Please note this disclaimer: my respects go out to JK Rowling and her works and I in no way make any claim to her characters (of course). Though I will my own ;)

Now, a tiny little bit about my story (I intend to keep this short): this was a one-off, self-insertion piece I started working on back in early 2006. And it is also a personal writing experiment: I have always had difficulty writing in first-person, having always found first-person annoyingly limiting when it comes to background story, description of events and character development. I also have great difficulty in finishing the stories I start.

This story is my attempt to write a first-person story that is interesting, engaging and finished. Please let me know if I'm doing okay with it, or please feel free to give me some constructive criticisms as to how I might make it better (an inclusion of sex-scenes don't count ;p ).

A Beginner's Crash-Course Guide to Dimensional Travel

By CalamityM

Prelude: The Space, Time & Dimensional Paradox.

We are not alone. Though we are scientifically certain, in a universe stretching several billions of light-years across, that we are isolated as a sentient race; that we exist as the randomly created, sole inhabitant of so much empty space, so vast and unfathomable that it seems impossible that there could be anyone else here. Possibly we would be very much surprised to know that there is intelligent, sentient life as close to us as our own skin. And that it exists concurrently with us in a Parallel Universe. Several, in fact.

Our planet, our Sun and the stars in our skies are merely one possibly of a universe. Our Earth exists – in our reality and in our universe – upon a Plane of Existence shared by several other universes, other realities and other Earths. It is theorised that it exists as one possible universe in a Multiverse of variable outcomes. Such a theory is called the String Theory. In String Theory, each universe exists in its own 'membrane' of reality, drifting and spiraling around like smoke inside a soap bubble; each has its own set of rules, its own outcomes and its own history of origins. In some realities the stars and constellations are different from ours; in others, humanity evolved upon the Earth through another source than apes; in other realities, the Earth is flat or square or otherwise different in some measurable way; and in some other realities, Earth doesn't exist at all.

They are each similar yet different, in their own unique way, to one another. But there are three distinct 'types' of membranes: Hard Universes, Soft Universes and Incorporeal Universes (alternatively known as 'Spectral' Universes).

Hard Universes conform to preset inviolate laws. It is bounded by restrictions as to how a universe can behave; Laws of Physics must be able to be calculated and predicted; the permanent-structural shape of the universe must be consistent. It behaves according to preordained rules: What goes up must come down.

Soft Universes are those membranes in which the Rules of Reality has been 'softened'. While they are still governed by the same laws and rules of the Hard Universes, those rules are 'malleable' and can be very subtly altered, changed or challenged, to varying degrees, depending on the level of manipulative (or psychic) ability by the beings living within.

Lastly, and most importantly, there are the Spectral Universes. Reality is bent in these realms, much in the same way that light is bent when passing through a crystal; light itself is not changed on any molecular level, it is still light, but it is divided, manipulated or reshaped by the crystal's design. So too is Reality within a Spectral Universe. They are "Magical" worlds; places in which the impossible is possible; the surreal is commonplace; unnatural alteration in both living and inanimate matter is normal; and the common Laws of Physics are placed, upside-down, upon their heads. They are strange universes, which seem to obey only their own (and seemingly, forever changing) Rules of Reality.

And all these 'other' possible realities, in their own membranes of existence, all drift like jellyfish – some as tiny as the head of a pin, others as great in size as the universe itself – in a vast ocean that is the Bioplasmic Universe. The Bioplasmic Universe is the Plane upon which all the membranes, the alternative universes, exist. It flows, unheeded by physical constraints, through each membrane, regardless of its characteristics; it is energy in its purist form, seething and raw, wild and primal. It is alive as an ocean is alive; made up out of the life it both contains and sustains. It is the Sea of Souls, the Mother Ocean; it is life and light and 'Love' – and death. It is Everything-that-is.

So what happens when one floating membrane collides with another? That depends on the membrane in question; Hard Universes bounce off one another when they do occasionally collide (causing catastrophic and sudden influxes of kinetic energy so violent and devastatingly strong that they reshape the whole universe with each collision – and it should be noted that the 'Big Bang' is theorised to have been the outcome of one such collision), as they are too 'solidified' by Reality to allow any outside alteration, even when colliding with a Soft Universe.

Soft Universes merge into one another to form a new, larger universe; in such universes there can be two "Earths", each one slightly different from the other. Spectral Universes, on the other hand, are very different; they drift, like their ghostly namesakes, through other universes without any disruption or alteration to either. But their passing does not go completely unnoticed. Behind them, they leave Echoes…