Shifting Perspectives

Beeping played in her mind. Not even the depth of sleep was safe from the troubles of the world. But this beeping, or more like clicks, it had a rhythm, a pattern. Renee remembered a talk she once had with her husband about some code, but pushed it away. I can’t afford to break down any more, she thought. But even then the clicking persisted. With a head of clouds, Renee forced herself to rise from sleep, even if it took nearly 30 minutes. The clicking persisted. I’m just going insane, she thought to herself. This is only a trick of my mind. Yet she searched for her husband’s old morse code chart. What really is the point of this?

She walked to her desk and wrote down the clicks for a while, dots and dashes, then slowly her body gave up once more. Looking out towards the back porch she saw her husband's old sneakers past the glass of the door. They were covered in dust. The weight of her head, she felt, was more than that of the whole house. Seeing those shoes brought back too many memories. What I would do to bring you back to me. Without warning tears began their journey down her face, but there was no sadness. No scratchy throat, no tightness in the chest. Only a slow pulse and a cloud in her mind remained. No, I just need to move on. She went back to the clicks, or more accurately she diverted her attention to them.

.. / .- -- / .--. . .- -.-. . .-.-.- / .-- .... .- - / .- .-. . / -.-- --- ..- ..--..

This was the final pattern; she translated it to: “I am peace. What are you?”

Who cares? She thought to herself. Now with this, the clicking stopped invading her mind. In the silence the house became loud. She could hear laughter and feel warmth. The walls no longer held photos of ghosts and once again the roof had something to protect. No. All of it is gone….gone. She kept repeating the word in her mind as if it would keep the thoughts at bay.

A shape appeared in the air. A shifting clump of different 3d shapes, all of which constantly changing in color and form. Like a school of fish they danced and swayed. The light from the porch hit them sending refractions and reflections all over the walls and even Renee herself.

She waited for fear to come. Staring at the morphing shapes, she waited. To her disappointment nothing about her changed. Only the shapes had that privilege. They were captivating in their movements, as if she could not see the whole part of them at once.

“I…” She tried to speak. “What…”

Then the shapes were gone.

“What is this?” Her heart started to beat slightly faster. She noticed she was now standing away from her desk.

“I am peace. What are you?” This voice seemed to come from within her own eardrums.

“I don’t understand. Just leave me alone!”

“I am peace. What are you?” That time the voice was louder than before, even coming from deeper in the ear.

“I don’t understand what you want! I’m a human.” Now the room around her started to spin, even as she was standing perfectly still.

“No fear, I said I am peace.” The voice proclaimed.

“Who are you!? What do you want?”

“You do not know? I have seen human who understands this, maybe you are not all the same. I am from higher dimension. Now my people have discovered how to contact with you.”

Renee stood speechless, but memories of her husband’s work started to come back. He was a topologist- or he studied how shapes behaved past how normal people viewed them. We lived in a world with three directions, up, down, and side to side, he would tell her. Theoretically, you could have another world with four directions, or four different right angles. Up/down, left and right, and…another direction past human comprehension, sometimes called ana and kata. These memories came back in a flash. She didn’t realize she forgot so much.

“We looked for man who helped us figure out how to access this lower dimension. We did find him, but too late. He was under earth and could not speak to us anymore. Why? We found you, the one he talked of most instead.”

“I- don’t talk about him.” She wanted to say more, but thought better then to provoke a higher dimensional being.

“You help us understand and learn, in return we help you know our dimension.”

“No, just please go away.” Everything she had pushed away was all coming back and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

In a split second she was outside in her back yard. The shock sent her to the grass.

“We have helped you move outside. See, we are very helpful and peaceful. I brought you to my dimension for a small time, then put you back in a different spot!”

The outside world was cold. The trees were bare, for the winter season drove them to their breaking point.

“You look still confused. You could pick up a 2d person on a paper, then by moving them upwards, move them to another spot on a paper. You see now? Last human we spoke to told us this example to help make people understand!”

The outside world was cold.

I remember him telling me that, Renee thought in silence. Or, at least she hoped they couldn’t read her mind or something. Maybe if I don’t say anything they will go away.

“What is those?” The being once again placed some of their physical body into Renee’s reality because she could see the shifting shapes pop up next to the sneakers. “Other human had them, why not now? Why will he not speak to us?”

The outside world was cold.

“Because he’s gone! Ok, stop talking about him!” The trembling inside was gone and replaced by a fire. It wasn’t violent, yet it burned with the fuel she had long been hiding from it.

Even with that fire….

“We do not understand.”

“Humans don’t last forever, nothing here does. So it doesn't matter.”

They apparently needed a long time to think about that. There was silence for a solid five minutes. With that, the world around her decided to take advantage and overwhelm the other senses. The dull apple tree they planted was close to lifeless in the corner with spoiled fruit in the dirt beside it and a few apples left to hang on the branches as they withered. The house color they chose was fading over time, losing to the sun’s power. Renee was there too, wet grass making her legs and hands feel the might of the wind tenfold. Then they spoke again.

“It matter more then, we think.” The shifting shapes teleported to a different spot. “What is this? We see life inside” They pointed to a cocoon on the apple tree.

Renee couldn’t process what was happening right away, she was still trying to fully understand what was going on. They were patient though. I suppose if you don’t even know what death is, you’d be in no rush at all.

“It’s a butterfly cocoon, they…well it’s probably a winter moth, I don’t get butterflies around here. They start as a small bug, then they grow wings. It’s not that special- Wait did you say you see life inside?”

“Yes, see now you are getting better, you ask a better question. We can see inside of your closed objects! Just like you can see inside a closed box in a 2d world. Yes, I can even see inside of you. Other human… .We were told all different names for different organs. We are very happy to learn!”

This knowledge left a chill going down Renee’s spine. They can see inside of me? They would be able to see that chill moving too! That thought just scared her even more.

“Now we see your heart organ moving faster.” After the leaves had been blown and the barking dogs in the distance slowly fell to their exhaustion the voices stopped asking questions and finally made a statement. “You have tried to help us, even though you did not know us. So we will keep our promise and help you to understand more too.”

“What?”

Now at once the world around her started to shift and change every time she moved her eyes and head. She was still in her backyard but everything was…shifting. There was no easy way to describe it. The rotten apples on the tree got smaller and larger depending on the angle she looked at them. The house became not a single cube, but it seemed as though there were multiple houses stacked on top of each other in a direction she could not understand. Then again with different perspectives the house changed and morphed, she assumed they were the parts her brain couldn’t see all at once as she was not able to grasp the four different directions. Everything was like this, but she could not get a clear look at the being she was speaking to- still only abstract forms and shapes.

At some specific angles she was able to glimpse into the insides of the apples. Looking at their seeds made her feel uncomfortable, yet with all of this chaos and change there was a sense of peace and pattern to it all.

“Now you can see more, you can understand more.” The voice said. Although this time it seemed to be coming from an outside direction, not from within her ear.

Time still moved through this dimension as it would have in her own, for the sun was setting, making the ever changing shapes around her seem to glow with a peach and strawberry light. This light moved in four different directions as well, and at some points she could have sworn that there were black spots- assumingly where the light had been reflected into the incomprehensible direction. But yet with what she could observe the world was still full of this light, always moving, always changing, sometimes refracting off in just the right way to create rainbows in just the most ordinary places. She could even start to see the moth in the cocoon, although her vision was handicapped by her 3d mind and eyes. The voice spoke again.

“You see how everything is beautiful here, even if you can not see it all the way.” Some of their words were quiet, others uncomfortably loud.

“How does this place not know death?” Renee asked, although barely able to get it out.

“Ah! We have found out how to control our worldline! See we have come a long way in our science, we did this with the help of other even higher dimension creatures. They taught us how to resist the change of time. They are the ones who helped teach us how to see your space. Now we can control your worldlines! This is good news, yes? We can make it so that not even the passing of time must cause this pain, this change.”

Renee stood unsure of how to process this, she didn’t even know what they were talking about.

“Oh you still seem confused again. These worldlines are the path of objects or people through spacetime, if you could consider time as its own dimension. We will show you!”

Renee waved her arm from left to right. There was a trail of blurry arms from where she had it to where it currently was, almost like a long exposure photo. And she noticed that even the branches of the trees in the wind left their own blurry shadow. She looked up to see a bird flying above, but she could also see where it had been, and in a way almost where it would go. As if the passing of time had not been erased and the future was just as set as the past.

“If we wanted to, we would be able to control the worldlines of lesser dimensions, making them do as we wish them to. Like drawing where they will go and their future as they pass through time. Or if time passes though them as they are static. We have not done so however, this would be poor manners we think.”

Her arm moved back to its original place on the left- before she had decided to move it. She had no control over this, it just happened without warning. The bird went back to where it was flying before. Not even the tree branches or the movement of the long grass were safe from this rewind. Now at once everything started to sink in. Do we even have a choice in what we do?! Is there such a thing as free will? Or is everything the workings of beings beyond our imagination?

“Ah! We have a good idea for you! We will bring back the other human, this way we can speak to him about the things you do not understand, and you will not be sad. See as we have said, we bring good news! We will look back in the worldline and put the older version of him here.”

The sun had set and the sky was beginning to fill with the stars so far away from here. In this 4d reality it was almost as though millions were dancing on top and around each other. Some seemed closer than she thought was possible. She wondered if these beings had control over them too, or if there was still something that could have the continuity of change. For yes, they have been the same stars almost every human has ever stared at in awe, but still they change. They have grown older, smaller, hotter, and new ones have been born so far away from here. Even the stars have died.

She was quiet for, well she didn’t know how long, but here that didn’t seem to be an issue. Looking around her yard once more, even if it was the 4d version, she was reminded of all the memories she had shared with her husband. It was almost in her mind she was forming her own worldline, for she could see in almost perfect clarity all the moments they spent together here. She could see the time they spent hanging up her grandmother’s old bird feeder. Or sitting on the porch, just living in each other's company. The good and the bad, all of which she lived out in this house with him came back to her mind, almost as if it was still there. But it wasn’t. Things have changed, dust collected on his shoes and the table they used to sit at was covered in old boxes and litter.

“No.” She had to work hard to get these words to come out. “Keep things the way they are. Don't bring him back.” The time I shared with him was special, but without change none of it would matter. These thoughts she kept to herself, for she didn’t think the being would be capable of grasping her reasoning.

“... I feel it was wrong of me to bring you here. I’m afraid this place may have caused harm to the human mind. You're unable to comprehend how we can help you. This is beyond your understanding. ”

Renee was back in her own normal backyard. In her mind the insanity of what she just saw still lingered, but everything was as it was before. Except, was it really? Now it was truly night and the stars glittered above her in their normal 3d forms. The sneakers still lay in the shadows of the porch, except.. They had changed, the more she looked at them the more they changed. They did not warp into unseen directions or shapes anymore, but they were different. They no longer caused her pain when she looked in their direction. Now they were a reminder of every step they had walked together.

The apple tree still stood neglected and withered down by winter’s weight. But the cocoon… slowly it started to unravel, revealing what was inside. A moth dragged its way out of the old shell and soon Renee could see the whole thing all at once. It was no butterfly or beautiful sight, but she could now see it in all its glory and awe in the presence of a life, its metamorphosis. I can see the same thing they did, she thought, if just given a little time.

“Actually, I don’t think any of this is past my understanding.” She spoke, as she was sure the beings were hiding in the directions she couldn’t see.

For the first time since her husband’s death she felt another change too, this time though she did not need the help of higher dimensions to make it happen, or to stop it from happening.

“Well, Peace, it was nice to meet you. I am human and we are change.”

The heaviness that once kept her from wanting to breathe, well, now she had the strength to look all the way up into the night sky. The moth moved towards the light of the moon, and through the holes in the curtain of the night she thought she might be able to discover her worldline.