I always look forward to change these days, but this shit really freaking sucks. I flipped through the pages of one of the more boring diaries I’d snatched. Sorry, not diary, logs, because this dude was an uber nerd. Given my situation, I’m really not a fan of spoilers, but any clue to get out of this “level” would be reeaaal hunky-dory right about now so I’ll take what I can get.

Unlike last time, where I entered an elevator while I was too sleepy to read the buttons, this time I just dissociated while walking up the stairs to my home base and fucking blinked. What, do I have to trip balls every time I want to swap realities? According to the notebook, the answer was no. All you have to do is to break out of our physical mindset and learn to fully comprehend and “embrace” the geometry of objects 4th dimensional and above. In other words, I have to get permanently high on math. I smacked the book against my face and groaned. Even stranded in an impossible dimension, I could never escape homework.

Listless, I stared into the distance, down the east and west corridors. The carpet was that shitty camo pattern that hotels use to hide dirt, and the doors all unlocked to reveal the same basic bedroom in different orientations. In other words, this was the most boring place I could have possibly landed in. Because unlike most other floors, as Mr -I held the cover in front of my face- Vincent Hugh confirmed, this was one of the weirder ones. A seemingly perfect loop in either direction with little to no changes to explore, and not even weather patterns to break it up. Although, according to him, he was pretty sure that one direction roughly “up” in the W direction, while the other moved “down”, they connected together like a very confused and very scared snake who tried to be Orobouros and read the instructions wrong. Unfortunately, one day he passed out from overwork and woke up somewhere else, theorizing that he accidentally moved “left” in the fifth dimension to escape the loop before he could figure out the specifics.

And so here I was. Trapped in an infinite boring hallway until I can solve hyperdimensional word problems straight out of a PHD textbook. As a high school dropout.

“Any hope that this is one giant colon and I’m gross enough to get explosively sharted out of here?” I mused out loud.

Yeah, wishful thinking.

And so I began my routine of getting up, moving up a hall, finding all the tiny differences, emptying the mini fridges, using the bathroom and shower, and settling into a random bedroom to read and take notes. Theoretically, I had infinite time to read up and learn high level science like some kind of minmaxer in a litrpg. That’s what I tried to think of it as. Grinding out my stats using an OP cheat item that would allow me to break the game. A little training montage, until I figured out the answer that would let me leave this cooridor, and maybe, just maybe, chart out a path through the higher dimensions to get back home.

Would time have passed slower on the outside than the inside? Would I just wake up one day, and all of this will have been some anomaly-induced torture dream that no one could ever relate to? Or would time pass even faster out there, and when I return, humanity would already be all wiped out by monsters and phenomena beyond our comprehension. I’d reach the end, only to find out it had all been for nothing.

I tried not to think about it. Just like how I tried not to think about the faces I’d see for a split second after opening a door. Or how I’d find myself nodding along to a song in my ears, only to remember my iPod was broken broken broken— Or the way that sometimes, I’d open a cup of generic yogurt and smell froyo from the shop I used to go to after school. They were nothing new. Nothing noteworthy. So I just told myself to keep wandering the hallway, stopping for rest, and reading the book that might as well have been half-written in a different language entirely, trying to piece together all the unknown symbols and equations with context clues or definitions offhandedly mentioned in one rant or another. Beating my head against it over… And over… And over… And over…

“God, kill me please! Whyyyy!?” I whined, slamming my head into the pillow.

My brain hurts so much! I’m gonna dieeee!

I can’t breathe I’m gonna die my heart’s racing I’m hyperventilating oh god of fuck fuck fuck I hate it I hate it I’m dying gonna die die die die die help me help me please—

…

Breathe in, breathe out. I took a second to just, flop there. Brain empty. Pillow soft. Feeling the blood pump through my body.

Haa, I really wish I could meditate.

….Mm, okay, I’m good now. Back to it.

I let out a groan and flipped around, sitting up and massaging my poor neck as I craned down at the notebooks again. I was honestly really lucky to have these, despite my burning hatred of them. I was both too spoiler-adverse and put off by the math to read these specific journals right away, and stuffed them in my bag out of laziness, so they came with me when I teleported. If I’d left them at home base for light reading or with their writers’ corpses like the rest of them, I’d probably have zero chance of getting out of here with anything other than luck.

I shook my head, trying to get back to studying. But, no matter how much I tried, it felt like my “just do it” strategy seemed to be working less and less these days. Within minutes my attention already started slipped through my fingers like sand yet again. I found myself rereading the same paragraph ten times, forgetting what I’d just read the second after it processed in my brain. I kept trying, and trying, but… just simply wasn't happening. I was tired. Every little action lately felt like it took ten times as much energy to complete now, to the point that just getting out of bed to make sure I don’t starve felt like a Herculean task. I found myself drooping forward over the pages, my dead eyes staring at the wall to the left.

…What if I just stayed here, like this?

Even just the idea of pushing myself back up made my shoulders sag, an unseen weight bearing down on my consciousness. It would be nice to just give in. I’ve been wandering for long enough. I was quickly re-realizing just how exhausting it was, to hold hope in my heart. I had no idea how Faith managed to do so for so long.

She’s stronger than me. The answer came unbidden from my subconscious.

And it was true. I didn’t even have the energy to end things myself. Every muscle, every nerve and brain cell was screaming at me for rest. Hadn’t I already accepted my fate? Why did I even bother continuing when it was already a lost cause?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The weight grew heavier and heavier as I grew further convinced, like a suffocating blanket weighing down my every limb. Telling me it was okay to sleep now. That I didn’t need to worry anymore. That there was no need to push myself any longer.

My mind drifted between imagination and dream as I further relaxed, teetering on the edge of consciousness as the warmth of the heavy blanket seeped into my limbs. Unrestrained, my train of thought brought me back to the only thing that had been keeping me going so far was psychoanalyzing the scientist through his logs. Psychology was the only subject I’d ever both enjoyed and found useful, and it wasn't even taught at school. With it, I could see a textbook example of the five stages of grief in great detail throughout the whole timeline. If I’d written a diary myself I probably would’ve been the same way. It was interesting, though. It was much less linear than it was often described as. He started with denial, waiting for rescue, then frustration with his team for not being able to keep up. But then he wrapped around to denial again, coating it with justification as a “theory” that time dilated here and his research team was just taking a lot of relative time to get to him. Or is that bargaining? No, that’s more like when he started talking about how great it was here, and how much research he could do.

It wasn’t hard to tell that he had major avoidant attachment. Don’t need nobody and all that crap. And maybe some autism? If so, it’s incredibly likely he had other comorbid disorders, but it was hard to tell with just these journals. Maybe adhd?

I would have shrugged if I wasn’t bone-deep exhausted. If he did have the ‘tism, higher dimension mathematics was clearly his special interest if so; I could practically feel the excitement radiating through the hastily scrawled words every time he tangents into infodumps. I heard some people with autism were perfectly fine being alone, but it’s called a spectrum for a reason. This guy probably wasn’t one of those, even if he’d like to think he is.

Well, regardless of whatever brain he has, I was glad I got to know him. Honestly, despite my dislike of studying, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit awed by the dedication of this man. He’d even used his specialization to come up with a pretty solid theory regarding the mechanics of anomalies and dimensions I’d never even heard about. A part of me wanted to know what it was like, being that smart, and that passionate.

Something shifted inside me. Dying embers landing in the smallest patch of kindling. My heart thumped, and the subsequent warmth gave me just enough energy to twitch my hand. The blanket was so heavy it might as well have been the combined weight of the entire planet pressing down on my shoulders. But with the tiniest of sparks I was able to painstakingly crawl my hand forward to reach the edge of the backpack.

I didn’t even consciously recognize what I was looking for as I dug through the bag, pulling out various items until I could reach the bottom. From there, I pulled out a worn out plastic bag holding a tall stack of paper plates. Nostalgia washed over me as I sleepily thumbed through each of the little masks I’d made over the… years? Yeah, I’ll go with that. I remembered each and every one of the little characters I’d made to stay sane. Some of them, I’d even modeled after their diaries or journals, as if bringing them back to life. Eventually I settled on a familiar spiral-glasses mask with a dorky know-it-all expression, with various math equations doodled around the edge. I gingerly slid it out from the stack, using the least amount of energy to generate the movement necessary, and held it in front of me with my fingertips. I didn’t have a corpse with me, but I did have one face I could use. I closed my heavy eyes and, fighting off the sweet whispers of sleep with the last traces of warmth from that tiny ember, I focused.

“Some say madness forms fertile ground for the anomalous. If that was true, I’d have been born among the supernatural.”

Vincent Hugh had probably grown up different. Not a little monster like me. He probably didn’t even realize what was wrong, and he doesn’t seem like the type to mask much either.

“This strange feeling, this tightness in my head, the persistent drain on my energy, difficulties sleeping… is it a supernatural effect of this world?”

“The quiet has always been a comfort to me, like a loving embrace without all the awkwardness accompanying it.”

“This hellish dust is getting everywhere, and my dry skin is practically ruining all these clothes and the new ones are cheap and the cloth is itchy so WILL THOSE DAFT BUFFOONS FIGURE OUT THAT OUTDATED MACHINE AND STOP PANTSING AROUND WITH THEIR DICK IN THEIR HANDS—”

“I knew I could never rely on them. The fools; even my teen self could run circles around them. I don’t know why I thought this would be different. This is why I never let anyone “help” me.”

His feelings were more muted, harder to understand. Quiet, but prone to outbursts when overstimulated. Talking with people took too much energy, all the unspoken expectations, land mines, and social cues everyone else seemed to take as given. It was clear from the journals that it never got easier either, even as he grew older. Facts were easier. Logic was easier. Clear lines to follow, clear rules to make sense of. Friends were rare, grew rarer as he retreated into the only things that make sense. His parents didn’t know what to do with him either, for the most part. The end result; he learned he could only rely on himself, and his hobbies. The notion was only reinforced when his only source of validation turned out to be grades, smarts, and achievements. The only friends he needed were peers. But if they were too helpful, they were pushed away. He needed to be able to do everything himself, after all. His identity, his self sufficiency, his self worth, was on the line.

Taking a deep breath, I slowly lifted the mask up over my face, and tucked the straps behind my ears.

…

Ah, am I back here again?

I blinked and sat up. Looking around, I stepped off the bed to rummage through the mini fridge, check the bathroom, and finally walk over to the hallway. Sticking my head out the door, I looked left and right, feeling a pleasant light rush in my head as I realized I could finally complete my model of this unique hyper-hallway. Satisfied, I walked back to the bed where I found my notebooks haphazardly scattered over the sheets. I clicked my tongue at the mess and swept them all aside, picking up the one I actually needed and a collection of blank hotel notes that I’d been using more recently.

I paused. Hm, it seems my memory is worsening at a rapid pace. The effects of isolation are truly interesting. I didn’t remember writing the amateurish nonsense in these hotel notes at all. Ah well. I have all the time in the world assuming I don’t get shunted out again.

I tapped my pen against my chin, deep in thought as I scanned my notes. It was clear from my thought process that I was first stuck at this level, I was desperate, and that desperation had made me stubborn. It was early on in my tryst, so I was still in quite the rush to get back home to report my findings. So eager to prove my worth to those greedy sponsors and get funding for further projects. It was probably why I’d overanalyzed everything and gotten so stuck in my head that I’d missed the obvious. All I had needed to do at the time was return to the basics and work my way up again. Four dimensional geometry and above is a lot simpler than people honestly give it credit for, after all. Instead of X, Y, and Z, there is X, Y, Z, and W. Really, it’s just an extra “variable” to calculate. A cube is a stack of supremely thin slices of “2D” squares, and a hyper cube is a stack of supremely thin slices of “3D” cubes. And so on and so forth. People just have trouble because they tend to think in 3D, and they have zero reference for otherwise.

Now, it may be relatively easy for the initiated to imagine a cube, but what about rotation into the fourth dimension, or more complex shapes? That’s what I’m dealing with here, which is why it took me so long. A maze of apparently three dimensional corridors continually “rising” and “falling” across the W access at a diagonal with left and right on the X axis. How does one map out such a maze, hm? If you put it that way, the solution becomes obvious.

If holding left at every turn will eventually have you finding your way to the exit of a three dimensional maze built on the X-axis, then I just have to continually turn “up” in the W axis to achieve the same. Ahh, my heart lightened at such an elegant solution. Maybe this is what that old professor meant, that, when you get to higher levels, math becomes the most beautiful art of all.