I Have A Theory

Chapter Five, Jeong-Su And Some Monsters In The Dark

It takes a while to process that Kimberly Crane is gone. Choking on CH4 on a vast expanse of human meat. It makes my stomach turn, and my heart turns to regret. But I've beaten her, and that is all. She was always my scariest competitor, and now she's gone... Maybe.

I wipe my hands and remind myself of all of the good things that exist. One of them is the latest Versace suit which was released just a day before I went down into this rancid pit. Another is my car, still parked at my mother's apartment back in Seoul--it's a Porsche, so I hope she doesn't drive it often. There's the white light of the observation deck, which is clean, and the smooth surface of the flesh, looking every bit the lunar landscape.

No curvature.

My mind does the calculations by reflex, using tangent lines which I cannot help but approximate to calculate gradients. Curvature of .0000271828...

e. e divided by one hundred thousand...

The constant for growth--what you get when you set a differential equation equal to the original equation. And of course it shows up here.

Imagine the flesh is uniform. A sphere.

Just how big would such a cyst be? I can calculate--tuck the answer back in my head because it's too scary. It's too close to the volume Yin and Yang gave to the group, when they told us the flesh was the underworld. So I ignore it.

Time to get up, Park Jeong-Su. Work to do.

I do.

Smile.

The first thing is to go downstairs. Into the red place--the infirmary, which Kimberly and Greene are so fond of. There's a man there, and he tries to talk to me, but I silence him with a cold, mathematical glance, solving the conundrum he poses before it can grow beyond my abilities. He understands who's in charge.

I enter a keycode--I've seen Greene move his fingers this way.

The patient comes out of his cell warily. Doesn't exactly seem to trust his liberator, but I'm Park Jeong-Su, and I'm not here to build trust.

I settle into the first theoretical framework that I had, letting my mind assume that the flesh is a three-dimensional cross-section of a four-dimensional entity. That it can be projected onto lower dimensions, or folded in higher ones.

And of course, as has never been possible in the history of mankind, my brain assumes that different phase.

Suddenly, I'm seeing it all in 4-D. Looking down into axes x, y, and z from my vantage, one axis removed. Seeing the hollowness of three-space, and the infinitude of four dimensions. Barriers are permeable, as circumnavigable as lines drawn on paper, and I wonder briefly how organisms cohere. All is moving, yet still motionless, unable to break that final barrier in the next and newest direction.

Colors spill like liquid through four-space, intermingling with dark into composite lights, and the possibility of teleportation clumsily comports itself like some dumb joke. Sounds display infinitely compounding doppler effects, and time passes normally, though my neurons fire abnormally.

In fact, I can already feel my brain moving in ways I don't intend. Spilling out of itself, away from itself, between and under itself.

And so quickly--before the journey kills me--I take a peek inside Victor Gonzales.

Scream through all four dimensions.

Oh Jeong-Su, whispers my mother's voice, stemming from the flesh--the only closed loop in this dimension. You never should have peeked. Now you've spoiled the surprise.