‘This is it,’ said Douglas Benson From Another Dimension. ‘My passport home.’

‘Wow!’ I said, and meant it.

It looked like a tree, but apparently it was a passport home. It was a big, spreading passport with a gnarly trunk and loads of branches. Leaves blocked the sky and there was a bare patch of earth at the base where the grass did not grow. I stood on that patch and craned my neck. I made small cooing noises and hoped they sounded like appreciation. I had never seen a portal to another dimension before and the protocols were beyond me.

‘How does it work?’ I asked after a suitably awestruck pause.

Douglas looked at me as if I were crazy, which was a little strange since I wasn’t the one claiming that a spreading tree was a gateway to another dimension. But then, I thought, I am crazy – so I suppose he was entitled.

‘I climb into its branches and jump,’ he said.

‘Hi tech,’ I replied.

We were in his garden. I had come round for our afternoon tea date. Dad dropped me off, and when I had approached the house I had seen Douglas sitting under his passport, though at that time I’d thought, in my innocence, that it was a tree. Inside his house, I imagined, were facsimile parents, and I was nervous about meeting them so it was good to chat awhile and delay. I’d hoped to spy a postie’s bike in the yard, but there was no evidence of one, which was disappointing. Still, I reasoned to myself, you can’t have everything. A portal and a postie’s bike was probably asking for too much.

‘Come for a walk with me,’ said Douglas. ‘I want to show you something and the facsimile parents have informed me food will not be ready for another forty-five minutes.’ His lip curled slightly when he made the parent reference. His eyes might also have flashed, but I’m not prepared to swear to that in a court of law, so it’s safer to stick with the lip-curling.

‘Okay,’ I said.

Douglas lived five-and-a-half kilometres outside Albright in a five-hectare block. Dad had driven up a rutted path, avoiding assorted chooks and one small lake. We retraced that journey up the path. It was a beautiful afternoon. The sky was clear and birds sang. It wasn’t difficult to imagine we were the only people in the world. Douglas said nothing for ten minutes, and although I like silence, generally speaking, I had questions that were, if not exactly burning, definitely smouldering around the edges.

‘Douglas,’ I said. ‘If travelling through dimensions happens when you jump out of a tree, are possums doing it all the time?’

He sniffed.

‘It’s not just jumping out of a tree, Candice,’ he replied. ‘There are other things involved and the maths is quite tricky.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I was a bit tired from my question. We walked for another minute or two.

‘Do you have a pad and a pen with you?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ I knew that interaction with facsimile parents was inevitable and had come prepared.

‘I’ll draw you a diagram when we get there,’ he said.

‘Okay.’

There wasn’t far away as it turned out. We’d veered off the driveway and wandered down a rough path through thick bushland, the kind of path that animals make when they can be motivated. The bushland wasn’t very interesting – flat and crowded with spindly gums – so I was surprised when we came to a clearing. Surprised and alarmed, since we were virtually on the edge of a ravine. I say ‘ravine’, but that might be flattering it somewhat. Then again, I am afraid of heights, so even modest drops are ravines to me. I took a couple of tentative steps forward and cautiously peered over the edge. Slabs of rock lined the sides and forty metres below a small stream trickled in a picturesque fashion. I quickly stepped back. It’s not that I don’t like small picturesque trickling streams, but I prefer them when they are on my level. Ideally in a photograph. Douglas sat close to the edge and I joined him. Perhaps a metre behind.

‘Pretty,’ I said to his back, though I wasn’t referring to that. And the scenery was pretty. It was a little surprise, like finding a bright stone in a pile of manure. That, I should stress, has never happened to me [possibly because I have never looked].

‘It’s nice here,’ said Douglas. ‘I often come here just to think.’

I was pleased to learn that Douglas had brought me to his special private place. It felt like an honour. I shuffled forward on my bottom so that I was nearly level with him.

‘May I use your pad and pen?’ he asked.

I produced them from my bag. He found a clean sheet and drew a line.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

‘A line,’ I replied. It wasn’t difficult.

‘Correct. A line. One dimension.’ He drew another three lines and lifted the pad towards my face.

‘And that?’

‘A square,’ I replied. ‘Or maybe a rectangle.’

‘Correct. Two dimensions.’ He scribbled some more.

‘A cube,’ I said, without being asked. I was on a roll.

‘The illusion of a third dimension.’ Then he went a bit mad with the pen. Lines appeared all over the place.

‘And this?’ he asked when he’d finished.

I screwed up my eyes and probably my forehead. I might even have tilted my head to one side.

‘A mess?’ I suggested.

‘A tesseract,’ he said. At least I got three of the letters right and in the correct order. ‘If a cube is a square taken into the third dimension, then a tesseract is a cube taken to the fourth dimension. For obvious reasons it’s difficult to draw.’

‘I thought time was the fourth dimension,’ I said.

‘No,’ he replied.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘What I’m trying to explain is that to travel between alternative worlds I need to take the tesseract to a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and then a ninth dimension, wrap myself within that construct and then use gravity to effect the journey.’

‘That’s where the tree comes in,’ I suggested.

‘Correct.’ He sighed and placed the pad down on the ground. ‘That’s how I got here. Logically, it’s how I should get back.’

‘But?’

Douglas gazed out over the ravine for a few moments. He cupped his chin in a hand.

‘Timing is everything,’ he said. ‘It must be at six-thirty in the evening. I’ve been over the maths time and time again. But it doesn’t work.’

‘Any idea why not?’

‘The only solution I can come up with is that gravity has a slightly different quality in this world.’

‘So?’

He thought for a moment or two.

‘So maybe I need to jump from somewhere higher than a tree,’ he whispered. It was as though he was talking to himself. Douglas peered over the edge of the ravine once more and suddenly the afternoon felt chilly. I hugged myself.

Douglas’s mum was called Penelope and she was very pleasant. Facsimile Penelope. When she found out I was interested in her work, she said she would take me for a ride on her postie bike, but it never happened. She was small with a face like a walnut. Probably a result of riding around all day in the sun. Douglas’s facsimile dad was called Joe and he had big ears and a bigger smile. I liked them. The parents I mean, not the ears, though I quite liked them too. We even had a good conversation before I had to get my pad and pen out.

‘Do you like vegetables, Candice?’ asked Penelope.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Roast beef?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Gravy?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’ I was feeling confident.

‘Is it okay if they are all on the same plate?’

I was ready for the yes, thank you, but the question stopped me in my tracks. I must have looked puzzled because Penelope continued.

‘It’s just that your mum told me that you like to have things a certain way, and Douglas mentioned your pencil case.’ My puzzlement clearly hadn’t diminished because she went on. ‘The way you like to have everything lined up just so.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘So I wondered whether you were okay about having different colours of food on the same plate.’

I might have raised an eyebrow. Possibly two.

‘You are autistic, aren’t you?’

‘No,’ I said.

It was facsimile Penelope’s turn to look puzzled.

‘Then what are you?’ she asked.

‘I’m me,’ I said.

Dad had arranged to pick me up at seven, so I had time to watch Douglas make his attempt at returning home. Penelope and Joe didn’t join us outside. I had the impression this was a spectacle they had witnessed before and were less than impressed.

Douglas climbed the tree with a practised air and balanced on one of the lower boughs. He glanced at his watch and closed his eyes. It was obvious he was concentrating fiercely, doing things with tesseracts taken to higher dimensions. I stood well clear. I wasn’t worried about flashes of light and the crackling of air that might accompany transportation to another world, but a boy’s body falling from a tree was clearly something to be avoided. Actually, it was all quite exciting. Then again, I’ve led a sheltered life.

Douglas must have been counting down because at precisely six-thirty [I say ‘precisely’ but of course my watch might have been wrong] he bent his legs, swung his arms back and launched himself into the air.

He landed in a puff of dust.

Douglas opened his eyes and I saw such a look of loss that it made my breath catch. He glanced at me and shook his head.

‘Not enough gravity,’ he whispered.

‘Dad?’ I said on the way home.

‘Hmmm?’

‘Can I have a bike?’

He looked at me for a moment before returning his eyes to the road.

‘You can’t ride a bike, Candice.’

It was true. I found it almost impossible to believe that anyone could balance on such thin strips of rubber, even though I’d seen it happen many times.

‘I could learn.’

‘Maybe for your birthday.’

That was no good, though I didn’t say anything. I needed a bike by tomorrow. For once in my life I had somewhere I needed to be and transport was a problem.