You may have heard that our universe has 4 dimensions. 3 spatial dimensions, and then time.

This was the working theory until recently.

It's now understood that, whilst time is one of the 5 dimensions, there are 4 spatial dimensions. Only 3 are truly comprehended.

I work at a company called Visiones, we're a science & research company, We're privately funded, and generally tackle things that humanity doesn't yet have a full understanding of. Our aim has always been to bridge those larger gaps in our knowledge.

I work in the Outreach/Public Monitoring department. Some of what we do involve members of the general public, who don't quite know they work for us. But my exact field isn't important context, and even being that specific is a little risky. I don't want this tracked back to me if my superiors find this.

As far as I'm aware, very little information about our company is kept from me. From my understanding of where I stand here, I'm allowed to know about everything we do. So, to the best of my knowledge, what I'm about to tell you is the exact same as anybody else in Visiones knows (minus some of the more exact science, that's not my field).

This started about 7 months ago. We were working on ways to exceed the zoom level of Electron Microscopes, and the team managed to get something working. They were able to achieve a zoom level of ~200 Million, roughly double what was previously possible. We thought this would help some of the other projects we have going on, but instead, something strange was discovered. Tiny particles, previously unknown to science, that were seeming to grow and shrink in and out of existence. No energy transfer - It seemed as though these little things were breaking the laws of physics, and creating energy from nothing, and destroying energy to become non-existent.

Due to the unknown origins of this particle, we refer to it internally as the Null Particle.

The first hypothesis was that as one particle "dies", another is made. It would explain where the energy is going/coming from. But this theory was quickly tossed aside in favour of another: The idea that our world might just exist on more spatial dimensions than we realised.

This sounds like an extreme jump to a conclusion, but all other possibilities were, well, impossible. I'm a fan of the Sherlock novels, so to quote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Think of it this way: If you were a 2d person, living in a 3d world, your entire perception is just a 2-dimensional cross-section of what's really out there. If a sphere were to roll through this cross-section, you wouldn't see the sphere as a whole, you'd see slices of it as it moves through. From your perspective, there's a 2d circle, that slowly grows from nothing, and then slowly shrinks to nothing once again.

I hope I haven't lost any of you with that.

But that explanation almost perfectly translates to 3d-4d. A 4-dimensional shape passing through our 3d cross-section that we perceive, would look like a 3-dimensional shape growing and shrinking, or more likely even morphing and contorting.

The next thing I knew, Visiones were working on ways to view into or move through this newly discovered spatial dimension, using Null Particles.

Most of our funding has been going into this for a while now, and it seemed to pay off last month. We had developed something that can push things on this fourth axis. It looks as simple as a round metallic platform. It doesn't appear to move from our perspective, because it isn't pushing objects in a direction we can perceive as humans.

Last month was the first successful test. The platform was able to push a wooden chair through. It appeared to slowly lose features - The back, the base, the back 2 legs, and finally the front 2 legs. This is exactly how we had expected it to look visually. But the amazing part was that the chair didn't come back. We had successfully proven that this chair had gone somewhere beyond our vision.

We tried to pull the chair back, but it was unsuccessful. It seems the chair didn't stay on the platform as it moved through the fourth axis. It had moved through multiple axes at once. Think moving diagonally, but on 4 dimensions at once rather than 2 or 3. A later model corrected this fault.

A week ago was the first test on the corrected model. This time we sent through a camera, with a live video feed. What we saw is almost beyond description, and petrified every one of us in that room to our core. None of us wants the company to continue with this project, but we all know something has to be done.

You see, everything outside of our 3d field of vision, we call Beyond Perception. We call it that for obvious reasons - We all exist on this single 3d cross-section, anything past that has been beyond our perception since the dawn of everything. So Beyond Perception has become what we call everything that lay along this fourth axis of our universe.

We pushed the camera in slowly. We have to be careful objects are pushed and not rotated along - Rotating causes insides/outsides to behave in extremely hard-to-predict ways. Essentially, anything inside the object can quickly spill out, as only the outside moves along through into Beyond Perception, leaving the insides here. This would, of course, break the camera, so we had to be very gentle.

The first thing we noticed on the screen were holes beginning to develop in the floor. Walls morphing, and objects seeming to shrink. This is all expected; If nothing changed, we'd actually be more concerned, as it would mean our world stretches to infinity. What we're seeing in this change is exactly what I spoke about earlier - A sphere moving through a 2d cross-section, except now, the cross-section is moving through the sphere instead.

What we were not expecting is sentient life.

As the world morphed on the screen, and we watched our own skin seem to disappear into nothing, something was growing. The cross-section was moving over objects that don't intersect with where we exist at all.

Except this wasn't an object.

As the creature grew to full size, we stopped the machine pushing the camera. We got a good look at this thing. It was grey and tall. Very tall. It was almost humanoid, but the proportions were off. It didn't seem to have eyes at first, and it seemed to only have 1 arm, but 2 legs.

That's when an arm appeared to grow out of it. We checked; The machine was definitely off. This could only mean one thing... These creatures were able to move and look across the fourth axis. Something that humans and no known animal can do. But then, to confirm our suspicions, the head grew ever-so-slightly, as eyes began to form on its face. This is the equivalent of a 4d object turning to face us.

We stood staring at the screen, nobody saying a word. The creature vanished, and reappeared closer to the camera. This meant it had used the fourth axis to hide from us as it moved. Whether this makes the creature intelligent, or was just a fluke in its walking pattern, we don't know. But we do know that it knew something was off, as the next thing it did was pick up the camera.

This must've caused the camera to rotate slightly on the fourth axis, as we immediately lost visual.

We've not broken any new research or discovered more in the past week.

We don't know how long these things have lived alongside us on Earth. But we know they can always see us. Like us, watching 2d characters on a TV. They can always see into our 3d space, but we can't see out of it.

Our contact wasn't long enough to know how malicious they are, but we don't really want to find out. Lots of people around the office are saying that this could explain how people disappear without a trace. Of course, that's just speculation, but what they're saying has a lot of truth to it. Any of these creatures could grab anyone at any moment, and pull them through into Beyond Perception. There is nothing stopping them.

Nobody on the team has gone missing, so there's that. It's about the only thing giving me any emotion besides dread right now - Knowing that they aren't actively coming for us. At least not yet.

We want to send a human through to make first contact, but we can't imagine anyone would be willing. Plus, if anyone accidentally rotated instead of simply being pushed through, it would basically mean all of their organs would spill out of them, as their insides & outsides swap places.

Earth is so much bigger than we thought it was, in a direction that wasn't even thought to exist a year ago.

But they've known forever, they've been living it forever.

Who is to even say that humans are the dominant species? We only know what's happening here, in our cross-section.

For now, we can only hope that they don't choose to come from Beyond Perception.