And immediately the unbearable heat and light were replaced by unbearable cold and darkness.   A coldness so great it almost froze Abner solid.   A darkness so great he couldn’t see the handset in his hand when he held it up before his face.

Faced with the threat of an icy death as the temperature rapidly fell to Antarctic levels, Abner knew he had only seconds to act, before his fingers became too frost-bitten to press the buttons on the handset.   Going back meant certain death, burnt to a crisp in the invisible dimensions, so he had no choice but to go forward again, although it meant risking the unknown again.   “But what choice do I have?” he thought, pushing the red button again.

*      *      *

As soon as Abner felt the tremendous pressure crushing him again, he realised the handset had malfunctioned again.   Quickly trying to look up, he confirmed that he was in a heightless universe.   Stuck in two dimensions again! he thought.   Until he noticed he could only look forward.   He was unable to look either left or right.   “I’ve been reduced to a straight line, like the edge of a ruler!” thought Abner.   He knew he had been sent to a single dimension this time.   “Lucky thirteenth dimension!” he thought wryly.   He decided to return to the previous universe, then chance trying to pass through the invisible dimensions to return to Earth.

But after a moment, futilely trying to press the red button on the handset (unable to even feel the handset itself now, let alone know if he was actually pressing the red button) without result, Abner realised he had doomed himself to spend the rest of his existence trapped in the thirteenth dimension.

“Mabel, oh Mabel, why didn’t I listen to you?” he thought.   “All the time we were married I resented you keeping me from my lab.   But if you’d only lived another ten years, you might have kept me from my experiments long enough for me to have died in peaceful old age.   Instead of having to spend who knows how many years, or even centuries as a straight line in the thirteenth dimension!”

In a single dimension he not only had no height or width, but was also outside the time-space dimension.   So in theory Abner could live forever — stuck in the form of a straight line.

THE END