clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

four
The sphere of my vision now began to widen. Next I could distinctly perceive
the walls of the house. At first they seemed very dark and opaque, but soon
became brighter, and then transparent: and presently I could see the walls of
the adjoining dwelling. These also immediately became light, and vanished—
melting like clouds before my advancing vision. I could now see the objects,
the furniture, and persons, in the adjoining house as easily as those in the room
where I was situated. . . . But my perception still flowed on! The broad surface
of the earth, for many hundred miles, before the sweep of my vision—describing
nearly a semicircle—became transparent as the purest water; and I saw the
brains, the viscera, and the complete anatomy of animals that were at the
moment sleeping or prowling about in the forests of the Eastern Hemisphere,
hundreds and even thousands of miles from the room in which I was making
these observations.
—Andrew Jackson Davis, The Magic Staff
Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles^ very sparsely scattered,
rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the
waters we know nothing.
—Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye