Sweet old Mrs. Maya was one of the few people Cecelia regurly talked to in the apartment complex – the stereotypical widow who outlived her husband and baked double-chocote cookies and pumpkin bread for everyone in the building. Still, Cecelia would rather not have to use the dimensional separator she’d run back into her room to grab – it would take hours to charge back up and she did need it for something – but having it on hand wouldn't hurt.
Bursting through the unlocked door, Cecelia found Mrs. Maya pressed up against the living room wall, gray-faced and shaking in one of her typical floral dresses. “A— A m-man!” she stammered, a sun-battered finger pointing to the hallway. “He— He came out of the ki-kitchen wall! Then, just… just walked away!” Following the elder’s shaking hand, the young woman rushed around the corner.
Just in time to watch a semi-transparent, older man with a cane step into the main bedroom. He was gone by the time she reached the room. ‘Oh, good,’ she sighed in relief. ‘I won’t have to use it.’
“Well.” A voice from behind her had Cecelia squeak in surprise. “You finally saw something ‘haunted’ here.”
“I guess better te than never,” she replied with a nervous ugh as she turned to face Agent Fisher. The slightly tanned woman had her arms crossed over her dark blue jacket that matched her pencil skirt, and her short haircut reminded Cecelia of one of her professors from st year – professional with slight curls. Cecelia wondered if the agent had taken the elevator up or had challenged the creaking stairs with raised-heeled dress shoes. “Is Mrs. Maya okay?”
Agent Fisher’s frown didn’t change as she adjusted her bzer, and Cecelia caught a glimpse of her flowy white blouse underneath. “She hasn’t died of a heart attack, if that’s what you mean.”
It was a bit harsh, but Agent Fisher had no reason to care about the old dy next door. (And it wasn’t like the woman had a super ‘caring’ reputation anyway.) “I’m going to go check on her,” Cecelia said, stepping around the other as much as she could in the small hallway.
The agent rolled her blue eyes. “Very well, but no more running. I mean it this time.”
~
“I’m sorry to worry you, dear.” Mrs. Maya had still been shaken up when Cecilia returned, though she had been easy enough to re-direct to the couch. “These old eyes must have been pying a trick.”
The college student hummed in a lie of agreement. ‘No, but it’s probably for the best that you believe that.’
“Now that I think about it, it almost looked like Linus,” Mrs. Maya continued, adjusting the hand-knit bnket over her p. “We moved into this pce after Li left the nest.” Another hum; this was a familiar story. “We had pns to remodel the pce, you know. The kitchen in particur. Linus wanted to expand it and take out that wall so you could go in straight from the entrance.”
“And that would have been where you first thought you saw something?” Agent Fisher inquired as she wandered around the trinket-filled room. The woman picked up one of the many photos that decorated the shelves. “Coming through that wall?”
“I…” Mrs. Maya paused, a handful of puzzled blinks as she thought about the question. “Yes, I do believe so.”
‘Typical overp event,’ Cecelia decided, sharing a gnce with Agent Fisher. Another Linus had been walking around his house right as the parallels had brushed, temporarily showing Mrs. Maya a glimpse into another world. One where her husband was still alive and they had renovated the pce like they had pnned. ‘The only odd thing is that it’s never happened before.’
Clearing her throat, Agent Fisher set the old photograph back down. “Since everything has been taken care of, I’m afraid Cecelia and I must be leaving.” The brunette winced at the reminder. ‘You knew it was a risk,’ she scolded herself. But the dimensional separator she’d “borrowed” had been the very st thing she needed. ‘Couldn’t Agent Fisher have waited another few hours?’
“Oh! Of course!” the elderly woman rose from the couch. “You must work where little Cecelia does her internship, am I right? I’ll make sure to bake extra next time, and she can bring it to your office to share.”
The intern held back a snort at Agent Fisher’s forced, pin expression. “That would be wonderful,” the woman gritted out. “Cecelia, let’s go.”
~
Agent Fisher stopped right outside of Cecelia’s front door. “Hand it over,” she demanded. Cecelia, still clutching the separator in her hand, shifted her grip on the canister. If she followed her kind-of-boss’s orders, then everything really would be over. ‘Maybe I can—‘
The sound of small footsteps pounding up the stairs. “Help!” A little girl with braided dark hair – maybe one of Mr. Benton’s kids? – ran towards them, almost tripping over her long dress. She tched onto Cecelia’s arm with one hand and the agent’s with her other. “Daddy fell! Lora went downstairs to look for people and I came up! So you have to come help! Please!”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Agent Fisher groaned, shoulders sagging.
“Please!” the girl begged again, pulling on the two women as much as a small kid could. “He just fell down and now everything feels creepy and he won’t wake up! And he was getting all blurry!”
Cecelia frowned. That st part, about the man becoming ‘blurry’.… “You don’t think he’s being pulled, do you?” she asked Agent Fisher in a low voice.
“A regur overp just occurred. Addition apparitions would make sense, but a single event with two effects is much less probable.” The little girl dropped her grip on their arms as the two adults picked up their pace. “It’s more likely that she’s not seeing things right.”
“No!” the girl shouted, on the verge of breaking down. “I’m not! Daddy was all blurry like when you cry, and– and—!”
“Sure,” Agent Fisher gave up. “Did you call 911?” The girl shook her head. ‘Even kids know ‘emergency services’ aren’t the best option.’ “Alright, let’s see what’s going on now.”
~
It was Mr. Benton after all. When they reached the third-floor apartment, the girl darted over and picked a cell phone off the ground, then backed away for the two women to get closer. Just like the little girl had said, the man, wearing simple jeans and a fnnel shirt, was blurry when Cecelia looked directly at him. “Damn it,” Agent Fisher cursed as the man’s figure began to flicker faster. “He is being pulled.”
“That makes no sense.” Cecelia crouched down as close as she dared to Mr. Benton. She was faintly aware of another, slightly older girl running back into the room, reuniting with her sister. “I mean, I know I suggested it, but still.” She looked up at her kind-of-boss. “Do you happen to have another dimensional separator on hand?”
Agent Fisher crossed her arms. “Is there something wrong with the one you’re holding now? That I can see is charged?”
‘No, but.…’ Cecelia sighed, closing the back panel on the device after a quick double-check that everything was configured for regur use again. This wasn’t a typical case of someone being pulled – the vast majority of the time, the only symptoms people were aware of were slight headaches and an odd feeling. That Mr. Benton had colpsed was really unusual. She could only remember reading about something simir in some old case files at the agency. Cecelia activated the cylindrical device, twisted the sections of the canister in the correct order, set it down next to the unconscious man, and jumped back.
“That’s unnecessary.”
Cecelia rolled her eyes even though her boss wasn’t wrong. Dimensional separators released a type of particle wave that separated the two (or more, as the number of multiple universes was impossible to count) brushing parallel worlds. Supposedly, the energy was harmless to beings of the affected worlds, but she always felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck when she was around an active device.
It took a few minutes but, eventually, Mr. Benton stopped flickering. While Agent Fisher began a quick medical exam, Cecelia picked up the separator. ‘That took two-thirds?!’ Sure, what she had been pnning to use the technology for would have absolutely drained it, but regur use rarely caused the battery to drop that much at once.
Someone pulled on Cecelia’s arm. “Is Daddy alright?” The little girl asked as her older sibling pushed past the college student to check on her father herself.
“Umm…” the brunette gnced over at her boss.
“He needs to go to the hospital,” Agent Fisher announced as she stood up. “I’m guessing low oxygen based on his breathing, and he’s likely to have a nasty migraine when he wakes up.” ‘Pulling sickness?’ That was extremely rare. “I’ll make the call; that way they’ll charge the agency instead. You figure out what to do with the kids.”
~
“Something’s wrong,” was the first thing Cecelia said once she and Agent Fisher were back in her apartment. The girls’ other father had returned home, leaving the two women free to leave. Somehow, Cecelia had convinced her semi-boss that they needed to stop by her apartment again. “I’ve been here for two years, and no active dimensional activity. Besides, you know unconnected events happening right after the other like that are rare!” Dimensional brushings generally went one way or the other. Cases with multiple symptoms usually meant the ‘ghosts’ were caused by airborne toxins or other base universe expnations
“At least you’re not calling them ghosts anymore,” Agent Fisher mumbled.
“But this means we have to investigate it!” Cecelia excimed. Energy that she wasn’t used to having tingled up her spine. When had she st been this excited? Probably on the day she was accepted as an intern. “We–!”
“There’s no ‘we’ here,” Agent Fisher firmly said. “I’ll report it and I’ll probably end up investigating it.”
“But this could be something big!” Cecelia tried. “And P.A.R.A.L.L.E.L. doesn’t have that many other people.”
“You are an intern–“
“Field experience!”
“–under suspicion and who I am here to bring back to the agency. By force, if necessary.”
‘…Shit.’ In her excitement, Cecelia had forgotten about that tiny fact. “I can give it back?” she offered even as her grip on the canister tightened. She’d been so close. ‘Why did someone have to do an equipment count or whatever today?!’
Agent Fisher crossed her arms. “That device is going to be returned whether you ‘give it back’ or not. Right now, you’re just digging yourself a deeper hole.”
‘Alright, pn B. What’s pn B?’ Cecelia looked around her apartment. Her ptop was in her room, and she doubted Agent Fisher would let her grab it. So, she would just… need to verbally expin everything. ‘Why was pn B the one that could either work perfectly or go horribly wrong?’
“You know Dr. Warrin works at the university here, right?” Cecelia started. Her fingers were beginning to hurt from her grasp on the dimensional separator but, if she set it down, the agent might take it. “They’re the one who figured out the theories on identifying and separating multiple ‘parallel’ worlds and then got in a fight with the government about keeping the stuff quiet.”
“Congratutions. You’re a foot deeper into the ground.”
“Wait! Long story – that you apparently already know – short, Dr. Warrin lost the rights for most of their research and was only allowed to publish and teach the basic theories. Which was better than the alternatives but still not great.”
Agent Fisher frowned and crossed her arms. “Your point?”
‘And here’s the point of no return.’ The brunette nervously pushed a stray strand of hair behind her left ear. “I know because I’m in Dr. Warrin’s lecture Mondays and Wednesdays. It’s actually a bit close time-wise getting from there to the agency. To be clear, they don’t know this, but I’m pretty decent at computer stuff and that includes accessing files remotely that may or may not be mine-“
“Hacking. I’ll add that to your list.”
Cecelia grimaced. ‘…Oops.’ Oh well. “I did put ‘technologically capable’ on my resume. And it’s not really that hard, since everything’s connected to the internet and for sale to data-”
“You’re almost at the end of my patience, kid.”
“Everyone in the css knows Dr. Warrin is horrible with most technology,” the college student rushed to continue. “Personally, I think half of the problem is that they’re still using a really, really old computer and don’t seem to update it regurly. However! That means finding the unpublished research they’re still allowed to have but can’t teach isn’t that hard.”
Her semi-boss brought one hand up to massage her forehead. “Are you–? You have got to be joking.”
Cecelia nervously ughed. “Nope. So, again, when I said they don’t know about this, I really meant it. So don’t go arresting them. Please?”
Another groaned. “‘This?’ As much as I don’t want to ask.”
“Well…” Cecelia paused, trying to figure out if there was a good way to continue. Nope, not really. “Between the research I’ve downloaded from Dr. Warrin’s computer and photos of stuff from the agency, I’ve got quite a bit of information that the general public doesn’t know. Which I get, because I’m sure plenty of people would freak out if they learned that ‘ghosts’ are actually the effects of parallel universes – as outdated as that term is. But that also means that the government would be in some hot water if certain things were leaked.
“And I’m not stupid”, she continued before Agent Fisher could interrupt. “So, yeah, I knew I might get in trouble for borrowing–“
“Stealing.”
“–a dimensional separator. I’ve condensed all the important info into a social media post that will automatically upload in”– she pulled out her phone to check – “shortly.” (Well, four hours, but close enough.) “Unless I manually post-pone it for another twenty-four hours. Or take it down.” She slid the device back into her pocket before the agent could try and snatch it. “It’s linked to go up on the university’s main page, and a few other highly trafficked, concerning low cyber-security, pces.” After all, on her personal account, Cecelia had a grand total of ten people. Far too easy for the government to clean up.
Agent Fisher was silent for a few moments, looking like she was trying to burn Cecelia to a crips with her eyes. “Are you attempting to bckmail a government agent who already has grounds to arrest you for stealing valuable equipment as well as hacking and photographing sensitive information?” she finally asked, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Cecelia shrugged. “When you put it like that, what do I have to lose?” That had been her mantra since she’d first come across real evidence of alternative worlds ten years ago.
“Any chance of parole.”
“Maybe,” she admitted with a nervous ugh. “My point is that, if you don’t want that info leaking tonight, let me help with this case. And we both know two events, or even just such a severe pulling, is a case. I’ll dey the release until we’re done. Then….” She shrugged again. Ideally, she wouldn’t still be around. “I’ll delete all the info I have— no leak to the public — and you can arrest me or whatever.”
With every passing silent second, Cecelia’s heart beat faster. She wasn’t bluffing… about much. She did have a lot of data that would get people talking, but nothing completely damning. And she wasn’t nearly as confident with her ‘computer skills’ as she was trying to make her kinda-boss think she was.
(Who knew all those years of “I’m fine” lies would help her out now?)
Agent Fisher just kept staring at her. Until, finally: “Ground rules. You do exactly what I say. You dey that post and then give me all your passwords and whatever else you have after we’re done. If the case goes longer than three days, it’s closed as far as you’re involved and you don’t make a fuss.” The woman’s gre turned into a deep sigh. “I’ll add more conditions when I think of them.”
“Really?” Holy shit, she hadn’t actually expected that to work!
“Against my better judgment.” The agent crified. “But dealing with a pissed-off government PR worker would be even more of a nightmare. In addition, if you’re too annoying, everything’s off.”
“I… Yes!” Cecelia’s fist punched the air, an entirely unconscious action. “Got it! I mean, understood!” Three days would have to be enough. She was genuinely curious about the weird combination of active events, but what she really needed was a few — just a few — more hours with the separator and her home set-up. “I’ll hit dey now,” she said, rushing into her room.
From the living room, she heard Agent Fisher mutter something like, “Great.” Unenthusiastic footprints echoed down the hall until the woman was standing in the door frame to Cecelia’s bedroom. “We’re heading to the office for a report as soon as you’re finished with that.” The agent started to leave the apartment but paused to gnce over her shoulder, not saying anything until Cecelia looked at her. “Don’t make me regret this, kid. Because I’ll make sure the feeling is doubled.”
“You won’t!” Cecelia chirped.
Username: IsekiMeAway42*
Password: **********
Dey post? 72 hours
Confirm dey? Yes
Cecelia made sure both generators were shut down before turning off her computer and shoving it under her mattress. Then she connected the dimensional separator and its charging cable (because you don’t “borrow” tech without grabbing the cable too) to the sole empty spot on the second extension plug before rolling the device under her bed. Hopefully, if anyone came looking, they would only see a strange mess of an art project. ‘Yeah, that was pretty bad,’ the young woman thought to herself. It was a good thing Agent Fisher had come and not one of the other two. Or, even worse, the head boss.
After one final gnce around her room, Cecelia double-checked that she had her lucky keychain — an adorable chibi version of one of her favorite characters — turned off the lights, and shut the door on her way out.
