Chapter 1
The Oberheim OB-Xa synthesizer that marked the beginning of Van Halen’s Jump echoed throughout the private workstation of Abram Guy. The President and CEO of Guy Technologies took a few steps away from the big black and blocky record player once the sound of drums announced themselves through the speakers. Bobbing his head to the upbeat rhythm of the song’s unique sound of 80’s hard rock and pop of the same era, Abram placed on his hands a pair of welding gloves over the course of the song’s intro. Soon he turned around in a stylized spin, stopping with his back to the rather retro stereo system while awkwardly moving to the beat of the music. With no one around to look at him strangely or to question any of his current actions, Abram was free to be as much of a fool as he wanted to.
With that said, he sang along with the first verse.
He continued to sing, dance and strut around his work station on beat with the song as he gathered the necessary essentials to put his current outfit to good use. His poise resembled that of lead men in rock bands from the same era of the song he was playing, with the provocative sways and the gyration of the hips. Even his facial expressions matched the playful mood the upbeat song had placed him in. Soon, he found himself sliding back in front of the stereo system upon the bridge of the first verse, stopping in a forward lean on the left side of his body.
He held an unlit welding torch in his left hand and proceeded to pretend it was a microphone. A welding helmet was held in his right, and was pointed toward the system in the midst of his current position. He sang with great gusto before returning to an upright stance to put on his helmet, his face becoming less intense and more playful as he withdrew his right arm in an attempt to place the strap of the helmet securely on his face. He bent back a bit as he continued to hold the end of the mask securely in the grip of his gloved right hand, in order to successfully sing the last part of the bridge before letting it cover his face.
He did so at the drop of the beat, then proceeded to light the torch he recently used as a microphone. He took long strides – to the beat of the song, of course – across the length of the work space, making himself look all the more awkward and amusing in the process. He was approaching what looked to be a gated off section of the station, containing a giant object in the center. It stood about four feet tall, with four sides and resembling the shape of a pyramid. Two of the visible sides were covered in a rather thick sheet metal, while the other two sides were exposing wires, motherboards, computer chips and other software and hardware that one couldn’t even begin to describe.
However in the midst of one of the unprotected sides of the pyramid, a metal circle of good size sat in the middle. A light blue colored light emitted itself from its center, slowly fading in and out as if it were a home computer on a mode of hibernation. Two sheets of the same thickened metal lay next to the contraption, pre-cut to make room for the metal circle. Abram found himself taking hold of one of these two pieces upon his arrival to the sectioned off area as he continued to physically display his love for the song playing in the background, preparing to place it on its significant spot on the pyramid in order to cover the exposed components inside.
That is, until the song stopped playing.
Abram immediately let go of the sheet, shaking his head and yelping simultaneously as he turned off the torch in his hand. He took off his helmet as he revealed his face to be writhing in pain, or so it seemed.
“Ah!” he said with clenched eyes and grit teeth as he covered his ears with his gloved hands. “That – That noise! What the devil’s that noise?!”
“It’s called quiet, Abbot,” answered Duke.
Abram stopped pretending to be in immense amounts of pain and opened his eyes. He saw his childhood friend and personal assistant standing by his large stereo system with the vinyl that was once playing throughout his workstation held in his right hand. He had a subtle yet mildly aggravated expression on his face, in which Abram challenged by scrunching his own and pointing his unlit torch his way.
“Hey, you know better than to mess with my Van Halen, Duke,” Abram responded. “You don’t see me messing with your Luther Vandross or your, uh…your Kenny G…”
“…Implying that’s all people my age listen to?” Duke asked with a roll of his eyes as he carefully approached his employer.
“Well,” Abram said eccentrically, “21st Century aside, that’s the one demographic fact about middle-aged African Americans that hasn’t really changed in the past twenty years, save the big-hatted church mothers that listen to A.M. radio all the time.” He gave Duke a witty smile. “Unless you fall into that category that is…”
Duke’s expression stayed the same, causing Abram’s own to slowly become more somber.
“Tha-That was a joke…”
“I know,” Duke said, still refusing to change his expression.
Abram responded with an upturned lip and a raised eyebrow.
“You scare me sometimes, man…”
Duke smiled. “Good,” he said before nodding at the four foot tall pyramid behind Abram. “I take it that’s what you blew Sarah off for tonight?”
“Hey, I didn’t blow my date off with Sarah,” Abram said as he pointed the torch at Duke, who in turn backed away upon instinct of it being so close. “We had lunch today to make up for me having to cancel and it was nice, romantic, uh…fruit was involved…and all that other…stuff…”
Abram once again found himself frozen by Duke’s unimpressed stare, limited only to blinking for mere seconds.
“…But yes,” Abram continued as he clasped his gloved hands together, willing himself out of Duke’s invisible hold in order to turn around and face the machine. “I remembered you telling me a week ago that I hadn’t physically made anything spectacular since I made the Skeleton Key. This is the result of me accepting your challenge.”
Duke stood next to Abram in order to get a better look at the half-covered machine and raised an eyebrow as a result.
“…So are you going to tell me what it does,” Duke asked, “or am I supposed to guess?”
“I call it a Pyratope,” Abram informed, looking at Duke with a giddy grin on his face. “It’s a dimension machine. Brilliant, right?”
Duke sighed. “I guess that means I have to guess what it is…”
“…Right,” Abram said as he prepared to explain himself. “The Kaluza-Klein theory informs us that the universe consists of five-dimensional space; three dimensions of space where objects and events happen with direction and relative position, one dimension where time and relativity coexist and another where gravity and the electromagnetic force originate. This machine allows me to take from the infinite amount of all these factors that came into play when establishing this prime dimension we all reside in and using them to create my own within our universe! With this machine, I can create whole new worlds!”
“…But can’t you already do that to a certain extent with your Skeleton Key?” Duke asked. “I mean, you can use it to compress this dimension in on itself in order to have a random doorway connect to the 70th floor of the Empire State building; even have them lead you to pocket dimensions to store all your junk in…”
“Well, yeah,” Abram said in a cheeky tone, “but that’s beside the point. The point is that I did all of this without any help of the Skeleton Key, like…at all. I did the math myself. I made the software and the hardware myself. Not a single bit of technology in this pyramid has been unlocked by my Skeleton Key. This is all me, Duke. All me…”
Duke narrowed his eyes as he glanced Abram’s way. “So you mean to tell me that you created a machine that generates alternate physical dimensions without the use of your Skeleton Key…” he said with suspicion in his voice.
“Should I get the lie detector brick?1” he asked with great confidence, sporting on his face the closest thing he could get to an innocent look as he pointed to the door behind him.
Duke gave the Guy another unimpressed glance before looking the pyramid�
�s way once again. The assistant began to look at the almost finished machine with a different light, folding his arms and gave it more of a thorough view.
“…Can you create landscapes and forces of nature?” he asked.
“As simple as writing a computer program,” Abram gloated.
“What’s it powered by?”
“Oh, a little something that fell into my lap during my trip to the Michigan branch of the company,2” Abram informed. “A bit of nanotech that I’m having a few people upstairs take a gander at while I test drive it in this bad boy, and I tell you, Duke; its working wonders as far as self-efficiency…”
“How about storage?” Duke asked, glancing Abram’s way. “Can you put things from our dimension into the dimensions you create with this machine?”
Abram pointed to the metallic circle with the light blue light fading in and out from within. “That light projects a makeshift portal into whatever dimension I create through this machine,” he informed. “Save my Skeleton Key, the portal emitted from the Pyratope is the only way in or out of any dimension it generates.”
“So what happens if the machine’s destroyed?” Duke asked. “What happens to the dimensions?”
“Nothing,” Abram answered. “They’re all hard-wired into the universe upon their creation; the Pyratope just keeps record that it generated them and keeps track of the
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