Dianne K. Salerni - Jadie in Five Dimensions

My target holds her phone against her ear, scurrying down the sidewalk in high heels. Shes dragging a wheeled suitcase and carrying a tapestry bag over her shoulder. The bag has sunflowers on it, which is how I know Ive got the right lady.

Coasting behind her on my skateboard, I weave between pedestrians. One man snarls at meWatch it, girl!even though I didnt touch him.

Great. Last thing I need is someone drawing attention to me.

Luckily, the woman is too busy talking on her phone to notice. Shes heading for a subway entrance a block ahead, so I have to make my move.

A lot of kids on my middle school soccer team talk about getting into the zone. I call it Jadie 2.0an alternate me that pushes the regular Jadie Martin aside and tells my body what to do. Speed up. Bend your knees. Lean left.

Bearing down on the woman, I hook my fingers under the strap of her tapestry bag and hurl it as far as I can into traffic. The bag strikes the windshield of a taxi, spewing its contents over the car and into the street.

The woman whirls toward me with a furious shriek, her hands curved into manicured claws. Cutting sharply away on my board, I call over my shoulder, Sorry!

I only did what I was ordered to do.

Other people shout after me, but only the guy who yelled at me a few seconds ago gives chase. Come back here, you little punk!

I steer into the closest alley, which turns out to be a mistake. A delivery van blocks the exit, and two guys are stacking crates around the vehicle. Theres no way I can get through them with the angry man ten steps behind me.

What I do next is against protocol, but I dont see an alternative. Hopping off the skateboard, I stamp on the back end and grab the front axle. As my pursuer barrels toward me, his hand outstretched, I stab the round button on my metal bracelet and vanish.

Or at least thats what it looks like to the man in the alley.

For me, its like being knocked from my skateboard while traveling at top speeda sudden wrench in a new direction. Not a normal direction like up, down, left, or right. Im flying kata, out of three-dimensional space.

Shutting my eyes to keep from getting dizzy, I hold out my arm. Only when my feet hit a metal platform and my bracelet clicks into a port-lock do I blink and look around. The alley is gone, replaced by what looks like a modern art painting sprung to life. In front of me, gold loops squirm and blue orbs pulse. Off to my right, silver tubes intersect in impossible ways like an optical illusionbut this isnt an illusion.

This is 4-space.

I glance down between my feet, through the metal grid of the platform. Earth isnt visible to human eyes from this position, but its there. My planet, the solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy the entire three-dimensional universe, in fact, is nested inside the vastness of this four-dimensional universe the way one Russian doll fits inside another.

A red glow illuminates the space around mebright enough to see by, but not as satisfying as sunlight or even a strong lightbulb. It reminds me of a fire burning in the wilderness, which always makes me wonder if these platforms are inside or outside. Or if inside and outside arent the only two options when you have four spatial dimensions.

The only things that make sense to my eyes are the platform Im standing on and the items I brought with me: my skateboard and my bracelet, where todays assignment is spelled out on a small screen.

Woman with luggage walking toward subway station. Sunflower tapestry bag. Throw into traffic.

Underneath these instructions are the spatial coordinates of the eventa string of numbers that mean nothing to me. They placed me in the correct location for my mission, but they arent necessary to get me home.

At the edge of the platform theres a clunky console that looks like something from the 1960s. It has large numbered keys for entering coordinates on the way to a course correction, and three buttons labeled Complete, Incomplete, and Return to be used afterward.

Hugging my skateboard under my arm, I push Complete. The screen on my bracelet goes blank.

Assignments like this leave me conflicted. On one hand, Im pumped with adrenaline, like when I intercept a ball on the soccer field. On the other hand, what I did was an aggressive act against a player unaware of the game.

It feels like a foul.

I hope things turn out okay for that lady. Maybe she wouldve been flattened by a bus at the next intersection and the delay I created saved her life. Or maybe, when she misses her train, she passes the time before the next one by buying a winning lottery ticket.

But Miss Rose tells us that the desired outcome of our missions rarely involves the target. The end result of throwing a purse into the street might be four steps removed from the act. Maybe the taxi that got hit with the bag misses a fare, and because of that, two people meet who wouldnt have met if the taxi had been there. They fall in love, get married, and have a kid who someday cures cancer.

That would make throwing a strangers bag into traffic totally worthwhile.

After Ive registered my assignment as complete, I push the Return button. The platform whirs into action, sliding past four identical but unoccupied platforms. Traveling through 4-space creates a shortcut between any two locations in 3-space. Therefore, its only seconds before my platform stops, the port-lock releases my bracelet, and Im yanked ana, the direction opposite from kata. The machine returns me to the same location I departed from earlier today: my bedroom in my house in Kansas, slipping me between the walls and the roof through the open fourth dimension (which is visible from 4-space even though humans cant perceive it). The adult Agents nicknamed this machine the Transporter because when it deposits me on the fuzzy blue rug in the center of my room, I appear in the blink of an eye, like in Star Trek.

Alia Malik looks up without any surprise and says, Hey, Jadie. Shes lying on my bed, scrolling on her phone. Where you been?

A city. Not sure where. I drop my skateboard and nudge it with my foot, sending it off to a corner of the room. Alia isnt surprised that I appeared out of nowhere, but Im a little surprised to see her. Shes my neighbor and a fellow Agent, but shes not usually waiting in my bedroom when I get back from missions.