“God Passing Through…” by Stuart Warren

Europe isn't what it used to be since the attack. Lots of nutters about and no rekoning what happened neither.

From the telly in Southwick we saw a continent in disarray. A plume of smoke had appeared in the sky over Paris one May afternoon, like a mote of black powder catching aflame. The authorities were called and the tabloids speculated in turn. Then, a blinding light capable of melting steel followed. It was no bomb, however much it looked that way. Survivors said, when the thick air settled, it tasted like strawberries. Then the BBC started streaming in the horror of fathers holding the charred remains of their children, kneeling in the coals, breathing in sorrow and exhaling death. 

For all it was, the stir it struck up across the globe, none could fathom it. Not that there was a lack of those who cared, or that the silly G-men in MI5 weren’t racking their spook brains over it. The bookish sorts at Uni worked in vain to see clearly what it was, hand in hand with Tory and Labour committees alike. I took no pleasure in their failures. Ol' Paris was gone and not a soul took credit.

One of my mates in the navy—fella named Tudley—was over the other weekend. Told me what he thought it was. "God passin' through, likely," he said. 

"Wazzat? Like Jesus?" I said over Chumbawamba racket at the pub. 

"Whatever you call ‘im, don’ matter. ‘Twas God, I say…"

Not that I have any commitment to the idea, I let it go unchallenged. I made my profession of faith to Queen and Country in RE when I was but a lad. Was even active in the Christian Union at Portsmouth. Good lot they were, mostly. 

"God passin' through..."

Or something like it. 

10 million people died that day, anyways. 

Life marched onwards, about seven years or so. One day, my boy was watching one of his science films online. There, a bookish gentleman in a silly lab coat presented a silver orb to the camera. 

"…know about three dimensional objects: the cube, the sphere, the cylinder," he said. "And so, with objects with only two dimensions: the rectangle, the circle, the triangle. A single point in space: one dimension. Etcetera, etcetera. But what would a fourth dimension object look like?"

I was making some chips in the kitchen, shuffling the icy bits onto a baking pan as this all happened. My son laughed a little at the man's prattling about shapes and cubes. Setting the timer, I placed the chips into the oven and walked to my chair in the sitting room.

That's when I heard it. 

"As you can see, a four dimensional object--to us at least--will appear as a shape appearing from nowhere and leaving just the same," the gentlemen said, demonstrating. He used a camera trick to make the silver ball grow in size and likewise reduce. I hunched forward, squinting at the screen.

“That’s brilliant,” my boy said. “Could be right there the whole time and not even know, just passin’ through. I wonder if that’s where ghosts live…”

I shrugged, then listened along.

“…those that think the Paris incident could have been an interaction with a higher dimensional obje—”

As my boy tells it, my face went white. I don’t recall the rest. He marked that I began to breathe funny, seized and fell out of my seat and onto the floor. He called for a doctor—which came straight away from the village over—which recommended I have tests made at hospital, just to be cautious. Gave him such a fright, my boy, which I was sorry for.  

A week or so later, he asked me what caused such a stir. 

Still trembling, I simply replied, "Blimey, he was just passin’ through..."