Chapter Text
“What if - when this all goes down - we just need to be released? What if we only escape when our core is destroyed?”
-Squeaks (2017-2018)
Physicists have theorised that in our universe, there are many different dimensions, the first four of which are space and time. Humans are very good at moving in all the space directions, but usually only good at moving forward in time. Lots of other people have theorised that our universe is not the only one, that other planes of reality exist in the same space as ours, like pieces of paper lying close to one another in a book.
Peter Walter VI didn’t believe in doors in the Manor, perhaps because they were only doors in space, which were a little dull. Doorways between worlds could be made just about anywhere, so long as you blew up a hole in the right dimension.
Rabbit had once carefully exploded, and created a door in a somewhat unexpected dimension.
One side of the door stood in a little room in the corner of the Manor.
The other side of the door was small and black, and hung a few miles above the Earth in 1962, looking very much like a small, dense little sphere of nothingness, delicately balanced on a ledge between two universes, which for the sake of argument could be called, say, Alpha and Prime.
The little dense nothing caught the attention of scientists, who sent up a station and came awfully close. They studied the Nothing intensely.
One day, a core of blue matter was fired at the doorway in the Manor at something approaching light-speed, albeit there was a reluctant robot attached to it at the time.
One day, the gateway in space burst open, as a blue laser li ght exploded out of it, along the thin line between two universes.
No!
The blue beam of light stretched out from its gateway, and headed for the space station.
No, wait!
If the scientists could hear light, they would’ve heard the beam crying as it raced towards them.
Where am I?
They would’ve felt the panic in its voice.
What… What is ‘I’?
The beam smashed into a space station, and didn’t, at the same time, as it split itself between two universes which existed so close to one another, and were just so slightly different.
Scared! Scared!
In one universe, the beam found a human who felt familiar. It clung on. In another, it pulsed on through, deep into space.
Nothing happened. For a very long time, nothing happened, for the part of the beam that knew it was still moving, except that it felt itself stretching further and further from the part of itself in another universe, which was holding tighter and tighter onto the thing it had hit.
This, thought the beam, clinging onto its human. Peter?
No , thought the beam, tearing through time and space.
Maybe? The beam desperately clutched at the man’s heart.
Maybe. The beam raced on.
Being so far from itself hurt. And with nothing to hold on to, it slowly forgot everything. Except… Peter. It held on to the thought, racing through space, waiting to stop. Peter .
The beam shattered a Russian space probe. It burned through the rubble, felt something... so small. So frail. Familiar. The beam touched it. It felt like... instructions. For how to live. To exist.
Heart , said the beam which destroyed the space station, pressing itself fondly into the heart of Peter IV.
Yes..., said the beam which destroyed the probe, heart . The blue matter moulded itself into the form of a heart. Why?
There was a long pause, like someone listening carefully. It beats.
Yes! The heart began to ripple. And lungs!
Yes! Lungs!
A child formed in space, as the beam talked to itself across the gap between universes, reading DNA, observing the man it occupied, remembering living. The child formed bones of light, eyes of gravity, organs and sinews from the limitless sea of passing neutrinos, and tried to remember what it was all for. It remembered lips, and laughed joyously with them. It rolled its shoulders, and carefully twisted and teased outwards, lengthening out limbs, flexing new fingers and toes.
She paused to look down and wiggle her toes.
Legs! We have legs!
The child was delighted, and giggled. She really liked having legs.
Skin , thought the beam, stretching into the body of the man, giving him power.
The woman blinked. Why?
To protect.
The woman, born of space, looked down at her hands, puzzled. Impenetrable purple light glowed back at her.
Against what?
Don’t know.
She shrugged. It didn't seem important. But a star rolled by, and she took the boiling white light as her hair, flowing all about her.
She existed, and so looked around her. All about was luxurious blackness, with a million, million specks of light she did not understand, all colours of the rainbow. And that rainbow was beautiful, for now she could see the whole spectrum of light, and X-rays danced between the stars in front of her. It was the universe, and it was hers to explore.
Her blue heart glowed. Where are you?
Here.
The Daughter of Space felt the pull; that way. Back to Earth.
I’m coming.
She headed back, for Peter.
FIN