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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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 57<br />
Satan is the ruler over the fallen angels, always struggling against the<br />
Kingdom of God by seducing humans to sin. Satan disrupts God's plan<br />
for salvation and slanders the saints to reduce the number of those chosen<br />
for the Kingdom of God. How might Satan do this from delta below<br />
our 3-D world? If he could occasionally pop up into our world, he would<br />
wreak havoc!"<br />
"Of course, we're only talking about metaphors here. But this would<br />
explain our encounter at Cherbourg. We saw pulsating bags of skin when<br />
a 4-D creature came into our world."<br />
Sally leans forward. "Was that Satan at Cherbourg?"<br />
"That's what we're here to find out. I think it was an Omegamorph.<br />
Lots of mysterious things are going on these days in Cherbourg and<br />
around Washington, D.C. Nothing is certain. I already mentioned that if<br />
we fell <strong>through</strong> Flatland, the Flatlanders would see pulsating, pancakelike<br />
blobs of skin as we intersected their world. When our mouths intersected<br />
Flatland, Flatlanders might get a glimpse of the edge of our<br />
tongues, which would be like bumpy pink shapes to them. When our<br />
heads fell <strong>through</strong>, they'd see the edges of a hairy pancake" (Fig. 3.3).<br />
"What would it look like to be lifted upsilon into the fourth dimension?"<br />
"Sally, think of a 3-D creature pulling on a 2-D square. If the square<br />
were slowly peeled from the 2-D world, part of the square would remain<br />
in the plane for a time. Similarly, if a 4-D creature lifted you from the 3-<br />
D world, your head might disappear while your body remained. And<br />
then you would be entirely lifted from the world."<br />
"One thing is bothering me."<br />
"Just one?"<br />
"I understand that a 4-D being should be able to glimpse into our<br />
guts, see the valves of our heart, and so forth, but what might their eyes<br />
be like? How would their eyes function?"<br />
"Sally, our own retina is essentially a 2-D disc of rods and cones—the<br />
two kinds of nerve cells for vision. By analogy, a 4-D creature would have<br />
a retina that was a sphere of nerve endings."<br />
"How would an Omegamorph see with a spherical retina?"<br />
"When you look at a circle moving in Flatland, your 2-D retina captures<br />
a circular pattern impinging on the nerve cells. Each point in the<br />
circle corresponds to a light ray from the circle to a single point in your<br />
retina. If you are looking from above, each ray goes up to your eye. If a 4-