The Paramount Dimension

by Joseph Calev

  I exited the ship and felt the gravitational waves vibrating into me. It was the song of the end of entire planets and civilizations. Yet just like anything in this universe, it could be manipulated. If I changed it just right, I could use it to send a message.

  “Algard,” I said through twisting the black hole, “I have your badge with key.”

  No more than a few seconds passed before one star of the many brightened. Just as the Khan had said, Algard was listening. Here was my beacon.

  A few moments later, I was parked in front of what appeared to be your standard high school built on its own artificial moon, with the purple hue of a nearby nebula dominating the sky, in a universe built explicitly for it.

  A disheveled man with a wide mustache and gray suit stood outside the school. Another professor, heavyset and dark in complexion, was next to him. Without a word, they ushered me into a bright room.

  He gave me his hand. “Algard,” he said, then allowed an uncomfortable pause. Then: “We know who you are, Jason. Your story has been most interesting, but this place is not for you.”

  “So, you know who my parents are?”

  “No,” the other said. “We know as much as you, but like you are curious for more.” He reached out his hand. “I’m Darstan, by the way.”

  I happily shook it, then remembered why I was there. “I’d like to enroll at your school.”

  They both laughed, with Darstan slapping me on the shoulder. “You’ve barely learned wormholes. Go through the levels, and maybe we’ll see you in a few years.”

  “But I found your school.”

  “True,” Algard replied. “You have promise, I’ll give you that. But there’s simply too much you don’t know. You’re better off where you are.”

  They both stood.

  “Now, we don’t need to be rude,” Algard said, “but you can imagine we’re quite busy here. It was a pleasure meeting you, Jason. I’m sure our paths will meet again.”

  This wasn’t going as I planned. There was only one hope now. “I have this for you.” I flung the badge with key onto the table.

  They both sat and stared at me with an eerie silence.

  “Am I supposed to be impressed?” Algard asked.

  Darstan laughed and tossed an identical badge on the table. “I have one of those, too.”

  “But, I thought Mordriss took yours?”

  I did not expect to suddenly be a pancake on the wall behind me. In one blast of resonance, I was thrown there, while Algard approached with a frown.

  “That’s a very strong accusation. And who led you to believe this? Tell the truth, now. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  “I accidentally orasated Sareya. It wasn’t on purpose but . . . I saw Mordriss kill her parents after mentioning this. He said you lost it.”

  The resonance blast ended, and I fell toward the floor, then predictably wound up on the ceiling. Algard lifted my badge.

  “This artifact has no purpose.” He pulled out the key. “Have you seen any doors here? There’s nothing to unlock, and were there a need anyone could easily avalate the key. As a prospective student, you should know that.”

  “None of this makes any sense!” I buried my head into my hands. “I don’t know anything. Who put me on Earth? Why didn’t I grow up here? Where are my actual parents? It’s not just that I’m desperate to go to school here. I need help. I need answers.”

  Algard motioned to Darstan, and the two resonated outside. They must have placed some resonation shield up, because I had no chance of overhearing them. After five minutes that felt like eons, they returned. Algard had a smug look, while Darstan appeared most displeased.

  “Very well, Jason,” Algard said with his hands at his sides. “You’ve shown some aptitude in finding us, but I warn you that this school is of a level for which you’re completely unprepared. Most likely, your determination is about to destroy you. Yet, I feel there’s a tiny probability you’ll prove truly special. We’ll just have to see.”

  I stayed seated, still unsure what he was saying.

  “Welcome to Oreca Gifted, Jason. You will receive no mercy here.”

  18

  Algard handed me a homing signal that enabled my ship to find the school easier the next time, and I floated out of the school and into my wormhole as if in a dream. Had I finally managed it? I’d enrolled in the most prestigious school in the universe!

  Instead of Annie, a quintet of the spotted rodents greeted me on the other side.

  “Hey asshole, do you have any more of those fucking beans?”

  I was still in so much of a stupor, that I failed to notice their language.

  “Uh, yeah.” I lumbered inside, still in a trance.

  When I handed them a healthy pile of beans along with a few other fruits and vegetables, the largest one approached me, his mouth nearly full.

  “So, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “I just got into the best school in the world!” My eyes were toward the sky.

  “Oh, fuck!”

  “Yeah, I know. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “Fuck, no.” He finished the last bean. “You’re a fucking moron. They’re going to kill you, and then we won’t have any more fucking food.”

  My stupor ended. “Why do you swear so much?”

  “We don’t swear, you rotting dingleberry. You’re just too much of a shit fucked idiot to fix your translator.”

  They disappeared, so I resonated inside to find Annie.

  “I got in!”

  She nodded, but didn’t seem overly excited. When I said we’d discuss it over dinner, she replied that we’d just eaten only minutes ago. In all my excitement, I hadn’t kept track of the time change. Due to the wormhole, barely a few minutes had actually passed. In some ways, this made school even more exciting. Little of the day would be wasted. Then I remembered her ship. I’d left it at school.

  “Don’t worry about that, dear. You’ll see it tomorrow.”

  It felt completely alien to be so enthusiastic for a school day, but that was my state. I promised to tell her something about cenosance when I learned it, but she advised me to spend less time celebrating and more reading up on things like avalance.

  The next day, I clapped the suns on, wolfed down two lammas, and found the credit card ship awaiting me in the living room. I paused for a moment to consider how it came back, but for all I knew she created a new one. Maybe there was some planet by the school, full of discarded ships. Regardless, I was too excited to dwell on needless details like those. I applied my homing signal, and in an instant I was cruising next to that familiar purple nebula.

  A crowd of students was already walking in, so I quickly joined them. When I smiled at everyone, I received frowns in return. There were a few whispers out of my reach, and none bothered to look my way. I didn’t see Raynee, but she was probably already inside. Algard stood in the hallway with a grim look.

  “Advanced resonance,” he said when I passed. “Resonate below us. Take a right.”

  My day was already starting well. Of all the forces, resonance was the easiest. In fact, I’d already demonstrated it quite well in finding the school. I was ready.

  I mistook my first professor for a Halloween decoration. With her long gray hair and gaunt face, I foolishly looked for what held it up when her mouth opened.

  “Sit down, Jason,” she creaked without once blinking or moving her eyes.

  True to form, the room’s seats existed on both walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Still not comfortable hanging like a bat, I grabbed a spot near the front on the floor, and when the class was seated, I looked around again for Raynee. She wasn’t there, and though almost everyone was chatting among themselves, no one acknowledged me.

  “Resonance,” she began with her hoarse voice. “Is our only innate force. That, of course, makes it the most difficult to master.”

  She threw a slew of equations across the board, but it could have been ancient Armenian for all I knew. Other
students were nodding or furiously annotating things across their screens, which operated off neither keyboards nor voice but were instead directed from the mind. I had nothing, not even a clue of what she was discussing.

  “Jason!” The entire class stopped. “Do you already know this?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  There was a chorus of giggles.

  “My name is not ‘ma’am’! It is Fantasa!” Her emphasis was on the second syllable. “Now, explain the Heborean Principle of the Quantum Median, so I may gauge your level.”

  I slowly shook my head. “I’m sorry . . . Fantasa. I don’t know that.”

  A force suddenly constricted me on all sides, and my seat was rapidly thrown to the back of the class. Another student hurriedly moved forward to the empty place.

  “I will waste no more time on you this session. You will receive zero points today. Understand that I expect a certain pace from my students, and if you cannot keep up then I have no use for you.”

  “Stupid turnip,” a boy just in front of me muttered.

  I sighed, then remembered my first day of level zero. Then too I’d felt out of place. This was all temporary. Considering that, I did my best to concentrate on the lesson, but the math was unlike any I’d ever seen. Maybe she was just enumerating something I already knew? Wouldn’t that show her! Ignoring the ancient Armenian, I anxiously awaited the demo.

  Just when I was nearly asleep, the entire front wall disintegrated and the room around us moved forward. The nebula roared over us as our classroom-now-spaceship sped toward it. Around me, everything grew cold and my lungs were straining. Desperately, I tried to relax and recall Sareya’s lesson, but this wasn’t an alternate dimension. We were still in the paramount dimension, and there was no air here.

  While I wobbled and shook, Fantasa pointed at a thin blond girl, who promptly stood at attention. With her hand held straight out, she stared directly toward the heavens and . . . a star began to move. I wasn’t quite sure of things, since my hands were at my throat and my body was tumbling off the side of our class-ship. Visions of my future as a lifeless frozen popsicle drifting through space flew through my head.

  Fantasa groaned.

  “Minus ten points, Jason!” After a snap of her fingers I was back in the school. The chairs were gone and the wall was still open, but I was breathing and alive again. I was also the only student there. This wasn’t a good start. Algard stood behind me.

  “Back so soon?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Avalance of Biologics. Top floor. In the corner. And don’t resonate through the other classes in session.”

  The latter proved difficult. When I closed my eyes and sensed around me, every single room had a class and there were no hallways. Then I figured it out. Since the class was in the corner, I only needed to walk through the open wall and resonate up to the next level. However, the outside wall was resonated closed.

  Those jerks! How was I supposed to get anywhere? Maybe they just wanted my life to be difficult? Resigned that there was no easier way, I found a route that only traversed two classes and began my journey. Raynee was in the first class.

  Upon seeing me inch across the front of the classroom, though I had thought for sure it was the back, she shook her head and then covered it with her arms. Realizing that I’d stopped to look, I bypassed the evil glares and ran through the next class, where the professor shouted at me to stop.

  Knowing any discussion would cost me points, I bolted through the wall, which promptly resonated closed with my foot still stuck in the other room. Raucous laughter rang out while my mouth kissed the floor. I struggled to bring my foot in, but there was no use.

  Algard stood before me, the cuffs of his pants meeting my eyes.

  “And why exactly is your foot in one room, and you’re in this one?”

  “You resonated the outside closed! I tried not to disturb anyone, and the teacher told me to stop and I didn’t.”

  “And what did I order you to do?”

  “Not disturb any other classes, but—”

  “No. I told you not to disturb any classes in session! The exercise was simple. You only needed to wait for them to end.”

  “Oh.” That had been an easy one.

  “Minus ten points for each class you disturbed, and minus fifty points for disregarding the explicit orders of a professor to stop!”

  “So, how many points do I have?” I was near crying.

  “You received no points for your lesson today, because you were not prepared. You are therefore at negative eighty points. At negative one hundred points, you are expelled.”

  This was the worst day of my life. There was zero possibility of receiving any more credits today from knowledge, so I just had to concentrate on not screwing up. Unfortunately, that seemed nearly impossible.

  “I’m sorry, Algard,” was all I could muster.

  He opened his palm and the wall released my foot. I was still sprawled across the floor. He kneeled down to me.

  “Don’t do this. Once you’re expelled, it’s forever. Take this lesson to heart, and return to your school. Then come see us again when you’ve completed level ten, like the rest of the students.”

  The offer was enticing. One more mistake, and I could never enter these hallowed walls again. My teacher had already said I would soon move to level one. Perhaps I could traverse the other levels just as quickly. I stood, and Algard smiled at me.

  “Your offer makes a lot of sense, but I just don’t think it’s right.”

  “You’re a bright boy. You just need more time.”

  He was almost certainly right, but something told me I didn’t have that amount of time. Mysteries awaited me: my parents, Mordriss. They weren’t likely to wait long.

  “I’m very sorry, but I need to do this.”

  “Such a disappointment,” he muttered, then walked off.

  Raynee was in the next class. Seeing me at the back, she turned and found the geometrically farthest place away, at the top of the classroom in the opposite corner. Her eyes caught mine once, and they were filled with hatred. I gulped, but then remembered that the tiniest of errors now met expulsion.

  Our teacher entered. Aviana, much younger than Fantasa the funeral caretaker, was barely in her thirties with long braided brown hair. She had glowering eyes, however, and the mean look of someone not to trifle with.

  The lesson began and again there were strange mathematics. This time I swore they were Sumerian, but rather than stare, I opened my screen and frantically searched for the meaning of each symbol. I had little chance to actually understand what she was teaching, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t learn anything.

  Each symbol was agonizingly complex, requiring many nested searches just to begin comprehension. She moved so quickly that I failed to look up nine out of ten of them, but at the very least she wasn’t calling on me.

  After forty-five minutes of Sumerian, she instructed us to create a portal to a specific dimension. That, at least, I could do. The universe was plain, with a flat brown surface that extended out of vision in every direction. Everything else was black.

  “Let’s start simple,” she proclaimed. “Each of you shall avalate a dimorphed viasile.”

  I considered raising my hand and asking what the hell that was, but instead I bit my tongue and waited for the first student to succeed. It was a six-inch plain brown slug. The problem was, I had no idea how to create anything with avalation.

  My sole goal had been to avoid destroying things. Though I’d witnessed Raynee create everything from pink leopards to spaceships to an amazing car, I was incapable of creating anything. I breathed deeply. This couldn’t be so hard.

  Avalation was simply the rearrangement of particles into something else. So instead of avalating things away from me, I had to put particles together. But where would I find the right ones?

  I’d read texts on avalation. I remembered them for a basic cube. The correct particles were all around me.
Slowly, over the next few minutes, I pieced them together and glowed when a tiny brown cube appeared on my palm.

  “That’s not a dimorphed viasile,” Aviana proclaimed while I proudly cradled my cube.

  “No, it isn’t. I paid attention during your lesson, but I don’t know how to make one. I did avalate this for the first time I avalated anything.”

  She looked down at my pitiful cube, and I grimaced in anticipation of losing points. As long as she didn’t dock twenty or more, I was still alive.

  “Every other student was capable of far more before matriculating here.”

  “Yes. I understand that.”

  “You have not demonstrated any understanding of the material I presented today, so you will not receive the ten points due.”

  “Yes, Aviana.” I was at full attention.

  “But you did not disturb our class with your failure. You paid attention, and attempted to understand. I will therefore give you one point for this lame cube. Make sure to review tonight everything I covered today. I will not be as generous tomorrow.”

  I searched for Raynee’s approval, but she kept her head turned away. Aviana looked to follow my gaze, but I quickly turned back to her and smiled. One point was a start.

  Next up was lunch. I prayed that there was no way to lose points here. All I had to do was get my food and eat it.

  “So, what’s the deal, Turnip?” asked a tall, redheaded kid with a voracious strain of freckles.

  My eyes scanned side to side in the vain hope he didn’t mean me. There was no one else at my table.

  “I’m not a turnip,” I replied with my eyes down.

  My food splattered and a force lifted me from the table and held me in midair. It was some form of resonation, but I was now pinned there, unable to move. From all around and above me I heard every student roar in laughter.

  “I give you the turnip!” The kid glared at me. “Now get out of here, and stop wasting our time.”