Chapter 3 : String Theory
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Jake opened his eyes, back in Amy's laboratory, Tim, Lisa and Amy all staring down at him.
"Whoa! Stop it! That's creepy!" Jake scuttled away as Amy intercepted with a giant hug.
"We thought we might've lost you!" Amy smiled, still clinging to Jake.
"Yeah, when you didn't wake up with the rest of us I had 'Muscles' carry you out of the pocket" Lisa pointed over at Tim who jokingly struck a pose, flexing his large muscular arms.
"Wait, just wait a minute," Jake rubbed his eyes, still coming to his senses, "You mean that was all real? Amy turned into a balloon and sucked us all up her..."
"Ahem! No need to go into the details." Amy interrupted, turning bright red at the memory of what she'd done.
"Who's Kaycee?" Lisa suddenly blurted out excitedly.
"Who? What?" Jake looked around the room nervously. Kaycee was just a dream, she had to be, didn't she?
"You were talking in your sleep" Lisa chided, "Mmm Kaycee, rub me harder, melt me down, mmm lick me all over..."
"That's enough!" Amy finally snapped, giving Lisa a very long stern glare. "He's been through enough, we all have today." she said calmly, trying to drop the Kaycee issue.
"More like we've all been through you, with your overinflated rubber love hole!" Lisa smirked.
"Why you little boob!" Amy threw a stress ball straight at Lisa, nailing Tim in the chest as Lisa ducked.
Everyone burst into laughter.
"I guess things did get kind-of blown out of proportion" Amy smiled.
"Ya think?!" Lisa giggled.
Yawning, Amy started examining lab equipment, then glanced curiously over at the pulsing K-Sphere, "Sorry about the bugged timer guys, it was only supposed to last 5 minutes then dump us back out."
On the opposite side of the room, Lisa and Tim began going through their personal belongings, putting things back in their own pockets that they had left in the lab for fear of breaking. "Um, Amy?" Lisa called out bewildered as Tim and she both checked their cell phones.
"Um,Ya Leese?"Amy chuckled, as if Lisa ever bothered to ask before blurting something out.
"Would you say we waited about 10 minutes for Jake to wake up?"
"Well, I suppose..."
"According to our phones it's only been like 15 minutes since we stepped into your pocket!"
"But that's just not possible, you must be mistaken..." Amy looked up at the security monitor, noting the same janitor outside making the rounds that had been there earlier. She rushed across the room and grabbed the cup-o-noodles she had been eating just prior to the experiment, "Still warm!"
Running to the K-Sphere, Amy placed her hands on the sides of the glowing orb and quickly leaned over, peering deep into its glowing crystalline core. White tendrils of energy extended out of the sphere and around Amy's head as she interfaced with the system via the neural link.
Releasing the sphere with a jolt, the tendrils retreated as Amy regained her composure.
"Well that mystery is solved!"
Lisa still looked bewildered, "Well tell us, will you!"
Amy glanced around the room with an intense gaze at all the curious eyes before finally shaking her head, "Oh right! Verbally! … Only 5 minutes passed out here, exactly as requested. Inside, things got a little timey wimey."
"Come-on Doctor Amy, How long were we actually inside that other universe!"
Amy looked around again before quietly replying, "3 hours 42 minutes and eleventy six seconds, give or take a few trillion femtos'."
Everyone gasped.
"But why only 5 minutes out here?" Lisa asked still perplexed.
"Very simple really. The K-Sphere compressed our pocket to ensure only the requested 5 minutes elapsed, regardless of what took place inside."
"It can do that? ... Well I suppose it can, since you just said it did, but wow, that's awesome!" Lisa blurted out excitedly.
"Damn dangerous if you ask me. We could have spent our entire lives trapped inside that 5 minutes and nobody would have ever known, ever." Tim remarked, more than a little disturbed.
"Actually we kind-of did" Amy mumbled.
Lisa's ears perked up, "What was that?"
Amy looked up reassuringly, "Oh, nothing to worry about." as she continued mumbling to herself regarding infinite timelines and alternate outcomes while making some adjustments under the K-Sphere.
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Jake sat bored, fiddling with the string stuffed in his jeans pocket. Wadding it into a ball and squishing it around between his fingers, everyone jolted in surprise as Amy fell to the floor moaning, twisting her legs around each other.
Quickly, Lisa rushed over to help Amy, "Are you okay?"
"Whoa... I think so. It just felt like..." Amy paused remembering how it felt to be a balloon, "Never mind, I'm sure it was nothing."
Pausing to make sure Amy was fine, Jake returned to playing with the string.
"Aiyee! Wowza!" Amy doubled over again, her legs twisting about on their own.
Suddenly Jake remembered where the string had come from. Quickly yanking it out of his pants pocket as if it were a snake, and watching Amy yank straight upright, he dropped it; everyone watching as the string fluttered to the floor.
All eyes were glued on the string leftover from the pocket, that impossible string.
After a few minutes of silence, Amy was the first to finally speak, "Is that what I think it is..."
"Yep." Jake replied instantly, almost in a daze, not quite believing it himself, "I untied it in your pocket and stuck it in my pocket for safe keeping just before sucking your air out the first time".
The same string that had been tied to Amy's balloon body inside her pocket universe lay before them, on the cold laboratory floor of their own universe.
Tim was beginning to wear the look of confusion and curiosity like a professional, having gotten used to the strange happenings of the day. "So that's from there, but it's here, and you are you. So what exactly does that mean? I mean it shouldn't be here, right?"
Amy's thoughts had suddenly turned to mush, like the victim of a car crash uncertain what to do next. The sheer shock and surprise was driving her mind in circles trying to figure out what was going on.
"No, I mean right. It shouldn't be here" Amy finally responded.
Lisa poked at the string, suddenly snapping Amy out of here daze and eliciting laughter.
"Stop Leese! That tickles!"
Rubbing her fingers up and down the string, Lisa watched Amy's reaction as she moaned, running her own hands up and down her legs.
"You can feel that?"
"Umm huh, it's these." Amy motioned towards her legs.
"How can it be your legs? I mean, you have legs already." Lisa dropped the string to search for something on the lab workbench.
"No clue." Amy relaxed and twisted her own legs around, watching mesmerized as the string twisted and bent on its own.
"Found some!" Lisa shouted running back, snatching up the quivering string.
"Found what?" Amy asked before everyone's eyes went wide with horror.
With one quick motion, Lisa brought the scissors up to the string and cut it in half.
Amy stood with her eyes wide in fear as she felt a brief sensation of cold metal move through her legs.
Terrified that she had been cut, Amy felt no pain and saw no blood, just a sinking feeling that something was suddenly off.
"What The Hell Is Wrong With You Melissa! Scissors? That could've killed me! I could've bled out right here!" Amy shouted red faced and out of breath from anger. Sitting on a lab stool to cool down, Amy felt her heart racing, "At least I'm still in one piece, I think."
"Not cool" Jake looked disapprovingly over at Lisa, rushing to Amy's side to look for any damage.
Tim quietly came up behind Lisa, removing the scissors from her hands.
"Geesh guys don't be so mad, I had to test a theory, it's not like anyone got hurt, besides, Amy tested her theories on us"
"My lab, I make the theories!" Amy huffed, bending her legs to ensure they were still in one piece.
Lisa grinned, "It worked."
Turning to see what Lisa was talking about, the two string halves were bending around as Amy's fidgeted on her stool.
"What's that supposed to prove?" Amy growled back, still angry at Lisa's insanity.
"Well, Jake had it in his pants the whole time. He was balling it up and you didn't ball up or break any bones. It seems to keep you safe. It only responds to very deliberate plausible actions. You can bend it and it can bend you but only as far as you can bend!" Lisa explained, pleased with herself.
"But you cut it in half, in a very deliberate action!" Amy shouted back.
Lisa looked down fidgeting "Oh, right. Sorry. At least you're in one piece?" she smiled, trying to stay positive.
"At least" Amy repeated, mockingly.
Experimentally tugging at Amy's leg, Jake gasped, "Oh. Uh oh. Um Amy?"
Looking down, Amy's face returned to a look of terror as she watched Jake fumbling around with her right leg from the knee down, trying to figure out how to reattach it.
"Damn." Lisa stared at the detached leg, "I guess a deliberate action on your end and bam! Plausibility goes out the window."
Amy wiggled her foot and watched in disbelief at the detached lower leg moving around in Jakes hands, still feeling every motion and touch as if it were still attached.
"I'm going to kill you Melissa!" Amy glared at Lisa, unblinking. For a brief moment her eye's glowed with a sparkling light.
"At least there's no blood?" Lisa cowered, confused by the strange twinkle from Amy's eyes.
"At least!" Amy repeated again.
"Hey, I think I got it guys!" Jake smiled in relief as Amy's leg reattached like magic by simply pressing it back together.
Amy flexed her leg watching in further shock as it bent in the wrong direction.
"Oops" Jake tugged, pulling it off again before flipping it around the correct way and reattaching it. "Good as new!"
"As long as I'm not bowlegged now" Amy grumbled.
"If that worked, then what about with these..." Lisa curiously grabbed the 2 string halves and mashed the ends together. After a brief moment they too magically reunited. "Cool" Lisa whispered.
"What the hell did you just do!? Do you even know?" Amy stood up and angrily walked over to Lisa, snatching the string from her hands. Shimmering into a sparkling thread of energy, the string disappeared at Amy's touch, her legs briefly glowing in response. A cool chill filled her legs then quickly subsided.
"What happened? Where did it go?" Jake looked on mystified, exchanging a confused glance with Tim. Tasting a brief hint of caramel, Jake thought he could hear the faint sound of Kaycee's laughter echoing from somewhere close.
Amy quizzically felt her legs, looking for any sign of abnormality, "My best guess, touching the string, that was me, with the real me, triggered restoration, putting things right."
"Whoa, that's heavy" Tim gasped, "I guess the universe can self-repair."
"I'm so, so, sorry!" Lisa reached out and hugged Amy, tearing up slightly at the thought of nearly hurting her bestie.
"It's okay Leese, no harm done I guess." Amy patted Lisa's head with a few hard bonks, "but I will get you back." Amy whispered harshly into Lisa's ear.
Satisfied she was back in one piece after pulling and prodding at her leg, Amy returned to the K-Sphere to seek some answers.
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"Everyone should go rest-up while I finish analyzing data. I've got to figure out what really happened so we don't have problems tomorrow."
Jake and Tim both looked at each other worried before Tim finally conceded, "O.K. I'll bite. What's tomorrow?"
"Well, you know, Amy wants to have us over so she can PLEASURE herself with us AGAIN!" Lisa mocked, sticking her tongue out at Amy.
"Never going to live that down am I?" Amy sighed.
"Not on your life!" Lisa grinned, "Best pocket mishap e-var!"
"Since you enjoyed it so much I'll be sure to use you again." Amy smiled menacingly at Lisa, "Best friend or sex toy?" Amy teasingly mulled over the question as if weighing options before having an exaggerated light-bulb moment, "You might as well be both!"
"... and I'm not just pulling your leg!" Amy added, grinning almost evilly back at Lisa.
Lisa felt uneasy at the way Amy was looking at her with such seriousness, yet a tingle of excitement made the hairs on her neck stand on end.
Jake, getting annoyed by all the playful banter finally shouted, "Seriously, What's tomorrow!"
Lisa and Amy looked up startled, eyes glaring at Jake.
"Sorry, I'm just really curious, that's all" Jake feigned a nervous smile to hide his trepidation about the possibility of another misadventure.
"Tomorrow night I'm scheduled to show my investor a sample. Milestone #1." Amy said annoyed, "I need all of you here to look busy and 'sciency'. I'll give you all lab coats and some pocket protectors. Trust me, my investor won't know the difference between you lot and real scientists."
Lisa suddenly perked back up, "Wait, So just who is Mr. Money Bags and is he single?" Looking apologetically towards Tim, "No offense, but a girl's got to have options."
"None taken, and ditto" Tim smirked back as Lisa nodded in agreement, then looked a little worried about the ditto.
Amy rolled her eyes at Lisa, "Really? Mr. Money Bags?" before diverting her attention back to Jake and Tim. "My backer is a very serious executive," a small giggle slipped out as Amy tried to remain serious, "HER name is none other than Ms. Teresa Valentine"
"Holy shit! THE Teresa Valentine from Valentine Entertainment Corp!? Club Vale?" Lisa steadied herself from shock, plopping down on the closest lab stool, the cold metal stinging her thighs.
"Ha! It's not just a rich babe, it's THE rich babe! SCORE! In Yo Face Leese!" everyone turned to see Tim gloating over Lisa.
Jake looked ready to burst, "You mean Booty Valentine, Teresa Tits, T-Booty, the spoiled rich girl on every magazine cover and TV talk show. The one with the reality show Happy Valentine that basically just films her butt and all the crazy stuff she gets into with her club shenanigans. The Teresa Valentine that made over 200 billion dollars when she inherited PacifiOil and then changed its name to Crude Release Natural Gas with a logo that looks suspiciously like the shape of her butt being drilled. She's your investor?" Jake finally gasped for air.
"Yeah, that's the one. We happened to meet in a back room pocket party at Club Vale. She's pretty down to earth when you get to know her, and only a few years older than us. A real tragedy what happened with her folks though. Not too bright with science, but gifted in, um, other areas. She's a total genius at marketing and public relations."
"So she's coming here? What about all the camera's and paparazzi? How did you expect this to stay a secret?" Lisa swiveled on her stool trying to figure out how exactly this was going to work.
Don't panic, she's a master of disguise and discretion. There won't be any crazy stuff, no 'Super Strings'. I'm just showing off a P-Crystal. The lab needs to look busy, like it's more than a one girl operation. I'd like you guys to explain how everything is perfectly safe, nobody's ever gotten hurt, yadda yadda."
Everyone moped around muttering under their breath about safety and how they should be getting paid for having been human and non-human test subjects.
Jake finally spoke up, "At the risk of sounding dumber... What's a P-Crystal?" looking first towards Tim who just shrugged and then over at the girls.
Amy threw on her lab coat and grabbed a pencil while walking towards the inactive metal archway, motioning for the others to follow "I'm so glad you asked!"
"A Pocket Crystal is required to anchor each pocket universe to an archway. That's how bootleg portals work." Amy pointed out a small translucent gemstone embedded like a button on the side of the metal archway."
"You see, infinite pocket universes already exist with infinite possibilities. We find the ones we want, then connect. Problem is it's totally random without an anchor. The crystal is like a string that ties an archway to a specific universe like a, um, balloon. If the string breaks free, the balloon drifts away. Since we want to avoid getting lost in any kind of 'Sliding' incident, we permanently anchor each pocket to a crystal. By swapping the crystal, you swap which universe an archway connects to."
"Oh! Like a game cartridge!" Jake said proudly.
Shaking her head at the simplicity of Jake's comparison, "Well, I suppose you could call it..."
Tim interrupted the thought, "Hold on. The K-Sphere was learning to modify your pocket; you even custom loaded a copy of the lab and the carousel. Your own string left that pocket and made its way here. Sounds like a lot more than just finding a spare universe laying around."
"Right you are! The K-Sphere is like a computerized super-crystal. It moves universes around the occupants until it finds the right one. Regular crystals can't do that. Sometimes it runs across special pockets that are completely customizable, as if we were predestined to edit them! I used one of those for our excursion. That's the beauty of infinite possibilities!"
"So the K-Sphere is like a trans-dimensional search engine with editor, while a P-Crystal is just a link to a custom universe!" Jake said with excitement.
"Exactly!" Amy clapped. "You will all make excellent fake scientists!"
"But that still doesn't account for how your string got here." Tim looked puzzled.
"Still working that mystery out" Amy sighed "It might have been a temporary bubble that came back with us, or maybe our universe was predestined for it to happen, or the K-Sphere had a reverse influence on our own vicinity, or we never left the… Oh, um, never mind, I'll figure it out."
"I bet people would kill for that tech." Lisa quietly remarked while spinning on her lab stool.
"Let's hope not." Amy said uneasily, "And nobody can find out we have this tech! It's a big secret so keep quiet, all of you! Only my investor is privy to the fact that anybody can even do this!"
"Ms. Valentine only wants to control the Crystal market, she doesn't care how I program them. In fact she said she'd rather not know. We give her crystals for her clubs, and she pays for everything. Best thing, I keep all my research, and the K-Sphere remains a secret."
"So do we, um, get any 'hush money' now that we know about it? Because, you know, accidents and all sometimes happen in situations like this." Lisa scanned the room mischievously with her eyes as if casing the place while still spinning on her stool, "So many people would pay big bucks"
Amy grabbed Lisa's shoulder, bringing her to an abrupt halt, "Why you little snitch... Ms. Valentine is the richest person on the bloody planet and you…"
"Gotcha!" Lisa busted out laughing at Amy's beet red face.
"Payback is coming" Amy smiled back at Lisa, "Payback in full."
"Mmm, I'm counting on it" Lisa grinned while spinning up on the stool again, leaning back and swishing her blonde hair.