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xxiv<br />
introduction<br />
snaps a few photographs of the being using a miniature camera concealed<br />
in the jacket of her prim and proper suit. "How can you remain so calm!"<br />
In front of you is a fleshy ball, the size of a large pumpkin. It bounces<br />
up and down off the ground to a height of about four feet and looks just<br />
like human skin: mostly smooth, fleshy, with an occasional wrinkle and<br />
vein.<br />
You back up a hasty half-step. "Think of it this way. Consider a twodimensional<br />
world resembling a sheet of paper, or the surface of a pond,<br />
with two-dimensional creatures confined to the world and gazing only<br />
along the surface. How would you appear to the inhabitants of such a<br />
world if you tried to interact with them?"<br />
"They would only see a small slice of me?"<br />
"Yes. They would only see cross sections of you as you intersected their<br />
universe. For example, your finger would look like a flat disc that grew in<br />
size as you pushed it through their world. Your five fingers might look<br />
like five separate circles. They would only see irregular shapes with skin<br />
boundaries as you entered their world. Similarly, a hyperbeing who lived<br />
in the fourth dimension would have a cross section in our space that<br />
looked like floating balloons made of skin."<br />
"Some of them don't look like blobs of skin."<br />
"Correct. Imagine how complicated your two-dimensional cross section<br />
would appear at the level of your ear or open mouth, especially if<br />
parts of your skin were translucent like a jellyfish."<br />
The blobs and wormy shapes drift closer to Sally and she raises her gun.<br />
"Don't worry, Sally. The being probably wants to pick you up. A fourdimensional<br />
being would be a God to us. It would see everything in our<br />
world. It could even look inside your stomach and remove your breakfast<br />
without cutting through your skin, just like you could remove a speck inside<br />
a two-dimensional creature by picking the speck up into the third dimension,<br />
perpendicular to the creature, without breaking the skin of the creature."<br />
Sally backs away from the four-dimensional being. "You jerk. I don't<br />
want to hear any more—"<br />
With those words, Sally Skinner disappears into the fourth dimension.<br />
All you can hear is the blowing wind, like the chanting of monks.<br />
And then suddenly, the wind stops. There are no bird sounds. The oak<br />
leaves do not flutter. The blackbirds above you seem to never cry, never<br />
move. They float, with dark wings outstretched and motionless, as if suspended,<br />
forever frozen in space.