“Oh…”
“I’ve figured it out now. This is the thing though. I don’t think I can quite explain it to you. It means working in many different dimensions.”
“How do you mean?”
“So Hal, humans think in three dimensions, at least thinking spatially. If you count time, then I guess there’s a fourth. How do I put this? There are a lot more than that. People from my planet are able to work with twenty or so, depending on how you count.”
“Depending on how you count?”
“Well, there are some arguments as to what qualifies as a dimension, especially when you get into the high teens, but there’s no way I’m getting that argument through to you.”
“Okay, just get this down enough so I can get some idea of what’s going on.”
“Look,” said Ms. Infinity, “Antimatter in quantities this great is dangerous. I have to get rid of it. And the goal is to get it to the nearest black hole.”
“Okay,” said Hal, “Sounds peachy so far, but as far as I know there aren’t any in the solar system. Or at least I hope there aren’t.”
“Well no. Not nearby the way you understand. Not spatially.”
“Not spatially?” asked Hal, “What other way is there?”
“There’s no way to explain this to you.”
“No way?”
“No way.”
“All I’m getting is that you have some other cosmic route.”
Ms. Infinity laughed grimly. “I guess if it helps you to think of it that way. The thing is, I have to do some fancy footwork to make this happen. I just have to find a few strategically placed black holes, nothing too big.”
“Oh no? So what is a black hole to you anyway?”
“Don’t be silly. That’s not how I meant it. Look, I have my limits, and a black hole would be the end of me too. I’m talking relatively here. I’m not going into black holes. I’m just sending most of the antimatter into them. What little is left will actually be useful for the next stage of our journey. Now the trick to moving it, that’s the hardest part. Basically I have to use my body to attract it, then fly out of the way at the crucial moment.”
“I see. Now maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I don’t get how you could bullfight this stuff away. I remember vaguely hearing something about what Einstein said about antimatter and relativity. I mean, I did alright in science, and I do remember that antimatter was predicted from the theory of relativity. Right? There was the negative square root...”
Ms. Infinity looked at Hal endearingly. “Look Hal, I give your Albert Einstein credit. He did pretty well for a human when it came to grasping the basics of these dynamics. But he was only human and he had the same limitations you do. You can only understand what your brain allows you to understand. Look, try to get your dog to play a video game and you’ll get the idea.”
“I don’t have a dog.”
“Well, right. Even harder.”
“Oh,” said Hal, now feeling utterly overwhelmed. He was also not much liking the comparison to a dog.
“So. I’d better do this now. You can watch, but it may get confusing. It won’t even be exactly like super speed. This time, well with a human mind, I’d expect that your very definitions of time and space could get mixed up. The object from the future might be the past of the anti-object, and that’s just getting started. I’m not even sure your eyes could follow it.”
“Like whack-a-mole?”
“Sure. I can put one of those into the rec room later if you want. Just remind me.”
“No. I mean…Oh never mind. I’ll…I’ll try to watch.”
Ms. Infinity disappeared out through the atrium ceiling once again. Looking outside, Hal saw the target. It was a strangely beautiful sight, a tremendous splatter of violet and other colors. He first saw her flying through space towards it. But then she was flying away from it. Then she seemed to disappear.
The splashes of color flickered in all manners. They seemed to suddenly get bigger and smaller without warning. She reappeared, but only for a split second. Then it seemed there were two of her, or more. His eyes were too confused by the constant flicker to tell. She might have been all over the place.
The images continued to become more unpredictable. Hal wondered if he should look away for his own sanity, but he couldn’t. He was so fascinated, he found himself glued. Increasingly the images of Ms. Infinity seemed to distort, intermittently becoming like a kaleidoscope of patterns that competed with the antimatter.
As Hal watched the weirdness unfold, he started wondering just who she really was. Yes her name was Bonnie Boring, but just what sort of alien was she? She seemed increasingly remote now as he watched her. Indeed judging by this odd game of space chicken, she must be a powerful being indeed. And if she could change her form, then what did she truly look like?
The vision reached a disturbing crescendo, the various splatters and splashes intensifying suddenly into a great flash that encompassed all he saw. And then all seemed to freeze. He was terrified. Did time stop? But then Ms. Infinity was behind him.
“Alright,” she said.
“So,” said Hal, “It worked?”
“Yes.”
“So then, the antimatter is on its way?”
“No. This isn’t spatial. It doesn’t work that way.”
“What way?”
“There is no way.”
“No way?”
“Enough. You’re just not going to get this, Hal. I’m sorry.”
“Fine,” said Hal, “But you owe me a whack-a-mole.”
It was now time for the next stage of the journey. Hal was feeling some apprehension, since it was clear that this was going to be uncomfortable, and much would happen that he would not be able to understand.
As he looked on, the heroine quietly rambled off a checklist. Though she was ostensibly running through routine maintenance issues, some of the items sounded bizarre. At some points she was looking at various gauges and indicators, but at other times she seemed to be talking into the air.
“Velocity is picking up, nearing 500 million miles per second. Time set to remain in the range of twenty minutes. Not reaching infinity yet but will add one when we do.” She looked at Hal and smiled, “That’s a joke.”
“Oh,” he said, trying to be amused.
“No undue galactic ink stain or discolored coin bounce. Carpets remain unliquidated….”
Hal listened but soon was utterly lost. After a while he broke in, “So should I be doing something right now?”
“Not this second, but stay put. Actually have you used the bathroom? Now is the time.”
“Alright but…”
“Soon you’re not going to be able to go anywhere, so I would go now.”
“How about you, do you need…?”
“I’m fine.”
As Hal washed up, he felt increasingly nervous. Just what was he in for now? Maybe Ms. Infinity had been right when she warned him that this might be too much for him.
When he returned, Ms. Infinity instructed him to sit down.
“So Hal,” she began, “This is where we have to get into more complex maneuvers. If we’re ever going to make it in enough time, I have to work once again in many different dimensions. Now please bear with me. I don’t mean to be condescending when I say this. But again, humans like yourself work within three, or in a way four dimensions if you count time. My people are like you in that we go forward in time in the same way. I can’t time travel, although I am experimenting with a time manipulation of a different kind. Anyway, we do work with a good number more than three dimensions. I have to move us through dimensional planes that you won’t understand; it’s just not within human range of understanding.”
“So like, is this a wormhole?”
“Uh….No. It’s not a wormhole. If you need a semi-familiar word, I guess you could get away with calling it hyperspace. I’ve seen that word in science fiction, and I guess this more or less applies. We’ll call it ‘hyperspace
.’ But this is not exactly like anything that exists in human science. I’ve heard some vague conceptualizations, but…you know what? There’s no time for talk. I have to get us moving.”
She touched a few controls, and then seemed to move her arms aimlessly in the air. Suddenly the ship jerked upward. Or at least upward it seemed, relative to the floor. But then there didn’t seem to be a floor. Then suddenly Hal saw something truly disturbing: himself.
It was himself from a few seconds ago, asking the same questions he had been. He was not reacting to the current him. Then suddenly that vision was gone, and he fell. Or was that falling? He didn’t seem to be going anywhere. But there was some unexplained sensation of movement. Then he saw two selves, the one he saw before and the one looking at the one from before, but they were down below him, no next to, no inside? He gasped. Suddenly it seemed he could not even define directions or dimensions.
More strange sensations followed Again he seemed to be moving, but he could not explain where or how. He saw a growing number of his selves increasingly looking like a chain of undefined mass. He tried to close his eyes, but he still saw everything. There was no escape. They were everywhere. Or he was everywhere.
He tried desperately to understand what he saw and heard and felt. Had time stopped? Was he in a loop? But try as he might, he could not make sense of it. And the rationalizations were useless, since nothing could stop the bizarre sights, sounds, or feelings. So much was happening to him, in him, of him. Even simply understanding himself was impossible.
The sensations continued for what seemed like an eternity. Or was it no time at all? He had no idea. Time was now something outside him. Everything seemed to move impossibly fast yet also be frozen all at once. But it was more than that. Even he was everywhere and nowhere at once, or not at once—all times, and no times. It exhausting to try to understand it, but he could not turn it off. He felt sick, violently sick.
Then he felt something or someone tugging on his arm, and he heard a voice. Suddenly he saw a face, perfectly defined, right in front of him. It was Ms. Infinity. “It’s okay Hal,” she said. “I’ve got you.”
“I’m sick!” cried Hal.
“Hold on a moment, I’ll take care of it.”
A second later he felt better. “Thanks,” he said.
“Listen,” said Ms. Infinity, “Try to keep your head… I can’t keep holding on to you the whole time.”
She let go, and he began to feel even more odd sensations. Suddenly he lost control of his movements. He seemed to jerk forward violently. It was if he was pulled out into another reality. Not that he could define it at all. His first thought was to wonder what was different from before, but that question proved useless. In fact, he didn’t know where he was. There was nothing anywhere that he could identify. It was worse than that. He couldn’t even figure out what was where, or up from down, or in any way make sense of the information in front of him.
Then without warning, it was over, and he suddenly felt as if he was dragged backwards into darkness. Worse than darkness, a complete void. There was no light, no sound. Now he wondered if his eyes were closed. But now he was trapped even more profoundly than the reality that had made him ill. He could not even feel his eyes, ears, any body at all. Was he dead?
He was in a deep and penetrating panic. Where was he? Could Ms. Infinity hear him? Hear what? He couldn’t even speak! There was nothing, no him at all. Or was there? He was thinking, right? So he must still be, somehow. After a torturously long time to wonder if he was alive or dead, he suddenly felt a huge stir; his body was suddenly there again. Then it seemed as if a light was suddenly turned on. He tried to scream but could not make a sound.
He found himself back on the ship. Was he awake? He seemed to be falling repeatedly from the ceiling to the floor, like an endlessly repeating video. Then it stopped, and for a split second, he was face to face with…something. He couldn’t say what. He wasn’t sure if he exactly saw anything, but he was certain something was there in front of him, and it was terrifying. He wanted to cry out, but again no sound came. Then he felt as if he was pulled backwards, with the falling vision reversed.
The vision faded, or in fact it turned into something even stranger. It became less and less of a vision and more and more a complex reality, with sight now intermingled with sound, and sound intermingled with touch, and all senses intermingled with something much more complex. Was it time? Was it space? He was not even sure if those distinctions mattered now.
The reality became increasingly complex, encompassing more and more aspects. Then it seemed to take him over. Suddenly it seemed like he was not merely in the situation, but of it. He was intermingled, by body and mind.
Increasingly he lost understanding not only of the outside but even himself. He barely even knew his own life anymore. He could scarcely even make out which sense was which. Was he even there? He felt undefined, stretched out over many, many directions he could not name. He hardly seemed to have any significance at all. Was there even a him? Did he mean anything? It seemed like he was nothing but a nameless and faceless stretch of material, just an amorphous part of an endless continuum. It took a great strength of will just to remember that he existed at all.
It may have been like that forever, it may have been not at all, but at some point, it finally came to a head. There was an abrupt and intense feeling of awakening, an explosion of being. Then he felt a tremendous sensation of falling, but he suddenly realized he was back in his seat, hyperventilating and sweating hard.
After a minute, he caught his breath. He was still flustered, but he could just summon up enough presence of mind to turn to Ms. Infinity and to ask her, “Is it over?”
“Yes” she replied, “Until the trip back. I think you need a rest.”
Ms. Infinity gently picked Hal up from his seat, and flew him into a bedroom. Like the rest of the ship, it was luxuriant. It contained a king-sized bed, track lighting, and a flat screen TV. She descended, then put him down on the bed and said, “You rest now.”
Hal was barely coherent. “Am I back? Am I alive? Who am I?”
“You’re Hal, Hal Holstein, just like before. You’re here with me, Ms. Infinity…” After a moment, she shook her head and smiled, then said gently, “You know, it’s me, Bonnie.”
“I…mean…I know, but…I..,it doesn’t make sense anymore. I can barely even feel myself. Will I ever be the same?”
“Yes honey, I promise. You’re already getting better. I can see it. You’ll be back to yourself in no time. Just rest.”
“I don’t know. Something’s not right. Something in my senses…Everything looks okay…”
“Don’t worry Hal,” she said tentatively, “There’s nothing much…”
“No! Something is off. I can feel it in the air. No strange sounds….”
“It’s nothing…”
“Something…I don’t know…You know what? I think it’s something I smell, but…”
“I farted! All right? I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” Hal was silent for a moment. “You know something? Lisa was right about you.”
“No Hal. She’s the one with the stinky farts. I have the B.O.”
“You might want to rethink that.”
“Oh no!” said Ms. Infinity, “I just thought of something.”
“Is something wrong?” asked Hal.
“Not here, but back when I did my grocery shopping at The Big Box, I made a horrible mistake. Oh no. I shouldn’t have used customer service to check out. You know…”
“Right. Right. With Lisa, there’s that…”
“It’s the one line with no candy! Now I’m light years away from home and I already need a chocolate fix.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t have any candy, do you?”
“Sorry. I didn’t plan for this…”
“It’s alright. Not your fault. I think it’s time you rested. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Ms. Infin
ity turned out the light and left. Yet as exhausted as Hal was, he was having trouble sleeping. The experience he had just had was disturbing, and brought up uncomfortable, existential questions. He struggled to think of simple, comforting things.
Throughout her teen years, school frustrated Bonnie Boring endlessly. For someone with superhuman intelligence, she achieved amazingly low grades. Like so many “gifted” youths, she was bored by the structure and lack of challenges that her classes provided. She was often rude to her teachers, and frequently failed to show up to class. Lisa’s influence helped to keep her grounded slightly. She might not have inspired her to love school, but at least she convinced her not to drop out.
Her mother was called in many times by the school for unpleasant discussions with teachers and administration. And indeed Betty was not one to take her daughter’s behaviors lightly. She herself was working her way through school at the same time, eventually achieving a PhD so she could become a physics professor. There were many volatile nights and loud arguments between mother and daughter. Betty was determined to get through to Bonnie, if not by example then by sheer force of will. But somehow she could not convince her daughter of the need for academic achievement.
Nothing embodied Bonnie’s frustration more than science. After all, many of the principles taught by Earth’s teachers were things that she knew or believed to be false. She herself could easily defy many of the supposed laws of physics, so acquiescing to them in classwork seemed very disingenuous. Betty would tell her that this should not bother her. If these theories were true for humans, then they were relevant to their lives on Earth. Indeed if anything these were truths that she needed to understand, truths that were eye opening and mind broadening. However, this line of thinking moved her little.
History and English were more interesting to her. She truly wanted to learn the stories of the world she now belonged to. Yet in her experience, she had also learned a deep cynicism for the narratives given by historians. And anyway, she could finish her work very quickly. Here as well as everywhere, the dearth of challenges was fatal to her success.
Ms. Infinity (Book 1): Earth's Greatest Hero Page 11
