1-10 It's Just a Jump to the Left

Augusta knocked on the thick wall. She had just finished going all the way around it, tapping and poking at every bit of surface. She pitched her ear towards her rapping knuckles. After a pause, she frowned. "I don't understand why you can't just make a door," she said rotating her eyes towards STEVE!.   "FOR THE SAME REASON STEVE! CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY HUMANS IN THIS UNIVERSE NEED AEROPLANES TO FLY." STEVE! boomed matter-of-factly.   Augusta shrugged. "I think I see your point. What I would call 'physics' you would call..." She rotated her hands at him, beckoning a response.   STEVE! looked at her unsure. "BOB?"   Whereas Augusta face-palmed, Horatio chuckled.   "Never mind," she stifled an amused grin and turned towards Horatio. "So, how do we get him out?"   "I don't quite know, deary," he clucked. "I've never had to capture the quasi-present soul of a 1½ dimensional being before."   "STEVE! CAN ASSURE YOU BOTH THAT THE ORPHIC-TINKER IS WELL. BORED. BUT WELL. STEVE! WILL CONSULT STEVE!'S MAGICAL TOMES FOR A WAY TO GET HIM OUT."   The dwarf mage moved his arms in an intricate pattern, and then he released the staff that he was clutching over the room. The staff wobbled, but stayed upright of its own accord and gave off a bluish glow.   Augusta rubbed her chin thoughtfully. She kept staring at the room.   Horatio, meanwhile, made tea.   Augusta's posture jerked as if someone had come up behind her and poked her with a pin. "Of course! We've been thinking about this in a limited way."   "How so?" grinned Horatio. He bobbled over to her with a cup and saucer filled with an aromatic Earl Grey. "The only hot beverage worthy of intercosmic explorers, don't you think?"   Augusta paused with a raised eyebrow. "Star Trek references now?"   Horatio and STEVE! shrugged at one another.   Augusta shook her head and resumed her original posture. "We are looking at a room with no portals, windows, doors, or other openings, right?"   Her two-man audience nodded.   "How do you get into such a box?"   "That's the problem, yes," said Horatio before he popped a vanilla scone into his mouth.   STEVE! nodded in agreement and turned another page in a very thick and elaborately illuminated book.   "But look at it from a higher dimensional point of view."   Horatio and STEVE! frowned at one another, shaking their heads simultaneously.   "I've thought of that already, sugar." He shook his head, eyes closed.   Augusta wrinkled her nose at Horatio, but he continued.   "The problem is that we are already in one of STEVE!'s dimensional rooms and already 'borrowing' from a higher dimension already. We can't do it any more, especially when Mr. Hejj is borrowing himself in a kind of dimensional decompression room."   Augusta smiled. That she did so seemed to take both of the boys off guard. She thrust a finger in the air, and then pointed at Horatio. More specifically, she pointed at his left breast. "But they can!"   "FLIGBUG?" blinked STEVE!   "Fligbug?" blinked Horatio at the exact same time in chorus.   Augusta nodded smugly. "Fligbug." She folded her arms. "They can just step around—for lack of a better word—the three-dimensional walls and the four-dimensional, non-temporal borrowed barriers and pick up this guy. Or fold him or...whatever. And then bring him out."   Horatio perched his chin on his fingers and looked upwards. A finger found its way up to his mustache and began to twirl one of the curled ends. A wry smile tickled across his lips. "You see? I knew your mathematical mind would come in handy." He gave her a wink and then promptly finished off the rest of his scone in one bite.


Cover image: Fantabulous Cover by Shaudawn

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