The Breach: Finish the Story Week #32
The Breach
She found him hunched over the PC. His face was flushed, his eyes wide.
"I did it!"
Her heart sank. She was hoping he would fail. That was the only way to stop him.
"How far along did you get?"
"I broke the code. Arthur had everything locked up. He thinks, with that MIT degree, he can code rings around anyone. I showed him. Showed them all. Wait till they see!"
"But Brian, how far did you get?"
She was beginning to panic. He might actually try to breach the dimension. Maybe he could get through. Then what? It was envy that drove him, an obsession that had consumed their lives for months. After he stole the code from Arthur she knew she couldn't keep him safe. If she reported him, they'd lock him up in a black site facility. He'd never get out. And if she didn't report him....
"Brian, just hold on a minute. What is it you think is going to happen next?"
"Think?"
He jumped out of his chair and grabbed her shoulders.
"Think? Do I have to prove it to even you? You doubt me?"
She was afraid of him how. Not that he would physically hurt her. Probably not. But he would definitely hurt himself.
"Whatever it is you want to do, to breach this dimension, whatever that breach does to you, it will do to me. Because I'm not leaving. So when I ask what you think, I'm not doubting you. I want to know what will happen to us."
His fingers relaxed and he sat down.
"Pull up a chair. I know the fourth dimension will be breached. This is history. Right here, right now. Bigger than Einstein. Bigger than anything that ever came before."
Softly, she asked, "What if...we are somehow.....absorbed, obliterated? Will anyone ever know?"
"Nothing like that is going to happen, but I've left a trace, kind of like electronic breadcrumbs, that Arthur, with his clever MIT training, would be able to follow. They'll come after us, to learn what we've seen, what we discovered. If that happens, won't we have a story to tell?"
She was glad they decided not to have children. At least no one else would be hurt.
"Are you ready?" He was eager. His eyes shone. His knuckles were white. "I'm going to execute the command. And we'll see, together."
"Yes, together, Brian."
![4th dimension accent.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdaQPmjxr3ZDwcytLQn1DP6VuvyK3nuxtzuiJTjwop2aX/4th%20dimension%20accent.jpg)
She didn't have long to reflect upon their folly. Somehow the dimension opened and then folded back so that it wasn't separate but reached into their room and became a continuous landscape of bleak darkness. Of crimson sky and endlessly floating graphite. In front of them, the most ominous edifice. And all around, a wail that cut to her soul.
They were soon separated, because familiar laws of locomotion and distance did not operate anymore. Would she see Brian again?
They were lost.
What follows below is the story, written by f3nix, that gave rise to my dark fantasy. @f3nix put so many rich clues (some perhaps I saw but weren't even there), that I went in a peculiar direction. I wondered, how did this unnamed man find himself in such a desolate circumstance? The wondrous thing about creativity--it is unbounded and unpredictable.
This is episode #32 of Finish the Story, a creative exercise that can be found in the @bananafish realm. Every week a new story is begun, usually by @f3nix, but sometimes by guest authors. The challenge for participants in the contest is to pick up the wand and complete the scene already set. There are no rules, except for a suggested 500 word limit and that the new piece be connected thematically to the original.
This week, I turned the beginning into the end. I hope I haven't violated the spirit of the contest by turning it, in a way, inside out.
Awakenings
The hoverbike lay abandoned on its side, the engine still warm. The fine black dust carried by the incessant wind was a snake that crept in every small recess.
From the top of the dune the Tesseract 19 could be seen with the naked eye. The column pierced the black sea of graphite and challenged the dark crimson sky. The awareness of his distance made him wince. That construction was enormous. That impenetrable artifact, Moloch's sharpest tooth.
Intertwined with dust, the warm wind brought an imperceptible howl: the bark of the monolith, an omen of death.
The man waited, a stiff exoskeleton bent over the black sand. The helmet lay abandoned beside him. Soon the team would have arrived.
"Soon you will arrive too and everything will be accomplished, one way or another."
He thought of her smile, her courage, her strength. "My life, how could I've been so reckless to have you involved in all this?" The tears were already kneading blackened as the memories of their happy normality swept over him.
"I can not let them find me like this". He stared at himself from outside: another tower on a dune, far more uncertain than the one that howled his feral wish.
These and other demons echoed within the chambers of his soul, when his eyes met a green sprout. The man stared that little miracle that, against every odd, was striving to affirm its existence. In the midst of that sea of bottomless despair.
The tear finally found its way lingering and bathed a leaf. The man managed to pull himself together and, now smiling, he put on his helmet.
"This Moloch will tremble, time has come for an awakening."
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Thank you! Very much appreciated. Woke this morning to find your vote on my blog--nice way to start the day.
This is so effective, adding so much more meaning to his thoughts. The black sands being in another dimension works so well, the idea of them having been ripped in but separated along the way, beautifully emotive! Very nicely finished, well, completed ;)
Thank you so much. Funny thing about writing (and me)--once an idea gets in my head, that's the way I have to go. But I think in this creative environment, that's OK. Somebody throws out a notion and each of us brings to it unique experience and perspective. This one hit me right away. I'll have to start reading the other stories now...I've been busy writing. Your scary story is done. That was great fun. Just a little editing...
that is what i love about this contest!
And woooo yeah! scary <3
:) It's an upside down universe
I loved your characterization of the protagonists and I've to say that your writing a beginning was a stroke of genius. It worked well, convincing and natural. The Pandora's box effect was another plus: never be superb toward laws of nature.
Thank you! Couldn't get away from the Greeks when I wrote this. Thought about Icarus, hubris, Prometheus. About pride and envy. Of course, you started it all. Not my fault :)
Very interesting direction you took it. I thought at first that you were making f3nix's story a computer program to hide something that could/might be hacked by those who wish the character's harm or from friends. They the character were in some strange land ... at least they were together.
Because I know you like ideas, I will bore you with how I got this concept. When @f3nix introduced a tessseract, I took that as a clue, or at least permission to explore the fourth dimension. I did a little research and picked up on his first paragraph where he described the wind as a
Well, there I had it, a concept, sort of what it would be like to breach the fourth dimension. In this lecture the narrator describes the kind of shape we should visualize ourselves in as a "long undulating snake". We would have to reconceptualize shapes, directions, space. So that's why, when the dimension is breached it fills the room in which they live and stretches out formlessly. They are separated, because they cannot orient in this new spatial reality.
I had to tell someone because it was so much fun sorting this out.
Now that I watched the video, I remember looking this up for one one the previous contests here. I'm still not grasping the concept very well.
I'm glad you were able to make use of it. 8-)
Thanks for sharing.
You made a very original choice, which I do not think anyone had yet done in 32 editions of the contest: tell a flashback instead of a final!
Your story has a great dramatic charge and provides an explanation to the desperate search made by the protagonist in the part written by @f3nix, and the thoughts full of sadness and regret addressed to the mysterious companion. Very good!
Thank you, Marco. Sometimes I have a peculiar point of view--I guess it worked in this story :)
This is awesome. A great exercise in creativity and imagination. Turning things on their head is a good way to see them from a new perspective.
Awesome is a great word. I appreciate that. Confidence wanes pretty often, so I'll take it.
I think it works @agmoore and more than that, the writing is fantastic. Your inverted end/beginning brings a lovely deep characterization to the couple that @f3nix hints at in his beginning. The whole alternate dimension angle is also a direction that I didn't expect, I love a good surprise :-) Really well done!
P.s. It's a million miles from the direction I took with mine which is nearly finished now.
Thanks @raj808! Can't wait to read it :)
Me too!
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This was a great beginning! When I first read the prompt, I was curious to see how writers would deal with the 4th dimensional aspect of the tesseract. Your description of the room folding into the next plane is fascinating (makes sense since they already occupy three of those four planes). And then what comes after...
That delivers such a punch. She truly loves the guy, and she's determined to see this through with him. But because of his obsession, it feels like he's been drifting away from her for months. Then when they invade the fourth dimension and that separation becomes literal... wow!
I also dig that you turned this into Start the Story! Feels like a nod to the way time and space get distorted inside the story itself. :D Very cool and very much in keeping with the creative spirit of the contest imo!
Thanks for that very insightful analysis. I didn't want to write another battle scene--although some I read this week for this version of the contest were mythic and original.
The fourth dimension seemed to offer an opportunity for a fresh perspective. I'm so glad it worked! I certainly had fun learning and writing about this speculative concept.