18/04/19
10:54

I just started today. I can be a bit absent-minded at times. Not just because I'm easily distracted, but because I also live in another dimension. I sorta got lost here a few months back - or at least my mind did. It's like I'm floating above people and if I drift down into them, I can control them for a short time.

Like who I'm using now, Ben. I saw him sat at this computer and thought I'd make myself known.

Hi. I'm Tim.

Well, it's not really. I just figured having a more human name would be better than having to explain the correct pronunciation of imQ'ryu'xlotl using insufficient vocal capabilities.

Uh-oh, I can feel him fighting back. I might not have much...

Hi, I'm Tim.

I'm a fairly new student here and I've yet to make any friends. Probably because I'm a disembodied consciousness from another dimension who can only inhabit a physical body for a short period of time.

I'd like to make some friends here, and so I thought we could set up some sort of Sports Clubs that regular-bodied persons and other disembodied extra-dimensional beings can partake in.

I've seen some footage on this computer of the human sport "Ping Pong" which looks quite fun.

Who's up for a

My roommate, Ethel Mariner, just sits in our room all day and all night like a bump on a log. She's not very athletic, but I don't think she'd put up much of a fight if you'd like to try her, @distantTim. My only requirement is that you pick up your dishes and don't leave used tissues laying around everywhere. Whaddaya say? I'd love to get her out of the room and have some time to myself in here.

I think my roommate might already be on the team. His name is Mushy Apple. He was pretty normal until recently. Ok actually he was really boring. I don’t even know what he did with his time. He just kind of blended into the background of all the scenes.

But the other morning he sat bolt upright in bed and announced I’VE DETACHED THE MECHANICAL and got dressed to go to the gym and play Ping Pong.

How’s turn out been for the team?

My life was really dull before I met @distantTim, but now I feel like the most popular guy in Golden Flower dorm! Everybody’s high-fiving me and “great moves at the table, bro!” even though at the very last point in the game @distantTim lost connection and I totally flubbed it. Because it’s pretty weird to wake up and find yourself in the middle of a championship ping pong game.

We kind of need to expand our roster though. @Len have you considered going out for the Extra-Dimensional Ping Pong team? I think your skills could be a really awesome addition.

I am visiting Psyhigh these days, but only in your dreams, ping-ponging around your heads at night. Or sometimes in the afternoons, you nappers.

It’s considered bad form, frankly, to do a full-body takeover. Unless it’s an emergency, but even then, somewhat distasteful.

Me and my sisters have been doing it for a long time. Sisters and cousins. Sometimes we have gray skin, sometimes brown. Usually it’s in a bright and sunny right-before-you-wake-up dream, because that’s when your mind is the most open.

We talk in bed.

I’ve got some things to tell you, so I’m looking forward to meeting each and every one of you!

You can tell me by my jewelry.

I’d been experiencing periods of lost time, which, as every Psyhigh student knows, is nothing in itself to worry about.

They were sporadic, and never very long at first. But they’d been getting longer and longer and I began to find shapes and messages scribbled onto scraps of paper and carved into my desk in my room. Strange symbols that seemed to crawl from the woodwork itself, drawing my mind towards an everlasting inward spiral.

I resisted the pull of the spiral, for a time, but the shapes are so alluring I am spending more and more time with them each day, tracing them with my fingers. Like this:

@distantTim

The walls between our world and yours are permeable, porous, and penetrable. But there's a reason we prefer to stay behind the screens, waving and whispering from two-way mirrors and windows.

It's holes.

The holes necessary for me to visit you in your dreams are very small. Impossibly small, actually. That's the only way it can work.

As soon as you try to pass anything more massive than transcendental spooky kabuki, it means tearing real holes. In reality.

These holes can get torn from either direction, and once ripped open they tend to grow, given the strain of the surface tension. Once they grow, anything can start slipping through.

Anything.

The periods of lost time are growing longer and more frequent. There are now great gulfs in my memory, giant holes, which I navigate around via the narrowest of pathways, barely wide enough to walk. My sanity is stretched thin and rickety.

These expanses, these holes, this missing time, are like huge empty eye sockets. I look down inside them and see the contours, spiral ridges threaded down the cliffs. It's as if the massive moments themselves were unscrewed and lifted from my mind, leaving nothing but a vacuous darkness.

I take a rest, dangling my feet off the precipice, and allow my fingers to trace the threads of spiral curves. Here too they are carved with strange symbols, which I can read with my fingertips... imQ'ryu'xlotl... @distantTim ... J. Jaques and Son...

I reach too far and slip off the edge--

do cats eat bats do bats eat cats do cats eat bats do bats eat cats

@Ben Hardy is almost better. He's been in the waiting room since he arrived, trying to put his mind together, but I trust he'll give up soon and leave it behind.

The waiting room provides visitors with familiar surroundings. Most outgrow it when they realize they've lost their attachment to it. There are the stubborn few, however, cowered in the corners, mumbling. Eventually we relieve them of their pain.

The first steps out the door are the hardest. Naturally, there's an initial feeling of being cognitively disabled, since you're at a disadvantage, having to generate thoughts and time in a whole new way. Newcomers spend most of their time sleeping, then sit for short periods awake, learning to concentrate and initiate the cascade event that will bring them into full awareness. To the extent each is able.

As for @distantTim--his whereabouts are unknown. Has he ping-ponged off to rip holes in the minds of countless others? Has he taken up residence in the Ben Hardy mechanical? He's outside the spectrum my sisters and cousins and I are able to access, and remains at large.

For now, we bring Ben fresh magazines, and let him know he is loved.