MirrorWorld

28.

I reenter the dimension of reality I call home, seven feet lower than I’d been standing, just in time to collide with a desktop. The internal discomfort of shifting between frequencies is temporarily overpowered by the external impact. I hit the surface hard, crushing stacks of paper, a lamp, a stapler, and other odds and ends. Momentum carries me and most of the desktop debris over the side and three more feet down to the floor.

Pens spill from a jar and roll across the cold linoleum. I watch them race away and stop against a pair of white shoes. An African American woman dressed in white pants and doctor’s jacket stands a few feet away, leaning back against a counter, where she must have leapt upon my arrival. Her hands are covered by blue rubber gloves and her hair is tied up in a tight bun. A glass slide is clutched between her fingers. She might be cute, or not, but I can’t really tell because the eyeglasses she’s wearing, with round, light-blue magnifying lenses framed by LED lights, make her look like some kind of sci-fi cyborg.

I push myself up, grunting from various ailments, and stand. “You’re not a cyborg, are you?”

“W-what?” the woman says.

I’m standing, but her eyes are still looking down. I follow the angle of her magnifying eyeglasses. “Ah,” I say. “It’s far less impressive without the magnification.”

That snaps her out of it. She looks up and lifts the lenses away from her eyes. “You’re naked.”

“You are cute,” I say, now able to see her wide, dark-brown eyes. And she’s right: I’ve once again left my clothing behind, taking only the plastic pendant and chain, the nonliving extension of myself.

She looks around the lab. It’s empty except for the two of us. “Where did you come from?”

I point to the ceiling. “Seventh floor.”

She looks at the laboratory door, then me. “You don’t have a key card. You’re naked.”

I smile. “Don’t get a lot of naked men in the lab?”

“Not live ones,” she says. “How did you get in here?”

“I’ll show you.” I point to the door. “That the way to the elevator?”

She nods. “Hey, wait, you’re Crazy, right?”

“With a capital C?”

“Yeah.”

I look down at my naked self, not a trace of embarrassment. “Kind of obvious.”

“Yeah,” she says again. “I’ve looked at your brain cells under a microscope.”

I step back toward the door. “How do my cells look in the macroworld?”

She smiles. “Far more interesting.”

“But not quite human?”

The smile fades. “There are… aberrations, but I don’t know why… Do you?”

“I’m starting to,” I say. “Ready for a demonstration?”

Buck naked, I sprint toward the door without getting an answer.

“Wait,” she calls after me. “You need a key c—”

I leap at the wall.

Focus.

Shift.

Pain.

The woman’s voice drops away as I slip into the mirror dimension. Just as gravity starts pulling my jump back down, I return to the real world and land on the other side of the wall.

Inside a lab table.

The sudden, jarring stop is like a punch to the gut, accentuating the systemic revolt created by slipping in and out of dimensions. I nearly vomit on the tabletop, but my surprise at being stuck inside a table helps distract me from the pain, which, if I’m honest, isn’t as powerful as before. In fact, most of the pain is now in my body. My head and eyes are mostly pain-free.

“This isn’t good,” I say, looking down. I’m waist-deep inside a black granite-topped table with two sinks.

A gasp turns me toward the door behind me. The woman scientist is there, hands over her mouth. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

“Not sure,” I say. I wiggle my toes. Can feel them. I haven’t been cut in half.

She rounds the table, squats down, and opens the cabinets.

“Am I there?”

There’s a pause, and then, “Uh, yeah.”

“Any blood?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Good news,” I say. “Matter moving from one dimension destroys matter in the other.”

Eyebrows furrowed, she looks up from the cabinet peepshow. “What?”

“Means I’m not going to die in this table.” I try to lift myself out of the granite slab, but the hole is perfectly conformed to my waist. I can’t squeeze my butt up or my ribs down. “What’s beneath us?”

She looks down. “The floor?”

“On the fifth floor.”

After a moment of thought. “Living quarters for the security teams, I think.”

“Thanks,” I say, and then slip into the world between, stretching that elastic band until I’m snapped into the mirror dimension. The whole process is fast now. Gravity yanks me down. I let a second pass, reenter the world, and brace for impact. My legs hit the squishy surface of a top bunk. The rest of me hits nothing. I’m flipped over backward, spinning to the floor and landing hard on my ass. Hurts like hell but is nothing compared to the ache of snapping between frequencies so quickly. I’m not sure if it’s doing any permanent damage, but I don’t think so. The pain fades fast enough once I’m settled in one reality or another.

The bunk room is empty, which is probably a good thing. I’m not sure the guards would be as receptive to a naked man as the bespectacled scientist had been. I sit up on the side of the bed feeling like I’ve just gone for a run. I wipe my arm across my forehead and it comes away wet. I’m sweating. Using my Dread… self is a physical thing. And it’s currently out of shape. But it gives me hope that, with a little exercise, I can reduce or remove the pain associated with shifting. I head for the door, think about leaping through, and then remember how that had worked out last time. I turn the handle and step into a hallway.

Several people turn my way. Some of them gasp. One hurries away.

“Which way to the elevator?” I ask.

The distant chime of an arriving elevator beckons me past the onlookers, who turn and point to the opening doors. My scientist friend from the sixth floor leans out, spots me, and waves me toward her. She holds the door for me as I enter.

“You know,” I say, “most people would have brought something for me to put on. A blanket or towel or something.”

She clears her throat with a smile. “Seventh floor, right?”

“Don’t get out of the office much?”

She pushes the button. The doors shut. “I’m Stephanie, by the way.” She holds her hand out. “I’m a neurologist.”

I shake her hand. “They call this place Neuro for a reason, right?”

The elevator ascends as Stephanie nods.

“Are you aware of what Neuro really does?” I ask.

“You mean, like why you’re able to fall through floors?”

I wait for an answer.

“No idea. We’re all kept pretty separate. My expertise is memory, but I don’t think that’s high on our management’s priority list. I’m pretty far out of the inner circle.”

“You knew who I was,” I point out.

“My predecessor is the one who…” She taps my head. “I’ve studied your file. What they did to you. Your photo was in it.”

“When did you look at the file?” I ask.

“They gave it to me a week ago.”

“Why?”

She pauses, unsure about whether she either can or should reply. “They wanted to know if it could be undone.”

The idea of having my memory returned has never occurred to me. Sure, I’ve daydreamed about it. Wondered who I was. But, realistically, I thought memories, once lost, couldn’t be regained. The trouble is, I’m not sure I want to remember. Seems like all I knew was pain, anger, and death. “Can it?”

“I don’t know. My access was pulled two days ago. I was given a new assignment…” She lowers her voice like someone is listening, which could be the case. “But I think the answer they were hoping for is no.”

Huh, I think, and then the elevator stops.

“So there is no way to access that file now?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Not for me, but all my results were inconclusive. You wouldn’t learn much about yourself that you don’t already know.”

“You might be surprised,” I say.

“Right.” A sheepish smile emerges. “No memory.”

The doors slide open. I take a step toward the waiting hallway and stop. “You seem like a good person. Not afraid to look where you want. Didn’t lose your mind when I fell through the ceiling.”

“And the floor.”

“I respect that. We friends?”

“You available?” she asks.

“Married,” I say. “Not that I can remember it.”

“Then yes,” she says. “We’re friends.”

I lean closer to her. “Then as your friend: get the hell out of here. I don’t think it’s going to be a safe place to be for much longer.”

“O—okay…”

“Now.”

She takes off her white lab coat and hands it to me.

“I don’t think it will fit,” I say.

“Tie it around your waist.”

I do as instructed, making myself a little more appropriate, and step backward out of the elevator. She gives a wave, and the doors close.

Alone in the hallway, I turn toward the sound of voices. A door before the Documentum room is open. I pad my way over, bare feet silent on the floor. It’s a security center. Everyone from the lab, minus Cobb, is there, huddled together, backs to me. Monitors display images of the inside and outside of the building. But a large screen at the center of the display shows an angry mob. They’re watching the news?

“Hey,” I say.

The group turns around as though one entity with a unified mind.

“Where were you?” Winters asks. She sounds genuinely concerned.

“Sixth floor. Then fifth.” I turn to Lyons. “You were right about the laws of physics. They definitely work the same on the other side.”

“You fell two floors down?” Allenby asks.

“One at a time,” I say. “But yes.”

“Awesome.” Dearborn grins. “Our very own demigod.”

“Hardly,” I say, and point at the monitors cycling through images of the building’s interior. Stephanie appears on screen, talking to some people, a smile on her face. Probably joking about me. “You should have seen me on the screens.”

“We were distracted.” Katzman sounds tense. A little angry, which is nothing new, but you’d think he’d also be impressed. I did just fall through a solid floor. He motions to the angry mob on the big screen. Like the march in Manchester, I see protest signs, masks, and weapons. The people in whatever city this is plan to get violent.

“Where is this?” I ask, thinking it must be somewhere in New Hampshire. Concord or Nashua, maybe.

Lyons, red-faced, eyes like an angry bull’s, rounds on me. “This is right outside our doors! In the parking lot!” He leans toward me. “What didn’t you tell me?”