HMS Atalanta, USS Cyclops, Carol A. Deering, the Mary Celeste, Amelia Earhart, the Roanoke Colony, the Lindbergh baby, my car keys, all of these things and individuals had been transported to another dimension, a dimension incomprehensible to us for it exists outside of space and time, material and sensation, by the caprices of the Bermuda Triangle. Andy and Gary, understanding the dimensions the Triangle linked to was beyond our comprehension, indeed had an existence separate from language which concerns itself exclusively with our material existence, only sought to understand the Triangle itself and when and where it activated.
By their calculations, the Triangle would activate at so-and-so coordinates, and spit them out, after some period, into the blue Mediterranean.
The time of activation was now.
Thus the crew broke and bruised their arms toward the goal of arriving at the Triangle on time; Homer and the grouch were so sore, they did not have time to think on the bliss they had just lost. Finally, Andy and Gary yelled for them to halt; the ripples around the boat slowed, the foam receded and subsided; they felt the wind whistle around them, and they surveilled the endless blue of the Atlantic; they stayed in silence...and began to question the machines’ sagacity.
Now, I can only speculate on this next part, for reasons that will be made abundantly clear.
In one sense, the teleportation started. But in the true sense, it did not happen at all, for it happened outside of time. Therefore, it could not start, nor could it have ended, and yet the outcome and the consequences were clear.
Furthermore, it did not take place in space, therefore there were no colors or shapes or sensations to accompany it. But it did happen, and Andy and Gary, Homer, the grouch, everyone experienced it, and they lacked every word in the languages of the world to describe it.
However, if they could describe it, only one word sufficed: painful.
It could not be painful in the sense their sensations registered harm. It was existentially painful. The journey was accompanied by an extreme discomfort with their environment, as if they did not belong and they were reminded, by some entity, that they did not belong, when in reality there are no entities and merely manifold realities which we incidentally, in our mundane lives, sidestep.
As to how this trip was even possible, I cannot explain, for, again, I have only a millionth of an Einstein in understanding. But know that reality, after all, is reality; it is not a world surrounded by fences and the fences are attended by gatekeepers; the crew were “translated”, albeit awkwardly, into the attributes of the dimension, and they perceived, though very poorly, for their sense organs were not adapted, some aspects of that dimension, and yet, because there are no extradimensional bureaucrats in charge of translating other-dimensional beings, they had no concept of what was going on, they merely were, for that is all reality concerns itself with, the is-ness and are-ness and was-ness of things.
And so, they found themselves in Egypt once more.
That’s it? you, the reader, may ask in exasperation. That’s all there is to the description of their journey? A thing that took place neither in space nor time but you, the author, refuse to elaborate? If you want, I can lie to you, but I’m trying to tell a story here, not a hackneyed science fiction novel.
As it happened, Paul and Paula received a message from Kepler-186f: they had left the stove on. They needed to take their ship, which had acted as God’s guidance, in the form of a pillar, for the Israelites, back home. Andy and Gary insisted they accompany them.
Andy and Gary went through a journey of the stars and the limitless black of the universe, a trip of five hundred and eighty light years that went by three days, as far as Earth days go.
Kepler-186f was like any other planet with grey aliens, and so it is not important to describe.
Paul and Paula shut off the stove. However, they needed to stay behind to get their gas meter checked. They sent a taxi for Andy and Gary back home, and waved goodbye to them.
The trip back home was silent. The driver minded his own business. Andy and Gary, however, were upset with one another: upset that the other did not know they were racing across the Atlantic, and that the other did not resolve the assassination of Paul and Paula. After all, Paul and Paula could not return back to Earth, for the sake of the timeline.
So they sat, in silence, staring, through the panes of the cab, at the darkness of space. Gary wanted to call Andy a numbskulll; Andy wanted to call Gary a buffoon.
In fact, Andy did call Gary a buffoon. Gary snapped, asking, And you could have done better? Andy answered, I can’t say, but I’m not the one who is God.
That lightened the mood. Andy kicked his legs over the seat in front of him. Why are we so dour all of a sudden? Wouldn’t this be simplest: now that we know how to get to the planet, we should return to the future, build another time machine, then go back to the past and kill Paul and Paula.
So what you’re saying is, Gary reasoned slowly, is that we need to find a way to assassinate Paul and Paula, unbeknownst to this current iteration of ourselves? But won’t the people of Kepler-186f be aware of Paul and Paula’s deaths and start an inquiry?
We could kill them on their journey back to Earth, after they resolve the issue with their gas meter.
Yes, but we would need a vehicle to get to Kepler-186f, and we’ve never developed one.
They looked at the taxi driver, who was fixated currently on alien folk music. They returned their gazes to the other.
This also does not resolve the problem of other inhabitants of Kepler-186f from visiting Earth.
Why not just dispose of Kepler-186f as well?
So what we’ll do is, we’ll commandeer a star-cruising ship, wait until we are back to the future, then go back to the past in this exact moment, unseen and unknown by our present-day selves, and, with a sufficient payload, destroy Paul and Paula’s planet, and them too?
Exactly.
They heard an explosion behind them. They turned: Kepler-186f had burst into a cloud of dust; the dust shook and rose, then subsided in the timelessness of space. The taxi driver just got to the favorite part of his favorite song.
But won’t people of our present miss Kepler-186f?
The human eye can suddenly peer into space? We just add motes into every telescope from now on.
Andy and Gary commandeered the taxi and on Earth created a covenant to their friendship, and this monument nowadays is called Stonehenge.
© 2025 Jay Lee