“Alright, guys. This assignment should be simple,” Danny V. called in early one morning. He seemed giddy at the profitable prospect of this affluent subject, all of whom he referred to as “clients,” though that was just a code word for anyone connected to high-ranking officials.

“One of our clients wants to commemorate the first time he caught a wave. He was vacationing down there with his family. He said he was sort of a loser back then. But when he caught that wave, his confidence shifted. In fact, the feeling of standing on that board is forever etched in his mind. It marks the watershed moment in his life that led him to become a CEO.”

Once the Cheshire crew located the client’s Earth version, we swooped the shuttle into atmosphere from the mothership. Sully was piloting the small, invisible craft to all native earthlings of this reality. The camouflage was necessary to remove any risk of ripple effects. The shuttle was much smaller than the Cheshire Herself, and only a few of us could fit on board for such a tight tagging mission. They let me join Sully, and Joey Photo—the tag cinematographer—on missions now, since my mopping skills hadn’t panned out. Though I was aging at a rapid rate—much quicker than my human shipmates—and the ripe old age of 16 at this point, they still gave me little to fuck up. While Sully expertly navigated the translucent, hovering shuttle meters from our CEO subject soon-to-be a surfer, and Joey tagged the required spacetime bookmarks to record this event, I was supposed to hang back and take notes. We had to painstakingly archive each mission this way—with meticulous, mundane accounts of every step taken in the procedure. Danny V. claimed the detail ensured authenticity, but I think he was just a stickler. Needless to say, the tedious task went to Lucky No. 13, when Cap thought even this bonehead couldn’t screw it up.

Joey set up the parallax machine, as Sully hovered, but the wave’s movement was ever-changing.

“I can’t lock in all dimensional layers to log this event,” Joey complained, pulling his gaze from the viewfinder toward Sully. “It’s like trying to hit a moving target… only after locking six crosshairs.”

Just then, the CEO caught the wave, stood up and screamed out in pure ecstasy, “Woohoo!”

“We missed it,” Joe reported. Sully hit a button and the whole world stopped and rewound back to the point just before CEO snagged some pipe.

“I’m telling ya, I won’t be able to lock in all six layers at the exact moment he stands up. There are too many moving parts to lock in on an also moving target,” Joey’s vocal register heightened in frustration. Sully remained stoic.

The two tried several times, but always ended the same way, missing one or more of the parallax levels to fully record this pivotal moment in the CEO’s life. Watching him catch that wave over and over again stirred a déjà vu effect. Sully turned back, looking directly at me.

“OK, don’t record even half of these attempts. I don’t need to hear it from cranky Danny V. Why don’t you just relax for a bit, while Joe and I figure this out.”

After Sully gave me the break, I stared off in the distance to what could have been a thousand miles, as déjà vu memories flooded my mind.

I was in some sort of tactical course setting. My mentor stood over me, instructing our class on the day’s lesson.

“Today we’re going to learn how to surf space-time. Feel space-time all around you,” the mentor walked in between his pupils who positioned themselves in the readying stance. “Concentrate its gravity down into a ball between your ankles.”

I could feel electromagnetivity and an awesome gravity pulsing down from above, through my spine and legs, down into the earth below. I fixated the electricity between my inner ankles, forming ball lightning. I imagined two platforms offshooting from the ball, onto which I stood. Concentrating the volatile energy between my legs, I hovered feet above the ground now, propelled by this brilliant, repellant force lifting me. It felt like standing on a skateboard of pure energy, in midair. And I now possessed the ability to move about space-time at will. I could hover here or there, like surfing gravitational waves. That was the moment when I knew I could harness gravity.

“Good! Good!” my instructor exclaimed. “That’s good! You now have one foot in this universe, and the other beyond. You can move about this world at will now, at any speed. You know no inertia inside the bubble.”

Back on the shuttle, several sparks ignited between my ankles, altogether throwing me out of the flashback, into the present, and bestowing grace upon one very convenient realization: I could tag this CEO surfer moment myself, without the aid of Joe and Sully’s machinery. I perked up from the backseat.

“What if we lock the last layer on site?” I asked Joe. “I can carry it myself to the subject.”

Joe and Sully both looked at each other perplexed.

“I’m good kid, but I can’t maneuver the shuttle that close without ripple effect risk,” Sully said plainly, still a bit confused at who he was now talking to. Without hesitation, I responded, “I can do it.” I turned to Joe.

“If I can lock in the last layer inches away from his surfboard, can you align the first 5?”

“Yeah, if I don’t have to worry about that last focal point, I should have time mark the first five checkpoints,” Joe was scratching his head. At this point, the two crew would try anything. It was getting late.

I heard Sully whisper to Joe, “How’s he gonna get out there on his own?”

I leapt from the shuttle and formed that buoyant ball lightning between my feet. Once steadied, I surfed space-time to within feet of CEO about to pop up. I yelled to Joe to lock the first five checkpoints, and as the novice surfer stepped up victorious, I locked in the sixth by hand. Looking back at the shuttle, I saw thumbs-up from Joe and Sully to indicate the tag had stuck. We had completed the mission. We could go home to Mother Cheshire.

When I climbed back into the shuttle, both Sully and Joe had nothing but questions—particularly how I had figured out how to hover.

“I remembered a certain technique I had learned,” was all I could say then. “I forgot I could surf through space with a little concentration.”

Joe didn’t seem satisfied at that explanation, but the open-minded Sully, who usually made me feel somewhat accepted, was more concerned with how I performed the feat. His unflappable response said it all.

“Yeah, you’re gonna have to teach me that.”

***

NEXT UP: Sully, Joe and Bill return to the mothership Cheshire. For the first time, Bill’s received with much enthusiasm and grace from the rest of the crew. Sully sings his praises to Cap and co. He’s also eager to learn Bill’s special skill at surfing space-time. The lesson goes awry, however, and Sully gets lost in the multiverse. Bill knows neither how to leap dimensions nor navigate the Dew yet—let alone achieve zen in the Drop—but the mishap triggers the necessary flashback for Bill to track Sully’s 5th-dimensional path and collect him.

Necessity is the mother of invention here, and Bill gets baptized by fire finding Sully. In one fell swoop, Bill learns how to leap dimensions and novicely navigate Dew en route to the unfortunate Sully. We wouldn’t call his demeanor “zen” at this stage under crisis, but the young trans-dimensional maintains enough Drop poise to retrieve his friend. In fact, his first venture into the Dew drops him at the Thunderbird equipment room, where he gains his helmet.

The time dilation has aged Sully a bit, however, upon the return. Cap is pissed. Bill falls under bad graces with the Cap and most of the crew again, but Kitty saves a soft spot for him and remains intrigued by Bill’s special abilities. She nicknames Bill “Big Cat,” as a term of endearment. The solitude also avails Bill opportunity to carve out his dimension transcending Drop, expanding from under a carpet-conceald trap door in the supply closet to a space much larger than it appears from the outside. It bends space-time in a fashion undetectable by the Cap, and rather spacious once inside. Here, he achieves zen in the Drop—his inner sanctuary. He learns how to leap dimensions and navigate the Dew in latter flashbacks, en route to teaching the crew who ultimately come around, gradually visiting him more and more. He takes them on extra-dimensional excursions, where they learn his techniques. Eventually, Cap comes around too.

***