A Walk Through Dimensions

By Josh Fredrick

In "A Walk Through Dimensions" readers embark on a thrilling journey through alternate realities guided by curious yet desperate protagonists. The story follows Emily and Jake, who possess the extraordinary ability to explore the multiverse, moving between different dimensions and parallel worlds.

As they travel through these diverse realms, Emily and Jake find themselves faced with monumental task after monumental task: to unravel some of history's greatest enigmas and prevent pivotal moments from taking a catastrophic turn. 

 

As the narrative unfolds, the protagonists' own pasts, motivations, and vulnerabilities come to light, adding layers of complexity to their mission. Themes of identity, sacrifice, and the ethical implications of their actions resonate as they grapple with the immense consequences of what failure means.

"A Walk Through Dimensions" is a gripping tale of exploration, suspense, and moral dilemmas, as two extraordinary individuals strive to complete increasingly difficult tasks while confronting the shadows of the past. Josh Fredrick's narrative seamlessly weaves together elements of science fiction, historical intrigue, and philosophical contemplation, inviting readers to ponder the boundless possibilities of existence across the multiverse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josh Fredrick
• Release date: Aug 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223558590

Book preview

Chapter 1

Emily was happy.

At least that's the word that she used when asked.

And she was asked.

Constantly.

At least once a day.

Whether it be by her neighbor, Dan, who she regularly passed in the hallway, or by the insanely cheery girl at Starbucks who always seemed to be jovial whenever she announced her name to the crowd of sluggish coffee drinkers.

Coworkers.

Friends.

Family.

It just went on and on.

She answered the exact same way every time. So much that it had simply become instinct.

An instant response of yes, insert random name here, I am happy.

It got old rather quickly.

She knew that she was depressed. It hadn't manifested itself into a more physical form yet. Just the occasional mood swing. The occasional shitty day. The occasional week of not wanting to leave her apartment.

She knew that it wasn't severe though. Severe would be constant thoughts of harming herself.

She was not at severe yet.

She seemed to be getting closer to the idea of taking a pill for it. However, being chained to an orange prescription bottle didn't appeal to her in the slightest.

She had the freedom to do anything she wanted right now. If she admitted defeat and got a pill, she would always be thinking about it. I know the bottle says, Take one, but today feels like it might require two.  Maybe three. She could fall into the abyss. Couldn’t she? Emily didn't want to think about it. So, she didn't take pills.

Instead, she tried going for walks. Every day during her lunch break. Just a brisk walk around the nearest park. About one and a half miles. Then back to work. Work. Emily liked to believe that it worked. That was where she found herself today. A little later than usual but her day had been particularly taxing. To be honest it was almost time for her to leave for the day, and she was simply killing time in a mildly productive manner. Walking at the equivalent of a slow snail's pace, while studying the intricacies of the park fountain. It was one of those pointlessly complicated ones. The kind designed to take your mind off things. Streams of water would shoot upwards and towards the center then collide and as one, slowly descend into the large pool of water at the base. She spent a few minutes staring at it until subconsciously she had memorized the timing.

Emily sighed and continued her laborious trek back. Closer to the building, she noticed a mother playing with her son. He appeared to be about four years old, too young to be in school. He was laughing as his mother chased him around just a few feet behind him with her hands extended towards him, as if she were about to grab him at any second. Emily sighed once more and continued the now agonizing trip back to work. She patiently waited at the crosswalk with seemingly lost tourists. She took out her phone and started playing a game, so that no one engaged her in conversation. A confused looking man in a fisherman's hat suddenly turned towards her. Emily immediately faked a coughing fit until he looked away.

About that time the cross signal lit up, and she half-jogged, half-walked to the other side of the intersection. She walked into a seven-story building with bricks the color of desert sand. Emily hurriedly dug for her I.D. badge before she made it to the security desk on the first floor. She contemplated why it was that after six years of working for this law firm, she still had to show her I.D. badge to whatever rent-a-cop happened to be sitting behind a mahogany desk that day. The blue uniforms seemed to be on a different muscle bound former high school quarterback every other week. Most likely because it was a different jackass every other week. Well, that wasn't fair. She didn't know any of them. However, looking at the current wavy hair, glowing teeth Adonis sitting behind the desk, she was instantly convinced that he was, in fact, a jackass. As she drew closer to him, she saw that his name was Jack. Definitely a jackass.

Stifling a laugh, she handed him her I.D. The guard studied it for a few seconds, going from the image on the badge to her face, then back to her badge. He seemed to be convinced, because a few seconds later, he slid it in the little RFID card scanner on his desk. She smiled a false cheery smile and walked through the large oak door leading to the upper floors.

She walked on what appeared to be a granite walkway, but from the way her shoes clicked on the surface, it was definitely stained concrete. It led her to a wide waiting area with six elevators. She pushed the single button that had a black illuminated arrow going up. She waited about thirty-five seconds and started moving towards the nearest one when it made a noise indicating it was arriving on that floor next. She waited for the door to open and put on a false smile as several lawyers in dark blue and tan suits got off the elevator accompanied by a man with a large grin on his face. She stepped into the elevator and immediately hit the close button. Normally she waited a few seconds for people to get onto the elevator, but Emily was not in the mood today. She jabbed the fourth-floor button with her middle finger, as a subtle FU to the day. She slowly made her way uninterrupted to the correct floor.  The elevator dinged and the large metallic doors slowly edged to the respective sides.

She walked out into what she would consider a lobby, this one a slightly different shade of stained concrete. Emily immediately turned to her left and then left once more, so she was about ten feet behind the elevator. She found herself in a corridor, about 100 feet, which was intermittently dispersed with large oak doors that lead to the various lawyers in the building's offices. Emily walked about forty-five feet, and turned to the right, where the name Emily Rodgers was engraved on a golden plate. She got her keys out of her purse and unlocked the door. She stepped into an office and was immediately greeted by a gust of cold air. She always made a point to leave her desk fan turned on over lunch. Although she suddenly realized that it wasn't really colder air, just more recently disturbed air.

She immediately regretted thinking that thought. She made her way over to her desk and sat down in a brown leather office chair. Emily sat her purse underneath her desk and took the time to get her cell phone out and place it next to her computer. She opened her laptop and hit the power button. She proceeded to straighten her desk a bit, while she waited for the password screen to light up the room. The familiar vibration from her phone interrupted the otherwise minute long silence. She glanced at it and seeing that it was a picture from one of her friends, Kara, she opened it to see a large diamond ring on a platinum band staring back at her. There was a message in all caps: MIKE FINALLY PROPOSED!!!

She texted back That's great to hear and turned back to her computer screen. Her hands quickly moved over the keys for her password. A few focused clicks, and a large expansive database of files opened in front of her eyes. She positioned the mouse over a folder named Active Cases, and double clicked once again. She used the mouse wheel and rolled it through three complete rotations, until she found a case named Mitchell VS. Vargas Trucking Corp. 

It was consuming a considerable amount of her time, considering that in her opinion it was an easily winnable case. A truck driver had been driving his truck for around twelve and a half hours; already illegal. He had gotten a little drowsy, made a wrong turn on an interstate, and hit a purebred black lab, whose owner was taking it on a late-night walk. The driver had kept going, later saying that he was oblivious to running into anything. The owner recorded the semi's license plate and took note of the cab's description. Red sleeper cab. Fairly easy to find with the license plate the woman provided. The driver was located and arrested within an hour, sleeping in the cab in a Walmart parking lot. His charges included reckless endangerment, animal abuse, driving while drowsy, and driving on an expired CDL license. The case should have been over in ten minutes. Vargas Trucking had one of the more grotesquely mannered lawyers that Emily had had the misfortune of coming across, however. Among other deplorable excuses, he claimed that the driver had not been driving for twelve and a half hours, but in fact it had been a team of drivers, taking turns over the course of the day. Apart from the fact that Vargas rarely, if ever for that matter, employed a team of drivers for seemingly simple jobs, the other driver was nowhere to be found.

It was a poorly executed stall tactic, that despite its inconceivable stupidity, seemed to be buying the lawyer some time, and was giving Emily the biggest migraine that she had had in months. She grudgingly reached into her purse and dug until she felt the familiar bottle she was seeking - Excedrin.

She took it out and placed it on her desk.  She lifted off the cap and took two pills out. She swallowed them dry, and then shuddered at the taste. Medicine always tasted like shit to her. Emily turned back to her laptop when she noticed that she had a new email. She pressed the Alt and the tab key and clicked the Google Chrome tab to see her email. Spam. Of course. No idea what she was thinking. That's what most of her emails consisted of. She saw a headline advertising a popular dating site. The promise to meet your soulmate in thirty days or less. Guaranteed. What a load of giraffe shit.

Emily clicked on the link provided in the email. It took her to what would have happened if 2008 MySpace became a dating site. Punk music was playing at what Emily was sure the site developer had thought was a subtle volume. It was not. There were hearts and Cupids floating up and down, occasionally making zig zags, and just generally being an unnecessary disturbance. She found the sign-up link and clicked on it. Emily breathed a heavy sigh that probably lasted several seconds longer than was typically necessary when discharging air through your mouth. As unsure as she was about this website, it still seemed to be a more productive use of her time than trolling for strangers on Craigslist. She looked at the five-question survey questionnaire and checked her watch. This seemed like a good way to kill some of the  time that she had remaining.

Chapter 2

Question 1. Are you a robot? What is the first law of artificial intelligence?

Emily stared at the screen for two solid minutes. In her experience she normally had to respond to this question with a Captcha code. This seemed a little weird. Her mind flashed back to the movie I, Robot. She kind of remembered it and had to paraphrase it: No robot shall harm a human being. She typed that phrase into the answer box and moved the mouse to the answer button at the bottom right corner of the screen. She was greeted with a strange message: Congratulations! That was incorrect, thereby proving that you are not a robot! Please proceed to question 2. Emily grumbled Fuck you. She then went to read question 2: Which friend are you? Emily mulled it over in her head for about thirty seconds and came to the unfortunate realization that she was in fact Ross. She faked vomiting in her mouth as she typed the name into the answer box and hit enter. Emily worked on the questionnaire for another thirty or so minutes, taking the time to craft the answers that would attract her ideal suitor. This proved beyond insanely difficult, when the most dignified of the next three questions was if you were a horse, what kind of horse would you be. The questions lacked any sort of substance, or as far as she could tell, meaning. On the horse question she had simply written down Clydesdale, if for nothing else then that she passionately believed that Budweiser should be in its own category of the food pyramid. She simply could not come up with a realistic reason why these questions were so absurd. Begrudgingly she moved on. She was prompted to upload a profile picture, which she took right there at her desk. Not the sexiest picture, but it worked. She went through the list of potential guys and would occasionally look at one of the profiles, and then usually back out in disgust within a few seconds. The men of this site had a terrible habit of poor grammar and spelling errors. She had no time for that. Already she knew that nothing meaningful would come from this site, but if it got her a good-looking wedding date, then so be it. Emily checked her watch, sighed, and started packing up her belongings for the weekend.

Ten minutes later she was saying falsely cheerful goodbyes to coworkers that she barely knew.

She turned down a lawyer from the other side of the building's hundredth invitation to go for drinks at a bar nearby called Quirks.

She awkwardly almost got slammed into the wall by the revolving door in the building's lobby.

All in all, her departure was standard for a Friday night.

As Emily continued to walk down the bustling New York street, she took out her phone once again, seeing that she already had received a message from a potential suitor. Emily eagerly opened the app and was greeted by the nonword 'sup'. Emily immediately blocked the user and deleted his ill-conceived message. With her phone still out, she opened her Uber app, and ordered a car to pick her up at the next intersection.  Emily walked the roughly 200 yards to the edge of the block lost in thought, barely even comprehending that she was surrounded, and occasionally brushed past by one of a thousand interchangeable faces. She loved New York.

Her driver for the evening pulled up in a nice Audi A4. Looking at the mostly steel grey exterior, Emily guessed that the vehicle was approximately four years in age, judging solely by the wear and tear of the body, the slight discoloration of certain spots in the paint that you become accustomed to, living in New York, and finally the slowly disappearing raised edges that represented the tire tread. Emily loaded her purse and her briefcase, which contained her laptop and notes, into the seat before getting in herself. As the car slowly made its way south, the phone in Emily's purse started to vibrate once again. A text from an old college friend, Jamie, greeted her, asking if there was a chance of going out for drinks tonight. Emily thought for a second and texted Jamie that she would meet her at around 8:30 at a lounge called Gordon's Wing in the central part of town. A minute later she received a confirmation text that simply said sure. A nice direct curt reply. Part of the reason that Emily had been friends with Jamie for the past five years. Looking up from her text conversation, Emily suddenly found herself directly across from an eleven-story partial-brick, partial-stone building. Her building. Built in the mid-1950s, the architect, or possibly the person, presumably a