clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

MIRROR WORLDS 123
Sally puts her head on the right side of you chest. "I hear a strong beat.
Holy mackerel, you've got to be correct. But aren't you going to change
yourself back?"
"No, I want to see what it's like to spend a day as my mirror image.
Imagine the romantic possibilities. Perhaps it alters one's perceptions.
You are quite beautiful now."
Sally snaps her fingers and beckons you to follow. "You sound drunk,
if you don't mind my saying so. Let's change the subject."
Sally's face begins to fade in the bright light. Even on your informal outings,
she wears a stiff-collared suit and sober tie. One of the hardest things to
take about her is the way her slender fingers dance when they are nervous.
"Sally, sorry. It must be the pressure of working long hours." You
pause. "Do you know much about the occult?"
"Nothing, except that you are obsessed with it."
You nod. "A lot of so-called occult phenomena could be explained by
the fourth dimension. Throughout history, some people have believed
that spirits of the dead are nearby and can contact us. Of course, I can't
believe this without proof, but lots of people believe that spirits can make
noises, move objects, send messages—and there have been scientists who
have used 4-D theory in an attempt to prove the existence of spirits and
ghosts. The idea of 4-D beings just a few feet upsilon or delta from us
had great popularity in the nineteenth century. In the seventeenth century,
Cambridge Platonist Henry More suggested that a person's soul is
physically unobservable because it corresponds to some hyperthickness in
a 4-D direction. A dead person loses this hyperthickness. Henry More
didn't use the term 'fourth dimension' but he meant just that."
"You said nineteenth century. What happened then?"
"Johann Carl Friederich Zollner promoted the idea of ghosts from the
fourth dimension. He was an astronomy professor at the University of
Leipzig and worked with the American medium Henry Slade. Zollner
gave Slade a string held together as a loop. The two loose ends were held
together using some sealing wax. Amazingly, Slade seemed to be able to
tie knots in the string. Of course, Slade probably cheated and undid the
wax, but if he could tie knots in the sealed string, it would suggest the
existence of a fourth dimension."
"What makes you say that?"
You hand Sally a string with a piece of wax sealing the two ends (Fig.
5.3). "A 4-D being could move a piece of the string upsilon out of our