“First things first, Kevin," began Alec. "The world you knew is gone. When your civilization cracked the dimensional cypher, all human beings were scanned. Once you initiated transfer protocols, your self from the external strength dimension was terminated, and then reconstituted as closely as can be under the different fundamental principles of the personal strength dimension. Your old dimension is in the process of being recycled.

“To answer the most common questions normally posed: No, no nonhumans were scanned and transferred here. No dolphins. No pets. No PDIs. No Aggie.

“This dimension has different physical laws. Gravity isn’t the same, nor are the other 4 fundamental forces of your old dimension, and this dimension has 3 new ones. That said, with electricity and atomic structure being different, your body was fundamentally altered. You look a lot the same, but there’s some amount of coordination you’ll need to re-acquire as your new body aligns with your consciousness.

“The central truth of this strength dimension is that everything is made of thaums. The air, the grass, your bed, me, and you. Whereas in your prior dimension, things were made of either matter, energy, or neutrinos, here, there is a single base: Thaums. To survive here, you need to consume thaums. That said, your new body is very efficient at thaum processing. If you are somewhere that thaum energy is thick enough, you can simply absorb it from the air by breathing deeply while relaxed. This pocket dimension is one such location.

“Your previous dimension’s trick of "sleep" will suffice. Roughly 1 hour of sleep or equivalent in a first-zone thaum density area will support 3 hours of high intensity activity, or 6 hours of low intensity. Alternate methods include consuming higher density thaum sources directly. For instance, you could extract the thaums in the nuts on that tree behind me through traditional consumption; Eating, you call it. Your digestive system has been rebuilt as a secondary thaum-processing engine. However, you have no further need of excretion, as all consumed items will be fully decomposed into their component thaums. Reproductive physiology was maintained as both essential to human psychology and to the next generation. However, the reproductive process and urges are now under conscious control.

“As a demonstration, Kevin, please walk to the nut tree behind me, reach up, and pull a nut off the branch.”

“Okay Mr. A. On it.”

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I hop up, walk over and grab a nut from the tree.

The nut pops off, about the size of a walnut, and then weird shit happens. The nut splits in half. But not down the middle or anything normal. For a second, there’s the nut, nice and normal, and there’s a spooky-ass ghost nut superimposed on the thing. And then I’m holding just the fake walnut, and I feel some coins land in my pocket. Dude, I didn’t know I was wearing pockets … wait, wasn’t I in the shower? Whatever. I grab the coins, the only things in my pocket, and pull ‘em out. 7 coins, all the size of a quarter, all a warm dark red. They each have a big T on the front, and the back just has a big number 1.

“Congratulations, Kevin. You’ve now gained seven I-Thaums, and a nut that I’ve been told tastes pretty good. A thousand I-Thaums make an R-thaum, which is about the amount of energy required to function as a new human -- homo sapiens novis -- for about a day at high intensity, or the amount you get from 6 hours of sleep.

“So I can sleep for a night, or eat 150 of these nuts?

“No, Kevin, you eat the coins.

“Won’t the coins get heavy?

“They compress. Take your seven coins, and squeeze them together in the middle.

I do it. It works.

“Dude. This world is crazy

When I actually look between my fingers, there’s just one coin, still that funky dark-warm-red, but it has a 7 on it.

“You can also split them apart by squeezing the edges the other way.

Another 45 minutes looking at plants, picking nuts, and playing with coins, and I have learned not only about nuts and trees, but also about money, and how my eyes work. Apparently, they widened the spectrum visible to human eyes by a bit on each side … so I was looking at Infrared Thaums … which is kinda contrasty with the light red coin I get once I’ve mashed I-thoms together to get a whole, R-thom. Apparently the real red coin is one r-thom. And the denominations rise by rainbow colors, each color is a thousand of the one before. Orange is thousands, Yellow, millions, and so on. The mean green plant machine says is that an ultraviolet u-thom is worth a million billion billion i-thoms.

And apparently you can eat them. Esse -- gosh I’m funny -- told me to eat one, so I put it in my mouth. When my mouth closed all the way, it dissolved like a mouthwash strip, even leaving a warm red minty aftertaste. Don’t ask me how that makes sense, but that’s the taste. I don’t think it used to exist. And I was suddenly full. Like … I don’t have to eat for 24 hours full.

“Hey Plant-guy."

“I assume you’re talking to me, Kevin?"

“Like, can I get my drums now? I’ve been chasin your nuts all over the jungle for like an hour, and ya know, no one appreciates havin’ nuts more than me, but it’s been an hour man, and I need to jam a bit."