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THE DIVINITY OF HIGHER DIMENSIONS 51
retical seeing in hyperspace as "hyperseeing" and points out in his writings that
in hyperspace one can hypersee a 3-D object completely from one viewpoint. He
calls a set of related sculptures with multiple orientations "hypersculpture."
Friedman writes, "The experience of viewing a hypersculpture allows one to see
multiple views from one viewpoint which therefore helps to develop a type of
hyperseeing in our three-dimensional world." See Further Readings for a more
complete description of hypersculpture given by Friedman.
Pinning God
In this chapter, we discussed the possibility of trapping a higher-dimensional
being in our world by stabbing the creature's 3-D cross section using a knife.
Interestingly, this idea of lower-dimensional confinement was the basis for "The
Monster from Nowhere," a fascinating short story by Nelson Bond (see Further
Readings). Burch Patterson, the hero of the adventure, travels to the Peruvian jungles
searching for interesting animals. Suddenly, he and his men encounter a 4-D
beast that appears to them as black blobs hovering in midair, disappearing and
reappearing. Most of his men are attacked and killed. Others are lifted off the
ground by the blobs and disappear into thin air. Patterson later determines that
the pulsating blobs have dragged the men into a higher-dimensional universe.
Patterson yearns to capture the 4-D beast, but wonders how he can trap it.
If he places a net around the beast, it can simply pull itself out of our universe
and the net would fall to the ground empty. Patterson's strategy is to impale the
blob with a spike so that it cannot leave our universe. This would be akin to a
Flatlander's stabbing us and trapping us in the plane of its universe. After many
weeks of studying the creature, Patterson identifies what he thinks is the beast's
foot and drives a large, steel spike right through it. It takes him two years to
ship the writhing, struggling blob back to New Jersey.
When the creature is exhibited to reporters, it struggles so hard that it tears
its own flesh to escape and then proceeds to kill people and abduct Patterson
into the fourth dimension. In the aftermath of the carnage, one of the survivors
decides to burn all evidence of the beast so that no future attempts
would be made to capture such a creature. It would simply be too dangerous.
Mulder: Hey, Scully. Do you believe in the afterlife?
Scully: I'd settle for a life in this one.
—"Shadows," The X-Files