The atmosphere inside the apartment crackled palpably as Emma and Damien entered. Their silence was a sign of seamless cooperation; the kind that could only come from having finished every detail of the setup a full day beforehand, and spent the intervening time laughing at inside jokes. By the time the dealer had texted them a rendezvous point, the equipment had been set up and primed for six hours. The pieces just seemed to fall into place on their own from there. And good thing too, because they were both a bundle of nerves. You weren’t supposed to be driving around with vials of DMT in your pocket, and if the cops caught you, they weren’t inclined to let you off easy without some quid-pro-quo, so the drive back had been tense, if thrilling in its own exhausting way.

The humming of the strange electrical equipment that littered the apartment set an even rhythm to the work. Damien had trip sat before, but he was going to have to fight a lot of his instincts for this. As he helped her affix the electrodes to the back of her head, he went over the checklist.

“So, you have the lav mike secure? Like, really secure? I’ve seen people skitter across the floor like roaches on this shit.” he inquired.

She snorted. “I mean hey, as long as they got where they were going, right?” she chuckled at her own joke as he groaned and rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, I get it, but seriously: this isn’t going to do anything but waste 250$ and a perfectly good afternoon if we don’t meticulously catalogue your experience.” he clarified briskly.

Emma huffed with mock-offense. “Oh, look at the deadhead trying to drug-splain my own metaphysical awakening to me.” she elbowed him playfully. “Yes, I promise I’m primed to take diligent notes, dad.”

Damien let a smirk crack at that one. “Okay, fine, sorry. Just didn’t want a repeat of your ‘UFO sighting’.”

“Hey! Don’t you dare put air quotes around ‘UFO’! What I saw that night was in the sky, and I couldn’t identify it! Whatever else you say about the encounter, you cannot claim that that was not, by definition, a UFO!” she protested.

Damien sighed. “A UFO that you didn’t get any pictures of and waited two weeks to bother even make a sketch of, at which point you drew what is very clearly a Romulan Bird-of-Prey from Star Trek.”

“That’s what it looked like!” she insisted. At this point, she genuinely couldn’t remember if she had made that part up. They had both been pretty plastered that night.

Damien made a gesture as if to physically waive off the conversation. “Fine, Em, sure. We don’t have time to relitigate this. The point is: this isn’t just some recreational psychonautics. We’re not going to get any tangible data out of this if we don’t actually monitor the process properly.”

Emma tightened a modified blood-pressure cuff around her left wrist. “Yeah, I know. Don’t worry, I’m sure this’ll be the paradigm shifter. Mass hysteria. The feds are going to dissect us. It’ll be awesome.” she smirked.

This man was just killing her. 

They had met in sophomore year of college, and immediately become inseparable, just the two biggest metaphysics dweebs on campus constantly grinding class to a halt to debate Wittgenstein or something. By the time their increasingly strange bodies of work and erratic class attendance got them both expelled, they had already planned a lifetime’s worth of parapsychological experiments, and moved in together. 

That was three years ago, and although they still hadn’t found conclusive proof of the supernatural, their investigations and tests had still been fun. Learning card tricks, driving down to Point Pleasant, reading declassified MKUltra files… Okay, so they weren’t always fun fun, but they were always exciting.

There was just one issue: it seemed like he somehow didn’t notice that she spent almost her entire waking life flirting with him. Not when she made jokes about “eating him first” when he worried they would be attacked by Bigfoot. Not when she spent her unemployment checks on seasonally-themed candy boxes to leave on his placemat. Not when she shouted “Oh shit, close encounter with the tickle monster!” and lunged at him while they were watching TV. Not even the time she literally passed out in his bed while in her underwear. 

Maybe she was just delusional, but Emma really didn’t think this was rejection. That was just the kind of guy Damien was. She had seen him oblivious to other people’s flirtations before. She had had to explain them to him, and the face he made when he found out someone had unreciprocated feelings for him…

Well, there was a reason she hadn’t told him point blank. Two years ago, she had coached him on letting people down easy. She was terrified that he would have to apply those lessons to her.

She was definitely hoping to win the big metaphysical argument that had been the lynchpin of their relationship for years now. It was the stated goal of the experiment, and it would go some way towards proving that a space existed based on semiotic rather than purely mechanistic principals, thus supporting her proposition of quasi-Fortean subjectivism, wherein the universe is composed of an infinite number of independent reference frames, each with their own distinct causal mechanisms. This stands in contrast to Damien’s belief that all reality operates on extensions and outgrowths of the same physical laws. Materialist Monism, as it’s often called.

And make no mistake, she did relish the thought of not just winning the argument, but getting to explore the infinite possibilities represented by contact with alien reference frames. If parapsychology was ever going to contribute anything as a field other than History Channel shows to the human endeavor, this was how it was going to happen.

But there was also another drive. Subtler, baser, and far more human. The terrified hope that maybe, just maybe, in the tender embrace of the God Molecule, she could finally tell Damien to his face how she felt. And maybe if she had to face his rejection, she could flee past an event horizon to hide among the fractal machine-elves. That’s what Reddit had said, at least.

She settled into the meticulously prepared beanbag chair and readied the eyedropper. They had gotten bored and spent an embarrassing amount of the previous night about the optimal threatcount and bean-density for the beanbag before realizing in the cold light of morning how profoundly inconsequential that part was.

“Remember, this is no ordinary DMT trip. We’re going to be applying selective electrical stimulus to the occipital lobe to accelerate processing and vividness.” he reminded one final time.

“Yeah I know. I just attached the electrodes to myself.” she reassured. “Are you worried or something?”

“I mean, yeah. And it kinda worries me more that you aren’t more. What I’m trying to explain is that if this trip goes bad, you will be in a state that, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever experienced before. It may be that no rehab group has anyone even remotely trained to deal with this.”

Proposing it as a theoretical framework for comparatively analyzing modes of subjectivity had been one thing. Designing a strange experiment with a stack of graph paper and a tin of gas station kratom had been much the same. But seeing his roommate now, looking half like a death row inmate strapped to an electric chair, he wondered if he could actually go through with the test.

In what would prove to be a rather telling trend-setter for the evening, Emma ended Damien’s debate with unquestionable decisiveness. Eyedropper raised, she compressed the bulb, then blinked a couple of times. In a matter of seconds, her pupils were dinner plates.

Damien mumbled something that could have been one of several similar-sounding curse words and flipped a switch. The DIY neurostimulator was up and running. It was too late to back out now.

Emma spent forty or so seconds just rocking back and forth, the only sounds emanating from her were the occasional deep, gulping gasp. Eventually, her pulse stabilized just a hair, and her back straightened.

“Whoa!” Emma finally managed out. “I think… I think I’m in the field that used to be here before the apartment was built?”

On the horizon, Emma saw a pillar. Her psychic form fell prone and began drifting towards it. In the physical world, Damien watched with distant unease as Emma relaxed back into the beanbag.

These levels didn’t seem too abnormal, but Damien wished now more than ever that they had had enough DMT to do a trial run to establish an experimental baseline. As it stood, it didn’t look like Emma’s brain was frying itself or anything, but the readings were erratic, and in a way he couldn’t be certain was safe. Still, at this point he had no choice but to help her ride the wave.

Meanwhile in Em’s mind, contact had taken place. There she hovered, at the top of a pillar that stretched far into the upper atmosphere. From this vantage, she saw entire geological epochs pass in seconds like clouds, prototaxites rising and falling like waves of rot to feed their descendents.

She stared at what sat atop the pillar. The geometry seemed to sway and squirm looking directly at it. If you somehow created a crude pencil sketch of an equilateral triangle with interior angles that add up to 250°, it would be a dead ringer for what she saw there, right down to the eraser marks. It gave no outward signs of being sentient or even alive, but Emma could feel it humming with a vast, alien intellect nonetheless.

ʜᴇʟʟᴏ, ᴇᴍᴍᴀ ꜱʏᴘᴇꜱ. ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪꜱʜ ᴍʏ ᴀɪᴅ, ᴇᴠᴇɴ ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ɪᴛ ʏᴇᴛ.

The thought bubbled up from the back of her psyche like a repressed memory. She could tell it was emanating from this… triangle object, whatever it was, but it didn’t feel like speech. It felt like being given a memory of having heard someone speak months ago.

“O- oh yeah? And why’s that?” she mumbled.

“Sorry, what?” Damien responded, his attention momentarily pulled from the monitor.

She remained outwardly silent, but in her mind, the demand for more information had come out much more confidently.

ʏᴏᴜ ꜱᴇᴇᴋ ʟɪᴀɪꜱᴏɴ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀᴍɪᴇɴ ꜰʟᴇꜱʜᴛʜɪɴɢ, ᴄᴀʀɴᴀʟʟʏ.

She wanted to argue, or at least object to it calling Damien a “fleshthing”, but she ultimately couldn’t deny that her seemingly unrequited love had become more and more of a factor in her life. She rarely got to sleep at night anymore without sleeping between two pillows she liked to pretend were his arms, holding her. This damned geometry had read her like a book.

She strained, trying to keep her next statement contained to purely the mental landscape.

“So what, you guessed that I have a crush on my cute roommate? Great job. Everyone I’ve ever met knows it too, including my parents! Everyone except him.” she mused bitterly.

ᴛʜᴇɴ ᴡᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴜꜱᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴏɴᴇ ᴀɴᴏᴛʜᴇʀ. ɪ ᴡɪꜱʜ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴡᴇʟᴄᴏᴍᴇ ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ. ʏᴏᴜʀ ʙᴏᴅʏ ʜᴀꜱ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ɪ ʀᴇǫᴜɪʀᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴛᴀꜱᴋ. ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪꜱʜ ᴛᴏ ᴡᴇʟᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴅᴀᴍɪᴇɴ ɪɴᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʙᴏᴅʏ. ᴍʏ ᴍɪɴᴅ ʜᴀꜱ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ʀᴇǫᴜɪʀᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴛᴀꜱᴋ.

“And that would be…” Emma replied, not loving being upsold by a non-Euclidean baby toy but still intrigued.

ɪ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴜꜱᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴄᴏɢɴɪᴛɪᴠᴇ ꜱᴜʙꜱᴛʀᴀᴛᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴀɴɪꜰᴇꜱᴛ ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴘʟᴀɴᴇ. ᴀ ᴘᴇʀᴍᴀɴᴇɴᴛ ʀᴇᴅᴜᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ɪɴ ꜰᴀᴄᴜʟᴛɪᴇꜱ, ʙᴜᴛ ᴀꜱꜱᴜʀᴇᴅʟʏ ɴᴏᴛ ꜱᴏ ᴍᴜᴄʜ ᴀꜱ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇʟʏ ᴀɴɴɪʜɪʟᴀᴛᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴄᴀᴘᴀᴄɪᴛʏ ꜰᴏʀ ꜱᴜʙᴊᴇᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ ᴇxᴘᴇʀɪᴇɴᴄᴇ. ɪ ᴍᴜꜱᴛ ᴀʟꜱᴏ ᴄᴏʜᴀʙɪᴛᴀᴛᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴍᴇᴀᴛ-ᴠᴇꜱꜱᴇʟ ꜰᴏʀ ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ᴘᴇʀɪᴏᴅ ᴏꜰ ᴛɪᴍᴇ, ʟɪᴋᴇʟʏ ɴᴏ ɢʀᴇᴀᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴀɴ 𝟣𝟢𝟥𝟧 ʜᴏᴜʀꜱ. ɪɴ ᴇxᴄʜᴀɴɢᴇ, ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ᴘʀᴏᴍɪꜱᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ɴᴏᴛ ᴍᴇʀᴇʟʏ ᴀᴄᴄᴇꜱꜱ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴀᴍɪᴇɴ, ʙᴜᴛ ᴀ ʟᴇᴠᴇʟ ᴏꜰ ᴅᴇᴇᴘ, ᴇᴍᴘᴀᴛʜɪᴄ ᴄᴏɴɴᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʜɪᴍ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ʙᴇ ɪɴᴀᴄᴄᴇꜱꜱɪʙʟᴇ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀᴡɪꜱᴇ.

Emma felt a shudder travel up her physical body’s spine. Whether this was fear or pleasure was impossible to tell. She found some part of her subconscious making a decision for her.

Her eyelids fluttered and her lips sputtered as she sprang back to life on the beanbag moments later. She searched the room absently for a moment before her vision focused like a laser on Damien.

“I know you were worried, but it actually went really good!” she beamed. “I think you’re gonna’ be real proud of what I found, ᴅᴀᴅᴅʏ.”