Oculus Pt. 01

The electric car purred like a happy cat as Doctor Sasha Brett considered the irritating paradox inherent in getting funding from billionaires. He wanted to expand the reach of science to make the world a better, more full place. To do this, he needed money. Lots of it. And to get that money, he had reached out to the wealthiest people on the planet.

But the only reason they were paying him enough to keep his laboratory in the funds required was because they wanted to get away from this.

The smokey pal that was drifting across the highway was thick and brownish and came from half a state away. The wildfire season had been kicked off this year by who knows what, and had been fanned to new record highs. Of course, it had been record highs in 2029, and in 2028, and in 2028. It looked like 2030 was going to be yet another new record. That panicky awareness that the degrees were getting higher and the corps were getting more expensive and the human race was edging closer and closer to the cliff-face had infected even the catastrophically rich.

So, when Sasha had come to several of them with the seductive promise that not only could other dimensions exist...but they could also be reachable, and reachable within the next five years, many of them had leaped for it.

His hands tightened as he slowed the car fractionally. Visibility was getting worse. A gang of cheaply paid laborers were putting up air scrubber towers to try and make things slightly more pleasant for the unfortunate people in Seattle who were going to be dealing with the worst of the smoke, and they were moving across the highway with a kind of careless disregard for their lives and futures that Sasha found faintly admirable. He still didn't want to be late to today's showcase because of a hit and run.

Though, considering my benefactors, he thought, his mental voice bleak. I bet I could plow through a row of school kids and still get off Scott free.

When the workers had cleared and he was on the road again, Sasha tried a few podstations. Most of them were content locked and he hadn't paid any of his licensees, so he ended up settling on a free channel. The only downside was that he had to listen to a fresh round of begging for people to sign up to their Patreons every five minutes. It was enough for Sasha to be moderately entertained (or at least distracted) as he drove past the tent cities and finally got to Seattle proper. A cop with two drones scanned his eye-dent and waved him through the checkpoint from highway to city. From there, it was a simple matter of letting the city's traffic AI route him to the QTI lab.

Quantum Tunneling Incorporated. It wasn't exactly the most...creative name for a corporation. But Sasha had never been a very artistic person. When he had gone to the tailor, he had come out of it with a suit that fit him and looked decent purely by saying yes to every question lobbied his way and standing still. When he had gone to visit his ex-wife and their daughter, the most difficult part of the day had been gluing macaroni into patterns that pleased the mercurial little Mixie -- fortunately, Sasha hadn't needed to be good at macaroni gluing. He simply had to be present.

And yet, despite his complete lack of creativity, and a certain attitude he'd once read described as 'like a cold fish that walks like a man', Sasha still could feel a deep sense of pride in QTI as he stepped from his car, swung the gull door shut and strode from the company parking lot to the interior room. The receptionist -- wearing the latest mask fashion -- nodded to him. "Welcome Dr. Brett. Having a good afternoon?"

"Reasonably," Sasha said, frowning. "Is Dr. Kittridge and Dr. Brown in?"

"Yes, Dr. Brett," the receptionist said, smiling.

"Okay, good," Sasha said. "I suggest that you relocate to building four. Just in case."

"...is..." the receptionist blinked, her eyes filled with worry above her particulate mask -- which was decorated with flowers and tiny two dimensional light strips. "Is there going to...be a problem?"

"The chances of the quantum tunneling device having a catastrophic implosion are fairly low," Sasha said, as brutally honest as ever. "But they are not zero. As you're not a required member of the team, you should relocate. Just in case."

The receptionist nodded. "R-Right. Yes sir."

And she scampered off.

***

Dr. Kittridge was looking drawn and nervous. But considering her youth had been the 2020s, Dr. Kittridge had every reason to look perpetually nervous. Sasha, being about ten years older than her, could very faintly remember a time where things felt like they weren't collapsing, and thus, felt nothing but faint pity for Kittridge's constantly shaking hands and sallow features. She was standing in the observation room, where the backers and doners would be brought in to witness the fruits of their investments, and she was watching as the quantum tunneling device was being assembled together by the technicians. It didn't look as sleek or futuristic as some of the doners might have preferred, but Sasha knew it would work.

The test earlier this week had punched a quarter sized hole between this reality and another. Now, that reality had been so alien that the only material recovered from it had flown apart into a spray of subatomic particles before they had managed to learn anything about it...but that was okay.

They had proved they could do it in private.

Now they were going to prove they could do it in public.

"Does it have to be you?" Kittridge asked, turning to face Sasha.

"Yes," Sasha said.

"Can't it be Mark?" she whispered. "He's just as good, and younger, and...you know..."

"A complete asshole?" Sasha asked, frowning at her. "I won't have a complete asshole be the first man or woman to travel between dimensions. Imagine if we end up making first contact, do you want Mark Brown to be the person to greet another species."

"It's just..." Kittridge gulped. "I just...I..." She trailed off, then seemed to square her shoulders. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." Sasha said, drawing up his chin. He looked down at his suit. "I must go and make myself presentable, shouldn't I?"

"The Tusks are going to be there, so, yeah," Kittridge said, nodding. "Armas hates it when we don't look futuristic enough."

Sasha sighed, but bowed to the inevitable. Where the quantum tunneling device was purely his construction, the suit -- the Mark II Hostile Environment Dimensional Exosuit, or HEDE -- had been the purview of Dr. Kittridge. And Dr. Kittridge had , better than anyone else on the team, really understood the billionaires backing the project. They could accept a machine that was mostly wire and pipes and tubes and exposed magnetic coils and toggles and flips and switches. It looked reasonably 'industrial', and thus, like a device that could punch a hole between realities.

But they would never accept a human being simply wearing a standard bio-hazard suit that would only cost a few hundred dollars. After the war in Iran, the market was flooded with combat capable NBC gear that could have been painted white or yellow or some other harmless color. But no. That would have been far too utilitarian for the billionaires to think their money was being spent appropriately.

So, Kittridge had put her robotics and cybernetics knowledge to work and created the most grotesquely over-designed suit for a five minute excursion that Sasha could have imagined. It was sleek, form fitting, midnight black with white trim, and had built into it a survival toolkit on the right arm, food recycling and processing systems, water filtration systems, oxygen recycling systems, ballistic armor with ablative plating that could handle low grade energy weapons and a mesh of stab-proof weaving underneath that. There was a flashlight in the palm, a computer system worked into the helmet. It even had the ability to handle the same apps that cluttered Sasha's iPhone.

Sliding the suit on, Sasha felt a tinge of irritation at being forced to wear the get up. But as he held the sleek, faceless black helmet, he figured...

Hey.

"Better safe than sorry," he said, then swung the helmet on. The HUD came to life and Kittridge's voice came through -- recorded.

"HEDE online," she said.

"...are you a bot?"

"Yes," Kittridge's voice said. "Dr. Tasha Kittridge provided the basis for my voice synth. If you would prefer, I could use the Majel Roddenberry voice synth, if you want to pay Disney for-"

"No," Sasha said, frowning. "No, no, that's quite all right. Kittridge will be fine."

"Very good. Armas Tusk, Jeremy Bently, Michael Lates, Xavier-"

"It's the the entire guest list, they've arrived, haven't they?" Sasha asked, cutting the AI off.

"-Logan and- yes, yes, the entire guest list has arrived."

Sarah breathed in, then blew out a slow sigh. "Lets get this dog and pony show on the road then."

***

The billionaires around the table watched Sasha as he set the helmet down on the table, the speech that Kittridge had written for him spooling through his mind -- a mental teleprompter. He had practiced it, and he knew that if he tried to sound peppy and energetic, he'd come off more like a serial killer than anything else. So, instead, he simply leaned into the cold, logical, stern sounding 1950s scientist that he knew he sounded and looked like. He was tall enough, square in the jaw, brown of hair. It worked out.

"Dimensional travel, long thought to be merely a work of fiction , has become a possibility, thanks to you and your generous and forward looking backing of QTI," Sasha said. "What you see behind me in this window is the first prototype of what will one day be humanity's ticket to other worlds -- a device that allows us to bridge the barrier between dimensions using quantum events previously thought uncontrollable. Today, you will be getting to witness the first ever dimensional event."

The billionaires nodded and murmured among one another as Sasha took his helmet, then locked it on. "Using this suit, I will be able to safely enter into another dimension, then return, proving the viability of this product and service. With this, all of you will be able to begin to open dimensional exploration and exploitation services. Worlds without onerous regulation or malicious bureaucracies, worlds that will restart the global economy and usher in a new era of progress and prosperity."

Polite clapping. More nods.

Sasha turned and then headed to the door leading from the observation room to the test chamber itself. The Quantum Tunneling device was being warmed up -- room temperature superconductors whiring softly as energy began to course through them. Cables hummed and sparks few from one of the breakers. A tech hurried to adjust the switches and toggles, while Dr. Brown and Dr. Kittridge sat at the control desk. Kittrdige looked more nervous than she ever had in her life.

The device began to strobe with a pale non-light. It was a strange absence of color, a kind of inverted wave of electromagnetic energy that the human eye simply could not fully integrate with reality. It should have been invisible. But it wasn't. No one in the lab had managed to figure out quite why, but as the lab mice exposed to it hadn't dropped dead from cancer, it was safe enough.

The pulses grew more and more intense, the beam of non-light stabbing out from the middle of the device and towards the circular part of the wall that contained the portal aperture. The wall rippled. Shimmered. Crackled. Then...it fell inwards, revealing an opening towards what looked like a verdant field of green grass, with a bright blue sky that hung overhead.

It had taken a great deal of math crunching to fine tune the quantum oscillations to find a dimension that was almost identical to theirs. Stepping through the portal into a world made up entirely of inert matter because gravity didn't exist and, thus, stars never formed...well, that wouldn't be very impressive to the shareholders. It also would be instantly lethal, no matter what suit he wore. Still, Sasha felt a warm rush of relief that the world was so earthlike. He stepped to the portal, his heart rushing faster and faster in excitement.

"I'm sorry," Kittridge's voice came over the radio.

Sasha turned.

Kittridge was holding a narrow needle of a device in her hand.

She triggered it.

The explosive under the table ripped upwards and outwards and, in a single blast, killed about fifty percent of the billionaire class in the United States of America. The resultant shockwave caused the quantum tunneling device to slew out of its mounting, the portal that Sasha stood before becoming an iridescent, chaotic swirl of light and sounds that human minds couldn't quite process. Sasha, knocked off his feet by the blast, tumbled straight in. He vanished -- and once the revolution was over, and the North American Self Defense Councils had finished stamping out the last of the capitalists that had almost brought the world to ruin, the files and documents on how to build a quantum tunneling device had been lost.

Still.

After a quick vote, the NASDC did build a very nice memorial for Dr. Brett, standing on the very spot he had died.

***

blee-WEEP

blee-WEEP

blee-WEEP

Sasha opened one eye, his head pounding.

"Consciousness detected." The HEDE's voice spoke in his ear, gently. "Playing 'I'm Sorry, Sasha'.mp3."

A faint click and Sasha closed his eyes, listening. "So, uh...I don't know if you're going to hear this. Uh...I tried to get Dr. Brown to be the first one through, since...like...it was the only way to get them all in one place. So, uh, I'm a member of the North American Self Defense Council. We're, uh, a...nation wide anarchist organization. Uh. We're gonna...start a revolution soon. Anyway. Um. Sorry about blowing up the portal, but, like...they were all right there." Kittridge paused. "God, this is terrible, uh, computer, stop recording, lets-"

Sasha groaned. So. My assistant is a literally bomb throwing anarchist. When I get back, we're going to have to...discuss...that... he thought, trying to get his limbs to work properly. His entire body felt as if it had been wrung out and left to dry. So, first, he opened his eyes again. And again, he saw only blackness. Sasha frowned, then murmured. "HEDE, activate flashlight."

Now, he saw a ring of brightness -- flaring out from around his palm. He curved his hand to the side, so that it wasn't pressed up against the smooth, gunmetal gray tube that it was pressed against. It shone outwards and revealed that he was in a narrow tube that appeared to be made entirely out of narrow pipes made of gunmetal gray metal that he thought might be steel...save that the metal was faintly porous. There were small rings, situated once every few inches on the tubes. He sighed, then started to wriggle forward, managing to get his arms underneath him after a bit of squirming and shaking -- and finally, as he moved, his muscles were beginning to come back to life.

He came to the edge of the pipe and tried to move out carefully. But the edge was more curved than he had expected -- his belly slid, and Sasha had enough time to swear. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck-" and then he tumbled over his shoulders, clattered, and came to a stop on his back on a floor that felt like metal. He groaned, laying on his back...and thanked god for over-designed suits -- the impact resistant gel that was packed into the armor was doing its job. Earning its keep.

Sasha took just a few seconds to try and collect his thoughts. Then, finally, he opened his eye and took in his first real view of an alien dimension.

Blackness.

Infinite, deep blackness, sweeping out above him. And yet, he had a faint feeling of being inside. There was faint hints of light hitting a kind of ceiling, but the details were so sparse that he only had a sense of immense scale. He was laying in a kind of narrow valley, beside a circular pool of glowing white liquid. The floor was gray-white, shading lighter and lighter the closer it got to the pool, darker and darker gray the further away from the pool it got. The slope was fairly steep, but not impossible to escape from. The tunnel he had fallen from emerged from the side of the hill -- opening in a faintly...yonic fashion, with curved, smooth gray lips and a pair of white circles at the top and bottom.

The air was filled with distant noises -- a vast, rustling, breathing sound. Like some vast beast was inhaling and exhaling in the distance.

"Okay..." Sasha whispered, then lifted his arm. He brought out the air sampling toolkit and waved it around. It came up having better air quality than Seattle. Breathable, less particulates, everything. Sasha still didn't take off his helmet. He instead sat up and then stood, testing first to make sure that his legs could support his weight, then again that he could move his arms, touch his toes. There were faint twinges along his back and spine, but nothing that felt like it would be too debilitating. Still, he took care to stretch himself out. He wasn't of an age where he could simply bound around after a fall and assume everything was fine.

He was, until he found otherwise, alone out here. That meant that he'd have to make sure that something as simple as a back spasm didn't leave him high and dry.

Once he had finished stretching, only then did he check his supplies. He had the recycling system in his suit, which would keep him fed and watered for a week before the inability to reprocess certain nutrients and chemicals would begin to catch up with him. After that...well...he better have found some local food he could eat. He had no weapons, save for a single survival knife that would be better at cutting samples than slicing up enemies. He had reasonably effective armor. And, most importantly...

He had his apps.

"HEDE, bring up my mapping software," he said as he finished patting himself down. "Begin to map this area. Lets call this lake..." He paused, eyeing the small pond of white, glowing liquid. "Pond...White." He sighed, slightly. "Make a note, too, if I ever get back to Earth, I will have to find someone who is better at naming things."

The mapping program got to work, sketching out the contoured lines of the surrounding area in the upper right hand corner of his HUD. Squaring his shoulders, Sasha strode up the side of the hill, frowning as he did so, and came out onto gray high ground. The first thing that he saw was the vastness of the place around him. Kilometers and kilometers away, rising like cylopean structures of some long lost city, were perfectly pyramidal shaped...he wanted to call them mountains, for they were so huge. But they were too regular to be mountains, weren't they? They were black and heavily textured, even from this distance. Huge tubes ran from their sides and upwards, towards the distant ceiling, adding an extra bit of evidence to the idea they were buildings, not natural formations. Between those distant pyramids was a flat plain, dotted with odd, small structures, tiny collections of things that could be alien forests or alien villages or alien farms.

The immediate area, though, was peppered by dozens of those small valleys, each one containing a tube and a lake. Most of the lakes, though, were mirror smooth and midnight black, not pale white like the one he had arrived in. As he took this in, he saw a glinting motion -- a single droplet of black, oil like liquid, falling from the distant ceiling and landing precisely in one of the pools. The ripples that swept outwards were almost hypnotic in their perfection.

"Where the hell am I?" Sasha whispered.