"Xoxx it, Tempest, I can't eat this scuzzy kilp. Show me where in the alla catalog you found it. There's got to be something better." Though Phil was quite hungry, his queasy stomach categorically forbade any further yam-snoot.
"Hyar 'tis," said Tempest, and she uvvied Phil a bookmark into Om's alien alla catalog.
None of the objects near the yam-snoot seemed to be food at all; indeed, Phil soon got the impression that the yam-snoot was in fact a Metamartian cleaning product. "God help me," he sighed.
And the instant he said that, the catalog altered its display to show a veritable buffet table of pleasant, normal-looking breakfast food: fruits, breads, cheeses, and pouches of juice.
"Actualize," said Phil quickly, and the cornucopia of food floated around him and Tempest. "Thank you, Om."
Phil listened for an answer, but he couldn't seem to hear Om while he was awake. The dream conversations with her last night had been intense. Yes, Om had been talking to him most of the night, avidly going over all of the memories and impressions that she could dredge out of his twenty-four years of life. It was like the time he had tried camping out with Kevvie, and she'd stuck a methedrine patch on herself for the hike and then forgotten to take it off. Though unlike Kevvie, Om had wanted him to do most of the talking. Tell me this, tell me that, and when you said that other thing, what exactly did you mean? No wonder he still felt tired.
But the breakfast foods were delicious. Tempest, Darla, Kurt, and Planet the dog joined in. And afterward, when everyone skulked off to relieve themselves, Om turned their waste right into air. Phil could pee, and the stream would just vanish into breezy nothingness a few inches from the tip of his dick.
"No drinking for me today," intoned Da solemnly when they drifted back together.
"My son and I have to talk."
"The fourth dimension," said Phil. "It's real."
"That was a good idea of yours to use Humpty-Dumpty for a spacesuit," said Da.
"I didn't think of that. I've only grabbed two quick peeks out of the hole so far. It scares me shitless."
"But it's what you've been talking about your whole life," said Phil.
"Hyperspace! Some of the things you taught have been coming back to me. I was seeing cross sections of my body, and I saw a whole lot of different spheres that must have been sections of this hypersphere."
Kurt looked uneasy. "I -- I don't remember if I brought this up yesterday, but--don't you think it's at least possible that we're dead? That this is an antechamber before we go on into the Light? That's why I can't get too enthused about anything. You know I hate religion, Phil. It's not my bag. I thought that when I died everything would be over. And now it looks like I might end up facing the fucking God of the rednecks."
"The Metamartians say Om is God. So maybe we've already met God. In our dreams. She talked to me all night long. Asking about life on Earth."
"You too, huh?" said Kurt. "In my worst moments I think Om is St. Penis-at-the-Pearly-Gates's assistant, deciding whether or not to send me to Hell. But mostly Om's been picking my brain about mathematics. It was the wowo that got her attention. Advanced as they are, the Metamartians never happened to make this particular model of the Klein bottle. It reminds Om of her--childhood? That's not the right word. Origin, maybe."
"She didn't tell me anything about her origin."
"She says there's a higher-level God that she comes from. And that's the God I'm worried about. He's supposed to be made of Light. I think maybe I saw Him when I peeked out into hyperspace. Light with a capital L."
"I saw that Light for a long time yesterday," said Phil. "There were wonderful vibes coming off it. I'm not scared of God like you, Da. I even pray. It helps me stay sober."
"You're a better man than me, son. I wish I could be more like you. But I'm too old to change."
"It's never too late."
Kurt put his hands to his head. "What a hangover. So the Light didn't dart over and grab you when you looked at it? Let's go stick our heads out and have a good look around. I'll try using Humpty-Dumpty like you did. If there's any way for us to get back to Earth, it's got to be through that hole."
So Kurt and Phil got hold of Humpty-Dumpty and took turns looking through the flaw in the hypersphere. Kurt finally agreed with Phil that the Divine Light had good vibes.
"It doesn't feel like a judgmental God," allowed Kurt. "It feels like a God of Love. Like the Light cares and wants to help me. Weird."
"I think we get to decide what our God is like," said Phil.
"God is so different from us that any of our notions is inadequate. So why not assume God is good and loving? All right, Da, I see your expression, I'm not going to harp on this, I don't want to sound like the usual bullshitting religious pricks. Next topic: Do you have any ideas about that big disk of rock and mud that sometimes looks like water?"
"Those are slices of the Earth," said Kurt. "It's good they're so detailed. That means we're not at a very great hyperspace distance from home."
"Earth!" exclaimed Phil. "Teach me some math, Da. I need a refresher course. Why do Earth and my body look like cross sections? Talk about A Square." Kurt smiled. He loved to talk about A Square. "All right! So think of A Square on a sphere floating above the plane of Plat-land. We're the same, with-every dimension one notch higher.' O
We're on a hypersphere floating ana the space we come from. A Square's sphere has a little ledge on it, a place where he can slide his eye corner off. That's like Om's flaw. When A Square wags his eye back and forth, what does he see?"
"Weird shit," said Phil.
"Indeed. Let us analyze. When we look at the world, we see little 2D patches on our 2D retina, and we use these to build up a 3D image of a world. A Square sees little ID patches on his ID retina --imagine that his retina is a line at the back of his 2D eye --and he uses those to build up a 2D image of a world. But when he's up above Flatland looking down, he doesn't see Flatland as a whole. Instead he sees what's in the particular 2D world of his eye plane. The plane of his eye intersects the plane of Flatland in a ID line. A cross section of Flatland. And if the cross-section line intersects some Flatland object, then A Square is seeing the innards of that object. In the same way, the 3D space of your eye intersects the 3D space of our ordinary universe in a 2D plane. And that's why you're seeing slices of innards."
"Whew," said Phil. "It's easier to see it than to talk about it. I saw a cross section of my heart. Did you look down at your chest. Da?"
"I did. Right down into my tired old ticker. And when we look down at Earth, we see cross sections of the Earth. We see these giant disks of dirt or water. It depends where our eye's 3D cross section of 4D hyperspace happens to intersect the 3D Earth in a 2D plane."
"Yaaar," said Phil. "But why is the inside of my heart lit up? You'd think it would be dark in there."
"That must be because there's a four-dimensional light in hyperspace," said Kurt. "From that divine Light we saw."
"The SUN!" exclaimed Phil. "Cobb Anderson talked about it at your funeral. I asked him what it had been like to be dead. The God Light must be what Cobb called the SUN. Capital S-U-N."
"The SUN," said Kurt. "That's a good name. As long as you understand that the SUN has nothing to do with our regular Sun."
"The SUN's light is inside everything," said Phil slowly. "It's like our world is made of stained-glass pieces with the God Light shining through. A cathedral window lit by the SUN. How can you be scared, Da?"
"You know," said Kurt after a long pause, "I have this feeling I should fly into the SUN. Maybe if I sacrifice myself, then Om will let you go."