I looked around, but all I saw was an empty parking lot a stone’s throw down from the police station.

“Huh?” I mumbled.

“Look closely,” Kush said.

I did look closely, but saw all the same.

“Walk to and fro.”

I stared at Kush for just a second too long. But then I did as he said— or thought what he wanted me to do, anyway; I am really honest, here, and never have I ever encountered someone in real life using the term ‘fro,’ so who knows what Kush could mean.

Walking up and down the dimensional strip, there was only so much to see in a partially dimensional framework.

“Uh, maybe I am stupid, but I am not seeing anything unusual, here,” I said after a while.

Kush, impenetrable from behind his hood, said nothing and stared at me. Suddenly, he yelled, “Congratulations! You are not stupid! Yeah, there is nothing here. You are seeing nothing. One of our bases is here, but without one of these bad-boys—” and while talking, he took out a strange device— “you won’t get very far.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“This, my friend, is a delvendive.”

~ ~ ~

“What the heck is a delvendive?” I inquired.

“The short answer is that it is a device from another reality. But one that is highly practical for our own reality. A rarity for anything from another realm. But I am getting sidetracked. Using one of these, we can manipulate Shimmers and the under-reality. Kewl, right?”

“Yeah. Very cool. Like . . . I dunno. Yeah. Looks shiny.” I replied, dumbly.

“In any case— you are going to be using it. If you want to see the base and continue your training, you are going to need to operate the device.”

“But, how can I operate something I have never used, before?”

“I will teach you, obviously. But the nuances? You will need to figure them out yourself. I am not in the babysitting business. Full Time is not a babysitting service; you are a part of us, now, so you need to be brought up to speed as fast as possible.”

Handing me the device— the delvendive— I with some direction from Kush, quickly managed to slid the device over my hand; it was like a series of rings that had been ‘sown,’ for lack of a better word, onto some kind of mesh glove. But the glove was invisible and the rings, though fitting well around each of my fingers, were translucent but also shimmering (as in shiny). As I wiggled my fingers, the otherworldly material of the device effortlessly slide over my skin leaving no abrasions or rash; but as I fiddled with my new device, I could not do so for very long, as watching the rings clank against each other whenever I moved my hand and seemingly dance on my fingers as they vibrated, warmed, and cooled, was a strange sensation that I could be lost in if I weren’t careful.

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“Neat, yeah?” Kush asked.

“Yeah, very cool. I’m just . . . this is really from another world? Like another universe?”

“Yes. But do not ask me any more than that. That universe is not relevant to us and, quite frankly, it is beyond my rank and grade to know too much about it— not that anyone of any rank does know much about it, but still. I know hardly anything about it. So from now on, we shall focus on what does concern us— using the device!”

“How do I use it, then?”

“Well, that is the question, right?”

I thought I had missed something because I waited for an explanation but received none. I asked, “How?”

“Yes,” Kush replied, “how.”

I was silent. I was also annoyed.

“Are you going to tell me how to use the device?” I asked in my best forced politeness.

“No. But I guess I can give you some suggestions, some hints. Your first hint is this: the device works differently for everyone. But, fundamentally, the device is about sensation. Lean into that.”

Nothing was ever easy, was it? I sighed one of my cartoon sighs and got to work on figuring out a device from another realm with no instruction manual.

~ ~ ~

I was at a loss. No idea, really.

“How. Do. I. Work. This. Stupid. Thing?!” I cussed and cussed.

It felt like hours. And I was over it.

Doing everything I could do— meditation, trying to ‘force’ the device to activate, asking it nicely, trying to forge a connection with it, willing it to do something— but it was all for naught. Sitting empty on my hand, the delvendive did nothing, and only made its now familiar noises of clanking and humming whenever I moved my fingers.

“Would you like another hint?” Kush asked. I just glared at him.

“Yes. Please,” I said after it was clear he was not going to help me without me first asking.

“Delvendives are less about concentration and more about knowing how they work. You won’t really be able to do much until you know the how. And what you’re supposed to be doing,” Kush said, only making me more frustrated.

But instead of verbally whipping him, I was able to compose myself: “Can you just fucking tell me, bruh? Enough of this trolling shit. I have had the craziest fucking days lately and I need something to make sense.”

Looking pensive, Kush shrugged his shoulders. He said, “Fine. I thought you mortals were all about fun and trickery. Delvendives are about precision; they work on the meshes of reality, finding those threads which can be temporarily untangled, and then exploited for our personal use. Case in point, this base we are trying to get into is located in one such tangle. If you want to unweave the threads, then you will have to know the physical motive process.”

What then followed was a series of tutorials that was actually helpful. Kush showed me exact movement patterns and had me repeat them back to him; and he was right— the device on my hand was exact. A goodly number of times I thought that I had perfectly followed Kush’s patterns only to learn that a tiny flourish or a micro-reaction in my nervous system had disabled the device’s activation protocol. It was tricky business, but I acclimated quickly; in a way, it was just like playing a video game. Sometimes, you had to trust the process.

“Eureka!” I shouted like a little kid performing a basic science experiment.

Following the movements to a tee, after the second— or maybe third— dozenth try, I successfully copied the movement Kush showed me. All of the rings hummed and as if compelled by some force, I brought my hand toward me and clutched my fingers together as if I were clutching something precious; the moment my fingers all touched, a flayed portal— its splintered and forcefully opened ends writhing about as if it were the ends of a blanket being undone— gradually materialized in front of Kush and myself.

“Well done, uhhh . . . what was your name, again?”

“Marcus . . . ?” I replied, unsure how he now forgot my name.

“Ah, Marcus. Thank you— my memory is shoddy, you see. Well done Marcus. Now, let’s cross the boundary before we have to re-open it and start that whole slow-as-ass process. Come!”

I didn’t much like being treated like a dog and told to come, or told that my attempts at opening the portal were slow— even if they were. But I followed behind him like a loyal pooch anyway, eager to see more of this fantastical world. And, really, when so much was happening in my life, why not dig deeper into the insanity?