Hello, and welcome to your weekly dose of the real world, where truth
is stranger than fiction and things are not always as they seem. This story
and job found us in the midst of a cosmic heist spanning dimensions, one
that threatened the fabric of our very existence, an attack that was to transcend
conventional boundaries, and in response, we are called in discern to help.
They call me the Ghost. I'm an independent dark operative on the dark Web,
taking on the mysterious and outrageous jobs that no one else will or can,
and this is one of our adventures. Take a listen and enjoy,
all right. I know you guys like to hear the request. So here
is what I received. And it was the first contact that I had regarding
this job. It said, greeting's ghost, and I'm reading this to you.
This is actually what I got. My name is doctor Eleana Russo,
a theoretical physicist at CERN. Our work often treads on the boundaries of human
understanding, but recently we've encountered an anomaly that has left even our seasoned team
in uncharted territory. We've been monitoring a series of unusual surges originating from seemingly
random locations across the globe. Simultaneously, we've detected an inexplicable signal its origin,
defying all conventional detection methods. This peculiar event has begun to correlate with
disturbing reports, objects disappearing, uncanny perception shifts, and individuals experiencing sudden,
transient alternate realities. Our preliminary investigations hint at only very unsettling theories that could
unravel our world. We've taken it as far as we can, and so
now I am reaching out to you. You've built a reputation for solving enigmas
that push the limits of plausibility. As such, I humbly request your help
in unraveling this predicament. We offer you complete access to our data facilities and
resources, along with suitable compensation for your time and effort. Should you accept
this challenge, please respond via the secure channel. We hope your unique skills
can help us comprehend and possibly mitigate this threat. Hoping to hear from you
soon, doctor Eliana Russo, so as you can see, this thing was
no joke from the beginning. If you haven't listened to any of the other
cern stories that we have out there, you really need to. There's a
lot that happens. I'll leave a link to one of them in the description
here. Now for us, just hearing about CERN and the fact that they
are contacting me, I knew this was something serious and something big. Now,
if you're unfamiliar with CERN overall, it's the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
It's located in Switzerland near the French Swiss border, close to Geneva.
CERN is one of the world's premier centers for scientific research, and it's famous
for its large Hadron collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
This allows physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics and high
energy physics. It's all very high end, high tech stuff, guys.
Now for me though and my team, CERN really equates to other dimensions,
right, because that's what we have dealt with through CERN. And we don't
know what this is yet, but our history with CERN is definitely on our
minds. Here. I had to Switzerland for the initial meet and I go
alone just to find out what all is going on. I get to the
sprawling CERN complex and I pull into this parking space that they reserved just for
me. It's near the control center. I get led to where I'm supposed
to go to conference room situated above the LHC. Sleek furniture, wall length
mires lying this constant stream of data, and a scale model of the LHC
took the center of the room. I mean, there's no mistaking where you
are when you're there. And it was in that room that I first met
doctor Eleanor Russo. She's a renowned physicist and at that time the head of
CERN's anomaly investigations, probably still is. She was dressed in all black.
She was topped off with a crisp white lab coat, and she had her
auburn hair and a tight bunch. She had these thick black roomed glasses.
Stylish. But you know, if you were to picture someone at CERN,
like in a movie or something, it would be doctor Russo. She was
friendly enough, but after her introductions her tone shifted. She got more serious
and confirmed what she had written to me, with the most unsettling thing of
all being the cases where individuals momentarily experienced what seemed to be entirely alternate realities
right here in our world, shifts and different things and she gave me some
example, so I want to give you one. One of the stories that
really stuck with her was about a woman named Claire. She was an ordinary
woman, a school teacher in a small town, and one day she's just
grading papers at her kitchen table. She picks up her coffee mug takes a
sip. When she placed it back down, it simply vanished. Didn't fall,
didn't slip, it just disappeared. Well, Claire was understandably shaken.
She searched her entire house, even though she knew it had never left her
table. She was alone, her doors were locked, no one could have
taken it, yet her mug was nowhere. Another incident was a man who
was walking his dog just in his own neighborhood, and there he was until
he turned a corner, and then all of a sudden, he found himself
standing in the middle of a bustling city street, skyscrapers, you know,
cars whizzing by. There was no explanation. And you know, when Cerne
starts to get When the scientists start to get these incoming signals and different things
that tell them that something's going on, they do go out in the world
and seek out situations, and they started collecting these reports, and they had
enough of them that they put it together that, yeah, what we're seeing
is actually correlating to what's happening out there. Well. Russo made it very
clear that these weren't just mere rumors or isolated cases of hallucinations or something.
They ruled all of that out. These were credible reports, documented, studied,
and the conclusion was always the same. Reality itself was warping in the
vicinity of these anomalies, our reality, and it was their opinion that none
of this was an accident. It was their full belief that what was happening
was intentional. The implications of what she said, you know, it sank
in slowly. Our world was being intruded upon, our reality disturbed, and
the cause, she hypothesized was a force or entities from another dimension trying to
break into hours. But why, what were the intentions? Were they supposed
to be friendly or hostile? Either way, it had to be stopped because
eventually these events could destroy us. She'll let me know that they were building
a working portal pointed toward the strong signals they were picking up. Because none
of it was slowing down. Something was going to have to happen. It
was at that point that I call my entire team in because this is CERN.
It's all the way out in Switzerland, and I would like them all
there. You know, in cases like this where we're dealing with other dimensions,
it's more helpful for me to have any backups right there at CERN and
closer to me than at home in the warehouse. So the team fast forward,
they arrive, We bring them in. We all dive in, taking
an angle to look at this thing. Harley and Rider. They take a
look at specific data to rule out the fact that this could just be something
affecting human perception. I mean, do we really know if our reality is
being affected or could it be the people on In the end, all of
the data pointed to reality shifts a. Scarlett and Frankie, they dove into
the temporal aspect of the bullets that Russo is describing. Are they happening at
regular intervals? Does their duration or intensity change or fluctuate? Basically, is
this something that is more controlled or is it random? While in their hunt
for answers, they find the blips are indeed a ratic However, they are
increasing in frequency and intensity, and do seem intentional. The pressure is building,
and then Jagger and I will be focus on the impact. How does
each bullep affect our world physically and energetically? Is there a tangible change in
the environment where they occur. So we compare instances of blips with instances of
normality, and it confirms these alarming facts that we can see each bullep only
changes our reality minutely. So that might be good, right, Well not
here, because when these are all put together cumulatively, they threatened to cause
a seismic shift in the fabric of our universe. The energy we're losing isn't
just being taken their energy, their alien energy from that other universe. It's
seeping into ours as well. But these energies, you know, they're not
a match. They are in fact way off. So put simply, the
two cannot coexist in our world or anywhere else, and it's our world that
seems to be getting pushed out. So all of this was already looked over
by Russo's group, but we have to do our due diligence, and she
wanted us to, I mean, in a way, she was hoping that
maybe we could find something that made their findings untrue, but we could not.
We checked it, we double checked it, we triple checked everything,
trying to cross verify all the findings, and it always came up the same.
So we're wrapping that up when a gentleman burst into the room to inform
us that the portal, our direct line to this investigation, is falling unstable
to a sudden surgeon energy signatures from the other side. They're growing and our
side is being affected the portals and stability may lead to its collapse if things
get out of control. I mean, who knows how long it will hold.
So we need to get moving. The clock is ticking, and I'll
fast forward again here. I mean, there was a lot happening in this
job, you know, fast forward pasted all the briefings with the CERN scientists,
the portal crew, and all of that to the point where we're now
close to launching this mission. Okay, I've clearly accepted the job. This
has to be done. When all is ready, we finally find ourselves standing
before the portal and on the brink of the unknown. This is a job
where we really do not know what's happening on the other side. Those jobs
are more risky than other jobs because it's hard to prepare. We have no
idea what we're going to find on the other side. I'm taking Rider,
Jagger and Frankie through that portal with me, Harley and Scarlett. They're going
to be our support on this side at cerns should be them for any reason,
And like I always say, the people that stay back, they're just
as crucial as the people that come with me. We always hope we don't
need, you know, any major support from the outside, but if we
ever do, we need to know that it's one of us that we can
count on. All right now, The portal was situated in this room.
It's a large circular structure. It's pulsating with this soft blue glow, and
as we approached the entrance, there was, you know, this visible distortion.
You could tell right you're leaving normal. It kind of was like air
above a hot road in the summertime, you know what that looks like.
It was hard to believe, like it always is when we have to do
this. You know that this shimmering veil was a doorway that's going to lead
us to another dimension. And the portal crew they ran their final checks and
then with a very deep breath. My team and I exchange glances and we
stepped towards the portal and then off we went. And once inside the air
around us, you know, it seemed to buzz with the energy. It
kind of felt like you were walking into a pool, you know, that
feeling you're walking in and then the water sort of envelops your body. It
was kind of like that. And during it all there was this brief moment
of disorientation, this blinding flash of light, a sensation of moving but without
moving, and you kind of felt like pieces of you were being pulled apart
in tiny little directions, and you kind of felt numb. And then it
was all being stitched back together in a span of you know, a heartbeat.
So not all that wonderful, but it had to happen. And then
just as suddenly as it started, it was over. And then we were
through. And it didn't take us long to figure out that that travel through
the portal, that was the easy part. Upon landing, we realized we
were in our world. It was like our world, but it wasn't.
It was really very different. Everything was distorted. It was so strange.
We actually turned around to make sure that portal was still there, you know,
in case we had to run right back through it. It was there.
But okay, time to face this new world. Our eyes adjusted to
the kind of strangely hued light that was there. It became clear that we
landed in a world that was both strikingly familiar yet not so familiar at the
same time. I mean, it was our world. It was a parallel
dimension, but it was a grotesquely distorted version of it. Looking out onto
the city, buildings leaned at odd angles. Their architecture twisted into impossible shapes
that defied the laws of physics as we understood them. In our world.
The sky above us swirled with this kaleidoscope of colors peeking through the pale blue
sky. It was almost hypnotic. We head on end to get a closer
look, and I mean everything was a hod right. But perhaps the most
disturbing thing was the eeriness of the empty streets. I mean, a city
that should have been full of life was utterly desolate, silent except for the
huntingly odd sounds out there. I mean, where was everybody? There was
any life at all. We didn't even see any birds. Nothing. We
caught some shadows out of the corners of our eyes. But we'd look and
we didn't see anything. We'd hear sounds like these distant echoes, and we'd
turn to look at those, but again there's nothing there, just the distorted
buildings and abandoned streets. Soon after we got there, okay, it was
starting to get dark that we got there late evening, so we're moving around
checking everything out, and we need to find somewhere to stay, and we
find this old, abandoned looking church. It's a bit outside of town,
looks like it's been sitting there for a while, so that's where we set
up for the night. We were not going to do anything there except get
rest, so we took turns keeping watch and we caught some z's as dawn
broke There we are starting our second day in this strange world. Frankie led
the way. He and Jagger break out their spectral scanners as we started through
town. I broke out my quantum coherence detector, my QCD, and we
start sweeping the area around us. As we walked. It was kind of
like, you know, how you'd expect someone searching for buried treasure with a
metal detector. That's kind of what we looked like. And as we went
through we weren't really getting any good data. Both the scanners and the QCD
they were giving off erratic readings that were jumping all over the scale. It
was a strong sign that the city's very quantum fabric, the underpinning of its
own reality, was being disrupted or altered. It was not stable. We
came upon the open City Square and we stopped for a second. We started
messing with the scanners. We're hoping. Our idea was, if we can
get on the same plane as this place, I mean, anything to give
us a better view, maybe we can see more of what's going on.
We had to assume there was more. I mean, if we could maybe
tune our scanners sort of like tuning a radio to the correct frequency to get
a station, well, maybe we'll be able to see what's really there.
And sure enough, when we finally do hit that sweet spot, we do
get a different perspective. The buildings don't appear quite as twisted or warped anymore,
but they're still designed in ways that are alien to us. But this
was good because it told us that maybe things weren't quite as messed up as
they first appeared, you know, And in case, in case you guys
decide that you want to jump dimensions anytime soon, you need to know that
they're not all equal. Okay, Each dimension out there is separate from the
others. How they grow and mature is completely independent of any others. So
the parallel universe might not be exactly parallel. And I know we'd all like
to think there are versions of us out there living these parallel lives everywhere,
but it's not everywhere. Sometimes you're not there at all, and sometimes you
are there, but you're not what you expect. After we start making our
adjustments, we do start to notice faint outlines of what look like people.
I mean they're a bit ghostly, like they're somewhat transparent, but still they
were there. The next question was can they see us? I mean,
it didn't seem like it. No matter what we did. We were standing
there starting to feel like sitting ducks and kept feeling these cold pockets of air
in the square. They weren't predictable and it was strange like everything else we
saw. Now, Frankie, with these people, he tried screaming in someone's
face. Okay, but the guy did nothing, so Frankie. He then
kind of looked around right like something happened, but he didn't see Frankie at
all. He didn't notice anything, and he really just brushed it off.
Writer moved the hair from a girl's face, and you know, all she
did was reach up and scratched her forehead. She didn't notice rider at all.
It's like something just caught her skin. Funny had no idea that someone
actually touched her forehead. It didn't seem like anyone really saw us until we
saw her. We spotted who we would come to know as doctor Steyn.
She stood out from everybody else. She was very alert ending there in the
square. She appeared to be kind of looking in our direction, so that's
why I caught notice of her. There was this big guy next to her,
clearly a bodyguard of some kind, so we can only figure she was
somewhat important. Well, I decide to walk right up to her, and
when I do, I say things like, you know, excuse me,
hello, and stuff like that. But I don't get a reaction. I
mean, I don't really get a reaction. She did look, but it
was ever so slightly. I mean, could she see me at all?
Could she see anything about us. She had a badge hanging around her neck,
a work badge, and I can see cerne written across it, and
I look closer and I can see that it says she is a chief theoretical
physicist. So pretty much that makes her like Russo in our world. Her
name looks to be Victorias Stein or a doctor Victoria Stein. And well,
this might make sense then, right, if she is Russo, then surely
she knows about what's going on here in her world a whole lot more than
any of us on our side. Was she expecting us with what they're doing,
surely she would assume that we would send someone, And I mean she's
right. Frankie decides to pull another scream session and he stands behind the good
doctor and lets it out, and I mean it was loud. Again,
she lifts her head up like she maybe heard something or at least got the
sense of something. Then she's slowly, and I mean very slowly turned around.
So now we have Frankie, who's literally inches away from her face,
looking directly at her, and she is literally looking right at him, but
she doesn't see him. We are convinced, though, that she sensed something
After that, she just started walking ahead again, briskly through the town square,
and we follow. Of course, she goes to an alley where there's
this large black transport type vehicle, and seeing that vehicle, we realize that
they were ready to pick up any invaders. They were out scouting around someone
that they would pick up, so it's a good thing that they couldn't see
us. The driver gets out, you know, and they all start talking
in front of this vehicle. Stein says something like, you know, there's
nothing there's nothing I can see, but I don't have a good feeling about
it. And then one of the guys says something like, no need to
get paranoid, you know, I'm sure we will know. And of course
I can't be sure what they're talking about, but it definitely fits with what
we're doing. From the sound of it. It's probably good they don't know
we are there. Now we know that we need to go with these guys
back Discerns. So we sneak into that transport vehicle and we hitch a ride,
and lucky for us, Stein takes us right into the hub of it
all, just like we thought she would. There's a group of people waiting
for Stein. When she gets to her conference room, she slams down her
briefcase in front of them and yells out, you know, their coordinates must
have been wrong. She's saying, you know, she thought that maybe she
felt something, but there was no one there. One of the women that
was in there, she came right back though, and she said, well,
something must have happened because calculations were right. So, I mean,
what does that tell us? Guys? We know that they are watching the
energies just like Russo is at home. They were looking for any incoming,
and that incoming was us. Of course they had to know, right,
they had to expect us. I notice some universal maps on one of the
walls. There's a digital version of two earths on a lighted screen on another
wall, and all I can see is one basically eating the other one.
That's what's going on, and the effects of their great idea they were going
to be devastating. I mean that either didn't know or they didn't care,
but either way, it all had to stop, right. We could not
let this continue. That meeting told us everything we needed to know. Now
we had to basically wait the rest of that day until there was no one
else you know, around, but maybe the late night diehards before we could
really roam about and learn what we needed to. So for the us the
day we kind of hung back, although we did poke around a bit.
We made our way around the eerily familiar corridors, got ourselves a bit acclimated
to what was different. And it was the same but different than cern at
home. Like everything else, it was kind of creepy and it was still
chilly. Everything had a chill to it, same as outside. It never
really went away. Well after most everyone had left for the day, we
finally had our freedom right to move about the place. We go back to
Stein's Hub, back to that digital display of the two earths side by side.
There was no denying what we were seeing. It was a representation of
their reality and hours. There was a web of energy linking the two,
a pulsing neonline that originated from their world and it bled into our earth,
trying to suck the life out of it. The next thing that we discovered
was this planning table, and it was covered in complex formulas, scientific data,
and what looked like mission plans that seemed to suggest that they were planning
to start an operation to increase this energy transfer they were doing. This could
be their reaction to the fact that it's not going all that well. Maybe
they think they need more energy when from what we can see, our energy
is not doing great stuff for them. Looking more closely at their data,
it was actually a bit confusing, like maybe they were confused or reading their
own data incorrectly. We were questioning again if they really knew what they were
doing. We needed to start to find out more about what they had going
on. The question was where to start. We had those random employees to
stay clear of during the wee hours, but that was okay because we started
by diving into their computer system and we found that there were two teams focused
on this project of THEIRS, an extraction team and an integration team, one
working on extracting the energy from our world, and then the second integrating that
new energy into their situation. We could see the integration team was having issues
integrating our energies and dimensional goodies into their world. Aside from the fact that
what they are doing goes against all universal laws, it's just not that easy
to do. We found a multitude of correspondences and heated debates between both the
extraction team and the integration team over the sustainability of their energy assimilation methods.
We could see that they were facing severe difficulties in stabilizing our incoming energy,
and that was causing both destructive and unpredictable anomalies in their dimension. I mean,
we could have predicted that some were even voicing concerns over potential feedback loops
that could destabilize their own cern facility or worse, create unprecedented ruptures in the
fabric of both dimensions, some of which we were already seeing in our own.
We also discovered something else going on that we weren't convinced they were aware
of the energy that they were leaching from our dimension. It wasn't just physical,
it was metaphysical as well. They were inadvertently siphoning off elements of our
culture, our history, our very essence, causing distortions in their own societal
and environmental fabric. Our art, music, languages, all were beginning to
seep into their world, creating a chaotic and unpredictable blend. It as if
they thought they could advance themselves by blending our society with theirs, become us
or more like us that can't happen like this, of course, but it
sure sounds good, but we don't know is this intentional? It looked like
it had to be, but that would be ignorant. So all we could
think it was they didn't have a full grasp on what they were doing,
but all of what they were doing in a very awkward way could explain why
we don't seem fully materialized there because something was definitely going on in a not
so good way. We get done digging around the data where we could,
and then we started scoping out the employees and there was one employee that stood
out to us, because you know, we need an end somewhere. This
girl, she stood out as different from the rest. We ended up giving
her the name actually of Geek. But don't worry, guys. She took
a lot of pride in her geeky nerdiness. Believe me, she lived for
it. We would get to know her later, and boy was she something.
But we kept seeing her name pop up in different places, so we
sought out her main machine and after digging into that, we could see that
she sort of supported both of the teams. She was there for tech support
and anything else that they needed. She was nothing major, though according to
her position at CERN, she was really just a mid level tech. But
she was very good, which we could see in her work made us think
she wasn't really recognized for it. Well, we went through it all and
to us, it revealed that she was working on an experimental procedure to reverse
this energy extraction process. This was the first we saw of anything any ideal
like that. She had notes on the dangers of the extraction and some very
good arguments as to why this should not happen. We dig deeper and find
that this idea of hers was shot down by Stein, even though looking through
all of her data we agreed a hundred percent with her. This obviously was
a bad idea and it obviously wasn't working yet. Her idea now of let's
shut this down and reverse it is shut down. Not sure why, but
it didn't stop Geek. She kept working on it. She even gave it
a name. She called it Project Reflection. The higher ups thought it would
be too risky, I guess, and it carried a potential for a destabilization
we read, but that was happening anyway, and that's probably why Geek continued
to work on it. In seek You could see that she was desperate for
a solution because she knew exactly what was going on. She just couldn't convince
anyone else. And her work was worthy, guys, she was good.
Her mathematical models and simulation results did suggest that there was a slim chance,
slim but a chance that this could work, and this sparked a glimmer of
hope among us. If we could help them perfect this process, we might
not only stop the energy drained, but potentially restore balance to both dimensions.
Geek was really onto something and we had to run with it. So with
our newfound resolve, we set our sights on Project Reflection. You know,
sometimes you can look at a society and think it's absolutely doomed, but we
always have to remember that there are other people out there, many of them.
Even in this other dimension where things are all messed up, there was
still some sanity in it all. So when things get crazy, guys,
you just have to find the sanity in the chaos. It's there somewhere.
Don't ever give up on that. But okay, with Geek now as our
main target, we get to work setting ourselves up for the next day.
By the time we're done, you know, running around and gathering up all
the intel we can. It's three thirty in the morning, and we know
that more people are going to start to flood in as early as five,
so we get prepared. We know now that Stein and her crew have everyone
who is working on this on high alert, looking for anyone popping in from
our dimension. So somehow we're going to need to get Geek's attention and then
get her to trust us so that we can work with her directly and not
be pushed to the side by Stein. We wait for Geek to get there
in the morning, and she rolls in at about five thirty. She has
her coffee, she gets settled in at her station, and that's when we
start in. We don't wait, there's no reason to. We flick her
lights and we start messing with things on her desk, and we don't stop
until she's pretty convinced that something or someone is there. But interestingly, she
doesn't go running for help. That's a great sign for us. In fact,
she seemed interested in what was going on. So let the games begin.
We move in even more. First of all, okay, we know
that we can't interact with other living things we've gotten to that point. We've
tested a few things and know some things we're invisible to them. We're silent
all of that, but we can interact with the solids, like flipping lights,
moving things, stuff like that. Now in my pack, I have
this small device. It's pretty awesome. It looks like a pen, but
I can direct it to another device like a computer or laptop or something something
online, and I can connect wirelessly and then penetrate and infiltrate the device.
There are a few things you know to get through, but it's pretty slick.
I can connect my mini laptop, the one I take with me pretty
much everywhere. It's very small, through the pen device over to her workstation.
So anyway, I get myself all hooked up, and then it's time
to send our geek a message. And in my message, I say to
her, well, I only say three things. I say, we are
here, and we know we are here to help with project reflection. And
then finally I ask her to meet me in the locker rooms and to bring
her work pad. I mean, CERN has plenty of locker rooms, okay,
because people work around the clock. Sometimes just kind of comes with the
territory. Not many people though, if anyone would be in their midmorning and
aside from wanting to be alone, I want it for the steam. We
watch as Geek gets that message. Those messages pop up on her screen.
She immediately looks surprised. She sits up straight. She's looking all around her,
but there's no one there, of course, everyone that is theirs,
just going about their business working. Frankie walks up to her desk. Andy
swipes a couple of books onto the ground right in front of her. This
also gets her attention, and after it happens, she puts the books back.
She looks around one more time at the people working around her, pulls
up my messages again, reads them, closes it, and then she briskly
walks off and we follow her all the way to the locker rooms for that
department. Inside, she starts looking around, you know, she's opening stalls
and things, making sure that no one's there. Then she locks the door
from the inside and she starts to call out, you know, who's there.
She wants to know if we are from the other side, and how
do we know about Project Reflection. If anyone were to walk in there right
now, if they could they just see her moving about the locker room talking
to no one. Well, we flip on the showers in the next room,
and that gets Geeks attention. She goes into the shower area, which
has a swinging door, and the room is filling up with steam, and
with all the steam around it settles on us in a way where our forms
become slightly visible to Geek. Now, at first she freaks out, even
though we know that she was basically expecting us, like so many of them
were. But it's still a strange thing to have happened, right, So
we give her a minute, and then she starts saying things like wait,
are you you know? Who are you? You know? Things like that
she knows who you must be, but of course it's hard to believe.
I send her another message from my laptop, because we remember she can't see
us, She can't hear us anything anything that we're doing her that we have,
so we still have to communicate with her in this way. Anything from
our world is not really forming over there in a way that we can interact
normally. Anyway, I let her know that I'm there and that I am
the ghost, and that I've been called into work on the issues that are
going on with this energy transfer, and I let her know that I'm aware
of the fact that they were expecting someone, but it's crucial that our presence
remain a secret. There are too many people on her side that would not
want us involved and messing with things. And she takes it all in and
once the complete shock wears off, we could see the wheels just churning in
her mind. Her eyes sparkled with this mix of fear and awe and excitement,
and she says that she agrees, and after a few more you walking
back and forth, she led us back to her workstation and she pulled up
several digital documents detailing the ambitious project Reflection. I mean, it was a
blueprint of a bridge between dimensions, a solution aimed at reversing the energy extraction
process to return what was taken. And she's quietly explaining things to us.
She could see there were also risks in trying to stop what was going on,
but she just couldn't live with the fact. She said that by doing
what they were doing, they could destroy two different worlds. I mean,
she just couldn't let it happen. So she went into everything that she had.
She was translating the complexities for us, showing us the mapped out equations
and dynamics of the energy transference, and we could also see the bottlenecks in
the system. The hurdles were significant, which I expected. The laws of
the universe are pretty much much impossible to get around. This was never really
going to happen, or work wasn't going to be successful. At its core,
Project Reflection aimed to reverse the direction of the energy extraction process right,
so, instead of pulling energy from our dimension into theirs, it was designed
to push the energy back and rebalance the scales. This would be achieved through
a complex series of calculations and algorithms realigning the directionality of the interdimentual conduit that
was there. So one part of Project Reflection was the calibration module. This
is the piece that recognizes and reacts to the changes in the energy signatures of
both dimensions. Each time energy is successfully transferred, the software needs to recalibrate,
seeking a state of balance between our two worlds. And this is crucial
because this continuous adjustment is the key to ensuring the energy drain from our world
stops and gradually reverses. It's an excellent idea, but there was an issue,
a glitch that Geek had been unable to resolve, and if it's not
resolved, we might not beat the clock. Here. The issue was getting
it to react in real time. There was still a delay that she couldn't
bypass, and the few seconds the system needed to catch up to everything.
It mattered because during the delay, the energy extraction would either pause or even
worse, exacerbate. Not good. So this was no small problem. We
were just about to get into it when doctor Stein showed up. She was
looking for some reporting from Geek, and then before she leaves again, she
tells Geek that she will be needed in a meeting in the lab area in
just a few minutes, so we have a few minutes to talk before she
goes into that meeting. We need to get to work, but where can
we work. On her way to that meeting, Geek drops us off in
an observation room. Apparently they're doing some upgrades in there and work in that
room, so no one using it at the moment, but the equipment all
there. It's all hooked to the network. The windows are tinted so we'll
be able to look out onto the main lab area. We can keep an
eye on everyone. That's where the meeting is, so we'll know what's going
on there, and no one should bother us. So technically this is a
great place for us to set up, which we do, and then Geek
goes off to her meeting and we get busy working on that glitch in Project
Reflection. While she was gone, I look at everything again. Now I
had dealt with similar issues before in our own dimension. In our work,
I had created algorithms that had to react instantaneously to changes in data patterns.
It's very delicate work, but it was not impossible, and from the looks
of things, the same thing could be applied here. So that's a really
quick summary of me diving in trying to find the source of the issue and
figuring out what to do. Okay, I knew I had to streamline the
data processing within the calibration module. I first had to reduce the complexity of
the decision making algorithm, retaining only the essential parts. Next, I implemented
a method of concurrent processing, enabling the module to process incoming data and execute
the adjustment commands simultaneously. And thirdly, I implemented a predictive algorithm. We've
used this algorithm in our own dimension, and it was fitting here. It
would use past data to help predict future energy shifts, and then adjust the
parameters in advance so that things could move along more quickly. And then lastly,
I optimized the code for efficiency, removing redundant commands and simplifying the complex
functions. This all made the module run faster. All right, there's a
point to all of it. It reduced response time, and all of this
combined enabled the calibration module to react in real time to the energy shifts.
Geek let us know that this was the last hurdle to overcome here, and
we just solved it. Now it's her world, this is her project.
All of my changes will have to pass her inspection, but we all know
it's good and we should be good to go. The big question at that
point for us would be what will happen to their world when this extraction does
stop. Well, Geek already did let us know that she had another project
that she started just for that. I mean, of course she did.
She was working out the details still, but once that was done, it
would really be their only hope, and Stein would not really have a choice
but to use Geek and it. Even though she's rejected all of Geek's ideas
and proposals so far, which still don't make any sense to me. Geek
felt confident though, in what she had, although it might not improve their
world really fast enough for them to enjoy any of the real big changes in
their lifetimes. I mean, the damage that's been done here, guys,
it could take generations. So we were in the observation room okay, and
we're looking out onto the main lab area. We're done with what we had
to do there. At the moment, we could see Geeks meeting starting to
break up. People are on the move, which means even though we were
told no one's using this room, we still have to be ready for anything.
What if someone came up there. We do have some non lethal weapons
set up with Frankie and Jagger standing by in case anyone does decide, you
know, to break in. We have combat batons, taser guns. We
even had this high powered energy pistol, but that would only have been used
if things got really extreme. We don't plan on being there very long.
Remember, with our defensive measures in place and the computer terminal access, we
were set to continue with this plan, it was now us against time to
get Project Reflection running and to save our own dimension. And as soon as
Geek gets back to us, we get things started. And it's important to
note that once we start things, we can't stop it. This is a
no go back situation, and that hangs over you. You know, in
a situation like this, we knew that this was not going to be good
for their world, at least not at first. But you know, at
the same time, we have to protect our world, just like doctor Stein
is trying to do or thinks she's doing with her own. But the big
differences, we're doing it the right way. We as people are in charge
of our own world, and we do what we can to keep it good.
You can't just ignore problems and then decide you can fix it by taking
from somewhere else. It doesn't ever really work out that way, folks,
and it probably never will. All right, Well, Geek brought us back
some lab coats, which is good thinking. I mean, if we had
those on, at least she could see something not where we were, even
though we'd still have to communicate through my laptop and her pad. It helped
we all stand there for a moment, just watching all of the little explosions
going off on our planet. Those are holes and rips that are about to
happen. That's what all of that is. It was like watching little fireworks
pockets going off all over the place, small and random, but the amount
of them was increasing. Their invasion and pull from our Earth was getting stronger.
In that moment, I just couldn't imagine what doctor Stein was thinking.
And she has to know this is not any kind of ideal solution. How
could this damage be okay? And what about Russo? I mean, she
was probably losing her mind. All right. Well, Geek goes over the
changes that we made to the calibration module and everything looks good to her.
It's time to initiate Project Reflection. There's no time to waste and no reason
to wait. Geek was quick to lay everything out. There were certain steps
that had to be followed. It was all very serious, and it kind
of reminded me of you know those scenes and movies where they're getting ready to
launch or enter nuclear codes and launch. You know, you've got your books
and your witnesses and a bunch of very precise steps that need to happen.
That's what this was like. And it was stressful like that because we were
doing something very big here, changing everything. All right, Well, things
start happening right away. The minute we engaged, the screens in front of
us started to blink and flicker. Equations and codes ran across the large monitor.
We were using a sign that the first step was working, getting things
going, and then we got to the prompt to load step two. The
next part involved that calibration and load balancing. This is the part we worked
down while Geek was in our meeting. It started up great, which was
awesome. This was such an important step. I mean, it's primary purpose
or task was to read the energy levels of both dimensions, identify any imbalances,
and adjust the extraction process accordingly, all to help maintain an equilibrium state,
which in turn ensures that the energy drawn from our dimension was immediately replaced.
Hence why it was crucial that it worked in real time. The step
didn't take away past extraction, but what it did do was it wouldn't allow
it to take any more from us, so when it tried to take more,
it also had to send keeping those interactions. Even then it moved on
to sequence and this was where the reversal process was truly initiated. Here all
the information and data points collected and processed in the previous steps, they're used
to flip the switch, so to speak. This part of the process was
the most complex, and every millisecond mattered, and we were watching the screens.
Things were happening fast, and I mean fast, And once all of
that was successfully initiated, it would lead us to the final step, which
was stabilization. The goal here was to ensure that the process was controlled sustainable.
It wouldn't cause any more damage to either dimension. Clearly I must have.
But now, stabilization in the context of Project reflection, it was a
critical and more final aspect of the process. But in the bigger picture and
on the other side of this, stabilization was only the beginning of a much
larger, longer term journey for both worlds ours a lot faster. I mean,
what we were doing was going to stop what was happening, but that
didn't mean it would fix everything right then and there. Our dimension, luckily,
was still in the early stages of the energy drain. The reversal process
would effectively reinstate the energy back into our world and could and would begin to
repair the damage relatively quickly. I mean, our world is strong at its
core, and the damage had only begun. Thank goodness for Cern and doctor
Russo because they caught this so quickly. Now, this parallel dimension that we
were in at the time, however, that's a completely different story. It
already had been damaged quite a bit over time, and then they started tapping
into our energy, which was a foreign energy, which led to more damage
and considerable shifting in their world state. And now with this energy reversal that
we're doing, they would lose this extra energy source. Now, our energy
wasn't good for them, but it was still energy, and they will still
feel that drain for a while. The process and step of stabilization will help
ensure that this energy removal won't cause catastrophic damage more damage. I mean,
they've done enough, and their world will still need time to adapt to the
change. And it's going to take many, many years, perhaps even generations,
for their world to stabilize fully and start recovering from the energy drain's impact.
It's a big situation they have going on over there, and this was
all happening now, and it was time to think about how that future would
look okay. And that's what Geek's long term project was for the one she
would continue working on when we left it to aid this recovery process. This
is that project I was telling about earlier, right that Stein won't be able
to deny when this is all said and done. I mean, Geek's ideas
were quite innovative. This one she called Project Renaissance. The key principle behind
it was energy self sufficiency and environmental symbiosis. Extracting energy from their world's core
while simultaneously recycling waste energy from their cities. All kinds of things. She
had it all planned out, core heat converted to usable energy, and energy
recycling system for their cities. I mean, how great is that? All
kinds of things? I mean, like I said, this girl was amazing.
She was really thinking it all out. Their world was about to face
a very significant energy deficit. Her project would help provide the roadmap back to
energy self sufficiency, hopefully eventual recovery. I could only hope that Stein would
listen, But really, what choice would she have? As for our dimension,
our world, the digital images were already showing the energy start to seep
back into our own dimension. It was working, and that was great news.
But what we noticed next was not so awesome. Sure we were stabilizing
again and things were moving in the right direction, but now everything was weaker,
and so of course we had to know it was inevitable that our own
shaky existence in their dimension would start to unravel as well. And it was
as our native energy gradually returned to our world, our fleeting presence in their
realm began to fade even more than we already were. We were losing the
small bit of energy that could support us, the only energy that could support
us. We were looking at each other as our bodies intermittently flickered. We
were shifting and becoming even more transparent. We also could feel the strength inside
of us dwindling. Things are happening, and we could definitely tell, and
I have to say it was pretty unsettling. It was an unsettling feeling to
know that as the energy was being drained from that world, we were also
being drained from that world. We were making something right at our own determent.
It's something you just don't forget. My hands ghosting through the control panels,
causing chills to run down my spine, goose bumps prickling along my neck.
When I tried to grab the edge of the console, testing my own
existence, it didn't go well. My fingers just slipped right through it,
as if it were a mirage and not even really there. So we're all
feeling it, we're all experiencing it, and it was sort of a controlled
panic that was happening, and all happening in front of Geek. She herself
was starting to panic, but we had to keep her calm. But we
did need to get moving. We had to return to our own dimension before
we risked becoming mere fragments and getting lost in the nothingness between dimensions. It
was time for us to get to the portal. We were packing up quickly
and talking to Geek as we began this frantic retreat. I kept my eye
on the progress of the project. Though the energy flow is reaching a balance.
I mean, it's funny how quickly things want to go back to normal.
And that was all great. You know, our world was doing pretty
good, but we ourselves were becoming increasingly spectral. We were moving even slower.
It was harder to get everything packed up, our equipment. It's not
cool when you start disappearing guys, don't ever take your existence for granted.
And if all of that wasn't enough to deal with, there was Geek.
Geek was what saved their world, or was going to. I could only
hope that she would get the acknowledgment she deserved when all of this was said
and done, if doctor Stein could get off her pedestal and see what was
really going on. But as we stood there, ready to basically run,
Geek stopped us. Fear and panic was all you could see on her face.
All of a sudden, she was trying to reach out to us,
but there was nothing there. We had to take off our lab coats and
then she wouldn't even know where we were at all. She was kind of
trying to hold onto them, you know. You could see some tears forming
in her eyes. It was sort of like a small child that didn't want
their parents to leave. She was begging us to be able to come with
us. She was telling us all the reasons how she would be such an
asset in our world, and how it would actually be beneficial for her to
escape the dreary destiny that would be her own. She could do more work
with us. She didn't want her knowledge or her existence to go to waste.
It was a very tense and sad moment. Really, all I could
do is type on my small laptop, which was getting harder by the second.
As much as it tore us up. To refuse her, we had
to explain the brutal truth our dimension was not compatible with their biological makeup.
The very energy disparity that allowed us to exist here in this half state would
prove fatal to her. In our world, she would not even survive the
transition. In her world, there wasn't enough energy behind her to travel at
all, much less come back with us. In all reality, her existence
in her own world was most likely already off because of how everything was like
we were about to dissolve. In her world. She probably wouldn't even survive
the trip back to ours. It was too dangerous in this particular situation to
even try. It was hard. She had those tears in her eyes when
she finally nodded in acceptance that she would have to stay. She did know
why. The girl was smart, and she had her own fight to continue
in her own world, and deep down she did know that. With a
very big sigh, it was time for our goodbyes. It was a tough
moment. I have to admit, there would be no way for us to
check on Geek. There would be no way for us really to know what's
going on on their planet or in their world. It just would have to
be. And that's how it is out there in the universe. Guys,
things just are. We just are. Earth just is. We always wonder
what else is out there, but hey, whatever it is, it just
is. There's not much we can do about it, and really we just
need to focus on what is ours, make sure we're taking care of things.
It is our responsible role in the universe to do just that. But
yeah, it still wasn't pretty leaving Geek behind. She was an asset though
in her world, and her world needed her. But Okay, now that
that was done, it was time for us to run, and I mean
really an actually run, which for us at that point was kind of a
slow jog because we were getting weaker by the second. It was actually getting
harder for us even to see each other, and everything was just getting more
difficult as we were running back to the portal. At one point, Jagger
actually fell to the ground and we were moving so fast because it was getting
so hard. We almost could have missed it. You know, we're all
in different people, okay, and we're all made up differently, And for
some reason, the energy there really got to Jagger. He was shaking and
shivering and his skin was getting dewy. Frankie had to take him on one
side and I had to take him on the other, and we basically had
to carry him the rest of the way back to the portal. When we
got there, we looked up, you know, to the sky one last
time, and everything was turning darker. Didn't look great, but it was
a sign that our process was working. Unfortunately for their side, there wasn't
going to be much color in their world for a while. Their landscape would
quickly become an even colder and more dark and bland place. It would be
going through this transformation for a while for everyone there, life as they knew
it. It would be changing once again. I mean, here's just so
you know basically how it's going to go down. The reversal of energy flow
would initially cause environmental and climate changes. Okay, plants and terrain, they
would change, a lot of it would die for a while. The pressure
on their world would continue into the future. For a bit until it would
finally let up. But until then it's pressure on everything, which means more
pressure on their buildings and structures as well. Eventually a lot of those structures
that have to come down and be rebuilt because there's only so much it can
take. Remember how our first visions were of that world when we first got
there. It showed us a very distorted landscape, all the buildings bent over.
But then as we got our perspective corrected, those distortions died down a
bit. Well, those were visions into what will be. The world is
out of balance over there, all of it plain and simple, and therefore
everything in it will be I mean, listen, guys, every step of
hurting your world, and I mean everything in it, not just the ground
you're sitting on, your entire world. It all adds up. These guys
let it go on for so long, and it got so far in they
were willing to try to steal from another existence, no regard for that existence.
And I don't think I can even get across how wrong that is.
The ripple effect of the damage it would do long term really would have been
catastrophic. Geek and everyone in her world they have a long road ahead of
them at this point. It's going to take them generations most likely to make
real and meaningful progress. Their hardship and struggle will be very real, but
in the end, so will the resilience and resolve of their people. And
we know a little bit about that, don't we. It will all get
regenerated, and someone will replace doctor Stein and hopefully help their world go in
a better direction. You know, they always say history repeats itself, but
it doesn't always have to. So let's hope this does not. All Right,
Well, let's get back to our escape, which clearly we did,
or I wouldn't be talking to you right now. We do get to the
portal, and we do get through. None of us felt all that great,
though, and when we got back, doctor Russo, you know,
in recruit they had all these alerts and notifications that the portal had been activated,
so they were ready for us when we got there, and it was
good because we were all shivering and shaking. Jagger at that point he couldn't
even walk. This was one of those jobs where when we got back we
all needed medical attention. Being in a world that's not right or balanced doesn't
do good things. For you. I can tell you that we were all
a mess for at least a week. And you know that brings up another
point that I'd love to share with you guys. You know, sometimes I
drop a story and everybody wonders, where do I go? Well, this
is the kind of stuff that sometimes we're dealing with. You know. I
tie up these stories into these nice little hour bundles, you know, an
episode, so I can summarize it for you. But these jobs can be
dangerous. They're extremely active, they're intensely intellectual, and they can affect us
both mentally and physically. It was a complete energy drain in this case being
over there. Because we weren't fully solid in their world. It took a
lot more energy to do anything. Even the simple task of trying to type
on my laptop. Everything was more of a challenge. I can say that,
even though we weren't all doing that great, it felt very good to
be home. One thing we all had thought of when we got back was
how close this all came. We're talking even a day. If I did
not get that request on time, if Doctor Russo didn't send it on time
and wasn't aware of what was going on, who knows what could have happened.
Their world could have been overloaded with our foreign energy, and at first
it'd be a surge, and then it would destroy For us, we would
drain a little bit out of time until we couldn't help. But notice,
I don't even want to think about how bad that could have been. Well,
we stayed at the CERN infirmary for five days after we got back.
We couldn't leave until we knew all of the effects of the other dimension were
gone. Russo kept a run of all her tests and we went over all
the reports and all the findings. All the data showed that the energy drain
slowed down and then halted. She also saw an uptick in the positives for
our world. So things were going great for us, you know, without
anyone realizing, unless you were one of those people that was involved in all
of this, you know our world was in danger. We all go about
our lives, and I'm not saying this for anyone to feel guilty or anything,
because really we are here to live our lives, and that's what we
should be doing, not walking around all paranoid waiting for our world to implode.
I'm just reminding us all of this because everyone needs to know that in
a world that can seem crazy at times. You know, we've been known
to be in some crazy times lately, right, guys, we can never
forget that there are good people out there. Even in the other dimension when
everything seemed nuts, we still found geek. Things can get stressful, but
good ones are out there, Guys. I hope you can always know that
and take solace in it. And so wow, that was our more than
interesting job jumping dimension. We've gone before, but it was never anything like
that. Just goes to show you that anything can happen, good or bad.
I hope you enjoyed the story today. This like all of them,
you know, it's just a piece of everything. I have more jobs and
more stories to share, so check back and thank you for listening today.
I always appreciate you taking the time to be here with me. So until
next time, and I will talk to you all soon.