Aelion's POV
You know that feeling when you’re on the verge of something big, pero hindi mo lang ma-pinpoint kung ano 'yun? Parang there’s this nagging thought at the back of your head, pulling at you, pero it’s blurry—hazy. That’s where I was, stuck between curiosity and frustration.
I was sitting in class, half-tuning out as our professor droned on about classical physics—things we’ve heard a thousand times. I couldn’t stop thinking about this theory that had been messing with my mind for days: multiple dimensions. The idea na maybe, just maybe, there’s more to our reality than what we can see or touch.
Pero teka lang, how would I even start explaining this to people? I mean, it sounds a little wild, right?
"Okay, guys," I muttered to myself, pretending to write notes. "So what if, like, there are hidden dimensions within our own, di ba? Places where the laws of physics, as we know them, don’t exactly apply?"
I stared at the whiteboard, not really seeing it. My mind was too busy connecting dots that hadn’t fully formed yet. My focus? Finding a way to tie this idea to something concrete. Pero every time I thought I had it, nawawala siya. Like sand slipping through my fingers.
Fast forward to debate class, where I knew I was going to drop the bomb. One of my classmates, Greg, was presenting his theories on string theory, and habang nakikinig ako, an idea hit me like, what if these strings were actually touching dimensions we don’t even know exist yet?
“Wait, wait, Greg,” I interrupted, sitting up straighter. “What if... hear me out lang, ha... what if these extra dimensions you’re talking about aren’t just theoretical, but like, physical spaces hidden within our own? Para siyang mga secret rooms inside the house of reality that we haven’t found yet.”
Greg stopped and looked at me like I just suggested aliens built the pyramids. “Uh, Aelion,” he said, laughing a little, “that sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. Secret rooms in reality? Seriously?”
I shrugged. “It’s not that crazy if you think about it. We already accept that there are forces we can’t see, like gravity or dark matter, right? So why not dimensions that are hidden but exist alongside us?”
Greg raised an eyebrow. “Bro, parang you’ve been watching too many Netflix shows. I mean, dimensions? Like what, are you gonna find a portal in your closet?”
I bit back a laugh. I wasn’t surprised by his reaction, pero honestly, it didn’t faze me. “Hindi naman ganun. But we already know the universe is more complicated than what we see. String theory, quantum mechanics... there’s already so much we can’t explain.”
“Exactly,” Greg shot back, crossing his arms. “Which is why it’s all still speculative. You’re connecting dots that don’t exist.”
I leaned back in my chair, feeling the debate heating up. “Speculative, sure. But every big idea was speculative once, di ba? Quantum theory sounded crazy at first, but here we are, using it to explain half of what we know about the universe.”
Our professor was watching quietly, letting us go back and forth. Greg wasn’t convinced, and honestly, neither were most of my classmates. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was onto something.
Later that night, I was back in my apartment, scrolling through articles and papers on string theory and higher dimensions. It was like a rabbit hole that kept pulling me deeper. Minsan, I thought to myself, maybe Greg’s right—baka nga I’m just chasing some crazy idea with no proof.
But then... bakit may mga patterns emerging na hindi ko ma-explain? Like, while doing my research, I started noticing anomalies, things na parang didn’t fit the established theories. Small things—random inconsistencies in the data, unexpected results when plugging equations into models. But when I tried to match them with known science, nothing worked.
Frustration crept in. “Ano ba, bakit ganito?” I muttered, rubbing my eyes. “It makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense, you know?”
The worst part? The more I dug into the research, the more unexplainable things I found. Parang, the universe was teasing me. Answers seemed so close, but still out of reach. My usual sources of comfort—the logic, the equations that always made sense—were failing me.
I slammed my laptop shut. “There has to be a way to explain this.” But the truth was, I didn’t know how. Not yet. And the more I tried, the more it felt like the answer was hidden in plain sight, just waiting for me to figure it out.
In the days that followed, I couldn’t let go of the idea. Kahit na everyone else thought it was far-fetched, I felt like I was on the verge of something big. And the question that kept bouncing around in my head was simple: What if reality was more layered than we thought?
Like, what if everything we’ve been taught to believe is just a fraction of what’s actually there? Sure, it sounded speculative—borderline impossible, even. But then again, so did a lot of scientific discoveries, right?
I stared out the window, the city below humming with life, unaware of the internal chaos my mind was wrestling with. “There’s something here,” I whispered to myself. “I just need to find it.”
For now, all I had were questions. But something told me that with time, those questions might just lead me to the answers no one else could see.
As I sat back down at my desk, I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to let a little skepticism—or a lot of it, for that matter—get in my way. The universe was full of mysteries, and maybe, just maybe, I was on the brink of discovering one of its biggest secrets.
“Alright, Aelion,” I whispered, cracking my knuckles. “Let’s figure this out.”
The more I dug into the idea of dimensions, the more I felt like I was clawing at the edges of something bigger—something just out of reach, like the answer was taunting me. “Bro, bakit parang napaka-complicated na nito?” I whispered to myself, staring at my notes. It had started innocently enough, a random hypothesis I threw out during that stupid debate with Marco. He practically laughed in my face, as if suggesting extra dimensions was something straight out of a sci-fi movie.
“Bro, hindi ka serious, di ba?” Marco’s voice echoed in my head, his laugh ringing in my ears. “Ano to, Interstellar? Chill lang. You're overthinking.”
I hated that. The way people brushed off things they didn’t understand.
Well, sorry, Marco, but this wasn't about proving a point. Something about this idea stuck with me, nagging in the back of my mind. What if there really were layers of reality we just couldn’t see? Spaces where the laws of physics broke down? And more than that—what if those dimensions weren’t theoretical at all?
I spent hours pouring over papers, pushing past the basics of string theory. Every new idea opened more doors in my mind, but none of them led to solid answers. I stumbled upon obscure texts late into the night, scanning through old research that most people had long forgotten. The books talked about M-theory and higher-dimensional spaces, but there was something… more. Something nobody seemed to address, as if they were scared to go beyond a certain point. I found one passage that stuck with me, written by a physicist from the 60s who had suddenly disappeared:
"The universe is not flat. It folds. These folds create spaces between—places we are not meant to access."
Medyo creepy. But it was exactly what I was looking for.
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the scribbles of equations in front of me. “Okay, so the universe folds,” I muttered, absently twirling a pen between my fingers. “That could explain hidden dimensions, sure. But if these spaces exist, then why can’t we measure them? Bakit walang evidence?”
Then again, maybe the evidence wasn’t something you could measure. Maybe it was something you could feel. Goosebumps prickled my skin at the thought, and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
“Nako, here I go again,” I muttered. “Overthinking, overanalyzing.”
But no matter how I tried to shrug it off, I couldn’t. There was something lurking beneath the surface of all these theories, something no one had really dared to explore. Maybe they were afraid of what they’d find.
“Afraid, or just blind,” I thought darkly. I wasn’t about to let fear stop me.
I stared at my notes, half expecting them to start making sense on their own. The patterns I’d been seeing lately—they weren’t random, but they weren’t following any laws I knew of, either. They seemed to bend and twist in ways that didn’t match up with anything concrete. Like Marco said, it was starting to feel like speculative fiction. But wasn’t all groundbreaking science like that, at first? What if those ancient physicists had stopped at the edge of their understanding, too scared to fall off?
“Maybe they missed something,” I said aloud. “Maybe no one’s been looking in the right place.”
I got up and started pacing around my small apartment, stepping over textbooks and half-empty coffee mugs. My mind raced in circles, thoughts overlapping until they started to blur together. There was something off. Something about these extra dimensions, something about the patterns I’d been seeing that made me feel like I was standing on the edge of a cliff, staring down into something vast and unknown.
I grabbed my phone and pulled up one of the papers I’d bookmarked earlier—an article on the idea of 'brane cosmology.' The theory suggested that our universe could be a three-dimensional slice within a higher-dimensional space, kind of like a page in a book. What if there were other pages, other 'branes,' stacked right next to ours? What if those spaces had their own physics?
What if the folds between those spaces were thin enough that they could touch?
The thought made my heart race. It was like standing at the edge of a mystery and suddenly realizing that the answer might be closer than I thought—closer, but just out of sight. I put my phone down and stared at the wall, feeling the weight of the idea settle over me.
Okay, so if these spaces existed, if these extra dimensions were real, then how the hell did I prove it? I couldn’t just keep sitting here scribbling equations and hoping something would click. I needed to find a way to test it, to get closer.
I glanced around the apartment, my eyes landing on the small closet in the corner of the room. Something about it made my stomach tighten.
Why that closet?
I didn’t know. But suddenly, I found myself walking toward it, the air in the room growing heavier with each step. My fingers brushed the doorknob, but I hesitated. “Bro, wala lang to,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s just a closet. There’s nothing there.”
But I couldn’t shake the feeling. I opened the door slowly, expecting to find nothing but clothes and clutter. But as soon as the door swung open, I froze.
There, tucked behind the coats and shoes, was a small gap—a sliver of darkness where the wall should have been. My heart thudded in my chest. I reached out, pushing the clothes aside, revealing the narrow space behind them. It looked like it led… somewhere.
“What the hell…” I breathed, staring into the dark, the shadows curling and twisting like something alive.
I couldn’t explain why, but I felt drawn to it, like it was calling to me. My hands trembled as I reached out toward the gap, feeling the air grow colder the closer I got.
For a split second, I considered closing the door and forgetting I ever saw it. I could walk away, pretend this never happened. But then I thought of all the nights I’d spent chasing answers, all the theories that had led me here, and I knew I couldn’t walk away now.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the gap.
As soon as I crossed the threshold, everything changed. The air was heavier, denser, like walking through syrup. The light from my apartment seemed to fade, swallowed up by the shadows. My head spun, and I had to steady myself against the wall, blinking to clear my vision.
This is crazy. This is impossible.
But I kept walking. The narrow passage stretched on, far longer than it should have. I reached out and touched the walls, half expecting them to feel cold and damp, but instead, they were warm. Almost alive.
“What is this place?” I whispered, my voice sounding small and hollow in the silence.
It felt like I was walking through a dream, like reality itself was bending around me. I had no idea how long I walked—minutes, hours? Time seemed to stretch, just like the walls around me.
And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the passage ended.
I stumbled forward into a small, dimly lit room. The walls were made of stone, rough and uneven, like they’d been carved out of the earth itself. There was nothing in the room—no furniture, no windows. Just a single door on the far wall, its surface smooth and black.
A door.
I stared at it, my pulse quickening. The same door from my dreams—the same one that had been haunting me for weeks.
“No way,” I whispered, taking a step forward. I could feel the pull of it, like a magnet drawing me in.
But as I reached for the handle, I stopped. Something held me back, a deep, instinctual fear rising up in my chest. I knew, without a doubt, that once I opened that door, there would be no turning back.
I stood there, hand hovering over the handle, torn between curiosity and terror.
Was this what I had been searching for all along?
Or was it something much darker?