The Fourth Dimension

“Dr. Midas!  Dr. Midas, wait!”
         Dr. Midas quickened his step with a sigh.  The faster he walked, the more insistent the voice following him became.  He came to a padlocked door, and quickly punched in the 9 number code.  The doors separated with a hiss, admitting him and slapping closed again.  The doctor found himself on a long metal catwalk, with thin wire railings separating him from a perilous fall into the work zone below.  He stopped, grasped railings and looked about, just as the doors hissed open again, followed by a slap and footstep pounding quickly on the catwalk.  Dr. Midas turned to his follower.  “What is it this time, Dr. Crainer?”          
         Dr. Crainer was younger than Dr. Midas, a man well into him middle ages, with thick glasses and a stern glare.  Dr. Crainer cleared his throat, “I have the answer sir, this is a set of calculations to create a low gravity environment to train the astronauts, without all the hassle, you know, and I think that this time it will work, I checked everything very carefully, please take a look.” Now breathless, Dr. Crainer presented a stack of papers, neatly stapled in the left hand corner, complying with every regulation there was.  Dr. Crainer, apparently, was taking no chances this time. 
         Dr. Midas sighed.  “Crainer, you have a very brilliant young mind, but you are very careless.  You do not catch many of your mistakes, and” he added delicately, “ I am not able to.” Dr. Crainer stared at him.
         “But sir, you are a Class 17, how could you not catch my mistakes?  There is no one on this planet who is a higher Class than you.”
         “That, young sir, is where you are wrong.  Perhaps I should have told you this earlier, Doctor, perhaps it would have limited our amount of… catastrophes.”  The two men began to walk out to the middle of the catwalk, the best viewing point of the many tests taking place below.  “You do know that there once was a man who was a Class 18, I presume?”
         “Well, of course sir, Christopher Depp, he created this.”  Dr. Crainer waved a hand at the many bubbles, each 12 feet in diameter, suspended by lasers.  Each bubble had a separately controlled gravity.  The problem was, they were always at 60 Gravity.  No one knew how to lower it, to provide the astronauts with adequate training.  “But sir,” Dr. Crainer had returned to his earlier mission, “ I think I can do it this time, I’m sure of it.”
         “Dr. Crainer, please cooperate with me, just this once.”  Dr. Crainer nodded, not that he would have done anything else under Dr. Midas’s glare.  “Please tell me all you know about the Class system.”  Dr. Crainer stared, a somewhat insulted look in his eyes.
         “The Class a person is refers to the percentage of their brain they use.  That’s how people these days are classified.  A person Class 5 and under is considered mentally disabled, between Class 5 and Class 11 is where most people fall, and they can find average work, and be taught in the public school systems.  If they are above Class 12, they come to NASA, because of the recent advances into space, and extra terrestrial habitats.  A person Class 12 through Class 14 becomes an astronaut, and a person Class 15 or Class 16 becomes a scientist, mostly physicists.  Why is this relevant, I mean, you know the Class system, and you know I know it.”  Dr. Crainer sounded annoyed. 
         “Dr. Crainer, every person who enters NASA is tested for their class and brain wave patterns, though we do not release the information.  You must also be aware that only 18% of a human brain can be involved in conscious thinking.  So naturally, no one has ever been more than a Class 18, and that has only happened once.”
         “Yes, and can you please tell me why any of this is relevant?”
         “I can.  But you do not have to believe me.”  Dr. Midas removed his glasses and surveyed the young, brilliant, and currently confused mind in front of him.  “Dr. Crainer, you are very unusual.  You have changed everything we know about the mind… you are a Class 19.” 
         Dr. Crainer stared.  This was no joke, this was serious.  “But sir,” he said slowly, “where does that other percent, outside of the 18, come from?”
         “The subconscious, which is why that I can’t catch your mistakes, and neither can you, you don’t even really know what you are doing.  You can see physics to levels that the rest of us cannot. Now please enlighten me, what is all this, and how does it work?”
         Dr. Crainer looked confused for a moment, and then his face brightened considerably. “Well, I was thinking that we could suspend a bubble, using electrodes, rather than lasers, and use more electrodes to attempt to influence the gravity within the bubble.  I know it doesn’t seem to make much sense, but if you’ll look at my calculations I think you’ll understand. If the bubble finds itself suspended in an environment in which is should be grounded, a 60 G, it may think that it is in a less Gravatized area, perhaps a 30 G.  It would be a form of fooling the bubble into changing its own gravity to cope with what it thinks its surroundings are.”
         “It sounds brilliant, of course, but may I remind you, these are rules.  Laws.  Laws of Physics.  Laws of nature cannot be ‘tricked’ or ‘fooled’ as you are proposing.”
         “Sir, I was using ‘fooled’ in lack of a better word to describe my idea.  Seriously, I think it could work.”
         Dr. Midas sighed.  “If you say so.  I’ll give you the grant.  What do you need?”
         “Not much.  Only one bubble, but it needs to be inside an observation room.  I’ll need electrode probes, and of course, a Gravity counter.  Digital.”
         “Why digital?” Dr. Midas looked skeptical. “ You aren’t expecting to go below Zero Gravity are you? It doesn’t even exist for all we know.  It’s just there because there is no physics law that allows Gravity to go so low.” Dr. Crainer remained determined, a glint in his eye.  “Very well.  You aren’t asking too much.”
         “Thank you Dr. Midas!  You won’t be sorry!  This will be worth it, I promise!” Dr. Cranier raced off along the catwalk towards the door.
         “Dr. Crainer!”  The man in question froze in his tracks, then slowly turned to face Dr. Midas.
         “Yes sir?”
         “Please don’t blow anything up.”  A broad grin split across the young physicists face.  He raced off without a response, through the hissing doors and out into the corridor beyond.  Dr. Midas looked out at the work zone below, many physicists and astronauts walking between and below bubbles, fighting 60 Gravity.  Perhaps they were going to win.  Perhaps they would finally control the last thing that held them back when it came to space, training, everything.  Perhaps. 

*~*~*~*

         “Everything is ready?” Dr. Midas was tense.  Of course, he could not review this proposal, find possible mistakes, errors.  One mistake could mean disaster, the subconscious mind was unpredictable, and no one knew anything about it.  Dr. Crainer was a strange mix of colors.  He looked almost like an artist had done a job on him, most of his face was nearly as white as his lab coat, yet his cheeks were bright red in anticipation. He nodded to the head of NASA.  “Then you may proceed.”  As Dr. Crainer began replace the lasers with electrodes, Dr. Midas grew fidgety, he needed something to do.  Idly, he glanced at his watch.  1200 June 10, 2763.  It was noon.  At least they were running right on schedule.
         “Beginning experimentation.” Dr. Crainer stated. “I have replaced all the lasers with electrodes, and will now proceed to add electrodes to attempt a lower Gravity.”  The blue lights on the control board lit up one by one, as Dr. Crainer pressed their complimentary buttons.  Finally, the control board was glowing faintly blue, the last electrode was in place.  Both men held their breath, and waited, watching the Gravity counter and the bubble simultaneously.  The digital Gravity counter remained stubbornly at standard Gravity, 60 G.  And then it changed.  The counter slowly began to count down from 60.  Dr. Midas was amazed.  It had worked.
         “Congratulations, Dr. Crainer, you have solved our problem.”  Dr. Crainer, however, did not look as confident.  “What is it?”
         “I made a mistake.”  The red was gone from his face.  “I do not know how far it will go, nor how to stop it.”
         “Well, it will just stop at Zero Gravity if it gets there.”
         “I wouldn’t be so sure.”  Dr. Crainer looked pale.  “There’s nothing to stop it from just dropping.”
         Dead silence as the Gravity counter slowly passed 40.  “What if you stop the electrodes?” Dr. Midas asked hopefully.
         Dr. Crainer shook his head.  “It’s no good.  The electrodes were just the instigator.  The key in the ignition.  It can’t be stopped.” Dr. Midas bit his lip as he looked at the younger man, in shock with realization.  It was odd moments, when Dr. Crainer seemed to be talking about something that he couldn’t actually know.  The counter had reached 35, and was now moving a little faster.  His brain wave patterns were strange, Dr. Midas thought, his mind racing.  The extra percent… it was single spot, in between the two lobes of the brain, but it sent out probes over the entire subconscious section.  The counter raced passed 30…25…20…15…10.  It was slowing down.  Maybe, Dr. Midas thought, just maybe it will stop, stop at Zero Gravity.  Both men held their breath as it hit one, then slowly, changed to 0.  Fingers crossed….  And it ticked passed,  -1,-2,… it was picking up speed now.  Both men wore identical masks of horror, as the counter speed into more negative numbers, and the bubble started to froth.  The surface rippled like boiling water.  They had no idea what was coming.  The rippling became more violent as the counter sailed passed -20. Suddenly, the bubble exploded. 
         The negative Gravity had a strange affect, instead of being blasted outward, everything was being drawn into the bubble.  Dr. Crainer ducked under the counter, safe from the glass of the observation window, which was sucked from its frame.  “Dr. Midas!  Dr. Midas, down here!”
But Dr. Midas couldn’t hear him over the rushing air and objects to the center of what used to be the bubble.  Dr. Midas felt himself being lifted up off the ground.  He grabbed at the end of the control board, as his shoes were sucked off his feet.  His grip was slipping, and his fingers were dislocating, one by one.  Preferring to stay in one piece and perhaps survive than to have his fingers ripped off, Dr. Midas let go of the control board.  He was in the center of the negative Gravity, it was painful, he couldn’t see, he wanted it to end, his limbs were not where they should be, everything was distorted.  Suddenly, it stopped.          

*~*~*~*

         Dr. Midas was lying in the middle of a field.  “Good God.” He said, looking around.  It had seemed that everything from the room had landed with him.  The glass from the window covered him like a blanket.  An idea struck him, and sure enough, Dr. Crainer’s papers were lying several feet away.  Dr. Midas stood up, and flecks of glass cascaded to his feet, a painful reminder that he needed to find his shoes.  Once found, he met another painful reminder in attempting to lace them up; seven of his fingers were dislocated.  Now in a severely bad mood, he picked up the papers, and began to look for some clue of what had happened, and most importantly where he was.
         “Sir, are you lost?”  Dr. Midas spun around to see a man, approximately  the same age as himself.  “I’m Dr. Crainer,” the man said extending his hand.
         “Michael Crainer?”  Dr. Midas asked hopefully.
         Perplexed, the other Doctor shook his head, “No, Matthew Crainer.  But perhaps I’m related to a Michael Crainer.” He said brightly. 
         Dr. Midas frowned at the offered hand.  “Could you get me to a hospital,  I believe most of my fingers are dislocated.” He showed Dr. Crainer his hands with a sigh, realizing his beautiful watch had been destroyed in the explosion.  “What time is it, by the way?”
         “1210, June 10.”
         Dr. Midas’s eyes widened. “Where is this?”
         “Shertonville, Florida.  Are you lost?” The man repeated.
         “Shouldn’t there…be a NASA building here?”
         “No, that’s over there.  It used to be here, but some time ago there was a Gravity disturbance, so all the experiments went haywire.  NASA was forced to move.”
         “Tell me, what year is it?” Dr. Midas could see now what was going on, but it was impossible, it couldn’t be, it was against the laws of physics.
         “3063.” Dr. Crainer responded promptly, a puzzled look in his eyes. “Are you alright, sir?”
         “Just get me to a hospital.  If you don’t mind my asking, what Class are you?” Dr. Midas knew that it was possible that things had changed in 300 years, but it was worth a shot, anything was.
         “Class 17.  That’s and odd question.  Why do you ask?”
         “I’m a Class 17 also, Dr. Midas, by the way, and it is imperative that I see someone at least Class 19.”
         Dr. Crainer’s eyebrows reached towards his receding hairline.  “At least Class 19?  Well, the only person we have above Class 18 is a Class 25.  It’s very strange, I know.  My niece in fact.  Anyway, we’ll take care of those fingers first, then you may see her.”  Dr. Midas nodded.  Class 25, she would definitely know what’s going on, but 25% of the brain? He thought, I wonder what those brainwaves look like.  And 300 years?  What on earth was he doing in the exact same location, 300 years later?  It seemed as if, finally, the 4th Dimension had been discovered.

*~*~*~*

         Dr. Crainer rapped on the door as Dr. Midas shifted nervously from foot to foot, the other Dr. Crainer’s papers clasped between his bandaged fingers.  The door slid open silently, revealing a pale blue room. “This way.”  Dr. Crainer beckoned towards an open door at the far end of the room.  Dr. Midas could see that the walls of the second room were completely covered in papers, tacked up hastily by a person in a rush.  Dr. Crainer called out, “Sophie?  You have a visitor.”
         “Come in.” responded a young, frail sounding voice.  Dr. Midas wished he had an extra set of eyes.  It was unbelievable, the papers on the wall consisted of almost every physics law possible, only they had been changed.  Some equations he had never seen before.  He had been so busy marveling at her work, that he had failed to look at the person who had done it all.  “May I help you?”
         Dr. Midas stared.  It was a girl, no older than 14 by her looks.  “Uh, yes,” he stammered.  “I would like you to take a look at this proposal here, and tell me what you think of it.”  Sophie the girl nodded. 
         After a few moments of silence, she looked up from the paper.  “Very interesting.  It’s brilliant, and it would work in lowering Gravity, but it has several flaws.  In fact, these flaws could cause devastation—as you apparently witnessed.” 
         “What happened?  Could you tell me why I am 300 years in the future?”
         Dr. Crainer’s mouth dropped open. “Future?  This isn’t the future, this is the present.”
         “No uncle, this is our present, but it is also Dr. Midas’s future.  You have discovered the Forth Dimension.  Who did this work?”
         “Dr. Michael Crainer, an ancestor of yours, I would guess.”  Dr. Midas had found his answer.  “But how?”
         “The negative Gravity was more than the bubble could take.  When the… I would think –30 Gravity, if the outside room was standard, collided with the 60 Gravity, it created a violent time vacuum, which sustained for 300 years.  So you have been inside of a time vacuum for 300 years.”
         “That’s impossible, I was only inside of it for a few moments, and look, I’m no older than when I entered it.” Dr. Midas was confused, something that he rarely experienced.
         “You were inside of a time vacuum, meaning that there was no time.  So when you immerged after it had ended, no time had passed because there wasn’t any.”  Confusion gone, Dr. Midas was completely bewildered.
         “I suppose I’ll just have to take your word for it.”
         “You will,” Sophie responded with a smile, “Because I am the only person who can devise a way to send you home.  Assuming you want to go home.”
         “Of course!  So I can give that ancestor of yours a good kick.”  Dr. Midas responded.
         Sophie grinned. “I’ll bet he deserved it.” Dr. Midas frowned, realizing that she had spoken in the past tense.  It was true, he had already given Dr. Crainer a good kick upon his return 300 years ago, provided that he had returned.  This was all very confusing.  “Now we need to work out how to return you to your own time.”
         “Shouldn’t that be easy?” Dr. Crainer asked.  “We’ll just drop to –30 Gravity and the burst the bubble allowing him to be drawn into the vacuum.”
         “It’s not that easy.  If we did that, he’d end up another 300 years in the future.”
         “Then how do we reverse it?” Dr. Midas was worried.  He didn’t think that appearing 600 years ahead of his own time would be a push in the right direction to solving this mess.
         “I have no idea.” Sophie responded with a frown.  “As far as we know, time doesn’t go backwards.”
         
*~*~*~*

         Sophie rarely left her room.  Most of the physics equations had been replaced with information about the Forth Dimension, and any physics or gravity laws that were even semi-relevant.  The days crawled by, and it appeared that she made no progress.  Dr. Midas was worried.  Would he ever make it home?
         “Dr. Midas, Dr. Crainer, I have made several advances, and I believe we have a plan.”  It had been three days since Dr. Midas’s arrival.  “I have checked it out, and the time and gravity vacuum is still there, though it is loosing its strength, and will soon be gone.  That’s why it dropped everything in it, because it could no longer sustain it.  My idea is that since there is no time inside of the vacuum, it should be possible for something or someone inside of the vacuum to exit it and enter into any time during which the vacuum has existed.  With this plan, we have three problems:  How do we get the vacuum to be able to hold Dr. Midas on his return trip, how do we get Dr. Midas back into the vacuum, and how will Dr. Midas know where, or I should say when, to exit the vacuum and how should he do that.
         “I believe I have an answer to our first problem.  Since the vacuum was created by a stimulation from electrodes, I think that we will be able to increase the ability of the vacuum using electrodes.  The other problems will take more thought and calculations.”  Sophie looked at the two men.  “Any questions thus far?”
         “You said that the vacuum is loosing strength.  How long do we have until it disappears?”  Dr. Midas asked curiously.
         “Approximately 43 hours.”
         “43 hours?  How are we going to finish forming a plan and carry it out in 43 hours?”  Dr. Crainer looked disturbed.
         “Work quickly.”  Sophie told him. “It’s the only way, as far as I can see.”
         The doctors exchanged a glance.  It seemed nearly impossible.  For all they knew, it could be.

*~*~*~*

         Dr. Midas, Dr. Crainer and Sophie were sitting in the middle of the field, discussing their plan.  “I think we can manage it.”  Sophie said for at least the 10th time in an hour. “Look, just go set up these electrodes, and I’ll work on the problem.”
         In the last three precious hours, they had gotten almost no where.  Sophie had located the exact spot at which the vacuum had been initiated, and now had the two older men preparing for what they knew so far.  “You’ll want to use a laser pointer to set up.  We can afford no mistakes.”
         “I can’t believe I’m taking instructions from a 14 year old girl.”  Dr. Midas mumbled to himself, shifting the pile of electrode sensors onto the ground.  They had so far to go… he began to wonder if he would ever make it home.
         “Careful, those measurements need to be exact!” Sophie called from her spot on the ground.  Apparently she could check their work while immersed in her calculations. 
“And when you’re finished come in here and I’ll show you what we have to do.”  Had she solved it already?  Dr. Midas stared in disbelief.  That’s not possible, even for her.  “Alright here we go.  We need to use the electrodes to drop the negative Gravity below –30 so that the vacuum will rip open.  How I think it works, is that the negative Gravity has been slowly moving back to Zero Gravity for 300 years, and each measurement of Gravity corresponds to the time period out side of the vacuum at which the vacuum had that Gravity.  Dr. Midas needs to enter the vacuum, which will be done when it rips open, at a lower Gravity, wait until it is at exactly –30 Gravity, and then get out, and he will have exited at the exact moment that the vacuum had sealed itself, properly in his own time.” She looked at them. “Did you get all that?”
         “No, but we can pretend that we did.” Dr. Crainer told her flatly.
         “Works for me.  That means that we only have one problem left.  How does Dr. Midas exit the vacuum?”
         “Can’t I just lower the Gravity to the point where it drops me?”
         “No, or you would end up exactly were it dropped you the first time.  I already told you, the Gravity inside of the vacuum corresponds to the time period outside.”
         “Riiiiiight.  Well, I sure hope you figure it out, because we have 40 hours until the vacuum reaches Zero Gravity.”
         “And for the next 8 I suggest you get some sleep.”

*~*~*~*

         Fingers of light spreading across his face woke Dr. Midas from a fitful sleep.  With a sigh and the feeling of a great weight on his chest, the doctor slid quietly off the bed and reached for his shoes.  As bandaged fingers clumsily tied his shoelaces, a glint of sunlight caught Dr. Midas’s eye.  He was still wearing his broken watch.  With a frown, he began to wrestle the watch off his wrist.
         “Don’t throw that away, we’re going to need that.” Sophie stood framed in the doorway, her uncle just behind her. 
         “What for?  It doesn’t work.” Dr. Midas said gumpily.
         Sophie grinned. “It may not tell time, but there’s no time to tell where you’re going.  We’re going to use it for this.”  She dangled what looked like a mechanical spider with too many legs in one hand.  “It’s a mass reducer.”
         “Mass reducer?  You can’t reduce my mass, that’s impossible.” Dr. Midas protested.
         “It doesn’t reduce your mass, it reduces your weight.”
         “But—“
         “I’m telling you what its name is, I never said that it was correctly named.  Now what it does, or at least this little beauty here,” she indicated a small black chip in the spider’s body, “it exerts a force on your body to counter gravity, thus making your weight smaller.”
         “What does that have to do with the time vacuum?” Dr. Midas was cross, the weight on his chest settling throughout the rest of his body.
         “I’m getting there.  The vacuum dropped you because it could no longer support your weight.  So with this, we are going to increase your weight and force the vacuum to drop you at –30 Gravity.  Considering the way you described the vacuum, you probably won’t be able to manipulate it yourself, so I’m going to set a timer, for lack of better words, that will activate the mass reducer at exactly –30 Gravity.  It will be like you never left.  Got it?”
         Dr. Midas blinked and looked at Dr. Crainer.  Dr. Crainer shrugged, apparently equally perplexed.  “How does it increase my weight if it’s a mass reducer?”
         “The Gravity was negative, so your weight was negative.  When the reducer counters the gravity force to reduce your weight, it will actually be raising your weight against the negative Gravity that is causing your weight in the first place.”
         “If you say so,” Dr. Midas said.
         “And if you haven’t guessed, we’ll be implanting the chip inside your watch.”
         “And by that,” Dr. Crainer clarified, “you mean you will be implanting the chip in his watch.”  Sophie rolled her eyes at her uncle.  Genius though she was, she was still a teenage girl.

*~*~*~*

         “Are you ready?” Sophie asked Dr. Midas, who was standing in the middle of the field with bits of glass and other debris from the observation room pilled at his feet.  The bandages had been removed from his fingers, and his shoes lay on top of a particularly large pile of glass.
         “I suppose so.  There’s nothing to loose, is there?”  Dr. Midas shivered as he and Dr. Crainer watched Sophie’s eyebrows reach towards her hairline.  “On second though don’t answer that.”
         “Alright then, we’re going on one.”  Sophie positioned herself behind the control board, next to Dr. Crainer.  “Electrodes?” Dr. Crainer began pushing buttons.  Checking that the watch was correctly secured to his wrist, Dr. Midas felt his throat clenching tightly from nerves.  “Three…”  the control board was faintly blue, “two…” the air around Dr. Midas and his debris started to froth, rippling and tossing off light from its folds, “one…” the vacuum ripped open.  Dr. Midas raised his hand to wave good-bye to Sophie and Dr. Crainer, but half way through the motion, they dissolved from his view.  He had the simultaneous feelings of his body being blown apart and of it being drawn into his center, the pain was indescribable. Just as soon as he registered a sort of floating sensation, it ended.
         
*~*~*~*

         “Dr. Midas!  Dr. Midas, are you alright?”  called a voice. The ancestor of Sophie was scrambling across broken glass towards him. 
         Dr. Midas groggily opened his eyes.  The glaring white expanse of the observation room ceiling was replaced by the concerned face of Dr. Crainer.  “The bubble exploded!  Or imploded really, I was so scared.  It happened just now.  Did you see it or were sucked in before you had the chance? And see, I didn’t blow anything up. Are you all right?”
Sophie is a miracle worker, thought Dr. Midas.  And now for that kick he deserves.  Too weak to kick, Dr. Midas sat up and glared at Dr. Crainer over his glasses.  “Dr. Crainer, you are going to buy me a new watch.”