SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Seven
The Fourth Dimension
Thea immediately felt a sickening sensation not unlike falling through space, though she knew she was standing in place. She suddenly felt beyond herself. An incredible idea occurred to Thea that she was inside herself, and she was actually only a small part of herself. Her true self was much more expansive than she had ever realized. Now she knew and still in some way, did not understand, that this was her true self, this larger vast version that was beyond the person she had known herself to be her whole entire life. It was as if she was staring up from inside of her consciousness and finally seeing herself for the first time, from the inside out. And she was beautiful, flowing and illustrious and transparent and alive in a way that transcended life as Thea knew it.
She felt her mother lightly squeeze her hand, pulling her back into herself. Thea looked over and saw what she knew to be the true version of her mother, pulsing in a tight coil at the base of her spine. She looked over to see that it was the same with her father and aunt. They all had something softly glowing and pulsing at the base of their spine, and she wondered if it could be their Kundalinis.
Conflicted by the remarkable new sensation of her unfathomable expansive form next to the familiar sensation of her corporeal body, Thea was frozen in confusion. She wanted to ask why her Kundalini wasn’t inside her body like everyone else’s, but before she could, her mother said, “It’s the fourth dimension, Thea.”
Oddly enough, her voice had a more interesting other aspect to it that made Thea want to ignore the noise she could comprehend and listen instead to the better version of her voice. It sounded like being outside at night—crickets chirping through the dark.
“It does this to everybody,” her mother added, and from deep inside her mother came the sound of an owl hooting softly. Thea couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of this second voice, but it made her feel happy. “Try to hold onto your familiar self. It makes it easier.”
Thea shook her head and immediately returned to her simple body. That’s when she noticed that her surroundings resembled the ranch in a way, but it was like she had only ever seen the flat version that was merely a sketch of the real thing that loomed around her. She began examining the true form of the ranch, seeing in three dimensions for the first time in her life. This crystallized multi-faceted ranch was deeper and richer and profounder than the ranch she had just left behind.
And all around them, after-images flitted in and out of perception, like watching all the still frames of every movie ever created, all instantly appearing and then instantaneously vanishing at once, all showing every moment of every day that had ever existed in this place.
The Infinimages.
Thea felt her consciousness wavering, and she stumbled. That’s when she noticed that in this plane of existence, the concept of a solid state of matter was somehow altered, and so instead of falling over, her feet simply sank down into the transparent ground. Thea stared down at her feet, seemingly immersed in what should be solid earth, and she thought she would vomit, but surprisingly, she felt rather calm. She simply pulled one foot up, and then the other, so that she was standing like a normal person. The thought made her giggle despite how shaken she was from almost sinking down into the earth.
From this fourth dimensional point of view, the Dimension Gate appeared to be a large black sphere resting on the earth, and where it touched the earth, Thea could see a white circle and a faint pillar of light, which had been the only part of the Gate that had been visible back in the third dimension.
Aunt Fanella broke their semicircle first and waved her hand dismissively, and the portal folded in on itself and vanished. “Best get a move on,” she said, her second voice whooshing like a gust of wings on the wind. “We mustn’t let too much Eternitime pass in the Crystal Dimension.” Then she took a step and rushed forward several hundred feet.
Thea’s mother and father grabbed hold of her arms and together they took step after blinding step, following Aunt Fanella as she raced on ahead of them. She promptly went straight through a tree without slowing her pace. Thea closed her eyes as her parents followed right behind her. She felt nothing, but when she opened her eyes, the tree was now behind them.
If Thea could sink down into the earth, then clearly, they didn’t need to go around anything in their path. They went through the side of a hill next, and Thea laughed in amazement.
Thea wondered vaguely if this was what traveling at the speed of sound was like. Then she realized that when they reached their destination, they would leave the fourth dimension, and no time at all will have passed. Which meant that they were literally traveling instantaneously. Thea wondered if that meant they were traveling at the speed of infinity, or if they had no speed at all.
Then she remembered what her father had said about science proving that light-speed travel was impossible. It wasn’t impossible. You just had to stop time first. Thea smiled in wonder as each step shot her forward several thousand feet, until she was sure she was about to leave the United States behind. She wondered if and how they would cross the ocean.
She got her answer as they approached the east coast. Instead of stopping, her parents began to run, and the world became an incomprehensible blur. They sailed right over the ocean as if it were normal for humans to walk on water. Of course, after sinking through the earth, walking on water seemed logical.
Thea lost all sense of where they were, but luckily it seemed that Aunt Fanella traveled this way often. She led them across the sea, over islands to the shore and up along a river to a large city which pulsed with Infinimages. When they finally went still, Thea felt like her very soul was vibrating with Energy.
Aunt Fanella took a lump of clay from one of her many pockets. She used the clay to paint another Alchemy Circle in midair, because when people can sink through solid ground and walk on water, then of course they can draw in midair. Then she stood back and spoke the word, “Spatium!” and another black sphere appeared, growing until it touched the ground, forming a small circle of white on the earth. A ghost image of a pillar emerged from the circle and reached to the top of the sphere.
Thea was just starting to get used to the Crystal Dimension where she looked out at her other-worldly body from within herself and everything she knew looked flat and fake next to this new version of reality that was a crystalized cosmos of unlimited possibilities. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to leave this new world, but her parents walked through the Dimension Gate with their arms entwined with hers, and she returned to life as she had always known it, though this time, she was painfully aware of how simple a three-dimensional world can really be.