Transdimensional Physics 101 - Ian - 47

My brain hurt. A lot. Having what must be four or five years of Quantum physics crammed in to your brain in less than six hours can do that to you. Marcus wasn't helping - he seemed to vacilate between thinking I knew nothing and thinking I knew everything, while all the while expecting me to come up with a brilliant solution to a problem I never understood in the first place.
After an exhausting conversation with Marcus, I managed to figure out, in a very basic way, what had just happened. This involved basically learning a new type of physics, but maybe that's why I was chosen - I'm a very quick study. As Greg explained to me much later, scientists are hardly ever recruited because they're to close-minded; learning transdimensional physics involves an unlearning of tradional physics which most of them can't deal with. So don't think to much about this, and I'm gonna try and explain it to you without bogging down the story too much (God knows it's been bogged down enough already.)
First, let's go over the basics of dimensional travel. Imagine, if you will, a grid. No, scratch that, imagine a waffle. Only, more like a stack of waffles, that is to say, a three dimensional grid, made of intersecting planes. All the parrallel planes are parralell universes, and all planes facing other directions are whats called perpendicular universes. Easy, right? Except now imagine the perpendicular planes are actually irregularly shaped, flat objects, like puzzle pieces, and which parrallels they connect are almost random, and they intersect at random angles, and they frequently have large wholes in them. What you have is nothing at all like the shape of the multiverse, but it will do for now.
So imagine we are on one of the planes, and we want to get to one of the puzzle pieces. We have to travel to a specific point on the plane to get to a specific puzzles piece. So how does a gate in a fixed location access so many different perps?
It uses a buffer dimensions. Buffer dimensions are kind of like shadows of reality, dimensional echoes that exist around every dimension. The gate actually takes you to the buffer, from which it takes a fraction of a second to jump to any connected perp. I don't know how this works either, and what I do know would take a week to explain, so just take it and run with it.
So during that split second we were in the buffer, Virgil somehow diverted us to another perp. Because of this, the ship remained in the buffer for a few seconds too long. This caused the ship, and everyone in it, to destabilize.
Again, I need to digress. All matter contains a three-part subatomic signature so dep within each subatomic particle it it is almost impossible to detect. These signatures can immediately be used to identify the native dimension, time, and basic geographical location of an object. These are called planar, temporal, and spacial frequencies, respectively. There is also a fourth signature which only appears in living things. Many scientists specualte it changes with a persons feelings, but all they know for sure is that it's in a constant state of flux. This is called the psycholinear frequency.
Confused yet? Imagine how I felt. Hold on, though, we're almost done. So we're in the buffer dimension, Virgil somehow changes course, and suddenly we destabilize. Normally when a creature or object becomes destabilized, it's four frequencies ensure that it restabilizes as soon as it exits the buffer, as each particle seeks out those with similar frequencies. Since everyone on board (As far as I knew at the time) had the same temporal and planar signatures and incredibly similar geographical signatures (one planet is nothing, from a universal prospective,) It is the psycholinear frequency which we relied on to restabilize us. Gillian and Gregs psychloinear frequencies had, for one reason or another, at that moment been very, very similar. Atoms didn't know where to go. So they formed into Grillian.
If your mind is analytical like mine, you're probably asking - where did all the extra matter go? How do two normal sized people become one normal sized person? Where, in short, was "Geg"?

Time for Intrigue

I never wanted children. I would never deal with having to worry about someone because they couldn't worry about themselves. Recruits are not meant to be depend on the recruiter, they are chosen specifically for their potential for working both independently and as a team. I found Ellen's concern for her team admirable, but a bit out of place for the current situation. She needed to straighten out her priorities, and we all needed a way into a normal plane of existance.
"Ellen, you're over reacting, this has happened before, and it can be fixed. I think you can handle a little time without Greg."
Absent mindedly, I skimmed my fingers across the nav-screen. The flight deck was actually split into three different sections, a main console controlling real-time/space movement, one for perpendicular navigation, and one for, oh, lets call it temperal navigation. Temporal navigation is always a touchy field. After all, or maybe before all, that's why this whole organization exists. Generally, the third console is only used for getting home at normal time; so that everyone we remember is still alive, rather than returning to find that thousands of years have passed when the mission only took a few weeks. It did, however, have many other theoretical, parodoxical, and incredibly dangerous uses.
"Yes, a little time would really hit the spot about now," I said, staring at the temporal navigation terminal. Slowly, Ellens eyes followed mine.
"No."
"It's perfect, Ellen. Exactly what we need to take stock. I'll have time to figure out what we need to do, and you'll have time to separate your kid from your boyfriend."
Ellen froze for maybe a quarter of a second.
"What? she, he, Never mind. You need to figure out what we need to do? Do I need to remind you who is commanding this mission and who is at best 'under probation'?"
Probation. Could that be what they were doing? Why send me along this mission, how much did they know about the other agencies? Were they just stringing me along after all? How much didy they really know? Bah, can't worry about this nonsense. Need to get out of this spot.
"Look, do you want me to fix this, or not? We've jumped early, into an unmarked parallel, and a time slip will be perfect for some... careful planning." Though what I'm going to do about Marcus, I'm not sure...
Ellen's eyes narrowed. "You've jumped us early into an unmarked parallel. I will not let you compromise my mission further through unauthorized use of the time machine." Ellen almost winced at her use of such a rudimentary term for the most complex instrument on board. I smiled again.
"Certain uses of this 'time machine' are restricted for more reasons than safety. What the Agency doesn't want you to know is that they can't track this craft at all in certain phases of time travel."
"And why would I want to avoid survielance by the Agency while you are on board."
This is the gamble. I could be playing right into the Agency's hand, or I could be saving us all and stepping ahead of them once again.
"Because, Ellen, your boss has sent you and your crew on a suicide mission, and not just to get rid of me. Even if you had managed to navigate that perp, the parallel they had you going to was a glimp. It would be like running into a brick wall, and if that didn't kill you, you'd be hurtled across the perp uncontrollably until something else did."

R.I.P. Societies Pants

You had good run. And we shall miss you dearly. But it is over now, I fear. No one even remembers what's going on. How sad.

Integration Studies - Grillian - 45

Six hours later I had managed to walk across the cabin, and I was starting to think as a single entity. The secret, I had learned... Greg had showed me... was to focus entirely on the here and now. The present was a consistent experience; it was the past that was tainted with our individual perspective. Total integration would have to include the past, but a temporary integration, just to prevent unimaginable horrors... psycholinear destabilization, wait UNIMAGINABLE HORRORS? Sorry, I didn't think that. Oh yes I did, care to explain what I meant? Well, alrigh- Ewww! That's why I didn't want to.... Ewwwwww!
"Grillian! You guys are flickering!" screamed Scarlett. I snapped out of it.
"Scarlett," I said, "Singular pronouns, remember?"
"Right, sorry." Scarlett had been selected to help us get oriented because we were the most united in our opinion of the girl, and because she wasn't needed elsewhere. Theoretically Marcus and Ian were working on finding a solution in the database and Ellen was having a heated conversation with Virgil on the flight deck. No one seemed to be focusing on the particulars of the mission, which worried half of me greatly, though the rest of me was still getting it's half of my mind around this whole weird situation.
"Do you want to try walking again?" asked Scarlett. I tried to say yes and no at the same time. Then I switched. Finally I came to a consensus.
"I'm a little tired just now, I think the best thing to do is to get some sleep."
"No, you can't. Ellen said to keep you focused on tasks. If your mind wanders, it will wander all over the place, and your conflicting subconscious could kill you in your sleep."
"Alright," I conceded, half-reluctantly, and got up to walk across the cabin again. I successfully walked back and forth three times and around in a circle, when Marcus and Ian walked in.
"Got any figured it out thing yet?" I asked, too excited to focus on integration.
"You won't like it," said Ian, looking quite sickly.
Marcus elaborated.
"There is a way out of this for you, but it's going to be very ugly."

So. Bad. - Ellen (44)

I didn't have kids. Not that I didn't want them-- I was only 31, there was plenty of time. But at the time that I led my first mission, I did not have kids. Nor did I have any younger siblings or, in fact, any siblings at all. But by the time Gillian and Greg became Grillian, I was beginning to imagine what it must have been like. It's all about lying, but lying in a very specific and reassuring way. Trying to make everybody think that everything is absolutely fine and it's all happened before, nothing to worry about, when this is not, in fact, the case. Inside, you're panicking. But outside, you can't show it. You don't want to scare the kids.
I was not very good at it. You have to be a certain amount of good at it to be a recruiter and to lead a mission, but this was just one thing too many. Inside, I was starting to lose it, and I could tell by the increasing tension in the air and the looks on the recruits' faces that it was starting to show on the outside. The implications of this regarding my potential abilities as a parent were something I would peruse later, in the peaceful solitude of my own apartment. There was no time for that as I grabbed Virgil by the lapel and hauled him up to the flight deck. Virgil and I were going to have words.
Once away from the eyes of the kids, I flung Virgil from me as hard as I could, shoving him into the wall, in fact. That, I think, wiped that smug grin off his face for the first time since the mission had begun.
Not wanting the kids to hear, I tried very hard not to scream. I'm not sure how successful I was on that front. "What did you do?"
The smug smile quickly back in place, Virgil only shrugged. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, yes you do! You know you did something and it was something big and it was something bad and I want to know what it was so that I can fix it!"
"My goodness, somebody's unhappy. Sexually frustrated, are we?"
I wish that I could say I had a witty comeback ready, but my jaw simply dropped in absolute shock. My eventual response was more a sound than actual words, which seemed to amuse Virgil greatly. He started to take advantage of the situation by sidling past me toward the exit, but I stopped him. The fortuitous thing was that his words had had the same effect as a slap across the face, and I was now feeling much more calm, though still seething. So when I asked him again, it was a very quiet growl.
"What did you do? This is not the time to mess around, Virgil. I'm not stupid, you know I'm not stupid, and I am in no mood for games."
Virgil nodded his acknowledgement. "Okay," he said. "I don't know."
I blinked. "Excuse me?"
"I don't know what I did. I was trying to get us out of the doom perp."
"How did you know--"
"Not important. The facts are that I was trying to get us out of the doom perp before we entered it, and I'm not sure what exactly happened."
"I can tell you what exactly happened! Two of my recruits are now one of my recruits, that's what happened! And you and I both know that only happens when a jump is made mid-transition!"
"Not necessarily. That's just the only time we've known it to happen up until now." He still hadn't wiped that idiotic smile off his face. I was severely tempted to do it for him, but suddenly all of my energy drained away into exhaustion.
"You bastard. You jumped us mid-perp, Virgil."
"Apparently."
"This is bad. So bad. Do you have any idea how bad this is?"
"Actually," Virgil countered, "no. That hinges on a very important question. Do you have any idea which perp this is?"
At first the implications of this question failed to hit me. "No. Which one did you jump to?"
"I don't know. I was just hitting things at random. God, Ellen, I didn't want to die in the doom perp."
So. Bad.
I stared at him. I stared at him in open disbelief. "There are no words, Virgil."
"How about 'oh, shit?'" For the first time, I looked past the stupid smile and managed to see that Virgil looked a little freaked out. It was in his eyes. Actually, Virgil seemed to have the comforting-lie part of parenting down. He'd fooled me, a grown woman who knew everything he knew and knew that he knew it, into thinking that he was calm for a good ten minutes. I silently added the disturbing idea that Virgil might be a better potential parent than myself onto my list of things to mull over later.
"I still don't trust you. But you're going to help me fix this," I told him. "You are going to help me fix this now, because you did it, and I need my recruits back."
Virgil looked taken aback. "Oh, surely you can get along without them for a little while? In an unstable environment? You ought to at least figure out where we are and whether they could possibly be of any use-"
I cut him off. "Do you want to end this mission as dead as you were presumed to be before it started? Because I can see to that. This is my mission. And I need Greg!"
I knew that was a mistake as soon as it left my mouth. Virgil raised an eyebrow. "So we are sexually frustrated, then?"
I was not even going to dignify that with a response.

Psycholinear Frequencies - Grillian - 43

It all sort of happened at once… It was like nothing I’d ever heard of… Of, course I’d heard of that sort of thing happening, but never been on this end of… It was like I wasn’t, well I was still me, but also not me… the whole situation – it shouldn’t have happened in this perp anyway, I mean… all at once. I could feel my feelings and my memories, but also new ones and I think they were… there are things that can be done to prepare for combiners like this. We should have… Greg’s. Must’ve been, because there was, well just because… eaten special roots or something, I don’t remember… I kept seeing these weird plant things, with funny shaped roots… but anyway, I was just so confused and overwhelmed, but of course that wasn’t me that was… I should have been completely freaking out, but half of me was really calm… well, not half of me me, but…
“What the- eww, you’re all..” we/I heard. It was Scarlett, she’d finally noticed us.
“Greg, Gillian, calm down. I’ve seen this before.” That was Ellen.
“I Seen know, what Ellen before?” I heard myself say. I’d tried to say, ‘Seen what before?’… I’d tried to tell Ellen I already knew, but of course…
“You two have been temporarily combined into one entity,” she said calmly… trying to sound calm… “This happens occasionally when two people who have similar psycholinear frequencies stand too close together while jumping into a perpendicular universe.” She frowned… was trying to figure out what was going on, because obviously… almost confused… this shouldn’t have happened, and she knew it…
“If you’re going to have any hope of getting out, you have to start allowing yourselves to integrate into one being. Otherwise you’ll tear yourselves –self- apart.”
That was ridiculous… how were we… we shouldn’t have to… supposed to integrate when we wanted to be … “integrate,” we should be getting… Separated.
“Good work,” said Ellen.
“What?” we asked.
“You stopped flickering. You’re sort of looking like a consistent person now.” One of us was starting to wonder what we looked like.
“Nice outfit,” Scarlett snickered.
Just then Virgil walked in from the direction of the flight deck... Wait, how did I know where the flight deck was? Anyway, a look of shock and then amusement broke out on his… smug little… face.
“Well, well, well. What happened down here while I was gone?”
“Gone?” asked Ellen, knitting her brow.
“Trimming my nails, naturally,” he snidely replied.
“So,” we asked, “What now?"
“Marcus, could you come here a second?” she asked.
“Right here.”
“See if you can find a remedy for this in the database.”
“I’m on it.” I –we- tried walking and instead ended up… flat on our face… falling down. This was going to take some getting used to.

Scanning for lifeforms - Ian (42)

Okay, so the perp was weird. Really weird. Too weird, I think for me to be able to describe to someone who's never seen one before. So I'm going to tell you about the training.
So I go into the room, with Gillian and Marcus. And Marcus handed each of us one of the little round silvery things. They look kind of like a cross between a Star Wars thermal detonator and a sexton, with the little measuring ring around it. There were three green lights on the top.
"This," said Marcus, in his usual completely emotionless way, "Is an interplanar scanner. As the name suggests, it is capable of scanning between planes, that is locating something even if it's in another dimension. It also serves as a sort of dimensional compass, telling you where you are in the multiverse and how to find a portal home.
Now, you see those three green lights on top?"
"Yes," said Gillian. I nodded.
"If all three of those are green, you're home. If not, you might be in a very similar universe, but it is not your own, and staying there too long may destabilize the fabric of existence,"
"How does staying in a different universe destabilize the fabric of existence?" I asked. I didn't know much about quantum mechanics (being more into the normal kind), but what I did know this didn't give with.
"Not important," said Marcus, "Anyway, if the light on the left is red, but the other two are green,you're in even worse trouble. That means you've traveled through time, and you're in either the past or the future of your own timeline. Press the button above the left light,"
I could have sworn there wasn't a button there before. It just appeared when I looked for it. I pressed it. A beam of light came out of the sphere and formed itself into numbers which scrolled around it:

00.00.00.00.00:00.00

"You're 0 centuries,0 years, 0 weeks, 0 days, 0 hours, and 0 minutes from our own time," said Marcus, "Be warned - it calibrates itself to the user. If activated by a native of the time in which you're trapped, it will read just like this, no matter when you are. This goes for the green lights too. Any questions?"
Gillian raised her hand timidly. She looked somewhat overwhelmed. I understood that.
"Yes?" said Marcus.
"Where did that button come from?" she asked. "I know there weren't any buttons on this thing before you told me to press that one,"
"If the scanner had as many buttons as it has functions, it would be too large to carry around conveniently. The device reads your mind and produces buttons on an as-needed basis,"
We both took a moment to absorb this information.
"Anything else?" asked Marcus, almost impatiently (but without enough inflection to actually be impatiently.) We shook our heads.
"Ok," said Marcus, "Now press the button above the central green button,"
The button materialized. I pressed it. Words scrolled around the sphere in the same way as the numbers had before.

Origin (A-Alpha 0.0*[infinity] Repeat)

"There are infinite universes, so of course actually classifying them all would be impossible. Think of this more like coordinance. Very few people, of course, are familiar enough with the system for those numbers to mean anything. So touch a word,"
I touched Alpha. The entry expanded.

Origin (A-Alpha)[This world is dominated by homosapien sapiens with minimal extra terrestrial contact] 0.0*[infinity] Repeat)

I looked over see what Gillian was looking up, and was surprised to see no letters floating around her.
"Is yours not working?" I asked.
"No," she answered, "It's working fine, see?" She pointed, but I couldn't see anything.
"No one else can see your readout unless you want them to," said Marcus, "The bottom button activates spectator mode,"
The button appeared. I pressed it. Gillian did to - I saw the words began floating around her head.
"Almost done," said Marcus, "You don't need to know about the light on the right, so it's classified until you do. Just one more feature you need to know about. There should be a knob on the side opposite the slider. Turn it,"
As I turned the knob, a round screen appeared in front of me. It read:

No input.

"The locator feature is keyed to every member of your group. Think about one of your team members, and focus on them,"
immediatly my mind went to Scarlett. I focused on her face - the beautiful smile framed by long red hair and perfect cheeks - but I was startled out of this thought by her appearance on the screen in front of me.
"Good, Ian," said Marcus, "Your image of her was so clear you didn't even need to focus it,"
I blushed. Gillian snickered. I looked over at her screen, which was displaying an incredibly blurry image of what I thought was Greg.
"Turn the knob and focus on a specific detail of his appearance or personality," said Marcus.
Gillian screwed up her face in concentration and turned the knob. Greg came into focus.
"Good," said Marcus, "Now press the knob in and turn it again,"
I did. Scarlett's face, smiling and laughing, was replaced with a triangle full of colored dots and an arrow.
"Spacial locator," said Marcus, "Very straight forward. Turn it again,"
I turned it again. The map was replaced with the same dimensional coordinates as before.
"Dimensional locator," said Marcus, "Tells you where they are, if it knows. The dimensional map has been disabled since one recruit had a stroke trying to deal with the scope of it. One more thing - use of the locators camera mode for snooping or any invasion of privacy will result in the confiscation of your locator,"
I hadn't actually thought of that yet. Now that I did... I pictured Scarlett getting ready to go into the shower, her pulling up her tank top - 'No!' I told myself, 'Get a grip, you perv!' Besides, I thought, nothing would be worth giving up a piece of equipment like this.
"Beyond that," Marcus concluded, "It functions just like a normal scanner. Feel free to explore it's other functions - just think about one and if it has it, a button will appear. Any questions"
"How does it -" I began.
"Not Important!" said Marcus, cutting me off. I glanced over at Gillian, who looked at me as if to say - "So why did he ask for questions?"
We turned and headed back down the corridor.