Chapter 4

"Nice shooting, Matt! That makes five games to three, your lead." Kathy and Matt were just starting the third week of their honeymoon, and had started shooting 4-D pool after breakfast. Matt had just won the latest game, sinking the last 27 balls in a row.

"I would never have guessed that playing this game would have become so easy in just two weeks," said Matt. "We're both at a point now where one shooting error by either of us usually lets the other run the table. I still love the 5-D chess board you made in Manufacturing, though. Man, what a challenge! Taking that quantum cleansing treatment with you did more than just make DNA repairs. My mind and body feel superb! We're both Olympic athletes now, maybe better. I saw you do your 10 mile run on the treadmill yesterday in less than 40 minutes... You are so beautiful when you're exercising..."

"Thanks. I like to watch you when you're working out too, you look so sexy... Matt, have you noticed something while shooting pool? I find myself not wanting to rotate the board, I find myself wanting to rotate me! This probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense..."

"No, it makes a lot of sense. I feel the same urge, that I can get in position for the shot much faster by... By what? By taking a step... By taking a 4-D step... I can feel it. Feel it in my balance..."

"Me too! Well put! I didn't know how to describe it, you did great. Matt, I want to try to take a 4-D step. It seems so natural. Will you watch me when I do? Help me if I need help?"

"Sure, want to do it now?"

"Yep. Here goes!"

Kathy popped from view, instantaneously appearing on the other side of the pool table, in the correct position for her opening shot.

"Wow! Try it, Matt! It's easier than walking!"

Matt popped into view by Kathy's side a second later. "Unbelievable! This is so easy! Let's try somewhere else! I'm thinking of standing by our bed..."

He popped out of sight. Kathy thought about the Bedroom too, and was standing next to Matt a second later. "My gosh, Matt! We can teleport! The entity gave us the power to teleport! That's what it meant, when it said the decision to go back to Earth had already been transferred. What an incredible gift!"

"Can we go back to Earth now, do you think? Can we return here if we do?"

"I don't know. This is going to take some experimenting... Are there any restrictions at all to where we can jump? I remembered a clear picture in my mind of this spot by the bed. It felt important to have that clear picture before I jumped. Let me try to jump to the northwest corner of the Gym, I've never really wandered into that area..."

Kathy concentrated a few moments. "Nothing, I can't do it. Now let me try the Gym room by the cross trainer." Kathy popped from Matt's view. She returned about 10 seconds later. "Interesting. I just spent a few moments staring at the northwest corner of the Gym; I think I have a visual lock on it. Let me try again." Kathy popped from view. Matt popped into the Gym a few seconds later.

"It worked!" said Kathy. Having a clear visual image of your destination is critical."

"The gravitational entanglement," said Matt. "It's letting us fold space, creating a tunnel between the origin and destination points. It's letting us pop through from one point to the next."

"But what if you were attached to something, Matt? What if you were, I don't know, handcuffed to a railing or something?"

"Wow, that's a really good point... Hold me, and I'll try to teleport into the Living room."

Kathy held onto Matt, Matt tried to teleport, and succeeded, feeling a brief sharp pull on his body when he did. Kathy joined him in the Living room a few seconds later.

"Sorry, Matt. You were like a bar of soap. I couldn't hang on. Let me get a really good grip!" Kathy jumped on Matt's back, locked her legs around his hips, and crossed her arms around his chest. "Wow, this feels kind of sexy! Try again, Matt."

Matt jumped into Kitchen, with Kathy still on his back. "Ah, interesting" Kathy said, as she dismounted. "Matt, will you jump into the Entrance Hall? I'll meet you there in a few minutes."

Kathy walked south into the Entrance Hall a few minutes later from Manufacturing, carrying a pair of handcuffs with keys. "I thought I'd walk for the exercise. Jumping all the time seems a bit decadent. Here, Matt, will you hold the key?" Kathy locked her wrist to the spiral staircase. "I'm going to try to jump to the Kitchen now."

Matt blinked as his eyes lost focus on Kathy for an instant. Then Kathy was before him with tears in her eyes. "Ouch, ouch, ouch! Oh Matt, unlock me please!"

Matt spent the next several minutes rubbing Kathy's sore shoulder. "I could see it, Matt. For an instant I could see the Kitchen. And then I was yanked back here. We'll have to remember this. Being chained to something takes away our ability to teleport..." Kathy stared at the spiral staircase she had just been chained to. "You know, there's something about this I don't understand. It reminds me of a dream I had about a bowling ball last night..."

Kathy climbed two stairs of the staircase, and then hopped off. Just before she hit the floor, she teleported to Matt's side, standing erect and still. She then climbed 5 steps, and repeated the maneuver. She finally climbed up 40 feet, near the ceiling, and leaped off, falling rapidly and teleporting to Matt's side just before crashing into the floor. She looked up to him and said, "How does this work? It reminds me of my dream, where I start rolling a bowling ball down the staircase. After 4 flights, it's moving fast and back to where it started. What would happen if we just let it keep falling? Where's all that energy coming from? Where's the energy go when I jump and stand by your side, instead of crashing into the floor..."

"I'm not sure. I remember my college physics though. It was a standard joke in Cambridge that the Harvard students couldn't count, and the MIT students couldn't read. But I actually liked my physics classes. If I remember correctly, the proofs for the conservation of momentum and energy really are just empirical observations. Perhaps in 4-D, it's just not the case, or perhaps the momentum and energy are getting exchanged with something we don't know about yet. You're right though, we should think about the implications of this. For example, can we teleport into a moving car or plane? What frame of reference will our velocity synch to? It's something we should explore sometime..."

"Matt, I feel I can jump back to Earth. Somehow I feel the push will be more difficult, but I still think I can do it. How about you?"

"I think so too. I have a clear picture in my mind of my apartment, my office, I feel I could just take a 4-D step and be there..."

"I feel the same way about my apartment. I feel I could also step back to a lot of places at Mount Holyoke. I have a firm visual lock on a lot of places there... It would be nice to stick together, though. I could try riding you again, letting you do all the work. For our first jump outside the tesseract, though, I'd feel safer if we were both under our own power..."

"I feel the same way. Do you remember my office well enough to jump to it?"

"No."

"How about the Top Of The Morning?"

"Maybe... Well, maybe not. But I do have a very good visual lock on that janitor closet, right by that narrow hall we went into..."

"Yeah, I do too. My watch says the time in Chicago is... 3:45 AM. Wow, we really have drifted away from Chicago time... Should we try jumping there?"

"I don't want to abandon the entity, Matt. Will we be able to jump back here?"

"I think so... I'm not sure... I do have a good visual lock on a lot of places here. I think I could jump back. Actually, I think jumping here is very easy for some reason... I would also guess the entity has the power find us on Earth, if it wanted to..."

"Okay, Matt. Let's try to jump back to the hall outside the janitor closet together. Wait! First let's get our wallets and things, and the clothes we had on when we first entered the escalators."

A short while later, they were ready to make their first jump out of the tesseract. "Hold my hand, Matt? On three. One. Two. Three!"

An instant later Kathy and Matt were standing by the janitor closet, on the top floor of the MCT. "Wow, Matt, we made it! It's been a month but we made it! Look! There's just a blank wall here now where that narrow corridor used to be..." Kathy ran her hand along the smooth wall for several moments...

Kathy and Matt walked down the hall, turned and then started walking down another. "I think the elevators are this way, Matt. I hope we don't have a problem getting out of this building so late. Maybe we should jump again, either split up or I can ride your back again..."

"I'd like to stay together, Kathy. I think it'll be okay if you ride my back now. I'm glad though, that we made the first jump here independently. This last jump seemed more difficult than my earlier ones..."