#Section 21

[flatland-a-2024-translation]

Section 21. How I tried to teach the Theory of Three Dimensions to my Grandson, and with what success

[Table of Contents]

I awoke filled with joy, and began immediately thinking about the glorious future ahead of me.

I would go forth, I thought, at once, and teach the whole of Flatland. Even the Soldiers and Women would be taught the Truth of the Three Dimensions. I would begin with my Wife.

But just as I had decided on my plan of action, I heard the sound of many voices in the street outside, commanding silence. Then came a louder voice, a Herald’s Proclamation.

Listening closely, I recognized the words of the Resolution of the High Council, demanding the arrest, imprisonment, or execution of anyone who dared to pollute the minds of the people with delusions of being given Revelations from another World.

I reflected.

This was a danger I couldn’t take lightly.

It would be better to avoid it by skipping straight to Demonstrations rather than explanations – and after all, the thought of the Demonstrations seemed so simple and conclusive that no harm would be done by dropping the words themselves.

“Upward, not Northward” was the clue to the whole solution. It had seemed very clear to me before I fell asleep, and when I first woke up from my dream, it had seemed as logical as Arithmetic. But somehow it didn’t seem very obvious now.

And though my Wife conveniently entered my room just at that moment, I decided after we’d exchanged a few words of small talk that I wouldn’t begin with her after all.

My Pentagonal Sons were men of good character and social standing, and doctors of good reputation, but not great when it came to Mathematics, and that meant they weren’t fit for my plans.

But then it occurred to me that a young and pliable Hexagon, with a Mathematical talent, would make a very good student.

So why not make the first test of Demonstration for my intelligent little Grandson, whose casual questions about the meaning of Three Cubed (though he only knew of it as Three to the Third Power) had earned him the approval of the Sphere?

Talking about it with him, a mere child, should be perfectly safe, because he wouldn’t know anything about the Proclamation of the Council.

Unlike my Sons, who were such patriots, and who cared little for blind affection, and adored to Circles so much that I wasn’t sure they wouldn’t immediately hand me over to the Prefect if they found me seriously preaching the heresy of the Third Dimension.

But the first thing I needed to do was figure out a way to satisfy my Wife’s curiosity, who still thought of the Sphere as a Circle, and wanted to know why he had wanted that mysterious private meeting with me, and how he had gotten into our house in the first place.

Without getting into the details of the story I gave her, (which wasn’t as truthful as some of my Readers in Spaceland might want) needless to say, I eventually succeeded in convincing her to quietly return to her household duties without further questions, all without revealing anything about the World of Three Dimensions to her.

When this was done, I immediately sent for my Grandson, because, to you the truth, I felt like everything that I’d seen and heard was, in some strange way, slipping away from me, like images from a half-remembered, taunting dream, and I wanted to test my skill as soon as possible by taking on my first student.

When my Grandson entered the room, I carefully locked the door. Then, sitting down next to him and taking out our mathematical books, or as you could call them, Lines, I told him we would pick up where we’d left off from the lesson from yesterday.

I went over again how a Point, by moving in One dimension, created a Line, and how a Straight Line moving in Two Dimensions created a Square.

After this, I forced a laugh, and said, “And now, you scamp, you wanted to make me believe that a Square could be moved the same way, ‘Upward, not Northward’, and create another figure, a sort of ‘Extra Square’ in Three Dimensions. Say that again, you young rascal.”

But at that moment we heard the Herald’s cry of “O yes! O yes!” outside again, repeating the Resolution of the Council.

My Grandson was young, but he was unusually intelligent for his age, and had been raised with perfect respect for the authority of the Circles. He understood situation with a clarity I wasn’t prepared for, and didn’t speak a word until the Proclamation had died away.

Then he burst into tears, and sobbed, “Dear Grandpa, that was only silly fun, of course I didn’t mean it, and we didn’t even know about the new Law then! And I don’t think I ever said anything about the Third Dimension, and I know I never said ‘Upward, not Northward’, since that would be ridiculous, you know? How could anything move Upward but not Northward? Upward but not Northward! Even if I were a little baby, I wouldn’t believe anything as ridiculous as that! It’s so silly! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

I lost my temper. “It’s not silly at all,” I said, “Here, watch, I take this Square—” and as I said it, I grabbed one of the toy Squares that was lying nearby— “and I move it, you see, not Northward, but...yes, see, I move it Upward, which is...not Northward, but I move it...somewhere. Not exactly like this, but— somehow—”

I ended my sentence on that meaningless conclusion, and shook the Square in an absurd way, much to the amusement of my Grandson, who burst out in laughter louder than before, and exclaimed that I wasn’t trying to teach him, I was joking with him.

And with that, he unlocked the door and ran out of the room.

And that was the end of my first attempt to convert a student to the Truth of the Three Dimensions.

[Table of Contents]

[chriswhodrawsstuff]

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[fitzrovianews]

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[breakbleheavens]

GRACIE ABRAMS performs 21 The Good Riddance Tour — Sydney, Australia (Night 2) | January 19, 2024

[tabbi-mysteries]

Episodes 1-900 of Mouri Ran's Wardrobe!

+Films 1-21 & OVAs 1-11 & Lupin TV Special & Magic Files & Lupin Movie & multiple TV Specials & Magic Kaito 1412 appearances

(Better quality images under the cut)

Next update is here! At 900 episodes into the series I have cataloged 860 outfits!

Let me know your favourites / least favourites in the tags / comments

[grubloved]

its so silly but i just keep thinking abt being in norway and seeing for the first time kinda ever that like governments can do things to make peoples life better. for no other reason but just to improve things. like im sure norway has lots of problems i didnt see on a trip but i cannot stress how insane it was that the government had done things because it would be nice. to take care of people. ?????

[hamiltonsf1]

zo’s saturday

[identityarchitect]

so tired of people saying elias would be gay and homophobic..... that man lived through the death penalty for homosexuality. even just a letter expressing affection could be enough to get someone imprisoned. he was over a century old when it stopped being completely illegal to be gay and it was still illegal to talk about being gay until he was over 2 centuries and gay marriage wasnt even legal at that point. come the fuck on

[britishchick09]

in math class my teacher wanted an example of a clothing store... and someone said dillard's of all places!! :o

and she said she worked at mervyn's when she came to america but no one knew that store except for me 😅😅😅

[licorishh]

Genuinely wanna know what the average Fontainian thinks about the Chief Justice wearing thigh-high high-heeled boots

[kjscottwrites]

ok y'all this is probably unrealistic but I'm on the 9th chapter out of 37 in draft 2 edits and my goal is to be ready for beta readers by.... january which is going to require some intense focus but MAYBE i can do it....................... this is going to be my accountability thread:

Status: 8/37 done

The chapter I'm on currently is going to be a page one rewrite. It's one of only two chapters in the whole book that needs this, so getting past it will be a bit of a milestone. Wish me luck.

[chriswhodrawsstuff]

Obsolete?

Ever since Labour were elected earlier this month, I’ve mentally ground to a halt. I’ve stopped obsessively listening to political podcasts and have focussed on finishing off various projects as until parliament starts to find its feet again with its new intake of politicians its been hard to predict what was hot air and what will be actual policy. Wheels started to slowly turn today in the form…

[radioactivehydronerd]

I still don't get how my mother at 45 yrs old is more in touch with the latest trends than I am. Sis will ask me if I've watched the new show everyone's been talking about or if I've seen that Tiktok on my for you page. No mother I haven't

[chthonicarcher]

you’ll be interested to know I hadn’t actually read your response to me on AO3 yet at the time of receiving this ask! I haven’t looked at my AO3 inbox at all since you left your original comment, in fact. if you felt bad about whatever you said, you could have just deleted it at any point... (but it doesn’t matter. the entire thread will be deleted soon regardless!)

continued... ->

okay, so first: I do sincerely apologize for replying to your initial comment in anger. because yes, it made me angry! I should have waited until later to reply, when I wasn’t so annoyed anymore. but I didn’t wait, and I do regret that. and, as a side note, I did *not* actually intend to sound condescending—but, as I’m sure you’ve realized, intentions sure don’t count for much here.

because you claim in your ask that you *intended* to “kindly” let me know about an error you noticed in my fic. but what you actually did, though, was rudely ignore the chapters you had read and PRESUMABLY enjoyed (who knows?? not me, because you didn’t say shit about that) and instead decided to point out what you perceived as a math error on my part (which, I’ll only say this once more, because it doesn’t actually matter: I was not, in fact, wrong about in the first place!) and called it a day. WOW, THANKS!

pictured here: KINDNESS!

do you understand why that kind of thing might make an author feel bad? I mean, really, do you? it’s like you walked into my house, sat down at my table and started eating this cake I had baked for you *without uttering one single word to me* the entire time, and then abruptly stood up and left while loudly talking about how *you* would have frosted the cake differently. come the fuck on, man. even just *thinking* about writing things again is hard enough for me right now. I mean *nice* comments don’t even hit the same when you’re feeling bad about your work! *this* shit feels demoralizing. like listen, I get that you probably weren’t trying to be a dick on purpose, but please just...try to have more awareness of how your words could affect people? I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

by the way, some advice for the future, if you’ll pardon the condescension: if you ever feel an urge to get pedantic in somebody’s comments section, in MY opinion you should either a.) be their trusted friend already or b.) be very sure they are receptive to those kinds of corrections. and ALSO, in addition to those things, you should probably say literally anything else in the body of your comment so you don’t come off like a total dick. you don’t have to write a whole novel or anything, as appreciated as those are—even something as brief and to the point as “this was great” is a perfectly acceptable comment.

SIGH. so okay. so.........I’m sorry, but I think it’s really fucking interesting that you ALSO left this comment on cabin fic, which *also* made me feel terrible? you’ve really got a knack for that, it seems. yeah...actually, I’m going to go ahead and request that you stop leaving comments on stuff I’ve written? usually it really is true that more comments = better! comments are so, SO appreciated by fic authors...I mean, they fuel us. they really are all that’s keeping us going sometimes. but...in both of these examples...I really think just saying nothing would’ve been better.

and...that brings us to the elephant in the room. again, I’m sorry—I just don’t know of a way to approach this without being a bit condescending?...but, listen. if you *are* in fact a minor...then I don’t just need you to stop commenting on my works, I need you to stop READING them. both of the fics we’re talking about here are rated Explicit. minors are not welcome.

alright, with that out of the way: at the time of this posting, I still haven’t read your second comment on AO3. if you’d like to delete it before that happens, please feel free. I’ll be deleting the entire thread pretty soon regardless. I don’t need it sitting there festering and making my WIP fic any harder for me to look at than it already is.

with all that said? thank you for apologizing. and, again, I’m sorry for the tone of my response, too.

— 𝒜𝓇𝒸𝒽𝑒𝓇

[gigantomachylesbian]

Yesterday the hostess at the applebee's REALLY thought I was the lone 12 year old in a group of young adults -_-

[gengarghast]

I'M NOT THE ONE WHO'S SO FAR AWAY, WHEN I FEEL THE SNAKE-BITE ENTER MY VEEEEEIIIIIINS!!!!!!!!!!!