BooksBarbecue
Back Excession
Chapters (108)
  1. About the Author
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. 1 - Outside Context Problem
  6. I
  7. II
  8. III
  9. IV
  10. V
  11. VI
  12. 2 - Not Invented Here
  13. I
  14. II
  15. III
  16. 3 - Uninvited Guests
  17. I
  18. II
  19. III
  20. IV
  21. 4 - Dependency Principle
  22. I
  23. II
  24. III
  25. IV
  26. V
  27. 5 - Kiss The Blade
  28. I
  29. II
  30. III
  31. IV
  32. V
  33. VI
  34. 6 - Pittance
  35. I
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. 7 - Tier
  42. I
  43. II
  44. III
  45. IV
  46. 8 - Killing Time
  47. I
  48. II
  49. III
  50. IV
  51. V
  52. VI
  53. VII
  54. VIII
  55. 9 - Unacceptable Behaviour
  56. I
  57. II
  58. III
  59. IV
  60. V
  61. VI
  62. VII
  63. VIII
  64. IX
  65. X
  66. XI
  67. XII
  68. XIII
  69. XIV
  70. 10 - Heavy Messing
  71. I
  72. II
  73. III
  74. IV
  75. V
  76. VI
  77. VII
  78. VIII
  79. IX
  80. X
  81. XI
  82. XII
  83. XIII
  84. XIV
  85. XV
  86. 11 - Regarding Gravious
  87. I
  88. II
  89. III
  90. IV
  91. V
  92. VI
  93. VII
  94. VIII
  95. IX
  96. X
  97. XI
  98. XII
  99. XIII
  100. XIV
  101. 12 - Faring Well
  102. I
  103. II
  104. III
  105. IV
  106. V
  107. VI
  108. Epilogue

The cloak went rigid underneath him and floated into the air, wrapping round him. He cried out and tried to fight against its enclosing black folds, but the buzzing came again and his vision faded even before the cloak finished wrapping itself round him.

8 - Killing Time

8

Killing Time

I

I

The usual way to explain it was by analogy; this was how the idea was introduced to you as a child. Imagine you were travelling through space and you came to this planet which was very big and almost perfectly smooth and on which there lived creatures who were composed of one layer of atoms; in effect, two-dimensional. These creatures would be born, live and die like us and they might well possess genuine intelligence. They would, initially, have no idea or grasp of the third dimension, but they would be able to live perfectly well in their two dimensions. To them, a line would be like a wall across their world (or, from the end, it would look like a point). An unbroken circle would be like a locked room.

Perhaps, if they were able to build machines which allowed them to journey at great speed along the surface of their planet - which to them would be their universe - they would go right round the planet and come back to where they had started from. More likely, they would be able to work this out from theory. Either way, they would realise that their universe was both closed, and curved, and that there was, in fact, a third dimension, even if they had no practical access to it. Being familiar with the idea of circles, they would probably christen the shape of their universe a ‘hypercircle’ rather than inventing a new word. The three-dimensional people would, of course, call it a sphere.

The situation was similar for people living in three dimensions. At some point in any civilisation starting to become advanced it was realised that if you set off into space in what appeared to be a perfectly straight line, eventually you would arrive back at where you started, because your three-dimensional universe was really a four-dimensional shape; being familiar with the idea of spheres, people tended to christen this shape a hypersphere.