God's Compensation/Well, that helped you understand things a little better. You're ready to hear about time dimensions now.
“Ok, I think I get it now,” you say. You are not sure you understand everything, but the fourth dimension is really starting to make some sense to you now. “I can understand spatial dimensions, but what about this bit with the time dimension?”
“Well, there are actually 2 time dimensions.” Mr. Austin says. “My people happen to have the ability to access both of them. This plane on the other hand, your people do not have free access to either of the time dimensions. You are just being pushed down one of them as though you were on a slide, and you are constantly moving in one direction without the ability to change it. This means that time is not a part of this plane, rather this plane is sitting on the time dimension and the entire 3 dimensional plane is being pushed.”
“Ok...” You respond. That was a bit of a wordy explanation, but you think you get it. “So you are saying that time does not move, our entire 3 dimensional plane is moving relative to time?”
“That is correct,” Mr. Austin says. “As such, yes, it actually is possible to go back and forth through time if you have the ability to access the time dimension.”
“Ok,” You respond. You are sure there are heavier implications to this, but the concept of time travel is so over your head that hearing the fact that time travel is possible in reality means about as much to you as watching a science fiction movie about it.
“Anyway, as for the second time dimension... well.. it is really more of a stabilizing factor for the time-line. I am sure in your time-travel sci-fi bits you have heard about time travel creating paradoxes that can rip the very fabric of reality apart?”
“Ummm.... yeah.” you respond.
“Well,” Mr. Austin continues, “The second time dimension keeps that sort of thing from happening. This can create some very interesting outcomes when put into practice. Really, if you only access the one time dimension, it really can have some rather bad side-effects, such as what is going on with you right now. If you can access both at the same time though, you can actually change things in the past without having all those nasty unintended consequences. For instance.” And upon saying this, Mr. Austin's shirt suddenly changed from a green sweater to a grey button-down shirt. “I just had my past self dress in a different shirt from the one I was wearing before. If I had only accessed one time dimension, you would have thought I was wearing this shirt all along. However, accessing the second time dimension allowed me to skip a certain segment of time from being altered, witch means you saw what my shirt looked like before I changed the past.”
“Huh...” You respond staring at him in mild wonder. That seems like a rather useful ability.
“Usually, the properties of the second time dimension come into play automatically if an alteration would create a paradox, but they are not seen at any other time. In the case of a being such as myself with access to both time dimensions though, I can make the second time dimension activate on its own in the exact ways I want it to, it is kind of like tyeing strings to one another.”
Well, that most certainly is rather interesting. “So then,” you observe, “does that mean that when you said your home was in a 6 dimensional world, you meant 4 spatial dimensions and 2 time dimensions?”
“Yep, you got it right.” Mr. Austin responds.
Well, that would make him rather powerful in what he could do. Almost god-like really. And he says things like this are just par for the course where he comes from? That just anybody can do these things? Sounds like his species could really be the basis behind a lot of the ancient stories about gods and other sorts of higher beings. And it is not some kind of extra measure of ability they have, just a function of being a creature that lives a higher dimensional existence.