I remember the day Kitty came to visit in the makeshift brig, with a good question.

“Wait, so if you can leap dimensions, why don’t you just leap out of this room?” she had a point. “The Captain would be none the wiser.”

“I tried that,” I said. “Haven’t been able to conjure the power necessary to break through space-time fabric. When I had to retrieve Sully, I seemed to summon some otherworldly force. I haven’t been able to focus as well, since then.”

“Maybe you should try now.”

Just then, I leapt up onto a small ball lightning bubble, hovering inches above the ship floor. I concentrated intently for several minutes, but no space-time breach.

“You have to believe, man!” her encouraging words gave me strength.

I attempted a zen state, floating in the supply closet, drawing the energy from above, down through my feet to the ground. The gravity between my ankles became heavy, but much more gradually this time. Instead of creating a rift in space-time, the energy expanded the existing space like a balloon. I dropped down from hover. Kitty was still impressed.

“Wow, you just warped space!” If only she had seen what Sully and I had accomplished.

She stuck her head into the orb that remained.

“There’s so much more space on the inside of this hole than appears on the outside!”

That is how I learned to form my Drop.

The space-time inside this small Drop became more pliable, and I stretched it further on the inside. The outside still only looked to be the size of a basketball. Like dough, I flattened it and hid under the throw rug on the supply closet floor. Think of it like a trans-dimensional trap door, or one of those cartoon holes you could slap on a wall and reach into without your arm protruding on the other side.

At first, only Kitty knew about it. I told her to keep this development from Cap. My mind raced with all the possibilities of infinite space within this self-made Drop.

***

The key to dipping into the trapdoor entrance of the Drop was to go head first. The gravity was inverted on the other side—inside the Drop—so diving in like a swan guaranteed you’d land on your feet.

By the time I had figured this out, my Drop had substantially expanded in size (from the inside) with the Cap and rest of crew none the wiser. There was literally no trace of it from the outside, save the throw rug I had placed over the trap door to conceal its entrance. And since I had expanded space-time only from within, the outside sustained absolutely no impact on the ship’s volume, mass or outward appearance. It truly was my own, hidden world.

After I had collected a few personal effects and stored them in the Drop, I invited Kitty down into its inner sanctum. We sat there mostly, face to face, and meditated on the circular pillows I had placed on the Drop’s floor. The quiet was perfect and eerily sweet, allowing us to focus better than anywhere on the ship. We were both trying to achieve zen as we sat. I hadn’t yet figured out how to leap dimensions, since retrieving Sully, but somehow knew that when I did, my head should be level. Kitty was my rock.

“Where’s the first place you’ll leap, once we can break through space-time?” Kitty asked me once coming out of a deep, transcendent meditation, as we sat.

Before she finished her question, I knew the answer, “I’ll most likely return to the Thunderbird Equipment Room. That’s where I found my helmet. It was somewhat of a blur the last time I had visited, frantically bent on finding Sully, but even in that frenetic state I recall that there was some stuff that’d be cool to place here in our sanctuary.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure where I’d go—,” she said.

“You’ll be with me.”

“Don’t we both have to figure it out for me to join you?”

“Once I learn to leap on call,” I assured her, “you’ll be my first passenger. I have to understand the mechanics of dimensional leaping myself, before I can teach it to you.”

Slipping back into meditation, her eyes and mouth were silently smiling, she whispered, “This is exciting.”

Kitty was my rock.

***

NEXT UP: Bill flashes back to remember leaping dimensions. He returns to the Thunderbird Equipment Room and collects some cool accessories, like a healing waterfall, megalithic stone altar and circular platform for meditating and leaping up into the Drop’s epicenter for trans-dimensional departures.

***