The sterile whiteness of the lab made the kid's eyes tired. At twenty-six, he could still put in an eighteen hour day without much thought, but he was now in his fortieth hour without sleep, and the drowsiness was finally catching up to him. His lids felt heavy as he punched data into the Cray. Excitement or none, he would soon have to catch, at the least, a cat-nap on one of the leather couches in the staff room, or he was liable to pass out against the keyboard.
Ben was brought quickly back to the surface of reality, as Doctor Yamamoto came bursting through the lab's double doors. The older man's grey eyebrows were high up on his forehead and he was breathing rapidly.
"It works! It works!" The scientist bounced up, and ruffled Ben's shock of sandy-coloured hair. He then pulled the young man out of his chair and danced a little jig while grasping his hands. The intern stood still with a bewildered look on his face.
The doctor went on, slapping his assistant on the back. "I have to settle down my boy, or I think I'm going to have a heart attack." He fanned the air in front of his face for a moment, but quickly re-gathered his composure. "Come," was all he said as he led Ben toward the chamber next-door.
This was, without a doubt, the greatest accomplishment in the history of all known science.
There were only a relatively small group of people who knew of the project's existence. It was not that the tests and developments had been kept secret from anyone, but more that the project was merely one of many obscure scientific experiments going on throughout the world, in which the general public showed little or no interest.
Ben now sat in the centre of the laser array.
Doctor Yamamoto had found the dimensional spectrum by a mere fluke. The two men, along with two more interns, and the finances of Doctor Ethan Spectre, had been plotting the infinite number of courses of the different combinations of pulse and color, created by their photon cage. Now they had, by a stroke of pure chance, come across something that had, before now, only been theorized about. It was something so bizarre, that only human experience could give it due credit in our universe. Without looking through the window, the extra dimensions would not exist- as far as we, or anyone else, would ever be concerned within our history of time. Perhaps other beings in distant solar systems, or even other galaxies, had discovered these extra folds in space-time, or perhaps, even lived within their boundaries, conscious of their anomalies, obscurities and general oddities. But humans had thus far, never known what lies beyond their own perceptible existence.
Ben wore headphones and a series of electrodes, which were glued to various parts of his body. The Doctor spoke through the speakers on his ears. "Here we go now, don't be shocked. Remember, it's only a one-way window. You can see out, and no one, or nothing can see back. You are a silent observer."
The younger man gave a thumbs-up. He was ready. He had now completely forgotten his need for sleep.
Yamamoto counted backwards, "Three, two, one..." He then activated the cage, and Ben McClure looked into an alternate universe.
He was not sure of what he was seeing at first, as all around him, the lasers criss-crossed in a complex pattern; completely surrounding him in a sphere of light. He heard the doctor's voice. "You have to let your eyes adjust for a couple seconds on this one, it's very bright."
Ben blinked a few times, and slowly the pinpricks that were his pupils began to filter out some of the harsh lightness. Then he began to discern the images before him. They looked like very angular flowers. They appeared as though they were a computer generated image, and he would have thought them so, if he had not been one of the scientists who had help to build the cage in the first place.
The flowers glowed orange, though he could tell now that they were not flowers at all, but strange geometric patterns that pulsated and moved in never-seen-before ways. They appeared to fold in on themselves and reappear at the same time. The action made his stomach turn slightly. Then the doctor's voice came to him again. "I'm going to shift it up only one dimension."
As the older man manipulated the array, the young intern experienced a darkening sensation as the light all around him dimmed, and the flower-things flew apart into tiny shards, which twirled around each other in a crazy dance. Then other shapes began to appear from nowhere at all. And what shapes they were! His mind writhed in his head, as he tried to comprehend the brain-bending images that pulsated before him.
Everything seemed to now be accented a strange tinge of purplish green that was really neither color; but it was as close as his overloaded mind could come to labelling the hues at that very moment. He shivered as his senses were assaulted by the barrage of bizarre stimuli.
"Are you okay?" asked Yamamoto.
"I'm fine, keep it going," the young man replied. He gripped the arms of his chair and tried to prepare for whatever would come next. He was pleasantly surprised as the scene changed to the reddest red he had ever laid his eyes upon. Everything was crimson everywhere, but the spikes of further crimson danced before his eyes. Each time one stabbed towards him, he could swear he felt a tingle in his body. As more and more of the sharp redness shot out of the all-encompassing redness and made him tingle, he began to moan. It was pure ecstasy to be viewing this indescribable sight. Faster and faster the spikes went. He cried out loud, and the whole scene began to vibrate furiously.
Then he blinked his tear-filled eyes, and saw that all had darkened once again. An instant feeling of cold washed over him, as he almost felt, with a brand new and previously unknown sense, the greyness that overtook him. It was a little like looking through murky water, yet something shimmered there in the depths, just beyond his perception. He tried to speak, but found himself holding his breath, unable to utter a squeak. Deep inside the fog of unimaginable material, he could see shapes moving. Somehow he knew that they were alive. They seemed to travel in a very random way, but with very direct purpose.
Ben felt his skin tingle as a shadow passed close before him. It was out of his peripheral vision as he realized, that it had looked surprisingly like a man. He jumped at the sound of the doctor's voice. "This is as far as I got before I stopped and came for you in the lab Ben." I'm recording everything of course, but I don't know for sure what the machines will even pick up from this. They may not have the capability to recognize the data that they must copy and make safe for later study. This is why it is so important for direct human involvement and observation. We have both now seen what lies in this portion of the dimensional spectrum. What will come next when I raise the pulse setting is only anyone's guess. Do you still feel like going on?"
Ben winced as more of the shadows passed him by. He did not like the feeling of this, and quickly agreed to see what else lay further up the spectrum.
Doctor Yamamoto raised the pulse, and the scene inside the array immediately changed. He heard his assistant jerk in his chair.
Ben now tried unsuccessfully to scream. This place permeated his very soul. It was horrific. The glow was that of no color, but the sickly putrid shine of the lights of hell. It was all-surrounding, and all-smothering.
Doctor Yamamoto saw with alarm, that his subject's heart-rate had climbed dangerously high, in only a matter of seconds.
Inside the array, Ben clawed at the air as the imagery, not meant for the eyes of any man, encompassed him, and he suddenly became aware of its presence. A juggernaut, the entity raced toward him like a freight train. Only it came from all sides. Even though the manipulated photons in the air were only capable of displaying a visual image of the spectrum, the thing made a sound, which raced through the lab, shattering glass and sending deafening feedback through the headphones at his ears. He clawed the device off of his head as the entity reached him. His own final scream was inhuman.
Ben lifted his head and stared at the terminal before him. Where he had been typing figures into an equation- had now run on into a line of complete gibberish from his forehead pressing randomly at the buttons of the keyboard. He had dozed off. This was not the first time it had ever happened in the lab; yet he felt very uneasy, as the final claws of some unremembered nightmare faded away into his subconscious. He blinked once and was suddenly surprised by the double doors of the lab bursting open.
Yamamoto ran in. "It works! It works!" He bounced up and ruffled Ben's sandy-coloured hair, and then pulled him from his chair and danced a little jig. The young intern stood speechless. He was just becoming fully awake, and was now feeling the distant creepings of deja-vu.
Soon he was seated in the chair in the middle of the cage once again, as the doctor began to manipulate the controls. In a moment he would begin surfing the dimensional spectrum.
Five minutes later, he was once again in the throws of deadly panic, as the entity raced towards him, as it would forever and ever, and ever again, and as it always had before, for all of eternity- now that the Ejxomashhhaz had taken over matters.
Back in that unimaginable dimension where no man should ever venture, the Ejxomashhhaz continued to tell his Heajjjasssssssss of the encounter. The being had had no business crossing over those lines. It was good that it was Healgalmosh, or the Ejxomashhhaz would not have detected the intruder. It was all fine now though, as the entity had simply placed the unfortunate being; and the rest of his universe with him, in an eternal time-loop. It was their predestined punishment for venturing outside of their existence.
The spectrum would not tolerate such crossings.
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