-1-
I know my place and this isn’t it. Faster than light travel is impossible; so are “wormholes” and “molecular transporters”. They make for great fiction but poor science. Still, here I am…or was. I haven’t figured that out yet. Bleep.

Yesterday afternoon I was working in the office. It’s my thing; haven’t lectured an actual classroom for years. I once supervised the doctoral candidates but now I simply ‘lock up’ in the office and work on The Proof.

-2-
Three dimensions along the x-y-z axes are dead simple algebra. Time, the fourth dimension in Minkowski’s space, takes a bit of Calc but, again, simple freshman material. A few hundred physicists on the planet find seven or eight dimensional proofs relatively easy. These folks constantly banter Superstring, M-Theory, Bosonic String and their respective 10, 11, and 24 dimension physical space.

-3-
They couldn’t hope to understand The Proof. Yes, I was in deep yesterday afternoon. One hundred forty-seven pages deep. Thirty three dimensions and The Proof looked complete. I was recopying for legibility when the pen started to shimmer, then my hand. Then I was here. Or is here. Or will be here - whatever here is. Bleep. I’ve taken to calling it the Where-when.

-4-
Alone. Alone with my revolutionary proof which will never be published unless I’m magically thrust back from Where-when so I can send it off to the Journal of Physics. There would be no refutation. There aren’t two people on earth who would understand enough to even ask an intelligent question about The Proof. How frustrating to work so hard and end up with nothing to show.

-5-
I’m not thirsty, nor hungry, nor anything. How long have I been here? Or am I not? Not here, that is. Perhaps I’m here as a mental state. That explains my complete lack of bodily functions. I pinch the left arm hard. Bleep. Painful, yes, but does that prove anything? All pain exists in the mind; nerves of the body merely transmit.

-6-
Hours later, out of boredom I attack the next level of proofs, thirty-four dimensions. After all, I seem to have unlimited supplies of paper and pencils in Where-when and little else. The first step is easy. Simply add another variable and see what happens; find out where the old proof begins to break down and create new from that point, if possible.

What the hell? Something completely new screams out from the center of page eighteen. Something I never wrote or dreamt. It almost looks like code. What is it doing inside The Proof? I frantically copy the lines to a blank page hoping to decipher it. It’s both massive and simple. Where to begin? It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.

-7-
I still question how the mystery code got pasted into The Proof. After weeks, five or maybe ten, I develop an algorithm that seems to work as a first step to decode. The algorithm transforms the combinations of variables and mathematical functions into symbols. Consistent symbols. A handful of symbols that must be some sort of language.

-8-
Translating the Where-when symbols is my new passion in this nothingness. The absence of nouns, verbs, or even syntax makes it nearly impossible to find a starting point. Initially I assign words and letters at random and run them through the algorithm. Everything comes out incoherent babble. After a month, maybe two, an epiphany! I break down sobbing uncontrollably. The ground, or floor, or base…whatever has supported me in the emptiness of Where-when accepts my falling spirit and body.

-9-
I feel, actually feel, for the first time in Where-when. The words in front of me are descriptive and prophetic. They speak of a higher power; from God’s hand to my eyes. They explain this unique dimensional anomaly and outline a solution. “Mathematics brought you here. Mathematics will bring you home.”

The sterile hospital room holds a handful of physicists and a nurse. Their withered friend’s coma has stolen his lifeblood and tissue for the last three months. The university physics department is written in as the executor of his Living Will after the prescribed ninety days without brain function. In that time they developed an algorithm to determine, at random, which of them would pull the plug. The variable x would be set to the time on the clock at the precise moment a pigeon landed on the hospital room windowsill. He would have wanted it this way spills out into the air as the machine stops bleeping.