Wick and the Cricket

[Wick]

Alright, but before you go let me tell you a little story, it'll only take a minute. Its called

The Voyage and Discoveries of Flagellan the Flatlander: A Cautionary Tail to Spacelanders

Long ago on a spherical expanding bubble (or at least what all Flatlanders would come to believe was a bubble), lived a young boy named, Flagellan the Flatlander. Most Flatlanders of his day moved about by little hairs that extended from their 2-dimensional bodies, but Flagellan was a mutant of sorts and was born with a single long hair protruding from his posterior which gave him the uncanny ability of traveling 100 times faster than his fellow Flatlanders.

At the time of his birth, it was generally thought all of Flatland was exactly that--a flat plane extending forever along the two axes of Length and Width, world without end. But in his youth, Flagellan postulated that the plane was not perfectly flat. you see there was another mutation of Flagellan--a pair of eyes, whereas all other Flatlanders had only one eye. Curiously, this mutation gave Flagellan the ability to see what he called "hypercurve"--an advanced form of depth perception.

Every Flatlander could see simple curve within the plane, for while all flat objects presented themselves to the view of Flatlanders as lines upon the horizon, the light of Flatland created a gradient shading upon curved and faceted objects which gave Flatlanders width perception. Flatlanders also had an intrinsic compass in their minds, which permitted them to orient themselves perfectly along the Length axis of north and south, and the Width axis of east and west. But Flagellan could sense more.

He was not able to see the actual curve of the plane, mind you, but he was able to see that the plane itself was oscillating in directions that he came to call "up" and "down". He told his parents of this perception and was whipped brutally by his father for "telling such lies." And after the beating, Flagellan wept in his room, listening to his father rail about his "mutant son," casting every dispersion at God and the universe for cursing him with such a monster with "two eyes and a tail!!"

It was there, in his bedroom that Flagellan was suddently struck with a remarkable inspiration. It was as if Someone was pouring light into his brain, but how could that be seeing that his brain was closed from the view of every observer? Yet the light poured in and suddenly, Flagellan knew something that no one on Flatland could imagine. The light--all light--was coming from somewhere outside the plane.

It suddenly occurred to him that the oscillations he could see were rather circular in shape and these circular patterns in the fabric of 2-space would spread and grow and interfer with one another. He was also able to detect that as the 2-space would move "up" and "down", "up" places were somehow brighter and "down" places were somehow darker.

This new knowledge filled Flagellan with a remarkable sense of joy. He knew no one would understand him, that the beatings from his father would only increase if he shared what he knew, so he slipped away from the home of his birth and set out to discover the meaning of "up" and "down".

He hadn't gone far, when he made another important discovery. He noticed that the gradient effect of light upon objects became darker the further away an object was. And so, Flagellan began to wonder whether the whole plane was bending ever so slightly in a downward direction. If such was the case, then the bright spot where any observer was located would be called "up", and as an observer moved, the "upness" of the world seemed to move with him.

"Wherever I go," Flagellan mused, "I am always "up" and everywhere else is always "down". It must be this way for everyone, but they can't see it. Even though "down" is really the only direction I go, I find myself up. I can go "down" in the west and yet I find myself "up" in the west. I go "down" in the east and yet I find myself "up" in the east. I go "down" in the south and yet I find myself "up" in the south. I go "down" in the north and yet I find myself "up" in the north."

And then it struck him, like his father's whip--only nicer. This relationship implied that if he kept going "down" in any direction, he would end "up" where he started. So Flagellan decided to circumnavigate Flatland. With the compass in his mind, and a few whips of his tail, he propelled himself at lightning speeds across the curvature of the spherical plane.

Wick paused for a moment. Crick's chin was resting in his front legs. Caramel shifted her weight, and slightly relaxed her right rear leg, her tail driving away the flies on her back.

"Did he come back to where he started?" Caramel asked, looking melancholy and thinking of the snows and her rider.

[Wick]

"Oh, yes. And he changed everything. When he returned the people of Flatland actually listened to him...almost. Even his father became proud of him...until the burning."

The people were able to believe what he said about the plane moving up and down. They also believed that this motion of the plane was causing the thing they called light. But they were not able to believe that the light was coming from outside the plane. Most scientists held the position that the motion of the plane itself was the light. They insisted that if they could not see something passing through the plane from "up" or from "down," they could not give such a wild theory credance.

Upon his return, Flagellan told the people that the world was growing at an alarming rate of speed, for his ability to tell the "upness" of his position was more difficult and the direction "down" seemed to be getting further and further away with every passing day. This alarmed the scientists greatly for they came to beleive that they were living on a most unlikely "bubble plane". The mathematicians took the data from Flagellan and came to the conclusion that the likelihood a universe such as theirs would arise at all was ridiculously small, that all creation was an improbable fluke, that the tenuous nature of the universe might eventually lead to a sudden collapse or an eternal expansion that would make life in the universe untenable.

Until he died, Flagellan tried to make the people understand that there was more to the universe than the "bubble plane". "Don't you see," he said, "there is something "above"!! That's where the light and the warmth comes from!! There is something "below"!! That's what determines the shape of our plane. We are dependent upon powers outside of this "bubble plane"!! The universe has at least 3 dimensions!!

The priests of Flatland would have nothing of Flagellan's irreverant talk. The Arch Priest of the First Circle held a personal inquisition of Flagellen where he is recorded to have said: "Dependent upon powers outside of the Plane, indeed! Everyone must remember that God is Flat!"

Flagellan certainly could have escaped his captors, given his improved eyesight and tail-like conveyance, but he chose not to.

They burned him to death in the capitol city of Planopolis. They say that as he burned, he cried out to "God above" to forgive the priest of the Plane, for "they haven't two eyes with which to see!" And then he gave up the ghost.

So you see, Crick, the inexplicable is sometimes hidden in a dimension above. There is something there. I believe we are moving through that something!! And that something is light!! The light isn't moving, Crick! We are!! And as we move, gravity and light and matter dance upon the surface of this 3-space we call the universe...light on the water, waves on the water, flotsom on the water, on a surface of 3 dimensions.

But the wind blows above the surface, and we fail to see it. The sun shines above the water, but since it is outside the surface of 3-space, we miss that, too. And below this surface are deep waters that determine the shape of the surface we call home. The universe is deeper than 3-dimensions, Crick!! We can't see the dark matter and dark energy because they exist elsewhere, outside our 3-space. Yet they have their influence upon our universe--like sunlight, wind and deep water--above and below the 3-dimensions we see.

[austintorn@aol.com]

'Thanks, Wick," cheered Crick. "There has to be something outside the universe and I sure hope that it is still around; otherwise we're really stuck. Also, you gave me hope for having my extra dimension."

"Yes, and who knows what will come out of it, for sometimes a preliminary model even ends up matching the actual find later."

"Too bad we can't look at the "end" of the universe and just see what happens, not that I would want to be around then."

"But you do say that you can look at the start, even through the dense plasma that hung around covering it for 380,000 years."

"Yes, for sure—and anything outside the universe will surely have to be around then and exerting its influence. Ah, I'm getting too sleepy to think."

"See you when the flowers bloom."

"Yes, and there'll be new WMAP data by then which will hopefully be conclusive either way. I'm off to the last dance of the year, after which we will drowse away."

[labelwench]

Caramel had experienced some difficulty in getting to her feet; the grass on which she had been resting seemed to be moving, or at least that was her perception.

Her mouth felt like she had been grazing on cottongrass, and when she shook her mane to discourage any fly from landing, she wondered if her ears would fall off.


"I conjecture, before the conjunction, that in Theory, it was Resting Light, I mean right beside me", she told Wick, with her straight face, when he asked about the wine. She gave him a long steady look, that he might know horses don't lie, before she continued mischievously,

"A question you ask, and hold me to task,
on the whereabouts of the Shiraz.
I seem to recall, at the Pub, one and all,
'twas consumed amidst song and pizzaz."

The red mare ambled out of view, presumably to refresh herself, leaving Wick and Crick to their musings.

***********************************************

Caramel wandered over the rise in the front pen just as her flake of hay landed in it's usual place.

"Oh, there you are, you gypsy," laughed her rider, examining her horse. "And just how do you come to have a fly stuck in your tail, with two feet of snow on the ground?"

"Perhaps you can also tell me how a bottle of Australian Shiraz, of a brand not found in Whitehorse, came to be sitting on the front deck in a brown paper bag?"

Caramel and her rider shared a long gaze. As the rider walked away, Caramel disinctly heard her humming a familiar tune, "Girls just got to have fun...."

[Wick]

Having poured his heart into the story, Wick now watched the mare trotting over the hill and the cricket marching off to the dance with Kit holding the leash of her seeing-eye-potato-bug, Spot. He was alone again, and while the cricket seemed pleased with the story, it didn't make the impact Wick had hoped for.

He sat back on the rock where he had conversed with the Cricket and horse through the previous night. It was warm beneath him. There was the cage where he had left it the night before. If he could have crawled behind the safety of the bamboo bars, he would have done so. Perhaps a determinate universe was more desireable afterall.

[austintorn@aol.com]

(Crick is still absorbing the impact of flatland since he was still stuck on the cyclic thing (plus it was already written), so that and all the future stuff here will still have great impact in all directions…)

(Crick's hibernation will pass as quickly as Austin can copy from a book, and maybe someone will describe the ice cold winter; then spring will quick arrive and we'll describe that and wrap up the amazing cyclic stuff… and then we'll all go undeterminedily where none have gone before, which is, who knows.)

(Hopefully, any off topics such as the quantum and cosmology stuff will still shed light on RLT and some will on determinism and grant some insights such as flatland expanding and/or being cyclically round.)

[Wick]

I know that, Austin. I'm just playing along. Stop breaking character!!!

I suspect you'll both be back, and if you're not, there will be a very long soliloquy by Wick until spring comes and Robert will get bored and insert a cosmic vortex and Nazi's with pigish noses who worship crickets will come storming through to imprison Wick for placing a cricket in a bamboo cage, anything could happen...

I would prefer no intervention, though so I'll try to make any soliloquy as interesting as possible. But that's kind of like holding your breath, and it can't go on forever, so cherry trees may begin to blossom before the pigs come...you'll understand.

Wick

[austintorn@aol.com]

Crick and Kit slipped beneath the white sheets of snow and thus they hibernated, snuggling in their nest, cradling, cuddling, and nuzzling, like kittens. The frogs, too glided, deep below the surface of the pond. Sea yet came to shore, as the dark tide of sleep swept the frog and the crickets away, Kit and Crick resting warm within a quilted sleeping bag of sorts.

A full moon was rising, lighting the banks of a nearby stream; it provided an otherworldly glow, as like the mood of love. Above were the stars, those lamps of incredible brightness that shone from far away and long ago, suns, really, but their brightness had been dimmed by the incomprehensible distances intervening.

Some travelers through space up there somewhere, perhaps refugees from some barren and fruitless world might be searching, ransacking the heavens, looking for an Eden of a world, hoping, that among those many lights that dance in the sky an oasis in space awaits somewhere—a world where flowers bloom and fountains spray—a paradise such as Earth—a world of boundless beauty and grace that perhaps has no equal, anytime or anyplace.

They would realize that, for all its hazards, Earth is still the be all and the end all, for Earth is among the best of all worlds due to its equipoise; it is a world balanced by sadness and smile, life and death, night and day, sun and flood, give and take, truth and doubt, plenty and drought, good and evil—for, you can’t have the one without the other; therefore, Earth, just the way it is, is truly among the best of all possible havens.

In their dreams, Crick an Kit left their bodies and floated weightless through the heavens and back—across the scenes of the centuries that they’d known: they spotted the first flying reptile, sighted near-man on the African savannah, swam in the sunken Druid cities of Atlantis, saw Merlyn building Stonehenge and burying the Crimson Chalice beneath it, watched the Sphinx weathering away—saved only by its sinking into the sand, witnessed the scaffolding around the pyramids that had formed the slow stone ramps, glimpsed the last temptation of Christ, beheld the fall of Constantinople, and observed Sultan after Sultan rising and then falling from the throne. Eventually they fell into deep slumber, cocooned in their embrace. Winter reigned.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Meanwhile:

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/

"The new WMAP data rule out many mainstream ideas that seek to describe the growth burst in the early universe," said WMAP principal investigator, Charles Bennett, of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. "It is astonishing that bold predictions of events in the first moments of the universe now can be confronted with solid measurements."

[austintorn@aol.com]

The ice was not in their veins, the freeze.

Nature Springs from Winter’s tomb,
The bloom already in the seed,
The tree contained within the acorn.

Crystal fragments surround—sharp memories
Of the ventures in which they shattered not.

Surging sprigs sprout from the soil;
Spring showers make the Summer flower.

The seasonings arrive in turn at one’s door,
For all things come ‘round to those who observe.

Summer wakes from Spring’s dying kiss,
Blooming when the rose does,
Sunning after the Spring’s running.

One could never be too warm who’d endured the frost;
The kaleidoscope revolves: it’s life’s cycle.

Summer reigns upon the land,
Eventually fading in the night.

Life’s second bloom shines upon middle age,
Coloring the mind—a rainbow’s shimmering.

Autumn Falls as Summer leaves,
Harvesting its sum of days,
Seconding the rose of Spring.

The hearthstone fire glows heartily with the self
As one stokes the flames of the wondering soul.

The smile meets the tear—
Fall’s embers last through December.

It snows atop the trees, some falling in,
Entombing the spring that waits for the miracle.

Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
Snow crystals barring all that grows.

They’re in hibernation, safe, snug, warm, and whole.

Winter is death cooled over;
But melting snows form Spring waters.