Dia and I met while working at a bookstore to support ourselves as students in our early twenties. It turned out we went to the same school and would later have some literature classes together. I had ambitions of being a writer, her of some indefinite bohemian lifestyle by way of a chemistry and philosophy degree.
I admired her carefree attitude to almost everything, which would come to include her own well-being. She was one of those people who fearlessly did what she wanted in spite of the practicality or what anyone else thought of her. I would have liked to have embraced the kind of wholehearted life-as-art attitude that she embodied but I didn’t have the courage for it. Or the income for that matter. Dia supported herself through the funds from a lucrative sale of several patents of novel chemicals she developed just after college. My day job as a technical writer for a company making instructional manuals allowed me a comfortable if humble subsistence. It’s hard to pass up a steady but dull job when there is rent to pay. And at least I was doing writing of some sort.
Dia eschewed concerns of that sort. She rarely had to worry about them. For Dia consequences seemed to be a concept that just didn’t exist. Not that she ran away from consequences, but that they quite literally never came to bear for her. She had up to this point lived a [[miraculously charmed life]].We both shared a love of open discussions of a wide range of topics and also a willingness to experiment with illicit and not yet illicit substances, often in combination. The goal being not to escape from reality, but to expand and enhance our experience of it. To this end Dia made her own drugs. Hofmann and Shulgin were idols of hers. She had both a talent and a love of chemistry. She enjoyed the challenge of it, of perfecting the chemical processes to get as pure a substance as the chemistry would allow. While the punishment for manufacturing most of these chemicals would have far exceeded that of merely possessing them Dia justified her choice of doing so by reasoning that it was much safer to acquire the chemical components needed while arousing less suspicion than resorting to buying the end products (of unknown purity from unknown dealers) on the street. It was hard to argue with her reasoning. And besides, I benefited from this in the form of access to the [[results of her chemical experiments]]. Dia lived in a warehouse converted into a loft apartment. The ground floor served as a garage and workshop with the upstairs being the living space. It was an amazing place with brick walls that were a hundred years old, hardwood floors, and a wide open interior space. It was a bit sparse for my taste, but it suited Dia well. Part of the living quarters was a lab she had designed and constructed to her own specifications. This was where she did all of her chemical experimentation. Though I didn’t have the technical mind for the chemistry processes that Dia had, I enjoyed watching her work. I sometimes assisted with the simpler aspects, often amounting to pouring premeasured flasks into other flasks, of which I was adequately capable.
This story had its start one night when the two of us were having a discussion about the uses and limits of exploration while under the influence of a small dose of mescaline. I was of the opinion that exploration was at its best a practical exercise.
“We explore for an intended purpose with an intended end. And even if that end is not where we arrive [[the practical needs to be kept in mind when undertaking the effort]],” I said.Dia on the other hand held that. “Exploration is its own purpose. The practical outcome is a fringe benefit, but the human mind needs to keep pushing the boundaries that it comes up against in order to grow and progress. Without this effort,” she argued, “humanity is sure to stagnate and die off. We need novelty in the world. [[Our physiology and psychology demands it]].” I jumped as a buzzer went off alerting us to someone at the door. I had no idea that Dia was expecting visitors but she seemed unsurprised. She pressed the button opening the ground level door and soon there was a knock on the loft door. Dia led the visitor in to the salon, as she liked to call it, where I was still sitting on one of her leather couches. I felt a bit off guard with the intrusion of this visitor to our evening. She introduced her to me as Annie who gave me a slight up nod. She had black lipstick, black jeans, and a black long sleeved top. The only thing about her that was not black was her pale white face framed by long white blond hair and a faded green military knapsack she carried over her shoulder. They conferred briefly in voices just quiet enough for me not to be able to make out the words. Their body language indicated that Annie didn’t intend on staying long, which was a relief. Dia looked up briefly towards me and I raised my eyebrows in questioning response. Without saying a word she took her down the hall to the Dia’s office. After several minutes they returned. Dia now had the knapsack over her shoulder. Annie gave me another nod as she let herself out. Dia took the bag to her lab and returned to [[continue our conversation]].“What was all that about?” I asked, still a bit ruffled at the intrusion.
“Acquiring some supplies,” She responded with nonchalance.
“A new experiment?”
“Yes, new.” She seemed distracted. “Better not to know any more than you do. For now.”
“Which is nothing.”
“Yes,” she trailed off. Then gave me a look as if considering something. A slight pause and then, “Huxley wrote about certain drugs turning off the filter the brain puts on our perception of the world.”
“Yes. A ‘reducing valve’ I believe was the phrase he used.”
“Exactly.” She paused, seeming to consider her words carefully. Then her secretive tone changed to barely bridled excitement. “Do you believe the things you see on psychedelics are real?” Behind her eyes was a look of joy. It was one of the things that had drawn me towards Dia in the beginning though it was something I would only consciously realize in retrospect. Now it brought me joy just seeing the light in her eyes when she was excited like this. I smiled.
“For the most part no. Just constructions created by our brains. What Huxley said seems somewhat correct. I think there are elements of the real world integrated with ideas and things inside our brains combined to form what we see as hallucinations. [[It really depends on the drug and the circumstances]].”“What if there was a chemical specifically designed to turn off filters in the brain? Something meant to allow us to see things that are all around us, but that our brain has simply ignored for some evolutionary reason.”
I considered this for a moment. “How would we even know where to start looking if we evolved not to see these things?”
“Possibly from historical evidence from those whose filters were not functioning correctly.”
“But how would you differentiate them from someone who was actually delusional?”
“By looking for similarities across delusions.”
“That seems an impossible task. How many have thought themselves the incarnation of the returned Christ?”
“Difficult, but not impossible. I’ve been doing some research in to it and found certain similarities that I think may represent something that only a few are able to perceive, yet is very real.”
“And this drug is supposed to reveal whatever it is our brain is filtering out?”
“Exactly.”
“What is it that you think is out there to reveal? I don’t believe you would be looking if you didn’t have at least some idea what you were looking for.”
“Evidence of higher dimensions intruding into our world,” she said plainly compared to her previous cageyness.
I must have betrayed a shocked expression because Dia continued with a [[smile]].“It’s not really all that surprising. Modern physics theories predict, some even require, the existence of higher dimensions. In the story of Flatland Abbott describes how a two dimensional plane might exist in a three dimensional world. We could just as easily be a three dimensional world inside a larger four or more dimensional world.”
“I follow you so far.” I’d read Abbott’s story, but I’d never expected to encounter its contents in a practical sense. “How would evidence of this other world ‘above’ us manifest itself?”
“As I said before “intrusions” in to our world. Like the sphere appearing as a succession of circles intersecting the two dimensional world a four dimensional thing intersecting our world would appear as an ever changing succession of three dimensional shapes. Likely just floating blobs.”
“Blobs. huh,” I smiled at the thought. The effects of the mescaline were enhancing the image in my mind of a blob bouncing around in the air.
“Most things in the real world aren’t as regular as a perfect sphere or cube. Our two dimensional cross sections would also appear as irregular blobs in a two dimensional world. So unless the higher dimensions are populated by regular polygons blobs are probably what we would see.”
[[I shuddered at that thought.|PT2R]]
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I was at a coffee shop reading a book a few weeks later when I saw Annie come in. After getting her coffee she turned in my direction and we made eye contact. I gave a small wave. I wasn’t sure she would even remember me. She waved back and [[approached my table]].“Hey, how’s it going,” she asked.
“Good how about you?” I said making obligatory small talk.
“Not bad. Have you seen Dia lately?”
“Not since the night you dropped by. Seems she’s been busy with work. [[Why?]]”
She looked uneasy for a moment before beginning. “A few days ago I ran in to her outside of a bookstore downtown.” She seemed hesitant to continue. I didn’t know Annie well enough to expect any kind of special confidence from her so something this serious seemed, well [[serious]]. “And…?”
“I know we don’t really know each other. But I’m worried about her.”
“What happened?”
“She seemed…[[unbalanced.]]”
I would have thought Annie was making a joke were it not for her tone. Dia was anything but balanced most of the time. In the best of ways in my opinion. But from the look on her face that wasn’t how Annie meant it. She seemed genuinely frightened. Not sure how to respond for a moment [[I waited for her to continue]].“She ran out of a bookstore as I was walking by. She looked insane. I saw someone on PCP once. That’s what she reminded me of. Deranged. I don’t know if she even recognized me. She grabbed me by the arms and started raving about ‘them.’ She kept saying, ‘I can seem them, but they can see me?’ I tried to talk her down but she took off running down the street before I could do anything.”
“That’s…weird. Doesn’t sound like Dia.”
“I didn’t think so either. I went into the bookstore to ask if they knew what happened. The clerk at the desk said she was fine at first. He seemed to know her from previous visits to the store. He said she was looking for books on alchemy and demonology. Then she began to get agitated and started raving. Finally she just ran out of the store.”
“That sounds unbelievable. Of course I believe you though. It’s just...”
“Yeah, just weird. And not like her at all. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t seen it. I’ve never seen her act that way.”
“Neither have I.”
“When you see her don’t mention you talked to me. I don’t know if she will even remember what happened. She seemed completely out of it. You guys are close right? Keep an eye on her. Make sure she’s okay.”
“I will. Thanks for letting me know.”
With that Annie took her coffee and [[left]].
I tried to get together with Dia, but she said she wasn’t free until a few days later. She had asked me to come over to her loft.
“I had an unusual conversation with Annie the other day,” I said trying to sound serious and concerned.
“Oh? Where did you see her?” There was a tone of expectation in her voice telling me she was waiting for what I was about to say, but not willing to reveal it herself. “Would you like a drink by the way?” She had a rocks glass with a deep green liquid over ice sitting in front of her at the kitchen island. She shook the bottle of Fernet Branca towards me jokingly in offering knowing I would vehemently refuse its minty herbal unpleasantness.
“No thank you,” I said in disgust to that particular offer. “I will have a Scotch though.”
She took another rocks glass and uncorked a bottle of dark amber liquid and poured me a healthy dose. She handed me the glass and then said, “Back to what you were saying.”
“I was reading at a coffee shop and Annie came in. She said she had seen you raving outside a bookstore in a paranoid panic.”
“Hmmm, I don’t know if I would describe it quite so dramatically, but essentially that’s not inaccurate.” She took a sip of her drink.
[[“Care to elaborate?”]]
“I was looking for some texts for my research.”
“Demonology and alchemy?” I interrupted.
“Yes, as I was looking I did get hit with, hmm, a bit of paranoia. I think it was a side effect of some impurities in the drug. I’ve refined my process since then so it shouldn’t happen again. I haven’t experienced that particular side effect since.”
“You’re testing unreliable drugs on yourself? That’s not like you.”
“It’s not that they’re unreliable. I just missed something in the process. I’m very careful about checking my work and making sure it’s as safe as possible before I take any chemicals I’ve made.”
This worried me. I don’t remember Dia having this kind of a reaction to a drug since the early days of her chemical experimentation when she was less concerned about safety and diligence. She may have often been carefree about her life, but rarely was she careless. [[My face betrayed my concern.]]“I admit I got a bit carried away with this one. I should have waited before testing it on myself. But I’ve gotten the process down now and I know what caused the initial problems. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Okay,” I said doubtfully, wanting to end the awkward conversation. “So how does the demonology and alchemy fit in to this?”
“I’m glad you asked.” She pulled some antique looking clothbound books off of a nearby shelf and set them down on the table. “If anyone in antiquity had discovered the things I’ve told you about they would have interpreted them within the context of the time they lived in. I suspect demonology and alchemy texts are the places these things would have been recorded if at all. How else could a four dimensional being be interpreted in the year 1000 AD except as some kind of unholy demon?”
“I guess that’s plausible. Any luck?”
She opened several of the books to woodcut prints of demons. In another she pointed to a written description of an “apparition.” Something that appeared from nowhere, shifted shape over the course of several minutes, and then [[vanished into thin air.]]“Some of the things I’ve found lead me to believe I was right. Nothing substantial enough to rely on though. Only indicators and unclear signposts. Nothing to do but go to this place myself.”
“Even if you say you’ve refined all the impurities how do you know there won’t be some other reaction? This seems to be different than the other experiments you’ve undertaken.”
“I don’t know. I’ve made every effort to make sure there isn’t and I feel confident that there won’t be, but in the end I don’t have any assurances. None of us have assurances about anything.”
A truism wasn’t going to convince me of anything and she knew it. It was recklessness. Yet I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t still curious. Very curious in fact. She knew that also. Knew how to pique my curiosity just enough so that I wouldn’t resist too much. In the end she was right and my curiosity got the better of me. I relented. Dia was right about the potential importance of what she was doing. If she was right about what she thought she was after.
So over the next few hours I assisted Dia in the first step of the new formulation of the drug that would allow us to see beyond what most people ever could. I have basic chemistry knowledge from my undergrad experience, but nowhere near the skills of Dia. As I said she developed several important chemicals while she was still in college. Now she had been working on her own wherever her interests might take her and her skills had increased dramatically over the years. I was always impressed watching her work. She had an expertise that allowed her to enter into an incredible flow state. She seemed barely conscious of what her hands were doing, yet she was rigorous and exact in all she did.
Dia took off her black rubber gloves. “That,” she said pointing to a liquid slurry in a Pyrex cake pan, “is a door. Possibly the most important door humanity has ever opened.” I was, I thought, suitably impressed but said nothing. The impressive part had been watching the work, not waiting for this slurry to crystalize. From the look in Dia’s eyes [[I don’t think it was the reaction she was hoping for.]]“This will drop the veil our consciousness puts up to ‘protect’ us.” She said the word “protect” with disdain.
“Why do you think it’s such a good idea to reveal what’s behind it?”
“Because it’s there. Waiting to be found.”
“Hidden from us for thousands if not tens of thousands of years. There might be good reason for that. Our evolutionary path may have been protecting us from things we are not capable of dealing with.”
Dia waved her hand in the air disregarding my argument with a motion. I frowned. The paranoid delusions, the secretiveness, the obsession, all those could possibly be excused. But this attitude of dismissiveness towards the potential dangers of the unknown concerned me. Even so I was nearly as compelled to find out as she was. The mystery propelled me just as it did her. I tried to put my reservations aside as I was also not willing to [[turn back now|PT3R]].
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Over the next few months I saw little of Dia. Since this all began I had seen her much less than any time in recent memory. On only a rare few occasions had I seen her in passing. She was too “busy with work” to see anyone according to her. And on those few occasions she was unwilling to talk about the work that was keeping her busy. It was odd since she had been so excited about it previously and wanted to share what she had been learning with me. Now she was distracted, always returning to a faraway gaze that seemed to focus on nothing that I could see. I was in fact afraid of what she was able to see that I wasn’t. Several months after our chemistry session I finally got a message from her inviting me to dinner at her place. [[Of course I went.]]After an excellent dinner of steak and potatoes and mostly inconsequential talk she began the conversation I had been waiting for.
“Remember that experiment I was telling you about?” she asked innocently.
“Not in particular,” I said. I wasn’t going to make this easy for her. “Which one?”
She gave me a smirking glare. I smiled in spite of my attempt.
“It’s finished. The drug is done. And it works. I’m ready for more extensive trials.”
“Does that mean both of us?”
“Yes. If you are game.”
“I’d wondered why we weren’t having the typical after dinner drink.” I couldn’t refuse after all this build up. [[“Of course,” I said with a sigh.]]I trusted Dia’s chemical expertise. If she said whatever she was working on was ready I wouldn’t second guess her. I did not think she would be as reckless with my safety as she may have been with her own. I hoped anyway. Though now I [[wish to a god I do not believe in that I had refused.]]Dia went to her lab and returned with an amber bottle. She held it up to the light between her index finger and thumb with a rather unnecessary dramatic flair.
“This is the culmination of my research. If this works it will be something great. Something that will eventually be on the lips of every researcher of science. The day that I lifted the veil to another place that most couldn’t even dream of. And those that did dream had no imagination for it.”
Dia then returned to practicality. “It’s a tincture. Put three drops under your tongue. Let it sit there for a few minutes before swallowing.”
She handed me the bottle and I gave myself a dose. She did the same.
“I didn’t even ask how this is supposed to work,” I said.
“It’s like a psychedelic. But…different. Whereas psychedelics generally allow one to see the contents of their own mind projected outward, this allows the reality around us to be revealed.”
“What should I be expecting to see? Amorphous blobs?”
“I don’t want to influence you any more than I already may have. [[I want to hear what you see with as few expectations as possible.]]”Dia set a digital recorder down on the table between us. It wasn’t unusual for one of us to record ourselves when taking new substances. It was easier than trying to remember to write while we were under the influence of something. With the importance of this test to her it wasn’t surprising that she wanted a record of it. We put on some ambient music as we typically did after dinner, drugs or not. I picked out Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports, put it on the platter, and dropped the needle. We each sat stretched out on separate couches in Dia’s salon in silence for the duration of the album. We mostly sat in relaxed silence, one of us making a comment here or there, [[enjoying the music]] and waiting for the effects to begin.I put on the next record, a Stars of the Lid album, and sat back down. It was then that I noticed the effects of the drug beginning. The air around me bent and curled, in the way that hot air distorts anything viewed through it. I looked up at Dia. She was staring at a point in the wall opposite her. I couldn’t see anything where she was looking. Then I turned, feeling a presence behind me. I saw a vague form, not quite solid looking. It was a transparent thing [[floating about four feet in the air]].“You’ve begun to see?” Dia asked.
I looked back at her. Her eyes were wide with excitement. “Something, yes. Not sure what exactly. Wavy distortions.”
“They may solidify with time. Usually they do with me, not always.”
“Is this,” I reached my hand out to touch the thing and it floated out of my reach, “real?”
“Yes. [[I think these things are always here]].”I shuddered at the thought. My blob had begun to coalesce into a more solid looking thing, but no less formless. I looked over and could finally see what Dia had been looking at. Her thing appeared similar, but where mine was more organic in shape hers had more sharp angles, somewhat crystalline in structure.
“What exactly are they?”
“Some type of higher dimensional life.”
“Are they…solid? They seem so ephemeral.” I had completely glossed over the fact that Dia just told me she may have discovered a previously unknown form of life. But I was so entranced by what I was seeing the larger implications of it were momentarily lost on me.
“They tend to appear more solid as you are able to better perceive them. Weird kind of feedback loop. It could be an effect of the drug or some effect of perception itself. There are quantum physics experiments in which the results differ depending on whether anyone is observing it or not. It could be a similar effect. Our observations somehow make them more [[amenable to interaction]].”
Over the next hour more of the things appeared and disappeared. Some floating, some lying on the ground. In addition to their varied “body” structures and shapes their color also varied. They all tended towards the organic, mottled browns, greens, and greys. There were some yellow and blue patches, but nothing so well defined as spots. The colors shifted in almost imperceptible ways. Concentrating on their surface I could see tiny shifts in the color patterns, like the nearly imperceptible dissolution of a cloud. And though their patterns changed, the overall palette of each stayed in the same range. Their interactions with the objects in the room were inconsistent. There were times the things floated ghost-like right through solid objects. I watched one of them move effortlessly through a lamp. Other times they would come up against a barrier and respect its physical boundaries. Upon approaching the wall one of them spread itself out over a section of it.
My initial urge to reach out and touch one of them had disappeared by then; once I became convinced they were real. In my experience with psychedelics I had touched all manner of hallucinations; a part of me knew they were not really there. This was different. Their very existence disturbed me out in a way that nothing ever had. Their ever shifting gelatinous nature only added to my disgust. I was not going to touch them. A deep animal instinct told me there was something to be feared from these unknown creatures. I was willing to go no farther than observation. The fact that there was no evidence for this did not matter. I was relieved to find out that Dia agreed with me on this point [[at least]].“You’re right. We should wait until we can learn something about them before we start poking them. For all we know we could trigger a reflexive reaction and end up with our hands [[bitten off]].” She brought this idea up in much too casual a manner. I nodded in agreement now that I had this new image of terror in my imagination. That particular thought hadn’t even occurred to me. My stomach clenched. I could have inadvertently antagonized one of the things and paid a dear price for it. Though there hadn’t been anything resembling a mouth, or identifiable organs of any kind for that matter, on any of the things I didn’t want to take a chance at finding out. The fact that I was the one to have brought up the idea of not touching them was one more thing that concerned me about this whole situation. Had she been previously touching these things? I was thankful when the effects of the drug began to [[wear off]] and the things faded from my view.“The thought that they’re still here in the room with us…,” I shuddered.
“Is it any different than the myriad of typical creatures that share the room with us unseen? Spider, various insects, bacteria, fungus. Even in your own body the bacteria cells outnumber your own.” She was right. And yet it didn’t assuage my fears.
“I know all this. They still bother me.”
Dia shrugged. I now knew they were there, whether I liked it or not. [[It was simply a fact]].
“For the next trial I’m going to adjust the dosage to see if that will extend the duration of the effects. It may also allow us to see them more clearly.” She began writing in her notebook.
I didn’t say anything, but after that experience I wasn’t sure there was going to be a next time for me. There were too many things that Dia strangely hadn’t seemed to have considered. It was so unlike her. An incautious Dia was nearly as frightening as those creatures.
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