mamabadger

7 March 2041

We keep Uncle Toby in a jar on the kitchen mantelpiece. The kitchen is the hub of our home, the central meeting place, and the home of the weekly 'family conflabs'. It is, of necessity, a large room. The solid antique oak table seats 12 comfortably, and more at a squeeze. It is also our pride and joy (it has been in the family for 17 generations, and we had even managed to keep hold of it during the Chaos Years when everything containing anything flammable was burnt).

I will introduce the family according to who rises first in the mornings. I am usually the first up, at around 7 ack emma (oh-seven-hundred Standard Time). I am Joshua Wilberforce Carter. If anyone wants to really annoy me they call be by my middle name (or if my parents want to tell me off). 'Nuff said? Sometimes my sister rises before me, in order to have some time for her animals. All the animals in the house are 'communally' owned, but in reality (if I can call it that) they answer only to her. She is called Theresa, Therry to the family and Teetee to anyone who doesn't value their continued existence, or me, now that I am (finally!) bigger than her and can hold her off.

The next earliest (and I use the word in its loosest form) is Pop. He and Mom usually stay in bed until around 10 ack emma. Pop comes down first and makes Mom a cup of tea. She shows up about twenty minutes later, still bleary-eyed and tousled. By choice she is a night owl and thinks 'morning' is a dirty word. Ben is usually next in line for breakfast. He is my brother and partner in crime. We are as different as chalk and cheese, which is probably why we get on with each other instead of competing. He's cool. Andie, never far behind Ben, is next. She is our cousin, but an honorary sister because she is an orphan. Then come the twins, Sam and Sally. A naughtier pair of eleven year olds never existed, I don't care what anyone says. So that makes nine. Uncle Toby came to live with us after his body died in the Chaos Years, and we always include him in the family conflabs even though he is not a blood relative (his wife was my mothers sister). He says he thinks better without the distraction of a body, and he sure has helped us out over the last few weeks.

I suppose I should get to the reason for this diary/journal/record.

We live nowhere. I know how weird that sounds, but it's true. We don't know where on earth (if it is still earth) we are. Yup. Even the house came with us. This is what happened.

Mom and Pop had gone to the shops for groceries in the aerocar (Mom doesn't have her pilots licence, so Pop always flies her to the shops in town, about twelve klicks away). Sam and Sally were doing some mischief to the kitchen garden, Ben, Andie and myself were in the treehouse cooking up a plan to avoid the chores, and Therry was talking to the horses in the stable, prior to taking Bucephalus out. Actually, Therry is the only one of us who can talk to animals. Apparently before the Chaos Years it was a common phenomenon, but since the Witch-hunts people have been nervous about showing any unusual features. Except our family, of course, but we keep ourselves to ourselves and no-one bothers us.

Anyway, Mom and Pop came running into the house clutching shopping bags and mentally screaming for us to gather for a conflab NOW. We didn't argue or ask questions, just ran (or flew, or teleported). In the kitchen, Uncle Toby had already been set on the table at his customary place, and the rest of the family were settling into their usual places when I rushed in, having made a diversion to the stables to collect Therry.

Uncle Toby’s voice came into our minds immediately.

'What's going on? Where's the fire?"

He is unaccustomed to panic in our household. All problems are discussed rationally between the whole family in the weekly conflabs. I don't remember the last time I heard a raised voice. Of course without his body, Uncle Toby is at the mercy of anyone who cares to pick up his jar and kidnap him or empty out his pickle-juice and kill him, so the unusual excitement in the atmosphere worried him more than the rest of us. (I would tell you the story of how he came to be in the jar on our mantelpiece, but it is a long, complicated one involving Witch-hunts, last minute rescues and a pig called Henry, and it is irrelevant to my story of how we came to be where we are now.) We are all telempaths, so Uncle Tobys voice came in loud and clear, the note of panic was also clear. Mom and Pop looked worried but tried to calm us down.

"Don't worry, there's no immediate crisis, but we do have a problem."

It appeared that while shopping Mom and Pop had met Mrs Grainger, the town Politrep. She told Mom and Pop that there was trouble brewing in USSA (United Southern States of America). The Chaos Years had resulted from a 'minor political spat' that USSA had had with Northam, so it was understandable that the Politreps were worried. Mrs Grainger said that there was nothing to worry about, just some dispute over some unclaimed Desoland about two hundred klicks south of here. The land was becoming useable again, the rad count was way down, and the Latins wanted to stake their claim while nobody else wanted the land. Mom and Pop had gone to the hardware and grocery stores immediately and practically bought them both out.

"But Pop, what's the problem? Mrs Grainger said it was probably nothing."

This from Sam, our intrepid twin. Pop sighed and said,

"It pays to be ready for anything, son. We can't take a chance on more bombs falling in Northam. There's not enough decent land to feed us all already. A few hundred more miles of Desoland and we will all starve. Or die of radiation exposure. Or worse" He added ominously.

After a pause, during which we all looked at each other with varying degrees of fear, excitement, disbelief or tension, Pop said.

'We are all going to have to pull together as a family now. We will have to assume the worst and figure out a way of surviving another Chaos."

The discussion went on for some time, without much progress. We couldn't build a nuclear shelter in the 'worst-scenario-time-scale' of forty-eight hours, we couldn't mobilise the whole family to emigrate in that time, assuming borders to be closed for the duration, hiding in caves etc. was out of the question, so what could we do? Uncle Toby had been quiet for some time when Mom said,

"Uncle Toby? Penny for them."

'Weell..." Said Uncle Toby, "I don't know if it has ever been done...But."

'What?!" Exclaimed seven voices (Mom was watching Uncle Toby's jar with her eyes slitted and her head cocked to one side)

"Did you ever hear of the Baker family? Remember? The ones who were Hunted for seventeen years but nobody ever got them? Well, I knew the Sister, Evie. She told me, the last time I ever saw her, that the family knew there was trouble a-coming, so they were getting out. When I asked how, she said, knowing that I was one of Us, that they had this plan to disappear into a parallel universe. I laughed, of course, but she explained that Danny, the brother, had been investigating, and according to Heisenbergs uncertainty principle, photons could have momentum, and they could have position, but never simultaneously. Nobody could explain how they got from one place to another. Danny extrapolated from this to come up with the idea that the photons 'disappear' from this universe and turn up later on, Where they disappeared to he didn't know but he was willing to stake the lives of his entire family (eighteen of them!) that they disappeared into a parallel universe. That way, the same photon (building blocks of every atom in the universe), could be used in more than one universe simultaneously, making a connection between all universes. The idea was to use the Power that the family had, collectively. Individually all they could do was the same as any of us, like teleportation and stuff, but collectively their power was greater than the sum of its parts, and Danny believed that it was possible to concentrate the family Power and 'disappear' into another dimension. He thought he would try to travel in time. Jump to another universe, and then jump back when everyone had forgotten about them. They were never found. Not even dead bodies. So they must have gone somewhere."

Silence.

"Do you think it's possible?" Mom asked quietly.

''The way I look at it is this. We haven't got a lot to lose. If the bomb drops anywhere near us, we either fry, or we have inedible food for ten years so we starve. If, by some miracle we were to survive, the Witch Hunts would start again. The Normals need someone to blame, and we're it. We couldn't survive them again, there are rumours in town already, and we've only been here for seven years. It can't do any harm to try, can it?"

So we did.

It hurt. We weren't sure how the Bakers had done it, we only had the information that Uncle Toby remembered from x years ago. Sketchy at best. But we tried. How we tried. Mom and Pop got us all to gather anything we might need for an unknown length of time in an unknown environment. Easy, huh. But that was the easy part. After we had gathered everything we thought we might need, we sat around the table in the kitchen holding hands. We had talked about the possibility of losing someone if physical contact was lost, so we practically squeezed the life out of each others hands. We were scared. The 'luggage' (A camping tent full of gear) was stuffed under the table. Uncle Toby was clutched by two sets of sweaty palms, and we concentrated like never before. What we were trying to do was visualise our bodies as tiny particles with great big spaces in between. Of course we had all learned in school that this was actually the case, protons and neutrons are teeny, and they have enormous spaces between them. But actually trying to imagine it when you can feel your seat pressing into your legs and your wrists on the grainy table, not to mention the vise-like grip of your brother on your hand...lt was hard. As we all had the Power, it was difficult for some of us to stay in our seats. We kept lifting up. The minute one of us got to grips with the idea of being mostly air, we started floating above our chairs and had to be dragged down. There were a couple of breaks for sodas and toilet runs, but mostly we concentrated for about seven hours. After that we stopped for dinner (Mom grumbling that we had packed her best knife).

After dinner pop said we should give it one more try and then give up. Actually I was surprised he hadn't given up earlier. He was the most sceptical of all of us. So we tried again. After about half an hour, I had an inspiration. The idea was complete when it came into my head, and to save time I didn't use words, but 'showed' the family how to do it. You see, we were each concentrating singly. We needed to channel our Power through the strongest of us and direct it at our goal. Andie was chosen as the strongest. Although she is the quietest, she has the most Power. I explained what I meant by channeling, and she caught on real quick. We held hands again, although I maintained that it wasn't necessary. This time it was easy. We visualised our power as a kind of ray of light, shining from us into Andie. Andie said it was the most peculiar feeling, like a full-up feeling, she had to let go of the energy before she burst, but she did the right thing, she didn't just let it go, she visualised the space between the atoms and kind of dived in!

Of course she overdid it. We slipped into this place, but we brought a chunk of Northam with us. Maybe the Bakers were more controlled, or maybe just not as strong as us. Anyhow, here we are. Nine humans (if you count Uncle Toby as human still, without his body), twelve assorted animals (I'm sure Andie brought them on purpose) and the house and the garden and a chunk of field about three metres wide all around the perimeter.

And what is this place? You may well ask. I have no idea. Outside of us there is greyness. No sky, no land, nothing but a kind of uniform grey fog. It has no substance, it's temperature is around 70 degrees, normal humidity. We are just hanging here. It is quite spooky knowing that there is nothing underneath the house. We are afraid to dig in the garden for fear of falling through. But there is air. At first we thought it was just air that we brought with us in the 'move', but we have been here for three days and there is no noticeable change in pressure or oxygen content. And another thing. Although the laws of physics are the same here, everything seems to be stronger. Levers push harder, gravity is stronger, plants grow real quick, even light appears to travel faster, although we do not have very accurate instruments to measure with. And our Power is stronger. We are all able to talk to the animals, now, and telekenesis is easier, flying is a doddle, requiring almost no concentration. It's like we're in some kind of pure universe. Pop reckons we have skipped into an unformed universe, where everything is waiting to happen, like before the Big Bang. He says energy is dissipated throughout our entire universe at home, but here, it is concentrated in a (relatively) small area. Of course we don't know how big this universe is, but we all agree it must be fairly small, maybe a few thousand cubic klicks.
Anyway, in a couple of hours we are going to try the same thing, slip into another universe. We are all pretty spooked by this place, and are prepared to face possible worse danger to get out of here. What have we got to lose? So I am going to write tomorrow’s date in to be sure that I survive to complete the journal. I am going to put it in my pocket now, so that even if the house doesn't come with us this time, I'll still have it. Keep your fingers crossed. With all this energy around, I'm sure we'll go somewhere...

8 March 2041