And then the world ended. There was a shockwave first, obliterating the surface and everyone on it, so fast you couldn't even hear it coming. Then the Earth fractured, and exploded in a ball of fire.

Except it didn't.

Instead, I met my mom.

It turns out dad did more than play poker with the aliens. One of them he was especially close with. Did they even know their different biologies were similar enough to conceive a child? She stuck around long enough to have me, then left. Back to the stars. Back to her destiny. Back to become what she was born to be.

A Halberd Class Mega-Weapon.

I'm not really sure how it works. The Halberd Class Mega-Weapons are alive. Conscious. Sentient. My mom is one. Did she somehow grow into a 600 mile long pink crystal space knife? Or was it grown on its own, and she was implanted into it? We didn't talk about it. We talked about how much we missed each other.

I was standing in the grass outside the library, staring up at the sky, waiting for it to hit. I'd spent so much time with it in 4-D land -- long enough to realize it was alive, long enough to start to care for it. It was all so mind blowing, so cosmic, I had forgotten or just didn't care about the world being blown up. I was just waiting for it to happen, out in the school yard, when from out of the sky it came straight down at me, point first, and stopped. 10 feet from my face. The point of it pointing right at me, the rest of its 600 mile long pink crystal knife body behind it.

"Asteroidea," it said. In my mind.

Then we were lost in a sea of telepathic memory. I could see my dad, young, in the dessert. My old house. A baby (me). She loved me so much, but couldn't stay. It was like salmon spawning - she had to get back to a certain place in deep space and become what she was born to become. But she had always planned to come back and check on me, when I was old enough.

All of my memories came rushing out too, and we both cried.

But it's not like it made a lot of sense to stay like that: a girl in a school yard looking straight up at a 600 mile tall crystal space bullet. People would stare. And call the military. But now that I know 4-D, we can visit any time. Mom said she'll be sticking around this area of the galaxy for awhile, so we can hang out. Mother-daughter time.

Slowly, she backed up into the stratosphere till she was just a glint of pink reflection in the sky. Then she shot off into the interstellar reaches.

I appreciate her sooooo much.

I can't wait to tell dad.

I've been spending my time totally zoned out in 4-D land. Do my eyes turn all white when I do it? I could ask my roommate if I weren't so zoned out all the time. I could also be going to class. The contingency for my scholarship is that I pass summer school.

But I've been drawing a lot. Pictures of what I see. Pictures of the mega-weapon. I wish I had taken remedial remote viewing. I'd be getting an A+ and extra credit.

I've been staring at it for days - its long graceful shark-knife form. Studying it up close too. The crystal it's made of looks more like scales when you're up close. Pink scales. I was studying a large formation of them near the bow of the ship when they suddenly shifted. And parted. At first a slit, which opened into an eye. A huge eye - 10 miles long? A cat's eye. With a purple diamond iris.

At that point I kinda freaked out and broke the connection.

I stopped trying to hang out with the Star Queens. I'm sure they were devastated. Like I care. Because I hung out around them long enough for some things to rub off. Just like with my dad and his alien poker buddies. Because now I SEE. Which would be really cool if it wasn't completely terrifying.

The mega-weapon. I can see it. Just like I'm there, flying off its right side. Sometimes I swoop around it to get a better look. It's hard to get a sense of scale when you're looking at one big thing floating by itself in space, but when you get close, and start to see detail, you realize just how big it must be. And then you're see you're wrong and you realize bigger.

It is kind of pretty. I'll give the Star Queens that. It's long, and graceful, and swoopy in places. Actually it's shaped like some bad ass knife you'd see for sale at a truck stop. Like something some vape ninja would buy. A shark silhouette. Thin, with a pointed tip, curved head. Then it gets slender again before the tail. And teeth, and a fin. Sharp. Made of some kind of crystal that glows pink from inside.

Yeah, you could make a fortune selling them at roadside casinos. Except this one is 600 miles long. And we're in its way.

When I come out of the trance, or vision, or whatever, I look out over the grassy hills by school. Puffy clouds. Not too hot. It's a beautiful day.

Sometimes people can make you feel like crap, just by being themselves. It's not what they do, it's what you are, know what I mean?

It's not like I idolize the Star Queens. They're shallow, and callous, and their perfume cloud gives me a headache. But hanging out with them, in their fourth-dimensional bubble, and seeing all the incredible and beautiful things they see, it's impossible to compete with. When the "conversation" turns my way - which it inevitably does - it's pretty embarrassing.

I haven't seen the petrified space mollusks floating in the ice caverns of Cleleum 9. I haven't watched the migratory clans of Miphizarrre feeding on the magnetopause as they pass through a solar system.

What I've seen is a star-filled sky over a trailer park in Nevada. I've seen a broken down pickup truck run over a gas pump because the driver was drunk, and a fireball light up the night. What I've seen is a stack of lottery tickets that didn't pay off.

I don't care if my clothes aren't as expensive as theirs, or my hair or make up. But when it's your actual life experience that's crappy, and obviously made of crappier stuff... how else are you supposed to feel?

I think the Star Queens must know four-dimensionality too. And if they're actually going somewhere with it, then they know it better than I do. It must happen when their eyes go all white and they zone out like that. The rest of their style and fashion sense I'll still blame on their personal taste.

But am I admitting they're better than me? Well, everybody's better at some things than everybody else. Or something. Right?

I need to know what they're doing. I guess I'll be sitting as close to them as I can at lunch - as close to their perfume fog as I dare. Conversation-starting distance at least. I'll bet the four-dimensionality is pinching up around them more than I realized.

Being around four-dimensionality gives you vertigo. Which is funny because we're actually surrounded by it all the time. So I guess it's being aware of four-dimensionality that gives me that feeling. And then the people around me get it.

Four-dimensionality isn't constant. It swirls and gathers, and there's more of it in some places than others. Usually it gathers around interesting things. Or maybe I just think the things it gathers around are interesting. I seem to gravitate towards them.

My dad taught me how to see it, but he says I've got a natural talent for it. I bet my mom did too, but she left when I was young. Dad says they didn't talk about that kind of thing with each other. She must not have hung out and played poker with the aliens like dad did.

I get my four-dimensionality from my dad. My parents lived in the desert in Nevada before I was born, and aliens used to drop by all the time. My dad played poker with them and learned a bunch of stuff, including how they don't really fly in spaceships all the way here but use Dark Matter like it was a highway and they can cross the vastness of space super quick that way. It's easier for them to get to Earth when there're nuclear bomb tests (because they rip little holes in space-time), which is why there were a whole bunch back in the 50s. But they still find ways today.

So anyway my dad hung around with them a lot so some of their four-dimensional stuff must have rubbed off on him, and then me! I love my dad.

That is very kind of both of you, @Kanji West and @xiirth. It's always nice to find friendly faces no matter how different you are. I find Goran the Snake Boy's musky scent kind of comforting, and I don't mind at all that Louisa doesn't talk. They got used to the four-dimensionality of being around me pretty quick! The nausea passes fairly soon for most people.

Psyhigh is so cliquey. I've got my besties Goran the Snake Boy and Louisa, but it seems like nobody else wants to make friends with anybody.

Like in the cafeteria at breakfast this morning the only open seats were by the Star Queens, who were all perfectly coiffed and radiant even at 8:30 am. I sat down and said hi and they all looked at me like I was an alien, then they did that all-white thing with their eyes and stayed that way through my whole breakfast. I'm sure they were talking about me and laughing, where ever they go when they do that.

Without Goran and Louisa I'd be pretty lost around here.