Gianna

"This is all going to sound crazy. Hang in there. I'll make as much of this make sense as I can."

Looking back, it’s surprising he managed to get the three of us in the room. He really did sound crazy.

"I'm an alien in a lot of ways that aren't…shall we say, intuitive. I'm a lot like you in most ways, perhaps the most important being that I can move freely in three dimensions, while moving a single direction in one dimension. Thing is, there's a fifth dimension. In the same way that the fourth dimension contains the three spatial dimensions along its axis, the fifth dimension contains many time axes within its domain. We'll call that axis the "exotemporal axis." Don't worry, we won't have to come back to this very often."

He was grinning and nodding as he spoke. Perhaps he had attempted a public speaking class, but dropped out halfway through the semester? He was clearly trying to pitch something to us, but the delivery was clunky, to say the least.

"Your world and mine exist on a 'straight line' on that exotemporal axis. Not just the world, actually: everything, down to the smallest subatomic particle, has a counterpart in every direction along the exotemporal axes that intersects it. This is usually very chaotic. A plane of exotemporal space that…"

The forced grin fell off his face, and he blew a deep breath out slowly.

"OK, I'm not going to pretend to fully understand this. Basically, my world doesn't exist on your timeline, and vice versa, but I managed to uh, do a…let's say, a cultural exchange? The person that is normally 'me' in your world - he doesn't look, talk, or act like me, but he's 'me' in an exotemporal way - has switched places with the 'me' on my world. How did I do this, you ask? That, I actually can explain. Sort of."

Kimia crossed her arms. She was curious, but unconvinced.

We watched as a thin line of bright light appeared in front of him, swirling in what looked like the typical image of an atom: a nucleus in the middle of three rings that swirled around it. All of us stared; Keola’s jaw dropped, and he grabbed his mop of curly, dark hair with both hands.

"In the ancient times of your world, there were people called alchemists. Yes, yes, I know. They had some strange ideas, and were obsessed with mercury. Shiny liquid metal, I get it. Anyways, they were very briefly on the right path at the beginning, when they began to give elements names and symbols. But their aims - the manipulation and transformation of matter - remained out of reach. They simply did not know the way."

He paused, apparently for effect, but we were still looking at the glowing light in front of him, which he was using to draw a hydrogen model in the air. I’m not sure Keola was even listening to what he was saying.

"It did not stay that way, of course. Your scientists have come to know and understand things about matter that we don’t even have names for on my world. But even without understanding, there can be use…as you see before you."

I was about to ask what use we could get out of his flashy light display, but the light from Rigel's display faded. Then, a breeze began to blow, apparently going straight up. It seemed to lift all of the air in the room. Good thing none of us were wearing skirts.

"My people understand matter on a different level. We all have the ability to reach out with our hands, with our nerves, and to coax the matter around us to move, to combine with other elements, to break bonds. This is general alchemy. Some of us, though, know a little matter on a far more intimate level. What I'm doing now is a manipulation of a single hydrogen atom. Its movement, its combination and the breaking of its bonds sets off chain reactions. And that's… basically what reality is."

The three of us were dumbstruck as we grasped what Rigel was claiming he could do. It would have seemed arrogant, had he not sounded just as in awe of what he was doing as we were.

"This isn't actually that far from what you do on this world with fire, glass and water. On my world, we'd call that general alchemy, or…something close to that. The knowledge is just as much the point as the action. I'd imagine my counterpart is at this very moment having a discussion with people not so different from yourselves, eager to learn the ways of science. What my people do with our minds, you do with your hands."

"Most from my world work with all elements equally. The minds and hands comparison works well there, too. General alchemists have a limited reach, usually a third to half a meter, and usually struggle to make atoms and molecules do things they wouldn't do themselves. But as you three might have guessed, there are others…"

The air in the room suddenly turned frigid.

"...to whom this generalization does not hold."

The three of us gasped as the breeze became a gale. I could now see that the wind was not blowing through the whole room, but only past, above and beneath the three of us, leaving every other millimeter of the room virtually untouched. The rushing air kept growing stronger, and I felt a firm push at the soles of my shoes. Rigel beamed as he watched us try to parse what was happening.

“Take a step. Hold your body straight.”

My heart raced as I gingerly lifted one foot. When I pushed it back down, the rest of my body rose up to meet it; it was like I was standing on a plate made of solid air, or an invisible step. Wordlessly, I met the eyes of my fellow observers; they too stood on columns of air, laughing disbelievingly, mouths agape.

“Incredible, isn’t it!?” Rigel’s smile reached from ear to ear, and his eyes flared with a glee - genuine, this time - that bordered on psychotic.

We gently descended to the floor as Rigel closed his eyes and exhaled. He had the expression of an experienced marathon runner after a vigorous warm-up, like he had only begun, and was excited for the real race to commence.

“So…would you like to try?”