“Show me!” was all I could gasp.
“The success of this experiment in changing from the _z_ to the _t_
coordinate has depended largely upon my lucky discovery of a favorable
location. It is just as, when you want the moon to ride the tree tops
successfully, there have to be favorable features in the topography or
it won’t work. The edge of this building and that little walk between
the two rows of Norway poplars seems to be an angle between planes
in the _z_ and _t_ dimensions. It seems to slope downwards, does it
not?--Now walk from here to the end and imagine yourself going upwards.
That is all. Instead of feeling this building behind and _above_ you,
conceive it as behind and _below_. Just as on your ride by moonlight,
you must tell yourself that the moon is not moving while the trees ride
by--Can you do that? Go ahead then.” He spoke in a confident tone, as
though he knew exactly what would happen.
Half credulous, half wondering, I walked slowly out of the door; I
noticed that Woleshensky settled himself down to the table with a pad
and a pencil to some kind of study, and forgot me before I had finished
turning around. I looked curiously at the familiar wall of the building
and the still more familiar poplar walk, expecting to see some strange
scenery, some unknown view from another world. But there were the same
old bricks and trees that I had known so long; though my disturbed
and wondering frame of mind endowed them with a sudden strangeness
and unwontedness. Things I had known for some years, they were, yet
so powerfully had Woleshensky’s arguments impressed me that I already
fancied myself in a different universe. According to the conception
of relativity, objects of the _x_, _y_, _z_ universe ought to look
different when viewed from the _x_, _y_, _t_ universe.
Strange to say, I had no difficulty at all in imagining myself as going
_upwards_ on my stroll along the slope. I told myself that the building
was behind and below me, and indeed it seemed real that it was that
way. I walked some distance along the little avenue of poplars, which
seemed familiar enough in all its details; though after a few minutes
it struck me that the avenue seemed rather long. In fact, it was much
longer than I had ever known it to be before.
With a queer Alice-in-Wonderland feeling I noted it stretching way on
ahead of me. Then I looked back.
[Illustration: _I gasped in astonishment. The building was indeed below
me. I looked down upon it from an elevation._]
I gasped in astonishment. The building was indeed _below_ me. I looked
down upon it from the top of an elevation. The astonishment of that
realization had barely broken over me, when I admitted that there was
a building down there; but what building? Not the new Morton Hall, at
least. It was a long, three-story brick building, quite resembling
Morton Hall, but it was not the same. And on beyond there were trees
with buildings among them; but it was not the campus that I knew.
I paused in a kind of panic. What was I to do now? Here I was in a
strange place. How I had gotten there I had no idea. What ought I do
about it? Where should I go? How was I to get back? Odd that I had
neglected the precaution of how to get back. I surmised that I must be
on the _t_ dimension. Stupid blunder on my part, neglecting to find out
how to get back.
I walked rapidly down the slope toward the building. Any hopes that I
might have had about its being Morton Hall were thoroughly dispelled
in a moment. It was a totally strange building, old, and old-fashioned
looking. I had never seen it before in my life. Yet it looked perfectly
ordinary and natural, and was obviously a University class-room
building.
I cannot tell whether it was an hour or a dozen that I spent walking
frantically this way and that, trying to decide to go into this
building or another, and at the last moment backing out in a sweat of
hesitation. It seemed like a year, but was probably only a few minutes.
Then I noticed the people. They were mostly young people, of both
sexes. Students, of course. Obviously I was on a University campus.
Perfectly natural, normal young people, they were. If I were really
on the _t_ dimension, it certainly resembled the _z_ dimension very
closely.
Finally I came to a decision. I could stand this no longer. I selected
a solitary, quiet-looking man, and stopped him.
“Where am I?” I demanded.
He looked at me in astonishment. I waited for a reply, and he continued
to gaze at me speechlessly. Finally it occurred to me that he didn’t
understand English.
“Do you speak English?” I asked hopelessly.
“Of course!” he said vehemently. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Something’s wrong with something,” I exclaimed. “I haven’t any idea
where I am or how I got here.”
“Synthetic wine?” he asked sympathetically.
“Oh, hell! Think I’m a fool? Say, do you have a good man in
mathematical physics on the faculty? Take me to him.”
“Psychology, I should think,” he said, studying me. “Or psychiatry. But
I’m a law-student and know nothing of either.”
“Then make it mathematical physics, and I’ll be grateful to you.”
* * * * *
So I was conducted to the mathematical physicist. The student led
me into the very building which corresponded to Morton Hall, and
into an office the position of which quite corresponded to that of
Woleshensky’s office. However, the office was older and dustier; it
had a Victorian look about it, and was not as modern as Woleshensky’s
room. Professor Vibens was a rather small, bald-headed man, with a keen
looking face. As I thanked the law-student and started on my story,
he looked rather bored, as though wondering why I had picked on him
with my tale of wonder. Before I had gotten very far he straightened
up a little; and further along he pricked up another notch; and before
many minutes he was tense in his chair as he listened to me. When I
finished, his comment was terse, like that of a man accustomed to
thinking accurately and to the point.
“Obviously you come into this world from another set of coordinates.
As we are on the _z_ dimension, you must have come to us from the _t_
dimension----”
He disregarded my attempts to protest at this point.
“Your man Woleshensky has evidently developed the conception of
relativity further than we have, although Monpeters’ theory comes close
enough to it. Since I have no idea how to get you back, you must be my
guest. I shall enjoy hearing all about your world.”
“That is very kind of you,” I said gratefully. “I’m accepting because I
can’t see what else to do. At least until the time when I can find me a
place in your world or get back to my own. Fortunately,” I added as an
afterthought, “no one will miss me there, unless it be a few classes of
students who will welcome the little vacation that must elapse before
my successor is found.”
Breathlessly eager to find out what sort of a world I had gotten into,
I walked with him to his home. And I may state at the outset that if
I had found everything upside down and outlandishly bizarre, I should
have been far less amazed and astonished than I was. For, from the
walk that first evening from Professor Vibens’ office along several
blocks of residence street to his solid and respectable home, through
all of my goings about the town and country during the years that
I remained in the _t_-dimensional world, I found people and things
thoroughly ordinary and familiar. They looked and acted as we do, and
their homes and goods looked like ours. I cannot possibly imagine a
world and a people that could be more similar to ours without actually
being the same. It was months before I got over the idea that I had
merely wandered into an unfamiliar part of my own city. Only the actual
experience of wide travel and much sight-seeing, and the knowledge that
there was no such extensive English-speaking country on the world that
I knew, convinced me that I must be on some other world, doubtless in
the _t_ dimension.
“A gentleman who has found his way here from another universe,” the
professor introduced me to a strapping young fellow who was mowing the
lawn.
The professor’s son was named John! Could anything be more commonplace?
“I’ll have to take you around and show you things tomorrow,” John said
cordially, accepting the account of my arrival without surprise.
A red-headed servant-girl, roast-pork and rhubarb-sauce for dinner, and
checkers afterwards, a hot bath at bedtime, the ringing of a telephone
somewhere else in the house--is it any wonder that it was months before
I would believe that I had actually come into a different universe?
What slight differences there were in the people and the world, merely
served to emphasize the similarity. For instance, I think they were
just a little more hospitable and “old-fashioned” than we are. Making
due allowances for the fact that I was a rather remarkable phenomenon,
I think I was welcomed more heartily in this home and in others later,
people spared me more of their time and interest from their daily
business, than would have happened under similar circumstances in a
correspondingly busy city in America.
* * * * *
Again, John found a lot of time to take me about the city and show
me banks and stores and offices. He drove a little squat car with
tall wheels, run by a spluttering gasoline motor. (The car was not
as perfect as our modern cars, and horses were quite numerous in the
streets. Yet John was a busy business man, the district superintendent
of a life-insurance agency). Think of it! Life insurance in Einstein’s
_t_ dimension.
“You’re young to be holding such an important position,” I suggested.
“Got started early,” John replied. “Dad is disappointed because I
didn’t see fit to waste time in college. Disgrace to the family, I am.”
What in particular shall I say about the city? It might have been
any one of a couple of hundred American cities. Only it wasn’t. The
electric street cars, except for their bright green color, were
perfect; they might have been brought over bodily from Oshkosh
or Tulsa. The ten-cent stores with gold letters on their signs;
drug-stores with soft drinks; a mad, scrambling stock-exchange;
the blaring sign of an advertising dentist; brilliant entrances to
motion-picture theaters, were all there. The beauty-shops did wonders
to the women’s heads, excelling our own by a good deal, if I am any
judge; and at that time I had nothing more important on my mind than to
speculate on that question. Newsboys bawled the _Evening Sun_, and the
_Morning Gale_, in whose curious, flat type I could read accounts of
legislative doings, murders, and divorces, quite as fluently as I could
in my own _Tribune_ at home. Strangeness and unfamiliarity had bothered
me a good deal on a trip to Quebec a couple of years ago; but they were
not noticeable here in the _t_ dimension.
For three or four weeks the novelty of going around, looking at things,
meeting people, visiting concerts, theaters, and department stores, was
sufficient to absorb my interest. Professor Vibens’ hospitality was so
sincerely extended that I did not hesitate to accept, though I assured
him that I would repay it as soon as I got established in this world.
In a few days I was thoroughly convinced that there was no way back
home. Here I must stay, at least until I learned as much as Woleshensky
knew about crossing dimensions. Professor Vibens eventually secured for
me a position at the University.
It was shortly after I had accepted the position as instructor in
experimental physics and had begun to get broken into my work, that I
noticed a strange commotion among the people of the city. I have always
been a studious recluse, observing people as phenomena rather than
participating in their activities. So for some time I noted only in a
subconscious way the excited gathering in groups, the gesticulations
and blazing eyes, the wild sale of extra editions of papers, the
general air of disturbance. I even failed to take an active interest
in these things when I made a railroad journey of three hundred miles
and spent a week in another city; so thoroughly at home did I feel in
this world that when the advisability arose of my studying laboratory
methods in another University, I made the trip alone. So absorbed was
I in my laboratory problems that I only noted with half an eye the
commotion and excitement everywhere, and merely recollected it later.
One night it suddenly popped into my head that the country was aroused
over something.
* * * * *
That night I was with the Vibens’ family in their living room. John
tuned in the radio. I wasn’t listening to the thing very much; I had
troubles of my own. F = g m₁m₂ / r² was familiar enough to me. It meant
the same and held as rigidly here as in my old world. But, what was the
name of the bird who had formulated that law? Back home it was Newton.
Tomorrow in class I would have to be thoroughly familiar with his name.
Pasvieux, that’s what it was. What messy surnames. It struck me that
it was lucky that they expressed the laws of physics in the same form,
and even in the same algebraical letters, or I might have had a time
getting them confused--when all of a sudden the radio blatantly bawled:
“THE GOSTAK DISTIMS THE DOSHES!”
John jumped to his feet.
“Damn right!” he shouted, slamming the table with his fist.
Both his father and mother annihilated him with withering glances, and
he slunk from the room. I gazed stupefied. My stupefaction continued
while the Professor shut off the radio, and both of them excused
themselves from my presence. Then suddenly I was alert.
I grabbed a bunch of newspapers, having seen none for several days.
Great sprawling headlines covered the front pages:
“THE GOSTAK DISTIMS THE DOSHES.”
For a moment I stopped, trying to recollect where I had heard those
words before. They recalled something to me. Ah, yes! That very
afternoon, there had been a commotion beneath my window on the
University campus. I had been busy checking over an experiment so that
I might be sure of its success at tomorrow’s class, and looked out
rather absently to see what was going on. A group of young men from a
dismissed class was passing, and had stopped for a moment.
“I say, the gostak distims the doshes!” said a fine-looking young
fellow. His face was pale and strained looking.
The young man facing him sneered derisively:
“Aw your grandmother! Don’t be a feeble----”
He never finished. The first fellow’s fist caught him in the cheek.
Several books dropped to the ground. In a moment the two had clinched
and were rolling on the ground, fists flying up and down, smears of
blood appearing here and there. The others surrounded them, and for
a moment appeared to enjoy the spectacle; but suddenly recollected
that it looked rather disgraceful on a University campus, and after a
lively tussle separated the combatants. Twenty of them, pulling in two
directions, tugged them apart.
The first boy strained in the grasp of his captors; his white face was
flecked with blood, and he panted for breath.
“Insult!” he shouted, giving another mighty heave to get free. He
looked contemptuously around. “The whole bunch of you ought to learn to
stand up for your honor. The gostak distims the doshes!”
That was the astonishing incident that these words called to my mind. I
turned back to my newspapers.
“Slogan Sweeps the Country,” proclaimed the subheads. “Ringing
Expression of National Spirit! Enthusiasm Spreads Like Wildfire!
The new patriotic slogan is gaining ground rapidly,” the leading
article went on. “The fact that it has covered the country almost
instantaneously seems to indicate that it fills a deep and long-felt
want in the hearts of the people. It was first uttered during a speech
in Walkingdon by that majestic figure in modern statesmanship, Senator
Harob. The beautiful sentiment, the wonderful emotion of this sublime
thought, are epoch-making. It is a great conception, doing credit to a
great man, and worthy of being the guiding light of a great people----”
That was the gist of everything I could find in the papers. I fell
asleep, still puzzled about the thing. I was puzzled, because--as I
see now and didn’t see then--I was trained in the analytical methods
of physical science, and knew little or nothing about the ways and
emotions of the masses of the people.
In the morning the senseless expression popped into my head as soon as
I awoke. I determined to waylay the first member of the Vibens family
who showed up, and demand the meaning of the thing. It happened to be
John.
“John, what’s a gostak?”
John’s face lighted up with pleasure. He threw out his chest and a look
of pride replaced the pleasure. His eyes blazed, and with a consuming
enthusiasm, he shook hands with me, as the deacons shake hands with a
new convert--a sort of glad welcome.
“The gostak!” he exclaimed. “Hurray for the gostak!”
“But what is a gostak?”
“Not _a_ gostak! _The_ gostak. The gostak is--the distimmer of the
doshes--see! He distims ’em, see?”
“Yes, yes. But what is distimming? How do you distim?”
“No, no! Only the gostak can distim. The gostak distims the doshes.
See?”
“Ah, I see!” I exclaimed. Indeed, I pride myself on my quick wit. “What
are doshes? Why, they are the stuff distimmed by the gostak. Very
simple!”
“Good for you!” John slapped my back in huge enthusiasm. “I think it
wonderful for you to understand us so well, after being here only a
short time. You are very patriotic.”