by Joseph Calev
She sat next to me and barely reached my shoulder. “You still think you’re one of them, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, we look the same.”
“But you aren’t. I’ll show you.”
My Lilliputian mentor hadn’t failed me yet, so I said not a word while she stood, faced her palms forward, then seemed to scan her immediate surroundings.
“Did your teacher tell you about essonance, yet?” She stepped forward and back.
I shook my head.
“It’s another of our forces, like resonance. It’s what keeps things together.”
“You mean like different atoms?”
“No. Completely different. We don’t have those.”
She was now concentrating on a specific area. “The cool thing about essonance is, it’s very strong, but if you pull it apart just right, you can do some things. Did you learn how to make a wormhole yet?”
I shook my head again, remembering that here I was, in fact, a moron. “Other kids made them, but I don’t know how yet.”
“That’s essonance. But I’ll use it a different way right now. This is first-level stuff. There’re two types of matter, you know. Matter and dark matter.”
I felt happy to have had actually heard of this.
“Matter’s in our dimension set, and dark matter isn’t. But if dark matter is in a lower dimension set, our forces can affect it. If it’s in a higher dimension set, then it affects our forces.”
She’d lost me already. The first grade evidently involved some complicated stuff.
“Look.” She had evidently noticed my vacant expression. “Imagine you’re in a box with medium-sized holes in it. You have a small ball and a guy outside has a big ball. If you have the small ball, you can hit him, but he can’t hit you with his ball, because the holes are too small. But if you have the big ball, then he can hit you.”
“But what if I catch his ball and throw it back?”
She shook her head. “That’s against the rules. But do you understand? He’s dark matter and you’re matter?”
I kind of did, so I signaled her to continue.
“So, what do you get if you essonate our matter and dark matter at the same time?”
“A duck?”
She gave me a quirky frown. “A what? No. You get a dimensional portal.”
She slid her hand into something and her fingers disappeared.
“Come here. But when you get inside, don’t freak out.”
I walked cautiously over to where she’d now formed a dark crack in midair. While everything looked normal where I stood, my skin turned cold where I placed a finger on the edge.
She took my hand, smiled, then led me inside.
The instant I entered, billions of stars surrounded me. I was in the midst of space. Everything was cold, and I couldn’t breathe.
My hand reached for the portal, but it was already gone. Sareya was floating next to me, but was completely fine.
“You need to relax.”
How I could even hear her in space?
My lungs were empty and I was freezing to death. Every muscle was completely incapacitated.
Sareya was laughing. “Come on, silly. You can still breathe.”
I shook my head while gasping. Sareya leaned her head back, sighed, then tossed me back through the portal.
Air rushed down my throat and I spread my body across the trunk. Everything felt so warm again. I was safe.
“You could breathe the whole time.”
“We were in the middle of space! How?”
“You were in another dimension. One similar to where you lived. But you were still here.”
I gave her a quizzical look.
“You were witnessing another dimension, but you were still in ours. Your mind was playing tricks on you. Nothing in that place can hurt you.” She put her hand on my shoulder while I coughed. “Now we’re going back. And I want you to remember that you’re still here. It’s like looking through a window.”
Sareya was right. After only twenty-six attempts where she had to yank me back, slap some sense into me, then toss me again into the void, my body finally understood that there was nothing wrong. Once I forced myself to realize that air was still available through my dimension, I was able to float to my heart’s content in the darkness.
She stood gloating while I performed somersaults. Yet after only a few, I stopped. There was no resonance here. The rich sounds that permeated Sareya and Annie’s world were gone. Next to where I’d come from, this place, despite its myriad stars peeking around me, was boring.
“We can go now.” I was a little surprised that I wanted to leave.
“One more lesson,” she said.
Briefly I felt like a pancake, then Sareya pulled us into another section of space. Though the star patterns appeared slightly different, this place was basically the same as the previous one. She pointed below me.
There were no stars.
“This is a black hole. I want you to touch it.”
I vaguely recalled from between my naps in physics class, this was a bad thing.
“A black hole is a collapsed star that exerts so much gravity that it consumes light particles. But gravity doesn’t affect us.”
I looked down. Other than the lack of stars, I couldn’t make out where its surface was. I was also still concerned that most physics texts and Hollywood movies advised against this.
“Your first challenge is to see it.”
“But how? It doesn’t resonate.”
“You don’t need resonance. We have more senses. Listen for them. See them.”
If all level one kids were this smart, I was in deep trouble.
I closed my eyes, but as predicted there was no resonance. Then I heard and felt them, slight waves that flowed across my hands and face. It was almost like the black hole was singing to me.
“You can feel the gravitational waves, can’t you?”
“But I thought you said gravity doesn’t affect us?” This was still thoroughly confusing to me. Though I wasn’t about to admit it, I also had no clue what gravitational waves were.
“It won’t. But that doesn’t mean we can’t notice it. Our bodies sense every force, but only our five can affect us. Now try to see it.”
I squinted, but still saw black, then slowly my eyes adjusted. Something was different about that empty space. There was a red light emanating from all around it.
“You can see the radiation? Can’t you?”
I nodded.
“Humans can only see a narrow band of light, but we can make out a lot more.”
A gigantic whirling disk was now below me. From its surface emanated red rays, which stretched in every direction across the universe. The gravitational waves hit me like heartbeats, and my head wandered across the horizon to witness this living thing in the midst of nothingness. Its rays were like blood flowing life into the universe, while its dark interior hinted at the death that awaited when one came too close.
“Do you want to touch it?”
I smiled, and she grabbed my arm and flew me to its surface. Around me, the gravity intensified, but it no longer controlled me. Instead, it felt like gently fluttering feathers, letting me feel their fibers without ever tickling.
Its surface shimmered red, and I carefully reached out my hand and petted it. The black hole felt like a slow porous current that was softly caressing my hand. With each stroke, a tuft of red rays flew outward and its song changed slightly.
Sareya smiled, then in a flash we were home. Yet, it was all too soon. Just when I thought the roller coaster of limbs in the forest couldn’t be beat, she’d introduced me to two new worlds. There were billions of stars in those universes. What lay there, unexplored? What other universes were out there? I had to return.
“How do I do that?” I was desperate. “Make a portal?”
“I can’t teach you that yet. You got lost in your backyard. Raynee would kill me if I let you wander in a trillion unive
rses.”
My heart stopped. “You know Raynee?”
“Of course. She’s my neighbor. Now your meadow is thirty feet that way.” She pointed at a break through the jungle, then she was gone.
11
The thought that Raynee was only a short walk away preoccupied me so much that I got lost again, which is much easier to do when there are six possible directions instead of four. Yet just when I was about to panic, I noticed a familiar spiraling tree just above me, and followed it to reach an opening to the meadow.
I stood there, gazing at the handful of clouds that barely obscured each sun, and knew then that Raynee might be sharing the same view. I was so deep in thought about her I didn’t notice Annie.
“It was kind of bright,” she said, “so I put those clouds up.”
That popped my bubble quickly.
“Could you teach me how to essonate?” I asked.
With Raynee so close, it was even more important now not to be a turnip. Despite having no clue on my first day of level zero, I had to learn these things. I was desperate to accomplish whatever would impress her.
“Essonance isn’t like resonance, dear. Your body won’t pick it up automatically. You need to work at it, and there’s a little bit of math involved.”
Something told me that “a little bit” meant a postdoctorate in physics.
“I’ll do it. Do you have any books on the math?”
“Books?”
“Is there anything I can read?”
She tried to teach me how to create a screen like they did in class, but that involved math, too, so we eventually settled for a credit card that created one for me. Annie showed me the page on creating basic wormholes with essonance, which were easier than dimensional portals. Of course, the math was completely alien to me, so we kept simplifying it until we got to differential equations, then I moved it back to calculus.
It was shocking to see lessons on calculus accompanied by drawings of various animals. Since this was the very first level of preschool, they obviously felt the need for visual aids. In truth, they helped a lot.
The first lesson was on Mr. Potter the Snowman, who wished to calculate the rate of change of his volume as he produced snowballs from himself at various speeds. Not having reached calculus in high school, it took me the entire night to comprehend the subject. Annie, for her part, tried to explain. I sympathized for her plight. It was kind of like me teaching addition to someone who had no concept of numbers.
The next day, my teacher was nice enough to arrive early to help me. Her face turned to a slight frown when I revealed that I hadn’t learned everything in the calculus text the previous night. She had hoped to finish differential equations by the evening.
“I know you’re trying,” she said while I was struggling with the integrals of trigonometric equations. “You have a bright mind, but even your classmates here in level zero have been studying this for several years now. I know you have a goal of going soon to the upper levels, but I just don’t think it’s possible.”
That evening I wanted to slam the door, run into my room, and smash something. However, there was no door, and everything I tried to resonate to the floor just stayed there. I couldn’t even throw a tantrum in this place.
Annie calmly resonated into my room and sat next to me. “I can’t imagine how hard this is for you. And it’s not your fault.”
I couldn’t hold back the tears now. This new world was wonderful, but I couldn’t stand being such an idiot.
“You’ll figure out everything eventually. It’ll just take you several years, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But then I won’t be with her!” I was a bit shocked to say it aloud.
“With Raynee? If you think she’s going to be impressed that you know how to essonate, then you clearly don’t understand her.”
“You know her?” I wiped away some tears.
“Of course. Since she was a baby. She’s had a difficult life, too, and won’t care what you know. She’s looking for all the intangible things.”
In a conversation concerning how stupid I was, I didn’t want to admit that I had no idea what intangible meant.
“There’s something else you should know.” Her face was down. “Raynee, is an exceptional girl. Even by our standards she’s smart. She’s in a special school for the gifted, called Oreca, so you’re not going to impress her on that level.”
The word “Oreca” stunned me. Could Raynee have slipped it in my pocket? Yet why would she do that? Still, I now knew where that key worked. I only needed to get there.
Of course, that was a school for the gifted, and I was an idiot. So, as far as Raynee was concerned, I was still a turnip.
The next morning, all my little classmates were more excited than usual. Their mouths were chatting a mile a second and there wasn’t even an attempt at order in the classroom.
“We’re going to play essoball!” one screamed when I asked about the commotion.
I asked another for more details and got “It’s this game to teach essonance, but we get to shoot people!”
I finally gave up and asked the teacher, who summarized the rules. The game was a bit like super-dimensional dodgeball. Players ride a flying motorcycle through different worlds, reached using dimensional portals. Players shoot essoballs at each other and teams score one point for each hit. Any single player is out after seven hits.
Immediately, I knew this would be fun for everyone but me. Without the ability to essonate, I stood no chance. My teacher smiled, then began handing out black-and-yellow gloves to the entire class. Of course, she had to specially make mine.
“What are these for?” I asked a little girl.
“They help us. They help us essonate. The bigger kids don’t have them.”
Well, that was cool. This game wasn’t sounding so bad.
“I think yours need to be turned up all the way,” she said, then fiddled with my gloves for a few seconds before handing them back to me. My confidence did not improve.
Pandemonium ensued when our teacher announced that it was time to play. They ran so fast I barely kept up with them, even though my legs were twice as long. Game central was the three-hundred-foot tall enclosed roller coaster thing in what I originally thought was a playground. It consisted of a steep ramp that ended in a near vertical plummet after which an enclosed loop dropped the rider in midair.
Other students explained that its job was simply to accelerate us in a way that made essonance easier. My mind blanked when they explained the math behind it, so I just took their word.
Our opponents showed up a moment later. They were the fifth level class, and though I was easily the tallest of the group, they towered over my teammates. Each of our opponents was staring directly at me, with a big smile.
“Wait!” one of the boys in my class said. “Is he on our team?” He was pointing at me when our teacher nodded.
“That’s no fair!” a little girl yelled. “We’re going to lose!”
Evidently their confidence in me was only slightly higher than my own. I began removing the gloves, knowing that they were right.
“Put those back on!” Alina ordered. “Jason is your teammate, so it’s your job to teach him the game.”
“But last time we only won by two points!” a blond boy yelled. “He’ll give them an easy seven.”
“Well, then, Robby,” our teacher said, “you’ll just have to watch from the sidelines.”
Now the entire class was fuming at me. Robby was our best player, and the fifth levelers were already high-fiving each other. I forced myself to remain calm. This looked like an advanced video game, and I wasn’t so bad in that department.
While we were queuing for entry, Robby approached me. He was nearly two feet shorter, but carried himself with the confidence of the finest investment banker.
“Look in the sand,” he said. “Lots of balls get stuck there.”
“Thanks for the tip.” I looked up to the devi
ce that was shooting riders at bullet speeds. “Has anyone ever died playing this?”
“Of course not. But you may throw up. Try not to look with your eyes backward. Use your resonance to see.”
I was glad that Sareya taught me to do that when I was directed to lie down inside a gray metal tube, which when shut, sealed off every bit of light. I grasped two bars, and my legs were suddenly curled around a metal body. I used resonance in the darkness to reveal I was on a sleek motorcycle-like craft with two jet engines. I smiled. This was exactly like a video game.
A few minutes later, I was no longer in a good mood. First, I threw up on the launch. That damned thing didn’t just shoot players forward. It spun me around, flipped me, then sent me backward at some thousand miles an hour until I spewed. Did those fifth-graders have any pity? No, I lost a life before I’d even wiped my mouth.
Determined to take my revenge, I soon found those little bastards were quick, and every time I thought I had one, they’d enter a wormhole and wind up behind me. Before I even managed to find a ball to fire, they’d shot me four times.
Some buzzer went off and jettisoned me into a portal: I’d been hit too many times in a row, so it sent me elsewhere. For the first time I checked out the background scenery. The previous one was just tons of green fields and blue sky, but this one was some form of desert world complete with canyon. I remembered Robbie’s advice about finding balls, and managed to grab a few before a fifth-grader blew me to oblivion.
This time I created my own portal, thanks to my new gloves, and headed out of there before they could finish me off. Now a bit panicked that I might truly cost our class the game, I devised a new plan: Get away from everyone. With their strategic wormholes, I stood no chance against these kids. This was not a video game. Those had controllers and screens. This was real.
Ahead was some city, and I pushed my ride’s throttle to max, since there would certainly be places to hide among the 10,000 skyscrapers. The downtown was a lot larger than Seattle, but otherwise it resembled any other city, with the exception of the flying cars. Also, the buildings were shinier and looked like pieces from a Picasso painting.
Soon I was among them, and the smells of street food and exotic restaurants filled my nose, and my eyes couldn’t help but admire the minute details. Every single person looked different, just like the real world. Some moved slowly, their faces indicating remorse, while others barged through the day. There were schools, pick-up hoops games, workers swarming about office buildings, and even a courthouse. And then it dawned on me.
