I step off the truck with a thunk, leaving more cracks in the asphalt. Another officer, this one a Captain, comes over to meet me. He’s a tall, pale man with close-cut brown hair. Despite his height, I still tower over him. He gives me a crisp salute, which surprises me. I’m stunned for all of eight nanoseconds.

  “Mr. Ryans, glad you’re here. I’m Captain Rains, in charge of this defense. Let me show you around, and we’ll figure out how best to use your abilities.”

  I give him a nod.

  “Sounds good to me, Captain.”

  We begin to walk through the multi-layered defenses, consisting of barbed wire and barricades. With the White House at six o’clock, there are two Bradleys at seven and five o’clock. At eight and four o’clock, there’s two Abrams tanks. At nine and ten o’clock, there’s multiple layers of barricades and even more barbed wire. Thirty soldiers relax against the pop-up walls and anti-tank caltrops.

  He points out the two Bradleys, on either side of the stairs leading up to the White House itself. Two tanks are next to them, main guns pointed at the Fracture. One has the name “Grave Mistake”, and the other tank has “Nap Time”, both written on their respective barrels. Their crews are hanging out of the open hatches, shooting the shit. Captain Rains points them out.

  “We’ve got two tanks here, as well as two Bradleys. They’ll provide heavy fire support on anything too big for small arms to handle.”

  In front of the tanks are low barricades, with barbed wire in front of those stretching out just to just a few yards away from the Fracture.

  “We’ve got some barbed wire here to help slow down anything quick.”

  Captain Rains points to the roof of the White House, where several machine gun emplacements are set up. There’s another four soldiers, each pair lounging next to a recoilless rifle. The soldiers notice me, and one gives me a friendly wave. I awkwardly wave back.

  “We’ve got machine guns up on the roof. There’s two anti-tank teams up there as well. Too close for Javelins, they’re using some recoilless rifles instead.”

  Finally, he gestures at the barricades with the soldiers.

  “And to round it all out, we’ve got two infantry platoons here.”

  He turns to me.

  “Alright, Mr. Ryans. How best can we work you in?”

  “Well, I’m not a tactician. I’ve been fighting hand-to-hand.”

  Captain Rains bobs his head side to side in thought.

  “Well, that might be a problem with friendly fire.”

  I shrug.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m pretty sure I’m indestructible. Or at least, close enough to it for the difference to be academic.”

  Rains seems taken aback.

  “Are… you sure about that?”

  “Extremely. I jumped a thousand feet into the air and landed hard enough to cause more damage than a bomb.”

  He works his jaw in shock.

  “…Right. Okay. No need to worry about friendly fire. Well, I guess when it comes to tactics, do what you have to, I suppose. Do you know anything about what might come out of the Fracture?”

  I turn to the shimmering, warped anomaly hanging ominously in the air.

  “Not a clue. Only that it’ll probably be worse.”

  “In what way?”

  “Don’t know. I suppose we’ll find out, eventually.”

  Captain Rains looks grim.

  “Yeah. Hopefully it doesn’t cost us.”

  The fire inside surges, and I clench my fist.

  “I’ll stop at nothing to make sure it doesn’t.”

  Rains nods.

  “I believe you.”

  I wish I understood these Fractures. They’re such beautiful structures, yet they lead to ugly things. Maybe one day we’ll understand them. I hope I can help.

  A wound in the universe, a garish injury upon reality. It pulses grotesquely. and with each pulse, come blood thirsty monsters. Urban Ant swarms charge as one, only violence on their primitive minds.

  There’s still much to learn about these things, of that, I’m sure. I move up as close to the Fracture as I can. Barbed wire covers the ground, knee high everywhere around it. It’s so strange how it warps the space around it. How it dives down and sideways and inside all the same time.

  Captain Rains clears his throat.

  “Mr. Ryans?”

  I jerk and turn away.

  “Sorry, Captain. Lost in thought. What did you say?”

  “If you’ll come this way, I’d like to introduce you to the Sergeant you’ll be working particularly closely with. They’ll be holding the center of the infantry line.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I follow him over to a group of soldiers sitting on the other side of the lawn, nearly forty yards away. They have camp chairs and a beach pop-up pavilion large enough to keep the dozen of them there out of the sun.

  As we get close, they all stand up and salute.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  A sergeant steps up to us. She’s a short, well tanned woman. She comes up to just barely above my waist.

  “Sergeant Callisto, this is Mr. Ryans. He’ll be joining the defense here.”

  I look down at her. It’s so strange to tower over people like this.

  “Good to meetcha, Mr. Ryans. Sergeant Callisto, 2nd Platoon, 2nd Squad.”

  She holds a hand out. I very gently take it and most of her forearm and shake it.

  “Good to meet you too, Sergeant.”

  She jerks a thumb behind her, pointing to her squad behind her.

  “And behind me is 2nd Squad. They might look a bit rough, but I promise you sir, they’re able, ready, and willing.”

  I hope I don’t get any of them killed.

  The fire inside burns hotter.

  “So, Mr. Ryans. What kind of magic powers you got?”

  I hold up my hands.

  “Besides being indestructible and ridiculously strong? I have a pocket dimension I can store things, though nothing combat related.”

  I pull out my phone with a flash of light.

  Still charged, strangely enough.

  Sergeant Callisto blinks at that.

  “Right, that’s a neat trick. But, uh, how strong?”

  “Strong enough to break the sound barrier by jumping. I caused some serious damage to Seoul’s roads.”

  Everyone’s eyes go wide. One of the guardsmen in the pavilion snorts.

  “Yeah right, pull the other one.”

  Another man next to him cuffs him on the back of his head.

  “Shut up, dude.”

  Sergeant Callisto very intently does not turn around, instead speaking to me.

  “Sorry for Eric, sir. He’s stupid.”

  I chuckle, a grinding heavy thing.

  “I wouldn’t believe it either, honestly. But I’m telling the truth, I promise you. Flying a thousand feet in the air by jumping is a lot of fun.”

  I turn back towards the Fracture.

  “It was good to meet all of you, but I have something I need to do.”

  Callisto nods.

  “Of course, sir. We’ll be here if you need us.”

  As I walk back towards the Fracture, I can hear Callisto chewing out Eric.

  “You dumbass motherfucker! What is wrong with you?!”

  I tune it out as I focus more deeply on the Fracture. Perhaps, just maybe, I can learn just a little bit more about it. That being said, I understand absolutely nothing about cosmology, theoretical physics, or topology. I’ve tried my best to self-teach, like how I did with learning to speak Korean, but to no avail. I was a mechanical engineering student, not a whatever-ologist is required for understanding space-time anomalies. Though, on second thought, I don’t have to do this alone. I make a call to McKinley.

  “McKinley? It’s Ryans. I need your help with something.”

  There’s a brief pause before she comes online.

  “Of course, Mr. Ryans. What can the National Guard do for you?”

  “I was wondering if you could pull together a team, or put me in contact with a team that was studying the Fractures? I have lots of observations of them, though I’m not really capable of making anything of it.”

  “I’ll get right on it, Mr. Ryans. I’ll get back to you in an hour to update you.

  “Sounds good. Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  I fully turn my attention back to the Fracture.

  “Mr. Ryans? I have an update for you.”

  McKinley’s voice shakes me from my intense study for the Fracture. I feel like I could look for a thousand years and never see all of it. Every moment I’m sure I’ll see whatever I need to finally understand. Just a second longer, and I’ll finally be able to see around that strange corner in space.

  “Mr. Ryans?”

  “Sorry, Lieutenant. I’m here.”

  “There’s a team at DARPA that’s been researching the Fractures. I’ve got contact information for you. It includes secure file transfer infrastructure, so you can transmit whatever you feel is necessary. Sound good?”

  “Yes, that sounds perfect, thank you Lieutenant.”

  “I’ll let you get to it, then.”

  I use the login information and IP address that McKinley sent, and hook into a mainframe at DARPA’s lab in Virginia. They’ve set aside several petabytes of space to dump sensor logs. Also connected is a monitor with a webcam, speakers, and a microphone. I connect to it, and peek through the admittedly low-quality webcam.

  About a dozen people are in a meeting room, all of them with a pair of laptops in front of them. It seems like I’ve been given a hardline-only connection to a meeting monitor. Further, it looks like the mainframe I’ve been given access to is air-gapped. One laptop in front of each scientist is connected via hardline, with its Wi-Fi chip disabled. The other is probably one they can take with them beyond the air gap.

  Trust your neighbor but lock your door, huh?

  The speakers in the monitor I’m using turn on with a click, and the microphone beeps twice.

  A white, older man sits on the left side of the table. He looks up, and his watery brown eyes peer through thick glasses.

  “Oh! Mr. Ryans! You’re here! How is the hardware?”

  “It’s good, thank you, Doctor…?” I trail off questioningly.

  “Oh of course! I’m Doctor Robert Patricks! I was head of astrophysics at Stanford, but with everything going on, I’ve been made lead of this little crash team here!”

  He introduces his team one by one, going around the table. The team is made up of some of the smartest and most talented astrophysicists, cosmologists, and mathematicians in the world. It’s a little bit intimidating.

  After finishing, Dr. Patricks clears his throat and takes a sip of water.

  “Alright, now that we’ve got the introductions out of the way, what can we do for you? The officer who set this up was fairly vague. Are you a physicist as well, by chance?”

  “No, Doctor, I’m not. That’s why I need you, actually. I’m capable of seeing the Fractures in greater detail than is possible by any conventional instruments, I think. I can tell you that the Fracture is at the very least, seven dimensional.”

  Half of the scientists start furiously taking notes on their disconnected laptops.

  “Oh ho! Now we’re talking! Tell us, Mr. Ryans, how did you come to this conclusion?”

  “I can see at least six of the seven dimensions. As for the seventh, it’s leaving a… shadow? For lack of a better term, anyway.”

  “You can see in more than three spatial dimensions? Fascinating! What else can you tell us?”

  I spend the rest of the day describing in great detail the strange wonderfulness that is the Fracture. I upload detailed scans and work with the team to build some topological models. Hopefully this is just the first step on the path of understanding what these Fractures actually are.

  I wish others could see the Fractures like I do. Actually, I wish others could see everything like I do. Every moment of every day I see a million new colors no other human could ever hope to see. By the time I disconnect from the DARPA lab, the sun has long since gone down. The city is dark, with damage having cut power to many areas, and evacuations leaving many homes empty. For the first time in who knows how many years, the stars are bright over DC. They’re breathtaking, beauty beyond human comprehension.

  My new form has come with downsides. I can’t forget all the terrible things I’ve seen just over the last few days, nor do I find it easy to turn my thoughts away from them. It’s left a heavy burden on my shoulders, one I can only hope to be strong enough to bear. But for sights like these? Astral wonder beyond compare? To see stars twinkling and whirling in X-Ray, Gamma Ray, and radio? To see a hundred meteors streaking across the sky, too faint for the human eye? To look out into deep space, and catch a glimpse of the Milky Way’s arm in a hundred different wavelengths?

  It makes it all worth it.