ernest's brain. "Perhaps an analogy is in order. Observe. No, hang on a moment." He ducked back into the bazaar and emerged quickly with a small sack of juggling balls and a determined expression. "Observe." He began to juggle eight or nine balls effortlessly and started to talk. "I'm juggling in three spatial dimensions, and the balls are following a circular path as well as I can manage. You can perceive the centre to their motion. Now I'll do this!"
Delores was shocked to see that the balls were now spitting in and out of view in a small shower of water droplets. Little rainbows shattered on a moment by moment basis. "What...?"
"I'm now juggling in four dimensions - don't look at my hands - about a new centre of motion that means nothing to your perceptions. And this... five dimensions... means you hardly see the balls at all... No matter how many dimensions we go to there's always a way to juggle around a common centre of motion in what is equivalent to a circle. You just can't see it." The juggling balls vanished and didn't return as he ceased his efforts. "I put them back in the bazaar in a much easier manner."
"We are in the Junction, the ancient nexus by which life forms - of whom we shall not speak right now - from all over every dimension came together to exchange goods and ideas. It has been neglected for several long cycles now, but shall inevitably be discovered again one day. Perhaps by you. You have great intelligence and perceptivity, much more so than I thought initially. You observe all."
Delores finally had her turn to speak but chose not to.
"While the Other bonds all the dimensions together in his mysterious ways he may not know about the existence of this place, if it is a place at all. In many ways it is more of a state of mind. A home away from home. It's strange to be so small, so far away from my own home. Even as I juggled my balls, all the known planes of reality gravitate around a common point, the Junction. For what purpose, I do not know. In every iteration of this system, the Junction remains."
"In reality you're a vast entity, no more a person than a God, something else entirely. What are you doing here? Why talk to me? What is it you want?" Delores stood up, suddenly a little angry. "Why are these things happening to me? Why am I here and not back at home in my little flat, wondering what to do with my holidays? Alone again, with only a book and a cup of cherry cocoa?"
"I don't know. I was hoping by meeting you I could deduce why you were chosen to cross the thresholds and become a leader in whatever the Other was planning. This... Junction... has existed since time immemorial and I created a temporary bridge just to get you here without their noticing. I had hoped you could tell me what to do. This idea of conflict is unknown to me as crossing into whole new worlds is to you."
What would happen if you were alone over all time eternal, with no equals and only one task to be performed? Would you know what to do if a rival appeared, seeking to pervert the course of things that must be? Could someone who had never been faced down by the school bully and stood up to tell the tale even conceive of the ways lesser beings lived their lives on a day to day basis. It all became clear.
"Ernest - What a name for such a being! - you're saying you don't know how to save everything?" Delores looked the once omnipotent being in the eye. "You've been alone for your whole existence?"
The earnest Ernest hesitated a moment. "Let's say 'yes'? There are parts I don't remember to be honest, moments of abandon inevitable in a sojourn so long amongst hyper-stars and cosmic ribbons."
"I think I'd better give you some schooling in how to do things the down and dirty lesser being way. And then I'm going home. After helping save everything, including ice cream and apple pie. And after you've told me how people could get to this Junction without building tunnels and bridges that you said were dangerous."
Ernest nodded, winced, and waited. There had to be more.
"And you have to explain to me why this has to be the work of an enemy, an adversary. Why can't it be the way things are supposed to be? Why can't it be the result of something bigger than even you?"
* * *
Time passed, and Delores tried to explain how things worked back on her world. She really did try. It wasn't her fault that Ernest the multiverse minder was naive beyond any human conception of the word. A whole eternal lifetime alone had left him unable to cope in any practical manner with things a human being adapted to in childhood. It was exasperating! His concentration seemed to drift in and out at random as if being distracted by falling motes of dust or passing photon packets. Finally, not being able to explain tactics or the nature of opposition she realised it was no use.
"You can't give up, Delores, the destiny of all the worlds is at stake. Please go on."
"I don't think I can. You don't seem to understand anything of the concepts but all of the words. It's as if you can recognise a bucket but not the usefulness of the water within." A long silence. "What is it you want, Ernest?" she asked again, quietly.
The man, for it easiest to refer to him as that, looked deeply inward and replied from some deep well of being, "I wish to understand. To comprehend why anything would try to do what is being done. And to know how to fight."
"It doesn't make sense really. How can there be something as vast as you, but so much more capable of deceit to make you look like an innocent barely born?"
Ernest sat with troubled expression for many long minutes, before finally releasing words with most reluctance and confusion. "I was not always like this, I think. Long ago, there was an incident before which I can not recall. The memories I possess are for the most part reconstructed artefacts, all except for my role in the grander scheme of things; That alone I recalled those three or four cycles ago." The bearded man sat with eyes closed and then opened. "If you cannot help me here then you must help me here. Please, take my hand."
"What? Why?" Suspicion flared in the mind of Miss Grey.
"I'm going to take you to my realm and there you will instruct me as you will temporarily see all that I see and feel all I feel. Physically you will of course remain here, but I shall secure a mental link. Perhaps with that connection and a new sympathy between us, we could examine what to do."
Of course it was total nonsense, or so Delores thought. How could a human being possibly comprehend what it could be like to be a vast and intangible entity that lived outside of time. It would be comparable to understanding a God or Destiny or Writer of all that stands in each of our fictional worlds. "Could that work? Really work?"
"Take my hand, and let us see. You need not fear."
Delores, daunted but not broken, took the hand of the Shepherd of the Planes of Reality.
And so ends Phase One of 'Triangles'. You may now stand ready for Phase Two...
No comments:
Post a Comment