FLATTERLAND

LIKE FLATLAND, ONLY MORE SO

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish
their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear
in this book and Basic Books was aware of a trademark claim, the
designations have been printed in initial capital letters.

Copyright © 2001 by Joat Enterprises

Previously published by Perseus Publishing
Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.

A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN-13 978-0-7382-0675-2
ISBN-10 0-7382-0675-X
eBook ISBN: 9780786723287

Find us on the World Wide Web at http://www.basicbooks.com

Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk
purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations.
For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the
Perseus Books Group, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142, or call
(617)252-5298, or e-mail [email protected].

First paperback printing, March 2002

11 12 13 14 15
FROM FLATLAND TO FLATTERLAND

Sometimes writers get a bee in their bonnet - an idea that buzzes around for
years Euntil one day it suddenly crystallizes. Yes, it’s easy to crystallize a
bee: you just have to get the right mix of metaphors. Flatterland is a
crystallized bee. Let me tell you how it came about, and why.
In 1884, in Victorian England, a headmaster and Shakespearean scholar
named Edwin Abbott Abbott - that’s right, two Abbotts -wrote a classic of
scientific popularization called Flatland. Written under the pseudonym ‘A.
Square’, it tells of a world of two dimensions, a flat Euclidean plane that
came straight out of the geometry texts of that period. Abbott would have
used them in his school. The inhabitants of Flatland are geometric figures -
lines, triangles, squares, pentagons ... The rather narrow Victorian attitudes
of A. Square are shattered by rumours of the Third Dimension, confirmed
by a visitor from that extra-dimensional realm who is named The Sphere.
Flatland reprinted within a month and has never been out of print since.
Its appeal has survived all intervening scientific and social upheavals. It
exists in numerous editions, and several writers have published sequels or
derivative works, such as Dionys Burger’s Sphereland and Kee Dewdney’s
The Planiverse.
Flatterland is another.
The scientific purpose of Flatland was serious and substantial. Abbott’s
sights were focused not on the Third Dimension - familiar enough to his
readers - but on the Fourth Dimension. Could a space of more than three
dimensions exist? Where would you put it? Abbott softened up his readers’
resistance to such an outlandish notion by making them imagine how a
Flatlander would respond to the outrageous suggestion that a Third
Dimension could exist.
He had a second purpose, a very different one: to satirize the rigid social
structure of Victorian England, with its hierarchies of status and privilege -
especially the lowly status accorded to women. To this purpose he made the
females of Flatland mere one-dimensional lines, inferior even to the
slimmest of isosceles triangles, and vastly inferior to the circular
Priesthood. Flatland was - and still is - a very subversive book. Some
supporters of female emancipation misunderstood Abbott’s satire, and in the
preface to the second edition he was forced to explain that A. Square

has himself modified his own personal views, both as regards Women and
as regards the Isosceles or Lower Classes ... But, writing as a Historian, he
has identified himself (perhaps too closely) with the views generally
adopted by Flatland, and (as he has been informed) even by Spaceland
Historians; in whose pages (until very recent times) the destinies of Women
and of the masses of mankind have seldom been deemed worthy of mention
and never of careful consideration.

So there! Abbott was, in fact, a social reformer who believed in equal

educational opportunity for all social classes and genders; Flatland’s
narrow-minded social system is his cry of frustration.
The Fourth Dimension was hot intellectual property in Abbott’s day. His
interest in it came a decade before H. G. Wells’s celebrated science-fiction
story The Time Machine, which was serialized in the New Review (1894-5)
and published as a book by Heinemann in 1895. Wells, like any good
science-fiction author, based his tale on a solid dose of scientific
gobbledegook, which in this case is supplied by the Time Traveller:

’But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?’

‘Don’t follow you,’ said Filby.
‘Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?’
Filby became pensive.
‘Clearly,’ the Time Traveller proceeded, ‘any real body must have
extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and -
Duration ...
‘... There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes
of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an
unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter,
because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one
direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives ...
‘... But some philosophical people have been asking why three
dimensions particularly - why not another direction at right angles to the
three? - and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimensional geometry.
Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York
Mathematical Society only a month or so ago.’

Wells’s reference to Newcomb reminds us that in the late nineteenth century

higher-dimensional geometry was all the rage among mathematicians,
especially Arthur Cayley (1821-95) and J. J. Sylvester (1814-97). Sylvester
emigrated to the States and became a major founding figure of American
mathematics. Some of the ideas about higher dimensions were introduced
into physics by Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909), and were among the
things that led to Relativity, the brainchild of (among others) Albert
Einstein (1879-1955).
I’m giving you the dates to make it clear that Flatland is slap in the
middle of all this. Abbott was a prolific writer, with some sixty books to his
credit, though none of the others are remotely similar to Flatland. He was a
passionate educator, and evidently understood the difference between
serious science and solemn science. His fascination with some of the
cutting-edge science of his day, in conjunction with these attributes, gave
the world a classic.
At the start of the twenty-first century, mathematics and science have
moved a long way from where they were at the end of the nineteenth. The
Fourth Dimension is mild indeed compared with the mind-boggling
inventions of geometers and physicists -spaces with infinitely many
dimensions, spaces with none, spaces with fractional dimension, spaces
with finitely many points, curved spaces, spaces that get mixed up with
time, and spaces that aren’t really there at all. The respectable reason for
allowing that bee in my bonnet to crystallize is that there is ample scope to
play Abbott’s game again in a new context - indeed, in lots of new contexts.
I must confess, however, that there is a less respectable reason too. I’d
been toying with writing some sort of sequel, and I’d got it into my head
that since Flatland was about the adventures of A. Square, the update ought
to follow the adventures of one of his modern descendants. We know that
A. Square had children, because Abbott tells us so - but he doesn’t tell us
what the ‘A.’ in ‘A. Square’ stands for, and that bothered me. At this point,
my thoughts were distracted by the sudden realization that I knew what Mr
Square’s first name must have been.
Obviously, the ‘A.’ stands for ‘Albert’.
British readers will immediately appreciate why this has to be so. There
is a popular TV soap called EastEnders - I’m not a fan myself - I don’t like
soaps - but things seep out into the general ‘extelligence’, and EastEnders is
one of them. Anyway, this particular soap is set in a fictitious region of
London centred around ‘Albert Square’. There is no real Albert Square in
central London, but there is an Albert Hall, an Albert Memorial, and an
Albert Embankment. Albert was Queen Victoria’s consort, and she loved
him dearly, so London is littered with Alberts. Abbott was writing in
Victorian times, satirizing Victorian values ... the name fitted.
Now, there may not be an Albert Square in real central London, but
there is a Grosvenor Square, a Berkeley Square (in which, according to the
song, a nightingale sang ...) and a Leicester Square. Suddenly the family
tree of the Square dynasty was falling into place - Grosvenor, Berkeley,
Lester ...
What of the womenfolk? On Flatland, women are lines - and it followed
just as night followed day that my central character should be female, and
her name should be ‘Victoria Line’. Vikki for short. There are Victorias all
over London, too, including a mainline train station. The Victoria line is an
underground railway line (the ‘tube’, or subway) linking Victoria Station to
Euston Station, another main-line train station. So Victoria Line it was.
Another underground line, the Jubilee line, gave me Vikki’s mother, Lee.
Crazy, but it crystallized the whole bee into a book. Everything came to
me in a rush. Young Vikki is Albert’s great-great-granddaughter, a
thoroughly modern young woman in a society rather like Britain and the US
in the early sixties, but with a dash of Internet thrown in for narrative
lubrication. Flatland’s male-dominated Victorian culture is beginning to
crumble as its women break away from their traditional restraints. Vikki
finds an old notebook, Albert’s original manuscript of Flatland, and is
bitten by the 3D bug - much to her parents’ consternation. Unknown to
them, she tries to follow in her ancestor’s vertex-steps (squares have
vertices, but no feet) into the expanded universe of the Third Dimension . . .
and she succeeds.
Now all I needed was to equip her with a guide. Dante had his Virgil to
conduct him through the Inferno; A. Square had his Sphere .. . but Vikki
would need a more versatile guide, familiar with dozens of mathematical
and physical spaces . . . For weeks I grappled with this problem, until one
evening I remembered a children’s toy - a rubber-skinned inflatable orange
ball with horns, plus two eyes and a broad grin painted on the front. The
child sits on the ball, grabs the horns, and bounces across the floor. The toy
was called a Space Hopper (the grin is that of an alien from Outer Space).
Evidently, a Space Hopper is ideally suited to hop from one mathematical
space to another . . . and I had my guide.
After that, all I had to do was choose which spaces were important
enough to include, and I did that with an eye on the frontiers of today’s
mathematics and physics. Oh, yes - I also needed a title. I hope you can
excuse the train of thought that led me to choose what now seems inevitable
for a Flatland sequel - Flatterland.
Please pardon my temerity in attempting this add-on to a classic. You
will see at once that I can’t use Abbott’s elegant Victorian prose style -
modern times demand modern cadences. The original, fortunately, is
untainted by my irreverence (re-read your copy: I promise that not a word
has changed!).

I.S.
Coventry, July 2000
 1
THE THIRD DIMENSION

Seen from space, it was a strange world, with the austere beauty of a page
from Euclid. In fact it was a page from Euclid, geometry made flesh: a
sprawling, humming world of two-dimensional shapes. Flatland. A land of
lines, triangles, squares, polygons, circles ... people, of their own kind. They
lived polygonal lives, ate polygonal food, drank polygonal drink, made
polygonal love, bore polygonal children, and died (polygonally) in a two-
dimensional universe - and never thought it the least bit curious. Their flat
world was all they could see, all they could hear, all they could feel. To
them, it was all there was.
As long as nothing disturbed that perception, it was true.
But times were changing in Flatland.

The house was dowdy and unfashionably pentagonal, but in an excellent

location: just along the street from the Palace of the Prefect. It had been in
the Square family for almost 150 years, and was now beginning to show its
age. Nonetheless, it was a comfortable dwelling, with the typical large
Flatlandish entrance hall, seven rooms for the male members of the
household, two apartments for the females, a study, a large room that once
had housed servants but was now used as a kitchen, with a dining alcove,
and a musty, cluttered cellar. It had separate doors for women and men - for
safety reasons, women being rather sharp if encountered end-on. In the hall
a middle-aged woman swept up after her two untidy square sons and her
neat and lineal daughter, waving her body from side to side so that the
males wouldn’t accidentally blunder into an endpoint and cut themselves.
She found it a comfortable life, though hardly a fulfilling one, and on the
whole she was content with her lot.
 In the cellar, her daughter Victoria was anything but content with hers.
Flatland was a sexist subtopia in which women, seen by their menfolk as
simple-minded one-dimensional creatures, performed only menial tasks.
Even the lowest of the males, the isosceles triangles, had higher status, and
each generation of males made sure everything stayed that way. Not exactly
deliberately ... well, not consciously ... well, not with malice, anyway - they
really thought it was the only option ... Well, most of them. It just never
occurred to the men that Flatland society might order itself differently. And
it certainly never occurred to them that their most cherished beliefs about
Flatland society might be based on prejudice and unchallenged
assumptions. How could it be? In Flatland, your position in society was
determined by how many sides you had and how regular your perimeter
was. It was an objective test, hence unquestionable.
At the top of the tree were the Circles, priesthood-cum-nobility:
glorious, almost transcendent beings - perfection made flesh. And the
biggest bunch of snobs you could imagine. They weren’t even true circles,
just polygons with an awful lot of sides. Like many aspects of Flatland,
their name was a polite fiction. Behind the rigid facade of Flatland society,
however, the winds of change were starting to whine. They had begun as a
gentle breeze when the Six-Year War between the Axials and the Alignment
had thinned the ranks of Flatland males and thrust women into the
munitions factories and the civil service. To the surprise of the men, and the
quiet satisfaction of the women, the lineal ladies carried out what had
previously been men’s jobs with aplomb - maybe too much aplomb. There
were mutterings in the Halls of Power - but the catenary was out of the bag,
and no amount of effort would ever get it back again. As the decades
passed, the breeze had stiffened to a howling gale, as the advance of
technology brought with it inevitable social spin-off.
If Vikki Line had her way, the gale would soon become a roaring
hurricane. Not that she disliked boys, you understand - as long as they knew
their place. Once they stopped flaunting their vertices and comparing how
many edges they had, some of them were even quite nice. In fact, that was
what had brought her into the dusty recesses of the cellar: she was hoping to
find some old discarded clothes of her mother’s to wear to the disco that
evening. Roger Rectangle was taking her on a date, the retro look was all
the rage, and she was hoping to find a few items that would put a kink in the
other girls’ endpoints.
So far, all she’d found was a motheaten dishcloth and a box of her
father’s old string vests. (Literally: most Flatland garments were flexible
lengths of string, which Flatlanders wrapped round themselves and secured
with sticky tabs, leaving their faces uncovered.) Vikki had a feeling that her
mother Jubilee would throw a fit if her daughter tried to go out wearing a
string vest, however chic.
She noticed a cluster of rectangular boxes in a corner. One of them was
battered and fraying at the corners, which looked promising; but she
couldn’t reach it easily, so she tugged at one of the nearer boxes. With a
crash, the mildewed cardboard disintegrated and the contents scattered
across the cellar floor.
‘Victoria? Victoria! What was that? Are you all right, dear?’
She sighed. ‘Yes, Mother. An old box came to bits, that’s all.’
‘Oh. Well, it sounded like a herd of ellipses. Do be careful, dear. And
clear up any mess you’ve made.’
‘Yes, Mother.’ Vikki started to pick up the junk that had tumbled across
the cellar floor, stuffing it back into the now rather battered boxes. She had
almost finished when she noticed a tattered book. (More properly, it should
be described as a scroll, for on Flatland books are written on lines, not flat
sheets, in a kind of Morse code; and the way to store a line compactly is to
roll it into a spiral... I can’t keep explaining this kind of thing to you, my
Planiturthian readers. So if I use a Planiturthian term that seems not to make
sense, for instance, having Vikki - who is a line, for heaven’s sake -pick
something up or carry something, you’ll just have to assume that there is
some Flatland equivalent.)
Anyway, the book, for so we shall call it, had skated behind some
cracked crockery, and nearly escaped her attention.
Curiosity impelled her to roll the book open. Even in the cellar, she had
no difficulty seeing it, for in Flatland light manages to make its way into
every nook and cranny. Where it came from was a complete mystery - even
to the greatest savants, even at the end of the twenty-first century - but its
ubiquity had an architectural consequence: houses did not need windows.
The book was handwritten, in an old-fashioned script. The title page
bore the words Flatland, a Romance of Many Dimensions. The author was
identified as A. Square. At first she thought it was some kind of child’s
primer on the geography, history, and sociology of Flatland, but as she
skipped through the text it began to mutate into something darker and more
personal. It was almost like a diary, except that it was not arranged by date.
A bit past the middle she did come upon a date, however:

From dreams I proceed to facts.

It was the last day of the 1999th year of our era. The pattering of the
rain had long ago announced nightfall, and I was sitting in the company of
my wife, musing on the events of the past and the prospects of the coming
year, the coming century, the coming Millennium.

Why, that would make the book almost exactly a hundred years old!
Vikki read on, hoping for more clues. The weird narrative told of a Stranger,
a Circle who could change size - a stranger from Space. It was some kind of
science fiction novel, then. A lot of the boys seemed to be into that kind of
thing. A phrase caught her eye:

You see, you do not even know what Space is. You think it is of Two
Dimensions only; but I have come to announce to you a Third— height,
breadth, and length.

Ah. They’d done this in physics. Space was two-dimensional, of course -

how could it be otherwise? But there was a sense in which you could think
of time as a third dimension, thereby getting a three-dimensional ‘spacetime
continuum’. It wasn’t real, of course, just a mathematical invention - and
she found the idea rather pointless because you couldn’t draw pictures of
three dimensions, anyway. Face it, you couldn’t even draw pictures of two
dimensions - you had to project real space down onto a line if you were
going to draw a picture. That was how the visual sense worked. Sculpture,
though - that was genuinely two-dimensional, like the tactile and auditory
senses. So a moving sculpture could be considered three-dimensional - and
that was what the Stranger in the book was. A moving sculpture that spoke:
what a strange idea!
She read on, and became confused. Whatever the Stranger’s three-
dimensional Space was - and only now did the significance of the capital
letter become apparent - it was not the conventional three-dimensional
spacetime continuum from her physics lessons. In the Stranger’s mind, the
Third Dimension wasn’t time! What, for instance, could be made of this
passage?

You are living on a Plane. What you style Flatlandis the vast level
surface of what I may call a fluid, on, or in, the top of which you and your
countrymen move about, without rising above it or falling below it.
I am not a plane Figure, but a Solid. You call me a Circle; but in reality I
am not a Circle, but an infinite number of Circles, of size varying from a
Point to a Circle of thirteen inches in diameter, one placed on the top of the
other.

Above? Below? On top? If A. Square had been writing about the

spacetime continuum, surely he would have used words like before, after.
These terms - she could try to infer their content from their context, but the
inference didn’t really work - were outlandish, meaningless nonsense
words.
Vikki Line tucked the curious book away inside her edgebag, an
accessory that had become very fashionable indeed, and not only among the
young. Even males were wearing them, though they called them ‘sidesacks’
to distinguish them from effeminate edge-bags. She would take a closer
look at the book later on. Right now there was a more pressing problem:
finding something suitable to wear to the disco.

‘I don’t understand why you young people insist on wearing your parents’
old cast-offs’, her mother fussed. ‘You know, your father gave me that
jacket just after we got married. It used to fit me then. The colour suits you,
dear, I must say.’ Only a few generations ago, Jubilee would not have been
able to make such a statement - the rule had been ‘any colour as long as it’s
grey’. But the old colour prejudice, fallout from the political sabotage of the
Universal Colour Bill, was slowly dying out (indeed, dyeing out), except for
a continuing prohibition on body-paint - and even that was coming under
fire with the new fashion for tipstick among upper-class young women.
‘It really needs an iron, though, dear,’ Jubilee fussed. ‘Would you like
me to—’
‘New clothes are so ordinary, Mother. I want to look different.’
‘Different from what, dear?’
‘Well, just... different. Like all my friends.’
‘Different but the same, then, dear?’
‘Ohhhh! You’re making fun of me again!’
Her mother smiled (Flatland women do this by wiggling their front
vertex in a special way). Vikki took the treasure away to her own little
room, along with her other discovery. She kept her clothes in there, and her
personal belongings - a Parallelogram Bear and a dilapidated My Little
Polygon which she had long ago outgrown but kept for sentimental reasons;
a tape-player with hundreds of cassettes; letters from her friends;
schoolbooks; and -her pride and joy - one of the new Home Computers,
complete with key-strip, tape-reader, printer, and scanner. It had a 2D
graphics accelerator, and twenty megs of RAM. Bundled with it had been a
‘free gift’: a tiny electronic Personal Disorganizer, in which she kept contact
information for her friends and an extensive diary. It communicated with
the computer by invisible light. Not only that - once she’d saved enough
money she was going to add a modem, persuade Daddy to rent an extra
phone link, and surf the InterLine. It wouldn’t be hard to persuade him: all
she had to do was to stay on the phone to her friends for hours and burst
into tears and tell him he was ruining her life if he dared interrupt to make
his own calls. Her friend Dilly had tried it on her dad a month ago, and a
second phone connection had been installed within a day.
The Flatland phone system, by the way, was a triumph of technical
ingenuity. In a two-dimensional world, you can’t lay a network of cables
without trapping people between them - there’s no underground and no
overhead. But you can avoid cables altogether and use radio waves of a
frequency to which most things in Flatland, especially houses and people,
are transparent. With enough repeaters scattered around to boost fading
signals back up to full strength and shunt messages past radio-opaque
objects, the system worked surprisingly well. Fortunately, Flatlanders
seemed to be unaffected by the radiation that sleeted through them, though
some consumer groups were beginning to worry that overexposure to the
phone system might be contributing to an epidemic of inflamed centroids.
At the very moment that Vikki was thinking about her father, he arrived
home from work. Grosvenor was a huge, good-natured square ... well,
actually he had gone a bit trapezoidal in his middle age, mostly because
Jubilee was such a good cook. As usual, he had picked up their young sons
Berkeley and Lester from primary school on the way home. Grosvenor gave
Jubilee and Victoria a homecoming kiss and flopped against the big sofa in
front of the fire. The soft, slightly springy cushions closed snugly around
three of his edges. (The distinction between sitting on/in/against a piece of
furniture and wearing it was often rather fuzzy in Flatland.)
The boys shot off into the yard, to play until dinner was ready.
‘Vikki, love, be a dear and bring me a beer, will you? It’s been a bisector
of a day at work.’
Typical. But thoughts of an extra phone link stopped her saying what
was on her mind: get your own beer, Dad. Instead, she padded off
obediently and brought him back a rectangle of lager from the freezer.
He popped the tab at one end and sucked. ‘Thanks, sweet-centre.’ Well,
at least he’s expressed gratitude. ’Like the shoes. Nice jacket, too, love: it
suits you.’
It’s the one you ... I mean, yes, it does, doesn’t it? I found it in the
cellar.’
‘I keep meaning to clean that cellar out’, said Grosvenor. ‘Nothing but a
heap of useless junk. Some of it’s been in there for generations. Give the lot
to Boxfam, that’s what we ought to do.’
Talk of junk reminded Vikki of her discovery. Innocently, she said,
‘That reminds me, Dad: I found a funny old book in the cellar. It looks
really really interesting.’
‘A book, eh? Well, that cellar holds an awful lot... bound to be a few
books down there—’
‘It was handwritten, like a diary. By someone called A. Square.’
Her father sat bolt upright and popped out of the enveloping sofa. His
beer slipped from his grasp and the fire hissed as a few errant drops hit it.
’What?’
‘It was all about some weird Stranger from the Third Dim—’
 Grosvenor’s face turned an angry shade of grey. ‘Victoria Line: don’t
you ever mention that phrase in this house! God, I thought the family’d got
rid of that pernicious little diatribe fifty years ago!’
Vikki didn’t understand what she’d done wrong. ‘But Dad, it’s just an
old—’
Jubilee, ever the calm one, touched her daughter’s side affectionately.
‘Wait till the boys have gone to bed, Victoria. Then your father will tell you
a piece of family history.’
Grosvenor stared at his wife in horror. ‘Lee, are you sure that now is the
right—’
‘She’s old enough to know the Facts of Life, Grosvenor dear, and how
to deal with them on a practical basis. So she’s old enough to know the truth
about her great-great-grandfather.’
The Facts of Life bit was news to Grosvenor, and it threw him
completely. ‘Dammit, Lee: great-great-grandad Albert’s already caused this
family too much grief!’
‘Is that what the “A” stands for, Dad? Is the book by Albert Square?
Was he my great-great-grandfather? What is the Third Dimension, Dad?’
‘Victoria, I’ve just told you not to—’
‘Grosvenor, it’s too late. We can’t hide our past from our own daughter’,
said Jubilee. ‘And it was all so long ago. Times are changing. She has a
right to know. And you did promise—’
Grosvenor Square sagged back against the sofa. ‘Yes, but I thought
she’d be a bit older than this before I had to ... Yes, yes, I’ll tell her. I’m just
finding it hard getting used to having a young woman in the house instead
of a little girl, OK?’
‘After dinner,’ insisted Jubilee, driving home her advantage, ‘as soon as
the boys have gone to bed.’
Grosvenor was a beaten man. ‘Yes, Lee - after dinner. As you say.’
Jubilee was already dishing out the food into semicircular bowls. Vikki
rushed to the door and flung it wide open. ‘Berkley! Les! Grub’s up!’

*
Faint sounds of childish prattle were wafting from the boys’ bedroom.
Ignoring them, Grosvenor took a deep breath and tried to find the courage
to peel the wraps off an ancient - and, he had hoped, forgotten - piece of
Square family history.
Jubilee saw her husband was having trouble, and offered a simple
solution. ‘We don’t talk about great-great-grandfather Albert because he
died in prison, Vikki.’
‘Lee!’
‘There’s no point in beating about the bush, Grosvenor. Albert did die in
prison.’
‘Yes, but he wasn’t a criminal.’
‘Did I say he was? Tell Vikki what he did to get himself imprisoned.’
‘Uh - well, you see, Ancestor Albert... Lee, do I have to do this?’
‘Yes.’
Grosvenor grunted, accepting the reality of his position. ‘Very well.
Vikki, Ancestor Albert was ... he was the black shape of the family, so to
speak. He ... he got some ridiculous nonsense into his head about what he
called the Land of Three Dimensions. It was an imaginary world, different
from ours, and he would have been all right if it had stayed imaginary, but
his ... his mind went. He became convinced it was real. He claimed that he
had received a visitor from the Land of Three Dimensions, which he called
The Sphere.’
‘What a funny word. Was the Sphere the Stranger I read about in
Albert’s book?’
‘It was. Albert even claimed he had visited the Land of Three
Dimensions himself, with the Sphere as his guide.’
‘Wow! Hey, that’s really neat!’
Grosvenor sighed. The naive enthusiasm of youth... ‘A hundred years
ago, Vikki, saying things like that got you sent to prison. For heresy,
because you were contradicting the Priests, and because anyone who
claimed to have visited another world must be a madman.’
‘Oh.’
‘So you see, sweetcentre, it’s not something the family is proud of. To
make matters worse, Albert’s unfortunate brother was imprisoned too,
supposedly because he witnessed something - a Visitation, some such
nonsense.’ He paused, gulped for air, found none that helped. His voice
came out half-strangled: ‘Do you really want all the neighbours to know
that two of your ancestors were lunatics?’
Vikki wasn’t sure. Being imprisoned for your beliefs was kind of
romantic, like being a freedom fighter. And as for witnessing a Supernatural
Visitation, that was cool. ’Crumbs, Dad, that was a hundred years ago.’
‘The taint still lingers, Vikki. If your friends found out about old Albert,
you might find that some of them weren’t your friends any more. I admit
that people aren’t as obsessed by religion as they were in 1999, but they’re
still unhappy about any hint of mental instability.’
You mean they’re still just as narrow-minded and unimaginative as they
ever were, thought Vikki. It was a sobering thought.
‘Did you read Albert’s book, Vikki?’
‘Only a few bits and pieces, Dad. I just... glanced at it.’
Grosvenor sighed with relief. ‘Good, at least it hasn’t had a chance to
taint you too.’
‘It looked kind of ... interesting. I was going to read the rest of it later.’
‘No!’ The cry was instant and automatic. ‘Sorry, love, but I don’t think
it’s suitable material for you to read - or anyone else.’
Vikki felt this was an infringement of her Polygonal Rights. ‘Why not?’
‘Look what it did for Albert,’ said Grosvenor, a wry smile flitting across
his florid features. ‘Think what it might do for you, for us ... In your room,
is it? Go and get it for me, there’s a good girl.’
Vikki didn’t like the sound of that. ‘But Dad, it’s a historical document!’
‘A hysterical document, more like. I’ll get it, then. Where did you put
it?’
Vikki gave her mother a pleading look. ‘Mum! He’s going to destroy it!
Can’t you stop him?’
Jubilee gave a negative shake of her endpoints. ‘I’m sorry, but your
father’s right, dear. Best not to wash our dirty strings in public. What’s done
is done, let’s not dwell on the past. You had to be told about Albert because
at some stage his name might come up, and you need to know how to react.
But you don’t need to read the rubbish that put him in prison. It’s not fit for
a young lady, anyway,’
Oh, Mum, if only you knew some of the books I’ve read ... But Vikki
could tell when she was beaten. ‘Wait here, Dad, Mum: I’ll go and get it.
Give me a few minutes, though, OK? Just to be alone with my thoughts. I
promise I won’t try to read any of it before I bring it to you. Trust me?
Please? Give me some dignity?’
Her father nodded, her mother gave a smug smile. Vikki slunk out of the
room, defeated.
‘That was very hard,’ said Grosvenor, ‘I feel awful. Do you think we
should—’
‘She said to trust her, dear. So we shall.’
‘Of course. Lee, you’re so sensible about these things.’
They waited. After a quarter of an hour, Vikki was back. With a sulk,
she put the book on the table in front of her parents.
Grosvenor rolled it partly open, checked the title, sampled a few lines
here and there to be sure it was the authentic copy. There was trust - and
there was trust. ’Should have been burned long ago,’ he said. Then he
tossed it into the fire. ‘Time you got yourself ready for young Roger, the
lucky dog. Go out and have some fun.’
Vikki watched, damp-eyed, as the flames turned her great-
greatgrandfather’s life’s work into smoke and ashes. ‘Anything you say,
Father.’
 2
VICTORIA’S DIARY

Wunday 25 Septober 2099

It’s been a day of lefts and rights, Dear Diary, and I’m still reeling from the
shock. I have a - get this - infamous ancestor! Isn’t that absolutely
ORTHOG? My great-great-grandfather Albert was a religious heretic who
got himself slung in the pokey for his beliefs - and let me tell you, they are
wildW. I hardly know where to BEGIN!!!!! Basically, they’re about...

Victoria stopped, unsure of the best way to convey the essence of

Albert’s heresies to the encrypted Diary in her Personal Disorganizer.
After Grosvenor had burned Albert’s book - what about freedom of speech,
Dad? What about freedom from censorship?- she had fled to her tiny room,
snuggled up against the thin cushion that served as the Flatland equivalent
of a bed, and sobbed her heart out until she heard her father tipvertex away
from the door of her room. She had continued sobbing for a few minutes
longer, letting the level fade, until finally she stopped. Then she had put on
a bit too much tipstick, found a skirt that was just a little more daring than
Dad normally allowed her to wear to discos, slipped into Mum’s wonderful
- though, she now noticed, slightly smelly - old jacket, grinned wickedly,
snivelled until her mascara ran, and emerged into the communal hall for an
inspection from her mother. Jubilee noticed the streaks of mascara,
admonished Grosvenor for upsetting his sensitive little daughter, and hauled
young Victoria back into her room to do a proper repair job on her lineliner.
Ten minutes later Grosvenor was still looking sheepish, and Roger had
arrived to escort her across town to the disco as arranged. The skirt was not
mentioned: Grosvenor knew when he was on a hiding to nothing.
It had been a successful evening, and Roger brought her home again
with five minutes to spare. Best to show willing. She said goodnights to her
parents, and retired to her room.
Within seconds she had switched on the Personal Disorganizer and
accessed her Diary. There was so much to tell before she forgot.
... Basically, they’re about a new kind of universe. That’s right, a whole new
UNIVERSE. And what thrills me to the core, Diary Dear, is that Old Al
actually WENT there!!!! Of course, Dad made me hand Al’s book over to
the Authorities - namely, HIM -1 should’ve known he’d do that, the ancient
book looked much too interesting for me to be allowed to look at it, let
alone KEEP it. And, entirely predictably, he burned it.
Fortunately, Dad doesn’t know how to work my computer, and he
certainly doesn’t know how to crack Most Excellently Private Encryption,
so I am free to reveal to you a few things of which my dear Papa knows not
one whit. (MEMO: find out what a whit is.) I did promise not to read Al’s
subversive pamphlet during the fifteen minutes that Mum and Dad left me
alone in my room to console myself about the impending loss of major
historical data, and you will not be surprised to hear that I KEPT that
promise, me being a good little butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-trisectors young
lady of horrendously decent upbringing.
However, I didn’t promise not to ...

Victoria broke off typing. Best to check if the file was intact before
looking foolish in front of her own Diary.
She booted up the computer and checked.
It was.

... I didn’t promise not to read it LATER. Now, you may well ask: how
could I read a book that Father had burned? (Co on, humour me.) Ah, since
you ask, Diary Dear: that is the oh-so-very clever part. You see, instead of
spending those vital fifteen minutes snivelling about having to give way to
Higher Authority, as Father no doubt imagined I was doing, I spent them
scanning Al’s magnum opus into my cute little computer. I now have two
copies in the machine, three more backups on tape, and yet another backup
in my Personal Disorganizer, so Albert Square’s seditious screed is safe for
posterity!!!! (meaning me). I now intend to read it from vertex to vertex,
and I shall faithfully record my discoveries in YOU, Diary Dearest. But be
patient with me, for I must make sure my parents don’t catch me reading it,
otherwise there will be convex hull to pay. OK?
Now, to more personal things. Let me tell you about racy Roger!!!! He
really is one of the cutest quadrilaterals I’ve dated in absolutely ACES and
he really knows how to show a girl a good time ...

The days passed, and the topic of Ancestor Albert and his cranky beliefs
was dropped by all concerned. Roger Rectangle fell out of favour and was
replaced by Trevor Trapezium. Grosvenor felt this was a backward step,
what with Trevor being even less regular than Roger, but he consoled
himself that by saying nothing he was demonstrating how modern and
unprejudiced he was. It was what you were, not your perimetral geometry,
that mattered. But deep down he hoped that eventually his daughter would
find a nice pentagon, get married, and present her parents with oodles of
grandchildren - Hexagons, preferably - like any respectable young lady
should.
The young lady’s thoughts, though, were elsewhere. The lure of the
illicit was proving irresistible, sucking her further and further into her
ancestor’s wild fantasies ...

Twoday 26 Septober 2099

Dear Diary,
I’ve become irrationally convinced that old Albert didn’t make up his
story at all. I’m certain as Squares fit in the Woods that the Sphere was
REAL!! My evidence is that the whole tale is much too imaginative to have
been invented - certainly not in the intellectual climate of the previous
century, Albert generally portrays himself as a boring, rather ho-hum sort of
guy - which he is. He has enormous difficulty taking on board even the
simplest 3D concepts, such as a cube. But a cube, Al my friend, is just a
line’s worth of squares, just as a square is no more than a line’s worth of
lines. That much seems evident even to me (though I suppose I’d better
concede that we did the cube in physics: it’s the space-time diagram of a
square that persists for an interval of time). So Albert must have got his
outlandish ideas from somewhere, and the best place to get outlandish ideas
from is Outland - somewhere external to Flatland. And if there is such a
place, why shouldn’t it contain a line’s worth of circles-admittedly of
various sizes - which is what his friend the Sphere seems to have been?
Spheres, then, exist - if only in some Flatonic realm of higher ideals. So
does The Sphere, I am sure - and in a far more concrete realm. ‘Space’, it
was called in the book. And if The Sphere visited Albert, why shouldn’t one
of its descendants visit me?
The only problem seems to be attracting its attention. And that is a real
pig.
Nevertheless, I’m writing computer programs to analyse Albert’s
treatise, in search of hidden messages. Surely he would have left some clues
for others to follow in his vertexsteps.

As Victoria’s obsession with Albert’s book grew, she began to spend more
and more of her time in her room, working away on the computer.
Grosvenor noted this tendency with approval. ‘I do believe Vikki is growing
up’, he confided to his wife one evening after their daughter had rushed off
to her room, saying she had some urgent homework to do for a test. ‘I knew
that computer would have educational value.’
Jubilee wasn’t so sure. In her experience, when a girl of Vikki’s age
suddenly developed new habits, that was the time to start worrying. But
there was no point in disturbing Grosvenor’s equilibrium unnecessarily. She
would keep a quiet eye on her daughter, just to set her mind at rest.
By now Victoria could pretty much recite Flatland by heart. She had
also learned to mistrust it, having noticed some absurdities. The most
glaring was Albert’s solemn declaration that from generation to generation
there was an almost certain progression towards ever greater regularity. ‘It
is a Law of Nature with us that a male child shall have one more side than
his father, so that each generation shall rise (as a rule) on step in the scale
of development and nobility. Thus the son of a Square is a Pentagon; the
son of a Pentagon a Hexagon; and so on. What utter rubbish! Why, for a
start, what of her brothers Lester and Berkeley, square sons of square
Grosvenor? And a moment’s thought about the evolutionary history of
Flatlanders, which had been going for at least a quarter of a million
generations, was enough to tell you that something was wildly amiss in
Albert’s confident statement. For if he were correct, by now every male in
Flatland would be a near-perfect Circle with a quarter of a million sides!
Even the most lofty of the Priests probably had less than a hundred.
What had he been thinking of? She could think of a few possibilities.
First, of course, the modern concept of Deep Time and a vast evolutionary
history hadn’t really gained common currency until a generation after
Albert wrote his book, so the error wouldn’t have been so glaring then.
Probably Albert had taken the aspirations of his class and cast them as a
Law of Nature - for it was as certain as anything could be that in his time
ordinary Flatlanders were desperate to rise at least one level in their rigid,
class-ridden society. So the occasional rare ‘success’ -judged by the
standards of the period -had somehow become elevated to the undeserved
status of Natural Law. That ‘as a rule’ was the giveaway. The truth - she had
done this in biology some years back - was more prosaic. Most male
children had the same number of sides as their fathers. A tiny proportion
had fewer, usually just one fewer. A roughly equal proportion had an extra
side; a very tiny proportion indeed had two or more extra sides. This
‘random walk’ of polygonal sides had, over time, led to a small number of
‘Circles’, while the overwhelming bulk of the population were equilateral
triangles, squares, pentagons, or hexagons. This, at least, was what
happened among the regular classes. With the irregulars, mainly triangles, a
similar story was played out but with changes to the lengths of the sides.
Perhaps Albert had just exaggerated the truth to flatter his readers? Or
was he mouthing a conventional wisdom that pretended people’s hopes
were reality? Certainly he was suppressing a lot of things that his society
presumably found to be unmentionable in polite company: there was, for
instance, no mention of starchildren - polygons so hideously deformed that
their sides overlapped, so that a pentagonal fatjier might have a star-shaped
pentacle for a son. Colloquially known as ‘2½-gons’, such children seldom
survived more than a few years.
All this paled beside an even more pertinent observation: what about the
female contribution to their offspring’s genetics? Albert’s male-default
blinkers had prevented him from even asking the question. But even though
a woman’s form might be a line segment, there were clearly lines and lines.
 And it was while lying in front of her bedroom fireplace, thumbing
through the book in search of clues to this strange puzzle, that Victoria
made a major discovery.

Threeday 27 Septober 2099

I HAVE FOUND SOMETHING!!!!!
Last night, rereading Albert’s treatise for the hundred-and-umpth time, I
noticed some very faint chicken-tracks, after the end of the book itself. The
cunning old swine had written them in tiny characters and very faint ink,
but my scanner is rather good at enhancing contrast. After southloading
some image-processing software from the InterLine I enhanced them
further, and - lo and behold - they’re a list of numbers separated by dots and
slashes:

and there’s a good bit more in similar vein which I’ve stored in the
computer.
It must be a coded message (cliche, ho hum). No, not ho hum, this is
exciting\ If Albert took so much trouble to include this funny message, it
has to be important. And for some reason he wanted to keep it secret from
the casual reader. Why? Well, I have an idea about that. After all, / am an
anything-but-casual reader. The message is for people like me: people who
are looking for truths even deeper than those recorded in Flatland. People
so obsessed by the Third Dimension that they might just be able to find an
almost unreadable message.
You’re saying I just got lucky? Diary Dear, that is an extremely cynical
and accurate remark, and because of it I shall stop writing this very instant.
Shame on you.

Victoria took to spending even more time in her room. Jubilee, growing
ever more suspicious but having no idea what she should be suspicious
about, searched the room every day while her daughter was at school, but
found nothing untoward. Though there were lots of scribblings with
numbers and letters all over them -mathematics homework, by the look of
them.

From Vikki’s Notescroll directory

It can’t be an alphabetical code, because it includes numbers

like 90, and our alphabet only has 73 symbols.
I’ve tried all of the decryption software that I can southload
from the InterLine, without result. It’s not a transposition
cipher, nor is it a polyalphabetic one. And public-key crypto
wasn’t invented in Albert’s day, so it’s not that, thank God. It
can’t possibly be a one-time scroll: it has to be decipherable, or
else Albert wouldn’t have put it in his book. But it’s only
intended for people who are willing to put in plenty of effort to
decode it, that’s for sure.
The numbers break into groups of four: 18.3.1.12, then
6.12.2.90, and so on. Why?
The groups involve different ranges of numbers. The first in
each group only goes up to 22. The second is usually small (like
2 or 3) but occasionally goes as high as 1 5. The third is always
 small: the highest is 4. The fourth, though, sometimes gets up
towards a hundred. This has to be significant.
It must be based on some key. Probably a standard text. I have
tried Polygon With the Wind, Parallels Lost, A Tale of Two
Circles, the Complete Works of Shakesquare, and sundry
religious texts - all without success. What book would Albert
have chosen? I am baffled.
Idiot. There is one obvious book - Flatland itself. But what do
the numbers mean?
Flatland has 22 chapters. The first number in each group never
exceeds 22! I do believe ...
Yes! It has all become clear. The first number in each group of
four refers to a chapter, the second to the numerical position of
a paragraph within that chapter, the third to a sentence within
that paragraph, and the fourth to a word within that sentence.

How crass! Anyway, after a few recounts I have cracked the code, and
the SECRET MESSAGE reads:

O Learned traveller who aspire to follow me the method is perplexing and

perilous do not reveal your intentioned The Sphere can be summoned by
drawing diagrams so as to be seen from Third Dimension semicircle circle
two isosceles triangles touch without their bases two rectangles with a
common side and ...

Fourday 28 Septober 2099

Albert’s message is now clear to me, though his grammar is sometimes a bit
overstretched -1 suspect because he had trouble finding the exact word in
his book, and settled for something close enough to be comprehensible.
Most of the message is an extensive and unfortunately somewhat
ambiguous series of instructions for constructing some quasi-geometric
diagram. It must have some cabalistic significance, because at first glance it
seems to be completely structureless.
I’ve got some sticks and I’ve dumped them on my bedroom floor. The result
is my best guess at the outlines the secret message so cryptically described.
[Added later: My diagram, I now understand, looked roughly like this when
viewed from the Third Dimension:

However, I had got the third symbol upside down, thanks to a

misinterpretation ofAI’s ambiguous instructions. And he claimed to be a
mathematician! In mathematics, Albert old fruit, the keyword is precision,
OK?]
I am now wondering where to place my diagram so that it will be visible
from the Third Dimension. I’m totally baffled - Al’s message gives no clue.
[Added much later: It hadn’t then dawned on me that everywhere -
including the insides of my cupboards and the insides of me - is visible from
the Third Dimension. Yes, I’d read the bits where old Albert said just that,
but they hadn’t registered. Idiot.]
I’m absolutely shattered, Diary Dear, and it’s time I got some beauty sleep.
The rest of the puzzle must wait until tomorrow.
 3
THE VISITATION

With so many things whirling round and round inside her head, Victoria had
difficulty getting to sleep. Eventually she dozed, but her sleep was troubled
with strange dreams. Somewhere in the nogonsland between ‘asleep’ and
‘awake’, with her mind drifting but half-aware, she began to hear a voice.
At first it was faint - no discernible words, just a speech-like intonation,
barely above the threshold of perception - but slowly it became louder and
louder ... until, with a start, she came fully to her senses.
An atavistic tingle ran along her length, and a sentence from Albert’s
book came unbidden into her mind: ‘I became conscious of a Presence in
the room, and a chilling breath thrilled my very being.’
The Sphere! It must be somewhere nearby! Hovering just a short
distance away from Flatland in that enigmatic Third Dimension! At this
very moment it was experiencing a panoramic view of her house, her room,
and her own internal organs. Including, she realized with shock, her dinner
in the process of digestion. How yucky! Albert had never mentioned this,
although he’d been surprisingly northfront about the visibility of his insides:
no doubt he’d considered this particular aspect of three-dimensionality just
a little too gross to put in his book.
The voice came again, and this time she understood its words. ‘Excuse
me? Someone called?’ Then, suddenly, incredibly, before her eyes, a dot
appeared in the middle of the room, like a very short woman except that its
shading was more like an extraordinarily tiny circle.
It was orange.
It did not enter through the doorway: it was just there, when a moment
earlier that place had been unoccupied. Was this The Sphere? She’d
expected it to be larger. But then, Albert had said that The Sphere was
composed of Circles of many sizes, shrinking right down to a point, so
some would have to be extremely tiny.
 A little way off a second dot appeared, which also expanded to a small
orange Circle. Were there two Spheres? A double visitation?
The disembodied voice spoke again. ‘Hello? Is anyone at home? Did
you want something?’ Then a third orange Circle, somewhat larger than the
others but still smaller than a typical Circular Flat-land adult, grew into the
space between the first two:

Three Spheres? How many were there? Why were they all clad in
orange garments? (Were they Buddhists? Is that why they were budding?)
Could there be an entire herd of Spheres lurking just... below (above?) the
homely plane of Flatland? What else was out there?
It was a chilling thought, but there was no question in her mind that she
must respond, quickly, while there was still a chance. If the Spheres made
no contact, they might never return. Fortunately the house, being rather old,
had thick walls. In a voice that she hoped could be heard by the Spheres but
not by her parents, she said, ‘Yes, it was me, I’m at home.’ Feeling very
foolish, and realizing that what she’d said didn’t convey a great deal of
information, she added: ‘My name’s Vikki Line, and I ... I want to meet a
being from the Third Dimension.’
The three Circles did something very complicated and merged together
like pools of liquid, turning briefly into a shape that her sense of shading
told her must be something like this:

Then, so fast that she couldn’t follow the movement, it expanded like a
balloon into a fairly normal-looking Circle. The only difference was that the
Circle didn’t stay quite the same width all the time - it made her feel slightly
giddy to watch it.
‘Is that all? said the Visitor. ‘Only the Third Dimension?’
Vikki felt that the Third Dimension would be a good start, but Albert
had waxed lyrical about even more esoteric realms, so she chose her words
carefully. ‘As many dimensions as you prefer, sir, as long as it’s more than
two.’
‘Then you’re in luck,’ said the Visitor. ‘When it comes to dimensions,
I’m as versatile as the next being.’ There was a pause, and he added, ‘Well,
more so, since you are the next being, and you’re a Flatty.’
This didn’t sound very polite, but it seldom pays to point out such social
nuances to transcendent beings from another universe. ‘Excuse me, sir, but
are you a Sphere?’
Her stomach vibrated to the sounds of deep laughter. ‘Me? A Sphere?
Nothing so prosaic, I’m delighted to say.’
‘Um, then ... what are you?’
‘I,’ the creature declaimed proudly, ‘am a Space Hopper.’
‘That’s a very strange name,’ said Vikki, before she could stop herself.
‘Not at all,’ said the being, ‘it’s a very good name.’
‘Why?’
‘Because - isn’t it obvious? Because I can hop spaces.’

Fiveday 29 Septober 2099

It took a while to sort out what the Space Hopper meant by that, Diary
Darling. For a time I thought that by ‘space’ the creature meant ‘gap’ - as
we would refer to the space between two buildings, say.
Not a bit of it.
To the Space Hopper, a space was an entire world! More than that, it was
an entire self-contained UNIVERSE. Flatland is one kind of space, and
Albert’s freaky Spaceland is another kind of space. But that’s just the tip of
the iceangle. Al himself talked of Lineland, with its smartarse King, and the
complacent God of Pointland: ’Infinite beatitude of existence! It is; and
there is none else beside It’ And he dropped heavy hints of “mysteries yet
higher... Extra’Solids...and Double’Extra Solids...’
Now: you and I may find this kind of stuff way out, but to the Space
Hopper it was kind of boring. Extra dimensions? Yesterday’s news. He - I’ll
call him a he, even though we haven’t discussed Space Hopper Gender
Issues ... for all I know they have seven sexes or none ... Anyway, he sounds
like a male, and he’s into far heavier stuff than that. One-and-a-quarter
dimensions, would you believe? Infinite dimensions. Bent space and rippled
space and space that blows itself up ... Space that’s just disembodied dots,
space that isn’t really space at all. This is one seriously spaced-out guy, ha
ha.
And when he calls himself a Space Hopper, able to ‘hop spaces’, what he
seems to mean is that he can hop BETWEEN spaces. Only there isn’t any
Between, just the spaces themselves. Or maybe there is a Between (I reckon
he’s a bit confused about this) and they all live inside some kind of Grand
Unified Metaspace (or GUM) known as the Mathiverse. Look, I don’t
understand this buzz any more than you do, Diary Dear, so there’s no use
asking me for clarification. Not yet, anyway.
We ran out of chat time rather suddenly when Lee woke up and I heard
her snooping outside my room. But The Space Hopper says he’ll visit me
again tomorrow night. And this time he’ll bring a Virtual Unreality Engine.
At least, I think that’s what he said.

Jubilee Line was getting very worried indeed. Modern morality was all very
well - no, actually it wasn’t all very well at all, it was far too lax, though she
acknowledged with a certain wistfulness that she had been born a
generation too soon - but Grosvenor would have a fit if he found out that his
dear sweet Victoria was entertaining a man in her room in the early hours of
the morning.
There was no doubt in Jubilee’s mind. She had woken up, and heard
muffled voices coming from somewhere in the house. At first she’d thought
it might be burglars, and she’d sneaked out of her room with every intention
of stabbing the intruder with her sharp rear end. She had neither fears nor
qualms about this: all Flatland women were armed and dangerous by virtue
of their needle-sharp lineal geometry, and they were trained from birth to
use this natural advantage if it became necessary. Criminals had no rights in
Flatland - rights were what you got if you agreed to abide by the common
legal code, and you couldn’t have things both ways. But as she sneaked
closer to the source of the sound, it resolved itself into a conversation
between an unknown male (she could tell by the voice) and her daughter!
Her worst fears were being confirmed; she’d known Vikki’s change of
habits had to be a symptom of some kind of improper behaviour.
It was that computer, without a doubt. She never should have let
Grosvenor buy the thing. Not that there’d been any way to stop him once
he’d got the idea into his head, however damnfool it was.
She tiptipped closer. Suddenly the voices stopped, but not before she
heard Vikki agree to meet the stranger in her room the following night.
Well, we’ll see about that!
As quietly as she could, Jubilee made her way back to her own room.
Silence once more descended on the Square household. But now it was a
thoughtful silence.

Vikki had heard right. The thing that the Space Hopper was going to bring
was indeed a virtual unreality engine, or VUE. It would, he said, ‘blow her
mind’. Not literally - despite its ungainly appearance, the gadget was
perfectly safe, because most of it existed only in the metareality of the
Mathiverse. More precisely, the Space Hopper explained, the VUE would
expand her mental horizons. Take her mind to new places. Change her point
of VUE. She was about to become a Space Traveller, and the VUE was to
be her Space Suit. With its extradimensional terminals plugged into the
delicate tissues of her brain - an easy operation, since her brain was
protected only against interference from North, South, East, and West, not
from Up or Down - she would be able to experience each of the bizarre
spaces of the Mathiverse from the inside. The Space Hopper had no need of
such prosthetics: he could transport himself from one space to another using
only the Power of Imagination. A Flatland mind, though, would need
technological assistance to overcome its own inherent limitations.
So absorbed had Vikki and the Space Hopper become in installing the
drivers for the VUE and customizing her user-preferences that they failed to
hear Jubilee’s approach. Through the solid door, Lee could hear their
discussion clearly. Whatever they were doing, phrases like ‘reinsert your
floppy’ sounded distinctly immodest and unladylike.
When the strange male urged Vikki that it was time to ‘go for it’, Jubilee
could no longer restrain herself. Outraged, she threw open Vikki’s door, and
charged into the room, her infinitely thin needlepoint waving threateningly.
Ahead was her daughter, frozen by the suddenness of the intrusion ... and a
remarkably handsome Circle wearing the most ghastly orange cloak.
Jubilee skated to a halt, confused. At least her daughter had taste- more
than she could say about the man’s dress sense. Jubilee wondered how
Vikki could have met this gorgeous hunk. But no good ever came of affairs
with the upper classes - they’d just get you segment and dump you. With a
shrill cry of ‘You swine! You ought to be circumscribed!’ Jubilee launched
herself backwards at the intruder, intending to give him a brand new
diameter. But he just seemed to slide away from her infinitely sharp tip. She
thought she heard Vikki’s voice saying ‘Don’t worry, Mother. . .’ Then,
silence.
Vikki, and her high-bred paramour, were gone.
With growing horror, Jubilee searched every corner of the room. She
knew they hadn’t gone out by the door, and that was the only possible route.
They’d vanished.
Eventually, Grosvenor woke up to find his distraught wife peering
hopelessly behind every piece of furniture and every childhood toy in their
daughter’s room, sobbing her midpoint out.

Virtual Unreality, Vikki had decided, was cool. Agreed, it took a bit of
getting used to - but once you’d mastered the knack of seeing new
geometries in their own terms, instead of expecting them to have the same
properties as the space you were familiar with from birth, you could begin
to appreciate their novelty. And it certainly made you realize just how
limited your familiar concept of space was. Having the VUE made all this a
lot easier: without it, you’d have to rely on your imagination. In Virtual
Unreality you could experience what others could only dream about. She
now understood how Albert had felt when his flat world had suddenly
expanded into the glorious realm of solidity, literally opening up new
directions. And the true form of the Space Hopper was now visible to her,
with his twin horns, manic grin, and bulging body. He wasn’t one circle, or
two, or three. All the while she had been trapped within the confines of
Flatland, all she had been able to see of the Space Hopper was a two-
dimensional cross-section. As he moved up or down (words to which she
could finally put a meaning), his cross-section changed. As he rose through
the plane of Flatland, what she had seen was this:

Even the complicated shape she thought she had seen, if only for a
moment, now made sense: it was a slice through the level where the horns
joined the bulbous lump of the creature’s body.
So this was what Albert had seen! Not with a shape as complicated as
the Space Hopper, though, just a straightforward Sphere:
 As the Sphere rose towards the plane of Flatland, not yet intersecting
that plane, it was invisible. As its surface began to pass through that plane,
it appeared - from nowhere, it seemed - as a single point, which became a
small circle, then a larger one, then ... When the ‘equator’ of the Sphere
aligned itself with the plane of Flatland, the circular cross-section had the
same diameter as the Sphere itself - but what a woefully inadequate
representation this single circular slice was! And if the Sphere continued to
rise, its cross-section would shrink back down to a point, and then vanish.
*

What is the Mathiverses

The Mathiverse transcends Time and Space ... it transcends Intelligence
and Extelligence... it transcends Thought; it transcends Transcendence
itself. Within it - and ‘within’ is definitely the wrong word, for concepts
such as ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ apply to individual Spaces, not to the
unfathomable reaches of the Mathiverse - are not just all Spaces and Times
that have existed, or all Spaces and Times that will exist, or even all Spaces
and Times that could exist. It also contains (wrong word, again) all Spaces
and Times that could not exist, if only as a grim warning of the dangers of
the nonexistent.
The Mathiverse contains all numbers.
The Mathiverse contains all shapes.
The Mathiverse contains all geometries.
The Mathiverse contains all vectors, matrices, permutations,
combinations, integrations, separations, projections, injections, surjections,
bijections, semigroups, transformations, relations, functions, functors,
functionals, algebraic group schemes, super-manifolds, /C-theories, M-
theories, M-sets, power sets, subsets, supersets, and plain, ordinary,
common-or-garden sets.
The Mathiverse contains all data structures.
The Mathiverse contains all processes.
The Mathiverse contains all formal descriptions of logical structures.
The Mathiverse contains all informal descriptions of illogical structures.
If one day somebody managed to invent a new kind of thing, one that
wasn’t a Space and wasn’t a Time but somehow belonged in the same
category (and, now that you mention it, the Mathiverse contains all
categories)... anyway, if somebody did what I’ve just said, then whatever
they came up with would have been present in the Mathiverse all along.
(Except, as you’ve guessed, ‘would’, ‘have’, ‘been’, ‘present’, and ‘in’ are
the wrong words, and so are ‘all’ and ‘along’. We can probably accept ‘the’,
though.)
Space Hoppers use the name ‘Planiturth’ to refer to the world that you,
dear reader, inhabit. Planiturth is not the same as what old Albert had called
‘Spaceland’ - but there is a close connection. Spaceland is an abstraction
that captures some of the essence of Planiturthian geometry, but Planiturth
is real Planiturth has a history as well as a geography, and its relation to the
Mathiverse is complex and convoluted.
Even philosophers (a special breed of the creatures that live on
Planiturth, generically known as Peoples) do not doubt that Planiturth is
intimately associated with the Mathiverse - of it but not in it, so to speak
(not that ‘in’ ... but we’ve been through that already, sorry). In a sense, the
Mathiverse is a creation of the combined mentality of the Intelligences of
Planiturth. It is a Planiturthian mental construct. Despite which, it has its
own kind of reality - it is so real that every atom of Planiturth’s universe
dances to its tune. The very rules by which Planiturth’s universe runs are
drawn from the Mathiverse.
Or so the Planiturthians think, anyway.
It is a deep philosophical conundrum. Does Planiturth’s universe really
obey rules that come from the realms of the Mathiverse? Or is that an
illusion born of Planiturthian prejudices? Is Planiturth’s universe built from
mathematics? Or is mathematics built by the minds of Planiturthians?
Planiturthian mathematicians would like to think that their universe is built
from mathematics, but that’s only natural, after all. Planiturthian physicists
would like to think that the Planiturthian universe is built from physics.
Planiturthian biologists would like to think that the Planiturthian universe is
built from biology. Planiturthian philosophers would like to think that the
Planiturthian universe is built from philosophy. (Let me tell you a secret: it
is. The fundamental unit of the Planiturthian universe is the philosophon, a
unit of logic so tiny that only a philosopher could hope to split it.)
Planiturthian greengrocers would like to think that the Planiturthian
universe is built from carrots and potatoes. Planiturthian taxi-drivers have
the definite opinion that the Planiturthian universe is built from opinions,
and they are prepared to say so at length. And Planiturthian beauticians
would like to think that the Planiturthian universe is built from beauty, and
in this belief they may be closer than all the others, for whatever attributes
the Mathiverse might have, beauty is paramount among them.
Mathiversian beauty is, of course, an acquired taste.
The Planiturthians are unique among the creatures of (but perhaps not
in) the Mathiverse in that they are not sure which Space (or Time, or
Spacetime, or...) they really belong to. Long ago they thought they inhabited
Spaceland, a rigid 3D universe; Time was simply something that passed, a
separate ID process. This was the Clockwork Universe of a famous People
named Isaacnewton: Absolute and Uniform Space ticking to the beat of an
Absolute and Uniform clock, and decorated with Absolute (but definitely
not Uniform) Matter. Spaceland is a genuine part of the Mathiverse, but the
Planiturthians have now decided - correctly - that they don’t actually live in
Spaceland at all. They live, perhaps, in Curvyspace. Or is it in Waveworld?
Or are they gambolling in the Quantum Fields (’gambling’ might be a better
word since these fields are made from probabilities). The Planiturthians
aren’t really sure, and about every ten years they completely change their
minds.
Mind you, Flatlanders will shortly have some rethinking to do, too.

Sixday 30 Septober 2099

We’ve been exploring Spaceland! (Planiturth, too, but that’s a lot more
complicated.) Like Flatland, it’s a Euclidean space (as I now know to spell
it). When the Space Hopper first said that word, I asked him what a ‘yiike’
was and why it needed a lid. He hummed and hawed for a while, and then
said that somewhere in the humongitude of the Mathiverse a Planiturthian
being known as Euclidthegreek first mapped out the geometry of worlds
like Flatland.
I find this a questionable assertion, to say the least, since according to all
the history books Flatland was first mapped out by an explorer named
Marco Polygo. Still, I rely on the Space Hopper to conduct me from space
to space safely, and it is best not to annoy him.
Anyway, Diary Dear, it’s amazing what an extra dimension can do for
you. Not just Spheres and Cubes and Pyramids and things - face it, those are
pretty obvious extensions of Circles and Squares and Triangles. A
Flatlander, shown a sequence of cross-sections, could get quite a fair idea of
what they’re like. But there are MUCH more interesting things in
Spaceland, things that are completely outside the Flatland frame.
Some of them are simple. In Flatland, if you hammer a nail right through
a plank of wood, it falls to bits:

This DOESN’T happen in Spaceland. And they can use wires to connect
telephones, without trapping everyone in the tangle they create. They put
the wires UNDER (a new word I’ve learned that means ‘in the Down
direction’) the places where people walk.
Some are subtle. My absolute FAVE is a widget they call a KNOT. This
is a loop of string, like a Circle, but it sort of runs through its own inside!!!
The result is that it tangles up in a way you can’t rearrange into an ordinary
Circle. Flatland is just too low-dimensional to allow knots.
The Space Hopper says that even Spacelanders (well, actually he called
them ‘Planiturthians’, he says there’s a subtle distinction but he refused to
talk about it until later) don’t actually have a very good feel for 3D - they
have trouble with knots, for instance! This, he says, is because their eyes
really see only in 2D. They see a 2D projection of an object, not the entire
object ALL AT ONCE. So it’s surprisingly easy to shake their intuition
about the space they live in.
For instance, here’s a teaser that the Space Hopper asked me. Take a
Spaceland cube, of unit side (that’s a fancy way to say ‘one thingy each
way’ where the ‘thingy’ is some standard unit of measurement, OK?) and
cut a hole through it (without it falling apart, like a plank would in Flatland)
with a square cross-section, so that another cube can be pushed through the
hole. Got that? Right - here’s the question. What’s the largest size of cube
that can be made to pass through such a hole?
I know what you’re thinking, Diary Dear. Obviously you can’t push a
larger cube through a smaller one. But that’s a Flatland way of thinking.
What you have to realize is that the second cube might be pushed through at
a slant. With the right slant, you can push a cube of side 1.06 through a
cube of side 1. You cut it like this:
So in Spaceland, you can push a bigger cube through a smaller one! (Not
many people know that.)
On the other hand, there are some things that Spacelanders THINK they
know - and it turns out they’re RIGHT - but it’s not so easy to PROVE
they’re right. One of the most amazing is all about how greengrocers stack
oranges ...

‘It’s called the Kepler problem, and it’s one of the oldest unsolved
Planiturthian mathematical problems,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘At least, it
was until someone solved it. Then it was one of the newest solved
Planiturthian mathematical problems.’
‘How old was it? Before some Planiturthian solved it, I mean?’
The Space Hopper scratched one of his horns. ‘In the Planiturthian
calendar it goes back to the year 1611. That’s 1711 in Flatland dates - by a
strange coincidence, Flatland time runs exactly 100 years ahead of
Planiturthian time. And it was solved in 1999 their time, so it lasted 388
years!’
 ‘What’s it about?’
‘The best way to stack spheres. Tell me, Vikki, how do greengrocers
stack fruit in Flatland? Round fruit like... well, roundfruit?’
That was an easy one. As a small child, Vikki had always enjoyed a visit
to the greengrocer’s hexagonal shop with its neatly laid out clumps of fruit.
The squarefruit, of course, were always packed in squares, because that way
they fitted exactly. But the roundfruit were packed in a honeycomb pattern.
That left gaps, but you had to leave gaps, and in this arrangement the gaps
were as small as they could be:

Flatlanders liked both arrangements, because the first was based on

squares and the second on hexagons. (If you can’t see the hexagons, look at
any circle and the circles that surround it. There are six of them, and their
centres form a regular hexagon.)
‘Quite right,’ said the Space Hopper when she told him this. ‘But how
do you know that the hexagonal pattern is the most efficient?’
‘Experiment?’ suggested Vikki.
The Space Hopper shook his horns. ‘No, that’s not a proof. It’s one of
those cases where the answer is “obvious", but proving the obvious is
difficult. It took the Planiturthians until 1910 to do that - and even then the
proof outlined by Axelthue is rather sketchy. A really solid proof didn’t turn
up until Fejestoth found one in 1940. So don’t be too unhappy that you
couldn’t tell me why the hexagonal pattern is the most efficient way to pack
circles in the plane. It’s hard, however obvious it may seem.
‘Spacelanders have fruit too. They have bananas, which are long thin
ellipsoids - usually bent - and they have spherical ones, like oranges. And,
just as in Flatland, every Planiturthian greengrocer knows the best way to
pack oranges. How do you think they do it?
This was a good test of Vikki’s mastery of the VUE, and she created lots
of virtual spheres in mid-air and started fiddling with them. Eventually she
stopped. ‘How about this?’

‘That would be good with cubefruit,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘But even
in Flatland, the way you pack squarefruit isn’t the way you pack roundfruit.
You’ve arranged each layer in squares. Try again.’
‘Um ... Oh, I see! I can make lots of hexagonal layers and stack them
vertically on top of one another!’

‘Better - but you’re still thinking like a Flatlander. You can do better
still.’
‘I don’t see how.’
 ‘Try shifting the layers so that the bumps in one layer fit into the dips in
the previous one. You’re putting bumps against bumps.’
Vikki thought about this for a moment, then she rearranged her virtual
oranges into a more efficient packing:

‘Fantastic!’ said the Space Hopper. ‘That’s the one I want! As I

mentioned, it’s the arrangement that every Planiturthian greengrocer knows
fills space most efficiently. A Planiturthian mathematician and mystic called
Johanneskepler knew it too, in 1611 - or, like the greengrocers, he thought
he did. It’s certainly a very efficient way to pack spheres in 3D. But is it the
best way? That’s another question altogether.’
‘Does it really matter? After all, if I’m a greengrocer, I don’t really care
as long as I don’t waste too much space.’
‘And if you’re a Planiturthian, as long as the pile doesn’t collapse. Quite
right - and that’s one reason why the greengrocers don’t “know” the answer.
What they know is the answer to a slightly different question. They build
their piles of oranges on a flat surface, and mostly they want to find a
method that avoids avalanches. But in a way it did matter to Johanneskepler
that this arrangement is the best, though he didn’t realize it at the time.
What he wanted to understand was snowflakes.’
‘Surely he didn’t want to stack snowflakes?’ asked Vikki, puzzled.
‘No. It’s easy to stack snowflakes: it’s called a snowdrift. Though that
doesn’t stack them very efficiently. No, Johanneskepler wanted to
understand why snowflakes are six-sided. You see, he wasn’t very rich
(being a mathematician), and he needed to give his sponsor - who rejoiced
in the name of Johnmatthewwackerofwackenfels -a New Year’s present. So
he wrote him a book called On The Six-Cornered Snowflake, in which he
tried to work out why snowflakes had sixfold symmetry. And he traced it to
a packing problem.’
‘But you just said—’
‘Ah. Not a problem about packing snowflakes together. A problem
about packing together whatever tiny units of stuff a snowflake is made
from. Johanneskepler didn’t have the modern concepts, but what he was
asking about was the atomic structure of ice crystals. He figured out that
nice was made of tiny spheres - not quite right, but close enough - and if
those spheres packed together as closely as possible, then the “crystal
lattice” of ice would have a hexagonal structure. Just like the hexagonal
packing arrangement for oranges. And the second “if was spot on, because
atoms pack together in whatever arrangement makes their energy lowest,
and basically that means close-packing.’
Vikki knew that ‘atoms’ were very small particles - well, particle-like
things - out of which all matter was made: they’d done this in Physics. And
she knew about crystals. They were made from atoms arranged in a regular
lattice pattern, a grid. In this respect, Flatland was just like Spaceland,
except that there were 17 types of crystal lattice in Flatland, as compared
with 230 in Spaceland. So what the Space Hopper was telling her all made
perfect sense - for once.
‘Anyway,’ the Space Hopper went on, ‘there was a period of nearly four
hundred years when the Kepler conjecture - that the arrangement of
staggered hexagonal layers is the best way to pack spheres - was something
that “most mathematicians believed, and all physicists knew". But you can
imagine that if a similar problem in 2D wasn’t solved until 1910, then its
3D analogue would prove to be a lot harder - and it was. Lots of Peoples
tried, and failed. Then, in 1999, a Planiturthian mathematician named
Thomashales finally proved that the physicists had been right all along.
(This greatly disappointed some of the mathematicians, who were vaguely
hoping that the physicists would turn out to have been wrong. Fat chance!)
His proof was huge: he turned the problem into a vast number of
calculations and then got a Planiturthian computer to do the sums. The idea
is to start with an arrangement that’s not packed into staggered hexagonal
layers, and show that by rearranging some of the oranges you can improve
the efficiency. Because in principle there are many possible ways not to
have staggered hexagonal layers, you have to do this in an awful lot of
cases. But Thomashales managed to organize a huge calculation to deal
with every possibility.’

Sevenday 1 Noctember 2099

Planiturth, and its Spaceland geometry, are BRILL. I’m having my mind
stretched in a dozen directions at once, and they’re all fascinating. But
tonight I’m feeling a bit sad - homesick, really. My parents must be terribly
worried. Thing is, i’m having a lot of fun, and I don’t want to go home
JUST yet - but it would be nice to get some kind of message back to them
to say I’m OK.
Maybe there’s a way to tap into the Flatland phone system from here. I’ll
ask the Space Hopper tomorrow.
 4
A HUNDRED AND ONE DIMENSIONS

Wunday 2 Noctember 2099

I’ve been MUCH too busy to phone home.
Compared with Flatland, Diary Dear, the Planiturthian universe is a riot!
For starters, it’s got a HUMONGOUS number of Spheres - well, they’re
more or less that shape - which range from huge balls of fire called stars to
tiny balls of ice known as setalights. No, Diary Darling, I haven’t the
foggiest why they call them that -1 guess because you have to set them
alight to warm them up. (It’d be a better name for the stars, really.) Anyway,
the Space Hopper has been having a whale of a time buzzing all over the
place, showing me all the tourist attractions like Black Holes and
Ooooooooort (I think that’s the spelling) Clouds ...
I’d call it a whistle-stop tour, except we never stop. Or whistle.
The Planiturthian universe, I now know, contains a vast range of shapes
that I’ve never seen before. Some are GIGANTIC: spiral things called
galaxies, clusters of galaxies, superclusters ... right up to rippled skeins of
matter millions of light years across. (A light year sounds like a unit of time
but it isn’t: it’s a very big unit of distance indeed, the distance light goes in a
year. And in the Planiturthian universe, light sizzles.)
On a smaller scale, most of the Planiturthian universe seems to be made
of rocks. Of every conceivable shape and size. And many inconceivable
shapes and sizes. Except - most of the Planiturthian universe is uninhabited,
but every so often you find living creatures of one kind or another. Even
intelligent beings like US (though not as beautiful and far less perfect).
Almost without exception the inhabitants of the Planiturthian universe (oh,
yes, there’s lots) are convinced that they are the ONLY life-forms in the
whole of Space. The Space Hopper says that when it takes light several
centuries to get to your nearest neighbour, then it’s hardly surprising that
you should think you’re the only lifeform in the whole of Space. I think the
Space Hopper is much too willing to tolerate poor imaginations, but that’s
just the opinion of a humble Flatlander.
One of the smaller spheres (it would be tempting to call it Roundworld,
but there are SO MANY round worlds here, and anyway its inhabitants
refer to it as Planiturth, so I shall too) is quite a fun place. I’ve told you
about it before, but now I’ve had a crash course in Planiturthian Studies.
Lots of these medium-sized Spheres are littered with common - though
distinctly nongeometric - shapes, such as rocks, mountains, canyons,
volcanoes, and clouds. Planiturth is smothered from pole to pole with far
more unusual structures: swamps, trees, plants, animals, and curious
vaguely star-shaped things with five protuberances that call themselves
Peoples. Like this:

The Peoples of Planiturth are just as complacent about living in a 3D

world as we Flatlanders are about living in a 2D one. Most of them are
convinced that there is no such thing as the Fourth Dimension. The Space
Hopper says that they’re right, but for the wrong reason.
I wonder what he means by that? Tomorrow, I’ll ask him. Right now, I’m
worn out. I do wish I could phone home. Maybe I can build a transmitter!
 *

They’re right, Vikki, because there is no such thing as the Fourth

Dimension. And they’re wrong, because there are lots of different Fourth
Dimensions - not to mention Fifth, Sixth, or even a Hundred-and-First -
many of which they experience in their daily lives, but fail to recognize.’
Vikki found it hard to believe that anyone could experience a Fourth or
Fifth Dimension and not know it, and said so.
‘It’s a question of being sensitive to what you’re actually experiencing,’
explained the Space Hopper. ‘They’ve got it into their heads that “Fourth
Dimension” has to mean a fourth direction in space -by which they mean
their usual 3D space. Well, naturally if you go looking for a Fourth
Dimension in a 3D space you won’t’find it, any more than you could find a
Third Dimension in Flat ... Well, actually, that’s not quite—’
‘You’re saying they should look for a Fourth Dimension outside their
own space? You may be able to hop spaces, but for the rest of us it’s not so
easy, you know.’
The Space Hopper wiggled impatiently. ‘Sometimes. Not always. It may
be just a question of looking at their own space in a different way. But
instead of us just talking about it, let’s see what a People has to say about
it.’ He made some adjustment to Vikki’s VUE, and the universe turned
inside out...
An infinite series of folds unfolded, and Space stabilized. Vikki sat still
for a moment until she stopped feeling sick.
They were sitting at the side of a rutted dirt path in the middle of
beautiful, rolling countryside. Beyond it was a field full of fluffy white
things on sticks that made ‘baaaa’ noises and copied each other a lot. From
the distance came a curious sound, a kind of rattle-buzz-hum. Then, along
the path, bouncing erratically from one rut to another, came A Machine. It
rolled along on two big Circles, and a People sat precariously on top of it.
‘A Bicirclist,’ whispered the Space Hopper. ‘We’re very fortunate: you
don’t often see them in this habitat.’ He bounced up and down, and the
Bicirclist promptly left the path and toppled into a ditch. There was a
silence, followed by a stream of Planiturthian invective. The Bicirclist
climbed back onto the road and stomped towards them.
 ‘Why did you— Oh, I say, are you two part of some promo or
something? How on Earth do you squeeze into those costumes? Are you
dwarves? That squarey thing is amazing, it looks so thin that from the edge
it seems to vanish altogether! Some kind of optical illusion? Must be.’
‘Not at all,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘We are visitors from a different
Dimension.’
The Bicirclist clutched its belly and laughed heartily. ‘I know,’ it said,
‘you’re students, aren’t you? Is it Rag Week? This is some kind of practical
joke.’
The Space Hopper turned to Vikki. ‘You see?’ She nodded.
‘Why do you think it’s a joke?’ asked the Space Hopper.
‘Because there aren’t any Extra Dimensions,’ said the Bicirclist.
‘There’s the usual three, and that’s it.’
‘Really?’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Just suppose, for instance, that your
comfortable, solid, 3D space were in reality just an infinitely thin slice of a
far more glorious 4D continuum.’
’Slice?’ said the Bicirclist, incredulously. ‘How can a solid space be a
slice?’
‘Let me tell you about a place called Flatland ...’ the Space Hopper
began.

The Bicirclist was extremely patient.

In the circumstances.

‘So you see, a Flatlander must face much the same question: since the plane
is all there is, how can it possibly be a slice of anything?’ For the dozenth
time, the Space Hopper had launched into his favourite argument. ‘By
analogy, in what sense is a plane thin, when it extends infinitely far along
both of the possible dimensions North-South and East-West? There is no
other direction for it to be thin along. It’s thin along the Up-Down
direction? These words have no meaning. Show me “Up” and I might
believe you - but you can’t show me “Up,” not if we remain in Flatland. In
the same way, you Spacelanders may have difficulty comprehending that
your solid 3D space might indeed be an infinitely thin slice of something
bigger.’ ‘But that’s just an analogy.’ The Bicirclist was getting really into
his stride now, and his face was flushed and animated. He waved his
protuberances a lot. ‘The difference is that I can see there’s more to Space
than just a plane. But I can’t see there’s more to Space than ... Space.’
Before the Space Hopper could tell him yet again that this was because his
perceptual apparatus was too limited, the Bicirclist quickly conceded part of
the argument. ‘I suppose it might be a part of something bigger that we
can’t perceive,’ he said, ‘I grant you that. But whatever it is, it can’t be thin’
‘Oh, but it can’, the Space Hopper contradicted. ‘Agreed, your space is
very thick (though probably not infinitely so) along the three dimensions of
North-South, East-West, and Up-Down. But there could be a fourth
dimension, Chalk-Cheese, and along that direction your supposedly thick
space might be no more than a filmy slice. Though the “film” would be
three-dimensional, of course. Travel a trillionth of a micrometre Chalkwise
or Cheesewise, and you would move out of your homely Space altogether!’
And he scratched a rough diagram in the dried mud at the side of the path:

‘It’s not very convincing,’ said the Bicirclist. ‘I don’t quite see where
the Chalk-Cheese line goes.’
‘Yes, well ...’ The Space Hopper writhed with embarrassment. ‘I ... yes,
I admit it’s not possible to draw a convincing fourth dimension on a two-
dimensional path - but then, even to represent a third dimension requires the
convention that a slanting line doesn’t actually reside within the picture.’
‘I guess.’
‘So we just need a further convention, that another kind of slanting line
doesn’t reside within 3D Space.’
‘Mmmph.’
The Space Hopper could see that the Bicirclist was still unconvinced.
‘OK, then: replace “Chalk” with “Past” and “Cheese” with “Future".’
‘I don’t catch your drift, old chum.’
‘Isn’t your present world separated by a trillionth of a second from its
future, and likewise from its past? Time is an example - but not the only one
- of a Fourth Dimension. And along the time direction, your present world
is wafer-thin!’
The Bicirclist disputed that time could be a dimension, but as usual all
he really did was argue that it wasn’t a spatial dimension, which was
reasonable but irrelevant. The Space Hopper turned to Vikki. ‘Wouldn’t it
be nice if one day a Hypersphere could convince him of the existence of a
Fourth Dimension, merely by appearing from thin air within a locked room,
growing from a point to a small sphere to a larger sphere, and then
shrinking back to nothingness.’
‘Or maybe he could get a visitation from a Hyperspace Hopper from the
Fourth Dimension!’ said Vikki. She paused. ‘Of course, all he’d see would
be a puzzling collection of spheres, changing size before his eyes.’
‘Exactly. Only a Virtual Unreality Engine could reveal the extradi-
mensional logic behind the strange contortions.’

In the wake of Victoria’s baffling departure, the Square household had

become a very gloomy place indeed. In Grosvenor’s mind, the trouble
caused by his ancestor’s old book and his daughter’s inexplicable departure
had to be connected somehow. He felt guilty that his hasty burning of the
ancient document was what had upset Vikki and caused her disappearance,
and to avoid admitting this -to himself or anyone else - he alternated
between raining curses on old Albert for bringing the family into disrepute
from the far side of the grave, and denouncing Vikki for the same offence
from its near side. These episodes, in turn, were punctuated by long periods
of stony-faced silence on the whole issue - which, he would declare, was
just something they should put behind them. ‘The girl was no good,
Jubilee,’ he would say, ‘always obstinate and headstrong. I don’t know how
she vanished, and I don’t know where she went, and I don’t carel The
family must move on.’
The boys, Les and Berkeley, had been told that their sister had been
offered a really good job in Numerica, a distant region of Flatland, and had
been forced to leave abruptly before it was offered to someone else. They
appeared to accept this explanation, but Jubilee could tell they were only
half-convinced.
She herself had gradually come to a very different view from the one
that her husband professed to hold. She was puzzled by the manner of
Vikki’s sudden disappearance, and the more she thought about it, the less
certain she was that her daughter had, in fact, been involved in a secret
liaison. She had searched Vikki’s room and found nothing incriminating;
she was starting to wonder if her daughter had been an innocent victim of
events that neither she nor Grosvenor understood. And she couldn’t help
sensing echoes of Albert’s strange visitations. Just what had been in that old
book?
Grosvenor had notified the police, of course, but he’d had to conceal
some of the story because officialdom would have thought he was nuts if
he’d told them she’d vanished into thin air. So he just said she’d run away.
Now, a daughter of Vikki’s age disappearing in a huff was hardly unusual,
and technically Vikki was an adult, responsible for her own actions and her
own decisions. In the absence of any signs of foul play, the police were
privately regarding her disappearance as a typical flight from the family
home by a young woman in search of personal liberty. They put Vikki on
their missing persons list, and that was pretty much all they did.
Jubilee knew that her husband’s real feelings were very different from
those he dared to express, and she hoped he would eventually be able to
admit as much. She was worried that when Vikki turned up again - and she
had an exceptionally strong hunch that it would be ‘when’, not ‘if - then
Grosvenor would blow his northedge and cause an irreparable rift.
 Secretly, Jubilee also hoped that her daughter was having fun -otherwise
she had caused an enormous amount of trouble for nothing - and when
everything started to overwhelm her, she tried to lose herself in housework
and looking after the boys.
It was a very difficult time for them all, and the atmosphere in the
spacious old house was strained and awkward. Still, they coped.

‘If Time were a dimension,’ said the Bicirclist, ‘you ought to be able to
travel along it, like you can with the dimensions of Space.’
‘You can,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘You can travel forwards at one year
per year.’
‘No, I mean travel back and forth at will.’
‘Ah.’ The Space Hopper turned to Vikki and whispered, ‘Should I
reveal that we Space Hoppers are also Time Hoppers?’ He turned back to
the Bicirclist. ‘Travelling through Time is more difficult than travelling
through Space because the temporal metric is far more compressed—’
But the Bicirclist wasn’t listening. ‘Time travel - like that bloke in the
story by H.G. Wells. Which, by sheer coincidence and narrative imperative,
I’ve got in my saddlebag.’ He rummaged in a small bag attached to the rear
of the Bicircle and extracted the book triumphantly. ’The Time Machine,
that’s what it’s called.’ He opened the book and thumbed through the first
few pages. ‘Wells’s Time Traveller opens the story by arguing that an
instantaneous solid body is just as much a mathematical fiction as a line or
a plane: “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any real body must have
extension in four directions: it must has Length, Breadth, Thickness, and -
Duration". Having argued that material bodies are really four-dimensional,
Wells’s Time Traveller then springs his trap. “There is no difference
between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our
consciousness moves along it,” he says, and drops dark hints that he has
overcome this particular limitation.’
The Space Hopper had a good grasp of Planiturthian history, especially
when it came to Space and Time. ‘Do you know that within ten years of The
Time Machine, a People called Alberteinstein invented the Theory of
Relativity? And another named Hermann-minkowski formulated
Alberteinstein’s ideas in terms of the geometry of four-dimensional
spacetime?’
‘Nope.’
‘Well - the idea of time as the fourth dimension came into vogue, and in
this world it’s never quite gone away again. But the truth is far stranger.
Your world has not just four dimensions, but five, fifty, a million, or even an
infinity of them! And none of them need be time. Space of a hundred and
one dimensions is just as real as a space of three dimensions.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘Not at all. Why, take that Bicircle of yours. It has at least seven
dimensions.’
‘Really? Then show me some.’
‘I will if you bring it over and hold it upright.’ The Bicirclist obliged.
The Space Hopper bobbed across to the Bicircle. ‘You’ll grant that its
current shape is three-dimensional?’
‘Of course.’
The Space Hopper nudged the Bicircle’s handlebars through a small
angle. ‘There! A Fourth Dimension!’
The Bicirclist laughed. ‘Don’t be silly! You just moved it in 3D.’
‘Yes, but it changed shape.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘No, it really did,’ said Vikki. ‘If it had stayed the same shape you could
make it fit into its current position by a rigid motion. But that bit with horns
on had to turn while the rest didn’t. That’s not a rigid motion!’
‘Oh. I suppose you could put it like that. But if it moved through a new
Dimension, in what direction does that Dimension point?’
‘In the Turn-The-Handlebars direction,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘which
is different from the Turn-The-Front-Circle direction, which is different
from the Turn-The-Back-Circle direction, which is different from the Turn-
The-Pedals direction. That’s four new dimensions, in addition to the
original three. You’ve got a seven-dimensional bicircle.’

*
Twoday 3 Noctember 2099
I really must phone home soon. But the Space Hopper says that this will be
difficult, because of system incompatibilities. Apparently, if I want to phone
home then it’s best not to do it from here.
Well, Diary Dear, eventually the Space Hopper managed to explain in
what sense the Planiturthian People’s Bicircle is Seven-Dimensional. It’s all
to do with variables - quantities that can change. ‘Dimension’ is a
geometric way of referring to a variable. Time is a nonspatial variable, so it
provides a fourth dimension, but the same goes for temperature, wind-
speed, or the number of termites in Tangentia. The position of a point in
three-dimensional space depends on three variables - its distances East,
North, and Upwards relative to some reference point. By analogy, anything
that depends on four variables lives in a four-dimensional space, and
anything that depends on 101 variables lives in a 101-dimensional space.
In fact, ANY complex system is multidimensional. The weather in a
typical Flatland back garden depends on temperature, humidity, two
components of wind velocity, barometric pressure - that’s five dimensions
already! I didn’t know we had a 5D garden before! An economy with a
million different commodities, each having its own price, lives in a
MILLION-DIMENSIONAL space!!
No wonder economies are hard to control!

Vikki was dreaming ...

She dreamed she was floating in the darkness above a world that looked
much like Flatland must have been before Life evolved - a featureless,
uniform, white surface. But something lived on the surface, for she could
hear it muttering to itself: ‘Painting the dot, painting the dot, red paint, red
paint, round and round; painting the dot, painting the dot, red paint, red
paint, round and round . . .’ over and over again.
In her dream, she came closer, and discovered a curious little antlike
creature, with pot and paintbrush in hand, going round and round in a spiral.
It had started by painting a small dot, and then it had gone round the edge
making it a bit bigger, and it had carried on until by now the dot was really
quite big. And still the tiny creature laboured away, painting its world a
brilliant crimson.
She watched, and the rim of the red dot got bigger and bigger, until she
could only see a small part of it. And as it got bigger, it got straighter and
straighter.
And the little ant continued painting, and continued muttering to itself,
‘Painting the dot, painting the dot, red paint, red paint, round and round ...’
Vikki was amused and contemptuous at the same time. Silly beast, she
thought. Doesn’t it know that the world goes on for ever? It will never finish
its red dot!She didn’t say this - and even if she had, she doubted the little
animal would have heard, so engrossed was it in its task. And then
something funny seemed to have happened, for the ant was now going
round and round inside a white circle. It had painted itself inside a shrinking
hole in its red dot.
This made astonishingly little sense.
And still the ant persevered, until finally it was completely surrounded
by a vast expanse of red, and was balancing on tiptoes (not that ants have
toes, but that’s what it looked like) inside a white dot that was smaller than
its own body. It put down its pot and brush, and its endless chant changed
into ‘Painted the dot, painted the dot, time for a rest, time for a rest, let the
paint dry, let the paint dry; painted the dot, painted the dot, time for a rest,
time for a rest...’ Until the paint did dry. And then—
Then, the ant picked up its pot and brush, and began circling the white
dot, chanting, ‘Painting the dot, painting the dot, white paint, white paint,
round and round ...’ And the white dot grew, and grew, until she could only
see a small part of it. And as it got bigger, it got straighter and straighter ...
She was intending to ask the Space Hopper what it meant, but when she
woke up, she forgot. There was so much to do, so many spaces to hop ...
The next night she had a different dream - a nightmare. She dreamed
that she was an ant, in Spaceland this time. In one hand she held a small red
ball, in another a pot of red paint, and in a third (ants have six limbs,
remember) a brush. And she was singing a little song: ‘Painting the ball,
painting the ball, red paint, red paint, round and round, painting the ball,
painting the ball, red paint, red paint, round and round ...’ And as she sang
she applied layer upon layer of thick paint to the ball. The red ball got
bigger and bigger until she could only see a small part of it. And as it got
bigger, it got flatter and flatter.
And Vikki continued painting, and continued muttering to herself,
‘Painting the ball, painting the ball, red paint, red paint, round and round ...’
And then ... something funny seemed to have happened. For Vikki was
now going round and round inside a spherical hole. She had painted herself
inside a shrinking hole inside the ball.
She was trapped!
At which point she woke up in a cold sweat. This time, she remembered
the dream, and told the Space Hopper all about it.

‘You were dreaming you were inside a 3-sphere,’ said the Space Hopper.
‘You mean there’s something sensible behind it? I thought my mind had
just made up some kind of nonsense.’
‘Not at all. Exotic dreams are a common side-effect of using a VUE. It’s
entirely sensible.’
‘It looked just like Spaceland.’
‘Yes, 3-spheres do, Vikki. If they’re big enough. It’s a trap a lot of
people who paint balls fall into. It’s amazing how often they have to be dug
out with pneumatic drills.’
‘What’s a 3-sphere, Hopper? What was happening?’
‘Let me put it this way, Vikki. The mathematics of multidimensional
spaces is based on generalizations from low-dimensional spaces. For
example, every point in Flatland, a 2D space, can be specified by two
coordinates, and every point in 3D Spaceland can be specified by three
coordinates. And a point in 4D space ought to correspond to a set of four
coordinates, and a point in nD space ought to correspond to a list of n
coordinates. So M-dimensional space itself (or n-space for short) can be
thought of as the set of all such lists.’
‘Is space really a lot of lists?’
‘Mathematicians don’t worry about what things really are. They just
want to find effective ways to work out what they can do.’
‘Oh.’
 ‘Now, the same kind of mental trickery leads to formulas for distances
in n-space, angles, and the like. From there on, it’s a matter of imagination:
most sensible geometric shapes in two or three dimensions have
straightforward analogues in n dimensions, and the way to find them is to
describe the familiar shapes using the algebra of coordinates and then
extend that description to n coordinates in whatever way seems most
obvious.
‘A circle in the plane, or a sphere in 3-space, consists of all points that
lie at a fixed distance from a chosen central point. The same idea applies to
n-space. The set of all points that lie at a fixed distance from a chosen point
is known as an (n-l)-dimensional hypersphere, or an (n-l)-sphere for short.’
‘Why the minus one?’
‘Ah. The dimension drops from n to n-1 because ... well, because it
makes sense. You see, a circle in 2-space is a curve, which is a 1D object,
and a sphere in 3-space is a 2D surface. A solid hypersphere in n
dimensions is called an n-ball. So Planiturth is a 3-ball and its surface is a 2-
sphere. This kind of stuff is a bit prosaic, but once you’ve set it all up you
can happily talk about a 9-cone in 11-space whose base is a 4-sphere and
whose axis is a 5-plane. Or whatever.’
‘And ... you said I was trapped inside a 3-sphere?’
‘Yes. The ant in your first dream, you see - it was really on the surface
of a very big 2-sphere. It started painting at the north pole, and by the time
it had worked its way down to the equator, the edge of its red dot was
looking pretty close to a straight line. Actually it was a gigantic circle, but
you couldn’t see that, you were too close to it. Then, when the ant had
painted its way south of the equator, it was painting itself inside an ever-
shrinking circle, surrounding the south pole. So it waited for the paint to
dry, and then it started again with white paint, working its way northwards.
A very hardworking ant, was it not?
 ‘Your second dream was what would happen if you did the same kind of
thing inside a 3D analogue of a 2-sphere - that is, a 3-sphere. The ball
represented its “north pole". As you painted the ball, and it got bigger, you
were actually filling the northern “3-hemisphere” with paint, and eventually
you passed the equator. From then on it was only a matter of time before
you got yourself trapped inside an ever-shrinking 3-ball centred on the
“south pole".’

‘This multidimensional geometry is weird stuff,’ said Vikki. ‘But it has

its own kind of logic, doesn’t it?’
‘It certainly does. It makes so much sense that after a while you get used
to the geometric language. But you can always do the algebra to check it
makes sense, if you’re worried.’
‘Actually, what worries me is something quite different,’ said Vikki.
‘Does this multidimensional stuff let you do anything useful? Or is it just
intellectual fun and games?’
The Space Hopper’s grin became even more manic than usual. He must
have done something to her VUE, because suddenly everything went dark.

Something went whizzzzzzzzzz! past her ear, and she ducked. It left a streak
of blazing white light like a meteor. Moments later, another streak shot past,
and another. As her eyes became accustomed to the dark, she realized that
white streaks were all around her.
‘Where are we?’
‘We are in the Land of Dotcom,’ said the Space Hopper.
‘And what are those whizzy things?’
‘Let’s find out.’ The Space Hopper produced a boxlike device and held
it up. As the next white streak shot past, its trajectory suddenly bent through
a hairpin curve and it sizzled straight into the end of the box. ‘Got it!’
shouted the Space Hopper, proudly. ‘Now, let’s see just what we’ve got.’
There was a little window in one side of the box, and when Vikki
looked through it she saw little red letters, forming words. They scrolled
past her eyes:

Mrs Smoggrimble, HI. Thanks for your e-mail of 14 January. We have

consulted our files and regret to inform you that we can find no record of
any payment for the crate of poodle dye that was delivered to you. Unless
the invoice is settled in full within 30 days we will HAVE TO SUE.:-)

‘What’s all that about?’

‘It seems that Mrs Smoggrimble thinks she has paid for a crate of
poodle dye but her supplier begs to diff—’
‘I can see that. I mean: what does it signify? How does it relate to those
whizzy things?’
 The Space Hopper bounced delicately. ‘Ah. It is one of those whizzy
things.’
‘How can a whizzy thing that streaks past at the speed of light be made
of words?’
‘Because those whizzy things are messages. Just think of them as very
rapid messages, like someone who talks very fast. A used cardioid dealer,
say.’
‘Hopper, we’ve got e-mail in Flatland,’ said Vikki dismissively, ‘but I
was asking about the uses of many dimensions. Instead of answering,
you’re showing me an e-mail message. Why can’t you stick to the point for
once?’
‘I am sticking to the point, Vikki. Messages can be thought of as points
in multidimensional space. Modern digital communications use sequence of
0’s and l’s to encode information. For example, here they might encode the
letter M as 10010, R as 11100, whatever. So the message you read would be
coded as a string of binary digits, starting with 10010 11100. Let’s just think
of those first ten digits. You can think of the string as a Point in a ten-
dimensional Space, whose coordinates are either 0 or 1. The first coordinate
determines the first digit, the second coordinate determines the second digit,
and so on.
‘Now, the trouble with digital messages is that interference can cause
errors. Say the message is sent out looking like 1001011100, but arrives as
1001010100, where the seventh digit has changed from 1 to 0. If you get a
lot of that kind of thing the message might be received as:

Mr Snogthimble, oi. Thinks fur you re-mail of 174th canary. We have

insulted your flies and piglet to infoom you that ?XX**?? grind on reword
any playmate for the cart of noodle eyes that was undelivered you. Unload
the thin ice is speckled in fool within 03 dogs we well. Love to Sue.:-{

‘... which would be confusing.’

Vikki laughed. ‘I can see that. So what do you do? Get rid of the
interference?’
‘Nope, usually impossible. But there’s a clever trick: error-detecting and
error-correcting codes.’
 ‘How can you detect an error if you can’t understand the message you
receive?’
‘If you can’t understand it, Vikki, then probably something is wrong.
But the idea is cleverer than that. For instance, you could detect (but not
correct) any isolated error if you coded every message by replacing every 0
by 00 and every 1 by 11. Then a message such as 110100 would code as
111100110000. If this is received as 111000110000, with an error in the
second pair of digits, you know something’s screwy because the pair 10
should never occur.’
‘Oh. I see. But you can’t tell whether it should have been 00 or 11.’
‘I’m coming to that. Suppose you code 0 as 000 and 1 as 111. Then any
isolated error can be corrected as well as detected. Suppose your received
111000101111, say. What was the message before the error got made?’
‘Uh .. . 111000111111. Easy! But what’s that got to do with thinking of
a message as a point in a multidimensional space?’
‘Ah. For that, we need to journey into one tiny corner of Dotcom. I hope
you don’t mind feeling cramped.’
The VUE reset, the world changed. As far as she could tell, it now
contained exactly four points:
 ‘Welcome to the Double-Digit District,’ said the Space Hopper.
‘This is a district?’ asked Vikki.
‘Certainly. I admit it’s a bit sparse, but there’s a reason. We’re in a
digital space. It has very few points, but, far more importantly, it has a
metric - a concept of distance. Each white point is one unit away from each
black point, and each point is two units of distance away from the other
point of the same colour.’
‘Don’t you mean root two?’ said Vikki. ‘Isn’t the diagonal of a square
—’
‘Aha! In Flatland, yes. In the Double-Digit District, no. Here diagonals
don’t exist - so you have to go along the edges.’
‘Oh.’
‘The Double-Digit District is the essence of the error-detecting code I
just mentioned. Think of two-digit segments of the coded message - valid
segments 00 and 11, and invalid ones 01 and 10. By thinking of the digits of
these segments as coordinates relative to two axes (corresponding to the
first and second digits of the segment respectively) we get the geometry of
the Double-Digit District. The valid segments 00 and 11 are at opposite
corners of the square, so they are two units of distance apart. Any isolated
error changes them to segments only one unit of distance away, at the other
two corners - but those are not valid segments.’
‘Oh, I see. So because each valid segment is surrounded by invalid
ones, you can tell when something’s gone wrong.’
‘As long as you don’t get two errors in one segment, yes. But in the
Double-Digit District, the invalid segments are adjacent to both of the valid
ones. So different errors can lead to the same result. That’s what makes it an
error-detecting code, but not an error-correcting one.’
‘Fine. So how do you correct errors using a code?’
‘The most obvious way to get an error-correcting code is to move into
Triple-Digit Territory. If we use segments of length three and encode 0 as
000 and 1 as 111, then the segments live at the corners of a “cube” in a
finite 3D space. Any isolated error results in an adjacent segment;
moreover, every invalid segment is adjacent to only one of the valid ones.’
 *

Fourday 5 Noctember 2099

Dear Diary,
You’d think that a Space consisting of isolated points would be
exceptionally dull.
Not a bit of it. Especially the multidimensional ones. And the amazing
thing is, the InterLine wouldn’t work without them. Every message sent to
or from a computer would be corrupted -I like that word, sounds very
streetwise, doesn’t it? - by noise.
The Space Hopper says that it all works because of a gadget called a
Hamming metric. I rather assumed this was some kind of incompetent actor
until he explained that it was a beautiful, simple idea for turning coding
theory into geometry.
 You see, on Planiturth - I’ve already told you why we can’t really get
away from that Place, have I not?-this approach to code messages was
pioneered by a People named Richardhamming in 1947. In the geometric
imagery that stemmed from his original algebraic ideas, codewords of
length n correspond to the corners of an n-cube - a hypercube in n-
dimensional space. Single errors correspond to moves along an edge of the
n-cube; double errors correspond to moves along two successive edges, and
so on.
The Hamming metric tells you the distance between two codewords -
how many single-digit changes it takes to convert one into the other. In fact,
it’s just the distance between them measured along the shortest path formed
by edges of the hypercube. Each edge has length 1 unit, so in the Hamming
metric the opposite corners of a square are 2 units apart, not ᖽ2 units apart
as they would be in Flatland . ..
Hamming hypercubes don’t have diagonals, OK?
Now comes the clever part. Codewords 2 units apart in the Hamming
metric can detect one error but not correct it. Codewords 3 units apart can
correct one error or detect two, and so on.
Richardhamming and his successors discovered a whole slew of useful
codes. And there’s payoff in other areas of the Mathiverse, such as sphere-
packing. Back to Johanneskepler and the six-cornered snowflake, OK? A
lot of scientific problems, like crystal structure, boil down to finding
efficient ways of packing circles in 2D or spheres in 3D. Now, you can ask
the same questions in nD, and use the results to do things like number
theory. In 1965 a Planiturthian People named Johnleech took an idea from
another one called Marcelgolay, and discovered a really efficient packing of
23-spheres in 24D. No People has found a better one since! In fact, it’s so
efficient that it led to a solution of the kissing number problem in 24D.
No, Diary, don’t be naughty. It’s not like that at all.
The problem is this: what is the largest number of noninter-secting
hyperspheres that can touch (’kiss’, OK? Satisfied?) a given hypersphere?
Planiturthians know the answer in exactly five cases: 1D, 2D, 3D, 8D, and
an astonishing 24D. And how do they know such obscure factoids? Well,
it’s a very curious story. In 24D a whole heap of Planiturthian
mathematicians managed, between them, to prove that the kissing number
was at most 196,560. The proof was highly indirect and nobody knew if
that number could actually occur. Johnleech’s packing - amazingly -gave
exactly the same number, so that was the end of the kissing number
problem in 24D. (Oh, and the kissing numbers in 1D, 2D, 3D, and 8D are 2,
6, 12, and 240.)

*
The Space Hopper must have dropped off for a snooze. When he awoke,
Vikki was counting.
‘One hundred and ninety-six thousand, five hundred and fifty-one ...
One hundred and ninety-six thousand, five hundred and fifty-two ... One
hundred and ninety-six thousand, five hundred and fifty-three ... One
hundred and ninety-six thousand, five hundred and fifty-four...’
Vikki, what are you—’
’Don’t interrupt!One hundred and ninety-six thousand, five hundred and
... and ... Um. Er, one, two... Bother!’
‘You don’t need to check it so laboriously,’ the Space Hopper pointed
out. ‘The Planiturthians have calculated it, I’m sure they got it right.’
‘I just wanted some practice with the VUE. You know, this gadget
almost makes the Mathiverse too easy.’
‘Except when you lose count.’
‘Shh! That was a joke. I saw you were asleep and I started from one
hundred and ninety-six thousand, five hundred and forty. But what I’m
trying to say is, how would anyone visualize multidimensional spaces
without a VUE? How do Planiturthians manage, for instance? Do they have
VUEs?’
‘Not yet. They’re working on them. They’re up to Virtual Reality.
Virtual Unreality is some way off, as yet.’
‘But this Johnleech People thingy must have ... I mean, he surely
couldn’t have—’
‘Ah. No, he didn’t get the kind of image you perceive through the effortless
medium of the VUE. He had to think. He had somehow to equip himself
with nD spectacles. I don’t know how he did it - probably a lot of algebra
but thought of as geometry. But Planiturthians have taught me a few simple
tricks, little more than analogies with 2D and 3D, which go a long way.
‘Let’s ... I know, think of your ancestor! No VUEs in his day, I assure
you. Yes, suppose that great-whatever-grandad Albert Square is sitting
happily in Flatland, and wants to “visualize” a solid sphere. How does he do
it?’
‘Well, in his story he talked about the Sphere passing through the plane
of Flatland, and moving perpendicular to it, so that what he saw was a series
of cross-sections of the sphere.’

‘Good! Yes, first he sees a point, which grows to form a Circle. The
Circle expands until he is seeing the equatorial section of the sphere, after
which it shrinks again to a point and then vanishes.’
‘Well - look, actually old Albert saw the Circles edge-on - line segments
with graded shading - but his visual senses interpreted this image as a
Circle.’
 ‘Don’t be pedantic. Anyway, by analogy a Planiturthian can “see” a 4D-
ball - a solid hypersphere in 4D-space - as a point which grows to form a
solid 3D-ball, expands until it reaches the equator of the 4D-ball, then
shrinks back to a point, and finally disappears.’

‘So in both cases the extra dimension is really represented as time?’

‘You could say that, Vikki, yes.’
‘Well, my physics teacher kept insisting that while time is a third
dimension, it’s not the third dimension’, said Vikki heatedly. ‘Mind you, he
also said that there was no real third dimension at all, and thanks to the
VUE I now realize that’s nonsense. Nevertheless—’
‘Nevertheless, using time is all very well, but the problem with time is
that it has a life of its own. I met Time once, and it definitely did have its
own life, I can assure you. Quite an interesting one, but it could never go
back. Time is always moving in one direction - into the future. What we
want is what Herbertgeorgewells’s Time Traveller allegedly invented - a
way to move at will up and down along some substitute for a fourth
dimension.
‘One of the Planiturthian tricks is to imagine a fourth dimension as a
colour. Imagine displacement along a fourth dimension to be colour-coded,
say from blue to red, with all possible shades of purple in between.’
‘Why?’
‘The advantage of using colour is that it doesn’t imply some particular
physical quantity, such as time. Planiturthians are very used to the idea that
any quantity can be colour-coded.’
Vikki could relate to that. ‘Same on Flatland. Well, depends on the era.
Colour was freely available at the time of Chromatistes and the Colour
Revolt, and in those days colour was used with tremendous freedom and
creativity. Then came the backlash, of course. It was the stupidity of the
Revolutionists and their Universal Colour Bill that did it. Typical
totalitarian attempt to impose some kind of uniform code of practice - and
of course they got it all wrong. Imagine trying to have Women and Priests
painted with virtually the same colours! Endless confusion, and it led to a
massacre with the Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition.’
‘Yes,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘I remember that.’
’You remember! How old are you?’
‘In the metaspace of the Mathiverse, time has no meaning. I have no age
-1 simply am’
‘Oh. Anyway, the idea of using colour as a form of decoration couldn’t
be suppressed for ever, and much later, after the Six-Year War, some daring
young women pioneered a new colour-conscious fashion. We’ve never
really looked back, actually. Anyway, what I’m really saying is - you’re
right. Colour is a pretty arbitrary way to represent something.’
‘I’m glad you agree, Vikki,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Now, where was I -
oh, yes. Anyone wishing to visualize a fourth dimension, say, can mentally
equip themselves with a Colour Machine instead of a Time Machine.
Merely by depressing a simple pedal they can imagine themselves moving
at will along the red-blue axis.
‘At each stage they “see” a 3D cross-section of 4-space corresponding
to that colour. As the colour varies, they can mentally “stack” these images.
Different sections that seem to overlap in 3D but have different colours
don’t really overlap, because they exist in different “levels” of 4-space. In
the same way, two Planiturthian cars that pass through a crossroad will
collide only if they occupy the same position at the same time.’
‘So .. .’ said Vikki, ‘if Albert used a Flatland Colour Machine to think
about a 3-ball, he would imagine a blue point which grows to a disc and
gradually becomes tinged with more and more red. The disc reaches its
maximum size when it is a beautiful purple, 50 per cent blue and 50 per
cent red. As it reddens further the disc shrinks, and eventually becomes a
red point, after which it vanishes.’
‘Correct.’
Vikki had a moment of inspiration. ‘Hopper! I’ve just realized! A
Planiturthian could visualize a 4-ball in the same way! They start at the blue
end, where they see a single point. As they depress the pedal, moving in the
red direction, that point turns into a purplish-blue ball, and gets bigger.
When they reach the halfway mark they see a solid purple ball. Further into
the red, the ball shrinks again, and turns redder. Finally they see a single red
point, which then vanishes.’
‘Very good. Now, it is well known that Planiturthians have problems
visualizing knots. Can you tell me how they could use a Colour Machine to
visualize how to untie a knot in 4D without breaking the loop?’
‘Urn. I guess they ... yes, yes, I can see! When Planiturthians look at a
knot, they see places where the string seems to cross itself. It doesn’t really,
of course - that’s just an effect of perspective. But those apparent crossings
tell them the shape of the knot. At each crossing, one bit of string goes
underneath - I’ll call that bit an “underpass". And another bit goes over the
top - an “overpass". Anyway, what the Planiturthians ought to do is imagine
a blue loop, tied in a trefoil knot, say. Near one of the crossings they
imagine grasping the overpass bit of the loop, and they pull that bit out
along the red direction.’
The Space Hopper bounced gently as he contemplated this idea. ‘Yes.
So nearby sections of the loop have to turn various shades of purple, in a
graduated way, to maintain continuity?’
‘Sure, Hopper, sure. But most of the loop can stay blue. Now they push
the purple overpass down through where the underpass is. It looks like they
intersect, but actually they don’t, because the underpass is still blue\ Things
that intersect must do so at a point with a common colour (the fourth
coordinate) as well as a common spatial position (the other three
coordinates). And now they can safely release the colour-pedal and return
that loop back to the blue region of 4-space. The end result is as if they’d
just pushed the overpass down through the underpass. So the loop is no
longer knotted.’

Fiveday 6 Noctember 2099

Well, Diary Mine, multidimensional Spaces are a lot of fun, and coding
theory shows they can be useful.
And it doesn’t stop there.
According to the Space Hopper, a solar system or an economy can be
viewed as a multidimensional space. I admit it sounds unlikely: the
Planiturthian solar system, for instance, is just a lot of rather big rocks
trundling around in ordinary 3D space. But the Space Hopper says that
appearances can be deceptive - or rather that they can be absolutely correct,
but irrelevant.
The way he sees it, every body in the Planiturthian solar system needs
three coordinates to specify its position. So with nine planets, that’s 27
coordinates - and anything that has 27 coordinates necessarily lives in a 27-
space! In fact you really need a 54-space, because positions alone don’t tell
you what the planets are doing. You need to know their velocities, and that’s
another 3 coordinates per planet.
And if you include the asteroids ... well, you’re looking at TENS OF
THOUSANDS of dimensions!!! And, that, he says, is what makes celestial
mechanics so hard.
I thought he was joking, but he’s deadly serious. ‘The Curse of
Dimensionality,’ he calls it.
So, Big Hairy Deal, a solar system has oodles of dimensions. Kind of
esoteric, though. But - get this - an economy has millions of dimensions!
Each dimension corresponds to the price of some commodity - say the first
dimension is the price of oxagons, the second the price of hogsagons, the
third the price of squarrel-feed, and so on. And that, he tells me, is what
makes economics even harder than celestial mechanics.
No, that’s not meant to be a joke, either.
Ah, Diary my Old Friend, I know what you’re thinking. MultiD
geometry provides an elegant reformulation, yes - but does it offer any
practical advantages?
The Space Hopper says ‘yes’. He says that, thinking about economic
problems multidimensionally led a Planiturthian called Georgedantzig to
some weird idea called the ‘simplex method’, which can find the most
profitable combination of goods that a factory ought to produce. Allowing
possessors of said method to make oodles and oodles of money!
Could physical space reallyhave more than three dimensions? After all,
how can you fit the fourth dimension in? Everything’s filled up already.
Well, of course that’s what Ancestor Albert’s book was about. Physical
reality has many interpretations, and the one presented to us by our sense
organs need not be the only possibility. Our universe could be just one of an
infinite variety of universes that might have happened instead, so that we
occupy just a wafer-thin slice of a vast multiverse.
Mindboggling, isn’t it?

‘So now we’ve visited all the possible spaces?’ asked Vikki.
‘Whatever makes you think that?’
 ‘Well, Hopper ... we’ve done OD and ID and 2D and 3D and 4D and all
the way up to a millionD, and I can kind of see how it would go from there
and I don’t think we really need to visit the rest. What else is there?’
‘There’s a lot more to spaces than just their dimensions,’ replied the
Space Hopper. ‘But even if we stick to dimensional variations, there’s
plenty more to find out about. What about one-and-a-quarter-dimensional
space, for a start?’
Vikki stared at him as if he were mad. ‘But you can’t possibly have one
and a—
 5
ONE AND A QUARTER DIMENSIONS

‘—quarter dimensions!’ said Vikki in bewilderment. But even as she spoke,

she experienced that by now so familiar psychic discontinuity, and her
VUEpoint shifted. There were times when she wished the Space Hopper
wouldn’t take her every statement as a challenge, to be demolished by
conveying her to yet another weird space. However, it seemed impossible to
stop the fat bouncy little creature with the thick orange skin from reacting to
questions with actions. It was certainly a striking teaching technique, high
on drama and nervous energy - but there were times when she would have
preferred a more relaxed approach.
She stared through the nonexistent realm of metaspace as if it weren’t
there (which it wasn’t, not in any sense of there that could be understood by
mortal creatures). Where metaspace wasn’t, there seemed to be - a forest.
‘The Fractal Forest,’ the Space Hopper announced proudly.
‘It’s very ... beautiful,’ said Vikki. And it was. There were gnarled trees,
and spiky-leaved bushes, and thick clumps of fern. Snow was falling, and
every surface was picked out in soft, diamond-studded icing.
‘So what’s with the forest, Hopper?’
‘Look at the fern, Vikki.’
She tugged at a frond. ‘It’s ... Hopper, it’s just an ordinary fern.
Intricate, pretty - so what?’
‘Use the VUE. Look closely.’
‘Well, what I see is a lot of fronds lined up on both sides of the stalk ...
and each frond is also a lot of smaller fronds lined up on both sides of a
tinier stalk. That’s what makes ferns ferny, isn’t it?’
‘Closer than that.’
‘OK ... each smaller frond is a lot of even smaller fronds lined up on
both sides of an even tinier stalk ... and ... oh. This one doesn’t stop, does
it?’
 ‘No. It goes on doing that for ever. It’s not a real fern: it’s a
mathematical idealization of fern structure. The trees and bushes have the
same infinitely fine repeating structure. And so, oddly enough, does the
snow.’
Vikki readjusted her VUEfinder. Hovering in mid-air, sparkling and
crisp in the unremitting light of VUE-enhanced imagination, was a single
snowflake.
It was the sort of snowflake that would appeal to a Flatlander, made - so
far as she could tell - from an endless series of ever-smaller equilateral
triangles. There was a big triangle, with three smaller ones placed on its
sides to make a six-pointed star ... then there were (she counted) twelve
smaller triangles, placed on the edges of the star to make a more elaborate
star. Then there were (she lost count five times and gave up) a lot of even
smaller triangles placed on the edges of that new star. When she Cranked up
the magnification of her VUE it became clear that the sequence of triangles
didn’t stop there: the closer she looked, the more of them she saw. The edge
of the snowflake was crinkled, and there were crinkles on the crinkles, and
crinkles on the crinkles on the crinkles.
The snowflake spun gently in the brilliant light, like a tossed pancake in low
gravity. ‘Enough of that’, said the Space Hopper, and twiddled some
extradimensional knob or lever or metaspatial demon, freezing the
snowflake in one position. ‘In the Fractal Forest, geometry goes on for ever
and dimensions come in fractional amounts. The edge of this snowflake, for
instance, has approximately 1.26186 dimensions. It’s not exactly one and a
quarter, I accept, but if you really want I can certainly show you a shape
that—’
‘Whoa there, Hopper! Let’s just back up, OK?’
‘Sorry? You have a problem?’
Vikki tried to pull her scattered wits together. She had a feeling that only
part of her discomfort was the psychic dislocation caused by the Virtual
Unreality Engine. ‘Look, dimensions can’t be fractions.’
‘Tell that to Helge the Snowflake, then,’ said the Space Hopper. A
quizzical eye opened at the centre of the six-pointed star. ‘Sorry, Helge, but
you’ve got another unbeliever.’
‘Just my luck,’ said the snowflake glumly, ‘I should have known. It
always happens to me. Every Tim, Dick and Harriet who wanders into the
Fractal Forest always ends up on my doorstep sooner or later - and it’s
usually sooner.’
‘It’s because of your inherent simplicity and elegance,’ said the Space
Hopper, ‘plus your parents chose an attractive name.’
The snowflake’s edges fluttered in acknowledgement of the
compliment. ‘I suppose so. But it’s still a great burden to have to bear, you
know. If I had a penny for every time my circumference has been measured,
I’d be able to retire to some nice fractal forgery of an island and spend my
time sunbathing on its infinite beaches.’
‘Are you a real snowflake?’ asked Vikki.
‘No, no, not at all. If I were, then I wouldn’t be able to sunbathe - I’d
melt.’ The snowflake paused, as if gathering its wits. ‘However, I do share a
real snowflake’s sixfold symmetry, and if anything I am even more
intricate, but my bodily form is much too regular for a true snowflake.
Think of me as a visual pun.’
‘The Space Hopper said you had 1.26186 dimensions,’ said Vikki. ‘I
think that’s rubbish.’
 The snowflake scratched its edge with one frilly corner. ‘I think
someone discovered that rubbish has about 2.8739 dimensions,’ it told her,
apparently in all seriousness. ‘Of course, it does depend on how you crush
it, but—’
‘I meant, you were talking rubbish.’
The snowflake looked offended (though you’d have to be an expert to
spot such nuances of expression). ‘Me? Rubbish? Perish the thought! You’ll
get nothing from me but the most sparkling insight. But my dimensions are
two, just like many of your fellow citizens. You, of course, are one-
dimensional.’
‘But—’
‘Ah! The dimensions of my boundary are 1.26186, whereas your
boundary, if I’m not mistaken, has exactly zero dimensions. Let me check
...’ (it began counting on its vertices)’... one, two, three ... mmmm ...
mmnnnhmmm ... hmmmhmmm ... zero. Right.’
‘My boundary consists of two points’, said Vikki.
‘Correct! And a point is zero-dimensional, and the same goes for any
finite set of points. Including two.’
‘Zero dimensions, I can understand. It’s really just a convention - it fits
the sequence cube/square/line/point. But 1.26186 dimensions? That’s
nonsense. The number of dimensions something has is the number of
different directions it points in - the number of numbers needed to specify a
point in it. You can have one direction, or two, but you can’t have 1.26186
directions. Can you?’
‘Of course not, Vikki,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘But you know what
mathematicians are like - always meddling. No sooner does one of them
come up with a definition of dimension in terms of directions, when some
other smartarse has to improve on the idea by finding a completely different
definition that gives the same answer when the dimension of a space is a
whole number, but works for other spaces too. More general, you see,
which to a mathematician means “better". Except that with the new
definition, you can get fractions.’ It swelled slightly with excitement. ‘They
were Planiturthians, those mathematicians ... Can’t say I was surprised.
Whole-number dimensions ... well, to be truthful, those had been around
since the time of Euclidthegreek, at least in principle. But a Planiturthian
called Henripoincare pushed the idea about as far as it can be pushed.
According to Henripoincare, every shape, however weird, has some whole
number of dimensions. As long as you allow infinity, of course ... oh, and
minus one.’
’Minus one?’
‘Sorry, don’t be nervous. That’s just a convention. The only -ID set is
the empty set.’
‘Which is?’
‘Nothing at all. If you draw a picture of it, it’s blank.’
‘Let me see if I’m getting this right,’ said Vikki. ‘According to this
Hairypunkarray—’
‘Henripoincare.’
‘—every shape has a whole number of dimensions.’
‘Correct.’
‘But you just said that Helge the Snowflake has 1.26186 dimensions.’
‘No, that’s my boundary—’ Helge protested.
‘Boundary, schmoundary. Whatever, it’s not a whole number.’
The Space Hopper bobbed in agreement. ‘Yes, but that’s because
another Planiturthian disagreed with Henripoincare. His name was
Hausdorffbesicovich, and he had quite a different idea about dimensions.
He reckoned that it wasn’t a matter of more dimensions meaning more
directions - it was more dimensions meaning filling space more effectively.
More crinkly, so to speak. You might call it “crinkliness” instead of
“dimension", but of course mathematicians wouldn’t do that, because the
name wouldn’t sound impressive enough. And, to be fair, there’s another
reason. You see, on all the usual spaces like the 2D plane or 3D space or
even 101D space, the Henripoincare-dimension and the
Hausdorffbesicovich-dimension are the same - they’re 2 or 3 or 101, as
you’d expect. So both notions generalize the “number-of-directions”
version of dimension.’
‘Unfortunately,’ said the snowflake, ‘they generalize it in two
incompatible ways.’
‘Yes - but that’s maths for you. As far as mathematicians are concerned,
the more kinds of dimension you invent, the happier they are. And if some
kinds are incompatible with one another, you can have a lot of fun finding
out why and when. So now there’s the box-counting dimension, and the
similarity dimension, and the information dimension, and—’
 ’Stop!’ Vikki lowered her voice to more normal levels. ‘You’ve already
told me enough dimensions to last me a lifetime. But you still haven’t
explained how Helge can have 1.26186 dimensions.’
‘Haven’t I? Dear me, no, I haven’t.’ The Space Hopper was
momentarily embarrassed. ‘Uh ... well, the easiest way to see that is to use
the similarity dimension.’ The Space Hopper waved his horns like a
conjuror, and a piece of card materialized between them. He laid the card
flat (in metaspace, you appreciate) so that it seemed to be hovering in thin
air. With a flourish, an entire pack of similar cards appeared, and the Space
Hopper fanned them out. ‘Now, Vikki: how many of these do I need to
make the original square twice as big?’
‘In what sense?’ she queried, having learned caution. The Space Hopper
asked too many trick questions!
‘By fitting them together. Look, let me show you the answer and you’ll
see what I mean.’

‘Right, I get it’ said Vikki.

‘It work with triangls, too. Four copies also make a triangle twice the
size’
 ‘Of course.’
‘What about cubes?’
‘Cubes?’
‘Do four cubes make a cube twice the size?’ The Space Hopper
twitched his horns, and four identical cubes materialized in her VUEfield.
‘Um ... no. They do make a sort of square slab, but it’s too thin to be a
cube.’

‘So how many more—’

‘Four! If we make a second slab, and fit it behind the first one, we get a
cube twice the size of the original.’ ‘Excellent. But why?’
 ‘Well, a cube’s thicker than a square, so you have to have two layers to
double the thickness. A square has no thickness, and twice zero is zero, so
one “layer” is enough.’
The Space Hopper grimaced. ‘Yeeesss ... but there’s a better way to say
that. What do you mean by “zero thickness"?’
‘Urn ... it’s not thick.’
‘True. But in what direction isn’t it thick?’
‘The one in which it’s ... oh, I see what you’re getting at. The cube has
an extra dimension, which I’ve been calling “thickness", but the square
doesn’t.’
‘Precisely. The cube is 3D, but the square is 2D - like the triangle.’
‘I see.’
‘Now, 4 is the second power of 2 - its square. Whereas 8 is the third
power - its cube. So what’s the common pattern?’
‘In order to double the size of a shape, the number of copies you need is
2 raised to the power of the dimension.
The Space Hopper grinned manically (U). ‘So if the dimension is 1?’
 ‘You need 2 to the power 1, which is ... 2. Two copies. Oh, right!’
‘And if we wanted to multiply the size by three, how many copies
would we need? Here’s a hint: three copies for a line, nine copies for a
square, and twenty-seven copies for a cube. So the general pattern this time
is?’
‘3 raised to the power of the dimension.’
‘Fine. Which, by a roundabout route, brings us to the snowflake.’
‘I’m glad you haven’t completely forgotten about me’, Helge the
snowflake muttered.
‘Not at all, my friend. Show Vikki here one of your edges. Not your
entire perimeter, that’s a bit complicated. Just one section of it.’ The
snowflake did so. ‘Lovely and crinkly, isn’t it?’
‘Beautiful,’ said Vikki. The snowflake blushed with pride.

‘And the interesting thing is, you can make that crinkly edge three times
the size by fitting four copies together. Yes?’
‘Absolutely. So?’
‘What power of 3 makes 4, Vikki?’
‘Well, um ...’ She racked her brains, and then realized it was another of
the Space Hopper’s trick questions. ‘There isn’t one. The first power of 3 is
3, which is too small, and the second power of 3 is 9, which is too big. And
after that, they just get bigger still.’
 ‘What about the one-and-a-halfth power?’
‘That doesn’t-oops, yes, it does. We did this in maths. The halfth power
is the square root. So the one-and-a-halfth power is ... the cube of the square
root?’
‘Correct. And that is?’
‘Sorry, I’m not that good at mental arithmetic’
‘OK, I’ll tell you: it’s 5.19615. Roughly. But unfortunately, that’s—’
‘Still too big. We want to get 4.’
‘OK. So what about the one-and-a-quarterth power?’
‘Urn ... that’s the fourth root of the fifth power, right?’
‘Right. Value 3.94822.’
‘Which is close.’
‘As you say. In fact, we can get a lot closer. The 1.26186th power of 3 -
which you could work out as the l00,000th root of the 126,186th power of 3
- is extremely close to 4. And by going to more decimal places, you can get
as close as you like. The exact number, in fact, is log 3 divided by log 4,
where “log” is the logarithm.’
‘So you’re saying that—’
‘The dimension of Helge’s edge is very close indeed to 1.26186. Like I
told you.’
There was a long silence. ‘It’s not really a dimension, is it?’ asked
Vikki. ‘It’s just come sort of measure of - crinkliness - that happens to be
equal to the usual dimension when you have a simple sort of space.’
‘Fair enough,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Complicated shapes like the
snowflake or the fern, whose “dimension” in the crinkliness sense is a
fraction - or to be strict, just differs from its dimension in the
Henripoincarean sense - are known as fractals. Roughly speaking, a fractal
is a shape that has detailed structure, no matter how much you magnify it.
Physical examples are rocks, clouds, trees, coastlines - as long as you don’t
magnify them to the scale of atoms, of course. Mathematical fractals can be
scaled up for ever and still have intricate structure; real fractals can be
scaled up a lot and still have intricate structure.
‘And if you want to be very precise, you can always call the crinkliness
measure the fractal dimension. Then there’s no danger of getting confused
and trying to find one-quarter of a direction.’
 *

‘Fractals must be very rare,’ said Vikki.

‘Why?’ asked the Space Hopper.
‘All that detail. Unusual.’
‘Funnily enough,’ the Space Hopper told her, ‘it’s pretty much the other
way round! Nearly all mathematical shapes are fractal. Having a whole
number of dimensions is what’s rare. Think of it this way: if you pick a
number at random - a decimal, not necessarily a whole number - then the
chance of it being a whole number is very small indeed. Most numbers have
something after the decimal point.’
‘True - I hadn’t thought about it that way. So what do some of the other
fractals look like?’
‘I’m sure the Snowflake would be happy to let us meet some of his
friends here in the Fractal Forest.’
‘Delighted to be of assistance,’ said the Snowflake. ‘You can usually
find them hanging around among the leaves and in between the tree-roots ...
Yes, here’s a very close friend of mine. Like me, he’s based on triangles.’
And he introduced them to Sierpihski Gasket, who was made out of
triangles with triangular holes, which cut it into more triangles, also with
triangular holes. He soon dug up Sierpihski Carpet, who was very similar
but with square holes instead. And an energetic search revealed the very
impressive Menger Sponge, who was like the Carpet but made from a cube.
 ‘Fractals like these,’ the Space Hopper explained, ‘are self-similar. Like
a fern, they’re made up from lots of smaller copies of themselves - that’s
what makes it easy to work out their fractal dimension. Have a go!’
‘Um .. . Sierpihski Gasket is made from three copies, each half the
size?’
‘That’s right. So his fractal dimension is log 3/log 2 = 1.5850. Whereas
Sierpinski Carpet is made from eight copies, each one-third the size—’
‘—so his fractal dimension is log 8/log 3 = 1.8928. I can do it too! Good
job my Personal Disorganizer has a built-in scientific calculator!’
‘And Menger Sponge is made from 20 copies each one-third the size, so
his dimension is log 20/log 3 = 2.7268.’
‘I see what you mean: the bigger the fractal dimension, the “thicker” the
shapes seem to get.’
‘That’s the general idea, and it’s what gives intuitive meaning to the
fractal dimension.’
Vikki watched as the Snowflake, Gasket, Carpet, and Sponge wandered
off and disappeared behind the infinitely crinkled vegetation of the Fractal
Forest. ‘Are all fractals self-similar?’
‘Definitely not,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Those are just the easiest ones
to understand. But there are lots more. They have a fractal dimension too,
which is usually not a whole number, but it’s nothing like as easy to
calculate.’
 ‘It must be very difficult to find a shape that has structure on all scales,’
said Vikki, ‘especially when it’s not self-similar. I don’t see how to start!’
The Space Hopper turned from side to side, as if searching for
something. He peered towards a gap between two fractal pine-trees.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘I’m trying to remember the way to Quadratic City.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there’s somebody there who will show you how to specify a
shape that has structure on all scales,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘OK, I think
I’ve got my bearings. Follow me!’ and he bounced off erratically through
the trees.
‘Who?’ asked Vikki, wriggling along behind him. ‘The Mandelblot.’

Sevenday 8 Noctember 2099

As we made our way through the beautiful landscape of the Fractal Forest,
Diary Mine, the Space Hopper told me the story of the Mandelblot.
For the record, here it is.
Seems that the Mandelblot was originally called the Gingerbread Boy.
Baked from gingerbread, but unusually articulate for a cookie. He changed
his name when he grew older. After he was first baked, he ran away. He
came to a river, and there was a fox snoozing beside it.
‘Please, Mr Fox, take me across the river,’ said the Gingerbread Boy.
‘I am the Fox Pup, and the wise person listens to me,’ said the Fox, who
had an eye for a bargain, especially if the bargain was a free lunch. ‘Hop
onto my back and I’ll swim across.’
So the Gingerbread Boy hopped onto the Fox Pup’s back. But as the fox
swam further out into the river, he began to sink. ‘Hop onto my head,’ said
the fox, ‘and you’ll keep dry.’ So the Gingerbread Boy hopped onto the
fox’s head. But still he sank. ‘Hop onto my nose,’ said the fox, ‘and you’ll
keep dry.’ So the Gingerbread Boy hopped onto the fox’s nose.
And as the fox sank further, the Gingerbread Boy hopped onto the very
tip of the fox’s nose. And then the tip of the tip, and the tip of the tip of the
tip ... until the fox began to get very frustrated. ‘How long do you intend to
keep this up?’ the fox demanded, in an irritated voice. ‘How do you expect
me to get lunch if you keep hopping onto ever finer scales of my nose? I
may have to dip my nose completely into the water if this carries on.’
But the Gingerbread Boy kept hopping on to the tip of the tip of the tip
of the tip of the ... tip of the tip of the tip of the fox’s nose. Because he knew
that the fox wouldn’t submerge his whole nose in the water. Why not? you
are asking, Diary Dear. Because he didn’t like soggy gingerbread. And the
fox got seriously frustrated, and again he asked the Gingerbread Boy how
long he intended to keep hopping along his nose, and when he planned to
get to the end (where, of course, the fox could open his mouth and gobble
him up).
I’m awfully sorry, Mr Fox,’ said the Gingerbread Boy, ‘I’m afraid I’m
never going to reach the end of your nose. You see, before I can get to the
end, I have to get halfway to the end. And before I can get halfway to the
end, I have to get a quarter of the way to the end. And before I can get a
quarter of the way to the end, I have to get an eighth of the way to the end.
And so on. So I can’t even get started—’
But the Fox Pup had heard that one. ‘Listen to me, young man,’ he told
the Gingerbread Boy sternly, ‘I’ve hung around the Mathiverse a lot, and
I’ve come across Zeno’s paradox before. I don’t believe a word of it. For a
start, you’re already nine-tenths of the way along my nose, and if your
argument were correct, you wouldn’t have been able to get that far.’
‘Oh, all right, then,’ said the Gingerbread Boy, ‘let me put it this way.
After I’ve got nine-tenths of the way along your nose, but before I can get
to the tip, I have to get ninety-nine hundredths of the way along your nose,
yes?’
‘Well .. . yes,’ admitted the Fox Pup.
‘And after I’ve got ninety-nine hundredths of the way along your nose,
but before I can get to the tip, I have to get nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine
thousandths of the way along your nose, yes?’
‘Well... yes,’ conceded the Fox Pup, who hadn’t encountered this
variation before.
‘So it’s clear I can never get to the tip of your nose.’
‘Let me get back to you on that,’ said the Fox Pup. By then he had
nearly reached the far shore, though he was too busy counting on his paws
to notice, and the Gingerbread Boy trotted along to the very tip of the fox’s
nose and hopped off.
‘Hey!’ complained the fox. ‘I thought you said you couldn’t do thatr
‘I lied,’ said the Gingerbread Boy. ‘The sequence is convergent.’

*
Vikki waited, but the Space Hopper had finished.
‘Was that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a very stupid story!’
‘Well, it was a very stupid fox. Anyway, I was just passing time until I
could locate the - and there he is! Hey, Mandelblot!’ And the Space Hopper
bounced up and down in excitement.
The Mandelblot was a very funny shape, a cross between a cat lying on
its side and a cactus:
And the closer Vikki looked, the more complicated the Mandelblot’s shape
seemed to be.
‘He’s a fractal?’
‘Indubitably. One of the best. But no, to anticipate your next question -
he’s not self-similar.’
‘Why is he that shape?’
‘He was made Taxi Controller, in charge of Quadratic City’s taxi
service, and he tells the taxi drivers whether they can get out or not.’
‘That,’ said Vikki, ‘is as clear as mud.’
 ‘It’s quite a long story,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘but better than the one
about the Fox Pup and the Gingerbread Boy, I promise. Come with me, and
I’ll ask the Mandelblot to explain—’
‘Everything in Quadratic City,’ began the Mandelblot, ‘is based on
squares. ‘Why, the city itself is nothing more than a square grid.’
‘How big?’ asked Vikki.
‘Well, from the outside it’s about the size you’d expect for a city, but on
the inside it’s infinitely big. It’s a plane, just like your home-world - yes, I
can see you’re a Flatty, we don’t often get nonfractal folk like you in the
Fractal Forest, you know.’
‘Does it have pentagons and circles and things like that?’ It wouldn’t be
the same as going home, but it might substitute. She still missed her family
and friends - she really must persuade the Space Hopper to overcome those
alleged system incompatibilities and find a way for her to phone home, or at
least send a letter ...
‘Not as such, no. Mostly it has roads ... and taxis. And taxi-drivers, of
course. Both of those are points.’
‘Oh.’ Not at all like home, then.
‘The roads are always straight lines, and there are two kinds. Streets run
east-west, and Avenues run north-south. There’s exactly one Street and one
Avenue for every point in Quadratic City: they form a coordinate grid. So,
for instance, if you get a taxi on the corner of 2.4 Avenue and 1.7 Street,
and want to go to the corner of 5.6 Avenue and 3.8 Street, then the taxi-
driver immediately knows that he has to go 3.2 kilometres east and 2.1
kilometres north.’
‘That’s a neat idea,’ said Vikki. ‘Fix it so’s the street names tell you
where you are.’
‘Yes. Mind you, most of the names of the Streets and Avenues are pretty
long. I hate it when I have to go to п Street or ᖽ2 Avenue. But that’s a
minor inconvenience when you consider how easy it is to navigate.
‘The two main thoroughfares are 0 Street, otherwise known as Real
Road, and 0 Avenue, the Queens i Way. That’s “i” as in the Square Route of
Minus One, you appreciate. They cross at Grand Central Station, the exact
centre of Quadratic City. Taxis start out from Grand Central Station, and try
to get out of the city.’
 ‘But I thought the city was infinitely big on the inside?’
‘So it is. They’re allowed to take infinitely long to escape, you see.’
‘But—’
‘You’ll see in a minute when we look at taxis 2 + 3i and -0.1 + li.’
‘Those are registration numbers?’
‘Very good.’
‘They’re strange.’
‘Very sensible, actually,’ said the Mandelblot. ‘Each registration number
is in the form A + B\, where A and B are numbers. And on any journey,
taxicab A + Bi is licensed only to travel from its starting point to whichever
intersection is A units to the east (or A units to the west if A is negative),
and B units to the north (or B units to the south if B is negative).’
‘Let me see if I’ve got that,’ said Vikki. ‘Suppose I’m in taxi 2 + 3i.
Starting from Grand Central Station, I can make a trip to the intersection of
2 Avenue and 3 Street.’
‘That’s right,’ said the Mandelblot, ‘and from there your next trip in taxi
2 + 3i takes you to the intersection of 4 Avenue and 6 Street.’
‘OK. And then you can get to the intersection of 6 Avenue and 9 Street,
and then the intersection of 8 Avenue and 12 Street, and then the
intersection of 10 Avenue and 15 Street, and so on.’
‘You got it,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘The Avenues go up in twos, while
the Streets go up in threes.’
‘Now,’ said the Mandelblot, ‘when I said the taxis are trying to escape
from Quadratic City in infinite time, what I really meant was that they want
to follow a path that eventually gets them outside any finite region of the
city. An “unbounded” path. So taxi 2 + 3i does escape.’
‘Hold it!’ said Vikki. “Any taxi eventually escapes!’
‘Except for taxi 0 + Oi. That just gets stuck at Grand Central Station.
Which is why my predecessor in this job was just a point. Dot, her name
was.’
Vikki found this statement enigmatic, to say the least.
‘Look,’ the Mandelblot went on, ‘the Taxi Controller’s job is to make a
map of Quadratic City that tells customers arriving at Grand Central Station
which taxis can take them out of the city.’
‘Nearly all of them,’ Vikki pointed out.
‘Yes, but someone has to tell them not to jump into the back seat of taxi
0 + Oi. OK, OK, it was an easy job when Dot did it, but not any more. What
Dot did was to introduce a systematic way to map out which taxis could or
could not escape. Start with a blank map of Quadratic City. Pick a taxi, A +
B’\, say, and colour the intersection of A Avenue and B Street white if taxi A
+ B\ eventually escapes, but black if it doesn’t. Do that for every possible
taxi, so every point on the map is coloured either black or white. Then all
you have to do is look at the map to see which taxis to avoid.’
‘If I’m following you, then the only point that gets coloured black is
Grand Central Station itself, corresponding to taxi 0 + Oi - the only one that
never escapes.’
‘Exactly. That’s why they called her Dot.’
‘Ah,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘I wondered whether—’
‘Another worry!’ Vikki butted in. ‘Escaping from Quadratic City is all
very well, but surely if you’ve just arrived at Grand Central Station, you
might want to see some of the sights before you leave.’
‘Mmmmmm ...’ The Mandelblot gave this idea some thought, as if it
had never occurred to anyone before. Finally, he said, ‘You don’t know
Quadratic City.’
But Vikki considered this an evasion, and persisted with her line of
questioning. ‘Suppose I’ve taken taxi 2 + 3i to 2 Avenue and 3 Street, and I
want to go back to Grand Central Station. What do I do?’
‘Hop out and hope that taxi -2 - 3i can get to you, of course! Or if that
one can’t manage it, take a two-trip ride on taxi -1 - 1.5i. Use some
initiative!’
‘That won’t work,’ Vikki objected. ‘Neither of those taxis can ever get
to 2 Avenue and 3 Street. Not starting from Grand Central Station.’
‘True.’ The Mandelblot looked crestfallen. ‘I forgot to tell you the other
thing that taxis can do, that’s why. After Dot had made her map, the city
authorities took a look at the result and decided that they needed a more
effective taxi service, something that would give the tourists an incentive to
stay a while. (God knows why, mind you.) So they decreed that taxis could
make a different kind of trip in between their regular “A east, B north” ones.
They’re allowed to square. In fact, they have to. Each regular trip must be
followed by a square trip.’
‘Why?’
‘No point in following it with a round trip, is there? And each square
trip must be followed by a regular trip. And they start with a square trip.’
‘What’s a square trip?’
‘Well, that’s an interesting question. The easiest way to answer it is to
say that if you’re on X Avenue and Y Street, then squaring takes you to X2 -
Y2 Avenue and 2XY Street. Look, don’t blame me, it’s the city authorities
who thought that one up. See, suppose you’re what I call a real taxi, one
with a license plate like X+ 0i. So the dot on the map that corresponds to it
is where X Avenue meets Real Road, get it? Then when you square, you go
to X2 + 0i, which is where X2 Avenue meets Real Road. That’s why it’s
called squaring. It tells you how the Avenues change when you go along
Real Road.’
‘Oh.’
 ’But, notice that X2 is always positive, so those intersections all lie to
the east of Grand Central Station. What if you want to go west?’
‘No idea.’
‘That’s the cunning part - the city authorities weren’t totally nuts.
Suppose you choose a taxi with license plate 0+ li, that’s plain i for short.
On the corner of 1 Street and the Queens i Way.’
‘Why is it called that?’
‘Because points on it correspond to license plates 0 + Yi, and it doesn’t
go to Brooklyn.’
‘Oh.’
‘Anyway, if you work out the square for taxi i you get the intersection
of 02 - l2 Avenue and 2 x 0 x 0 Street, which is the intersection of -1 Avenue
and Real Road. So the square of i is -1, in effect. Every point along the Real
Road has a Square Route, and not just the ones to the east of Grand Central
Station.’
‘That’s cool!’ said Vikki.
‘And at that point I inherited Dot’s job, didn’t I?’ said the Mandelblot.
‘And it’s a zillion times harder, let me tell you! See, what / have to do is
map out which taxis escape from Quadratic City if they start at Grand
Central Station and keep alternating a square trip with a regular “A east, B
north” trip.’
‘And that’s hard?’
‘Think about it. Suppose you get in taxi -2 + 0i. Where does that take
you?’
‘Let me work it out... we start at Grand Central Station, so the first
square trip take us to - Grand Central Station?’
‘Yes. The square of 0 + 0i is 0 + 0i.’
‘That’s silly. Why waste a trip?’
‘It puts a few minutes on the clock - kind of entry fee.’
’Then the first regular trip takes the taxi to -2 Avenue and 0 Street.
Followed by another square, which takes it to 4 Avenue and 0 Street. Then a
regular trip ... ending up at 2 Avenue and 0 Street. And then another square,
which gets it to - oh!’
‘Problem?’
‘It goes back to 4 Avenue and 0 Street!’
 ‘Agreed.’
‘And then it just hops for ever between 4 Avenue and 0 Street, and 2
Avenue and 0 Street, doesn’t it?’
‘Right.’
‘So - it never escapes?’
‘Exactly. Which means I can take the map, and I can colour -2 Avenue
and 0 Street black. But you see, that’s only one point on the map. There are
infinitely many points. But for most of them the calculation doesn’t work
out so nicely. Try taxi 2 + 3i, since we were talking about that, and see how
its itinerary changes with the new rules.’
So Vikki got out her Personal Disorganizer, and programmed its
shopping spreadsheet to do the calculation, and this is what it told her:

Trip Avenue Street

START 0 0
Square 0 0
Regular 2 3
Square -5 12
Regular -3 15
Square -216 -90
Regular -214 -87
Square 38,227 37,236
Regular 38,229 37,239
Square 74,713,320 2,847,219,462

‘Looks like it’s definitely escaping,’ said Vikki. ‘I wasn’t sure at first,
but now that the numbers are getting so big—’
‘Yes, but how can you be certain?’ wailed the Mandelblot. ‘You can’t
keep calculating for ever!’
‘Surely,’ the Space Hopper protested, ‘once the numbers get big
enough, the taxi has to escape? Can’t you prove that?’
‘Well, yes, I thought of that,’ said the Mandelblot. ‘It’s a bit
complicated, but you can. Turns out that as soon as a taxi gets more than 2
kilometres from Grand Central Station - as the crow flies - it will always
escape. But some taxis take an awfully long time to get that far, you see.
Here’s one of the first taxis I was told to sort out when I started the job.
Have a go at taxi -0.1 + li.’
Vikki tipped that into her Personal Disorganizer, and got this:

Trip Avenue Street

START 0 0
Square 0 0
Regular -0.1 1
Square -0.99 -0.2
Regular -1.09 0.8
Square 0.5481 -1.744
Regular 0.4481 -0.744
Square -0.352742 -0.666773
Regular -0.452742 0.333227
Square 0.0939353 -0.301732

‘I don’t think that one’s escaping,’ said Vikki. The numbers are staying
fairly small ... all of them seem to be within 2 kilometres of Grand Central
Station.’ She stopped. ‘On the other tip, they’re not repeating, either, and I
doubt they will. Still - I’ll guess it never escapes.’
’WRONG!’ shouted the Mandelblot with glee. ‘Keep calculating!’
‘Nothing much happening yet - oh, hang on, now they’re getting quite
large ... and now the numbers are gigantic. So it does escape.’
‘You’re beginning to see how hard it is to be sure what colour some
points on the map ought to be,’ said the Mandelblot, ‘and sometimes it’s a
lot worse than that. In fact -’ (he lowered his voice for a moment) - ‘the
calculation might have to go on for longer than the lifetime of the universe!’
‘Which universe?’
‘Any universe. As long as you like. Or longer. To tell the truth, whether
a general point gets coloured black or white is algorithmically undecidable’
‘Which means that no computer program can be guaranteed to give an
answer,’ added the Space Hopper, helpfully.
‘That must have made your job pretty difficult,’ said Vikki.
 ‘Difficult? It was impossible! So ... I cheated. But don’t tell anybody! I
found a rule of thumb that gives a good approximation to the answer, and I
used that. Keep following the taxi for a hundred trips: if at any stage it gets
further than 2 kilometres from Grand Central Station, then you definitely
know to colour the corresponding point white. Colour all the others black.
Some points will be given the wrong colour if you do that - the ones that
were going to escape, but slowly. However, only a tiny proportion are like
that. And it’s just not worth the effort to be more accurate, because the eye
wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyway.’
‘That sounds a reasonable approach to me,’ said Vikki. ‘Pragmatic’
‘That’s my feeling - but don’t tell my boss, OK? I might lose my job if
she finds out.’
‘It’s a promise. Not a word shall I breathe. Anyway, what answer did
you get?’
‘Me. The Mandelblot, I call it, when I want it to sound posh.’
‘You mean you’re that weird cactus-cat shape because that’s the
answer?’
‘Yes, just as Dot was a dot when that was the answer. But I’m far more
complicated. In fact, I’m a fractal. Well, my boundary is. Look very closely
and tell me what you see.’
Vikki cranked up the VUE and zoomed in on the edge of the
Mandelblot. ‘Sort of cactusy blobs ... decorated with their own cactusy
blobs ... now it’s spirals ... then sort of - seahorses? More spirally things ...
twirly curly curlicues ... now it’s like the branches of a tree ... Gosh, it is
complicated, isn’t it?’
‘Infinitely complicated,’ said the Mandelblot, proudly. ‘Now, take a
look right... here’
‘It’s - my word, it’s a tiny copy of you!’
‘Perfect, I’m told, in every detail.’
‘But the Space Hopper said you’re not self-similar.’
‘I’m not. Some bits of me - rather rare ones - are small copies of me,
though they’re all very slightly bent. Most bits, though, aren’t. So I’m not
made out of small copies of myself. And that means I’m not self-similar.’
‘What’s your fractal dimension?’
‘You mean the fractal dimension of my boundary?’
‘Yes.’
 ‘It’s exactly 2.’
Vikki was disappointed. ‘I expected something like 1.7729 or whatever.
A fraction.’
‘Ah, but my boundary is a curve. Yet it has the same fractal dimension
as a solid disc, or a square. So actually that’s very interesting. Because
intuitively a curve ought to have dimension 1-
‘It does, in the Henripoincarean sense,’ the Space Hopper interjected.
‘Thank you. Anyway, in the fractal sense, the dimension is 2. Which is
as big as you can get for a curve in the plane,’ the Mandelblot pointed out
proudly. ‘So that’s very remarkable and unusual.’
Vikki turned to her companion. ‘Space Hopper, this is fascinating, but is
there any serious point to it? What’s it all about?’
‘Dynamics,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘rules for moving taxis around, if
you wish. More to the point, rules for moving anything around. Any system
that changes as time passes, and isn’t subject to random influences, must
obey some kind of repetitive rule that governs everything it does. That rule
is its dynamic. If we gave the taxis a different rule for the trips they were
permitted to make, we’d get different kinds of dynamic. And almost all
important systems change over time. Populations of animals or bacteria, the
positions of planets, the weather ... they’re all like the taxis of Quadratic
City.’
‘So what does the Mandelblot tell us, then?’
‘That a very simple mathematical rule can lead to incredibly
complicated behaviour,’ replied the Space Hopper. ‘Isn’t that amazing?’
‘I guess ... But doesn’t that mean that trying to understand dynamics in
terms of rules is a waste of time?’
‘Not at all!’ said the Mandelblot heatedly. ‘Can’t you see how beautiful
I am?’
‘Sorry, but what’s beauty got to do with anything—’
‘Pattern!’ shouted the Mandelblot. ‘Structure! I may be infinitely
complicated, but I’m made from layer upon layer of intricate pattern!’
‘That’s right,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘What the Mandelblot tells us is
that something which seems very complicated may in fact arise from simple
rules. So the trick is to understand the rules, not the complicated behaviour
that follows from the rules. And if you didn’t know there were any rules for
the Mandelblot, you’d still be able to tell there must be some, because of the
patterns. He’s not a random mess, you see.’
‘I’m not any kind of mess,’ protested the Mandelblot.
‘Sorry, never meant to suggest you were,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘What
I mean is, instead of all this telling us that rules aren’t any use because they
can lead to complexity, it tells us that we can hope to understand complexity
by finding out what the rules are. But, to do that we have to be sensitive to
new kinds of pattern, such as fractals. New types of pattern can lead us to
new types of rule.’
Vikki felt she ought to be impressed by this, but wasn’t sure exactly
why. The dilemma must have showed on her face, because the Space
Hopper tried again. ‘The Planiturthians have a name for rules like that,
Vikki. It may be an exaggeration, but it shows how important they can be.’
‘And what name is that, Hopper?’
‘Laws of Nature.’
‘Heavy,’ said Vikki. ‘Philosophical. And all based on a city that’s so
featureless, the only thing new arrivals can think about doing is getting out
again.’
‘Well, if you feel like that, we’d better go and visit somewhere else.’
That sounded a good idea to Vikki. ‘Somewhere fun, Hopper? Where
there’s a lot going on?’ Somewhere to take my mind off home.
The Space Hopper wiggled its antennae, searching for inspiration. Then
its face lit up in a u. ‘I know just the place!’
 6
THE TOPOLOGIST’S TEA-PARTY

An instant - or a lifetime - passed. Vikki had no way of telling how much

time had elapsed, since time had no meaning in metaspace ... What she
experienced was not a transition, but a shift of attention. Her Virtual
Unreality Engine reconfigured itself, and she was ... elsewhere.
Using her VUE-enhanced senses, she tried to come to grips with her
new surroundings. It was difficult, for nothing stayed still. Strange bendy
plastic shapes drifted silently past, shrinking and swelling, rippling and
undulating, twisting into grotesque pretzel-like forms, writhing and
intertwining like very friendly surreal baroque worms. Even the ground
beneath her endpoints heaved and pulsated like a living creature, sprouting
elaborate protrusions and then sucking them back into its weird alien
landscape. It was disturbing, yet oddly beautiful.
‘Here we are,’ said the Space Hopper proudly.
‘Where?’
Topologica,’ replied the Space Hopper, ‘the Rubber-sheet Continent,
which doesn’t so much drift as stretch ... We have entered the realm of
topology, from which rigidity was long ago banished and only continuity
holds sway. The land of topological transformations, which can bend-and-
stretch-and-compress-and-distort-and-deform’ (he said this all in one
breath) ‘but not tear or break. You’ll find plenty to occupy you here. Look,
someone’s coming to meet us already.’
Vikki was about to ask what such a place might be good for when she
looked up to see a small, rather nondescript creature sauntering towards
them through the ever-changing hills and valleys of the restless landscape.
It carried some kind of bag. Even though the creature seemed to be
dawdling, it reached them surprisingly quickly.
And promptly went to sleep.
Vikki stared at the snoring animal. It had a fat little body, a sharp nose
with whiskers, tiny ears, and a long thin tail. She poked it, being careful to
fold her tip back on itself like a hairpin to avoid spiking the curious beast. It
continued to snore, and where she poked it her curled-up tip left a dent. The
animal had a texture like dough.
‘Meet the Doughmouse,’ the Space Hopper whispered. Then he shook
his horns in irritation. ‘I don’t know why I’m whispering. A Doughmouse
can sleep through just about anything ...’ his grin broadened into a ◡ ‘...
except a “WAKE UP!”...’ the Doughmouse shot to its feet and the contents
of the bag it was carrying scattered everywhere ‘.. . call from a Space
Hopper. Doughmouse, you have company.’
‘Oh, hi...’ The Doughmouse gave a gaping yawn, and began to curl up
again.
‘I said, WAKE UP! Be polite this time, and stay awake.’
‘I’ll dough my best,’ said the sleepy creature.
‘Hopper, you’ve made the poor little thing spill everything,’ said Vikki,
her latent maternal instincts aroused by the animal’s big round eyes and
doleful expression. ‘Let me help you pick them up.’ The bag was marked
‘Doughnut Disturb’, and several dozen ring-shaped tubes of cooked dough
had spilled out onto the ground.
Moments later, they had contorted themselves into the cups from a
twelve-piece tea-set. Chinese willow pattern.
‘Doughmouse,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘allow me to introduce my
friend Victoria Line.’
‘Dilated to meet you,’ said the Doughmouse, swelling alarmingly as if
to prove it. Vikki’s maternal instincts were about to vanish, but then it
shrank back to its previous size. ‘Er ...’ The Space Hopper had told it to be
polite, and the Doughmouse was a very literal-minded creature. What was
the height of politeness when meeting a stranger? Ah, yes! It turned to
Vikki and bowed. ‘Would both of you care to join me—’
‘Join you to what?’ asked the Space Hopper. ‘That’s not a topo-logical
transformation!’
‘—for tea?’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ replied Vikki, ignoring the byplay, ‘but your
tea-set has only cups, Mr Doughmouse. No saucers, no plates - and no
teapot! I’d say it’s a very poor service.’
‘And that’s a very poor joke,’ said the Doughmouse, ‘also a very old
one. And you’re a very forward young lady. Only just arrived, and already
you’re criticizing my crockery.’
‘Vikki is a visitor from Flatland,’ the Space Hopper said.
‘Oh well, that explains it,’ the Doughmouse stated with a shrug. ‘Very
elegant people, Flatties, but rather rigid in both their geometry and their
thinking. And yet ... here you are, Victoria, consorting with me and the
Space Hopper, so perhaps you’ve got more imagination than your fellow
geometrymen. I wonder, though, if you have enough imagination for thisl
You criticized my tea-set, and here is my answer!’ And with that, the
Doughmouse tipped out two dozen ball-shaped doughnuts. Then he turned
the bag upside down and jiggled it, muttering to himself, until the bag
disgorged the most peculiar doughnut Vikki had ever seen.
It had two holes.
The Doughmouse looked expectantly at her.
After a few seconds’ stunned silence, she realized she was expected to
react. ‘Sorry, but I don’t.. . what I see is a dozen cups and 25 doughnuts, of
which 24 have no hole at all and the other is so very badly made that it’s got
two. It still isn’t a tea-set!’
The Doughmouse gave the Space Hopper a meaningful look. ‘It is if
you think like a topologist. Let me present my wares in a way that makes
sense to your Euclidean eyes.’ He held up one of the round doughnuts, and
as she watched it flattened itself into a thin pancake, for all the world like a
lump of pastry being rolled flat. The pancake’s rim tilted and its edge
contracted. With a final silent hiccup, it settled into its new shape. The
Doughmouse placed the now-transformed doughnut beneath one of the
cups.
 ‘A saucer!’ cried Vikki.
Eleven more doughnuts changed into saucers. Twelve more expanded to
about twice their size and became plates. Only the two-holed doughnut
remained doughnutty.
‘Well .. .’ said Vikki, half-conceding. But not yet. ‘Where’s the teapot?’
The Doughmouse used its whiskers to gesture towards the two-holed
doughnut.
‘That? That’s not a teapot! Teapots don’t have two holes!’
‘Really?’ replied the Doughmouse.
‘No. The tea would trickle out.’
‘Oh dear, just my misfortune to bump into a teapot expert! Well, I’m
sure you know best. But tell me: does a teapot have a handle?’
‘Of course. Otherwise you couldn’t pick it up,’ said Vikki, getting angry
now. The Doughmouse was so obtuse.
‘So there must be a hole between the pot and the handle for you to put
your hand through?’
‘Hand?’
‘Sorry, I forgot you’re a Flatty. Your manipulatory vertex.’
 Vikki hadn’t thought of the aperture as a hole before, but she had to
admit that it was just as much a hole as the one in a doughnut - which
wasn’t actually in the doughnut ... it was more a place where there could
have been dough ... but... there wasn’t.
‘All right, I accept that in that sense a teapot has one hole. But your
doughnut has two ...’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Oh! A teapot has a hole in the
top!’
The Doughmouse gave her an enquiring stare. ’That’s not a hole.’
‘Yes it is! It’s a hole for putting the tea into the pot.’
‘Ah, but that “hole” only goes in. It doesn’t come out again.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Vikki. ‘A hole in a wall can go in but come out again.
A hole that goes in and does come out again is called a tunnel’
‘Terminology, terminology,’ muttered the Doughmouse, ‘why does
everybody get hung up on terminology? It’s enough to send a body to sleep
...’ It emitted a tentative snorelet, and the Space Hopper administered an
admonitory kick. ‘Ow! Uh - in Topologica, a hole that only goes in isn’t a
hole at all. It has to come out again. Somewhere else.’
‘Then why didn’t you say what you meant?’
‘I did say what I meant - you just didn’t hear what I meant ... but don’t
get me started on the meaning of words, young lady, it’s been done. Tell me,
when you pour the tea, how does it get out of the pot?’
‘Through the spout,’ said Vikki. Really, the creature was extremely
annoying.
‘So there has to be a hole in the spout to let the tea out.’
‘That’s a tube, not a hole!’
‘A tube,’ said the creature carefully, ‘is just a long, thin hole.’ It
coughed in a self-important way. ‘In Topologica, the Rubber-sheet
Continent, “long” and “thin” have no significance. A hole is a hole,
whatever its size or shape. Though I should be careful how I say that. What
do you make of this doughnut?’ It held up a semitrans-parent, strangely
convoluted mass of dough:
 ‘It’s a ... no, it’s more of a ...’
‘It’s a hole-through-a-hole-in-a-hole,’ proclaimed the Dough-mouse.
‘That doesn’t make a hole lot of sense—’ Vikki began, and then
stopped. Because actually, it did. Suddenly everything that had been
happening was starting to make a weird kind of sense. The Doughmouse
wasn’t as stupid or as annoying as he seemed. ‘Hole’ was just a rough-and-
ready way to describe something infinitely more subtle: topology.
‘You’re telling me that the hole where the tea goes into the pot, and the
spout where it comes out, are really just the two ends of the same hole?’
‘Exactly! So now you can see how my two-holed doughnut turns into a
teapot. Think of it as two doughnuts joined together, like Siamese twins.
First, I pinch one twin down to make a handle on the side of the other. Then
I flatten the bigger one out to make a disc with a small hole. I bend the disc
up into a cup-shape, and then stretch it further and shrink the edge of the
cup so that it’s teapot-shaped. Finally, I pull out the region immediately
around the hole into a tube, stretch that to the right length, and bend it into a
spout shape - oh, and while I’m at it, I tidy up the shape and position of the
handle. Done!’
Topologica, thought Victoria, is a very strange continent. I must be careful
Things aren’t necessarily what they seem. I wonder if- she picked up one of
the cups and nibbled gingerly at the rim.
Sweet dough crumbled into her mouth.
She looked inside the teapot. It was full of tea, and none of it seemed to
be leaking out. She poured some tea into her half-eaten cup, expecting the
cup to soak it up and turn into a sloshy mess. It didn’t. It sat there, like
normal tea in a normal cup.
‘All geometric forms in Topologica lead multiple existences’, said the
Space Hopper, who had guessed what she was worrying about.
‘Mathematically, any shape is topologically identical to anything you can
continuously deform it into. But to the inhabitants of this particular world,
the physical properties of shapes depend on what you use them for.
“Context-dependent", that’s the phrase.’
‘Oh.’ Vikki began to pay more attention to the tea, rather than the cup.
‘Yuck! There’s no milk!’
‘An omission that can easily be remedied,’ said the Dough-mouse. ‘I
happen to know that just over the brow of the next hill there lives a cow
who will sell us a bottle of milk at a very reasonable price.’
‘What is the name of this beneficent beast?’ asked the Space Hopper.
‘Moobius.’
‘And its milk comes in ...?’
‘Klein bottles.’
The Space Hopper sighed. ‘I rather thought so.’

Wunday 9 Noctember 2099

Whatever next, Diary Dear? A talking cow, would you believe? Not that it
looked much like a cow - but, after all, a doughnut doesn’t actually look
much like a teacup. Even so, this was a very singular cow ...

*
Victoria wasn’t particularly bothered that Moobius the cow was two-
dimensional - because, after all, so was she. Nor was she bothered by its
extraordinarily long tail, which could wrap all the way round to touch its
face. She was a little disturbed, though, when she realized that the cow’s tail
was glued to its nose. Or, rather, that tail and nose merged seamlessly into
each other:
Was the creature really a cow with its tail attached to its nose? Might it
instead be an elephant with its trunk attached to its bottom? Either way, she
wasn’t sure she wished to pursue the matter. However, even the remarkable
appendage, whatever it was, was less disturbing than the extremely loud
music that seemed to be coming from somewhere inside the cow. They had
heard the music growing ever louder as they approached the animal, but for
a while they had assumed it must be coming from somewhere else. Now it
was clear that the music definitely originated inside (or, the creature being
two-dimensional, on) the cow itself. At first it had seemed to be coming
from the head, but then it migrated to the stomach. At the moment it seemed
to be concentrated near the cow’s rear end. It was some kind of military
march - mostly brass and drums.
‘Hello!’ shouted Vikki, trying to make herself heard over the din.
‘Eh?’ said the cow.
‘Sorry, but your music is making an awful lot of noise!’
‘You’ll have to speak up,’ said Moobius, ‘my music is making an awful
lot of noise.’
Vikki put her moth close to the cow’s ear and yelled, ‘Can’t you put a
stop to it?’
‘Good heavens, no,’ said the cow. ‘That would be terribly orienting.’
‘Surely you mean “disorienting"?’
Moobius shook its head. ‘I know what I mean.’
‘Well, can you turn it down a bit so that we don’t have to shout all the
time?’
‘I suppose so,’ said the cow, somewhat miffed. It jiggled around for a
moment, and the noise of the band faded to a low clickety-dackety-boom.
’I’d be nothing without my band,’ said the cow. ‘It’s essential to my
existence.’
Vikki decided that this was yet another aspect of Moobius the cow that
might best be left unexplored, but the Doughmouse must have felt
otherwise. ‘Oh no it isn’t,’ it said.
‘Oh yes it is!’ the cow responded, quick as a flash.
‘Oh no it isn’t!’ Vikki felt that the quality of debate might be improved,
but there was no doubting the level of commitment.
‘Oh no it isn’t!’
‘Oh yes it is!’
‘Oh yes it is!’
‘Oh no it isn’t!’
‘Oh no it isn’t!’
‘Oh yes it—’
’Hold it right there,’ Vikki interrupted, replaying the conversation in her
head ‘I don’t think I quite followed that—’
‘Let me explain,’ said Moobius in a patronizing tone of voice. ‘First he
said “Oh no it isn’t” and then / said “Oh yes it is” and then he said—’
‘Not at all,’ the Doughmouse objected, ’you started the argument by
saying that it was, though not in those words, and then I made the
reasonable point that it wasn’t, to which you responded without a single
whit of justification that it most assuredly was, and then—’
‘Eeeeeeeeek!’ Vikki’s scream stopped them both. She gathered her
breath and tried to calm herself. ‘Uh ... Doughmouse: first you started out
saying that Moobius’s band isn’t essential to its existence.’ She turned to
appeal to the Space Hopper for support, but it seemed to have wandered off.
‘Uh ... when Moobius disagreed, you repeated what you’d said before. But
then ... well, Moobius changed his mind and agreed with you, but you
promptly changed sides and said that the band is essential to Moobius’s
existence. Then Moobius agreed with that, too, but all you did was go back
to your original position!’
‘Sure. But then Moobius changed his mind again—’
’And so did you! You were both being completely inconsistent! Don’t
either of you know which side you’re on?’
They stared at her. ‘I know which side I’m on’, said the Doughmouse.
‘Which?’ demanded Vikki.
‘The inside,’ said the Doughmouse.
‘The what side?’
‘And you are on the outside,’ the Doughmouse added in a helpful tone.
‘Uh ... then what side is Moobius on?’
 ‘Both,’ said the cow. ‘Well, actually there’s only one, and it’s on me.’
‘You’re both talking utter rubbish,’ said Vikki.
‘Not at all,’ said the Doughmouse. ‘Haven’t you heard the phrase “a
side of beef"?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Well, that’s what Moobius is. A side of beef. Whereas I—’
‘Yes?’
‘—am an inside of a Doughmouse. And you—’
’What about me?’
‘—are nearly beside yourself with rage. And I recommend that it
remains “nearly", my dear, at least until you visit a space with the property
of bilocation.’
With an effort, Vikki took a deep breath before trying to reboot the
conversation. ‘Moobius. Is. An. Entire. Cow. A side of beef is half a cow,
that’s why it’s called a side. If you slice a cow in half from nose to tail -
excuse me, Moobius, nothing personal - you get two separate sides of beef.
One from the left side and the other from the right side. Even Flatland
butchers know that, though our cows are mostly oxagons, you know. Er - a
cross-breed between hexagons and octagons,’ she added apologetically.
‘No hoctagons?’
‘Well, no, but there’s a hogsagon, which yields excellent bacagon—’
’Keep to the point!’ shouted Moobius. ‘I assure you that I am a single
side of beef.’
‘Rubbish!’ said Vikki. ‘Nothing has only one side.’
‘Well, actually, nothing has no sides at all—’
‘And you were telling the Doughmouse to keep to the point! Of course
you’ve got two sides. Why, even from here I can see that part of you is on
the far side and the rest is on the near side.’
The cow grimaced. ‘Yes, I know that, you pigheaded Flatty, but—’
Vikki made an effort and kept her temper. ‘So you’ve got two sides,
Moobius.’
‘Only ... locally. Um ... you know, what I could really do with is a
hosedown. Can you fetch that hose over there, Doughmouse? And since the
young lady is so clever and knows so much about bovine anatomy, she can
hose me down on just one side. Yes?’
 ‘Well -1 really don’t see why /need to do it, but in order to prove my
point, OK.’
The Doughmouse came back with a dog collar. ‘Got it.’
‘No, that’s a—’
‘In Topologica, nothing is what it seems.’
‘No,’ said Moobius, ‘nothing isn’t what it seems, because if it’s nothing
then there isn’t anything to seem.’
‘Oh, do shut up!’ snapped the Doughmouse. He handed Vikki the dog
collar. ‘Grab one end, Victoria.’
‘It hasn’t got any ends.’
‘Yes it has, they look like edges. Grab an edge.’ And she did ... and the
Doughmouse pulled ... and pulled ... and pulled ... and the short fat cylinder
of the dog collar became longer and longer and longer, and thinner and
thinner and thinner, until she found herself holding the end of a hose. She
just managed to point it away from herself before a spray of water shot out.
‘Hose me! Hose me!’ yelled the cow. ‘But only on one side, remember!’
‘Easy!’ said Vikki. First, she peeped round the back to make sure that
there was a second side to the cow’s face: there was. Then she sprayed
water all over the side of the face that was nearest to her. Slowly she
worked her way along the flank of the cow until she reached the tail.
‘Carry on,’ said the cow. ‘You haven’t finished yet.’
‘I know that. But there’s only the tail left to do.’ Vikki worked her way
back along the cow’s tail, checking that the near side was dripping wet but
the far side was dry, but about halfway along she found she was having to
contort her body to get at the correct side of the tail. ‘Hey, Moobius?’ she
called out. ‘Your tail’s twisted, did you know that?’
‘Tell me about it!’ said the cow.
The Doughmouse started to yawn again, and looked round in a vague
sort of way for something soft to sleep on. It took the teapot out of its bag,
did something to make it grow a good deal bigger, climbed in, and pulled
the lid over its head.
Vikki kept on spraying water over Moobius, being careful to keep the
far side dry. ‘Nearly done, coming back to the nose -hold it.’
‘Now what?’
‘I’m back to your nose - but it’s dry\’ She glared at it. ‘Moobius, have
you been sneakily drying yourself while I’ve been hosing your tail?’
 ‘Not a bit of it,’ protested the cow. Try looking on the other side.’
‘It’s - it’s dripping wet! Are you playing a trick on me?’
Moobius nodded. ‘Yes.’ Then it shook its head. ‘But not in the way you
mean.’
‘Can’t you ever make up your mind?’
Moobius gave her a level look. ‘I always thought that my mind made
itself up, and only told me about it later. But the wet “side” of my face really
is the one you started washing, I promise.’
‘Then what - oh. The twist. In your tail. It - it flips over so that the wet
side runs into the dry side. I see it all now. If I keep going I’ll spray the
whole of your other flank, and then go along the other side of your tail...
and finally get back to where I started. The twist makes your two sides join
together.’
Moobius nodded. ‘Which means that what you thought were two
different sides are actually just different parts of the same side. So, like I
kept telling you, I’ve only got one side. And I’m not on it: it’s on me.’
‘Whereas I—’
‘Have two separate sides,’ said the Space Hopper, reappearing from
nowhere with two new companions. ‘These guys were looking for the
Doughmouse - Vikki, where’d he go?’ A resonant snore boomed from the
interior of the teapot. ‘Oh. You shouldn’t have let him go in there. Now
we’ll have a terrible time waking him up.
‘Anyway, you have two separate sides because you’ve got edges that
keep your sides separate.’
Vikki thought about this. True, an edge can separate one side of a flat
surface from the other, but the Space Hopper’s argument had a flaw.
‘Moobius has edges, too.’
’Edge,’ the Space Hopper corrected. ‘Run your eye along it. What you
think ought to be two separate edges also join up seamlessly.’
‘Because of the twist. Again.’
‘Of course. Every good tail has to have a twist, you know.’
‘Um - I think that’s “tale"’, said Vikki.
‘Tail, tale, so what? It’s the twist that matters—’
‘—so you’ll only get one side of beef out of me’, Moobius finished.
 *

Wunday 9 Noctember 2099 [continued]

... and that, Diary Dear, is how two people can hold a really interactive but
one-sided conversation.
Moobius went on to say that the reason we were getting so confused is
that the word ‘side’ has several meanings. It’s not really a question of how
many sides a cow has: it’s orientations that matter.
I’ll see if I can explain. Moobius has a resident band - mostly brass, but
when I looked closely I saw that there’s a drummer with a gigantic bass
drum. It always carries the drum on its left-well, what Moobius says is its
left. When I first saw it, that’s where the drum was.
But when the band marched all the way along Moobius’s body, back
along its tail, and returned to its starting-point, the drum was on the right.
I’d been watching it closely. The drum never switched sides.
Then it clicked. The band doesn’t live on Moobius. It’s in it. Like an ink
drawing that’s soaked right through to the other side. Now, locally - that is,
near any given place - Moobius has two sides, just like any other surface.
But globally - taken as a whole - the twist in its tail makes the two sides join
up. As a result, there’s no sensible concept of left/right. As the drummer
goes round the twist - Diary, stop laughing, you know what I mean -his
apparent orientation gets flopped over, so left becomes right and right
becomes left.
The Moobius band is nonorientable, that’s the point.
And Moobius isn’t the only such surface. There’s an even weirder
nonorientable surface, which Moobius keeps her milk in. A Klein bottle.
The Space Hopper told me why it’s called that. It’s a Planit-urthian
name, you see. A mathematician’s joke. In one region of Planiturth, called
Germany - no, not because it has many germs, Diary Dear-the word klein
means ‘small’. But size doesn’t matter in Topologica, so that’s a red herring.
And a Germany-People called Felixklein invented a nonorientable surface
in 1882. Unlike Moobius, it had no edges - it was a closed surface.
Basically, it’s a tube that bends round and joins up to itself, like a doughnut.
But as it bends round it kind of passes through itself and turns inside-out, so
the surface all joins up.
Weirder still, it only passes through itself if you try to embed it in 3D. In
4D it doesn’t.
Now, the Space Hopper has a private theory about the name Klein bottle.
He thinks it was originally Klein’s surface. In Felixklein’s day, Germany-
People were forever inventing new surfaces and getting them named after
themselves. For instance, there was a People called Ernstkummer and he
invented Kummer’s surface - which in Germanyspeak is Kummersche
Flache, the ‘-sche’ being a possessive ending and Flache meaning
‘surface’.
So, the Space Hopper reckons, the name started out as Kleinsche Flache,
Klein’s surface. But it looks like a bottle, and the German for bottle is
Flasche, so ...
QED, as we Flatlanders say.

*
The two new creatures the Space Hopper had brought with him had come to
join the tea-party. Make it more sociable, he said. Vikki thought this
unlikely, though she politely kept the thought to herself. One of the
creatures was a very angry-looking horse. The other carried what seemed to
be a bottomless bucket of mud, and kept building mud huts with it.
‘Who are they?’ whispered Vikki.
‘The Harsh Mare and the Mud Hutter,’ replied the Space Hopper. The
two creatures climbed into the teapot to join the Doughmouse, waking it up,
and all three began to bicker. Their voices rose and fell.
‘I know they seem a bit intimidating,’ the Space Hopper continued, ‘but
that’s because they are intimidating, so it’s OK to be intimidated by them,
right?’
‘But I don’t want to be intim— What the convex hull is that?’
Another extraordinary inhabitant of Topologica was trotting towards
them across the bouncy surface of the Rubber-sheet Continent. Its head, if
head it was, was adorned with antlers, if antlers they were ... they seemed to
branch and entwine and branch and entwine ... and the closer the curious
beast got to them, the finer the branches became.
 A red sweatband was wound between them.
‘Wow!’ said the creature, skidding to a halt. ‘A tea-party? Great! And
visitors from Out-a Space, too! Hi, Hopper - how’s tricks?’
‘An old friend,’ the Space Hopper whispered by way of explanation.
‘Whatever you do, don’t take him seriously.’ He turned to the new arrival
and spoke in a more normal tone. ‘Vikki: meet my old buddy Alexander the
horned sphere.’
‘You’re a sphere?’ Vikki found this difficult to believe. Alexander
surely wasn’t the Sphere: Albert would undoubtedly have mentioned the
horns.
‘Hey, baby, yeah!’ boomed Alexander.
‘Er, in a manner of speaking,’ the Space Hopper qualified.
‘Yeah. My inside is topologically the same as the inside of a Sphere -
but my outside is topologically different from the outside of a Sphere. Dig?’
 ‘That doesn’t make any sense at all,’ said Vikki.
‘Sorry to contradict, babe, but it does. You’re forgetting the difference
between the intrinsic topology of a space, considered on its own, and what
happens when it’s embedded in another space. Intrinsically I’m a Sphere,
but extrinsically I’m not.
‘It’s the horns, see?’ Alexander went on. ‘From the inside, pushing out a
horn doesn’t make me any less spherical. So pushing out lots of horns, even
infinitely many, doesn’t either. But when seen from the outside, the horns
tangle up, whereas the outside of a sphere isn’t tangled at all. I’ll prove it.
Try to remove my sweatband.’
‘Uh ...’ Vikki began. Those horns looked sharp. Fractal, even.
‘Go on, try,’ the Space Hopper encouraged her, ‘give it a tug.’
Vikki tentatively pulled on the sweatband, but she couldn’t dislodge it
from its loop around the horns. ‘It’s ... stuck!’
‘"Homotopically nontrivial” is the phrase ya want, babe, but ya dead
right. But ...’ The horned sphere’s horns started to shrink back into its body.
‘If I now turn myself into a bog-standard sphere ... Try again, kiddo.’
By now the horned sphere had turned into a perfectly round ball. The
sweatband was wrapped round it somewhere close to what a Planiturthian
would have called the Tropic of Cancer.
Vikki reached over and, without the slightest difficulty, lifted it off.
‘See? My inside topological shape never changed, but now I’ve got a
null-homotopic sweatband!’
‘Uh?’
‘It can be pulled off, OK? So my outside topology has changed.’
‘Indisputably’, said Vikki.
The bickering inside the teapot stopped, and the Harsh Mare
poked her nose over the edge. ’You may not dispute it, madam, but /will
dispute anything?
‘No you won’t,’ came the voice of the Mud Hutter.
‘Yes I will,’ insisted the Harsh Mare, ducking back into the teapot.
Snore, the Doughmouse contributed to the debate. The bickering
intensified.
‘Oh dear,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘I think we may have outstayed our
welcome. Time we went.’
And they did.
 7
ALONG THE LOOKING-GLASS . . .

‘This stuff about one-sided surfaces is all very interesting,’ said Vikki, ‘but
it’s just intellectual fun and games, isn’t it? You can’t really use it for
anything.’
The Space Hopper gave a few thoughtful bounces. ‘That depends on
what you mean by “use",’ he said. ‘If you mean direct application, then
maybe not. I did read once about someone using a Moobius band as a
conveyor belt, because that way the wear on its surface was halved - but
you could achieve the same thing by using an ordinary cylindrical belt and
then turning it over to use the other side, so I can’t personally see the point.
Except perhaps a small saving on maintenance.’
‘So you don’t—’
‘I don’t think there are many direct applications. But most applications
of maths are indirect. It plays out its roles behind the scenes. And there are
plenty of ways to use topology. But you were talking specifically about one-
sided surfaces. I do know one place where such things turn up naturally, and
the associated ideas are certainly useful. Ready? Let’s go!’
Vikki scarcely had time to prepare herself for the transition before her
VUE reconfigured ...

This was a bleak and oppressive world. A seemingly endless sandy desert
stretched away in all directions, it was flat and featureless.
‘I don’t like this place,’ said Vikki.
‘Why not?’
‘It feels lonely and unforgiving. And nothing’s happening.’
‘Not yet. Don’t judge geometries by first appearances, Vikki. Some of
the most beautiful geometries start out looking most austere. If you reserve
judgement, you will find that this is a very elegant world indeed.’
 ‘Hmmph.’ Vikki was unimpressed. ‘Where are we, anyway?’
‘We have landed somewhere on the Projective Plain. And it’s not as
deserted as it seems. It’s teeming with wildlife.’
‘Wildlife? There isn’t so much as an ant!’
‘Not so. The Projective Plain is inhabited by lions.’
‘Lions?’
‘Projective lions.’ The Space Hopper saw Vikki gasp, and her eyes
flashed wildly to and fro. ‘Don’t worry - they’re friendly. So friendly, in
fact, that any two projective lions always meet.’
‘Meet? Meet what?’
‘Each other.’
‘Meet each - where?’
‘Somewhere. At some projective point - which is to say, at some
location in the Projective Plain. Precisely where depends on the lions. Why,
right now a lot of them are all meeting here.’
‘Lions? Lots? Here?’ Vikki’s voice was edging upwards.
‘Don’t worry, they’re harmless. Anyway, you’re a lion yourself.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Victoria Lion.’
‘That’s Victoria Line, you buffoon!’
‘Which, in the local jargon, is pronounced “lion". The difference is that
you are a Euclidean lion - well, part of one, anyway - whereas they are
projective lions. And it’s a very significant difference, because in Flatland
you can have parallel lions - sorry, lines- which never meet, but on the
Projective Plain every lion meets every other lion at one, and only one,
point.’
‘Crazy!’
‘Not at all. And to get back to your original question: just like a Klein
bottle, the Projective Plain has only one side. And it’s very useful, for
example in art and perspective drawing.’
‘To me it looks like an entirely normal plain - I mean, plane,’ said Vikki.
‘Yes, it does, and looks is definitely the word. But as we explore the
Projective Plain and get to know the lions, you’ll come to see that I’m
telling the truth. This is a far stranger world than it appears.’
‘It certainly is,’ said Vikki. For a start, I can’t see any lions.’
 ‘You can’t? Oh, my mistake - I forgot to adjust your point of VUE to
make them visible. They are infinitely thin, you see. Well, they would be,
wouldn’t they?’
‘Why?’
‘Because they live in a desert and they’re very friendly. So of course
they don’t get much to eat. And that makes them infinitely thin, so to the
untutored eye they are completely invisible. But if I make the right
adjustments to the VUE’s settings ...’
Suddenly a blue glow came into being - a long, thin line, stretching
away to the distant horizon. Vlkki turned, and it stretched away behind her
to the horizon in that direction, too.
‘That’s a projective lion?’
‘Apart from the artificial blue tinge, yes.’
‘It looks just like an ordinary lion to me. I mean, “line".’
‘It does, but it’s not. Let me reveal another lion, and you’ll see the
difference immediately.’ Now a thin red lion brightened into visibility.
Vikki stared at the two lions. They marched off to the horizon together.
As far as she could see, they were perfect parallels. But the Space Hopper
had said ...
‘I thought you said there were no parallel lions in the Projective Plain?’
‘I did.’
‘But these two lions are parallel!’
 ‘Really?’
‘They don’t meet anywhere!’
The Space Hopper did a double take. ‘They don’t?’
‘No. They seem to converge as they go towards the far horizon, but
that’s an optical illusion.’
‘It is?’
‘Well, it would be on Flatland. I’d have thought that on the Projective
Plain ... oh, maybe not. New space, new rules.’
‘Now you’re talking. This space runs on projective geometry, not
Euclidean geometry. Think how many paintings include the horizon as a
genuine line. Why is that? One reason is that when artists want to paint a
scene, they project that scene onto a flat sheet of canvas or paper. Another
is that Planiturth is round, but even if it were an infinite Euclidean plane,
they’d still draw a horizon - because if you looked, that’s what you’d see. In
effect, they draw lines from every object in the scene to their eye, and
where that line hits the canvas, that’s where they paint that object. It’s like
looking out of a window and tracing what you see on the glass. If the object
is at infinity, in the projective sense, it may still correspond to a point on the
glass - and if it does, you have to draw it to make the picture look right. So
projective geometry is a good geometry for thinking about perspective.’
 Vikki was assailed by an unexpected twinge of pain. ‘Damn, I’m getting
blisters on my endpoints from all this space travel. I’m going to take my
shoes off.’
(You may be wondering why a line needs shoes - and if so, where she
wears them. Well, shoes are a universal female attribute throughout the
unbounded Mathiverse. They’re an essential fashion accessory. Moreover,
they always come in pairs - otherwise they would not be shoes. To be sure,
the millipods of the Amazin’ Basin have to wear five hundred pairs, but
that’s an extreme case. Victoria Line wore a normal pair of shoes: a left
shoe for her front endpoint, and a right shoe for her rear one. She was
always getting them mixed up, and that was a nuisance because then they
didn’t fit.)
She eased off her shoes and inspected her endpoints for blisters. The left
end was fine, so she put that shoe back. But the right end was sore.
The Space Hopper made vague passes in the air, and a container of
ointment appeared. He passed it to Vikki, and she massaged some into her
sore foot.
‘Let me ask you something, then,’ said the Space Hopper, as if their
conversation hadn’t been interrupted. ‘Is the horizon a genuine line in
Flatland?’
‘Yes.’
Then where is it?’
‘A long way away.’
‘How far? If the horizon exists, then it must be in a definite place. So
how far away is the point on the horizon where two parallel lines would
meet - if they were extended far enough?’
‘Well... at the edge.’
‘It’s a long way to the edge of a plane. Infinitely long. The place where
parallel lines appear to meet is at infinity. In the Euclidean plane of
Flatland, infinity doesn’t exist. You can go as far as you like, but you can’t
actually get to infinity. So the horizon looks like a line, but it doesn’t really
exist. When the eye looks at parallel lines, they appear to meet. Parallel
lines don’t exist in the geometry of the visual system, so we need a new
kind of geometry, one in which any two lines can meet. And that’s what
happens on the Projective Plain.’
 Vikki found this hard to believe. ‘Infinity can’t exist. It’s just an ideal
concept.’
‘Really? I think you’d better come with me. We’re going lion-tracking.’

Twoday 10 Noctember 2099

What the Space Hopper meant, Diary Dear, is that we were going to follow
the parallel lions and see where they met. In short, we were going to walk to
the horizon! Totally mad, I thought, just as usual: the poor creature doesn’t
have much of a brain anyway, and what it has seems to have flipped.
Wrong again! I’m beginning to think that the opposite is true: that the
Space Hopper’s bulbous head is all brain, and a first-class one at that. He
just behaves like a nutcase, for dramatic effect.
Be that as it may, we followed the parallel lions, and something very
funny started to happen. (Well, the first thing that happened was that I
realized I’d left my right shoe behind. The ointment had been so effective,
and my feet had felt so comfortable as a result, that I hadn’t noticed.)
I pointed this out to the Space Hopper, but he said not to worry, we’d be
back where we started shortly. That seemed unlikely, since we were heading
for the horizon, but I’ve learned not to argue with him.
Anyway, as I was saying, something funny happened. You know that
normally, when you walk towards the horizon, it just moves away from you
- like a Planiturthian rainbow. But on the Projective Plain the horizon
behaves quite differently. It stays where it is, and you get closer to it.
I first realized we were actually reaching the horizon when I heard the
growling. At first it was so faint that my ears couldn’t really focus on it, but
slowly the noise grew until it was loud and clear.
I asked the Space Hopper what the noise was. Fool. ‘Oh, that’s the lions
meeting!’ it told me. ‘Having a conversation.’ And you know, when I
listened really closely, I began to make out words. As far as I could tell, the
lions’ conversation went like this:
’Pleased to meetcha!’
’Pleased to meetcha!’
’Pleased to meetcha!’
 ’Pleased to meetcha!’
And so on. Not a very interesting conversation, I told the Space Hopper.
‘But a very friendly one,’ he said.
Then, suddenly, we straddled the horizon: the Space Hopper was on the
far side, and I was on ... well, you appreciate, Diary, that whatever side I am
on is by definition the near side, and that’s where I was.
We were there.

I told the Space Hopper that it was a funny edge that could be straddled. I
mean, the bit he was standing on shouldn’t have been there. Well, in his
usual smart-alecky manner he insisted on pointing out that if it wasn’t there,
he wouldn’t be able to stand on it... I hate that kind of conversation, don’t
you?
Well, things got a bit heated for a while, but the upshot of the
conversation was that on the Projective Plain, the horizon exists, but it’s not
an edge. In fact, there isn’t an edge. What there is, is—

‘Infinityville,’ said the Space Hopper, proudly.

There was a notice scratched in the sand. It bore the symbol ∞. Beneath
it was written, POPULATION ∞.
‘What’s that figure eight thing?’ Vikki asked.
‘That’s not a figure eight,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘it’s the symbol for
“infinity". And that’s where we are.’
The sign changed: POPULATION ∞ + i.
‘Ah, a birth,’ said the Space Hopper.
The sign flickered for an instant, then reverted to POPULATION ∞.
‘Uh - a death?’ asked Vikki, in a quiet voice.
‘What? No, not at all. That would look like POPULATION ∞ - 1. But then
it would change back to POPULATION ∞ again. You see, infinity plus one
equals infinity, and infinity minus one equals infinity. Infinity, basically, is
Where Things Happen That Don’t. Which is why parallel lions meet there.
The Projective Plain is very similar to Flatland, in a lot of ways, except for
this business of parallel lions meeting. Which changes things a lot - for
instance, “distance” doesn’t make much sense.’
‘Is that why we got to infinity so quickly?’
‘Of course. Anyway, like I said, on the Projective Plain parallel lions
always meet. And, like Flatland, they meet at just one point.’
Vikki digested this. ‘Hang on. In Flatland, parallel lines meet at the
horizon, which isn’t a genuine line. Here, apparently, it is. But even so, in
Flatland parallel lines meet at two points. One at one end, one at the other.’
‘Not on the Projective Plain,’ said the Space Hopper.
Vikki turned round. In the far distance she could see the two parallel
lions converging. She looked at her feet (one still unshod): the lions met a
short distance away. Well, it looked short, but distance has no meaning on
the Projective Plain ... No matter. She pointed out the other meeting point
for the parallel lions.
‘There? No, that’s not a second meeting point. That’s the same place as
here.’
‘But it’s not here. It’s over there.’
‘Yes, but over there is actually here. The ends of the lions are one, not
two - look, all you have to do is use the zoom facility on your VUE and
you’ll see what I mean.’
Vikki boosted the magnification and inspected the second meeting point
from close up. And what she saw was—
Herself.
Talking to the Space Hopper.
The other Vikki seemed to be inspecting something through the zoom
facility of her VUE.
Wild!
‘You’re saying we’re over there as well as over here?’
‘No, I’m saying that over there is over here. It’s the same point. We’re
just looking at it along two different directions. It’s like seeing some object,
and seeing it in a mirror. One ray of light comes straight from the object;
the other ray bends when it hits the mirror. Or it’s like a mirage, when you
see the same object in different directions because hot air refracts light.’
‘But you said that these lions are straight.’
‘They are. But they still bend. On the Projective Plain, lions can be
straight and yet close up. Like a circle - in fact, in a topological sense they
are circles - except that these circles are straight’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Vikki in bewilderment.
‘That’s because I’m using Flatland words to describe a projective
phenomenon’, said the Space Hopper, pompously. ‘Let’s have another go.’
He pondered for a few moments. ‘OK. Mathematically, infinity is just an
abstract construct, so we can endow it with any properties we want. I
happen to want lines to meet at only one point. So I insist that the “two”
points at infinity, at either end of a pair of parallels, are considered as the
same. It may sound odd, but it works. It’s sort of like bending the lines
round into a circle, except that they stay straight.’
‘Clear as mud!’
‘Good. So we can think of the Projective Plain as the usual plane, plus a
“line” at infinity, plus the rule that the opposite ends of pairs of parallels
meet the line at infinity in the same point.’
‘I just can’t visualize it.’
‘On the contrary, Vikki, it’s how your visual system actually works.’
‘Well, I’m having trouble getting it into my head in one piece. And it’s
not at all clear to me why the Projective Plain has only one side, as you say.
The ordinary plane has two sides, top and bottom.’
‘Yes, but the top surface and the bottom surface get joined together at
infinity because of the rule about the endpoints of parallels being the same’,
said the Space Hopper. ‘Don’t try to think about it. Just follow me. We’ll
keep following the same parallel lions as before, in the same direction, and
see where we get to.’
They trudged on. Now Vikki’s shoeless vertex started to hurt. She was
just about to complain when the Space Hopper called a halt. ‘We’re there.’
‘Where?’
‘You tell me. What’s that lying on the ground?’
Vikki followed the line of his horns. ‘My shoe!’
‘So?’
‘So we’ve come back to where we started! You’re right, the lions here
really do seem to go round in circles!’ She glanced back to check: a pair of
parallel lions led towards the distant horizon, met, and diverged again. With
the zoom facility of her VUE, she could see herself standing next to one of
her shoes. Shoes! She seized the accidental castoff and pulled it onto her
bare right endpoint—
 It wouldn’t fit.
She inspected it.
‘Hang on, this is a left shoe! The one I lost was a right shoe!’
‘Have a look through the VUE,’ said the Space Hopper. She did. In the
distant image, she was definitely looking at a right shoe.
‘What you see in the VUE is the same shoe as the one before your
eyes,’ said the Space Hopper.
‘Then why has it changed into a left shoe?’
‘It hasn’t. You have changed into a left Victoria. Yes, I know you’re a
line, so that ought to make no difference, but you have a sense of left and
right, and thathas changed. Your left shoe has changed into a right shoe,
and your right foot has changed into a left foot. It is as though you have
passed through a mirror, but there isn’t a mirror. The Projective Plain is a
one-sided surface. We’re not standing on that surface, as a Spacelander
would stand: we are in the surface, like drawings inscribed upon it, but
going all the way through, like ink on tissue paper. And the geometry of the
Projective Plain means that when you slide an object along a lion until it
gets back to where it started from, it returns as its own mirror image.’

Vikki began to wail. ‘I need another shoe! This one won’t fit!’
The Space Hopper gave her a kindly look. ‘You’re tired, too,’ he said.
‘Give me the shoe, and wait here. I won’t be long.’ She watched as the
Space Hopper headed off along the lions, back towards where they’d come
from, carrying her unwanted, wrong-footed shoe. He dwindled into the
distance ...
... and tapped her on the shoulder.
She jumped.
‘Sorry. I thought you’d see me coming.’
‘I was still watching you going.’
‘On the Projective Plain, coming and going are the same thing. Anyway,
I’ve brought your shoe.’
‘The same one?’
‘Of course. You don’t think I can create shoes out of thin air, do you?’
‘Then it’s useless. I’ve tried it and it won’t fit.’
‘Try it now.’ She did. It fitted.
She gave the matter some serious thought. ‘Oh! Now I see - if the shoe
is carried once round a lion, it flips. But carry it round a second time, and it
flips again—’
‘Getting it back to where it was originally,’ said the Space Hopper.

Threeday 11 Noctember 2099

Dear Diary,
My experiences with the missing shoe have convinced me that the
Projective Plain really does have only one side. It acts like a sort of mirror,
but instead of going through the looking-glass, you go along one.
Moreover, the Projective Plain captures the geometry of projections -
which are important. For instance, I now see that every time anyone takes a
photograph, their camera projects the outside world onto the film. The
Space Hopper says that by using projective geometry, you can compare a
photograph with the real thing and work out where the camera must have
been (no, don’t ask me how, I gather it’s a bit technical). So one-sided
spaces are useful after all.
Funny old world, isn’t it?
 8
GRAPE THEORY

Flatlanders are so emotional, the Space Hopper thought. Vikki had gone off
in a huff for no reason at all. Just because he was explaining the geometry
of the Projective Plain in exquisite detail, that was no justification for being
antisocial! Then it belatedly occurred to him that what he thought of as
‘exquisite’, others might well find ‘excruciating’. For once, the bouncy
creature felt depressed. He’d offended the little Flatlander by being
overenthusiastic. He ought to do something to bring back the sparkle to her
endpoints ...
Of course - the very thing!
He scuttled over to where she was trudging along between the parallel
lions. ‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, ‘but I could do with a drink. I
know a great bar just a few paraspatial leaps away in the Mathiverse.
Owned by a turtle, has his own vineyard, makes great wines - Chordonnay,
Modulot, Quadrati, Rhombolo, Bouzo ... Care to join me?’
Vikki perked up at once. A bar sounded a lot more exciting than a
desert. And a paraspatial bar at that! Within a few minutes they were on
their way to Running Turtle’s, which was situated on a prime piece of
surreal estate in one of the more fashionable zones of metaspace. Zone
999999999959, in fact - as prime as they come. Not only that, it had an
excellent view of the Galois Fields, the Lakes of Wada, and the Devil’s
Staircase. They would be able to watch the tangent cones grazing.

Elsewhere in the Mathiverse - not that there was a Where to be Else in - the
Square family were settling down to their evening meal.
‘I do wish Vikki would come home’, said Lester, out of the blue.
Jubilee went rigid. It was the first time that Lester had mentioned his
sister for weeks.
 ‘What’s it like in Numerica, Mum?’ asked Berkeley, and Jubilee seized
on the distraction like a drowning polygon being thrown a length of rope.
‘It’s very .. . numerical,’ she said. ‘They have very big houses and very
big cars and they all eat very big meals.’
‘Do they have very big cats and dogs?’ asked Les, wide-eyed.
‘Er - no. I think their cats and dogs are the same size as ours. And
they’re the usual star shape, too.’
‘What sort of big meals do they eat? Giant oxagons?’
‘Um ... giant lumps of oxagon. In a bun. They call them hogs-burgers, I
think.’
‘Surely it ought to be oxburgers, dear,’ said Grosvenor. ‘Hogs-burgers
ought to be made from hogsagons.’
‘I think someone once told me,’ said Lee tentatively, ‘that hogs-burgers
are called hogsburgers because they were invented in a town named
Hogsburg. Not because they’re made from hogsagons. And the
Hogsburglars happened to make their hogsburgers from oxagon meat, just
to confuse everyone.’
‘Well I never,’ said Grosvenor. ‘Never knew that.’ He lapsed into
silence.
‘Is Vikki eating hogsburgers?’
‘Of course,’ said Lee. ‘Just like any native Numerican.’
‘Is she eating them right now, Mum?’
‘Probably, dear.’
‘And will Vikki be coming home soon, Dad?’
Lee saw the expression on Grosvenor’s face, and tried to steer the
conversation back to safer lines. ‘Not very soon, Les, no. Not very soon.’
‘Why not? Is she having too much fun?’
Whatever gave the boy that idea? Grosvenor thought.
‘I’m sure she’s having some fun, Les,’ said Lee, ‘but definitely not too
much! No, she’s got to stay there for quite a long time yet, because ... er ...’
‘Because she’s working very, very hard,’ said Grosvenor.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Lee agreed. ‘I’m sure that’s exactly what Vikki is
doing right now.’

*
Running Turtle’s was, in fact, run by a large turtle, who poured the drinks
and mixed the cocktails himself. It had a pleasant balcony with lots of
small, cloth-covered tables, nicely sheltered from the afternoon breezes.
The only mildly dissonant note was struck by the large number of small
orange snails that were crawling over the patio, the railings, and several of
the tables.
‘Why is he called Running Turtle?’ Vikki asked. ‘He mostly stands
still.’
‘Listen.’
Vikki did so, and she heard the turtle muttering under its breath,’...
makes seven hundred and ninety-six; five plus seven hundred and ninety-six
makes eight hundred and one; twelve plus eight hundred and one makes
eight hundred and ...’
‘He’s adding things up.’
‘Exactly. Keeping a running turtle.’ Vikki kicked him.
Running Turtle had undergone an Out-of-Cosmography experience like
Vikki - dislodged from his own universe by a random metaspatial
fluctuation. He had decided that he preferred the Mathiverse to home, and
had set up as a bar-owner in partnership with two other Mathiversian
immigrants, Woolly Coati and the Chicken Mock Nugget (who organized
the bar food).
It soon became clear that Running Turtle had a problem.
‘Blasted Tetrahedro!’ said Running Turtle in annoyance.
‘Pardon? I don’t speak Turtle, I’m afraid—’ Vikki began.
‘And blast the Enneagono, the Triangulo, the Trapezoidia, the
Frustumo, the Chordonnay, and above all the Circumfrovese!’ he added
heatedly.
‘What?’
‘Grapes. I’ve got seven (... plus eight hundred and thirteen makes eight
hundred and twenty ...) varieties of grape that I need to test, to see which
gives the best wine. I want to plant them in plots in my vineyard
overlooking the Galois Fields. Unfortunately my hill is narrow, and I can
plant only three (... plus eight hundred and twenty makes eight hundred and
twenty-three...) varieties of grape on each plot of land. And I want to
minimize the effects of different soils and different exposure to metaspatial
illumination, too.’
‘You’ve got eight hundred and twenty varieties of grape?’
‘No, just seven (... plus eight hundred and twenty-three makes eight
hundred and thirty ...) just ... just the smaller number I mentioned. I daren’t
say it, or I’ll be forced to add it to the running total. It’s a habit of mine, I
just can’t seem to—’
‘In matters of viticulture,’ the Space Hopper interjected pompously,
‘good experimental design and hypothesis testing are essential to eliminate
error.’
‘I agree with every word I understand, my friend. And I’ve drawn up
some requirements which I believe will achieve those aims.’ With a
flourish, Running Turtle produced a sheet of paper on which was written:

Seven varieties of grape are to be arranged in plots. Each plot contains

exactly three different varieties. The following conditions must hold:

Any two plots have exactly one variety in common.

Any two varieties lie in exactly one common plot.

‘Very clearly expressed,’ said Vikki. ‘What’s the problem, then?’

‘I can’t find an arrangement that satisfies my conditions,’ said Running
Turtle sadly.
‘Any ideas?’ the Space Hopper asked Vikki.
‘None,’ she replied, brushing several of the tiny snails to the ground.
‘Running Turtle, just be grateful your problem’s not about geometry! This
crazy Space Hopper will stuff your mind with parallels that meet at infinity,
circles that are straight lines, and surfaces that have only one side!’
‘Don’t you think Running Turtle’s problem sounds geometric, then?’
asked the Space Hopper.
‘Geometric? It’s about grapes! Which reminds me - I’m hungry.’
There was a whoosh, and there appeared a stocky creature covered in
feathers and with a rubber beak. It thrust a menu in front of her.
‘Oh - thanks. Who are you?’ asked Vikki, startled by the rapidity of the
response.
 ‘I am the Chicken Mock Nugget. Today’s special is sugar-coated rat-on-
a-stick followed by a choice of kipper blancmange or pond-weed pudding.’
Vikki made a face, glanced down the menu, and ordered a fruit salad,
while privately wondering what she would find on her plate.
‘Geometry can be about grapes,’ the Space Hopper persisted.
‘Mathematics is universal, and its truths apply in many different
interpretations. As instance of which: suppose I replace “plot” by “line” and
“variety of grape” by “point". Then the Turtle’s conditions become:

Seven points are to be arranged in lines. Each line contains exactly three
different points. The following conditions must hold:

Any two lines have exactly one point in common.

Any two points lie in exactly one common line.

See? It’s geometry.’

‘Hmm,’ said Running Turtle. ‘But grapes, small and round though they
may be, are not points. And plots of land, even if long and narrow, are not
lines.’
‘True - but irrelevant,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘We’re talking about
abstract properties of arrangements of objects, not the objects themselves.
Logically, it makes no difference what names we call them. As the great
Planiturthian mathematician David-hilbert said, the logical structure of
geometry should make equal sense if the words “point", “line", and “plane”
are replaced by “beer mug", “chair", and “table". Names don’t matter.’
‘I don’t think I’d be happy if my beer mug were replaced by a point,’
said Running Turtle.
‘Look at what kind of geometry we’ve got here. Is it Euclidean?’
‘Urn - no’, said Vikki. ‘It’s got to be a form of geometry in which there
are no parallel lines. Because one of the conditions is that any two lines
have a point in common. And that condition fails in Euclidean geometry.’
The Space Hopper nodded energetically. ‘Right. But that condition
holds in projective geometry. So Running Turtle’s little problem is really
about a Projective Plain. A finite Projective Plain. It is a geometric problem,
but the geometry has finitely many points. Or, in this case, baby space
hoppers.’
 ’Baby space hoppers?’
‘They’re the most suitable materials to hand. I could have used grapes,
but I don’t see any. And for some reason this patio is crawling with baby
space hoppers.’ He pointed at the things she’d thought were snails. ‘Must be
the breeding season, though nobody told me.’ The Space Hopper made a
low whistling noise and seven babies - they really did look like little shell-
less snails, bright orange with tiny antennae - crawled up the leg of the table
and arranged themselves in a semicircle in front of him.
‘Baby space hoppers!’ said Running Turtle in a hopeless voice. ‘He’s
going to solve my wine problem using baby space hoppers!
Numbers from 1 to 7 appeared on the sides of the space hoppers, as if
by magic. ‘These babies correspond to your seven varieties of grape:
Tetrahedro = 1, Enneagono = 2, and so on. OK?’
Running Turtle nodded. He no longer had the energy to disagree.
‘Now,’ said the Space Hopper, addressing the babies, ‘I want you lot to
form yourselves into seven lines of three. Got that? OK, then. Right:
numbers 1 and 2, just line up somewhere - yes, that’ll do fine! Now, another
of you - yes, number 6, I saw you volunteer -stand in between them. Good,
that’s one line of three. Now, number
3, you go and stand somewhere off to the side - that’ll do nicely.
Number 4, stick yourself in between 2 and 3. And number 5, stick yourself
in between 1 and 3. Great, now that’s three lines.’
‘what about me?’ squeaked number 7.
‘Oh. Uh - just sit right in the middle, will you? Now, if numbers
4, 5, and 6 jiggle about a bit - stay in line with the other guys, OK? -
then we ought to be able to get three more lines. Number 4: just shift along
a bit so that you’re in line with 7 and 1, but stay in line with 2 and 3, yes?
Good. Number 5, you do the same kind of thing, in line with 7 and 2 as well
as 1 and 3. And Number 6, you get in line with 7 and 3 as well as 1 and 2.
‘Excellent! So now we’ve got six lines. Vlkki, what’s the seventh?’
‘I can’t see one.’
‘No, I mean: if there was one, what would it have to be?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Remember Running Turtle’s rules? Any two points lie on a line and
any two lines meet at a point. Look at number 4. Which babies is he in line
with right now?’
 ‘Er-7, 1,2, and 3.’
‘Not 5 or 6?’
‘Well - he’s in a line with either of them, of course, but there’s nothing
else in the same line.’
‘So it seems, yes. Suppose numbers 4 and 5 form part of another line. It
has to meet line 1-2-6 somewhere, according to Running Turtle’s
conditions. So where?’
‘Well, it can’t be number 1 because 1 and 5 already lie on line 1-5-3,
and there can’t be two lines that contain them. And it can’t be number 2
because 2 and 5 already lie on line 2-5-7, and there can’t be two lines that
contain them, either. So that only leaves number 6.’
‘Right.’
‘Which won’t work, because 4, 5, and 6 lie on a circle, not a line.’
‘Right.’
Vikki looked pleased.
‘And wrong. What did Davidhilbert say?’
‘Something about beer mugs .. . oh. There’s no reason why a “line”
should look like a line.’
‘No. Especially since it represents a plot of land. We just deem (lovely
word!) points 4, 5, and 6 to form the seventh “line". And then, by a miracle,
we find that Running Turtle’s conditions are all satisfied.’
 The Chicken Mock Nugget returned with Vikki’s food. She was relieved
to see that the fruit salad actually was a fruit salad. Raspberry and radish.
The chicken sat down next to her.
‘In terms of the original problem,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘I just list the
triples of “points” on each “line", and this is what I get:
1-2-6
1-3-5
1-4-7
2-3-4
2-5-7
3-6-7
4-5-6
The numbers 1 to 7 are the varieties of grape. The list corresponds to the
seven different plots, each containing three varieties. And both your
conditions hold. “Any two plots have exactly one variety in common.”
Well, the first two plots, 1-2-6 and 1-3-5, have just 1 in common. Plots 2-3-
4 and 4-5-6 have just 4 in common, and so on. “Any two varieties lie in
exactly one common plot.” That’s true too. For instance, varieties 1 and 5
lie in 1-3-5, and in none of the other plots. And varieties 3 and 6 lie in 3-6-7
only. You can check them all if you really want to.’
The chicken wasn’t quite sure. ‘But the curved line isn’t—’
‘It has to be drawn in a curve, Chicken Mock Nugget, because the
“points” and “lines” aren’t real points and lines, they’re varieties of grapes
and plots of land! Look at the list! It works! Do you care that one “line” is
bent?’
‘Uh - no. It wouldn’t stop Running Turtle planting those combinations
of grape varieties, would it?’
‘Not at all. Finite geometry is all about combinations, you don’t actually
need to draw diagrams.’
‘Though the diagram does have its uses,’ said Vikki. ‘It’s a lot easier to
remember than a list. And you can see that it satisfies all three conditions.
You don’t really have to check everything so laboriously.’
‘Great,’ said Running Turtle. ‘I’ll tell Woolly Coati to get planting
tomorrow. In the meantime, perhaps you and your lady-friend would join us
in a relaxing wine tasting.’

Several bottles later, Woolly Coati happened to mention that he, too, had
some grapes to test. ‘I’ve got thirteen varieties, though, and my plots are
larger: each can hold four different varieties. But I still want Running
Turtle’s two rules to hold.’
‘Terrific!’ muttered the Space Hopper, thinking rapidly. Thirteen points,
in lines of four, each pair of lines meeting in a unique point and each pair of
points lying on a unique line. That’s another finite Projective Plain!’Can do.
But,’ he added, determined to extract the maximum advantage, ‘I’ll only tell
you if you let me tell it right. I want to explain where the answer comes
from, as well as what it is.’
‘Why?’ asked Woolly Coati. ‘All I want is the answer.’
‘Answers without reasons are magic, not mathematics, Woolly Coati.
And knowing where that answer comes from might help you solve similar
problems later.’ Woolly Coati reluctantly agreed, and everyone settled down
for a long afternoon. The Chicken Mock Nugget brought nuts and olives,
and the wine flowed ...
‘The starting point is the connection between the usual Euclidean plane
and the Projective Plain,’ said the Space Hopper. To get the Projective Plain
you take the Euclidean plane and add an extra “line at infinity", which has
one point for each direction in the Euclidean plane. If a bunch of parallel
lines all point in the same direction, they are deemed to meet at the
corresponding point on the line at infinity. Right?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of contradicting’, said Running Turtle, downing a
glass of full-bodied red.
‘I should hope not! Now, to get a finite analogue of a Projective Plain
we need to start with a finite analogue of the Euclidean plane, Vikki, does
that ring any bells?’
‘This Chordonnay is really, really goo— Oh, sorry, Space Hopper. You
... said something?’
‘Does “finite analogue of the Euclidean plane” ring any bells?’ repeated
the Space Hopper, a little testily.
‘My head is ringing a bit, but no bells, Hopper, not one.’
‘The Double-Digit District, Vikki! That was a four-point analogue of the
Euclidean plane. Two coordinates - but only taking values 0 and 1,
remember?’
‘Oh, yes, those e-mail messages.’
‘Four points forming a square,’ said the Space Hopper, beginning to
suspect that no one else was listening. ‘Now, we have to decide what
“straight lines” should be in such a geometry. That’s easy: they’re the sides
of the square and its diagonals. Finally, we add a line at infinity. The top
and bottom of the square are “parallel” in the sense that they don’t meet. So
we add to each a point at infinity. Similarly for the left and right sides. The
diagonals form a third pair of parallel lines.’
‘But the diagonals of a square meet,’ Woolly Coati objected, staring into
the far distance with his eyes crossed.
‘Not on the grid, they don’t,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘In this version of
the Euclidean plane, only the four corners of the square exist. The diagonals
don’t meet at a corner, so the centre of the square doesn’t count. Since they
don’t meet on the grid, I consider them to be parallel.’
‘Fine by me,’ said Woolly Coati, opening another bottle.
 ‘Those three sets of parallels provide three extra points, forming a new
line - “at infinity” - and we get a system with seven points and seven lines.
Of course it’s just a disguised version of the 7-point Projective Plain I
talked about before.’

‘Wonderful!’ yelled Woolly Coati. ‘No it’s not’, he corrected himself.

‘My plot has thirteen varieties, so it’ll need thirteen points, not seven.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m coming to that,’ said the Space Hopper.
‘Soon?’
’Fairly soon ... To get a 13-point Projective Plain we play the same
game, but this time starting with a 3 x 3 grid of nine points. The lines in the
grid come in sets of three “parallel” lines. The obvious sets of parallels are
the horizontal lines 1-2-3, 4-5-6, and 7-8-9 and the vertical lines 1-4-7, 2-5-
8, and 3-6-9. But there are two more sets, which “wrap round” - one
consists of the broken diagonals 1-5-9, 2-6-7, and 3-4-8, and the other is
made up of the broken diagonals 7-5-3, 4-2-9, and 1-8-6. Now all you have
to do is add a “line at infinity” with four points, numbered 10-11-12-13, one
for each set of parallels. And then ... you get a 13-point Projective Plain!
 ‘If you want to, you can read off a list of thirteen plots, each with four
varieties of grapes in it, to solve your problem, Woolly Coati.’
‘That’s amazing!’ said the Chicken Mock Nugget. ‘Let me try! I’ll start
with a 4 x 4 grid—’
‘Whoops, no, you—’
‘—I can do it! Don’t interrupt, Hopper, I’ll soon get the hang of this ...’
Two hours later, the sun was beginning to set, and the Chicken Mock
Nugget’s eyes had a glazed look. The wine had long run out, but that wasn’t
the reason. ‘It doesn’t work,’ he said finally. ’I either get too many points on
lines, or not enough lines through points.’
‘I was trying to tell you that hours ago,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘The
method won’t work with a 4 x 4 grid because 4 isn’t prime. You have to use
a square grid whose size is a prime number. You could start with a 5 x 5
grid, for instance, and you’d get six sets each containing five “parallel”
lines. You’d end up with a Projective Plain containing 31 points arranged in
lines of six.’
‘Where dose numbersh come fum?’ asked Vikki.
‘Well, the number of points on each line, not counting one point at
infinity, is called the order of the Projective Plain. And the total number of
points, including all those at infinity, is one plus the order plus the square of
the order. Each line contains one more point than the order, and the number
of lines is the same as the number of points. So if the order is 2, there are
three points on each line, and 1 + 2 + 4 = 7 points altogether. If the order is
3, there are four points on each line, and 1 + 3 + 9 = 13 points altogether.
And so on.’
‘Which - hic!- ordersh’re possible, Hopper?’
‘There are Projective Plains of any prime power order - 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8,
9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 19, and so on.’
‘What about the rest?’ asked Woolly Coati. ‘Order 6, for instance?’
‘The rest are tough. The Planiturthians have known for a century that
there isn’t a Projective Plain of order 6. You can’t arrange 43 points in lines
of seven while obeying the conditions that each pair of lines meets in a
unique point and each pair of points lies on a unique line. So, Woolly Coati,
if you’d had 43 varieties of grape to test, in plots that could hold seven
varieties, you’d have been out of luck.’
‘No I wouldn’t, I’d have been rich.’
‘I was speaking hypothetically.’
‘So was I!’
The Space Hopper sighed, and battled on. ‘There’s been one big
advance, which rules out orders 14, 21, 22, and infinitely many other
values. But that still leaves a lot of orders unsolved - 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, and
so on. It’s a hard problem because the number of possibilities get very big.
When the order is 10, for instance, there are 111 points, which have to be
arranged in lines of 11 apiece. There’s no way you could try every possible
arrangement, life’s just too short. However, a People named
Lamthielswierczandmackay devised a computer proof that there isn’t an
order 10 Projective Plain. It took nine years, on and off. Now, here’s an
attractive challenge for you - the order 12 case is still open! Of course, an
attack along the same lines would take ten thousand million times as long,
but. . .’ He noticed that his audience had gone to sleep.
How could they possibly doze off when he was telling such a gripping
tale? Putting it down to the wine, the Space Hopper deflated itself to a
comfortable girth, and joined them.
 9
WHAT IS A GEOMETRY?

Fiveday 13 Noctember 2099

How am I feeling?
Somewhat overhung, Diary Dear, since you ask. Which is a remarkable
condition for a Flatlander to be in. We usually suffer from stickouters, not
hangovers. But I am definitely overhung, not outstuck.
I hadn’t realized that finite geometries could have such a drastic
physiological effect!
However, that’s not why I’m writing this. I had a really important idea
somewhere in the middle of the night, and I need to make a note before I
forget it. Here is the idea:

WHAT IS A GEOMETRY, ANYWAY?

As you will instantly grasp, it is a stroke of sheer GENIUS!!! (she said

modestly). You see, the Space Hopper has been so busy carting me round
dozens of different geometries that until now it never occurred to me that
something was missing. Namely, Diary my Pet, an Organizing Principle.
It was the finite projective geometries that did it. Until then, I’d kind of
got it in my head that geometry was about spaces, and spaces were sort of
continuous. Smeared-out sort of things, right? The kind of environment you
could imagine things wandering around in.
Not just a small collection of dots.
Yes, I know the Space Hopper had taken me to the Double-Digit District
and on to Triple-Digit Territory, but all that talk of distances along the edges
made me think they were just particular bits of Euclidean space, with the
emphasis on their corners. Now I see better. Only the relationships between
those corners matter: the rest don’t have to be present at all. We were
looking at finite geometries then, too.
 Anyway, some time in the last twelve hours I awoke from a rejuvenating
snooze and realized that I now have no idea whatsoever of what a geometry
is. So now I’m bugging YOU with it, Dearest Diary, in order to bug the
Space Hopper with it once he, too, regains consciousness. Though, to judge
by the Dough-mouse-like snores emanating from his general vicinity, I
wouldn’t hold my breath.

‘You mean you haven’t worked it out?’ said the Space Hopper in
incredulity. ‘I show you all these marvellous examples of geometries - plane
Euclidean, 3D Euclidean, nD Euclidean, fractal, projective, topological,
finite projective - to name but a few - and you still don’t know what you’re
looking at?’
‘That’s right. It’s just a random grab-bag of unrelated stuff, as far as I
can see.’
‘Oh dear.’ The Space Hopper looked downcast. ‘I haven’t done my job
as well as I thought.’ He rubbed his horns together (not easy) in search of
inspiration. ‘Hmmm ... ah! Yes! We must temporarily return to the vicinity
of Flatland!’
‘You mean I can contact Mum and Dad?’
‘I really don’t think that would be wise at this juncture. It would only
upset them, and it might get them into trouble with the authorities.’
‘Oh.’ Vikki wasn’t sure whether to feel disappointed or relieved.
Certainly she was having far too much fun to think of going home just yet.
But it would have been nice to leave a message. On the other hand, what
could she tell them? Anything she said would either have to be a lie, or be
totally unbelievable.
A few hours later, subjective time, they hovered a short distance away
from the Euclidean plane of Flatland, displaced from it along a metaspatial
dimension that can best be captured by the word ‘above’.
The Space Hopper had tactfully chosen a region remote from Vikki’s
house, so as not to risk making her feel homesick. This was somewhere on
the edge of a city, and a crowd of polygonal Flatlanders - mostly equilateral
triangles and squares, nothing very posh - were making their way through
the streets.
‘There,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Do you see?’
‘See what?’
‘The essence of geometry.’
‘No. All I see is a bunch of polys on their way to work.’
‘You don’t see a hint of a far-reaching principle that can unify all the
different geometries we’ve visited so far?’
‘If it’s a hint, it’s so subtle that it hasn’t registered on my conscious
mind, Hopper.’
‘But you do see what happens to the polygons when they move?’
‘Nothing happens.’
’Brilliant!’ The Space Hopper bounced with joy. ‘You’ve grasped it
immediately! Oh, frabjous day!’
‘What in the Plane are you gabbling about?’
The Space Hopper stopped bouncing and its face fell into a n. ‘You
mean - that was just a guess?’
‘Hopper, I don’t know what it was. An expression of ignorance,
probably.’
‘But you do see that the polygons can move without anything else
happening to them?’
‘I can’t imagine what else could happen.’
The Space Hopper’s ∪ returned. ‘You’ll retract that statement in a
hurry once I’ve adjusted the VUEfield to include the part of Flatland we’re
looking at.’
Flatland ... well, it shimmered. Suddenly, the polygons began to distort
as they moved. What had previously been an entirely ordinary equilateral
triangle flowed into a convoluted swirly shape. You couldn’t even tell it was
triangular. Squares turned into ellipses, Maltese crosses, and irregular
hexagons with curved edges. Some shrank, some swelled to ten times their
original size.
It was awful.
Vikki tried not to feel sick. ‘Hopper! What are you doing to those poor
people?’
‘Don’t worry, Vikki. They don’t feel a thing. To them, everything seems
normal. It’s just the effect of the VUE. Now, tell me what didn’t happen to
them before when they moved.’
They - they didn’t change shape. Or size.’
‘Correct. That’s what happens to an object in Euclidean geometry when
you transform it. Effectively you make it move, though technically that’s
not quite the same thing. Its shape and size are invariant under Euclidean
motions. That means they don’t change.’
The Space Hopper let Flatland slip back out of the VUEfield, and at once
everything returned to normal. ‘Watch closely. As each polygon moves, it is
being transformed. Mostly what you’re seeing is translation - the whole
polygon just moves rigidly without any change of its orientation. But what
about that one?’ The Space Hopper pointed to a small pentagon that was
spinning endlessly about its centre.
‘That one? That’s just a kid playing Dizzy.’
‘That kind of transformation is called a rotation. And there’s one more
transformation, which Flatlanders can’t actually do to themselves. But, with
a little bit of metaspatial help ...’ The Hopper leaned down, tucked the tip of
one horn under a Hexagon that had stopped near a large public building,
and neatly flipped it out of the Plane of Flatland altogether. Screeching in
fright, he spun like a tossed pancake, and flopped back into the Plane,
landing upside down.
‘That’s called a reflection,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘If you want to
perform a reflection while staying in the Plane, you have to use a mirror.
But if a third dimension becomes available you can reflect an object by
rotating it in the extra dimension.’
‘Oh, poor thing! He’ll be most upset!’
‘He was. Literally. And I can’t leave him that way - all his internal
organs will be back to front. AH his molecules, too. He won’t be able to get
any nourishment from ordinary proteins. He’ll starve unless I do something.
So ...” The unfortunate experimental subject was flipped out of Flatland a
second time, reverting to his normal hand-edness. He fled down the street,
yelling incoherently.
‘If you perform a reflection twice, Vikki, you get back to where you
started,’ the Space Hopper pointed out. ‘Isn’t that fascinating?’
‘Considering what you’ve just done to that poor Hexagon, I hope there’s
some point to all of this,’ said Vikki in a menacing tone. ‘He could have
been a friend of mine.’
 ‘Point? Oh, yes, very much so ... What you’ve been looking at are rigid
motions in the plane. Translations, rotations, reflections. Those
transformations characterize the geometry of Flatland: the only meaningful
geometric properties of Flatland are the ones that are unchanged after a
rigid motion. Invariant. Properties like length, area, angle, and so on.’
‘Oh.’
‘Whereas in topology, say, the range of allowable transformations is far
greater. Length, area, or angle are not topological invariants. They can all be
changed by continuous transformations. They can change in projective
geometry, too - but in projective geometry the permitted transformations are
projections, so straight lines stay straight. “Straightness” is invariant in
projective geometry. But it’s not invariant in topology, because there you
can take a straight line and bend it.’
Vikki mused upon this new idea. ‘You’re saying that... you can
distinguish different geometries by their allowable transformations?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But that still doesn’t tell me what a geometry is.’
‘No, but we’re nearly there. Let me tell you about groups.’

Sixday 14 Noctember 2099

Another e-note for you, Diary Dear, before I forget. This mathematical stuff
is very cute, but it’s a pig to remember.
A space is a set of objects, conventionally known as points. But they
don’t have to LOOK like points, actually. The set of all triangles in the
plane, for instance, is a space. Its ‘points’ are really triangles. It has six
dimensions: two to specify the position in the plane of each vertex.
A transformation, I gather, is in effect a recipe for moving things around
inside a space. ‘Translate by seven units in a northeasterly direction.’
‘Reflect in this mirror.’ And so on.
Transformations can be combined with one another by doing first one,
then the other. For instance, think of a square. Rotate it through 90 degrees,
then through 180 degrees. That’s two consecutive transformations. The
result is the same as ‘rotate through 270 degrees’ - another transformation.
According to the Space Hopper, the word for this is that the transformations
form a group - meaning that the result of performing any two of them in
turn is another one.
A geometry is a space together with a group of transformations of that
space. For the 2D Euclidean geometry of Flatland, the space is a Plane and
the transformations are rigid motions. For topology, the space is whichever
topological object you’re interested in, and the transformations are
continuous deformations. For 2D projective geometry, the space is the
Projective Plain, and the transformations are projections. And so on.
The legitimate geometric concepts, for a given space and transformation
group, are the things that are invariant under all transformations in the
group. Things like lengths and angles for Euclidean geometry; things like
‘knotted’ for topology; things like ‘lying in a straight line’ for projective.
This idea, apparently, was invented by Felixklein - yes, the Planiturthian
who came up with the Klein bottle. Pretty clever guy, eh? What it means is
that ALL of the geometries ever imagined turn out to be different versions
of the same idea: groups of symmetries of some space. Now that’s what I
call an intellectual synthesis!

‘How do the finite geometries fit into the Felixkleinian picture, though?’
Vikki asked the Space Hopper. ‘I don’t see how you can move objects when
space is a finite set of dots.’ Another objection struck her. ‘And what about
fractals?’
‘Ah. Those geometries are also associated with transformations. For
fractals, the allowable transformations are lipeomorphisms.’
‘Right, that makes perfect - sorry?’
‘Lipschitz diffeomorphisms.’
’OK, that explains it! Well done, Hopper!’
‘You’re being sarcastic,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Look, roughly
speaking, a lipeomorphism is a transformation that lives somewhere
between a topological transformation and a rigid motion. Unlike a rigid
motion, it can change distances, but there’s a limit to how far it can stretch
things, whereas there’s no limit for topolog-ical transformations.
 The important thing is that the fractal dimension of a shape is invariant
under lipeomorphisms. So a fractal is a geometry, and its fractal dimension
is a legitimate concept within that kind of geometry.’
‘I believe you. And the finite geometries?’
There, the transformations are permutations of the points. They’re ways
to change the labels on the points - to rearrange them, if you like - while
preserving the relation of “being in the same straight line". For instance,
think about the 7-point projective plane. If I rearrange the points so that the
labels 1234567 become 4736215, for instance—’
‘Where did that come from?’
‘A few straightforward but messy calculations, Vikki. Educated trial and
error, if you like. Anyway, if you permute the labels like that, you find that
every line transforms to a line.’
‘I don’t quite follow.’
‘Well, 1-2-6 is a line. The permutation sends 1 to 4, 2 to 7 and 6 to 1. So
1-2-6 goes to 4-7-1, and that’s one of the seven lines. You can check all
seven if you want.’
Vikki did. He was right. ‘Is that the only possible permutation that sends
lines to lines?’
‘Not at all. There are exactly 168 of them, as it happens.’
That’s a lot!’
‘It is. It means that the 7-point projective plane is extremely symmetric -
it has 168 symmetries.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean by “symmetry",’ said Vikki.
‘Ah! That’s the most important idea of all!’ said the Space Hopper.
‘What does “symmetric” mean in ordinary language?’
‘Ummm ... well-proportioned? Elegant?’
‘Yes. Mostly, people use the word in a metaphorical sense. Sometimes
they mean something more specific, though: that an object looks the same
when viewed in a mirror. Like your Mother. Mathematicians call this
“bilateral symmetry", and see it as the simplest example of a much more
general concept.’
That doesn’t surprise me,’ Vikki said, sniffing a little. The Space
Hopper, in his bumbling way, didn’t realize that mentioning her family
might make her feel unhappy. But, actually, it was comforting to talk about
them: it reminded her that they still existed. Oh, and so close ...
 ‘Your father, for example, has eight symmetries.’
‘That does surprise me. I didn’t realize he had any.’
‘Oh, yes. As long as you ignore fine details like where his eyes are, of
course. His general shape has eightfold symmetry. Poor Planiturthians only
have twofold symmetry - bilateral. And it’s somewhat imperfect.
Nonetheless, they make an awful lot of fuss about the “beauty of the human
form” and suchlike. Well, no doubt it’s beautiful to them - but to us Space
Hoppers you can’t beat a good fat bouncy blob with svelte orange skin, a
pair of horns, and a cheeky smile.’
‘Grin.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Total visible area of teeth.’
The Space Hopper quickly changed the subject. ‘To mathematicians, a
symmetry - note the “a", we’re talking specifics here - isn’t a thing, it’s a
transformation. To be precise, a symmetry is a transformation that leaves an
object looking exactly the same as it was before the transformation was
performed. For instance, if someone rotated your dad through a right angle
while you’re looking the other way, you wouldn’t notice any difference in
his overall shape. So “rotate through a right angle” is a symmetry
transformation of any Square.

‘Sometimes more than one such transformation exists. Then, the object has
symmetries, not just symmetry. That happens to be the case with your dad,
because he’s a Square. Every Square in the Euclidean Plane has eight rigid-
motion symmetries. Can you think of any?’
‘Well... let’s see ... “rotate through two right angles"?’
‘That’s right. If “rotate through one right angle” doesn’t change the
shape, then another “rotate through one right angle” doesn’t either, and their
combined effect is “rotate through two right angles". Any more?’
‘"Rotate through three right angles"!’ Vikki said, cheering up a little.
That was an easy one. And the Space Hopper’s enthusiasm was infectious.
‘Very good. And that’s the same as “rotate through one right angle in the
opposite direction", of course.’
Vikki stared at him. ‘Of course? But that twirls him the other way, and
through a different angle.’
The Space Hopper’s horns drooped disconsolately. ‘Sorry. Silly me. I
forgot to explain something extremely important about what a
“transformation” is. The only thing that matters when describing a
mathematical transformation is where everything ends up, relative to where
it started from. The route it takes on the way is ignored.
‘If your dad rotates through three right angles in one direction - let’s call
it “clockwise” to be specific, though it would look anticlockwise if you
viewed Flatland from the other side - then he ends up in a particular
position, and we can tell what that position is by looking at his eyes, even if
we can’t tell by looking at his outline. If, instead, your dad rotates through
one right angle in the anticlockwise direction, then again he ends up in a
particular position, and again we can tell what it is by looking at his eyes.
Not only that, it’s the same position as the previous one! So in that sense the
transformations specified by “rotate clockwise through three right angles”
and “rotate anticlockwise through one right angle” are identical.’
Vikki said she understood. All that matters is how each initial point
corresponds to where it ends up. Clear as mud.
‘Any other symmetries?’
‘Well - “rotate clockwise through four right angles"? No, hold it -
everything ends up where it started if you do that. So that doesn’t count—’
‘Actually, it does. “Leave everything where it is” is a transformation,
and it certainly can’t change the shape! It’s known as the identity
transformation - from “identical", I guess. The identity is a symmetry of
any shape whatsoever!’ The Space Hopper’s grin faded. ‘But not a terribly
interesting one. And quite often, the only one. When we say that a shape is
asymmetric - without symmetry - what we really mean is that it is without
any symmetry other than the identity. The identity is “trivial", you see. But
in a precise theory of symmetry, we have to bear it in mind, trivial or not.’
‘Why not rule it out? Define a symmetry to be any non-identity
transformation that leaves the shape looking the same.’
The Space Hopper pursed his rubbery lips. ‘Could do. But then you
destroy one of the key properties of the symmetries of an object, the “group
property": any two symmetry transformations carried out in succession lead
to a symmetry operation. If the first transformation leaves the shape
unchanged, and the second transformation leaves the shape unchanged, then
doing them both in turn must also leave the shape unchanged. Yes? If you
don’t change the shape, and then you don’t change it again, then you
haven’t changed it!’
‘That’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?’ asked Vikki.
‘Sure. Obvious things can still be true - though often what seems
obvious turns out to be false, young Victoria. The fact that two symmetries
make a symmetry is both obvious and profound. It leads to a kind of
“calculus of symmetry", known in the Mathi-verse as group theory. But I’m
getting ahead of myself: you’ve still only told me four of your dad’s
symmetries, and I reckon he has eight.’
‘Can’t see any others. I mean, “rotate through five right angles” is the
same transformation as “rotate through one right angle", if I’ve understood
what you’ve just told me.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Then I’m stuck.’
‘I think you may find that, on reflection, you’re not.’
‘But I am! I just told you so! More thinking isn’t going to help—’
‘That’s not what 1 said. I said that I thought that on reflection you—’
‘Oh! That was a clue, wasn’t it? Reflection! If Dad stands in front of a
mirror, his reflection still looks like a Square!’
‘Yes - although with most mirrors, his position in the Plane changes.
However, there are four mirrors which, after reflection, leave his outline
exactly the same as before.’
‘I don’t see how that can be true. If he stands in front of a mirror, then
his image will appear to be behind it. Wherever the mirror is. And if he
stands behind it, there won’t be any image at all.’
‘Yes, but these are mathematical mirrors, not glass ones. You don’t have
to stand in front of them for them to reflect you. You could stand behind
them and they’d still work.’
‘That doesn’t help either. If Dad stands behind a mathematical mirror,
then his image will appear to be in front of it.’
‘Right again. Now, think like a mathematician. Are “stand in front of
and “stand behind” the only possibilities?’
‘Yes! Wait, wait, no! You could stand part-way across the mirror - some
parts of you in front, others behind.’
‘Yes. And if you’re Grosvenor Square, and you want your mirror image
to coincide with you, just where do you stand relative to the mirror?’
‘Well - the mirror has to run through your middle,’ said Vikki, ‘or else
the image pokes out differently from you, if you see what I mean.’

‘Very good. Will any mirror through Grosvenor’s middle give an image
that coincides with him?’
Vikki called up the VUE’s menu-bar visualization routine to try a few
thought experiments. ‘Oh, no. The image can flop over into a different
position, even when the mirror runs through the middle of the Square.’
 ‘Right again. But are there any positions for the mirror where that
doesn’t happen? I’ll give you a clue: what happens to the angle between one
corner of the Square and the mirror, when the Square gets reflected?’
Vikki doodled with the VUE again. ‘It doubles.’
‘Correct. But if the Square’s image fits on top of the Square, what can
that doubled angle be?’
‘Oh! A right angle!’
‘Yes. Or two right angles, or three right angles - or no right angles, zero
degrees.’
‘So twice the angle between a corner and the mirror has to be a multiple
of a right angle ...’ Vikki mused. ‘And the angle itself must be a multiple of
half a right angle - which is 45 degrees.’
‘Beautifully expressed - I couldn’t have put it better myself! So the
possible angles between the mirror and a corner of the Square are 0, 45, 90,
and 135 degrees. Where do those place the mirror?’
‘Um. Zero degrees puts it ... along a diagonal of the square. Then 45
degrees is ... through the middle, parallel to two of the sides. Ah! And 90
degrees is the other diagonal of the square; and 135 degrees is through the
middle, parallel to the other two sides.’
The Space Hopper waggled his horns in delight. ‘So you’ve found -
how many reflectional symmetries?’
‘Four.’
‘Which together with three nontrivial rotations and the identity makes
...?’
‘Eight. Like you said.’
‘Good!’ The Space Hopper bounced energetically up and down. ‘So
now we’ve established that Grosvenor has eight symmetries—’
Vikki interrupted. ‘Hang on, you’re hopping to conclusions.’
‘I am?’ The bouncing ceased.
‘You told me to think like a mathematician. How do we know it’s only
eight?’
‘Choose a corner. You can place it on top of any of the four corners,
itself included. Having done that, there are only two ways to position the
neighbouring corners: rotate the square, or reflect it about the diagonal
through your chosen corner. That makes eight ways to reposition it.’
‘It’s obvious now you’ve told me. I withdraw my objection.’
 *

Sevenday 15 Noctember 2099

Dear Diary,
I have just had a BRILLIANT idea!!! I now know why our ancestors
placed so much weight on how many sides a polygon had, and how regular
it was.
It’s not really about the number of sides as such, and it’s not regularity
as such.
It’s about SYMMETRY.
For the same reason that Dad has eight symmetries, every Pentagon has
ten, every Hexagon twelve - the number of symmetries of a regular polygon
is twice the number of its sides. A genuine Circle has infinitely many
symmetries - no wonder the Priests were so snobbish! Of course, an
approximate Circle, which is what they really were, has perhaps a hundred
sides . . . but even so, that’s two hundred symmetries, which is a lot.
On the other hand, a poor little Equilateral Triangle has only six
symmetries - three rotations, three reflections - and an Isosceles Triangle
has only two: the identity and a reflection. An Irregular Triangle of the
‘criminal classes’ has only the identity symmetry.
An interesting point for future reference, Diary Dear: Flatland women
have two symmetries: the identity and rotation through 180 degrees. In fact
- a technical caveat that may or may not be significant - there are four rigid
motions in the Plane that leave a woman’s form invariant. Two of them I’ve
just described. The third is to reflect the Plane in a mirror that runs along
the woman’s length. And the fourth? Reflect in that mirror and flip her end
over end. (I mean rotate her by 180 degrees. Didn’t mean to sound risqué!)
So, with the exception of women - misunderstood, as always, by the
male-oriented society of a century ago (and it hasn’t changed MUCH, Diary
Darling, as you and I both know) -anyway, with that exception, one’s social
position was determined almost entirely by the size of one’s symmetry
group!.
This, of course, must be the result of sexual selection. The Space Hopper
says the same thing happens on Planiturth -female birds prefer males with
symmetric tails, for instance. As I understand the process, a symmetric form
is an external sign of ‘good genes’ - an indicator of genetic fitness. Females
that happen to mate with symmetric males (and vice versa, natch) have
fitter offspring, so not only are genes for symmetry passed on to the kids, so
are genes for preferring symmetric mates.
Astonishing. Suddenly the whole of our past snobbish society makes
complete evolutionary sense. Bummer!
Except for the lowly role of women, who - as I’ve told you -are about as
symmetric as a Square. Unfortunately, evolution treats males and females
differently.
Until now.
We have nothing to lose but our genes!
 10
PLATTERLAND

Vikki had the good sense to keep this particular insight to herself. She
didn’t want to get involved in gender discussions - she was having enough
trouble coping with the challenges posed by the Mathiverse. And now the
Space Hopper was determined to carry them away to pastures new.
Once more Vikki experienced the indescribable but unforgettable
sensation of Space Travel. The Space Hopper grunted in satisfaction. ‘Now
this is a space I really like. Significant. This one will surprise you, and no
mistake.’
So far every new space had surprised Vikki, so she couldn’t see why the
Space Hopper was more fascinated by this particular world than by the
others they’d visited. But she had to admit that it was rather elegant. It
floated directly below them, a perfect circle, glowing salmon-pink and
lavender against the non-coloured backdrop of metaspace. It looked like a
giant dinner-plate.
‘Welcome to Hyperbolica,’ announced the Space Hopper. ‘You’ll feel at
home here: it’s two-dimensional. Colloquially known as Platterland to us
Space Travellers,’ it added, confirming her mental image.

As they descended towards the glowing disc, Vikki began to make out
details. The growing expanse of the plate was crisscrossed with curved
lines, which at first she took to be roads, until a series of smoke puffs drew
her attention to the long vehicles that were making their way across the
Platterland terrain.
The curves were railway lines. But there was something terribly wrong
with them.
‘Hopper, am I right in thinking that those lines are railway tracks?’
‘Yes. From a distance they look like single lines, but up close like this
they come in pairs.’
Unlike Spaceland trains, the ones in Platterland were running between
the rails. So was the trail of smoke they left behind. But that made good
sense to a Flatlander: in two dimensions, there wasn’t an ‘on top’ direction.
No doubt sections of rails, the wheels, and parts of the carriage walls could
be dismantled when the train reached its destination, so that passengers
could get in or out. That’s how Flatlanders would handle such technological
obstacles. The smoke could be let out the same way. Or maybe it would just
fade away of its own accord ... But one thing bothered her.
‘If those are railway lines,’ she said, ‘then why are they curved? Surely
they ought to be straight.’
‘Trains can follow curved tracks, Vikki.’
‘I know. But curved tracks hundreds of kilometres long must be terribly
inefficient. Why aren’t they following the shortest paths?’
The Space Hopper considered this carefully. ‘I think they are following
the shortest paths. The tracks look perfectly straight to me.’ He was about to
qualify this remark when Vikki objected.
‘Straight? Straight? Rubbish! They’re curved. All of them! They look
like arcs of circles. Shouldn’t railway lines be parallel? That is, unless the
people here know how to manufacture trains whose wheels can get closer
together or further apart, depending on the width of the rails. Here the pairs
of rails meet at the edge!’
‘As I was about to add when you interrupted, it all depends on what you
mean by “straight” and “parallel",’ said the Space Hopper, ‘and “line", for
that matter. Each railway track here has one straight rail and one rail that’s
equidistant from it but not straight.’
 ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘No, not really. Since the equidistant lines aren’t straight, they’re not
true parallels. On the other hand, some straight lines here are parallel - but
not equidistant. In fact, technically speaking, the distance between parallel
lines gets closer and closer to zero.’
‘You mean they meet?’
The Space Hopper was baffled. ‘Sorry? Meet? Where?’
‘At the edge.’
‘What edge? There isn’t an edge!’
‘The edge of the plate.’
Now the Space Hopper understood the source of her confusion. ‘Ah.
Yes, it does look like an edge, doesn’t it? But Platterland has no edge. Or at
least, if it does, none of the inhabitants can ever reach it. And appearances
are deceptive. Some of the lines that look curved are actually straight, and
the curves that seem to meet at the edge are really parallel straight lines.
But, in this space, the distance between parallel lines is not constant. So if
you drew a line at a fixed distance from a straight line, which is what you
need to make a railway track, then the second line wouldn’t actually be
straight!’ He saw Vikki’s look of puzzlement. ‘Mind you, if the distance is
small, they look pretty much like straight lines do here. Which is to say -
from our point of VUE - curved.’
‘But the lines you’re telling me are equidistant get closer together as
they head towards the edge, Hopper.’
‘Do they?’ asked the Space Hopper in a quiet voice.
‘Yes, they do!’
 ‘You realize that if you’re right, then the trains must shrink as they get
closer to the edge? And they can’t just get narrower, either, because if they
did, they’d stop being train-shaped, and the natives would notice. So the
whole train must shrink as it approaches the edge. The passengers, too.’
Vikki looked down at the Platterland rail network from her overhead
VUEpoint. ‘They do. Shrink, I mean. They get smaller and smaller the
closer they get to the rim.’
‘Really?’ The Space Hopper’s scepticism was palpable.
‘I can see it with my own eyes,’ Vikki protested.
The Space Hopper sighed. ‘Haven’t I told you over and over again not
to believe what you see when you look at a space from the outside? As
external observers we have a privileged position, which is denied to the
inhabitants. To them, what they can perceive is what’s real - and all that’s
real.’ By now Vikki was looking a bit sulky, and the Space Hopper bounced
apologetically a few times, his horns wobbling. ‘Come with me into
Platterland, and All Will Become Clear. I promise.’
Vikki’s stomach lurched as the bottom dropped out of her universe.
Here we go again! Platterland rushed up to meet them ... There was a sound
like supersonic suet pudding encountering a mountain range - then the
world fell to pieces in total confusion.

When Vikki’s senses returned, everything seemed perfectly normal. Just as

in Flatland, the Space Hopper had reverted to being a mere two-dimensional
section of its Spaceland glory. At the moment it was roughly circular,
though it shrank and expanded in an extremely disturbing, though rhythmic
way. She realized that must be the Space Hopper’s breathing.
Actually, things weren’t quite normal. She felt ... well, more curvy than
usual, as if her endpoints had been sucked in. But she didn’t feel any
unusual compression of her internal organs. It was almost as if her central
region had bent.
Platterland no longer looked like a plate. No matter how hard she tried,
she couldn’t see the edge any more. Everything just faded out into a distant
haze.
 They were standing on a footpath, not far from a level crossing. From
out of the hazy distance came the mournful hooting of an approaching train.
They hurried over to the crossing. As they neared it, the barrier slid
across to bar the way. Fortunately it was semitransparent, otherwise it
would have blocked their view. The rails were semi-transparent too - and
the barrier was actually a section of rail, which could be swung aside to let
travellers pass when there were no trains coming.
With a sound like thunder the train surged past. When the train was far
enough away for it to be safe to cross, the barrier opened. The Space
Hopper led Vikki out into the middle of the track, and they stared at the
departing train. The smoke had cleared, and she could see it perfectly well,
even though the rails had appeared to curve when she had seen them from
outside Platterland.
The Space Hopper ‘rose’ to a level where his eyes could see the train
too. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Look, the train’s shrinking!’
Vikki laughed. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s all perfectly normal. That’s just
perspective! The further away the train gets, the smaller it looks. It hasn’t
changed size in the least.’
‘Oh?’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I am!’
‘That’s not what you said just now when we were privileged observers.’
‘But then I could see - oh.’ This was going to be embarrassing, she
could tell.
‘Exactly. And you can still see, but now you don’t take what you see
literally. So why did you take it literally before?’
Vikki blushed pale grey. ‘Force of habit. But you do have to admit that
it all seems perfectly normal now that we’ve entered Platterland.’
The Space Hopper gave her a mischievous look. ’Me? Have to admit?
Vikki, I am the Space Hopper - I don’t have to admit anything? He paused.
‘But maybe you’re right. Let’s carry on along this path and see if we can
find anything to change your mind. Or mine.’
The path led through a wood, with what looked like perfectly normal
flatbushes and jomma trees. An edgehog scurried across the trail just ahead
of them, and squarrels ran round the bases of the trees looking for nuts. At
least, they looked like squarrels. Except there was something funny about
them.
 The Space Hopper began to shrink. As the circular cross-section of his
fat body gave way to the twin circles of his horns, he sank below the plane
of Platterland. Vikki just caught a faint cry of ‘I’ll be back momentarily’
before the words floated away on the breeze. There was a flurry of activity
and a muffled squeak. Moments later, the Space Hopper was back. Trapped
between his horns was one very surprised squarrel.
The Space Hopper was triumphant. ‘They’re almost impossible to catch,
these things. Unless you sneak up on them along an unexpected dimension.
I used the nineteenth, did you notice?’
‘Don’t be silly. Anyway, what’s so special about trapping a squarrel?’
‘You tell me. Do you see anything special?’
Vikki gave the wretched animal a quick once-over. ‘It’s a perfectly
ordinary squarrel, just like the ones in Flatland. It’s small and furry, it’s
square, and it hoards nuts.’
The Space Hopper bobbed in excitement, so that he looked as if he was
breathing very rapidly. ‘Are you sure it’s square?’
‘Well, admittedly I can’t see all its sides without walking round it, but I
can recognize right angles when I see them. And when it was running round
the tree, all this squarrel’s angles looked right to me. And all its sides
looked the same length, too.’
‘I agree. They are. But did you count its sides?’
Vikki exploded. ‘Now you really are being silly. If all the corners are
right angles and all the sides are equal, it’s got to be a square.’
The Space Hopper grinned. ‘Sure?’
‘Absolutely!’
‘OK. Just indulge me. Keep an eye on the animal while I pirouette, and
count how many sides it has. You can tell you’ve got back to the start when
its nose comes round again.’
Vikki stamped her vertices in frustration - this was such a pointless
game. ‘Oh, if you insist. What a stupid idea! OK, start turning ... One, two,
three, four ... five. See, it’s a perfectly ordinary sq— five? Hang on, you’re
cheating. Turn round again. One, two, three, four, five. Again: one, two,
three, four, five. Nuts. How are you doing that? This is mad! How can there
be a five-sided square?’
‘Maybe it’s a right-angled pentagon,’ the Space Hopper suggested, with
a wicked .∪
 ‘Yeah, maybe - oh, you’re awful. That doesn’t help at all, it’s just as
bad. This is crazy.’
The Space Hopper bobbed in agreement, then stopped. ‘On the other
hand, Vikki, it may just be showing you that Platterland isn’t quite as
perfectly normal as it appears. After all, it did look a bit weird from the
vantage point of Grand Unified Metaspace.’
‘But you just said I shouldn’t trust my eyes.’
‘True. You really must learn not to take everything I tell you so
seriously. But not right at this moment.’

Wunday 16 Noctember 2099

Diary Dear, you must believe me when I tell you that this Platterland space
is as nutty as a squarerootcake. At first everything looks normal, and then
when you take a more careful look it’s all completely MAD. There are
triangles here whose angles don’t add up to 180 degrees, for instance. In
fact they’re ALL like that, though with the smaller ones you’d never notice.
The area of a Hyperbolican triangle is proportional to the difference
between the angle-sum and 180 degrees: if the sum is close to 180, then the
area is close to zero! The bigger the triangle, the weirder it is: there are
some triangles whose angles add up to zero degrees. Though apparently
those aren’t really triangles, just shapes made from three straight lines,
because their vertices are on the edge, which doesn’t exist...
I think that what saves my sanity is the belief that what counts as a
straight line in Platterland is actually curved ... but the Space Hopper insists
that this is merely a parochial Flatland view, or more accurately a parochial
Euclidean view.

‘Think of it this way,’ the Space Hopper was saying for the dozenth time.
‘Imagine that Platterland really is a circle in Flatland, as your visual sense
wants you to believe. What kind of fancy physics would make the
Platterland railway lines and creatures behave the way they clearly do?’
‘I haven’t the foggiest idea,’ admitted Vikki.
‘Fog? Oh dear me, no, not fog. More like a touch of frost. Here’s a clue:
to you, everything in Platterland seems to shrink as it approaches the rim of
the disc. What physical influence makes things shrink?’
Vikki thought about this. Pushing makes things shrink if they’re elastic,
but somehow she doubted that was the physical influence the Space Hopper
had in mind. Frost? Frost is cold ... Ooooh. Things shrink when they get
cold, just as they expand when they get hot.
‘Cold.’
The Space Hopper’s thick orange skin wobbled in encouragement, like
hyperactive blubber. ‘Very good. Now, as I say, this is only an analogy. The
inhabitants of Platterland don’t actually feel any kind of cold. But suppose
there is some kind of “temperature” effect of which they are unaware: the
rim is very cold indeed, and the centre is a lot warmer. Imagine that the
temperature falls away according to the distance from the centre—’
‘How, exactly?’
‘It doesn’t matter much, but if you must know, the temperature should
be the difference between the square of Platterland’s apparent radius and the
square of the apparent distance from the centre ... anyway, assume that all
objects shrink in proportion to this “temperature". At the rim, the
temperature is zero, so objects shrink to zero size as they approach the rim.
Got that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fine. So here’s my first question. How far is it from the centre to the
rim, as experienced by a Platterlander?
‘It’s just the radius of the disc ... oh, no, because to them everything
shrinks in accordance with the temperature. So let’s suppose there is a
Platterland creature that can take very big strides—’
‘There is. It’s called a bigstrider.’
‘—and to keep the argument simple, let’s imagine that when it starts
from the centre its first pace takes it halfway to the rim, as it would appear
to us.’
The Space Hopper grinned manically. ‘Bigstriders aren’t that big, but
you’re on the right lines. Keep going!’
‘OK. Um ... Because distances shrink as the temperature falls, its next
stride takes it halfway from where it is to the rim - that is, three-quarters of
the radius as we would see it. And the third stride also takes it halfway from
where it is to the rim ... seven-eighths of the radius. With the fourth stride, it
gets to fifteen-sixteenths of the radius; the fifth takes it to thirty-one thirty-
seconds, and so on.’
‘Well...’ said the Space Hopper, with a worried look. ‘Your basic idea’s
right, but your numbers aren’t. You’re assuming that the temperature is
proportional to the distance to the rim, whereas the correct temperature rule
would give something distinctly more complicated. Never mind, though:
qualitatively, you’re smack on target. The length of the strides shrinks very
rapidly as the bigstrider nears the rim. With your numbers, how many
strides would it take to reach the rim?’
‘Um ... Oh! It never gets there!’
‘Correct. And the same goes for the accurate numbers. Mind you, to our
eyes it will appear to get extremely close if it keeps going ... but the poor
animal is taking tinier and tinier steps -again from our prejudiced viewpoint
- so to it, the rim seems just as far away as ever.’
 Vikki had a sudden moment of insight.
‘The rim is infinitely far away, then.’
‘From the bigstrider’s point of view, yes. And it’s his world, so we
ought to respect his viewpoint.’
Vikki thought about this. ‘You keep saying that being outside a space
gives us a privileged - and therefore potentially misleading -position. We
perceive Platterland as a finite disc ... but its own inhabitants perceive it as
being of infinite extent.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But it’s really finite, isn’t it?’
If there had been any sand around, the Space Hopper would have gone
and buried his head in it. And he was all head. But there wasn’t any sand,
so instead he just said, ‘Let’s go and ask them.’
 *

They had landed in a rural part of Platterland, and it took a while before
they encountered a native Platterlander. He had that same disturbing
appearance as the squarrel. His angles were those of a hexagon, 120 degrees
- but he had seven sides.
The Space Hopper introduced himself with a degree of politeness that
Vikki had never heard from him before. ‘Very formal, Platterlanders,’ the
Space Hopper whispered to her. ‘They expect courtesy.’ Then it turned once
more to the hexangular heptagon. ‘Please excuse my brief conversation
with my fair companion, good sir,’ he said. ‘I was enlightening her with
regard to the customs of your delightful country.’
‘Ooh aar,’ replied the heptagon. ‘Tha’s a real gennelmun an’ no
mistake. An’ a stranger to these parts, ooh aar, that ye are.’
‘That is most exceedingly perspicacious of you, sir. We are travellers
from a distant land, visiting your beautiful and prosperous country for the
first time. Such is our ignorance that we have many questions - but perhaps
it would not be polite to ask.’
‘Foire away,’ said the heptagon. ‘Oi’m bein’ a fair bit more broad-
minded than most.’ He paused. ‘That’s what comes from ‘avin’ a bigger
’ead than most, har-har-har!’ Clearly this was a favourite joke, and equally
clearly it was not to be taken literally - though with seven sides, the
heptagon could hardly fail to have a big head.
‘I’m curious about your weather,’ Vikki began. ‘Do you find it cold out
here near the rim?’
‘Cold? Why no, m’darlin’, it’s a glorious summer’s day. But what’s this
faffle about a rim?’
‘The edge of your world—’ Vikki began, and stopped when the Space
Hopper kicked her. He would have kicked her in the angle, but she didn’t
have one, being a Line. Not until now, anyway.
 ‘Edge? You’m thinkin’ of a ’awthorn ’edge, p’r’aps? Not ‘ere-abouts,
Oi runs a modern farm mysen, an—’
Vikki couldn’t restrain herself any longer. ‘No, “edge” as in “boundary".
Where the world ends.’
The heptagon broke into peals of laughter. ‘The world ‘as no edge,
m’dear, as you can plainly see for yoursen, it bein’ such a glorious day an’
the pollution ‘avin’ been cleared by last noight’s thundershower.’
Vikki ignored the Space Hopper’s increasingly urgent kicks. ‘But if you
keep walking away from the centre, don’t you eventually reach the edge of
the world?’
‘Har-har-har, funny joke. But what d’ye mean by centre, duckie?’
‘The midpoint of the world,’ said Vikki, ‘the special place where
everything is at its biggest.’
‘Ah, you’m be meanin’ Boondock, no doubt. That’s the town where we
sells our produce, ‘bout two hours by schmule, that-aways. They got
buildin’s with more’n foive rooms in Boondock -that’s what Oi calls big!’
‘No, I mean the place that’s different from any other, where objects
reach their greatest size!’
The heptagon wrinkled one edge in perplexity. ‘No such place,’ he
finally stated. ‘Apart from the local lan’scape, every place on Oiperbolica is
‘xactly the same as any other. And everythin’ stays the same soize -
wherever it moight be!’
‘But—’ Vikki began.
‘I think my young companion is referring to the effects of perspective,’
said the Space Hopper, diplomatically. ‘Things look smaller when they’re
further away from you’, it explained when the heptagon’s edge began to
cloud over in puzzlement.
‘No,’ Vikki protested, ‘I mean that things really are smaller—’
‘Nonsense!’ said the heptagon. ‘If fings changed soize as they moved
aroun’, nothin’d fit prop’ly any more.’ There seemed to be no answer to
that.

*
They had found an inn, The Sober Newt, and were arguing Platter-land
geometry over glasses of the local firewater. Grosvenor would have been
horrified had he known, just as he would have been when Vikki had taken
part in Running Turtle’s wine tasting, but Daddy was a world away. If not
several.
‘I don’t see the problem,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘After all, in Flatland,
if you watch an object moving away from you, your eyes tell you it’s
shrinking. In fact, as it heads off into the infinite distance its apparent size
shrinks to zero. So Flatland objects behave just like Platterland ones!’
Vikki wasn’t having any of this nonsense. ‘But on Flatland we know
that really the object isn’t shrinking. It’s just the effect of perspective.’
The Space Hopper wasn’t buying that. ‘Hah! So when your eyes tell you
that Flatland objects are shrinking as they move off to infinity, that’s just an
optical illusion. But when your eyes tell you that Platterland objects are
shrinking as they move off to infinity, that’s reality. Seems to me you’re just
choosing whichever interpretation suits you best. That’s poor logic’
‘But Flatland objects don’t shrink! If you walk away from somebody
else, it may appear to them as if you’re shrinking ... but you don’t feel
yourself getting smaller. You’re still the same size relative to your
surroundings.’
‘But the person watching you sees the surroundings shrinking too. So of
course you wouldn’t notice that you were shrinking.’
A look of horror passed over Vikki’s edge. This was starting to sound
quite convincing, if you took it at face value. ‘You’re just teasing me, aren’t
you?’
‘No,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘I’m trying to put you into a Platter-
lander’s frame of mind about Platterland.’
‘I still think that’s different. Look - on Flatland you can carry a ruler
with you and measure your size. It stays the same, however far away you
move.’
‘That’s because the ruler shrinks at exactly the same rate you do.’
 ‘Rulers can’t shrink! Rulers are rigid.’
‘So what happens if a Platterlander carries a rigid ruler with them as
they head out towards the rim? Won’t they notice that their size, as
measured by the ruler, doesn’t change?’
‘But their rulers shrink! The temperature makes everything shrink.’
‘Just as the temperature in Flatland makes everything shrink as it moves
towards infinity?’
‘Don’t be silly. There’s no temperature in Flatland - well, not like the
one in Platterland.’
‘How do you know?’
‘We’ve never noticed one.’
‘But the Platterlanders don’t notice theirs, either. In fact, it’s not real.
It’s just an aid for Flatland thinkers to understand Platterland geometry.’
 Vikki’s mind started to rearrange itself. Just like Topologica, Platterland
was finally beginning to make its own kind of twisted sense. You just need
twisted logic to appreciate the twisted geometry. It might sound crazy, but
everything was perfectly self-consistent. ’Ooohhhh ... I see. You’re saying
that if rigid rulers can change their size as they move - whatever that means
- then you can’t rely on the rulers to measure distances accurately.’
‘Nearly. Actually, I’m saying the exact opposite. Since the only-way
you can measure distances is by transporting supposedly rigid rulers
around, you have to believe what they seem to be telling you. And on
Platterland, what they tell you is that nothing really shrinks when it moves
... and the world is indeed infinite in extent.’
Vikki saw the logic, but she still couldn’t shake off the feeling that her
own perceptions were the true reality, and said so.
The Space Hopper thought about that for a while. ‘The trouble with
perceptions,’ he said, ‘is that they’re processed by brains. And brains have
evolved short cuts in processing as an aid to survival. Often what we
perceive is different from reality. If you switch your VUE to Spaceland
mode, I can make that very clear to you.’ He waited for her to do so.
 ‘Look at these lines - the long ones, not the short cross-hatchings. Tell
me, do you perceive them as being parallel, or as converging?’
‘Obviously they’re converging.’
The Space Hopper agreed that it did look like that. ‘Measure the
distance between them. What does that tell you?’
‘Urn ... Wow! It says they’re really parallel! But they look... oh, I get
your point now. They’re not what they look like. The cross-hatchings fool
the eye.’
‘They fool the brain into misreading what the eye tells it. I’m not saying
that your perceptions and senses are false, Vikki, just that there are some
circumstances in which you can’t trust them.’

*
Twoday 17 Noctember 2099
Dear Diary,
The Space Hopper has explained the ridiculous geometry of Platterland
in terms of an easily comprehensible Flatland analogy. I now see why the
angles of triangles here need not add up to 180 degrees, and the right-angled
pentagon of what counts for a squarrel in these parts now seems perfectly
sensible. I remain vaguely convinced that Platterland’s straight lines are
really bent, but I now concede that, from a Platterlander’s point of view,
Flatland’s straight lines can be considered bent too. It is dawning on me that
what a universe looks like from the inside, and what it looks like from the
outside, may be very different.
This, of course, is what the Space Hopper had been telling me for weeks.
Stuck-up little twit!

‘But surely a “straight line” ought to be the shortest path between two
points,’ said Vikki. ‘It is in Flatland.’
‘Of course,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘So?’
‘So, I don’t see how a curve can be the shortest path.’
‘Oh dear.’ The Space Hopper’s customary manic grin turned upside
down, from a ∪ to a ∩. ‘I thought we’d gone over this already. They’re not
curves. They look like curves to us, because we’re on the outside. From
inside Platterland, they’re straight. And - I’m sorry, but they are the shortest
paths.’
Vikki’s head was swimming. ‘I hear what you say, but I can’t convince
my eyes it’s true.’
‘Let’s compare a line that looks straight to us with one that looks
straight to them,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘What you have to remember is
that rulers shrink as they get nearer what we see as the “rim". And our
“straight line” lies nearer the rim than theirs. So when you try to measure
the two lines, the ruler is shorter along our line than it is along theirs. It’s a
delicate calculation, but the extra length caused by the shrinkage outweighs
the apparent loss of length caused by looking straighter (to us). See it now?’
 ‘I suppose so,’ said Vikki. ‘At any rate, I do see what you’re getting at.’
‘The relationship between intrinsic Platterland geometry and what we
see when we observe their world from orbit is very elegant,’ said the Space
Hopper. ‘We can characterize their straight lines rather neatly. To us, they
are arcs of circles that meet the rim at right angles - at both ends. This is
called hyperbolic geometry.’
‘What’s it good for?’
‘Well, you’ll recall me telling you that long ago on Planiturth there was
a mathematician called Euclidthegreek. The most influential thing he did
was to invent a brilliant way to formalize geometry - in fact, his method can
be extended to any part of mathematics. His idea was to start by stating a
system of axioms: basic assumptions that provide a starting-point for
making deductions. You don’t have to decide whether axioms are true: they
determine the “rules of the game". If you dislike the axioms, you just don’t
play that particular game.
‘Anyway, when Euclidthegreek laid down axioms for what in those
days was assumed to be the only possible kind of geometry-in two
dimensions, anyway - most of them were pretty simple things: “any two
points may be joined by a unique straight line". And “any two lines are
either parallel or meet at a unique point” and “all right angles are equal".
But one of them was a lot more complicated.’
‘What did that one say? Some right angles are more equal than others?’
‘No, no. It said, “given any line, and any point not on that line, there is a
unique line through that point that is parallel to (meaning ‘does not meet’)
the given line".’

‘I see what you mean by “complicated” - but it makes sense.’

‘It certainly seems to. And because it was complicated but made sense,
people wondered if it could be proved from the other axioms. Because if it
could—’
‘The complicated axiom would be superfluous,’ Vikki finished for him.
‘Which would be nice,’ she added as an afterthought.
‘Exactly. Now, a lot of Planiturthian People tried to do just that. Guess
what?’
‘No idea.’
‘They all failed.’
‘OK, so Planiturthians are rotten at geometry.’
‘Not at all. Some of them are brilliant. Euclidthegreek was. Mind you,
most of them are rotten at geometry ... but that’s true about everything.
Sports, music, painting ... But I’m drifting away from the point. Some of the
most brilliant Planiturthian mathematicians began to wonder if there was a
reason why every attempt to prove the parallel axiom failed.’
Vikki thought for a moment. ‘But surely there must be a way to prove it.
I mean... why don’t you just draw the new line equally far from the original
one at every point along its length? That’ll do it.’
‘Fine. They tried that one. The snag is, how do you know that what
you’ve just described is a straight line?’
‘Pardon?’
‘How do you know that what you’ve just descri—’
‘I heard you the first time. I just couldn’t believe my ends. Of course it
is!’
The Space Hopper’s uncharacteristic n became even more elongated.
‘You think that’s a good way to do mathematics? “Of course it is"? What
about critical analysis? What about proof? What about logical rigour?’
‘Yes, but this is obvious.’
The Space Hopper’s u returned, but now it was like the teeth on a shark.
‘Really? Well, that’s certainly what everyone on Planiturth thought - until
they came across hyperbolic geometry. You see, in hyperbolic geometry, all
Euclidthegreek’s axioms are true—’
‘I don’t see how they can be, if the lines are curved.’
‘I keep telling you, they’re not curved. But you didn’t let me finish. All
Euclidthegreek’s axioms are true except the parallel axiom. And that means
you can’t prove the parallel axiom from the others.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because, if you could, the same proof would show that the parallel
axiom is valid in hyperbolic geometry. But it’s not. Given any hyperbolic-
line, and any point not on that hyperbolic-line, there are infinitely many
hyperbolic-lines through that point that do not meet (which in Euclidean
geometry is the same as “are parallel to”) the given hyperbolic-line.’
 ‘It’s not about how the real world fits together, is it?’ said Vikki. ‘It’s an
abstract statement about the logical consequences of certain assumptions.’
‘Exactly. If you spend your entire life in one space, you can perhaps be
forgiven if you think it’s the only space there is, and has the only geometry
there is. We Space Hoppers know better: we’ve hopped between so many
different spaces - and now, so do you, even though you’re a Flatty with all
the usual Flatty prejudices. There are lots of spaces and lots of geometries,
all equally valid in terms of internal logic. And in this particular geometry,
hyperbolic geometry, nearly all of Euclidthegreek’s beloved axioms are
valid. Just one isn’t: the perplexing parallel axiom. So now you see why it’s
perplexing. There is no proof. So there’s no point in looking for one.’
‘I think I see. It’s like trying to prove that the only possible geometry is
that of Flatland. But we’ve seen several different ones already. To us - well,
to me - the others all seem weird. But if you were used to them, they’d seem
entirely natural.’
‘Right. You got it.’
Vikki felt pleased. Then a new thought stuck her. ‘Space Hopper, what
is hyperbolic geometry good for?’
‘Good for? What’s Flatland good for?’
‘It’s good for us to live in.’
‘OK, so hyperbolic geometry is good for Platterlanders to live in.’
‘Yes, I see that. But why should a Flatlander care?’
The Space Hopper bounced in excitement. ‘Well, one reason -maybe
even be the best reason - is that Things May Not Be What They Seem.’
 ‘Sorry?’
‘You’ll see. But not yet. First, you have to understand just how different
geometries can be. Then, when I’ve got you softened up to the point where
you really don’t believe your eyes, we can think about the true shape of the
Planiturthian universe.’ Vikki began to protest, but the Space Hopper was
adamant. ‘No! Not yet! First, you must learn both patience and
imagination.’
Imagination will be easy, she thought. I’ve got a good imagination. But
patience ... that’s not one of my virtues. In fact, to tell the truth, it’s not one
of my virtues AT ALL But she bit back her protest, since it would only make
the Space Hopper’s point all the more forcefully.
 11
CAT COUNTRY

Of all the realms of the Mathiverse, there is none stranger than Cat Country.
It is (until replaced by something else) the space in which all Planiturthians
live - the space from which they are built Yet it is so different from the
space that they perceive themselves as living in that they find it bizarre in
the extreme. Even their scientists find it difficult to understand what goes on
in Cat Country. They can calculate what’s happening, and they can carry
out experiments to check their calculations ... but when it comes to what it
all means, even the scientists get confused.
You can tell, because if you ask questions about what it all means they
stop behaving like scientists and either shout at you or turn into High Priests
of some Cosmic Religion. Or both.
Cat Country is ruled by Superpaws, more usually referred to in terms of
the owner of its intellectual property rights, an intensely curious
Planiturthian named Erwinschrödinger. Not ‘curious’ in the sense of
‘weird’: Erwinschrödinger was surprisingly sensible considering what he
was interested in. Curious in the sense of ‘possessing curiosity’. Now, it is
said that ‘curiosity killed the cat’, but Erwinschrödinger went one better. He
killed his cat and kept it alive, all at the same time.
Not surprisingly, the poor beast is even more confused than the
Planiturthian scientists.
Not surprisingly, the Space Hopper was determined to ensure that
Victoria Line became intimately acquainted with Schrödinger’s Cat.

Suddenly the universe seemed to be growing. Not just the space between
things, but the things themselves. A piece of gravel that only a moment ago
had been lying on the path became a boulder, then a rocky outcrop, then an
unorthodoxly shaped mountain ... Then it became too big to see as a single
object at all.
Only the Space Hopper remained his usual size. And Vikki herself, of
course.
‘Why is everything growing?’
‘It’s not. We’re shrinking.’
The surface of what once had been a pebble kept changing in surprising
ways - sometimes rugged, sometimes rippled, sometimes smooth, and
sometimes hairy, as if forests were growing on it. Funny clusters of bulbous
things appeared, like balloons being blown up, but even they quickly
became too big to take in. The pace of shrinkage slowed, then stopped. The
surface of whatever it was they were now looking at became sort of lumpy,
like dumplings floating in a thin soup. They were small dumplings, and the
soup was so thin that it was scarcely distinguishable from empty space. The
dumplings formed clusters, like bunches of grapes - but the gaps between
the bunches were a lot bigger than you would ever see on a Planiturthian
grapevine.
Not far away was a sort-of-beach, itself rather lumpy; and sort-of-waves
rolled up towards it, creating iridescent rippled patterns that were hard to
make out clearly. Try as she might, Vikki couldn’t see where the waves
went. They just kept coming towards the beach.
There would be time to sort out the waves later. Right now, it was the
lumps that were bothering her. ‘What are those?’ Vikki asked. ‘Those
lumpy things. And why are they so ... fuzzy?’
‘Do you mean the round lumps, or the bunches?’
‘The round lumps.’
‘Those,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘are atoms. The bunches are
molecules.’
Vikki knew about those. ‘Atoms are what all matter is made from’, she
said. ‘They’re very tiny particles, and they’re invisible—’ No, that couldn’t
be right. ‘Sorry, indivisible. And they combine together to form molecules,
which is what chemical compounds are made from.’ There were atoms and
molecules in Flatland, much as in Spaceland, but the differences of
dimension made Flatland chemistry a bit simpler than it was in Spaceland.
The basic principles, though, were pretty much identical.
 ‘That’s what the Planiturthians used to think,’ said the Space Hopper.
‘Now they know better. Atoms aren’t exactly particles, and they’re not
exactly indivisible. Look, I’ll show you.’ And he grabbed one of the
dumplings and squeezed. Out popped three smaller round objects, also
fuzzy: two the size of peas, and the other so tiny that only VUE-enhanced
senses could see it at all. One pea was green and the other was yellow; the
small object was pink. The Space Hopper explained that these were not
their true colours -they didn’t have true colours. The VUE had just been set
to represent them that way.
‘Let me just - bother? yelled the Space Hopper. He flapped ineffectually
at the yellow pea, sending it skittering through the interatomic soup, in
which it momentarily left a faint trail, like ship’s wake. They skittered after
the errant pea, while the Space Hopper cursed under its breath.
Something small and circular loomed ahead. No, something large and
circular. Improbably, in this space of fuzzy lumps, it was a perfectly sharply
defined object. A bowl. Round the side was written SCHROD - no doubt
there was more, but it was hidden from view. Inside the bowl was - catfood.
Fuzzy, lumpy, sometimes a bit wavy catfood.
The yellow pea plopped into the bowl.
‘Good,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘We’d never have caught it if that hadn’t
happened.’
‘Caught what?’
‘The proton.’
‘Come again?’
‘The yellow pea. It’s a subatomic particle called a proton. It’s got itself
trapped in a potential well. And unless I’m very much mistaken, the
electron - the small pink particle - will be sticking to it. They do that, you
know. When we first encountered them, those three particles were the parts
of a deuterium atom. Now the neutron has been expelled, and the proton
and electron have combined to make a hydrogen atom. It’s very hard to stop
those two joining up if they get the opportunity.’
‘What are you waffling about?’
‘Don’t you take that tone with me, young Line. This is very basic stuff -
subatomic particles and the Four Forces of—’
’e; a tiny voice interrupted. It seemed to be coming from the pink
particle.
 ‘What was that?’ said Vikki. ‘Did something say “Eee"?’
‘No, e.’
‘Who are you? An electron?’
‘Nearly. I am the Charge on the Electron. The fundamental unit of electricity.’
‘Oh. I thought the charge for a unit of electricity was about 40p.’
‘Not a financial charge,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘An electric charge.’
‘Well, it would be, for a unit of electricity.’
‘I mean, it’s not money!
‘Oh.’
The Charge on the Electron lost its cool. ‘ No, not o! e! i keep telling you, but you
don’t listen. I may not be a financial charge, but I do have a value. My value is one ten-quintillionth
of a coulomb.’
‘That’s not very much.’
’No, but there are an awful lot of us, I can tell you.’

Threeday 18 Noctember 2099

Diary Dear, you’re wondering why the Space Hopper made me spend so
much time talking to that funny little Charge creature that lives on an
electron.
The answer, in a word, is particles.
The answer, in a word, is waves.
Aha! I can tell, you’re confused! You ask me one question, and I give
you two answers. Which contradict each other.
Cat Country is like that.

They sat on the seashore of Cat Country, watching the waves surge up
the beach - and disappear. Unlike Planiturthian waves, they didn’t roll back
again.
It was caused, the Space Hopper claimed, by Quantum Tunnelling.
Vikki saw no point in asking what that was. She sat, dangling her rear end
in the ... sea ... and tried to sort out what she hadn’t yet understood. ‘What is
an electron, anyway, Hopper?’
‘It’s a particle.’
‘A very, very, very tiny piece of matter?’
‘Yes. Smaller than an atom. And it’s all in one lump - that’s what
“particle” means.’ The Space Hopper thought about that and corrected
himself. ‘Used to mean.’
‘Isn’t everything made from particles? What else is there?’ asked Vikki.
‘Waves. Waves are very strange things. Think of water waves. They
seem to be moving along quite fast - and they do roll up beaches, I admit.
But if a wave was really a lot of moving water, the land would have flooded
long ago. In fact, the water mostly moves up and down - but the hump that
People see looks as if it’s a thing that travels along. However, at each
instant, that hump consists of different molecules of water. They just trade
places. Until they hit the shallows, anyway.’
‘But water is just a lot of particles, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It’s made from hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and those are made
from protons, neutrons, and electrons. But water waves are big. At very tiny
scales, there are waves that don’t reduce to moving particles.’
‘Such as?’
‘Light. Light is a wave. Or, at least, that’s what Planiturthian scientists
had convinced themselves it was. They could even do experiments to prove
it. And they thought that electrons were particles - they could do
experiments to prove that, too.’
‘What sort of experiments?’
‘I’m sure the Charge on the Electron would be happy to demonstrate a
particle experiment’, said the Space Hopper.
’Happy? I’d be ecstatic!’ said the squeaky voice. ‘But I’ll need some help. Give me a
few minutes to set it up.’
The Charge on the Electron disappeared, and Vikki and the Space
Hopper sat beside the quantum seashore watching the waves. The Charge
soon returned, accompanied by thousands of identical particles, who were
carrying several metal plates and a bottle of oil.
 ‘Idiots! I said two plates, not dozens! Oh, never mind, just dump the rest
and bring me two. Now, you lot start by lining up the plates, and the rest of
you can open up the bottle and create some oil drops. As small as you can
manage, please, and be quick about it!’

Soon all was as ordered.’OK. Now, some of you sit on one plate, and
the rest sit on the other one. I’ll squirt a drop of oil in between, and you can
play roller coaster like you usually do.’

‘What on Flat—’ Vikki began.

‘The other Charges on the Electron are going to take rides on the drops,’
the Space Hopper explained. ‘That way they transfer electricity from one
plate to the other. Now, suppose you could measure the amount of
electricity very accurately. What would you expect to find if the electron is
a particle?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Let me put it this way: each electron carries a charge of one e. So could
you detect a transfer of 0.5 e from one plate to the other? Or 619.74e?’
‘Oh! The amount of electricity transferred always has to be a whole
number times e!’
‘Spot on, Vikki. And that experiment has been done, and that’s the
answer you get. If electrons were divisible, you’d get fractions of e, but you
don’t, so they’re not. And that - everyone thought -means that electrons are
particles.’
‘I’ll buy that. What about waves?’
‘The important feature of waves is that when they interact, they add up.
I’ll just borrow some of those plates, and you’ll see what I mean.’ The
Space Hopper waded into the sea with a couple of the plates, and set them
on end with a small gap between them. Vikki noticed that as the waves
encountered the gap, a series of semicircular ripples formed on the other
side.
‘That,’ said the Space Hopper, rather short of breath from lugging the
plates around, ‘is a diffraction pattern. It’s a sure sign you’ve got waves.’
‘We can see the waves,’ Vikki pointed out.
 ‘Yes, but we’ve got a VUE. Planiturthian scientists don’t have that, but
they can detect diffraction patterns even when the waves that make them are
invisible. Now, let me add another plate, to make a second gap. To start
with, I’ll just block off the first gap.
What happens?’
‘Another series of semicircular ripples, Hopper!’
‘As expected. Now I’ll unblock the first gap, so that we’ve got
two. Now what do you see?’
‘Uh - it’s rather complicated. A sort of bent chequerboard, that’s
the only way I can describe it.’

‘What’s happening is that when a peak of one set of semicircles meets a

peak of the other set of semicircles, the two peaks add up to make an even
higher peak; and when a trough of one set of semicircles meets a trough of
the other set of semicircles, the two troughs add up to make an even lower
trough. And if a peak meets a trough, they cancel out and the result is in
between. That’s what I mean by waves adding up. It’s called superposition.’
‘So if we see that sort of pattern—’
‘—it’s a sure sign of waves. Or, as I said before, so everyone used to
think.’
‘Used to?’
‘On very small scales - down at the sizes we’ve been shrunk to by the
VUE - matter is a bit weird. As Charge on the Electron will now
demonstrate.’
’Why me? Why not one of the others?’
‘You’ll do it so well’
’Aw - I hate this bit.’
 Charge on the Electron stood back, took a run at the middle of the
central plate, and hit it with what ought to have been a splat. But, Vikki
couldn’t help noticing, he didn’t actually seem to get to the plate - he started
to spread out. And then, on the other side of the plates—
He formed the bent chequerboard pattern that she had just learned to
associate with waves.
‘An electron is a wave?’
‘Sometimes it feels like it • said Charge on the Electron in a wavering
sort of way. He slowly reassembled into a conventional rounded particle
shape.
‘It is like a wave,’ replied the Space Hopper.
‘How can a particle—’
‘Behave like a wave? Good question. But it gets worse.’
‘I rather expected that,’ said Vikki.
‘Everyone was convinced that light was a wave. They’d argued about it
for hundreds of years, but the diffraction patterns and superposition
experiments made it absolutely clear that light really was a wave. Until they
looked at the photoelectric effect.’ He cast around for inspiration. ‘Ah. I
knew these plates would come in handy. They’re made of a special metal
which emits light when ... Charge on the Electron, will you oblige again,
please?’
‘Oh, no! I’ll be bruises all over...’ But there was no way out. Again he stood
back, took a run at the middle of the plate, and hit it with what this time was
a pretty convincing SPLAT. He bounced off.
As he did, a thin beam of light shone out of the plate, just for an instant.
‘See, Vikki: the metal converts the energy of the impacting electron into
light. So what would happen if he hit the plate harder?’
’Can’t we go for softer?’
‘Not yet.’
’You’re a pig.’
‘We’ll get more light?’ Vikki hazarded.
‘Let’s see.’
SPLAT.
’Ow!’
‘Yes, you’re right. OK, Charge on the Electron - now we’ll try softer.’
’You rotter!’Splut.
 ‘That’s funny,’ said Vikki, ‘I didn’t see any light at all.’ ‘
Me neither,’ confirmed the Space Hopper.
‘But - we should have seen a fainter beam of light, surely? The lower
the energy of the impact, the weaker the light - but it shouldn’t just switch
off.’
‘If light is a wave, infinitely divisible, yes. But it did switch off. So
what’s the explanation?’
‘Uh - well, clearly light isn’t infinitely divisible.’
‘Which means?’
‘It’s a particle?’
‘That’s what an extraordinarily wise Planiturthian named Alberteinstein
was led to conclude. He deduced that light comes in tiny packets with a
fixed amount of energy. They’re called photons. That had already been
predicted by a People called Maxplanck. The amount of energy in one
packet - one quantum - of light is very tiny. It’s equal to the frequency
multiplied by Planck’s constant, and that’s incredibly small.’
‘How small?’
‘0.0000000000000000000000000000000006.’
‘OK, that’s small. Space Hopper?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is light a wave or a particle?’
‘Yes.’
‘Both?’
‘Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Well - sometimes behaving like
one, sometimes behaving like the other. Particles and waves are things from
classical physics - things we can observe on the human scale. There used to
be a thing called the Complementarity Principle that said you could never
catch light being both things at once, but that always seemed much too neat
and tidy for me. A photon is a quantum object - why should it care which
classical object it looks like? And, sure enough, I was right. But on the
whole, it tends to resemble one or the other nearly all of the time.’
‘And the electron?’
‘That’s both, too. You can call them wavicles if it makes you feel
happier. Though most people now call them quantum wave-functions.’
‘I don’t think new names make a great difference. It still seems very
weird.’
 ‘That’s because we normally live on the classical scale, and we see
quantum effects only if we try very hard and use special apparatus. If we’d
grown up on the scale of the Planck length, where wavicle physics applies,
we’d think that a particle that could only be a particle was ridiculously
unimaginative.’
‘The world is made of wavicles?’ Vikki asked, stunned by the newfound
vision. Solid matter wasn’t solid. It was all ripply!
‘So the Planiturthians were led to believe. They realized that the wave
nature of matter on small scales meant that everything was based on
probabilities - on chance. In fact, a quantum wave is a wave of probabilities.
The places where the wave is biggest - the probability peaks - are the places
where the particle is most likely to be observed.’
‘Why can’t they just observe the entire wave?’
‘Because of the Uncertainty Principle, discovered by Werner-
heisenberg. If you try to measure the position of a particle, say, then you
disturb its quantum wavefunction. In fact, you can’t measure a particle’s
position and velocity at the same instant. Trying to observe one of them
changes the other, randomly.’
Weird, though Vikki. Which was a good start. If you don’t think
quantum theory is weird, then you haven’t understood it.

Fourday 19 Noctember 2099

The more I look into this particles business, Diary Dear, the more hairy the
whole thing gets.
I’ll start with atoms. When it comes down to it, the Planit-urthian
physicists have an astonishing habit of choosing really bad names. Like
‘Relativity’ for a theory where relative motion isn’t relative and lightspeed
is absolute. But new discoveries have to be given names, and those names
have to be based on guesses about what will happen next. If those guesses
are wrong, you’re stuck with a bad name. I don’t think that’s what happened
with Relativity, but it’s certainly what happened with ‘atom’. Which means
indivisible, doesn’t it, Diary?
 Unfortunately, that’s about as far from the truth as you can get. There are
literally HUNDREDS of subatomic particles - pieces of the indivisible!!!
Proton, neutron, electron, photon ... but those are just the best known. There
are muons and tauons and neutrinos and pions and all sorts of others ...
The list of fundamental particles is HUGE. It’s hard to see how they can
be fundamental when there are so many of them. But the irony of it is - so
the Space Hopper says - that the best way to reduce the number of
fundamental particles is to introduce a lot of extra ones.
This sounds mad, but it works because the old ones can be built up from
the new ones. So when it comes to ‘fundamental building blocks’ you can
keep to a fairly short, and very structured, list. Sort of sub-subatomic, then,
if you catch my drift, Diary.
The most important of these sub-subatomic particles are known as
QUARKS. (The name rhymes with ‘corks’, not ‘marks’, OK?) Protons and
neutrons, for instance, are made by sticking quarks together. The proton is
two up quarks plus one down quark; the neutron is two down quarks plus
one up quark. The omega-minus particle - no, I dunno either - is three
strange quarks.
It’s like this: there are six ‘flavours’ of quark: up, down, top, bottom,
strange, and charmed.
Quarks always come either in threes, or as a quark-antiquark pair.
Mesons are like that, for instance. You never observe a solitary quark. How
do they know that? Because quarks have charges that are 1/3 or 2/3 the
charge on the electron. So if they occurred on their own, they’d stick out
like a sore vertex.

Where there is catfood, there will be a cat. (Often the same one.)
Vikki looked anxiously around, but the animal was nowhere to be seen.
She walked round the bowl of catfood. On the other side, it read ‘INGER’.
‘Why does the bowl say INGERSCHRÖD?’
‘No, no, Vikki: that reads SCHRÖDINGER.’
‘Manufacturer?’
‘No.’
 ‘Catfood advert?’
‘No.’
‘Logo?’
‘No.’
‘The cat’s called Schrödinger?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
‘Maybe the cat dings schrös.’
‘Dings?’
‘Rings like a bell.’
‘Schrös?’
‘Rather like shrews, I think.’
‘Oh.’ The conversation lapsed into an awkward silence. Finally, Vikki
said, ‘Space Hopper, you made that up! You have no idea what the name
means, and there’s no such thing as a schro!’
‘Don’t complain to me,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Actually, I do know
where the name comes from, but here’s the cat himself. You can ask him.’
‘Where? I don’t see him.’
‘He’s starting to materialize. Look over there - you can see the glum.’
‘The glum? What’s a glum?’
‘The opposite of a grin. This is a very sad cat.’
A ∩ shape had formed in mid-air, near the bowl. It slowly solidified into
a doleful and rather fat grey-and-white striped cat, which sat down by the
bowl and began to eat from it.
‘Excuse me—’ Vikki began.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said the cat in a mournful voice, and carried on
eating.
‘No, I mean I’m sorry to interrupt you—’
‘Then don’t!’ snapped the cat.
‘I did say “excuse me",’ Vikki pointed out.
‘And I told you not to mention it. Which you’ve just done. Again. Don’t
you ever listen?’
‘You’re a very strange cat,’ said Vikki.
The cat stopped eating and stared at her. ‘Look: you’re an observer,
right?’
‘Sorry, what do you—’
 ‘You’re observing me, yes?’
‘Well, if you put it that way. I suppose I am.’
‘Then I can’t be a strange cat,’ said the cat. ‘I’m only a strange cat when
you don’t observe me. When you’re not looking, I’m totally weird. But
you’ll never observe me being weird. To you, I’ll always look normal.’
Vikki was prepared to dispute that - she found the creature both
fascinating and irritating. But politeness was a virtue to be cultivated. ‘Are
you hungry?’ she asked.
‘That depends,’ said the cat.
‘On what?’
‘On whether you’re observing whether I’m hungry.’
‘I’m observing you eating’, said Vikki.
‘That’s different,’ said the cat. ‘Inferences don’t count. As long as
you’re not actually observing my state of hunger, then I could be hungry,
and I could be bloated with food and desperately stuffing the last morsel
down my throat. Or I could be half of each at the same time.’
Aarrrgggh! Why was everyone in the Mathiverse like this? ‘Space
Hopper, I need your help. This cat isn’t making any sense.’
The Space Hopper wandered over.
‘That’s because you haven’t heard my tale,’ the cat said.
‘Don’t be silly, you see a tail, you don’t hear it. And I can see your tail
perfectly well.’
‘I’m a bit sensitive about it,’ said the cat.
‘Don’t worry, Mr Cat - I’m not going to tread on it.’
‘My name,’ said the cat, ‘is Superpaws.’
‘That’s a funny name.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Vikki.’
‘And you say mine is funny. Ha! Be warned, my tale is a sad one.’
‘No it’s not! It’s stripy and twirly and really quite beautiful!’
The Space Hopper took Vikki to one side and gently corrected her
misapprehension. Then they sat down while the cat related its story. (And if
you’d called it a story in the first place, Mr Superpaws, none of this
embarrassment would have happened! But she was too polite to say so.)
‘For many years,’ the cat began, ‘my life was uneventful. Until one
fateful day I saw a job advertised in an experimental laboratory. I should
have realized. “Cat” and “experimental laboratory” - it’s a disturbing
juxtaposition. But being a bit short of readies, you understand, I took the
plunge and sent in my application. To my delight - well, it was delight to
begin with -1 secured the position.’
‘Which was?’ Vikki enquired.
‘I had to sit in a box. Now, sitting in a box is something cats are pretty
good at. “Easy-peasy", I thought to myself. What they didn’t tell me was
that I’d be shut up in the box with some kind of gadgetry stuff, and I
couldn’t get out again until some geezer opened the box. All this was before
the Animal Rights Movement, you see. Nowadays it would never be
allowed, but back then, nobody cared.
‘So, I’m sitting in this box, and I can’t get out until this geezer lets me
out, and I look around to see what’s there - being a cat I can see in the dark,
and anyway, there was this lump of stuff that was glowing, so I thought,
“That’s nice, they’ve left me a nightlight.” And there was some kind of
glass tube, with nothing in it. Well, it looked like nothing -1 only found out
the real story later. The glass was a bit fragile-looking, and then I noticed
this dirty great hammer on a hinge, held up by a length of very thin thread.
So I thought, “Someone ought to get rid of that hammer before it falls down
and smashes the glass.” There was a pair of scissors, opened round the
thread, and there were lots of coils and springs and gear-wheels and things
running from the handles of the scissors to some incomprehensible gizmo
that was pointing at the glowing stuff.
‘Since it made no sense at all, I went to sleep, like any normal cat. Next
thing I know, the lid comes off, and someone’s poking their nose inside. So
I lie low, hoping to get a bit more shuteye.
‘"Oh, look, it’s dead!” says a voice. ‘Course, I knew I wasn’t - we cats
can tell that kind of thing - but I wasn’t savin’ nuffin’. “The detector must
have registered the decay of a radioactive atom and released the poison
gas,” says another.
’Poison gas! Well, I was ready to leap out of that box like a shot, I can
tell you. But then the first geezer says something that pins my ears back.
“So his wavefunction collapsed, then?” Look, matey, I’m proud of my
wavefunction, and I’d never let it collapse even if you paid me huge
bundles of dosh to neglect it. I wash my wavefunction every month,
whether it needs it or not. Anyway, “Yes,” says the second geezer. “He must
have been in a superposition of states-part alive, part dead. Then we opened
the box, and observed him - and collapsed his wavefunction to ‘dead’.”
‘Well, that did it. I opened one eye, then the other, and glared at them.
And do you know what the first geezer said?’
‘No.’
‘"Perhaps we should have used stronger poison.” Well, really!’ The cat
stopped for a moment to lick its paw and wipe it over one ear. ‘Later, I
figured it out,’ he continued. ‘I was a quantum cat, see? Subject to the
Principle of Superpawsition. Hence the name, of course. Like a wave, I
could interfere with myself, if 1 wanted to -though I hasten to add that I’m
not that way inclined at all.
‘When the box was shut, the two geezers outside couldn’t observe what
was happening, so they had to assume that the radioactive atom was in a
quantum superposition of the states “decayed” and “not decayed". Which,
bearing in mind the detector, hammer, glass vial, and poison gas, indicated
to them that / was in a quantum superposition of the states “dead” and “not
dead". When they opened the box and observed my state, however, their
actions immediately collapsed my wavefunction. Luckily for me, it
plumped for “not dead", and I was able to hoof it before they shut the lid
and tried again. But they thought I was dead. Too busy observing me to
notice that the hammer hadn’t moved.’
‘That’s awful,’ said Vikki.
‘The worst is yet to come,’ said the cat. ‘It so happened that just as I
escaped from the box, their attention was distracted by discovering that the
poison vial was still intact, and they didn’t actually observe me escaping. So
all they could assume was that I was in some quantum superposition of the
states “escaped” and “not escaped". And I’ve been wandering through Cat
Country ever since, wondering exactly when my wavefunction will collapse
- and whether, when it does, I’ll find I’ve been in the box all along, when I
thought I’d eluded their Evil Clutches.’

‘Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘For the purposes
of physics, you are not so much a cat as an extraordinarily large system of
fundamental particles, all interacting in some incredibly complicated way.
Since each individual particle is a quantum wave, it has a quantum
wavefunction. Therefore you have a quantum wavefunction—’
‘It’s more that I am a quantum wavefunction,’ Superpaws interrupted.
‘—which is therefore subject to the Principle of Superpawsition ... I
mean, Superposition. Your quantum wavefunction, when unobserved, can
be - indeed, most likely is - in a superposition of states.’
‘That’s the gist of it,’ said the cat.
‘When you are sealed up in your impermeable box, then it is impossible
for anyone to observe you, so—’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Vikki. ‘Why can’t Superpaws observe himself?
Isn’t he an observer ... inside the box?’
‘I wondered about that myself,’ said the cat, ‘but what they all say is
that because I can’t communicate my observation to anyone outside the
box, it doesn’t count.’
‘That seems very peculiar to me—’ Vikki began, but the Space Hopper
was anxious to continue with his summary.
‘—since it’s impossible for anyone else to observe you while you’re
inside the box, your wavefunction can remain in a superposition of states.’
‘Yes.’
‘The relevant states being “alive” and “dead".’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ asked Vikki. ‘Why couldn’t Superpaws’s state be a
superposition of “hairy” and “hungry"?’
‘Dunno,’ said the cat. ‘To be honest, that’s my most probable state -
what physicists call the “ground state".’
‘Or “covered in purple spots” and “descending from a tall building by
parachute", for that matter,’ said Vikki, warming to the task.
‘Not quite as likely,’ said the cat. The Space Hopper felt a kind of itch at
the back of his mind, a vague memory that wouldn’t pop into conscious
view.
‘No, but in the quantum world, anything that’s remotely possible has to
be taken into account, yes?’ Vikki persisted.
‘Yes,’ said the cat, ‘that’s what worries me.’
‘Now, let me ask you about observations,’ said Vikki. ‘Just what
constitutes an observation in quantum theory?’
 ‘It’s any interaction between the system being observed and its
environment that generates a well-defined number,’ said the Space Hopper.
What was that elusive thought?
‘So if I count Superpaws’s tail and get “one", that’s an observation?’
‘Yes. If you count Superpaws’s tail and get five, that’s an observation,
too. But not a very good one.’
‘And what happens when someone makes an observation?’
‘The wavefunction collapses to some pure state.’
‘What’s a pure state?’
‘One that can’t be described as a superposition of other states. Which,
by some mathematical trickery, is the same as one that leads to a numerical
answer. So pure states are the only ones that can be observed.’
Vikki thought about that. ‘And “dead” is a pure state?’
‘Yes, because you can observe it.’
I’m not sure that isn’t circular logic,’ objected Vikki. ‘What number do
you get for a dead cat?’
‘Zero. Breaths per year.’
‘Hmm. I’m not convinced. Is “dead” really a quantum state?’
’Everything is really a quantum state.’
‘No, you didn’t hear the emphasis. Is it really one quantum state?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Couldn’t a cat be dead in more than one way? I mean - run over by a
bus, eaten by an alligator, squashed by a rampaging hippopotamus—’
‘Do you mind?’ protested the cat. ‘I think you enjoyed that!’
‘Sorry, just listing hypotheticals. How can you tell from the quantum
state of a cat that it’s dead?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Alive?’
‘Same problem. I’m not sure you can even tell it’s a cat.’
‘So if “dead” is really lots of possible states, and “alive” is really lots of
possible states, what happens when you superpose half of each? You get
even more possibilities. For all we know, “covered in purple spots and
descending from a tall building by parachute” is 13 per cent dead plus 87
per cent alive if you choose the right “dead” and “alive” states. I mean,
suppose it’s “only just dead and covered in lots of purple spots” and
“extremely alive and vibrant and descending from a very tall building by an
oversized parachute"? Wouldn’t 13 per cent dead plus 87 per cent alive
work out as “covered in purple spots and descending from a tall building by
parachute"?’
‘I have no idea. But your general point is a good one.’
‘Superpaws, it’s all nonsense, you know. You’re a cat, not a wave-
function. “Cat” is a classical concept, not a quantum one. I suppose that at
any given moment you’ve got a quantum wavefunction ... no, even that’s
not really true.’
‘Why not?’ asked the Space Hopper.
‘Because he’s interacting with his environment. So you can’t split off
the part of the quantum wavefunction that’s him, and the part of the
quantum wavefunction that’s the environment. For instance, are the
molecules in the food that have gone into his stomach part of him, or part of
his environment?’
‘I never thought about that,’ said the cat. ‘At first they’re not part of me,
and later they are. The main thing is to get as many of them as I can. But
this business about the collapse of the wavefunction: it definitely works,
you know, they’ve done experiments!’
‘With a cat?’
‘Well, like I told you, they were working on it when I... No, with
electrons.’
‘An electron is a very simple quantum system, Superpaws. A cat isn’t.
It’s immensely complicated. So terms like “pure state” and “superposition”
aren’t terribly clear-cut, are they?’
The Space Hopper finally remembered what had been bugging him.
‘Vikki, you’re right. Superpaws has a very short decoherence time.’
‘Blimey,’ said the cat, ‘now I’m feeling really safe.’
‘Superpositions of pure states kind of fuzz out in systems composed of
large numbers of particles. Their phases decohere.’
‘Deco here, deco there - whatever,’ said the cat. ‘I can’t abide jargon.’
‘OK. Er ... quantum states are usually interpreted as probabilities. If you
observe a mixture of pure states, say 13 per cent dead plus 87 per cent alive,
that is interpreted as a probability of 13 per cent that you observe a dead
state, and 87 per cent that you observe an alive state.’
‘Well, at least the odds are on my side,’ remarked the cat. ‘I’d prefer
better ones, though. Those are about the same as Russian roulette.’
 ‘However, the probability is just the amplitude of the state - the size of
the wave that corresponds to it, so to speak. As well as an amplitude, every
quantum wavefunction also has a phase.’
‘I’ve been going through a phase,’ said the cat. ‘Didn’t know I had one,
though.’
‘The phase is how far through the cycle of wave-motion the state has
got at a given moment,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Relative to some specific
choice.’ He was struggling. ‘I can show you the formula if you—’
‘You mean, like - the wave goes up and down and up and down, over
and over again, and the phase is whether it’s up, down, or somewhere in
between?’
‘Thank you, Vikki, that’s exactly what I mean. Though “up” and
“down” must be taken metaphorically. Now, the number you get when you
observe a state doesn’t depend on the phase. But the wavefunction you get
by superposing states does depend on the phase. People used to think you
couldn’t observe the phase, but now they just think it’s extraordinarily
difficult.
‘Anyway, every quantum system undergoes complicated changes in
phases as it interacts with its environment. That’s “deco-herence". If it’s a
simple system like an electron, it can maintain its phases in much the same
relationship for quite a while, so “superposition” has a well-defined
meaning, and it can behave like a quantum particle. But the decoherence
time - how long it takes for the phases to get jumbled up - increases very
rapidly as soon as the number of particles increases. Superpaws’s
wavefunction would decohere in a time so short that it doesn’t even make
sense to speak about it in quantum theory.’
‘Wonderful!’ said Vikki.
‘What good is all that to me?’ asked the cat.
‘It means, my dear Superpaws, that if you were ever in a state that was a
superposition of “dead” and “alive", you would have stayed in that state for
such an incredibly tiny fraction of a second that no one could ever have
caught you in it. Because you are a large quantum system, interacting with
your environment, you don’t behave like a quantum system at all. You
behave like a classical one.’
The cat digested this information. ‘But the box stopped me from
interacting with my environment.’
 ‘No, there was more than enough environment in the box. The
interaction of the radioactive atom with the detector made the wavefunction
decohere - you weren’t even involved at that point.’
‘I would have been,’ said the cat glumly, ‘if the detector had registered
the decay of a particle. Still, I see what you’re telling me. So I was never in
a superpawsition of “dead’ and “alive"?’
‘Not one that lasted long enough to count.’
‘What state was I in, then?’
‘You were either dead, or alive,’ said the Space Hopper. ’You would
know which - at least if it was “alive". An external observer wouldn’t know,
though - not until they opened the box. But there’s nothing mysterious
about that! Nearly everything that happens to us is like that. We can’t
predict what it will be, we just have to wait to find out. That’s not quantum.
It’s just ignorance.’
There was a long pause. Then, ‘I can live with that,’ said Superpaws.
‘It’s my stock in trade.’ And his face lit up with a U, almost as broad as the
Space Hopper’s.

Fourday 19 Noctember 2099 [continued]

Something’s been bothering me for a while, Diary my Friend, and I finally
managed to put my endpoint on it.
You know that the Mathiverse and the Planiturthian universe are
different, yet strangely intertwined. The Mathiverse is a collective mental
creation of Planiturthian intelligences - yet the structure and behaviour of
the Planiturthian universe is somehow governed by the Mathiverse. So have
these bizarre creatures invented their own universe out of pure mentality?
I asked the Space Hopper. And he laughed.
After a while, he apologized and said it was a really good question, but
he found it amusing because some Planiturthian scientists and philosophers
believe just that. They think that unless at least one Planiturthian Mind is
observing the universe -to ‘collapse its wavefunction’ - then it doesn’t exist.
 Most, though, think this is rubbish. (’Fortunately’, he added as an
afterthought.) A universe is even more complex than a cat, so its
decoherence time must be even shorter. And anyway, how could the brain to
house a Planiturthian mind ever have evolved in a nonexistent universe?
Good point, Diary.
What WAS going on, then? I asked him.
He pointed out that Planiturthians don’t possess a VUE. They can’t
experience the Mathiverse directly, like I’m doing. But that, he said, is
because they are real whereas /am a Virtual Unreality Construct. I got
annoyed, but he says he’s one too.
So how do Planiturthians experience the Mathiverse, then? Instead of a
VUE, they use an IMAGER. Imagination, Mathematics, Analogy,
Generalization, Extrapolation, and Recursion.
Take, for instance, their conception of space. They look around and
imagine themselves to be on a flat plane with an extra up/down direction.
(Planiturth is round, but no matter: it’s also BIG.) They turn this into the
mathematics of 3D Euclidean space. They use analogies with 2D space,
where they can draw pictures, to understand 3D. But - and this is crucial to
understanding how their minds work - they don’t stop there. They
generalize to 4D, 5D, nD, ∞D. And they extrapolate concepts from their 3D
experiences, so planes extrapolate to hyperplanes, spheres to n-spheres, and
so on. Finally (only you’ll see it’s not final at all) they recursively go back
to the imagination stage and start all over again. Which is what’s led them
from a simple 3D Euclidean spatial model to the far more sophisticated and
intricate geometry of the quantum universe.
‘So it’s all in their minds?’ I asked the Space Hopper.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Their minds are all in It. Their brains are built from
Planiturthian-universe matter, obeying Planiturthian-universe rules. Their
minds are processes that go on inside their brains - and many of those
processes are internal representations of that external universe. So, not
surprisingly, Planiturthian minds construct - by the collective use of
IMAGER - a Mathiverse that mimics the effects of those external rules
pretty well. They don’t always get the rules right -for all they know there
may not be any ultimate rules at all - but they keep tinkering, and slowly the
correspondence between Mathiversian rules and observed reality becomes
extraordinarily accurate.’
 ‘So that’s all there is to it, then?’ I asked him.
‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘There’s something very mysterious going on, too.
Why is it that Planiturthians live in a universe where IMAGER works,
anyway?’
‘Why?’ I asked him, after a long silence.
‘Beats me,’ he said.
 12
THE PARADOX TWINS

‘Grosvenor?’
‘Yes, Lee?’
‘You really miss her, don’t you?’
Grosvenor Square dropped his newsscroll and glared at his wife.
‘Who?’
‘Vikki.’
Grosvenor went dark grey with repressed anger. ‘I’m surprised you can
bring yourself to utter that name in this house after what she’s done to us!’
Jubilee said nothing, but she was clearly on the verge of tears. ‘Not even a
postcard or a phone call ... that’s what I find really annoying, Lee. I might
forgive her running away - she’s an adult, when it comes down to it. But not
like this.’ He shook his vertices in disbelief. ‘This just leaves us stuck in
emotional limbo. It’s so unfair?
‘It’s not like our Vikki, is it?’
‘Not like her at all.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m very worried, Lee.
Maybe ... maybe somebody’s stopping her from getting in touch. Maybe
she’s in some kind of trouble. I -1 know I don’t talk about it much, dear, but
it would just upset everyone. So I keep my feelings to myself.’
‘And that’s what upsets everyone, Grosvenor. Don’t you understand
that? You don’t need to hide your feelings from me. How do you imagine /
feel?’
‘I - I know ... but even so, I think it’s sometimes more upsetting talking
about her, when we can’t do anything about it. I just.. . wish ... she’d get in
touch. It would set my mind at rest to know that somewhere on Flatland
she’s safe and sound, and that she’s put all this three dimensions nonsense
behind her.’

*
Fiveday 20 Noctember 2099
OK, Diary: now get THIS!
You’ll remember I told you that the Mathiverse is both a Planiturthian
construct and the driving force of the Planiturthian Universe. Yes, I know
it’s mad, but that’s Planiturthians for you ...
Anyway, a consequence of this loopy self-referential nature of
Planiturthian civilization is that, uniquely among the inhabitants of the
Mathiverse, they keep changing their minds about which Space they are
actually in.
In his Romance of Many Dimensions, my great-great-granddad Albert
uses the term ‘Spaceland’ for the geometry of Planiturth. I mean, here’s
how his memoirs START:

I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature
clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

And he talks about Spaceland sailors, and Spaceland children, and a number
of other things which - thanks to some useful guidance from the Space
Hopper - make it clear to me that old Albert managed to confuse Planiturth
with a Mathiversian Construct. No surprise, then, to find that Spaceland was
the Mathiversian Construct that was believed to be a valid geometry for
REAL Planiturthian space in the days when Albert visited what he was
TOLD was Spaceland. (Remember, Diary Darling, that for profound
reasons of Cosmic Synchronicity, deriving from Narrative Imperative, the
enumeration of years in the Planiturthian Universe proceeds in step with
that in Flatland, except for a numerical difference of 100, so that our 1999 is
their 1899, and our 2100 is their 2000.)
Well, as you have no doubt anticipated, by the time Yours Truly got to
visit Planiturth the fickle creatures had changed their minds. No longer did
they imagine their world to be an ideal 3D Euclidean Space. Not a bit of it.
It had become a 4D Spacetime. With various bells and whistles which I
shall reveal at a later date!! They had come to this momentous conclusion,
apparently, because of an Albert of their own ... But I am getting ahead of
my story, as usual. I am so impatient, Diary Dear, to tell you the astonishing
things I am discovering.
 *

Vikki and the Space Hopper were sitting in a bus.

The Space Hopper had bought them two tickets for a kind of historical
package tour of Planiturthian Physics. Actually, it was an omnibus, meaning
that it could go anywhere. Not any-where on Planiturth, but anywhere. It
was a Universal Touring Machine. And in the wild expanses of the
Mathiverse there’s an awful lot of anywhere to go, but most of it is so
bizarre that it’s probably best not to. The trouble with package tours,
though, is that once you’ve paid your deposit you don’t have much of a say
in where you go.
The bus was chugging its laborious way along Continuum Carriageway,
a metaspatial bypass that avoided the need to drive through Topologica,
which was always a nightmare because nothing ever stayed the same shape.
The driver was desperately looking for the exit to Pyramid Park and hoping
he hadn’t passed it by mistake, when Vikki and the Space Hopper heard the
sirens screeching in the distance, far behind them. The driver must have
heard them too, because he pulled over to the hard shoulder and killed the
bus’s motor.
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooo
Whatever it was shot past so quickly that they never caught a glimpse of
it.
‘What was that?’ screeched Vikki.
‘Dunno,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘I’ll have a word with the driver.’ He
hopped along to the front of the bus and engaged in animated conversation
with the person behind the wheel. After a few minutes, he hopped back
again. ‘Urn. Let me see if I can summarize ... you’ve heard of the Fire
Brigade?’
‘Of course,’ said Vikki. Every city in Flatland had its own Fire Brigade.
‘They ride round in fire engines and put out fires. Try to, anyway.’
That was the Light Brigade.’
‘They ... ride round in light engines and ... put out lights?’
‘Mmm ... sort of,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘They’d put out the light if
they could catch it, definitely - but they’ve never succeeded. They chase
light. But it’s a wild-goose chase, because in this Space-time they have no
chance of succeeding. Of course that doesn’t stop them - it’s their job, you
see. And they’re very conscientious, the Light Brigade.’
‘What a shame. Why can’t they catch the light?’
‘Because it’s faster than them.’
‘I think,’ said Vikki, concentrating hard, ‘that’s just another way of
saying they can’t catch it.’
‘I guess. The real point is, it’s faster than anything- except itself. It’s the
fastest thing there is. Didn’t you notice all those round signs along the
roadside that say ©?’
‘I thought they were copyright notices.’
‘No, c is the speed of light, 300,000 kilometres per second. Those ©
signs tell us the universal speed limit in this part of the Mathiverse - the
Relativistic Spacetime Continuum.’
Vikki thought about this. ‘I didn’t realize light had a speed. When you
switch on a lamp, you don’t see the light seeping across the room towards
you.’
‘Vikki, even if it was doing that - what would you see it with?’
‘Light - oh. You only see it when the light arrives, of course. Sorry.’
‘There’s more to it than that,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘You don’t hear
the words other people are speaking making their way across the room
towards your ears, either. For the same reason. But sound takes a
perceptible time to travel from one place to another. That’s what makes
echoes work - you hear your own words bouncing back to you with a time
delay. Caused, of course, by the time it takes the sound to get to whatever it
bounces off and come back to your ear. With me so far?’
‘Yes. But why aren’t we aware of echoes in a room?’
‘In a big room we do. Even in a small room, echoes give the sound its
character. But mostly we don’t notice because the time it takes sound to
cross a room is a tiny fraction of a second.
‘Light is similar - but it’s a lot faster. You see a flash of lightning almost
the instant it happens, but the thunder takes time to reach you, and you’re
aware of a delay. About three seconds per kilometre.’
‘I always wondered why that happened.’
‘As far as lightning goes, light could be instantaneous. Infinitely fast.
But it’s not. Planiturthians found ways to measure it - astronomical ones, to
begin with - and they found that it travels at the aforementioned 300,000
kilometres per second. Our old friend Alberteinstein - yes, the People who
realized that light can behave like a particle - used that one simple fact as
the basis of an entire theory of Spacetime. He called his theory
“Relativity".’
‘Because it said that everything was relative?’
‘Pretty much the exact opposite! The main thing to remember about
Relativity,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘is that it’s an extraordinarily silly
name.’
‘Then why use it?’
‘Historical accident,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘The Planiturthians are
stuck with it. The whole point of Relativity is not that “everything is
relative” but that one particular thing - the speed of light -is unexpectedly
absolute. Here, take this gun.’ A small pistol had materialized beside them.
’Gun?’ Vikki squealed. ‘What would I do with a gun?’
‘It’s all right, it’s a potato gun. Point it forwards and fire it.’
‘But I might hit the driver—’
‘No, aim at that big sign beside the road, the one that says TIREDNESS
CAN KILL. Oh, and you’d better load it first.’ The Space Hopper passed
her a potato. She looked baffled. ‘Just put it in the chamber there. Like I
said, it’s a potato gun. It fires potatoes. Whole ones.’
Vikki had got used to strange requests from the Space Hopper, so she
loaded the gun with a medium-sized King Edward and took steady aim, just
past the driver’s left ear. She began to squeeze the trigger ...
‘Wait! Hold it! First, a question for you. You’re travelling in this bus at
50 kph. A stationary gun fires a potato at 500 kph. How fast will this potato
travel?’
‘Um ... Well, it gets a 50 kph boost from the bus, so I guess you add the
speeds up, like Running Turtle would have done. That makes 550 kph.’
The Space Hopper pulled a remote velocimeter from the voluminous
folds of metaspace. ‘We can measure the speed with this. Right, fire away,
and we’ll see.’
The gun went off with a bang. The driver ducked as a potato-shaped
hole appeared in the windscreen next to his head, and the bus wobbled all
over the metaspatial road. The driver turned and glared at them, then turned
back again quickly before he hit a seven-dimensional truck.
 ‘Sorry,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Physics experiment.’ The driver
muttered something unintelligible and probably obscene. The Space Hopper
consulted the remote velocimeter. ‘Well, it’s 549.999999999 something.
Good enough for government work.’ He handed Vikki a torch. ‘Now, let’s
try it again with light.’
‘Light?’
‘Light travels at approximately 1,080,000,000 kph (300,000 kps). But
the bus is moving at 50 kph. So at what speed does the light hit the sign?
Not that sign, we’ve passed it. The one coming up next.’
Vikki thought about this. ‘I guess the speeds add up, like they did for the
potato. So that ought to give a speed of 1,080,000,050 kph.’
‘OK, let’s try it. Ready ... aim .. . switchV
A pool of light illuminated the sign, before the bus chugged past.
‘Too quick for me to tell,’ said Vikki.
‘Too quick for anyone. But the remote velocimeter knows - it’s
extremely accurate. And it says the speed was 1,080,000,000 kph.’
‘What happened to the extra 50?’
‘Not there. Extraordinary, isn’t it? If you fire light from a moving
vehicle, the light travels at exactly the same speed as if the vehicle wasn’t
moving at all.’
‘That’s mad. Surely relative velocities don’t—’
‘In Spaceland geometry, no. In Relativistic geometry, yes. And to make
it worse, even though our bus is moving, the speed we measure for light
passing along the bus is exactly the same as the speed that would be
measured by a stationary observer.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Let’s ask one.’ The Space Hopper leaned out of the window and
shouted to a motorist trying to change a flat torus. ‘Oi, mate! What speed do
you measure for light?’
The motorist made a rude gesture.
‘Picked the wrong observer, I think,’ said the Space Hopper, unabashed.
‘Ah, here’s a policeman. I’ll ask him. Driver - slow down! Stop for a
moment, there’s a good chap! Pardon me, Officer, but what speed do you
measure for light?’
‘1,080,000,000 kph,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s the lawful speed limit, sir
- you must have seen the signs. Nothing goes faster than 1,080,000,000 kph.
At least, if it does, it’ll have me to reckon with. And a speeding ticket.’
Vikki still felt that there was a difficulty. ‘Look, Hopper, I know I’m
probably being unimaginative, but you can’t limit the speed of light just by
passing a speeding law. The only law that can limit the speed of light is a
law of physics. And physics says that relative speeds add up.’
The Space Hopper shook his horns. ‘Ah. Physics prior to Albert-einstein
said that, certainly. But not after. You can do very sophisticated
experiments, with highly accurate equipment, and you get the same answer
- as a People called Michelsonandmorley discovered between 1881 and
1894, Planiturthian time. He was trying to detect the motion of Planiturth
relative to the “aether", an all-pervading fluid that was thought to transmit
all electromagnetic radiation, light included. If Spaceland physics were
correct, that motion should show up as a difference in the apparent speed of
light when Planiturth was at opposite points of its orbit, moving in opposite
directions. But Michelsonandmorley couldn’t find any difference in the
speed at all, even with very sensitive equipment.’
‘All that proves is that Planiturth must carry the aether along with it
when it moves in its orbit,’ Vikki objected.
That had never occurred to the Space Hopper, and for a moment it threw
him. ‘That’s quite a cute theory, Vikki. But it’s wrong, because ...’ he
searched desperately for a counter-argument ‘... you’d expect to see funny
effects in the light from distant stars if the aether was swirling around like
that. Michelsonandmorley concluded that either there wasn’t an aether at
all, or Planiturth wasn’t moving relative to it - which he didn’t think was
credible - or that there was something pretty weird about light.’

The bus resumed its journey, and the Space Hopper continued with his
explanation. ‘In 1905 Alberteinstein turned Michelsonand-morley’s
observation into a theory - Special Relativity, it was called - to the effect
that there is something pretty weird about light. And he pointed out that this
meant there had to be something pretty weird about space, too. Well
actually he wasn’t the first to do that, but he was the first to understand the
Big Picture behind it all.’
 ‘How can space be weird?’
‘Let me adjust your VUE to exaggerate the effect I’m talking about. It
will slow light down to a modest running pace. Now, you sit on that seat,
and watch me hopping past you. See if you notice anything different about
me.’ The Space Hopper bounced past, very slowly.
‘Not a thing. You look perfectly normal to me.’ Vikki coughed and
corrected herself. ‘As normal as you ever do, that is.’
‘Good. That’s what I should look like. But now I’ll speed up.’
Again the Space Hopper bounced past her, getting some aggrieved looks
from the other passengers.
‘You look - Space Hopper, you look thinner.’
‘That’s right. And so do you. Not thinner, though: you’re a line and
your thickness is zero anyway. Shorter. But when you say I look “thinner",
what you really mean is that my width looks shorter, yes?’
‘Yes.’ Vikki curled her tip round to look along her length. ‘But I’m the
same length as usual.’
‘To you, yes. To me, too - while I’m sitting here and not moving. But if
I move fast enough, you look shrunken to me.’
‘But—’
‘I know, you don’t look shrunken to you. That’s because you’re not
moving relative to yourself. But you are moving relative to me, so to me
you look shorter.’
‘But... wait. If I’m moving relative to you, then you’re moving relative
to me. So to me, you look shorter.’
‘Correct! It’s perfectly symmetric! When we are in relative motion, I
look shorter to you, and you look shorter to me. Whereas we each look our
normal length to ourselves. Isn’t that amazing?’
‘Astonishing. I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s a necessary consequence of light having an absolute speed.
Light from different parts of a moving object reach you at different times,
having travelled different distances. Combined with an absolute speed for
light, that makes the moving object seem to contract in the direction of its
motion. Alberteinstein realized that this contraction was a real physical
effect. A lot of other Planit-urthians, like Hendriklorentz and Henripoincare,
were working on the same idea, but they kind of saw it as a mathematical
fiction. Not so old Alberteinstein. He was made of sterner stuff!
 ‘And it doesn’t end there,’ continued the Space Hopper. ‘Time has to
slow down when you move quickly, too.’
‘Time usually seems to speed up when you move quickly, in my
experience.’
‘Ah, that’s psychological time. I mean time as measured by a clock.’
‘Oh. But why does time—’
‘I’ll bounce past you again, but this time I’ll shine a torch. Still with
artificially slow light, OK? I’ll give you a stick and a clock, and you can
measure the speed of the light from my torch. And I’ll carry a stick exactly
the same as yours, and a clock exactly like yours, and I’ll measure the speed
of light too. First, I want you to be sure that your measuring instruments and
mine are identical.’
Vikki put the two sticks side by side - they were exactly the same
length. She watched the clocks ticking for a few minutes -they kept
identical time. ‘Yes, they’re the same.’
‘Good. Now, as well as measuring the speed of the light from my torch,
I want you to keep an eye on my stick. Can do?’
‘Sure. And I can chew gum at the same time, too. I’ll do my best,
Hopper.’
‘Right. Let’s go for it!’
The Space Hopper hopped past her, and suddenly switched on his torch.
Vikki held up her stick and timed the light as it crawled along the stick’s
length. A quick mental calculation supplied the speed: 300,000 kps. In
VUE-foreshortened kilometres, naturally.
She couldn’t help noticing that the Space Hopper’s stick had shrunk
quite a lot, as she’d seen before. It looked about half the length of hers. So
he’d see the light travel the length of the stick in half the time she’d
measured for her stick. So he’d have to measure—
‘300,000 kps,’ said the Space Hopper.
‘No,’ protested Vikki, ‘you ought to get 600,000 kps. I was watching,
and the light travelled along your stick a lot faster than it did along mine.
Because your stick had shrunk.’
The Space Hopper shook his horns in mild irritation. ‘I’ve never heard
quite so many misconceptions in one statement!’ he complained. ‘To begin
with, you already know that you and I are going to measure the same speed
for light. So why do you think I was going to get 600,000 kps?’ The
infectious ∪ lit up his face. ‘2c or not 2c, that is the question!’ he
declaimed theatrically. ‘And the answer is ... not 2c, but c. Then, you say
my stick has shrunk. I assure you that from my point of view it hasn’t. It’s
entirely normal. To me, your stick has shrunk.’
‘Oh. Right. So how come—’
‘Think about how we observe each other’s clocks. According to my
clock, light takes the same time to traverse my stick as it does to traverse
your stick according to your clock. We get the same speed, OK? But you
observe my stick as being shorter - so what do you deduce about your
observations of my clock?’
‘Um ... Oh. Your clock must be slowing down by just the right amount
to compensate for the shrinkage of your stick. The light covers a shorter
distance, but the clock measures the time as being longer, so the two
changes cancel out.’
‘As you observe my clock and stick, that’s a correct description. In other
words, from your observational viewpoint, not only do objects contract
along the direction in which they are moving, but time also expands by the
same amount. If the length halves, the time doubles. That’s a consequence
of the speed of light being the same whether you observe it or I do. Speeds
intertwine distance and time: if one changes, so must the other.’
‘I guess that makes sense.’
‘Yes. Now, it also turns out that an object’s mass increases with its
velocity, becoming infinite at the speed of light, too -but let’s not go into
that now. What makes less sense - but is also true in Relativity - is that I
don’t notice anything strange happening to my stick or my clock - even
though you do. Instead, I get the impression that it’s your stick and clock
that are doing funny things. Because, you see, it’s just as accurate to say
that you’re moving relative to me as it is to say that I’m moving relative to
you.’
‘That’s crazy!’
‘Planiturthian physics is crazy. But that’s because the Planit-urthian
universe is crazy. Don’t blame the physicists!’ The Space Hopper paused.
‘Well, not for that, at any rate.’ He blinked. ‘But you’re right, it does seem
paradoxical. And, by a remarkable coincidence, the bus is approaching our
destination at just the right narrative moment. I want you to meet two
acquaintances of mine. The Paradox Twins.’
 *

‘But - they’re different? said Vikki, unable to stop herself. ‘You told me
they were twins! Oh! I’m sorry! That wasn’t very polite of me, was it?’
‘Wasn’t it?’ one of the Space Hopper’s acquaintances asked the other.
‘No, it wasn’t,’ said the other.
‘But the explanation—’ began one.
‘Is very—’ the other added.
‘Simple. We are—’
‘—twins.’
‘He is—
‘—Twindledumb. And I am—’
‘No, I am—’
‘Have it your own way. He is Twindledumber.’
What extraordinarily curious people, Vikki thought. ‘Being twins would
explain why you’re the same—’ she began. ‘But not why you’re—’
‘But we’re not the same’, Twindledumb pointed out.
‘No, he’s a lot older than—’
‘—him.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Vikki, ‘if you’re twins, you must be very
nearly the same age as each other.’
‘That’s the paradox—’ the Space Hopper began, but the twins
interrupted.
‘Do we—’
‘—look the—’
‘—same age?’
‘Well, no,’ she admitted. ‘That’s what I was saying right at the start!
Twindledumb looks much older than Twindledumber.’ Then she greyed
with embarrassment again. ‘Oh! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to ... you look
very distinguish—’
Twindledumb inclined his head of sparse, greying hair to reveal a big
bald spot. Twindledumber inclined his head of thick, dark hair. ‘We’re not
offended,’ they both said at once. ‘Yet...’ they added.
 ‘How ... how can you be twins, when one of you is much older than the
other?’ Twindledumb scratched his ear. ‘It’s a long story—’ he began.
‘No, it’s a short story’, contradicted Twindledumber.
‘It was to you! To me, it was a long one. That’s the point!’
Vikki intervened to halt the bickering. ‘Surely it has to be either a long
story or a short one. It can’t be both.’
‘Oh, but it can,’ said Twindledumb, ‘it all depends on who’s telling it.’
‘No, it all depends on who’s observing it.’
‘Same difference, other way round, yes?’
‘No! Different difference.’
Once more Vikki tried to calm them down. ‘Twindledumb: you said that
to you it was a long story. Tell me the story, then - but keep it short. Space
Hopper and I haven’t got all day, I’m afraid.’
‘Tell a long story but keep it short... I’ll try. About forty years ago,
Twindledumber and I were exactly the same age. In fact, we both looked
like he does now. But then he went off in a spaceship to a distant star, and
he didn’t come back until a few weeks ago. That’s it. Short enough for
you?’
‘Admirably concise.’
‘It’s a pity you don’t have time to hear about my onions. I started them
from seed, you see, the first year my brother left, and they started to
produce beautiful little green shoots, and then—’
‘Very interesting I’m sure,’ said Vikki hurriedly. ‘Now, Twindledumber:
you said your story was short. So tell it to me. Take your time, no need to
rush.’
‘Well,’ Twindledumber, began, ‘it all began when a mutual friend
happened to remark - it was over dinner, as I recall, munchroom pudding
with a salt-cellary glaze - and ...’ He droned on, and everyone except Vikki
fell asleep ... Three hours later, Twindledumber finally reached the point
where he climbed into his spaceship and set off for the distant star. ‘The
ship was fast - very fast. Ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine
nine nine nine nine nine nine per cent of the speed of light, the
manufacturers claimed, and I’m pretty sure it did at least Ninety-nine point
nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine eight per cent.
Anyway, it took me out to the star, we whizzed round the back of it, and its
gravitational pull slingshotted us straight back the way we’d come ... and
before I knew it, I was home again.
‘To find that he ...’ Twindledumber pointed at his brother ‘... had gone
prematurely old.’
‘Prematurely? Prematurely? Forty years I waited for you to get back! Of
course I was old!’
‘But I was only gone for a couple of days!’ The twins glared at each
other, and then they both laughed; a little sadly, Vikki felt.
‘He’s right,’ said Twindledumb.
’He’s right, too,’ said Twindledumber.
‘We’re both right,’ they said together.
‘Relativistic time dilation, Vikki,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Because
Twindledumber was moving so fast, for him time slowed to a crawl. So the
whole journey only took just two days. But for Twindledumb, stuck at home
and not going anywhere, forty years passed.’
Vikki nodded. Then a thought struck her. ‘But ... just now, when I
measured your clock as running slow, you measured mine as running slow
too! “It’s symmetric", you said.’
‘I did. And it was.’
‘So why isn’t this symmetric, too? Twindledumb sees Twindle-
dumber’s clock as going slower, so to him Twindledumber hardly ages at
all, but poor Twindledumb ages forty years. But, by the same token,
Twindledumber observes Twindledumb moving very fast relative to him, so
to him Twindledumb hardly ages at all, but poor Twindledumber ages forty
years. Symmetric, see?’
The Space Hopper frowned. ‘The difficulty is, Vikki, that after the
round trip is over, they’re both back in the same place, not moving. They
can’t each be a lot older than the other.’
‘Oh. Sorry, never thought of that. But surely that means Relativity is
rubbish?’
‘Don’t be embarrassed. And it’s not. What you’re missing is a technical
point - an important one, as the stories of the Paradox Twins illustrate, but a
subtle one. What I said about the speed of light being the same however fast
you’re moving, but lengths contracting and time expanding - that’s true, but
only if your speed is uniform. If you accelerate, it all gets more
complicated. Acceleration is not a relative quantity in Alberteinstein’s
theory. Like I said, “Relativity” is a silly name. “Inertial frames” is the
jargon for “what you observe when moving at a constant speed". Even the
speed of light ceases to be constant for an accelerating observer. And the
source of asymmetry between the twins is that Twindle-dumber went off in
a spaceship, and he accelerated quite fast to get up to lightspeed, and then
he accelerated again when rounding the star, and finally he decelerated to
avoid smashing into his brother at lightspeed when he arrived home again.
Whereas Twindledumb stayed in an inertial frame - no acceleration. So it’s
not symmetric, and that’s why Twindledumb has aged forty years while
Twindledumber has aged only two days.’

Fourelay 19 Noctember 2099

Dear Diary
It’s not easy getting the hang of Relativity. There are so many pitfalls,
you need a clear head. Which, frankly, I lack at the moment.
For instance, there’s the paradox of the near-lightspeed train. Suppose
that a train is being driven along a railway track at close to lightspeed, and
there are small gaps between lengths of the track. Then the driver observes
the gaps as moving at near-light-speed, so they shrink, and to him they
appear even smaller than they would have been when he was (they were?)
stationary. So he expects just the tiniest of bumps as the train passes over
each gap.
On the other hand, to a ‘stationary’ observer beside a gap, the TRAIN is
moving at near-lightspeed, so it shrinks - so much so that it ought to fall
into the gap between the rails!
How do you resolve that contradiction, Diary?
You don’t know, do you? The answer, as in all of these apparent
paradoxes of Relativity, is to remember that relativistic geometry is
mathematically self-consistent. Any apparent problems must result from its
interpretation. So you use the maths to work out what really happens. In this
case, the train does ’fall into’ the gap - but it’s travelling so fast that it
doesn’t fall very far\ So, even as viewed by a stationary observer beside the
gap, all that happens is a very tiny bump.
 Which is what the driver experiences, too.
So, if you want to think sensibly about relativity, Diary Dear, then you
have to go the whole hogsagon. A mixture of nonrela-tivistic and relativistic
thinking is inevitably fatal.
 13
THE DOMAIN OF THE HAWK KING

‘They were such a sad pair,’ said Vikki. ‘I’d hate to wait forty years for my
brother to return from a voyage, only to discover he’d hardly aged at all
compared with me.’
‘It’s even sadder. You see, Twindledumb could have gone to the star
with his brother, but he decided not to.’
‘Why?’
‘Said he couldn’t spare the time.’
There was a long silence.
‘Was that... a joke?’ Vikki asked, finally.
‘I wish it had been. It shows how important it can be to understand your
universe as it is, and not just as you imagine it to be.’
‘I suppose. Still, Twindledumb could always make an interstellar
voyage himself, and get their ages back in synch.’
‘I’m not sure the spaceship still exists. But there’s another way that
Relativity could help the twins overcome their paradoxical temporal
displacement.’
Vikki waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. So eventually she asked,
‘What?’
‘What what?’
‘What way. To help the twins.’
‘Oh, sorry, my mind was wandering. Time travel.’
‘You mean - going into the future or the past?’
‘We all travel into the future - at one year per year. The past... well,
that’s trickier. But perhaps not impossible. Relativity doesn’t just change
our perceptions of space, time, and matter. It also affects our view of
causality.’
‘Which is?’
‘The link between cause and effect. If you want to understand that, we
need to visit Minkowski Space. Now, because of the commercial
exploitation of Intellectual Property rights .. . look, it’s tricky to explain, but
basically somebody bought Minkowski Space, along with several other
spaces that you really ought to visit. They’ve been franchised out for the
tourist trade, so I’ll need to pull a few strings to get us in there without
paying. I’ll just make a call on my mobile.’
The conversation was lengthy, laced with words that Vikki didn’t
understand, and mostly consisted of the Space Hopper reminding whoever
was on the other end of past favours granted and future favours to come.
Occasionally the Space Hopper flashed her his trademark ∪ , as if to
indicate that the negotiations were succeeding, and once he actually winked
at her.
‘OK, we’re in - but only if we can get there in a hurry. Let me reset your
VUE, and we can head straight for—’

‘—Minny Space. And there she isǃ Hi, babe! Long time no see!’
‘Don’t you try your alien charms on me, Hopper. If you wanna be my
Hopper, you have got to give, baby. Who’s the geom?’
‘What’s a geom?’ asked Vikki.
‘Slang for “geometric entity",’ said the Space Hopper. ‘As a Flatland
line, you’re an archetypal geom. Don’t be offended - it’s just Minny’s way.
She does it to maintain street cred.’
Vikki decided not to ask what street cred was. Life was too short to sort
out everything you didn’t understand. ‘Minny?’
‘Minny Space. Short for Minkowski Space, you see ... She’s one of the
Space Girls. And if I’m not mistaken, here come the others! Victoria: meet
Curvy Space, Bendy Space, Pushy Space, and Squarey Space.’
Suddenly Vikki was surrounded by strangely clad - well, that wasn’t
exactly the word, but it would have to do - Spaces. Rather brash, fast-
talking spaces, who used a lot of street slang and for some reason kept
breaking into song-and-dance routines. They seemed very confident, very
self-aware, and - to be frank - they were a considerable pain in the endpoint.
When they discovered that Vikki was a girl, though, they immediately
tried to make her feel at home. And, apparently, to empower her - an
operation for which they were an endless fount of novel ideas. ‘Yo, Vikki,
what you Flatty girls need is Line Power]’
‘I’ve heard of a power line,’ said Vikki. ‘Would that do?’
‘No, that’s quite different!’ pouted Pushy Space.
‘The Lines of Flatland should assert their power!’ asserted Squarey
Space.
‘Stop giving in to the Polygons!’ Curvy Space added. ‘Right now!
Thank you very much!’
‘Above all, get yourself a Good Manager!’ advised Bendy Space.
‘Exploit your assets!’ Minny Space clarified.
‘Kick some assets!’ shouted Curvy Space, and the others all laughed.
This all sounded like fun, and Vikki would have tried it if she’d had the
foggiest idea what any of them were talking about. Female emancipation, of
some kind, by the sound of it. ‘We’re working on it’, she told them. ‘At
least, /am. I don’t think my mum is. But I kind of suspect she secretly
approves. It takes a while ... I’m not sure I really know—’
‘What part of “know” don’t you understand, girly?’
‘Minny,’ the Space Hopper interjected, ‘could you oblige and introduce
Vikki to modern notions of causality?’
‘Yeah, sure. OK, Vikki - pay attention and ignore the grinning idiot who
brought you here. In relativistic spacetime, everything depends heavily
upon which “frame of reference” an observer uses. Moving and static
observers see the same events in different ways. Now, in full-blooded
Minkowski spacetime, space is 3D; but I’m Minny Space, and that’s not just
a nickname like the Space Hopper told you, it’s because I’m a miniature
version. My spatial coordinate is one-dimensional.
 ‘Now, as a particle moves through spacetime, it traces out a curve, its
world-line. If its velocity is constant, its world-line is straight. The slope of
the world-line depends on the particle’s speed. Particles that move very
slowly cover a small amount of space in a lot of time, so their world-lines
are close to the vertical; particles that move very fast cover a lot of space in
very little time, so their world-lines are nearly horizontal. Got it?’
‘Sure have.’
‘In between, at an angle of 45 degrees, are the world-lines of particles
that cover a given amount of space in the same amount of time - measured
in the right units. Those units are chosen to correspond with each other
through the medium of the speed of light - say years for time units and
light-years for space units. Tell me, Vikki, what covers one light-year of
space in one year of time?’
Vikki knew that one. ‘Light.’
‘Right on, babe, and I choose my words with care. So world-lines
sloping at 45 degrees correspond to light rays, or anything else that can
move at the same speed as light.’
‘My head is starting to ache.’
‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Now, Relativity won’t let anything move
faster than light. There’s a maths reason: if things could move faster than
light their lengths would become imaginary, and so would their masses and
the local passage of time. So the world-line of a real particle can never
slope more than 45 degrees away from the vertical. Such a world-line is
called a timelike curve. The extreme opposite is a curve in Minny Space that
always slopes more than 45 degrees away from the vertical. That’s called a
spacelike curve, and no part of it can coincide with the world-line of a
particle.
‘Any event in space-time has associated with it a light cone, formed by
the two 45 degree diagonal lines that pass through it. It’s called a cone
because when space has two dimensions, the corresponding surface really is
a (double) cone. The forward region contains the future of the event - all the
points in spacetime that it could possibly influence. The backward region is
its past - all the events that could possibly have influenced it. Everything
else is forbidden territory, elsewheres and elsewhens that have no possible
causal connections with the chosen event.
‘A timelike curve always moves from its past into its future. Spacelike
curves are quite different: no point on them lies in the past or future of any
other point.
‘In ordinary space, the distance between two points tells you how far
apart they are. In Special Relativity there’s something kinda similar, and it’s
called the interval between spacetime events. Along the 45 degree lines the
interval is zero, so those lines are called null curves. The interval tells you
how time seems to pass for a moving observer.’
‘Yes, the Space Hopper told me about that,’ said Vlkki. ‘It’s time
dilation, isn’t it? The faster an object moves, the slower time appears to pass
for an observer in a frame that moves with it.’
‘Yes. If you could travel at the speed of light, time would be frozen. No
time passes on a photon.’
‘So light is frozen time?’
‘I suppose you could put it like that.’

The Space Hopper was rabbiting on about time travel again.

‘But I thought there were paradoxes associated with time travel,’ said
Vikki. ‘For instance, suppose I could go back and warn ancestor Albert that
his messing about with the Third Dimension would land him in the pokey!
Then he might never have written Flatland... but then I wouldn’t have
known about him, so I wouldn’t have gone back and warned him ... so he
would have written the book and then - well, you see what I’m getting at!’
‘I certainly do,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘A concise statement of the
Great-great-grandfather Paradox. But we Space Hoppers generally find that
it’s best to find out what the universe is capable of by trying it out, rather
than ruling it out because of philosophical paradoxes. The paradoxes have a
habit of taking care of themselves, you know. Anyway, we generally find
we have more fun that way. Before I can tell you about time travel, though,
you have to understand how gravity fits into a relativistic picture of the
universe.’
‘What does gravity have to do with time travel?’
‘Everything. Though I admit it’s not obvious. You see, Albert-einstein
invented another theory, called General Relativity, which was a combination
of Newtonian gravitation and Special Relativity. You know what
Isaacnewton said about gravity?’
‘No, I’ve not studied Planiturthian history in that much detail, Hopper!’
‘He said it was a force that moves particles away from the perfect
straight lines they would otherwise follow. He worked out a law for how the
gravitational force exerted by any particle of matter varies with distance.’
‘OK, I remember that.’
‘Alberteinstein wasn’t keen on forces. He preferred to think
geometrically. The paths that particles follow, in the absence of any forces
such as gravity, are called geodesies. They are shortest paths - they
minimize the total distance between their endpoints. In flat Minkowski
spacetime - Minny Space and her full-blown extension to 3D space plus ID
time - the analogous relativistic paths minimize the interval instead.’ Vikki
had difficulty imagining anything more full blown than Minny Space. ‘The
problem is to add in effects of gravity consistently. Alberteinstein
incorporated gravity not as an extra force, but as a distortion of the structure
of spacetime, which changes the value of the interval. This variable interval
between nearby events is called the metric of spacetime. The usual image is
to say that spacetime becomes “curved".’
‘Curved round what?’
‘That’s why Curvy Space is here. She can show you.’
 *

‘It’s not curved round anything, girly. It’s just intrinsically distorted
compared with flat spacetime. You might as well ask “flat along what?”
about ordinary Euclidean space, it’s just as sensible - or silly - a question.
The curvature is interpreted physically as the force of gravity, and it causes
light cones to deform.’
‘How can space be curved?’ asked Vikki.
‘I’m surprised a Flatlander who’s seen the Mathiverse can ask that,’ said
Curvy Space. ‘You used to think space had to be flat. Now you know
better!’
‘Yes, but that was 2D space, and it’s easy to imagine a curved surface.
But a curved solid?’
‘Platterland was curved,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘but when we were on
it, it didn’t look bent’
‘You mean the disc had a curved edge?’
‘No, not the edge - the whole space was curved. That’s what made the
geometry so weird. Platterland has constant negative curvature. A sphere
has constant positive curvature. And a plane, like Flatland, has zero
curvature. Different curvatures, different geometries. You can get curvature
in 3D, too.’
‘How?’
‘You’re suffering from too heavy a Spaceland diet, girly,’ said Curvy
Space. ‘Tell me, what would a curved 2D universe look like from inside?’
‘Bent?’
‘Not at all! Flat. Because light would follow the surface, see? It would
go along the geodesies - the shortest paths that lie in the surface.’
‘Then how could you tell it wasn’t flat?’
‘Because images would distort as light rounded the curves’, said the
Space Hopper. ‘Distances wouldn’t match up to the model of a Euclidean
plane. Which is why the shortest paths, the geodesies, in Hyperbolica
looked - from an outside VUEpoint - like circles.’ She still looked
uncertain, so he cast around for another example. ‘Remember the squarrel?
As soon as you see a five-sided squarrel with all angles 90 degrees, you
know you’re in a negatively curved space. And the same goes for curved 3D
space, or curved 4D space-time.’
‘Yes, but... what would the space be curved around?’
The Space Hopper grunted, and Vikki suddenly found herself falling
into Squarey Space.

‘Don’t ask “curved around what", baby. Ask “flat around what"!’ ‘That
makes no sense at all.’ ‘Yes it does, kid. Look at me - I’m flat.’ ‘You look
flat. But Curvy Space just told me that doesn’t mean
anything.’
‘Believe me, take my measurements, I’m as flat as a pancake in
a steamroller rodeo. But I’m a torus.’
‘Well, I’m Libra, but I don’t actually believe in that sort of—’ ‘No, no.
A topological doughnut. And just watch it, OK?’ ‘I wasn’t going to say a
word about what kind of nut you—’ ‘I said, watch it! Know why they call
me Squarey Space?’
‘No.’
‘Because ultimately I’m a flat square.’
‘But you said you’re a torus, and that’s all curves.’
‘Ah. A torus embedded in 3D is curved. An unembedded one, just being
its own space without any outside assistance, can be flat.’
‘How?’
‘Take a look over there - no, a bit further to your left. What do you see?’
‘Er . .. wow! It looks like me!’
‘It is you. And beyond that?’
‘An even tinier me. And another, and another... fading into the distance.
The light rays are bending round like a projective lion.’
‘The light rays are bending straight like a projective lion, babe. In
certain directions, you see yourself. That’s because opposite edges of my
underlying square wrap round and glue together, seamlessly. You don’t
need to bend me to make them join - you just have to declare that they do.
Or, if you prefer, you can tile an infinite plane with copies of that square,
and insist that whatever happens in one copy, happens in all of them. It’s the
same thing.

‘So, you see, I’m flat, and yet I have closed geodesies. Which don’t
bend around anything, because there isn’t anything else anyway.
Intrinsically, a space can be bounded, have no edges, and yet be flat.
Compared to that, curved 3D space is a piece of cake. Just squeeze its
metric here and there.’

With a PLOP! Vikki found herself back in metaspace. ‘So now you know,’
said Squarey Space.
‘And when the Planiturthians made very careful measurements,’ Pushy
Space butted in, ‘they discovered that their universe is curved.’
‘How did they discover that?’
‘Look for the rainbow in every storm, kid. Bent light, you dig? Curved
space leads to “gravitational lensing", where light gets bent by heavy
objects. You can see it happening during an eclipse of the Sun. And quasars
- powerful, distant kinds of superstar - produce multiple images in
telescopes because their light is lensed by a galaxy that is in the way.’

‘It’s easier to visualize,’ the Space Hopper said helpfully, ‘if you think
of a spacelike section of 3D spacetime - 2D space, ID time -near a star. It
forms a curved surface that bends downwards to create a valley, and the star
sits inside. Light follows geodesies across the surface and gets “pulled
down” into the hole because that path provides a short cut. Just like the
circular arcs - to our eyes - that form geodesies in Hyperbolica. Particles
moving in spacetime at sub-lightspeed behave in the same way. If you look
down from above you see that the particles no longer follow straight lines,
but are “pulled towards” the star, which is where the Newtonian picture of a
gravitational force comes from.
‘Far from the star,’ the Space Hopper continued, ‘this spacetime is very
close to Minkowski spacetime - the gravitational effect falls off rapidly and
soon becomes negligible. Spacetimes that look like Minkowski spacetime at
large distances are said to be asymptotically flat. Remember that term: it’s
important for making time machines.’ He was back to those again. ‘Most of
our own universe is asymptotically flat, because massive bodies such as
stars are scattered very thinly.’
Vikki digested this information. ‘So we could give spacetime any form
we wanted? That sounds a bit too flexible.’
‘No. When you’re setting up a spacetime, you can’t just bend things any
way you like. The metric must obey the Einstein equations, which relate the
motion of freely moving particles to the degree of distortion away from
“flat” Minkowski spacetime.’
‘You mean,’ said Vikki, ‘that there’s a connection between the
distribution of masses within a spacetime and the structure of the spacetime
itself? As if matter ... creates and moulds its own space and time?’
 ‘Exactly.’

Fiveday 20 Noctember 2099

OK, Diary: finally, the Space Hopper explained how to interpret the phrase
‘time machine’ within the framework of General Relativity.
Here’s the gen. A time machine lets a particle or object return to its own
past, so its world-line, a timelike curve, must close into a loop. A time
machine is just a closed timelike curve. So instead of asking, ‘Is time travel
possible?’ we ask, ‘Can closed timelike curves exist?’.
So, can they?
Not in Minny Space. There, forward and backward light cones - the
future and past of an event - never intersect. But they can intersect in other
types of spacetime. The simplest is Minny Space rolled up into a cylinder.
Then the time coordinate becomes cyclic, but the spacetime is still flat.

In such a spacetime, history repeats itself, over and over again. Sort of,
anyway. Spacetime repeats - but what happens to history depends upon
whether you think free will might be in operation. It’s a tricky question, and
one that Einstein’s equations don’t really address. They just govern the
overall coarse structure of spacetime.
I told you that this cylindrical spacetime is flat, Diary Dearest, though I
admit it doesn’t look that way. It’s rather like Squarey Space, but with time
thrown in, so you have to be careful. Although a cylindrical spacetime looks
curved, actually the corresponding spacetime is not curved - not in the
gravitational sense. When you roll up a sheet of paper into a cylinder, it
doesn’t distort. You can flatten it out again and the paper isn’t folded or
wrinkled. A creature that was confined purely to the surface wouldn’t notice
that it had been bent, because distances on the surface wouldn’t have
changed. In short, the metric - a local property of spacetime structure near a
given event - doesn’t change. What changes is the global geometry of
spacetime, its overall topology.

‘Rolling up Minny Space,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘is an example of a

powerful topological trick for building new Spacetimes out of old ones: cut-
and-paste. If you can cut pieces out of known Spacetimes, and glue them
together without distorting their metrics, then the result is also a possible
Spacetime.’
‘You’re speaking metaphorically, of course.’
‘Well, until recently I’d have agreed with you. But now the Hawk
King’s moved into the spacetime construction business.’
‘The Hawk King?’
‘A very, very impressive being. I’m planning an audience with him, if
we can swing it. When it comes to spacetime heavy engineering - and I
really do mean heavy - the Hawk King is in a class of his own. But I’m
getting ahead of myself.’
‘Well, you said you were interested in time travel.’
The Space Hopper laughed politely. ‘I say “distorting the metric” rather
than “bending", for exactly the reason that I claim rolled-up Minny Space is
not curved. I’m talking about intrinsic curvature, as experienced by a
creature that lives in the spacetime, not about apparent curvature as seen in
some external representation. Apparent bending of this type is harmless - it
doesn’t actually change the metric. Now, the rolled-up version of Minny
Space is a very simple way to prove that Spacetimes that obey the Einstein
equations can possess closed timelike curves - and thus that time travel is
not inconsistent with currently known physics. But that doesn’t imply that
time travel is possible.’
 ‘I see that. There’s a distinction between what’s mathematically possible
and what’s physically feasible.’
‘Very good, Vikki. A spacetime is mathematically possible if it obeys
the Einstein equations. It’s physically feasible if it can exist, or could be
created, as part of a specified universe. Which is where the heavy
engineering comes in. Unfortunately for time travel in the Planiturthian
universe, there’s no reason to suppose that rolled-up Minkowski spacetime
is physically feasible: certainly it would be hard to refashion the
Planiturthian universe in that form if it didn’t already have cyclic time. The
search for Spacetimes that have closed timelike curves and have plausible
physics is a search for more plausible topologies. There are many
mathematically possible topologies, but you can’t get to all of them from a
given starting point. But you can get to some remarkably interesting ones,
based on black holes.’
‘Are those like topological holes?’
‘Only very loosely speaking, Vikki. You know that in classical
Newtonian mechanics there’s no limit to the speed of a moving object, so
particles can escape from an attracting mass, however strong its
gravitational field, by moving faster than the appropriate escape velocity. In
1783 the Planiturthian astronomer Johnmichell realized that when this idea
is combined with a finite velocity for light, it implies that really heavy
objects can’t emit light at all -because the speed of light is lower than the
escape velocity. The light travels too slowly to be able to get away, you
understand?’
‘Sure. That’s easy.’
‘In 1796 another astronomer, Pierresimondelaplace, put the same idea in
a book of his called Exposition of the System of the World. And both
Planiturthian astronomers imagined that the universe might be littered with
huge bodies, bigger than stars, but totally dark.’
‘Wild!’
‘You said it. They were both a century ahead of their time. In 1915
Karlschwarzschild asked whether the same kind of thing could happen with
relativistic gravitation. He solved the Einstein equations for the
gravitational field around a heavy sphere in a vacuum. His solution behaved
very strangely at a critical distance from the centre of the sphere, now called
the Schwarzschild radius. When it was first discovered, People thought this
strange behaviour just meant that space and time lost their identity in
Schwarzschild’s solution, and became meaningless. A mathematical
artefact, yes? With no physical implications at all. But then some bright
spark asked what would happen to a star so dense that it lies completely
inside its own Schwarzschild radius.’
‘And what would happen, Hopper?’
‘It would collapse under its own gravitational attraction! In fact, a whole
portion of spacetime around that star would collapse to form a region from
which no matter, not even light, could escape. In 1967
Johnarchibaldwheeler called such a region a black hole, and the name
stuck.’

‘Does a black hole stay the same for ever, or does it change?’ ‘It
changes. First the star shrinks symmetrically until it hits the Schwarzschild
radius, after which it continues to shrink more rapidly until, after a finite
time, all the mass has collapsed to a single point, the singularity. From
outside, all you can detect is the event horizon at the Schwarzschild radius,
which separates the region from which light can escape from the region
that’s forever unobservable from outside. Inside the event horizon lurks the
black hole.
‘If you were to watch the collapse from outside, you’d see the star start
to shrink towards the Schwarzschild radius, but you’d never see it get there.
As it shrinks, its speed of collapse as seen from outside approaches the
speed of light, and relativistic time dilation means that the entire collapse
takes infinitely long when seen by an outside observer. However, the
collapse time experienced by an observer on the surface of the star would
be finite. Once inside a black hole, the roles of space and time are reversed.
Just as time inexorably increases in the outside world, so space inexorably
decreases inside a black hole.
‘That’s where the scope for engineering comes in,’ said the Space
Hopper. ‘The Hawk King has developed a whole battery of techniques,
from quantum foam enlargement to improbability calculus. Now, the
spacetime topology of a black hole is asymptotically flat -its “mouth” opens
out and becomes flat at large distances. So a black hole can be cut-and-
pasted into the spacetime of any universe that has reasonably large
asymptotically flat regions - such as the Planiturthian one. This makes black
hole topology physically plausible in such a universe. The scenario of
gravitational collapse makes it even more plausible: if you want to build a
black hole, you just have to start with a big enough concentration of matter,
like a neutron star or the centre of a galaxy. That’s what I meant by heavy
engineering. The technology of 3001 will be able to build black holes. With
matter processors - modified neutron stars with gravitational traps and
heavy-duty laser-compressors.
‘However, a black hole isn’t enough, because a static black hole doesn’t
have closed timelike curves. However, Einstein’s equations are time-
reversible: to every solution of the equations there corresponds another that
is just the same, except that time runs backwards. The time-reversal of a
black hole is a white hole. An ordinary event horizon is a barrier from
which no particle can escape. A time-reversed event horizon is one into
which no particle can fall, but from which particles may from time to time
be emitted. So, seen from the outside, a white hole would appear as the
sudden explosion of a star’s-worth of matter, coming from a time-reversed
event horizon.’
‘Why should the singularity inside a white hole suddenly decide to spew
forth a star, having remained unchanged since the dawn of time?’ protested
Vikki.
‘Good point. It makes causal sense for an initial concentration of matter
to collapse, if it’s dense enough, thereby forming a black hole; but the
reverse seems to violate causality. It doesn’t, of course - but the cause
would have to lie outside our own universe, beyond the white hole’s event
horizon, so we wouldn’t see it coming. Let’s just agree that white holes are
a mathematical possibility, and notice that they’re also asymptotically flat
when they open out enough. So if you knew how to make one, you could
glue it neatly into your own universe. The Hawk King has just developed an
effective method for doing that, based on the uncertainty principle. He uses
a Heisenberg amplifier to make the position of matter so uncertain that it
may well be outside the normal universe altogether. Not only that, he can
also glue a black hole and a white hole together. He cuts them along their
event horizons with a cosmo-tome and sews the edges together with exotic -
that is, negative-energy - matter.’
‘And what does that give?’
‘A wormhole. A sort of tube. Matter can pass through the tube in one
direction only: into the black hole and out of the white hole. It’s a kind of
matter valve. And the passage through the valve is achieved by following a
timelike curve, because material particles really can traverse it.

‘Now comes the clever bit. Because the topology of spacetime is

asymptotically flat at both ends of the tube, both ends can be glued into any
asymptotically flat region of any spacetime. You could glue one end into the
Planiturthian universe, and the other end into somebody else’s; or you could
glue both ends into the Planiturthian universe - anywhere you like, except
near a concentration of matter. Now you’ve got a - guess.’
‘A spacetube?’
‘No: a wormhole. The Hawk King makes the best wormholes in the
universe. They’re called wormholes because they look like the holes a
maggot bores in an apple. Only here the apple is - well, not so much
spacetime as everything that’s not spacetime.

‘The next important thing is this: the distance through the wormhole is
very short, though the distance between the two openings, across normal
spacetime, can be as big as you like.’
‘I see,’ said Vikki. ‘A wormhole is a short cut through the universe.’
‘Right,’ said the Space Hopper.
‘But that’s matter transmission, not time travel.’
‘So far, yes,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘But there’s more.’

‘It ought to be easy to use the VUE to explore a wormhole,’ said the Space
Hopper. ‘Unfortunately, it’s not. Most parts of the Mathiverse are in the
Public Domain, because mathematicians never understand how important
their ideas are until long after they’ve told everyone about them. Anyway,
according to metaspatial law, mathematicians aren’t allowed to patent
mathematics because it consists of ideas. Anyone else can patent
mathematics, as long as they don’t admit that that’s what it is, but
mathematicians can’t because - being mathematicians - they know it’s
mathematics, and are bound by their logical training to say so.
‘The Hawk King has acquired a vast commercial empire (so I suppose
he ought to be called the Hawk Emperor, but somehow that doesn’t sound
right) by securing a monopoly on Time Travel mathematics. In principle he
also controls the Mathiverse’s supply of magnetic monopoles, so he has a
Monopole Monopoly - but since no one has found a monopole yet, that’s a
bit hypothetical. Since all rights to time machinery are controlled by the
Hawk King, we will have to request an audience with His Majesty and
petition him for temporal access.’
‘How do we do that?’ asked Vikki.
‘We VUEtravel to where he lives, and approach the appropriate
officials.’
‘Where does His Majesty live, then?’
‘In the Domain of the Hawk King. It’s right next to the Public Domain,
separated by a domain boundary, so a couple of Space Hops will get us
there in no time at all...’

‘Passport? What do you mean, passport?’

‘No one enters the Domain of the Hawk King without a passport,’ said
the official from His Majesty’s Customer Extortionists.
‘But we haven’t got—’ Vikki began.
‘What sort of passport?’ asked the Space Hopper. ‘Would I be right in
thinking that it’s made of paper?’
‘Of course.’
‘Strong paper?’
‘Indeed.’
‘With lots of fancy engraving on it?’
‘Definitely on the right track.’
‘And it sort of ... folds?’
‘Yup, sure sounds like a passport to me,’ said the official.
‘Would that be a big piece of paper, or a small one?’
‘Oh ... big. Yes, definitely. Big.’
 ‘How big?’
‘How big have you got?’
‘How big will secure us an immediate audience with the Hawk King?’
‘Oooooooh ... about five times as big as your run-of-the-mill passport.’
‘Would this be suitable?’ There was a rustling as paper changed hands.
‘Definitely. Your documents are completely in order, Mr ... er ...
Bankofspaceland. And your good lady Ms Travellerscheque too, I’m
pleased to say. Let me just call up His Majesty’s schedule ... Right. You
have a five-minute audience at 3.50 this afternoon. Just give your ticket to
the official at the door.’
‘But we don’t have a—’ Vikki began.
‘Vikki, the ticket is without doubt a document just like a passport.’
‘Uh - oh, right, Space Hopper. I see.’

The Hawk King’s audience room was vast. He sat on a splendid throne at
the far end. It took them for ever to make their way towards him.
‘This is where a time machine would really come in useful,’ the Space
Hopper whispered to Vikki.
‘Yes. Or a wormhole. I could do with a short cut.’
‘I’d be careful using that sort of metaphor in the Hawk King’s
presence,’ cautioned the Space Hopper. ‘He has a habit of taking things
literally.’
‘Ulp.’
Eventually they arrived at the foot of the throne. The Hawk King’s
piercing eyes dissected their souls.
‘You do realize,’ he said, ‘that people used to think time travel was a
theoretical impossibility, a contradiction in terms?’
Obviously he had overheard their whispered conversation. Hawks
reputedly have astonishing eyesight - perhaps his hearing was just as acute.
Or perhaps the audience room was equipped with sensitive microphones.
‘Of course, now we know better,’ the monarch continued. ‘You are
thinking of exploring one of my wormholes?’
‘Uh - my companion did mention a wormhole, Your Majesty.’
 ‘You cannot afford the price, you realize.’
‘We were hoping that wouldn’t be necessary, Your Majesty,’ said the
Space Hopper.
‘Is there a connection between wormholes and time machines, Your
Majesty?’ Vikki asked in a squeaky voice.
‘Of course. It was the Paradox Twins that suggested the idea to me
originally - you’ve met them? Yes, I see you have. Never mind, you’ll get
over it. They experienced a time discrepancy- but it led into the future, not
the past. However, in conjunction with a worm hole - that time discrepancy
can be turned into a closed timelike curve.’
‘Uh - how, Your Majesty?’
‘Fix the white end of the wormhole, and tow the black one away - or
better still, zigzag it back and forth - as close to lightspeed as you can get.
 ‘The white end of the wormhole remains static, and time there passes at
its normal rate. The black end zigzags to and fro at just less than the speed
of light. So time dilation comes into play, and time passes more slowly for
an observer moving with that end.’
‘Ah!’ said the Space Hopper. ‘I see, Your Majesty. A brilliant insight!’
‘Um—’ Vikki began.
 ‘Why, Vikki - all you have to do is think about world-lines that join the
two wormholes through normal space, so that the times experienced by
observers at each end are the same’, said the Space Hopper. ‘At first, those
lines have a slope of less than 45 degrees, so they’re not timelike, and it’s
impossible for material particles to travel along them. But as the black end
of the wormhole zigzags back and forth, at some moment that line achieves
a 45-degree slope. And once this “time barrier” is crossed, you can travel
from the white end of the wormhole to the black one through normal space
- following a time-like curve. And once you’ve arrived there, you can return
through the wormhole, again along a timelike curve. Because the wormhole
forms a short cut you can do that in a very short time, effectively travelling
instantly from the black end to the white end. And now you’re in the same
place as your starting point, but in the past?
‘Indeed,’ said the Hawk King. ‘You have travelled back in time. And
the actual distance you travel through ordinary space can be quite small - it
depends on how far the black end of the worm-hole moves on each leg of
its zigzag path. In space of more than one dimension it can spiral rather than
zigzag, which corresponds to making the black end follow a circular orbit at
close to light-speed.’
‘Wonderful, Your Majesty,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Vikki, you could do
that by creating a binary pair of black holes, rotating rapidly round a
common centre of gravity!’
Vikki gave the matter thorough consideration. Somebody might be able
to do that. Not her. ‘Would I be right in thinking that the longer you wait
before you start, the further back in time you can go?’
‘Yes,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘but there’s a nasty snag. You can never
travel back past the time barrier, and that occurs some time after you build
the wormholes! So there’s no hope of going back to the time of the
Planiturthian dinosaurs, or the time of the Universal Colour Bill in
Flatland.’
‘Unless someone found a very old, naturally occurring worm-hole,’ the
Hawk King pointed out.
‘Is that what you’ve done, Your Majesty?’
‘That, my dear young Line, is a commercial secret. And the time
allocated for your audience has almost run out, so I strongly suggest that
you present your petition immediately.’
 Royal hints should not go unheeded. ‘We should like to experience time
travel’, said the Space Hopper.
‘Into the past,’ Vikki added quickly, just in case there was a
misunderstanding.
‘Ah. And do you have a reason for this wish?’
Vikki racked her brains ... why did they want to try time travel? ‘To see
if we can help the Paradox Twins, Your Majesty.’
The Hawk King rose and spread his magnificent feathers. Vikki and the
Space Hopper tried hard not to cower. ‘That is a worthy motive,’ the King
remarked. ‘I have decided to grant your request. My aides will deal with the
details on your way out. You are dismissed.’
 14
DOWN THE WORMHOLE

Sevenday 22 Noctember 2099

Thus, Dear Diary, began the most curious adventure that I have yet
experienced during my Misguided Tour of the Mathiverse! The King’s aides
took us into a special room, full of strange, arcane machinery. And in the
middle of that room, hovering unsupported, was—

‘—a red hole?’ said Vikki, disappointed. It was like a big blood-red bubble,
and it sparkled. ’I thought they were black.’
‘A common misconception - or perhaps I should say “misper-ception",’
said the Master of the Royal Wormhole. Vikki had taken an instant dislike
to him: the Hawk King was majestic and awe-inspiring, whereas the Master
of the Royal Wormhole was an arrogant snob. She wasn’t sure they ought to
trust him. But the Space Hopper seemed unconcerned. ‘The term “black
hole” refers to the manner in which light is sucked into the singularity.
However, thanks to relativistic time dilation, the light emitted by anything
that is falling into a black hole actually appears red.’
‘Oh.’
‘For example, the bunch of roses that you see sinking slowly towards
the event horizon - the surface of what appears to be a bubble - actually
crossed the event horizon several weeks ago, and by now has emerged into
a previous century. What we see is the light that the roses emitted, which
has spent the intervening time struggling painfully away from the black
hole’s clutches. And struggling light shifts towards the red end of the
spectrum. Not only that, but every black hole is surrounded by a complete
record of everything that ever fell into it. But unless the object fell in
recently, the image is extremely squashed and redshifted, and mixed up
with all the images of all the other objects. And the longer ago an object fell
in, the closer it had to get to the event horizon for its image still to be
visible. Still, it’s an intriguing thought, is it not?’
‘So ... er ... how do we use the wormhole?’ asked the Space Hopper.
‘Easy. You fall into it.’
‘How do we do—’
‘The problem, young lady, is to stop yourself falling into it. You see that
white line marked on the floor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Step a micrometre beyond that and the Black Hole will suck you in.
Guaranteed.’
‘Oh.’
‘But the gravity will shred you like cheese in a grater.’
‘Space Hopper, I think I’ve changed my mind—’
‘Unless you wear protective suits of exotic matter.’
‘Ah. That’s different.’
‘Which are available for a small - um - documentary exchange.’
More rustling. Weird suits that didn’t quite seem to be present were
brought, and the two travellers climbed into them. After a perfunctory
safety check they were led towards the fateful white line.
The tip of one of the Space Hopper’s horns crossed the line. Suddenly
his shape was drawn out into a long, thin tube. His body elongated, then
flattened - then shrunk as if all his insides had been sucked away along an
unseen dimension. He became a dwindling speck of redshifted light.
Vikki took a deep breath, and followed him in.

Wunday 23 Noctember 2099

Diary: it was the second most HORRIBLE experience of my LIFE!!!!
What was the FIRST most horrible?
I’m coming to that.

‘We’re trapped!’ said the Space Hopper.

 They were circling the black hole’s singularity, held away by the forces
generated by the suits’ exotic matter. They should have been swept past it
towards the white hole exit from the wormhole.
But there was no exit.
‘It was just an ordinary black hole all along,’ complained the Space
Hopper. ‘There never was a way out. The Master of the Royal Wormhole
was playing games with us. Very nasty games. I imagine he pocketed the
cost of the white hole construction instead of getting it built. And now
we’re stuck. I’m sorry - I should have realized he wasn’t to be trusted.’
‘I didn’t like him,’ said Vikki, ‘and I should have said so. But can’t we
use the VUE to get out?’
‘It doesn’t work in here. Exotic matter interferes with its concep-tical
actuvailers.’
‘Then we’re trapped?
‘I already said that.’
‘I know - and it’s still true! Is there a way out?’
‘Does it look like there’s a way out?’
‘No, but there must be! We could die in here!’
The Space Hopper gave her a mournful look. ‘I’m afraid that’s exactly
what we will do’, he said. ‘No food, no drink - and no way out. And I don’t
think there’s any kind of “and with one bound our heroine was free” trick
that can save us.’
There was a long silence.
‘We’re stuck, then,’ said Vikki disconsolately.
‘You certainly are,’ said Vikki.
Vikki thought the voice was familiar, and looked up. To see -Vikki.
‘Hold it. You’re me!’
‘No, I’m me. You’re you. But you’re close. We’re both us.’
There was a second Space Hopper too.
‘Where have you two come from?’
‘No time to explain - you’ll find out soon enough. We’ve brought a
portable white hole with us. You can use it to get out.’
With one portable white hole, our heroine was free ... ’That’s orthogl
You’re coming too, of course.’
‘No, we can’t. It won’t work if we do that.’
‘What won’t work?’
 ‘Causality won’t work. Don’t try to think about it now - there’s plenty of
time for that later. Just jump into the event horizon of the white hole. Oh,
and take it out with you.’
‘We can do that?’
‘Yes, it’s a special model. It shuts itself down automatically after you’ve
gone through, and only opens up when you need it.’
‘Then what?’
‘You will be contacted,’ said the second Space Hopper mysteriously.

‘Whew!’ said the Space Hopper. ‘That was a narrow squeak.’

‘It certainly was,’ said Vikki. ‘And also,’ she added after a few
moments’ thought, ‘completely mad.’
‘Mad?’
‘Hopper, we rescued ourselves. But to do that, we had to have escaped,
and we couldn’t because there was no way out!’
‘Mmm. But obviously we did escape ... or else ...’ He stopped. ‘I dunno.
You’re right, it’s mad.’
‘So now?’
‘We hang around and wait. “You will be contacted", so my alter ego told
us. So I imagine we—’
‘Hi there!’ said the Space Hopper. Two Space Hoppers stared at each
other. So did two Vikkis. ‘Now listen very carefully, I shall say this only—’
‘I think you’ve got some explaining to do. Anyway, how did you two
get out of the black hole?’
‘Hmm. You’re making a rather big assumption there. But you’re right,
we did. We used the time machine, of course.’
‘What time machine?’
‘This one. Which, by the way, you are going to need, so I’ll give it to
you now. Oh, and keep the portable white hole, you’ll need that shortly
too,’
Slowly, an idea was forming in Vikki’s mind. Now that they were out of
the black hole, and were in possession of a time machine and an
automatically deploying portable white hole ...
 ‘Hopper! They were us!’
‘But they said they weren’t.’
‘Not exactly. They were a second set of us - from the future. Our own
future. They were a slightly older version of us!’
‘That’s right,’ said the slightly older version of Vikki, ‘and do you see
what you’ve got to do?’
‘Most of it,’ said Vikki. ‘But how do we—’
The slightly older version of Vikki told her.

Knowing where the black hole was kept, this time round, and having full
use of the VUE, it was easy to sneak into the Hawk King’s Wormhole
Room unnoticed. They had travelled back in time, using the time machine
they’d just given themselves, to a moment a few minutes after their first
disastrous descent into the black hole.
Now they were going to do it again - but this time they were
forewarned, and therefore forearmed. With a time machine and a white
hole.
Once inside, they went through a now-familiar routine.
‘We’re stuck, then,’ the original Vikki was saying disconsolately.
‘You certainly are,’ said Vikki - who was now the slightly older version
of herself.
The original Vikki thought the voice was familiar, and looked up. To see
- Vikki.
‘Hold it. You’re me!’
‘No, I’m me. You’re you. But you’re close. We’re both us.’
The original Vikki saw there was a second Space Hopper too.
‘Where have you two come from?’
‘No time to explain - you’ll find out soon enough. We’ve brought a
portable white hole with us. You can use it to get out.’
With one portable white hole, our heroine was free ... ‘That’s orthogl
You’re coming too, of course.’
‘No, we can’t. It won’t work if we do that.’
‘What won’t work?’
 ‘Causality won’t work. Don’t try to think about it now - there’s plenty of
time for that later. Just jump into the event horizon of the white hole. Oh,
and take it out with you.’
‘We can do that?’
‘Yes, it’s a special model. It shuts itself down automatically after you’ve
gone through, and only opens up when you need it.’
‘Then what?’
‘You will be contacted,’ said the Space Hopper mysteriously.

Vikki (slightly older version) and the Space Hopper (slightly older version)
watched their younger versions depart, taking the portable white hole with
them.
‘So how do we get out?’ asked the Space Hopper. ’They’ve got the white
hole, so now we’re stuck here. Do we wait for a third version of us to rescue
us?’
‘Not at all. You’re forgetting, we’ve got the time machine.’
‘So?’
‘All black holes eventually lose their energy by Hawk King radiation,
and evaporate.’
Vikki’s brain screeched to a halt. ‘No, hold it, wait. I thought a black
hole gobbles up everything near it.’
‘Oops. That’s true for a purely relativistic black hole, but not -as the
Hawk King discovered - for a quantum one. When quantum effects are
taken into account, black holes turn out to be hot’
‘Hot? Why should something that nothing can escape from be hot? How
does the heat escape, then?’
‘It escapes because in quantum physics a vacuum isn’t empty.’
‘I thought that’s what “vacuum” meant.’
‘It did, long ago,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘but not any more. On the
smallest of scales, a quantum vacuum is a seething foam of particles and
virtual particles, being created in pairs from nothing, coexisting for a split
second, and then annihilating each other -or something else. A quantum
vacuum is only empty on average. Now, suppose that a particle pair comes
into being just outside the event horizon of a black hole. What happens?’
‘They both get gobbled up?’
‘No. One gets gobbled up, but the law of conservation of momentum
implies that the other one has to go in the opposite direction, so it escapes.
Hawk King radiation is the result of all those escaping particles. So black
holes are hot. Over time, they lose more and more heat by radiation, cool
down, and eventually evaporate.’
‘How much time does it take?’ Vikki asked. It affected their current
predicament.
‘Very quick for atomic-scale black holes, enormously long for bigger
ones,’ replied the Space Hopper. ‘This one will take for ever to evaporate.’
He sighed.
‘We’ve got for ever,’ said Vikki, in a flash of inspiration. ‘We have a
time machine.’ The Space Hopper perked up again. Some careful crosstime
planning was in order ...
And so they fast-forwarded several zillion years, until the black hole
evaporated around them and they were floating freely in meta-space. Then
they fast-backwarded several zillion years - though not quite as many as
they had fast-forwarded ... and again they experienced a familiar
conversation from the other side ...
‘So now?’
‘We hang around and wait. “You will be contacted", so my alter ego told
us. So I imagine we—’
‘Hi there!’ said the Space Hopper. Two Space Hoppers stared at each
other. So did two Vikkis. ‘Now listen very carefully, I shall say this only—’
‘I think you’ve got some explaining to do. Anyway, how did you two
get out of the black hole?’
‘Hmm. You’re making a rather big assumption there,’ said the slightly
older version of Vikki. ‘But you’re right, we did. We used the time machine,
of course.’
‘What time machine?’
‘This one. Which, by the way, you are going to need, so I’ll give it to
you now. Oh, and keep the white hole, you’ll need that shortly too.’
Slowly, an idea was forming in the mind of the slightly younger version
of Vikki. Now that they were out of the black hole, and were in possession
of a time machine and an automatically deploying portable White Hole ...
‘Hopper! They were ws!’
‘But they said they weren’t.’
‘Not exactly. They were a second set of us - from the future. Our own
future. They were a slightly older version of us!’
‘That’s right,’ said the slightly older version of Vikki, ‘and do you see
what you’ve got to do?’
‘Most of it,’ said the slightly younger version of Vikki. ‘But how do we
—’
The slightly older version of Vikki told her.

‘And that’s that,’ said the Space Hopper.

‘Wha— but they’ve just gone back in time to go into the black hole, and
—’
‘No, they’re earlier versions of us, and we’ve already been through all
that. Think about it: we’re out of the black hole, we’ve done all the time
travelling and handing over of technology that was needed to get us out—’
‘But where did that technology come from?’
‘The white hole and the time machine? We gave it to us.’
‘But—’
‘You asked the wrong question. Where did that technology go to? We
haven’t got it now, have we?’
‘No.’
‘So that’s all right. The Mathiverse hasn’t gained anything it didn’t have
before.’
‘But it’s mad,’ said Vikki. ‘The causality doesn’t work.’
‘On the contrary,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘The causality is the one thing
that does work! You’re just not thinking about it the right way.’
‘I don’t know how else to think about it!’ Vikki wailed.
‘Use a Feynman diagram, of course’, said the Space Hopper.
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
‘Richardfeynman was a Planiturthian who was doodling pictures of
world-lines of particles moving through space and time, when he suddenly
realized that antiparticles moving forwards in time could be viewed as
ordinary particles moving backwards in time.

And then he noticed that there was just one line in his picture, whizzing
back and forth through time, and suddenly a really revolutionary idea
popped into his head. ‘Why are all electrons identical?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Because they’re all the same electron! It just keeps shuttling up and
down in time, and each new incarnation turns it into what seems like a
different electron.’
‘Cunning.’
‘Very. And possibly wrong - nobody knows for sure. But the point is
that by drawing a picture of the world-lines, you can sort out the subjective
sequence of events from the objective one, and check that the causality
works.’ And the Space Hopper quickly used the VUE to sketch a Feynman
diagram of their adventures down the Black Hole.
 ‘OK,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘The Mathiverse’s “objective” time runs
vertically up the picture. The horizontal space direction is just there to
separate out the main events. And our subjective time is shown by the
arrows.
‘Let me run through what happened. We started at (1), in the Hawk
King’s Palace. Then we got trapped inside a black hole that we’d been told
was a wormhole - that’s (2). And while we were there, another we came
back from the future using a time machine -that’s the path from (3) to (4) -
and dropped ourselves back into the black hole to rescue ourselves. We also
brought a white hole to create an exit. Where did we get it, and the time
machine? That’s another story - I’ll come back to it once we’ve sorted out
the main timeline.
‘Anyway, from (2) we used the white hole to get ourselves to (3), back
into ordinary space. We left the time machine with the “other” Vikki and
Space Hopper inside the black hole and proceeded into the future in the
normal way. Then we went from (3) to (4) - I’ve already told you that bit.
After that we used the time machine to go zillions of years into the future,
to (5), where the black hole evaporated and we were free of its event
horizon. We promptly used the time machine again to go slightly fewer
zillions of years into the past, to (6). At that point we met our former selves
(3) coming the other way - in time, that is - and gave them the hardware
they needed to go back to (4). Then we continued from (6) towards the
distant future (7), using the normal method of waiting for time to pass of its
own accord.’
Vikki ran her eyes over the Feynman diagram, checking each event. It
all seemed to fit. But... ‘I’m still puzzled,’ she said.
‘Do you see that the passage of subjective time, for us, just moved from
(1) to (2) to (3) to (4) to (5) to (6), and now we’re heading towards (7)? It’s
just a single linear chain of experience - for us. Subjectively.’
’Yeeesss...’
‘And each event has the right versions of us, and the right equipment?’
’Yeeesss...’
‘Then I don’t see what your problem is.’
‘Space Hopper, where did the time machine come from? Where did the
white hole come from?’
‘Where have they gone? That’s what you ought to be asking.’
‘I don’t know! We’re out, and we don’t have them any more ... but I
can’t quite see how the trick worked.’
‘Actually, the question is not where did they come from, but when.
Trace the temporal movement of the white hole.’
‘Um. We picked it up at (2), carried it to (3), took it back in time to (4) -
oh! And then we handed it over to our former selves at (2) again!’
‘That’s right. The portable white hole is going - was going? Will go?
Will have being gone? - round and round a closed timelike curve. A time
loop. Its past runs into its future: it has always been in the time loop and it
always will be. And what about the time machine?’
‘We were first given that - in our own subjective sequence of events - at
(3). We took it back to (4), used it to get to (5) without tottering off this
mortal coil, used it again to get us back to (6) - and then handed it back to
ourselves at (4). The time machine is going round a time loop too!’
‘Yes. But a different one from the loop that the white hole is in.’
 ‘Right. And because they’re in time loops, but we’re in an ordinary
open-ended chain, we emerge from the whole process without any fancy
technology that we couldn’t possibly possess.’
‘Precisely. All of which goes to show—’
‘—that causality is totally weird when you’ve got a time machine. Even
if it disappears up its own - er - closed timelike curve.’
‘It’s only weird to us. As far as the Mathiverse is concerned, it all makes
perfectly good sense. It seems weird globally - viewed as a whole. But each
piece of it is entirely reasonable and logical. It’s easy to explain where the
time machine and the white hole come from. They’ve always been stuck in
their time loops, and always will be. The hard thing to explain, Vikki, is
where we come from. Because that seems to need an infinitely long chain of
causality. Like you said, our timelines are open-ended.’
That reminded Vikki of something. ‘Yes, maybe ... but Space

Hopper,’ she said, ‘do you recall that funny picture that Space-landers
sometimes use to baffle themselves with?’ She fiddled with her VUE, and a
line drawing of a solid object appeared:
‘Yes, I remember. The object looks OK, but it can’t actually exist.’
‘My point exactly. Now, what do you mean by “look OK"? You mean
that each piece is entirely reasonable and logical. And when you say “can’t
actually exist", you’re saying that—’
‘It seems weird globally.’
‘So maybe the kind of twisted causality that we think we’ve just
experienced can’t really happen in a relativistic spacetime,’ said Vikki.
‘We’re missing a global law of nature that could rule it out.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as having to avoid the Great-great-grandfather Paradox.’
The Space Hopper gave this due consideration. ‘You could be right,’ he
said, ‘though there are other ways to get round the Great-great-grandfather
Paradox. But if you are right, how come we got out of the black hole?’
Vikki had no answer to that.

Thanks to the logic, or illogic, of causality in closed timelike curves, Vikki

and the Space Hopper were once more free to roam the Mathiverse. But
their plan to use a time machine to help the Paradox Twins had to be
abandoned, for they dared not return to the Domain of the Hawk King. The
twins would just have to pursue a career of hiring themselves out to writers
of physics texts.
Despite their narrow brush with death, however, Vikki still wanted to
understand more about wormholes and time travel. The whole topic was
just too interesting for her experiences to put her off thinking about it.
‘The Hawk King’s heavy engineers must have some amazing
construction methods to be able to build wormholes to order,’ she said. I’d
like to know just what’s involved in that.’
The Space Hopper jiggled his antennae. ‘Well, we can’t return to the
Hawk King’s territory, that’s for sure. So we won’t be able to watch a
wormhole being made. But there’s another part of the Mathiverse where
people think about that kind of problem but don’t actually make anything to
put their thoughts into action. I suppose we could go there if you want.’
‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
‘No more than usual. Anyway, I haven’t met up with the Charming
Construction Entity for a while. Be nice to find out what he’s up to these
days.’
 ‘That’s a very curious name.’
‘It was a mistranslation. He was originally known as Civil Engineer.
When he emigrated to his current part of the Mathiverse, he didn’t speak the
language very well, so he used a dictionary to translate. Unfortunately he
chose the wrong meaning for “civil", and a rather roundabout phrase for
“engineer".’
‘Why didn’t he go back to the right translation when he found out?’
‘Marketing. His customers were mostly romantics who were uneasy
about technology. They found the mistranslated name less threatening.’
The Charming Construction Entity can best be described as a land
octopus. It had four stubby legs and eight long, flexible tentacles. If it had
ever got round to building any of its designs, the tentacles would have come
in useful, but even at the theory and design level they gave it a major
advantage over its competitors. When Vikki and the Space Hopper arrived
in its metaspatial office, it was building a model of a spinning black hole
with two of its tentacles, answering the phone with a third, drawing two
separate blueprints with two more, photocopying a letter with the sixth,
signing contracts with a seventh, and stirring its tea with the tip of the
eighth.
When the Charming Construction Entity saw it had visitors, it dropped
all these activities and slumped into a comfortable armchair. With eight
arm-rests, forming an octagon. Vikki looked wistfully at the phone, but she
knew that there was no metaspatial connection to Flatland’s rudimentary
telephone system.
‘I’m not surprised you had trouble with the Hawk King’s worm-hole,’
said the Charming Construction Entity. ‘They’re unstable things at the best
of times. I spend most of my time trying to find improvements.’
‘How does he build his wormholes, anyway?’ Vikki asked.
‘It’s not easy. There are several serious technical obstacles. The worst
one is the question of whether users can really get through the wormhole.
It’s not so hard to build the wormhole and move its ends around. That’s just
a matter of creating intense gravitational fields, which is the Hawk King’s
forte. The main problem is what you might call the “catflap effect". With
the earliest designs, when you traversed the wormhole it would shut on your
tail.’
‘Why not go through faster?’
 ‘It turned out that, to get through without getting your tail trapped,
you’d need to travel faster than light, so that was no good.’
‘How does that come about?’
The Charming Construction Entity grubbed around among its papers
and tossed one across to her. ‘Take a look at the spacetime geometry in this
Penrose map.’
‘Named after a Planiturthinan named Rogerpenrose,’ the Space Hopper
added helpfully. ‘Not because it’s in rows and drawn with a pen.’
Vikki ignored him and stared at the cabalistic scrawls. ‘I don’t know
how to read this.’
‘Then I’ll tell you’, said the Charming Construction Entity. ‘You know
that when you draw a map of a curved space - a sphere, say - on a flat sheet
of paper, you have to distort the coordinates.’
‘Sure. Planiturthians suffer from that problem because they live on a
sphere. They have to compromise, by drawing curved lines of longitude,
say. They can choose to preserve some features - lines of latitude, or
directions, or areas. But not all of them.’
‘That,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘happens because curvature is an
invariant - you cannot change it. A plane has zero curvature, whereas a
sphere has positive curvature. That proves you can’t preserve all features of
a spherical surface in a planar map.’
‘Thank you for that,’ said the Charming Construction Entity. ‘It’s the
same for spacetimes. The Penrose map of a spacetime also distorts the
coordinates - but in a way that doesn’t change light cones. They still run at
45 degree angles. Now, Vikki, this is a Penrose map of a wormhole. Any
timelike path that starts at the wormhole entrance, such as the wiggly line
shown, must run into the future singularity. There’s no way to get across to
the exit without going outside the 45 degree angle limit - without exceeding
the speed of light.’
 *

Threeday 25 Noctember 2099

This wormhole stuff is a gripping tale. But I’m feeling rather upset right
now, Diary Dearest.
You see, I’ve just realized: back in Flatland, today is Crisp Moose Day.
Traditionally, a time when all families get together to celebrate over a
special seasonal meal. And this year it’s extra-special, because 2099 is the
last year of the century!
Now here’s a minor curiosity. You know that the Flatland calendar and
the Planiturthian one coincidentally move in step, except that ours adds 100
to theirs? Well, this isn’t quite true. The Space Hopper tells me that in the
Planiturthian calendar, new centuries end with years numbered 00 and start
with years numbered 01. Whereas on Flatland new centuries end with years
numbered 99 and start with years numbered 00. However, it turns out that
most Planiturthians don’t know how their own calendar works, so most of
them celebrate new centuries one year too early. You can understand why:
our system is much less confusing and far more logical.
Sorry, Diary. I’ve been rabbiting on about the numerology of new
centuries in an effort to forget how miserable I’m feeling today. It was all
right until I became aware of the date. The rest of my family will be sitting
round the big table waiting for Mum to finish crisping the Moose ... and it
will all be spoilt because I’m not there, and they’ll be worrying about
what’s happening to me ... and I haven’t even sent them a crisp moose card!
Now there’s an idea ...
Flatland telephones may be incompatible with metaspace, but Flatland
cards?
I’ll ask the Space Hopper whether something can be done.

The smell of crisping moose filled the old pentagonal house. Les and
Berkeley were charging round like mad things and playing with their new
toys; cards from friends, relatives, and acquaintances had been collected in
one corner; and the natural logs in the hearth were burning brightly. But the
toys just reminded Grosvenor of Vikki’s childhood, the cards reminded him
that she hadn’t sent one, and the fire reminded him of how he had burned
Albert’s book - an act that he still was convinced had played some part in
Vikki’s dramatic disappearance.
No doubt Lee was feeling much the same. It was putting a real damper
on the proceedings, and the boys would soon notice. He needed something
to cheer himself up. So he decided to pour himself and Lee a couple of
drinks.
He always kept the drinks cabinet locked, ever since Lester had got hold
of a bottle of torquila and been found asleep in the washing basket wearing
next door’s dustbin lid. He got out the key and opened the cabinet...
There was an envelope inside. Addressed to him and Jubilee.
His vertices tingling, he picked it up and took it through to the kitchen,
unopened. His wife was busy checking whether the moose was crisp
enough yet.
‘Lee, have you been putting things in the drinks cabinet?’
‘No, dear - what kind of things, dear?’
‘An envelope. This one.’
‘Nothing to do with me, dear.’
‘Well, it’s got your name on it.’
 Jubilee put down the moose-strainer and came over to take a look. ‘It’s
got your name on it too, dear. And it’s - Grosvenor, that’s Vikki’s writing!’
‘Yes, I wondered about that. It’s certainly very similar ...’
‘Why don’t you just open it and find out?’
‘I’m ... Lee, I’m scared of being disappointed.’
Jubilee took the envelope from him and ripped it open. ‘Don’t be silly.
Look, it’s a card.’ She opened the card, which read: ‘Wishing you a Very
Crisp Moose’. There was also a note - a very long note, by the look of it.
She unreeled the paper, and they began to read.

Vikki felt a lot better once the Space Hopper had agreed that she could use
the VUE to deposit a Crisp Moose card in the plane of Flatland. It had been
his idea to put it somewhere that only Lee or Grosvenor would have access
to: that fact alone would support the story that she had insisted on including.
She had thought of the drinks cabinet - on Crisp Moose Day, her dad was
bound to open it.
To take her mind off what might happen when her father read it, Vikki
was badgering the Charming Construction Entity for more details about
time machines. ‘How does the Hawk King’s wormhole work, then?’
‘Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s all marketing propaganda. You didn’t
actually pass through a wormhole, did you?’
‘True. But surely customers would catch on if the things never worked.’
‘Possibly. But you met the Hawk King. Would they dare say so in
public? However, I think that he does have working wormholes. His
methods are commercial secrets, of course, so I can’t be sure, but I’ve done
a lot of calculations and I think I’ve figured out how the trick works. I
reckon he must be threading his wormholes with exotic matter.’
‘That sounds ... well, exotic. What is it?’
‘It’s an unorthodox form of matter that exerts enormous negative
pressure, like a stretched spring.’
‘Antimatter?’
‘No, that’s different,’ the Space Hopper interjected. ‘When matter meets
antimatter they annihilate in a blaze of energy. Exotic matter just pushes
instead of pulling.’
‘Antigravity, then.’
‘Well... technically, no. Sort of, though.’
‘Anyway, exotic matter is the most obvious way to hold the catflap open
so it doesn’t trap your tail. But there’s a more old-fashioned method that
cuts out the need for exotic matter altogether. And because it doesn’t
involve building a wormhole, there’s no time-barrier effect. You can go
back to any time you want. Depending on what nature has up her sleeve.’
‘I don’t follow you,’ said Vikki.
‘I’m talking about using a naturally occurring time machine. A rotating
black hole, formed when a rotating star collapses gravita-tionally. The
Schwarzschild solution of Einstein’s equations - you know about that?’
‘Yes, the Space Hopper told me.’
‘Well, that corresponds to a static black hole, formed by the collapse of
a nonrotating star. In 1962, a Planiturthian called Roykerr solved the
Einstein equations for a rotating Black Hole, now known as a Kerr black
hole.’
‘The Planiturthians know about two other kinds of black hole,’ the
Space Hopper said. ‘There’s the Reissnernordstrom black hole, which is
static but has electric charge, and the Kerrnewman black hole, which rotates
and has electric charge. It is almost a miracle that an explicit formula for the
solution exists - and it was definitely a miracle that Roykerr was able to find
it. It’s extremely complicated and not at all obvious.’
 ‘But it has spectacular consequences,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘One is
that there is no longer a point singularity inside the black hole. Instead,
there is a circular ring singularity, in the plane of rotation. The Charming
Construction Entity’s Penrose map shows that any matter entering a static
black hole has to fall into the singularity - but in a rotating one, it need not.
It can either travel above the equatorial plane, or pass through the ring.’
‘Yes, and a rotating black hole’s event horizon also becomes more
complex. In fact, it splits into two. Signals or matter that penetrate the outer
horizon can’t get back out again; signals or matter emitted by the singularity
itself can’t travel past the inner horizon. Further out still, but tangent to the
outer horizon at the poles, is the static limit. Outside this, particles can
move at will. Inside it, they have to rotate in the same direction as the black
hole, although they can still escape by moving radially.’
‘Yes, yes!’ said the Space Hopper, getting all excited. He loved this kind
of complication. ‘And between the static limit and the outer horizon is the
ergosphere. If you fire a projectile into the ergosphere, and split it into two
pieces, one being captured by the black hole and one escaping, then you can
extract some of the black hole’s rotational energy.’
‘The most spectacular consequence of all,’ said the Charming
Construction Entity, ‘is the Penrose map of a Kerr black hole.’ He
rummaged around and tossed over another map.
 ‘The white diamonds represent asymptotically flat regions of spacetime
- one in the Planiturthian universe, say, and several others that might also be
in that universe, but could be in totally different ones. I’ve drawn the
singularity with broken lines, because it’s possible to pass through it.’
‘How?’
‘By diving right through the ring, Vikki.’
‘And now comes the fun bit,’ the Space Hopper butted in. Beyond the
—’
‘No, I want to tell this bit. Beyond the singularities lie antigravity
universes in which distances are negative and matter repels other matter. In
those regions, any body made from normal matter will be flung away from
the singularity to infinite distances. Now, Vikki, I’ve drawn several legal
trajectories - ones that stay below lightspeed - as curved paths. As you can
see, they lead through the wormhole to any of its alternative exits.’
‘The most spectacular feature of all,’ said the Space Hopper, attempting
to reclaim his part in the conversation, ‘is that this is only part of what’s
going on. The complete diagram repeats the same pattern indefinitely, so
there are an infinite number of possible entrances and exits!’
Vikki had to admit she was impressed. But what was all this for?
‘Well, if you used a rotating black hole instead of a worm-hole, and
towed its entrances and exits around at nearly lightspeed with the Hawk
King’s matter-processing equipment, you’d get a much more practical time
machine - one that you could get through without running into the
singularity or getting your tail trapped.’
‘It all looks very complicated.’
‘Oh,’ said the Charming Construction Entity, deflated by her lack of
enthusiasm. ‘Well, if you don’t fancy trying to control Kerr black holes, you
could settle for a much simpler kind of singularity: cosmic string. That
gives a static spacetime.’ And he dug out yet another map.
‘Let me run through the details for you. The best way to visualize
cosmic string is to use two dimensions of space—’
‘Like Minny Space?’
 ‘Oh, you’ve met the Space Girls? Congratulations on your survival
skills. Yes, just like Minny Space, but with some parts snipped out. You
have to cut out a wedge-shaped sector and glue the edges together.’
‘Like Squarey Space? You don’t mean real glue, do you? Squarey was a
square whose edges were “glued” together. Conceptually.’
That’s exactly right. But in this case you can actually do the gluing if
you insist on it. And it may help you visualize the result. If you make a
model out of paper, and really do cut out wedges and glue their edges
together, you end up with a pointed cone. But you’re right: mathematically
you can just identify the corresponding edges without doing any bending or
using any actual glue.’
‘Wow! Coney Space.’
‘Funny you should say that,’ the Charming Construction Entity said. ‘I
hear that one of the Space Girls is leaving and there could be a place for a
new member ... but let’s not get distracted. The time coordinate works just
as it does in Minkowski spacetime - and to get the right shape for light
cones you really should just identify the edges and not make actual cones,
OK? Now, throw in a third space coordinate and repeat the same
construction on every perpendicular cross-section, and you’ll get a fully
fledged cosmic string. It behaves like a line mass - nonzero mass
concentrated on a line. To make a model of one of those, you can thread lots
of identical cones on a length of - well, string. Each cone is a spacelike
section of the actual spacetime.’

‘So what does that do for you?’

 ‘Something very subtle and interesting. A cosmic string has a mass,
which is proportional to the angle of the sector that you cut out. But it
doesn’t behave like an ordinary mass. Everywhere except at the tips of the
cones, spacetime is locally flat - just like Minkowski spacetime. The
apparent curvature of a real cone is “harmless” - yes, Vikki, just as Squarey
Space wasn’t really curved even though she was a torus. In a cosmic string
there is some genuine curvature - which in relativistic gravitation is equated
to mass - but what it does is create global changes in the spacetime
topology. These global changes affect the large-scale structure of geodesies
- particle paths. But not the small-scale local structure. If you were standing
next to a massive cosmic string, you wouldn’t feel any gravitational
attraction.’
‘Then how would you know it was there?’
‘By looking for global effects - things happening over greater
distances’, said the Charming Construction Entity. ‘For instance, matter or
light that goes past a cosmic string is gravitationally lensed.’
‘Oh, I know about that. The mass bends light. But how can it do that, if
the light doesn’t “feel” the gravity?’
‘The bending is caused by the global form of the spacetime, not by a
loss of local flatness. Geodesies on a paper cone correspond to straight lines
on the flat paper, but when you bend the paper to make a cone, those lines
get “bent” too - in the sense that what were originally parallel lines can
converge. Let me draw you some geodesies, and you’ll see what I mean.’
 For time travel purposes,’ the Charming Construction Entity continued,
‘a cosmic string is much like a wormhole because the mathematical glue
lets you “jump across” the sector of Minkowski spacetime that you’ve cut
out. Way back in 1991 a Planiturthian named Richardgott exploited this
analogy to design a time machine. He showed that the spacetime formed by
two cosmic strings that are whizzing past each other at nearly lightspeed
contains closed timelike curves.’
‘Fair enough, but could you actually make a time machine that worked
that way?’ asked Vikki.
‘A shrewd question.’
‘Yes, she’s learning,’ the Space Hopper said with pride.
 ‘Well ... in 1992 by the Planiturthian calendar, Seancarroll, Edwardfarhi,
and Alanguth proved that there isn’t enough available energy in the
Planiturthian universe to build a Gott time machine’, the Charming
Construction Entity answered. ‘More precisely, that universe never contains
enough matter to provide such energy from the decay products of stationary
particles.’
‘Oh. Pity!’
‘Though if the Planiturthians could develop a sufficiently powerful new
energy source ... but I’m afraid that’s not in the works yet. However, I recall
that surveys of the distribution of galaxies in their universe has revealed that
they clump on vast scales, forming structures hundreds of millions of light-
years long. This dumpiness is too great to have been caused by gravitational
attraction among the known matter.’
‘So?’
‘One theory is that the clumps were seeded by naturally occurring
cosmic strings,’ said the Charming Construction Entity. ‘Not by
gravitational attraction, of course, because there isn’t any, but by
unexpected convergence of geodesies. If so, those cosmic strings ought still
to be around. So maybe, just maybe ...’
‘The Planiturthians really could build themselves a cosmic string time
machine,’ the Space Hopper finished for him, ‘which would be nice.’
‘But what about the Great-great-grandfather Paradox?’ asked Vikki.
‘Ah, that. Yes.’ The Charming Construction Entity always found such
objections tiresome. ‘If you can make a time machine, then presumably the
paradoxes will iron themselves out.’
Vikki didn’t find this entirely convincing. ‘Maybe they won’t, though.
Maybe when you build a time machine the logic of your universe unravels
and it comes to pieces. Or maybe history becomes something that can be
changed, and you get huge Time Wars as people range up and down history
trying to alter it to suit their own wishes.’
‘Could be,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘On the other hand, every time you
change history, you might get switched to a different timeline in an
alternative universe. So you’d think history had been changed, when
actually the original timeline was still present, elsewhere in the Mathiverse.
No paradoxes, then.’
‘That sounds suspiciously like a cop-out to me,’ said Vikki.
 ‘Not at all,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘It’s one way to make sense of
quantum indeterminacy.’ And before she could protest, the VUE once more
took control of her senses.

‘It’s like this,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Despite what everyone seems to
think, quantum superpositions don’t tell you anything very interesting about
cats. But they could be important for time travel, by resolving the Great-
great-grandfather Paradox.’
Vikki wished he hadn’t reminded her of Albert. Visions of Crisp Moose
Day filled her head, and for a moment she felt dizzy. To distract herself, she
asked, ‘How could they do that?’
The VUEfield shimmered ... Flatland was below them. If anything, that
made her feel even worse, but she struggled against a rising tide of emotion.
The Space Hopper, who wasn’t exactly tactful at the best of times, didn’t
notice.
‘Is that—?’
‘Your ancestor Albert? Only in VUE simulation. So don’t be upset by
anything that happens, OK? Promise?’
‘Promise,’ Vikki snivelled. ‘Oh, look, he’s in prison, poor thing -you
can see the dots over the window. And he’s writing something. Is it
Flatland?’
‘The very same. Now, let’s run time back to before he was imprisoned.
When the Sphere was about to visit him. That’s what started it all.’
‘Oh, there he is in his house. And - I can see the Sphere rising up
towards the plane of Flatland!’
‘Yes. What would you do to stop Ancestor Albert encountering the
Sphere?’
‘I’d ... I’d turn up just before and find some excuse to get him out of the
way.’
‘And that’s just what you are doing. Look, he’s got up and gone to the
door.’
‘Yes, but - he’s stayed behind as well! And both versions of him are
semitransparent!’
 ‘Yes. His universe has split into a quantum superposition of two
different versions. In one, you managed to distract him; in the other, you
didn’t. From now on, both universes will follow distinct paths.’
They could hear the conversation in Universe-1, faintly. The time-
travelling Vikki was pretending to be collecting money on behalf of a
charity. The Sphere materialized in Albert’s room - but the room was empty.
Puzzled, the Sphere pottered around for a bit, and then disappeared again.
In Universe-2, the Sphere materialized in Albert’s room, confronted
Albert - and at that moment his eventual imprisonment became inevitable.
‘OK,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘Universe-2 is the one in which Albert
went to prison, and therefore it’s the universe that you were in when you
used the time machine to go back to distract him. Universe-1 is what
happens instead, once you have distracted him. Let’s fast-forward to the
moment when you climbed into the time machine. Got it. Here you are, in
Universe-2 ... you get into the time machine, go back, still in Universe-2 ...
until eventually you’re back before the time when Universes 1 and 2 split.
Now, in Universe-1 you do manage to distract him ... which means that in
that version of the universe there was no need for you to go back in a time
machine to stop him encountering the Sphere. Because he never did
anyway, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So do we see you get into a time machine in Universe-1?’
‘No. Only in Universe-2.’
‘Exactly! And when you come back from time travelling, you remain in
Universe-2 because that’s where you came from. And Universe-2 is the one
where he did go to prison and you did need to go back and try to distract
him. So it’s all consistent. More generally, if the universe splits into
alternatives every time some decision could or could not be made, then time
travel would just switch you between alternatives, maybe creating new ones
in the process or changing their probabilities. But there wouldn’t be any
time travel paradoxes.’
Vikki thought about this, and spotted what seemed to be a major flaw. ‘I
thought you kept saying that real cats don’t superimpose. How come real
universes do?’
‘Ah. They don’t: they become alternatives. The people in them perceive
one or the other, never both. But in terms of quantum theory, the physics
makes more sense if you pretend that both possibilities coexist. It’s a way to
represent quantum uncertainty and make it mathematically respectable.
Planiturthians call it the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum theory.’
‘Is the Planiturthian universe really a branching network of alternative
possibilities, then?’ asked Vikki.
‘That’s certainly a consistent interpretation of the mathematics,’ said the
Space Hopper. ‘The question is, does every consistent interpretation of
physicists’ mathematics represent reality?’ There was a long silence.
‘Well, does it?’
‘You’ll have to work out your own VUEs about that.’
 15
WHAT SHAPE IS THE UNIVERSE?

Another day, another trip through the Mathiverse. The sphere of Planiturth
hovered before them - dazzling ultramarine, smeared with white, patched
with greens and browns.
‘How anyone could ever have doubted that the Planiturthian universe is
based on geometry is beyond me,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Just look at the
thing they’re living on!’
‘I guess they were too close to it to understand what it was,’ suggested
Vikki.
‘You’re learning, aren’t you?’ said the Space Hopper, impressed.
‘Not to go by appearances?’
‘Exactly. You’ve put your tip right on it. Yes, it often helps to take a step
back and see the whole more clearly, as well as to take a really close-up
look at all the nuts and bolts ... Speaking of which, we’ve had a very close-
up look indeed at the small-scale structure of the quantum world, but we
haven’t yet—’
The jewelled topaz sphere receded as if snatched away. Its diminutive,
pockmarked satellite sped past them, vanishing to a speck. The entire
Planiturthian solar system turned into a child’s toy and disappeared against
the velvet backdrop of stars.
The stars radiated away as if the universe were contracting to a point.
The speckled dust of pinpoint lights merged, acquired form - a
whirlpool of fuzzy light. The sedately twirling spiral arms of the Home
Galaxy.
This was just the beginning. Now the whole process repeated on a
galactic level. The heavens were filled with luminous skeins, cosmic
cobwebs millions of light-years across, now shrunk to the size of a paper
doily.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Vikki, breathless at the sheer pace of the
motion.
 ‘We’re taking a step back. Looking at the cosmos as a whole’
‘And what do we expect to see?’
‘The shape of the universe. And its origins.’
Now the contraction had ceased. The Planiturthian universe hung before
them, a dark smudge visible only because metaspace has no existence at all
and therefore cannot be any particular colour, not even black. The smudge
was fuzzy, inchoate, and impossible to see all at once.
The Space Hopper sighed, and a message wrote itself across the
formless smudge of the Planiturthian universe:

OUT-OF-INFORMATION-ERROR

‘As I thought,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘The VUE can only show what
it’s programmed to. It shows Virtual Unrealities, not Realities. It doesn’t
know what shape the Planiturthian universe should be, so it can’t show us
any detail. But there’s one thing it does know. Look at the smudge - what’s
it doing?’
‘I think ... it’s getting bigger! Yes, it is! Or are we getting closer to it?’
‘No, it’s getting closer to us. It’s expanding. I don’t mean that the stars
are moving away from one another through space - I mean that space is
moving away from itself. Growing of its own accord.’
‘Obviously somebody decided that the Planiturthian universe needed
more space,’ said Vikki, ‘but how do you know it’s expanding if you don’t
know what shape it is?’
The Space Hopper’s grin was a big ∪ as the smudge swelled and
enveloped them.

They orbited a pale blue galaxy.

‘Oh! It’s beautiful’!’ cried Vikki, entranced.
‘Well, I chose this one because it’s particularly pretty,’ said the Space
Hopper. ‘And it’s out near the edge of the universe. But the main thing I
want you to remember is its colour.’
 ‘Blue,’ said Vikki. ‘A wonderful, delicate, heartbreaking blue.’
‘It’s a very special blue,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘This is the only
monochromatic galaxy in the universe. Meaning that the light that it emits
is all of one wavelength. It’s been like that since it first appeared, and it’s
always been the only one. Remember that. Because now we’re going to
travel to the centre of the universe and look back at this galaxy.’
Space surged past them, too fast for the eye to follow; then it stopped.
‘Turn around, look back the way we came, and use the VUE’s zoom
facility to locate that pale blue galaxy,’ the Space Hopper instructed her.
‘Set the VUE for monochromatic light; then you won’t be distracted by
billions of other galaxies.’
Vikki searched, using higher and higher magnification, but she couldn’t
see the blue galaxy. In fact, in all the universe the VUE could detect only
one monochromatic galaxy. But that one was red.
‘I’ve found a red one,’ she told the Space Hopper.
‘Not blue?’
‘No. But didn’t you say the blue one was the only monochromatic
galaxy in the universe?’
‘I did. And I was right.’
‘Then where did this red one come from? And where’s the blue one
gone?’
‘You tell me!’

Fiveday 27 Noctember 2099

The Space Hopper is such a tiresome creature! Try as I might, I couldn’t
puzzle it out. ‘Follow the logic,’ he told me. But I couldn’t see any logic to
follow. All I could see, Diary my Sweet, was a red galaxy when I was
expecting a blue one.
‘You mean this red thing is the blue one?’ I eventually asked him. ‘It’s
changed colour?’
‘That’s a very interesting question,’ he replied, in that irritat-ingly smug
way he has.
 Eventually I figured it out. Since the blue galaxy was the only
monochromatic one in the universe - and the only one there had ever been,
which turns out to be important - and I was LOOKING at a monochromatic
galaxy, it had to be the blue one.
The fact that it was red didn’t change that conclusion, you appreciate.
So ... it must have changed colour, right?
Sort of.
My first thought was that, seeing as the blue galaxy was at the edge of
the universe, and we were in the middle, then it had to be an awfully long
way away. And since light can cover only 300,000 kilometres in a second,
the light that was reaching us must have started out billions of years ago.
So, of course, the blue galaxy had actually been red, then.
Not at all.
’Blue from the day it was born,’ the Space Hopper insisted. So I sat
down and thought very hard. According to the Space Hopper, that galaxy
was blue when the light left it. So the light must have changed along the
way!
Nope.
Nothing had happened to the light. Not as such.
Then I remembered the Light Brigade. You’ll recall that when they first
overtook our Universal Touring Machine, when we were cruising along
Continuum Carriageway, the siren made a noise like this:

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOooooOOOOoooooooooooo

Now, it may not have been obvious at the time, but the EEEE part was a
higher pitch than the OOOO part. This, the Space Hopper had told me, was
caused by the Doppler effect. (Really, Diary, the next bit ought to be done
relativistically, but the calculations are messy and the answer is
qualitatively- though not quantitatively - the same.) Because the Light
Engine was moving, it was catching up with the sound waves its siren was
emitting in the forward direction, so anyone listening to them received more
waves per second than they would have done if the Engine had been
stationary. Higher frequency, right? And that pushed the pitch UP. When the
Light Engine had overtaken us, it was getting away from the sound waves
its siren was emitting in the backward direction, so anyone listening to them
received fewer waves per second than they would have done if the Engine
had been stationary. Lower frequency, you see. And that pushed the pitch
DOWN. So the sound started out as an EEEE and ended up as an OOOO,
when really it had been an in-between MI all along.
But this was the Light Brigade, right? It had a flashing blue light on top
too, didn’t it? As they do. BUT - and I regret I hadn’t spotted this at the
time, or I would have told you - as it sped away from us, that light looked
RED. It only looked blue when the Light Engine was catching up with us.
Now, all you need to complete the puzzle, Diary, is the information that
red light has a lower frequency than blue light.
Yes, that’s right. Diary, you are a veritable GENIUS. The Light Engine’s
light had undergone the Doppler effect too. So whenever you see something
that ought to be blue, but looks red, it must be moving away from you.
Let me rephrase that. My adventures with the Space Hopper have honed
my critical faculties - which is to say that I’m not impressed by oxagondung
any more. It’s not really the colour of a moving object that changes. What
happens is that all the frequencies of the light that emanates from it have to
shift a bit. Now, even if the blue light shifts down into the red part of the
spectrum, the object may still look blue, because the ultraviolet has also
shifted down into the blue part of the spectrum. If it’s emitting any
ultraviolet, of course.
And that’s why it was so important that the blue galaxy was
monochromatic. If it looked red, then the frequency really must have shifted
- so it had to be moving. Away from the centre.
You can look at lots of galaxies, and although none of the others are
monochromatic, you can use ‘spectral lines’ to tell whether the frequency
has shifted. And what you find is this: they’re all moving away from you!
Which means they are also all moving away from one another. It’s as if
they’re dots on a balloon and someone is blowing the balloon up. Except
that this is a balloon with a 3D skin.
And that means—

*
‘—That the universe is expanding,’ the Space Hopper agreed. ‘And since
we’re pretty sure that all of the space that exists contains much the same
proportion of galaxies, the only way that can happen is if space itself is
expanding.’
Vikki gave this information careful consideration. ‘Well, Hopper, I’m
not sure that’s really a surprise. Most creatures get bigger as they grow up.
So presumably it’s telling us that the universe is some kind of gigantic
organism.’
‘Wha—?’ The Space Hopper was outraged.
‘Only thing is, what does it eat? Maybe it eats time. It gobbles up the
past, and that’s what causes everything to move into the future!’
‘Vikki, that’s the silliest theory I’ve heard in a ... well, maybe not... it
might just possibly be—’
‘Hopper, it was a joke.’
‘Many a good theory starts as a joke. Most end that way, too. But I think
I ought to warn you that what you’ve just said is highly unorthodox and
there’s no serious evidence for it.’
‘I told you, it was a joke.’
’You say it’s a joke. Others may take it more seriously. You realize, it
might even be right?’
‘Hopper, calm down. You were telling me why the Planiturthians think
space is expanding. So tell me this: if it’s not because the universe is
growing up, why does it expand?’
‘Let’s find out,’ said the Space Hopper.

Vikki waited, but nothing much was happening. The nearby stars seemed to
flicker a lot, but that was all.
‘Hopper, is the VUE working?
‘I don’t see why not. We’ll soon see. It’s supposed to be running the
universe backwards in time. To see where it came from.’
‘Well, I can’t see— Hold it, that star just evaporated! Look, it’s turned
into a cloud of gas!’
 ‘Hydrogen and helium,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Most of the matter in
the universe used to be hydrogen and helium - the stars made the rest in
their nuclear furnaces. When the universe runs backwards, all the heavier
elements decompose back into hydrogen and helium. In fact, if I’m not
mistaken ...’ he fiddled with the VUE and zoomed in on some of the nearby
atoms ‘... yes, the mix is pretty close to one part helium, three parts
hydrogen, as I expected. Now, let’s see where they came from.’
‘The helium is the big guys?’
‘Yes, a helium atom contains two protons (the yellow blobs), two
neutrons (green), and two electrons (pink), whereas a hydrogen atom is just
one proton and one electron. And a proton is really a neutron with a
different mix of quarks ...’
‘The atoms are breaking up! It’s all going green!’
‘That’s right. We’re back into the Era of Free Neutrons.’
‘What’s driving all this change?’ Vikki asked.
‘Well, in forward time the universe is expanding. So in backward time?’
‘It has to be ... contracting.’ That made sense.
‘Yes. And as it contracts, there’s less and less space to hold the same
amount of energy - so everything heats up.’
Vikki gasped. ‘You’re right! I can feel it!’
‘I’m afraid some of the heat is seeping through the VUE’s simulation
boundaries. Don’t worry, it will only get comfortably warm -I hope,’ the
Space Hopper added.
‘What’s the temperature now, then?’
‘Ooohhh ... no more than a billion degrees.’
Ulp! I hope you know what you’re doing! And space is contracting, you
said? Shouldn’t we get out before there isn’t enough room for us to fit
inside?’
‘We’re only “in” in Virtual Unreality,’ said the Space Hopper, unruffled.
‘We can exit the simulation before the universe gets too cramped. Or too
hot. But we have to adopt an internal VUEpoint to see what’s happening.’
They watched. Vikki imagined she could feel the universe shrinking
around her. It was like painting yourself into a corner, except that the paint
was nonspace.
‘Now it’s all going pink, Hopper, why’s that?’
 ‘The quarks have reassorted themselves into electrons. The
temperature’s risen to about two billion degrees, now, Vikki. And when it
gets to three billion—’

F1ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZUU!

‘—a lot of vacuum will pull apart into electrons and anti-electrons. A
billion times as many as there were just now.’
‘I see. In backward time, they’re unannihilating each other. And that
means we have only thirteen seconds left.’
‘Until what?’
‘Until the End of the Universe! Rather, the Start of the Universe VUEd
in backward time. I think it might be a good idea to slow down the VUE’s
clock.’
Backward seconds ticked away ... backwardly. And, to their
perceptions, more slowly.
‘It’s all gone sort of ... transparent.’
‘That’s the neutrinos decoupling from the rest of matter. The
temperature must be up to about ten billion degrees now. One second to
go!’
‘Nothing much going on at all, now, so far as I can tell. Are you sure the
VUE is working? I think something’s broken—’
‘No, the temperature’s up to thirty billion degrees, that’s all - too hot for
any atomic nuclei to stay together. It’s just independent particles now.
That’s why we can’t see much going on any more.’
‘What’s that wispy stuff, then?’
‘Time. The VUE has decided to show us time as if it’s something
material. Watch the wisps shrink! A tenth of a second to go.’

FIZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZHU!

‘Ah. The unannihilation of the hadrons,’ said the Space Hopper, as if he’d
been expecting this. ‘Yes. The heavy particles, like protons and neutrons
and antiprotons and antineutrons, have multiplied a billionfold, just like the
electrons did.’
‘Whatever there was, there’s a lot more of it now,’ said Vikki, ‘but
crammed into a much smaller space.’
‘More vacuum converted into particles and antiparticles, I’m afraid. It’ll
soon run out altogether.’
‘What will?’
‘The supply of vacuum.’
‘Oh. I thought vacuum was nothing, anyway. How can nothing run out?’
‘It’s empty space, and the space is running out. Anyway, a quantum
vacuum isn’t really empty: it’s a seething torrent of particles and
antiparticles winking into existence and back out again, I’ve told you that.
Look, the time-wisps are shrinking - time is literally running out, there’s
only a hundredth of a second left. I’ll slow the clock some more or we’ll
miss it. Oh, and we’re up to a hundred billion degrees, by the way, and that
means we ought to—’

GLOMP

‘—get out sharpish.’

Vikki was getting better at adapting to sudden shifts of VUEpoint, and
the dizziness lasted only an instant. ‘Is that the Planiturthian universe,
Hopper?’
‘Yes.’
‘That soggy thing like a deflating football?’
‘Yes. But a very hot football. Three hundred billion degrees and rising.
And in a thousandth of a second ... see how tiny the time-wisps have
become? ... it will—’

FLOOmp

‘—disappear.’
They stared at empty metaspace. No particles, no vacuum, no
temperature ... and no time-wisps.
 ‘That,’ declared the Space Hopper proudly, ‘is known as the Big Bang?
‘More of a Big Flop,’ said Vikki. ‘What an anticlimax!’
‘That’s because we saw how it looked backwards,’ the Space Hopper
pointed out. ‘It’s like reading a story starting from the end and working
back to the beginning. Of course it’s an anticlimax. But in forward time, it’s
like a sudden humongous explosion! Space, time, and matter all coming
into being from absolutely nothing.’
‘Why did you show me it backwards, then?’
‘Because that’s how the Planiturthians figured out what must have
happened. Take an expanding universe and track it back in time, and you
can see it must collapse. And that raises the temperature, and then all the
matter comes to bits, and that leads to everything we’ve just seen. Tell the
story in the right time-direction, and you have the story of the origins of the
Planiturthian universe.’
It all sounded exceedingly far-fetched, even so. ‘Is the expansion - the
redshift - the only evidence for the Big Bang?’
‘No, there are other things that corroborate it. You can even detect the
Bang’s echoes. No, I don’t mean sound - “Bang” is a metaphor, and so is
“echo". But electromagnetic radiation has been bouncing around the
universe for twelve to fifteen billion years, ever since the Big Bang went
off, and that radiation has been detected - and it looks right.’
‘What caused it?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What caused the Big Bang?’
‘There wasn’t a cause. Couldn’t be.’
‘But - what happened before the Big Bang?’
‘Vikki, there wasn’t a “before"! Look at where the universe was in
metaspace. What do you see?’
‘Nothing. Just... metaspace.’
‘Which is a Mathiversian fiction and doesn’t really exist. Do you see
any space?’
‘No.’
‘Does that bother you?’
‘No. Space appears when the universe blows up.’
‘Do you see any matter?’
‘No.’
 ‘Does that bother you?’
‘No. Matter appears when the universe blows up, too.’
‘Do you see any time? Any time-wisps hanging around out there?’
‘No. They vanished along with the soggy football.’
‘Does that—’
‘You’re telling me that time arises when the universe blows up?’
‘Exactly. Without time, there can’t be a “before". Since causes occur
before their effects, there couldn’t have been a cause, either.’
‘But—’
‘Of course, maybe there really is some sort of... extrinsic para-space and
paratime ... and the Big Bang did have a cause,’ the Space Hopper mollified
her. ‘Some Peoples think so. They even think that universes might bud off
black hole babies that can evolve. So you never know. That’s what makes
physics such fun.’

Sixday 28th Noctember, 2099

Dear Diary,
The Space Hopper got so carried away showing me the ORIGIN of the
Planiturthian universe that he completely forgot what we started talking
about, namely, its SHAPE!
Until I reminded him.
Well, it turns out that the Planiturthians don’t actually know what shape
their own universe is! I told him that proves how ignorant they are, but he
said that working out the shape of a universe from the inside is pretty tricky,
especially if you can’t go and visit places. All you can do is look in various
directions, and see whatever you can see. Which may not be everything
you’d like to see.
I said that we Flatlanders know that our world is a plane. He said we’re right
- as it happens - but that if we weren’t, we might find it very difficult to
discover we were wrong.
You know something? He’s right, dammit. I hadn’t thought about it before,
but the problem is, we only ever see a limited part of our world. If it looks
like part of a plane, we assume the whole world IS a plane. But for all we
know, it might be the surface of a very big sphere, or a flat torus, or a
hyperbolic plane, or a finite hyperbolic surface, or some kind of awful
super-teapot with seventeen holes ...
Basically, it’s like trying to work out the geography of some distant country
without ever being able to go there.
Except: you’re allowed to look. And that opens up some fascinating
possibilities.
Let me tell you what would happen if Flatland wasn’t really a plane, but a
flat torus. Remember Squarey Space? A flat torus is a square whose edges
‘wrap round’ and join seamlessly. The way Planiturthians always draw tori
makes them LOOK curvy, but that’s because they embed them in 3D space.
If you don’t bother about this, the tori can be flat. Which, you’ll recall, just
means that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, and so on. It
doesn’t mean you could iron them.
The easy way to think of a flat torus is to tile the plane with infinitely many
copies of a square, and insist that whatever things you find in one copy, you
will find it in exactly the same place in ALL copies. Now, if Flatland were a
SMALL flat torus, then you could look in certain directions and see
yourself in the distance.
You’d immediately know you weren’t on a plane, yes?
But what, Diary Dear, if you’re on a very big flat torus - so big that light
hasn’t had time to go all the way across it? Well, you’re then in much the
situation that the Planiturthians are in right now.
The simplest possibility for the spatial shape of the Planit-urthian universe
is a 3-sphere, like the one in my nightmare, a few weeks ago (when I started
painting a ball and got myself trapped inside the paint!). That fits the
simplest Big Bang mathematics - space is a sort of 3D balloon that blew up
very big. But there are other possibilities, depending on what the shape was
right at the beginning and exactly how it grew. In the simplest of these,
space is curved, but the curvature is the same everywhere
- a nice, symmetric condition that fits rather nicely with the symmetry of
natural laws. Of course that symmetry could be broken, but the easiest
assumption is that it’s not, OK? Well, that assumption leads to three
possibilities: positive curvature, zero curvature, and negative curvature.
The 3-sphere has positive curvature, but so do other things -in particular
various shapes that tile a 3-sphere, with suitable ‘wrap-around’ rules for
going across edges. Do that with haif a sphere, by the way, and you get the
confounded Projective Plain
-again. There’s a 3D flat torus - a cube with opposite faces wrapped round -
and that has zero curvature. And in the negative curvature department
there’s 3D hyperbolic space, plus whatever you can extract from it by using
a shape that tiles it. With wrap-around rules as well, of course, or else your
universe would have an edge - and that’s bad because the laws of nature
would be different at a genuine edge: you wouldn’t be able to go beyond it,
and that’s contrary to symmetry, you see.
Anyhow, in any of these finite universes with wrap-around rules, you’re in
much the same situation as a Flatlander in a flat torus. If the universe were
so small that light could cross it very quickly, then in principle you could
look in various directions and see yourself. By mapping all the copies of
yourself that you could see, you could work out whether the universe had
positive, negative, or zero curvature, and what shape it was.
But in a BIG universe ... well, let me show you how it goes on the flat torus.
The region of space that’s visible from a given point forms a circular disc,
and as time passes that disc grows. When it grows to roughly the same size
as the whole universe, it starts to OVERLAP ITSELF. At that point - and
not before, Diary Dear, because of the speed of light, I’m sure you can see
that - it becomes possible to observe the same object in more than one
direction. Any object in the overlap will do, but the others won’t, of course.
The first objects you can see that way will be sitting at the points where the
boundary of that disc overlaps itself.
Now, the Planiturthians start with a few advantages. They reckon they know
roughly how old their universe is, and roughly how big (because they know
how fast it expanded from the Big Bang). And they’ve calculated that their
light sphere, if it exists, ought to have started to overlap itself by now.
So the Planiturthians are planning to hunt the overlap down. Since their
space is 3D, the disc has to be replaced by a solid 3D ball. So the places
where it first overlaps itself form big circles in the sky ...
Why circles? Because, Diary Dear, a sphere intersects another sphere in a
circle. Even if the ‘other’ sphere is just a different bit of the first sphere
that’s been wrapped around and overlaps!
To return to my story: the pattern of those circles - if you can find them -
will tell you what shape your tile is, and that will tell you what shape your
universe is.
The only problem is that what the Planiturthians see repeated many times
over on those special circles is either empty space (not much use, Diary of
Mine, since all regions of empty space look identical) or randomly scattered
stars. And the rest of the sky is ALSO randomly scattered stars, and the
Planiturthians have no idea where to look for those circles. So picking out
the right circles from the random speckling of the night sky is next to
impossible. The best they can do is trial and error - mostly error. Pick some
circle - which may or may not be the right one - and record the positions of
its stars. Then search the sky for other circles whose stars seem to match it
unusually well. There’s an awful lot of circles to try. But the Planiturthians
are nothing if not persistent, and their answer to that is to build faster
computers and just crunch circles until they find a match.
Or not.

Intelligent it isn’t. Except that there doesn’t seem to be a cleverer way to go

about it.
You know, I think that when I get back to Flatland I’ll try to find out what
shape that really is.
Bother, now I’ve reminded myself. I’m homesick, Diary. The is tremendous
fun, and the Space Hopper is a competent, if sometimes irritating, guide -
despite being utterly weird. But in the early hours of the morning, when I
find myself awake and can’t get back to sleep, I miss my home and my
family more than I dare admit.
And I hope they’re missing me, and I’m worried that they may very well be
doing just that. And I’m even more worried that they’re not.
I hope they found the Crisp Moose card I sent them.
 16
NO-BRANES AND P-BRANES

As usual, the opportunity to bring up the topic of a return home never arose.
The Space Hopper was far too enthusiastic about whatever bit of the
Mathiverse he wanted to show off next, and Vikki was too kind-hearted to
disappoint the poor creature. And its ∪ was kind of cute, in a ghastly sort
of way.
They were discussing the state of Planiturthian physics - the nature of
space, time, and matter.
‘Of course, the Planiturthians weren’t content to leave it at that,’ the
Space Hopper observed. ‘And you can see why.’
‘I don’t see why at all,’ said Vikki. ‘The Planiturthians had worked their
way towards one amazingly effective and accurate theory of the large-scale
structure of space, time, and matter - and a different, even more amazingly
effective and accurate theory of the small-scale structure of space, time, and
matter. So between them, those two theories covered everything.’
The Space Hopper’s u widened. ‘Actually, that’s the one thing they
didn’t cover.’
‘What?’
‘Everything!’
‘You mean - they didn’t cover the medium scale?’
‘No, I mean they didn’t cover everything. Not all in one go. What the
Planiturthians wanted was a Theory of Everything. One theory. Not two.
One set of laws to explain the large scale and the small.’
‘I must be missing something here,’ said Vikki, deeply perplexed. ‘Why
can’t they have one theory with two options? These laws for the large scale,
but those laws for the small scale. Like groceries - one price for a small
order, but a different price for a big one. I don’t see the problem.’
‘Well... I guess they just felt that kind of conditional law wasn’t elegant
enough.’
 ‘Oh,’ said Vikki. ‘They wanted it elegant, too? Why not just stick to
something that worked?’
The Space Hopper bobbed uncomfortably. ‘Because it didn’t, not
entirely. I know, it sounds all right in theory: one set of laws for the large
scale, a universe-sized law; another set of laws for the small scale, a
subatomic-sized law. And never the twain shall meet. But then came the Big
Bang, as you already know. And in the Big Bang—’
‘What ends up as a universe-sized object starts out as a subatomic-sized
one! And it grows continuously from small to large ... so there’s no obvious
place to swap the laws.’
‘Correct. And in some respects it was even worse than that. You see, the
large-scale laws had implications for the small scale, even after the Big
Bang was long past. That’s because the large-scale laws indicated that there
was a “force of gravity” that acted on the small scale. Between any two
particles.’
‘I thought General Relativity explained the force of gravity away by
reinterpreting it as the curvature of spacetime.’
‘Yes, but that really works only on the universe-sized scale. It doesn’t
fully explain why the solar system behaves as if each body attracted all the
others. Sure, you can come close ... but what would really sort everything
out would be a gravitational particle. A graviton. Just as a photon is a
particle of light, so a graviton should be a particle of gravity.’
‘Hold it. Gravity is a force. Light isn’t.’
‘On the face of it, that’s true. But it’s not that simple. And there are
other types of particle for which the analogy works better.’
‘Oh.’
‘And just as the large-scale laws had implications for the small scale, so
the small-scale laws had implications for the large scale. They meant that in
a sense the large-scale universe didn’t really exist at all. Because the
mathematics of General Relativity assumes that the universe is an infinitely
divisible spacetime continuum, whereas the quantum theory says that space,
time, and matter can be subdivided only so far before they become
indivisible. You can subdivide them a long way, I grant, but not for ever.’
That’s something of a hair-splitting argument.’
‘Hair-not-splitting, really. But you’re right, it wouldn’t have mattered so
much if the Planiturthians hadn’t been so set on finding a Final Theory that
unified the whole shebang in one fell swoop. Wrapped up the entire ball-
game, all at—’
‘Hopper, I think you’re overdoing it. I get the picture. Anyway, why
would anyone want to do that?’
‘Well, the Planiturthians had all sorts of rational reasons, but when it
comes down to it, I think it was because Planiturthian science had grown
from a monotheistic religion. Most of their science was the product of a
culture whose religious beliefs attributed their entire universe to a single act
of creation by a single deity. Whether or not the scientists themselves were
religious, this cultural trait led them to seek a single explanation for
everything. The search for One Final Theory is psychologically very close
to the search for One True God - though the Planiturthian scientists
wouldn’t have agreed with that view at all. They didn’t like religious
explanations. None the less, they adopted a very fundamentalist attitude -
they used that word a lot, “fundamental". They seemed to think that their
mathematical equations - if they ever found them - would be How the
Universe Really Works. Which is a breathtaking piece of arrogance, coming
from a bunch of creatures that have experienced only one tiny planet, and
then only for a short period of time and on a small range of scales.
‘But maybe that’s being unfair. A lot of them understood that their
hoped-for theory would be fundamental only in a metaphorical sense - that
in principle it might be possible to base most of their other theories on it.
What they expected to be done in practice was much less ambitious. And I
think some of them even realized that what they would get would be a
description of how the universe seems to work, not the actual rules by
which it runs. Because - well, because there might not be any such rules. A
rule is a very Peoplish concept, and even more so a law. Those are methods
Peoples use to run their own society. So it seems to me that they had a
mental picture of their universe that was modelled on their own social
interactions. The amazing thing is that it worked pretty well.’

Sevenday 29 Noctember 2099

We’re getting into very difficult intellectual territory here, Diary Dear, and
not just philosophically. This stuff is right out on the frontiers of the
Mathiverse, where new concepts are still popping into existence ... and the
physics is pretty hairy too. So I’m going to make some notes for you.
The most important item of background information, the one that sets the
problem up, so to speak, is that the Planiturthian universe seems to be
governed by exactly four different kinds of force. What’s a force?
Something that lets matter affect other matter. How does it work? Forces are
produced by fields, which in turn are associated with bits of matter, and
other bits of matter respond to those fields. For instance, a magnet is
surrounded by a magnetic field, and any matter that responds to magnetism
is affected by whatever magnetic field it finds itself in.
Cot that? Good.
What are the four forces? Here goes:

Gravity. This is a very weak force - it takes the entire mass of

Planiturth to generate enough gravity to hold Planit-urthians on
the ground, and even then they can jump to roughly their own
height (with training, effort, and skill). In compensation,
though, gravity is a long-range force - it acts over
extraordinarily large distances. Right across the universe, in fact
- it’s what holds their universe together
Electromagnetism. Originally the Planiturthians viewed this as
two different things: magnetism, which made needles point
north and lined up iron filings in patterns; and electricity, which
gave them shocks when it built up on metal objects, and
powered their lights and televisions. Both magnetism and
electricity have fields associated with them, which you can
measure with the right instruments. After the work of
Jamesclerkmaxwell, who invented a single mathematical
framework for both the magnetic and electric fields, the
Planiturthians recognized that they’d merely been seeing two
different aspects of the same thing. Electromagnets can turn
electricity into magnetism, and dynamos can turn magnetism
into electricity. This was the first unification of apparently
distinct physical fields and the associated forces.
 Electromagnetism is intrinsically stronger than gravity, but it
comes in two kinds - positive and negative. Because those tend
to cancel out, the dominant large-scale force in the universe is
gravity, not electromagnetism. This is why General Relativity
works pretty well on cosmological scales.
Strong nuclear force. You don’t come across this directly in
everyday life, Diary! However, without it there wouldn’t BE
any everyday life, because it’s what keeps protons and neutrons
together in the atomic nucleus. No strong nuclear force, no
nuclei; no nuclei, no atoms; no atoms, no molecules; no
molecules, no anything. The strong nuclear force really is
strong, which is why nuclei are so hard to break up, but it acts
only at short range - about a quadrillionth of a metre.
More accurately, the strong nuclear force acts between
quarks, which are the fundamental (that word again!)
constituents of protons and neutrons. Quarks are complicated
beasties, and, as you know, a proton or a neutron contains a
bunch of them ... so the strong nuclear force is a rather messy
thing to work with.
Weak nuclear force. A lot of particles - the technical terms is
‘leptons’ - don’t ‘feel’ the strong nuclear force at all. But they
do feel the weak nuclear force, surprising as this may sound.
Basically, some particles are ‘immune’ to the strong nuclear
force - the Force isn’t with them, OK? The weak nuclear force
is a lot weaker than the strong nuclear force (surprised?) and
has about a hundredth of its range.

OK, Diary Dear: now you have the ingredients. The problem is to make
sense of it all!
That’s hard.

‘I still don’t fully follow this business of fields and forces,’ said Vikki in a
troubled tone. ‘It seems to mean that in some mysterious way a particle can
affect another, possibly quite distant, particle, without anything passing
between them.’
‘In a classical picture, and in a relativistic one, that’s true, and it’s not
just a philosophical difficulty. It’s one reason why Planit-urthian physicists
found it necessary to try to marry gravitation and quantum theory. In a
quantum picture - well, let’s take a look.’
The VUEfield zoomed in on their surroundings, homing in on a fuzzy
pink ball. ‘Look, an electron!’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Listen closely, and
you’ll hear it singing.’
‘Electrons don’t sing!’
‘VUE-enhanced electrons do. For heaven’s sake, Vikki, we spoke to the
Charge on the Electron not long ago. Don’t balk at a bit of harmless
singing! At least they’re not dancing too, like the Space Girls did. Turn up
the volume, and you’ll hear it.’
Vikki did as she was bid, and sure enough, a high-pitched voice was
singing a curious, repetitive little song:
’I can’t get no / more momentum / got fixed energy / can’t invent ‘em ...’
‘What’s all that about?’
‘It’s singing about conservation laws. Which is nice.’
‘No, I mean, how come it’s singing at all?’
‘It’s how the VUE represents a quantum field. Electrons don’t really
sing—’
‘That’s a relief!’
‘—they hum.’
The singing went on for several minutes, and then a second, lower-
pitched voice started to join in, in a weird descant:
’... take you down / ‘cos I’m going to / Yang-Mills Gauge Fields / Nothing is real...’
A second pink ball came into VUE, closing in on the first one. ‘This
should be interesting,’ said the Space Hopper.
‘They’re on a collision course!’ cried Vikki.
‘Maybe. They’ll come close, certainly.’
As the two particles approached each other, their songs became
strangely intermingled, and odd snatches of other songs began to intrude:
‘I can’t get down / ‘cos I really really want/ got nothing ...’
‘... take you no more / fixed energy Fields / did it my way / is real...’
‘They’re interacting,’ said the Space Hopper.
 ‘Sounds more like overacting,’ Vikki commented. ‘They’re going to hit
— Hey! What’s that?’ But as the Space Hopper started to answer, Vikki
interrupted: ‘Hey - they bounced!’
‘Ho-o-o-onky / -tonk /eptons! / Gimme, gimme, gimme / the honky-quark-gluon-plasma...’
‘You ain’t nuthin’ but a hadron / nucleifyin’ all the time / You ain’t...’
‘And their songs have changed.’
‘Yes,’ confirmed the Space Hopper. ‘The collision has altered their
quantum states - energy, momentum ... could have been a change in charge,
too, but not this time.’
‘Why?’
‘You noticed something when they came close to colliding, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, it was a sort of red squiggle.’
‘That was a photon. They exchanged it.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, in the quantum world, energy and momentum and charge and
suchlike are all quantized - they come in whole-number multiples of tiny,
irreducible amounts. When particles interact, their quantum fields affect
each other, creating forces between them, and the result is to change their
energy, momentum, charge, whatever. That’s how the electrons bounced.
But, for the reasons I’ve just given, those changes come in whole-number
chunks. A tiny whole-number bit of momentum, say, gets transferred from
one electron to the other. Something has to carry that chunk of momentum -
take it away from one and give it to the other. While the momentum is in
transit between the two electrons, it in effect forms - or more properly, can
be represented as - a tiny particle of its own. In this case, a photon.
 ‘All quantum force interactions are carried by particles in this kind of
way’, the Space Hopper went on. ‘Electromagnetic forces are carried by
photons, strong nuclear forces by eight different gluons, and weak nuclear
forces by the W+ boson, the W” boson, and the Z boson.’
Vikki mused on these remarks. ‘I thought I saw a purple squiggle
passing from one electron to the other, as well as a red one. Was that a
gluon or a doubleyouplusboson or something?’
‘A something,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘That was the infamous graviton,
and you were extremely fortunate to see it. The graviton is the carrier
particle for the force of gravity - assuming that any such particle exists,
which for narrative purposes the VUE just did. Any unification of Relativity
and quantum theory has to bring the gravitational force into line with the
other three - so, in particular, it has to introduce a particle to carry the
gravitational force.’
The Space Hopper warmed to his theme. ‘But that’s not so easy. The
scheme that works for the other three forces - known as the Standard Model
- is pretty complicated. You can’t bring in a new particle without upsetting
all the delicate logical implications of the mathematics behind the Standard
Model. The newcomer has to be introduced with care, forethought, and the
very best taste. Otherwise all it will do is disrupt the logical harmony of the
Standard Model, with disastrous consequences.
‘And one of the main features of the Standard Model - one that pretty
much qualifies it as a Geometry in the Felixkleinian sense is symmetry.’

Wunday 30 Noctember 2099

Well, now we’re getting to the heart of the matter, Diary Dear. What drives
the whole enterprise is a curious kind of symmetry of the Standard Model
of fundamental particles and forces. I’ve told you already that the deep
nature of a Geometry - that is, of a Space or a Spacetime - is best captured
by its symmetries. If you’re a mathematician, the symmetries characterize
the geometry; if you’re a physicist, they tell you what the possible laws of
nature are - because the laws have to be invariant under the symmetries,
OK? The laws must respect the symmetry, and not bash it about.
 The most obvious symmetries of the Planiturthian universe are those of
Space and Time. Every region of space behaves, in principle, like any other;
ditto for instants of time. I don’t mean that every bit of space looks the same
as every other - you might have an atom of carbon at one point of space and
vacuum at another. But in principle it could have been the other way round:
there aren’t regions of space that must have carbon atoms in them, or can’t.
Those symmetries imply that the laws of nature must be the same at all
places and at all times. But they don’t give much more of a clue as to what
those laws ought to be. A more interesting restriction comes from time-
reversal. If you run the universe backwards in time, it obeys the same laws
that it did in forward time. That symmetry is more puzzling - especially
since the Planiturthian universe seems to run in just ONE time direction.
But again, the point is not that some particular realization of the universe
possesses time-reversal symmetry; just that whichever behaviour you
encounter, it could equally well have run backwards in time without the
LAWS changing.
However, there are other, less obvious symmetries on the quantum level.
For instance, you can ‘reflect’ an electron - not in an ordinary spatial mirror,
but in a ‘charge mirror’. By which I mean you can change its charge from
negative to positive. When you do that, the electron becomes a different
particle: a POSITRON. However, the laws that govern positrons are just
like those that govern electrons, provided you ‘reflect’ all charges.
Well, nearly. I lied, OK?
In fact, there are slight differences: the charge-reflection symmetry is
‘broken’ in the actual Planiturthian universe. Some particle interactions
involving positrons look slightly different from the corresponding
interactions involving electrons. An attractive explanation for this breaking
of symmetry is that at the time of the Big Bang, the nascent universe
possessed exact charge-reflection symmetry, but then - as the universe
expanded - that symmetry became broken. This idea has another advantage:
it suggests that at the time of the Big Bang, ALL four forces of nature were
unified into a single force. All the different carrier particles for those forces
were in effect the same kind of particle - and the differences we now see
arose when that original symmetry broke.
So this setup provides a scheme for unifying all the forces of nature - a
plausible route to a Theory of Everything. All you have to do is set up a
really symmetric version of physics, appropriate to the time of the Big
Bang, and then break the symmetry in the right way.
Not easy. But symmetry, Diary Dear, is the key.

‘It’s like politics,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘All a question of spin.’
‘Spin?’
‘In certain respects, quantum particles behave as if they are spinning
around some axis. Like a top.’
‘You mean, if we used the VUE to look closely at an electron—’
‘Let’s do that and find out. But I warn you, what we’ll see is really too
classical an image. The spin of a quantum particle isn’t really movement At
least, if it is, it’s not movement in space. Think of it as some kind of
intrinsic excitation - a “state of mind", if you wish. But, for now, let’s
program the VUE to realize spin as ... spin.’
No sooner said than acted upon: a fuzzy red ball rotated gently before
their eyes. The VUE caused a thin blue line, the axis of rotation, to become
visible, and decorated it with an arrow to indicate the direction of rotation.
‘That’s a photon,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Its spin is 1 quantum unit.
Now this guy over here ...’ he gestured towards a fuzzy brown ball’... is an
electron, with spin 1/2. Which, by the way, is the minimum size that
quantum spin can be. Except zero, of course.’
‘Shouldn’t the minimal unit be spin 1?’ Vikki objected.
‘Well,’ said the Space Hopper, ‘spin ½ is more traditional.’
‘What’s tradition got to do with it?’
‘When there are Planiturthians around, lots. And there are ... other
reasons. For that choice of units.’
‘Such as?’
‘Particles with whole-number spins, like the photon, behave just like
classical spinning particles in one important respect: what happens to their
spins when you twirl their axes in space. Keep a close eye on that photon,
and I’ll show you.’
Vikki aligned herself with the photon’s axis, so that the blue arrow
showing the direction of spin ran clockwise. The Space Hopper grabbed the
axis of the photon and began to move it. ‘Hard work, this, it’s like trying to
turn a gyroscope,’ he muttered. ‘All that angular momentum - wears a chap
out.’ Slowly, the photon’s axis turned; the photon continued spinning,
without visible interruption or change. After a lot of shoving and swearing,
the photon’s axis had turned through a complete circle. The arrow continued
to point clockwise, a fact that the Space Hopper pointed out with
considerable excitement.
‘Don’t be so over-dramatic, Hopper!’ protested Vikki. ‘That’s exactly
what you’d expect!’
‘Ah, but this is the quantum world, where the wise person expects the
unexpected. Let’s try it with an electron - which has spin ½ - instead.’
Vikki lined herself up with the particle’s axis, as before, and again the
blue arrow showing the direction of spin ran clockwise. The Space Hopper
moved the axis in a circle, still complaining under his breath. After a lot of
shoving, the electron’s axis had turned through a complete circle.
The arrow now pointed anticlockwise.
‘But - that’s mad,’ said Vikki.
‘Welcome to the quantum world.’
‘You must have turned it through 180 degrees by mistake.’
‘No, it was a full circle, 360 degrees, I guarantee. How far must I turn
the axis to get the direction of spin back to clockwise, Vikki?’
‘Well - if a 360-degree turn of the axis in space reverses the spin, I
suppose that a second 360-degree turn of the axis in space would reverse it
again. That means that after a 720-degree turn of the axis in space, the
direction of spin should come back to where it was.’
They tried it.
It worked.
‘This is very puzzling,’ said Vikki.
‘It illustrates one of the ways in which quantum spin is not rotation
about a spatial axis,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘That behaviour is a
consequence of the mathematics of quantum spin. And it means that
quantum particles come in two very different kinds. They’re called bosons
and fermions. Bosons have whole-number spin - an even number of basic
spin units of ½ - but fermions have an odd number of basic spin units of ½.
The photon, with spin 1 - two units of ½ - is a boson. The electron, with
spin ½, is a fermion. And if the much-sought graviton, the “missing link”
between quantum theory and Relativity, exists, it should have spin 2 -
making it a boson - and (as it happens) mass 0.
‘Anyway, bosons behave like classical particles when their spin axis is
rotated. Fermions don’t. There are all sorts of other differences, too.’
Vikki leaned back to digest all this. ‘It’s complicated, Space Hopper.’
‘Sure is. I’m skimming the surface of a detailed - and sophisticated -
piece of geometry, OK? Don’t expect to get it all, I haven’t told you it all.
The big point here is that there are these two very different kinds of particle,
with different kinds of spin, as unlike each other as odd and even.’
‘Got that.’
‘So of course, Planiturthian physicists got used to thinking of them as
completely different things.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Until one day they discovered that bosons and fermions could be
viewed as two different aspects of the same thing. There was a symmetry of
the universe - or, at least, of a mathematical scheme to represent the
universe - that could turn bosons into fermions, and vice versa. They called
this super symmetry. It implied that associated with every particle there
should be a corresponding superparticle - and if the particle is a boson, then
its superparticle is a fermion, and vice versa. It was a huge surprise.’
‘I’ll bet,’ said Vikki. ‘But how can a symmetry of the universe change
an even number of spin units into an odd number? Won’t that change the
laws?’
‘Oddly enough, no - one reason why this was an exciting discovery. It’s
because of the way quantum spin works.’
‘So the VUE ought to be able to start with a photon, apply a
supersymmetry, and give us an electron?’
‘It’s not as easy as that. There’s no reason why the superparticle
corresponding to a known particle has to be another known particle. In fact,
the superparticle corresponding to a photon isn’t -it’s believed to be a
hypothetical particle called a “photino". Let me show you how
supersymmetry turns a photon into a photino.’
Vikki watched as the Space Hopper captured a fuzzy red photon and
lined it up for a supersymmetry transformation. ‘Here we go!’ he yelled.
The fuzzy ball promptly turned brown, and the Space Hopper beamed with
pride.
 ‘Um,’ said Vikki, in a bored voice, ‘was that it?’
‘What? Not impressed by my marvellous - oh, you weren’t using the
full power of the VUE! Vikki, you really must pay attention to everything
that the VUE can show you. Let’s try it again, but first -activate this VUE-
extension, OK?’
The Space Hopper recaptured the errant photino. ‘I’ll turn it back into a
photon. Tell me what you see as I’m doing that.’
‘Well, it starts out as a brown ball - no, wait, hold it. It’s not a ball and
it’s not brown. What have you done now?’
‘I’ve set the VUE to show you the hidden dimensions of super-space.’
‘Oh. Well, it is a ball, but it’s a much higher-dimensional ball, and it’s
all sorts of colours. But there’s a sort of brown stripe—’
‘That’s the photino state,’ said the Space Hopper helpfully.
‘—and another red stripe—’
‘The photon state.’
‘—but they’re not really stripes, they’re fuzzy balls of lower dimension
... sort of, it’s hard to describe in words.’
‘Count the dimensions of spacetime that are present in the image,
Vikki.’
‘Uh - one, two, three, four, five - five?’
‘Keep going.’
‘Er-five, six, seven, eight. Eight?’
‘Yes. Four dimensions of spacetime, and four more, called superspace.
According to the theory of supersymmetry, every particle in ordinary 4D
spacetime carries along with it a kind of attached ghost in a second,
nonphysical 4D space - its super-partner. Well, really I should say that
superspace is a physical but not a spatial 4D space, I guess. Tell me, now:
which component is the brown stripe in?’
‘Um - ordinary space.’
‘That’s right. So we’re seeing a photino in ordinary space, but there’s
also a lot of attached ghostly gadgetry that we don’t normally observe,
which extends into four further dimensions -inside which there is what?’
‘A red stripe. A ghost photon? In superspace, not real space?’
‘Exactly. Now, all we have to do is rotate the whole picture so that real
space and superspace get swapped - see, in 8D it makes perfect sense - and
once we’ve done that, what do we get?’
 ‘A red photon in real space and a brown photino in superspace. The
ghost has become real and the real one has turned into a ghost!’
‘Elegantly put,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘And that is super-symmetry.’

Twoday 31 Noctemher 2099

Deep stuff, Diary Dear. The untamed frontiers of the Mathiverse are
looming before me. And back home (sniff) it’s New Year’s Eve. Everyone
will still be eating the leftovers from Crisp Moose Day, and waiting to
welcome in a new year and a new century ...
I’m getting maudlin. Back to the untamed frontiers.
Ingredients: four forces of nature. Three unified by advances in quantum
theory; the fourth - good old gravity, still holding out.
Needed: a new particle, the graviton, to carry that force. Spin 2, mass 0:
impossible in conventional quantum theory.
Implication: reformulate quantum theory AND Relativity. And you can’t
do it with point particles.
Required structure: hierarchies of particles, each with its own peculiar
properties, somehow all part of one unified picture.
Hint: SUPERSYMMETRY. There’s a new kind of extended space out
there, superspace. Particles spill over into that, as well as into ordinary
space.
So what, Diary Darling, do you think we are missing? What would tie
the whole picture together?
That’s right.
String.

‘Superstring, actually,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘If you want to bring gravity
into the scheme of things, you can’t keep the Standard Model exactly as it
is. You have to be prepared to modify it a little. Hah! I say “a little", but that
“little” includes a complete rethink of the structure of spacetime. Not just a
supersymmetric add-on. Something more significant than that.’
 It seemed to Vikki that this was going Over The Top. ‘Why does
spacetime have to change, Hopper?’
‘Because when you try to quantize gravity, it turns out that particles
can’t actually remain particles. That just doesn’t work -pointlike objects just
don’t fit all the requirements. So they have to be replaced by something
else.’
‘What?’
‘Like I said: superstrings.’
‘Yes, I know that’s what you said, but it made no sense then and it
doesn’t make any more now!’
The Space Hopper gave the criticism due consideration. ‘Very well,’ he
said. ‘A particle is a point - or, at least, it looks like a point, with no internal
structure. It’s a pointlike object, yes?’
‘Sure.’
‘Moving up in dimensions, you could replace a pointlike particle by a
curve - a string. Come to think of it, Vikki, you’re a string. Like all Flatland
women. Geometrically, you’re a line segment.’
‘Do quantum strings have two ends, like I do?’
‘Some do.’
A constant worry of Flatland women surfaced. ‘Do you think my
endpoints make my bum look flat?’
‘I’m not a good judge of Flatland womanhood,’ the Space Hopper said
tactfully. ‘But it seems to me that - er - quantitatively speaking, you have
the exact correct number of endpoints. One at each end, which is ideal.’
Vikki decided to be flattered. ‘That’s very kind of you. So what happens
to quantum strings without ends?’
‘They loop round and form a closed loop. A topological circle.’
‘Ah.’
‘That’s most of them, actually.’
‘Tidier that way. Otherwise the ends would flap around.’
‘They can, in some string theories. Anyway, curves are intrinsically
one-dimensional. The next step up from curves leads to two-dimensional
surfaces - membranes. Perhaps with exotic topologies, like Moobius, or the
Projective Plain, or a doughnut.’
‘Don’t remind me about Moobius! That cow?
‘Well, she was a cow,’ the Space Hopper pointed out.
 ‘That doesn’t justify her behaving like one!’
‘Beyond membranes,’ the Space Hopper said, diplomatically changing
the subject, ‘are three-dimensional analogues of surfaces, which the
Planiturthian physicists insist on calling 3-branes. And then come 4-branes,
5-branes and so on. They also insist on using the symbol p for an arbitrary
number of dimensions, rather than the customary N... and I think I know
why. Guess what you get in dimension pT
‘Oh no! p-branes?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘So a surface is a 2-brane?’
‘Yes.’
‘And a string is a 1-brane?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Which makes an ordinary particle, with dimension zero, into a no-
brane?’
‘I had a feeling that’s where you were headed’, said the Space Hopper.

‘You said “superstrings",’ Vikki remembered. ‘You’ve only explained

strings.’
‘Well, you remember that particles - no-branes in your terminology - are
accompanied by ghost extensions into superspace?’
‘Yes. You mean superstrings are strings that extend into super-space as
well as ordinary space?’
‘Correct. It’s quantum string, it can do that.’
‘Quantum things can do anything you want, it seems to me. Where do
you find these superstrings? At a superstationers?’
‘In yet another extension of ordinary space, Vikki. Good job I updated
the VUE’s HyperZoom facility. Let me just check it’s been installed ...
good. Follow me!’ And down they went, into the smallest scales of the
Planiturthian universe - into a world where an electron was too huge to
contemplate, where its component quarks glistened like tiny jewelled
specks.
 ‘Right now we’re at the limits of the VUE’s spatial resolution,’ said the
Space Hopper. ‘Down at the Planck length, where quantum effects make
space so fuzzy that it’s not even clear that space really exists at all.’
‘It’s frothy,’ said Vikki, ‘not fuzzy.’
‘That’s quantum foam - particles springing into and out of existence,
creating space and time along with themselves. Try some, it’s quite tasty.’
‘No thanks!’
‘Go on. It’s a bit like chicken.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Suit yourself. See those bright specks?’
‘Yes. They’re quarks, aren’t they?’
‘Among other things, yes. What do they look like on this scale?’
‘Dots. Points. No-branes’
‘Yes. And yet, those points have to support all sorts of quantum states.
Spin, charge ... would there be room for such diversity on a no-brane?’
That thought hadn’t occurred to Vikki before. ‘In what sense?’ she
asked, cagily.
‘All will shortly become clear. I’ll use the HyperZoom to improve the
resolution in any other dimensions that may be around—’
‘Like superspace?’
‘Yes, but there might be others - there’s more to a particle than its spin,
you know. Ah, yes ... coming into focus now ... Look at that!’
‘It’s - hey, that quark’s not a point at all! It’s a tiny loop!’
‘Yes.’
‘And ... isn’t it vibrating?’
‘A little bit, maybe. This one’s in its ground state, lowest energy. But if I
give it a—’

TWANGGGGGGGG!

‘—then something really interesting happens. Zoom out for a moment,

and you’ll see.’
‘Oh. It’s changed colour!’
‘Yes. That’s the VUE’s way of showing us that it’s actually become a
different particle altogether. A much more massive relative of a standard
quark, as it happens. Doesn’t have a name. Anyway, the main thing here is
that anything from a 1-brane up can vibrate in all sorts of different ways,
whereas a no-brane can’t. That means that a 1-brane or a 2-brane or a 3-
brane or a zillion-brane can easily support all sorts of different quantum
states. Whereas for your traditional point particle the states are just some
kind of unexplained add-on.
‘So here’s the idea. On really small scales, spacetime isn’t 4D at all.
What looks like a tiny point in 4D spacetime is really something else - some
kind of p-braned topological hypersurface in a higher-dimensional space.’

‘How many? Dimensions, I mean? Equal to pT

‘No, could be bigger. For a while 7D and 22D were hot favourites,
making the revised spacetime come to 11D or 26D. Right now, though, the
consensus is settling on 6D for the extra dimensions - a total of 10D
altogether.’
‘Spacetime is really ten-dimensional?’
‘That’s what every well-informed Planiturthian thinks right now.’
‘You mean there’s a choice?’
The Space Hopper laughed. ‘Oh, yes! A huge choice. The range of n-
dimensional spaces is inexhaustible! The problem, Vikki dear, is cutting that
number down enough to be able to fix the exact one. Not just the value of n
- the number of dimensions - but the topo-logical shape of the
corresponding space.’
‘Put that way, I see the difficulty. So how do they sort out all those
possibilities?’
‘Still working on it. But they’re making progress. Turned out that the
original 11D model - supergravity, it was called - had a fatal flaw. It
couldn’t encompass the broken symmetry of the weak nuclear force. A
People called Edwitten pointed that out in 1984, by their calendar. The way
to deal with that was to reduce the dimensionality to 10D.
‘Now, when you do quantum theoretic calculations, as often as not you
get stupid answers.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t do quantum theoretic calculations at all.’
‘Ah. When anyone who does quantum theoretic calculations does do
quantum theoretic calculations, as often as not they get stupid answers.’
‘Easy to make mistakes?’
‘No, even when they get the calculations right, they still get stupid
answers. Infinity, usually.’
‘That’s bad?’
‘It’s nonsense. When a physical theory gives you infinity as an answer,
it’s always a sign of trouble. The real universe doesn’t have infinities.’
‘Hang on, Hopper - we went to infinity in the Projective Plain.’
‘Yes, but that wasn’t a real universe, OK?’
‘Only an idealization, that’s true.’
‘And in a sense Infinityville wasn’t a real infinity, either. But you’re
distracting me. There is a way to get round these quantum infinities, and it’s
called renormalization. Doesn’t matter exactly what it is - just take my word
that it’s not an easy trick to pull off. So most potential superstring theories
don’t work because they’re not renormalizable. It turned out that for a 10D
superstring theory to be renormalizable it has to be one of five competing
possibilities.
These are known by their symmetries. One is called SO(32), another is Eg x
Eg, and they both have an extra 16 dimensions of ‘internal’ states, as well
as the 10D of the string itself. See? 26D in all. And the other three are
known as Type I, Type HA, and Type HB.’
‘Imaginative terminology.’
‘Very. The fascinating thing - a strong hint that such theories could
unify gravity and quantum theory, the physicists’ Holy Grail - was that they
all predicted the occurrence of a particle with spin 2 and mass 0. In
quantum theory by itself, that would have been an embarrassment because
no such particles are known. But—’
 ‘The graviton, if it exists, has to be a particle with spin 2 and mass 0!’
yelled Vikki, caught up in the excitement.
‘Precisely. String theory seemed to be telling physicists that if they
wanted an effective theory of quantum particles, then gravity would be a
necessary consequence. All consistent string theories include gravitons.’
‘It would have been more satisfactory if only some had,’ said Vikki. ‘To
help pick the right one.’
‘True. But it didn’t work out that way ... and it may not be necessary.
You see, that People named Edwitten has recently discovered that all five
superstring theories fit into a bigger 11D picture, known as M-theory.’ The
Space Hopper noticed Vikki hopping up and down. ‘Yes, Vikki, I agree -
that’s a very imaginative name too, isn’t it? But back to my story. There are
five different ways to shrink away one of the 11 dimensions of M-theory,
and they lead to those five 10D superstring theories. So all five competing
theories are actually part of the same Big Picture. Maybe it’s the Big Picture
that really matters.’
He paused. There’s only one problem with all this stuff, he said. ‘Which
is a pity, because it’s 50 beautiful.’
‘What’s the problem with it?!.
‘It may not be true,’ said the Space Hopper sadly.

‘There’s no experimental evidence, you see,’ he explained. ‘Hard to come

by - desperately hard to come by. For that matter, the calculations are so
difficult that there aren’t many theoretical predictions, either. So there’s
precious little to experiment on.’
‘But couldn’t the Planiturthians tell if they really lived in a 10D
universe?’
‘Couldn’t the Flatlanders tell that their 2D world was really just part of
3D Spaceland?’
Touché. Even so, surely there are experiments that would reveal a whole
six extra dimensions? For that matter, why didn’t they notice them ages
ago?’
 ‘Because, Vikki, they didn’t have a HyperZoom. Think about a sheet of
paper. What’s its dimensionality?’
‘Two.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh. In Flatland, yes. In Spaceland, say, it would really be 3D, but very
thin along the third dimension.’
‘Quite. And the Planiturthian universe looks like a 4D spacetime, but in
Superstring Territory it is really 10D, but very thin along the fifth, sixth,
seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth dimensions.’
‘So thin that the Planiturthians didn’t notice?’
‘So thin, Vikki, that the Planiturthians can’t notice. The structure is
below the Planck length - the smallest size their instruments can detect.’
‘That’s a pity. Convenient for the theorists, though.’
‘Suspiciously so. But there might be other ways to find out whether
they’re right. Indirect ones. For instance, in M-theory there is a class of
branes called Dirichlet branes, because they look rather like a surface
discovered long before by a People named Peter-dirichlet. They turn out to
be black branes - branes from which light can’t escape. You can even
interpret a superstring with ends as a superstring that forms a closed loop,
part of which is covered by a black brane. And by doing that, you can
reformulate black holes in terms of intersecting black branes wrapped round
inside a 7D space.’
‘And what good does all that do?’ asked Vikki.
‘It makes very accurate predictions about evaporating black holes. But
that kind of evidence is just circumstantial. So right now, all anyone can
really do is point to the elegance of the theory, and the beautiful way in
which it unifies Relativity and quantum theory.’
‘Which makes it right?’
‘Not at all. Lots of physicists don’t like that approach. They say that
beauty could be totally irrelevant. And there are lots of other possibilities in
the Mathiverse that don’t roll up the extra dimensions of spacetime into
very tiny shapes, and there are all sorts of other reasons why the
Planiturthians wouldn’t notice them, either ... Beauty can be a trap, Vikki.
‘Anyway, everything in the Mathiverse is beautiful, if you get used to
it.’ The Space Hopper’s u faded momentarily, then renewed itself in a
dazzling display of teeth. ‘None the less, the idea that the extra dimensions
are curled up really tightly, so you can observe them only on the
extraordinarily small scale of the Planck length, is still the most appealing
explanation of why Planiturthians don’t observe ten dimensions.’ He
paused. For once, the bouncy creature seemed at a loss for words. ‘Urn -
you know something?’
‘What?’
‘Back in Flatland, Vikki, it’s the eve of a new century. Your tour of the
Mathiverse has reached its climax. You’ve learned as much as I can teach
you and as much as your brain can digest at one sitting ... I... I think it’s
time I took you home. Don’t you?’
Vikki’s centroid leaped. Oh, yes ... But. ’I’ll miss you, Hopper! But
you’re right. It’s time I returned to my family. Urn.’
‘Yes?’
Vikki wanted to ask one last question, to make sure she’d understood
the essence of the Planiturthian universe. ‘You’re saying that when the extra
dimensions of spacetime get so thin that they’re only one Planck length
across, they become undetectable?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So the only features of the universe that Planiturthians can observe are
those that are ... as thick as two short Plancks?’
‘You have it exactly,’ declared the Space Hopper.
 17
FLATTERLAND

The whatever-it-is that moves narrative through the realms of metaspace did
whatever-it-does. Victoria Line was going home. Never again, though,
would she imagine that just because Flat-land looked like a plane, it must
therefore be a plane. In this, her thinking went beyond eccentric
Planiturthians who were convinced that because their world looked flat,
therefore it was flat; it even went beyond the modern Planiturthians who
were convinced that because their world looked three-dimensional,
therefore it was three-dimensional. However, there was still some way to go
before she could compete with those Planiturthians who were convinced
that they had no idea what kind of space or spacetime they lived in, but
were enjoying the challenge of finding out.
‘It would be wonderful,’ she mused wistfully, ‘to return to Flatland and
discover it has hidden dimensions that no one had ever suspected. Even if
they’re rolled up so tiny that nobody can see them. But I don’t suppose that
will ever happen.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Look, we’re getting
near Flatland now.’ He waggled his horns thoughtfully. ‘I’ve got an idea.
Instead of dropping you straight back into your home territory, why don’t
we heave to somewhere nearby and see what it looks like from there?’
‘Nearby?’
‘In the quasi-metric of metaspace. Conceptually nearby. Don’t worry
what that means - come to think of it, I have no idea what it means, I just
know how to do it. Oh, and switch on the HyperZoom extension.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve just got this feeling that... well, we may come across some
surprises.’
The glowing plane of Flatland loomed closer. They could tell, because
suddenly it was possible to pick out details - first, the great polygonal
oceans, then the zigzag edges of huge forests, which quickly resolved into
leafy fractal structures with circular cores.
The Space Hopper muttered to himself and made some adjustments to
the VUE. The forest slid away and was replaced by a maze of houses and
streets.
They zoomed ever closer.
‘The Palace of the Prefect!’ Vikki yelled, as she saw a complex of
shapes that she recognized. ‘And - look! There’s my house!’
The Space Hopper made some further fine adjustments, and the familiar
pentagonal house grew until it was all they could see. Vikki hadn’t seen it
from this angle, of course - except for a split second when she was first
whisked away from her own world, and she hadn’t been in the mood to
appreciate the fine points at that stage - but she’d got so used to the effect of
the VUE that she had little trouble recognizing the layout of the rooms.
Grosvenor and the boys were sitting by the fire; Jubilee was bustling
about in the kitchen. Vikki felt a deep-seated twinge of guilt. Her mother
always threw herself into the housework when something was troubling her
- and Vikki knew very well what that was. Their daughter had gone off
mysteriously, without leaving a trace, and (despite the very best of
intentions, Vikki told herself) had been too preoccupied with herself to get
in touch ...
She was so busy feeling guilty that it took her quite a long time to notice
that there was something very strange about her mother. There was a clear,
solid line segment, bustling about in the plane of Flatland ... but above it,
pointing along another direction entirely, was a ghostly pentagonal shape.
Her mother’s lineal features were one of its edges: the rest pointed out of
Flatland altogether.
Vikki stared at the ghostly apparition, and then at the Space Hopper.
‘You knew about this,’ she said. ‘What, exactly, is going on here?’
‘Shadow matter,’ said the Space Hopper. ‘Flatlanders think that their
males are two-dimensional polygons, but their females are “only” one-
dimensional lines. Quite why they place such importance on apparent
dimensionality, beats me - but social hierarchies are usually absurd.
However, what neither the males nor the females realize is that Flatland is
supersymmetric. It’s one of the most basic social symmetries - male/female
duality. As different as even and odd, bosons and fermions. But there is a
social super symmetry, unnoticed until now. Flatland females extend into a
third dimension - not the third dimension in a Spaceland sense, just a
dimension that’s different from the ordinary two spatial dimensions of
Flatland. Along that dimension, matter has different properties - reflected in
the difference in mental outlook between Flatland males and Flatland
females. The shadow world and the ordinary world of Flatland meet along
lines - not just one line, but all lines ... one reason why the Spaceland model
is inadequate. Female consciousness has evolved to recognize the ordinary
world, but not the shadow world. But the female subconscious has always
known about the shadow world.’
Vikki stared at him. ‘And you say all Flatland females have this
extension into the shadow world?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even - even me?’ Her voice had gone all squeaky at the implications.
‘Of course. You’re a Flatland female, right?’
‘What - what shape am I really?’
The Space Hopper fiddled with the VUE. ‘Mmm, must be a setting for a
shadow-matter mirror somewhere . .. not that it’s something I often use, you
see ... not much call for it most of the time. Where did I put the manual?
Oh, yes, tucked away inside the tenth dimension, here it is! Right, see for
yourself.’
A ghostly image appeared in front of her VUE-enhanced senses. It was
—
‘An octagon?’
‘Very much so. I don’t know what your father would think, from that
hidebound position of his in which the number of sides determines social
position. Your mother is a pentagon - one step higher than him. And you are
much higher in the social hierarchy.’
Vikki thought about this. ‘Not really. The males determine what counts.
They’d just say that shadow dimensions don’t count.’
The Space Hopper bobbed in agreement. ‘Indeed they would. So?’
‘So? So what?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Sorry?’
‘So: what are you going to do about it?’
 Vikki’s mind was whirling. Obviously it wouldn’t do any good to
explain any of this to the men. They’d just declare her insane, and she’d get
the modern equivalent of what had happened to poor old Albert.
But - she could tell the women.
The only problem was, how?
And it was then that the idea came to her.

Threeday 1 Angulary 2100

Well, Diary Dear-that was quite a homecoming! I suppose it was a bit of a
shock when I suddenly materialized in the living room! Bang on the stroke
of midnight at the century’s end! Talk about high drama ...
I don’t think I can write down my feelings. Or anybody else’s. Some
things just don’t translate into print.
I chose the dramatic entrance because -well, because I’m like that, but
mostly because it was the best way to make my story sound credible.
Because Grosvenor and the boys were there, it wasn’t possible for Mum
and me to have a woman-to-woman talk about important things like the
Shadow World ...
Silly name. Makes it sound unreal. So I’ve come up with a better one.
Flatterland.
Now, I know what you’ll say, Diary my ever-present critic, because
you’re a pedantic little so-and-so: since Flatland is a plane, which is about
as flat as you can get, how can anything be flatter? But that’s not my
meaning. As the Space Hopper said, technically speaking, Flatterland is flat
- something to do with zero geodesic curvature and other technobabble. But
even so, that doesn’t make it flatter. Obviously.
But flatness isn’t the only place where this is a problem. Take ‘wetter’.
Look: either you’re wet or you’re not. The extent to which you are wet may
be lesser or greater, but not your actual state of wetness or dryness.
My dictionary says that you add ‘-er’ to a word to indicate the
comparative: one interpretation is that X-er is ‘like X, only more so’. And
that’s what Flatterland is. Like Flatland, only more so. The ‘more so’ is
what the Space Hopper called the Shadow World.
 So, my idea has a name. In effect, I have a Brand. And in today’s
market-oriented world, branding opens many doors.
Not, however, the door of distribution. Or dissemination, since what I
have to sell is a concept, a Philosophy, a Big Idea. An idea that, given time
to take root, will empower all Flatland women. Like the Space Girls said I
should. And replace Flatland by Flatter-land in everyone’s minds - even our
shadow-blind males.
Distribution, that’s my problem ...
I can’t just wander out on to the streets preaching the Gospel of
Flatterland. It would be poor old Albert all over again, in spades. But - this
is the age of electronic communications. Which the young understand much
better than their elders, and use much more. And the youth of Flatland will
be my shock-troops . . .
Ah, now you see it too, Diary.
All it needs is a smattering of HyperDot Mark-up Language and an
Anonymous InterLine Link. Then, I’m in business!

Jubilee stared at the screen of Vikki’s computer. She couldn’t understand

why her daughter had been so insistent that she should learn how to use the
InterLine.
Vikki had gone out, leaving her mother with a scroll of detailed
instructions about which buttons to press and so forth. Jubilee had started
tentatively, but now she was feeling distinctly proud of herself, for she had
successfully gone on-Line and was even now surfing a variety of sites that
her daughter had suggested.
An advertisement caught her eye.
WOMEN’S TALK CHAT-POINT.
She looked again at the scroll. Yes, Vikki had listed this as a really
interesting site. Suggested she tell Grosvenor all about it. Well, she’d tried
to raise the matter, but her husband didn’t really seem interested in such
things.
She positioned the cursor and clicked.
 What she had learned to call an ‘interval’ opened up. Within were
several subintervals - COSMETICS was one, and dresses another. There
were headings for SHOPPING and SLIMMING and HOW TO MAKE YOUR POLYGON
NOTICE YOU and HOW TO DUMP YOUR POLYGON AND BE YOUR OWN LINE, and
lots more. About two-thirds of the way down the list was an item on Vikki’s
scroll: GLOBAL GOSSIP.
Click.
Whatever Jubilee had been expecting, it wasn’t what she got. The next
screen flashed a brief message: IS THE POLYGON IN YOUR LIFE IN THE HOUSE?
She typed ‘NO’.
The screen went blank for a second, while the computer downloaded
something called a squif file, and then—
FLATTERLAND, the heading said, in big, antique lettering. Then, in
smaller type: Supersymmetric Sister! The shadow world of gender equality
awaits. Superiority, even. If you want to raise your station in Life, click here
and be empowered.
For some reason, the thought of being empowered appealed to Jubilee -
even though she wasn’t quite sure what it meant. She hesitated, then—
Click.
And a new universe opened.
 18
THE TENTH DIMENSION

Seen from space ...

But it was a space. Well, a spacetime. Start again.
Seen from a ten-dimensional supermanifold, it was a strange world,
with the austere beauty of a page from Einstein. In fact, it was a page from
Einstein, geometry made flesh. A sprawling, humming world of three-
dimensional shapes stacked together along one-dimensional time: women,
men, infants, toddlers, adolescents ... People, of their own kind. They lived
Peoplish lives, ate Peoplish food, drank Peoplish drinks, made Peoplish
love, bore Peoplish children, and died (Peoplishly) in a 3+1-dimensional
universe, and never thought it the least bit curious. Their rela-tivistic
spacetime continuum was all they could see, all they could hear, all they
could feel. To them, it was all there was.
As long as nothing disturbed that perception, it was true.
But times (and spaces) were changing in Spacetimeiand ...
 INDEX

Abbott, E. A.
absolute space
absolute speed
absolute time
acceleration
aether
Alanguth
Albert Square’
Alberteinstein
Alexander
antigravity universes
antimatter
antiparticles
art
asymmetry
asymptotically flat
atoms
Axelthue
axioms

Bicirclist
Big Bang
bigstrider
bilateral symmetry
binary code
black branes
black holes
evaporation
event horizon
Kerr
Kerrnewman
 Reissnernordstrom
rotating
singularity
types of
Boondock
bosons
branes
Dirichlet

calendar
Cat Country
catflap effect
causality
Cayley, A.
Charge on the Electron
Charming Construction Entity
Chicken Mock Nugget
Circles
clocks and rods
code
colour coding
Complementarity Principle
complexity
computers
coding
Coney Space
context-dependence
conveyer belts
cosmic string
Crisp Moose Day
crystals
cubes
n-cube (hypercube)
Curvy Space

Davidhilbert
decoherence
deuterium
diffeomorphisms
diffraction patterns
digital communication
dimensionality
fourth dimension
one-and-a-quarter dimensions
similarity dimension
whole numbers of dimensions
Dirichlet branes
distance
Doppler effect
Double-Digit District
Doughmouse
dreaming
dynamics

EastEnders
echoes
eclipse
economics
edgebag
edgehog
edges
Edwardfarhi
Edwitten
Einstein, A.
Einstein equations
electromagnetic radiation
electromagnetism
electronic mail
electrons
Charge on the Electron
collisions
spin
Era of Free Neutrons
ergosphere
Ernstkummer
error-detecting/ correcting codes
Erwinschrödinger
Euclidean geometry
Euclidean plane
Euclidthegreek
event horizon
evolution
Exposition of the System of the World

Facts of Life
Fejestóth
Felixklein
fermions
ferns
Feynman diagram
fields
finite geometries
finite Projective Plain
Flatland
evolution
telephone system
Flatland(Abbott)
Flatterland
foam
forces
fourth dimension
colour-coded
Fractal Forest
fractals
defined
dimension
Mandelblot
Menger Sponge
 self-similar
Sierpinski Carpet
Sierpinski Gasket
transformation
frame of reference
future
General Relativity
generalization
genes
geodesics
geometry
Georgedantzig
Gingerbread Boy
gluons
Gott time machine
Grand Unified Metaspace
grapes
gravitational Iensing
gravitons
gravity
Great-great-grandfather Paradox
ground state
groups

hadrons
Hamming metric
Harsh Mare
Hausdorffbesicovich
Hawk King
radiation
Heisenberg amplifier
Helge the Snowflake
helium
Hendriklorentz
Henripoincare
heptagon
Hermannminkowski
hogsburgers
holes
homotopically nontrivial
horizon
black holes
hydrogen
hyperbolic geometry
Hyperbolica
hypercube
hypersphere

identity transformation
IMAGER
indivisibility
inertial frames
infinity
Interline
invariance
Isaacnewton

Jamesclerkmaxwell
Johanneskepler
Johnarchibaldwheeler
Johnleech
Johnmatthewwackerofwackenfels
Johnmichell

Karlschwarzschild
Kepler problem
Kerr black hole
Kerrnewman black hole
kissing, number
Klein bottle
Klein’s surface
knots
Kummer’s surface

Lamthielswierczandmackay
Land of Dotcom
Land of Three Dimensions
Laws of Nature
length contraction
leptons
light
bending by mass
cone
speed of
years
Light Brigade
Line, J. (Lee)
Line Power
Line
boyfriends
card to her family
copying Flatland
discovering Flatland
dreaming
edgebag
family’s reaction to her
disappearance
personal belongings
returning home
shoes
Space Hopper appears to
lines
parallel
straight
lipeomorphisms
Lipschitz diffeomorphisms
logic
M-theory
magnetic field
magnetic monopoles
Mandelblot
many worlds
Marcelgolay
mathematical rules
Mathiverse
Maxplanck
Menger Sponge
mesons
metric
Michelsonandmorley
Minkowski, H.
Minkowski
(Minny) Space
molecules
monopoles
Moobius
Mud Hutter
multidimensionality, see dimensionality
My Little Polygon

n-ball
n-cube
n-space neutrons
Era of Free Neutrons
nuclear forces
null curves
Numerica

observation
omega-minus particle
On The Six-Cornered Snowflake
one-and-a-quarter dimensions
orientations
Paradox Twins
parallel lines
Parallelogram Bear
paraspatial bar
particles
past
patterns
Penrose map
Peoples
perception
permutations
Personal Disorganizer
perspective
phase
philosophon
photino
photoelectric effect
photons
Pierresimondelaplace
Planck length
Planck’s constant
planes
Planiturth
Platterland
points
Polygo, Marco
positron
potato gun
power of the dimension
Principle of Superpawsition
probability
projective geometry
Projective Plain
finite
order of
protons
Pushy Space
Quadratic City
quantum foam
quantum indeterminacy
quantum theory
Quantum Tunnelling
quantum wavefunction ,
collapse
phase
quarks
quasars

radioactive decay
railway tracks
Rectangle, R.
redshifting
reflection
Reissnernordstrom black hole
Relativity
General
Special
religion
renormalization
Richardgott
rods and clocks
rotating black holes
rotation
Roykerr
Rubber-sheet Continent
rulers
rules
Running Turtle

Schrödinger’s Cat
Schwartzschild radius
Seancarroll
setalights
Shadow World
shoes
sides
sidesack
Sierpinski Carpet
Sierpinski Gasket
similarity dimension
simplex method
singularity
slices
snowflakes
sound
space
absolute
curvature
n-space
Space girls
Space Hopper
Spaceland
spacelike curve
spacetime
asymptotically flat
curvature
dimensionality
interval
metric
Spacetimeland
Special Relativity
spectral lines
speed of light
Sphere
spheres
(n-l)-sphere (hypersphere)
stacking
spin
Square
Square
Square, G.
Square,L.
squares
Squarey Space
squarrels
Standard Model
starchildren
stars
straight lines
string theory
strong nuclear forces
subatomic particles
sub-subatomic particles
supergravity
Superpaws
superposition
superspace
superstrings
supersymmetry
Sylvester, J. J.
symmetry

teapots
telephones
temperature
Theory of Everything
Thomashales
time
absolute
dilation
as fourth dimension
-like curve
reversal
 -reversed event horizon
travel
Time Machine, The(Wells)
Topologica
torus
transformation
translation
Trapezium,
T. triangles
Triple-Digit District
Twindledumb and Twindledumber
2½-gons
Uncertainty Principle
unification
universe
antigravity
contraction
curvature
expansion
origin
shape

vacuum variables
virtual unreality engine (VUE)
visual illusions
wavefunction
collapse
phase
waves
wavicles
weak nuclear forces
Wells, H. G.
viii Wernerheisenberg
white hole
Woolly Coati
world-lines
wormholes
building
Zeno’s paradox