Life In The Tesseract

"Exactly! The evidence suggests an extraordinary ability by agents unknown to kidnap people and then cover their tracks. Even the secret service is interested in this. In agreement with the Morningstar executive board, I plan to have a 24/7 rapid response team based on both the top and bottom floors of the MCT, and extensive monitoring of the video feeds. If it happened once, it may happen again. And the next time gentlemen, whoever is doing this is not going to get away with it!"

Chapter 4.

"Nice shooting, Matt! That makes five games to three, your lead." Kathy and Matt were just starting the third week of their honeymoon, and had started shooting 4-D pool after breakfast. Matt had just won the latest game, sinking the last 27 balls in a row.

"I would never have guessed that playing this game would have become so easy in just two weeks," said Matt. "We're both at a point now where one shooting error by either of us usually lets the other run the table. I still love the 5-D chess board you made in Manufacturing, though. Man, what a challenge! Taking that quantum cleansing treatment with you did more than just make DNA repairs. My mind and body feel superb! We're both Olympic athletes now, maybe better. I saw you do your 10 mile run on the treadmill yesterday in less than 40 minutes…. You are so beautiful when you're exercising…"

"Thanks. I like to watch you when you're working out too, you look so sexy… Matt, have you noticed something while shooting pool? I find myself not wanting to rotate the board, I find myself wanting to rotate me! This probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense…"

"No, it makes a lot of sense. I feel the same urge, that I can get in position for the shot much faster by… By what? By taking a step… By taking a 4-D step… I can feel it. Feel it in my balance…"

"Me too! Well put! I didn't know how to describe it, you did great. Matt, I want to try to take a 4-D step. It seems so natural. Will you watch me when I do? Help me if I need help?"

"Sure, want to do it now?"

"Yep. Here goes!"

Kathy popped from view, instantaneously appearing on the other side of the pool table, in the correct position for her opening shot.

"Wow! Try it, Matt! It's easier than walking!"

Matt popped into view by Kathy's side a second later. "Unbelievable! This is so easy! Let's try somewhere else! I'm thinking of standing by our bed…"

He popped out of sight. Kathy thought about the Bedroom too, and was standing next to Matt a second later. "My gosh, Matt! We can teleport! The entity gave us the power to teleport! That's what it meant, when it said the decision to go back to Earth had already been transferred. What an incredible gift!"

"Can we go back to Earth now, do you think? Can we return here if we do?"

"I don't know. This is going to take some experimenting… Are there any restrictions at all to where we can jump? I remembered a clear picture in my mind of this spot by the bed. It felt important to have that clear picture before I jumped. Let me try to jump to the northwest corner of the Gym, I've never really wandered into that area…"

Kathy concentrated a few moments. "Nothing, I can't do it. Now let me try the Gym room by the cross trainer." Kathy popped from Matt's view. She returned about 10 seconds later. "Interesting. I just spent a few moments staring at the northwest corner of the Gym; I think I have a visual lock on it. Let me try again." Kathy popped from view. Matt popped into the Gym a few seconds later.

"It worked!" said Kathy. "Having a clear visual image of your destination is critical."

"The gravitational entanglement," said Matt. "It's letting us fold space, creating a tunnel between the origin and destination points. It's letting us pop through from one point to the next."

"But what if you were attached to something, Matt? What if you were, I don't know, handcuffed to a railing or something?"

"Wow, that's a really good point… Hold me, and I'll try to teleport into the Living room."

Kathy held onto Matt, Matt tried to teleport, and succeeded, feeling a brief sharp pull on his body when he did. Kathy joined him in the Living room a few seconds later.

"Sorry, Matt. You were like a bar of soap. I couldn't hang on. Let me get a really good grip!" Kathy jumped on Matt's back, locked her legs around his hips, and crossed her arms around his chest. "Wow, this feels kind of sexy! Try again, Matt."

Matt jumped into Kitchen, with Kathy still on his back. "Ah, interesting" Kathy said, as she dismounted. "Matt, can I meet you in the Entrance Hall? I'll be there in a few minutes."

Kathy walked south into the Entrance Hall a few minutes later from Manufacturing, carrying a pair of handcuffs with keys. "I thought I'd walk for the exercise. Jumping all the time seems a bit decadent. Here, Matt, will you hold the key?" Kathy locked her wrist to the spiral staircase. "I'm going to try to jump to the Kitchen now."

Matt blinked as his eyes lost focus on Kathy for an instant. Then Kathy was before him with tears in her eyes. "Ouch, ouch, ouch! Oh Matt, unlock me please!"

Matt spent the next several minutes rubbing Kathy's sore shoulder. "I could see it, Matt. For an instant I could see the Kitchen. And then I was yanked back here. We'll have to remember this. Being chained to something takes away our ability to teleport…" Kathy stared at the spiral staircase she had just been chained to. "You know, there's something about this I don't understand. It reminds me of a dream I had about a bowling ball last night…"

Kathy climbed two stairs of the staircase, and then hopped off. Just before she hit the floor, she teleported to Matt's side, standing erect and still. She then climbed 5 steps, and repeated the maneuver. She finally climbed up 40 feet, near the ceiling, and leaped off, falling rapidly and teleporting to Matt's side just before crashing into the floor. She looked up to him and said, "How does this work? It reminds me of my dream, where I start rolling a bowling ball down the staircase. After 4 flights, it's moving fast and back to where it started. What would happen if we just let it keep falling? Where's all that energy coming from? Where's the energy go when I jump and stand by your side, instead of crashing into the floor…"

"I'm not sure. I remember my college physics though. It was a standard joke in Cambridge that the Harvard students couldn't count, and the MIT students couldn't read. But I actually liked my physics classes. If I remember correctly, the proofs for the conservation of momentum and energy really are just empirical observations. Perhaps in 4-D, it's just not the case, or perhaps the momentum and energy are getting exchanged with something we don't know about yet. You're right though, we should think about the implications of this. For example, can we teleport into a moving car or plane? What frame of reference will our velocity synch to? It's something we should explore sometime…"

"Matt, I feel I can jump back to Earth. Somehow I feel the push will be more difficult, but I still think I can do it. How about you?"

"I think so too. I have a clear picture in my mind of my apartment, my office, I feel I could just take a 4-D step and be there…"

"I feel the same way about my apartment. I feel I could also step back to a lot of places at Mount Holyoke. I have a firm visual lock on a lot of places there... It would be nice to stick together, though. I could try riding you again, letting you do all the work. For our first jump outside the tesseract, though, I'd feel safer if we were both under our own power…"

"I feel the same way. Do you remember my office well enough to jump to it?"

"No."

"How about the Top Of The Morning?"

"Maybe… Well, maybe not. But I do have a very good visual lock on that janitor closet, right by that narrow hall we went into…"

"Yeah, I do too. My watch says the time in Chicago is… 3:45 AM. Wow, we really have drifted away from Chicago time… Should we try jumping there?"

"I don't want to abandon the entity, Matt. Will we be able to jump back here?"

"I think so… I'm not sure… I do have a good visual lock on a lot of places here. I think I could jump back. Actually, I think jumping here is very easy for some reason… I would also guess the entity has the power find us on Earth, if it wanted to..."

"Okay, Matt. Let's try to jump back to the hall outside the janitor closet together. Wait! First let's get our wallets and things, and the clothes we had on when we first entered the escalators."

A short while later, they were ready to make their first jump out of the tesseract. "Hold my hand, Matt? On three. One. Two. Three!"

An instant later Kathy and Matt were standing by the janitor closet, on the top floor of the MCT. "Wow, Matt, we made it! It's been a month but we made it! Look! There's just a blank wall here now where that narrow corridor used to be..." Kathy ran her hand along the smooth wall for several moments…

Kathy and Matt walked down the hall, turned and then started walking down another. "I think the elevators are this way, Matt. I hope we don't have a problem getting out of this building so late. Maybe we should jump again, either split up or I can ride your back again…"

"I'd like to stay together, Kathy. I think it'll be okay if you ride my back now. I'm glad though, that we made the first jump here independently. This last jump seemed more difficult than my earlier ones…"

"Yeah, for me too… Wow, look at all these video monitors! They're all over this corridor too. Were there so many here a month ago?"

"FREEZE! Don't make any sudden moves! Put your hands behind your heads and step away from the wall! DO IT NOW!"

Matt and Kathy looked forward and back, and saw that both ends of the corridor were filled with security and FBI agents. Kathy saw several agents getting out handcuffs, and her lips began to tremble. She looked Matt in the eye and whispered, "Entrance hall?"

Matt nodded. A second later they were both standing in the Entrance hall of the tesseract. "Well, that didn't go very well, did it?" said Kathy. "At least there's no place like home."

"Yeah… And look behind you, I think our homebuilder is back."

In the far corner of the room near the floor, a sphere was floating. Matt and Kathy walked quietly and sat down next to it and just collected themselves, not saying anything for several minutes.

"Thank you for returning" said Kathy at last.

"Thank you for returning, and for practicing." replied the sphere. "Great appreciation. I have been practicing too. My communication skills had been unused for billions of years."

"You're doing fine now. Matt and I have talked about how best to communicate with you. We thought it might be easier if just one of the two of us talked to you at first, and we voted for me. I'm going to try to ask just one question at a time, and wait for you the finish answering before I speak again. Will this be okay?"

"Yes."

"Good! First, we thank you for everything you have provided for us. You are very kind. We understand now that you have given us the ability to return to Earth by ourselves. Earlier you mentioned modifying our genes, for progeny propagation. Does that mean our children will also have the ability to teleport?"

"Yes. Both needed at first, then either after first."

"What?"

"Both of you needed at first, afterwards the genes will breed dominant."

"Kathy, if I may interrupt, I think what it's saying is that for the first generation, only you and I together can produce a child who can teleport, but our children will be able to marry other people and pass on the trait too. Is this right, entity?"

"Yes."

"Oh," said Kathy. "Entity, where is the tesseract?"

"This Entrance hall is buried at the core of your moon. The seven other cubes are artificial constructs of folded space. It is quite stable. The tesseract can withstand a neutron star's core pressure. In comparison, the pressure at the moon's core is negligible."

"And the reason you made it is what?"

"As a gift of shelter for you. The folded space here would also be particularly easy for you, for your first jumps. Flying with the wings helps develop your ability for spatial orientation."

"Oh…" said Kathy. "Entity, I want to ask you what your need is, and what purpose you have for us. Please, explain your need first. We saw the tapes of the universes destroyed by the blackness. Is our universe in danger?"

"No. Not as long as I am careful."

"You can destroy an entire universe by being careless?"

"Your spacetime would be destroyed within a million years if I entered it. Not directly by me, but by the adversary. I will explain. The adversary and I are incomputable gravitational constructs, created by a race of master builders 7 billion years ago, just over half the age of your spacetime. My construct is designed to exist with negative or flat spatial curvature. In error, the builders created a second entity which thrives on positive curvature. Maximum positive gravitational curvature is achieved in any spacetime by combining all matter-energy into one singularity. Once created, the adversary was unstoppable. All organic life in my original spacetime was destroyed within a few 100,000 years of the creation of the adversary."

"My gosh!" said Kathy. "So you can live in a black hole?"

"No. I can live anywhere from empty space to neutron stars, but not in black holes. The unbounded positive curvature of a black hole singularity would tear by construct apart."

"So how did you survive?"

"By evolving. As a pure gravitational construct, I discovered a way to teleport in all 11 spatial dimensions, allowing me to tunnel to other spacetimes. In great sadness, I discovered the adversary can also use these tunnels, once I have created them. Over the last 7 billion years, I have fled to over 8,000 spacetimes, and have seen them all destroyed within a million years of my entry. After the destruction of the second spacetime, when I realized the adversary's ability, I have tunneled into spacetimes with high entropic states, no longer able to sustain life. In the last million years of searching, I have not found another such spacetime, and my current spacetime is within days of final collapse. I must flee it now or be destroyed. Already, the curvature is painful to my thoughts."

"What a horrible burden! Is there some way we can help?"

"In great gratitude, yes! I do not wish to destroy another spacetime with life in it, and the pain is too great to continue searching. I am about to enter a massive black hole near my current location and be destroyed. But… I do not wish to die alone…"

"Oh," cried Kathy, "To save our world, I am willing to join you, and I think Matt will be too. Do you want us to die with you?"

"No! What a ghastly desire! I do not want you to die with me. I want you to remember me."

"Huh?" said Matt.

But Kathy got the point immediately, and she started to cry. "Of course, of course! Good and gentle creature, of course! Who would ever want to die unwept, unhonored, and unsung? I will remember you, you have my word. And I will teach my children about you."

"…Thank you. Infinite gratitude and appreciation."

The point finally sank into Matt. "Creature, I understand you now too. I also promise to remember you… There's a widespread belief in my species, that all these spacetimes were created by God, a being of infinite mercy and justice. Our belief is that all who borrow life from Him are forever in His care. Your death might not be eternal, it is our hope. For our own deaths as well."

"Then it will be my hope too. Goodbye. I will create a temporal tunnel to return you to the initiation event. Run through it quickly. I will shield it with folded space, but the tunnel will be indirectly linked to my spacetime, and there is a slight risk of the adversary finding it. You won't be able to jump while in it."

Matt and Kathy saw a hexagonal shape growing in the corner of the room.

"The origin of the word goodbye is God by ye," said Kathy, blinking back her tears. "Goodbye, good and gentle creature. God be by your side."

"God by ye also, long life! Now go!"

Kathy and Matt raced down the tunnel, quickly emerging into a dim corridor. They heard a warm familiar laugh, and turned to see Kathy#1 letting go of a metal door at the end of the corridor, and starting down her first escalator flight in delight. "Oh my gosh…" whispered Matt.

Matt and Kathy walked out into the deserted hall of the Morningstar Capital Tower just as they heard the closing click of the metal door down the narrow corridor. Turning, they saw only a solid wall behind them.

"Kathy," whispered Matt. "Just try to act casual. There are a few video monitors here, but I think we'll be fine if we just act normally and quietly leave…"

Matt and Kathy were alone in an elevator a few minutes later. "I think we'll be okay, Kathy. There might be a few funny images on the video cameras, but without people starting to search for us, nobody will ever look at them. If there ever is a problem, let's just say we might remember wandering into a narrow hall for a few seconds, and let them worry about where the hall is now. But without the cause for an investigation, I really doubt the issue will ever come up."

An hour later, Kathy was waiting in Matt's office when Matt returned. "Well, it's all set, Kathy. Stan agreed to be your official supervisor, though you can still work primarily for me. You'll start this coming Monday, at 9 AM. He was somewhat flabbergasted about my story of the both of us being smitten by love at first sight, but, ah, what the hell… He does agree with me that you're absolutely gorgeous…. My next job is to remember what my 3 pm conference call is about. I'm afraid I'm going to sound like a complete idiot."

"You'll be fine! I'm so glad it's Friday, we'll have the weekend to recover and plan.... You know, we were lucky to avoid temporal jetlag. We jumped from 4 AM Chicago time to 1 PM Chicago time, but by chance we were already running our sleep cycle with the new timeline... Well, I should probably go now. Will you be home for dinner?"

"Sure. I'll be back in the moon by six. Goodbye, Sweetie!"

Epilog

Kathy whimpered as she led Matt to their bed. Matt felt quite touched by how deeply Kathy was depending on him for sexual fulfillment. Sometimes, Kathy and Matt would have slow, gentle sex, filled with leisurely caresses and unfocused goals. At other times Kathy's desire would burn as a physical need. They had barely undressed before Kathy had reversed mounted him, suckling and stroking his penis to erection, penetrating his anus with her index finger and softly caressing his prostate. She then quickly rolled on a condom onto his throbbing penis. With another whimper, she lay flat on her back, her legs up in the air in a large V with her toes pointed, her hips already rocking in anticipation, and she pleaded with Matt with her eyes for swift entry. Matt mounted her and they were soon both lost in their passion for each other. In a part of Matt's mind, he felt filled with appreciation that he was so important to the core of Kathy's being, in awe that her passion was based on her burning desire to affirm him as her husband. They rejoiced in their fidelity as their caring love, sexual love, and friendship love were woven in their coupling into a strong and permanent braid.

Nearing her orgasm, Kathy placed her heels against the top back of Matt's thighs to lock him into her. Matt felt lost in his love and delight for his darling wife beneath him, and began his own orgasm a few moments later, feeling Kathy join him with her gasps and the arch of her back, delighting Matt with strong vaginal contractions around his thrusting penis. They hugged as the slowly drifted down and recovered from their experience. After uncoupling, Kathy removed the condom and playfully licked his penis clean. Smiling a moment later, she said "Here, take this blanket, and hold on tight!" Kathy wrapped her arms and legs around Matt and a second later they were in a lush forest on a high mountain, watching a sunset over a sparkling ocean.