Thursday, November 1, 2001 [by:SpaceBass]

Over at my mom's for a visit one day, I was wandering around looking at her new house. I gazed out the large picture windows with the view of the mountains, a rolling range that stretched to the horizon both to the left and right. A bit of movement caught my eye; one of the mountains suddenly zipped from a distance to the right until it rested directly across from me. I felt like I was watching a movie filmed through a racked wide-angle lens. I blinked and called to my sister to join me.

Then it happened again and she saw it too, two mountains from the far left slid rapidly to rest at one o'clock. "What was that?!" my sister cried.

"Dimensional shifting," I replied. It just made sense.

The sky grew dark, roiling with dark clouds, as the mountains played musical chairs, faster and faster. There was a flash, a crack of thunder, and the mountains disappeared. The house lurched. We were thrown to the floor, and the crash-thud-grunt from downstairs said that our mom was tossed around as well.

The house was moving. It was moving fast.

I clawed my way upright, climbing an overturned easy chair, and made my way to another room with windows facing in the direction I could feel us sliding. I caught a glimpse of hundreds of similar houses sledding their ways through multiple snow-covered tracks, skating down a mountain pass toward a well-lit city in the distance. Then, with a flash of grayish fog, the scene shuddered and the clouds split to reveal a sunny blue sky, over an unfamiliar suburb covering rolling hills. It was noticably warmer.

We regrouped and went around back to the pool, where another family was enjoying the weather. "Who are you?" we all said together.

I looked up at the sky and noticed the moon, a misshapen crescent more like a cookie with a big bite taken out of it. Not my moon.

"This isn't our world," I said.

The unfamiliar family making their home in ours gave me a collectively quizzical look. My sister hissed, "Ssshhhhh!"—always careful to assess a situation before blurting statements that could bite back.

My gaze swept the sky, taking in the myriad of eclipsed moons faintly shining through the bright blue.

"Well, maybe it's our world," I said, "but it's sure not our universe."