Mr. Py was not traveling in this dimension any longer, any shorter, or in any way imaginable to most of the inhabitants of this Earth. The “Skate” was traveling fractionally above the speed of light, an impossibility just seconds before.

Questioning the reliability of the digital display; Mr. Py tapped the screen absentmindedly as he was incapable of resisting this antiquated analog practice. All external indicators and internal sensors confirmed his impression of what was happening at this very moment. The knotted lump in the pit of his stomach confirmed his growing fear. The quantifiable external velocity was in fact in keeping with the experimental data collected on pulsed quarktide propulsion systems.

Nothing had prepared him for this experience. His early technical work with “striker- aerocraftidrones” had not prepared him. The twelve, “pure research” years studying Cherenkov Radiation had not. The ten grueling and exhausting years of study and experimentation at CERN on the first Heisenberg Compensator had in no way prepared him for this or had it? This may be the first effects of Imaginary Mode of Mobility Affected Disorder or ImMAD setting in. His first “rip” in the “4FooSkate”; although enlightening, was in fact a quiet uneventful carousel ride by comparison.

What troubled him the most was not the excruciating physical pain traveling at this speed albeit considerable, it was the unexpected exposure to the void. It was there, it could be seen! It was beyond all reason…a sound of string breaking reverberating with a cruel echo…

Traversing the space/time hologram at above light speeds was bound to punish the “ripper”. This punishment was minute when compared to his enormous sense of loss, disconnection, and dread of all things he had previously considered essential to his health and well being. It wasn’t surprising to Mr. Py that madness usually accompanied the “rips” as the early literature of “Skate” events would suggest. Driving a “Skate” even at reduced velocities produced violent reactions even in the most mentally capable “drivers”. Doubt, pain, exhaustion, drool…

His powers of observation had always been acute. He had refined them over his experimental life. Mr. Py had honed them to razor sharpness before this event horizon. What he was now experiencing was a sense of being captured in a thickening ooze impairing all of his mental faculties. The experience of a thickening mental ooze is consistent with the technical term, “veloci-rapture”. Blood pools in the brain for an instant at 147.000/Amk, producing the effect. After it clears one may actually believe the spectacle before them is not real. Mr. Py believed that. He believed he was a tunneling electron microscope. He believed he was a quantifiable success. He believed his life was ending or not ending. Mr. Py believed his internal digital display and systems monitor had one flashing yellow LED sensor. He ignored it as usual. The last synapse snapped I/O. He was in fact beyond all things human.

© J. Jenkins 2018