3

January 10, 2026
10:14 p.m.
Boston, MA

The smell of old wood and spilled beer greeted her as she stumbled into the warm building. She stomped the snow from her boots and yanked them off, placing them next to the other pairs by the wall. As she pulled her black flats out of her purse, she heard Bridget call to her from the other side of the room. “Alison!”

She smiled and waved, hanging up her coat and making her way over to her friend. Bridget hugged her immediately, unstoppably. She hugged her back a little less forcefully. “So good to see you, Bridget.”

Bridget tapped the red vinyl cushion on the barstool next to her. “Here, I saved you a seat!”

Alison sat down and leaned against the bar, eager to order a drink. She picked up a menu and flipped through it. “What are you thinking of ordering? I hear they have a great new warm apple cocktail.”

“I was going to get my usual, but that apple drink sounds amazing.” She lifted a hand and gestured to the bartender. “Excuse me?”

The young man sauntered over with a sly smile. “What can I get you?”

Bridget returned his smile, flirty as ever. “Two of those warm apple cocktails please. Thank you!”

“No problem. I’ll have them right out.”

He turned to walk away, but Alison caught him before he could leave. “Actually, excuse me? Could we get two waters too?”

“Sure thing.” He gave a polite nod and swiftly filled two mason jars with ice and water. “Here you go. Your cocktails should be ready in just a minute.”

Alison smiled at him. “Thank you so much.” He headed back to the tap as she turned her attention to her friend. “So, how’s the new job?”

“Oh, you know. It’s a job.”

“Is it better than your old job?”

Bridget shrugged. “I guess so. Everyone’s nice enough. It’s not terribly exciting.”

“It sounds better than my job,” Alison muttered.

The bartender was back a moment later, setting two red ceramic mugs down in front of them. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Thank you,” Bridget smiled as he walked down the bar to help another patron.

Alison watched the steam rise from her mug, the inviting apple aroma drifting up into her nostrils. She blew on it and took a tiny gulp. “That really hits the spot.”

Bridget slurped up a mouthful. “Mmm. Good choice, Al.”

All of a sudden, as if she just remembered something, Bridget reached for Alison’s arm with wide-eyed curiosity. “You have to tell me what’s going on with you. I know this project of yours has turned into quite the venture. Everyone wants to try it.”

Alison rolled her eyes. “That has nothing to do with me. My part is done now.”

“Well... it doesn’t look that way to me.”

Bridget glanced over at the television hanging behind the bar. A picture of Alison and the rest of her team crawled across the screen, the four of them standing awkwardly in front of their laboratory building. “NEW DIGITAL HORIZON FOR TRAVEL INDUSTRY” was the headline. Seeing her own face, Alison immediately tried to hide under her scarf.

Bridget laughed. “Oh, come on, don’t be embarrassed. Everyone here is watching basketball on the other TVs. No one would recognize you anyway.”

Alison blushed. “Can we talk about something other than work?”

“Yes, of course.” She lowered her voice. “Are you seeing anyone new?”

“Not at the moment.” Alison took a sip from her water glass to fill the silence, reluctant to comment on her romantic insecurities. “Does this water taste a little funny to you?”

Bridget took a sip from her own glass and frowned. “Eugh. I swear, I can’t stand the water in this city. It’s nothing like we have in New York.”

Alison rolled her eyes. “There you go again. Everything is so much better in New York City.”

“It is!”

“That doesn’t make sense. What makes you think the water there is of such a premium quality?”

“We have very high standards for tap water. I don’t know, it’s just better. It’s hard to quantify.”

“I don’t believe it. I’m going to look it up.” Alison pulled out her phone and quickly found an article to defend her case. “Look. New York City isn’t even in the top ten for water quality in the US.”

Bridget scoffed. “That list doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s the taste, the experience. It’s not something you can measure.”

Alison laughed. “You can’t be serious. Everything can be measured. It’s-” She stopped short, the revelation hitting her like a tidal wave. Her eyes darted around the room, connecting unseen dots.

“I have to go.” She gathered her scarf and purse and slapped a few bills down on the bar.

Bridget shook her head knowingly. “Is this about work?”

“Maybe.”

“I thought you were done with that job.”

“This is different. I... I just need to check on something.”

“I’ll see you later then?”

“Yes. See you soon.”

With that, she whisked away in a flurry, tying up her boots and pushing her hands through her coat sleeves by the door. As she stepped out into the snow, she typed a text message to Sam.

Hey Sam. Are you busy?
            

She trudged down the sidewalk toward the subway station, staring at the blue light of her phone. As she turned the corner, the device buzzed with a message from Sam.

Just got Ellie down. What’s up?
            

She clacked out a quick reply:

Can you meet me at the lab in half an hour?
            

Snowflakes landed on the glowing screen as she tapped, their intricate patterns gently melting into water droplets. Arriving at the station, Alison ducked under the awning and pushed the door open. She walked down the stairs and saw another message from Sam.

Sure, be there soon
            

She sat on the cold metal bench and waited for the next train. Completely preoccupied, she hardly noticed the time pass as she boarded and found a seat. The locomotive propelled through the earth as she stared ahead blankly. By muscle memory, she stood up at her stop, stepping through the sliding doors onto the platform and making her way to the lab on autopilot.

When she opened the door, she saw Sam standing there waiting for her. “Good evening, Dr. Emery.”

“Hi, Sam,” she said warmly as she descended the stairs. “Thanks so much for coming. Sorry for the short notice.”

“No problem,” he muttered, smiling weakly. She knew he was lying; it was a problem for him to be here this late at night, leaving his partner at home with an infant child. She felt a tinge of shame and hoped he would understand why she had called him.

“Sam, I had an epiphany. I think there is something we have not been able to capture from our subjects.”

Sam nodded along, but his eyebrows slanted up in the middle like a fearful puppy’s. He was silent, listening to Alison as she described her theory.

“We exist within the confines of space and time, within these four dimensions.” She gestured at the air around her, snapping a rhythm like a metronome. “During intake, the device measures the data across these four axes: x, y, z, and t. Those four dimensions comprise our entire physical reality, our entire experience.”

“Yeah...”

She paused, her lip trembling as she contemplated her next words. “But what if...”

“What if what?”

“What if there was something else? Something on a different axis?”

“A fifth dimension? Of course, but we don’t exist in five dimensions.”

Now it was her eyebrows that slanted, concerned she had gone mad. “What if we do? What if there is another axis? The q axis.”

Sam chuckled nervously. “The q axis? What’s that, the quantum axis?”

“Yes! The quantum axis!” Her speech quickened as she continued, her hands shaking, her eyes alight with sheer mania. “What if quantum entanglement and superposition are the result of non-local hidden variables that exist on another plane, outside of our four dimensions of reality? What if our reality is influenced by these immeasurable forces?!”

“It worries me that this is starting to make sense.” Sam rubbed his chin, his hand shivering as he considered the thought. “So what does this mean? What are you going to do?”

A strange smile crept up her cheeks. “We need to make the immeasurable measurable.”

Sam exhaled, his head hanging low. His eyes darted across the floor as he hid his face. “No, I... I don’t think so.”

Seeing his anguish, she snapped out of her madness. She touched his shoulder gently and looked upon him with careful tenderness. “What’s wrong, Sam?”

“All this stuff... I’m not the one to help you with it. I’m not smart enough to understand it. I barely understand how anything works as it is. You should call Dr. Silberman instead.”

“Oh, Sam...” she pulled him closer and hugged him tightly, tiny pearls of moisture welling up in her eyes. “Listen to me. You’re the only person I’d ever want to help me with this.”

“Me? I’m an idiot, Dr. Emery. I can’t do this. I can’t.”

“You are not an idiot, believe me. Have I ever told you about my time in college?”

He shook his head, and she continued.

“When I was your age, I felt a very similar way. Everyone else was so much smarter than me, and I could barely keep up.”

Disbelief flashed across his face. “No way! You’re like the smartest person I know!”

“Believe me, I’m not. And back then, I was even less smart.”

She looked off into the distance, reminiscing. “I worried every single day that I was going to fail every class I took. It was hard. Everyone else seemed so confident, so sure. It was effortless for them, like they already knew everything there was to know. And some of them did. It made me feel like a total failure, like I was completely inadequate. I thought about dropping out, I really did. I didn’t belong with all of those smart people. I wanted to quit and find a job as a convenience store clerk in a small town somewhere.”

Sam was on his tiptoes, his arms crossed over his torso, his hands clutching his shoulders. He looked like a child waiting to hear the conclusion of a bedtime story. “So what happened? Why did you decide not to quit?”

“I don’t really know. I don’t have a good answer. But I’ll tell you what I learned.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, remembering her younger days. She turned to Sam, gripping his shoulder tightly as she glared into his pupils.

“Anyone can do anything. Talent is a lie. Sure, some people have to work harder than others. Some people learn things more quickly than others. But everybody struggles. Everybody doubts themselves.”

She smiled as she contemplated the hackneyed piece of advice she had been given so many years ago; the stupid, sentimental platitude that had helped her through college. “There is nothing you can’t do. There are only things you can’t do yet. You can do this, Sam. I believe in you.”

He swayed, considering the thought. “Well...”

Alison laughed, half from frustration, half from Sam’s silly disposition. “You said I was smart, right? Why would such a smart person believe in you if you were an idiot?”

He bobbed his head, a light simper growing on his lips. “I guess you’re right.”

“You’re right I’m right. Now, are you ready to figure out how to navigate the quantum realm and capture some extradimensional energy?”

He popped a thumbs-up and smiled goofily. “Let’s do it.”

They raced over to the whiteboard and Alison began to map out her idea. The two of them collapsed into a flurry of markers and words, diagrams and debates, enigmas and explanations. They worked faster than they ever had before, motivated by the same madness that must have motivated William. Alison thought of him, always wholly devoted to the cause, unstoppable. She wondered how he had been able to power through those long nights, and then remembered his addiction to energy drinks. Luckily, his fridge was unlocked and fully stocked. The two of them downed one caffeine bomb after another, any notion of time slipping into the recesses of their minds.

Alison dug into the collection software and pored over thousands of data points, trying to find some pattern. They had originally assumed that all the extra data was nothing but noise, but she knew something must be behind it. It had to follow the laws of some universe, even if that universe was yet unobservable. She started constructing a separate attachment, another piece of intake hardware that could translate that noise into something more tangible. Sam’s simulations proved invaluable as they attempted to visualize life beyond reality. He began mapping a theoretical five-dimensional dataset into three-dimensional layers, a task he must have thought impossible before he actually accomplished it. Their work consumed them as the minutes and hours ticked away.

Beyond the windowless walls of the laboratory, the dark night gave way to dawn. The prototype was finally complete. Sam and Alison stared down at the tiny, completely unspectacular device that sat on the table in front of them.

“So this is it?” Sam asked, a numb tiredness in his voice.

“This is it,” Alison replied. “This thing should be able to track the sequences of superimposed quantum particles. Hopefully, we’ll see something that can’t be seen from our reality.”

They laughed like stoners at the paradoxical statement, so deprived of sleep that the absurd notion felt as real as anything else.

“Let’s give it a whirl!” Alison giggled, picking up the attachment and plugging it into the port on the collection apparatus. Sam grabbed a small white mouse from one of the cages and placed it delicately in the plastic wrapping, petting it on its head before zipping it up.

“All good down here,” he called up. He lumbered over to his station and logged in.

“Alright, here we go,” Alison muttered under her breath. Any nervousness she may have felt was buried deep under her exhaustion. She walked toward William’s station as if she were underwater, as if some unseeable force propelled her forward. Blinking, she entered her credentials and flung the button case open.

“Check!” she shouted. She heard Sam’s reply echo back a second later.

“Set...” She waited, time dripping like maple syrup. “Execute!”

She pressed her finger down on the little red button, her eyes glued to the screen as she waited for the data to populate. The light and sound exploded around her, but she was entirely focused on the glowing monitor in front of her. Gradually, the results trickled in. She scanned them vigilantly, hoping to find anything new, anything the advanced attachment had been able to pick up.

All she saw was static, television snow, complete and utter randomness. She cursed herself for hoping it would be any different. She was about to turn away and tell Sam the bad news when she saw it: one tiny yellow data point, swimming in the static. One superpositioned quantum particle. It seemed to follow the atomic structure of the subject, nestled within it, but it was different. It was not on top of the structure, not under it, not adjacent to it... it was the structure. And yet, it was not. It resided at the exact same coordinates as the real particle, but it existed beyond those coordinates.

She could hardly believe her own eyes. “Sam! Get over here, I need your visualization.”

Sam rushed over and pulled up his modified visualization apparatus, plugging it into her computer haphazardly. “What is it?!”

“I don’t know. Let’s see.”

The grey visualization disk began to hum as it loaded the data. Little specks began to rise from it, dancing in the air. They reflected off the light like dust in the afternoon, forming a subtle but rigid outline. When it took shape, Alison saw it clearly; a digital mouse, shimmering before them in three dimensions.

“Alright, this is the four dimensional representation,” Sam sputtered. “Now, let’s see if we can see it in five dimensions...” He pressed the newly-created button on the side of the disk, his finger shaking. The light flashed, and then went out completely.

He shivered, staring at the disk. “Give it a minute...”

A few seconds later, a bright red light shot up, quickly morphing into a mouse.

Alison looked at Sam. “This looks the same. What am I supposed to be seeing here?”

His eyes stayed locked on the disk. “Just wait.”

The image flickered, wavering between light and darkness. Sam squeezed his hands into fists and clenched his teeth. “Come on...”

Suddenly, an alien-green light rose from the surface beneath the mouse. It traveled through the binary beast, settling in one microscopic pocket within its head. Sam let out something between a gasp and a laugh. “No way...”

Alison slapped him on the back. “Is this it?!”

“I think this is it.” A tear slid down his cheek. “The red light is our reality, and the green light is... well, I’m not sure exactly, but it’s from beyond us. And where they overlap... the colors mix together...”

They stared in awe at the glowing red mouse, a tiny bit of yellow hovering right where its brain might be. Alison pondered the impossibility of what she was seeing. The realistic, pragmatic side of her mind knew that it could very well be nothing more than fluke, but her imagination ran wild. What could it mean? How could it be? She could not possibly know, but somehow it felt like she did.

“This particle in superposition... I think it’s a communication channel,” she said hesitantly. “I think it’s sending binary messages from our plane to another plane, across the q axis, totally outside of our four dimensions of reality.”

“What kind of messages could it be sending?”

“I... I don’t know. But I know it’s tied to this mouse in some way. And I wonder if it’s tied to that mouse in the same way.” She gestured to the output platform, where the transported mouse struggled to escape its airtight plastic shell.

“Well, we can take a look,” Sam bubbled, enamored with his own creation. He clicked around on the software and selected the output dataset. “Here goes nothing.”

The same red mouse took shape on the disk, the swirling particles coming together in the same way they had before.

They waited. “It could take a while,” said Sam. “It’s not perfect. I’m sure it will show up.”

They waited. The sanguine rodent stood stationary, unchanging. The circle beneath it was completely still.

Alison inhaled deeply, reminded of the harrowing implications of their work. “I don’t think it’s going to show up.”

“It must be something wrong with my visualizer,” Sam said frantically. “Let’s try it again, on another mouse. I’m sure it will work.”

“We can try,” Alison said darkly. “I don’t think it’s going to be any different.”

He looked at her worriedly, saying nothing, glad he had yet to go through the process himself. Alison thought again of William, wondering if he felt anything different, wondering how she would tell him what they had discovered. She did not want to believe it, but she knew it was true. The process had failed. Something was missing.

Sam blinked, his feet fidgeting beneath him. “What are we going to do?”

She kept her eyes on the monitor. “Test it a few more times. I’m sure we’ll see the same thing happen again.”

“And then what? What will happen to the project?”

She turned to face him. “I don’t know.”

She took a deep breath and shifted her gaze to some far off point. “We never should have started this project in the first place. The entire thing is fundamentally flawed. It never really worked. We should have kept it to candy bars and baseball caps. We never should have tested it on a living thing. It could never actually capture life; not fully.”

Sam trembled, his voice not much more than a mumble. “The public release... are we...”

Alison exhaled. “We have to stop it.”