Tale from Pentapia, Chapter One

Tale from Pentapia
An Alternative Childhood

J. E. McCarty

Chapter One
The Touch

         Julie bends down to pick up some knick-knacks that have been knocked off onto the floor and hears the familiar sound of two playful children getting closer. As they come into the room, they are too busy running to notice the upright line glowing softly in a corner.

         In a blink, she appears there. “Haven’t I told you not to run in the house?”

         The children shriek. One of them cries out, “Mom, you scared us!”

         “Well, I am scared you are going to break something again. There is lots of room outside of the house. It is cold only in the Kappa plane today.”

         “Okay, Mom,” her son Danny responds.

         Julie adds, “And, if you go into Kappa, bring something for energy. I don’t want to see you two come back looking gray.”

         Danny answers, “Yes, Mom.”

         The boys run to the energy preparation area, while their mother puts on a shimmering pair of gloves and picks up the other objects.

         As they leave the house, one of them, the younger and more dominate of the two, has a small shimmering bag tied onto him.

         Outside is a cloudless, sparkling green sky contrasting with a faintly glittering dark terrain. The objects, plants, and animals have many colors. Some of what they can see appears solid, while many things are either flat images or lines, including some of the life forms in the air.

         The younger boy with the bag starts running, the other doing his best to keep up with his quicker brother. As he is about to catch him, his brother suddenly becomes a flat image, with the bag continuing down the path around the image. Just as he reaches him, the bag drops and he grabs at seemingly nothing. He picks up the bag and pops into his brother’s dimensional plane, calling out to his younger brother, “You lost the bag, Danny.”

         “No, George, I did it on purpose to slow you down.”

         George responds, “Here, Danny, you take back the bag.”

         His brother Danny takes off, leaving George with the bag. With the bag now in hand, George follows him. As Danny goes down a slope, he again changes planes, appearing as a vertical line going down the hill.

         George does not see his brother as he starts down the hill. When he spots his one perceivable dimension, he begins to catch up. As he draws near, he knows which is Danny’s plane.

         When George goes to his plane, it is windy, and the sky is cloudy. He finds Danny standing at the bottom of the hill.

         Danny says, “George, Mom was correct. It is cold here. I don’t think I put enough in the bag for this.”

         “Beta is nice and warm. Let’s go back there, Danny.”

         “Okay.”

         They switch to Beta plane, and notice a girl just starting down the hill.

         Danny remarks, “George, it’s Angela.”

         “Yes, I can see.”

         Danny (whispering) asks George, “Do you think she likes you?”

         “Don’t ask stupid questions, Danny.”

         She comes closer, smiling.

         Danny comments, “You seem to like talking to her, George.”

         “She is a smart girl.”

         Angela greets them, “Hi, George, Danny.” (Danny nudges George in the side.) “Fancy meeting you boys here.”

         Danny remarks, “Yes, it is fancy, Angela.”

         George nudges Danny in the side for his comment.

         Angela smiles a bit, and asks, “Oh, what do you think, George?”

         “Yes, it is fancy meeting you, Angela.”

         “Thank you, boys. I had a very interesting day. I stayed after school to hear Elder William give a science lecture. I was just thinking that you guys would like to hear about what he had to say.”

         The boys look at each other briefly.

         George replies, “What kind of science did Elder William talk about?”

         “He was talking about how the scientists think our universe was born. It was some really deep stuff.”

         “I think that sounds interesting. What do you think, Danny?” (as he nudges Danny again in the side)

         “Sure, that sounds interesting.”

         They sit on the ground next to something that looks like a log. Angela takes some papers out of her bag.

         Angela continues, “Some of Elder William’s words are hard to say, so I picked up some stuff he had printed. He said, ‘At first, what the Creator made all had five dimensions. It was half regular matter and half anti-matter. The two mixed and made an unimaginably great explosion. Then, about all that was left was pure energy, spreading out very fast. In the explosion, about half of the pieces of energy were stripped of two of their dimensions and became stuck in the ten three-dimensional planes.

         “‘After a very long time, the five-dimensional and the three-dimensional energy had spread out so far that they became very cold. Most of the energy began to start turning back into matter and started shrinking back. Three-dimensional and five-dimensional matter began falling together.’ (She puts on a pair of shimmering gloves from her bag.)

         “‘This made more very big explosions. In these explosions, the three-dimensional Tridimental matter…’” (she picks up some of the glittering soil) “‘was slamming very hard into the five-dimensional Pentadimental matter…’” (she points out the hard ground underneath the topsoil) “‘creating more Tridimental matter and turning some of it into three-dimensional Trans-tridimental matter that would jump from one three-dimensional plane to another. None of the Trans-tridimental matter ever truly became solid.

         “‘When living things started to form, they did not seem to work well with Pentadimental matter. So, most living things formed from Tridimental matter and stayed in one plane, while a few forms of life formed from Trans-tridimental matter, including us. Most of the other Trans-tridimental forms have disappeared. We have not.’”

         “That is deep, Angela! How did you understand all that?” George asks.

         “I don’t know, George, I just do.”

         Danny interrupts. “Can you explain how these gloves work, Angela?”

         “Nobody asked you, Danny,” George responds.

         Angela responds with, “That’s okay, George. Digitation gloves are the first polydimental machine, Danny. We cannot individually be in more than one plane at a time. So, in the beginning, it took groups of us to do many things. The soil here is probably made of stuff in all ten planes. Pentadimental objects are hard to move, or do much of anything with from just one plane. These gloves and our bags are made from a mixture of strands of matter in all ten planes, and some Pentadimental strands.

         “That is why these gloves can be used to pick up and manipulate just about anything, whichever plane you are in. And, that is why our bags can hold anything, and stay with us when we change planes.

         “You have also surely seen many tools and machines made in a similar way used to do all kinds of work. They are made mostly of pieces, instead of just strands.”

         Danny remarks, “Yes, I have seen some of those things. Also, they put up a big decoration at school. In Delta plane, it’s like a ladder. The staff at school gets all stressed out trying to keep us from climbing it.”

         “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me, Danny,” Angela replies.

         George comments, “You spend a lot of time with the elders, Angela. That is probably how you got to be so smart.”

         “That could be, I guess, George. The elders have raised me. My birth parents were only about twenty years of age when I was born. People that young have a lot of living to do; they often are not experienced enough to raise children…well, some of them can. But, I do see my birth parents a lot. They are nice. What is your mother’s age?”

         “Mom is ancient,” Danny interjects.

         George states, “Angela is asking me, Danny… I think she is about nine hundred years of age. Our father is about the same age, give or take twenty or thirty years.”

         “They are almost experienced enough to be elders. What is it like being raised by your birth parents?” asks Angela.

         “I’m not sure how to answer that. I have talked with many kids that are being raised by the elders. All I can say is, it is our mother and our father that are around for us a lot more than other adults are. For kids like you, it is the other way around. Besides that, I don’t know what the difference is, except with kids being raised by young parents, they seem to act a bit lost or confused about themselves.”

         “I have noticed that too, George.”

         “Angela, I have another question,” Danny says.

         “Okay, Danny, what is your question?”

         “Why is it that most brothers and sisters are in twos, and their older brothers and sisters are a lot older than they?”

         “You do ask good questions sometimes, Danny. People have been doing that for a long time. What I have heard is that we are afraid of using up too much of our Trans-tridimental matter too quickly, and there might not be any more children. So, after a woman has her first two children, she waits sixty years or more to have two more. They have two children about the same age so they each have a brother or sister near their age.”

         “How long can mothers do that?”

         “I don’t know. The elders have children, but they often go longer times between having them. I have met elders who are tens of thousands of years of age.”

         “Do people ever go away?”

         “Sometimes. I heard of someone who saw an elder who was looking as if saying ‘goodbye,’ and then just sort of came apart. And, once in a while something happens to someone, or just runs out of energy for some reason, and it does something like that.”

         “Have you ever seen a girl have a baby?”

         George seems a little annoyed. “You ask a lot of questions, Danny.”

         Angela remarks, “Yes, that he does, George. I can answer that. But, why don’t we take an energy break first.”

         The three of them agree to the break. They open their bags and put on digitation gloves.

         Angela pulls a shimmering cloth out of her bag to place on the ground. She says, “This should be nicer.”

         Danny responds, “It’s like a girl to make it like a picnic.”

         “Yes, it is, Danny.”

         They begin taking a variety of energy sources in Beta plane out of their bags and placing them on the cloth.

         Angela remarks, “You guys brought more than I did.”

         “We were warned by our mother that it is cold in Kappa. I made sure we were ready for all planes. But, it was too cold for us to stay there very long,” George explains.

         “That’s good to know. Thanks, George. Remind me to tell you sometime why the weather is so changeable in Kappa plane.”

         Danny has already picked up something from the cloth. As he holds it up to his mouth, it crumbles into dust (his lips glow slightly) and he tosses the dust into the air.

         Angela remarks, “Danny, is that good manners?”

         “What?”

         “Tossing your table dust into the air is what.”

         “We’re outside…girls…”

         George remarks, “Danny, it would be a smart thing to do, to practice manners whenever you consume energy with other people. Would you please use the dust bowl?”

         “Okay, George, but you’re beginning to sound like Mom.”

         Angela and George look at each other with a little smile. They make their own selections from the cloth and quietly watch Danny as they consume their energy. They slow down after about ten minutes.

         George asks Angela, “Do you feel better now, Angela?”

         “Yes, thank you for asking, George. Your brother seems to be slowing down as well. How are you doing, Danny?”

         “I think I’m good. If I take much more energy, I might start to spark.”

         “Good! Now, can you please help pick everything up?”

         “Now, you are starting to sound like my mother.”

         Once everything was neatly put away, Danny speaks up. “Are you now ready to answer my question, Angela?”

         “Sure, Danny. First, I would be called a girl, but when a woman has a baby, she is too old to be called a girl anymore.

         “A while back, a lady at my home had a baby. It isn’t hard to tell when a woman is going to have a baby soon. If you don’t know how to tell, you will soon know. She was just standing there; she looked down at her center and said, ‘It’s time!’ A couple of other adults came to her and put a cloth down on the floor if front of her. They gently helped her down to her knees and told the children to stand back and give her some space.

         “After a few minutes she looked odd; she was glowing and her upper body was expanding. She put her arms out in front of her and leaned forward. A few moments later, she rose back up with a little person in her arms. Then, the other adults quietly helped her back up and took her to another room.”

         “That sounds strange. How did the baby come out?”

         “I know a little about that, Danny, but if you really wish to know, you should ask your teachers or your mother to explain it,” she answers.

         Danny then asks Angela, “Why do ladies have babies?”

         “That is another question you should ask your mother or your teachers. But, there is always a man who is the baby’s father. Have I answered your question, Danny?”

         “Yea, I think so.”

         George remarks, “You do seem to know a lot for a girl your age, Angela.”

         “That is just how I am. Does that scare you, George?”

         “No, I don’t think it scares me. I guess I’m still getting used to how smart you are.”

         “Well, thank you, George. I like the sound of that. But, I hope I didn’t say anything you didn’t understand.”

         “I think I understood what you said okay, but I don’t know a lot about girls.”

         Danny begins to roll his eyes.

         Angela says, “That is usual for boys. And, girls don’t always understand boys either. Maybe we can learn from each other, George.”

         “Maybe, Angela, but, I do wish I knew why the older boys start acting so differently around girls.”

         “That may not be easily explained with words. Have you noticed boys and girls briefly touching, and they have an unusual reaction?”

         “Yes, sometimes I see that. It looks like they like it, and sometimes they seem to glow a little. But it looks a little strange to me.”

         “It seems strange because you don’t understand what is going on. They are letting a little bit of the outside of their bodies overlap for a moment. I understand from the older girls that it causes a pleasant reaction, even at our age. Why don’t you try it and see?” She holds her hand out to George.

         Danny is a little surprised and looks at the two of them.

         George asks, “Are you sure that would be okay?”

         “Yes, I’m sure. It is harmless. Just try it with one finger. Let the tip of my finger be in the tip of your finger just for a moment.”

         After a short hesitation, he slowly reaches out to Angela. At the full extension of their arms, their fingers do not quite touch. Their fingers begin to stretch until they touch. A couple of seconds later, there is what seems to be a brief, small flash. Their fingers part. George looks more surprised than Angela of the response.

         Danny has on a digitation glove, drawing in the dirt.

         Angela asks, “What did you think of that, George?” (smiling)

         “It was very interesting! Have you tried that before, Angela?”

         “No, that was the first time. And, I agree, it was very interesting!”

         George begins to smile a bit. Danny is becoming fidgety. “Now you two are getting weird. Can we go home now, George?”

         “You are asking me if we can go home, Danny?”

         “You are older.”

         Angela remarks, “I think it’s been a long afternoon for Danny too, George.”

         “I guess it has. If Angela is ready to go, I am too, Danny.”

         “She seems really important to you, George,” says Danny.

         “Is anything wrong with that, Danny?”

         “I don’t know.”

         Angela says, “I am ready to go, boys. Can we talk tomorrow, George?”

         “Oh sure, Angela.”

         They pick up their bags and start back up the hill, with George walking in the middle. Danny looks up at Angela and his brother every few seconds to see what they are doing. After a few minutes, they reach the crossroad to go their separate ways.

         Angela states, “Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, George.”

         “Yes, I’ll see you tomorrow, Angela.”

         He reaches out to take her hand. Looking a little surprised, she extends her hand. A moment after their hands clasp there is a brighter flash than before, followed by a slight glow.

         Angela looks more surprised this time by the response. “That was very nice, but quite unexpected, George!”

         “I know…see you tomorrow.”

         “Sure, just take it a little slower.”

         “I will, I promise. Goodbye, Angela.”

         “Goodbye, George.”

         Danny is now looking worriedly at George. “George, you’re now starting to act funny with Angela. But, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

         George replies, “Wait a few years, Danny, and see how you act around girls.”

         “I don’t want to think about it.”

         About a minute later, they reach their house. It seems unusually quiet.

         George states, “Danny, we are in Beta plane, not Theta.”

         “Oh, yea.”

         They switch to Theta plane and begin to hear some activity inside. Upon entering the house, they find their mother in the energy preparation area.

         She sees them, pauses for a moment, and says, “Hello, boys. Did something unusual happen this afternoon?”

         Danny answers, “Did it ever! George and Angela got weird on me.”

         “Okay…do you mind if I talk to George alone, Danny?”

         “Sure, Mom, I’m going to play with my Geo-Builders.”

         George’s mother has an odd smile as they sit down at the table. “You’re still glowing a little, George. I guess you like Angela.”

         “She is a smart and interesting girl, Mom.”

         “How did the two of you get the idea to crossover touch?”

         “To what, Mom?”

         “That is what it is called when two people allow a little of each other to overlap…usually a male and a female.”

         “Oh, we were talking about a lot of things. It started with some science she heard at school. Danny had a bunch of questions. Just before we took an energy break, Danny asked if Angela had ever seen a lady have a baby. After our break, she answered his question, and, yes, she had.

         “Then, a little later, she asked if I had ever done…what you said. She said it wouldn’t hurt anything. The first time it was just the tip of a finger. We both thought it was interesting. Then, a little bit ago I took her hand. That was very interesting. I promised her I would take it slower. I hope that didn’t hurt anything, Mom, like she said.”

         “It didn’t hurt anything. Boys and girls who like each other often do that. But, I would keep your promise to take it slower, at least for the next few years. Stick with the tips of a few fingers for now; the reaction will get stronger. However, most have this experience for the first time a little later, and not in front of their little brother.”

         “Oh, I wasn’t thinking about Danny at the time. Sorry, Mom.”

         “That is not surprising. But don’t worry; he should be okay. I’ll have a talk with him and ease his mind. I am more concerned about your state of mind, George. These changes can be confusing for both boys and girls. We are a lot different from the single plane life forms. The male and female interactions are very different, including how we give birth and reproduce—that means make babies.

         “Let me or your father know when you are ready to have all that explained. You will probably be very surprised.”

         “I need to think about this, Mom.”