Chapter Nine


Sarah and I both rushed over to the console. Sarah began hurriedly typing in commands, and soon sheets full of cryptic symbols were pouring out of the printer.

"What's it look like so far?" I asked anxiously.

"We don't have much yet," Sarah replied, her voice a little testy. "This is just preliminary data. It shows the mouse landed on your world, not much more. It should be on its way back now, and if the trip here was as quit as it was there, it will be back in no time."

"And the data with it?"

"Uh-huh." Sarah got up out of her chair. "So I don't have to pack up and leave just yet."

I frowned. "Sarah, you have to understand. I know these kinds of people, and they're, well, dangerous."

Sarah came closer, bending over. Even with her chin inches away from the desk, she was still looking down on me. She didn't look happy.

"I'm not about to get up and go, just because you think you 'know' these people. This is my home. It's not like I can just run away, to some place where nobody will question where I am and I can do whatever I please. I don't have that kind of freedom." Her voice sounded more and more irritable.

"I'm just trying to help," I mumbled.

She turned away. "Well, you can help yourself. You can leave. Once this test is ready, I'm sure it'll work fine, and you'll be good to go." She was so bitter. I'd never heard her like this before.

"You make it sound like I'm abandoning you."

She turned back, her eyes screaming accusations. "Well maybe you are. Maybe you're trying to." For a moment, I thought she would try to hurt me. Her huge hands were slightly raised, and I could see the tension in her arm muscles. Instead, she turned away once more, and ran her hands through her hair. "Just leave me alone, okay? I just need some time to straighten things out."

I responded by getting on my hoverboard and gliding over to a far corner of the room.

I got off the hoverboard and slumped against the wall, burying my head in my hands. I'd never seen Sarah act like that before. It didn't even frighten me so much as depress me. It really hurt to see her feeling like this. I couldn't help but blame myself for it.

After all, who had regaled her with stories of his failed life? Yes, I could see now. I'd been doing it all along, subconsciously. I'd been trying to influence her, get her away from the military. But wasn't I really just looking out for her, and her best interests? It wouldn't have ended well any other way, I told myself.

It might not even end well now. It was true, to some extent, that I was abandoning her. I had set her on this path and was now leaving her, without guidance, to fend for herself against the power of her government. She might have to face more than I did, I thought. She might have to deal with worse.

I felt a great deal of pity for her, as well as a deep sadness. I also felt sick to my soul at the way things had turned out.

Sarah was walking back over now, no longer looking angry or domineering. Instead, she just looked kind of lost, and helpless. I shook my head at the absurdity of the situation. Here was a woman seventy times my size, and I was thinking of her as helpless! But in some strange way, she was. She needed me, as much as I needed her.

"Listen," she said softly. "I'm sorry for what I said. I've just been under so much pressure these past few days, and so much has happened. There's been so much change..."

"I know," I said, and I was surprised at just how strong my voice sounded. "And it's okay. We're going to get through this together. I'm not leaving yet. I won't until you're safe."

"Well, I can't leave either," said Sarah. "I won't. It's just not something I can do."

"I understand. But I think I have something of an alternative."


The next half hour was spent making the house as secure as possible. We hurriedly set up security cameras, a possible escape route and a backup countermeasure. It wasn't sealed tight, but the house wasn't as easily penetrable as before.

We were going over our plans when there was a loud noise, indescribable in its strangeness, on the other side of the room, accompanied by a flash of light.

I quickly jumped on my board and zoomed over to the source of the noise. Sarah almost overturned a chair in her hurry. The mouse had returned to this world.

It was still the same size as before. Nothing had perceptibly changed. Sarah ran a battery of tests designed to test its basic functions. I watched carefully, all the while going over the possibilities in my head. The mouse clearly hadn't shrunk in the teleportation process, the preliminary data reports showed that. That, I supposed, was good news. Well then, why did I shrink? It wouldn't make any sense for a human to shrink and not a mouse... It was all so puzzling.

Sarah looked up from her position crouched over the mouse's cage. Because I was perched on a nearby table, I was at eye level with her. The sheer immensity of her face struck me then, as it had before. Her plush lips the size of a small patio, her comparatively small, cutely rounded nose the height of a house. I guess there are just some things you never get used to.

"All the tests came back normal," she said. "The teleport worked perfectly."

"It makes absolutely no sense," I replied frustratedly. "None at all."

"I know," she said calmly. "But there has to be some scientific reason for this. It's not like there was magic involved here."

"But what could it be? I see no reason as to why I'm so small."

Sarah suddenly looked pensive. "What if it isn't that you're so small?"

"Huh?" I tried to see where she was going with this.

"What if the matter is that I'm so big?"

I gasped, and understood. "Ahh. What if your world is simply bigger than mine?"

"Exactly."

I grinned and shook my head. "Scientifically impossible. It would never work in our universe."

"You're right," she said glumly. "There's no way it would be so accurate. Not to mention the probabilities... Two worlds, almost exactly the same except for scale? Not in our universe."

Then came my epiphany. "What if it isn't OUR universe?"

This time it was Sarah's turn to look puzzled.

"What if we don't come from the same universe at all," I continued excitedly. "What if we're not even from the same dimension?"

"Wait, wait, hold up," Sarah said, putting two fingers to her temple. "Now you're bringing in the parallel universes theory, as well as contradicting rules in quantum physics, string theory, and virtually every other scientific doctrine on the way the world works. Plus, our machine wasn't even designed for interdimensional transport."

"I know it wasn't," I snapped. I can be a bit short-tempered when I'm on a roll and a fellow scientist doesn't see what I mean. "But what if the flux field collisions interfered with the quantum structure?"

Sarah completely stopped for one second, her massive face frozen in a look of concentration, her lips pouting. "Oh my God. You might be right."

"I'm almost sure I'm right," I said. "Now start inputting these calculations..."


Over the next hour, we made one feverish advance after the other. In just one hour, we rewrote most of the laws of science, disproved several accepted theories, confirmed others, and created several completely new ones. We deserved the Nobel prize. Hell, we deserved three.

By the end of it, my theory had underwent some modifications. But the bottom line remained the same: Sarah and I came from two parallel but distinct dimensions, hers happening to be on a far larger scale than mine.

"But there's one thing I don't get," said Sarah. "How exactly do you manage to survive in my dimension if there are so many differences between the two?"

"I don't know yet," I admitted. "I'm sure there's something at work here that we just don't know about. It's something we'll need to look into further at some point."

"Not now, please," Sarah said, her magnificent head coming to rest on the desk before me. A large stray brown hair landed on my shoulder and I brushed it off. "My brain's totally fried."

"Hey, we don't have to work if you don't want to. I'm getting a little tired myself."

The doorbell rang.

"Ugh, why did it have to be now," Sarah grumbled. "God, people have terrible timing."

"Hold up a sec," I said urgently. "Check the monitor first."

"Oh, right." Sarah went over to the monitor and brought up the security window. Her face froze into a very strange look, part shock, part disgust, part surprise and part gladness. It was exceedingly odd, enough to make me want to see just who was at the front door, so I glided over to the monitor.

On screen I could see a man outside Sarah's door. He looked rugged, his hair clipped in a kind of jagged, rough-cut style. With his five o' clock shadow and square jaw culminating in a chin with a large cleft, he looked like the stereotypical Hollywood action star. So stereotypical that I thought I'd seen him before.

Sarah suddenly got out of her chair and began to rush for the door, her ordinary graceful movements becoming almost clumsy. Something was making her seriously perturbed. I quickly zoomed after her.

She arrived at the door. I quickly made myself hidden this time, using Sess to attach myself to the ceiling while I killed the engine. Sarah opened the door, and the man didn't bother to wait but moved directly indoors, putting Sarah in an embrace.

I clenched my teeth as hard as I could.

"Sarah, baby." His voice was somehow thick as well as deep. Its falsely sugared nature made me think of corn syrup.

"Brian," Sarah replied. In her voice was a tangled mix of strong emotions.

I suddenly knew where I had seen his face before, in the sketch on Sarah's wall which she tore down in her rage the other day.

Brian. Her ex-boyfriend, now with the woman Sarah had recently thrown out of her house. What the hell was he doing here?