Knock. Knock. A ringing rapped on my supply closet’s metallic door. Kitty was always punctual. 8 o’clock.

“Have you figured out where to go yet??” Kitty hadn’t forgotten, even after all this time apart.

“Um, hey, how are you? It’s been a while!”

She hugged me, but then got back to business. A straight shooter was Kitty.

“C’mon, we don’t have all night. Let’s jump in the Drop and do some dimensional leaping!” she said, ecstatic I might add.

I flipped the concealing carpet off the trapdoor and we descended into its hidden realm. The Drop.

Once inside, Kitty seemed impressed.

“Wow! I love what you’ve done with this place! A waterfall! And, ooh! Some mysterious back door!”

“Yeah, don’t open that. It’ll suck you right out. I’ll explain that a little later. Let’s lotus in the epicenter of this here space and meditate. It’s a school night and we have much to accomplish.”

“So, have you figured out where to go yet or how even to leap??”

As we gently sat on our facing zen pillows, I looked deep in Kitty’s eager eyes.

“To answer your first question, yes. I have a couple places in mind. Regarding the latter, I’m going to need you to listen very closely.”

“U-hu, yeah, I can’t wait!”

“The Captain has relegated me to basically the ship’s janitor. She does not trust me with any sort of dimensional leaping with the Cheshire or otherwise… especially otherwise.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. The “yeahhh” trailing, I could tell Kitty wanted me to get on with it.

“Luckily, we’re stationed in the presence of one of the greatest, most ancient dimensional engines in the known universe—the Sun, Earth, Moon.”

“I thought those were celestial bodies,” she said, confused.

“Look, I’m going to take you on a ride. Don’t feel that you need to digest all of this wisdom at once. I hope, though, that you’ve been practicing your surfing. I’ll need you to stay close. You’re also a necessary component in this method of leaping. You’re my tether.”

“I have been practicing my surfing! Every night in my chambers, just before bed. But what do you mean by ‘tethering’?”

“We don’t need the Cheshire’s oscillator to leap. The Earth is a far better spaceship and Drop. The Sun is Her engine. And the two focus on the black hole at the center of the Moon to leap dimensions. When we leap tonight, this Drop will seem no different than the Earth Herself. The Moon’s black hole will be our ball lightning between our feet, and also the outer orb electromagnetically protecting us through the movierain to new Earth versions raining down. All the while, we’ll channel impossible energy from the Sun.”

“OK, I’m starting to get how the Earth can be our vehicle, but you still haven’t answered my question about tethering.”

“That explanation leads us to where we’ll be leaping tonight. In order to effectively leap to an entirely new world, our belief in it must be strong enough for its idea to reach critical mass and drop out of the movierain Dew, as we surf it. In healing Ron and Rachael’s and Donna and Edward’s relationships through their dreams, I uncovered two such worlds—the respective Earths where each couple met. No single human’s account of their Earth is good enough for full existence drop, but the overlapping memories of a couple in love can provide this gateway. Without the luxury of the Cheshire’s oscillator engine, however, we need a way to triangulate back to this Earth, where our ship orbits in relative space-time. We’ll leap from this Drop tonight, you tethered to me, from a single exit point through Moon’s black hole. We’ll dive into the drop of Donna and Edward’s world, as two separate entities, with two accounts of this new world. I need you to stay tethered to me so that I can take our individual points and trace them back to that single origin—this Drop off the Cheshire. Otherwise, if either of us broke from this bungee bond, we could get lost forever in the movierain… Again, I don’t expect you to absorb all of this at once. But I do need you to remember to stay close. Stay tethered to good old Bill, your Big Cat. Can you do that?”

Kitty’s eyes grew increasingly wide at this metaphysical explanation. Her mouth became agape, but then she closed it to form words, quietly, almost whispering.

“I can. I will stay close.”

I knew she would. Kitty was my rock.

***

“Now, we’re going to leap to Donna and Edward’s Earth. It’s the one freshest in my memory from entering Donna’s dreams the other night.” I gently prepped Kitty for her first leap.

“Lead the way, Big Cat!”

“I have been there before, but only via Donna’s dream. Without her, it may be a little more tricky to conjure this Earth.”

“What are we going to do when we get there?” Kitty raised a very important question.

“First, we should leave a breadcrumb, in case we ever want to return. That way, we can drop in where we’d left off. Ah! And something else that is imperative I must tell you: We can’t alter anything on this Earth. We may only observe. We can make slight nudges and interactions, here and there, but only if their ripple effects don’t cause complete alterations in this planet. Cool?”

“Aye, aye!”

“Oh, and one final thing: we’re going to astral project into this reality. Our physical bodies will remain here in the Drop, as we meditate.”

“How are we going to surf on space-time then? What was I practicing that for?”

“You’ll still need those skills; we’re just tapping into a higher vibration, a higher consciousness—your energy body. While we could slog our material bodies through the movierain, our energetic bodies will glide much more freely through the Dew. Don’t worry, I’ll help you. What’s the only thing you need to remember?”

“Stay close. I’m your tether.”

“Here we go…”

We sat in a deep meditative state for several pregnant moments, until our astral selves leapt from their physical shells. Kitty and I hovered at high frequencies, just above and upside down from our bodies still sat on the pillows. An energetic tether formed between Kitty’s soul and mine, as I conjured the Sun’s electromagnetivity to propel our native Earth Drop through the Moon’s black hole and into the movierain. My astral self donned the Thunderbird helmet, concentrating the ball lightning between my astral ankles, projecting its entangled essence outwardly as a force field torus protecting us. I made sure the electromagnetic orb reached beyond myself and Kitty, as she surfed on her own ball lightning close by. She looked at me apprehensively, as we hovered in my projected Alcubierre bubble, since her astral self acted a bit more unstable than her physical one.

“Just focus on balancing on the energy between your feet!” I yelled to her, and pointed to our tether. “You’re not going anywhere!”

She nodded.

Within a lightning flash, we leapt from our known Drop, our Earth as the vehicle, into the movierain, raining heavy droplets all around our general vicinity. But my protective orb held, weathering the extradimensional storm. As I surfed, I concentrated deeply on Donna and Edward’s Earth, that I had visited not two nights ago. And a drop appeared just in front of Kitty and me. I summoned the awesome power of gravity and descended into this new Earth (to us) as it achieved critical mass in the movierain. We entered its atmosphere from near space (and adjacent dimensions). We gently navigated our astral selves down to the surface, flying by beautiful, crested waters, treetops, and then eventually we saw the city skyline off in the distance, where Donna and Edward met at school.

Still guiding our orb by my now well-fashioned gravity surfing tactics, I glanced over at Kitty.

“Let’s explore,” I said, and she looked back.

“This is the best night of my life!”

***

NEXT UP: Bill and Kitty enter a cool, urban environment of modern, natural delights. Donna and Edward’s Earth is an enlightened one, with beautiful architecture, vegetation crawling like vines over all of the buildings, and even cooler people residing there. Bill and Kitty can’t help but strike up a few conversations. They even find a little pub at the basement of some large, red brick building, with a step down entrance not unlike Harvard Square’s haunt, Grendel’s Den. They drop a breadcrumb, before performing the Irish exit.

The next day, Kitty’s a little tired for work. But she keeps it under wraps so that Cap doesn’t notice. Her nightly extracurriculars are far more fun than anything she’s doing during the day, on the boring, old bridge.

***