clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org
clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org
clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org
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128 <strong>surfing</strong> <strong>through</strong> hyperspace<br />
Would it be this way for the rest of your life? Are you always to live<br />
mostly in your office, smile politely at the custodians, do your work, and<br />
eat sandwiches from Leo's Deli by yourself?<br />
You turn off the lights and stare out the window. Outside there is a<br />
drizzle, and lamps throw broken yellow gleams off puddles. You are hungry,<br />
and find two apples to chew on. It is so dark they remind you of<br />
hyperspheres. Somehow the apples don't taste right when you can hardly<br />
see them.<br />
You sit in the darkened office with only the lights from the streets<br />
reflecting off your shiny desk surface. You feel as if you are in a dream,<br />
sitting in limbo. Is Sally right—is your dream of lifting off into the<br />
fourth dimension unrealistic? Does it matter? What would it prove if you<br />
did? You know you can go on for months, perhaps years, trying to<br />
unravel the fourth dimension without ever fully understanding it.<br />
At first you think it might be a good idea to try an experimental flight<br />
to prove your theories. A flight into the fourth dimension is quite a risk.<br />
How could you dare? Yet some inner compulsion drives you. You need<br />
not "experiment." You decide to take the plunge. Tomorrow would be<br />
the day.<br />
You press a button and Beethoven music pours into the room like<br />
water, water you have looked into, water you have held.<br />
The Science Behind the Science Fiction<br />
The curious inversion of Plattner's right and left sides is proof that he<br />
has moved out of our space into what is called the Fourth Dimension,<br />
and that he has returned again to our world.<br />
—H. G. Wells, "The Planner Story"<br />
That was why Mick had looked funny; he had turned over in hyperspace<br />
and come back as his mirror-image.<br />
—Rudy Rucker, Spacetime Doughnuts<br />
"Could I but rotate my arm out of the limits set to it," one of the Utopians<br />
had said to him, "I could thrust it into a thousand dimensions."<br />
—H. G. Wells, Men Like Gods