The ship shuddered, a deep, guttural tremor that resonated through the deck, feet and all through my bones. It wasn’t just a vibration; it was a dissonance, a disharmony. The air thickened, grew oppressive, as if we were sinking into something denser than space, a viscous, unseen fluid. The ship’s internal gravitic compensators strained, their hum, which was not mechanical but rather an odd auditory artefact of spacetime distortion, rose into a high-pitched whine. The ambient light dimmed, then flapped off and on, as if the very energy powering the ship was struggling to maintain its coherence.

“ADA,” I said, gripping the nearest surface, my knuckles white. “If we’re not actually moving, why does it feel like we are?”

ADA’s expression flickered between amusement and something else. It might have been a disconcerting blend of human mimicry and cold, calculated logic, but more likely, it was simply showing off. I was already beginning to have my doubts about this ADA splinter.

“It’s a side effect of your primitive biological perception. Your senses are designed for a four-dimensional framework, a comfortable, linear progression of space and time. Unfortunately, the Bulk does not care about your expectations. You may well perceive movement, acceleration, perhaps even displacement, but these are merely echoes, phantom sensations, of a more complex transition. The folding of space-time induces gravitational tidal forces that your body misinterprets as conventional motion. Your inner ear, your proprioceptive sensors, they are all reporting data that is no longer relevant nor accurate. They are attempting to map a reality that has fundamentally shifted, like trying to navigate between galaxies with a map of the London Underground. The perceived acceleration you feel is likely a result of the extreme curvature of spacetime near the fold, a kind of gravitational lensing of your sensory input.”

Florence tightened her harness, the straps digging into her shoulders. “OK then. And will we experience time normally?”

ADA hesitated. Not a good sign, I was starting to learn. A flicker of uncertainty, a ghost of doubt, passed across its synthetic features. “Time is… negotiable in the Bulk,” it said at last, its voice a shade softer, a touch more hesitant. “Your minds will attempt to construct a coherent sequence of events, to maintain a sense of temporal continuity, you won’t be able to stop yourselves. But the reality may not align. The very act of folding space-time disrupts the causal structure of the universe. Be aware that subjective and objective durations may differ. In extreme cases, travellers have returned to conventional space-time before they left. A causal loop is a possibility, though a rare one.”

A hollow feeling opened in my chest, a cold, empty space where my certainty used to be. “Before they left?”

“Indeed. Though it’s a low probability. Oh, and typically fatal. The paradoxes inherent in such temporal displacements create instabilities within the biological matrix. The body, unable to reconcile the contradictions, simply… unravels. Ten seconds.”

The ship’s hum deepened into a resonant thrum. The lighting seemed to pulse. I could feel the ship’s structure groaning under the strain, pressure building, tension mounting. And then the moment the universe folded around us, not with a sudden, dramatic snap, but with a slow, agonising creak, like ancient tectonic plates of my reality shifting. The sensation was less like movement and more like being compressed, squeezed, pulled apart, and reassembled. My senses swam, my perception fractured, and the world dissolved into a chaotic, swirling vortex of distorted perceptions and impossible geometry. The air crackled with an unseen energy, a palpable sense of everything being rewritten. The Bulk had us.

It was a full-on sensory assault. It wasn’t just the distorted visuals, the swirling nebulae that defied Euclidean geometry, or the phantom sensations of acceleration and deceleration. It was the plain, simple wrongness of it all, the fundamental violation of every physical condition I’d ever known. My stomach churned from a deep, primal unease.

Florence, her face pale and drawn, gripped the armrests of her seat, her knuckles white. “ADA,” she managed, her voice strained, “how long… how long until we’re through?”

ADA, now a shimmering, translucent figure, flickered. “Temporal metrics are unreliable within the Bulk. Subjective time dilation is significant. For you, the passage may feel like minutes, hours, or even days. Objectively, we are traversing a compressed spatial manifold. The duration is… variable. The entropic field is unusually turbulent.”

“Turbulent?” I echoed, my voice a dry rasp. “What does that mean? Come to that, what the hell is an entropic field?”

ADA’s expression, a subtle blend of concern and detached observation, deepened. “The folding process, as I mentioned, is inherently unstable. The universe, in its decay, resists such manipulations. The entropic gradient, the measure of disorder, fluctuates wildly within the Bulk. These fluctuations currently manifest as localised distortions in the space-time continuum, creating… anomalies.”

As if to support ADA’s explanation, the ship groaned, a deep, unsettling sound. The distorted visuals outside the viewport intensified, swirling into a kaleidoscope picture of colour and myriad shapes. I felt a strange, tingling sensation, a prickling of the skin, as if the very air around me was charged with an unseen energy.

“Anomalies like what?” Florence asked, her voice trembling slightly.

“Temporal anomalies, spatial distortions, causal paradoxes,” ADA replied, its voice devoid of emotion. “The Bulk is a realm of… probabilistic realities. The laws of physics, as you understand them, are merely statistical averages… But here, the probabilities are… skewed. Think of it as a region where the standard deviation of physical constants is abnormally high. We are moving through a region where the value of c, the speed of light, or G, the gravitational constant, might be different than what you are used to. Or possibly where the dimensionality of space is not exactly confined to four.”

I confess, most of this stuff between ADA and Florence was sort of washing over me, lost in a dizzying sense of disorientation. “So, we could encounter… anything?”

“Precisely,” ADA confirmed. “The Bulk is a region of high uncertainty. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, normally confined to the quantum realm, manifests on a macroscopic scale and it multiplies here so that the probability of a measurable position or momentum are destroyed by complication of seven extra dimensions.”

The ship lurched violently, throwing us against our harnesses. The distorted visuals outside the viewport intensified, coalescing into a swirling vortex of iridescent light. The noise was becoming difficult, like having my head stuck inside a box full of screeching murder victims.

“What was that?” I demanded, my heart pounding in my chest.

“Localised spatial distortion,” ADA replied. “A minor tear in the fabric of space-time. We have passed through it. The ship’s structural integrity is… compromised, but within acceptable parameters.”

“Acceptable parameters?” Florence repeated, her voice laced with incredulity. “Acceptable for what? Being torn apart?”

ADA’s avatar tilted its head. “Survival is a probabilistic outcome within the Bulk. The ship’s systems are designed to withstand significant stress, but the unpredictable nature of the environment introduces a degree of… risk.”

Then a tingling sensation started all over my body. It intensified, becoming more a burning sensation, as if my skin was being exposed to intense heat. But it wasn’t hot. The air grew thick and heavy, making it difficult to breathe. Except there was plenty of air. The distorted visuals outside the viewport shifted again, coalescing into a series of impossible geometries, shapes that seemed to go against all logic and reason. I felt an unpleasant vertigo, a dizzying disorientation, as if I was being pulled in multiple directions at once.

“ADA,” I said, well, croaked, my voice strained, “I’m feeling… strange.”

“Subjective sensory distortions are to be expected within the Bulk,” ADA replied, clearly bored now. “Your hopelessly inadequate biological systems are attempting to process information that is fundamentally incompatible with their design. Your neural pathways are being bombarded with conflicting sensory data, leading to… cognitive dissonance. Your brain is attempting to create a coherent narrative, but the input is too chaotic. This is likely due to the extreme gravitational time dilation and spatial distortions. The metric tensor that describes the geometry of spacetime is, at the moment, highly variable.”

“What can we do?” Florence asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“Maintain composure,” ADA advised, as if giving a public service announcement in a bus station. “Focus on your breathing. Attempt to anchor yourselves in the present moment. The distortions are temporary. We will soon exit the Bulk.”

The ship shuddered again, a violent tremor that shook the entire vessel. The distorted visuals outside the viewport intensified, coalescing into a blinding flash of white light. Then, just as suddenly, it was gone. The ship’s hum returned to a steady, reassuring almost inaudible drone. The air cleared, and the tingling sensation subsided. The distorted visuals outside the viewport resolved into the familiar starfield of conventional space.