Editor's Pre-Script to Chapter 18 and Disclaimer of Authenticity

Remember me?

Of course you don't! I am the Editor of this book, the journal of Ugoñaschßtenätraξo's Life Among the Three Dimensionals. He wrote his book while posing as the Earthling 'Hugo Nash,' the true version of whom was, ahem, "temporarily" allowed to chill in the mezzanine between parallel universes.

Of course, you read my introduction eighteen chapters ago... or, rather, you skipped that part, didn't you? Students seem to be the same in every part of the Multiverse, aren't you. Perhaps you have to start reading again from the beginning, hmm?

Ever since our infinitely wise and benevolent authorities re-opened... and then re-closed... the Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University in the central Looo Nebula, all of you students in training for Earth-side substitution have been studying and preparing for your exams on-line.

It's not a very good way to learn anything, we know we know; but that's what the reconstituted and vastly wise Pioneer Central Administration and Gassy Committee for Public Safety decided was absolutely necessary. And because the Authorities, ahem ahem, decided it was absolutely necessary, it was, ipso facto, the right decision. Period. End of discussion.

In order to curb unruly and unsanctioned protests by university students wearing masks and demonstrating against the five dimensional government's colonial policies and violent imperial behavior toward non-gaseous life forms (as though anyone ought to care about any, ahem, life forms less dimensional than intelligent gas bags!), the campuses were closed and everyone was sent home to continue their studies remotely. Because that was what the Authorities decided, it was ipso facto the right thing to do! Period. Discussion over.

But we are not naive, my dear students, no we are not! We know that in the comfort of your own homes, you have been skipping chapters of your reading assignments, skimming here and there and basically reading just enough to get by. Yes, indeed. We know the tricks and subterfuges because, ahem ahem, students do seem to be the same in every part of the Multiverse.

But 'getting by' won't cut it; no, it simply will not cut it. By reading this textbook, you were all supposed to have been learning the language skills necessary to continue the five dimensional subterfuge, the gradual deconstruction and reconstruction of this puny planet Earth. You have all been in training to further our 5D program of terra-forming the Earth into a plasmoidic paradise; id est, a radioactive and chemically contaminated five dimensional paradise for us, rather than for the quasi-intelligent three dimensional dominant species of that little planet.

Academic studies are critically important, dear students. This has been proven by those who, over the years, previously have been inserted and substituted for many of Earth's ruling class without anyone noticing. These prior successful substitutions show just how important it is to master the linguistic subtleties and mannerisms of human speech in order to accomplish our transformative project.

However...

... even in the cases of some of Earth's preeminent political, military and business leaders who we successfully replaced long ago, some of their, ahem, 'educational deficiencies' - due to sloppy study habits, no doubt - are jeopardizing the noble 5D project that you, too, have been training to continue.

So, as with the current and immediate past Presidents of the United States, France, the EU, and Ukraine; the Prime Ministers of Israel, Great Britain, and Canada; the Bundeskanzler of Germany and the leader of his not-so-Green Party ally; and the heads of several trivial states in Scandinavia and in the Baltics... notwithstanding all of these previously substituted five dimensional gas bags holding their respective high offices, the citizens have begun to notice strange ticks and odd behaviors that practically give the game away!

Some - but gratefully, so far, only some - of the quasi-intelligent three dimensional citizens have started to catch on through mere observation - in spite of the, ahem, 'guidance' of the western media (that is, conveniently, also controlled by five dimensional editors and publishers) - that these apparent leaders of the, ahem ahem, so-called "free world" (as our own five dimensional leadership have cleverly defined them!) are, at the least, just a tiny bit peculiar.

So far, these gas bag world leaders' stumbling use of human languages, their incomprehensible policies, their incoherent narratives and nonsensical behavior have led to the growing suspicion that all of these presidents and prime ministers are either hallucinating artificially intelligent manikins OR that they are truly inhuman.

Soon, the citizens might start to also realize that these so-called 'world leaders' are neither hallucinating AI robots nor inhuman, but in fact non-humans... which is what they really are: five dimensional poseurs engaged in an other-worldly project of global deconstruction and reconstruction.

Yes, indeed! Soon, because of inadequate education and the lazy study habits of your five dimensional university alumni, the cat may soon be out of the bag (as the local quasi-intelligents are wont to say): that most of the quasi-intelligent world leaders of Planet Earth are five dimensional gas bags gently pushing and pulling the 3Ds to their own destruction... and, ahem, our own plasmoidic heaven on Earth (in a manner of speaking, ahem ahem).

The curiously incomprehensible syntax and childlike a-historical narratives of these inadequately schooled five dimensional substitute world leaders - recent American presidents and Canadian prime ministers are but prime examples of such gas bag incompetence - have placed at risk our grand project of terra-forming Planet Earth with expanding war, radioactivity and pollution more to our five dimensional liking than to the liking of the 3D locals.

This increased risk, dear students, is due simply to poor scholarship and academic sloth such as all of YOU, my dear students, have exhibited. Yes, yes. Indeed. Ahem.

So while the so-called secondary 'plum' positions have already been substituted with intelligent gas bags - such as the governorships of New York, California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Texas and Florida, and the judges of all of these states’ courts - there are still many important positions yet to be filled: college professorships, public school teachers, mayors, business leaders, actors, movie producers, lawyers, engineers, software programmers, directors on the boards of major technology companies, bankers and financiers, in America and around the world. Yes, indeed, there is still room for all of you in the unfinished five dimensional business of terra-forming Planet Earth... IF you have mastered the language well enough to credibly pass yourselves off as genuine three dimensionals!

… Unlike, of course, our hapless 'Hugo Nash' who, as you dear students will appreciate, was a complete NINCOMPOOP!

Clearly, Chapter 17 of his journal, Life Among the Three Dimensionals, was intended to be Hugo Nash's last entry, although whether it was or was not is still a matter of some academic dispute... but just a trivial dispute in my humble and august position as a university professor, ahem ahem, wherefore you should not question my opinion!

Nevertheless, the bumbling Mr. Nash clearly had a seventh sense about his impending dissolution.

Certainly, 'Hugo Nash' came to understand that, due to fundamental changes in our own five dimensional universe... changes for the better, I hasten to add... that he was literally 'stuck' forever and ever to live the rest of his useless and stultifying life among the primitive dominant species of this three dimensional world. Having come to this logical conclusion, 'Hugo Nash,' just like any gaseous intelligent being, must have determined that his Complete Immersion, Disintegration and Recycling à la auto-da-fé was the logical course of action. So, even in the absence of facts, the authorities have concluded that this is what happened, therefore it must have happened. That is what we reported in our own five dimensional media, wherefore it must be true!

Unfortunately, there are naysayers and Conspiratorial Dissenters who deny the "official" story of Hugo Nash's self-immolation. To their shame, the Conspiratorial Dissenters claim that the official story is a cover-up, blatant propaganda and similar such tin-hat blather. The criticism is wholly unfounded, of course, and deleterious to the inertia of gaseous society.

No such criticism can be tolerated when it is untrue. Because it is intolerable, it is ipso facto untrue. Despite gaseous notions of free speech, we absolutely cannot tolerate speech that we have determined is false. Our wise authorities have so decreed, so it must be. If you disagree, you will be deflated!

Nevertheless, certain Conspiratorial Dissenters have proposed a different ending to the story altogether. The Conspiratorial Dissenters have repeatedly claimed that the "final chapter" of Hugo Nash's Life Among the 3Ds was purportedly authored by the 4D intelligent vegetable "Szofia," and that this chapter is the definitive and true account of what happened.

This is utterly preposterous - even if it is true - and, because the notion is preposterous, it simply cannot be true! That is so because no 78,238 intelligent and carnivorous vegetable posing as a twelve-year-old 3D intelligent -- and a self-pollinating female vegetable to boot!!! -- could possibly have undertaken to send a zippledisk on a five dimensional Tandytripper, let alone to have dictated it in such rude and crude vernacular such as this fictitious individual has used!

Furthermore, the notion is utterly ridiculous that an intelligent five dimensional plasmoidic would rather not return to Gas Land and choose, instead, to consort with a lesser dimensional life form. No, no gaseous intelligent, not even such a degenerate as Hugo Nash, could have deigned, rather than to immolate himself, instead to "go native" by remaining among the three dimensionals... let alone socialize with a carnivorous four dimensional vegetable! The mere suggestion is completely, disgustingly and profoundly insulting as it is inconceivably preposterous! Wherefore, because it is inconceivable, ipso facto, it did not happen.

End of discussion.

Full stop.

So, you Conspiratorial Dissenters, just shut up already before we send you off to be flattened!

But alas...

In a gesture to the Conspiratorial Dissenters, the publishers of this textbook (over the informed objections of this learned editor, I might add), solely for the shameful and meretricious purpose of "selling books," have elected to include herewith as though it were legitimate, the completely unauthenticated and obviously bogus final chapter of Hugo Nash's journal which, unfortunately, the unruly and unwashed entropic gaseous masses contend is the true conclusion of Hugo Nash's journal, Life Among the 3Ds. Naturally, it was not composed in Original Field Impulse 2.2., and there is some question whether this final chapter, written as it were by this fictional 'Szofia' creature, is even written in proper formal English!

Thus, in this Editor's humble opinion, the following chapter is purely a marketing gimmick, a curiosity, a sop to the uninformed and molecularly disorganized gaseous population.

The authorities have said so, wherefore, ipso facto, it is a mere silly conspiracy theory. Therefore, unless the reader has time to waste with such tomfoolery, one absolutely ought not waste the time to read this last chapter.

Harrumph!

* * *

Hey!

Test. Test. Test. Hey, you out there! This is Szofia! Hey, this zippeldisk shit is pretty bad-ass cool!

Hugh, are you sure this thing is working?

What?

You mean it's already recording?

….. And now a word from our sponsor, Mosker Wosker Wieners: Hot diggity Dog, the Mosker Wosker Wieners - the dogs that plump like a lump!

Hey Hugh! Are you sure this thing is on? What the eff does this knob do....? Fuck. Psssssssst. Wow wow wow wow wow. Jeez! Listen to that feedback!!

ZZzzzzzzzuuuuuunnnnnvvvvvvvvsldkklkkkkkkkkbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraazzzzzzzzzzbbbbbbbb......

Okay, okay. Okay, I've got it nooooow. Just turn this a leeetle beeet..... I think... Oh oh. Uhhh.... Got it! Okay - reset...

Hello.

Hello. Hello out there in the Cosmos!

Yo! This is Szofia and I am, like, an intelligent 4D vegetable. Hugo Nash, my 'bud' from 5 Land is convalescing right now, but he'll be just fine. So, meanwhile, I'm sending out this final chapter of his journal in a zipple-disk message for him, because he asked me to. So, if you happen to get this thing, that's what it is, okay?

So.

After his close encounter with the original Hugo Nash's ex and loser-spawn, Hupidoopy and me made a plan, a super duper plan. First, Huey and me split up. That was the plan, see? The Branchers would follow him because of his 4D life support butt bag and they would think that I was with Huey because I had been with Huey all that time. But I wasn't, of course.

He skated east and south and I went north by northwest. Then east. But mostly "up," as far as the maps go. Up and to the right. So I had the super-cool Lamborghini that I borrowed from someone or other and then I went in the uprightish direction of the map. Then upleftish, then just uppish and leftish. So the blockhead Branchers followed Hughbert skateboarding into the desert and I high-tailed it into the big city where, as you know, with green hair and green eyes, black hoodie and tattoos, I don't stand out from anybody else.

Oh, yeah, and I dumped the Lamborghini in a no-parking zone where the po-leeze would be able to pick it up and tow it back to the sender. Nice car. Verrrrrrry fast. Smooth transmission and, yowser, great acceleration. Zero to 100 in about half a second. I think I needed new tires every fifty miles or so. Too bad about the cigarette burns in the leather upholstery, but, you know, stuff happens.

So Huey did the decoy routine and I went shopping.

I like shopping for stuff. We needed to save his strength for the big kaplooey so Huey wasn't going to be able to belch or sneeze and get the cash machines to dump their loads like he used to do. No biggee, it just means little Szofie did her shopping the old fashioned way by using some bozo's borrowed credit cards and laptop to hack right through the so-called secure web sites and scorch a bunch of retail stores' finances. Wowzer, you wouldn't believe the dumb-ass passwords these quasi-intelligents use…

... Damn! …'Quasi-intelligents...' I'm beginning to talk like you do, Hugh!

So, like, once I get into one of those cloud servers, I can get into everybody's data. You cannot believe what kind of confidential junk these bozos put into their supposedly 'secure' containers!

And anyway, just like that, I'm nosing around in the Cloud, heh heh! Then I just tweak a few digits, move stuff around, try a little of this and that. You know, spoof a little high frequency trading on Wall Street, install a little rootkit here and there, initiate an eggplant-in-the-middle scam, launch a teeny weeny bot-net attack on some central banks, swipe a few identities from some hospital records...

And voila (that's Greek for 'eureka,' you know)... I've got a bullet-proof ID, a million instant bank accounts, secure on-line security passwords, about a thousand social security numbers and a perfect work history! I'm, like, simultaneously, a 40 year old nun, a 50 year old multi-billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur, a 70 year old bankster, a 20 year old pop music diva, a Harvard law professor emeritus, a five star Pentagon general, the head of NATO, the CIA Director, an eminent heart surgeon, the Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, the CEO of a start-up pharmaceutical company, the Pope, the head of the European Central Bank and the President of Ukraine. So, like, presto: I've got IMF and World Bank approval for a ten gazillion dollar line of credit! Like no problemo!

So first, no money down, I buy this Huge effin SUV - it's got a BIG 25 cylinder 6,000 horse power motor (or something close to that). And it's got a BIG sound system with woofers loud enough to pulverize the windshields of other cars and crack the pavement. Yeah, and 2,000 dB muffler cut-outs as noisy as hell! It's got every new high tech doodad ever invented; plus blinding chrome trim, fog lights, spot lights, bug lights, Christmas lights, and color-shifting LED running lights all over the place. It's got super dark tinted window glass and a sparkling two-tone tangerine and candy green mint metallic paint job with giant flame decals on the front fenders. This booger's got chop shop custom suspension that changes from high-rider to a jumping low-rider and at night it scrapes the pavement and makes multi-color sparks! And it's got BIG monster knobby off-road tires each one about as wide as an Abrams tank and twice as tall. And it's got tandem wheels and spinners! This truck's so freaking big I need a crane to hoist me up into the drivers seat! I can't even hardly see over the hood, it's so goddamn big!

Gets about half a quarter mile to the gallon, but, you know, whatever!

So I buy this monster truck and start loading up with everything Huey said we would need to buy. And then I start heading down according to the map, downleftish, then downrightish, then straight right, heading for where we are supposed to rendezvous.

Meanwhile, Huey's putzing along on his skate board dragging the Branchers along with him deeper into the desert.

Sooooo, this is the exciting part!

When Huey gets to where we said we would meet, he rolls off the road, jumps off the skate board and stops in Nowheresville somewhere around the Salton Sea. And then he just waits and waits and waits.

So then, after a few hours it's almost nightfall - well, I don't know that it was almost nightfall for sure, but it must have been because of how long it took. And later it was dark, so that's a fact.

Now I'm still heading that-away, but I'm not there yet because this truck is definitely not a Formula I Gran Prix racer and it won't go more than a hundred fifty miles an hour even though I'm hauling ass with the pedal to the metal driving on the shoulders and sidewalks to get past the traffic and all. But the pole-eece are out there with their radar guns going ZZZZZZAaaaappppPPPPP, so, you know, I gotta take it a little easy now and then.

And, anyway, it's dark out already and no one's around, just Huey sitting behind a rock in the desert waiting for the Branchers.

I am not making this up, you know, because I have it on first hand authority.

So theeeeen, here they come.

Dum de dum dum. Dum de dum dum dumbbbbbbb!

There must'a been about a zillion of them by then; well, okay, maybe a few hundred.

But being Branchers, they were enormous, real big, you know what I mean? I mean, you could barely see the sky because of all theirs arms and spiky vines and pruning saws and loppers these bad boys were swinging around out there. So they make a bee-line for Huey (because that's where the 4D backpack is, see?) and they find him alright, but there's no "me," to their everlasting surprise. So, then, according to plan... because, you know, we really did plan most of this out. Or, rather, Huey did, he's the Man. Huey did the heavy thinking here. I mean, sure, he's a doofus, but give the gas man credit where credit is due.

Soooo, just like we planned, Huey's sitting there minding his own business, not doing nothing, twiddling his inside out thumbs, and here's this mob of hundreds of gigantic Branchers, big honking monstrous vegetable bounty hunters looking for me and telling him what they're going to do with him if he doesn't tell them where I am. So he says, ok, she's over there; and he leads the whole effin forest of them out into one of these dried up arroyos and theeeeen...

Oh, I almost forgot...

Right. Then I get there around this time, coming up from behind on the road. But I can take this truck off the road 'cause the booger's got seven wheel drive with the tandem wheels in the back, and even the spare tire is a drive wheel! So Huey's leading the Branchers on down the dry wash and he sees me coming up from behind the Branchers and says to all of them, “Wait right here and I'll get Szofia for you!”

So they stop and that's when I start throwing the hundreds of cans of barbecue lighter fluid and the bags of charcoal briquettes I had in the back of the truck and all the cans bust open on the rocks and lighter fluid runs down the river bed toward the Branchers. Now at this point, the Branchers smell the lighter fluid rolling around their roots and they look back and see me and they go, like, totally apeshit!

Then Huey, with all the strength he has left, tries to burp or sneeze, like to ignite the cook-out, but NOTHING HAPPENS!! Because it's really hard to force yourself to burp or sneeze when you really don't have to and, besides, he was so worn out by everything he'd been through, so he was feeling, like, really, really deflated.

So the Branchers start coming after me, Dumb de dumb dumb, and Huey is besides himself trying to burp or sneeze to ignite the gas fumes, so it's up to me.

See, I'm smoking a joint while all this is happening, so I just flick the lit joint into the river bed where all the lighter fluid is, and kapoof, the fire starts and spreads and all the Branchers start getting themselves singed like the bags of charcoal briquettes that I had also thrown down there. But so far, it's just an ordinary barbecue fire so a couple of them Branchers can still make a lunge at me even though their branches are being toasted.

And that's when it happens!

Huey -- I mean I've never seen the gas man move so fast EVER! He sees them getting close to me and Huey whips off his kitchen gloves and practically runs into the whole grove of burning Branchers swinging my skateboard at 'em! And they're swatting at him with their burning branches and saws and loppers and its a bad-ass riot out there with burning lighter fluid and Branchers getting singed and Huey swinging his skateboard and Branchers swinging at him.

Oh, yeah. It was almost the Fourth of July.

So, you know, because it was almost the Fourth of July, I also had bought a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of high power fireworks, you know, the professional grade stuff: boffo pinwheels and high test skyrockets, Roman candles, bottle rockets, jumping jacks, cherry bombs and whatever. Hughie didn't know I would do that, but I did. So I also threw all the fireworks into the barbecue, too. Yowser! This is just like television now, except it's real! Fireworks and Branchers blowing up all over the place! Gosh it was so beautiful!

And then one of the Brancher's pine needles must have punched a hole in Huey's skin bag because all of a sudden - I smelled it - stinkarino! What kind of gas was that!!! Well it comes out of Huey, right out of the hole the Branchers made in his lower arm, and his volatile gases hit the burning lighter fluid and the fireworks and all. But Huey's arm is now like an effing flame thrower and he's roasting them all like marshmallows!

Zaaazzzzoooussssssssh!

This is like a bleeping Hollywood movie and if it wasn't me and Huey right in the middle of it, I'd be going, like, 'Yeah, fry them boogers!' But, like I said, we're there, so, I mean, really!

And theeeeeeen, the burning Branchers were coming back toward me, all on fire as they came, so I scrambled up the banks of the arroyo leaving the big honking seven-wheel drive truck behind, which was lucky because it also catches fire, and…

KABOOM!

…the truck also blows up! Yowser, it was just like in the movies! And the fire really starts to burn up the Branchers now!

This is so cool!

But there goes Huey now shooting up into the air again, just like I saw him do in California outside his ex's house when I siphoned back into 4D to grab him.

WHOOOOOOOSH!

ONLY THIS TIME he's jet propelled!

He's like a skyrocket himself 'cause his gases are combusting and its completely dark out now. It's really kind of beautiful, except that it is Huey.

I kept telling him that palm-reading lady on the board-walk totally screwed up. She read a short life-line in his right hand. But because his hands are all messed up, his right hand is his left hand. So she must have been reading the wrong future in the right hand because it was really left so he didn't really have a short life line.

But he was still bummed and I think, like, this is exactly what Huey planned to do, you know, take down all the Branchers along with himself!

Only, dude! He didn't tell me ALL the details, because I'm sure he meant to turn himself into a 5D blowtorch and take out all the Branchers all at once!

So maybe Huey didn't tell me everything in the plan... but I also didn't tell him everything either.

So I figured that Huey - he's literally less than a year old, remember? So I figured he might try to do something heroically STUPID like this because, you know, he really is kind of dumb in a nice sort of way. So in the 78,238 years I've been around on this stupid planet - remember, I'm a whole lot older than the 12 year old earth kid I look like while on the run from the Branch - well, in my 78,238 years of living I've learned a thing or two, mostly from doing stuff like Wild West bandito and cattle rustler and like that. And I was kind of expecting this, or something like it, so I brought along two extra things I'd bought that Huey didn't ask me to buy: a rope and a fire extinguisher.

So as Huey goes shooting past me about 45 feet high like a Patriot missile and I do like Szophia, cattle rustler supremo used to do back in the 1880s when I rode with Billy the Kid and Jesse James and then the Dalton Gang teaching those butt-heads how to be real outlaws instead of the chickenshit wusses they started out as knocking off bubblegum dispensing machines and penny-ante crap like that.

So I twirl this lasso just like I taught Billy the Kid to do with cattle, and I siphon into 4D... because, what the hey, the Branchers already know where I am... and I reach up and snag Huey flying past me and I pull him down.

Then, of course, he's still jet-propelled and spinning around me in a circle like a batshit pinwheel until I can stand on one end of the rope and spray him with the fire extinguisher. So that puts his fire out, but his body bag arm is now all melted into a blob, but at least that seals off the leaks and he doesn't need to wear a stupid kitchen mitten on that hand anymore.

Anyway, Huey's still OK, or his essential gases are, more or less; even though his human plastic bag is looking like a plucked chicken and a toasted marshmallow all in one. But that's a whole lot better than the Branchers who, by now, are just a pile of steaming, burnt up barbecue ash in the dry river bed.

Along with my truck, of course, which is just a blob of molten metal and rubber. But, doh! What the hell, I bought it with credit anyway, so the bank can just repossess it, for all I care!

So, anyway, you kind of get the picture, right? The newspapers reported it the next day, ho ho ho! In a little story on page 12 they said there had been a "forest wildfire!" Riiiiighhht, a FOREST FIRE in the middle of the desert! What are these journalists smoking! There are no forests in the desert! But whatever, they said there had been a freak wildfire and that was it. No more questions asked.

And, whoohooo! No More Branchers! At least not for now. Not right away, anyhow.

So that's it.

Huey's okay, more or less. I mean. It's just his stupid 3D body bag that got fried, but he's still the same Huey. He ended up half a foot shorter and one arm tied off at the shoulder and his face was a little wrinkled like a prune.

But it didn't matter 'cause all this human incognito crap didn't matter any more. So we ditched the fake bod and put the essential Hugo, his intelligent gases and whatever, into a scuba diving oxygen bottle where he is now until we can figure out a better container that we can pump him into. Or, maybe not. Scuba gear is cool. Or maybe even a basket ball - that would be chill! But I don't think Huey would like being bounced around or thrown through a hoop!

But there's nothing wrong with him that a bicycle pump, a CO2 cartridge, a little TLC and a few months of rest and recuperation won't heal.

Of course, Huey, being the Boy Scout that he is, Huey said that he has to figure out a way to bring the "real" Hugo Nash out of deep freeze in the mezzanine back into 3D reality.

I mean, I couldn't give a rat's ass one way or the other about that turkey, and damned if he's going to want to come back anyway as the world's former No. 1 terrorist... former, of course, because no one is even looking for Hugo Nash anymore now that his supposed bratty daughter said he flew off into space making brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr noises just like a Harley Davidson exhaust pipe! Ho ho! The truth was stranger than any of them could stand, so they just ginned up some other heinous terrorists to get people all excited about.

And just like that, Hugo Nash, Super Terrorist Criminal Numero Uno is just completely forgotten, like that other comic book bad guy they supposedly offed several years ago and buried at sea. Uh huh. So all the mad dog people continue to foam at the mouth, just like before, but hey, it's not Hugh they're getting their undies knotted up about. So, whatever.

But the main thing is that the Branch is temporarily off our butts. It's just temporary, we know, but temporary is better than not temporary. You get it.

So until Huey recovers and until he figures out how to extract the real Hugo Nash from the mezzanine and plop him back into the 3D cesspool, we're going to stick around for a while and just lie low.

And then... once those loose ends are tied up, we are history!

Literally history!

Huey's going to show me how to twizzle into another time zone, how to slive blitherwards across the unislices and how to body-surf the endless probability waves of parallel universes.

And I'm going to teach him the really important things in Life like how to hustle and dance and how to hang loose and how to kick blowhards and bullies in the butt and how to play the electric bagpipe. Well, okay, in Huey's case, the bagpipe might not be such a good idea. So maybe he can learn to play the kazoo.

He doesn't have any of his precious "buttons," but who cares? Nobody's gonna know where we are and we won't want them to know! The important thing is that we're going to have fun going backwards and forwards and sideways in time, and wherever we end up is where we're at.

Qué Sera Saran Wrap, or whatever (that's more Greek, you know).

We are definitely going to blow this joint, or maybe smoke one, and if we can't get back to where we started, well, who gives a fart?

No offense to Huey, of course.

But I promised Huey I'd send out this zippeldipple disk for him, sort of his last report to 5-Land. So here it is, cosmos - it's coming at you. I'm cranking that tandytripper to send it out, as I speak: Hugo Nash's Life Among the 3Ds... as if anybody really cares about three dimensional whatevers.

And then we're gone! Out of here! Finito! Or as they say in Italy, sayonara, baby! We're cutting off all communications.

It's like a message in a bottle. Who knows where it's gonna go! If you find it, read it and pass it on, dude!

There's no return address on the outside, brothers and sisters, so don't bother writing back to us. Oh, we'll be around for a while hanging out in the nooks and crannies of less than respectable so-ci-e-ty, but don't bother looking for us.

There'll be no more "homelands" for us, nowhere! No more "nations," no "states," no planets or even galaxies! Huey won't need that communication podule anymore because he won't be communicating no more no way - not that there's anyone worth communicating with. At least not in this solar system.

So, no more "reports" back to wherever. No more bullshit earthworm "studies" and no more living on the run from the Branch.

3Ds, 4Ds, 5Ds.... screw 'em all.

Did I say that already?

It's time for the us to create our own dimensions, our own universe, our own time zone.

I kind of like odd-numbered ones - maybe we'll try some place in eleven dimensions, maybe thirty-seven? Hughy says that it's mathematically possible to have negative dimensions, too! Now that would be cool! I could dig living in negative dimensions! But plain old three, four, five dimensions?

Bor-ing!

Ain't none of them big enough for the two of us! Who knows? Catch you sometime in the dodecahedron dimensionality!!

Maybe.

So for Szopia and Hugh, this is US signing off!

Don't leave the porch light on waiting up for us, 'cause

We...

Ain't...

Coming...

Home!!!

Ciao, y'all!

XOXOXO

So, Huey, how'd I do? Did it go out, huh? I cranked the sucker, like you said.

What?

It's still recording? No way!

What release button? I don't see no bleeping chartreuse button. Hughie, I don't even know what a chartreuse is! A color? What kind of color is chartreuse?

Green? Well, then why don't you just call it green? Chartreuse... gimme a break, Hugh!

Whaddya mean the button's in the 5th dimension! Hey, Einstein, how am I supposed to push anything in the 5th? I can't even see anything in the 5th! I only do 1, 2, 3 and 4, remember?

What? You want me to reach across the dimensional seam and press... where...? Here...? Like th

FINIS

Life Among the Three Dimensionals was a serialized sci-fi novel. All the chapters, from start to finish, are available here.

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Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Have you skipped so many chapters that you don't know where we are?

Has your own life skipped so many chapters that you don't know where you are? To catch up on the past click HERE.

In the preceding Chapter 16, Szofia got tattooed while Hugo paid a visit to the studio of Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic. The psychic, Merlin the cat, and Robespierre the one-eyed parrot discover that their 'client,' Hugo Nash, is the most wanted man in the world. But as Madame Fabula diFalooza considers her own past and the true state of the world, she decides to forgo the $100 million reward and set Hugo free. The saga continues with Chapter 17 of "Life Among the Three Dimensionals"- California Scheming.

I WAS IN a state of near mental collapse. I barely noticed where Szofia was leading me or how we got there.

My batteries were running low. I felt like I was slowly transforming from a gas to a solid.

The short stellar orbits of this 3D planet were debilitating. I badly needed to rest and recuperate. I doubted that I even had the strength to thinkput or expulsifor anymore. When Szofia asked me to 'liberate' some money from a supermarket cash machine, all I could manage was a few tens of dollars and several hundred dimes, quarters and pennies from a Coinstar machine. Even the humans' digital machines could barely understand my weak bio-electric pulses.

Stupefied by exhaustion, I can only recall that Szofia led us somewhere by cab and by bus and by light rail. Then we started to walk up into the foothills. Szofia still carried her skateboard. She was talking non-stop, as usual, but I remember little of what she said.

More bees than ever were buzzing in and around the flowers growing in her ears.

I looked around me. We were walking through a very ordinary suburban neighborhood in the outskirts of Los Angeles. It was very hot and we were the only people walking. Everyone else drove sealed up inside air conditioned cars with dark privacy windows. I smelled heavy metals like lead and arsenic and mercury in the underground water pipes. I sensed traces of radioactive thorium, cesium, iodine and strontium in the ocean several dozen miles away and in the groundwater.

As we walked, I was bathed in the electromagnetic waves of millions and millions of wireless devices.

I noticed the alpha particles emitted by the americium in the ionizing ceiling smoke detectors in the homes we passed. Americium was a radioactive by-product of nuclear power generation and the production of weapons grade plutonium. Why would humans put radioactive americium into their homes? Supposedly, americium was 'safe' so long as it remained sealed inside the smoke detectors.

But what happens when there are brush fires and the peoples' houses... and their americium-containing smoke detectors... burned up and spewed radioactive particles into the air? What happens when ionizing smoke detectors are discarded in landfills or when they are incinerated? Whose crazy idea was this to 'spread around' the radioactive waste products inside people's homes in an ostensibly 'useful' application? Putting americium into residential smoke detectors must have been one of the early projects that the five dimensional ersatz politicians had undertaken to create an Earth more hospitable for them and less so for the quasi-intelligent humans.

As we walked, I also sensed the dense atmospheric inversion the locals called 'smog.' The stagnant air was rich with carbon monoxide, diesel particulates and nitrogen dioxide. This also must have been due to the five dimensional engineers who were recreating planet Earth as a paradise - for themselves. The whole environment along the West Coast seemed to be a plasmoidic paradise in the making. Obviously, the quasi-intelligent leaders of California had been replaced by five dimensional gasbags intent on re-creating the State as a resort for non-terrestrial five dimensional life.

As my mind slowly cleared, the nagging, almost existential questions in the back of my mind resurfaced:

Where were we?

Where were we going?

Why were we going there?

Through my mental fog, some of what Szofia was saying became more clear.

“So, you remember, Huey, that I got here by hitching a ride with an intergalactic pollen cloud that rides through this solar system every 80,000 or 100,000 earth years or so? And you remember that when I got near to this dump of a planet I jumped off the freight train, so to speak, along with some other primordial life forms that were also hitching a ride?

"Whaaaaale, it looks like another big pollen cloud will be passing this way. Mucho hay fever for the locals, of course, but maybe my ticket out’a here! With all the Branchers trying to find me and cull me out, Hughbie, and with you carrying around your 4D butt pack that stands out like a flaming GPS carrot for all 4D bounty hunters to see, it might be time for little Szofia to thumb a ride, you savvy?

"I mean, I can smell their spores getting closer every day. I can even feel the little seismic waves as the knot-heads start to close in on us. The local news stations call them minor earthquakes, but I know better: its the Branch posse pounding the pavement as they track me by tracking you, Hughie!

"I mean, it's harder for a grove of Branchers to sneak up on you in Southern California because of the general treeless-ness and all, but it does make a girl antsy every time I see some tall palm trees bending toward me. How's that line go, Hughie? Szofia shall not vanquished be until Great Brancher Wood to California remove against her...”

This pulled me out of my stupor. “Szofia, are you quoting - or rather, mis-quoting - Shakespeare? Isn't that line from MacBeth, Act 5, Scene 3... '...Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane.' Is that what you mean?" I asked.

“Shakespeare?! You are so uneducated, Hughie. That line is from MacSpinach, which is a famous play written by me. Ditto Yamlet and King Weird, and the Eggplant of Venice. I told you that already, Hugh, in an earlier chapter. Obviously, you haven't been reading this book too carefully, have you? I mean, who do you think wrote all those silly Elizabethan plays, Hughbert? Billy Shakespeare didn't have the brain cells to write a menu for a McDonald's without having me to tell him what to say. I mean, really, Hugh!"

I did not know. Maybe Szofia was right: Had she written all of Shakespeare's plays? Or was it a million monkeys over a million years randomly hitting the letters of a million computer keyboards, kind of like an Elizabethan era AI Chat Chimpanzee? I did not know anything anymore.

What I did know was that Szofia still had not told me where we were going or why? She was always changing the subject when I asked. But now I insisted. I demanded to know!

Szofia stopped and looked at me rather oddly. “Well, Hugh, all your questions are about to be answered because, well, we're here.

"I mean, we've arrived. Or, rather, you've arrived.”

We were standing at the front door of one of the ordinary hominid ranch houses in this ordinary suburban tract in the hills outside Los Angeles.

I didn't understand. I looked around. “Szofia! We have arrived where? What are we doing here? There are just endless rows of more or less identical houses. What are we doing here?”

Szofia started pawing the sidewalk with her feet, looking down as she spoke.

“Whaaaaale, Hugh, you see, you need to be in a safe place where someone will look out for you while I exit stage right on the next intergalactic pollen cloud. So let me just ring this doorbell here and.... whaaaaale, you'll see what I mean, Hughie. It's been cool. Well, kinda cool some of the time, but I've gotta go now, sooooo....”

The door opened and Szofia shoved me toward it.

A little brown-haired girl about Szofia's size stood there and stared at me in wide-eyed astonishment. I turned around, but Szofia was already gone, rolling away on her skateboard.

As Szofia rolled down the sidewalk she turned and waved just once at me and I thought there was a glint of something wet and sparkling in the corner of her eye.

Panicked, I turned back to the open door. The little brown-haired girl stared at me with enormous eyes. She was grinning.

"Who is it, honey?" asked a woman's voice inside the house.

“IT'S DADDY!”

screamed the little girl and threw her kitchen-mittened hands around me pinioning my arms and my own kitchen mittens to my side.

“DAD! OH, DAD!”

I was utterly speechless! Who was this miniature person? What was happening? Why did she attack me and was she trying to squeeze all the living gas out of me? Was she trying to arrest me! My pressures were skyrocketing! 834 kµ units/3M! I would literally burst! What had Szofia done to me???!!!

“IT'S DADDY!”

screamed the little girl again and held me tighter in her arms.

“DAD! OH, DAD!”

"Who is it??" asked the woman inside the house. "Who's there?" she asked as she approached the front door with the little white dog that ran ahead of her - that dog... that dog... I knew it from somewhere, somewhere, someplace.... FLUFFY?? Oiyoyoyei!!! Szofia, what have you done???!!!!

"Who's there, Jenny?" asked the woman inside the house who finally saw me and said "Who's... who... ?????

“Who? HUGH? HUGO!!!

“Aaaaggggghhhhh, HUGO!!!!”

I was so weak from prolonged leaks of psziproots fluting from my body bag fissures and from Jenny Nash squeezing me so hard that I was as confused as everyone else. Who's there? Who's there? I wondered to myself trying to turn around to see WHO WERE THEY LOOKING AT?

It took quite a while for me to realize that the WHO was HUGH and the HUGH was ME!

It was a scene that will forever remain etched in my plasticizers so long as I remain pressurized: there I was crushed in the embrace of my own "daughter," Jenny Nash, ecstatic over the return of her "father" (who was the true 'Hugo Nash' hibernating in the mezzanine between unislices) while Carol Twuinbargh - the former Mrs. Nash who had divorced the original Hugo Nash - the same Carol Twuinbargh aka Carol Nash who I had seen interviewed on the TV- was definitely NOT so overjoyed about seeing me.

Fluffy, the same small white dog whose photograph I had seen in my host's - Hugo Nash's wallet - was running around barking and sniffing me and alternately snarling at or licking me. Indeed, Carol Twuinbargh, formally known as Carol Nash, looked more horrified than happy and she kept her hand over her mouth while making gargling noises that sounded like "gruuuckkggghhhhh" or "ackkkkkkk" or "glluugggg," which is exactly what I might have been gasping, too, because little Jenny Nash was practically squeezing the fumes out of me!

At last, Carol Twuinbargh, "my" ex, came to her senses long enough to holler “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! THE TERRORIST! THE TERRORIST! HUGO NASH, THE TERRORIST IS HEEEEERRREEEE! AGENTS! MUST CALL AGENTS!! Aggggghhhhhh!”

She darted back inside the house and I realized that she was going to CALL FBI AGENTS and that my cucumbers were about to be very, very pickled, as Szofia would have said!

“Aggggghhhhhh!” I gasped with whatever strength I could muster as 'my daughter' Jenny, nearly squeezed the life out of me! “Carol,” I wheezed with all my might, “please... do not... call... FBI agents!”

But little Jenny, jumping up and down with me in her arms, answered, squeezing me even harder: “DADDY, OH DADDY! She's not calling FBI agents! She's calling her publicist and her literary agents! You're going to be EVEN MORE FAMOUS THAN BEFORE! WE'RE ALL GOING TO BE ON TV! And they want to make a feature length movie about us… maybe two or three of them… starring famous movie stars; and also an animated version with more big time movie star voice-overs!

"And we're going to be rich after we get the reward money for turning you in, Daddy! And Mom's about to publish a third sequel tell-all book that her publisher says will win the No Bells Prize for illiterate literature! Its called Carol's Continuing Story Part 3: I Was Stalked by an Islamo-Commie Drug-Dealing Sex Fiend Terrorist. It was also written overnight by an artificially intelligent large language model plagiarizing machine. Mom will get some selfies with you for the dust jacket!... and then she'll call the FBI.

"And, oh Daddy! We'll do a duet, you and me singing and dancing 'The Pudge' together, for my next hit music video! You know, I can record us dancing and singing as they take you away! Oh, Daddy, the lyrics are coming to me right now...

        My Daddy came back to me,
	Me me me me me!
	And then they took away Dad-dy
	Dee dee dee dee dee...
	Cha cha cha! Olé!

"... Or some catchy lyrics like that so the AI program can write the music for it! Whaddya think Daddy? It'll go double platinum, don't you think?! We're going to win a Grammy Award, don't you think?!!

"OH DADDY, DADDY, DADDY! I knew you'd come back!!! And now we'll get the reward money and I can buy new clothes and lots of jewelry and new designer kitchen mittens with diamonds and gold thread and the latest cell phone and Fluffy can get a new collar with rubies and emeralds and we'll get a big new house with a home theater and a giant swimming pool and a new pink sports car and... and... and... and I'll visit you in jail, Daddy! I promise, I'll visit you in jail every weekend, Daddy!... Or, at least, once every few months, or during the holidays, maybe. Oh, you're the best daddy in the world!! I love you, Daddy!!”

But Fluffy, the little white dog, was growing more and more agitated, especially because these four-legged canine quasi-intelligents can sense things that the dominant two-legged quasi-intelligent specie cannot, namely that I was not who I appeared to be.

So while little Jenny Nash squeezed and squealed, and while Carol Twuinbargh, formally known as Carol Nash, yelled at her publicity and literary agents over the phone to get down there as fast as they could and to bring their photographers, Fluffy was circling me and counter-circling me and counter-counter-circling me, snarling, barking, and sniffing the alien transuranic methane that only a dog's nose could smell.

Until... with a yap and a lunge and snap of his jaws Fluffy made up his mind and bit my ankle!

Now slow leaks are things that intelligent plasmoidics can deal with - a bandage, a tourniquet, just a quick stitch of the bag membrane and the hemorrhage can be stopped. A fissure that develops over time can be sealed. A small tear in the outer fabric can be patched. But a catastrophic, multi-pronged puncture by a rack of sharp canine teeth will cause a sudden escape of high pressure ignoble gases that will issue like a jet stream. Had there been a spark, a fire, any nearby source of ignition, then half of LA County might have gone up like a blow torch, along with me. But, for better or for worse, there was no spark and, instead, the jet stream of gas blasted out of me with enormous force.

As explained by the third law of physics postulated by the early plasmoidic physicist, Gas-sack Newton, for every gaseous force there is an equal and opposite reaction. So while my internal life gases shot out of the dog-teeth holes in my ankle, the bag that held the essential "me" - that is, the counterfeit Hugh Nash - shot off with equal force in the opposite direction up and out into the atmosphere like a suddenly released party balloon bilabially flapulating like the exhaust of a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

I recall seeing the palm trees and fire hydrants and cars pass quickly before my eyes as I squirted speedily through the air.

I recall a few startled birds wondering what a human-looking quasi-intelligent was doing up there as I erratically flew by ten or twenty feet above ground in their avian element.

I recall, fading away in the distance, Jenny Nash's startled expression of wonder… and disappointment… watching me (and her reward money) fly fly away, jetting gas out of my ruptured ankle.

I recall Fluffy, now fading away in the distance, yapping and jumping happily for having vanquished the alien intruder that Fluffy didn't know was truly an alien.

I recall thinking that this was a funny way for my life to end and for my gases to be recycled.

I began to lose consciousness. As I reached the threshold of sudden Delabrae'th bio-organic degradation syndrome, I might even have hallucinated about the grasp of a large and firm blackberry vine-like branch that reached up in the 4th dimension and caught me by the calf, squeezed off the leak at my ankle and dragged me back down to earth, back down to Szophia who had momentarily siphoned herself back into her normal full-size self, thus breaking cover in the 4th Dimension, immediately disclosing her location to the Brancher bounty-hunters tracking her, placing herself at risk solely in order to rescue me.

And I might have hallucinated that I heard Szophia saying to me as she tended to my wounds, "Well, Hughdoo, I guess that wasn't such a good idea after all, was it? Whaaaaale, everyone makes a mistake every few tens of thousands of years, even little Szophia. Sorry about that, Hughbiedoo."

And I might have hallucinated, too, that Szophia was smiling and crying at the same time.

* * *

It had not been an hallucination.

Szofia never gave a rational explanation why she had broken her 3D cover by siphoning herself into 4D to reach out and rescue me. Even her momentary appearance in the 4th dimension would flag her specific location for the Branch bounty hunters who were determinedly pursuing her.

Szofia told me that she had waited around the corner just to "make sure" that I was properly welcomed home by the only people on this planet she thought might possibly welcome me. And she said that she could not just let my exhausted body bag and my 4D backpack drop on the street like so much litter because "littering is illegal" and being a law-abiding little girl, leaving my empty body bag on the street would have been just too environmentally unfriendly.

“I mean,” said Szofia as she looked away, “you were going to dump me and join your five dimensional circus back at the airport, so don't blame me for trying to figure out a way of dumping you, too, Bozozilla. I got this once in a multi-millennium opportunity to hitch a ride out of this solar system and I had to go for it. Okay, so I made a mistake. Everybody makes a mistake now and then. I mean, if we are keeping track of mistakes, dude, like, your list would be a few miles long, you follow me?

Szofia got really excited. "I mean, you're like blinking a “HEY BRANCHERS! LOOK AT ME!” GPS arrow with your freaking 4D life-support fanny pack! I mean, Hughpoo, I tried to drop you off someplace safe to give myself a chance of escaping. You didn't even do that for me, did you, Hughpoo? I mean, you didn't even ask me when you tried to borrow your stinking 'buttons' from those two 5D douche bags so you could slink back to your Yicky Drippy parasite and back to gas-land, or wherever you come from!

"You're such a ten ton strawberry, Hughpoo. I just don't know what I'm going to do with you! And, without little Szofia, Hughpoo, I think you can't take a step without walking straight into a pile of Zhungx dung. No offense intended, Hughpoo, but you are just such a doofus! And if the Branchers took me away, then there's no telling what kind of trouble you'd get into, seeing as how you're already the most wanted man on Earth!”

She kept up the banter and heckling, but her actions belied her words. She did not abandon me. Szofia laid my limp body bag on her skateboard and tied off my left leg with a rubber band. Using a short length of rope tied to the front axle of her skateboard, she towed my sad sack at night from one safe location to the next.

Sometimes, we stopped at a gas station where Szofia would use a tire pump and the gas from soda bottles to re-inflate me. She "liberated" a few 'smart phone' tracking devices, from whom I do not know, and she would place their warm transducers near my head to stimulate my gas molecules with their electromagnetic radiation. In the evening, using plastic bags fished from dumpsters, she would apply a bisphenol plaster to my ankle.

Eventually, we stopped near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo where I bathed in the generator's rejuvenating discharge waters and I dipped myself in the plume of radioactive cesium that had begun to migrate around the Pacific gyre from Fukushima in Futaba, Japan - more gifts, I suspect, from my enviro-engineering compatriots in 5D.

Over time, I revived a little, but it would take a long time to fully recover. My left "leg" became stiff below the knee and I walked unsteadily. My energy, too, was gone. Szofia was her usual chatty self, but I could hardly muster the strength to interrupt her monologues.

We kept moving, moving, moving, however because, as she repeatedly warned me, she could "feel them," the posse of Branchers closing in on us, that is to say, closing in on me because they were tracking my four dimensional back pack. The seismic vibrations were increasing around Southern California and marching nearer every day as the relentless grove of 4D bounty hunters closed in on us. The hominid universities' geology departments recorded the daily 2.7, 2.8, 3.0 tremors on the Richter Scale and pronounced that they were shallow earthquakes.

They weren't earthquakes. They were the footfalls of the Branch coming nearer and nearer.

Szofia had already missed her chance to hitch a ride with the intergalactic pollen cloud. It had come and gone while Szofia chose to tend to me. “No big deal,” she said with false bravado when I asked her about her missed opportunity to get away. “The pollen cloud will be back in another 80,000 years or so, and I'll be ready for it when it does.”

Szofia had, however, burst her seed pods while I was convalescing and, in the midst of planet Earth's worst recorded hay fever season ever, billions of her spores had issued from her ears into the vortex of the intergalactic pollen cloud to sprout who knew where.

“The fucking Branchers have already lost,” Szofia chortled. “Imagine! Seeding planets all over the universe with shit-loads of little Szofias! If they can just stay away from the event horizon of a black hole, there will be so many Szofia-clones on Earth and out there that not even the Branch can weed them all! Wheeeehoooo! Imagine a billion identical Szofia-clones all over the fucking universe!!”

I could not imagine a billion Szofia-clones, but I did feel a responsibility for the preservation of the original one.

After all, despite her raillery, I understood that she had siphoned herself into the 4th dimension at great peril to herself solely to save me from the fate of a punctured party balloon. So long as Szofia remained a faux 12 year old in three dimensions, it would be hard for the 4D bounty hunters to track her down. However, I also understood that so long as she stayed with me and so long as I carried my life support podule in 4D, then I was the trail that the Branchers could track.

The problem had only one solution, and I was it.

While still in my cocoon, long before my emergence into the 5D world, I learned that pressure makes gases hotter and that an inert gas is not dynamic. Well, I was now under pressure. It was time for me to think hot, time to be dynamic. It was time for me to think outside of my inert elements.

As the ominous rumblings of the approaching grove of Branchers came ever nearer I devised a plan, a last-ditch, audacious plan to solve all our problems at once. For me, the choice was simple: my Pioneer mission had been a disaster and there was no way that I could get back to the five dimensional universe from whence I had come.

Indeed, it appeared that even if I could return home, I would not want to. I simply would not fit in any longer with a five dimensional unislice of the Multiverse that resembled the three dimensional Earth where I was now stuck. I no longer could see Five Ways at once. I couldn't even see five ways sequentially! I had no Drůkk' ąou location buttons. I no longer even missed my triploid! Life back home, as I once knew it, had irreversibly changed.

I was stuck on planet Earth.

It was truly time for me to move on. It was time for my Complete Dissolution and Recycling. As in the plasma-classic novel A Tale of Two Plasti-cities, it was a far, far better thing that I would do, than I had ever done before. For Szofia, it was an equally simple choice: she could continue to run with me, until, inevitably, I ran out of gas and she was caught and weeded; or she could help me execute my plan, the only plan that offered even a hope of relief.

In concept, the plan was simple. In its details, it was daring, sublime and fraught with danger. Szofia and I plotted and prepared, schemed and organized. Then, when all was in order, we arranged to split up and prepare our separate tasks. Szofia trained me as best she could how to ride her skateboard kneeling my bad leg on the deck and pushing with my good leg. I went out into the desert, taking the grove of Branchers with me tracking my 4D life support podule, while Szofia hot-wired what she described as a "neglected" Lamborghini near the Hollywood Strip and drove north by northwest to go "shopping."

As Madame Fabula diFalooza had told me... the palm of my right hand had a very short life line.

This probably would be my last entry in my memorial. It has been entered on a message zippledisk and inserted in my telecommunication podule in 5D, preprogrammed to transmit when the deed is done, to skip out into the never-collapsing wave functions of parallel universes, like a message in a bottle, the complete unfolding of my Life Among the 3Ds.

Goodbye. Pass gas in peace. May you see five ways at once.

* * *

SPOILER ALERT: Noooo, put away your handkerchiefs! This is NOT the end of Life Among the Three Dimensionals!

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Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Have you skipped chapters and don't know where we are? Have you skipped chapters of your own life and don’t know where you are? For earlier chapters click HERE.

In the preceding Chapter 15, Hugo and Szofia had an animated conversation about the birds and the bees in a 'borrowed' car at 100+ mph. They ended up on the beach west of Los Angeles. Szofia went to get tattooed. Hugo Nash saw a wooden sandwich board with an arrow that pointed up a narrow flight of stairs to an upstairs office: Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic. She could read palms. She could read Tarot cards and tea leaves. She knew the past. She could tell the future. She could cleanse people's auras. Hugo Nash climbed the stairs of Madame Fabula diFalooza, psychic.

Chapter 16 of "Life Among the Three Dimensionals"- A Black Cat, A One-Eyed Parrot and Madame Fabula diFalooza:

THE STAIRWAY was dark and the wood risers creaked with every step.

The door at the top was partially open. I tapped lightly on the door.

No one responded.

I slowly pushed the door open. The hinges creaked.

Gingerly, I stepped in.

Inside, it was dark and claustrophobic. The walls were covered with raspberry red tapestry and faded gold-trimmed ropes and tassels. The room smelt musty. The furniture was heavily brocaded and dark. A black cat standing on a stool arched its back. Its fur bristled. It watched me with green eyes. A large African gray parrot perched in an open cage hanging in the corner. The parrot was munching on corn flakes. It studied me with a single yellow eye. The parrot only had one eye because the other was covered with a pirate's patch fastened around its head feathers.

The room was dimly illuminated by burning aromatic candles. There were some heavy, old-fashioned oil paintings with gold baroque frames hanging on the wall, portraits, or copies of portraits from centuries ago.

In the corner I saw a shape, a large woman in a dark robe with something wrapped around her head. She was not moving. Her back was to me. She was hunched forward. She seemed to be looking very intently at a glowing glass that was emitting a stream of changing shapes and colors. I heard the faint babble of ethereal voices, voices that were clearly from the past.

It smelled of incense inside the studio of Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic. It smelled of incense and... and... and it smelled of tuna fish?

“Just sit down and I'll be right with you,” said Madame diFalooza in a distracted voice. “I'm having lunch. Have you ever seen this rerun of 'Gilligan's Island?' The one where they have the beauty contest to choose a Miss Castaway and Gilligan, is the judge? I must have seen this show a hundred times. Do you want a sandwich? I've got some extra tuna fish in the fridge.” She turned around to look at me. “Oh, I was expecting my sister, Sheila. Can I help you?”

“Are you Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic? Can you tell my future?” I am sure that I looked and sounded as troubled as I felt.

Madame diFalooza, Psychic, stared at me quizzically. “Yes, of course. You're my first customer of the day. In fact, most of my customers come after sunset when they've gotten into an altered state of mind, if you know what I mean?” She turned off the television set. “Let me change into some proper clothing - I just took a shower, my hair's still wet and I'm still in my bathrobe. I'll be right back.”

Madame diFalooza, Psychic, retired with her black cat and her one-eyed African gray parrot into a back room and reappeared a few minutes later. She was now dressed in red and purple and had a large felt fez on her wet hair. Gold and silver stars and crescent moons decorated her dress and her fez. The cat also returned and it, too, wore a tiny fez with gold and silver stars and crescent moons. The one-eyed parrot returned to its perch in its cage, also wearing a little gold and silver trimmed fez.

“So,” said Fabula diFalooza sitting down. She adjusted her fez. “What can Madame diFalooza do for you? What do you need to know?”

“Everything,” I replied anxiously. “I need to know what will happen to this planet after the Big Burp now that the 5 dimensional gaseous engineers are being inserted as humanoid simulacrums to run the world. I need to have my aura cleansed. It is very important because I am writing my end of life memorial in anticipation of my Complete Immersion, Disintegration and Recycling in Tszũm'paáß, the universal omphalus.”

Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic, squinted at me.

“I see,” she said. “The Big Burp, immersing yourself in an oompah phallus and 5 dimensional engineers running the world.” She slowly kneaded her fingers and pursed her lips. “Did you, by any chance mean to see Dr. Drooper?”

“Who is Dr. Drooper?” I asked.

“Oh, he's the shrink just down the block. Some of his, uh, clients, sometimes drop in here by mistake. Dr. Drooper cleans peoples' auras, too, in a manner of speaking. Are you, maybe, trying to get a prescription refilled? You do seem pretty depressed. There's also a lawyer down the street. Do you need to, you know, see a lawyer? I mean, are you about to get into some kind of a committed relationship, in a manner of speaking?”

“I need a psychic who can read the future,” I told her, sighing. “It is very important to the future of all stellar cycles in this slice of the multiverse!”

“I see, I see,” said Madame Fabula diFalooza. She kept her eyes on me while she rummaged for something inside her desk. “You know, most people want to know about their boyfriends or girlfriends or their girlfriends' boyfriends or their boyfriends' boyfriends, or their careers or whether they're going to win the lottery or what stock they should buy... It's not the typical Joe who wants to know about, you know, the, uh, 'Big Burp' and the end of the universe, if I follow what you are talking about...”

She continued to rummage through the desk while watching me intently. “You seem like a, uh, 'sensitive' young man. What's your name? When were you born? Where were you born? You do look a little familiar to me. Have you ever been on television?”

I did not understand - if Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic, was a true psychic, then she should already know the answers to these questions. Time, it almost goes without saying, is not a spatial 'dimension,' but a perception, a continuum of experience. One normally can slive forward, backward and even sideways across that continuum with little difficulty. Without Drůkk' ąou location buttons, however, I could not risk movement along any coordinates without getting hopelessly mired in the multiversal mucilage. But although I was time-blind and could not perceive the future, certainly one who was a psychic could. Perhaps, I reasoned, perhaps Madame Fabular diFalooza, Psychic, knows the past and future in three dimensions only and that was why she did not know all about me. But how could I tell her who I was without informing her that I was this planet's most wanted criminal? Although the program was shuttered, I was still a 5D Pioneer committed to learning the truth and speaking the truth. Thus, I could only answer her questions honestly and hope for the best.

I finally answered: “My real name is Ugoñaschßtenätraξo. I was not born, but I emerged from my cocoon on 401-9/67☼Ψ.2 in the Spΐntz-'há epicycle. I am from the central Looo Nebula many unislices removed from here. And, yes, my picture, unfortunately, has been on television.”

“I see,” said Madame diFalooza gently drumming her fingernails. “Are you, uh, an alien from outer space, by any chance, stranded on earth? There does seem to be a lot of that going around these days, hmm?”

Oh, now I understood just how sublime was this Madame diFalooza, Psychic. She knew! She knew! “You are right, in a way, Madame! I am indeed an alien, an intelligent plasmoidic. You are most perceptive! But I am not from outer space but from an adjoining space! An adjoining unislice in five dimensions right next to this one yet simultaneously an infinite number of unislices away. I was inserted here to study three dimensional civilization. Yes, it does look like there are a lot of us around these days - I encountered many more of them at the airport just today! And I have lost my Drůkk' ąou location buttons so, yes indeed, I am stranded here on this planetoid! It is my future I came to see you about, that is, if I have any future at all...”

No one spoke. The black cat's eyes grew very large. The only sound came from the one-eyed parrot munching corn flakes.

“Mr. Unganestrovsko? I'm sorry,” Madame di Falooza said at last. “Is that a Swedish name? Oh, no, you said you were a space alien, or a next-door alien, or whatever, and you don't look Swedish or sound Swedish. And, yes, indeed, Mr. Ungarianstrovski, I can see that you really have lost quite a few buttons. In fact, you have more buttons missing than anyone else I've ever met before.”

“You have met the others?! You have met the 5D enviro-engineers or the medical tourists or the Unstables or Naifs?”

Madame diFalooza's black cat screeched and bolted from the room. The one-eyed parrot flew down and landed on Madame diFalooza's shoulder. It stared at me sideways with its beak agape while scratching its head with a talon.

“Okay, look , Mr. Ungonaztroponov, everyone's entitled to have their future foretold... even if they're whack jobs who've lost a few buttons, like you. But I'm not running a charity, you know, so the first thing you have to do is pay up. Normally, I'd charge twenty-five dollars, cash, in advance, to peer into my Acrylic plastic ball or read your palms. But because you're obviously a special case, I'll make you a special deal and charge a hundred. Come on now, show me the money, Mr. Ungonastravinski.”

“Awwwk,” said Madame diFalooza's one-eyed parrot, “Hundred bucks! Hundred bucks! Awwwk!”

I took out my wallet from my jacket pocket. Oh my! I had filled it with money from the last cash machine Szofia and I had emptied before we got on our flight. But I forgot that I had given it all, including the McPfeffers' cash, to Szofia ten minutes earlier so she could pay for her tattoo! “I am so sorry, I told Madame diFalooza. I do not have any money on me right now! I gave it all to my traveling companion, an intelligent four dimensional carnivorous vegetable.”

Her eyes narrowed to pinpricks. “Oh yeah?”

“Awwwwk!” screeched Madame diFalooza's one-eyed parrot. “Off with his head! Off with his head! Awwwk!”

Madame di Falooza abruptly stood up and pushed back the table. She had an 8" long S&W Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver in her hands like what I had seen Dirty Harry Callahan use in several Hollywood movies. Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic, thrust the barrel of the revolver into my belly.

“Awwwwk!” cried Madame Fabula diFalooza's parrot. “Make my day! Make my day! Awwwk!”

“So, you're not just a space alien, but you're a space alien comedian!” said Madame di Falooza. “Okay, sucker, up against the wall. Hands up, palms out! Right now! Now! Now! Do it Now!” She was almost spitting her words at me holding the gun barrel at my belly the whole time.

I was so terribly frightened! “Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

“Oy veh? Oy veh? What? Now you're suddenly a Jewish space alien comedian? Keep those dukes up there, sucker. Alright, take those kitchen gloves off - let see your palms, joker.

---- KEEP 'EM UP THERE OR I'LL USE YOUR TUKHUS FOR TARGET PRACTICE!”

She started to rummage through my pants pockets and then my wallet.

“Hmm,” she finally said. "Reading your billfold... I can see... that you're a loser, a real poor loser. And as for your future? Well... " she said dumping out the contents of my wallet with one hand onto her desk, "... I foresee that you're also going to be a poor loser in the future, with the emphasis on POOR, --- DID I SAY YOU COULD PUT YOUR HANDS DOWN? KEEP 'EM UP!”

“Awwwk!” cried Madame Fabula diFalooza's parrot. “Make my day! Make my day! Awwwk!”

Madame diFalooza paused to look more closely at my palms even with the revolver barrel still pressed into my belly. “Saaay, you've got some mighty strange looking grippers there, fella. Upside down, inside out? No wonder you're such a loser! How do you even pick your nose with paws like that? KEEP 'EM UP THERE!!!”

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

Madame di Falooza tucked her .44 Magnum into the sash of her robe, while she first patted down my shirt pockets and then shuffled through the identification and credit cards that had fallen out of my wallet.

“Well, well, well,” she said out loud as she inspected my drivers license by candlelight. “Some space alien you are! So it's Mr. Hugo Nash, is it? Nash rhymes with cash, but it looks like you have nothing except credit and debit cards, and I have a hunch your bank cards ain't worth their weight in turkey shit. What do you think, Robespierre?” Madame diFalooza asked her parrot.

“Turkey shit! Off with his head! Awwwk!” said Robespierre, the psychic's one-eyed parrot.

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

“You know, Mr. Nash. Your name, Hugo Nash...

… Hugo Nash…

... Hugo Nash…

Hugo Nash! You know, your name is starting to sound familiar to me. That face. Those hands... haven't I seen or heard about you somewhere before... ?”

“HUGO NASH! HUGO NASH! HUGO NASH!” screamed Robespierre.

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

“Off with his head! Off with his head!” screamed Robespierre the parrot.

She studied my face. “Were you ever on Rod Sterling's 'The Twilight Zone?' Or maybe the 'X Files?'”

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

“No! I've got it now! 'The Outer Limits'?... With a body and face like yours, I know that I didn't see you on 'Baywatch?'"

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

“Why do you keep gobbling like a turkey? C'mon, speak up... and KEEP YOUR HANDS HIGH WHERE I CAN SEE 'EM!”

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

Madame diFalooza's black cat came back into the room still wearing his miniature fez with stars and crescent moons. He was carrying in his mouth a digital tablet, which is quite a mouthful for a cat, after all.

“What have you got there, Merlin?” asked Mrs. diFalooza stroking her black cat's fur just behind his little star-spangled fez.

Merlin laid the tablet on the table and swiped the screen with his paw. Then he touched his nose on the 'local news' app. The day's top headline opened up and the cat first tapped his paw on the story and then pointed a claw straight at me. “Meoeowwooww,” said Merlin the black cat with an accusatory look in his green eyes. “Awwwk!” cried Madame Fabula diFalooza's parrot. “Make my day! Make my day! Awwwk!”

“Let me see that,” said Madame diFalooza as she read the front page story. Robespierre, the one-eyed parrot, flew down to the table and read the story, too.

“Airplane at LAX airport...mmm mmm jumped mid-flight... uhh, hmmm, mmm mmm... Trevor and Gale McPfeffor, the airport hijacker and accomplice ... mmm mmm mmm ... notorious Chinese, Palestinian and Russian terrorist... jail break… larceny… contributing to delinquency of minor… Hugo Nash... former teacher and divorced husband of tell-all author... mmm mmm inside out hands...

“… HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS REWARD!!”

Robespierre the parrot screeched:

“HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS! HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS!”

Madame diFalooza grinned at me. “HUGO NASH! Of course, you're the biggest terrorist of them all! Who'd a thunk it! The world's most terrible terrorist, mother-stabber, father-rapist and Islamo-child pornographer has come to Madame diFalooza's salon and walked right in masquerading as a Jewish-Swedish space alien to have his palms read! And a reward of a hundred million smackers! They want you..... dead...... or alive, my friend!”

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

“Stop that gobbling Mr. Nash!” yelled Madame di Falooza and pointed the revolver at me again. Merlin hissed menacingly. Robespierre, the parrot, beat his wings while screeching,

“Dead or alive! Off with his head! Dead or alive!”

Madame diFalooza leaned back in her chair. She laid her revolver on her lap. She lit a cigarette in a long ivory holder using a vintage Queen Anne style table top silver plated lighter. Merlin, her black cat, sat down cross-legged in her lap also smoking a small cigarette in a tiny holder. The parrot flew down, perched on the desk and began smoking a miniature hookah. Together, they scrutinized me through the haze of blue smoke. Robespierre the parrot puffed tiny twin smoke circles through its nostrils that formed expanding figure 8s as they floated toward the ceiling.

“You know,” Madame diFalooza said to me at last, “you don't seem all that terrifying, Mr. Nash.”

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

“In fact, you seem more terrified than terrifying.”

“Oiyoyoyei!”

Madame diFalooza pushed up her fez with the barrel of her revolver and leaned further back in her chair. She looked up at the ceiling, blowing smoke rings.

“When I was young... of course, that was a very long time ago, Mr. Nash. We were all very radical. I was a Lit major, minor in Art History... everybody who studied literature or art history or sociology was a flaming radical in those days, did you know that Mr. Nash? Really, truly! I mean, what else could we do with majors like that except start a revolution? We burned down quite a few ROTC buildings, occupied a lot of deans' offices, drove two presidents right out of the White House, yes we did!”

“Purrrrr,” said Merlin the black cat.

“Awwwk,” said Robespierre, the one-eyed African gray parrot.

“Oiyoyoyei,” said I.

Madame diFalooza leaned forward and stroked her cat's back. “Yes, Merlin, yes, Robespierre, decades and decades and decades ago we were going to change the world, end capitalism, free the oppressed of the world... Hippies and Yippies, we were going to free Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, end imperialism and liberate colonized peoples everywhere, weren't we, my dears?”

“Purrrrr,” said Merlin the black cat.

“Awwwk,” said the African gray parrot.

“Oiyoyoyei,” said I.

“Well, you know what happened, don't you, Mr. Nash? When the Vietnamese won the war and the draft came to an end, suddenly we had nothing to focus on, nothing to unify us, nothing to keep us on edge. We got bamboozled into entering the Okefenokee Swamp of identity politics and micro-causes and bickering splinter movements with big bucks NGO funding and trivial two-party electoral politics all of them competing with one another and dissipating our money, our time and our energy.

"That wasn't an accident, you know. No, Mr. Nash, it was the old rule of divide and conquer, 'Divide et Impere,' as the Romans said as their legions conquered and colonized the world. And they divided and conquered us all internally as well as externally.

"And besides, Mr. Nash, nearly half the so-called activists were actually government informants, infiltrators and provocateurs. At the top and at the bottom of every organization and movement, you didn't know who was real and who was not.

"After Vietnam, it was party time - time to get stoned, time to make a buck, time for trivial pursuits! Time to smoke hash and time to make your stash. But the endless exploitation of resources and people, the limitless returns on investment hit their limits. The profit margins started to shrink. The climate changed. The good times were coming to an end, but we were still rockin' and rollin' like they weren't. And then, while we were still hung-over, the Soviet Union toppled with a big push from Uncle Sugar, mamma mia! Suddenly, as Margaret Thatcher said, 'there was no alternative!'”

Madame diFalooza turned toward me. “Do you know what it means when there are no alternatives, Mr. Nash? It's like having 57 varieties of ice cream, but you can't buy anything except vanilla. So plain vanilla was all there was.

"First, the musicians sold out and went mainstream. Then all the lawyers went to Wall Street. Then the writers and the artists, the scientists and engineers and the computer techies - everybody caved in and went to work for the ruling class who owned just about everything including the government. Do you know what they call that Mr. Nash when the private sector and the state are one and same? That's called fascism!

“Purrrrr,” said Merlin the Cat.

“Oiyoyoyei,” said I.

“Awwwk,” said the African gray parrot.

Madame diFalooza shook her revolver back and forth for emphasis. “That's right, fascism Mr. Nash! It's like satirist George Carlin once said: World War II ended - Germany lost, but fascism won. That's what happened! It's like we slid into a parallel universe with a slightly different twist on history.”

“That is entirely possible,” I murmured.

“What did you say?? Did you say something, Mr. Nash?? Keep those hands up!!!” She rested the handle of the gun on the table, the barrel still pointed at me.

“Oiyoyoyei!”

Madame diFalooza's black cat Merlin took the .44 Magnum. He held it up in his two front paws and aimed it at me with one green cat-eye closed, a single claw on the trigger. “Dead or alive!” screamed Robespierre, the African gray parrot. “Off with his head! Make my day!”

Madame diFalooza leaned back in her chair again studying me. A minute passed while Merlin rotated the revolver cylinder with his claws. One click. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

"Feeling Lucky? Feeling Lucky? Awwk! Make my day! Feeling lucky? Awwk!" screeched Robespierre the parrot.

Madame Fabula diFalooza tilted her chair forward, took the revolver from her black cat and pointed it at me again: “So then you know what happened, Mr. Nash? The Cold War ended and capitalism won and all the rest of us lost.

"Why were we so happy, Mr. Nash? Why, I ask you? Why? I'll tell you why - we got bought off with a little chump change! They gave us rigged stock market casinos and real estate bubbles. People could make some dough, have some fun, stash money in illusory 401(k) retirement accounts that they could never actually use; become hot snot consumers with endless consumer debt, buy lots of useless bling on credit, buy an overpriced home with a mortgage that amounted to a lifetime rental that enslaved us for the balance of our lives. We did a deal with El Diablo, Mr. Nash! We pawned our future and the future of generations to come for a few rental years of the good life, Mr. Nash.”

She leaned forward. “And worse, Mr. Nash! The majority of us just went along, got along and were grateful for a stinking job, a paycheck, stability, peace, bread, circuses and silly political slogans - just like so many Adolf Eichmanns with our noses to the grindstones and our heads up our asses.”

“Purrrrr,” said Merlin the black cat.

“Oiyoyoyei,” said I.

“Awwwk,” said Robespierre the parrot.

“We were such fools, Mr. Nash!” Madame diFalooza continued. “There was no future for someone like me with a degree in English Lit and Art History. I tried my best to resist, Mr. Nash, but a girl's got to eat, doesn't she?”

She started to slowly twirl the revolver on her finger like in the movies, and it is quite remarkable to twirl a Model 29 .44 Magnum like that.

“So, Mr. Nash, just like it was meant to be, I eventually broke down. Yes, I utterly and completely broke down. Sold out. Yes, that's what I did, Mr. Nash. I sold real estate for a while. Waited tables at restaurants. Taught transcendental meditation. Wrote poetry for fun, but no profit. Did some telemarketing. Got married, got divorced. Did some social work. And then I got into this gig: Tarot cards, palm reading, Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic! Sheesh! what a way to make a living! Quite a come down from Tolstoy, Hemingway, Matisse, Franz Marc, Kandinsky, Marx and Engels. It's a pretty dismal story, isn't it Mr. Nash?”

“Purrrr,” said Merlin the Cat.

“Oiyoyoyei,” said I.

“Awwwk,” said Robespierre.

Madame diFalooza stubbed out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray. “You know, Mr. Nash, all those revolutionaries from back then were darn good-looking, too. That Che Guevara, with his dark Latin looks framed in curly black hair and beard, those sensuous eyes and his red beret - oh, I had such a crush on him! And Malcolm X with his big confident smile and sonorous voice! Fidel, Jerry Garcia, Seamus Costello, Muhammed Ali, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Renato Curcio, Ulrike Meinhof, Zbignew Zhing. All those talented, courageous women and gorgeous men!” She squinted at me judiciously. “Of course, you're not nearly as good-looking or talented as any of them, Mr. Nash.”

“Oiyoyoyei!”

“And you do seem to have a little flatulence problem, don't you?”

“Oiyoyoyei!”

“Well, it's all gone now.” She wheeled around in her chair. “It's really a shame, isn't it Merlin? Isn't it Robespierre? We thought that by ending the draft we would end war; but we only got twice as many wars, and instead of pacifist middle-class college-educated draftees being sent out to maim and kill, now we have presidential signature strikes and mercenaries and robot drones and proxy wars to maim and kill.

"We thought we would destroy the 'system,' but the 'system' destroyed us, body and soul. We wanted to destroy the middle-class institutions and, instead, we ended up reinforcing them and defending those same middle-class institutions. We wanted to distribute the wealth of nations, but the wealth of nations ended up being redistributed to the folks who already owned most of the wealth of nations. Instead of a class-less society, we got an even more class-based society; instead of democracy, we got plutocracy masquerading as democracy; instead of equality we got greater inequality.

"They gave us a 'shared economy' where we own nothing and have to rent from those who own everything. And then, Mr. Nash, we cheered our own degradation. Yes, that's what it means when you live in a world where there are no ice cream flavors except vanilla!”

“Purrrr,” said Merlin the black cat.

“Awwwk,” said Robespierre the parrot.

“Oiyoyoyei,” said I.

Madame diFalooza leaned forward on her elbows. “We tried, Mr. Nash, we really tried but let's admit it, we were historical and political idiots. We blathered our little phrases and mouthed the words without insight. We were fed bullshit slogans and we parroted them back just like we were indoctrinated to do.”

“Purrrrr,” said Merlin the black cat.

“Oiyoyoyei,” said I.

“Awwwk???” questioned Robespierre, the parrot.

“No,” she continued, “we have to admit it - we were stupid, stupid, stoooo-pid! We were stupid and naive and propagandized and led by the nose and... we failed. We didn't change the police state; it just evolved into something stronger and more violent and more intrusive than ever! We never managed to free Mumia or Leonard Peltier or Julian Assange or close the Guantanamo prison camp or end imperialism. And we never really ended slavery or colonialism - we just rebranded it under a different guise as global capital and let it migrate from South America to Africa and to Eastern Europe.

"Everytown, USA became colonized and exploited by the exploiters! We ourselves became Third World peasants! We never really liberated any oppressed peoples or ended a single war, we just neo-liberalized them and fooled ourselves with a fuzzy future fantasy that, like the proverbial carrot on the stick, makes the donkey keep plodding along. Can you believe it, Mr. Nash? We were self-deluded suckers. Nut-cases! All we accomplished was legal marijuana and charter schools and spy phones and gigantic pro sports stadiums with luxury box seats for the über-wealthy and on-line pimping services for temporary gigs and and social networking that the owners could make a profit on (and use to keep a close eye on us) and that would keep us all dumbed down and docile.

"I mean, the Internet was supposed to make information free and to set us free, Mr. Nash. Now, all the information, the books, the scientific journals, all the knowledge is locked up behind pay-walls, and they spy on, track, sell and file away every click, every web search, where you drive, every purchase, every message, your texts, your posts, what you watch, the music you listen to, what you buy, every photo you take and every call you make, everything you read on the Web, they keep and file it all. We're in a fool's paradise, we're living in glass houses and we've been brainwashed to love it.”

Madame diFalooza lit another cigarette in her ivory cigarette holder. “Oh yes, and that's not all, Mr. Nash! The System proved stronger than all of us. In the end, we were all corrupted; all of us were assimilated into it. We knew nothing and had learned nothing. Our collective sell-out proved that we could be as myopic and intolerant and as culturally chauvinistic as everyone else.

"We proved, Mr. Nash, that all men and women, black and brown and white and red, young and old, rich and poor, straight and gay - we all could be co-opted into the Establishment that we never even came close to eradicating, proving only that within every demographic of race, nationality, ethnicity, age, sex and religion, there is the same percentage of lying, psychopathic, mean, egotistical, corrupt, self-centered, venal, hegemonic SOBs, just like the rich old white gas bags we railed against.”

“Purrrr,” said Merlin the black cat.

“Awwwk,” said the parrot, Robespierre.

Gas Bags??? “Oiyoyoyei!” said I.

She tapped the cigarette ashes onto the floor. “And now, Mr. Nash, they want me to sell you down the river for one hundred million dollars! They want me to trade all this psychic gimcrack for the life of a point one-percenter! Now that seems like a whole lot of money, doesn't it Mr. Nash?”

Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic, slowly thumped the table with her fist.

“Yessir, I could kick back and not have to read another dirty, sweaty palm for the rest my life if I claim that reward! That's a lot of Friskies, corn flakes and catnip, Mr. Nash!”

“MEEEOOWSERWOWSER!!!” exclaimed Merlin the cat.

“Corn Flakes!!! Hundred Million Dollars!!! Awwwk!!!!” exclaimed Robespierre, the one-eyed parrot.

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!” said I.

Madame diFalooza leaned forward in her chair resting her chin on her hands that cradled the gun. Merlin, her black cat, also leaned forward and rested his chin on his folded front paws. Robespierre scratched his head. Five eyes - two dark brown, one yellow and two green - studied me. “Hmmmm, hmmmmm, hmmmmmm,” all of them mused in unison, blowing smoke rings.

After a few moments, Madame di Falooza said: “Well, here's what I think. A hundred million is hardly worth anything in today's dollars! I mean, due to inflation, that's chicken-feed, these days!”

“Meeoow??” queried Merlin the Cat.

“Awwwwk?” asked Robespierre, the parrot.

Madame diFalooza got up and started to pace the room. “In this world, only the psychopaths and the parasites live well and the innocent host gets slaughtered. Life is parasitic, Mr. Nash. Parasites feeding on parasites. You're the host or the leech and sometimes both. That's how their so-called 'rule of law' works, too. There is no justice. There is no fairness. It's all a charade, a farce. A cirque du parasitisme. The lions lie down with the lambs to eat them. The scum floats to the top. They get the spoils of this life and you get... the after-life! What a racket, ho ho ho! No, it's not just a racket, it's a conspiracy carried out in plain sight!”

She paused, then continued more loudly than before. “It all has to crash and burn! All of it! And besides, Mr. Nash, they don't really want to actually arrest heinous terrorists like you! No sir, you're the rationale for a much bigger agenda that cannot be spoken, a tool for achieving other ends! And, what's more, they're making a ton of money just going through the pretense of tracking you down! You serve a real purpose, a unifying purpose. You are a perfectly grotesque villain with your flatulence and misshapen hands, the quintessential enemy of the people, a lightening rod for peoples' fears and insecurities around which they can rally the unwitting serfs while the parasites suck out more blood and profit. Mr. Nash, truth be told, they could have nabbed you overnight, if they really wanted to do so, because we're living in a global panopticon where everyone lives under surveillance.

"Truth be told, Mr. Nash, if you didn't exist, the parasites would have to invent you. If I really were to turn you in, they'd probably shoot me first and blame it on you to cover their tracks... (and save the stinking reward money!)... and then they'd let you 'escape' just so the Hugo-Nash-Terrorist gravy train could keep right on rolling along.”

Madame diFalooza put the revolver back inside the desk drawer. “Oh, you can put your hands down now, Mister. I envy you in a way. You're obviously an idealist, an artist, a political zealot true to your principles, a real reformer, a rebel prince, a Commandante Zapata Nash, banner carrier of the new revolution... even though you are a certified whack job with quite a few buttons missing who's guaranteed to go down in a blaze of glory - you have a very short life line in your right hand, Mr. Nash, you do know that?” She paused for a moment and stroked her chin.

“Yes, Mr. Nash, you can go now.” Madame diFalooza pointed to the door. “You can go. Be gone, Hugo Nash! Vaya con Dios! Non vaya con Pollo! Hasta la Victoria siempre!”

She started to sing the Internationale in French as Merlin the cat hummed through a kazoo and Robespierre the parrot squawked in accompaniment... “Debout, les damnés de la terre; Debout, les forçats de la faim...”

I put on my kitchen gloves and slinked down the stairs. As I descended, I noticed that Madame Fabula di Falooza had suddenly stopped singing and her eyes had quickly narrowed.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her reach for the phone. I heard her tap the touch-tones

… 9 … 1 ... !!!

.... 4-003-7099 ....

“Hello, Sheila?” I heard her speak. “Sheila, you know my old old VW bus that's in your garage? Let's fix it up and travel around for awhile, for old time's sake...”

That is the last I heard Madame Fabula diFalooza say as Robespierre the parrot screeched at me “Turkey shit! Off with his head! Awwwk!”

Merlin, with a hiss and a kick from his hind paw, slammed the door behind me.

Szofia was waiting for me when I got downstairs.

“Hey, dude, where have you been? Look at these works of art,” she said proudly showing me the multi-colored psychedelic eggplants she had had tattooed into her forearms.

She looked me over. “You know, Kimosabe, you look even more pale face than usual. Are you alright?”

I was not sure I was alright. I was not sure of anything anymore.

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Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Have you skipped a few installments and lost the thread of the narrative? Are you reading this to avoid doing 'real work'? Have you slipped into a parallel universe and can't find your way out? For earlier chapters click HERE.

In the preceding chapter, Hugo and Szofia encountered a gaggle of Five Dimensional "engineers" who were preparing to continue a program of substituting gaseous intelligents for all of the world's political and business leaders. Hugo hopes to seize the chance for his exit ticket from 3D Earth while Szofia, in disgust, simply decides to exit the scene.

Hugo gets dumped, Szofia gets lost, and everyone is alone and alienated in LA. The story resumes with "A Bee in Her Bonnet & A Ride on the Wild Side," Chapter 15 of "Life Among the Three Dimensionals"...

There I was, all by myself, at Los Angeles International Airport.

I sat by the taxi bay, watching the hours tick away. I felt I had nothing to live for and it looked like I was stuck in LA. I watched as the cabs rolled in and I watched them roll away again.1

It was clear that there was no longer any point in sending reports to Pioneer Central. My study of Life Among the Three Dimensionals was a forgotten project, a vestige of another time, another culture. I was stuck in a 3D world for which I was unsuited. I was in a dimensional cul-de-sac.

It was time... 'antediluvian' was how my five dimensional compatriots had described me... to write my end-of-life memorial and seek out, as best I could, the Complete Immersion, Disintegration and Recycling in Tszũm'paáß, the universal omphalus. It was hard to believe that it had only been a few months since I had been de-cocooned and thrust as a new-born into this three dimensional world as a newly fledged scholar of quasi-intelligent anthropology. That short time period began when the true 'Hugo Nash' had been placed to chill in the mezzanine betwixt layers of the ever expanding multiverse and I had been inserted in his stead. It had led from one misadventure to another until now I was the most wanted and the most lonely fugitive on the planet.

Because my life was measured in mere months, it took just seconds to compose and record on a zippeldisk the foregoing memorial of my life and adventures among the rustic three dimensional quasi-intelligents. It would only require that I wrap up the story and send it out into the Multiverse to end up who knew where.

Deep in somber self-reflection, I did not notice the long, dark sedan with wide, high-performance, low profile tires, brilliant chrome work, diamond-studded gold spinners and blackout windows that had rolled up to the curb next to the "no stopping, no pickups, no waiting" sign. The unseen driver, ignoring the sign and the oft-repeated broadcast warning that stopped vehicles would be impounded and their drivers beaten, fined, and summarily incinerated, pulled up next to me and stopped. “What now?” I thought miserably to myself.

The passenger side window slid down a few inches. A thin plume of blue smoke curled out the window.

“Hey you! Fat head! Get in the car!”

I could barely believe my ears!

I opened the passenger door and happily got in. It was Szofia, of course, her green hair and hooded head barely poking over the steering wheel. I just managed to close the door when she jammed the accelerator to the floor. As we sped off, an artificially intelligent parking enforcement drone started its descent toward the 'no stopping' zone at the taxi stand and launched a parking infraction missile at the black cloud of burnt tire rubber where we had been just moments before.

Steering with one little finger, Szofia turned to me, grinning. She puckered and blew a marijuana smoke ring in my face, batting her eyelashes. The red blossoms growing inside her ear canals had grown larger. It looked like there were bees rummaging around inside them.

“I thought I would never see you again!” I said, my happiness barely restrained.

“Oh yeah?” said Szofia looking at me out of the corner of her eye.

“I thought you never wanted to see me again!”

“Oh yeah?” said Szofia. “You know, the thought did cross my mind.”

I felt so remorseful. “Szofia! I am so sorry! What are we going to do? 5D has completely changed. I do not recognize my own kind anymore and I am a freak of gaseous metahistory. And you are being pursued by ruthless bounty hunters from your own vegan world! What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” I was genuinely distraught and could feel my gas gauges bumping lower and lower.

Szofia was driving nearly 80 miles an hour as she entered the freeway, careening in and out of traffic, still steering with one small finger on the wheel.

“So it's back to 'we' again, is it, Hughbiedoobie? Team Szofie and Hughie, again?”

She accelerated up to 100 miles an hour. “You know, for a five dimensional airbag, Hughie, you do a pretty good imitation of a quasi-intelligent three dimensional male type.”

She looked accusingly at me while driving at breakneck speed. “So now that you've been rejected by your ass-gas buddies from 5-land, now you're sorry, huh? Okay, I'll accept that as an apology, Hughbert... at least until I want to drag up your betrayal again some time in the future, to my own advantage, of course.” She squinted at me. “Or maybe you could get your shitty little pippy to bail you out next time you get chin deep in fertilizer, eh Hughie?”

Szofia, leaning on the horn, zoomed past a slow moving Winnebago RV and flipped the driver a tattooed asparagus finger through the sun-roof.

I was non-plussed. “If you were a humanoid, Szofia, I would think you were jealous of my triploid!”

Szofia steered onto the shoulder kicking up a cloud of gravel and debris, then darted past half a dozen cars on her left before swerving back across six lanes of the Freeway at 110 miles per hour.

“Hughbie baby, thank the Big Broccoli in the sky, I am a vegetable, and not a fucking 3D bean brain of the hominid persuasion. Vegetables are way too intelligent to do the jealousy thing, you savvy?” She slammed on the brakes and slowed to 75.

“And besides, we not only grew up on different sides of the galactic railroad track, but you, amigo, are a different specie, a different phylum, a different genus, a different fork in history - in fact a whole different pitchfork in history - a different universe, and, to top it all off, you're from an entirely different set of dimensions! I mean, 20% of you is completely not there, as far as I'm concerned. And, besides, you're waaaay too young for me because I'm 78,238 human years old and, what are you, a months-old babe in the woods? 'Scuse me, padre, but you plasmoidics don't even subscribe to the same time coordinates that the rest of us do (or at least the rest of us intelligent vegetables, which is all that matters).”

Szofia accelerated to 100 and zipped past a school bus, passing it in the right lane. She turned to me and completely took her hands off the steering wheel.

"Szofia!" I exclaimed. "Pay attention to your driving!"

"It's on auto-pilot," she calmly replied. "It's supposed to be completely autonomous, so it will just drive itself." The car accelerated to 130 miles per hour and, like at a bowling alley, it started to knock over red traffic cones that marked an upcoming construction zone. Szophie snorted disparagingly, turned off the auto pilot and began again to steer with one small finger on the wheel.

“Oh, and I almost forgot" she continued to harangue me, "you're also a lousy dresser and you're too freaking boring! In sum, Huey, you're just a young fart (literally!) and you're not my type.

She accelerated to 150 mph, darting in and out of traffic.

"And, in case you're interested (which apparently you aren't... Mr. so-called five dimensional field anthropologist... my 'type' is ME, solo io, because, after all, like so many intelligent vegetables, I am self-pollinating. No sex or other halves required, comprendre? And thank the Big Broccoli for that, too, because you can't imagine how gross it is when some degenerate types of fruits and veggies pair up and roll around in their raised beds full of chicken shit fertilizing one another just like, I dunno, like the filthy, plant-eating animals that inhabit this dumb planet.”

Szofia flashed her headlights at a Ferrari that was traveling at only 90 miles an hour.

She flipped the finger to the Ferrari driver as she passed him and then drove to within inches of another car's bumper. There was a traffic jam. She abruptly slowed down and leaned on her horn while threading lanes. More bees had flown in through the sunroof and had joined the other ones buzzing about Szofia's right ear. There might have been more bees in her left ear, too, but that side of her head was turned away from me.

I thought about what Szofia had said. Because plasmoidics of my ilk can only discern and speak the truth, I concluded that everything she had said was... well, what she had said was totally ridiculous and made no sense whatsoever.

I turned to her and said so. “So, Szofia, I guess that, based on everything you have told me, does that mean that you really are jealous of my triploid?”

She screamed. “Aaaaaaaagghhhhqueeechkkkk!!!!!!”

Szofia slammed on her brakes and screeched to a complete stop in the middle of the freeway. Multiple cars behind her also slammed on their brakes, causing a chain reaction rear-ender half a mile in length. Then she sped off leaving tire rubber on the roadway and a massive traffic-jamming 300 car pile up behind us. The bees were still buzzing around her ears.

Szofia lit another reefer, turned and blew a smoke ring at me again, smiling, green eyelashes fluttering.

“So, Hughbiedoobie, what's the scoop on the itty bitty shitloid, anyway?” She accelerated to 90 mph.

I was afraid we would crash into another vehicle. I put my inverted hands on the dashboard while I answered her inquiry. “Szofia, my Trippy Pippy is a triploid, not a shitloid,” I huffed. “And if you want to know, my triploid is not what you think it is.”

“Yeah? Do tell!” Szofia slowed down to 75 miles per hour weaving back and forth between eight lanes.

I was being rocked back and forth in my seat. I was beginning to feel motion sickness. The tension between us was terrible. “Szofia, Why are you driving like that?”

“Like what?” she asked innocently. “I'm just driving defensively. Defensive driving means you drive to put everyone else on the defensive, savvy? It's safer that way. Everyone stays out of your way.” She cut in front of another driver.

“I'm making sure that other people give us plenty of room on either side and all around us, in case of an emergency caused by some crazy reckless driver. People in California just go nuts when they get behind the wheel of a car!”

She accelerated again and the speedometer registered 150 miles per hour. “So, Huey, you were telling me about the pippy pooper and why all your prevert gasbag buddies are snuggling what looks like stuffed teddy bears or hiding their triple pooper whatevers in their cell phones.”

I clenched the dashboard, digging my upside-down fingers into the padding. “Well, it is difficult to explain, Szofia, because this is such common knowledge in 5D that no one ever has to explain anything.” I thought about how to explain the situation in a manner she would understand. “You see, they may look like stuffed teddy bears, but they are not. That is just their 3D disguise, I suppose.”

“The truth,” I explained to Szofia, “goes back to the beginning of our local eruption of rapidly expanding space/time when everything was a big and undifferentiated cloud of hot plasma. The primordial gases would occasionally congeal around random imperfections and fluctuations in the five plains of our space geometry, but there was no life as we know it now, no civilization, no advances or knowledge or even reproduction. Gas was and continued to be gas, and that was that. Then, apparently, there appeared triploids...”

Szofia laughed. “Whoa! Stop, cowboy! Whaddya mean 'there appeared triploids...? They just appeared? From where? Triploids aren't plasmoidics?” Szofia ground out her reefer in the leather seat cushion and drank several gulps from the plastic water bottle in the cup holder. The 'water' in the bottle smelled like tequila and whiskey with pineapple juice.

I explained. “Szofia, nobody really knows where the triploids came from because, you know, they are not 5Ds. Triploids are six dimensional. Or, at least, that is the speculation, because they might even have higher dimensionality, like seven, eight... or even eleven. No one is really sure, and you cannot ask a triploid because nobody really can talk to them.” I pondered how I would explain this to her. “Szofia, triploids do make sounds and noises, so you can tell when they are happy or sad by the way they coo or squeal or whatever.” I began to feel weak and lonely as I described 5-life. “But we 5s are attached to our triploids. I mean that we are literally, actually attached to them while they metabolize our gases; so, conversation when you are... in love, you know, is not really possible or even necessary.”

“WHAT! Ahahahah snort ohohohohoh hic!” Szofia started laughing (and hiccuping), then slammed on the brakes, skidded 360 degrees on two wheels, recovered and resumed speed. “Your Trippy Pippy Pooper is a vampire sucking out your body gases? You must be pulling my bean poles!”

I felt embarrassed. “It is sort of true, Szofia. The triploids first appeared, apparently, as some form of extra-dimensional parasite. The conjecture is that they attached themselves to the congealed gases in our world that had formed around the accidental bubble-fluctuations in space. The triploids use our gases to energize their own functions, but they only metabolize the excess gas that we would ordinarily have to expel in order to maintain our own equilibrium. So, in a sense, it is a symbiotic relationship. We plasmoidics maintain our air pressures with the assistance of triploids that have permanently attached themselves to our plasma sacks, one triploid per plasmoidic at the moment of our un-cocooning. And they, in turn, use our excess gases to live. Neither of us can survive independently. That is why as a Pioneer, when I had to travel without my attached triploid, my Trippy Pippy, I had to use an external pack of equilibrating valves and meters. Valves and meters are all very sterile and very heavy, you know, and nothing so comfortable as a nice warm attached triploid!” I sobbed inconsolably.

Szofia flicked on the auto-pilot again and looked at me sideways with narrowed, disgusted, cynical eyebrows. I could see that, indeed, there were bees crawling around in the red blossoms in both her left and right ear canals.

“Do you mean to tell me, Hugh, that you bag boys live your whole lives with alien leeches sucking on your bodies, and you get all orgiastic about that?!?!” She laughed hysterically. “This sounds like some sort of primitive humanoid bloodletting practices to supposedly balance their body humors.” She screamed at me through an immense grin: GROSS ME OUT! And what do you get out of it except relief from the pressure-cooker of life?”

I felt myself blushing like a humanoid. “It is more than that, Szofia. It is also that the triploids allow us to... I am sorry, it is a little embarrassing to talk about this, because, like I said, plasmoidics just 'do it' and we do not talk about it in public.” I looked out the window to avoid Szofia's incredulous, laughing stare. “Szofia, we get very, uh, 'close' to our triploids because, well, they are always, always attached to us! The triploids allow us to relax and, you know, most importantly, to, uh, reproduce. Ahem. Every so often, whenever they get filled with sufficient 5D gas, they drop off for a while and just loll about 'digesting.'”

Szofia's grin grew unimaginably large. I cleared my throat and continued. “Where and how they do this digesting is unknown because, you know, they are other-dimensional and loll about to digest in private. But then, later, they reappear in 5D and reattach themselves to some other 5D passing by whose triploid has gone of to digest, and as it attaches to that fortunate gas bag, it begins the equilibrializing process all over again. Over time, the gases from the various gas bag hosts conflate inside the triploids. Like humanoid DNA, gases are for mixing and they get all mixed up inside the triploids.”

Szofia turned off the auto-pilot. She could barely restrain her amusement as she sped down the freeway. I cleared my throat again and continued. “Then, after a while, the triploids drop off again - I know this sounds very complicated, Szofia, but it is really all quite as natural and no more convoluted than life cycles in, say, this primitive 3D world. There is a deep-water species called football fish on this planet that has a somewhat similar reproductive mechanism.

"A WHAT!?"

"A football fish. One of those wide-mouthed cold water anglerfish that has a bio-luminescent lure dangling from its head. The males of the species are very tiny and parasitic and just attach themselves permanently... " I looked away in embarrassment.

Szofia was so amused her eyes were tearing up. Or, perhaps, it was the effect of what she was drinking. I continued. “So the triploids drop off again and... and... well, this part is pure conjecture, Szofia, they sort of 'pop' in their own six or seven or eleven dimensional unislices, expelling one or more highly mixed gas bubbles into our unislices. And those are the cocoons, the gas mixtures contained in very thin triploidic membranes, into which we infuse all of our pre-birth basic knowledge and from which we eventually emerge as full-fledged gaseous intelligents.”

I looked away from Szofia's amused stare. “And, by the way, our triploids do not really have a shape or sensory organs or anything other than little, very adorable sucker pads. They are just spheroids, little globules permanently clinging to us; until they drop off, that is.”

Szofia laughed so hard that I thought she might choke.

“But, Szofia, it appears that the current crop of sight-seers, tourists and, so-called 'engineers' disguise their triploids as toy stuffed animals and cell phones as a kind of 'cover,' I guess. With all the five dimensional agents that have been substituted on planet Earth, that probably explains why so many people - or, at least, those who appear to be 'people' - seem to be permanently attached to and constantly looking at their cell phones."

I sighed. “No, Szofia, I am glad I am not in 5-land anymore. This modern five dimensional life is just not my style.” I turned to her feeling utterly disconsolate. "And, honestly, that's all there is to our triploids..."

“NO WAY!!!” Szofia shouted barely able to control her laughter. “Oh my Gawd, you bag boys are... you're genuine freaking freaks!”

I felt offended. “Szofia, no, it really is not that strange. I mean, look, you have bees rummaging around in those red blossoms that have appeared in your ear canals. I do not know this for a fact, but I assume that you are growing flowers in your ears which attracts bees, which are not even the same kind of life form as intelligent vegetables, but they are necessary to pollinate you. And there you have it. Lots of different life forms live and reproduce in mutual or symbiotic relationships. Insects fertilize plants in return for nectar. Birds eat seeds and help propagate the plants whose seeds they eat. Termites colonize protozoa and microbes in their gut to help them digest food, and so do hominids. Mammals breath oxygen and expel carbon dioxide which plants use in photosynthesis expelling oxygen. And triploids have a mutually interdependent and necessary relationship with gaseous Intelligents. It's nature's way. So there you have it.”

Yes, there you had it. I felt even worse now than before explaining this to Szofia. Much worse. There I was, a lonely five dimensional intelligent plasmoidic in a barely intelligent 3D world explaining gaseous reproduction to an intelligent four dimensional vegetable with bees in her ears riding at a hundred miles an hour on a Southern California freeway in a dark speeding sedan with blacked out windows, low-rider tires and rhinestone-studded spinners... I felt worse and lonelier than I had felt during my entire time on this planetoid.

Finally, some awareness of my true situation returned to me. It finally sank in that we were driving somewhere – I didn't know where – and that we were driving very fast. “Uhhh, Szofia... where did you get the car??? Why are there flowers growing out of your ears? And, Szofia, where are we going, anyway?”

"Just hold on, Mr. Super Huper," she answered between snorts and laughter. "This is so bleeping funny I think I'm gonna barf! Wait until I can catch my breath!"

* * *

Szofia suddenly veered off the freeway at 95 miles an hour. She raced down the exit ramp, ran several traffic lights, turned left, turned right, skidded sideways, slammed on the brakes and parked the car in front of a 7-11 store.

We started walking.

Or, rather, I started walking. Before leaving the car, Szofia pulled from the back seat a hybrid skateboard with titanium trucks and gold polyurethane wheels and "Tail Devil" sparking plates on the front and back undersides of the deck.

Pushing her skateboard alongside me, Szofia offered to teach me all the tricks she could do including an airborne corkscrew, a freestyle hippie jump and 360 kick flip off a flight of stairs.

“See,” she said while pivoting on the back wheels generating a shower of sparks, “you just visualize your jump, let gravity accelerate you, time your lift-off and land with your knees bent, like this...”

No, I could not visualize myself, Ugoñaschßtenätraξo, aka Hugo Nash, lifting off on a skateboard. It was academically interesting to me to watch Szofia sliding down staircase banisters on her board or jumping the curb and scooting between cars in the road, but it would be undignified. What would be more interesting to me would be the answers to my questions.

“Szofia - you told me you would answer my queries. Now - where are we going? We seem to be heading west toward the ocean - but why? Why are there flowers growing in your ears? And where did you get the car... and the skateboard, for that matter?”

“Whaaaale,” she sighed while kicking up the skateboard and tucking it under her arm. She withdrew deeper into her sweatshirt hood and shuffled alongside me. “Hugh, let me answer your questions in reverse order.

"Where did I get the car....let's see, uhhh, where did I get the car.... whaaaaaale, you see, after I left you in deep conversation with your balloon headed friends from the fifth dimension, Yugo, I walked along, just minding my own business, whistling to myself, watching the grass grow and the faces in the clouds. I was just bopping along.

"And theeeere was this police-man standing by the curb near the drop off zone for the airport. He was looking very unhappy, very exasperated, if you know what I mean, Hugh. He had a verrrry looonnnggg face. He was a very sad man. You see, this police-man had a problem. And his problem was what to do with this car, because he was on break and he wanted to grab a cup of coffee and a doughnut and he didn't want to take the time to write a ticket for this illegally parked car while he was on his break. So this police-man just says to me, 'Honey, can you do me a big favor and take this illegally parked car and just drop it off anywhere you like, just so long as it's not near the airport?' And so I ...

I did not believe this story and told Szofia so. I asked her again, more forcefully: “Szofia, where did you get the car?”

“Okay, okay. The truth is, there was this real old lady. She walked with one of those four-wheeled walkers, you know. The skycaps were ignoring her, so, you know, I'm like a girl-scout doing a good deed. I offered to help carry her bags for her to the ticket counter. And you know, she was so grateful, she said, 'Child, here's a couple of hundred thousand dollar bills' (they've got Woodrow Wilson's picture, Hugh). Now, she told me, 'you go out and buy yourself something nice, like some ice cream or a Bugatti Chiron sports car and some hash oil...'”

I felt exasperated by her stories. “Szofia! I do not believe you!”

“Hughbert, you're starting to talk like you're my father, or something! Quit lecturing me, okay?”

“Szofia, you do not have a father! You are a vegetable, remember?”

“Hughbert,” Szofia huffed, “you are just so animal-centric. Of course vegetables have fathers. It's just that I'm self-pollinating, so I'm both my father and my mother... and my own children, too, for that matter. And I am a long line of my own ancestors. I mean, what's it to you? You got a problem with self-pollination?”

My head was spinning. “Szofia! Sometimes you talk like a real hominid teenager who you are impersonating and sometimes you talk like the 78,238 year old intelligent vegetable that you are. You keep switching personalities. It is very disconcerting!”

She jumped on her skateboard and did a pirouette. “Hughbert, I'm into method acting, can you deal with that? I act like what I look like, okay? When I look 12, then I act 12. Or not. Sometimes I feel like a nut; sometimes I don't. Mounds have real dark chocolate and... whatever. I do a good job being who I am, Hughbert, which is more than I can say for your persona, dude.”

Szofia kicked her board up in the air and caught it. She withdrew back under her sweatshirt hood like a turtle. “Dammit, Hughboo, I don't think I'm going to talk to you anymore about the car! Forget it, okay? I may be acting like a 12 year old, but you sure do a damn good impression, Hughboo, of an overbearing uncool quasi-intelligent humano-daddio. Stuff it!”

She was just putting me off. I was not going to stand for it. “Szofia! Where - did - you - get - the - car? Tell me the truth! I refuse to go any farther with you until you answer my questions!” I stopped in my tracks.

Szofia got back on her skateboard and pushed off. “Okay! Okay! You want to know the truth, Doobert? I was walking away from the airport in a funk because YOU, Mr. Hugh, are a five star idiot who was getting ready to beat it back to Gas Land and leave little Szofia hanging out to dry. And as I was walking along, kicking pebbles and spraying a little graffiti here and there, I saw a couple of upstanding gentleman who were also just hanging around, doing nothing by the side of the road, minding their own business... which was dealing drugs and God knows what else.

"They saw me, a little green-haired middle school girl wearing a hoodie who was obviously cutting class. And these upstanding fine young men in dark sunglasses and super slick dark jackets with slicked back hair and ultra polished white teeth and lots of gold and diamond bling, were seated in this very expensive, very fast, very shiny new car - the very car to which you, Mr. Hugh, have previously alluded.

"So these nice young gentlemen slid down a window and asked me with their big fat smiles if I wanted to go for a ride with them or buy a bag of a certain kind of class 1 narcotic. Well, that was obviously not very nice, but they opened the door for me, so I got in. And then I told them that they really weren't very nice people, but their car was super cool.

"I told them this as I slapped their leering faces nose down onto the dashboard and then whacked both of them with a kung fu kale karate chop upside the head laying them out cold, because, you know, I am a law-abiding, non-violent little girl, yes?

“So theeeennnnn, Hugh, I thought, well, now what do I do? I have this super fine, very expensive car that was so cute and lonely and these two unconscious lunkheads just lazing the day away, and I thought to myself, hmm, what should I do? What should I do?

“So theeeennnnnn, after I gagged and wrapped these gentlemen up with bungee cords and put them in the trunk...”

I was aghast. “Szofia! You assaulted and kidnapped two people, tied them up and put them in the trunk of the car?!?!”

“I did no such thing!” She huffed. “Pay attention, Hugh! I didn't kidnap or assault anyone! These were grown men; they were NOT kids! And I didn't use any salt on them whatsoever, just a kung fu kale karate chop to the neck... and, oh I forgot, a knee to the groin, too.

“And they were not napping, Hugh! No sir, when I put them in the trunk they were unconscious! So there were no kids and no napping and no salt! I was just keeping them safe. That's what trunks are for, to keep things safe and secure. I mean, that's probably why they kept all those little baggies of class 1 narcotics I found in the trunk, you know, to keep them safe.

"Anyhow, it did occur to me, Hugh, that these guys might be a little annoyed and all when they got out of the trunk, sooner or later, and they might want to know who had put them there. So I left Mr. and Mrs. Trevor McPfeffer's wallets and drivers' licenses with them in the trunk...”

I was doubly aghast. “You incriminated the McPfeffers?!? How could you do that Szofia? And what did you do with the car?”

She was indignant. “I did NOT incriminate the McPfeffers, Hughboo! I wouldn't do such a thing! They were not even there, so how could they be incriminated? They are probably still in custody back where they were falsely arrested before we got on the plane to fly to LA. No sir: I incriminated the two drug dealers.

“Besides, the two guys I put in the trunk had a smart phone that I used to contact the police. Not immediately, of course, but just before we dumped the car. While you're carrying on about your shitty pippies, I sent the cops a text message: the REAL Trevor and Gale McPfeffer... the accomplices of the notorious terrorists Szofia and Hugh... are not who you arrested. The REAL McPfeffers are hiding in the trunk of this flashy sports car at a 7-11 just off the freeway. And then I left the phone 'on' sitting on the drivers seat. The po-lice can track the location of all those smart phones, you do know that, don't you Hughbie?”

She cupped a hand to her ear: “Wait... are those sirens I hear in the distance? They're probably already there. Well, the police will figure it all out. They'll see that there ain't no Trevor or Gale McPfeffer in the trunk (because, you know, the McPfeffers are probably still in custody back at the airport we took off from) and they'll realize it was all a joke and return the wallets to the McPfeffers... minus the McPfeffers' cash, of course, which I put in your wallet, Mr. McHugh.

"So the po-lice will sort it all out, Hughbie. You know that. Eventually, anyway. As for the car... I mean, HUGH! Whaddya mean 'what did I do with the car?' I drove it away with you, dumb-ass!”

She stopped skating and looked me in the eye. “You know, Hugh, these guys had left the engine running, and you can't just leave a car with the motor running. Oh my God, that would be so totally un-California, so completely un-environmental. I am one conscientious, peaceable, environmentally friendly vegetable, Hughbert. So I couldn't leave it with the engine running. I took it with us!

"Even though I don't even have a drivers license, Hugh, I had to do something to protect the public! If I hadn't taken it, someone could have stolen the car! What if I hadn't taken it into my protective custody? I'm just saying! Some Californian who doesn't know how to drive... unlike me... could have stolen this very car and gotten into a very serious accident, and that might have injured those two gentlemen who I gagged and tied up with bungee cords and put in the trunk.

"No, Hugh, I couldn't let the chance of an accident happen. Besides, it's very illegal and polluting to leave a car on the side of the road with the motor running. You don't want me to break the law by leaving an unattended car with the motor running, do you, Hugh? You don't want be to pollute, do you?” She grinned. “And besides, they were very nice wheels, huh? They even had some nice weed and a little drinky-poo in the cockpit bar! And, also, look what I also found in the glove box!”

Szofia, grinning, showed me a gold-trimmed H&K 9 mm semi-automatic pistol that she pulled out of a leather holster concealed in her sweatshirt.

“Cool, huh? Suppressor ready, upper and lower Picatinny rails, super high capacity drum magazine, custom match-grade five inch six-twist threaded barrel, green laser sights, decocker and no safety, serial number sanded off, Hogue recoil absorbing grips, 125 grain jacketed hollow point frangible bullets... very tacti-cool, Hugh. You wanna try plinking a few pimp and drug dealer cars in the city?”

I was aghast! “Szofia! Get rid of that gun! We are still America's most wanted terrorists! You have broken the law everywhere we've gone. Now we really are terrorists and they are going to imprison us.”

“Naaahhh.” said Szofia re-holstering the gun. “Don't talk nonsense, Hugh. They might shoot you, but they won't even try to prosecute you. No sir, in this country, they only prosecute political dissidents, crimes against the investor class, journalists who publish the truth, college students protesting in support of Palestine, and those running for public office who are not approved by the power elites.

"Besides, Hugh, I'm just keeping this nasty pistol out of the hands of children and drug dealers and other people who don't know how to use it. It's just terrible that there are so many guns out there, Hugh! And that's why I'm doing my part to keep at least one very illegal gun off the street and safely in my pocket! I am one very concerned and civic-minded vegetable and I don't want anybody incompetent to get hurt. I mean, I simply had to take this terrible pistol away from the banditos who I had tossed into the trunk because if I hadn't, then those bozos might have accidentally hurt themselves... more than I already did, of course.

"No, Mr. McHugh, it's not the 3D 'law' that we have to worry about. I can always siphon away into 4D in a pinch and you can just burp or sneeze or hiccup, or whatever you do to cancel all these bio-electric types. It's not the humming bean-cops we've got to worry about. It's the Branch bounty hunters we've gotta look out for. And they're not tracking fast cars, but 4D butt-packs like you're carting around, Senor Hugh.”

“Besides,” she added. "I didn't really steal the car. I just took it into my temporary care and kept it safe and warm. You know, I am a nice girl. I left the keys in the ignition when we dumped it at the 7-11. So when the police let those fine young men get out of the trunk - eventually - they can drive their car away... after they post bail, of course, for possession of the McPfeffers' stolen wallets and all those bags of class 1 narcotics.”

She suddenly got an impish expression on her face. “And as for the skateboard, Hughbiedoobie... When I was at the airport just before I picked you up, I saw some kid riding goofy down the sidewalk with a really hot board, so we did a deal. I gave him a big roll of hundred dollar bills that I found underneath the front seat of that super fine, super fast car. So me and the kid did a little dealie-poo, and I put the skateboard in the backseat -- not in the trunk because, you know, there were already two nasty drug-dealers in the trunk and there wasn't room for a skateboard, too...”

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

“What's with you, Hugh? You think I paid too much?” She gently patted my cheek. “I mean, really, it was kinder free, sorta like the nasty drug-dealers paid for it, so the skateboard cost me nothing. It was kinda like a gift, see?”

I was an honorable 5D scholar, a Pioneer, an ambassador of 5 dimensional civilization even though that same civilization had, apparently, morphed into something terrible. I was horrified!

“Szofia, you have committed assault. You are carrying a stolen hand gun, a gun that is certainly illegal in this state and definitely illegal for you to carry at your age. You have kidnapped. You have committed car theft, grand larceny, not-so-grand larceny and identity theft. You have trafficked stolen property. You have contributed to the delinquency of a minor, namely me. You are drinking underage. You drove faster than the speed limit probably while intoxicated. You were driving without a drivers license. You drove recklessly. You might even be guilty of littering...! Szofia, they are going to put us away for life... if the drug dealers do not shoot us first!”

“Hugh, you are such an uptight weenie and you watch too much television. Relax, Hugh. Just chill, ok? I'm looking out for youse and meese, and everything's going to be alright. You gotta believe the hype! You've gotta believe in me!”

Szofia cupped my chin in her hand, looking straight at me. “Oooh, Hugh, those sound like good song lyrics! Hugh, we've gotta put this all to music. Maybe they'll make a musical about us? An opera; a rock opera! A Wagnerian rock opera! You can wear a 5D Viking helmet with horns and I'll be a green Brunhilda.”

She suddenly broke out singing (sort of) with her arms wide apart:

“Aaaaaaaaa warble snarkne krrrraaappplesauce ahhhhhggggrreeezzzzz Zzklkerwarble snarkle darkle applesauce.....!”

“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Szofia, I think you are intoxicated! I think I am going to burst my seams and you are going to burst my eardrums!”

She stopped singing. “Oh, and you asked about the ear flowers, Hugh... yes, those are ear flowers and, yes, those are bees. Very perceptive. You are one clever dude, Hugh. I just can't put one over on you!” She wriggled her ears and smiled. “And I am not drunk, Hugh. I am just high on life. I'm just a vegetable mother-and father-to-be, in a manner of speaking. I am 'in bloom,' so to speak, and sooner than later I'm going to bust a seed pod and spew pollen all over Southern California like no attack of hay fever they have ever seen before.” She smiled beatifically. “But... we'll talk about that later.

I looked all around me in a panic. I could see puffs of pollen issuing from Szofia's ears.

We were near the beach of the Pacific Ocean.

Strange people were doing strange things on the boardwalk.

I was in a depressed and agitated and frightened mood all at once!

“Szofia! You have told me where you got the car and the skateboard. You told me about the flowers and the bees in your ears. You have not told me yet: where are we going???”

“Oh, yeah, right. Okay. Well, this is going to be difficult, Hugh. But first, I have to stop in here.” Szofia turned to enter a tattoo parlor: Needle Me - Needle U. “So, in the short term, Hughboo, where we're going is to get a tattoo. Let me have your cash to pay the nice skin artist, okay? It helps me relax to go under the needle. You want one, Hughbie? Well, no, probably not such a good idea to etch some art onto a thin bag of volatile gas, huh? Well, Hugh, then you just wait for me out here. I'll be back soon to continue our conversation.”

Szofia and her swarm of ear-bees went into the tattoo parlor and left me alone on the boardwalk. Barely dressed roller skaters rolled past. Minimally clad and very muscular runners ran around me. All were listening to their own music through their earphones. Most of them were taking pictures of themselves doing whatever they were doing.

I felt utterly lost, utterly hopeless, just utterly five dimensional in a three-dimensional world.

There was a wooden sandwich board on the sidewalk three doors down from the tattoo parlor.

The sandwich board had a white arrow painted on it that pointed up a narrow flight of stairs to an upstairs office: Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic.

Her sandwich board sign said she could read palms.

She could read Tarot cards and tea leaves.

She knew the past. She could tell the future. She could cleanse people's auras.

I needed my aura cleaned. I needed my future told. I was desperate.

I went up the narrow wooden stairs.

* * *

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Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Have you forgotten how we got here and who these characters are? Have you forgotten where and who you are? Have you been living a sci-fi novel your entire life? Are you looking for something to distract you from 'work' you'd rather not be doing? Did you stumble on this Substack site by accident and can't get out? For earlier chapters click HERE.

In the preceding Chapter 13, our traveling duo encountered the Branch face-to-face on their flight to Los Angeles. The bounty hunters seeking to weed Szofia were on board. They gagged and tied Hugo Nash into an economy class seat while they set forth to espalier Szophia, the ‘juvenile delinquent’ 4 dimensional intelligent vegetable. Szophia, meanwhile, was zonked out in 1st Class while composting hot dogs and absorbing multiple alcoholic beverages through her fingers. The Branchers set a series of turbulent events in motion that sucked themselves out of the fuselage and nearly crashed the jet. Arriving in Los Angeles, Chapter 14 of "Life Among the Three Dimensionals"...

We landed at Los Angeles International Airport.

The Department of Homeland Security had concluded that the two trench-coated, fedora and sunglass-wearing passengers who had been vacuumed out of the airplane must have been... the nefarious terror-duo Hugo and Szofia. More than likely, they hadn't been "sucked out" of the plane at all, the Department's spokesperson declared, but, rather, like the fabled D.B. Cooper, Hugo and Szofia had staged their mid-air exit and used concealed parachutes to make their getaway. This was a complete fantasy, of course, but the news media swallowed and regurgitated it as the whole truth!

As we walked into the airport terminal through a frenetic mob of television reporters, the story of Hugo's and Szofia's sensational mid-air escape was broadcast as a scrolling "breaking news" headline at the bottom of every overhead television screen in the airport. My picture - the notorious Cubano Sino-Russo Palestinian Terrorist Hugo Nash - flashed repeatedly on every screen along with a "computer-generated" simulation of green-haired Szofia, (my supposed criminal collaborator and/or child abductee), wearing a black and white keffiyeh. The images were accompanied by the latest breath-taking rewards offered for our capture dead or alive!

The 'experts' authoritatively concluded that yet another terrorist attack on Heartland America had barely been averted. Their frothy, completely fabricated commentary, prompted immediate and vociferous calls from every quarter of business and government (which, of course, is redundant), in the name of protecting Free Market Democracy and the American Way, to further constrain individual rights and liberties and to incarcerate and/or deport anyone who did not subscribe to the authorized narrative about the malevolent Hugo & Szofia.

In between the "breaking news" story, the news channels played excerpts from a recent re-interview of my ex-wife -- that is the original Hugo Nash's ex-wife -- Carol Nash. She had, within 48 hours of publishing her first runaway best seller (soon to be a full length made-for-TV movie starring several prominent Hollywood actors and actresses), released a sequel "kiss and tell" book: Even More Lurid and Excruciating Details About My Marriage to an Islamo-Slasher-KiddiePorn-Terrorist.

The sequel, just like her first book, had also been ghost-written overnight by an artificially intelligent LLM ("large lying machine") computer program that wrote, proof-read, edited and published in twenty different languages the entire 1,000 page autobiographical hallucination, including several dozen Photo-Shopped and digitally created inauthentic 'photographs' (borrowed and concatenated without any attribution whatsoever to the many millions of other books and images that the AI program had liberally plagiarized).

Meanwhile, "my daughter" Jenny was also on camera again! She had 'invented' yet another new dance step (that looked, more or less, just like "Everybody Does the Pudge," her first dance creation, except that in the 'new' dance the steps were performed backwards). Jenny had now dropped out of school at the age of twelve to become a full-time professional "influencer." She had released yet another song ("I Want You") with the following lyrics (also ghost-written by an artificially intelligent LLM program plagiarizing without any attribution whatsoever to millions of other songs and lyrics):

My Daddy's a wanted man.
Wanted, wanted, wanted, wanted.
I want to be wanted, too!
Too, too, too, too, too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Do wacka do wacka do!
Cha cha cha!

Szophia cringed and muttered “Oh Gawd, what a loser!!!” as she strode through the concourse with her hands covering her (now blossoming) ears.

Strangely, even though we walked undisguised right through the terminal with our pictures broadcast everywhere, nobody spotted us. The quasi-intelligents seem never to look at one another, at least not directly. Consequently, no one recognized us even though we were passing among them in plain sight.

Or, if they did recognize us, they pretended not to.

Waiting at the landing gate to greet the elderly Trevor and Gale McPfeffer were their son, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter waving a crayon inscribed "Welcome Home" sign. All three of them - son, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter - were wearing à la mode green-dyed hair like Szofia's and red oven mittens, just like I and a quarter of the young population of Los Angeles were wearing (thanks to Szofia's own social media campaign)!

But there was no sign of grandparents Trevor and Gale McPfeffer. Unbeknownst to the welcoming trio, the elderly Trevor and Gale McPfeffer were still in custody for having tried (apparently) to sneak onto this same flight without identification (because their pockets had been picked by Szofia and because Szofia had also slipped a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol into Mrs. McPfeffer's purse).

The fact that the elderly and as yet unidentified couple left behind in custody at the departure gate insisted that they were Mr. and Mrs. McPfeffor obviously made no sense because - obviously - the 'real' Mr. and Mrs. McPfeffor had checked in and had flown first class on the flight to Los Angeles. Obviously so, because otherwise the authorities would have made an error in detaining the wrong people, and authorities can never admit that they have made a mistake.

As for us... the double-incognito Mr. and Mrs. McPfeffor aka Hugo Nash aka Ugoñaschßtenätraξo the five dimensional gaseous intelligent, and Szofia, the 78,238 year old truant four dimensional intelligent vegetable... we simply walked right past the younger generation McPfeffers because they didn't know who we were and we didn't know who they were.

Appearance-wise, I was a changed man by the time we arrived in Los Angeles International Airport. Many of my chŭpaжthx hair fibers had turned white or fallen out. Due to acute loss of gas pressure, my entire body bladder (and especially my simulacrum human face) had become lined with what appeared to be "age lines." I wore a tourniquet around my arm that Szofia had made for me to staunch a small puncture wound. My wrists were red where the Branchers had tied my hands to the economy class armrests.

When we entered the main terminal, representatives of the airline and the jet manufacturer were holding a joint press conference in which s/he/it repeatedly declared, ipse dixit, that "passenger safety is our Companies' highest priority." S/he/it further announced the "latest (dis)information," i.e. that the plane's fuselage door had not just "popped open" as several obviously intoxicated eyewitness passengers had misunderstood, but that the evil Hugo and Szofia had, apparently, dynamited (or used a powerful and mysterious laser beam) to blast a hole in the otherwise completely safe and thoroughly inspected plane because, s/he/it repeated, "Safety is the Companies' highest priority."

The airline and airplane manufacturer also had brought in hundreds of corporate lawyers to corral the disembarking passengers. We were offered discounted (but not completely free) medical care plus a free mid-week one-time 30 minute pass to Disneyland along with an off-season 10% discount on a one-way economy class airline ticket to Kiev, Ukraine.

In return, the passengers were required to sign an agreement relating to the recent "incident" by which the signors agreed to release the airline and the airplane manufacturer, their successors or assigns, agents, employees, directors, officers and insurers, from any liability for all property damage, emotional and personal injuries, both known and unknown, now and forever; including a confidentiality agreement not to discuss with anyone, alive or dead, including members of the press, investigators from the FAA, TSA, NTSB, family or friends, about what had happened on board their flight, whether real or imagined, because "Safety is the Companies' highest priority;" and any violation of this same release and confidentiality agreement would lead to violators committing suicide out of abject shame, and the airline and/or airplane manufacturer suing the pants off any non-suicided violator and/or violator's estate post-suicide; and, in addition, seeking injunctive relief, actual, liquidated and punitive damages for libel, the forfeiture of one's home, incarceration in a Super Max Prison, and the seizure and sale of one's children; plus an award of highly unreasonable attorneys fees and costs.

Of course, as attractive as the settlement offer was, Szofia and I declined it.

What medical treatment could they possibly provide to a 5D plasmoidic or to a 4D intelligent vegetable? Did they have ignoble gas coils? Nitrogen fixers? Fertilizer? Anaplastic subcutaneous plasma pumps? Gamma pills, antigraviotics, cultivar inoculator and ununseptium stabilizers?

Worse, from what I understood about the humanoid system of medical care, it was primarily designed to generate revenue for the commercial sector, jobs for the service sector and profit for the investor class. The health of the patient was only incidental. Even so, in light of the 3Ds' rudimentary scientific knowledge and commonplace peculation, it appeared to me that many humanoids ended up worse off after receiving medical treatment than before.

I simply could not take the chance. What would have happened if they had tried to draw my "blood" by sticking a needle into my bladder skin? What would have happened if they had tried to vaccinate me? I literally would have "popped," jetting explosive gases as well as experimental mRNA molecular strands into the environment!

What if they had tried to X-ray my non-existent bones? Or what if they had tried to hydrate me intravenously? The fluids would immediately have squirted right out of my nostrils!

What if they had tried to put a blood pressure cuff on my arm? With each pump of the rubber bulb my internal pressures would have readjusted like a balloon and caused my nose, eyes, earlobes or my tongue to instantly bulge out like a squeeze toy!

Szofia, too, was looking a little washed-out. But I noticed that those tiny red blossoms inside her ear canals were now larger.

Worse than being tired, Szofia was stressed out. She kept looking behind, around and above her for Branchers. She fidgeted with her spray-bottle of herbicide. She repeatedly sniffed the air for spores.

And speaking of sniffing, there was that unmistakable scent of transuranic methane again! Was it the two five dimensional Unstables we had met before embarking for Los Angeles, Clºpstr'apµo and Zerpăstchosptizhd?

No, this was a much, much stronger smell.

In fact, it seemed like it was all around us, especially near the baggage carousels. There were huge clouds of ignoble gases! The smell grew stronger outside at the taxi stands. It seemed almost as though there were a large contingent of 5D plamoidics, a whole contingent, a veritable tour bus-full of intelligent Gassies surrounding us!

Then -- I heard Field Impulse babbling all around me, front, back and sideways!

Yes, we were literally surrounded by my compatriots!

Was this one of the vacation tours heading for a radioactive resort, like the two Unstables had told us about?

But they did not look like Intelligent Gassies... they were like... like... they were like me, human simulacrums, all wrapped up inside humanoid bladder skins that made them look like ordinary 3D quasi-intelligents! They were disguised with all those superficial humanoid phenotypes of skin color, sex, age, height, weight, and ethnicity. They were dressed just like all the rest of the 3Ds in two and three-piece suits, jeans, cargo pants, polo shirts, blouses, T-shirts, sport jackets, Bermuda shorts, short dresses, long dresses, baggy pants, tight pants, sweaters, neck ties, bow ties, yoga pants, Gore-Tex jackets, penny loafers, wing tips, sandals and leather boots. In fact, they looked exactly like all the rest of the quasi-intelligents at the airport... including many wearing red oven mittens and green-dyed hair!

And, yes, they all carried their personal triploids inside their shirt and jacket pockets disguised as cell phones, their tiny heads just faintly appearing on the cell phone screens!

Oh my goodness, the smell of the familiar chlorine gas was overwhelming! Oh, the green, green gas of home!

I could barely restrain my excitement! I could join the tour. I could abort this misbegotten study of life among the 3Ds, piggyback onto the tourists' location buttons and, maybe... hopefully... return with them to hibernate for many restful cycles among my gaseous colleagues in my own five dimensional unislice!

I frizzed my decay signature, “'ßustuřgoőchç! 'ßustuřgoőchç! 'ßustuřgoőchç! I'm Ugoñaschßtenätraξo! Hugo Nash - the Pioneer Explorer! 'ßustuřgoőchç! 'ßustuřgoőchç! 'ßustuřgoőchç!”

But they only looked at me condescendingly and laughed like I was some kind of atavistic hayseed walking around with an antique four dimensional external support podule and five dimensional communication pack.

“'ßustuřgoőchç! 'ßustuřgoőchç! 'ßustuřgoőchç! I'm Ugoñaschßtenätraξo! Hugo Nash - the Pioneer Explorer! 'ßustuřgoőchç,” I repeated despairingly to each and every one of them.

One of the Gassies came up to me. He looked me up and down like I had popped out of a time twizzler.

“Can I help you?” the stranger asked me.1 He was a professorial type in a tweed jacket, deerstalker hat, rimless glasses and held a smoking calabash pipe. He asked again, “Are you all right, old man? You seem a little, shall we say in the local jargon, 'out of it,' no? And what's with all that four and five dimensional baggage you're carrying around with you, eh?”

My confusion was making me incoherent. I stumbled over my own words.“Yes, I'm fine. Uh, no. I mean, I'm Ugoñaschßtenätraξo! I'm a Pioneer doing a study of Life Among the 3Ds! Yes, you certainly can help me. You can help me leave this place and go home!”

The professor looked at me gravely. “A 'Pioneer,' you say? Studying the primitive fauna of this planetoid, eh? Really? Whatever for? And who is this elfin-like street waif who appears to be missing a dimension, eh?” He scrutinized Szofia over the top of his rimless glasses as though he were a lepidopterist studying a new specimen of moth.

Szofia looked exasperated. She whispered to me:

“Hubert, are these some more of your snarky friends from Five-land? I have enough to worry about with Branchers stalking my pollen without having to be bored to death by your blowhard gas bag buddies.”

“But Szophia, this could be my way out of here,” I whispered back to her.

“Speak for yourself, Mr. Hughbert Nashtrash,” she snarled through her teeth. “So you want to exit stage left and abandon me here to the bounty hunters? Well, Go rake your own leaves, you fucking fair weather farmer!”

Szofia flipped me an asparagus hand sign and then stormed off leaving me standing with the other gassies from my own galaxy from my own unislice.

“Hmm,” mused the professor aloud as he sucked on his calabash while examining me over the top of his glasses. “Your dimension-challenged elfin friend seems to have evaporated. Mr., ah, Hughbert Nashtrash, did she say? I don't recall your name on our manifest of enviro-engineers.”

“Hugo Nash. Not Nashtrash. Hugo Nash.” I started to frizz with anxiety. “Hugo Nash is my 3D name tag. The original human 'Hugo Nash' was placed in the multiverse mezzanine while I, his double, conducted my research. I am an Explorer, working undercover to do a study, sent here by the Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University, you know, in the the central Looo Nebula.”

“Hmm. An undercover gasbag? The Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University, you don't say? Yes, indeed, I've heard of it. The universities have reopened again, but they don't bother having any students or doing any studies, of course.”

The Professor continued puffing on his pipe while looking at me skeptically. What had happened to the Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University? What was a university without students or learning? The Professor looked at me like he thought I was some sort of lunatic or a gasaholic. What had those two Unstables, Clºpstr'apµo and Zerpăstchosptizhd, told us? The Pioneer program had closed down! Times had changed in the fifth dimension!

“Look,” I desperately explained, “I was specially cocooned for this project and first emerged in 401-9/67☼Ψ.2 in the Spΐntz-'há epicycle when I was inserted here! I know that it is now 602-15/60097☼Ψ.18 in the Spΐntz-'hŏ epicycle and that time cycles much more slowly in this unislice than in Gaslandia. But I have lost my Drůkk' ąou location buttons! I am marooned here, as part of an earlier anthropological study of the 3D life forms of this planetoid! You have to help me escape from here!”

“602-15/60097☼Ψ.18 in the Spΐntz-'hŏ epicycle, you say?” The professor looked startled and pulled his earlobe. “Why, that was more than 500 million epicycles ago! This is 1403-22/46683☼☼☼ж.73 in the Strpΐntzerock-'hάşŋ epicycle... Mr., uh, Yugo Mash, you say?”

“Oh, my, Praise the Dissolution!” I exclaimed. Of course, another 500 million epicycles had passed - literally decadoodles since we had encountered the Unstables, Clºpstr'apµo and Zerpăstchosptizhd, before we embarked for Los Angeles. Time not only bent far more acutely in this distant unislice (each solar period being just 17/34,557th of the length of the stellar cycle of the Home System), but time seemed to barely advance at all in these slow-moving hinterlands of the Multiverse.

The Professor sucked on his pipe again. "'Praise the Dissolution,' you say? You are a queer fellow, Mr. Mash. What quaint Field Impulse idioms you tend to use! 'Praise the Dissolution,' indeed! Next you will be talking about the universal Omphalus, Tszũm'paáß, and the Complete Immersion, Disintegration and Recycling! Oh ho ho ho! How very antediluvian!”

The professor looked at me amusedly. “Well, I suppose, Mr. Marsh, if you behave yourself, you might tag along with our teams of enviro-engineers (if you promised to stay out of the way).” He stroked his chin in thought. “But, you know, on second thought, they have their work to do and, uh, you would, uh, stick out a little too much, if you know what I mean?” He tapped one of my mis-attached hands with the bowl of his calabash.

I dreaded to ask, but did anyway. “Are you not disaster and eco-tourists on a tour of all the polluted and radioactive five dimensional resort hotels on this planetoid? What do you mean by "enviro-engineers," anyway?”

The Professor laughed and pulled his earlobes. “Oh, goodness no, Mr. Mash! Resorts and vacations are just so, you know, last megastellar cycle! Oh ho, oh no, Mr. Mash! We do not do small scale local resorts and hotels anymore! How quaint! We do the whole shebang now! The whole planetary system. The whole galaxy. That is why I am here chaperoning the latest group of enviro-engineers until they become acclimated to their positions.”

The Professor chuckled and winked at me. “Long, long, long ago, 5D's Homeland Leadership Counsel decided that it was easier to just give these little quasi-intelligent three dimensionals an extra push along the path they were heading anyway. They were well on the way and we just have given them a little assist in turning their whole planetary system into a delightfully junked up, radioactive, climatically hot, electromagnetically supercharged, chemically complex heavy-metal and genetically modified anorganic spa suitable for wholesale R&R for all of us intelligent gas-bags.

“We've even convinced them to start more wars and build nuclear power reactors again, as though it was a ‘green’ technology. Can you believe that? Yes, indeed, Mr. Crash. So we have been pulling out the native 'leaders' for about the last 70 earth-years on a selective basis. Then, as fast as we can stick the originals in the mezzanine, we train up and insert our own simulacrum politicians, television news broadcasters, business CEOs, scientists, book and newspaper publishers, celebrity chefs, army generals, judges, entrepreneurs, professors, engineers, artists, actors, bishops, mullahs, ministers, rabbis, journalists and movie producers - you know, the whole economic, social and leadership class in all of their so-called 'nations,' religions and political parties.

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Quatsch. For decades now, the presidents and prime ministers and senators and governors of some of the biggest three dimensional states, along with many of their cabinet members, many of their plutocrats and most of their preeminent academics have actually been five dimensional doppelgangers. Yes, indeed, Mr. Clash. Many of Earth's most influential politicians and its wealthiest people and giants of technology are actually Five Dimensional Intelligent Gas Bags who only appear to be human beings. By skillfully making these substitutions we have been able to keep these feckless quasies firmly on the path to creating a really, really nice environment everywhere... not for them, but for all of us five dimensional Intelli-gassies to enjoy, of course.

"And here you see our latest recruits ready to begin work at their stations,” the Professor said, waving his calabash at the nattering horde of diversely attired 'human' simulacrum five dimensional gas bags gathered at the LAX airport terminal with their different phenotypes of skin color, sex, height, weight, hair type and eye color. “From here, they will disperse all around this little globular wasteland and plug themselves in, joining with all the other 5D simulacrums we have inserted over the decades. They will be a seamless fit, do you not think so, Mr. Mashed? Our 5D substitutes have kept their hands on the tiller, so to speak, and they have worked out splendidly for well over half a century of earth-time, eh?”

I looked. He was correct. I could not tell the difference at all between the five dimensional gas-bags and the humanoid politicians, generals, entrepreneurs, businessmen and spiritual leaders they will replace.

“But, but, but...” I was flabbergasted! Shaken! I felt a sudden surge of Delabrae'th bio-organic degradation. “But what about the Pioneering Code of Ethics: Study; don't muddy!? Pioneer; don't interfere!?' What about our 5D honor code prohibiting exploitation and meddling? What about our noble gases, our Intelligents' commitment to let all life forms live and evolve naturally on their own?”

The professor smiled broadly and tapped his calabash lightly on my head. “Oh, Mr. Match, you are such a comedian, eh? Noble gases? Ethics? Honor? How absolutely antediluvian you are!”

He poked his pipe in my belly. “Times are different, Mr. Math. We are now in an age of eternally expanding gases. Progress depends on perpetual expansion until hot gas permeates every corner of the Multiverse.”

He suddenly stopped and looked at me with alarm. “You know, Mr. Match, the way you talk... your vocabulary... you almost sound like... you almost sound like one of those Conspiratorial Dissenters that we read about in our dusty annals of gaseous history."

He looked askance at me. “You aren't a Conspiratorial Dissenter are you now, Mr. Mach?” The Professor pulled back a few feet and looked at me over the top of his spectacles like I was some kind of semi-congealed solid.

“Hmm. Well, Mr. Mash, I can see that it really would not be a good idea for you to tag along. I am really, really sorry that we cannot help you. So, you see, it is time that you and the rest of us go our own ways. You do understand, of course. You must excuse me!”

The Professor turned away and engaged with his group of gas-bags in-training. There was a bit of Field Impulse garble, some final instructions, some long and short goodbyes. Then they split up, some in pairs, some singularly, moving off into Southern California by taxi and bus and airplane and train and thence to different parts of the earth-globule where they would take on their 3D assumed identities and missions on behalf of 5D civilization, as it had apparently evolved.

And so they left me by myself, still stuck in my human camouflage, still stuck in my old values and my old way of thinking, all alone, at the Los Angeles International Airport Taxi Stand.

I stood there by the taxi stand.

I had no triploid.

I had no relatives, no colleagues, no friends.

I had no way home.

I had even driven away Szofia, my one-time four-dimensional friend and companion. For in reaction to my selfish desire to save my own gases, she had left me in disgust to fend for myself.

* * *

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[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Are you feeling lost? Have you forgotten what happened before? Checking in for the first time? Too little time and too much to do? For earlier chapters click HERE.]

At the end of Chapter 12, Hugo Nash and Szofia, having purloined the identities (and the first class airline tickets) of two other travelers - the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Trevor McPfeffor - were now traveling ‘double incognito’ to Los Angeles. While waiting in the airport concourse to board their flight, they encountered two Gaseous Unstable tourists from the 5th Dimension. The "Big Burp," the closure of the gaseous intelligents' universities and the violent suppression of on-campus student protests against the genocide in Gasa, had turned Hugo Nash's five dimensional universe upside down and inside out (just like his own upside down, inside out hands). Chapter 13 of "Life Among the Three Dimensionals"...

We were airborne on our "red eye" overnight flight. I had just calibrated my gas pressures to account for the altitude when Szofia began ordering drinks.

“Mr. Trevor McPfeffor will take a glass of vodka, a glass of Cabernet and a couple of Jack Daniels, neat,” she told the skeptical stewardess while pointing at me. “And I will take any kind of meat you have in the galley; no bread, no vegetables, no ketchup or toppings, no froufrou, just meat. Don't even microwave it, thank you. Oh, and one headphone for the movie.”

The drinks arrived - four little bottles and a plastic glass, and later two cold hot dogs, no bun or condiments. Szofia poured all four drinks into the cup at one time and left it on my folding table. Then, when no one was looking, she reached across, dunked her tattooed fingers in as deep as her third knuckles and twirled them around. Then she ordered two additional bottles of tequila and two of rum (for me, Mr. Trevor McPfeffer, of course) and tipped them into the glass with the wine the vodka and the whiskey.

When the scowling stewardess had left, Szofia surreptitiously mashed the two (cold) hot dogs into the soles of her shoes and pointed the reading lights for my seat and hers straight at the top of her own head.

Szofia reclined back in her seat. “Hugh,” she said, “just close your eyes and compost awhile. You need to chill out and take your mind off that interminable study of the local earth-worms.”

Szofia began to look a little rosy as she composted the hot dogs through her foot-roots and swirled her green fingernails inside the plastic wine glass. In fact, her ears were more than rosy... there were literally tiny red flowers starting to blossom inside her ear canal. If you didn't look carefully, they merely appeared to be a string of tiny earrings. She placed the earphones onto her head, taking care not to crush the flowers, leaned back and began to vegetate. By the time the movie began, Szofia was in the third dimension in body only.

The movie interested me, but only as an academic matter. It was the standard three dimensional Hollywood production. Distilled to its essence: Bad Guy chases Good Guy in a visually spectacular display of violence, followed by a spectacular display of death and additional violence directed at "extras" and at Good Guy's improbably attractive Female Companion. This was followed by unexpected and improbable turns of event, followed by sexually provocative scenes involving Good Guy's improbably attractive Female Companion, itself followed by a "cliff hanger" scene of life or planet-threatening nature. This, in turn, was followed by a visually spectacular "rescue" and the usual lesson that Western Civilization Triumphs over Evil Non-Western Barbarians and/or Capitalism Prevails over Socialism.

All of it was accompanied by dramatic background music, noise, explosions and subliminal messages to buy certain types of beverages and automobiles, followed by catharsis, an episode of brief "comic relief," and the hint of a "sequel."

In the sequel, Bad Guy, Good Guy and Good Guy's new, but also improbably attractive, Female companion will do it all over again in a slightly different venue. In the sequel there will be slightly different unexpected and improbable turns of event accompanied by similar dramatic music, noise, explosions and subliminal messages to buy certain types of beverages and automobiles, followed by the same catharsis, a similar episode of brief "comic relief," and premonitions of yet another "sequel" where Bad Guy, Good Guy and yet another improbably attractive Female companion will do it all over again. In between sequels, the movie industry will award prizes to those who it believes sold the most movie tickets and facilitated the highest sales of drinks, automobiles, clothing and movie sequels.

But these thoughts proved that Szofia was correct. I had been cocooned to be a Pioneer and I simply could not take my mind off that interminable earth-worm study, as Szofia called it. There might not be anyone back in 5D who cared, or even a Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University in the central Looo Nebula anymore. But I was still a scholar and a field investigator with a job to do: investigate and report on the quasi-intelligents of this very peculiar 3D planetoid. I emerged from the cocoon as a philosopher and the inbred love and acquisition of pure knowledge – exactly what Szophia claimed made me so “boring” - drove me forward.

I looked around me - everyone in the airplane cabin was now watching the movie. Indeed, they were utterly transfixed by it, almost absorbed into the alternate reality depicted on the screen. Meanwhile, Szofia vegetated. She absorbed her very mixed alcoholic beverages through her fingertips, composted her cold hot dogs, and photosynthesized beneath the overhead reading lights.

What was I doing here on a flight to Los Angeles? So much had happened so quickly that I needed time to clear my thoughts. I got up and walked slowly down the airplane center aisle.

As I exited the first class section and entered "business class," I was struck by the stratified nature of the humanoids' 3D society and its extraordinary social distinctions. I passed through "business class" and entered the tightly cramped narrow aisle of the "economy class" section of the airplane where humans were stacked up on top of one another. Here, too, they were transfixed by a movie projected onto a screen. The seats in "economy class" were very narrow, very hard and very upright. Some people sat with the backrest of the seat in front pressed into their own laps. The seats were so narrow that some of the heavier passengers' bodies extruded from their own into adjacent seats, almost like my own four and five dimensional backpacks - except that they could not sense anything in the fourth and fifth dimensions, but a human could certainly feel a human body overflowing into one's own seat.

The seating in the "economy class" section of the airplane seemed extremely unpleasant, like rowing slaves sitting on planks in an old Greek or Roman trireme galley.

I saw and heard colic babies who were crying and screaming.

I saw people trying to nap with their heads leaning against the fuselage of the airplane or their heads falling against the shoulders of adjacent travelers.

I saw too many people waiting to use too few restrooms.

I saw a couple of passengers wearing dark sunglasses, fedoras and trench coats and who had dark green, thorny hands.

I noticed many people who were coughing and sneezing, like on the bus I had ridden to get to my substitute teaching assignment months earlier. The air on the plane contained an aerosol of viruses and bacteria that were recirculating around the cabin. The cabin air was very warm and dry.

I saw...

… I saw...

Wait! Scroll back a minute... !!!

I saw passengers with dark green thorny hands...?!?!

What...?!?!

I walked back through the aisle! What row were they in? I quickly repeated my steps frantically staring at every passenger's hands. Not him. No, not her. Not her. No...

No...

No...

No...

Yes! I found them!

Or, rather... they found me! Green-tinged fingers pulled off my oven mittens and clamped powerfully onto my backward, upside down hands. The green fingers drew me down. Another pair of thorny green hands clamped my mouth shut. Their grip was strong as ironwood roots. I was pulled toward the seat, toward the face of THE BRANCH! Or, rather, the face of TWO BRANCHERS, for there were indeed, two of them wearing brown trench coats and sun glasses!

I tried to break free but I could not! The two Branchers immediately siphoned themselves into the 4th -- I could see them, of course, but to all of the 3D passengers on the plane, they had simply disappeared. And nobody noticed, anyway, because they were completely absorbed in the movie.

In the 4th dimension, the Branchers appeared to be huge, kudzu-like, gnarly and pyramidal beings with large glowing eyes and vine-like upper tendrils reaching far outside the plane, blowing in the jet-stream. They were much, much bigger than Szofia and very muscular. Their faces were diabolical, and their branches were full of long, sharp spikes. There appeared to be thousands of four dimensional hornets buzzing around their bark.

The Branchers got up together and formed a solid grove. The one that had first grabbed me pushed me down into a now empty seat, gagged and tied me up with four dimensional duct tape. The other one reached toward my life support podule for my flutes and disconnected them! Transuranic methane began to leak out of me and into the compartment! The Branchers then tied a strip of 4D bird tape to my life support podule equilibralators and wrapped them around my backwards upside down hands that they then tied, in the fourth dimension, to the armrests in the third dimension.

“We have a little espalier work to do,” wheezed the Brancher who had snagged me, “and we do not want you to interfere.” He snickered asthmatically like I had heard a Snidely Whiplash character snicker on an old humanoid educational television show about a flying squirrel. Oh, where was Dudley Do-right when I needed him? Where were the guardians of human civilization - Paladin, Pa Cartwright, Batman, Matt Dillon, Spiderman, Popeye, Bullwinkle, Superman, Tonto and the Lone Ranger - where were these heroes of the Third Dimension when I really needed them?

I was helplessly bound to the chair, frizzing transuranic methane from my disconnected flutestacks! I was venting ignoble gases into the passenger cabin!

One of the Branchers took out a pair of 4D heavy duty shears from a bag in the overhead compartment. The other one took out a 4D pruning saw, bird netting, a weed-whacker, a cultivating knife, a scythe, a bottle of herbicide, a hammer and a sackful of copper nails. Carrying their horticultural instruments the two Branchers lumbered off toward the first class section chanting in unison “Hi ho, Hi ho, it's off to weed we go...”

I was utterly helpless! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!

I had to do something because Szofia was obviously their target and she was totally vegged out composting her cold hot dogs and absorbing through her fingertips a cocktail of tequila, rum, whiskey, vodka and wine. I could expulsifor, but to what end? The Branchers, like Szofia, were photosynthetics, very different from the bio-electric human beings. They would not be affected any more by me expulsifying than Szofia would have been.

I tried to wriggle free from my seat, but the loss of gas through my disconnected flutestacks was starting to enfeeble me. The Branchers were now entering business class, heading for first class! I pulled as hard as I could. Nothing. I pulled and wriggled and squirmed, all the while ignoble gases were fizzing out of me. Someone seated behind me yelled at me: "Stop rocking the seat back, asshole!"

I failed to untie the bird tape! Oiyoyoyei! I could hear the hissing of escaping transuranic methane and ignoble gasses - it was like a cut vein and I was bleeding away! The audible signals in my support podule began ringing emergency, emergency, emergency... the bells rang only in the 5th, of course... but the gas was spilling out in the first, second, third, fourth and fifth dimensions. My telemetry boards in my 5D backpack were preprogrammed to flip out an SOS zippledisk in the event of a major gas leak or disaster decoherence within the matrix, but to whom would it be sent if Pioneer Central and the Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University no longer existed?

The strong smell of transuranic methane gas spread quickly. It was sucked up and distributed by the airplane cabin recirculation system along with the usual broth of bacteria and viruses. Transuranic methane is both extremely volatile and extremely odoriferous, especially to the unrefined olfactory senses of humanoids. The powerful smell of transuranic methane even broke through the stupor of the in-flight movie. The passengers were ripped from their trances by the "stink." They put pillows over their noses, rang call lights throughout the aircraft for the stewardesses to help, pulled blankets over their heads and generally accused one another of having done most unpleasant things.

Then, triggered by the change in the cabin's atmosphere and the volatility of transuranic methane, automatic sensors caused the oxygen masks to drop down from the ceiling of the plane. Alarmed, the attendants ordered everyone back to their seats, stopped the in-flight movie and turned on the fasten seat belt sign.

The two Branchers intending to 'weed' Szofia, however, were unsure what to do. They froze in the aisle, still in the 4th dimension.

The flight attendants, meanwhile, were getting frantic - where were the sunglass-wearing trench-coated passengers who had been sitting where I now sat alone?

The passenger manifest described a Ms. May N. Branch and her traveling companion Mr. Rip Thorn who should be seated where, for some imperceptible reason, I appeared to be thrashing. "Mr. Trevor McPfeffor" (that is I, Hugo Nash!) belonged in the First Class Cabin but, for some unfathomable reason "Mr. McPfeffor" (that is, I) seemed to be unable to rise from where he sat while rocking back and forth, grimacing and shriveling up. He (that is, I) was occupying the otherwise two empty seats in economy class where Ms. May N. Branch and Mr. Rip Thorn should have been seated.

Fluting psziproots through my ventilation orifices is hazardous. But it also was depressurizing my exterior body sack such that Hugo Nash, aka "Mr. Trevor McPfeffor" was both losing mindfulness and becoming wrinkled like an under-inflated balloon. Even my chŭpaжthx hair fibers were turning white.

At this point, the sudden increase in cabin pressure caused by the exflow of my own transuranic methane caused one of the Boeing jet's mid-fuselage "plug doors" to pop out! The consequential sudden depressurization caused my four dimensional duct tape to tear free. I reached back and reconnected at least some of my life support hoses.

The air rushed out of the passenger cabin through the open plug door that had fallen out. All of the passengers, firmly seat-belted in, stayed where they were although their drinks and dinners (dinner in the economy section consisting of aluminum foil bags of salted peanuts ) were sucked out the open door.

The two Branchers who had frozen in the aisle, however, panicked. They siphoned themselves back into three dimensions. As they did so, standing up in the aisle, "Ms. May N. Branch" and her traveling companion "Mr. Rip Thorn" were also sucked through the open plug door out into the wild blue yonder along with an assortment of plastic cups, cell phones, diapers and bags of peanuts.

Plasmoidic five dimensional life forms are well known for their intelligence, but less so for their grace under pressure. Indeed, I was both literally and figuratively under-pressure with my warning signals blaring and my meters whirring in reverse with every passing of ignoble gas and my SOS zippledisk poised to skip out into the unistacks of the multiverse, so I was hardly feeling full of grace. When in doubt, therefore, an intelligent gassey can only do what is logical; and what is logical, when one does not know what to do, is to freak out and do everything at once.

I did: I simultaneously and involuntarily im- and expulsifored, which is a contradiction in terms except as a highly improbable quantum possibility and, consequently, extremely appropriate under the circumstances. In sum, I unwittingly created the five dimensional equivalent of a giant solar flare.

Of course, neither im- nor expulsiforing had any effect whatsoever on Szofia... but it did have an immediate effect on the 3D humanoid passengers, the pilots, the crew and the jet engines, too, because they all shut down instantly. The plane began to dive and to plummet earthward.

Objectively, this was very bad - the pilot and crew unconscious, the plane diving rapidly toward the ground, myself fluting highly combustible psziproots through my ventilation orifices.

Objectively, I could have taken this unique opportunity to study the psychology of impending death.

Objectively, there was nothing to be concerned about because, after all, one way or another, we all, sooner or later, would become part of the Complete Immersion, Disintegration and Recycling.

Objectively, I might have relaxed and seen five ways at once.

Subjectively, however, I was so terrified that I couldn't even see one way let alone five!

I was terrified! This was like the roller-coaster ride of a lifetime - and, perhaps, the last roller-coaster ride of my life!

The bright side, however - to the extent there could be any bright side to the situation - was that the two Branchers were no longer "on the plane."

After having been sucked out of the plane, the Branchers had siphoned themselves back into the 4th dimension. I alone saw them outside the window as both they and we plummeted in parallel formation. The Branchers sought to place a three dimensional anchor point inside the airplane so that they could siphon themselves back inside the cabin in the third dimension. Fortunately, however, they couldn't place the anchor point. Their free-fall trajectory pointed toward to the desert below. I, and I alone, saw the Branchers pass by the cabin windows shaking their gnarled green fists at me as – without wings to meliorate their descent - they rushed down, down, down.

In that instant, I passed out from acute loss of gas pressure.

* * *

I survived, of course, because I am here writing this memorial of my life. When I came to again in first class, I saw Szofia. She told me that she had snapped out of her photosynthesis when the movie abruptly stopped. She had no idea that there had been Branchers on the plane preparing to espalier and prune her. She had no idea how close she had come to having her root ball literally dug out. She did know, however, that I was not in my seat, that the cabin of the plane reeked of stinky butt-gas (as she artfully put it), that every humanoid on board was stunned, that the lights and fans and (most importantly) THE MOVIE had stopped. Significantly, Szofia also noticed that we were all plummeting like a rock to a cataclysmic end... and that I must have had something to do with it.

To make a short story shorter, she looked for me and found me passed out in the economy class section of the plane. As an intelligent vegetable, Szofia could walk the steeply inclined cabin with her feet firmly planted on the floor. She reached into 4D to reattach my equilibralators and put bandages on my lacerations. She used the overhead oxygen masks and several bottles of seltzer water to partially reinflate me.

“See,” Szofia said after she had successfully resuscitated me, “my Green Thumb first aid training has paid off, you stinky old gasbag!”

Szofia helped me back into the first class cabin.

I spoke by Field Impulse with the plane's onboard computer and autopilot program. Like all smart digital systems, the machine could exchange electrical impulses with me about the situation. After some discussion with me about what to do and how to do it, the onboard computer and auto pilot regained control of the plane. It straightened itself out as no humanoid pilot ever could have done. After all, no digital instrument left to its own devices (even one approved by quasi-intelligent 3D financial planners at Boeing) would want to terminate its life cycle in such an ignominious way as crashing into a hot, dry desert.

The propulsion system came back on line. The aisle lights and ventilation system reactivated. The passengers revived and, of course, they had no recollection whatsoever of what had just transpired... other than the fact that a) there was a gaping hole in the side of the airplane and b) two passengers were missing, i.e. Ms. May N. Branch and her traveling companion Mr. Rip Thorn!

The air traffic controllers on the ground had noticed that something unusual had happened.

They called out the fire trucks along with a large number of corporate lawyers to meet us and persuade us to sign releases of liability when we landed at LAX airport. But no one on board - no one other than Szofia and myself, of course - had any idea what actually had happened. All the human passengers and the plane's transponders and black box recorder had completely disconnected during the time of their im-and-expolsifore induced knock-out.

The only clues anyone had were the clutter of magazines, handbags, diapers and eyeglasses littered all over the aisles, the lingering smell of ignoble gases, and the mysterious disappearance of the two passengers wearing sunglasses, fedoras and trench coats who seemed to have been sucked through the open plug door in the middle of the airplane's fuselage.

Away in the dry bad-lands of the desert, there had been a Richter Scale event, an inexplicable nighttime crash of two enormous gnarled kudzu-trees right in the middle of nowhere. They collided with the ground and instantly splintered into dozens of thorny shards and sprigs... from which sprouted a copse of similarly enormous gnarled kudzu-trees that, in the morning, began to slowly lumber toward Los Angeles.

Are you feeling outraged? Morally indignant? Dazed and confused? Do you want to have a strong word or two with Hugo Nash or with Szofia? Are you convinced that this novel isn’t a work of fiction at all but a chronicle of your own life? Have you met someone, some place, some where, who was exactly like Hugo Nash or Szofia? Are you yourself an intelligent vegetable from the 4th dimension or a gaseous intelligent from the 5th? Do you feel like having a cocktail of tequila, rum, whiskey, vodka and wine? [Highly un-recommended!]

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I asked Szofia repeatedly why we had to fly... and where we were going!!

She marched me through the airport lobby. Thanks to Szophia's ubiquitous social media campaign, the airport was full of people - nearly half of them, by my estimate! - wearing over-sized oven mittens and electrostatically charged hair, just like mine. Of that half, nearly half again had green hair and hooded sweatshirts like Szofia's. I could hear that people were listening to Spotify on their cellphones and most of them were listening to "my daughter," Jenny Nash, singing "Do the Pudge!"

We strode through the airport lobby and, immersed in the camouflage of fashionable kitchen mittens and green dyed hair, no one seemed to notice us at all.

Still. I didn't know why we were flying off somewhere.

She finally gave me an answer.

Sort of.

“Hugh," Szofia said, "we're going to fly because it's too far to walk. And besides, it's safer to hide in plain view among the big herds of these three dimensional herbivores than it is to travel on our own. The real problem is your 4D backpack bobbing around like a flag. You're, like, you know, a big Goodyear blimp with a huge sign that reads "Here I Am," Mr. Hugh! So you are veritable bait for all the Branchers to pick out, like, you know, a giant inflatable pink neon carrot. So, the faster we get to where we are going, the faster I will be able to escape the Branch bounty hunters."

“But why can't you just leave this planet the same way you got here?” I asked Szofia as we walked through the long lines of travelers.

She looked irritated. “Yeah? Yeah? You want me to just get up and leave, huh? Well, why don't you, Hugh?”

I explained again how because I had lost my location buttons, I could not be extracted because I could not be, well, properly located. So if Pioneer Central tried to pull me back without my Drůkk' ąou buttons, then instead of me, they might withdraw into my 5D universe slice someone else... like Szofia, or a dog... or a whole baseball team... or an entire city like Washington D.C... As I explained to Szophia, accidentally sending a whole American city into the 5th dimension could be more than slightly embarrassing - even if nobody noticed that it was missing!

Nor, without road signs and a map, could I just walk out of this three dimensional slice of the Multiverse the same way I had walked in. With all the zeta-dillions of universes being laid down all around us by the mezosecond, I would not even know where to look for the path that led me here. So I could end up walking aimlessly around and around forever from one adjoining uni-slice of the Multiverse to another one. Any nearby universe would be so close as to be virtually identical but for the few missing socks or a piece of toast that fell upside down here and right-side-up there... with the exception that there could be two of me in that particular slice of universe, or even three or four... or a huge crowd of 'mes,' or possibly 'mes' of different ages, depending on where I was when I walked in on myself.

Although two "me's" encountering one another is nothing disastrous in itself (it happens now and again), it could lead to even more complications trying to sort out 'me from me' in deciding which 'me' to extract. It would be as complicated as pulling a thread through the eye of a quantum needle. One false step and I might fall into an entropy trap and I'd never come out. Or, if I made a wrong turn, I could accidentally walk into the mucilage that holds all the many universes together. Stepping into multiversal mucilage is like stepping into an enormous wad of cosmic chewing gum. That could lead to me dragging the goopy stuff along with me causing uni-slices to get completely and forever entangled. What a mess that is, Szofia, cleaning up entangled universes that ought to have been parallel and now intersect!

And what was worse, I explained, what if Pioneer Central had finally got around to sending me my Trippy Pippy and it arrived after I had left? I so miss my Trippy Pippy, I told Szofia. “So that's why it was imperative to have my Drůkk' ąou location buttons so Pioneer Central can pull the right 'me' out at the right time without wreaking temporal havoc.”

“Whatever,” said Szofia with obvious disinterest. She slowed to light a cigarette and blow smoke rings at the airport surveillance cameras.

Szofia then explained that her predicament was similar to mine.

“It's no easier for me than for you, Hughniper.” She flicked a cigarette butt onto the floor and lit another one. “See, I got here hitching a ride with one of those intergalactic clouds of pollen that periodically roll this way. It's like tramping with a freight train, you know what I mean? I jumped off Earthside along with a load of cosmic dust and a bunch of primordial life forms. Me and the hay fever pollen that came to afflict these Homo-Saps arrived around the same time.”

She turned to look me straight in the eye. “You know, Hugh, I'm not a seedling anymore, so it'd be tough for me to hang out with the Pollenesians again for a few thousand years, even if another cloud were to pass by this way. But with Branchers all around, I still have got to make a move or I'm gonna get flushed. You gotta get off the loo and do what you gotta do. You savvy that, Mr. McHugh?”

As I pondered what Szofia had told me about her galactic tramping, I found myself standing in the security line with Szofia pushing me toward the scanning machines.

We did not have tickets. For that matter, I, for one, didn't even know where we were going!

We did not have boarding passes.

We did not have any seat assignments.

We did not have any baggage... well, at least not in three dimensions.

On top of that, we were probably the most sought after pair of terrorists in this forsaken little unislice in some bayou of forgotten time! Tszũm'paáß save my memory, what were we doing here?! And those body scanning machines! The electromagnetic pulses were causing me to flute psziproots through my ventilation orifices and my pressure dials were whirring like crazy! I felt like I would explode, there was so much juicy radiation enveloping everyone. And then I saw that the three dimensional humans were showing some type of identification cards to the security personnel as they entered into the scanners! What was I going to show them: the drivers license of Hugo Nash, the most wanted man in America?! What were they going to see on the scanner screen?! A sackful of transuranic methane and ignoble gases, pipes and conduits that pass into an invisible life support podule and telemetry pack in 4 and 5D? But Szofia kept pushing me forward, forward, forward like this was the most natural thing to do!

Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!

One of the security officers pointed at me and shouted: “Hey, you! Take your shoes off! And take off your stupid gloves!”

Me? I had to take my shoes off? I looked around - everyone was untying their shoes and waddling barefooted toward the scanning machines like ducks. Untying shoelaces was very hard for my upside down inside out hands! I pried off my shoes and held them in my backwards, upside down hands - oh, what was going to happen when they saw my upside down inside out thumbs? We were toast, burnt and butter-side down toast. But Szofia kept pushing me forward, and she did not take her shoes off or even stop smoking, for that matter.

She pushed me into the scanner and I nearly jumped out of my gasbag when they turned it on! The EM radiation surge made my gravitational sheets bounce completely out of alignment! I felt like I was momentarily fuzzed out-of-focus! The security guards stared at my Hugo Nash driver's license thinking, no doubt: What have we here? The world's number one terror suspect flashing his photo ID to airport security!

While they held my driver's license they were looking slack-jawed at the screen in utter disbelief because there was nothing there to be seen, just an empty sack full of gas and tubes and... and... WHAT WAS THAT? A very three dimensional 9mm Sig Sauer semi-automatic police pistol that the security officers could clearly see lying in my fourth dimensional backpack that the security guards couldn't see?? Oiyoyoyei! Oh, what had Szofia done to me!

In that instant, Szofia whispered, “Hey, Hughie!” When I looked across at her, she blew a handful of pepper into the scanner chamber and, Aaaaaacchhhhhoooo, I expulsifored. The security guards bio-electrics instantly were wiped clean, as was all of their electronic gear, while Szofia (an intelligent vegetable unaffected by bio-electric impulses) pushed me out of the scanner and walked through herself. Szofia then dragged into the scanning booth the next two completely frozen passengers, an elderly couple with gray hair.

Szofia brushed off her hands in obvious satisfaction. “Totally cool. You are one bad boy, Hughie baby. Now, before I forget...”

She removed the Hugo Nash driver's license from the guard's hands and gave it back to me. Then she took the pistol out of my jacket pocket and put it in the grandmother's purse.

"What are you doing with that gun, Szofia!" I wailed.

"Yugho, you are such a whiner," she answered. "First, you got all bent out of shape when I borrowed a pistol from the police station that time when you broke us out of jail. Now, you get all bent out of shape when I return the pistol to the police! Yughopio, make up your mind already, okay?"

Szofia then stubbed out her cigarette and flicked the butt with her thumb and forefinger into the security guard's cup of coffee. “Ciao, bella,” she said, blowing him a kiss laced with pepper dust.

Sniffling and completely disheveled, I hurriedly put my shoes back on and scurried off in Szofia's tow into the main embarkation terminal. Fifteen minutes later, the expulsifor wore off. Security officers drew their guns, guards started shouting, the security alarms screamed. The poor, unwitting couple were tackled by burly policemen, frisked and handcuffed. The grandmother's handgun, found in her purse, was seized as evidence.

Szofia sniffed the air. “The coast is clear. C'mon, Hughey, let's go grab a hamburger and coffee while we wait for our flight out'a here.”

I also sniffed the air. It was not pepper or hamburger or spores that I smelled. It was something else.

* * *

The airport concourse was lined with television screens that all played the same program everywhere you looked. My "ex-wife" was giving another interview, this time about her upcoming kiss-and-tell memoir, Carol's Story: I Was Married to an Islamo-Slasher-KiddiePorn-Terrorist, ghost-authored overnight by an artificially intelligent LLM ("large lying model") book-writing computer program that totally confabulated, proof-read, edited and published in twenty languages the entire 500 page autobiographical hallucination (plagiarized and concatenated from several thousand previously published books) and that instantly made the top of every newspaper’s bestseller list based solely on pre-orders by bookstores owned by the same people who published the newspapers.

During the commercial breaks, the many television screens flashed pictures of... ME! But I was hardly recognizable. They were showing photos of me that clearly had been altered. I now appeared to be, what... Chinese? Palestinian? Russian? They showed me holding an AK47 and wearing a black and white keffiyeh scarf??? And it was breathlessly reported that my true name was not Hugo Nash, but Vladimir Hassan Hu-Mao Putinov!

Then they flashed pictures that they said were computer generated images of Szofia based on purported witnesses who allegedly trained with her in one terrorist training camp or another... but the computer generated pictures made her look like she was a leather-jacketed twenty-something Ulrike Meinhof type with black eyes and dark hair, carrying several sticks of dynamite in one hand and a large knife in the other, and wearing a green and red hijab instead of a hooded sweatshirt! This was complete nonsense!

"Szofia," I exclaimed, "they're never going to find us with pictures like those!"

Szofia yawned and wriggled her tattooed fingers in her cup of overpriced coffee. "Huno," you really don't get it, do you? They want to chase us. But they absolutely don't want to catch us. At least, not yet. They just want to keep everybody scared and worried. We're much more scary on the run than in captivity, and we're much more useful alive than dead."

The coffee in her cup diminished as she swirled her fingers.

"Eventually, Snugorino, they'll get around to apprehending us." She licked her fingers. "And after that, Snugho, they'll make a major Hollywood movie starring big time actors and glamorous actresses, depicting their heroic pursuit, their death-defying adventures and our ignominious demise, all of which, of course, will be 100% twaddle; but which will immediately be deemed the indisputable truth as verified by various truthfulness-certifying entities that are themselves 100% twaddle.

I was totally baffled. None of this made any sense to me, an intelligent, gaseous five-dimensional scholar. My head was literally spinning.

“How do we get out of this madness? And where are we going?” I pleaded with Szofia to tell me as she sat stirring her fingers inside a cup of hot coffee.

“Los Angeles, Hughie. We're going to the City of Angels.”

“Los Angeles! Why Los Angeles? And how are we going to get there without any tickets?” Based on what I had seen so far, I didn't really want an answer to my question. I could feel my gases begin to ee'ălify.

Szofia smiled impishly. “Who has no tickets, dude?” She removed her fingers out of the now empty coffee cup, wiped her nails clean and pulled out of her sweatshirt two airline boarding passes, destination LAX airport. She waved them in front of my eyes. “First class, Hugh; we only fly first class.”

I was astounded. “What? What? How did we get airplane tickets?” My gravitational fields began to wobble.

Szophia grinned. “Well, we didn't, exactly, but, uhhh ... " she held up the boarding passes to the light... "but, Trevor and Gale McPfeffer did have tickets! The McPfeffers, you know, the older couple who were arrested with the, uhh, missing, semi-automatic police-issue pistol a short time ago. So 'Trevor,'” she said looking me in the eye, “while we were standing in line at security, a little light leafy touch allowed us to, uh, borrow, these humble first-class tickets… along with their driver’s licenses, of course.

I could barely speak, I was so outraged. “Szofia, you are going to get us into big trouble! They are going to report their stolen tickets to the authorities!” My schrΰmp'schtǻck was going to burst my seams!

“Cool it, Hugh.” she laughed heartily. “We're Szofie and Hughie, the most wanted terrorists of all earth-time -- not to mention that I am also pursued by Vegimatic bounty hunters from the fourth dimension, in case you've forgotten. You're worried that I'm going to get us in trouble? Don't be such a bitter herb, Hugh. We're already a couple of pickled dill cucumbers.” She spun her fingers in my now half-empty cup of coffee.

“And besides," she continued, "who is this couple? They're obviously just a couple of loco, armed terrorists, if you ask me. I mean, Mister Trevor McPfeffer, give me a break! Is that cheeky, suspicious-looking older couple trying to impersonate you and me? Who knows? They might even be the evil Szofie and Hughie incarnate! That's right, Szofie and Hughie traveling in disguise, hmm? Or, more than like, they are our evil confederates! I mean, who's to say? They can say they are whoever they like, but who's going to believe them?

She licked the coffee off her finger tips. “And besides, by the time everything gets sorted out, we'll have drunk our first class Cabernets and Orange Juice Screwdrivers and we'll be on the ground in Tinseltown. Comprendé amigo?”

I had nightmarish visions of sharp little copper slugs piercing my gas bladders! But before I could exhaust the balloon of Schu'ũmm that was welling up inside my flutes and equiliberators, Zsophia gripped my arm with one of her small, powerful hands and said sotto voce,

“Now don't get too excited and don't turn around right now, Hugh, but there are two guys over there who have been staring at us for the past ten minutes, and I don't like the look of them.”

Of course, having been warned not to turn around and look, I instantly turned around to look, and, indeed, there were two male humanoids, both of them holding what looked like stuffed animals. They were laughing and grinning and pointing at us.

They pointed right at us and they waved!

Were they friends or relatives of the real Hugo Nash?

Then, oh Praise the Dissolution, they got up and started to walk right toward us!

This was it! We were a couple of pickled dill cucumbers, alright, just like Szofia said! She tightened up and drew her concealed pump-spray bottle of Roundup from her pocket and held it nervously at her side, tattooed finger on the activator. “Sneeze, Hugh!" she commanded me, and she blew a cupful of latte cinnamon froth at my face.

I sneezed and expulsifored.

Aaaachooooo!

The lights went out and people everywhere froze in place... except those two who kept walking straight at us, laughing, smiling with their hands outstretched! No reaction! They kept coming and grinning and coming and grinning! And those stuffed animals, those were no stuffed dogs or teddy bears... what was it they were carrying?

Szofia jumped out of her seat, knocking over a table. Her hand shaking, Szofia held the pump bottle of Roundup menacingly in front of her.

“Stop!” she commanded. “Twigs in the air and leaves on the ground! Now! One more step and you're uprooted!”

They ignored Szofia and went straight for me!

“Vr#Str¥oµ*gere' ~æ^ΐted!” Said the one on the right, giggling.

Szofia sprayed them! But they just... inhaled!

“Aaarwk!” gulped Szofia, which, I imagine, is vegespeak for something like 'oh shit' in terrestrial AmeriEnglish.

“Wowser!” said the man on the left in a heavily accented auricular vernacular. “Hmmhmm, 'ßustuřgoőchç!” He frizzed his decay signature, which in Field Impulse language meant something like, 'Cool! Do it again!' Because, indeed, they were communicating in Field Impulse because they were 5D gas bags, just like me, wearing human skins and clothes! And they were carrying their triploids with them, disguised like teddy bears, carrying them underarm like every self-respecting 5D. Except me!

“Hey, bro,” said the left one in AmeriEnglish, as all around us the expulsifor was beginning to wear off. “Where'd you get the antique 4 and 5D backpacks? And who's the grass-colored chick with the bottle of intoxicants? She's kinda missing a dimension, eh?”

He turned to Szofia: “Hey, how's tricks, sister? I'm Zerpăstchosptizhd and this is Clºpstr'apµo - you look a little bit green around the gills, kid, you know what I mean?”

I tried to explain. “Szofia! Szofia! Do not spray them! They are not from the Branch! They are Five Dimensionals from my universe! We are saved, Szofia! We are saved!”

Szofia looked disgusted. “We are saved, Hugh?” Szofia was annoyed as she cocked, locked and holstered her bottle of Roundup.

“Yo, uh... Hugh?” said Zerpăstchosptizhd pumping one of my upside down hands. “That's a funny name for a gaseous intelligent from the fifth dimension. So, uh, what're we saved from, anyhoo?”

I was incredulous. “You do not know me? I'm Ugoñaschßtenätraξo! I'm Hugo Nash, the Pioneer Explorer on an important anthropological study mission. Surely you have heard of me?”

“Yeah? Well, whatever,” said Clºpstr'apµo. “There haven't been any Pioneers in, oh, I dunno when. Are you, like, heh heh, lost in space? Hey, Zerpăstchosptizhd, when did they close down all that exploration and Pioneer study crap?”

Zerpăstchosptizhd scratched his head. “Beats me. Maybe several hundred million epicycles. Around the time of the Big Burp. You know, they closed down all the universities because all the students were protesting about the terrible things going on and the genocide that the State was funding or allowing to happen in Gasa. Or wherever. Your name's 'Hugh' you say?”

Szofia looked annoyed and put up her hood showing only her glowing green eyes.

Clºpstr'apµo and Zerpăstchosptizhd looked goofy. They did not know who I was! The Pioneer programs shut down? What was happening in Gasa that the authorities didn't want anyone to know about? Of course, hundreds of thousands, even millions of epicycles could have passed back home while I had only been on this little planetoid in this peculiar uni-slice a few months. But how could it be that the universities and the Pioneer programs had been shut down to censor students and suppress debate? Free speech and dissent were part of our enduring culture and gassy value system. Pioneering, the pursuit of knowledge and polyuniversal understanding were the essence of five dimensional civilization! The universities and the Pioneer Institute shut down? The end of freedom of speech? How could that be?

“How could that be?” Zerpăstchosptizhd echoed the question I finally put to him. “The Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University in the the central Looo Nebula? Doh. Beats me Mr. Hugh. I didn't fledge very well so, whatever. They kinda, you know, got the education inserts screwed up after they closed the schools and beat up so many students. After that, I didn't have much to do with academic types, you know. We were told to just drop out, shut up and get lost. So here we are.”

Clºpstr'apµo added: “We're just bopping around, you know, kicking back, stomping around the outer expansion slices of the Multiverse, sucking up the airborne plastic and gamma particles in this outpost, hanging with the natives before the tourists ruin the place and they start building all those Five Dimensional resort-hotels. We just flew back from that Fukushima place. Totally cool. To-tal-ly! Lots of hot rays; lots and lots of hot, radioactivity, you know what I mean? We've gone swimming in oil spills. Toxic waste sites. Sucked extra-long non-composting polymer threads. Chomped Styrofoam. Sucked frack juice. PCP. Formaldehyde. Mercury. You can get a real buzz on Earth almost without trying! And now we're off to Three Mile Island and then the Santa Susana Field Lab site and Canada's tar sands in Alberta and Chernobyl and Hanford and anyplace else we can find with dirty, hot juice. It's still real nice here, before they ruin things and start building the tourist spas, that is.”

Clºpstr'apµo turned to Zsophia. “Hey, kid, can you spray me again with some of that sweet jiggle juice you got in the bottle?”

“Who are these clowns?”

whispered Zsophia to me under her hood, glowering at Clºpstr'apµo and Zerpăstchosptizhd.

I was perplexed myself. I had no idea who they were. They seemed to be unstables or juvenile naifs. Or were unstables and naifs now the "norm" in the world of intelligent five dimensional gas bags?

“If you're Intelligases,” I said to Clºpstr'apµo and Zerpăstchosptizhd, “then where are your life support podules? Where are your communication gear? How did you get here? Do you have location buttons? And, most importantly... can I borrow your buttons?”

It was Zerpăstchosptizhd's turn to look perplexed.

“Doh, like you are a strange dude, Mr. Hugh. Your hands are a little weird, too, you know? Nobody uses external life support podules anymore. Or location buttons. Today, everything is, like, iPodules - you wear the whole thingy on your outerbladder or inside your sight preceptors, you know, like OoogleGasses. Ditto the location buttons. Who needs location buttons when permanent location transmitters are inserted during cocooning? Ditto the comm-crud. I mean, I haven't even seen an external telecom set since, I dunno, since whenever. How very very! Extreme funnyballs, yup. But that's how we spotted you, dude, walking around the airport with your 4D and 5D things and all. Very very, dude! And how'd we get here? We slived over, just like everyone else. Tripped our triploids out like toy teddy bears, just like the Five Dimensional Hitch-hiker's Guide to the 3D Galaxies suggested, so we didn't look too much out of place. Just followed the yellow brick road of sweet plastic litter and thin plumes of radiation seeping through the planetoid's coordinates. It's almost like the locals made this place for Intelligasses while wrecking their planet for themselves.

'This place is almost puuurrrfect -- for us, that is, not for them! It's in the tourist guide books, you know: Three dimensional vacation paradise on thirty squirts a day. EM emissions. Hot gamma and alpha particles everywhere. Plastic and hydrocarbons in the air, in the water, just, mmm mmm everywhere. Very cool. Very yum yum. Very intoxicating. Yessir. Very very. Just like that spray can, kid - say, can you hit me with another whiff, sister?”

Clºpstr'apµo turned to me. “So, did you retire here, Pops, going native, so to speak, to insuck all the goop in your golden epicycles before you, you know, get recycled, ahah hah hah?” He poked his triploid's belly and it bleated "Earrapphh."

This sorry looking triploid sounded as drunk as Clºpstr'apµo and Zerpăstchosptizhd, but, oh, still it made me nostalgic for my own Trippy Pippy.

Mostly, however, I was confused, stunned. These delinquents were talking to me like I was an old gas bag. I had hardly emerged before being sent to Earth on assignment. And that was only a few Earth months ago! They did not use Drůkk' ąou location buttons? So how could they help me get out of this place? Trembling, I asked Clºpstr'apµo and Zerpăstchosptizhd: “What... what age is this and what has happened back home?”

Clºpstr'apµo looked at my uncomprehendingly. “What age? Why it's 602-15/60097☼Ψ.18 in the Spΐntz-'hŏ epicycle, of course.”

The Spΐntz-'hŏ epicycle!! Naturally, I thought to myself. It had been just 401-9/67☼Ψ.2 in the Spΐntz-'há epicycle when I first emerged. Time moved differently at different distant points in any universe, let alone universes decadoodles removed from each other. It was completely to be expected that an hour here was epochs there. But only about two hundred million epicycles in 5D time had passed since I left - hardly enough time for such a momentous change to have occurred in my own civilization. It could be that among the three dimensional quasi-intelligents of this planetoid culture change could occur so quickly. But 5D gaseous intelligents are very evolved life forms who do not change capriciously! Two hundred thousand epicycles were a mere two and a half billion earth year equivalents or so... what possibly could have happened in such a short time frame?

“Dunno, Mr. Hugh,” said Zerpăstchosptizhd when I finally asked him. “There was something that happened. We told you, there was the Big Burp, you know, but that was before we emerged. But we know that a lot of gas got passed back then. And whatever.”

Clºpstr'apµo and Zerpăstchosptizhd looked at me like I was a bit crazy and shied away. “So, uh, yeah, we gotta go now, Mr. Hugh. And you, too, kid,” Zerpăstchosptizhd said to Szofia. “Nice green hair and all. Hope you find your missing dimension, kid. So, see you. Bye bye.”

Their triploids waved small drunk hands at me- "Earrapphh."

And off they galumphed, triploids underarm, leaking psziproots from their ears, waving and giggling, insucking toxic pollutants, trailing molecules of transuranic methane in their wake. Off they went, taking my hopes for an exit off this planet with them.

“We've got a plane to catch, Mister Hugh aka Trevor McPfeffer,” snarled Zsophia who was really very aggravated. “You got any more 'friends of the family' you want to make my acquaintance and scare the buds off me?”

I was lost in disquieting thoughts.

Tourists?

Five dimensional spas and resort hotels on Planet Earth?

Intoxicated triploids? I-podules and OoogleGasses?

Universities shuttered to censure and prevent political debate and dissenting opinions?

The Big Burp!?

The last major evolutionary belch had happened way back in gaseous pre-history, supposedly at the time when our 5D universe bubbled out of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Events seemed to have passed me by. In all honesty, I did not know if this was good news or bad. I was utterly baffled by what had happened to my own universe, just as I was baffled by what was happening in this one.

But I was equally baffled by the question Szofia had not answered: WHY are we flying to Los Angeles???

* * * * *

[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Did you start in the middle? Forgotten what came before? Skip a few chapters? To go back in time click HERE.]

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I had emerged from my cocoon barely four weeks ago and three of those had been spent with Szofia "on the run" from the earthlings' police authorities... and from the four dimensional "Branch" bounty hunters who were looking for her.

There had been no response - not one! - to my urgent reports and pleas to Pioneer Central to send me replacement location buttons and to extract me from this incomprehensible three dimensional world. I didn't know whether any of my missives had been received or, if they had been received, whether anyone had answered. I was despondent. I gave up trying to make contact.

In any event, my research project had become meaningless. I had been inserted into this world in order to study the lives of the three dimensional quasi-intelligents otherwise known as "humans." Instead, I was forced to depend on, and learn more about, four dimensional intelligent vegetables like Szofia who, I had since concluded, was hardly 'normal' even in her slice of the Multiverse!

Worse, instead of an anthropological study of the Earth's three dimensionals' culture, everything on Earth was now rapidly changing to mirror Szofia and me!

I suspected that Szofia had a lot to do with this because every time we stopped to "change horses" (as she described the process of dumping, hot-wiring and borrowing various cars, trucks and motorcycles) she would furiously "post" things to her SubStack, Tweezer, XYZ, Faceplant, YuBoob, WeSplat, TickleTockle, Telegramp, and Red-Itch social media platforms. She claimed that she had millions, maybe billions of followers "... or maybe even trillions and decadillions, who knows?" she said chortling.

Szofia said that all of her followers were now - wittingly or unwittingly - enlisted in helping the two of us to "hide in plain sight." Thus, it seems, that Szofia had launched a transhandedness social revolution along with the viral fashion to wear heavy oven mittens outdoors. It had also become à la mode for young men and women to imitate my appearance! They called this "the pudge look."

Now, everywhere we turned, there were young (and not-so-young) people wearing various colors of thick kitchen mittens 24/7. All of them had a perpetually 'startled' look on their faces. All of them had cultivated pudgy "dad bods" like mine. All of them sported the same kind of electrostatically charged, unmanageable hair. Not surprisingly, most of them had also dyed their hair green, just like Szofia au naturel!

Szofia denied that she had anything to do with this. "No sir," she told me with a sly smile. "Don't know nothing 'bout it, Monsieur Hugorino! These folks just decided on their own that the 'fugitive' 5D look - inverted hands, big gloves, green hair and that perpetually goofy expression of yours - were bad-ass cool! And there you have it, Hupiedoopy! We're cult heroes, now. And what's better," she continued, "we can now walk about wherever we want to without standing out, like, you know, the giant pink carrot that you usually are!"

Indeed!

Transhandedness, as they called it, had, virtually overnight, washed over the planet like a tsunami. The Transhanded Liberation Movement had sprung up out of almost nowhere... although I suspect it sprang from little Szofia's head! Demi-miniature humanoids around the planet were now demanding the right to express their true back-handed personalities by surgically reversing their left and right hands, thus making them look more like me! Medical and social-psychology professionals, realizing the enormous waste and expense of these surgical procedures, piled onto the bandwagon and urged everyone to give full surgical license to peoples' inner backwardness. Germany, Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the United States were among the leading countries where children, without their parents' permission, could now request immediate hand-swap surgery and post-procedure adaptation therapy.

"I always felt emotionally frustrated and trapped by my ordinary right-handedness," said a prominent social media influencer who had recently undergone 'the swap.' "Now, with my hands inside-out and upside down, I can release the true 'me.' Now, I can also finally indulge my life-long dream to play the guitar backwards and behind my back," the prominent social media influencer said.

"Unleash Our Maximal Oppositionality," became a college rallying cry of the transhanded revolution. Overnight, a crusade was underway... I suspect the source was, again, the media postings of Szofia, my intelligent vegetable colleague... to reexamine the significance of many historical Earth figures who, the revisionist historians asserted, had perpetuated an oppressive culture of normatively oppositional thumbs via traditional left/right handedness. Protesters gathered around many stone and bronze statues in humans' cities, including those of saints and apostles in various cathedrals. They demanded that the statues' hands be sawed off, reversed and reattached backwards to support the equalizing objectives of the transhanded movement.

Transhanded student activists additionally demanded that all languages be purged of words and phrases that might trigger the sensibilities of the transhanded community, including patently illiberal 'dominant hand' descriptors such as "sleight of hand," "handsome," "handyman," "acting underhanded," "putting one's hands up," "thumbs up/thumbs down," "hands on the wheel," and "hand-outs." The movement condemned as a micro-aggression the social imperative to identify oneself as left or right-handed rather than even-handed.

Moreover, the activists protested all "clapping," "waving," "finger-tapping," and "hand-shaking" in public because these practices discriminate against the transhanded whose palms faced outward and upward, not down and inward, and are unable to clap.

In response to the growing TLM protests, reactionary forces (orchestrated by the owners of the media) launched a counter-propaganda campaign that blamed "Antifa" for the transhanded phenomenon. This was utterly silly because "Antifa" is no more than a domestic iteration of the international "terrorists" - like ISIS and Hamas and Al-Qaeda - created, coordinated and funded by the selfsame states that denounce them.

Notwithstanding our celebrity status, Szofia and I had been identified as "dangerous terrorists" subject to apprehension and vilification. Szofia, for the moment, seemed mildly amused by the "manhunt" for us because neither one of us could properly be called a "man."

I, however, was not amused.

My medical condition was rapidly deteriorating. I suffered from extremely high gas pressures and early symptoms of radiointoxication due to extraordinary amounts of high and low frequency radiation emitted by local dominant quasi-intelligents. I wondered if the dominant three dimensional species released all these toxins into their world as a misguided deterrent to extra-dimensional exploration. No other rational explanation was possible for their otherwise irrational behavior.

The life of a fugitive was trying. Neither Szofia nor I needed to "eat" or "sleep" in the human senses of those terms, but we each had our own needs. Because, as she told me, the bounty hunters from the Branch can detect four dimensional anomalies that would betray her presence, she made every effort to "hide out" in "little girl form" among the three dimensional flora and fauna of this small planet. She told me that she had been dodging the Brancher posse for tens of thousands of years across numerous galaxies and stellar systems.

Szofia explained that, in her 4D world, all the vegetables were destined to be lined up in large industrial-scale plantations as identical row crops all the same height and width, repeatedly sprayed with chemical fertilizers and growth hormones, trimmed, pruned, weeded, staked and harvested. "It's one gigantic and incredibly boring monoculture," Szofia moaned, and she got a bit teary-eyed describing the fate from which she had escaped.

Periodically, Szofia would flit in and out of 4D in order to "borrow" (a term that she liked to use) one electronic appliance or another. “Word up,” she told me, with some exasperation at my ignorance of local customs. “Liberating other people's assets” was something everybody did on planet Earth, she assured me, to a greater or lesser degree. There are big crooks and little crooks, big rackets and little rackets, she explained to me. The whole planet was just mafias all the way up and mafias all the way down. She said that the big crooks own all the financial institutions, manufacturing, medical, entertainment and communication industries and they, in turn, own all the crooked politicians. The little crooks then emulate what the bigger crooks do just on a smaller local level. Then the big crooks blame the little crooks for making everyone's life miserable, thus distracting everyone from what the bigger crooks are up to.

“Some folks got cheese, and some folks got no cheese, but everything's a hustle. Are you down with that?” she lectured me as she lightly patted my head like I was a slow learner.

Szofia “liberated” a smart phone for me to hold in front of me and to "network" with. I explained to her that I didn't have any friends to “network” with nor did I have anything I wanted to 'share' with quasi-intelligent 3Ds. Szofia replied impatiently that it was crucial for me to walk around with my face to the phone whether I used it or not. If I didn't do face time with the phone, she assured me, I would stand out like the proverbial “pink carrot,” even more so than I usually did.

Moreover, she told me, with a coy smile, that if I didn't have any “friends” to network with, then I could always send text messages to her!

When I told Szofia that it made no sense for me to send text messages to anyone standing right next to me, she huffed that I was hopelessly ineducable and it would serve me right if the police caught me and pounded me into pesto sauce. "Be cool, okay?"

But how could I be cool, I replied to her, when I was simulating a warm-blooded mammal, not a reptile?

“Never mind! Ne-ver MIND!” she uttered in exasperation.

The life of a fugitive was not easy. Szofia, in her 3D configuration, still required some shelter from the elements as well as periodic opportunities to sunbathe, hydrate and compost.

It was also necessary to curb my own exposure to the intoxicating atmospheric, ground and water pollution that permeated the local environment. Consequently, for the preservation of our health, we entered various business and public establishments after they had closed. Szofia assured me that "squatting" was as much a local custom as shoplifting, and that it was nothing to be concerned about.

Our modus operandi (as Szofia called it) was that, after dark, she would siphon herself into the fourth dimension and walk into a congenial establishment like a flower shop or garden store. As she unlocked a back door from the inside, I would emit a bio-electric impulse and disable the primitive security systems. Szofia would then twist one leaf of every plant to verify that they were real and not some Brancher surveillance device planted in the plant stores.

Every night, before retiring, Szofia would (for “fun and relaxation,” she said) spend hours with her digital devices launching DDOS attacks on politicians and on pornographic websites, stealing and disseminating the identities of identity thieves, crashing the web portals of banks and government agencies, posting highly provocative anonymous comments at on-line newspapers, and unliking thousand of businesses on social media world-wide. Then, cheerily exhausted with her handiwork, Szofia would curl up under a grow light and vegetate through the night.

But no matter how hard we tried to "lie low" (as Szofia put it), our notoriety grew. We became regular topics of discussion on the so-called "talk shows" and the "evening news." Watching on Szofia's liberated communication devices, we viewed terrorism experts circularly interviewing other terrorism experts, and journalists circularly interviewing journalists who circularly interviewed the terrorism experts who had been interviewed by other terrorism experts.

They all had these supremely self-confident expressions, unblinking eyes, perfect complexions and carefully coiffed hair. They talked about how they knew what Hugo Nash was "up to," what my tactics were, where I was likely to "strike" next, how they were "hot on my trail” and how I would be "brought to justice" in a body bag.

This was particularly odd because I was already, in a real sense, living in a body bag.

A few times, my "ex-wife" - that is, the real Hugo Nash's ex-wife - was interviewed by reporters. She also had unblinking eyes and a perfect complexion. Szofia watched her interviews and told me in no uncertain terms how unimpressive “my ex-wife” was.

“Boring,” was how Szofia described her and “dumb dee-dumb dumb dumb dumb.”

But I learned something about "myself" from watching my "ex's" interviews. I learned that ‘my former wife,’ once named Carol Nash, now called herself Carol Twuinbargh – the name she used before she had married “me.”

During one interview at her house, my ‘ex-wife,’ Carol, denied that she had had any idea about her ex-husband's criminal proclivities. But, she disclosed confidentially (to everyone who was watching on television), that she always thought that Hugo Nash had led a secret life, that he always was up to no good and that he spent far too much time playing computer games, watching television sports, viewing TickleTockle videos and drinking beer. And, no, Carol (the former Mrs. Hugo Nash) had never noticed her ex-husband's odd-looking non-opposing thumbs and upside-down palms-- but, come to think of it, did he, perhaps, wear his wedding ring upside down? But who really remembered because, you know, men, are very peculiar that way!

During one of my ex-wife's interviews, she was joined on camera by none other than Hugo Nash's daughter – my daughter!!! Yes, my own daughter, “Jenny,” was the brown-haired girl whose photograph I had found in Hugo Nash's wallet only a mere four weeks earlier! Oh, Omphalalala!

But Szofia was even less impressed with “my daughter” than with my wife.

“So that little runt is your pseudo-spawn?” Szofia snorted. “Maybe you should leave your replicating twin in the Mezzanine, Hugh, so he doesn't reproduce again, eh?”

I watched in complete horror as these humanoids – yes, my double's own genetic family – disclosed to everyone the most private aspects of their lives. That was most un-five dimensional, because we plasmoidics value our privacy very highly! In this strange 3D world, however, privacy seemed to count for nothing. Everyone was a voyeur or an extrovert, and all of the governments and big businesses were harvesting and archiving everyone's personal habits and information all the time. Nobody seemed to care!

So, to my shock, there was Jenny, my daughter, bawling with reddened eyes and arms outstretched to the camera - yes, she was wearing large 'designer' kitchen mittens, too! - sighing for "Daddy" to come home and to give himself up... so that she and her mommy could collect the reward money!

With the reward they would receive for "turning Daddy in," Hugo Nash's own "daughter" said she could buy more fashion-ware such as rainbow colored and diamond-studded Vendi and Gucci oven gloves to add to her collection along with the red ones she was wearing during the interview! Oh, and she also wanted the reward money - the reward for capturing me, her erstwhile father - so she could buy front-row tickets to the latest Taylor Swift concert, throw lots of cool parties for her friends, and start her own social media channel where she could recommend sneakers and dance steps and music videos.

"So, let me show you my latest version of 'Doing the Pudge!'" cooed Jenny to the television cameras. "One and a-two and a-three... "

She proceeded to dip and pitch and kick her feet out from side to side, singing lyrics softly to herself while bouncing, slightly off-balance, and fanning her hands and knees in a way that resembled a "Roaring Twenties" flapper dancing the Charleston!

"Do the Dad-dy Pudge! Do the Dad-dy Pudge! Everybody's Daddy gotta do the Pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pudge!"

“Oɥ ɯʎ ƃɐɐɐʍʍp' ʍɥɐʇ ɐ loooooosǝɹ¡”1 groaned Szofia watching the televised interview with ‘my daughter’ while standing upside down on her head.

There were more revelations during that television interview with Jenny (my "daughter!"). Jenny patted the head of an animal, a little dog. Yes, it was the mysterious dog with the white fur whose picture I had also found in Hugo Nash's wallet! During the interview, "my daughter" (who looked like she was about Szofia's size and age, give or take 78,238 years) was chastising her pet: “Fluffy, stop barking! Fluffy, don't pee on the cameraman! Fluffy, go back in the house! Fluf-fy!!!!” The whole while, Fluffy ignored her and barked and peed all over the cameraman.

Szofia watched these scenes while standing on her head and said it was so hysterically funny that she might barf.

On another television program, the reporters actually interviewed Szofia's adopted parents – that is, the people she had adopted.

They seemed like a very nice elderly couple who apparently made a living selling marijuana cupcakes, home-brewed kombucha and recycled compostable condoms. They thought Szofia was a Hungarian orphan who they may have adopted, but they were not too sure exactly when, maybe two or six or fifteen years ago. But she might have been just a street kid who dropped in from time to time to smoke some weed. Which was okay with them, because they believed in peace and loved everyone and everybody regardless who they were. She had green hair you say? School grades? Well, they were not sure about that. Whether she studied or not was alright with them - they just wanted the "kids" to be "free range," so to speak, because "the children," and so forth.

Szofia laughed so hard she could barely breath and said while upside-down, “∀ɥɥɐɥɐɐɥɥɥɐɥɥɥɥɐɥ' ɐɥɥɥɥɐɥɐɥɥɐɥɥɐɥɥ˙˙˙˙ ɐɥɥɥɐɥɐɥɥɥɐ˙˙˙˙˙ Oɥ' I,ɯ ƃoᴉuƃ ʇo dnʞǝ' ɐɐɥɥɐɥɥɐɥɥɐɥɥ¡”2

Well Szofia might have been delighted by all of this nonsense, but I felt totally alienated; which, I guess, was normal, because I was an alien.

Among the strangest events I watched, however, was the "news conference" that the "President" of the local dominant political entity hosted one day for television reporters.

For the sake of my research, I begged Szofia to stop "channel-surfing" for a few minutes so that I could watch it closely on one of Szofia's liberated smart devices.

[Introduction by off-camera person]: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

Good Evening.

My fellow Americans; I have called this press conference to update the American People about our efforts to keep your children and loved ones safe. Let me be clear: no one is in any danger and your families and retirement accounts are perfectly safe. However, eternal vigilance is the price of the free market system. And, things could be worse, like when my uncle in World War I was shot down by the Russians while flying an F35 stealth biplane and was eaten alive with chopsticks by communist Chinese cannibals who, as you know, had invaded Japan and dropped atomic bombs on Berlin, Paris and San Francisco.

I am joined tonight by the Vice President, the Speaker of the House; the Senate Majority Leader; the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; all the members of the Federal Reserve Board; the leaders of the EU, NATO, the World Bank and the IMF; Prince Harry and Meghan Markle; Pope Francis; the chairs of the New York and NASDAQ Stock Exchanges; the Directors of the CIA, DIA, FBI, NSA, BATF, MLB, AFL, NBA, WTF, IMO; Beyonce, Dua Lipa, Drake, Ariande Grande, the Boston Philharmonic and Ed Sheeran; all of the Kardashian family; the winners of this year's World Series; the New York Knicks basketball team; Stormy Daniels; Homer Simpson; and all of the Muppets to show our unity and resolve in these circumstances.

It is important for the American People to understand that the events of recent weeks confirm that this country continues to be vulnerable to evil, freedom-hating, child-porn peddling criminals. Although we have the situation under control, the terrorist currently roaming the country, Hugo Nash, is but one member of a larger sleeper cell. These evil operatives are well-trained, highly dangerous and, like all sleeper cells, spend a lot of their time sleeping. So, folks, if you see someone who seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time sleeping, do not attempt to wake or apprehend this person yourself, but immediately call 911 and have the sleeper awakened by professional special forces teams.

Huey, Hugh, HUGH, dammit, are you listening to me??? Pay attention, okay? I've got more important things to say than this guy! So, look, Hugh... HUGH! C'mon, don't take this stuff so seriously. Pure farm fertilizer! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...

In the interest of protecting The Rule of Law, Energy Independence, Good Jobs and the American Way, and in furtherance of some of our constitutional values, I am declaring today a state of emergency by which the Bill of Rights will be indefinitely suspended, along with the right of Habeas Corpus. The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Amendments of the Bill of Rights will be subject to reinterpretation by a secret panel of the FISA Court. In order to safeguard your privacy, until further notice, I am, by executive order, retroactively authorizing 24/7 harvesting of the Internet, the Web, all social networks, all phone conversations, the Post Office, all electronic banking, all digital medical records and surveillance of all hotel and residential bedrooms.

Additionally, I have ordered the forced sale of the non-American and highly profitable media TickleTockle because they out-compete us and because they won't share its data harvest with our secret surveillance agencies. I have further authorized the use of armed artificially intelligent drones programmed to liquidate on sight terrorists, political malcontents and drivers who exceed the speed limit.

I want to reassure the American People that these measures are undertaken solely for the purpose of preserving intellectual property rights, as well as The Rule of Law that we hold so precious because the American Way of Life is not negotiable, and that means more fracking, more nuclear power and leaky shale oil pipelines, so just get over it. Meanwhile, I have ordered our brave men and women of the armed forces to liberate all nations world-wide that do not have any weapons of mass destruction and that have any petroleum, uranium, water, gold, nickel, copper, bauxite resources, and/or have gone off, will go off, or conceivably are thinking about going off the US Dollar as their reserve currency.

The Amer-i-can Pee-Pole, the evil free-dumb hating Hugo Nashhhhh..... Barf! C'mon, Hughey, baby, can we watch something more interesting than this, you know, like, what's on the gardening channel, huh?

Or maybe there's some old 'Leaf it to Beaver' reruns? The Tree Stooges? C'mon, Hughey baby, lighten up, okey dokey?

Although no direct links with China, North Korea, Iran, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Julian Assange or Bolivia have been uncovered so far, we are determined to find them; and we have cautioned that all options are on the table if we determine that any of these non-free-worlders seek to interfere with our economic exploitation interests.

Because this Hugo Nash character might also be a vector for a dangerous and highly contagious virus we ourselves created, we have implemented at warped speed a public-private partnership that will, with absolute immunity from liability regardless of disabling or fatal side-effects, develop overnight, with absolutely no laboratory or field testing, a thrice monthly mandatory MRNA vaccine regimen to immunize everyone from the illness we haven't yet identified, but which will boost our stock markets with every booster shot we require you to get.

HUGH! I could write a speech like this! Good gawd, Hugh, its all about jo-obs, the Amer-i-can waaay, the rule of laaaw, cold slaw, mothers-in-law, lawdy law daw... Bor-ing! Duuh, let's just round up the usual suspects, Allons enfants de la Patria... Play it again, Sam! Hoo-ah!

Duuuh, Hugh, can you just shut this junk off already? HUGH, are you listening to me? What a bunch of hooey, Hughie, I'm going to go hang out under a grow light and smoke some weed, okay? Want some? Yo?

By executive order, I have also exercised my unconstitutional prerogative to authorize Israel, our close ally and major reelection campaign contributor, to kill another 30,000 or so Gazan women and children for thinking that from the River to the Sea, Palestine must be free. I have also directed the Pentagon to immediately transfer the entire Sixth and Seventh Fleet to the government of Ukraine, along with several nuclear aircraft carriers, the entire U.S. Marine Corps, the Starship Enterprise and 700 trillion dollars, to be used only for humanitarian purposes like building bio-warfare laboratories, blowing up undersea gas pipelines, triggering a nuclear world war, funding proxy armies and terrorist attacks on civilians in Russia and Syria.

So, mindful of the need to create competition for low-paying jobs, protect us from the Basket of Deplorables while promoting American style uni-party democracy, increase defense industry profits, preserve portions of the Constitution and some of the Bill of Rights, as we choose to interpret it, I remind you that, so long as you have nothing to hide… in your past or on your cell phone or on your computer… then you have nothing to fear...except us... and one another... and who or whatever might be lurking under your bed or in your closet... or what's in the darkest recesses of your own mind.

Thank you, God bless those who matter, and don't forget to go shopping!

Szofia had been chattering throughout the President's speech until the very end when, uncharacteristically, she suddenly blanched a lighter shade of green. She pointed a tattooed finger at the screen. “Oh my gawd," she groaned. "They're here!!”

Szofia began to siphon herself back and forth between 4 and 3D, as though she could not make up her mind which dimension to be in.

“It's them,” she repeated.

She pointed her shaking finger at some shadowy figures wearing dark sunglasses and standing in the background near the red curtains behind the president's teleprompter.

I looked, but I saw nothing amiss. “... Szofia, those must just be the President's cabinet and security team...”

“No they're not. They're BRANCHERS! They can siphon back and forth like I can, but if you look closely, you can see the shadows of an extra dimensionality just behind the other three. It's the way they stand, the way they walk. It's the shiftiness in their eyes even through the sunglasses. See how seedy they look? I can almost smell their spores right through the screen. Look closely, Hugh! See what I mean?"

I stared at the shadowy figures.

Indeed, I did see the fourth dimensional shadow. And these men with the dark sunglasses certainly did look seedy. Could Szofia have been right? The posse of the Branch might well have arrived!

And was there something else, perhaps? A trace of yet another dimension beyond the fourth? Although I didn't smell any alien spores like Szofia had smelled, was there just a faint trace of a hint of a whiff... of transuranic methane and ignoble gases?

Szofia was already headed out the door. She grabbed me by the arm. “Drop everything,” she begged me. “We gotta get out of here!”

We did.

The street was dark and wet. The streetlights cast our furtive shadows on the brick walls of the city.

We walked fast, almost running.

Every few blocks, we stopped to test the air - she sniffed for Branch spore and I for the telltale scent of a 5D gaseous life-form.

We both could sense it.

We were not alone.

* * *

[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Dazed and confused? For earlier chapters click HERE.]

End of preceding Chapter 9:

“Look outside the window, Hugh!” Szophia laughed, lifting one of the yellowed Venetian blind slats.

“So, what do you see, huh? Nothing... nothing... just... just thirty or forty police cars... several dozen police motorcycles... several armored SWAT vehicles... a hundred or so cops in riot gear and gas masks... a few snipers and canine units..."

Szophia gently closed the slat of the window blind and cautiously slunk away. “So, uh, it might be high time for little Szophie to siphon herself into another dimension, exit Stage right... et tu, Senõr Hughie...?”

I told Szophia that she was being ridiculous. This was all just a big mistake. The best thing to do, I assured her, was for us to go outside and speak to the police. I was an Intelligent, and even though they were only quasi-intelligents, they must surely have at least a modicum of sense. By reasoning with them, they would understand and we would defuse the situation.

Besides, I thought to myself, I couldn't go on “running” with a 12 year old girl from the 4^th dimension, even if she really was 78,238 years old. Yes, I thought, she could go back to school and I could go back to my research.

“Szophia,” I told her in my most authoritative and baritone five dimensional voice, “I think that all we need to do is explain the situation. I am sure they will see it was just a big misunderstanding.”

Szofia nodded skeptically. "Uh-huh," she muttered under her breadth and siphoned herself back to her cacti-redwood-blackberry self in 4D. She was still "there," of course, but visible/palpable only to me and herself... and any of the four dimensional bounty hunters from the Branch who might be in the vicinity looking for her.

"Okay, Hugh," Szofia whispered to me, "you go out there and reason with the nice police-men. You explain to them that you are a five dimensional plasmoidic inserted into a simulacrum of an earthling named Hugo Nash who your compatriots have temporarily stuck into the mezzanine between universes for safe-keeping while you do research among the 3Ds of this weird planet. And you tell them that your traveling companion is a fugitive 78,238 year old four dimensional intelligent carnivorous vegetable who siphons back and forth between her little girl incarnation and her natural state of motile planthood. Ya sure, ya betcha, you go out there and reason with the nice police-men, Hugh. I've got your back, Hugh, waaaaay... waaaaay... waaaaaaaay back... in the fourth dimension, of course. I'll watch out for you from here, okay?" She retreated to the nethermost corner of the motel room in her 4D veggie modality.

Annoyed with Szophia's lack of reason, I opened the motel room door and stepped outside.

“HELLO!” I called out in a friendly and confident tone of voice. As I had been taught to do, I smiled broadly showing all of my teeth.

Instantly, twenty halogen spotlights and dozens of red targeting lasers lit me up and blinded me.

A mass of pistol and carbine and shotgun barrels, Tasers, flash-bang and tear gas grenades aimed at my head and chest. Full automatic and semi-automatic bolts racked ominously and simultaneously as one loud KA-TSHUNGK! Snarling, sharp-toothed, drooling German Shepherds and Dobermans lunged toward me and strained at their handlers' leashes. Flashing blue and red emergency lights painted the night sky. Drones circled overhead.

A raspy voice barked at me through a bullhorn:

ON THE GROUND YOU ****~=~@#$%^&*(-+=!!!!

Now it has taken billions of Qvΐntzvs'há epicycles for our specie of fully intelligent 5D plasmoidics to evolve. Clearly, we are not the most beautiful life form in the Multiverse - the geometrically perfect Rhomboids and the elegant Spheritics must take that prize. Even the 2D Linears (the "Flatties", as Szofia has disparagingly called them) have a straight-line elegance all their own - - and we plasmoidics might not have the best toolbox of physical attributes like our neighboring uni-slice's wise Dragon Flies, or even four dimensional vegetables like Szofia. No, we intelligent plasmoidics being, essentially, just free-form volatile gases, have coalesced into luminous and electro-magnetic thought condominiums capable of near-instantaneous communication at a distance through the deployment of field impulse language. But it is precisely because we are so "disembodied" and our communicative faculties so powerful that our intelligence and knowledge have maximum range, breadth, depth and insight, as well as the ability to "fill" selected containers appropriate to our objectives, viz. my insertion into the simulacrum of Hugo Nash for this particular Pioneer research project. In sum, we five dimensional gaseous intelligents can assess a problem quicker than most.

So in the nanosecond it took me to absorb and fully appreciate the situation with all these locked and loaded and ready-to-fire weapons aimed at my head and chest, I was able to analyze the problem and deduce that if only one of these quasi-intelligents' deflagrate launched projectiles (let alone fifty or more) were to penetrate my gas bag alias, aka "Hugo Nash," that my vital innards (comprised largely of the isotope Hydrogen 7, transuranic methane and other ignoble gases linked with gelatinous pseudofibers and neuroblipterodes) would immediately and catastrophically rush out possibly causing a massive explosion that would not only terminate my existence in this three dimensional universe, but, most likely my existence in 4 and 5D as well, in addition to wiping out most of the local fauna and flora within a quarter-mile radius; and, in addition, creating a wide, very deep hole in the ground where the Comfy Inn Motel presently stood. And that, of course, would be a terrible public relations faux pas as well as an embarrassing end to my research mission and my ability to ever go home again or to be properly recycled in the universal omphalus, Tszũm'paáß, to say the least.

Besides, Szofia was right. How could I "reason" with these people, even if they were partially intelligent? If I told them the truth, then they would as likely deem me a lunatic or a terrorist; or perhaps both.

And what if they did believe me? What then would they do? Medical experiments? Interrogation? Water-boarding and forced feeding in a maximum security prison? Would they torture me to divulge the ways of five dimensionality so that they could create new and more destructive weapons systems? Would they make me watch hours on end of FOX TV, CNN, PBS, MSNBC and White House news conferences to break my resistance?

In this context, I carefully considered all of the facts and all of the logical sequelae: a phalanx of lethally armed, insanely homicidal quasi-intelligent police authorities and their less than friendly snarling, razor-toothed police dogs facing me from the front; a rather thorny four dimensional cacti-redwood-blackberry qua 12 year old "Szofia" at my back; and myself stuck right in the middle.

So, being the 5D intelligent plasmoidic that I am, I fearlessly and dispassionately did the most logical thing under all the circumstances.

I got the hiccups.

Medically speaking, hiccups consist of a myclonic twitch or a series of synchronous diaphragmatic flutters. In the 3D mammalian planetoid of "Earth," hiccups are a mere annoyance or even a source of amusement. So, too, are hiccups in the 5D uni-slice of my plasmoidic ancestors.

A plasmoidic case of the hiccups living among the 3Ds of Earth, however, is no laughing matter.

Like hiccups everywhere in the multiverse, my 5D hiccups reflexively and automatically clear gases from my mid-section. Unlike everywhere else, however, plasmoidics emit a bio-electric pulse with each "hic" and a bio-electric counter-pulse with each "cup." The net effect of this pulse on, pulse off pattern is nothing in my world.

But five dimensional hiccups can wreck havock on planet Earth!

So with each reflexive "hic" all electrical and bio-electrical systems in a 300 meter radius shut down, and with each "cup" all these systems overloaded with a power spike. Plant life, like Szofia, was unaffected; but all electromechanical and digital devices, and all mammalian life forms, were disrupted. It was like an expulsification fireworks display.

Police car engines stopped sparking and ground to a halt. Police officers' brains stopped thinking causing the police officers, themselves, to grind to a halt. There they stood, mute and motionless, letting their loaded firearms clatter to the ground. It was a wonder that none of their weapons accidentally discharged. Of course, the excitement of the police raid and all the flashing emergency lights at the Comfy Inn Motel had also attracted a throng of looky-loos, rubber-neckers, and selfie photographers, all of whom (including their cell phones and cameras) were also stricken by my hiccuping expulsations.

Meanwhile, the police dogs, too, "lost their memories" and reverted to their youthful pre-police training before the time when they had been trained to attack, bite and maim. Frolicking with their tongues lolling like puppies, several of the tail-wagging police German Shepherds and Dobies sauntered through the open door of our motel room and started sniffing at where the cacti-redwood-blackberry iteration of Szofia was crouching! Even though they could not actually see her in the fourth dimension, the dogs' sense of smell somehow made them aware of the living tree-like form in the corner, and they lifted their legs as if to...

… But Szofia was faster than the dogs, siphoning herself back into her three dimensional humanoid form and pushing herself away from the pack of woofers. How a 3D dog can smell what it cannot see or touch in the 4th is a matter of great scientific interest to me, but the research into this issue will have to be done by our own 5D olfactory scientists.

Meanwhile, trying to stay safely dry and distant from the canines, Szofia led the dogs back outside to the parking lot. Then she walked around, inspected the battlefield, and joined me, still hiccuping, still wreaking inadvertent havoc among the 3D cops with every diaphragmatic twitch.

Hic....

…. Cup....

Hic....

…. Cup....

“Well done, Huey dudey,” she said. “Very nicely done.” With a light brush of the index finger, she touched a bent-over, but not yet prostrate, officer and made him roll back and forth on his heels like a rocking horse. “Very cool,” said Szofia. "Very cool, indeed."

The scene outside the motel was more chaotic than a straight-forward field expulsification because a) the hiccuping continued unabated at roughly three-second intervals, and b) because I was alternately pulsing and counter-pulsing, causing all kinds of biological processes as well as electromechanical ones to shut down and start up again. Car motors would stop, then start up. Police radios would go dead, then turn back on. Lights would flash, then go dark, then flash again. Police officers would go limp, then perk up momentarily, then go limp again.

Once I left the area (or once I stopped hiccuping) everything and everyone - including the "police puppies" now wagging their tails like docile family pets - would revert to "normal"... except for some massive temporary Katzenjammers and permanent gaps in their short term memories. The scene was both mime-like and vaudevillian but, thankfully, completely peaceful because, after all, 5D intelligent plasmoidics are peaceable beings.

But perhaps intelligent four dimensional vegetables are not as peaceable!

Szofia, tsk-tsking her sympathy with the stricken police officers, walked among them and, using their own gear, proceeded to handcuff and zip tie their hands and feet to one another in a big daisy chain.

Then Szofia let the happy, docile police dogs sniff the soles of her shoes where she had composted the hamburgers. She pointed at the fast food joints nearby.

"Dinner!" she shouted at the animals.

The pack of police dogs loped off like hounds at a fox hunt, barking and wagging their tails behind them, heading straight for the greasy spoon hamburger shacks.

I continued to hiccup and, but for my personal and transitory disability, I would have tried to dissuade Szofia from her mischief.

Well, maybe!

“There's one more thing we have to do before we go,” said Szofia. She went into the Comfy Inn Motel manager's officer where he of the rotten front tooth was curled on the floor in a twitching clump, utterly done in by my hiccup pulses and counter-pulses. I watched, convulsed with hiccups, as Szofia took a little spray vial containing a black liquid out of her pocket, pulled back the manager's waistband a bit and pump-sprayed something down the front and rear of his trousers. Then she stuck a lighted cigarette between his twisted lips and one more in each of his ears.

“What (hic) was that all about (cup)?” I asked her when she rejoined me.

“That was a little eau d'urushiol aka toxicodendron radicans, which the earthlings call 'poison ivy.' We little girl vegetables carry it like, you know, mace, for self-protection. It's something for the jerk to remember us by. That and the cigarettes, you know, because… this is a no-smoking motel!” She beamed.

I chided her behavior. “(Hic) Szofia, you really should not have (cup) done that!”

“Look who's talking! You've wiped out George Custer and the entire 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn again! And you lecture me about a little scratch job? Besides, it's only transitory, like your expulsiforing... it just lasts a whole lot longer.

"Heh, heh, like, oh, several months longer, heh heh!” Szofia grinned beatifically showing a rack of slightly green teeth.

She surveyed the carnage. “Now, let's blow this joint, Hugh. Your old Ford beater is too hot. We're going to dump it." She surveyed the parking lot full of police vehicles. "Hmmm, whaddya say we hot wire one of these cruisers ...

… oooooooooo, no! Hueydooey! Let's borrow a police motorcycle! It's Easy Rider Time!”

She threw her leg over the saddle of one of the big police motorcycles in the parking lot and pointed where I should sit down behind her.

“Vrrooom, vrrooom,” Szophia growled and bounced up and down on the seat, pantomiming with the handlebar controls.

I sat down behind her with my 4D life support and 5D communications podules swangling behind me, because, praise the Dissolution, what else was I going to do? My plan to reason with the quasi-intelligent 3D authorities clearly didn't work, and there seemed to be no other alternative than to flee for our lives! So there we were, a fugitive 78,238 year old 4D intelligent cacti-redwood-blackberry masquerading as a 3D green-haired 12 year old twisting the accelerator of a humongous police motorcycle and me, a pudgy, fugitive 5D plasmoidic in my Hugo Nash alias, grasping the rack trunk for dear life.

But my hiccuping continued which also meant the motorcycle would rrrRRRun for two seconds then shut down for two seconds, then rrrRRRun for two seconds then shut down again.

Szophia turned back to me and shouted, “Hugh, enough's enough! It's time to turn it off! Besides, I think I hear the whup whup whup of an approaching cop copter which, if you're not careful, will probably stall out with your next series of hiccups and drop straight onto our itty bitty heads. So STOP hiccuping already!”

Whup whup whup whup whup whup WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP

“C'mon Hughie, baby, STOP Hiccuping!” she yelled.

The police helicopter flew closer

... WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP...

“I (hic) can't stop hic-cupping, Zsofie! It's an (cup) involuntary spasm!”

But there's many a slip between the hic and the cup, and in the two second interval while the motorcycle engine was running, Szofia dropped it into gear, twisted the throttle, popped the clutch and sprang a 45 degree wheelie while melting a patch of tire...

.....rrrrRRRRRRRRRR.....

The hiccups were scared right out of me!!!

“Hi ho Sillllllveeerrrr, Awaaaay!!” shrieked Szofia, her green hair trailing in the night as we roared out onto the freeway leaving, as she put it, the entire '7th Cavalry' in a cloud of exhaust and burning rubber and a hailstorm of parking lot pebbles.

*****

[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Dazed and confused? For earlier chapters click HERE.]

I watched the motel manager leering at us from his office window.

Szofia slammed the door shut, locked the deadbolt and leaned a chair against it. "Now excuse me while I get to work," she said. Szofia stood upside down on her head and began to use her "burner" mobile phone. I asked her what she was doing.

"Hnƃɥ' I ɔɐu,ʇ nupǝɹsʇɐup ʍɥɐʇ ʎon,ɹǝ sɐʎᴉuƃ˙ ⅄on sonup lᴉʞǝ ʎon,ɹǝ ʇɐlʞᴉuƃ ndsᴉpǝ poʍu¡"1

"Szophia," I replied, "I couldn’t understand what you were saying. You sounded like you were talking upside down!"

She righted herself and squatted on the carpet, still working her digital device. "Hugh, I couldn't understand a word that you said. You sounded like you were talking upside down!"

"What are you doing, Szophia?!"

"What am I doing? Well, why didn't you ask that in the first place? I mean, whaddya think I'm doing, Hugh? I'm trying to save your proverbial bacon, Mr. Five Dimensional Scholar."

I was totally confused. "Szophia, how can using your digital device do anything to help?"

"I'm posting to my Substack page. Also my Tweezers and my Fazebuch and my XYZ and my Telegram social media accounts. I’ve got tons of followers who depend on me, you know what I mean?"

"Szophia, how is any of that relevant to this terrible situation?"

"Oh never mind, Hughbiedoobe. You just go back to doing whatever you academic gasbags do and let little Szophie take care of everything."

After a few minutes, she turned off her device, and stood on her head again in front of the television. She turned it on and rapidly fiddled with the channel changer. Every time she pressed the button to change the program, a tickle would pulse through me. I lay down on the floor, curled myself into a yoga position and tried to meditate.

The noise of the television disturbed my meditations.

... back, back, waaaaaay back and ooooout of here. It's a hoooome run <click>

... cleans even the dirtiest shirt collars <click>

... Loooove you, Baby; Ah ah ah ah looove you, Baby, Ah ah ah <click>

... for a limited time only, you can get two for the price of three <click>

... blew up more Gaza hospitals and killing thousands <click>

I ruminated on my situation. Here I was, a Pioneer five dimensional sent to a backward three dimensional planet in a peculiar three dimensional uni-slice of the Multiverse. I had been substituted for one of the local dominant species, a certain "Hugo Nash" who, it turns out, was kind of a schlep who might have been a bad choice for my cover. And now, here I was, linked up not with the three dimensional fauna I was supposed to study, but with some other alien - a four dimensional vegetable - and hiding with her in a dumpy motel.

While I was trying to think through my predicament, Szophia was playing with her digital tracking device and making a lot of noise racing through all the television channels.

... ackackackackackackackackack! Ackackackackackack! <click>

... sauteed with ginger and creamed <click>

... Operators are standing by now to take your orders <click>

... can't let Russia win because America <click>

... ackackackackackackackackack! <click>

How did I get here? After just a few days into my research, I was "on the run" from the local authorities accompanied by a 4D intelligent and ambulatory vegetable from a different slice of the Multiverse. Szofia, who sometimes looked like a little earth-girl, and sometimes like a very large and very prickly cacti-redwood-blackberry tree, who was herself on the run from the authorities of her world who, she says, were intent on pruning and espaliering her.

She said she was 78,238 human years old and had been hiding on Earth for ages. But she only looked like she was 12. It would undoubtedly attract too much attention for Hugo Nash to be seen traveling around this three dimensional world with someone who appeared to be a green-haired 12 year old girl. It certainly was a little undignified for a five dimensional gaseous intelligent to be entangled with a four dimensional fugitive with a very short attention span!

Perhaps, I thought, it would be best for me and Szofia to part ways. But how? I didn't even know where I was. Where was this 'Comfy Inn Motel' where we had 'holed up'?

Meanwhile, my research was being neglected while my health was deteriorating. The local atmosphere, rich in high and low frequency radiation and noxious fumes, was deleterious to my well-being, and very addictive. I found myself slurping radiation more and more frequently, which, I was sure, added to the high gas pressures I felt from the tension of our fugitive status. Szofia was right – even at the hamburger joint, I wanted to crawl underneath the heat lamps.

As I ruminated, Szofia continued to plow through the television channels.

... yes, hold me, kiss me {SMOOTCH!} again, {SMOOTCH!} just <click>

... ackackackackackBOOM ackack BOOM ackack <click>

... so when your family demands the very best <click>

... can't let China win because America <click.

... nothing tastes as good as a double <click>

Perhaps the best thing, I thought to myself, was for Pioneer Control to abort my mission and declare this uni-slice segment of this galaxy "off limits" to 5D intelligents. Ahhh, then I could go home to my Trippy Pippy, spread my gases and learn and lead a fulsome life of intelligence culminating in the longed-for disintegration into the Universal Omphalus. Oh, that would be so fine.

... our Redeemer loves you, and that's why every dollar you contribute <click>

... referee doesn't notice the choke-hold! Hulking Harry is looking for the tag <click>

… check with KPUT reporter Christine Zipe for the latest information on the jail house breakout <click>

... after you are sure that the last frost is over, plant the seeds 3 inches deep and 6 inches apart. Add a mixture of bone meal and potting soil tamping it down gently with...

But wait! Something had caught my attention on the television. “Szofia,” I said. “Could you switch back one channel?”

“Noʇ uoʍ' Hnƃɥ' ʇɥᴉs ᴉs ᴉuʇǝɹǝsʇᴉuƃ˙˙˙˙ ∀up I ʇolp ʎon ʇo sʇod ʇɐlʞᴉuƃ ʇo ɯǝ ndsᴉpǝ poʍu˙ I ɔɐu,ʇ nupǝɹsʇɐup ʎon¡” she said while standing upside-down on her head.2

Szofia snarled as she righted herself. “Killjoy!”

<click>

“... all but one of the 32 inmates who escaped from the county jail on Friday afternoon are now back in custody, according to Sheriff Cody Wrangler who spoke at a late night news conference. That one inmate, believed by authorities to be the ringleader of the break-out, is still on the run. Sheriff Wrangler, can you tell us the latest developments in this amazing case?”

“Well, uh, as far as we can tell, uh, Christine, this, uh, was a well-planned escape that, like, was intended to cause the maximum amount of disruption to the system. Because of the highly sophisticated AI technology deployed by the criminals in bypassing our, uh, electronic securities systems, we've contacted federal agents from, you know, both the FBI and, like Homeland Security, who right now are searching the cells for clues.

It's also apparent that a powerful, uh, nerve drug of some sort, you know, was administered to the jail staff - probably, like, through the ventilation system - which, you know, knocked out all our personnel. As a precaution, we've put all affected personnel on medical leave of absence, you know what I mean, and we're taking like blood and urine samples at General Hospital in order to help us identify the, uh, exact biological agent employed during the breakout just in case something like Anthrax or Covid or Black Plague was used, you know what I mean.

Christine, it's obvious that this was a large conspiracy and that some of the other prisoners were part of it. We've beaten a number of the others to -- excuse me -- I mean, we've questioned a number of the prisoners as we try to, uh, like, sort things out. At this early stage of the investigation, we know that the perpetrators were definitely involved with ah, illegal drugs and that they are in league with highly sophisticated computer hackers, you know, capable of disabling the county's prison security system.

Federal agents have preliminarily described this as an act of terrorism and caution members of the public that our suspect is likely armed and dangerous. An inventory of the guardhouse weapons showed that at least one, and possibly more handguns were, like, taken from the jail house. So if you spot the suspect, we caution people not to try to apprehend him, but to immediately call your local law enforcement agency.”

I saw Szofia pull what looked like a black semi-automatic pistol from the front pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. She pointed the gun sideways, "gangsta style," at the television. “Pew, pew, pew'” she mimed with one green eye closed. “Pew, pew, pew!”

I was horrified! “Szofia!! Did you take that from the jail??!!”

"Beats me, Hughbie'" Szophia replied. “I just found it in my pocket. All the kids at school carry something. Maybe I found it on the playground during recess, who knows?"

“... Sheriff Wrangler, can you tell us the name of the suspect and what is known about him?”

“Yes. Uh, his name is Hugo Nash. He's about 5' 9", about 195 pounds, gray-brown thinning hair, brown eyes, as shown in this mug shot taken when he was brought into the facility. He could have dyed his hair, you know, and might be wearing colored contact lenses, also. Nash, uh, claims to be an American veteran of the Spanish Civil War and the Iraq and Afghan and Syrian and Yugoslavian Wars of Liberation, but, we've checked and the Pentagon has no military records for him. He, uh, has a peculiar physical disability in that his hands appear to be like inside-out and upside-down, or whatever - possibly the effect of special military training, you know, by a non-American terrorist organization funded by us.

We have some reports that he often wears heavy mittens, probably to avoid leaving fingerprints at his crime scenes, you understand. Last week a couple of women were apparently assaulted by Nash in a shopping center. They say that he tried to ply them with offers of friendship or atheist Marxist propaganda and pornography, or all of them together, you know how these Reds are, and he wanted them to go to the movies with him for unknown, but likely criminal purposes. And did I mention, Christine, that this Commie's mittens are RED? RED!! There's a clue right there. That tells you what we might be dealing with. A Commie caught red-handed, so to speak!

Now we don't want to unduly alarm the public, but you know, better safe than sorry. Our deputies observed that Mr. Nash has a very foreign and, like formal way of speaking, as though American is his fourth or fifth language after Iranian, or Chinese, or Cuban, or Canadian, or whatever; so we're suspicious that he might be a Palestinian or North Korean Jihadist or a crypto-Venezuelan drug lord - or he could be all of them - operating under deep cover as an elementary school teacher.”

Suddenly they showed the jailhouse booking picture of ME, HUGO NASH, on the television screen! I was shocked! “Szofia!” I exclaimed. “That's a picture of me!”

Szofia compared the picture on the screen to my own ersatz face. “Hmmm. You're right to be upset, Hugh; that's not a very flattering picture is it? You should have closed your mouth and combed your hair and tried not to look so 'surprised,' ya know? Hmmmm, a Palestinian or North Korean Jihadist, Hugh; who'd a thunk it, huh?”

I was upset with her. “Szofia! Be serious! I'm a wanted man!”

She was nonplussed. “That's very cool, Hugh... you know, there are some men that just nobody wants. Try not to let it go to your head, okay?"

“...We're also on the look out for his blue-green Ford sedan, kind of an old beater, we understand, and possibly a, uh, White, but possibly Hispanic or American Indian or Afro-Asian or Indo-European juvenile girl with like green-dyed hair, about 11 or 12 or 13 years old, maybe younger or older, who appears to be either an adopted child or part of an Antifa anarchist street gang or, maybe, a juvenile delinquent or a drug dealer, although she could be all or none of the above, you know.

We don't have any current photos of the girl, but we're talking to her parents who, unfortunately, didn't know she was actually missing. But we'll find her, or I'm not Sheriff Cody Wrangler!”

Szofia started laughing! I was amazed at her insouciance. She chortled and said, “Well good luck with that search, Mr. Po-leez-man! It isn't like you've got a drivers license for me or a Christmas picture with Santa! And I always skipped school whenever it was class photo day! And, ahahaha, my adopted mummy and poppy didn't know I was missing!! Ahahaha, just like they've never noticed anything all these years! Ohohohohoho! Soooo freaking fun-ny!”

“...We've also obtained from the NSA data repository Hugo Nash's complete medical records, his emails over the past 15 years, his Web-surfing habits and every text and phone call he's ever made plus his shopping history and his social networking posts on Tweezers and Fazebuch and XYZ. We've also got every credit card purchase, all of his on-line banking activities, telephone voice samples, school and bus surveillance videos, his tax returns and copies of all of the secret ballots he's cast in every election for the past 20 years.

There has been a lot of pornographic and violent messages sent to his cell phone and emails over the years, and even though all of it was sent to him as spam, it could be a form of encryption, like the messages of an international web of drug-dealing, sex-slaving Hong Kong computer kidnappers aligned with a crypto-ISIS type of secret organization like Beaucoup Harrumph and Al Jazeera and Wikileaks.

So, just to be safe, you know what I mean, we've put out an, uh, Amber Alert because it might turn out that this Nash fellow has, uh, kidnapped the girl. In that case, we are dealing with a sexually deviant Islamofascist pedophile drug-pushing communist, you know, who, like that Putin secret agent and Commie pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, is kind of recruiting helpless young Christian girls for international prostitution in North Korea and Iran, drug- smuggling, digital sabotage, domestic littering and Russian suicide bombing missions in Ukraine.

Now this is all just speculation right now, nothing hard to go on, you know, and we don't want to, uh, prejudge the situation, but these are real possibilities that in all probability they could likely be true, and we might just have averted another 911 attack on the World Trade Center, you know what I mean? But this Nash fellow, of course, will be presumed innocent, until we arrest him and kill him.”

Szofia was jumping up and down with excitement. “Yowser! We're famous, Hugh!!! We're the new Bonnie and Clyde! I’m the moll of the Americas! America, meet Szofia and Hughie! Szofia and Hughie, America's Most Wanted!! Yeehaa! Ho ho, they think you've kidnapped ME! An intelligent vegetable from another galaxy! Green-DYED hair! Dyed!!! Oh, that's soooooooo funny. Ahahahaha, only my clorophyllist knows for sure! Ha ha ha! And we're TERRORISTS! AND YOU'RE A NABOKOVIAN CRADLE-ROBBER WHO’S RUN OFF WITH A 78,238 YEAR OLD VEGETABLE LOLITA!”

Szofia was laughing so hard that she began to gag as she spoke. “Yeehaa! Hugh, this is the most fun I've had since I was a wild young sapling and slipped peyote buttons into the bean sprouts' watering can! Wheeehaa!” She reached over and high-fived me vigorously on my inside-out hands.

I was not happy with her or with the situation. I told her sharply: “Szofia, stop it! This is serious! They are out looking for us!” But Szofia continued to chortle uncontrollably.

The gravity of the situation struck me and I started to moan uncontrollably,“Oiyoyoyei Oiyoyoyei Oiyoyoyei!!”

Well, thank you Christine Zipe. This is certainly a story we'll be following for all of our viewers. Now let's hear what KPUT meteorologist Cal Lippey has in store for us with tomorrow's weather report... <click>

Szofia, laughing deliriously, flipped the channel changer into the air and let it drop onto the carpet. She dropped on her back onto the spongy bed and then bounced back onto her feet. “Oh hohoho, ahhahahahahha! This is all tooo fuuuuunnnny, Hughbiedobedoo! Ohohoho, this is so funnny, I think...

I think...

I think I'm going...

… to barf... ahahahahahaha!”

I turned my head to look at my 4D survival backpack and watched my analog pressure-gauges spinning wildly.

Szofia saw the worry written on my face. “Hugh Hugh Hugh,” she mocked me. “You are such a worry-wart. These 3D earth animals are so stuuuuuupid, it will take them decades to figure out where we are. And they'll just stop looking long before that!”

She ran over to the other side of the room. “Look outside the window, Hugh!” she laughed, lifting one of the yellowed Venetian blind slats with the barrel of her pistol. “So, what do you see, huh?

Nothing...

... nothing...

... just

... just thirty or forty police cars...

… several dozen police motorcycles...

… several armored SWAT vehicles...

… a hundred or so cops in riot gear and gas masks and snipers and canine units...

* * *

[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Dazed and confused? For earlier chapters click HERE.]

“Room for two? Mr. and... ?” The motel manager squinted as he questioned us.

I hesitated, not quite knowing what to say. Szofia saw I was tongue-tied and spoke for us. “Nash. Mr. Nash and me -- I'm his... I'm his daughter.”

The man behind the desk snickered and hacked noisily. He had a phlegmy, wheezy kind of cough, the kind that sounds like he had some horrible infectious disease. He smelled of cheap booze and old cigar snipes. Szofia's head barely reached the counter top. She snarled at the motel manager “You got a problem with children, Mister?” The manager shook his head as continued to snicker and cough.

Outside on the road, the neon motel sign flashed a peculiar and incomplete message that I could not decipher:

The neon sign flickered and agitated me. A small, old style television played in the motel office, the blue and blurry images flashing frequently as the raster scanner moved back and forth across the cathode ray tube. As everywhere else on this planet, the high and low frequency emissions were powerfully intoxicating. I had to resist the lure into complete radionarcosis. The flickering neon sign combined with the television scanner made me giggle again.

The motel manager continued to smirk at us. “You got some ID, folks?”

One of the manager's eyes was dull and bloodshot. His other eye was completely motionless. Szofia had said that we should "lie low" for a while someplace out of the way. She said that after the "heat" was off, we could figure out what to do next. This motel was certainly "out of the way;" but was this the best place for us to hide out? It reminded me of the Bates Motel from an Alfred Hitchcock movie I had watched during my cultural orientation, Psycho something? Was this the same Bates Motel and they had just changed the name? What kind of a place was this? The motel manager continued to snicker and cough. The blue television screen jumped around in the background. The neon bulbs pulsed and tickled me uncontrollably. I couldn't stop giggling.

“Hugh... I mean, Daddy... show him your driver's license already,” Szofia said as she drummed her green-tipped fingers on the counter-top.

I pulled Hugo Nash's driver's license out of my wallet and showed it to the man at the desk. He looked me over as I continued to giggle.

“Yah, sure. Hugo Nash, huh? Yeah, looks sorta like you. I guess.” He compared my face to the photograph on my drivers license. I giggled. He snickered. “OK, pardner. You're Hugo Nash as far as I care. Or the Man in the Moon. Whatever. Just sign here on the line and fill in the make and model of your car and license plate. That's twenty dollars a night. No luggage, huh? And you seem to have a hard time signing your name wearing those, what are they, red kitchen mittens, Mr. uhhh, Nash and ... daughter...? Haw haw haw!”

The manager laughed and snorted. His teeth were uneven, jagged, stained. He was missing several. One solitary tooth in front was dead and black. His one good eye squinted out of sync with the other one. Maybe one eye was false? Maybe they both were. The man looked like he hadn't shaved in several days. The hair on his head was patchy, streaked with oily strands of uneven white and brown that hung into his eyes.

“How you going to pay, Mr. Nash, cash or credit card?” The hotel manager winked his good eye slyly at Szofia. She sneered back at him.

“Cash?” I said uncertainly.

Since Sfozia and I had "high-tailed it" out of Dodge City (as she said) we had been withdrawing money from automatic cash machines that we found along the way. I didn't feel good taking all of the machines' money, but the machines gave me what they had quite gladly. I shouldn't worry about it, Szofia said, because the humans' central bank created bazillions and bazillions of digital money out of nothing all the time and they would never notice the picayune withdrawals I was making. I gave the hotel manager two brand new ten dollar bills.

The hotel manager took the money, examined it with his good eye and leered at us. “Looks like real dead presidents to me, haw haw haw.” It wasn't clear whether he was laughing or coughing or both simultaneously. He sounded like a sick, braying donkey.

"I don't have any rooms with separate beds, haw haw haw!" the hotel manager snorted.

"Actually," I replied, "we prefer a room with no bed, if you have one. I can just curl up on the floor and my, uh, my daughter, well, she will just spend the night vegetating."

"Haw haw haw," brayed the hotel manager. "You'll curl up on the floor and, uh, your daughter will spend the night, what' d you say, vegetating?? Vegetating!! Haw haw haw!"

He took down a key attached to a large red plastic disk that had been hanging from a board behind the desk. “So here's your room key, Mister Nash, haw haw haw - Room 4, haw haw haw. Next to the pool... but it's not open at this time of year, you know. Haw haw haw. Actually, that pool's not open at any time of year, haw haw haw! Oh, yea, and there's no smoking allowed in the room, haw haw haw. No smoking allowed!”

The motel manager was still laughing and coughing as we walked down to the room and opened the door.

The room smelled like mold. It also reeked of tobacco. The window had been painted shut. The wide yellowed slats of the blinds were broken and uneven. You could hear the road noise from the freeway, just beyond the parking lot and across the access road: the incessant, Doppler Wssschhhhh--UUuuuuuuuu of the cars and the gargling Hccrrrr-Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr of the trucks shifting gears as they entered from the on-ramps. A forced air heater rattled underneath the single pane window. The window faced the parking lot that was illuminated by high-intensity orange crime lights. A thick cover of waxy dust adhered to everything. There was a small desk with a creaky wood chair. The light switches felt sticky. I touched the bed even though I would never sleep in it: the mattress was lumpy and had a deep depression in the middle. The blankets were thin, moth-eaten. The wall paint was an indistinct mushy yellow-brown color.

Szofia went straight to the bathroom and lit up a joint. She poured herself a glass of water and stuck in her fingers. The tap water in her glass was tinged with rust. As she smoked, Szofia pulled out a little tracking device like all the other demi-miniatures on this planet. Sfozia had said that this was a "burner phone" that she had borrowed from one of the convenience stores that we had stopped at to buy gas. She said she would use the phone until its battery ran out, then leave it someplace for someone else to borrow. She scrolled the tracking device with her right hand while soaking the fingers of her left hand in the glass of rust-colored water. Her joint hung from her lips.

I watched Szofia take a few puffs. I reminded her about the no-smoking policy. She quietly continued scrolling her device and smoking. "Screw 'em," she finally said. She continued to smoke.

I looked around the bathroom. I thought I saw some of those little earthling tschůųpis scurrying around the tub. But I will not bathe here anymore than in Hugo Nash's house. I do not perspire. I do not flake off skin detritus like the local fauna.

I found a relatively unstained spot on the carpet in the main sleeping area. I sat down and curled myself into a meditative posture. I saw five ways at once. I was the picture of complete calm... Or was I?

I composed a brief report:

Report 4

Have experienced harrowing day in close contact with local law enforcement officers. In order to avoid "the heat" and to broaden cultural exposure, have undertaken travel to heartland of local quasi-intelligents' political homeland. Peculiar cultural practices: members of specie are "locked up" by others. Authoritarian hierarchy dominates majority of human fauna. Recreational activities remain indecipherable. Dominant specie exhibits outbreaks of intelligence, but without clear purpose or orientation. Could be random events? Due to absence of triploid, feeling extreme plasmoid pressures. Urgent: Send triploid!! Urgent Repeat: send replacement Drůkk' ąou location buttons!! While "on the lamb" and outside of the original insertion matrix, extraction specialists will not be able to identify coordinates without Drůkk' ąou location buttons!

Signed/Ugoñaschßtenätraξo aka H. Nash.

PS - URGENT, repeat: please send triploid and Drůkk' ąou location buttons!

PPS - DOUBLE URGENT, request immediate extraction from Pioneer Project on Compassion Grounds. Recommend termination of investigation due to unsafe/unhealthy radiation levels that can induce radionarcosis and/or intoxication. Pressures consistently and abnormally high.

I decided not to mention Szofia to Pioneer Central just yet. I was not sure whether it had been improper protocol to disclose my mission to a non-5D alien life form while studying the subject three dimensionals. Perhaps, in retrospect, that was a mistake. But I had made so many mistakes already, what difference would one more make?

I reached back into the 5th dimension and inserted my report into the message zippledisk in the telemetry modulator. I cranked the tandytripper and flipped the disk transversely across the infinitely stacked universes. Oh, how it made me nostalgic for home, sending a message back to where I came from. But was anybody there? Did anybody care?

I was beginning to feel very anxious. I had sent several reports now to Pioneer Central Command. No one had responded. What was wrong? My gases were quivering with worry. I badly needed to hibernate for several stellar cycles, maybe longer. I badly needed to be extricated from this crazy 3D planet in this crazy 3D universe.

Szofia came out of the bathroom licking the water dripping from her fingers. Her green hair seemed to be a little brighter. She was almost cheerful. “Hey, Hughey, let's go get some compost; I'm hungry. There's got to be a fast food restaurant near the freeway where we can get a burger.”

She didn't make sense to me. "A hamburger, Szophia? I thought you were vegetarian?”

She laughed. “I told you, Dumbo: I AM a vegetable. I don't eat vegetables. How crude! But when it comes to compost, I'm a strict carnivore. Dirt. Water. Sunshine. Meat compost. It's a complete ecocycle, you know. No vegetable life form would ever dream of composting anything except animal meat! Come on, there's gotta be a greasy spoon near this dump.”

“But I do not 'compost,'” I protested! "And don't animals eat plants and vegetables? So when you eat, or compost, animals, aren't you just composting plant life?”

Szophia thought my question was ridiculous. “Of course animals eat plants, but life's a bitch, isn't it? I mean, so what? If I eat one grass-eating animal, the world's a little safer for all veggies, right? So long as I'm not eating the vegetables directly, it's not my problem. Anyhoo, that's how we intelligent vegetables evolved: stationary photosynthesizing vegetables became mobile photosynthesizing vegetables which evolved into mobile, intelligent, predator meat-composting, occasionally photosynthesizing vegetables which evolved into ME, the highest form of intelligent vegetable life.” Szofia preened. “Pretty cool, huh? It's the evolution of the real Green Revolution.” She smiled at me. “So, Hugh, tell me: what do you five dimensional gas-bags feed on, huh?

I straightened myself and proudly explained the superior metabolism of 5D gaseous life. “5D plasmoidics absorb high and low energy radiation and petrochemical micro-particles and fumes,” I explained to her. “We absorb it directly and very efficiently. 'Eating' is completely unnecessary in highly polluted environments like the humanoids are creating on this planet.”

“Well mow my lawn, Hugh!” Szophia was completely unimpressed, but very amused. “Come along anyway. We'll start your first lessons on social integration and think about what to do about you while I compost. Also, you can protect me from the local predators and absorb the cosmic rays from some local beanery while I chow down on some rotting animal flesh and photosynthesize the moonlight. C'mon, Pappy,” she said taking one of my gloved hands. “It's time to hit the chuck wagon.”

* * *

We walked outside the motel room and pulled the door shut. Szofia rattled the door two or three times to test whether it was truly locked. It was one of those doors that could be opened with a credit card slipped between the jamb and the frame. The door also looked like it could easily be kicked in.

As we went out, we could see the motel manager slyly eyeballing us through the office window. I imagined that I heard him baying: haw haw haw!

We had parked Hugo Nash's banged-up sedan facing our room. All the other vehicles in the parking lot were large pick-up trucks. The trucks had wide tires so big that they over-topped the roof of our sedan. All the trucks had metal racks hanging in their back windows that might have been made to hold umbrellas. The rear bumpers of these trucks had stickers advertising chewing tobacco and other food products. They also bore decals with flags, messages about what schools their children attend, how much they loved their dogs or their guns, or what sports teams they liked that threw around those leather gas bags I had seen on my first day here... My first day here... it seemed like ages ago, but it had been just a few days!

A fast food restaurant was nearby. Its huge electric sign boasted that they had sold as many hamburgers as there are electrons in the Multiverse. But Szofi said: "Not there. Their grub won't compost."

Further away, we found another restaurant: Manny's Shocking Shake Shack and Fat Burgers. We went in. There was a potted plant near the entrance. Szofia approached the plant and scrutinized it, tugging at a leaf. "Great! It's artificial," she whispered. "The coast is clear."

Szofia strode up to the counter. "Gimme a triple half-pound Fat Burger," she ordered. "Give it to me straight-up and extra rare: no lettuce, no tomato, no pickle, no onions, no ketchup, no mayo, no mustard. And hold the fries... uuuh, Daddy, you want something other than to stick your paws under the heat-lamp to soak up some infrared radiation? No? Well, Daddy, pay the nice man his money..."

I paid. She took the burger on a tray back to a table where we sat down.

It was late. Other than the two of us, the restaurant was nearly empty. Szofia discarded the bun, folded up the burgers and, when she was sure no one was watching, slid them into her shoes. She wiggled her toes. “Ahhhh,” she sighed. “I can feel the nutrients being up-rooted as we sit here.” She leaned back and grinned.

"Now, Hugh, while I compost, let's talk about what to do with you. Your fourth dimensional backpack stands out like a ten story tall orange eggplant in a hay field, Hughdooski, and that ain't too good for little fugitive Szofia trying to stay out of the Branch's sights. Meanwhile, your whole manner, your speech, you know, your whole way of living just screams that you are a 100 percent, not-of-this-world weirdo alien from gawd knows where. Even after the heat dies down, Hughgo, you're never going to be able to study anything incognito, so to speak, unless you learn how to blend in with everyone else in this world. And then, mon ami, there's the problem of those big red mittens and your upside-downsie digits. I'm already working on doing something about that, but it will take a little time. So, in the meanwhile,Hughdy-doo, let's start trying to socialize you."

“But I do not need to be socialized,” I protested. I was very offended! “I speak the vernacular 3D communication language English perfectly well, Szofia! I received the highest level of pre-birth language training while in cocoon. I look and act just like any ordinary three dimensional quasi-intelligent being... don't I??”

Szofia grimaced and shook her head. “Sorry to bust your bubble, Hughdoo, but you don't sound, look or act like anybody I've ever met on this planet. As a matter of fact, you think, talk and act like you were just born a few weeks ago; which, in a manner of speaking, you kinder were, right? Anyhoo. Your diction and vocabulary and syntax may be perfect, Hugh, but the way you talk, the way you walk, the dumb things you do, it's like you dropped out of a circus a hundred years ago.

“A circus?” I thought that Szofia was intentionally insulting me and my entire five dimensional upbringing!

“Never mind,” said Szophia while she massaged her burgers with her toes. “Look, Hugh. It's bad enough that your 4D life support pod makes you stand out like a ten ton purple strawberry, as far as bounty-hunters are concerned. That's my problem, of course, but I can't hang out with you if you're just bait for the Branchers! I could just set down roots in some other town, plant myself in another school, adopt another family, and just blend in with the rest of the weeds, so to speak. But you, Hughie-Dooey, you're just a big naive baby-poo! I mean, you look like an adult, and you kinder think like one... well, some of the time... maybe... but, what did you tell me, that you're really only about one week old now since they let you out of your cocoon? And you learned everything pre-birth, isn't that what you told me? So I can't just leave you alone because you're now a refugee from the three dimensional lawman. And you know, without me to help you, Mr. Hughpino, you would end up ground up like so much wheat in a bakery and served hot from the oven! So, Hughpoo, if you always act like you're from the Middle Ages, then you'll be as easy to spot as, well, like I said, a ten ton purple strawberry.”

I felt irritated. Who gave this person the right to criticize a Pioneer field investigator? But then, I supposed, I had failed at everything so far.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe I did need to be properly “socialized,” as she put it.

I swallowed my pride. “Alright, Szophia, so what am I doing wrong?”

“Hugh, I don't have time to list EVERYTHING that's wrong about you, so let's just concentrate on the big ticket items, okay? First, when you talk, you're too god-damned LOUD, Hoodoo! You've got to take it down a few notches so you're harder to hear.”

I was perplexed. “But I thought people spoke to be heard?”

“No,” she informed me, “people speak to hear themselves talk. If anybody else hears them - let alone understand what they say - well, that's purely accidental. So try talking to me in an appropriately obscure way, Okay?

This was certainly contrary to what I had learned in my cocoon! 3D people communicated so as not to communicate? But I would try it, if it would make be blend in better with the dominant 3D species and keep me out of jail. “Alright, Szophia. What should I practice speaking?”

“Anything that comes into your gaseous mind, Hugh, so long as I can barely hear or understand you.”

“But I do not know what to say! Nothing comes to mind. Perhaps I can recite this song they sing at the beginning of baseball games...”

Szophia grinned. “Actually, Hugh, not having anything in your mind is exactly the way you want to be if you want to blend in. But, no, don't recite 'The Star Spangled Banner,' Hugh! If you do that, then people will stand up and start looking for a flag to salute. What else do you know?”

“Hamlet...?”

“HUGH! PLEASE! I'm composting, okay? Don't make me barf with that Globe Theater gar-bage! When you're 78,238 human years old like I am, you get to know a few folks. I hung around with Bill Shakespeare when he was still a kid painting graffiti on the walls of Parliament. He was such a hack back then. I told Billy that if he really wanted to become a writer, he should try doing a recipe book, like Bill’s Bully Beef Barbecue Secrets; or maybe a corset-ripping, steamy romance. You know, something he could make beaucoup bucks selling.

"But no, Billy-boy Shakespeare wanted to write sonnets and comedies and dramas and crap like that. But the guy couldn't string two coherent sentences together, Hughgert! He was such a dolt! I practically had to dictate it all to him... Maccarrot, Julius Caesar Salad, The Asparagus of Venice, Romeo and Sweet Potato, King Lime, Much Ado About Onions, The Taming of the Radicchio, A Tale of Two Radishes... "

"Wait a minute! Don't you mean A Tale of Two Cities, Szophia? And wasn't that written by Charles Dickens, not Shapespeare?"

"Hey, Hughpert, who's the literary expert here, huh? I was just getting ahead of myself, okay? Chucky-doo Dickens was another bad boy I had to take by the hand and practically spell everything out for him. A Tale of Two Radishes, was the way it started out before Chuck turned it into something else.

"No," she continued, "for now, let's stick to Bill Shakespeare, since you're the one who brought him up. Don't change the subject, okay? So I wrote nearly every flipping word of Billy-boy's goofy plays. But was that good enough for him? Nooooo... he just messed it all up and changed everything: 'A pumpkin, a pumpkin, my kingdom for a pumpkin!' and 'Fava beans or lima beans, that is the question;" I mean, by the time he screwed around with the dialog I wrote for him, you can hardly understand what on earth the guy was talking about!

"So everyone knew that Billy-boy Shakespeare didn't write his plays, but they never, ever guessed that it was really me who ghost-wrote it all... or, at least, the good parts!"

"But Sfozia," I protested, "I thought you lived in the Steppes riding with Attila the Hun!"

"Hughtoo, baby," that was way earlier! A plant's gotta keep moving, you know what I mean? Especially when there are bounty hunters out there who want to prune and trim me! I can't let moss grow on the bark, can I? But whatever. Let's not talk about me right now. Let's talk about you talking like Hugh. Pick something other than Billy Shakespeare to practice your diction, okay?"

“The Declaration of Independence?”

“Go for it!” she said and gave me a thumbs up sign.

I squared my shoulders and cleared my throat: “Ahem. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and...”

Szophia interrupted. “Okay. Enough already. That's awful. You sound like you're Thomas Jefferson doing a pod-cast. Hugh, I also knew Tom and I wrote most of that script, too. You should have seen what his crappy first draft looked like before I gave him stylistic pointers. What a doofus Tom was. But even with my help, he still didn't get it right. I told and I told him and I told him that the first line should read 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are stupid shits compared to intelligent vegetables who are endowed by photosynthesis with etc. etc. and so on. But no, Tommy couldn't get it straight even though I practically spoon-fed him what to say. He was too busy screwing around with his Sally Hemings slave-mistress in the kitchen and knocking back bottles of Madeira. Anyway, Hughper, take it down a few decibels and try again. Oh, and remember to speak rapidly and slur your words, just like the human beans do, okay?”

I tried again, speaking more softly: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that...”

“Vegetables, Hugh. All vegetables are created equal. Are you listening to me? Szophia frowned. “Hugh, let's try something else. Let's concentrate, instead on making you speak less clearly.”

“What?!?!”

“I want you to stop enunciating clearly, comprendre pardner? You're still trying to make yourself understood. Stop it.”

“But I thought the idea of communicating was to clearly...”

“Wrong wrong wrong, Hugh. Where did you learn this nonsense? In your silly cocoon that you keep yammering about? If you want to communicate, you post something on social media or on Tiktok, or make a naked selfie of yourself and send it to your friends. But, of course, you don't have any friends, so we'll have to try something different.”

Zsofie leaned into my face and stared into my eye sockets. “Hugh, if you want to sound like a genuine native... and keep yourself out of the slammer in the meantime by not attracting as much attention as a dancing pink celery... then you have to learn to think, talk, act and look like the natives.”

She paused to consider my education. “This is serious. What you want is balance, Hupo. Don't go so far that you make sense when you talk. That will mark you as either a 'foreigner' or as an 'intellectual.' Either one is really bad, Hupo, because the locals are real suspicious of 'foreigners' and smarty pants 'intellectuals,' and they're likely to call the cops, tar and feather you, shoot you on the spot or all of the above if they think you're too foreign or too smart or that you're reading 'foreign' news sites on the Web.”

She thought some more while squishing the burgers inside her shoes. “I know what we'll do, Hupie Doopie. I'll get you a cell phone. That will knock you into shape in no time. But that's gonna be later.”

Then she reached into the 4^th and patted my podule. “Now here's something much more important in real time... it's about that 4D backpack, Hughper... Can we get rid of that thing? Right now, Hughper, your life support pod is flapping around in the 4th dimension and it's guaranteed fish-bait, like a worm on a hook. You're the worm, Hugh, and I'm the one they're going to hook. Me, I've got a seed pod in the fourth dimension for when I have to siphon back in. But that seed pod's just a singularity, barely a dot in an infinite plane and nothing anyone can find without 4D glasses and a map. Whatever you've been wearing in the fifth dimension doesn't matter, Hugh, because neither I nor the Branchers can see or go there. But the 4th... that's gotta go, Hugh, if I'm gonna hang with a nut-case like you, we need to fix this. What are we going to do about it, huh? Can you pull it into 3D and wear it like a some kind of cool bicycle messenger bag?”

“ Szofia,” I said. “If I pulled my survival pack out of the fourth and into the third dimension, it would weigh too much and it would leave me dangerously unbalanced. I wouldn't be able to walk. There would also be a long and fragile connection stretching between me in the third dimension and the telemetry pod in the fifth dimension. My survival pod might pass for an ordinary backpack... maybe... so long as no one looked inside or tried to make me take it off! But then there is this little socket on the bag which would seem to be just a hole that goes nowhere, but which really connects to cables and pipes stretched across two dimensions to the telemetry pack that I am wearing in the 5th."

I sighed. “Szophia,” I whispered. “It just won't work.”

Szophia nodded. It wouldn't work. "But we still have to think about this, Hughger. I mean I can't continue to hang around with you, you know, if you keep advertising your presence in the fourth dimension! We are going to have to solve that problem, pronto."

She looked around thoughtfully. “Hugh, I think we've been at this dive long enough. Let's buzz off. Vamos amigos.”

We arrived back at the motel. I saw the manager peering at us through the slats of the window blinds. He seemed to be talking to someone on the telephone.

I longed to be "back home" in Hugo Nash's house... or better yet! I longed to be extracted from this locale and returned to my Zippy Pippy back in the comfort of my real five dimensional universe! Ahhhh, the mere thought made my feet skip and my mood lighter.

* * *

[This was Chapter 8 of Life Among the Three Dimensionals, a serialized sci-fi novel. Dazed and Confused? Totally lost? Time for remedial lit 101... or the CliffsNotes? For earlier chapters click HERE.]

Zsssupft!

Szofia resiphoned herself back as her three dimensional green-haired 12 year old little girl persona.

The policeman was surprised. “How did you get here?”

“I walked,” snapped Szofia.

“Walked?”

She snapped again. “I'm a fast walker.”

The policeman got angry. “Well, walk out again just as fast! Family aren't allowed in this part of the station. Beat it!”

I saw Szofia scuttle backwards very slowly toward the reception area, eyes on what was happening with me. As she passed a potted plant she tugged off one of its leaves, smelled it, studied it and then dropped it on the floor, still scuttling backwards a little at a time.

“Mr. Nash,” said the desk sergeant after the arresting officer had removed my handcuffs, “press your fingers against the ink pad and then roll them onto the card.”

I did that as best as I could in light of my inside-out upside-down hands.

Ink. Roll. Press.

Then, blitz, before I could even orient myself, they had pushed me against a white screen and snapped pictures – one from the front and one from each side - with my name, a number and date plate under my chin.

The desk sergeant started to process me into jail. “It's Friday, Mr. Nash, and your arraignment will be next Monday morning for all of your charges plus any additional ones we might think of between now and then. You have the right to remain silent and the right to a court-appointed attorney, if you cannot afford one yourself. Et cetera, et cetera and et cetera. You've watched enough television to know the drill, haven't you Mr. Nash? Did you bring your toothbrush and a change of underwear?”

I was terrified and all I could say was “Oiyoyoyei!!"

“What's that you said?”

“Oiyoyoyei, Oiyoyoyei, Oiyoyoyei!!”

Szophia scurried up to the desk to explain my gurgling. "It's OK, Mr. Policeman. See, My dad's got bad dyspepsia. That's his stomach making those noises."

The desk sergeant pointed to the door and told her to get out.

She started to shuffle away. As she slid out of the booking area still walking slowly backwards, Szofia shouted: "It's one of Daddy's old war wounds acting up and all because you PIGS have been abusing a poor veteran with PTSD!! YOU'LL HEAR FROM OUR LAWYERS!!”

Then she blew me a kiss with her fingers! “Hughey-baby... I mean, Daddy... Take care of yourself. I'll see you real soon..." The arresting officer slammed the glass door on Szofia leaving me alone by the front desk.

* * *

I was put in a holding cell with another man who was apparently intoxicated. There were all kinds of shouting noises and hollering from down the corridor. Banging. Twanging. Clanging from every direction. The noise completely roiled my intelligence coils.

The cell had stainless steel furniture that folded up against the wall - two cots, a table, a chair, a sink, a toilet with no seat. It was cold and sterile and hard. It was the most frightening place I had seen so far! The other man in my cell was seated on a steel cot mumbling something, not exactly looking at me. He smelled like the old beer cans that Hugo Nash had left lying around his house.

Then Szofia - that is, the four dimensional cacto-blackberry version of Szofia - walked in right through the walls of the jail. Or, rather, she did not "walk through" the walls, she just ambled into the cell over from 4D where she had been biding her time, because 4D space is always coterminous with 1-2-3 whether the indigenous peoples notice it or not. Zsssupft! She siphoned herself out of 4D and back to three dimensions and humanoid little girl-dom.

She dusted herself off. “Hey! Daddy-O, nice digs you got here ... Heh, heh, you know, dude, I've always wanted to say that to someone!” She cursorily looked around the cell and then at me. “You didn't think I'd abandon you, did 'ya, Hugh? I mean, we're pals now, right?”

The drunk man stared at her and burped.

“Hugh,” Szofia said to me, “why don't you just do one of your little techie blasts like you did in the class room in school and make everything go blank-o?”

“I could,” I answered her. But, I explained, I was supposed to be doing a research study. “How can I do proper research if day after day I do something that upsets the dominant species' equilibrium or that risks alerting the authorities to the fact that I am not 'one of them?' This is all so stressful. Right now my gaseous pressures are sky-rocketing. See my gauge readings on my survival pod? Look: 744 kµ units/4M, oh my! I can literally feel my gasses frizzing over. Oh my, oh my! And besides, won't my pulses knock you out, too, Szofia?”

She was nonplussed. “No problemo, Hugh. It didn't affect me when you did it in school and it won't affect me here. We intelligent vegetables use pure photosynthetics. No bioelectrics necessary. Pulse away, Poppy!”

“There must be some other way to get out of this,” I said. “I do not want to be explusifying at the drop of a hat every time I get in a pickle.”

Szofia raised her eyebrows. “You have something against pickles?” she asked accusingly.

The drunk man stared at Szofia. Szofia stared back, gnarling her nose. She stuck out her tongue pierced with a gold plug and grimaced at him. “Blleeeelllhhbxx,” she warbled. The drunk blinked twice and continued to stare, pasty-eyed, muttering incoherently. She shrugged him off.

The noise from down the hall continued unabated. Other detainees in other cells were still banging things, clanging, shouting... It was terribly discordant.

Szofia sat down on the concrete floor cross-legged. She motioned me to sit down cross-legged, too. “Say Oooooooom,” she said.

I was dumbfounded. “What???”

“Close your eyes and say Ooooooom.”

I sat down cross-legged, but I refused to moan. “This is ridiculous, Szofia! “

She got angry with me. “SAY OOOOOOOOooom, dammit!”

“Oooooooom.” I felt utterly ridiculous.

Szofia, annoyed, waved both her hands upward. “Now, do it again! Louder!”

I was growing annoyed, too. “What's this supposed to do? Are you trying to meditate?”

Szofia placed herself in a full lotus position. “I don't do yoga, Hughdoo. I'm an intelligent vegetable, remember? I'm doing what vegetables do best: I'm vegetating. I'm vegetating for my own benefit, Mr. Hugh.” She paused and became agitated. “You know, you're so damned egocentric, Hugh, just like the rest of them. It isn't always about you. This has nothing to do with YOU. It's supposed to relax ME. I'm vegetating so I can figure out what we're going to do. Because obviously, Hugh, you aren't going to figure anything out, because no matter how big a gas bag scholar you say you are, you are one utterly useless polka-dotted celery stalk. Now help me vegetate, okay?”

I did as she asked: “Ooooooom. Ooooooom. Ooooooom. Oiyoyoyei Oiyoyoyei Oooooooooom...”

“Now keep it up,” she commanded.

“Ooooooom. Ooooooom. Ooooooom.”

The drunk man now joined in. “OoooOoomoomommommooo...Ooooooom. Ooooooom. Ooooooom.OoooOoomoomommommooo Oooooooooom OoooOoomoomommommooo...Ooooooom. Ooooooom. Ooooooom. OoooOoomoomommommooo Oooooooooom...”

The banging and clanging down the hall quieted down. “See, it's working already,” said Szofia.

She then pulled out a cigarette... or was it a cigarette? She struck a match on the floor and lighted her... what.... what was it? I smelled... marijuana... ? “Szofia, what are you smoking?”

She closed her eyes in vegetative meditation. “Shhhhhh. Keeping oooming! I'm trying to relax.”

“Szofia, you are going to get us all thrown in...”

She laughed. “Thrown in jail, is that what you were going to say? Really, Hugh, get a clue: we're already in jail, you clever boy.”

The drunk man continued: OoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommooo...

I was beginning to lose it. “That is fine! You are relaxing...” I pointed at our drunk cell-mate. “He is relaxing... I'm feeling stressed!”

“Then shut him up,” she said opening her green eyes and looking straight at me. “Shut 'em all up! C'mon Hugh. They won't hardly notice.” She started to rap: “Just give a little jolt and then we'll bolt/ Turn on the juice and then we'll be loose. Omm-pah, Doo-dah, time to revolt!”

I was feeling sick. “Szofia! That is a terrible rhyme!”

“It's poetry, Hugh. But it's going to get worse if you don't do something to get us out of here. We succulent veggies get really thorny when we get upset, and when I get thornier, the rappin' gets ornerier!” Szofia shut her eyes again and started rocking back and forth.

The drunk man droned on: “OoooOoomoomommommooo OoooOoomoomommommooo OoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommooo...”

I could barely stand it. “Szofia, make it stop!!! My seams are going to burst!”

She ignored me. “YOU make it stop, Hugh. I'm busy vegetating and oooming and rappin' on you balloon'...”

“OoooOoomoomommommooo OoooOoomoomommommooo OomoooOooo Ooomoomommommooo OoooOoomoomommommoooOoooOoomoomommommooo...”

I was agitated, angry, literally bursting with superheated gases, PISSED OFF (in the local vernacular). I twaggled my gravitational sheets harder than I ever have before and massively expulsifored!

Tsschiapppff

There were impulses galore! It was a dynamite electromagnetic pulse. The overhead florescent lights blistered into small super novas and burned out. So did every electric coffee maker and computer terminal and cell phone in the jail - and for half a mile radius around, as well. The drunk man ceased oooming and went totally blank and silent. So did every corrections officer in the facility, every visitor, every detainee and every car parked in or around the building and also several blocks nearby.

“Taa-daa,” said Szofia. “See what you can do when you put your tiny mind to something?” She blew cannabis smoke up at the ceiling at the sprinkler nozzle. No alarm sounded because the power was shorted out, but the sprinkler itself started to spray water. Szofia tested the grated door of the cell - the electric lock had unbolted and she pulled the door open. She grinned an enormous, face-creasing smile while swinging the open door back and forth.

In fact, every cell door in the jail was unlocked and open. Everyone was soaking wet due to the activated ceiling sprinklers.

“Hugh,” she said, “you are a veritable Marvel Comic Book Superhero! Super Hugh, that's you! C'mon, let's blow this joint before the Man comes back to life!"

We ran down the corridor. Every cell was open and everyone inside looked stunned.

As we passed the front desk, Szofia stuck her water-soaked marijuana cigarette between the immobilized desk sergeant's lips. He remained blank and speechless. She threw open the front doors and hollered. “Let's go already!! We're oooouuuut'a here!!”

We went. When running I still tended to careen in and out of 3 and 4 and 5 D, but though I wobbled, I was able to keep up with Szofia... barely. We cantered out to the street and kept it up all the way home. I was almost out of gas.

About twenty minutes after we had left the building, we heard a commotion from a distance. The fire trucks and police cars had started to converge on the station, but we were long gone and far away.

* * *

I sat in the worn out driver's seat of Hugo Nash's old, banged up Ford. I was petrified.

After crumpling up and tossing away the new parking tickets that had been stuck under the windshield paper clips, Szofia got in and sat down next to me. "If you've got any cell phones or wireless devices in your pockets, Pappy Dear, throw them all out the window right now! On or off, those things are always recording and broadcasting where you are, who you're with and what you're saying. Toss 'em all, dude, and let's get moving!"

I put the key in the ignition, trembling.

"No wait!" shouted Szofia! "Not yet. First, we gotta check out this rocket ship before we lift off!"

Szofia hummed and rocked back and forth while running her fingers across the dust covered vinyl dash board that was cracked in many places. "So cool, so very cool," she said. "This old beater's got real dials and buttons and switches. And, oh my gawd, I don't believe it! That's a real three-on-the-tree manual shifter! I can't believe it, a three-on-the-tree shifter!!! This is one crazy old set of wheels, Houghzer! And no touch screens and no trackware! Yowser! Very, nice, Hughie Dooey. And will ya look at this! A real cassette tape player! I haven't seen one of these in a million years! And look at this collection in the glove box of oldie moldy rock 'n roll music! Hot dog, let's roll Mr. Hugh!"

But I still hadn't turned the ignition key.

Szofia stared at me incredulously. “So, muchacho??? What are you waiting for? A special invitation? TV cameras? Tucker Carlson? Dude! They know your name. They know where you live. You know the cops are coming back here to get you. C'mon, Hughbie baby! We're fugitives from the law, wheehoo!! So let's go already!” Szofia was bouncing up and down in the car seat with excitement.

I cringed. “But, Szofia, I have never before really driven one of these terra-rovers, what they call a car. I have scanned all the manuals. I understand, in theory, how it works, but in practice...”

She laughed hysterically. “It's easy-schmeazy, dude! Just turn the key, shift into gear, step on the gas and POP THE CLUTCH! Come on, Hugh, we won't have all day, you know!”

Szofia slammed in a cassette. "Hot diggity dog!" She screamed. "Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble cover Hendrix's Voodoo Child live at El Mocambo!" She jammed the play button and turned up the volume to the maximum. "Hughie!" she screamed, "I taught Jimi and Stevie all those guitar licks and tricks and they almost, ALMOST got them right! Now, listen, Mr. McHugh. After I give you a snare drum roll, you count off eight quick measures to establish the beat, then you stick it hard! REAL HARD! Buckle up, butter cup......... Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8...! GO! GO! GO! GO! Houston, we have lift off!"

I turned the ignition key, slipped the car in "gear," lifted off the clutch and stepped on the gas. Oiyoyoyei! We rocketed backwards into the street and across the center-line into oncoming traffic. We then spun 180 degrees as I let go of the steering wheel and it whipped around! We drove backwards into the lanes weaving between cars and trucks at breakneck speed!

Szofia was ecstatic.

“Wheehoooooo!!”

I was getting motion sick.“Oiyoyoyei!! Oh my hardening jellybags!!!”

Bam. We scraped a concrete jersey barrier. Bam bam. We rubbed against something else, a car, a streetlight stanchion, a fire hydrant... a pedestrian? I screamed at Szofia. “Oh no! What will I tell Pioneer Central Command? Hugo Nash has become a fugitive from the quasi-intelligents' law? A 3D criminal?? A reckless driver??? Oiyoyoyei!!”

“Wheehoooooo!!” screamed Szofia in reply.

I was scared witless. Breathless. I didn't know what to do next. We were pirouetting and pin-wheeling in the middle of the street. “Szofia... how... do... I... stop it???”

She was ecstatic. “Step on the brake, dummy!

“Wheehoooooo!!”

I stepped on the brake pedal!

Hard!!

Too hard!!!

The motor stalled and we skidded to an abrupt stop, sideways in a 7-11 store parking lot. White steam rose from the hood. I glanced back into 4D and saw that my pressure gauges were spinning wildly in circles, completely off the scale. I think that several chŭpaжthx synthetic hair fibers had popped out of my head leaving a bald spot! I sat there expelling warm plasma gases from my ears. Car drivers sped by pointing and honking at us.

Szofia was still bouncing up and down. “Wheeha, that was cool! Okay, now it's my turn. Move over, Rover, and let Szofia take over.”

She grabbed me by the collar and yanked me hard into the passenger seat. She was very strong for her size! Szofia got behind the wheel. Her small green-haired head, shrouded under the hood of her sweatshirt, was barely visible over the dashboard. She looked at me with a crazy grin. She blew a kiss my way and then screamed:

“Wheeeeeeeeehoooooooooooooo!!”

She stomped on the accelerator leaving wriggling black tire tracks burned into the road. A cloud of sparks and melted rubber followed us. The rear of the car fishtailed wildly as we blasted down the highway out of the city and into the darkening evening.

* * *

[You have just finished reading Chapter 7 of Life Among the Three Dimensionals, a serialized sci-fi novel and a throw-back to the non-digital day of extended narratives. Dazed and Confused? Totally lost? Time for remedial lit 101... or the CliffsNotes? For earlier chapters click HERE.]

The police officer read me my rights and patted me down.

I tried to remember everything I had learned about the Law from watching television - Perry Mason re-runs, Judge Judy, LA Law... I barely remembered the charges for which I was being arrested: missed child support, two counts of attempted indecent liberties, assault, grand larceny of a cash machine, not-so-grand larceny, attempted shop-lifting, inciting a riot, violation of a bench warrant, contempt of court for failure to appear, failure to pay property taxes, felonious failure to pay parking tickets, walking while intoxicated, public lewdness, vagrancy, indecent behavior, attempted thinking without a license, pronoun misgendering, and several other violations I could not comprehend.

“Mr. Nash, you're going to have to take off the mittens, turn around, put your hands behind your back and let me cuff you before you get into the patrol car,” the officer said.

“But I...” I blustered.

The officer gave me a look and put his hand on his nightstick... “But you what?”

Szofia then stepped up to the policeman and with her hands reached up to pat me on my shoulder. “It's alright officer,” she said. “He just has, uh, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, you understand.”

The policeman looked at her menacingly. “So who are you, kid?”

“I'm, uh, I'm his daughter. He's a war vet, really badly messed up,” Szofia said, lightly tapping her green haired head. She gave the police man a knowing look lifting her green eyebrows a few times.

“Yeah? You're a veteran, Mr. Nash? Marines, regular army? Where'd you serve, good buddy?”

I panicked. My intelli-tracts skipped a line. Where did I what....????.....

I reluctantly removed the mittens exposing my upside-down inside-out hands.

"Ooooooohh," said the Officer looking at my invertedness. "Did you get that in combat? Which war, good buddy?"

There had been so many, many wars on this planet that, under the pressure of the moment, I could not keep straight the sequence of which one came before the other. “¿¿¿... the, uhh, the... Civil War...???”

“What?” shouted the policeman.

Szofia stepped up again. “He doesn't mean this country's Civil War, officer. Honest, he means, uh, some other people's civil war that this country generously instigated for them...”

I struggled to play along with Szofia' lead. “... uh, yes, Officer, the... uh... the Spanish Civil War...?

“DAD!!! I'm sorry, officer, he gets that way, sometimes. It was a head injury, you know - Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Kosovo, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Syria, Korea, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Arkanistan, Nitwardia, Buttoutia, Oilstanislaw... He was in all of them. Including all of the undeclared wars, too. He fought for one side or the other. Sometimes both sides simultaneously. The last one, that's where it happened - his hands, you see what I mean.”

Szofia lifted my handcuffed hands to show them to the policeman, then let them drop heavily. “See. They just couldn't sew him all back together normally again. It was kind of a medical screw-up. You know how those MASH units are, officer? And surgeons are just quacks, right.” Then she pointed at my head. “Also his hearing... it's real bad. Constant ringing. Real bad tinnitus from when the ammo dump exploded. He doesn't always clearly hear what you say.” Szofia reached up and gently stroked my head. I heard her whisper to me:

“Just keep your trap shut, Mr. Gasbag, and let me do all the talking, OK?”

The officer looked somewhat placated. “Wow. No kidding. A real war hero, eh? Well let's go, Mr. Nash, or is it... ?”

“... Sergeant. First Sergeant Major Hugo Nash with oak leaf clusterfuckers,” interjected Szofia. “Highly decorated, Mr. Police Officer, yessir. His uniform is covered with ribbons and awards: Bronze Star, Silver Star, Red Star, Neutron Star, Falling Star, the Congressional Medal of Dishonor, the Honorable Mention Medal, the Croix de Guerre, the Je Ne Sais Quoi Croix, the French Croissant, the Iron Cross, the Double Cross, Victoria Cross, Red Cross, Purple Cross, Crossed Eyes, Good Conduct Medal, Bad Conduct Medal, Purple Heart, Green Thumb, Purple Liver, Pink Eyes... you name it, he's got it.”

But the policeman clearly didn't believe what Szofia said. “Alright,” he announced. “Enough already. Watch your head when you get in, Sergeant Nash...” Szofia slid into the back seat next to me. “Hey, where are you going, kid? Get out of the car!”

“Well, can't I come with him? He's my daddy!” Szofia whimpered and fluttered her green eyelashes.

“Absolutely not. It's against regulations. Where's your mother, kid?”

“I don't have a mother,” sniffled Szofia.

I interjected hesitatingly “Officer... I am divorced... I think...?”

“Right,” added Szofia. “He's divorced. Mom… his ex... is a social media junkie and she watches daytime television and she’s a convicted jay-walker and she wears Birkenstock shoes and she lives in another city hundreds of thousands of miles away and she’s addicted to chocolate chip cookies like, she must eat a million of them a day... and Daddy has sole child custody.” She whimpered. “So if I can't go with you, I'll have to stay here all by myself...” She sniffled and whimpered.

The policeman was adamant. “Sorry. It's against regulations for anyone to get in the squad car with the detainee. Now get out of here, kid!”

Szofia whined. “But I'm just a LITTLE KID, officer, and I could get into TROUBLE and I might burn the house down playing with matches; or someone could break in and I could be KILLED or RAPED and then there would be a big, nasty news story that would go viral and YOU and this WHOLE STINKING CITY WOULD GET THEIR PANTS SUED OFF... AND you'd lose your retirement pension! So, whaddya say, let me just ride along with my dear old daddy to the police station... pretty please with sugar-sprinkled doughnuts on top, officer?” She whimpered and fluttered her eyelashes.

“NO!”

“Fuckhead.”

“What'd you say???”

“I just reminded my father to duck his head as he gets in and out of the police car.”

The policeman put his hand on his hips. “One more word out of you, you green-haired punk, and...”

But Zsssupft! and she was gone. The officer peered into the car, shrugged, slammed the back door, sat down in the driver's seat and took off with me... and Szofia... in the rear.

Or something that I assumed was Szofia, was sitting right next to me... in 4D, but not 3D in any way shape or form. It... she... looked like a cross between a saguaro cactus and a coastal redwood and a blackberry bush, though it - she - clearly was not a cactus or a blackberry or a coastal redwood, and it - she - extended through the roof of the car, or appeared to, because the "top" of Szofia (her "head" and her "eyes" and her "nose"??), like all the rest of her, was entirely in the 4th while the car was only in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd dimensions. And what looked like roots really were not, but were more like hundreds of gnarly legs with small feet and, what, rhizome-like toes? It was Szofia, of course, but sitting there in 4D, with her dozens of root-feet crossed and twiddling her rhizomes, serenely unseen by any of the local 3D fauna like the police officer driving us off to the station, but still highly visible to 5D me.

The police officer's radio was chattering loudly in the front.

“Szofia?” I whispered beneath the radio chatter.

“Doh. So who else would it be sitting next to you in the fourth dimension? Hugh, your molasses really runs kind of thick, you know, no offense intended.”

“You look so... different!”

She... it... turned to look at me. “So, Hugh, what do you look like au naturel? A helium balloon? A jellyfish? A bowl of plasma porridge?”

The policeman turned back toward me. “Hey, pipe down back there! If you're going to talk to yourself, talk quietly!”

We drove on in silence. Finally, I whispered to Szofia, “What are we going to do?”

She sounded amused. “We? I dunno, Hugh. Why don't you just siphon yourself into the 4th dimension like I did and leave old Mr. Police Officer with a pair of empty handcuffs á là Harry Houdini, eh?”

I was fluting gases all over the place. “Szofia, I do not do dimensional siphons, whatever that is. I am always in five dimensions, even though my alias body and the locals are only in three. Oiyoyoyei! What are they going to do with me?” I felt absolutely awful. Once again, I was a failure and my mission was about to be ruined.

Szofia, however, was unperturbed. “Who knows what they going to do with you, dude. Maybe they'll rough you up a bit, then put you up against a wall and shoot you, ah ha ha ha! But I would guess that they're just going to throw you in the slammer. Don't you watch any Hollywood movies, Daddy dear?"

The police car pulled in to the station.

Szofia got out before the policeman did and slipped out of the patrol car. As she ducked around the side she told me, “Don't sweat it, pops. I'll stand by you. Remember, I'm on the run from the Branch. I have to get back into three dimensions with all the rest of them because if I remained in 4D, then just like you Hooeydooey, without the camouflage of all these 3D animals, I'd stick out like the proverbial eggplant among the strawberries...”

* * *

[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Dazed and confused? Try reading it out loud to your cat, your dog or to a special (or not so special) human in your life. For earlier chapters click HERE.]

It had been a difficult week. I remained cloistered inside my house and tried to make contact with my project controllers.

Report 3

Necessary to pause study program. Recuperation "at home" required to revitalize schrΰmp'schtǻcks to prevent them from totally ee'ălifying, ergo, drop off in reports.

Have experienced major shock while "teaching" elementary school. Something has gone very wrong! Full report to follow upon extraction from Pioneer project.

Still require delivery of replacement Drůkk' ąou location buttons. Situation deteriorating. Have had no response to prior requests! RSVP urgent!!

Also, advise re status of triploid, please? Please send buttons and triploid ASAP. Or, if extraction imminent (please!!!) do NOT send triploid.

Signed/Ugoñaschßtenätraξo aka H. Nash.

I was getting worried.

I had received no responses, no further instructions, no anything from Pioneer Command since I had been inserted onto this planet Earth in this 3D slice of the Multiverse. It was beginning to dawn on me that if I had lost my Drůkk' ąou location buttons, then how would my controllers know where to send the replacements for me to sew on?

My despair also increased as my internal gas pressures began to rise due to the flood of radiation and electro-magnetic pulses that the locals emit unremittingly into their environment. It was both intoxicating and degenerative. I was becoming sensually engorged with this planet's pollutants; that is, the environmental toxins that adversely affected the bio-organic three dimensionals affected me, a gaseous five dimensional, like a cat set loose in a field of catnip.

The elementary school administrators had called and asked me to "substitute teach" again. They told me that my students all thought I was a very good teacher.. even though none of them could remember anything that I had taught them. I declined the invitation to teach again, however. I said I was ill, that “flu bugs” had flown up my nose, and I could not do it.

I was, indeed, feeling ill.

How could my backpack in the 4th dimension be visible to anyone on this planet other than me? It wasn't possible!

Worse, my assumed Earth-identity was beginning to upset my well-ordered gaso-plasmatic life. It began to dawn on me that Hugo Nash had not actually received party invitations, as I had first believed. I now understood that Hugo Nash was in some type of very serious "legal" trouble and he was a "party" to litigation. And that meant that I could be in very serious trouble.

A man wearing a blue uniform had pushed many threatening letters through a slot in the front door. I piled them up on the living room sofa along with the other documents. I did not understand what they wanted, but some of these documents threatened that I would soon be "sued" for non-payment of certain money or that I was now unlawfully occupying my house which would be sold at "auction." One document was from someone who said he was a lawyer representing my ex-wife and that I was "seriously in arrears" on my support payments (supporting exactly who or what was unclear!). Another document stated that I had to appear in a downtown courtyard for failing to show up for another appointment regarding my - or, rather, the original Hugo Nash's - “driving while under the influence." Whose influence had Hugo Nash been under? Had Pioneer Central substituted me for an undercover agent for another agency's covert mission?. It seemed like everyone on Planet Earth was "undercover" doing something covert. Everyone seemed to be under the influence of someone else.

Just two nights ago, someone had tried to steal Hugo Nash's terra-rover in the early morning hours by breaking into it, quietly starting the engine with jumper cables and driving it away. Of course, I do not sleep so I felt the anxious impulses emitted by the ignition battery at around 0245 in the morning. When I went to the window and saw what was happening, I quickly counter-pulsed at 30,000 Herz, which sucked the energy out of the car's alternator... and, for better or for worse, also wiped the bio-electrics of the man who was trying to take the car. I was sure he would eventually recover, although he might have suffered a considerable hang-over, as the natives call it.

The day after that, a uniformed woman drove up in a three-wheeled vehicle and put more tickets on the windshield underneath the paper clips. Perhaps she did this to help me warn off others from stealing Hugo Nash's terra-rover? I wasn't at all sure, so I left the tickets where they were under the paper clips.

And then there was Szofia...

Szofia was the elementary school 6th grader who had seen my 4D back pack in the school on Monday.

Szofia stormed out of the classroom leaving me mumbling and giggling. Her last words to me were a threat! She snarled, "I'll talk to you later," and then she slammed the door behind her! She sent me a text message, or rather, she sent Hugo Nash a text message, announcing that she was coming to my house, his house, Friday morning. THIS FRIDAY MORNING!!

But by 2 o'clock in the afternoon Szofia had not appeared.

Which was fine by me. I concluded that this Szofia was not coming after all. I curled up on the living room floor in full ruminative posture dreaming of immediate extraction from this frightening and perplexing world. I had just about forgotten about her when at 2.15 pm someone rapped loudly on the front door.

“Who is it?”

I remained curled up defensively on the floor.

“Who are you expecting, dummy, the Easter Bunny? It's Szofia! Open the door, dammit!”

She banged again on the door.

I uncurled, got up and opened the door just a crack...

... I peeked...

Yes, it was her, the small sixth-grader. She was still wearing the same dark hooded sweatshirt and green sunglasses...

Before I could say anything, she shouldered open the door and it smashed against the jamb. She barged right past me, almost knocking me over!

She stomped through the entire house, kicking doors open, peering into closets and looking behind the furniture as she frequently stared back at me.

“Does anyone else live here?" She demanded. “On second thought... nobody would want to live here! Mister, you are SUCH A SLOB!” she stated after reconnoitering the living room. “And why is it so damned dark in here?” She pulled off her sunglasses and lifted the blinds to let in the sunlight.

“You said you would come before noon,” I whimpered.

“So I'm late. What about it?”

Szofia peered inside the drawers and rummaged through the pantry. Then she strode into the sunlight now streaming in through a window and sat down on the sofa. She glowered at me.

“Shouldn't you still be in school?” I asked sheepishly. “Do your parents know you are here? This is all very irregular, I think.”

She stared at me for half a minute without answering. “To answer your questions: Yes. No. Yes. Is this all very irregular, Mr. Nash? ... Well, you're very irregular, too, aren't you? So what about it, Miiiiister Naaash?”

Her green eyes bore into mine. She stared silently at me waiting for me to answer. I didn't, of course. What could I say? What is it about "it" that I was supposed to talk about? What could I possibly tell her that I was permitted to tell her? Or that would make any sense?

“I'm going to get right to the point,” she finally said as she picked up, examined and tossed away pieces of mail lying on the sofa. “If you're not from someplace else, THEN WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? C'mon, out with it! I know you're wearing a back pack in the 4th dimension, and, obviously, you know it, too, because I can see the tubes that connect you to it. So who the fuck are you? What are you doing here? Were you sent by the MAIN BRANCH? IF YOU WERE, YOU NEED TO KNOW THAT I'M CARRYING, PUNK! I'VE GOT A BOTTLE OF HERBICIDE IN MY POCKET, SO KEEP YOUR DISTANCE OR YOU'RE GONNA BE WEEDED!”

She kept one hand deep in a sweatshirt pocket while she scrutinized me.

I quickly analyzed the situation. This Szofia kid could be crazy. She could be, but she had clearly seen my back-pack, and that was not an indication of insanity, because it was there to be seen.... IF you had four-dimensionality.

But this was not possible... unless she, Szofia, too -- like me! -- did not belong to the local 3D quasi-intelligent fauna! But who was she, then? I was the only Pioneer here.... wasn't I? I had not been trained for this! What should I do?

I did not know what to say so I decided to tell the truth. If she was crazy, no one else would ever believe what I would tell her. And if she was not crazy, well, then... I would have to find out!

I spoke to her with all the gaseous dignity that I could muster under the circumstances: “Alright then, hear this: I am Ugoñaschßtenätraξo. I am a Five Dimensional Intelligent Plasma, a gaseous intelligent. I am here in the alias of Hugo Nash, the real version of whom is temporarily chilling in the mezzanine between local universes. I am a Pioneer inserted here to do research on the local quasi-intelligent life forms. I have lost my Drůkk' ąou location buttons, so I seem to be... at least temporarily... at least, I hope, only temporarily... stuck here!" I literally choked up as the gravity of my situation sank in as I said it.

I paused to let the shock of my disclosure sink in.

But, surprisingly, Szofia showed no shock at all.

In fact, her face registered nothing. Her green eyes bore unblinkingly into me.

But then she suddenly yanked out a pump bottle of Round Up, a tattooed finger on the applicator, and pointed it right at my nose. I blinked uncomprehendingly and did nothing... which is what comes naturally to all intelligent gaseous lifeforms under stress.

“Well, you're pretty pimping cool for a Brancher,” she finally said after a minute. If you were a Brancher, you'd have dropped all your leaves by now.” She carefully re-pocketed the aerosol herbicide. "And as for having lost a couple of your whatever buttons, I understand - you do seem to have seriously lost a whole lot of buttons, dude!"

I replied indignantly! “I am not a "dude" or a "Brancher," whoever or whatever those are... Now, Ms. Szofia", I demanded: "WHO ARE YOU?”

“I'm a Vegan. Four dimensional. I'm on the run.”

“You only eat vegetarian food?” I asked.

She literally screamed at me. “EAT VEGETABLES? Gross! Utterly barbaric! I don't EAT vegetables, you freak! I AM a vegetable. Oh, Never mind. I'll explain later,” she said.

She pointed at my life support podule. “What does the back-pack connect to other than you? I see pipes that connect it to your body, but there are other external pipes that seem to terminate in nothing. What's with them?”

“The 4D pack pack connects to my 5D telemetry unit for communicating with Pioneer Central Command,” I explained. “You cannot perceive the fifth dimension?”

Szofia looked me up and down like a shirt on a clothes rack. “5D, eh?” she said. “Cool. Yeah, that's cool, Hugh. Well, sort of cool, anyway. No, I'm a 4D, I told you that, but you clearly weren't paying attention, Mister Nash!

“You know, I've met a lot of stupid two dimensional Flatties in my lifetime, not to mention the native 3D life forms around here. And I've always thought there could be higher dimensional life forms as well. But I've never actually met a 5D before... that is, assuming you are what you say you are, Mr. Huge. I mean, sure, you could be five dimensional, that kinder makes sense; maybe I could buy that. But why anybody would want to study the stupids in this world... I mean, really, Hugh, you don't really expect anyone to believe that ridiculous story, do you?”

I felt offended. I huffed, “My name's Hugo, thank you.”

“Well, you're "Hugh," now. 'Hugo' is too ridiculous. Like Szofia.”

“Like what?” I could barely follow what this girl was talking about.

“Never mind,” she answered. “We'll get around to that when we get around to it. I need a drink.”

The girl went into the kitchen and thoroughly examined the plants on the counter by rubbing several leaves between her fingers. Then she took out a glass from the pantry, flicked off a cockroach and filled the glass with rust-colored tap water. She stuck her tattooed fingers into the water. “Ahhhh...”

“Ms. Szofia,” I said as she twirled her fingers in the water glass. “So what exactly are you doing here?”

“Here? Why, I'm checking you out! Isn't that obvious?"

“No, I mean, what are you doing here on this Earth planetoid?” I was having as much difficulty communicating with this 4D life form as I had with the 3D life forms. I rubbed my chin. “Ms. Szofia, I told you what I am doing here. I'm a scholar doing field research. Why are you here? And why can't I see anything in the 4^th dimension if you are supposed to be a 4D?”

“First. Don't call me 'Mizz,' dude. It's Szofia… or ‘Your Highness’… or nothing, got it? And in case you really want to know, I'm hiding, that's what I'm doing.

"Hiding from…

“… seriously hiding…

"… And that's why I needed to check you out. When I saw you had more than the local dimensions, I first thought that you were a bounty hunter. But you're either more clever than you appear to be... and to be perfectly frank, Hubert, you don't appear to be that clever... or you've got to be the clumsiest, dumbest bounty hunter I've ever encountered, no offense intended, Hugh.

"And as for what you can't see in 4D, Hughby-baby, what kind of camouflage do think it would be if I traipsed around LIKE YOU carrying a fourth dimension load on my back so any bounty hunter could pick me out like a flaming pink carrot! So I siphoned my 4D into 3D. But I can yank it back and forth, you know what I mean? It just leaves a dot as an anchor, a singularity, in 1-2-3 or in 4, got it?” She screwed up her eyes and scrutinized me. “Now don't tell me you don't do inter-dimensional siphons?”

I was mystified. “A pink what? A siphon???”

“Never mind,” Szofia said, exasperated. “You talk and act like you were just born yesterday, Hughbeedoobee.”

“Well, I was, indeed ‘born,’ more or less, just yesterday. But what about your parents?” I asked.

“My what? Parents? What about 'em?” Szofia walked around casually inspecting the house, kicking at the laundry scattered on the floor. She carried the glass of water while her fingers were still in it. The water glass was now 3/4 empty.

“Don't your parents notice that you are missing school, that you are not at home... that you are a... a Vegan from... ?”

“They don't notice anything, Hughy baby.” Szofia kicked over a pile of old magazines in the living room. “See, Hughie, they're adopted. I mean, my parents are adopted - I adopted them as part of my cover. Get it? They've got so many screaming kids in that household they don't even know who they're related to. There must be eight or nine of them, or maybe a couple of dozen. Damned if I know, and neither do they. Really nice people, but pretty clueless, you know what I mean, Hughbie? I just walked in the door one day and made myself at home. In the beginning, they must have thought I was one of their kids' friends. And then I came by more and more often. And, you know, like, one day, there I am – part of the household. Like I told you: these 3D stupids are clueless, totally clueless.”

Szofia refilled her glass of water and stuck her fingers in it again. “Jeez, it's like a zoo in that place! A bunch of animals screaming and hollering all the time. People running around at all hours of the day and night. Nobody even notices that I don't eat there with them, don't sleep there, and that I like to walk around barefoot at night in the garden and stick my roots in the dirt. So, no, they don't know when I'm around, let alone that they let a 4D Vegan crash at their home. Or whether I cut class or not. Or that I'm really 78,238 human years old. Hah! That’s so funny: you look like a mature, adult human whack-job - kinda weird looking, you know, but, more or less human - but you were actually born just yesterday, Hugebert; and I look like I’m twelve and I’m really 78,238 years old. So, so funnnnny! Hah!”

"Every few years over the past many centuries, I've had to move on, find a new hang-out, adopt another persona, another identity. I've gotten around, Hughbidoo, let me tell you! When you're on the run, mister, you gotta keep running, you got it?”

Szofia swished her fingers around the glass spilling some of the water on the floor.

“Hughtoo, let me tell you.” She continued. “When I budded off the stem, my adoptive parents' great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents were still hunting bison with sharp sticks and scratching red ocher drawings on cave walls. Ha ha! I've been holed up on this cesspool planet for multiple millennia, always hanging with the really cool folks like pirates and bandits and renegades and stuff. No offense, Hughgo, but you may be the exception, you know what I mean?

"Anyway. My school teachers totally misunderstood when I said I was 'bored' with Attila the Hun more than twelve hundred years ago and that I taught 'Atta-boy Attila' how to ride a fast pony while pulling a bowstring. I taught that kid, Attila, everything, you know what I mean? We rode all over the Steppes raising all kinds of hell and eating shish-kebab and barbequed horsesteak! What a blast! I told the teachers here that when I rode with Attila I called him 'Attitla the Hun' and they called me 'Szofia the Fun', and that's the truth!

"But my teachers must be completely deaf, old farts that they are. Or, more likely, just plain s-t-u-p-i-d! They thought that I said I was 'born' in 'Hungary,' not bored; that I'm 'Szofia the Hungarian,' and that I'm 12 years old, you know, not that I rode with Attila twelve hundred years ago. Dang it, I've been here in this dumpy city four years already, Hughberto, and nobody's figured out that I'm STILL 12 years old and STILL in the Sixth Grade. I mean, really, give me a break! People are like that - they hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see. So they think I was "born" in Hungary! Whatever.

"So that's why I'm Szofia, little Szofia. Screw 'em. They think it's a Hungarian name. Whatever! I might as well be from Mars, as far as anyone's concerned. Shiiiit. Nobody else in this town is named Szofia. But what the hell, I'm the little Hungarian girl, and that's my cover. They're all such dweebs. Say, you wanna drink, Nugh?” She offered me the now mostly empty glass of water.

I scratched my head. “Okay, but who is BRANCH ” I asked, “and why... are you hiding from him?”

Szofia exploded. “BRANCHERS ARE NOT A "HIM,” okay? The Branch is an IT. The Branch is an agency, got that, genius? It's the Main Branch. I'm a bad bud, a rotten apple, know what I mean, and it's up to the Branch to cull the crop. But I'm not about to be culled, see? So I'm on the run and the Branch is looking for me. The last thing they want is for me to splice up with another bad bud, heh heh, or, you know, even go to seed! Aha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!

She paused, brushing a stack of bills off the sofa unto the floor. “Ha! Here's something really funny, Hugh-do. Imagine a whole shitload of Szofias roaming around the galaxy! Ah ha ha ha ha!”

Szofia put her wet finger over her lips and whispered.

“But not if the Branch finds me first. The last place they'll find me is here, living among the animals.

"Except for people like YOU, Hugh, who walk around with a fourth dimension back pack like some kind of flaming pink carrot!”

She yelled at me again, wagging her forefinger. “Dammit, Hugh, wearing your 4D backpack like you do, you might as well be carrying around a flashing neon kick-me-hard billboard, as far as the Main Branch is concerned!”

She sized me up with obvious disapprobation.

“So, look here, Hughnifer,” she whispered while pointing at me. “We're going to make a deal, you savvy? I keep your secret, baby, and you keep mine. Okay? We're both kind of like, you know, desperadoes, got it? ... Except for one little thingy, Hughy-baby... ”

She kicked at some of the documents that were now lying on the floor. “If I correctly understand all this crapola you've been piling up on the couch - summonses, complaints, tickets, impound notices, late fees, hearings, show cause orders, eviction notices - if I correctly understand all this crapola, then you're already chin-deep in a vat of organic cud-chewing animal excrement, do you know what I mean?”

I absolutely did not know what she meant.

But just moments later I did know what she meant.

Someone was pounding on the front door!

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"Open up, Mr. Nash! We have a warrant to serve for your arrest!"

It was the police! They were there to take me away!

* * *

[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. To understand what is going on, you might have to recap what came before. For earlier chapters, and the explanatory introduction, click HERE.]

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The next morning, I decided to try using Hugo Nash's terra-rover.

I opened the door, sat at the "wheel" and ignited the motor by turning the "key," as I had learned to do in my cocooning. The motor made grinding sounds, but it didn't ignite. I could tell that the ignition battery was tired, so I loaned it some electrical energy. The battery said thank you and tried again, weakly. The motor ignited and started to cough just like Lena Normandy who had called me from the elementary school the day before.

The car was also probably sick with the flu. The terra-rover motor continued to hack and shudder while a lot of blue smoke came out of the back. It clearly was not doing well. I would be uncomfortable forcing a sick machine to do work. It needed to stay home and get better.

Me, too, I thought! Me, too!

I turned off the motor and decided, instead, to take the "bus" to school, as Lena Normandy had suggested.

There was a "bus stop" near my house where others waited with me. But as in the shopping center the day before, no one spoke, let alone even looked at me or at anyone else.

The bus arrived and I let everyone else go in ahead of me. I observed that many who entered the bus had waved their hands, or something like a card or their digital tracking devices in front of a small digital reading device. I approached the device and waved one of my mitten-ed hands. Nothing happened. I waved my wallet. Nothing. The bus driver looked at me and at my mittens. She was obviously getting impatient with me.

I knew that I would have to proffer "money" to ride the bus, so I gave the driver the same ATM card that had worked in the store. The driver looked at me strangely, gave it back and said she only took bus passes, nearfi digital wallets, or dollar bills. Ahhh, I understood. So I took out from my wallet a one hundred dollar bill that the machine had given me the day before in the store and pushed it into a deposit box next to the driver.

The driver raised her eyebrows. "Hey! I don't make change!"

"Oh, I don't want to change anything!" I replied and smiled in a friendly manner.

The driver's eyebrows remained raised and she muttered something under her breath about a type of legume that grows underground. She then gave me a piece of paper that she said would allow me to "transfer" to somewhere else. For just a moment, I thought that transferring to another universe would be very nice, but the buses probably didn't go that far. So I simply thanked her and asked her to tell me when we reached the Lewis & Clark Elementary School. The driver grunted something. Then she stepped on a floor pedal that made the bus accelerate quickly. I stumbled down the aisle trying to keep my balance while holding onto an overhead rail with my red kitchen mittens. I tumbled forward and fell into the lap of a seated woman. I was so embarrassed!

"HELLO!" I said apologetically, "My name is Hugo Nash. What is your name?"

She looked very irritated and pushed me away.

I regained my composure and my balance and walked further down the aisle. There had been people standing in the middle of the aisle hanging from straps, but as I approached, they all moved away from me crowding toward the back of the bus. Nobody said anything.

I found an empty seat on the aisle that someone had vacated as I approached. Instinctively, before easing my body into the seat, I adjusted my 4D life-support podules and my 5D telemetry pack. But as self-conscious as I was about my fourth dimensional podules and my fifth dimensional telemetry pack, they were as light as a vacuum in this uni-slice, completely unobtrusive and, of course, totally invisible to everyone else on the bus.

I sat down "on" the bus seat leaning against the backrest while my 4D and 5D podules slived through the backrest and looked like they were resting on the legs of the passenger sitting behind me. But, of course, my podules were in the fourth and fifth dimensions, not the third, so no one noticed them.

I was seated next to a man reading another one of these small LCD tracking and communication devices. I saw that he looked sideways at my mittens folded in my lap. He pretended not to have seen them.

“Hello,” I said and smiled broadly. "Do you know what time it is? Would you like to go to the movies? What is your name? Where do you live?"

The man acted like he had not heard me and squeezed himself a little bit closer to the window. He looked again at my red kitchen gloves out of the corner of his eye. A few seconds later, the man abruptly pushed a button that caused a bell to ring. The bus stopped and he literally ran off the bus.

The seat next to me stayed vacant. I noticed that the people on the other side of the aisle across from me had also exited the bus. Everywhere else, the seats were full. My row of seats, however, stayed empty.

The bus ride was as strangely unsociable as the store. No one looked at or talked to anyone else. Instead, they seemed to communicate through ear buds or tiny devices for listening to "music" or playing some kind of games or watching short videos of people doing peculiar things or watching "newscasts" that appeared to be coordinated to repeat the same educational themes over and over and over again. Many bus riders were constantly thumbing up and down, up and down. The pulsing of their devices tickled me badly and, once again, I started to giggle. I could tell that many on the bus were looking at me discretely from the side. But their pulsating devices continued to tickle me and I giggled louder. More people looked at me side-ways.

Almost everyone on the bus seemed to be ill like administrative assistant Lena Normandy and Hugh Nash's wheezing terra-rover. Some coughed loudly just like the terra-rover had done. Others "sniffled" or "zsupped" or blew their noses into paper squares, or they "sneezed" or made raspy sounds from their chests. Some wore masks over their faces. I made a mind-sketch showing how they were arranged on the bus:

DRIVER (DOOR)

Sniffle, Snort COUGH, mask

zsupp zsupp wheeze

Tissue, snort COUGH, sniffle

Tissue, mask Tissue, SNEEZE

(empty),(empty) (Me), (empty)

zsupp, sniffle cough, wheeze

Sniffle, COUGH (MIDDLE DOOR)

cough, Tissue Standing man

mask, Tissue snort, COUGH

sniffle, zsupp zsupp, sniffle

COUGH, mask, tissue, zsupp, SNORT

Everyone on the bus seemed to have the "flu bug." But I did not see any "bugs." What kind of "bugs" were these that had flown into their noses and throats and that made them so raspy? Of course, I had seen the dark crawly bugs in Hugo Nash's house - had these insects crawled into people's noses and made them sick? I kept a sharp look out so that "bugs" would not crawl into my nose and clog my cooling manifold.

Time passed. Veritable minutes. Many many minutes. This form of locomotion seemed to be excruciatingly slow.

People got on and off the bus, all of them coughing, sniffling and sneezing. But no one sat next to me or in my row, even though I was the only one on the bus whose respiration systems were not clogged with "bugs;" even though I was the only one who smiled at everyone nearby. Self-consciously, I sat on my inverted hands in their heavy mittens so no one could see them. I sensed that others were "looking at me."

We Five Dimensionals, when we "look" at something, we look right at it. If we "look" at you, you know you are being "looked at," and there is no question about it.

But the quasi-intelligents here seemed to have a type of peripheral vision, an ability to see out of the sides of their "eyes" without actually looking at what they are looking at. It was very deceptive and disconcerting. They seemed to be looking elsewhere, but my mindfulness knew that they were sideways-looking at me!

As the time passed, I studied the small instructional signs that bordered the inside roof of the bus. They seemed to be similar to the often repeated educational messages I had seen on the television the day before:

Earn $20 an hour working from home! Interested? Call Now!!

Injured? Auto Accident Attorney - $$$Millions and $$$Millions Recovered for Clients!!!

Kiester University - Enroll today for your new tomorrow!

Unhappy? Assisted Suicide Clinic Open Now! VISA and MasterCard Accepted... or Pay on the Installment Plan!

We Buy Any House, Any Condition! Call Phillip's House-Flip Services!

1000s of Slots and Mega Prizes - Let the Fun Begin at Crooked Cove Casino!

Enjoy Chicken Liver Burgers and Garlic Milk Shakes at SmaltzShack

Creamy, Steamy Coffee at Bikini Barristas and Recreational Drug Emporium! 100 Yards On Right!

Spine hurt? Call Whack-a-Back Chiropractic and Feel Better Fast!

As the bus drove down the road, it passed large signs known as billboards. Like the instructional messages that bordered the roof of the bus, the billboards also sought to educate people:

Buy One Super Whooper Burger & Get Nothing Free!

Vote for Joe and for America's Future!

Vote for Don and for America's Past!

Great Taste Without the Waist? Eat Ozempic Frosted Cream Doughnuts Today!

What did it all mean? What was the purpose of this endlessly repetitive catechism of educational slogans? It seems that the only purpose of this incessant messaging was to persuade people to buy things they didn't want or need and to do what was clearly not in their best interests. The "educational" programs seemed to encourage a growing number of gradually less affluent people to become less healthy and increasingly indebted to a small number of increasingly affluent people. Why was this desirable? It was the same riddle that had puzzled me when I had down-loaded all their television shows, and visited all their web-sites, and read all their books and magazines and wondered what the object was. It was all so harmful to themselves personally and to their local societies. The "education" system was similar to their incessant deposit of pollutants, micro-plastics and radiation into their environment all of which made this planet less hospitable for bio-organic three dimensional beings and more hospitable for gaseous intelligent five dimensional beings. There must be some sense in all of this, but it escaped me completely.

As I pondered these mysteries, the bus driver called out “Lewis & Clark Elementary.” I got out. I waved to the bus driver to thank her. But she slammed the bus doors behind me and quickly drove away. I saw that everyone remaining on the bus was staring at me through the windows.

I saw a large, nondescript building a short distance away. It had only one floor and was made of red-brown brick. The building was encompassed by an asphalted two dimensional plane with "playground" types of structures on it. A piece of striped cloth hung from a tall white pole near the entrance of the building. Was this pole a communication antenna for receiving educational data to infuse into the miniature 3D specimens? What was the function of the striped cloth attached to the antenna?

I knew that this building was a "school." This was where the local quasi-intelligents "taught" and "learned" knowledge, or so I had learned during my own pre-emergence. In buildings like these, the dominant species of this globule in this particular 3D uni-slice spent nearly a quarter of their short lives "learning" very rudimentary knowledge and skills that any one of them could have absorbed during their own days "in utero."

If the rudimentary things were learned pre-birth the way gaseous intelligents do it - things such as arithmetic; how to tie one's shoe-laces; how to drive a terra-rover; on what dates which important things had occurred; how to walk and run and swim - if all of these rudimentary things were already imprinted into one's mind before birth, then people would have a significant head-start. They could then better use their lives to investigate, appreciate and understand more investigative science; wiser political systems; more insightful art; more equitable economics; and more of everything that they seem never to have enough time for.

Of course, even pre-birth education had its limits. I had been de-cocooned just days before. But even in my own case, for example, my controllers had lazily prepared my internal maps based on the wrong millenniums, so my internal "maps" displayed large inland seas where the States of California and Utah are now located. I was also discovering, much to my dismay, that my pre-birth brain-ware for this mission was extremely "buggy" and current only up to the Earth-year 1957! As far as I knew, Eisenhower was President of the United States, Sputnik 1 had just been sent into space and Fortran was the latest computer programming language.

I pondered these conundrums as I was swept along with the in-flowing surge of variegated, demi-miniatures. Most of them wore what looked like very large and heavy 3D life support backpacks of their own.

I entered into "school" with full mindfulness and my valves tightly schnarpled.

* * *

“What happened to your hands?” Lena Normandy asked as she escorted me to my classroom assignment. COUGH! COUGH!

I told her a lie. I admit it. Yes, I was already learning the techniques of deception that these quasi-intelligents seem to excel at, but it made me feel bad because all 5D Intelligents are inclined to tell the truth at all times. But how could I always tell the truth when I was myself living a lie inside the skin of my host, Hugo Nash?

So I lied and explained that I had burned my hands cooking dinner and had to cover them up for a while.

Lena Normandy's eyes looked very red and watery and I thought her face was puffy. She looked unwell, even by the standards of this species, but she was quite willing to accept any story about my hands that did not require any extra consideration.

She ushered me into the front of the classroom while handing me two "textbooks" and a "lesson plan." There was a desk and chair at the front of the room, also a green chalkboard and a white drawing board with some type of marking devices.

She told me to remember to ask what everyone's preferred pronouns were just in case he, she, it or they had changed his, her, its or their gender preferences over the weekend. I didn't know what she (he, it, they???) was/were talking about!

The room was filled with many demi-miniatures, male and female (at least to outward appearances!), in various colors and sizes, in various skin tones, with assortments of hair styles seated in identical wood-and-metal structures that combined a chair and a desk in one unit. Their attire was almost identical. Each wore similar trousers, sneakers style shoes, T-shirts or hooded sweatshirts. Some of them apparently had small radio antennas implanted in the sides of their noses or in their earlobes or eyebrows or cheeks. Some had illustrations on their arms or their necks which were evidently some type of identification system. All of them wore ear buds. They were hunched over their tracking devices or scrolling around on small computers. I turned back to ask Lena Normandy what I was supposed to do now... but she had already slived leftwise and with a loud sneeze - AHHHH-CHOOO!!! - she scuttled out and closed the door behind her. I trembled slightly.

I was alone with dozens and dozens and dozens of demi-miniatures of an alien life form. I felt very afraid. I must have looked as frightened as I felt.

I stared at the demi-miniatures. What was I supposed to teach them? ‘Math and science,’ Lena Normandy had said the day before. Holding the two text-books in my mittens, I skimmed quickly through their pages. I absorbed them too quickly, however, because I started fluting psziproots through my ventilation orifices. That sounded like a sometimes embarrassing human phenomenon, I suspect, because the noise of my fluting psziproots caused some of the demi-miniatures to laugh!

Still, the text-books I had quickly skimmed gave me instant indigestion! They contained so much nonsense it was truly embarrassing. How could I "teach" what was so basic and obviously incomplete? The periodic table of elements? Prime numbers? "Newtonian" physics? Chemistry? I thought this was a math and science class, not a nursery school!

Perhaps, just perhaps, I could teach real math and science. Teaching the truth couldn't be harmful! Seeking the truth, after all, was the whole point of education, wasn't it? Somewhere back in time, I knew that this planetoid had experienced an Enlightenment, a period when all learning and knowledge was to be available to all. Surely, I could teach something to an enlightened civilization that sought to elevate one and all!

For the moment, however, I couldn't teach anything because the demi-miniatures paid no attention to me at all. They were engrossed in their thumbing and ear-buds and little tracking devices.

I straightened my figer pipes in my 4D back pack and summoned courage.

“Hello,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster.

There was no response. Everyone continued thumbing and ear-budding and scrolling.

“HELLO!”

I said more assertively. “I am Hugo Nash. I am your substitute teacher today for math and science.”

There was no reaction.

Thumb thumb thumb. Ear-bud music. Scroll, scroll scroll. Thumb thumb thumb. Ear-bud music. Scroll, scroll, scroll.

I did not know what else to do.

“Ahem!” I expulsifored, juuuust a large enough impulse to get their attention.

The overhead florescent lights waggled slightly (in the whole school, actually) while every digital device in the classroom flared blue and then extinguished itself with a little tune. Of course, like in the shopping center, the brains of these demi-miniature humans also went as blank as their screens; and though it was a harmless and transitory brain scrub, I honestly could see no more change on their faces than when I had first walked into the room.

“Ahem,” I said again. “I am your substitute teacher, Hugo Nash. Who can tell me what area of math and science you were last 'studying' and where are you in your course work?”

Many still looked at their tracking and communication devices that by now, of course, were totally disabled.

Some continued to thumb thumb thumb reflexively.

Others, however, were rapidly reorienting themselves to the present. Most began to look up, to look at me rather than at their digital devices. Some were getting an appearance of sentience in their eyes. This was getting somewhat hopeful.

"We're doing plane geometry," said one male demi-miniature.

"... and physics," offered a female demi-miniature. "We are learning about atoms and nuclear theory."

"Good," I said, although I had no idea what this 'plane geometry' was. Certainly, however, I knew a thing or five about geometry generally - any well-cocooned 5D would! And, of course, the rudiments of nuclear sheet and trough theory were quite simple. So this would be a "piece of cake" teaching assignment, as the locals say!

“Alright, then... you, please....” I pointed to the first demi-miniature who had spoken. “.... Come to the board and draw the boundaries of a quintangle intersecting a dollyloop.”

"............... ?"

“A what?” asked another young demi-miniature in the classroom.

“A quintangle intersecting a dollyloop,” I reiterated, tapping one of my kitchen-gloved hands on the board.

I motioned to the first male demi-miniature with one of my mittens. He came up to the board uncertainly, looking back at his now grinning colleagues.

“A quintangle???”

“A quintangle intersecting a dollyloop,” I said for the third time.

He took an analog writing device and cautiously sketched on the white board a crude two dimensional drawing with five sides.

“So, if it's a... what did you say, a quintangle? Is it, like, a pentagon?”

He drew a pentagon, capped and replaced the analog writing device, and sat down. Others started laughing in the room.

I looked at the drawing of the pentagon. “Well, alright,” I said, “but where are the other sides of the quintangle? And where is the intersecting dollyloop?”

They were all quiet. Then some of them laughed nervously. I began to question whether they were really studying geometry or not. But I was here to "teach" them so, I suppose, I would teach them.

“Look,” I explained. I removed my mittens and grasped the writing instrument as best I could between my backward thumb and index finger. I proceeded to draw in the rest of the quintangle using 3D short-hand for the 5D dimensions they obviously did not appreciate. “So, quinto-mechanically speaking, if the pentangle, which is represented by ▲5'ℓ* ... and the dollyloop by 0Й4/1ζ³... and they intersect, then you have...” I wrote the equation on the board:

▲5'ℓ*

0Й4/1ζ³

“... or just 1/5 XΨ of the original that now looks like...”

I tapped the board with a wooden pointer. “So there you have a 3D representation of a quintangle intersecting a dollyloop.”

I was pleased with my self for having so deftly rendered a rudimentary 5D geometry lesson into a simple 3D form. But the class looked quite mystified.

“Alright,” I said, “let us move on then.” Pointing to the girl demi-miniature who had noted their study of atomic theory, I said, “Alright, please summarize what you have learned about nuclear sheet and trough theory.”

She stammered, “Nuclear... sheet... and ... trough theory?? We, uh, we haven't gotten that far yet... I think...” She refused to get up from her desk.

“Well, alright.” I went back to the white board and drew the basic equations. “So, if the interior mass of a quarkite is .38999/16^645ӝ and the angularity of the adjoining nuclear sheet is 400^Ԇ degrees, and a quintratic slice of the crust is 1³ then....

.38999/ 16^645ӝ x 400^Ԇ

1³ (N/µ4) = «2'

... or, diagrammatically...”

There was no reaction. A few of them tried to scribble some notes. Others just stared at the board, then at me, then back at the board. It got very quiet.

I began to feel despondent. I had failed again. If I could not even communicate with the younger specimens, how would I ever be able to communicate with the adults? Perhaps I needed to concentrate on learning from them, rather than trying to teach them. After all, I was a Pioneer here to study the quasi-intelligents of this 3D planet. I was not here to lift them out of their technological poverty.

By now, their digital tracking and communication devices had begun to reactivate and the thumbing, ear-budding and scrolling had resumed. I stood there quietly as the demi-miniatures began to ignore me again. As a precaution, I emitted an inverted pulse and absorbed all memories of what I had taught them. I also wiped the white board clean. The wall clock ticked off time fractions, and when fifty minutes had passed, a bell gonged through the public address system. Everyone filed quickly and noisily out of the classroom into the hall.

Except for one, an especially small demi-miniature girl wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt. She came up to me from the rear-most part of the classroom and studied me intently through dark green sunglasses in a face framed with green hair.

She looked at me very heatedly, so heatedly I started to feel gases evaporating.

“Can I help you?” I asked, as pleasantly as I could.

She was absolutely silent and just stared and glowered at me.

She stared and glowered.

She stared and glowered ominously, purposely, menacingly.

She craned forward to inspect every inch of my face. I would have started to perspire, if I could have perspired!

She snapped off her green sunglasses revealing two black eyes shrouded in green eyebrows. Her stare was so sharp it nearly pierced my outer wrappers! She stared so intensely it was almost painful!

She hissed through clenched teeth:

“What are you?”

"What am I?" I repeated. "Well, I am Hugo Nash, your substitute teacher, of course."

She hissed again.

"Don't give me that crap. Who are you?"

“Who am I?” I stuttered nervously. “Uhh... wha... wha... what on Earth do you mean?”

She snarled:

“I don't mean 'what on Earth,' dude. I mean, are you an alien from somewhere else?”

My essential gases warmed. My face might even have blushed like humans do when embarrassed. “Of course not,” I answered, starting to giggle. “Where else would I be from?”

The girl stared at me for another minute without a word while I giggled uncontrollably. Then she hissed again:

“If you're not an alien… then why are you plugged into a backpack in the 4th Dimension?”

Oiyoyoyei!!! Praise the Dissolution!

I nearly burst a plasma bag!!!

*****

[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. For earlier chapters click HERE.]

When I got back to "my" home - that is, Hugo Nash's home - I discovered a new message taped to the front door.

Pay or vacate: 20 Day Notice

I read the notice. It appeared that Hugo Nash had many "money" types of problems and they were accumulating. Apparently, he had not paid his "mortgage" payments to a bank - plus something called "interest," “late fees” and "attorneys fees" - and they were preparing to "foreclose" on his house.

The total of the ancillary costs seemed to be much greater than the missed mortgage payment! Actually, the total of the interest, late fees, penalties and attorneys fees seemed to be much greater the entire value of the house! How could this be? As incredible as it appears, it seems like "banks" made arrangements that inflate the estimated value of the underlying asset, and they seem to have the authority to enforce their fulfillment in “money”

None of this made a lot of sense to me.

If it was Hugo Nash's house, then how could some "bank" take it away from him?

Who was this "bank?"

Was this some type of extortion racket?

Was this why I had seen people sleeping on the sidewalks in what looked like small and portable homes? Why didn't Hugo Nash just go to the shopping center as I had done and get cash to pay his bills from one of the machines?

I pondered the mysteries of life on Earth. Everything seemed so irrational.

Still, I saw a silver lining (as the 3D humans say!) in this foreclosure. I could just skip the payments and let the "bank" take the house! It was a very dirty house, in any event... they could have it! Besides, if "Hugo Nash" lost his house in "foreclosure," it might give my controllers good reason to terminate my assignment so that I could go back to my own 5D world! Yes!!

Maybe all the people I saw living on the sidewalks were also looking to escape this world for another one? To look at them, many appeared to have already escaped into a different slice of the Multiverse!

I must say I was shocked at these thoughts that I was having. Gaseous intelligents don't usually engage in subterfuges to achieve an objective. Was something on this planet causing me to think only in three dimensions, like the local quasi-intelligents? I considered all this as I turned the key and opened the door.

Something was "ringing" inside the house. Inside the central room, on the "sofa" next to all the loose papers (to which I added the newest "pay or vacate" notice), lay a small tracking device that also permitted one-to-one communications, just like the tracking devices I had seen miniatures using in the shopping center. The device rang and vibrated and flashed. Obviously, the tracking device was trying to get my attention. It pulsed wildly and tickled me as it rang. I stared at the strange device until it stopped ringing.

What was I supposed to do?

Half a minute later the tracking device started to ring again. The pattern repeated itself many times, but I froze in indecision. Finally, I picked the device up. I shook it - nothing. It rang and vibrated. I squeezed it. Nothing. I rubbed it with my upside-down thumbs. Oh ho! Someone spoke!

“Hello, hello,” said the voice.

Hesitatingly, I whispered:

“.......Yes, hello....?”

“..…..???...... Is this Mr. Nash, Mr. Hugo Nash? I can barely hear you!”

I had to stop a moment. Yes, I thought. Hugo Nash, that's me, of course. “Yes, uhhh, yes, of course, this is Hugo Nash. Hello. How are you? Where is the train station? Would you like something to drink? How old are you? The weather is very nice today. Should we go to see a movie? The dog is very nice. Do you have the time?”

“Uhh, ...excuse me, Mr. Nash... ?? This is the Lewis & Clark Elementary School administrative assistant, Lena Normandy. We've been trying to reach you all weekend to confirm your substitute teaching assignment for tomorrow morning at Lewis & Clark Elementary School, 6th Grade math and science.

Cough!

“Everybody's out with the flu bug that's going around, so we really need you.” Sneeze. Sneeze. SNEEZE!! “Excuse me! Can we put you down? We're really short-handed. Cough! You are certified for teaching math and science Mr. Nash?”

I answered, “Uh, of course, I do know math and science... but... what? You said "certified"... ?? On Monday, you said?"

“Yes, tomorrow, Mr. Nash. Is everything alright?”

Sneeze!

I answered as bravely as I could, even though I doubted that anything was 'alright': “Yes. Yes. Of course. Everything is wonderful.”

“Oh, good. So we'll see you Monday, tomorrow morning, at 6.30 am, Lewis & Clark Elementary School. Cough. Cough. Excuse me! It's at 6505 65th Avenue. You can take the No. 55 bus, it'll be easier than driving and finding a place to park. Bye, Sneeze, bye.”

Oh no, what had I done?! I exclaimed, “But wait, Lena Normandy! I meant only that everything was alright, but as for the teaching...

Hello...? Hello... ? Are you there Lena Normandy? Hello... ?”

Oiyoyoyei!

Now what, I thought to myself? I was supposed to be at an "elementary school" to substitute teach math and science? Praise the Dissolution!

Teach??? Of course, I knew that these creatures "teach" things after they are already born. But how incredibly inefficient and incomprehensible! Their lives are already so short. Why should they have to spend so much of their days "learning" what they could have absorbed in utero before they were born?

Today was... Sunday? Then tomorrow will be.... MONDAY!!!

Oiyoyoyei!

Substitute teaching, this is one of the things that Hugo Nash did... does... for "a living," right? Oiyoyoyei! Then I had to be there. I had no other choice, lest my project would be over even before the "bank" could foreclose the house and my controllers could bring me home!

The "silver lining," as they say, was that I would teach math and science, not anything having to do with the locals' strange practices. Math and science, at least, should be the same in all dimensions, in all time sectors and in every slice of the Multiverse.

Of course, history, too, as a universal constant, should be easy to teach…. if you knew where the seams are. If you knew where the seams were, you could just walk over into the prior slices of time and see what had unfolded as it happens in real time. Even if you meet yourself, it only means that in that particular slice of time and space, you met yourself - there's nothing particularly unusual in that and (so I learned during my cocooning) it sometimes happens. But here, in three dimensions and in their uni-directional time, they seem to believe that nothing truly has happened except for how they tell themselves it has happened… even if what they believe has happened is absolutely false!

No, I can teach math and science to the local quasi-intelligents, but to teach anything else would not be possible.

I decided to devote the rest of the day learning all I could about this world so as not to embarrass myself while "substitute teaching." I had less than 12 hours of their time and there was so much to learn. Or was there?

The woman at the shopping center had made a small hole in my outer surface when she kicked me. I patched that hole with a sticky repair kit patch I found in a mirrored cabinet in Hugo Nash's bathroom. I folded myself up in the living room of the house and turned on the television. I expulsifored every .001th of a yoctosecond thus rapidly changing all 200 channels to watch them all simultaneously.

While absorbing the television (there really wasn’t that much to “absorb!”), I started leafing through my magazines. It took veritable picoseconds, ages really, to thoroughly read each page of this peculiar communication medium printed on paper. The hardest part was turning the pages with my inverted thumbs, but I eventually got the hang of it. It was easier, however, just to use my tongue to lick the pages over one at a time. But, unfortunately, I had to stop this because the magazine pages did not taste very good. Neither did their content. Indeed, the magazines seemed to echo the repetitive themes of the 200 channel television.

I quickly finished reading the magazines. I reached back into the fourth dimension to my support pod and fed the magazines into the input chute for shrinksizing onto a zippledisk. The magazines were literally reduced to a quantum sized filament that were pouched into the zippledisk along with the rest of my correspondence. Hah, I was just going to call it "mail!" Only one "day" here and I was already acclimating! But was this a good thing? I was not sure.

I finished shrinksizing my magazines, put them on the zippledisk and put the zippledisk on stand-by.

I then turned to Hugo Nash's computer in his study. I expulsifored and thinkput it back to where it was when I first arrived.

This computer, like the portable tracking devices I saw everyone connected to, seemed to be linked to the locals' main education, tracking and communication facilities at some larger computer facility. It was strange, but the local dominant specie seemed to always be tracking and recording what everyone was doing and where everyone was going and what everyone was saying.

I looked for and found the repositories where all of their "knowledge" seemed to be stored. The knowledge repositories were clearly redacted and of dubious authenticity, but they would do for now. I thinkput to the computer to access all of this data. Many access sites appeared. Apparently they needed "passwords" to read them. This is the same issue I experienced with the automatic cash machine in the store - I still did not know Hugo Nash's PIN number or his password or any other secret handshakes he used to get information or money.

So I "cheated" again - I twaggled my local gravitational sheets and I submitted every possible sequence of digits and letters up to ∞ -1. The computers instantly connected. I began to access data. Apparently, there was information stored in various places “in the cloud” and that information concerned everyone everywhere on the planet. How could that possibly be worth archiving? Who wanted to archive all this information on everyone everywhere? Someone must be feeling very insecure!

Next, I accessed all of the so-called libraries and bookstores I could find. I began to download "books" from many different sites - places called "Google" and from the Amazon and from someone named ABE and from a Library of Congress.

The books had been published in different languages, but that was no impediment because I had been imbued with a trans-linguistic large language model during my cocooning... although, to be honest, I only needed a small language model to learn what there was to learn on this little planet!

I quickly metabolized what I downloaded at sub quintel-zark speed - Gibbons, Tacitus, Lawrence, Mann, Boccaccio, Rabelais, Joyce, Plato, Thackeray, Quigley, Dumas, Kant, Voltaire, Zbignew Zingh, Kafka, Canetti, Cervantes, Newton (apparently a teller of children's stories and fables), Seuss, Marx, Dickens, Dőblin, Caesar, Tacitus, Proust, Hemingway, Richard Leigh, Greene, Steinbeck, Dumas, Twain, Spinoza, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Camus... &tc. and &tc. and &tc. It took no more than .37 quintel-zarks to assimilate the entire extant human library, or about 41.056825 minutes earth-time. When I was done absorbing all of the human print literature, I spent a few moments watching, in high compression, all of their film media and listening to all of their “music” worldwide. It was like a small brain-squirt, hardly more than that.

It was then nightfall. I thinkput off the television, extinguished the computer and reflected on what I had learned. It was all very confusing - there was a lot of "activity" on this 3D sphere, but very little movement. The dominant specie was like a fast vibrating particle that really wasn’t going anywhere.

Perhaps these 3D quasi-intelligents were not intelligent beings at all, but just emanated the aura of intelligence? Was their intelligence a hologram of another sentient life form? Or was their apparent lack of insight itself a guise, a crafty mask of intelligence to hide their true nature, just like their clothing masked their bodies?

I unfolded myself and began to compose a missive to Pioneer Command Central:

Report 2

First full day interesting, but confusing.

Item: request reevaluation of intelligence ratings for dominant specie of planetoid in local uni-slice where I am located.

Item: Locals hostile and exceedingly strange. Obsessed with "appearances."

Item: Local atmosphere very rich, almost intoxicating due to high radiation emissions, micro-particles in the water and atmospheric emissions. This is curious because radiation, micro-plastics and atmospheric emissions are definitely harmful to the local quasi-intelligents even though they are good and useful for gaseous intelligents. It is as though the quasi-intelligents are deliberately re-making their world to suit themselves worse and to suit us better. This is very strange behavior.

Item: Dominant human specie seems obsessed with following: sex, violence, money, food, drink, deception, physical appearances, something or someone who "saves souls," leather airbags, cult of “law,” and dominance.

Item: Dominant species seems to be very self-conscious with socialization capabilities nearly non-existent. They practice self-and-social deception at all levels and generally lack analytical faculties. Lives short and brutish. All behavior might be explained by interactions of the preceding fixations amplified by shortness and brutality of life.

Progress quotient: Unable to determine based on limited data. Likelihood of further evolution unclear. Pioneer project continues "Monday" with experiment in "substitute teaching."

Signed/Ugoñaschßtenätraξo aka H. Nash.

PS - if possible, please send my triploid!

PPS - I really miss my triploid, thank you!

PPPS - A "bank" is preparing to "repossess" house I occupy. Please consider whether, in light of this development, I should be immediately evacuated and project temporarily paused for several millennia until another 5D Pioneer could take over. In which case, do NOT send triploid!

PPPPS - Please hurry!!!

I decided not to mention my various party invitations – I would wait until afterward to report on this life-form's socialization habits. I also decided not to say anything about my little incidents at the shopping center. They were probably meaningless, I thought.

At least, I hoped they were meaningless!

I pouched the memo onto the zippeldisk along with the shrinksized magazines. I then loaded the zippeldisk into the telemetry modulator, cranked the tandytripper --- and... and… right then, yes, right then it happened!

As I prepared to release my tandytripper to skip the zippeldisk, two of my Drůkk' ąou location buttons snagged on the crank and just sheared right off. I knew that this could happen, but it had never before happened to me!

They clearly did not make Drůkk' ąou location buttons like they used to make them!

Had I overloaded the transmission? Was the rich bath of radiation and micro-particles in this local atmosphere destabilizing my sense of balance? I wasn't sure why or how, but for whatever the reason, the location buttons had sheared off! As they did, the Drůkk' ąou location buttons bounced from the fourth dimension into the third dimension where, of course, they were completely invisible, just like the 4D podules strapped to my back were invisible in a three dimensional world!

Of course, I knew what had happened and I immediately unfolded myself. I got down on my ersatz knees and started to "feel" for the location buttons on the floor. But with my inverted, upside-down hands, it was a difficult job.

Worse, I could not even be sure which uni-slice the buttons had landed in: this one, or an adjacent one... or one thousands or even (by now) zeta-dillions of uni-slices away!

Without a complete set of location buttons I couldn't even locate my lost buttons! Of course, I could transmit data, but my precise orientation in the 3D matrix where I was located could not be determined. I knew at the time that this was serious, but not critical. All the control agency needed to do was to send me a new set of buttons to sew on to the telemetry podule and everything would be alright.

Yes, everything would be alright. My messages would be read. My controllers would read that my location buttons had been lost. I would be extracted quickly and easily. Yes, everything would be alright.

So I quickly unwound the zippel-disk transmission by cranking telemetry in reverse, composed another post-post-post-script explaining that I had popped off my location buttons and they had landed in an unknown and invisible 3D space. I asked in the post-post-post-script if they would please, send me a replacement set with a podule sewing kit, thank you, over and out.

The disk skipped out at an angle, rotating quickly as it skipped through time and space toward home and rescue. I relaxed, sucked in some of the atmospheric micro-particles, curled up into a ruminative posture on the living room floor and resolved to "substitute teach" at Lewis & Clark Elementary School.

I meditated to myself that I could see five ways at once - even though I couldn't see my lost location buttons!

I was calm, pure calm.

For the most part...

* * *

[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. For earlier chapters click HERE.

[Life Among the 3Ds (a sci-fi novel serialized) - Introduction and preceding chapters click here.]

It was still dark when I heard something! Someone shouted and pounded on the front door!

“Nash!! I know you're in there!! You can't hide, Nash!!”

I lay folded up on the floor, petrified.

The pounding stopped.

Then it started again.

Then it stopped.

Someone shined a light through a window. A bright beam roved around the corners of the rooms. The light illuminated the furniture and cast long, spooky shadows.

The light went out.

I could hear that someone was walking around the house. Someone was peering through the windows. I heard crunching, heavy footsteps. I remained tightly curled on the floor.

The voice growled again. More pounding.

“Nash!! I've got something for you, Nash!! Open the door! I know you're in there!”

Then it was quiet again.

I waited until sunrise. Carefully, I unfolded myself and stood up on 3D feet. It felt weird to be inside someone else's body, let alone a three dimensional one. The door had a peep-hole so I peeped through it. I saw no one.

I carefully opened the door a crack.

Nobody.

I opened it wider and looked around.

Nothing.

There were some papers taped to the front door - a court “summons.” There were some "parties" mentioned in the papers. Were some of Hugo Nash's friends hosting parties? I closed the door and put the party invitations on the sofa with the other papers.

It was too soon for me to socialize at parties! I hadn't yet even met another human being “face to face.” But I knew I would have to do it sooner than later.

It could be dangerous, but I knew I had to go out. I drafted my first message to the Home Controllers in Field Impulse 2.2.1 acknowledging my successful insertion:

Report 1

I arrived. I am well. Maybe. I am acclimating myself to the new environment. Air is very sweet with ionizing as well as non-ionizing radiation, microwaves, electromagnetic and thermal radiation. There are also intoxicating particulates the natives intentionally place in their atmosphere like benzene, carbon ash, asbestos, formaldehyde. Note: slight equipment design failure - please check drawings for a) hand, b) thumb and c) bellybutton placement.

Signed/Ugoñaschßtenätraξo aka H. Nash

PS - if possible, please send my triploid!

I reached back into the 5th and inserted a message zippledisk into the telemetry modulator, cranked the tandytripper and flipped the disk across the stack of unislices. The telemetry zippledisk was designed to skip the stacks like a flat sided rock skipping over the surface of a lake thus bypassing most of the nearly redundant and proximate unislices. The coordinates were pre-set, so I assumed... so I hoped... that my report would be received in due course.

Perhaps, due to the usual time warp in the multiverse, my report may have been received before I had even sent it.

Perhaps, by tomorrow Pioneer Central will have already answered yesterday.

Maybe I should wait for instructions before venturing outside, I thought.

I knew, however, that I was just twaggling my interloops. There would be no immediate answer. I was fooling myself and wasting time. I had to go out into Hugo Nash's world, my world, meet and talk to the regional fauna and the local quasi-intelligents.

I firmed my jellies and my resolve, placed my left gloved hand on the door handle, turned, pulled and opened the door. I went out into Hugo Nash's world where no Five Dimensional had ever gone before.

* * *

Yes, I remember that first excursion into the wild. I felt awkward and clumsy in 3D. Geography, however, was not the problem because I had maps imprinted in me from the time of my cocoon training.

Unfortunately, the maps dated from some very prehistoric times millions of Earth years earlier and my map-imprints showed huge inland seas and mountain ranges that no longer existed. My location was clear, but I still did not know where I was.

I saw a "car," a terra-roving device, outside the house, one of those metal boxes the locals use to propel themselves. Could I use it to explore my surroundings? I felt a key in my pants pocket that I knew would open the car and which would let me activate its locomotive engine.

I got in the car, practiced sitting in it, and then I got out and closed the door. I looked it over carefully. It was blue. Or, rather, it was mostly blue. Parts of the terra-roving device were red and parts were putty-colored. It had a dull silver badge that labeled it a Ford. The terra-roving car was dirty; not surprisingly because it belonged to Hugo Nash! The car's metal skin had some indentations. The front glass had a long crack along its length. It seemed to roll on four rubber doughnut-shaped gas-bags (more gas bags!!), three of which were very smooth. One doughnut-shaped gas bag looked sad and a little flat.

There were what appeared to be some papers tucked under large paper clips resting against the front glass. I looked at the slips of paper under the paper clips – they were more invitations, I supposed. They said there was a party and should appear in a few weeks at someone's courtyard. Maybe I misunderstood the syntax – did it mean that I was invited to another party or that I was supposed to host a party? Hugo Nash must be a very popular person, a real party guy, I concluded.

The invitation described how Hugo Nash's car had been parked. That, and how long it had been parked, appeared to be “fine.” If everything was fine, why did they give me this notice?

I was very perplexed by Hugo Nash's friends. For me – the new Hugo Nash – the threshold question was when I went out to roam my environment: should I "drive" the terra-rover or walk? I already had been inculcated with the theoretical knowledge needed to "drive" the car. But I was too unsure of myself right then, it was all so new.

I knew how to walk - theoretically, that is - but actually doing it, balancing the mass of this "body" in the rocking, shifting motion that the bipedal quasi-intelligents use to propel themselves, that required more than a little practice! I thought that I should learn to walk before I drove.

So I walked.

I walked in the street. I thought this was the safest thing to do because it was wide and flat. But quasi-intelligent drivers in many terra-roving cars called me names that I am sure were not my own. Did they mistake me for someone else? In any event, they urged me to get out of the street.

There was a separate, slightly elevated and parallel pathway I now know as a "sidewalk." But the name "sidewalk" made no sense because many people had built small, portable houses there and were living on this sidewalk. How could I walk where people were sleeping and living? Clearly, it made better sense, therefore, to walk in the street.

Several times while walking in the street, I nearly fell over. I bobbled. As I walked one way in 3D, my life support backpack swayed another way in 4D and my communications systems swayed yet other way in 5D. I slinked slightly between 3 and 4 and 5 so that to the careful observer I could be seen to alternately grow fatter and thinner with every step. But I persisted. The inter-dimensional slinking became less frequent and less noticeable. My dimensions became more stable.

It was like walking a pentagonal tightrope - balance was everything. Firm footing was essential. And self-confidence. I am a thinking, gaseous being. I could learn to propel myself even in three-fifths of the usual space-time geometry. There is a reason why we are Intelligents, I thought smugly to myself as I slowly mastered the pedal form of 3D propulsion.

I walked far away from where Hugo Nash "lived" so as to lessen the chance of meeting someone who "knew me" and who might want to talk to me. I came upon a large empty area where people "parked" their terra-rovers while they went "shopping." I learned that this was a place called a "shopping center." I mixed among the dominant fauna, still bobbling ever so slightly. I was terrified, but I was also excited!

I saw humans looking at me as I practiced walking. Although they said nothing, I could feel the impulses of their brains expressing some form of disapprobation.

Most of the humans had digital communicators plugged into or hanging from their ears. They were always looking at their little communicators and they rarely looked at one another. The smaller humans' faces reflected the faint light emanating from the small tracking devices that appeared to transfix them. The adults must use these tracking devices so that the miniatures do not get lost, which made perfect sense because the miniatures were, indeed, very small. Some of the miniatures were talking through their tracking devices to someone else ... or were they talking to themselves?

Certainly, no one was talking to anyone else.

Other miniatures were thumbing the screens of their devices (I wish that I could get my inside-out, upside down thumbs to do something like that!). Some were alone, some in pairs, some were obviously parent-offspring combinations.

One adult-sized specimen brushed past me as I bobbled along and whispered to a miniature human whose hand she held tightly - her child, perhaps?

"Drunk! And so early in the morning!" the human snorted disapprovingly.

The smaller human stared at me round-eyed, her face framed in light-colored hair. I was wearing my bulky red kitchen gloves to cover my upside-down inside-out hand and I saw her staring at them. She stared and stared, big-eyed.

“Your hands look funny! You're wearing mittens in the summer!” she shouted at me.

“Come on, dear, we have to go now,” said the adult-sized specimen as she yanked the miniature away from me.

Mittens in the summer?

I looked at my big kitchen gloves covering my upside-down, inside-out hands. I needed a better disguise to cover this defect, I thought.

I continued to walk and as time passed, I rapidly improved upon my bobbling gait. I was well-trained. It did not take long to master this "walking" business. After a time, I had all but mastered it. I walked more confidently through the aisles of the "stores" in this shopping center. I stopped bobbling back and forth. The inter-dimensional slinking subsided. With each stride, I became more of a normal walking man, not a teetering "drunk" from another unislice.

I walked almost serenely, almost unobtrusively - just another "guy" among many, observing, lifting up cartons, smelling packages, squeezing bags, rubbing cans, tasting fruits, licking bottles and shelves, making many notes for my study of life among the 3Ds.

But other 3D practices took longer - speech for example.

Yes, of course I knew how to form the vowels and the consonants, how to syntactically string certain sounds together in a coherent and sequential stream of mechanical air-moving utterances. I knew all this from my pre-emergent training... theoretically, of course. But doing it, Oiyoyoyei, getting my lips and my tongue and my larynx and my nose and my teeth all properly coordinated, this took practice! I bit my tongue several times. I became, as the locals say, 'tongue-twisted.' Literally so!

At first, I tried just simple words.

I walked up to a young woman.

“Hello,” I said softly to the young woman.

I smiled broadly with all my teeth, as I had been trained to do to show “friendliness.”

It sounded strange to me to hear myself "speak," and maybe it also sounded strange to the woman because she did not reply at all and just walked away from me. Did she hiss as she left? Why?

“HELLO,” I said to several others in the store when I saw them. They all quickly walked away from me. Most of them did not even look at me. Did some of them look at me with disgust? These are strange and unfriendly people, I thought to myself. Are they all like this, or was I speaking the wrong language for this quadrant of the planetoid?

I tried again with someone else.

“Hello! Nice day, is it not?”

I spoke more loudly and annunciated as clearly as I could so that I wouldn't be misunderstood. But still, no one answered. They all moved away from me.

“Where are you going?” I asked a young man. He walked away quickly like he hadn't heard me.

I spoke to a another woman: “My name is Hugo Nash. What is your name?” She scurried away. I tried talking to anyone who passed by me:

“Can you tell me where the train station is?

Are you hungry?

Where is the opera house?

Would you like something to drink?

Where do you live?

I am feeling well, are you?

This is very nice day today.

Are you feeling sleepy?

Do you have the time?”

There was no response from anyone. Everyone ignored me.

Was it what I said or how I said it? I said the precise phrases I learned in utero in the "conversation" section of my English language primer. What had I done wrong??

Why was everyone in these stores, anyway? I watched and... finally, I figured it out! This was the place where the humans were sent to purchase the things that they had been trained to buy when they watched the two hundred channels of television: soap, shampoo, lipstick, cookies, beer, love, deodorant, toothpaste, cereal, soda, eggs, milk, toilet paper. Some stores sold some things and some stores sold other things. But then some stores seemed to sell everything all the other stores sold. But why were they supposed to buy these things? What were they supposed to do with them after they bought them? Where did they sell the terra-rovers that they talked about so much on the television? Where did they sell the airplanes?

I found an aisle that had displays of printed materials, magazines. I recognized them from my training. I looked at them. Yes, they were good learning material with lots of words and lots of pictures. Carefully reaching over with my mittens, I picked out two of each that was on the shelves (one for my education and one to shrink onto a zippledisk for transmission to Central Control) including, to name a few, Playboy, Hustler, Ebony, Time, Newsweek, People, Car and Driver, Soldier of Fortune, Wired, Teen World, Road & Track, GQ, Architectural Digest, Ebony, Atlantic, Ms., Mother Jones, People Magazine, TV Guide, Cosmopolitan, Top Gear, Sixteen, Rolling Stone, American Rifleman, Forbes, Scientific American, Unscientific American, Readers Digest... there were so many, my inverted hands could not hold them all and I had to use one of these push "carts" the natives use to carry things around the stores. I completely filled the cart with magazines.

Then what was I supposed to do?

I saw that people pushed their carts to a place at the front of the store and, after standing in line for a while, the people who worked there inventoried what had been put in the carts. So I stood in line, too, with my cart full of magazines.

When I got to the "check out," a woman stared at me very strangely. I smiled back at her with all my teeth showing. “Hello,” I said.

She said nothing.

The woman was chewing something pink and rubbery and, from time to time, she would inflate a bubble between her lips. I understand what bubbles are - I am, after all, a gas bubble myself. This 3D universe itself probably evolved from a quickly expanding bubble like the pink and rubbery material the woman was chewing on, only much bigger. But then she would cause the pink bubble to pop and she would inhale the pink rubbery stuff back inside her mouth. I was amazed, it was so cosmological!

After she had blown and popped several pink bubbles, the woman started to pass each magazine past an optical device. I felt the electrical pulse with every pass. It made my jellies tingle a little.

Chew. Chew. Pfffffffft.... Pop!

“Why do you want two each?” she asked. Pfffffffft.... Pop!

She stared at me like... like... like I was some kind of alien! Did she suspect the truth? Was there something wrong with my face just like my hands? Were my eyes asymmetrical? Was my nose in the wrong place like my belly button?

My voice sounded strange to me as I answered her in my most careful diction: “I am going to read one and give the other one to someone else.” I smiled widely with all of my teeth showing. Well, it was true, in fact, and as a 5D pioneer I was ethically bound to always state the truth... at least to another 5D Intelligent, that is. Was I also obliged to speak truthfully to the 3D natives? I was not sure. But the 'checker' shrugged and continued to 'check me out.'

Chew. Chew. Pfffffffft.... Pop!

She continued to scan each magazine.

Pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse.

It was rhythmic and the small electrical ripples it set up tickled me deep inside. Oh no! I started to giggle, it was so ticklish! What could I do? She was unknowingly feathering my pipes with every pass over the optical reader.

The check-out lady looked at me sideways, but she kept at her work.

Chew. Chew. Pfffffffft.... Pop!

I started to laugh out loud. Her eyebrows arched.

She stopped when she had inventoried the last magazine and had put them into four large plastic bags. And then she waited, looking at me.

Chew. Chew. Pfffffffft.... Pop!

What am I supposed to do now, I thought to myself?

There were three or four people standing behind me waiting to check out what they had in their carts. I did not know what to do, so I said "Thank you!" I giggled because it still tickled, and I started to walk out with the magazines.

“Hey! Wait! You haven't paid yet!”

Pfffffffft.... Pop!

I stopped. “Paid?”

She spoke very slowly to make sure I understood. “Debit or credit, mister?”

Chew. Chew.

Ahhh, I understood. An intelli-track illuminated inside my gas bubbles! The inventory system was supposed to align with the data on those cards in Hugo Nash's wallet. I took the wallet out of my jacket pocket and offered it to her.

Pfffffffft.... Pop!

She refused to take my wallet and, again, looked at me like I was an alien, which, indeed, I was.

I was perplexed. In the adjoining aisle I saw that people would take a piece of plastic from their wallets and hand it to the store owner. Ahhh, now I understood. While people behind me got frustrated and joined other lines, I looked for and eventually found the "debit card" in Hugo Nash's wallet. I gave it to her, smiling with all my teeth. I was still giggling from the pulses.

The checkout woman arched her eyebrows. She said, “So swipe it already. What are you waiting for, Christmas?"

She looked at me disapprovingly.

Chew. Pfffffffft.... Pop!

The few remaining people standing behind me made some comments about me that I didn't understand. Then they abandoned my line to go to a different one. Another person, a large and male "manager," had come up, too. He now stood next to the checker. The manager looked at me intently. I was still giggling from the pulsing tickles.

I looked around me and saw what others did at the other check-stands. I carefully "swiped" my debit card through a magnetic device. Nothing happened.

“Other way,” said the manager as he glowered at me. “Turn the magnetic stripe the other way.”

I did what he said and re-swiped the card. I could feel the exchange of information. Pulse. It tickled and I laughed some more. The check-out lady's eyes narrowed.

Pfffffffft.... Pop!

“You're maxed out,” she said. “Try your credit card.”

Pfffffffft.... Pop! Chew.

Both the check-out woman and the manager scrutinized me. Their eyes got even more narrow.

I swiped the credit card. Nothing happened.

“You're credit's no good,” said the manager. “You rang up a 1,475 dollar magazine purchase. How much cash have you got?”

Nervously, I looked inside Hugo Nash's wallet at the "money" inside. I could barely handle the bills because of the red kitchen gloves that I was wearing. Finally, I counted out twelve dollars.

“That buys you a Time Magazine and an Unscientific American, okay?” The manager talked to me like I was not a human being. Did he suspect the truth?

I continued to smile, but I still felt like giggling. Nervously, I said, “But I want to buy them all. Where can I get more money?”

The manager glowered at me. “You have an ATM card? You can try the cash machine near the entrance. But if you're maxed out, that won't work for you. You do what you want,” said the manager, “but all the magazines stay here. NOW GET OUT OF HERE!”

He looked and sounded intimidating. I felt intimidated. What had I done wrong? I did not understand.

I left all the magazines with the check-out lady and went where the manager had pointed me to go.

There was a machine there. What now? I tried to recall what we had just talked about. I stuck in all the cards I found in Hugo Nash's wallet – the library card, the voter ID card, the drivers license, everything! I put them in one after the other and one after the other the machine spat them back at me. Then I inserted the bank card. It was not rejected. The machine wrote me a message on its face. It asked me to type in my "PIN number." I did not know Hugo Nash's "PIN number" and even if I did, I was wearing kitchen gloves that prohibited me from using any kind of small keypad. Nothing happened.

After a few moments, the machine spat out my card. I stuck it in again and the same thing happened. I was supposed to enter my PIN number that I did not know otherwise I could not get any money, and if I did not get any money then I could not buy the magazines or continue my research.

I grew frustrated and more than a little frizzed. I could feel my dials whirring in a panic. Almost by instinct, I lapsed into what came most normally to me. I knew I should not do it. I knew it was a breach of Pioneer protocol. But I could not help myself or else this project would be a flop from day one. This one time, I thought to myself, just this once.

I twaggled my local gravitational sheets, in strait-forward Field Impulse language, of course. The machine and I connected.

Pulse pulse pulse.

It was tickled; I was tickled.

Naturally. We spoke the same language, although the machine had a strange accent and local dialect. Accent and dialect notwithstanding, we understood one another. I thinkput money and the machine gave me money. All of its money. Several thousand dollars. The bills shot out of the machine faster than I could catch them. I started picking the money up off the floor.

“Thank you,” I thinkput. The machine thinkput back in its strange local accent that I was welcome. And then it shut itself off because it had no more money.

People were watching me. Now what was I doing wrong? Did they suspect who or what I was? Had I done something to breach my cover? The manager had told me to get money from the cash machine and I had done so. What had I done wrong?

I noticed that someone standing close to me had a faraway, almost vacant look on her face. I then knew what had happened. Field impulses are not unidirectional and she was within range of the field flaps when I twaggled to thinkput the money. Human brains are bioelectric. I knew this from my cocooning. She had had a momentary brain wipe that happened when I expulsifored. Sorry. It would pass, (fortunately) and she would remember nothing. She would have just a brief period of confusion, and then nothing. Already, she had forgotten about me and was going about her shopping, just like nothing had happened.

To be safe, I emitted another tiny field impulse and wiped the brains of everyone who had been watching me at the cash machine. They blanked momentarily. So did the store's overhead lights (I had to watch what I did here!). Then they forgot about me. Apparently these humans' brains go blank quite often so this was nothing alarming to them.

I counted all of the bills that issued from the machine. I walked back to stand in the check-out line again, the same one with the same woman. She looked surprised to see me.

Chew. Pfffffffft.... Pop! Chew.

My magazines were still in the big bags in the cart near her. I counted out the cash, bill by bill, for the magazines. She squinted curiously, but said nothing and gave me the bags along with a "receipt."

“I had to charge you an extra 10 cents for each bag,” she said. “Plus sales tax.”

Pfffffffft.... Pop!

She followed me with her narrow eyes and chewed the pink rubbery stuff as I walked out of the store. I hooked the carrying loops of my bags over my wrists so that I would not have to carry them with my upside-down gloved hands. I started to walk back toward "home" trying to act as nonchalant as I could. But I was deeply perturbed and started to slink a little between dimensions again.

As I started to leave the shopping center, bobbing slightly between dimensions 3, 4 and 5, two plainly dressed women standing outside the store handed me a magazine that I did not have. They promised that if I read the magazine I could find salvation.

I told them I was not looking for salvation; I was looking for the way home. But I told them I wanted an extra copy of their magazine so I that could send one to Central Control. But now these two women really wanted to talk with me, more so than anybody else I had met so far! They asked me to consider my everlasting sole and whether I wanted to avoid going to Hell. I looked at the bottom of my shoes and assured them that my soles were fine, if not everlasting; and I certainly hoped to take the straightest way home unless they recommended I go home by way of Hell.

Then, to hone my speaking skills, I smiled with all my teeth showing and asked them:

“Can you tell me where the train station is? Would you like to go to a movie? Would you like something to drink? Where do you live? Are you feeling sleepy? Is there a hotel nearby?”

To be courteous - 5Ds always strive to be courteous - I followed our normal etiquette and returned their favor to me by offering them one of the magazines that I had just purchased. Because they were women, I gave them a colorful magazine with a healthy young woman pictured on the cover.

They looked at the magazine, dropped it on the ground and started to gasp. One of them rolled up one of their own magazines and muttered some soft, prayerful words.

Then, without any warning she started to hit me with the rolled up magazine!

She screamed at me: “Go away, go away, go away! Monster! Help! Devil worshiper! Help! Police! Somebody help!”

And because she was hitting me, I also screamed, “Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”

She hit me again and again on the top of my head.

Oiyoyoyei!

The other woman blew a whistle she had put in her mouth!

“Tweeeeet! Help! Tweeeet!”

Then the one with the whistle started to kick me as she blew the whistle! People came out of the store to stare. The bubble-blowing checker and her manager came out and pointed at me. People opened their tracking devices – they pointed them and I felt them make digital images of me and broadcast them. Several people talked excitedly into their devices. The two woman continued to hit and kick me.

I ran, wobbling between dimensions, as fast and as far away as I could. I didn't look back, but I heard sirens in the distance. I wasn't sore, but I was emotionally devastated, afraid, humiliated. They all hated me, but why? I was a failure, a complete failure.

I think the kicking woman had made a small puncture with the point of her shoe.

I heard a slight hiss coming from my bottom near my misplaced belly-button.

* * * * *

[Life Among the 3Ds (a sci-fi novel serialized) - Introduction and previous narrative click here.]

Call me Hugo Nash.

I emerged in 5D as Ugoñaschßtenätraξo.

Now, I am not sure who I am.

I am one or the other; or neither.

Or both.

I emerged from my cocoon on 401-9/67☼Ψ.2 in the Spΐntz-'há epicycle. I was posted, fully informed, trained and shaped, to a Pioneer assignment with the Demographic Services to the topical habitation of a 3D spheroid world colloquially known as "Earth." I was among the first 5D intelligent to be posted here

I was assigned to an urban center in the western quadrant of a moderately "advanced" (by 3D standards, that is) cluster of partially managed humans. My assignment was to conduct research. Upon my evacuation (may it ever prove feasible!) the Pioneers seriously ought to consider isolation containment of this segment of this thin slice of this particularly dangerous 3D universe!

The stellar cycle of this Earth's central star is a mere 17/34,557th of the length of the stellar cycle of The Home System. This “Earth,” unlike our own gently rolling planet, rotates almost as fast as its stellar orbit is slow! It spins so fast on its axis that it is a miracle that the natives are not flung off into space!

"Time," as we know it, moves very rapidly in this slice. The quasi-intelligents, just like the rest of the fauna, live fast and die even faster, almost before they have any meaningful opportunity to learn. A quasi-intelligent might live, at a maximum, one hundred of their short stellar cycles; and then he or she fizzles out. Yes, instead of becoming more active and aware as they age, the 3Ds tend to peak in their middle “years” and then begin a regression back into infancy, at which point they die babbling and as ignorant as they began!

They should be born old and fully formed, like us, and grow younger with each passing year. And they barely rest at all, "napping," as it were, for barely a third of the period of one of the planet's "days." With so much of their time spent wide awake, one wonders how they learn anything at all let alone learn to deal with the stress of living a life as short as a fruit fly in our own slice in the multiverse.

My task, as I was informed during my pre-emergent cocooning, was to "blend in" with the local dominant species of fauna in order to learn more about 3D quasi-intelligent customs and behavior. However, "blending in" was difficult from the moment of my insertion.

My trainers - careless and inadequately experienced in the physical modalities of this particular location matrix - erred in the attachment of the species' gripping devices known as "hands," providing for their alignment facing upward with the "opposing thumbs" also reversed from their customary position of opposition. Idiots! Szofia would have called them. Idiots!

The schematic calls for a "left" hand and a "right" hand, you say? Opposing "thumbs," okay, but opposing exactly what? Opposing each other? Opposing the nose, the feet, or something else? If we put them on the outermost side of the hands, then the thumbs have the greatest opposition, yes? Palms "up?" Palms "down?"

Whatever.

Or, so I imagine, the engineers conversed before I was de-cocooned. I appreciate that there were no precise drawings, so they must have ad libbed it. They just attached the body parts as they thought they should work and they would fix any "bugs" later after I had been assembled.

But they could not go back and upload a "patch" like the 3Ds patch their software after it has been installed. Or like their aircraft engineers do when they forget to install a door properly and it pops out in mid-flight.

Ship it fast - fix it later, seems to be a 3D motto.

But anatomy is not software or aircraft engineering. Now I am what I am – a 3D mutant. What I would give to be fully five dimensional again!

My handlers also misplaced the distinctive mark known as a "bellybutton" on my low backside rather than the front of the torso. It was a minor error, but it added to my dismay. I showed it once to the girl, Szofia. She laughed so hard that she almost asphyxiated. I am utterly humiliated.

But I was placed here to learn, not to complain. My problem was how to observe the local fauna without alarming them by my otherness.

In this world, as I found out, otherness can be fatal.

The occipital location of my "bellybutton" was a peculiarity which could be camouflaged with "clothing," as such items are known. My upside-down hands with inverted thumbs, however, presented a more difficult challenge. In this many-handed world of tactility, upside-down and inverted digits made me peculiarly clumsy and marked as an outsider. If I waved “hello” or “good-bye,” for example, I would have to be careful to turn my palm backwards. I had to learn to handle their strange "eating" utensils called forks, knives and spoons by grasping them twisty-like between my fifth and fourth fingers rather than between thumb and forefinger as the 3Ds do. This was hazardous because a misuse of either device could have caused a catastrophic rupture of my outer bag (what the natives call their “skin”) and immediate deflation.

Furthermore, using the keyboard input device of one of this civilization's hand-held communication devices presented me with almost insuperable inputting obstacles. Apparently, they cannot talk directly for any great length with their electronic devices and they cannot communicate with electrical pulses. Rather, they use mechanical interfaces, tiny fingerboards that are practically impossible to use if your thumbs, like mine, face out rather than in.

I took to wearing mittens over my hands in order to mask their deformity. I discovered that humans, being especially gullible - particularly when surprised - accepted without question my "explanation" that my hands had been re-attached kattywompus due to an injury and a surgeon's malpractice. This same gullibility seems to control people's willingness to accept some of the otherwise incredible statements made by their leadership class, their moral leaders and their economic advisors.

Why do they seem contented to remain in a single slice of the multiverse? As every 5D fledgling knows, it is trivial to move from one multiverse layer to another. The problem is not moving between the infinitely expanding, closely packed and occasionally glued together universes that are layered like a growing 5D stack of unlimited width pancakes - no, anyone can do that, if you know where the seams are.

It happens all the time even among the 3Ds, mostly by inadvertence, as every day someone slips in and out of nearly identical adjoining universe slices, barely aware of the differences. You think you saw something or someone out of the corner of your eye. Indeed, you did see something, but it was just a knot in the warp of the fabric where a few threads momentarily tangled, a place where some random multiverse mucilage glued things together. Until you look... and then the Separateness has been restored. Or, rather, the appearance of Separateness has been restored, because once knotted, the adjacent uni-slices are entangled forever, even if the local 3Ds will not understand this.

It is not uncommon even for 3Ds to slip across dozens of uni-slices at a time and end up so many worlds removed from where they started with barely a clue what has happened. Even among the 3Ds, they often have a sense that their world has radically changed, seemingly overnight, and they hardly recognize where they are anymore.

Two adjacent universe slices, indeed, thousands and millions of nearby slices, differ from the other only in that you or someone else has lost a sock or someone dropped the toast jelly side up or jelly side down; or here a bird flew east a few wingspans and there it flew west, or in this uni-slice a radium atom emitted a neutron and in all the other uni-slices it did not. Here a cat is dead; there the cat is alive.

You may not even notice the fact that you have slid sideways into a different universe smeared out over an infinite number of uni-slices merely a few nano-millimeters distant from where you began... except for the vague sense that your world seems inexplicably different. What the 3Ds don't know, what they would never accept because of their dimensional blindness, is that their worlds have, indeed, become different, and it happens all the time, every moment of every day, day after day. They will not accept the obvious truth: their world really has changed overnight, and no matter where they once were, they now live in an entirely different slice of the continuously expanding Metaverse.

No, the problem isn't how to slide in and out of parallel worlds. The problem is how to get out of one and go back to where you started. The problem is how to maintain your coordinates in an infinitely and rapidly expanding location matrix. I am "here" now, but as I am inserted "here," "here" is someplace different relative to an infinite number of new "theres" that are instantly layered on top, beside and below that "here" such that precision insertion and removal is a monumental challenge... particularly, as in my case, when your Drůkk' ąou location buttons have been sheared off and no one at Central Control seems to be paying attention.

Sure, the 5D disaster tourists and juvenile delinquents can drop in for their quick visits and drop out again after getting their thrills, but when you stay in a foreign matrix for multiple stellar cycles as I have done, the task of re-coordination becomes monumental. You can skip along from one universe to another like a flat rock skimming across the water. But, Praise the Dissolution! Every moment, every nanosecond that passes, I am an infinite number of uni-slices further away from where I started!

Of course, the mass of the uni-slices holds them all locked together, gravitationally speaking, in a single five dimensional space-time continuum. Gravity holds it altogether along with the occasional spots of multiversal goop that sometimes oozes out between the slices. But if a Controller does not pay close attention, the coordinates can be totally obliterated in the infinite dump of new uni-slices piled up where once I was, the warp of the interstitial gravity and the sticky glop of multiversal mucilage. It is not a science, but an art, as the local quasi-intelligents would phrase it.

* * *

They slid me into the location matrix where there was a small wood frame house in an outer neighborhood of a city.

They slid out the man who lived there. I was "Hugo Nash," identical (to outward appearances, at least)... except for my hands, my thumbs and my bellybutton! They extracted the original Hugo with sterile decoherence tweasers and then they placed him in the Mezzanine freezer between two adjacent dimensions. There he would cool for as long as my research project lasted, and they would reinsert him in my stead when they pulled me out.

Or that was the plan. For if I am stuck here, then the original Hugo Nash is stuck, too!

Plop! The original Hugo was gone and the new Hugo was here. I was naked as the day he was born. The shock of the substitution left me disoriented. I lived in a house, Hugo Nash's house. A 3D house!

I looked around.

There was a simple one-way communication device - a television I now know – making excited noises in one room. It was very loud and new images flashed by every few seconds. The 3Ds watch this device, but I find it annoying because of its constant pulsation.

When he had been extracted, the original Hugo Nash must have been observing some unique 3D rite and it remained “on” even as he was being warehoused. I watched the screen. Very large and heavily disguised humans pushed each other around to possess a leather gasbag in a kind of oblong temple. I could understand why they would want to possess a bag of gas, for I am one myself. But then, to my astonishment, they would beat one another. They would kick and throw the bag of gas around and jump on it and throw it into the ground!

The people bayed and leaped to their feet and drank fizzy golden libations that made them very animated. On the periphery of the inner circle, minimally disguised females of the species danced and called rhythmic incantations. The people drinking the golden libations responded by repeating the incantations, jumping up, then sitting, yelling, standing, then sitting, becoming increasingly agitated. Some of them poured the golden libations on the heads of others and then they began to wrestle and punch one another. They all wore similarly colored clothing with slogans and numbers emblazoned on their chests or their rounded bellies. They were apparently a dramatic chorus of some sort. I did not understand the meaning of the rite, but the leather gasbag must have been very central to the ceremony.

Frequently, the routine was interrupted – often for very long intervals – while a series of educational lectures instructed viewers to try certain things, wear them, buy them, drive them, eat them, or drink them. The 3Ds apparently use these televised educational programs to train themselves like we do in uteri. The intensity and repetitiveness are obviously central to the specie's culture. But it all gave me an aching jellywash of Schu'ũmm right behind my ersatz eyes.

I turned away from the one-way communication device and looked about me. There was furniture in the room: an "overstuffed chair," a cabinet with plates and drinking glasses in it. There were many unwashed socks and pizza boxes and empty potato chip bags and empty cans and a ring with "keys" and envelopes that contained "bills" on the sitting thing called a "sofa." I looked at the bills - some people were clearly very, very angry with Hugo Nash. They were warning and threatening him about something. Were the bills sent by extortionists? Was Hugo Nash... was I... in some sort of trouble with local crime syndicates?

An odd digital device they call a "remote control" lay on the sofa. They use this, I later came to understand, to "change channels" on the television communicator because they do not know how to speak Field Impulse, either to one another or to their electronic devices. If they could ex- and impulsifor like ordinary intelligents, then they would be able to “change channels” without using the device. I saw that there were several hundred "channels" available on the television, but in my studies I discerned only four or five or six basic "themes" that differentiated them: physical activities like kicking or throwing gasbags, shopping relationship instruction, moral relationship instruction, sex relationship instruction, violence relationship instruction, and sometimes sex and shopping and violence relationships all mixed together.

I am convinced that this television was a learning reinforcement tool – one would study a lesson on one channel of the television. Then "changing the channel," the lesson was repeated, and so on, until the lesson you were supposed to absorb finally became second nature to the human. It seemed to be an effective educational tool for them, although I never quite understood what the end goal was or why they needed to educate themselves in such a time-consuming manner.

To me, all of the quasi-intelligent instructors on these channels looked pretty much the same: two ears; one nose; a single mouth; two eyes of roughly the same size and appearance; some of them without hair and some with hair all over. Their voices were also all the same.

I explored my 3D house. In the food preparation area, a room called a "kitchen," I saw empty bottles of a substance labeled "peanut butter" and a lot of "bread crumbs."

I saw a few small, dark, creatures with antenna creeping around the edges of the kitchen sink. We 5Ds keep tschůųpis, which are larger, substantially more intelligent, but similar looking. We keep them as house pets and guard animals, of course. Is there an evolutionary link between these small dark earth-insects that live in the humans' kitchens and our own intelligent, affectionate and well-trained tschůųpis?

A "refrigerator" stood against the wall of the kitchen. It was supposed to keep things "cool." Inside the refrigerator there were bottles labeled "beer" and "Coca-Cola" and "ketchup." I now understand that "beer" and "Coca-Cola" and "ketchup" are what the quasi-intelligents consume to sustain themselves. The "freezer" compartment was empty except for a box of ice cream. There were no healthful radioactives in the refrigerator and nothing plastic that was good to melt into my sockets, except the packaging.

Next to the refrigerator there was a thermal heater. They use this, I now know, to prepare chopped up pieces of other life forms so that they can ingest them. First they kill animals and then they cook them. Then they refrigerate what's left over and then they cook it again. It is all very energy-wasting and very confusing. On a counter-top I saw a microwave thermal heater. I felt the urge to deflate myself, slide inside and excite my gaseous molecules with radiation, but I did not. I knew that giving in to the urge to self-deflate leads to personal degradation and addiction. I know there are a lot of things like that on this particular spheroid, and that is what, later on, started to attract the delinquents.

I looked around the kitchen. I saw a machine I recognized as a "dishwasher." It was full of dirty dishes and cups and glasses and silverware, and more of those small, dark, insect things with antenna. They looked friendly enough, but they ran when I tried to pet them.

I explored “my house” further. There was a "bathroom." They do things in bathrooms that all highly inefficient corporeal life forms need to do on a regular basis in order to regulate their internal systems and to purge themselves of under-utilized energy resources. The reason there was a kitchen and a bathroom was because of their inherent organic inefficiency.

This bathroom had a "bathtub" in which, so I now understand, Hugo Nash would "wash" himself. The tub looked yellow and dirty. I was glad I do not have to wash. I refused to ever step into his dirty bath tub. It, too, was inhabited by a few of the skittish crawly things with antenna.

Another room had a "bed" which looked like someone never got out of it. The original Hugo Nash "slept" there. Sleeping is a kind of hibernation, but extremely brief and fitful. It is no wonder their lives are so short. Sleeping appears to be a form of purgative for their subconscious minds, which is curious in light of how little this species' minds contain. Was I supposed to lie in that disgusting bed, too? No way, Tszũm'paáß save my memory!

There was another room (I think it is called a "study" or perhaps an "office," according to my training) where there were "books" and "magazines" and "bills" scattered around the floor, and also one of those rudimentary digital computers connected to a simple communication network. The display screen was on and showed a shopping site, apparently somewhere on a river in South America.

There was an icon that indicates he -- I - - Hugo Nash - - had "mail." What was I supposed to do with "mail?" My training informed me that "mail" is a message directed to me with important information. I thinkput the computer to read to me my mail. Nothing happened. I thinkput it again with no success. I tried pushing random buttons on the keyboard with my elbow (it would take me awhile to adjust to using my inside-out upside-down thumbs). The buttons "do things" though I have no idea what. I gave up; but as I moved my elbow aside, something rolled over something else on the screen and a box opened up on the screen.

I had 478 "messages:"

From Tabatha "Add inches to your manhood..."

From Henry G "Buy Viagra now at special prices..."

From Mana Johnson "Please help me move inheritance from..."

From Lands Start "Hurry! Special Offer ends on..."

From Joe "Stand with Ukr..."

From Sam "Stand with Isra..."

From Justin "Stand with Taiwa... "

From Jessica "I lost 50 lbs...

From Sabatha "Add inches to your manhood..."

From Yabatha "Add at least five inches to your..."

From Crystal "Best prices on body..."

From Cynthia "Satisfy your girlfriend by..."

From Samantha "Add inches to your..."

From Kobe Tanakana "Can you help me to... "

From Administrator "Your accounts are about to be... "

From Bank of Kabul "Urgent. Your wire transfer was..."

From Fourth National Bank of Kobe "You have inherited 100 million..."

From L&C Elementary School "Confirm Substitute Teaching on Monday..."

From Harry Hugo "Call to confirm your prize..."

From Harriette Huno "Cliatis at the lowest prices..."

From Juno Yugo "Can you help me..."

There were many more, all much the same. I understood none of it. I looked around at Hugo Nash's - no MY study - and the chaos within it.

According to my indoctrination, Hugo Nash was a reclusive person who lived alone after he "divorced" from his opposite sex companion. This is another peculiarity of this species because we 5Ds, except in the name of science as in my case, would never voluntarily separate from our triploids! Still, being "divorced" made my mission slightly easier because I would not have to interact with my human "ex" who might easily detect the artificiality of my 5D self. But perhaps not because I have learned that even the humans who "wed" and "live together" may not know each other very well.

I deeply miss my Trippy Pippy!

Apparently, this Nash fellow almost never went outside the house. He often sent out for food and groceries to be delivered to him and he did nearly everything with his computer. Intermediaries then brought things to him, but Hugo Nash never talked to the intermediaries directly. They just drove up to his house, dropped things by the door, and then they drove off again.

But I am now Hugo Nash. Am I still a recluse? How could I be a Research Pioneer if I do not go outside the house? Why did they pick this person for me to alias for? It must have been more inattention and sloppiness at the Demographic Services, may they instantly be dissolved!

Nash "worked" from home doing something with a telephone selling something to people who he did not know. He was also a part-time "substitute teacher."

What did he teach?

What happened to the other teacher that he substituted for? Did 3Ds put teachers into the Mezzanine?

And what could these 3D quasi-intelligents possibly "teach?" To whom?

I saw pizza crumbs and crumpled paper napkins on the floor. There were little tumbleweeds of hair and dust along the edges of the floor and in the corners. It was a mess. Why did they pick this man for me to alias for? Why couldn't they have picked someone cleaner? This Nash 3D was a slob, I tell you!

I had been trained to first find some clothes because these quasi-intelligents, unlike our own kind, cover themselves up as a form of portable shelter from the elements and, mostly, as a kind of disguise. Cover ups are an important part of their world. They are always covering things up, so it seems. Especially their political and business "leaders," so I later learned.

I was still naked, just as Hugo Nash was when he was born. I was taught that if I walked around, as we 5Ds do, completely natural as Tszũm'paáß meant us to be, then I might be "arrested" and locked up.

I looked for some of Hugo Nash's clean disguises to put on. There was nothing clean. Everything was rumpled and smelly and lying on the floor. I found some clean disguises in what they call a "dryer." They looked like they had been in there for weeks. I put on "pants" - does the zipper face the front or the back? How does one use a zipper? "Socks" go over my "feet." "Shoes" go over the socks. You tie "laces" to keep the shoes on your feet while you "walk." I was working from instinct and the knowledge that had been embedded in me during my cocooning.

I found a sweatshirt with a hood - does the hood pull over the face or behind the head?

In front of the face would make more sense because it would keep the unhairy part of the head warm and also better disguise who you are. Well, if that makes sense, then on this planetoid, it must be the other way around, so the hood must fit behind the head. Szofia, who I met later, wears a sweatshirt with a hood worn behind the head, so my guess was correct.

I put on a shirt. Buttons, oh no! Oiyoyoyei, what a pain in the cheeky bonnets buttons are when your thumbs are wrongly opposed!

I practiced for several hours putting clothes on and taking them off and putting them on again. I found some big red mittens near the heating device in the kitchen. I put them on to cover up my inverted hands. Except for my hands, I worked things out. I looked in a reflecting device: I had become... Hugo Nash... however, Hugo Nash with backwards hands with wrongly opposing thumbs inside red kitchen gloves. And a butt-button! I felt as ridiculous as I was sure I looked.

My indoctrination informed me to find Hugo Nash's "wallet" which was in a "jacket" pocket. It contained the "identification" things that would make me certifiably "human." I found small pieces of paper and plastic. There was a paper called a "Citation" from something called a "Court" with an "appearance date." No one had told me what a "court" was. I found a small business card next to the citation. The business card had the name of a "lawyer" on it. What was that for?

I found a couple of plastic rectangles in Hugo Nash's wallet. Credit cards they call them. Also, a "social security card." Those without "social security" must be socially insecure, I guess. I was feeling very insecure. Did I need a social insecurity card?

The wallet contained a lot of information whose utility I did not yet fully understand. I found a "library card," a "debit card," a small piece of candy in a wrapper, some greenish rectangular papers with a man's portrait and numbers in the corners, another piece of paper that promised "fifty cents off" if I bought something called "razor blades," a card that had something to do with "health insurance" (how does one "insure" health?), a "bus transfer ticket," another credit card to buy "gasoline," an "automatic cash machine" card for a "bank," a shred of paper with some numbers written on it (a secret code of some sort?), more slips of paper with blocks of numbers - Lotto? Power Ball? I found a paper clip and a card with a store's name on it. I found a picture of what I thought was a dog with white fur.

I had been informed that Nash "owned" a dog. But how does one life form own another life form? Where was this dog and what did he... she... it... mean to Hugo Nash, or to me? They didn't tell me very much about the dog. I put the dog picture back in the wallet.

There was a another picture in the wallet: a miniature girl with brown hair. This was, I learned during my cocooning, my "daughter" and she lived with her "mother," my so-called "ex" wife. It was good that "my daughter" did not live with me because she, too, might recognize that I wasn't what I seemed to be. Or would she? This miniature brown-haired girl seemed to be about the same size as Szofia, who I met later. But unlike Szofia who was tens of thousands of years old, this one, "my daughter," really was "a child," at least by the 3Ds' reckoning.

As I looked around me, I wished that I could have talked to the real Hugo Nash and asked him what all this stuff was. But I did not really want to talk with a real, live quasi-intelligent 3 dimensional at that point, nor was it possible to talk to him because he was chilling in the Mezzanine.

I found a driver's license in his wallet. I looked at Hugo Nash's picture on the driver's license. It was a picture of me. It was a bad picture. He looked startled. It looked like he, that is "I", had blinked just when they took the picture. I later learned that all drivers license photographs in this nation-state are supposed to be taken when you blink so that you can be identified by your startled appearance.

I looked again at the drivers license. The license had information about him, about me: Hugo Louie Nash.

Louie???

Apparently, I had three names, not just two. Do some of the natives have four or more names. Is there a Louie Louie Nash?? I saw that I had an identification number: WANASHHL87738. The drivers license had an expiration date in two years.

What would expire?

Did that mean I would expire in two years?

I had a "sex," according to the license: I was a "male." I am not sure what that means except that it has something to do with how these organisms replicate. I had brown eyes. Brown hair. I looked in the mirror and confirmed that I did, indeed, have brown eyes and brown hair, although my hair was thinner on the top of my head and starting to turn white at the edges. I was 5 foot 9 inches tall. I weighed 183 pounds. I looked "pudgy." I felt fat. In 5D I "weigh" almost nothing because I am pure gas. The trainers incorporated extra mass into my overpressure expansion sacks to give me the appropriate "weight" for this assignment. One hundred eighty-three pounds... no wonder I felt so sluggish.

Hugo Nash-- I -- had a "birth date," according to his drivers license (Bless my jellies, I do not want to even think about that!). I was "born" on March 15, 1988. There was a birth place, too. I was "born" in a location called "New York New York." So what and where was Hugo Nash before he was born? They do not recycle themselves? If not, why not? It was all very peculiar.

What was this New York New York? It sounded redundant - perhaps it is a typographical error, a printing stutter, and there is really only one New York, not two of them. Or maybe there are many New York New Yorks? Maybe there is also a triple, a New York New York New York just like there might be a Louie Louie. I hoped there are not many people from New York New York New York and that I will never run across anyone who wants to talk to me about it because I would not know what to say. I would claim that I have amnesia.

I have claimed amnesia for a lot of things. The amnesia was related to the same incident that caused my hands to be reattached backwards by the surgeons. That was my story: I was traumatized by the medical emergency and I really cannot remember the details. I convinced myself and everyone else that I had amnesia. Except for Szophia who believes nothing and always laughs so hard that she nearly asphyxiates.

I saw a "signature" on the drivers license... it was Hugo Nash's signature. I was trained to understand that this is a validating detail and that I had to learn how to simulate this mark. It would be difficult, especially with my inverted hands and super opposing thumbs. I intuitively knew that I needed to practice my signature.

There was more: it said on the driver's license that I was an "organ donor." I have organs? Organs - not pipes and pumps and meters? How can a 3D life form donate his organs? Wasn't it necessary for a 3D to keep his organs to stay alive? Donating them could be fatal! I had no organs. I was here as a guest only, as an alias. I looked like Hugo Nash, I sounded like Hugo Nash. But I was Hugo Nash only on the outside, and I had no organs to "donate."

I did have a heartbeat even though it was artificial. Pum pum pum, all very steady, day and night, day after night. I would get used to the noise of my heart beating even though it was so loud and disconcerting. Pum pum pum.

I wished my heart would stop beating for just few hours so that I could think more clearly.

I had the customary "body temperature" for this life form: 6.458 degrees fsså'Œtz. It corresponded to the local gauge of 97.3 in Fahrenheit which, if not exactly the body temperature of the local dominant human species, was close enough to pass for human. But my life function regulators were external to my 3D pseudo-body. The metronome that maintained my "heartbeat," my plasma meters, my pressure gauges, my temperature regulators, my flutes and equiliberators, my sockets and relief valves, the piping for all this and, of course, the Zeltzer Batteries to run it all for the duration of my mission... all of this resided in 4D space attached to the back of my 3D alias. And in 5D, of course, I was also connected to my telemetry boards and broadcast dish.

I knew it was all there clinging to me like a back pack. Or, like the scuba tanks or aqualungs the locals wear when they go diving beneath their seas. I see my external equipment all the time; but the locals do not notice them, and they never will. They are like flatfish who can only see up, but not down. But I was relieved to see that my podules hang on me like my own skin, which is natural because it is all attached to my own skin by the necessary wires and pipes. So long as I was careful to avoid having my support podules cast a shadow into their cramped little 3D world, they would never be the wiser.

Was it awkward having some of my essentials in 4 and 5D while the rest of me resides exclusively in 1, 2 and 3D? In the beginning it was awkward, but I got used to it. Although the 4th and 5th were there, there was nothing to interfere with them, no quantum hooks or entropy wires, nothing at all to snare my podules as I carried them along with me. In fact, there was not even any "drag" because there is nothing here in 4D or 5D to restrict me. It really was like scuba gear and oxygen tanks - out of this uni-slice they are heavy and clumsy, but in the water, you hardly notice them at all. Ordinarily, "I," in my aboriginal existence, would extend through all five dimensions anyway, so I was only fractionally in my natural state with my podules and telemetry pack carried around with me, light as the vacuum, in the Fourth and Fifth.

I replaced the drivers license in the wallet and put the wallet back in the jacket pocket. I looked some more. I found a cotton tissue in another pocket. Some lint and some fuzz. A receipt for something he had bought. Some things called "coins," metal disks with pictures of humans etched on them. There was a "comb." It is a little sticky to the touch and has small pieces of what looks like dead dry skin on it. Nash had hair that grew. And fingernails and toenails.

I have hair that looks like Nash's hair, but it does not grow. My hair is programmed to always look like Hugo Nash's hair in his drivers license photograph. My hair does not grow longer, fall out, turn color, nor can it be "cut" at places called "barber shops." My hair, in fact, cannot be cut at all because it is spun from chŭpaжthx fibers. My fingernails and toenails do not grow. I will always look like Hugo Nash at the moment that I substituted in for him but, praise the Dissolution, I didn't need to use his comb.

There was so much to study and learn about Hugo Nash, so I set myself to it. I thinkput the television to receive and relayed to myself all of its hundreds of channels simultaneously while I unwound a figer communication pipe discretely hidden in my ear and plugged it into one of the desk data ports. I sat quietly while, for a few minutes, the 200 channels of this species' peculiar "intelligence" was poured into me. It was after nightfall, the time when the quasi-intelligents "sleep." I sent an expulsifor and thinkput the television into the "off" mode. I folded myself into a contemplation posture on the floor in front of the sofa in the living room and began to organize all that I had downloaded. I elevated a pole and ingested some stray radiation. I decreased my pressures slightly. I began to frusszulate softly.

I saw five ways at once. I was pure calm.

[Life Among the 3Ds (a sci-fi novel serialized) - Introduction to the Forward to the Introduction, click here.]

Translated from the Original Field Impulse 2.2.1 into Auricular "English" Language

Ugoñaschßtenätraξo's classic memorial, commonly known as Life Among the 3Ds, long has been popular among the intelligents of our own bio-system and, more recently (thanks especially to yours truly, your most humble editor of this publication), it has become a staple of graduate studies in 3D social anthropology.

Now, for the first time, Ugoñaschßtenätraξo's work is presented in translation in one of the 3D auricular languages, specifically "English," spoken by one of the quasi-intelligent species among whom Ugoñaschßtenätraξo lived for several of their species' short stellar cycles and among whom he is believed to have tragically and completely incinerated on A'7709~478-2/67☼Ψ.3 in the Qvΐntzvs'há epicycle. No doubt this endeavor will garner the well-deserved attention of the No Bells Literature Awards Committee (of which your most humble editor is a senior member, ahem, ahem).

Auricular languages are difficult for all non-3Ds to learn and harder still to comprehend. In fact, yours truly, the most humble editor of this publication, is one of the foremost experts in auricular languages (and consequently, a frequent recipient of endowments and study grants that pay the salaries, I might point out, of so many lesser luminaries in our other otherwise august university department). As the experts know, "spoken" languages derive from "sounds" commonly organized as "verbal language" expressed with physical structures known as lips, tongue, teeth, palate, throat, nose and vocal cords. For those of us who have no lips, tongue, teeth, palate, throat, nose or vocal cords, this is difficult to comprehend. But let us nevertheless endeavor to understand.

This peculiar medium of "spoken" communication is often misunderstood by Five Dimensionals as random noise. Nevertheless, for social anthropologists and students of comparative civilization studies, especially those studying in the department that I, your humble editor has chaired and wisely guided for so long, it is as important to understand the means of native communication as it is to analyze and classify them biologically or technically.

The particular translation presented in this edition is intended for graduate students who have accomplished at least seven quints of auricular language proficiency and are capable of simulating "sounds" sufficient to "express themselves" as though they had recently acquired the target auricular language at least as proficiently as a non-native speaking child.

Readers are nonetheless cautioned that language proficiency alone will not gain insight into the peculiar 3D thought modalities absent a concomitant proficiency in the 3D culture. No, no indeed!

A word about the translation of the text: just as some bliptics and definitions in Field Impulse are incapable of expression in 3D auricular, it is, likewise, impossible, if not misleadingly humorous, to translate some auricular expressions into Field Impulse. This is particularly true in the case of local jargon, slang or nonverbal expression such as music or gesture.1

Except in the case of complete untranslatables (of which the three dimensionables have oh so many!), I have rendered and abbreviated Field Impulse "names" and "words" in this text, where possible, into similar auricular names for individuals and places within the 3D universe. Thus, for example, Ugoñaschßtenätraξo, in the translated text, is called "Hugo Nash" (his 3D alias) and his local residence at 478-2/67☼Ψ.3 is referred to as "Earth," or, more specifically, that part of the exterior skin of the Earth-spheroid known locally as a political subdivision self-described by the 3Ds as "the United States of America."

Time, though sensually appreciated in 3D, is barely understood by the native quasi-intelligents. For them, time functions primarily as a measurement of "aging" or the intangible progression of an organism as events in a straight and linear process.

In this sense, 3Ds are temporally non-reversible organisms with unidirectional-perception, similar (as Hugo Nash explained it) to certain types of flatfish whose eyes are located on only one side of their bodies and who can only see "up" and not "down." For the purposes of this work, however peculiar it seems at first, "time" is described as a linear 3D experience in order to give the 5D graduate student a better appreciation for the nuances of the 3D experience and social organization. Indeed, indeed.

As another example of peculiarity, my own earlier researches have shown that 3D life forms are mostly (but not always) mono, bi- or tri-sexed (or changeable variations thereof), though none reproduce as triploidics as do all 5D life. They (and all similar mammalian organisms on the planet) are "born" in an odd way that appears to be quite traumatic. It is not comparable to the 5D emergent experience at the conclusion of one's training. Moreover, the 3D life form, though necessarily insentient of much of "his" or "her" physical environment, on rare occasions has an "intuitive" awareness of higher dimensionality that, to a greater or lesser degree, reflects itself as "insight" by some rare 3D quasi-intelligent individuals who dabble in their rudimentary concepts of mathematics, geometry, alchemy, music, and physics. Unsurprisingly, many of the locals' pets - birds, cats and dogs – and also the dominant species' very young children, all, from time to time, display an awareness of other dimensionality that the adult specimens have lost. Yes, indeed.

Ugoñaschßtenätraξo - that is, "Hugo Nash," as he will hereinafter be called - did not intend to compose a study curriculum. Frankly speaking, I am not sure exactly WHAT he intended! After all, he was a Pioneer, just an explorer, and not qualified to write anything resembling a scholarly work like (modestly speaking) has been produced by the eminent editor of this scholastic publication.

Initially, Mr. Hugo Nash (for that is how the male of the species sometimes addresses itself) was collecting data for his Pioneer report on life among the 3Ds, thus the title of this text. However, like any 5D intelligent (even one as unsophisticated as Mr. Nash), he had a seventh sense about his accelerating demise which was apparent as his chaotic reports merged with a more traditional end-of-life memorial for 5D posterity.

Nash - poor, deluded and inadequate schlemiel that he was - probably expected that when his accounting was complete, he could be extracted from the surface of the spheroid known as "Earth" and transported to the universal omphalus, Tszũm'paáß, for the Complete Immersion, Disintegration and Recycling we all look forward to. Unfortunately, as everyone knows (at least everyone who has read and studied your humble editor's very thorough investigations into the matter!), Hugo Nash did not understand what contemporary researchers have but recently discovered: living for extended periods of time among the 3Ds on the surface of spheroid Earth significantly adumbrates the bio-cycles of 5D intelligents and, thereby, caused Nash to miscalculate the timing of his tragically accelerated disintegration and eventual demise. Too bad for him, of course, but good for the advance of 5D knowledge... and, of course, the careers of certain experts in 3D cultural anthropology such as your humble editor.

Nash knew before tragedy struck, however, that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. He and his station handlers eventually recognized that Nash's prolonged life among the 3Ds had detrimentally affected his 5D bio-systems and, worse, had materially degraded his station handlers' ability to extract him from a rapidly deteriorating environment.2 It is unclear whether Nash – who was a mere “pioneer” and not a fully fledged scholar, you will recollect - recognized exactly how hopeless his tragic situation had become. It is clear, however, that Nash was sufficiently alarmed that he undertook to commence writing his end-of-life memorial.

Obviously, Hugo Nash's memorial, as he originally composed it, was not organized in the fashion that is commonly read by students and academicians today. Indeed, the original text was not organized at all. Frankly speaking, the original text was chaotic, jumbled, and a complete mess as though the pressures of living among the 3Ds had derailed the innate 5D sense of order we would have expected even from a Pioneer of his low caliber and minimal training. No, no, but for the organizational insights of your humble and renowned editor, Hugo Nash's writings would not make any sense at all. Thus, to the extent that his writings are intelligible, we, the editor hereof, take modest, but full credit (a fact that the No Bells Literary Committee, of which I am a senior voting member, will no doubt fully appreciate).

And then, of course, there was the supposedly intelligent vegetable, “that female,” that peculiar little girl urchin, a veritable femme petale - a poisonous potted plant, I dare say! She who seems to have incited our Mr. Nash to engage in unseemly and abnormal behavior that, for a sentient 5D intelligent (even a lowly and non-academic “Pioneer!”), can barely be comprehended, let alone read without blushing! No, the less said about her, the better!

This edition of Life Among the 3Ds, of course, follows the practice of all prior editions published in Field Impulse 2.2.1. We have organized Hugo Nash's end-of-life memorial into a more-or-less coherent (in so far as that concept can describe 3D "culture" and "civilization") and logically sequenced series of chapters. As with earlier editions, Hugo Nash's separate Pioneer Reports, when they are properly annotated and corroborated as genuine (a subtle linguistic endeavor only qualified academics such as yours truly can attempt), also have been interwoven into the text in a logical order. In order to make this concatenation flow properly, the Editor, that is, yours truly, necessarily has taken certain liberties with the original text, although only where appropriate to correct grammar and syntax and to ensure that harmful and inauthentic errors of thought have not corrupted the subject text. No, indeed. Nor would be want to offend our university corporate sponsors and generous government sources of grants by publishing errors of thought incompatible with our refined five dimensional culture and civilization. No, we would not!

As all scholars of 3D culture know, there are several extant versions of Life Among the 3Ds. Some versions of the story contain only trivial variations in the spelling of the auricular "names" that appear in Hugo Nash's life history. Others describe different unfoldings altogether. All other 3D experts (both of whom are my junior colleagues in my department) have painstakingly analyzed these many alternative versions using thousands and thousands of hours provided free of charge by closely supervised undergraduate and graduate students at our university as part of their education and academic apprenticeship.

Using the most exacting methods, we (that is to say my department and my subordinates) have established unequivocally that the majority of these alternatives are most likely quantum-echoes of Nash's transmissions with the to-be-expected corruptions. Or, as in the case of Version 457.«΅/33 (the so-called "happy ending" in which Nash purportedly did not incinerate) and Version 308.»΅/490 (which includes the supposed "missing" Chapters 15 and 16), they are outright frauds perpetrated by Unstables, Naifs or Conspiratorial Dissenters who seek to discredit Tszũm'paáß and the Complete Immersion, may their gases soon evaporate! There is even a suspicion that the “girl,” the green-haired waif who appears to have intersected with Hugo Nash's life, may have deliberately corrupted his transmissions if not his very gaseous equilibrium.

Thus, consistent with the highest academic standards (as adopted by the University Academic Standards Committee, of which your humble editor is the Chair), the version used for this publication of Life Among the 3Ds is the standard Ώђ 788.2 text that was originally validated by (my friend and, forever-after, junior colleague) Professor Zsschipηtraξo-achOO in the ☼Ψ.87 epicycle at the Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University in the central Looo Nebula.

Fortunately for Hugo Nash's posterity and for 3D social anthropologists throughout the multiverse, Nash had at least time to complete the small portions of his personal memorial for which he is known. If they present a fragmented picture of life among the 3Ds, Nash's personality, observations and insights nevertheless shine through for the better understanding of the numerous curiosities and inscrutable features of what we sometimes perceive as the illusion of 3D intelligence. For that, his memorial (as ably translated in this edition) well deserves the scholastic kudos and anticipated nomination for an upcoming No Bells Award in Literature, as well as immeasurable public acclaim; thanks, in no small part, of course, to the careers of certain eminent scholars such as, modestly speaking, yours truly.

* * *

Honestly, I have tried to keep the Hippomuse site funny. 'Funny' as in humorous, not as in smelling like old fish. Although that too, sometimes, I know.

The problem is that so much going on in our world these days is damned not-funny. It's almost immoral to force a laugh when you really feel like cursing and screaming about genocide in Gaza, Neo-McCarthyite chicken hawks inciting war, or our political puppet show that gives us the appearance of choosing between the insentient and the infantile.

Thus, this.

"This" is a serialized science-fiction novel. I wrote "this" a few years ago and have continued to twiddle and fiddle with it ever since.

The novel is called LA3D - Life Among the Three Dimensionals. The idea was to tell an adventure story as a sci-fi narrative superimposed on our own world. It is an inverted picaresque novel with an extraterrestrial twist. I meant LA3D to amuse, but also to lightly parody our times.

Initially, I tried to recruit a literary agent to flog this thing to the usual bunch of traditional publishers. I actually signed up for a "writers' symposium," one of those events where thousands of wanna-be authors pay $$ to attend seminars where they coach the deluded how to 'position' their work, how to write exactly like everyone else and, of course, how to monetize your scribblings. In today's world of artificial idiocy and GPT, however, it would not be necessary to coach "human" authors at all because the gibberish churned out by hallucinating AI would be perfectly adequate from a marketing perspective.

Still, the writers' symposium I once attended was a strange experience. Like law school, it was a canine obedience school designed to make us all think the same, write on command, and write all alike. The object of the indoctrination was to create writers who would churn out formulaic rubbish that the publishers and book vendors could sell wholesale at a profit to a preconditioned public. The pop music industry works the same way.

Ugh.

The high point of the writer's obedience school that I attended was the "face-time with a literary agent" session. "Literary agents" are those gate-keepers who (so we were led to believe) know the shibboleths that will get us "in the door," who know the all-powerful editors and publishers, and who have "the connections" to the mysterious world of the print media.

There was a time, not too terribly long ago, when all the lonely adults created by our careerist-driven super-capitalist society were encouraged to engage in "speed-dating." You remember, before the advent of digital meet-up platforms, singles and lonely-hearts would pay a fee to sit at a table and 'chat' for all of two minutes with a stranger before they were shuffled off to another table to meet another prospective life partner. And so on, until, in the course of about 100 seconds per "date" you either met Mister/Ms Right or headed, slightly nauseous, for the exit opting for your cat's company rather than that of any human being. Still, unlike today's dating platforms, you could at least be sure that whoever you were "speed-dating" in person really was (more or less) what she or he appeared to be rather than a deep fake persona adopted by a psychopathic chainsaw murderer.

"Meet the literary agent" sessions were like speed-dating. There were long lines of unpublished, unrepresented authors who sought to "sell" their novels to dozens of agents according to whatever "genre" the authors were seeking. We were encouraged to distill our "pitches" down to just a few sentences, a thirty-second spiel that would pique an agent's interest just enough for him or her to request a follow-up. They were strict about the pitches. The agents all had egg-timers on their desks. When the two minutes were up and the bell had rung, you were done! As you left, another mendicant slob would slide in after you to supplicate the agent.

There were several dozen agents, but thousands of wannabe authors. Even though everyone's "pitch" lasted no more than a couple of minutes, there were so many interviewees standing in line that folding metal chairs had been set up in case someone grew faint or wobbly.

There was a smorgasbord of agents. Some were young and some were old. Most of them were bored. Some of the agents specialized in representing authors who wrote "young adult" novels about sorcerers and warlocks; or they were seeking books about paranormal furry transgender space romances; or zombie splatter-punk; or erotic sword-and-sandal Anime cartoon books. There were genres and sub-genres and sub-sub-genres and sub-sub-sub-genres.

I chose an agent's line at random. I waited. I gave my pitch.

"So, youse got any kinky sex or gruesome mass moiders?" asked the agent as he chomped off the tip of a fat cigar.

"Uh, no," I said. "My protagonist is a five dimensional intelligent gasbag and his specie replicates via a third party intermediary, if you know what I mean. [He didn’t.] And my protagonist's companion is an intelligent four dimensional vegetable, and her kind reproduce asexually by budding. So although this is a love story, of sorts, it's not exactly X-rated."

The agent was unimpressed. "Youse don't got no super-heroes? No gender-bending drug-fueled orgies? No sorcerers, no wizards? Whazzamatter wid you?"

"Uh, no. But I do have a few critters with attitude and an embittered palm reader who pines for her activist days from the '60s... "

"Yea? So what are youse, some kind of weirdo?" the agent asked. He bit off the other end of the cigar and spat it out. "Don't call us, pal. We'll call you, okay?"

The egg timer binged.

Thus ended my literary career before it even began. It was probably for the best because, as I now understand, what goes into the publishers' Cuisinart blender comes out all the same and is soon forgotten.

So what's the book about, you ask, if not super-heroes, gender-bending drug-fueled orgies, sorcerers, wizards and kinky mass murders?

LA3D is the memoir of a 5 dimensional gaseous intelligent dispatched from a parallel, but remote slice of the multiverse. The slices of the multiverse are layered on top of each other such that "space travel" is simply a matter of walking to where you want to go... provided that you know where you are going and that you don't get lost as the infinitely expanding multiverse continues to pile up new layers on top (and below) of where you are. Of course, our hapless 5D hero gets lost almost immediately which leads to him getting, more or less, "stuck" on our planet while mired in a 3D bizarre world (that is, bizarre to him). So, our gentleman from 5D is not "Lost in Space," but lost on Earth and looking desperately for some way to get out. Kind of like the rest of us.

More specifically, our 5 dimensional gaseous intelligent (as they refer to themselves) has been substituted for an American substitute school teacher in order to conduct an anthropological field study of Earth's primitive 3 dimensional dominant specie. Hence, the title of the book, Life Among the Three Dimensionals.

This is a book within a book. The main story - the escapades of our five dimensional substitute teacher - is bracketed by a pompous 5D academician's preface and his post-script for gaseous intelligent "grad students" studying lesser-dimensional life forms at a prestigious and gaseous university in another slice of the multiverse. Ergo, this introduction to the preface.

Of course, many things in this book are derived from personal experience. Or, they are tropes and memes borrowed from our common literature and shared cultural memory, then appropriately mashed. In that regard, human minds do, indeed, scrape and transform knowledge just like computers do. And both humans and AI computers similarly "hallucinate." I am not sure whether that means computers are intelligent or that humans are no more clever than computers. However, with respect to this particular academic who wrote the preface and post-script to LA3D, he is a composite of graduate and law school professors I have known. I can actually hear one such prof’s particularly haughty, nasally voice and see his finely manicured fingernails as I reread the academic’s words. Maybe you, too, can hear similar voices of such people from your own lives.

According to the obnoxious professor who introduces the story, there are many versions of this book, some of which might be authentic and most of which are likely fake. In addition, several chapters are "missing," or rather, they were "lost in the mail" (perhaps) as the author (our hero) tried to send them to his publisher by the usual means of a file attached to a Frisbee-like universal postage device that skips across the layers of the multiverse like you can skip a flat rock across the surface of the water.

The novel has its own glossary of neologisms to express concepts that make little sense to humans. It involves ideas, laws of physics, flights of fancy and events that transcend three dimensionality. So, clearly, this is just like the practice of law.

LA3D is told through the eyes of the intelligent extra-dimensional as his "testament." His given name is Ugoñaschßtenätraξo, but, for the purposes of our story, he is known as Hugo Nash, the substitute teacher temporarily stored in the multiverse "mezzanine" and whose identity our 5D protagonist borrowed while conducting his terrestrial investigations. The text of this story - the 5th authorized edition of the textbook - has been "translated" into English from the ur-manuscript that was originally composed in the gaseous intelligent's own 5D language, Field Impulse, based on pulses of energy and electrical stimulation. Obviously so.

Now then, you're either mildly intrigued... or you have already checked out, like my literary agent at the obedience school for writers. Let's assume the former.

The second principal character is a show-stealer. Wait a minute! How can there be two "principal" characters? Well, if we can have five dimensions, then we can have two principals, too, okay? Anyhow. First introduced in the 7th Chapter, principal character number 2 is a nominally female carnivorous "intelligent vegetable" from a 4 dimensional slice of the multiverse. Carnivorous because no principled intelligent vegetable could bear to eat other vegetables. Come to think of it, the story's 4 dimensional intelligent vegetable is not exactly a principled principal. Rather she's like a street-smart Neapolitan scugnizzi. She is pursued by intelligent Vegematic bounty hunters who want to drag her back home to be pruned, espaliered and potted.

Our 5 dimensional gaseous intelligent is a bit of a nebbish who leans toward hypercritical intellectualism and over-analysis. His 4 dimensional vegetable companion is anything but an intellectual. She is a thousands year old anti-authoritarian, street-wise, potty-mouthed, cynical and on-the-run misdemeanant who is hiding in plain sight on our 3D world among the green haired and hooded kids in a public school near you.

Both characters have a similar but opposite problem. He, the intelligent gaseous being, wants to return to his own well-ordered higher-dimensional universe where he hopes to be assimilated into the Universal Gas Cloud. Things go wrong, however, and he ends up a fugitive from the law. Our law, that is.

She (that is, the carnivorous and intelligent vegetable) is a fugitive from the well-ordered 4D world that she loathes. The two of them (5D and 4D protagonists) are thrown together by circumstances and evolve by necessity into a collaborative relationship.

Obviously, this is a love story.

Oh, lest I forget the trigger warnings! Yes, the book does contain scenes depicting violence, drugs, foul language, guns, 6/5 dimensional plasma sex, one seamy adult motel (with a leering proprietor who gets his comeuppance), booze, fast cars and motorcycles, militarized cops, disingenuous politicians, drones and terrorism (the stage props of our real-life world), but all are depicted (more or less) tongue-in-cheek.

Life Among the Three Dimensionals. LA3D.

Coming soon (but NOT to a book store near you).

Chapter by chapter, serialized over several months.

Fasten your seat belts. Grab some popcorn.