Chapter Twelve

I walked through the door, and noticed the dramatic change much more quickly this time. Like how the first new dimension seemed an odd tint of red, and how the second one seemed to have a blinding yellow-ish white, this dimension seemed like a peaceful and calm blue. Everything looked normal at first. Nothing stuck out, and nothing scared me. This place looked fine. In fact, it looked exactly like home.
Uneasily like home. It was day time, and everything seemed to go perfectly. I was in my home town, I could see my house, and my street, and all of the familiar aspects of my neighborhood.
“Is this a new dimension?” I asked. “It looks the same to me.”
“Yeah, this one is probably the most similar to yours,” Luke said. “You will find a few differences, though, if you look hard enough.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“I don’t know off the top of my head,” Luke said. “I suppose we’ll find something eventually if we keep wandering about.”
“But what’s so great about this place?” I asked. “I mean, if it’s exactly like home? Were you or were you not supposed to take me out on the best damn adventure of my life?”
“Oh, trust me, there is a reason we are here,” Luke said slowly.
“Like what? Shagging girls? Buying cake?”
“That,” Luke said. “And some investigating. We have to figure out what caused that quake, because that quake didn’t only happen in that dimension, that quake happened in all of the ones adjacent to it, too. Now, I have no idea what could cause something like that. Something that would only shake one dimension and the dimensions near by, but not all of them. How strange.”
“Yes, yes, it’s all very fascinating,” I said. “So let us just get on with it. You go find your girl, I’ll go get your cake, and then we’ll do whatever the hell this investigation thing is. All right?”
Lucas smiled. “You’re so strange, I hope you realize this.”
“Oh, I’m the one who is strange? Me? Really? I am not the one shagging girls every other hour, and I’m not the one whose diet consists of only chocolate cake! I’m the one who was content with her life, and perfectly fine with the way things were befor eyou showed up and started pulling me through alternate dimensions.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Anyway, I’d better be going. I’ll leave you with the motorcycle, in case you want to go around somewhere. It’s very likely that you’re safer here than you are in that other dimension. I won’t get into the details too much. Anyway, I’ll see you later.”
“So, what, you’re just going to leave? Like that?”
“Well, you insisted.”
He turned around and walked off.
“When will you be finished?”
“Just stay with the motorcycle!” he called back. “I’ll have it come back to me when I’m all done!”
“And what if I get into trouble? How will I find you?”
“Bye!” He waved, and continued on in a sprint, obviously trying to get away from me.
“God damn it,” I muttered. I got onto the motorcycle, and made it roar to life. Where would it take me? I simply let it go on its own, making sure I didn’t lose my balance, and letting it drive on its own, letting it take me to where ever it wanted to go, considering the fact that in this whole new world, I had no particular location I wanted to visit. That is sort of like me, I guess. I just go with the flow.
It felt so weird, because this neighborhood felt exactly like mine. So safe, so familiar, so exact.
I saw my house, and it looked exactly the same as it did before the fire that stole half of my families lives. I oh so badly wanted to go inside, and see what was the same and what was different, because it was interesting and I was just so curious. I held myself back, however, out of fear of running into myself, or whichever Caitlin lived here. I had no idea what she was like. She might have tried to kill me like last time, and she might have even tried to find out who I was and where I was from. If I had run into myself, and Caitlin asked me how I looked exactly like her when she had a twin brother and not a twin sister, how would I respond to that?
So I figured it was best to just not go into the house at all.
I ended up going to the ice cream store that was a few blocks away from my house. It was exactly like the one that was back in my home dimension. I began to question whether I was in an alternate dimension at all. What exactly was different about this place that made it any different? I mean, the first one was obvious. There were dark buildings, a red sky, and I was just plain evil. The second one was even more obvious, considering there wasn’t even a city or any people, and just a sea of yellow sand infinitely stretching until the desert’s edge met with the sky causing an odd yellow-ish green-ish blue-ish horizon that looked like it was on fire… however that works. But what was different here?
The motorcycle roared to life, even though I haven’t touched it. I figured that Lucas was summoning it from wherever he was. I hopped on it just in time before it took off onto the streets.
It stopped near a house, and Luke was outside. There were two girls, only wearing bathrobes to keep decent at the door of the house.
“Really?” I asked. “Two girls?”
“When are you coming back, Luke?” the blond one asked. “You are taking us out to dinner tomorrow, right?”
“Of course, ladies,” Lucas said, winking at them. “No need to worry about all that. You can count on me. I will be back, do not ever fret!”
The girls giggled, and shut the door.
“You are absolutely disgusting,” I spat.
“What?”
“That! That whole thing with those girls! You straight up lied to them, I know for a fact that you are probably never going to see them again. And sex with two women at once? My God, what is wrong with you?”
“What the bloody hell are you yelling at me for?” Lucas spat back. “I had to stop early!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry that you didn’t get to shag those girls as much as you’d like! God, you are so disgusting!”
And just then, the ground shook again. It shook so violently, that it felt like the buildings were going to fall over, and that the sky was going to tumble and fall. I was completely knocked off my feet, and found myself with on top of Lucas, my face buried into his chest. The shaking stopped, and I looked up at his face.
“See, this is what I wanted to talk to you about,” Lucas said, actually laughing.
I jumped, and got myself on my feet as quickly as possible. I dusted myself off a bit, and then scowled back at Luke.
“This is why I ended early,” he said. “I have a theory for what might be going on with the whole dimension quake things.”’
I loosened up a bit. “You know what could be causing this?”
Luke nodded. “Like I said, I’ve got a theory, but it’s the only real explanation… but I don’t see how it can be like that… because… it’s just so…”
“Are you going to talk to yourself, or tell me what you actually mean by all of this?”
“I think someone is dimension hopping,” he said.
“What, you mean us? Are you saying that we’re the ones causing all this?”
“No! Because I’m the keeper of the dimensions, things are supposed to naturally adjust to me. Also, we’re not dimension hopping, we’re dimension traveling. We’re going through dimensions in a conventional way, with the doors, and with the motorcycle. These are the only ways to travel inter dimensionally that the universes will, how do I say this?, accept, I suppose. So someone is dimension hopping, going from one dimension to the other, and I have no idea how he can be doing it, but I will tell you, it’s not an easy thing to do. So what is going on? I mean, I can’t think of any other idea that could piss of the balance between dimensions so much.”
I paused for a moment. I was still only barely getting used to the idea of alternate dimensions and traveling between them. I didn’t know how the mechanics were, I didn’t know the details. All I knew at that moment… there was something weird about this dimension. It was too similar, it was too weird, and it was just too exact. Why would there be two dimensions that are exactly the same?
“What?” Luke asked. “What are you thinking? I mean, who ever this is, I am the one who is responsible of finding him and making sure he stops.”
“Lucas?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“I want to stay here,” I said.
“What? Why? If you don’t want to come along, I would much rather you stay in your own dimension. It could be dangerous here, and you aren’t familiar with this dimension… anything could happen. Wait, why don’t you want to come along?”
“It has nothing to do with not wanting to come along,” I said. “I just want to stay here. I most definitely do not want to go home.”
“What is so appealing about this place?”
“It is almost exactly the same as my home! Except… I want to know what’s different.”
“We’ll come back, Caitlin,” he said. “But we need to go as soon as possible.”
“You can go, I want to stay.”
“I don’t want to leave you here.”
I paused. “You’ll take me back here?”
“As soon as I can,” he answered. “And once this thing is over, we can go wherever the hell you please. It’s just important that we leave soon, Caitlin.”
I nodded, and got on the motorcycle.
Lucas began to drive. He seemed to know where the door was this time, because he didn’t need to activate the homing device on the dashboard of the motorcycle.
We went into an old abandoned factory at the edge of London, just like the one that was back at home. Luke led me through a maze of dark rooms until we finally reached the purple door.
“See? This place is exactly the same,” I said quietly.
“Caitlin,” Luke sighed. “Do you really want to know what’s different about this place?”
I paused, but didn’t answer.
“In this dimension, Caitlin Whitewood is dead.”