The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert by Rios de la Luz

such a pretty puppy!”
    The astronaut is captivated by Spatula. She grabs Spatula’s ears and makes them dance. She kisses Spatula on the head. This makes the situation more palatable, but your gut still feels uneasy. She turns to you.
    “Hello, I’m Maribel. I’m a time travel agent from portal Q2786 and I am here as a fugitive of sorts.”
    You rub your forehead. Purple and gold spots begin to form in your line of vision. Sitting is your best option and it’s a relief on your back.
    “Explain.”
    “Of course. You are the first version of myself that I have found, by the way. This is really neat.”
    She presses a blue button on the wrist of the suit and it starts disappearing from her body. A tiny cube forms and she places it into a case attached to a silver belt around her waist.
    “As a travel agent, I was part of an agency that searched for lost kids from other portals and dimensions that started on this version of earth. Kids go missing everyday right? Well, my department investigated disappearances that were never solved. Most times, the kids were deceased, but sometimes we found lost kids stuck in between time portals. If we got there in a reasonable amount of time, we could rehabilitate the child and send them to a foster family in a different version from their earth of origin. People can’t survive long in between time portals so, if we were too late, they’d be deceased.”
    Maribel’s hair is silver. You notice that even the hair on her arm is silver. Her speech patterns are similar to your own. Are you really in your own room? Are you locked up somewhere with this dream sequence looping through you?
    “So, how does that make you a fugitive? What’s the point of finding me…you?”
    “There’s a political campaign against multi-dimensional travel. They are marketing through xenophobia, claiming the kids my department has rescued should be left for dead. They claim the kids should not be allowed on an earth from which they were not born. The government is killing agents from my department off in secret, one by one. I’m not the only agent in trouble. There are others looking for multidimensional versions of themselves, too. I don’t know how many of us are left, but I know they killed one of us off. They got to her before I could.”
    Your palms are soaking and the pain in your back is reaching up toward your shoulders. Is this the apocalypse you dreamed about? You dreamed of zombies and a bright emerald gun as your weapon of choice. You dreamed of sinkholes swallowing earthlings’ whole. The only way to fight back was to build a net connected to the sky. A little moleskine with the list of apocalyptic dreams is sitting on the lavender dresser next to your bed.
    “Okay, are you here to take me with you? Can I have a cool shrinking cube thing?”
    “I have extra suits, yes. I brought enough for six others. I figured I would give my spiel and see where we go from there.”
    Overwhelming pain is settling in your head. Would you be able to leave your mom alone? She just lost Great Grandma.
    “Maribel, I need to take a bath first.”
    The water stings against your skin. Tired bones against the yellow tub. With your head back, your hair spreads out and the earth is mute. You are considering traveling with yourself into other dimensions to find more versions of yourself so you can all hang out and survive together. You have scraps of paper hanging in front of the toilet in case you are taking a shit when the apocalypse comes. Push it out. Pull up your pants. Possibly use the shit as a weapon or a distraction.
    Maribel might read your other apocalypse tips as she paces in your apartment. This brings you comfort and it makes you cringe at the same time. When you step out of the tub you look above you. There are red X’s that you drew for every apocalyptic dream you were a part of. There are over one hundred markings.
    “Maribel? I want to know more. I am someone with two jobs, a dog and a pile of