Jadie in Five Dimensions

by Dianne K. Salerni

  “You mean destroying Sam’s program?” Marius calls out. “We’re onto you, Miss Rose!”

  Sam wonders if his ears have failed him again. His program? Meaning, what—the video game landscape? Impossible! And surely this huge, horrifying creature is not named Miss Rose?

  “Foolish children. My project is the development of Sam’s program.”

  “It’s a game,” Sam states out loud. This makes the least sense. The fourth dimension wants his Escher-inspired game landscape?

  “Sam was hit by a car, thanks to you. How have you helped him develop anything?” Jadie challenges.

  “Sam was on the track team and would have been the school’s star sprinter. There was also a strong probability of a romance with someone on the girls’ team. It was unlikely he would receive the software program he needed for this project and even less likely that he would find time to work on it if he did.”

  “Wait. What?” Sam struggles to lift himself.

  “You didn’t let him become a track star or get the girl?” Marius sounds outraged. “You monsters!”

  “Alia was sent to destroy his computer,” Jadie says. “Then Ty. You can’t tell me that was supposed to help him. He can’t afford to replace it—right, Sam?”

  “What?” He’s repeating himself, but he’s totally lost. Who’s Alia? Isn’t that the fake name Jadie gave when they met?

  “His family cannot afford a new computer,” the being from the fourth dimension agrees. “His mother would have contacted his teacher to explain the situation. From that point, there was an eighty-nine-percent probability that the teacher would loan Sam a far superior computer so that he could complete the project faster. But Sam did not report his device broken.”

  “Because it was stolen by thugs from the fourth dimension,” Sam says. “Who’d believe me?”

  “Harsh, dude,” Marius grumbles. “C’mon, Miss Rose. This gravity sucks. You want to punish us for messing up your gambling? Fine. But don’t keep us stuck to the floor like magnets! Take us to a desert or an island and do your worst.”

  “Marius, shut up!” Jadie hisses. Sam agrees silently. He doesn’t want to get stranded in a desert or on an island!

  But this creature they call Miss Rose says, “Very well.” Long curved talons dive toward them like knives. Jadie shrieks, and Marius yelps like a hurt dog. Sam squirms, trying to get away, as sharp spikes jab his legs and arms and torso.

  Something reaches inside his damaged knee. Abandoning any attempt at bravery, Sam howls.

  26. JADIE

  “What are you doing to him?” I push myself to a kneeling position. Next to me, Marius makes it onto his hands and knees. But Sam is plastered to the ground, hollering in horror. “Stop it! Leave him alone!” Torture me, torture Marius, but not poor Sam, who’s already been through so much!

  “This cannot be hurting him,” Miss Rose says, sounding irritated. Flashes of magenta-colored crystal and flesh-toned blobs hover overhead. “He just dislikes the sensation.” The bits of Miss Rose retreat, and Sam sits up, panting heavily.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, my chest tight.

  “There were things! Poking inside me!”

  “Put some weight on your leg, Sam,” Miss Rose’s voice encourages him.

  His brow furrows in suspicion, and he glances at me. I nod because I think I know what Miss Rose has done. He gathers his legs beneath him and pushes to a squatting position. “It holds my weight!”

  “I cannot repair the ligament that was torn,” Miss Rose says. “But I have replaced it with wire on your kata side. It will never break, and it cannot be detected by any device in your world. I have also injected the three of you with a chemical that temporarily enhances your muscles. The effect will wear off as your body consumes it, but for now, you are strong enough to hold yourselves upright. Satisfied, Marius?”

  “I guess so,” Marius answers grudgingly.

  Gravity still pulls on me, so I sink into a comfortable sitting position. If this strength is going to wear off, I need to conserve my energy. The boys copy me, Sam groping at his knee like he’s trying to locate the kata-side wire.

  “I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” he says. “If you fixed my knee…”

  “She’s the reason you hurt it to begin with,” Marius reminds him.

  “I get that,” Sam says. “But if she can talk to us on Earth, why do we have to be here? Can’t she put us back in my room?”

  “No, I cannot,” Miss Rose says. “Someone removed your father from your braneworld. Until I figure out who—and where they have taken him—we must speak out of sight of others. You are in my private chamber.”

  “Wow. Can I get the number of your decorator?” Marius asks sarcastically.

  I look too, now that it doesn’t hurt my neck to move my head. The glowing light in this place pulses, like it’s coming from a fireplace. But the source isn’t visible, and in spite of the light there are many dark, unwelcoming corners. Too many corners. I stop counting after fifteen. If there’s any furniture here, I can’t see it.

  “But my mom,” Sam insists. “You can’t do this to her. If I go missing—it’ll kill her!”

  “Your mother is in a fragile state,” Miss Rose agrees. “I have every intention of returning you and your father, once I have found him. A mental collapse on your mother’s part would interfere with my plans. You three wait here. I will take care of Holly Lowell.”

  “What do you mean?” Sam pushes to his feet. “Leave her alone!”

  “I am going to help her, Sam. Inject her as I have done you, except with a chemical that will assure she wakes many hours from now rested in mind and body.” That blue eyeball swoops over them again, close enough that Sam ducks. “Stay put. If you wander off, you will not only use up your strength faster, you might get hurt.”

  “By meekers?” I haven’t forgotten that Miss Rose practically confessed to arranging that little scare.

  “By meeker traps. I dislike vermin in my residence. Think of mousetraps, except you will not see them until they snap closed.”

  Sam promptly sits down, and I pull my feet close to my body.

  The eyeball disappears. There’s a squelchy movement of flesh and the scrape of talons on stone—then nothing but the flickering light and the darkness.

  “You know that creature?” Sam asks.

  “For as long as I can remember.”

  “What the heck is she?”

  “Shh,” Marius hisses. “She might not really be gone.”

  “What are those bracelets you’re wearing? What did you mean when you said people were sent to destroy my computer? Where have you been since you were kidnapped, and why did you steal that photo album? How did you—”

  I hold up my hand. “One question at a time!”

  I explain my life as an Agent in a quick recap. The course corrections. The Transporter. The bracelets. How I accidentally discovered myself in his family portrait. “The Seers are supposed to be guiding our world toward peace and prosperity. And we’re helping. That’s what my parents—my adoptive parents—believe.”

  “But they’re not,” Marius interjects. “They’re gamblers using us for their own amusement. Our world is Las Vegas to them.”

  “Who told you that, Marius?” Blobby bits of flesh pop into sight, followed by the blue eyeball.

  Sam glares up at it. “Is my mom okay? Or were you here the whole time?”

  “Your mother is asleep and healthier than she has been in months. I flushed her body of the chemicals your human doctors have been making her ingest.” The eye rolls toward Marius. “I will ask again—who told you the Seers were gamblers playing a game with your world?”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” Marius says.

  “No, it is not true. Our actions in your braneworld are the opposite of a game.”

  “You’ve got a purpose for interfering in my life?” Sam asks. “For kidnapping my father?”

  “Your father was not supposed to disappear, Sam, and the fact
that he has could be disastrous for us all. If you want to speak in metaphors, your world is not Las Vegas. It is a petri dish in our research laboratory. We are cultivating something we need, and you and your father are supposed to be creating it for us.”

  27. JADIE

  Miss Rose’s explanation makes more sense than anything I’ve heard so far, but Marius sputters indignantly, and Sam exclaims, “A petri dish? Like, you want to make penicillin, and we’re the mold?”

  “I rank you above mold, Sam. Your intellect is essential to our plan.”

  “What part of your experiment called for me being kidnapped?” I ask. “If you want us to trust you, tell me the truth. Why did I have to become an Agent?”

  Miss Rose makes a sound like a sigh. “You were never supposed to be an Agent, Jadie. You were supposed to die.”

  It’s like she slapped me. My head spins; everything swirls and starts to go black. The only reason I don’t fall over is because Marius wraps his arm around my shoulders, his warmth soaking into my numbness.

  Miss Rose speaks calmly. “Eli Lowell was entering his doctoral program and scheduled to take the wrong courses. He would never have formulated a workable unified theory schooled by the professors he had been assigned. The Seers believed a personal tragedy would delay his education by a year or more, which would put him back on target. The youngest child was chosen to die, because the loss of his wife would prevent him from going back to school at all and his son was integral to our plan.”

  “Monsters,” Marius whispers. “You really are monsters.”

  “The recent unemployment of Sam’s parents was also planned,” Miss Rose continues. “It gave him the motivation to work on this program. Additionally, it provided Dr. Lowell with uninterrupted time to work on his mathematical theories. Every event that you perceive as bad for the Lowell family was in fact purposeful for us.”

  Beside me, Sam moans, his hands on the back of his head. “Mom was right. She said someone was out to get our family. She wasn’t paranoid. She was right.”

  Expressions of outrage lodge in my throat. For years I believed my birth parents threw me away while the Seers thought I was worth saving. Even after I found out the Seers had deceived me—that I was kidnapped, not abandoned—I assumed it was because they wanted me.

  But they didn’t. They tried to kill me so my father would take a different set of college classes. My body shivers violently, and Marius tightens his arm.

  “The Seers have no emotional attachment to creatures in the braneworlds. They do not work directly with humans or any other species they study.” Miss Rose pauses. “I am the one who arranged for Jadie to be saved. My Agent Becca Martin wanted a child. I gave her one that was otherwise slated to die.”

  “Why couldn’t you hire my dad to do what you wanted?” Sam asks. “You’ve got these Agents working for you. Why didn’t you contact him like you did them and ask him to do what you wanted?” His voice rises to a shout. “Maybe that would’ve worked better than killing off members of his family. Did you ever think of that?”

  “We tried it that way with other scientists—eight times—and failed. The last time we worked directly with a physicist, his wife became convinced he was conspiring with enemy spies. She reported him to her government, and he was executed before we could intervene. Do you want to know what is really hidden in Area 51 of Roswell, New Mexico? A prototype of the Transporter confiscated by the US government from scientists who were working for us. We get better results acting indirectly through human operatives with no understanding of our true goals but who believe they are saving the world.”

  “As long as you don’t care about killing babies,” Sam growls.

  “I did not let that baby die,” Miss Rose points out. “She is sitting next to you. I am telling you the truth about it now because you need to understand: I am the only friend you have in 4-space.”

  I lift my head, looking at Sam and Marius in turn. My feelings are mirrored on their faces. The three of us are stuck in a place where we can barely function, at the mercy of a bizarre creature who might be the only thing keeping us alive.

  I can’t fall apart now. Sucking in a lungful of air, I choose to see past the plan for my own demise. Breathe, think, and then act. Play smart. “This thing you need, that the Seers would’ve killed me for, so Sam and his dad would invent it in the future,” I say. “It’s a computer program, right? Why do you need a program that lets us see in your dimension?”

  “That is not our goal,” Miss Rose replies. “It will not operate in this dimension anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “The physical laws here are different,” Sam cuts in. “Right? The gravity. The way sound travels. Electromagnetism must be different too. I’ll bet electricity doesn’t work here. I mean, this place is lit by firelight, isn’t it?”

  “Very good, Sam.” Miss Rose practically purrs. “The nature of gravity and electromagnetism changes at the transition point between your braneworld and ours. The Transporter is the outer limit of any physical laws you would recognize, and electricity as an energy source does not exist here.”

  “Then why do you care about the program?” Marius asks.

  “Do you remember the Belvedere drawing by Escher? What did I teach you about that?”

  Marius looks panicked, like he’s been called on in class without warning, but I remember the lesson. “You can sketch that building on paper, though you could never build it in three dimensions. But in 4-space…”

  “That is correct. The Belvedere could be built here.”

  “So,” Sam says, reasoning it out. “Computers that work in a three-dimensional universe are useless in the fourth because electricity is impossible here. But if physical properties alternate between dimensions—in a fifth dimension, electricity should work.”

  “Fifth dimension?” repeats Marius. “There’s a fifth dimension?”

  Sam leans around me and says to Marius, “My dad says there’s at least eleven.”

  “You are correct. Physical forces such as gravity and electromagnetism behave similarly in alternating dimensions.” Miss Rose explains. “Even-numbered dimensions are dismally alike—crushed by gravity with no way to generate energy from electrons—while odd-numbered dimensions are full of potential. We can use human technology in 5-space, except that we are as blind there as you are here. If we could see well enough to construct a Transporter there, it would solve limitations of transportation caused by the gravity here. But my clianthh has more ambition than that. We want to colonize the fifth dimension, much like humans would like to colonize your moon or the planet Mars. In 5-space, my people could evolve, physiologically and technologically. When this clianthh was founded, we gave ourselves the name Aallhoassha—which loosely translates to ‘Skybound’—with that goal in mind.”

  “What’s a clithith…?” Marius imitates the word.

  “Clianthh. You have no word for such an association. We are not a company, because we are not paid employees. We have a strict hierarchy of labor—Seers, Technicians, and Drones—and we communicate chemically, similar to a hive in your world. But we do not have a communal mind or a queen. The closest concept you have is a clan, although members of a clianthh are not genetically related. Our clianthh acquired your braneworld, along with several others, to research and develop what we cannot create here in 4-space.”

  I take the Seers’ plan to murder me pretty personally, but that last statement demonstrates how little my life or death means to them. Humans are lab specimens under a microscope. The whole thing is almost too horrifying to take in, but I know we’re lucky Miss Rose is explaining herself instead of squishing us and starting over with a new batch of mold.

  “Marius,” Miss Rose asks, “are you ready to tell me who gave you false information about the Seers? Because you must realize by now, whoever it was has taken Dr. Lowell.”

  Marius looks guiltily at Sam. “Dave and Steve. They call themselves Resisters and said they want to save our world fro
m the Seers. Their real names are something like Daffid and Shteffy. But longer than that.”

  “Dhaffyidhre and Shteffrynha?”

  “Maybe. You know them?”

  Miss Rose’s eyeball withdraws. Ripples of her body move back and forth. Her talons click on the stone floor. “No,” she says finally. “This is worse than I anticipated. Those words mean Darkness and Storm in our language. It is the name of a rival clianthh. I thought Dr. Lowell had been hidden by another Skybound Technician who wanted to coerce him into finishing the mathematics and claim credit for my project. That would be irksome to me but not dire to your father or our clianthh. However, if these individuals are calling themselves Darkness and Storm, we have been infiltrated by something much worse.”

  “Like what?” I demand. “Who has Sam’s dad?”

  “Intruders. Spies and thieves. If they cannot steal what they want, they will destroy the experiment to make sure Skybound does not have it.”

  I swallow. “Destroy the experiment. You mean the computer program, Sam’s dad, or our world?”

  “As many of those as they can get away with.”

  28. JADIE

  Her prediction flattens us more thoroughly than fourth- dimensional gravity. After a horrified moment of silence, Sam exclaims, “You can find them, right? Before they hurt my dad or—”

  Destroy the earth. Sam doesn’t say it. Is it possible? There’s only two of them.

  Miss Rose hesitates longer than I like and sounds uncertain when she does answer. “I intend to try. The stakes are high for me personally and disastrous for my clianthh. The problem will be identifying these spies when technically they should not exist.”

  A hand the size of a pony slams down in front of us. My skin crawls at the sight. It has six fingers with far too many joints bending in ways that don’t make sense. But what I think Miss Rose wants us to see is the spiky magenta-colored stone embedded in her skin, the same stone I saw hovering above me when I was stranded in 4-space, and the same stone from the ring on Miss Rose’s three-dimensional avatar.