God's Compensation/You're still a little fuzzy on this whole higher dimensions thing
“Well that's cool and all, I'm still not quite getting this.” You tell Mr. Austin. You have to admit, this really is pretty neat, but you just feel like if he doesn't slow it down you are going to start feeling a little left behind.
“That's Ok,” Mr. Austin says, “how about I give you an example that you might be able to understand, put you in my shoes a little.”
“Okaaay..” you tepidly agree.
“Howww about... you try to imagine yourself attempting to interact with a 2 dimensional creature. How do you think that 2 dimensional creature will see you?”
“Ummm...” Ok, he has now completely lost you.
“Think about it, they can only see the part of you that intersects with the 2 dimensional plane they live on. So, imagine you stuck your finger through the plane they lived on. To them, you would look like a large circle. Now, you put your arm through their plane. Now you would look like a cylinder to them. You would be constantly changing your shape as you moved, so to them you would be a very strange and impossible to comprehend existence.”
“Oh, ok, I think I understand.” You respond.
“Here,” he says, sticking his hand into his pocket. Take a look at this. He tosses you something that, at first glance, looks like a cube. But then, in mid-air it seems to start warping and changing its shape so it looks like there are 2 cubes connected to each other. You fumble with the object and then drop it.
You reach down to pick up the object, it looks like two cubes oddly linked together. They are both about the same size, but somehow the two of them keep melding into each other and passing through one another. Actually, just looking at it is starting to make you a little sick as your brain rejects the thing that it is seeing.
“That is called a tesseract,” Mr. Austin tells you. “A tesseract is to a cube the same as a cube is to a square. So, a square has 4 sides, and a cube is 6 squares formed into a box. Well, that tesseract is 8 cubes lined up into a solid object in the fourth dimension. Since you are used to 3 dimensional space, I am sure that thing looks rather weird to you. To me though, having the ability to perceive 5 spacial dimensions, that thing looks as solid to me as a 6 sided dice would to you.”
“Ehhh... it's sort of making me sick.” You say, closing the object in your hand but still getting disturbed by the fact that it is continuing to shift and change its shape in your closed palm. The sensation sends shivers down your spine and you wind up holding it back out to Mr. Austin as you close your eyes and look away from it.
“Hehe, yeah, you are probably experiencing a bit of vertigo since your brain can't properly process what it is seeing.” He responds as he mercifully takes the tesseract from you. You peak out the corner of your eye and see him slap it down on the table where now that it is stationary it is also holding its appearance. "Anyway," he continues, "Now imagine showing these 2 dimensional people a cube. They would probably feel much the same way you did looking at that tesseract. If you move it, it shifts from being a square to being a rectangle and then a triangle, a rombus, and then a square again. They would probably not know what to make of it and likely experience the same sense of virtigo you got looking at that tesseract as it moved through your 3 dimensional space."