This is not an original idea, I'm almost convinced. If you know where I stole this idea from, please tell me! It's driving me mad. The only thing I can think of is Futurama's 2-d episode, and I honestly don't think this came from that. Maybe?
'Darkness' (an element) in Arbiter travels using this principle. I have a short story on the backburner where a scientist who invented a new form of interstellar travel was going to use a metaphor like this to explain his invention to Congress.
Here we go!
Not String Theory, but it's a fun exercise!
John is a very small person who lives on a string (yarn, if you’re curious!)
If it seems strange for someone to live on yarn, there are some things you must understand about John. First, John doesn’t know about other people, and yarn is the only surface he’s ever seen. He doesn’t know he has other choices!
Next, John doesn’t understand what the words ‘left’ or ‘right’ mean. John only knows ‘up,’ ‘down,’ ‘forward,’ and ‘back;’ in fact, the only thought John gives to ‘up’ and ‘down’ is that his head is supposed to go above his feet! He doesn’t think about what’s under the yarn or above the sky. He doesn’t even like to look back! John’s only interest is in moving forward.
Some of you may have guessed the truth already: John is, essentially, a 2-dimensional person. You musn’t judge him for it; while he may seem ignorant to us, he actually fancies himself to be a scientist!
John wants to know if the string ever ends, and if it does, he wants to know what happens when he reaches the end. So John walks along his string. It never gets boring, because the string is all he’s known. The only things he’s ever seen are himself and his string! So on he walks, and walks, and walks until he can walk no more. Eventually, poor John can’t go on, and he lays down to die.
How sad, but also, how noble! John lived and died in pursuit of the truth! Remember him fondly.
If only we could share the truth with him now; how do you think he might react? You see, there is a remarkable coincidence in John’s story: the point that marked the start of his journey was only a string’s width away from the point where he ended it. Had he known about ‘left’ and ‘right,’ he could have reached that same destination with a simple jump to his left.
As you may have guessed, John’s thread was wrapped upon itself into a ball of yarn. The poor little man didn’t really understand the horizon, couldn’t fathom how his straight and narrow path was actually curved into a circle. Nor could he have understood that, from his first moments to his last, his yarn was falling from a table to the floor. Poor John didn’t get to live very long, did he?
John had followed his thread all the way around the ball exactly 1 time, ending his life where the string ran parallel to the portion where he started his life. John may be a 2-dimensional thinker, but his world is 3-dimensional, or maybe more! Through those ‘left’ and ‘right’ mechanics his 2-dimensional brain could never understand, his thread was wound around the prime meridian of the ball with a slight slant (in relation to the core) to John’s ‘right.’
Pretend you’re the one who wound the ball; you’ve wrapped it over itself countless times, and you’re almost done! This time, you want to wind the string around with an almost-perfectly longitudal orientation, only off-center just enough to leave room for the next row of string to line up next to this one as you make another lap. If you make that slant to the right, and you keep the string as straight as you can at that angle as you wrap it all the way around the ball, then that slant turns from ‘right’ to ‘left’ as you wrap it around the bottom side of the ball and back up just to the left of where you started again.
It’s a simple thing for us, isn’t it? Of course that’s how it works, that’s why we need East and West in addition to ‘left’ and ‘right!’ It’s all a matter of perspective. But for poor ignorant John, who can’t comprehend ‘left’ and ‘right,’ can you imagine how magical it must seem for this incomprehensible ‘right’ to somehow become ‘left?!’
So there you have it. John’s entire life occurred as a ball of yarn fell from a table to a floor, and it lasted just long enough to make one complete circle around the globe (a shape he could never understand, remember; he’s only 2-D!)
Afterward, the ball hit the floor and bounced once before Schrodinger’s cat pounced on it. Or maybe it didn’t pounce, I wasn’t looking. The point is, poor John and his noble quest for the truth was always doomed to fail, because John wasn’t capable of thinking in 3 dimensions.
This, of course, begs the question: what if there are more than 3 dimensions? There’s time, of course, but if that’s a dimension, we only know how to move forward along that string. What if there’s 5 or 6? What if we could reach Mars in an instant if we only knew how to jump to our 5th-dimensional ‘left?’
Oh, how lamentable, to be a poor 3-dimensional John! Still, isn’t it noble to try so hard to seek the truth?
So, for those of you who wondered how Robin Priest summoned that 'sphere' of Darkness to swallow Johann, this was how.
Darkness, the purest form of matter... 99.999999999% of it lives way far out in space - thousands upon millions upon billions of light years for us string-travelers. It doesn't matter, we really can't wrap our heads around the distance
Darkness understands at least 5 dimensions though, and a really big blob of it shifted ever so slightly to its 5th-dimensional left so that an itty-bitty-bitty portion poked into Robin's world long enough to smash and drain Johann's body into space dust - because those millions of light years by string aren't that far away if you just know how to turn in the correct direction.
To summarize, I don't get it either, but Darkness isn't bound by our understanding! It's got a special perspective.
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