Experiments in extra dimensions; The Cheshire cat

“The preserved corpse of a non corporeal entity, manifested as solid by the will of those who enter non linear planes of existence. Its aesthetic similarity to the common cat is mere illusion, for the creature contains no bone and no organs”.

In the early 1850’s, a theoretical physicist by the name of Henry O’malley was emitted to the Borough of Charlston County hospital, with severe wounds to his face and hands. He was in a state of severe shock and began to rant and rave as the nurses tried to calm him. He was sedated and his injuries treated, yet he had not made a full recovery from his bout of hysteria. He was sectioned and sent to the Beverley asylum, in somerset.
There he was treated by the venerable psychiatrist Dr.Howard Keith. For three months he would not say a word, he would eat very little, and horde almost everything placed before him. His medication was cut to see if this was altering his behaviour, but nothing seemed to stem the awkward stare into the corner of his room, the muteness or his inability to comprehend his situation.
Until one morning, a steward knocked on the door of Dr. Keith and presented an altogether different Henry O’malley. “I wish to discuss my predicament, my research, and the reason for my lapse in judgement” exclaimed Henry, with this he began a tale that would have filed itself neatly between the cases of all the other inmates, if it hadn’t been for his final words.

“And i have proof.”

Henry O’malley was a member of a group of scientists who had been commissioned to build a series of devices which would render all electrical current impotent. Envisioning the rise of electricity as the new weapon of war, the British Government commissioned the construction of three huge electromagnetic batteries. Placed within metres of each other, the “triplets” as they became known, were the hub of varied studies involving the focused collapse of electric fields. The experiments incorporated the work of scientists shunned by mainstream physics and yielded all manner of bizarre phenomena that formed the crux of O’malley’s work.
Unbeknownst to his colleagues, Henry had continued to add to and choreograph the machines to suit his own ideas pertaining to their research, and were unaware that he had made these alterations whilst the machines were switched on. When questioned, he said that he could “feel when the field was right” and made no further allusions to how he knew this. Yet his predictions ran true.
The machine was activated the next morning, and electrical current generated in other rooms ceased working as planned. Henry stood between the triplets and clapped loudly “I told you it would work, i can feel it!” He exclaimed. At that moment, the devices surged in power – his hair began to rise, as a charge built up around him. He turned to leave but was thrown back into the centre of the room. His eyes seemed cold as his gaze fell upon his colleagues, a look of puzzlement and fear on his face. He then spoke “I can feel it, it feels wrong.”

With that he was gone.

A moment later he found himself in a claustrophobic void – an overwhelming feeling of dread fell upon him. He vomited on himself, and saw blood in his ablutions. He tried to stand but his body ached as unseen pressure grasped him. His surroundings were blurred and erratic, but he soon found a solid mass to prop himself upon, and rested for a while. Once he regained some energy, he checked himself for noticeable injuries, but found none other than a nose bleed.

He now looked upon a landscape utterly disfigured. Constructed from dark geometric patterns, malformed half recognised artwork, characters from literature he enjoyed or despised, nightmarish fears and fantasies played out upon a fluid sickly horizon. It made him disorientated and dizzy, yet he tried to comprehend what he was viewing. Either he was in a coma and was experiencing a collusion of random thoughts as his synapses misfired, or he was now part of some other place, brought here by his own misguided experiments. Both, he soon realised, were true.

This reality folded and churned, spasmed and coalesced before him, and he was soon dragged down to the ground by what felt like a shift in gravity. Straining to keep his mouth and nose out of the ground below him, he heard a voice. “You you you! fucked you are, fucked!” a mouth was forming over his left shoulder, a mouth of vile foul smelling teeth, disembodied and drooling a mixture of sour milk and alcohol, or what smelt like it. hair covered Arms fell around his neck and choked him, bile rising in his stomach as eye soon floated before him, separate now from the mouth that continued to spew forth threats and taunts. He had no control over his bowls and he began to loose himself in his own effluent

“shit yourself you did! shit yourself you little turd!” it spoke with spite and anger yet a sardonic tone which struck a hateful chord – He knew the voice as his own father, the drunk bastard who had made his childhood misery, Yet the voice emitted from something much less familiar. Before him was a blur of mouths, slathering tongues and pin prick eyes. It was a bastardization of living tissue and unconscious thought, some form of quadruped – a striped cat with the anthropomorphic grin of a human. It hovered before him, parts of its body phasing in and out of vision. It toyed with him, slashing at his face with dirtied nails and fevered teeth. Until he finally had enough. He raised his hand, gripping something solid, and slammed it into the creatures head. A look of shock, and confusion seemed to shift through its ugly countenance, as though physical contact was never considered. No one fought back before. Not even the girl. It dropped before him, seemingly dead. Henry hauled himself up on to his knees, grabbed the creature by its tail and stood up, took a deep breath, and passed out.

Henry awoke in the middle of Oxford circus, London. His hands were burnt and his face stung, yet he was alive. He looked down at his hands, and saw the aborted ragged form before him. He smiled with glee, wrapped his hands around the creature and began to laugh. With that, he passed out again, and awoke days later, in the asylum. The experience had damaged him, he hypothesized that entering this plane – an extra dimensional reality – had caused some minor brain damage, and it had taken a while for him to recuperate.

At this point Dr. Keith interrupted him and politely tried to surmise that the entire experience may have been some form of episode brought on by the electric field, and that further cautionary studies would have to be done to assure that anyone experimenting with these mechanisms must be made aware of the risks. Henry O’malley smiled and shook his head “Doctor, i am perfectly sane, and i understand your need for a more, conservative explanation. I anticipated this, so brought the proof with me.”

Before he had called for the nurse to escort him to the office of Dr.Keith, he had inquired to the whereabouts of his cat, which he had been brought in with. “Sir, the cat was very much dead, so we buried him in the grounds.” He asked the nurse to take him to the grave and leave him for a moment. In that moment he had gained his proof.

He lifted the bedraggled corpse from beneath his robe by the tail and placed it on the table. It was dead, yet it emitted no odor. “This is the vile creature which governed the place i visited. As you will see from its cranium, it is no known species of feline. The mere girth of its mouth is unsupported by a bone structure. I believe that this entity is not a physical being, but a part of a greater whole – a sentient reality. Have you ever seen paws like these? You will agree these three fingered prehensile hands are somewhat human? And if i..” he lifted the doctors letter opener – the nurse forcefully gripped his arms, holding them back “please let me, i am not mad” – he took the knife and cut into the creatures stomach. As he did so he pulled back the subcutaneous layers, to show something so otherworldly, so outlandish, that words failed the Doctor.

The creatures stomach was a void, a blackened void. Yet this was not what frightened the doctor into believing the story. For the void was filled with grinning tooth ridden mouths, flexing and smiling out into a world not fit for such abominations.

“But you are right” O’malley spoke, “this does warrant further research”.

These extra dimensional planes or realities became the lifes work of many a physicist, creating a plethora of tools to examine, and indeed cross into these realms. See the Solid Geometric Anomaly Location Gauntlet

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This piece is a large wooden/ glass display cabinet, contained within, the taxidermied corpse of an extra dimensional entity known as “The Cheshire cat”. We can only hypothesize to the nature of this creature – whether it indeed was sentient, able to talk – or the physical manifestation of unconscious thought. either way, dissections were carried out to discern its internal organs, which were entirely absent.

measurements – 44cm x 41cm x 23cm