clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

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