Resonance

by Katelyn Forrest

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Derrik Wilkerson flipped through his old mentor’s journal. The cover was plain with “Isabel” written in block letters on the first page. He still referred to her as The Professor. Derrik never could get used to being so informal even after he stopped being her student and they worked as proper colleagues. He stopped at a random page and pinched his nose in awe and frustration. Derrik always knew the Professor had some radical, and at times, esoteric, ideas where theoretical physics and philosophy converged but this… Derrik read Prof. Isabel’s hasty scrawl impressed with how far she chased this line of thought. It was unfinished and Derrik worried he was not up for the task. She left this gift to him in her will though. Her life’s work, as she succinctly wrote on the top of the first page.

Derrik closed the journal and caught a whiff of ball point ink, still lingering about the book from a burned out pen. “She must’ve been working on this right up to the end,” he said to the empty lab. “A bridge to the multiverse.”

It wouldn’t do to let anyone else in on the experiment. Prof. Isabel left him the journal, and him alone. Derrik felt guilty though. No one would call him a glory hog, but he felt protective of the journal and the Professor’s legacy. The math was solid, of course, but if the experiment flamed out, Derrik did not want to drag his mentor’s name though the mud. There were some less than conventional pieces of this puzzle. No, Derrik figured it was best to do an alpha run on his own. There was some latitude in his laboratory funding and Derrik wouldn’t be the first researcher to ‘reappropriate’ some unused university equipment and ride that wave hoping no one noticed. He could do this solo.

Weeks of after hours work passed and Derrik was still at a loss. He sat in ‘borrowed’ lab space in the basement of the Ortiz Building surrounded by an eclectic mix of equipment centered on a laser in a vacuum chamber.

“What were you thinking Professor?”

It was not the first time he said that aloud to the air around him.

“To open the door,” he read from Prof. Isabel’s notes, “the laser’s wavelength frequency must be in precise tandem with the other side.” The word ‘must’ was underlined three times. What other side? The Professor referenced the ‘other side’ frequently and in more vague terms as she went.

‘The other side will do its part.’

‘-resonance waves from the Other Side.’

‘-temporal anchor point synchronized with the Other Side.’

Once she started capitalizing O and S, Derrik started to worry if his mentor was losing her mind to a slow dementia drift at the end of her life.

Derrik sighed and pitched the book back onto a cluttered desk. It all felt-

-so unfinished.

Derricke, late of the village of Wilke’s Creek and more recently of the city Orteez, paced the outskirts of the large space in the warehouse district he rented with the last of his funds. The sigils etched into the floor were exactly as Magnus Isabel sketched out. He darted across the room to the sole piece of furniture, a table filled with the detritus of magical experimentation.

The pattern Derricke labored over meticulously covered almost the entire floor. The Magnus’ writing emphasized precision over and over. With nothing else to do, he flit about the room, triple checking positions and alignments, ever careful not to step on any piece of the sigils beginning the ritual before he was ready. With light running low, Derricke conjured a palm light to make sure he saw every detail.

The pattern sprawled. Precise sigils and incantations were worked into its length. It was intended to be a path a person walked, each footfall increasing the energy flow to the crystalline obelisk in the center. Only there, at the center, would the key to new worlds be revealed.

At least according to Magnus Isabel’s grimoire.

“The details are always so important,” he heard his old Magnus’ voice in his head like she was still among the living.

“Then what am I missing?”

Threes, threes, threes! The grimoire constantly refers to the resonance of threes. “The keys to forming the resonance vortex lie withing a triumvirate resonance.” The Magnus circled this and spent the next three pages pontificating why three made a better vortex than two or four.

But still only a single crystal at the center. She never explained why.

“The theory is sound,” Derricke grumbled aloud. At least as much as he understood was sound. The Magus took… liberties in her logical leaps at times. He had seen Magnus Isabel perform great and wonderous acts of magical evocation. Derricke had personally assisted her in carving the sigils on the Gates of Magdaline. He knew to the marrow of his bones that Magnus Isabel would not leave any fool’s errand behind as her legacy.

Derricke would have to trust her.

“It wouldn’t hurt for one last check though. Now where —“

“-the bloody hell did I put that?”

Dierdre “Will Throw Hands if you Deadname Her” Wilkerson rummaged through the mess of crap in the back of her van. She had it backed up to a derelict mill on the outskirts of town, empty for ten years. It was a band’s van, a workhorse plucked from the scrapyard and held together with duct tape and hope just as much as welds and bolts.

When she found the spare guitar cable at the bottom of a milk crate, Dierdre held it aloft and kissed it. She stomped back to the innards of the mill, Docs echoing off the pitted concrete floors. She triple checked the cables running from her generator along the way.

The sound echoed around the cavernous space reminding Dierdre the epic acoustics were the reason she was there. Isabel showed her this place when they played an unlicensed, underground show here. Dierdre stood in the center of the now quiet space and imagined where everything was that perfect night. ‘Stage’ rigged up there. Speakers there because that was as long as their generator cables reached. The mosh pit full of primal energy formed there, an organic swirling mass of humanity.

That night was the first time she shared the stage with Isabel. The elder punk had found a shy mousy kid hovering around the edges of the scene and taken them under her wing. Isabel was the one who showed Dierdre how to live her best life with a middle finger held high to the haters. Isabel was the core of her true family, the one she found herself, bound by love and respect and not genetics. That night, that perfect night, Dierdre said, “Let’s do this Punk Mama” and she said, “You got this kid” and Dierdre strode to center stage. They hit the first chord together.

The sound reverberated through her soul and the transformation of Dierdre to her best self was complete.

In the here and now, Dierdre looked around at the empty room, speakers set up for a concert of one and an audience of zero. She would play one last time with Isabel’s ghost. Punk Mama’s gone now.

“Fuck cancer,” Dierdre swung her boot at a stray piece of trash and-

-kicked the cabinet in frustration.

“Why isn’t this working?”

Well, he thought he knew why it wasn’t working, but he did not want to go down that thought train. ‘It was dementia’ the voice in his head kept saying. ‘There’s no final hurrah here, stop wasting your time.’

Derrik stared at the vacuum chamber at the center of the experiment. Blue light flickered as the laser inside cycled through wavelength frequencies. It was hypnotic. When he lost himself in blue light, the invasive thoughts whispered to him again.

He shook the negativity out of his mind. Maybe he could expand the laser’s amplitude and increase that sweet spot for the laser to achieve resonance with… Derrik still didn’t know what it was supposed to resonate with.

‘Because the Professor’s mind was gone.’

“No,” he said aloud. The math checked out even if Derrik was missing that one last piece. Math was sacred to the Professor. Math was her holy writ, and she would never betray math.

“She just left me one last test —“

“-ing my resolve.”

There was nothing left to do but do it. Still, Derricke looked at the sprawling pattern of sigils across the floor and could not help but hesitate.

Magnus Isabel suffered no fools and minced no words. No magic was free and everything had a price, whether or not you knew what that price was.

Derricke knew the price here though. The Magnus drummed it into him from day one, ‘Know the price you are about to pay and make sure you are ready for that kind of debt.’ For this grand ritual, the writing was literally on the walls of Derricke’s rented space. And the floor. And intertwined with every step along the path he was supposed to walk.

It was going to hurt.

With a final plea to Lady Bandearga, the Goddess Patron of Magical Arts, Derricke placed his first foot on the pattern.

He let out the breath he held in his chest. It was not bad. Yet. He might not have noticed the low thrum vibrating through his body if he did not know to expect it.

A second foot on the pattern.

The air around Derricke hummed with pure potential.

His walk among the twisting, turning sigils laid about on the floor would draw the raw chaos of magical possibility and distill it into the crystal at the center of the pattern. The distilled magic vibrating within the crystalline matrix would pierce through the veil and seek out what was beyond. Then it would draw in what it found like the shadows of three lanterns coming to a point.

If he survived the ritual walk through the pattern.

Another foot forward like walking through quicksand. Sparks flew with every footfall. The magical currents ripped through Derricke’s muscles threatening to bring him to his knees.

To stop now was death.

Another step forward ripped a mighty-

-screamed out into the empty space.

Dierdre’s echo found its way back to her ears, raising the little hairs on the back of her neck. It was now or never.

“One last time, Isabel.” Dierdre pressed play on the audio board rigged up in the middle of the space where she stood with her guitar. “This one’s for you Punk Mama.”

They had been working on an album together when the cancer struck Isabel. This very song. One Isabel penned and titled ‘Resonance.’ Dierdre mixed these last fragments of studio tracks herself into one last chance to play with Isabel.

A concert hall’s worth of speakers ringed the room, with Dierdre at the center. She didn’t need to hear the music. She needed to feel the music.

Isabel’s ghost smashed into rapid fire power chords, booming in the old mill.

Waves of raw music shook through Dierdre’s entire sense of self. The sound of Isabel’s guitar pummeled Dierdre as a physical assault. It was the purest way to truly experience music, shaking every cell you have, resonating body, soul, and music as one.

Tears streamed down Dierdre’s cheeks while the most glorious guitar riffs Isabel ever played wrung her soul to pieces. Isabel somehow knew this would be her last hurrah.

Dierdre did not miss her mark though and jumped in with a rapid fire simple G chord progression.

The power of the music distilled to the point where her pick met the strings.

And Dierdre sang.

            A raw wound exposed to the universe.

            One last go with Punk Mama’s ghost.

                        When the world comes crashing down

                        In a triple headlight barrage

                        The only thing left to do is-

-turn up the power!

Derrik was not getting another shot at this. The laser jumped. Its amplitude spiked. Right there. It was getting input from somewhere.

“She was right,” Derrik said. “The Professor wasn’t crazy.”

He smelled burning wires.

“No!”

The laser drew too much power. Derrik scrambled around the room shutting down everything non-essential to that blue laser reaching out across the mathematical possibilities.

Yes! He could say it now, the multiverse. It had to be right there, somehow, but he needed more power.

Derrik burst out of the lab, sprinting down the hall to the utility room. If he shut down everything else in the building, he could get maximum-

-pain through every limb.

The sigil pattern Derricke walked pulsed with a life of its own. His breathing, his pulse, taking their cues from the pattern. His pain, his heart, his lungs. Felt like an echo of a remembered beat. The pattern mirrored… something. Something out there.

“Yes, yes!” Derricke grit his teeth and grinned through the pain. From worlds away, the resonance felt something. The needle strikes through his soul weren’t for naught. Magnus Isabel’s legacy was at hand. His legacy was at hand.

One foot after the other.

“If it can just make it to the center crystal,” Derricke thought.

Next foot.

Time slowed.

Derricke’s entire being shrunk to the next step in front of him. The magic resisted. The resonance rubbed his bones raw, agony radiating from his marrow.

Step.

The end of the pattern drew near. Derricke’s vision faded blue around the edges. Beyond pain, just will power and spite. The crystal obelisk was just out of reach.

So close-

                        -and so far away

                        When your world comes crashing down

                        From so far away

                        And in the light of a blue moon

                        A raw missive written out in blood

                        Scratched on the floors and

                        Scrawled on the walls

                        What do you do when confronted by yourself?

                        A new version of you with the masks stripped away?

                        Are you even yourself

                        With the mask stripped away?

                        Will you recognize yourself

                        A different version of you

                        The same face but a different mirror

                        And a whole other life behind it?

                        Can you see the soul from worlds away

                        Looking back at you

                        Reaching out to you

                        From so far

                        Too far-

-gone to stop now.

Derrik ran back into the lab in time to see the tertiary couplings arc out. Hoped the others could hold. Every joule of electricity the laser could eat up, half a town’s worth of energy, focused now on this point.

The air hummed around Derrik.

The air pulsed.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. His body shook with an echo of phantom pain.

But the laser found its resonance.

Read outs flashed before Derrik’s eyes. 307% higher than the power could account for.

Derrik took a step-

-closer.

There. Almost in reach. Then Derricke would see the mysteries the Magnus left for him. The pain of this pattern would be worth it to open-

                        -the doors wide

                        See yourself

                        Your true self

                        Across the different worlds

                        One last-

-question.

What now? But the laser drew him in. The hypnotic pulse of that blue light. He put out a hand-

-on the crystal obelisk. Felt it grab hold into him and-

                        -hold on and never let go

                        Only when all of your selves-

-resonate in sync-

-will the gates-

Open.

In a shadowed limbo, three figures stand facing each other. They know the faces that stare back at them, The Scientist, The Mystic, and The Musician. The same face from the same seed, grown with the light of three different fates, now drawn back together.

When your world collapses to a single point and all you know is that your own face looks at you with different lives behind those eyes, a different history, a different world, a different you looks back at you, what do you do?

They raise a hand and say a simple,

“Hello.”

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Katelyn Forrest exists in Rhode Island writing SFF fiction. She went to film school, has been a radio disc jockey and a dot com prospector. She isn’t allowed to give blood because of that one time with the cow brains out of a vending machine in Europe. She got on stage at a Dropkick Murphys show and drank free samples of Guinness in Dublin. She keeps an anvil in her garage and seven different currencies stashed away. Just in case. Find her on BlueSky @kateforrest.bsky.social or links to all her fiction at katelynforrest.com.

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