clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

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