Chapter 1

My name is Doug Smith. At least that is what I call myself on Earth.

I would tell you my actual name, but the pronunciation of my name is not possible for the people of Earth. To pronounce my name requires a vocal frequency range greater than the frequency range the people of Earth can hear and speak.

For this story, I will use English words where possible, and when the English language does not have an appropriate word, I will use the phonetic spellings to create a word that is similar to the Multiverse word. The Multiverse’s units of measure are also different, so I will use the Earth’s units of measure.

Yes, I am what the people of Earth call an ’alien from outer space’, but you would not know it to look at me. If you had been there, when I first arrived on Earth, you would have seen a man in his mid-twenties, six feet and two inches tall and weighing a hundred and ninety-five pounds. The man also had brown eyes, a pale complexion, and a slender slightly athletic build; he was dressed in dirty clothes and was wearing a backpack.

My home planet Vora is in the Home Universe. The Home Universe is one of the thousands of universes that make up the Multiverse. Earth’s universe is one of those thousands of universes.

In the Multiverse, most of the citizens are human and the people of the different planets have evolved due to their physical environment. There are also sentient species that are not human. Some members of the human population have different physical traits, such as blue skin and green hair, but we are all within the accepted genetic range of being human. There are a few very slight variations in our DNA, but not significant enough to matter. Despite these minor differences, we are all human. The people of Earth also fall within that range of being human even though their hearing and speech frequency ranges are less than normal.

Before I get started telling you about my life on Earth, I should make something clear about me and provide you with some general background information. When I first arrived on Earth, I could not read, write, or speak English. It took me a long time to become fluent in the English language. Now, I can read, write, and speak English fluently. I can also make myself understood in a few other languages, but I do not speak them fluently. To make this story flow smoothly, I am not going to recreate the manner in which I butchered the English language when I first arrived on the planet. I will tell my story using what is now my normal speech pattern.

I am what is known in the Multiverse as a Dimensional Hopper (D-Hopper). I have a very rare ability that allows me to see the fourth dimension’s lines of force that interconnect the Multiverse’s universes in a grid structure. My ability allows me to push my awareness along a line of force. As I travel along the line of force, I can sense and pass through the universes that are connected by the lines of force. When I reach what I call a destination universe, I can transfer myself, others, and inanimate objects from a planet in my departure universe to a planet in my destination universe using my mind. That form of travel is referred to as a “hop”.

I am considered to be an average D-Hopper, since I have a Three-Universe Hop Rating and a One-Hour Recovery Time Rating. My hop rating indicates how far I can travel in a single hop. My recovery time rating means I need one hour to recover from the mental and physical efforts of making a hop before it is safe for me to make another hop. I should clarify that a recovery period is required for long hops of one universe or more. Very short hops, like from Boston to San Diego, do not require a significant amount of energy; so I do not need a recovery period. Of course, that assumes that I have not made numerous back-to-back hops.

I make frequent trips between Earth and my birth planet, Vora, which is about ninety universes from Earth’s universe. The line of sight distance is actually less, but I don’t travel by line of sight. I have to follow the Fourth Dimension’s lines of force. As a result, I have to push my senses through about ninety universes, but I only make stops on thirty-one of those universes.

When I am on Vora, I initially stayed with my parents to conduct my business and visit with my family. We have a small family in that, I only have two brothers and four sisters. That may be a large family on Earth, but on Vora, a large family is ten or more kids, plus the adults. Marriage customs vary between Multiverse planets. The one-man and one-woman marriage custom of Earth is common in the Multiverse, but on many Multiverse planets, a marriage can have more than one husband or more than one wife or both.

Life was normal for me growing up until a year or two after I hit puberty. My brothers, sisters, and I were learning the Specialty Woods Trade, when not busy with public school. My entire family (i.e. grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles) are traders, and we all work in the family business. My family specializes in buying and selling rare and exotic wood. My siblings and I were being prepared by our family to join the family business. I was only a month or so short of my 18^th birthday and almost ready to begin my apprenticeship, when I sensed the development of the D-Hop ability in me. I knew then that I would not be joining the family business and that disappointed me. However, the idea of becoming a D-Hopper was exciting. Everyone knows that D-Hoppers are special, unique people. This is especially true of those who go into exploration, which is what I wanted to do.

I should mention that the D-Hop ability only occurs in children who are raised on eleven planets, which are all located in the Home Universe. I am fortunate that Vora is one of the eleven planets. I should also note that I am the only person in my family to develop the D-Hop ability.

My parents took me to the doctor’s office, and he started me on the No Hop medication that suppresses the D-Hop ability. In the history of D-Hopping, there is only one known first hop that was completed successfully without prior training.

Over the next two months, I underwent mental and physical tests and applied for acceptance at the D-Hopping University. I was accepted, and the head of the University made it clear to us during our orientation briefing that we needed to immerse ourselves in D-Hopping for at least the next two years. The University’s administration believed immersion required us to live on the campus. I was an 18-year-old adult at the time I moved into a student dormitory with my classmates.

The University assigned us to two-person rooms, and we could swap rooms with other people if we wished. If we swapped rooms, all we had to do was update the University’s locator file. It was surprising how many people forgot to do that.

My classmates included both male and female students, and our ages ranged from 15-years-old to over 18-years-old. The University recognized that on many planets the age of majority was 14-years-old. Therefore, we were all young adults, and the University’s staff allowed us to establish relationships with each other. We started out with two males, or two females, in each of the dormitory rooms. By the end of the first year, most of us had a boyfriend or girlfriend as a roommate. I had a girlfriend whom I will call Mary; she was 19-years-old when we were accepted by the University.

On Vora, adulthood is determined using the Maturity Index, rather than physical age. On Earth, I have met teenagers that I would consider adults, and people over twenty-one years of age that were not even close to being adults. On Vora, being an adult is about accepting responsibility and behaving in a responsible manner. The idea that a person becomes a mature adult at an arbitrary physical age is ludicrous. I should also mention that on other Multiverse planets adulthood is determined by other means. I don’t know the age at which young people are defined as an adult on all of the Multiverse’s planets. However, I do know that there are some planets on which adulthood can be as young as 14-years-old.

Sexual conduct in the Multiverse would be scandalous to most of Earth’s societies. In Home Universe, sex among young people is not only socially acceptable, but it is expected as part of normal physical development.

My schoolmates and I began our basic sex education lessons by the time we were twelve years old. Those lessons included the aspects of having sex that did not require contact with another person.

Once we completed the basic lessons, we started our advanced sex education lessons. The advanced lessons addressed all aspects of sex to include the specifics of how to have intercourse and physical contact with other students was part of the lessons. It was not required, but intercourse between consenting partners was highly encouraged. However, sexual contact with the teacher was illegal.

I should mention a couple of things about the relative ages and emotional maturity of Multiverse citizens and Earth citizens. In the Multiverse, a citizen’s age is express in solar years. Earth’s solar year may be greater or less than Earth’s solar year. Thus, a person’s Earth age may be greater or less than their Multiverse age. Due to a difference in environmental and cultural factors, Multiverse children mature faster physically and emotionally than Earth children. The average 14-year-old person in the Multiverse Vora is as emotionally mature as the average sixteen-year-old teenager is on Earth. Differences in gravity and other environmental factors will affect their physical development.

Mary and I formed our relationship in the fifth month of our classes. I was 18-years-old, and she was 19-years-old. My roommate and her roommate fell in love in the third month of classes and they wanted to share a room. Mary and I would tease them by saying they fell in lust, which subsequently proved to be more accurate than love. The two of them worked on Mary and me for over a week, before Mary and I agreed to share a room on a platonic basis.

Mary and I developed feelings for each other very quickly, and once we admitted to liking each other, our relationship changed rapidly to that of lovers. Like most young lovers, we knew the relationship wasn’t love and that it wouldn’t last forever, but we planned to enjoy our personal and sexual relationships, while they were mutually enjoyable.

The D-Hopping University provides D-Hoppers with two career paths: Commercial D-Hopping and Exploration D-Hopping. We all started with the basic set of courses that everyone had to complete. Those courses focused primarily on how to perform a hop, and search algorithms to use when you got lost. Yes, ‘when’ you get lost, not ‘if’ you got lost! It is very easy to make a mistake while hopping. The types of mistakes that lead to a D-Hopper getting lost are usually not fatal ― as long as the D-Hopper does not panic.

After you complete the basic courses, you choose your career path. I selected the Exploration Program when I first arrived at the University, and remained in that program after my first year.

During the orientation briefing for the Exploration Program, our Instructor told us the Exploration Program prepared us to hop to and between unexplored worlds. He also told us that if we wanted to make and enjoy a large amount of money, we were in the wrong career field ― we needed to be in the Commercial Program. Most D-Hoppers that go into exploring make very little money, but they do get to have many new experiences and adventures; until the unexpected kills them. He said exploration would provide us with a living, but only one out of a thousand Exploration Program graduates made any significant amount of money.

He also informed us that statistics indicated that less than fifty percent of us would complete the Exploration Program. We would transfer to the Commercial Program or make a fatal mistake. Of the people that graduated from the Exploration Program, the University estimated that seventy-five percent of the graduates would be dead within twenty years. I was like the rest of my youthful classmates in thinking that I would survive and become one of the successful D-Hoppers. Those facts are what caused many of us to switch to the Commercial Program.

Chapter 2 »