The Other Side of the Window
Chapter 10, Life Among the Three Dimensionals
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 4th 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.]