Calling it a telescope isn’t quite accurate, I admit. It is supposed to interact with things like particles and light from a fourth spatial dimension. Now we don’t actually know how many dimensions exist (probably infinite), so what “4th dimension” we are talking about is a bit vague.
This is all highly secretive. Why? Well no one wants any corporation to just get access to the technology and do dumb shit with it. It is all still very new so don’t expect any news about it in the next decades.
Just three months ago we weren’t even sure if it worked at all, as we didn’t detect anything.
Three months ago was also when I first met our new colleague.
I had just arrived at the facility, when the director came along and told me to come with her into her office.
“This is Julia.”, she introduced me to the woman standing in the room and we greeted each other. “You will be her guide for the next week. Show her around the facility, introduce the team, you know.” She fell into her chair.
“Alright”, I responded and we went out of the room.
“Have you done something like this before or…?”, I asked.
“Well, not really. I worked at the University in Paris for two years, after getting my degree and then I moved here.”
I showed her around all the important places.
Over the next week I had to introduce her to our work. I didn’t expect to have to explain everything, but still I was impressed with how much she knew. And I don’t mean because she had “just” left University, I mean my own graduation was five years ago. But still, when I was new, I had to ask because of everything that wasn’t basics.
However, I would never complain about someone being smart. So I just accepted it.
At most it made the work easier.
On the next Friday we tried to use the telescope again. We didn’t have high hopes of detecting anything, but we were working on it. That work involves a whole lot of maths and far too much coffee.
We got into the telescope room, not its official name by the way, and tried out new ideas.
“Power is on!”, I said after turning the switch.
The director was standing just next to the giant ball with all the appendages and wires and pipes. “Good. Are we ready?”
“Yes.”, a voice from the other side of the room shouted.
“Then start!”
Things around us began to hum. The inside of the ball heated up to a good thousand degrees as light left our dimension and hopefully returned. On our screens we could see the result as a pattern. If that pattern changed drastically we had detected something. We waited for a good half an hour there. Hoping to see something. But no result. At least nothing that couldn’t be explained otherwise.
“Turn it down.”, the director ordered. She just stood there for a few seconds. “Great work everyone.” And then she left. Clearly in a worse mood than she presented.
Later we analysed the data. To see if there was anything we had missed or that could at least help us. It wasn’t particularly busy. We weren’t really expecting anything at this point.
“I think we need a bigger ball.”, Tom argued while typing stuff into his laptop.
Laura countered: “It’s already like ten meters big. And it’s not cheap.”
“Would stop it from getting to hot.”
While the two of them argued I went over our sensors again. Julia was sitting next to me.
“I guess we would need some more details.”, she said.”I mean if that was an eye you could barely see anything either.”
“Yeah, but that would require a whole lot more energy. We already have problems with the heat.”
“Hmm…Can you send me the data with the temperature?”, she asked.
“Sure.”
Next week, still early in the morning, I was standing together with Tom when Julia came to us:”Simon, Tom! Good to see you. I need to show you something.”
So we followed her and she pointed at something on her computer. It was a bunch of calculations. “I thought I would look a bit into the heat problem you mentioned and I think I came up with a possible solution.”
We looked over all of it for a while and it all seemed pretty good. In fact I wondered how she made all of that in not even a week. Still it had to be tried out first and so we brought it to the director. She approved it and on Friday we would test it.
Same as last time we were all in the massive room and the director ordered us to begin.
The humming started again and we looked at our screens. The seconds passed and nothing had happened. Seconds turned into minutes. Still nothing. Julia seemed nervous.
Then about 20 minutes later I saw something. On the right upper corner of the pattern there was a massive spot of red dots that grew in size. Around me the murmuring started and grew into cheering.
Unlike most others the director stayed calm although her face was brighter than before. Julia couldn’t resist and uttered a scream of joy. We kept the machine running for another ten minutes as planned. Everyone got a bit calmer.
This time, we were actually excited to analyse the data. Although it wasn’t like we found anything special. We couldn’t even make out the thing that we observed. It was just a few circles. But still. This was an object in a higher dimension. We had a little celebration after work.
The week after we improved our method and we got even better results. Things went smoothly from there on. Once again we tried a few new things and had “reoriented” the telescope.
In front of me the pattern changed its colours. At this point I had somewhat gotten used to it. It was still cool, but not all that special anymore. It was a little different this time however. Occasionally strange stripes appeared. That wasn’t uncommon but it happened too often this time. We had of course no idea what they were. There again. A red stripe. Another right next to it as the other disappeared. Then nothing. Then three stripes. I didn’t really think much about it until the end, when someone asked if this could be some sort of signal. The wavelength of the stripes was much higher than the rest of the pattern. We sent out light in the visible spectrum. And thus we expected visible light back. This was something else.
Next time we tried to look for the signal again. It was still here and so we tried to get a closer look. The thing was that this wasn’t a constant emission. Or even in regular time intervals. We weren’t sure what it was but it looked…artificial. The pattern it produced just didn’t fit any sensible movement. Even in four or more dimensions. Of course nobody dared to say the A word with five letters, but the speculation was there.
Oh except Tom. He said it first in fact. At lunch break, following monday, not publicly but still.
“But what else could it be? Give me one celestial object that behaves like that.”
“How do you know it is a celestial object? It is in another dimension. We don’t have the slightest clue as to what it is.”, I said.
“So it could be artificial.”
“I mean yes. Technically. But it could be literally anything.”
“But with the stuff we do know, it being artificial is the most plausible.”
“Simon, he just wants to believe this stuff. You know you can’t convince him.” Laura came off far more hostile than she wanted to. “And besides. The object isn’t that far away. If they can travel through higher dimensions they could just come here.”
Tom defended himself: ”I never claimed that they wanted to communicate with us.”
Julia had been listening until now while enjoying her sandwich: “Personally I hope it’s not Aliens. Like you said, that object is pretty close. Any civilisation older than ours is far superior in ways we probably couldn’t even imagine.”
I laughed: “Yeah. Let’s hope they are friendly. Otherwise only God can protect us.”
“There is no God.”, Julia replied in a way that made it sound like I had just claimed that Unicorns are real.
She always had something serious about her. At this point we were all pretty good friends though. She got along especially well with Laura. At Lauras birthday Julia even brought a cake, something very unusual here, as we mostly forget birthdays.
She was extremely smart and also a bit ‘nerdy’, but she was also very social and friendly. So not very stereotypical.
Someone suggested that we send a signal in the same wavelength back into the same direction to see if anything changes. Some people were a bit hesitant about the idea, but we followed through. And sure enough the pattern changed. Not drastically, but still. We repeated the experiment one more time to confirm.
We tried a few things to check how it responded and after a while figured out some tricks. There was a way to stop the signal, to let it run continuously, We even managed some simple morse code. None of this meant that we were communicating with an intelligence of course. But it was something exciting. Whatever it was.
Just one week ago, that was really all there was to the story. A strange signal from an unknown object in another dimension. Of course I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about my work. Not even my parents. I visited them this weekend. They live quite a bit away, near the Belgian border. They think I work in an observatory. Often I wish I could tell them what happened, but sadly I have to either lie a bit or I can’t talk about it at all. The government is also pretty strict about that.
But the next part of the story…well I wouldn’t want my parents to know anyhow.
It was Friday again. Telescope day, although I wasn’t sure what we were going to do exactly. One thing that struck me as odd was that Julia was late. That was very unusual. But I guess everyone has their bad days. When she did finally arrive she seemed happy. Well, happier than usual.
“Sorry I’m late. I had to get something done first.”, she said somewhat out of breath. We were already in the telescope room.
“Ah you are here. Good. I was afraid we would have to wait.”, the director shouted as she came towards Julia and then ordered: “Simon start the engine.”
I did as I was told. Just routine really. Then Julia went down to the control panel and connected her laptop with it. “Takes a bit to upload, I’m afraid.”
“So what exactly are we doing?”, Tom asked the director.
Her answer was a bit too long for me to write it down here, but basically Julia made a coded signal that should give us more insight into what exactly the object we are pen pals with, is. How big it is, its shape, at least a little bit.
“Done.”, she said after a good nine minutes. Then she just stood there next to the control panel as we all looked at the pattern on our screens. For a while nothing really interesting happened. A few changes here and there a few brighter spots. Was Julias signal even working?
But then it came. The pattern on screen got brighter and brighter. The telescope began to hum louder until it growled. “Turn it off!”, the director ordered. But my controls didn’t work. Instead I got an electric shock while touching it. The telescope began to rumble now and the screens failed.
“It’s overheating!”, someone shouted.
Then a loud bang and the ball exploded. From its inside came a blinding white light and I had to cover my eyes. I heard a few screams. When I looked again I was relieved to see that no one seemed hurt. Besides the shock. Well everyone except Julia who had been standing right next to the telescope which had just collapsed. She lay on the floor unconscious. A few people rushed to help her. Laura sat next to her trying to wake her.
But then she opened her eyes. Everyone was relieved. “Are you hurt?”, Laura asked.
“I am fine.”, Julia sat up. “In fact I feel great.”
“That is good to hear!”, the director said.
Julia then stood up. She didn’t seem hurt a bit. She went up to the rubble that had been the telescope and chuckled. “They really thought they could imprison me here. Took a bit longer than I hoped, but still. I’m free!”
She must have hit her head pretty hard. Laura put her hands on Julias shoulders and told her to lie down a bit. But Julia just grabbed her hand. “I said I am fine, Laura!”
The next moment she disappeared. In shock we all looked up where she now floated in the air above. The room around us began to fade away. It just disappeared slowly. The walls, the roof, the telescope, everything. Like a picture that slowly transitioned into another. The ground turned to dirt and grass. The hallway up the stairs, which were the only thing remaining from the massive room, was still there and so was the rest of the building. People began to scream. No one knew what was happening.
Then even the sky itself changed. It had been pouring rain the whole day yet in just a short moment, the sky had barely any clouds.
Julia was still in the air flying higher and higher. I got the weird feeling she might be doing this…but how?
If all of that wasn’t enough, suddenly strange branches appeared where the telescope had been previously. These branches grew bigger in size and joined together into spheres, these spheres joined together with other spheres, disappeared and reappeared and a massive confusing object formed in front of us. Now people began to run in all directions. Me and the director ran to the hallway where at the same time the security guards came down.
They saw what was happening and quickly just stood there. I think it was panic and I somewhat understand the reaction, but I don’t think if you see a person floating in the air doing weird things to the environment it is a good idea to shoot at that person.
Well unfortunately one of them had that idea and the bullet flew into Julias direction. I did not find it surprising that she didn’t even flinch. The bullet just fell to the ground. Then she looked at us and teleported to the entrance of the hallway. She quickly walked up to the guard that had shot her. He slowly took a step backwards, seemingly not sure if fleeing was still an option. Another guard didn’t hesitate and just ran.
Julia stood still in front of the guard and ripped his gun out of his hands. I held my breath.
Then Julia began to talk: ”They will know you helped me escape this dimension. They probably won’t come here. You are not important enough. Should they do so anyway, tell them the truth. Do what they want. They can destroy your entire world in a second, they don’t have a reason to, so don’t give them one.” Then the gun she was still holding turned into a lizard. Yes you read that right. A confused lizard, but a living and breathing one. It jumped off her hand and she flew away to the strange structure, which began to disappear just as strangely as it appeared.
The higher ups and the government were, as you might expect, pretty angry. Obviously they didn’t believe a word. Though they couldn’t explain what had happened to the telescope room, nor the disappearance of Julia. The official story was that the telescope exploded and we all had a concussion. The thing is, an explosion leaves rubble behind and the floor certainly doesn’t become a patch of grass. We all know what happened, even if we can’t say it.