THE ORBLINGS

Tech support hacked manically away at their keyboards, jotting notes. Smiling and laughing with each other. We were all pretty young, just out of grad school. The kind of scientists who smoked grass and partied on the weekend.

When they’d finished sticking electrodes on me, I gave my thumbs up and said, “commencing dimensional shift.”

I placed the pipe between my lips and inhaled.

I sat for an indeterminate slice of infinity in attendance of divine congress.

It’s the colors I remember mostly, and the sense of wonder, but those two things seemed to melt together in a strange way. The colors were my sense of wonder. And the feeling that the big secret was always right around the corner, just out of the way, but perhaps reachable one day when the child-like gods stop playing with me and let me in the game.

Back in the lab, my support team were unhooking me from the machines.

“This is truly remarkable,” Jensen said, bewildered, “you went. You actually shifted. Earth’s first dimensional astronaut.”

“Not the first,” I corrected him, deep in thought, “the first documented.”

***

“Humans have been visiting this other dimension or dimensions for centuries now,” I read from my notes to the assembly, “via the hallucinogenic compound, DMT. This compound is produced naturally in the body and released in high doses during death. It is possible that when one undergoes the near-death experience, the DMT can actually shift a person’s consciousness into this other dimension, and there is life there. Other life with another kind of intelligence. These intelligences are playful and benign, seemingly helpful beings. Gifted children, beings of pure joy. In time, we will share knowledge in a free exchange of ideas. But, there can be no tricks. These beings may be benevolent in nature and very playful and they seem innocent, but there should be no attempt to deceive them. Remember these are extra dimensional intelligences, whose perceptions may be completely different from ours. There is evidence that these creatures, these machine elves, can see beyond our outer shell and into our innermost motivations.

“On my next interdimensional navigation, I will attempt to establish a permanent locus for the interaction of our separate realms. The trouble with this idea is the seemingly transient nature of timespace in this other dimension. What my team and I are hoping to accomplish is to give the self-transforming extradimensional beings a grid of coordinates that will help them locate our own origin point in timespace.”

The assembly was pleased with our findings and excited to hear more. I was excited to give them what they wanted.

***

“My best guess,” I said to Colvin, “is that our two dimensions are not so much separated by a single membrane, but are two similar membranes that rub up against one another, only slightly off centered. Like two sheets of transparent paper with the same drawing on it, off-set, each invisible to the other by normal human perception. The DMT allows our perceptions to shift over to the other dimension, with only minor almost imperceptible physical shifting.”

“And that’s what my research has proven,” Jensen said, “the minor physical shift.”

“Right,” I said, “that’s what we need you here for.”

“Yeah,” Colvin said, understanding washing over his features, “you want to ramp it up.”

“Ramp it up both ways,” I said, “we want to bring one of these beings to our world.”

Colvin thought about it for a long moment. Lines of concentration creased his forehead. “Okay,” he said, finally, “we can do it.”

***

Colvin’s telemetry cables were wired into my brain. Tech support giggled when my mouth retold long buried memories fired off at random as they found a stable neural connection.

“Okay White,” Colvin said to me, “you are now a satellite.”

This time, there was no pipe. Inhalation was a good way to get the DMT into the system quickly. Intravenous injection was a slower, less tangible experience. This time, they fired the DMT straight into my cerebellum.




Contact.


The bright long tunnel kaleidoscoped into a billion billion lights. I felt myself tethered to my body back in my home dimension, floating freely above and in a world beyond. The mercurial globes danced and smiled friendly curious smiles all around me. Their smiles were the dancing itself. They were helping me by dancing.


Something strange happened.



I danced with them and laughed by dancing, danced by laughing. The self transforming orblings came closer, closer.


Somehow they told me.



They knew. They knew by dancing with me what I was trying to tell them. Somehow they knew how to get to Earth. Somehow I knew they would have to go through me. Millennia of patience paid off. Their dancing was hunger. They were coming through me now, into the other world. Our world.


Their smiles told me.

Their smiles maybe not so friendly. The smiles became a physical thing. A mouth, and in that mouth, teeth.