Everything went wibbly wobbly spatially exciting as something grabbed the group and dragged them across dimensional barriers. By his count Declan knew that they had changed spatial dimensions at least three times after they had escaped the black hole generation of the Intergalactic Confederacy, as they first appeared in what he believed was a world called Lineland, a supposedly fictional place which they all appeared as straight lines. They all had length but no width. The effects were dizzying and they would have fallen over had they not lacked height. True to form they next materialized in Flatland. Now, having two dimensions Declan could see that he was a polygon and the women presented as segmented lines. He could not tell what happened to the cat, but he realized that he was an octagon. This pleased him insofar as he had always believed himself to have more sides than most people, and this proved true even in Flatland. The team exploded unexpectedly and reinstated themselves in a three dimensional state once more.

Declan pulled up his HUD, since he had no idea of where they were and tried to see where they had landed. His world indicator opened and he read:

They found themselves on the corner of a street in a sprawling Metropolis unlike anything Declan had ever seen. He assumed that the system had routed him to the nearest place that would approximate his targeted landing zone, which would place him close to Sarah’s Bucky Starr coffee shop. He saw no such store, though, but did see something called a McStarbuck that looked like it served coffee. There was also a Krunkin Kronuts next door to it. Both places looked so good that he thought that he might get something from there when he saw another Sarah come out of the McBucky, er, McStarbucks. He was about to yell to her when they were suddenly ripped from reality again and pulled back towards the Home World if they were lucky.

Again, they slipped the bonds of the third dimension and burst into the fourth. Declan would literally sense time. He could feel it as it actually existed, not the way in which three dimensional beings perceived it. His HUD opened and he began to scan and record everything that he could see. He knew that he would not be able to understand any of it until Mother had a chance to digest the information he was going to feed her.

He looked at the girls. Crowe was struck with childlike wonder; staring in amazement at the river of time that surrounded them. The new Sarah had her eyes squeezed shut and was refusing to look at anything. Mister Biscuit began hacking and vomited out a gout of letters, hieroglyphs, cuneiform, emoji’s, and numbers. Declan had no clue as to why that would happen, but he’d never gone out of three dimensional space before. For all he knew cats horked up a dizzying array numerical alphabets whenever they were elevated beyond the three dimensions they were comfortable with.

His blue suit glowed as if it were under a black light as time trickled into its fibers. He could see the girls, but not the cat, begin to bioluminesce. Cats are weird, he decided, and studied the way that time had taken hold of the girls. He presumed the same thing was happening to him as well even though he didn’t feel any different than he had before he entered this strange space. As he watched he had the feeling that they had just arrived, had just left, and had always been here. Cause and effect were merely suggestions that his limited mental capacity needed to permit him to exist, and that linear time was a myth. Every piece of Planck Time existed separately but was entangled with the one preceding and following it. It was like a stack of photographs on a string that then was crushed into a ball flattened, and spread out like a veil. Declan had no idea of where this thought was coming from, but it intrigued him. He felt like he was very close to understanding something much bigger than he was, when he could feel the pull of the Fast Travel once again.

There was a brief stutter and he found himself back in the Launch Bay. The newest Sarah, her cat, and Crowe were, thankfully, with him. The three of them looked stunned, and Crowe seemed less dumbfounded than she did awestruck. Before he could do anything his HUD opened and he read: A Fast Travel Error has occurred. You have returned to your starting point before your departure due to interference from the fourth dimension upon reentry to Home World. Please immediately remove yourself and your party to the second Launch Bay via tram twenty four to avoid temporal disturbances.

He shrugged. Who needed a temporal disturbance? Not him, that was for damn sure. “Ladies, I need you to come with me. I know some crazy stuff just went down, but we have to leave this area right now or something even worse is going to happen.”

The new girl looked at him. She was frazzled and could see she was close to crying. “C’mon,” he said as he put his arm around her. “We’ll get you some coffee, and some food. What would you like to eat? A nice rare steak? A hamburger with all the fixings, maybe? How about some shrimp, we can do raw or fried. Your choice.”

Numbly, she shook her head. “No. No, meat for me. I’m a Vegan. A salad and some bean soup would be nice, though.” Declan stopped. He had just risked his life for a vegan? Couldn’t she have just been a nazi? A Mad Engineer? (He knew people always mixed up Mad Scientists when they really meant engineers and he’d sworn to never fall into that trap.) Those he could deal with, they were ideologies that he could understand even if he would never agree with them, but a Vegan? Life was cruel. She’d seemed so nice, too.

Well, he’d just have to put her in the far wing of the complex. There was no point in letting her try to corrupt everyone else with her life style choice. She was going to announce her lifestyle every single time she saw someone. She’d probably get on Headnet and make Vegan proclamations three times a day. What had he done? He was already in hell, now he had willingly brought in demons to torture him. He could just see it now, he’d wake up and she’d have breakfast sent over for him. It would be a piece of dry wheat toast, some carrot juice, and a pickle. No bacon, no sausage, no Canadian bacon, eggs, cereal with milk ever again. For a moment he wondered if he could send her back. They had time, his other self was heading to the Launch Bay right now. He could just put her on there, and have them hang back. His other self who was temporally behind him would completely agree and he would happily let that world do whatever it was going so the Invigilator could kill them all. Better that than vegan world.

Instead of venting his thoughts he said, “I’m sure Mother will be able to accommodate your palate. No worries. We’ll get you some food and then give you a room to bed down for the night.” As soon as she heard him say that Crowe shook her head. She pointed one finger at her chest, and motioned the pointer finger on her other hand from her chest out as far as her arm could extend as she shook her head no. The implication was obvious, don’t put her anywhere near me. Declan nodded in understanding and she got his message. Crowe relaxed and yawned.

“As for you, Miss Crowe, you can get some rest. We’ve all been through a lot and I think I’ll be ok this one time without you.” He took her hand and squeezed it tightly, “Thank you for being there for me. I do appreciate your help.” He kissed her on the forehead and put her on the tram.

“Mother, give these ladies some food, and set our newest guest up with our finest accommodations,” mentally he sent her, and keep her the hell as far from me and Crowe as possible. If the A.I. was shocked that he was her while he was also in the launch bay she gave no indication. He turned and started back to Launch Bay One. By the time he arrived back there his other self would be long gone and headed into a mess he didn’t want to think about.

“Mother, I have some things I want you to work on. First of all, I need you to figure out why Headnet goes down whenever I get near some of these odd creatures. See what you can do to negate the effects altogether.” He kept a brisk pace as he returned to his point of departure.

“Yes, Declan. I shall list that as my top priority. We cannot continue losing communication every time you go planet side. By the way, were you aware that the world that you reintegrated on after leaving flatland was completely digital? I have never seen a living computer simulation before. I think that I might create my own virtual world.”

He ignored her comment on the trip home. He didn’t want to think about, but he still had to bring it up, “Secondly, we ended up in the fourth dimension. I want you to examine all the data I collected, from my observations to the scans that I ran. We might be able to up our game if we can move through time as well as space.”

“I will see what I can learn, but it is improbable to believe that we will be able to do more than glean an imperfect understanding of what time really is. It is similar to asking a blind man who placed his bare feet in the ocean for a minute to break down everything about the ocean from what he experienced. I will try, though.”

“Ready Launch Bay One for my next destination.” He stepped into the room in time to see himself and Crowe vanish while screaming. That sight made him remember that he’d left his messaging system in an auto sequenced loop when he couldn’t contact mother. He was stunned to see that he’d racked up two hundred thousand points of Expy. It seemed that the trip from Line Land to the Fourth dimension took a lot longer than he’d thought. Coupling those points with the Expy that he just earned for apocalypsing that world and he was actually sitting on a tidy sum of Expy.

Mother’s voice sounded in his head. “Just so you know. The world you just came from was actually a pocket dimension in sub-space. That is why you had to re-enter the universe one dimension at a time. I just thought that might be of interest to you.”

He straightened his tie and continued into the Launch Bay. He had girls to save, worlds to destroy, and a mystery to solve regarding why he was wiping these worlds out. None of that was going to get done with him standing around dodging Vegans or questioning the implications of time travel, but he knew that he could save his Sarah if he could only figure out how to travel through time. That was the only way she was coming back and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to replicate his temporal trip again without dire consequences. For now he was going to have to do this the hard way.