It was only so long before coexisting dimensions began to bleed together. Inevitable that they would weep their sorrows and guffaw their joys into one another. And it was, of course, equally natural that despite all evidence against it, humans would assume this to be a unique ability they had developed. A sixth sense.

Shadow Sensing was coined and sensationalised by a television psychic who claimed she could view versions of herself in alternate realities, catch glimpses through to other worlds, through the actions of her shadows. She professed she was gifted, the church cried demonic, and skeptics - delusional. That was until others proclaimed they were experiencing a similar sense, a feeling of knowing, often beginning with deja vu and developing into visions and tactile experiences. News headlines broke out in bold and scientists homed in to debunk.

Though it soon became apparent that it could not in fact be debunked. Studies found continuity and reliability in visions of other worlds. They found absence of any other indications of mental illness in those experiencing Shadow Sensing, and soon they found evidence of shadows that moved independently of their source.

Shadow Sensing spread. Thousands, millions, billions of people started to make claims and science began working on explanations. Explanations that I am sure made perfect sense to them, but very little to the layman. The layman just said “Well shit, Psychic Sue was onto something.”

And again, people did what people do and assumed that all of this meant something. That this unique ability was a gift of god or some other higher power. An act of fate. Something that just had to be harnessed for some kind of good. Because, often, visions of other planes were apocalyptic terrors, filled with bombed buildings, wild fires, chemical leaks, invasions of privacy, land, bodies. Except, despite the distance these realities may once have had from one another, they were not at all different from the one another. Destruction and dystopia were everywhere.

Humans may have “developed” the sixth sense of shadow sensing, but what would have been much more useful was if they had developed some common sense.