The Eleventh Dimension or, a Series of Events that were NOT MY FAULT

11

So on the day the ship arrives, I have an app running on my phone wired up to a dozen different little gizmos I've set up, all to run the current into the cabbages at the correct times; plus a load of cameras so I can see what's going on. I don't need all the computers or the bacon, because they were mostly there to record stuff or for the sensor; I just need the bang.

I'm hanging out with the sheep, looking at my handiwork via camera 3. They look weird, in the gloom of the garage; it's like four people standing around a circle, with a fifth lying down in the middle. I shiver a little, then, and remember how the current gets cut off suddenly from the middle one, almost as if it was a person being cut off, as it were. I wonder if this isn't new, and we've somehow managed to simulate something very old?

Nah.

The shuttle for the sheep is due in half an hour; I have a pair of massive bags absolutely stuffed with food which should keep me going for the three and a half weeks to Gluck, although I'm definitely going to lose some weight. I'm not completely sure how I'm going to get out the other side, or whether I'll be able to hide if anyone comes and checks on the sheep, or anything else, really; but this is as good as it gets, plan-wise.

A chime on my phone; the shuttle has left the supply ship, carrying the container to transport the sheep. We're go. I press the start button on the app that runs project what-in-the-world-is-that; and I start herding the sheep towards the holding area. They bleat at me, bored and stupid; and normally I would chuckle and make jokes about mint sauce, but I'm too nervous.

And this is when it all starts to go wrong.

The shuttle has landed, its robot pilot is waiting, the long airlock for the sheep is opening, ready for me to herd them into (and join them myself, obviously), camera three is picking up the weird music and glowing stuff, the noise is building, wait for it it's coming and...

It's incredibly loud, even through the phone speakers. I secured the cameras as well as I could, bolted them onto the metal walls of the inside of the truck's dump box, so they're fine; but everything else is predictably blown around, the cabbages and electronics thrown aside. For whatever reason, the bang is much, much bigger than last tine. Brilliant. That should turn some heads.

The sheep are running now, but that's because they can see the buckets of feed that I'd put down earlier, not because of any kind of supernatural premonition. I think. So I run after them, holding a hurdle, shouting, and all of us gallop down the tunnel towards the waiting shuttle.

I glance at my phone.

The water is there, sure enough. But it's not still like the last time; it's running out of one side of the circle, flowing over the floor of the truck. Very slightly, it's true. But more and more. A cabbage slides past, in the same direction. It's almost as if the ground is no longer flat and...

Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

I switch to camera two. That one's mounted in the garage proper, outside the truck. And I see what I was dreading.

The mineral truck is a dumper truck, right? It's designed to tip its contents out. And like a moron, I'd put the circle right at the end, just because that was the easiest bit to get to. Because I'd already tipped it most of the way, and the bang was beyond the fulcrum of the tipper, the bang must have done something to whatever mechanism holds it up, and it was slowly tipping up.

And so, the circle was no longer flat. And whatever crazy laws of the universe governed this meant that the water was coming out. First in a trickle, and then more and more as it tipped up further, that black water coming out like a river.

And there, on camera one, poking its little head out, scrabbling against the flow of the water was Kermit the fucking poisonous space frog. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

One Kermie fell out with a plop, and then a second and a third. They slid and skittered down the wet metal, burbling to each other, as pissed at being ejected into this dimension as I was about them being here. Well, welcome to Plethin, shitbags.

I tore my eyes away from the phone – although I think a few more of my froggy friends may have come through – to concentrate on this side of the job. The sheep were in the transport now, milling around, eating, and generally being stupid. The next bit was irritating but easy; the button to close the doors was on the outside. Obviously. But that wasn't a big deal, because I'd made an ACME button presser, just a pokey thing in a plastic box with yet more wiring to the master app. I taped it onto the panel with gaffer tape, and hurried into the transport along with the sheep. Then, I press the button that presses the button, and the huge doors started to close.

Well, I knew that control weren't watching me. No way I'd be able to get away with that if they had been. I look at my phone, and there are shouts coming from there; someone is checking on the bang. And, right on time, wham! There's the second one, the implosion or whatever it is. The ring closes, and I mean really closes; one of the hatstands is half in and half out of the water, and after the flash has faded, I can see that it's been cut neatly in half, the other section presumably now spiralling through water and confusing poison dog frogs. I've managed to litter another dimension, hell yeah.

The shuttle door has closed now, with me on the correct side. One more thing. I need to send audio confirmation to the robot driver; easy enough, I press one last button, and play the clip I previously recorded. So, let's go!

Nothing.

I press the play button, in case he hadn't heard it the first time. More nothing. I flick through the phone, and then it appears: a dirty great red banner notification. Base lock down. Oh shit.

I click on the notification. It doesn't say much; just that there have been some problems with dangerous animals in garage six and... And then it changes. Maximum alert. The code number is the one that we have drilled into us in safety briefings, but I've never actually seen it being used. It means, buckle up buttercups, level five clusterfuck in progress. Right now, across the base, huge doors would be closing and red lights would be lit up like an arsonist in a flamethrower factory.

The staccato chuckle of gunfire is coming through the cameras. The equally staccato noise of people shouting is coming through too; the place has gone to shit.

And then; sweet mercy. The shuttle starts taking off.

I guess I was in before the lockdown. If I was outside, I think I'd be freaking out and asking why they were going without me, but the autopilot doesn't care, so off we go, the ship roaring into the sky, the sheep all freaking out.