Portal on the 7:42

Neemus Ockdrapple, Ph.D. in pure mathematics with a specialty in non-Euclidean topology and occasional classified dabbling in what the higher-ups cheerfully called “dimensional-adjacent phenomena,” sat in the quiet car of the 7:42 MARC train out of Martinsburg, West Virginia, headed toward Union Station. He wore the same charcoal cardigan every Tuesday because statistical analysis of laundry cycles had proven it minimized decision fatigue on commute days. His laptop balanced on the fold-down tray, screen brightness set to exactly 47% to prevent both eyestrain and accusations of wasting taxpayer electricity.

Today’s project carried the innocuous filename “KnotTheory_Survey_v12.3.xlsx” but actually contained 1,847 lines of Python that modeled hypothetical Calabi–Yau compactifications using a modified Ricci-flow algorithm he had personally convinced to stop crashing when fed negative Kähler potentials. DARPA had given him eighteen months and an unlimited AWS budget to determine whether certain six-dimensional manifolds could be “encouraged” to fold in ways that might—might—allow localized violations of the light-cone structure. In layman’s terms: could you cheat and make a shortcut through spacetime without anyone noticing the paperwork?

Neemus typed:

Python

ricci_flow_step = lambda g, dt: g - dt * Ric(g) + perturbation_term

Then frowned. The perturbation_term was supposed to be vanishingly small. Instead the eigenvalues were doing the hokey-pokey: in, out, in, out, shake it all about.

He highlighted the offending block and hit Ctrl+/ to comment it out. Muscle memory betrayed him. Instead of / he pressed the Windows key + / combination that—on his custom-key-mapped ThinkPad—opened “Quick Launch: Experimental Subroutines.” A window the color of expired military surplus olive drab materialized.

“WARNING: AUXILIARY CALCULATOR v0.9b – UNAUTHORIZED EXECUTION MAY RESULT IN [REDACTED]”

Neemus blinked. He had no memory of writing an auxiliary calculator. He certainly had not authorized anything called v0.9b. Yet the cursor blinked patiently in a field labeled “ENTER MANIFOLD COORDINATES (6-tuple, comma separated):”

Curiosity—the same quality that once led him to prove a minor lemma by assuming the Riemann hypothesis false just to see what happened—won. He typed the last six numbers he had been staring at:

-2.718, 3.14159, 1.41421, 0, -1, 42

Enter.

Nothing happened for 0.73 seconds. Then the laptop fan spun up to jet-engine RPM. The screen flickered like a bad 1980s sci-fi effect. A thin vertical line of violet light, no thicker than a piece of dental floss, unzipped itself from the center of the display and extended upward until it touched the luggage rack. Sideways. Because physics had apparently decided “up” was negotiable.

Neemus whispered, “Oh butterscotch.”

The slit widened to approximately 91 centimeters—roughly the width of an economy-class airplane seat—and a smell rolled out that was equal parts wet cardboard, hot solder, and somebody’s grandmother’s potpourri gone feral. Then something stepped through.

It was approximately bipedal, approximately lavender, and wearing what appeared to be a tuxedo made of sentient mercury. Its head was a smooth ovoid with no eyes, no mouth, no nostrils—only a single horizontal band of slowly scrolling binary code where a face should be. It looked left, looked right (somehow), then fixed its non-gaze on Neemus.

01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111

The binary translated itself in Neemus’s mind with the gentle insistence of closed captioning at a funeral.

“Hello,” it said again, this time in a voice that sounded like Stephen Hawking narrating a TED Talk through a bowl of Rice Krispies.

Neemus managed, “You’re… standing on my spreadsheet.”

The creature glanced down. Indeed, one shiny foot rested directly on cell B47, which had just calculated the 1,342nd digit of π incorrectly for no apparent reason. It lifted the foot apologetically. A small holographic apology emoji (a frowny face wearing a propeller beanie) floated upward and popped.

“I appear to have trespassed on your… local data structure,” it said. “My designation is 47-Qwerty-ξ-9, but you may call me Qwerty if the phonemes are less distressing.”

Neemus glanced around the quiet car. Miraculously—or perhaps because dimensional breaches came with their own privacy filter—no one else seemed to notice. The woman two rows up continued highlighting her e-book. The man in the backward baseball cap snored gently against the window. Only Neemus’s tray table now hosted an extradimensional guest-services representative.

“I didn’t mean to summon you,” Neemus said. “There was a perturbation term. It was supposed to be small.”

Qwerty tilted its head 47 degrees—exactly 47, Neemus noted with professional interest. “Your perturbation was precisely tuned to resonate with the membrane tension between Brane-3 and Brane-π. Congratulations. You have achieved an unplanned handshake protocol across eleven dimensions.”

“That’s… above my pay grade.”

“Your species pay grade system appears to be linear. Ours is best visualized as an infinite-dimensional Sierpiński carpet soaked in espresso. Pay grade is therefore irrelevant. However—” Qwerty produced a small silver sphere from somewhere inside its tuxedo “—protocol requires I offer compensation for unauthorized access.”

The sphere hovered, then dropped into Neemus’s palm. It felt warm and faintly disappointed, like a hard-boiled egg left in the fridge too long.

“What is it?”

“Universal translator patch, version 4.2.1. Installs directly into the temporal lobe. Side effects may include sudden fluency in languages that do not yet exist, occasional déjà vu from next Thursday, and a mild craving for lutefisk.”

Neemus stared at the sphere. “I’m not sure DARPA’s health plan covers extradimensional neurosurgery.”

Qwerty made a sound that might have been laughter or a modem handshake. “Your DARPA is charmingly parochial. They still use vowels in their acronyms.”

Before Neemus could protest, the laptop gave a cheerful ding. The violet slit pulsed and disgorged three more entities in rapid succession:

A creature resembling a sentient Roomba wearing a tiny fez, emitting a constant low hum of contentment.

Something that looked like a cross between a flamingo and a filing cabinet, balancing on one leg while frantically sorting virtual index cards.

A very small dragon—approximately corgi-sized—wearing safety goggles and carrying a clipboard labeled “OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION – INTERDIMENSIONAL DIVISION.”

The dragon cleared its throat (a sound like crumpling tinfoil) and announced, “Greetings, Neemus Ockdrapple, employee ID 867-5309-DARPA. You have initiated an unscheduled portal event in violation of Section 4.2(b) of the Pan-Dimensional Workplace Safety Accord of 10^−43 seconds ago. Please remain calm while we issue citations.”

Neemus looked at Qwerty. “You said compensation.”

“This is compensation,” Qwerty replied serenely. “You now have coworkers.”

The Roomba-thing rolled forward and bumped Neemus’s shin affectionately. “I am custodial unit 88-ζ-θ. I clean paradoxes. Your current reality has seventeen unresolved plot holes. Would you like me to lint-roller them?”

“No thank you,” Neemus said automatically, the way one declines a second slice of fruitcake.

The flamingo-filing-cabinet clacked its beak. “I am Archivist Lλ-9. I have already indexed every embarrassing thought you have ever had. Would you like the zipped folder titled ‘Middle School Gym Class Incidents’ emailed to your .gov address?”

Neemus went pale. “Please delete that.”

“Deletion requires Level-7 clearance and three forms signed in your own blood. Alternatively, I can offer a one-time embarrassment credit redeemable for minor cosmic faux pas.”

The dragon thrust the clipboard forward. “Sign here, here, and here. Initial that you understand that summoning extradimensional entities on public transit constitutes a Level-2 bureaucratic infraction. Also, your laptop warranty is now void across all 47,329 licensed realities.”

Neemus stared at the clipboard. The paper appeared to be made of recycled event horizons. “I just wanted to fix the Ricci term.”

Qwerty patted his shoulder with a mercury tendril. “Everyone says that.”

At that moment the train lurched as it switched tracks outside Rockville. The portal wobbled. A fourth entity attempted to squeeze through—a creature that looked like a giant walking semicolon with anger-management issues—and got stuck halfway.

;̸ERROR̸;̸ DIMENSIONAL FIT FAILED

it bellowed in surround sound.

The dragon sighed. “Not again. Somebody get the spatial lubricant.”

Neemus, still clutching the silver sphere, had an epiphany. “Wait. If this is a portal, can I close it?”

Qwerty considered. “Technically yes. You would need to invert the perturbation, divide by zero exactly once, and apologize to the topology in iambic pentameter.”

“I minored in classics,” Neemus said faintly.

“Excellent. Begin.”

Neemus cleared his throat. The entire quiet car remained oblivious; someone had apparently cranked the reality-damping gain to eleven. He began:

“O manifold of six dimensions fair, Whose Ricci tensor once did flow with grace, I humbly beg forgiveness for the tear That breached thy calm and brought this mad chase. With perturbation small I did thee wrong, And now these beings clutter up my tray. Return thee hence where thou hast dwelt so long, And take these guests, I earnestly do pray.”

The semicolon creature gave a wet pop and vanished backward. The portal shrank to the width of a drinking straw.

“Almost,” Qwerty said. “You forgot the final couplet.”

Neemus groaned. “Seriously?”

“Poetry is contractual.”

Neemus finished:

“And should I e’er again disturb thy peace, May my grant funding promptly cease.”

The portal collapsed with a sound like a giant sipping the last of a milkshake through a straw. The silver sphere in Neemus’s hand glowed once, warmly, then crumbled into glitter that smelled faintly of cinnamon.

Silence returned. The Roomba, Archivist, and dragon were gone. Only Qwerty remained, looking faintly wistful.

“You did well,” it said. “For a carbon-based lifeform with only five senses and a tendency toward imposter syndrome.”

Neemus exhaled. “Will this happen again?”

“Only if you divide by zero again. Or if you accidentally open any file named ‘DO_NOT_OPEN_Seriously_v13.docx.’ Or if you sneeze during a lunar eclipse while thinking about tax forms. The usual.”

Neemus closed the laptop. “I’m going to stick to knot theory from now on.”

“Wise,” Qwerty agreed. “Although your knot theory has, statistically speaking, a 0.0004% chance of summoning a sentient pretzel in the year 2047. I mention it only for completeness.”

The train slowed for Union Station. Qwerty began to fade.

“Wait,” Neemus said. “Why me?”

Qwerty’s binary band scrolled one final message:

01000010 01100101 01100011 01100001 01110101 01110011 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01100100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100011 01110101 01110010 01101001 01101111 01110011 01101001 01110100 01111001 00101110

Because you coded with curiosity.

Then it was gone.

Neemus sat in the suddenly ordinary quiet car, laptop closed, silver glitter dusting his keyboard like the world’s most expensive screen protector. The woman two rows up glanced back, frowned at the glitter, and returned to her book.

He opened his email. One new message, subject line: “Performance Review – Q3 2025 (Interim)”

From: darpa-hr-no-reply@darpa.mil

Body: “Noted minor deviation in computational hygiene. No further action required. Keep up the good work. P.S. The pretzel thing is classified.”

Neemus stared at the screen for a long moment.

Then he laughed—quietly, because it was still the quiet car—and began composing a new file.

Filename: KnotTheory_Survey_v12.4.xlsx

First line: import math

Second line: # No portals today. Promise.