First 3D Encounters of the Close Kind

Life Among the 3Ds - Chapter 2

[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.

* * * * *