Into the Fourth Dimension by Ray Cummings

There were few preparations to make, for Wilton Grant had planned this thing very carefully. Our chief difficulty was with Bee. The girl was quite distraught; illness, the fear which for weeks had been dragging her down, completely submerged the scientist in her. And then abruptly she mastered herself, smiled through her tears.

"That's more like it, Bee. " Will glanced aside at me with relief. "I couldn't understand you. Why Bee, we've been working at this thing for years."

"I'm all right now. " She smiled at us -- a brave smile though her lips were still trembling. "You're -- about ready, aren't you?"

They had set aside a small room on the lower floor of the house -- a sort of den which now was stripped of its accustomed hangings and furniture. It had two windows, looking out to the garden and lawn about the house. They were some six feet above the ground. It was a warm mid-summer evening; we had the lower sashes opened, but the shades fully drawn lest some neighbor or passerby observe us from without. On the floor of this room lay a mattress. There was a small table, a clock, two easy chairs. For the rest it was bare. Its white plaster walls, devoid of hangings, gave it somewhat the sanitary look of a room in a hospital.

We had been so occupied with Bee that Will had as yet given me no word of explanation. He left the little room now, returning in a moment with some articles which he deposited on the table. I eyed them silently; a shiver of fear, apprehension, awe -- I could not define it -- passed over me. Will had placed on the table a carafe of water; a glass; a small vial containing a number of tiny pellets; a cylindrical object with wires and terminal posts which had the appearance of a crude home-made battery -- four wires each some ten feet in length, terminating each in a circular metallic band.

I glanced at Bee. Outwardly now she was quite composed. She smiled at me. "He'll explain in a moment, Rob. It's quite simple."

We were ready. By the clock on the table it was twenty minutes of ten. Will faced us.

"I'd like to start by ten o'clock," he began quietly. "The time-factor will be altered -- I want to compute the difference -- when I return -- as closely as I can."

I had the ill grace to attempt an interruption, but he silenced me.

"Wait, Rob -- twenty minutes is not a long time for what I have to say and do. " He had motioned us to the easy chairs, and seated himself cross-legged on the mattress before us. His gaze was intent upon my face.

"This is not the moment for any detailed explanation, Rob. I need only say this: As I told you a while ago, the fundamental substance of which our bodies are composed is -- not substance, but a mere vortex. A whirlpool, a vibration let me term it. And the quality of this vibration -- this vortex -- the time-factor controlling it, governs the material character of our conscious universe. From birth to death -- from the beginning to the end -- we and all the substance of our universe move along this unalterable, measured flow of time.

"Do I make my meaning clear? From -- nothing but a vibrating whirlpool the magic of chemistry has built with this unalterable time-factor what we are pleased to call substance -- material bodies. These material bodies have three varying dimensions -- length, breadth and thickness. But each of them inherently is endowed also with the same basic time-factor. The rate of time-flow governing them, let me say, is identical."

He spoke now more slowly, with measured words as though very carefully to reach my understanding.

"You must conceive clearly, Rob, that every material body in our universe is passing through its existence at the same rate. Now if we take any specific point in time -- which is to say any particular instant of time -- and place in it two material bodies, those two material bodies must of necessity occupy two separate portions of space. That's obvious, isn't it? Two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

"Now Rob, I have spoken of this unalterable measured flow of time along which all our substance is passing. But it is not unalterable. I have found a way of altering it."

He raised his hand against my murmur, and went on, carefully as before. "What does this do? It gives a different basic vibration to matter. It gives a different rate of time-flow, upon which, building up from a fundamental vortex of changed character, we reach substance -- a state of matter -- quite different from that upon which our present universe reposes. A different state of matter, Rob -- it still has length, breadth and thickness -- but a different flow of time.

"You follow me? Now, if we take a material body of this -- call it secondary state -- and place it in the same space with a body of our primary state, they can and do occupy that space without conflict at the same instant of time.

"Why? Ah Rob, it would take a keener mind than mine or yours to answer that, or to answer the why of almost anything. The knowledge we poor mortals have is infinitesimal compared to the knowledge we have not. I can conceive vaguely, however, that two primary bodies, placed in identical points of space and time would be moving through time at identical rates and thus stay together and conflict. Whereas, with a primary and secondary body, their differing time-flows would separate them after what we might call a mere infinitesimal instant of coincidence."

His gesture waved away that part of the subject. He rose to his feet. "I have particularized even more than I intended, Rob. Let me say now, only that the pellets in this little vial contain a chemical which acts upon the human organism in the way I have pictured. It alters the fundamental vibration upon which this substance -- these bones, this flesh we call a body -- this substance of my being, is built.