In my defense, I never thought I'd find anything real. That's the thing about being a conspiracy theorist, you don't actually want to be right. Being right means the world is much worse than most people think. Being right means you're fucked.

  I got into the scene back in 2003 after I lost my IT job when the company outsourced everything to Mumbai. I had time on my hands and a growing suspicion that the system was rigged. Turns out I was right about that part, just not in the way I thought.

  Started with the usual stuff, chemtrails, fluoride mind control, false flag operations. Got deeper into it. Started attending meetups in VFW halls and the back rooms of Chinese restaurants where dudes with questionable personal hygiene would share "classified intel" about alien-human hybrid programs. You know the type: guys who've never been within fifty miles of Langley but somehow have detailed floor plans of CIA black sites.

  Most of these groups would fall apart within months. Someone would accuse someone else of being a government plant, there'd be a schism, and suddenly you've got two smaller, angrier groups instead of one medium-sized one.

  But there was this one group that kept going. Called themselves "The Peering Eye." Pretentious as shit, I know. They met in this old bomb shelter beneath a defunct mini-golf course in northern Pennsylvania. The kind of place where the office still had wood paneling and cigarette burns on the desk.

  Their leader was this guy Terrence. Retired high school science teacher with a ponytail and those glasses that turn dark in the sunlight but never quite turn clear again indoors. Always wore the same army surplus jacket with too many pockets. Said he'd been "gathering evidence" for thirty years about what he called "the manipulation project."

  Most of his theories were the standard garbage, reptilians infiltrating world governments, HAARP controlling the weather, interdimensional beings feeding on negative emotions. But he had this one idea that was different. He talked about portals, doorways.

  "The government's been working on dimensional portals since the Philadelphia Experiment," he told me one night after most of the others had left. "They're trying to create passages to places where the laws of physics don't apply. Places where death isn't permanent."

  I nodded and tried to look impressed, which is what you do when the crazy guy who controls access to the bomb shelter is talking. But then he said something that actually caught my attention.

  "I found one," he whispered, leaning in close enough that I could smell the beef jerky on his breath. "A prototype. Left over from a project they abandoned in the nineties."

  "Where?" I asked, more to be polite than out of any real interest.

  "My basement."

  Now, when a normal person says they have a dimensional portal in their basement, you make an excuse and leave. When a conspiracy theorist says it, you assume they've relabeled their water heater. But when the head of your conspiracy group says it with absolute conviction while staring directly into your eyes without blinking, you get curious.

  "Can I see it?" I asked.

  He studied me for a long moment. "You're ready," he finally said. "But you'll need to bring something."

  "What's that?"

  "Something dead."

  Terrence lived in one of those neighborhoods where all the houses look like they're waiting for someone to come home who never will. Faded aluminum siding, chain-link fences, cars on blocks in the driveways. His place was at the end of a cul-de-sac, backing up to a stretch of woods that had somehow survived suburban expansion.

  I brought a dead crow I'd found on the roadside that morning. Wrapped it in a plastic shopping bag from Walmart. Felt like an idiot carrying a dead bird to a crazy man's house, but by that point, I was committed to the bit.

  "Perfect," Terrence said when I showed him. He was wearing rubber gloves and what looked like a butcher's apron over his usual outfit. "Follow me."

  His basement wasn't what I expected. I'd pictured the stereotypical conspiracy theorist's lair - walls covered in newspaper clippings connected by red string, manifestos taped to every surface. Instead, it was clean, well-lit, and empty except for a large object in the center of the concrete floor.

  The doorway didn't look impressive. It was about seven feet tall, four feet wide, made of what appeared to be standard aluminum framing. But inside the frame was... nothing. Not empty space, not darkness. Nothing. Looking at it hurt my eyes, like they couldn't quite focus on the absence of everything.

  Around the frame, there were components that seemed both electronic and organic. Circuitry melded with what looked disturbingly like veins. Pumps that resembled hearts pulsing rhythmically. The whole thing hummed at a frequency that made my molars ache.

  "What the fuck is that?" I asked, taking an involuntary step backward.

  "Project THRESHOLD, the RESURRECTION PORTAL," Terrence said proudly. "I acquired it when they were decommissioning the facility in 1999. Cost me my marriage, my pension, and most of my sanity, but worth every penny."

  "What does it do?"

  "It returns what's been taken." He held out his hand for the crow. "Watch."

  He approached the doorway, the dead bird held out in front of him. As he got closer, the humming intensified. The flesh around the frame grew to fill the center, it was like watching an embryo develop nine months in seconds. Then Terrence pushed the crow through the small opening which strangely resembled a vagina.

  Nothing happened for about thirty seconds. Then the embryo... pulsed in waves as if gestation was almost complete and something was about to crawl out of the hole. There's no better word for it. And then, with a sound something wet plopping, something fell through.

  It was the crow. But not just the crow. There were two of them now, identical down to the broken feathers on the left wing. Both alive, both took a few seconds to stand and then looked around in confusion. But when they spotted each other, they didn't react like normal birds seeing a rival. They moved in perfect synchronization, like reflections.

  "Holy shit," I whispered.

  "The cost of resurrection," Terrence said solemnly. "Nothing comes back alone."

  One of the crows suddenly attacked the other, pecking viciously at its duplicate's eyes. The second crow didn't fight back. It just stood there, allowing itself to be mutilated, making no sound even as blood spattered across the concrete.

  Terrence seemed unconcerned. "The original usually destroys the copy. Or sometimes the copy destroys the original. Either way, balance is maintained."

  "How do you know which is which?" I asked, unable to look away from the gruesome scene.

  "That's the thing, you don't. They're identical in every physical way. But behaviorally..." He shrugged. "The copy seems to know it's a copy. And it either accepts that reality or rebels against it."

  The aggressive crow had finished its work. The other lay dead on the floor, one eye socket empty, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle. The survivor hopped around the corpse in a circle, as if performing some bizarre victory ritual.

  "Why is this in your basement?" I finally asked. "Why aren't you famous? Or rich? Or locked up in a government black site?"

  Terrence laughed, a dry sound like pages being turned in an old book. "Because it only works for me. They engineered it that way, like DNA-locked. I was part of the research team before they shut it down. I'm the only one who can activate it." He paused. "Well, me and my blood relatives. Safety protocol."

  Something in his tone made me uncomfortable. "Why are you showing me this?"

  "Because I'm dying," he said simply. "Cancer. Terminal. Three months at best."

  "I'm... sorry."

  "Don't be. I've made arrangements." He gestured to the Resurrection Portal. "When I go, I want you to put me through. I've left instructions. My daughter will help you."

  "Your daughter?" I hadn't pegged him as a family man.

  "Emily. She's been avoiding me for years. Can't blame her. But she'll come when I'm gone. She's the only other person who can operate the Resurrection Portal."

  I stared at the humming contraption, at the dead crow and its triumphant duplicate. "What happens if you go through? Won't there just be two dead Terrences?"

  His eyes gleamed with an unsettling light. "That's what they thought too. But there's a difference with humans. We have souls. Consciousness. The Resurrection Portal doesn't just duplicate the body, it splits the consciousness too. Two versions of the same person, sharing memories but with different... imperatives."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "It means," Terrence said, picking up the surviving crow and stroking its head with one finger, "that one of me will come back with something extra. Something from the other side."

  Terrence died six weeks later. I found him slumped over his kitchen table, a half-finished cup of tea gone cold beside him. There was an envelope with my name on it propped against the sugar bowl.

  Inside was a key, a series of instructions written in shaky handwriting, and a phone number labeled "Emily."

  I called the number.

  "He's dead?" she asked after I introduced myself. No greeting, no surprise in her voice.

  "Yes. Found him this morning."

  A long silence. "Did he tell you about the Resurrection Portal?"

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  My skin prickled. "Yes."

  "Don't use it," she said sharply. "Whatever he told you, whatever he promised you, don't do it. Cremate him and scatter the ashes somewhere far away from that thing."

  "He left instructions—"

  "Of course he did." Her voice was bitter. "Let me guess. Put his body through, wait for him to come back, one version will try to destroy the other, and whichever survives will have 'knowledge from beyond.' Right?"

  "Something like that."

  "Do you know what happened to my mother?"

  I thought of what Terrence had said about the portal costing him his marriage. "No."

  "He put her through." Emily's voice cracked slightly. "After she died in the car accident. I was thirteen. He promised me he'd bring her back."

  My mouth went dry. "What happened?"

  "Two of her came back. They seemed fine at first. Identical. Both knew everything about our lives, both acted like my mom. Then on the third day, they tried to kill each other. One of them almost succeeded, slashed the other one's throat with a kitchen knife."

  "Jesus."

  "Dad managed to save the injured one. The attacker ran away, disappeared. We never saw her again." She paused. "The one who survived... she wasn't my mother anymore. She looked like her, had all her memories, but something was different. Something fundamental was just... wrong."

  "What did she do?"

  "Nothing dramatic. She didn't sprout tentacles or speak in tongues. She just... watched us. All the time. Like she was studying us. She'd forget to blink for minutes at a time. She'd stand in my doorway at night, just staring. When she thought we weren't looking, she'd taste things that weren't food, dirt, soap, blood."

  I glanced nervously at Terrence's body. "What happened to her?"

  "She left eventually. Said she'd 'learned enough.' That was twelve years ago." Another pause. "Last year I saw her on the news. She's some tech CEO now, running a company that makes neural interfaces. She doesn't go by my mother's name anymore, but it's her. Still doesn't blink enough."

  I looked down at Terrence's instructions. The first line read: PUT ME THROUGH IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT EMBALM.

  "I don't think I can cremate him without some kind of authorization," I said. "He named me as his executor, but—"

  "Then lock his body up somewhere," she interrupted. "A storage unit, a freezer, I don't care. Just keep it away from that portal. I'm flying in tomorrow. I'll deal with everything then."

  "What about the Resurrection Portal itself?"

  "I'm going to destroy it." Her voice was flat. "It should have been destroyed twenty years ago."

  I didn't follow Emily's instructions. Or Terrence's, for that matter. I'm not proud of that decision, but curiosity is a powerful force. I wanted to see what would happen.

  After I hung up with Emily, I dragged Terrence's body down to the basement. It was heavier than I expected, and I had to stop twice to catch my breath. The whole time, the organic portal hummed, the flesh surrounding it began to transform into embryo faster and faster as I got closer, like it could sense what was coming.

  I propped Terrence's body up in front of the hole resembling weird vagina and checked his instructions again. There was a panel on the side of the frame with what looked like a small metal basin. The note said to put blood there, Terrence's blood, to activate the portal.

  I hesitated, knife in hand. This was the point of no return. I could still call Emily back, tell her I'd locked the house and left. Wait for her to arrive and let her handle it.

  Instead, I cut Terrence's palm and let the blood drip into the basin.

  The organic portal's humming rose to a wail. The growing embryo begun to secret some kind of strange fluid as the hole expanded to the taken in Terrence's body.

  I pushed dead Terrence's through.

  Nothing happened for about thirty minutes. I was starting to think I'd done something wrong when the embryo the size of adult convulsed violently. The room temperature dropped so quickly my breath clouded in front of me. The lights flickered, went out, then came back on.

  Two Terrences slipped out of the hole, still wrapped in placenta, they ripped it apart like animals, and stood staring at each others in unison.

  They were identical, same skin, same posture, same expression. Both very much alive. They looked at each other, then at me.

  "It worked," they said simultaneously, in exactly the same tone.

  "Terrence?" I managed.

  "Yes," they both answered.

  "Both of you?"

  They nodded in unison. "For now."

  I swallowed hard. "What happens now? Emily said... she said you'd try to kill each other."

  The Terrences smiled, the same smile, at the exact same moment. "That's the usual outcome," said the one on the left.

  "But we've found a better solution," continued the one on the right.

  "What's that?" I asked, taking an involuntary step backward.

  "We need a tiebreaker," they said together. Then they both looked at me with identical expressions of clinical interest.

  I ran. Made it halfway up the basement stairs before something hit me from behind with surprising force. I tumbled down, cracking my head on the concrete floor. The last thing I saw before losing consciousness was the two Terrences standing over me, still moving in perfect synchronization.

  I woke up strapped to a table in the basement. Both Terrences were working on the Resurrection Portal, modifying it with tools I didn't recognize. They moved like dancers who had rehearsed the same routine for years, never getting in each other's way, handing tools back and forth without needing to ask.

  "What are you doing?" My voice was hoarse.

  They both turned to look at me. "Adjusting the parameters," said the left Terrence.

  "The Resurrection Portal wasn't designed for what we need," said the right one.

  "Which is what, exactly?"

  "A merger," they said together. "Rather than one destroying the other, we're going to combine."

  "Is that... possible?"

  "Theoretically," said the left Terrence. "But we need an anchor. Something to stabilize the process."

  The right Terrence smiled thinly. "That's where you come in."

  I struggled against my restraints. "Listen, Emily's coming tomorrow. She knows about the portal. If I disappear, she'll know what happened."

  "Emily is precisely why we need to hurry," said the left Terrence. "She doesn't understand the potential here."

  "What potential?"

  The Terrences exchanged a look. "When you go enter the portal," said the right one, "you glimpse what's on the other side."

  "There are beings there," continued the left. "Vast intelligences that exist between dimensions. They taught us how to modify the Resurrection Portal."

  "For what purpose?"

  "To bring them through," they said together.

  I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the basement's temperature. "Why would you want to do that?"

  "Because they promised us knowledge," said the right Terrence. "The secrets of reality itself."

  "And all they need is a way in," added the left.

  I looked at the portal, now modified with additional components that seemed even more biological than before.

  "You're going to put me through," I said, understanding finally dawning.

  "Yes," they confirmed.

  "And when two of me come back?"

  "We'll merge with both versions of you," said the left Terrence. "Four consciousnesses combined into one vessel. With the extra dimensional beings riding along."

  "That's insane," I whispered.

  "That's evolution," they corrected.

  They were nearly finished with the modifications when we heard the front door open upstairs. Footsteps crossed the ceiling above us. Then a woman's voice called out: "Dad?"

  Emily had arrived early.

  The Terrences froze, then looked at each other in alarm. "Not yet," muttered the right one. "We're not ready."

  "We need more time," agreed the left.

  The footsteps moved toward the basement door. "Dad? Are you down there?"

  I opened my mouth to shout a warning, but the right Terrence slapped a hand over it. "Don't," he hissed.

  The basement door opened. Light spilled down the stairs. "Dad?" Emily's voice was closer now, concerned.

  The Terrences moved simultaneously, both heading for the stairs. But they'd forgotten something crucial, they were mirror images of each other, down to the mole on their face and the way they moved. The moment Emily saw them both, she'd know.

  I managed to twist my head free from Terrence's grip. "Emily!" I shouted. "Run! There are two of them!"

  A pause, then the sound of running footsteps, not away, but down the stairs. Emily appeared at the bottom, a woman in her thirties with her father's eyes and a determined set to her jaw. In her hand was a small blowtorch, the kind used for crème br?lée.

  The Terrences moved toward her in perfect sync. "Emily," they said together, reaching for her with identical gestures. "We can explain."

  She ignored them, eyes fixed on the portal. Without hesitation, she strode toward it, blowtorch ignited.

  "No!" the Terrences cried, lunging for her.

  Emily reached the Resurrection Portal first. She applied the blowtorch not to the frame or the electronics, but to one of the organic components, a pulsating, vein-covered mass that resembled a heart. It caught fire immediately, burning with an unnatural blue flame.

  The effect was instantaneous. The organic portal emitted a high-pitched wail that made my teeth vibrate. The embryo within the frame began to churn violently. The Terrences dropped to their knees, clutching their heads and screaming in perfect unison.

  Emily kept burning, moving methodically around the frame, targeting each organic component. The basement filled with acrid smoke and the smell of burning meat. Through streaming eyes, I saw the portal beginning to collapse in on itself, the frame twisting like melting plastic. The Terrences were still screaming, their voices rising in pitch until they didn't sound human anymore. Blood began pouring from their eyes, their ears, their mouths, almost black, with flecks of purple that caught the light like glitter.

  Emily finally reached me, cutting through my restraints with a pocket knife. "We need to get out of here," she shouted over the wailing. "Now!"

  I didn't argue. We ran for the stairs, the inhuman screaming of the Terrences following us. Behind us, the portal was imploding, the nothingness within it expanding outward even as the frame collapsed inward, an impossible geometry that hurt to look at.

  We made it to the front yard before the ground shook beneath us. The house seemed to fold in on itself for a moment like paper before snapping back to normal dimensions with a thunderclap that shattered windows up and down the street.

  Then silence. Complete and absolute.

  Emily helped me to my feet. We stood there, staring at the house, which looked perfectly ordinary now. No smoke, no damage, just a shabby suburban home at the end of a cul-de-sac.

  "Is it over?" I asked.

  "For now," she replied, her voice hollow. "But there are others."

  "Other Resurrection Portal?"

  "Similar," She nodded. "Different designs, different purposes, but all doing the same basic thing, punching holes between here and somewhere else. Letting things through that shouldn't be here."

  "How do you know?"

  Emily's gaze remained fixed on the house. "Because my mother built eleven of them before she disappeared. And my father helped her."

  She turned to me finally. "Do you understand what you saw in there? What almost happened?"

  I thought about the Terrences moving in perfect unison. About the beings they said existed between dimensions. About four consciousnesses merging into one vessel, with something else riding along.

  "I think so," I said slowly. "They're trying to get in. Whatever's on the other side, they're looking for ways through."

  "Not trying," Emily corrected. "Succeeding. Little by little, hole by hole." She looked back at the house. "And we're helping them do it."

  We stood in silence for a long moment, considering the implications. Then Emily straightened her shoulders and turned away from the house.

  "Come on," she said. "We need to find the others."

  "Others?"

  "Doorways. Portals. Interfaces. Whatever you want to call them." Her face was grim. "Before what's on the other side finds a way through that we can't close."

  We left in her rental car, never looking back at the house. I sometimes wonder what happened to the Terrences. Whether they survived the portal's destruction. Whether they're still in that basement, still screaming in harmony, still bleeding that glittering purple-black blood.

  But mostly, I wonder about what they glimpsed on the other side. What vast intelligences exist between dimensions. What knowledge they promised. And what they really wanted in return.

  Because the thing about conspiracy theories is, sometimes you turn out to be right. And that's when you realize being right is the worst thing that could possibly happen.