Since the incident, it seemed like everybody's abilities were back to their usual levels, as unpredictable as those might be. I am so sorry to hear that you are not feeling better @Bella!

I have been able to find the quiet times and places to commune with my other four selves in the neighbor universes. I've been thinking of them like that lately--like if you lived in a big apartment building and you had neighbors on four sides (totally possible) Well those are like the almost-the-same realities that my me's and I all live in. So we find a place that's "close enough" and we "kick it."

But about that.... Why only 5 of us? I made a model of 5 universes out of peas and toothpicks, but what about nine? Or 20? Do they all need to be equally spaced from each other? That's where my non-Euclidean sculpture class has been coming in handy.

But so sorry @Bella. Have you tried not eating gluten?

The bell rings no more. And we all appear to be safe and sound on campus once again.

Things didn't start off so great. Even though @Luna, @Bella, and myself were turned completely invisible (except for the jelly), it didn't matter to the black robes in the building. They saw right through it. But when they saw who we were, they began to treat us special. They asked if we wanted water or a cup of coffee, and were really eager to show us around. There were lines and lines of black robes, altars and rituals and rites in shadowy rooms. There was a room of black robes with their hoods pulled back, sneezing out of their hideous trunks and wiping goo out of their enormous, drippy eyes.

They brought us to a darkened room that smelled like a library, and in the half light you could see a wooden throne, like a judge's bench. They said we needed to wait for the Magister. @Bella thought they said "manager" so we laughed about that, and then we noticed the open door.

We went out and up and suddenly we were in the bell tower.

@Crystal Rosethorn's condition hadn't gotten any better. She was orbiting the bell -- speedwalking at close to the speed of sound. She was becoming a blur. The psychostatic gravity well of the bell was pulling her over the event horizon.

Immediately, we sprung into action. Forming a human chain, with @Luna as the base, we were able reach out and pull her back to land.

And then the bell imploded.

It's pretty fuzzy what happened next, but we were in the clearing in the woods. Nothing but the owls or the mourning doves in the setting sun. And all four of us there safe.

My ears are still ringing, but things do feel better now.

The line for brunch was totally backed up, but now we've got you a croissant and are working on turning it invisible, @Crystal Rosethorn. So far we've got the croissant itself to disappear, but not the jelly. Oh and we're invisible too but @Bella had jelly on her fingers and then she straightened me and @Luna's robes and got the jelly All over us, so we're invisible too except for the jelly.

But we can't wait anymore--we are headed in right now for you @Crystal Rosethorn. Hang on!

I think the Tower could be wearing a hole in reality @Crystal Rosethorn, and you're rapidly speeding up inside its temporal gravity well! It's only been 24 hours and you've already gathered three whole days of info. That's.... huge.

Maybe we can use that to our advantage. If you can keep up your hyper-dimensional speed, maybe you can get in and out without any of those creepy black robes noticing?

I've run a number of simulations with my own dolls and tower, and the only thing I've been able to come up with is this: The black robes enter and they exchange handfuls of spare change (or jewels or rocks) for something of great value. But as they exit I can't see what it is (though sometimes they have dribbles on the front of their robes).

I can't find a safe way in for all of us. Your hyper speed may be our only hope! Bring a handful of bottle caps or pebbles and get in there and see what they're all so interested in! Maybe you could shadow @Chrissy McMuffin.

Good luck, @Crystal Rosethorn. I'm getting all teary eyed thinking of you and your... condition. If you're not able to reverse it, you may just keep moving faster and faster till you spin right out of this dimension and into a higher reality! And we hardly got to know each other. Sniff.

The Tower is definitely interrupting our powers, @Crystal Rosethorn, but it's not effecting everybody. Only you, me, @Bella, and @Luna are being disrupted. And @Chrissy McMuffin's hair. I don't think we can trust her hair.

So what is it about the four of us that makes us special? You and @Luna talk to ghosts. @Bella warps reality. I talk to my other selves in five adjacent dimensions. Don't you see? We're all sensitive to the walls of this reality. We see through it, or bend it. We know it's there like the edges of a soap bubble. We can see that we're inside it and we can put our hands right up to it and see the other side.

Except now we can't because that Tower is messing it up. I think it's time we see what's up in that Tower, huh? We borrow some black robes from the gym and walk right in. How about that? Who's with me?

We can do a practice run with my dolls first. I've got a vintage Barbie's Unsettling Tower (from the classic Barbie's Tarot Playset series) that will be perfect, and plenty of black robes from the G.I. Joe "Assault on the Monastery" kit. We can plan everything out ahead of time, so we'll be ready for any eventuality!

My cross-dimensional visitations were interrupted again by that darn bonging bell. I'm sure it's what's interfering with my resonance connection with my four other me's.

So I followed the sound into the woods and there it was, just like @Chrissy McMuffin said - a tall tower, on the old and creepy side, with vines and masonry and a pointy roof and open windows at the top.BI could hear the bell quite clearly bonging out the windows.

I would have walked right up to it if it didn't seem so sinister... partially because it shorts out psychic powers, but also because of the line of black robes figures walking around it, a single file line that snaked out of the woods and into the front door of the thing.

Just as the ringing of the bell was really starting to get on my nerves, the whole thing just up and vanished. Blinked away! Nothing left but the clearing.

I turned to leave my little hiding place but what did I find hidden up in a tree but a little nest of paper cranes, just like @Alice claims to make. Could she have something to do with this? I do wish I could get to the bottom of it and my powers could become reliable again. I so miss my other me's.

Thank goodness it's not migraines, @Luna. I understand those are terrible. But when I try to get in contact with my other four selves in their adjacent four parallel dimensions and I can't, I hear this bell ringing in the distance. Not like a door bell or a school bell, but like a church bell. Bong... bong... It's really faint but the last couple of times I've been shorted out I know I heard it. It's distracting now. I feel like it grounds me out and I can't concentrate.

Today, thankfully, I was able to connect. It was by the outdoor pool. The others all went to their outdoor pools, and we sat on deck chairs together in our different dimensions. There was nobody in the pool and the ripples and the five pointed star in the water were big. It was so nice to see everybody, but they're worried about me. Because there isn't an annoying distracting faint church bell in the woods in their dimensions. Oooooo - it gives me shivers just thinking about it.

I have been noticing the very same thing, @Luna. I arranged to meet myselves at one of our usual spots yesterday and nothing happened. I stared at the fountain for an hour. But a couple of days ago we met up at a coffee shop and it worked just fine (and the ripples made a little five pointed star in my latte). I never had this trouble before. I thought it was just me.

When I was little my dad made a dollhouse so big it took up the whole house. He built it just for my dolls, but then we couldn't afford to live anywhere else so we had to move in with them. Things got so cramped! That's when I made friends with the other four of me living in the parallel dimensions.

Today is one of those days when the other four of me I know in different parallel dimensions all get together at the same relative place in our respective dimensions. We're all from planes that are almost exactly alike so it makes a kind of harmonic frequency when we all do something outside of our usual routines simultaneously. It's like leverage. Kind of making the whole boat lean against itself just a little.

Today we're all hanging out by the fountain. You can tell what we're doing because the water gets this ripple that looks like a five pointed star. It's a beautiful day!