Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions — John Shaqi
Flatland: A Romance of Many DimensionsAbbott, Edwin Abbott
Science
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Abbott, Edwin Abbott
Fourth dimension
My resolution was taken. It seemed intolerable that I should endure
existence subject to the arbitrary visitations of a Magician who could
thus play tricks with one’s very stomach. If only I could in any way
manage to pin him against the wall till help came!
Once more I dashed my hardest angle against him, at the same time
alarming the whole household by my cries for aid. I believe, at the
moment of my onset, the Stranger had sunk below our Plane, and really
found difficulty in rising. In any case he remained motionless, while I,
hearing, as I thought, the sound of some help approaching, pressed
against him with redoubled vigour, and continued to shout for assistance.
A convulsive shudder ran through the Sphere. “This must not be,” I
thought I heard him say; “either he must listen to reason, or I must have
recourse to the last resource of civilization.” Then, addressing me in a
louder tone, he hurriedly exclaimed, “Listen: no stranger must witness
what you have witnessed. Send your Wife back at once, before she enters
the apartment. The Gospel of Three Dimensions must not be thus
frustrated. Not thus must the fruits of one thousand years of waiting be
thrown away. I hear her coming. Back! back! Away from me, or you must go
with me—whither you know not—into the Land of Three Dimensions!”
“Fool! Madman! Irregular!” I exclaimed; “never will I release thee; thou
shalt pay the penalty of thine impostures.”
“Ha! Is it come to this?” thundered the Stranger: “then meet your fate:
out of your Plane you go. Once, twice, thrice! ’Tis done!”
§ 18.—_How I came to Spaceland, and what I saw there._
An unspeakable horror seized me. There was a darkness; then a dizzy,
sickening sensation of sight that was not like seeing; I saw a Line that
was no Line; Space that was not Space; I was myself, and not myself. When
I could find voice, I shrieked aloud in agony, “Either this is madness or
it is Hell.” “It is neither,” calmly replied the voice of the Sphere, “it
is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open your eye once again and try to
look steadily.”
I looked, and, behold, a new world! There stood before me, visibly
incorporate, all that I had before inferred, conjectured, dreamed, of
perfect Circular beauty. What seemed the centre of the Stranger’s form
lay open to my view: yet I could see no heart, nor lungs, nor arteries,
only a beautiful harmonious Something—for which I had no words; but you,
my Readers in Spaceland, would call it the surface of the Sphere.
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