Ogur was irritated. He was not one who would tolerate loose talk and mumbo-jumbo. I say he, but gender was of no import in the five-dimensional world of hyperspace that Ogur and his kind inhabited.
“How can you even contemplate creatures that can exist in four dimensions? It doesn’t make any sense!” Ogur exclaimed.
Nadis, a more easy-going philosophically-inclined scientist, said, “Oh, Ogur, don’t be so close-minded. The Multiverse is a vast place; surely, there could be four-dimensional beings somewhere.”
“Right, the next thing you’ll be saying is there could be three-dimensional creatures,” Ogur snapped.
“Well, why not?”
“Why not? Why not! How would they eat and travel and—and—how would they think?”
“They probably wonder the same about us,” Nadus replied patiently.
“Where are these silly three-dimensional creatures you’re so eager to proclaim—you’re a scientist, yet you talk of silly creatures—it’s superstitious talk—I have no time for it.”
“Luckily, I’m not alone in this speculation. As you know, I’ve been leading a like-minded group of scientists and, for the last three hundred millennia, we’ve been perfecting a device that will open up a worm-hole through the quantum foam of the universal manifold and allow us to peek into a three-dimensional landscape.”
“It annoys me no-end to see sensible, rational people indulge in this sort of pseudo-science!” Ogur exclaimed. “And when—or rather, how—do you plan to use this contraption of yours to peek into these so-called lower dimensions?”
“As you know, empty space at the quantum level is not really empty, but is seething with fluctuations in the fabric of space. The contraption, as you so fondly call it, has been working for generations to produce enough negative energy density to keep the worm hole open just long enough for our sensors to record something of life in three-dimensions.”
“I’d love to be there when you fail spectacularly,” Ogur said, in a supercilious tone. “When exactly are you planning to run this experiment?”
“The wormhole portal is set for opening tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there to show you the way back to proper science,” Ogue stated, smugly.
*** *** ***
Jamie was nine years old, and had the misfortune of having a father who drank and a mother who nagged and so, all in all, his life left much to be desired. He had a friend from next door, a dorky kid named Derek, who was a science nerd and who was well into his gizmos and gadgets.
Today was a Sunday, and like any other Sunday, Jamie’s parents had forced him to dress smartly and accompany them to church. Jamie thought he looked naff. At church, his father dozed off while the priest droned on about eternal bliss and everlasting torment. His mother wore a pretty frock and a hat with a prim pink bow on its side. To outside appearances, they made the perfect family.
It was only when they got back home that the yelling, shrieking, and bickering began. Jamie, was too blasé about what was going on. Occasionally, he heard his father talk about the war. The words Saddam and Iraq were on everyone’s lips.
The war had ended, but the squabbles on the domestic front had only just begun. Jamie’s mother was a stay-at-home mum, and raising three children on her own was starting to take its toll, especially because her no-good husband did little to pitch in. He spent more time down by the pubs than he did at home. If he ever was at home, he would either be watching footie on the telly or dozing off on his favourite armchair.
Like millions of others, Jamie found solace in television. He wasn’t a fan of reading and didn’t particularly enjoy school. He was a naughty child and was forever getting into trouble. He spent more time at the head teacher’s office than in class.
His sister, Clowie, was a year younger than he was and went to the same school. She was a study in contrast to her brother, Jamie. Whilst Jamie was constantly thumbing his nose at authority, riling his parents, and rattling his teachers’ collective cages, Clowie was bookish and soft-spoken. She was a lonely child and took to playing the flute to while away her Sunday morning.
Jamie and Clowie had another sibling: a six-month old baby, named Jessica. Jessica was a tomb in infant shape. She never cried, rarely threw a tantrum, and hardly ever made her presence felt. She was content to sleep and let the world pass her by.
There was no school on Sunday, so Jamie and his nerdy friend, Derek, lay sprawled on the floor watching their favourite television programme. All of sudden and to their immense wonder, the air in front of them began to tremble and quiver. Jamie and Derek first looked at each other and then back at the spatial anomaly. They rubbed their eyes, but the distortion in front of them only seemed to grow more intense. The TV screen to which they had been glued now disappeared behind a black circular mass that glowed with an ebony eeriness and threw out electric discharges. The fluorescent black orb seemed to distort light and bulged and shrank ever so slightly. Its throbbing, pulsating appearance made it seem almost alive.
Jamie and Derek stared with open jaws. They didn’t dare touch it. It looked ominous, what with its black interior and shimmering rim and electrical discharges thrown in for good measure.
After they had got over their initial shock at this sudden brazen intrusion into their reality, the two boys slowly stood up and walked hesitatingly away from the black pulsing orb. They stepped backwards out the door, turned, and ran shrieking down the stairs.
*** *** ***
“And finally we have some answers to offer our people who’ve waited patiently for millennia,” said Nadis.
Gathered before him was a surging avalanche of five-dimensional people, all reporters, all eager to hear about the startling discovering made by the scientist who had peered into the lower dimensions.
Nadis knew how to play the crowd. He knew he mustn’t reveal everything at once. There was something to be said about building up the suspense and leading up to a climax. He enjoyed the sensation of a captive audience and was well aware of the need for a grand revelation.
“I won’t bore you with the details of how we created the wormhole,” Nadis declaimed. “I will however, inform you categorically, that life most certainly exists in the lower dimensions.”
The crowd gasped, filled with a delicious confluence of thrill, wonder, and terror.
“It took us several millennia to make sense of all the data and visual input our computers received from our observations through the worm hole. These lower-dimensional creatures seem to thrive in their limited dimensions.”
“What are they like?” shouted someone from the crowd.
“Obviously, we don’t have all the answers, and we were only able to keep the portal open for a short while. But it would appear that these creatures are not as tall as we are. They have a sickly outer texture, it was hard to tell what colour, but it looked a bit yellowish.”
“Did they have families?” called out another reporter.
“It was hard to tell, there was a lot of disturbance, but judging by their size we would say there were two adults and four young ones. Our exobiologists and inter-dimensional psychologists have been pouring over the data. They’ve speculated that these creatures come in two flavours—we are calling the flavours male and female. Putting the pieces together it would appear that you need both flavours to generate offspring. The adult female flavour didn’t seem too happy and the adult male flavour kept swallowing a sparkling liquid from a container made of silicon.”
“Tell us about the young ones!” piped an eager voice from the crowd.
“When the wormhole portal opened up, the first thing we saw was two of these creatures. Both had a pale yellow exterior. Both had fibrous growth on what seemed to be their heads. On one head the fibrous growth was pointy and on the other it was floppy and fell over to the side. The floppy-fibred one also had a transparent object placed over what seemed to be two organs of vision.”
“Were there any other youngsters?”
“Judging by its size, there was one youngster that seemed very young, we are calling it this young female one. Another creature, young female two, held an object to an orifice at the front of her face. It seemed to be a musical instrument of some sort.”
“Were there any other creatures?”
“It was hard to tell. All the creatures we saw had four limbs, a head, two organs of vision, and one orifice to ingest substances for nourishment. However, we did notice a creature that didn’t have the yellow skin of the ones that moved on two limbs. This creature seemed to perambulate on four limbs. We suppose it could be a creature that belongs to a different but related species.”
“Tell us about their world,” called out one reporter.
“Their world was filled with garish colours. Everything was bright and gaudy. Gravity seemed to work very differently in their world as compared to ours. They would open and close their orifice at the front of their face as if they were communicating, but because the wormhole portal could transmit only photons and not sound waves, we have no way of interpreting what they said.”
“Have you decided what you will call these three-dimensional yellow creatures that move on two legs?”
Nadis, smiled whimsically and said, “Why do you assume they are three-dimensional?”
The reporter looked back, puzzled. “I thought you said they belonged to lower-dimensions…”
“Yes, they do, but they are, shockingly enough, two-dimensional creatures.”
A collective gasp rippled across the room. The five-dimensional folk stared in trepidation and bewilderment.
Nadis knew how to work the crowd. He was ready for his big revelation: “And these two-dimensional creatures are made of… photon pixels.”
A horrified murmur rippled across the congregation. “What are we going to call them?” someone called out.
“Even though we haven’t been able to interpret their sounds, the pangalactic, hyperdimensional, polyquantum computers designed in collaboration with our best linguists, graphologists, glyptographists, and symbologists have been working for millennia to interpret the letters, words, and texts that were transmitted through the wormhole portal. And we think we know what these yellow creatures are called.”
Silence filled the room.
“We believe they’re called ‘The Simpsons’.”
