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The philosopher strode towards the chamber with confidence. The researchers trailing him found this odd. If you knew what was inside, you were trepidatious in your approach. The philosopher betrayed no sign of it. In fact a keen observer would have realized his movement showed concealed excitement - he was moving slightly faster then those around him, while rigid limbs revealed concerted effort at self-control. But nobody had the space to think about such things. Everyone's attention was drawn to the object in the centre of the room whether they liked it or not.

As the party moved into the room, it was mentioned quietly that the philosopher however showed no signs of the usual internal struggle that accompanied the object. Perhaps this was due to his lack of exposure? But the effects of the object extended to any documentation about the object and the philosopher was definitely aware of it. It had been long established that trying to comprehend the object resulted in cognitive distress in the observer. That trying to force the idea of the object into someone would drive them mad.
For the researchers and scientists then, the subject of interest was not the conceptual blind spot taking up the center of the room, but the philosopher who starred into the space, unblinkingly. Without speaking the crowd began to clump together behind the thinker so he stood between them and the object. Only one remained by his side, a senior researcher who - according to the official documentation - had looked over the object for the longest.

The crowd looked to the philosopher. The philosopher looked to object.

"Marvelous."

A minute smile appeared on the philosopher. The senior researcher turned to face him in shock. In all the documented responses there was not a single a time someone reacted to the object with a sense of wonder. For the most part those unlucky enough to be nearby responded with shock, terror or anxiety. Occasionally you would get poorly disguised confusion or ennui should the observer have the professionally detached temperament that this job inevitably beat into you.
The philosopher however was instantly engaged, despite no prior documented history dealing with such phenomena.

"Simply fantastic. Words literally fail me."

"Ah. What do you mean by that, exactly?"

"Whatever this is, it is beyond my ability to reason. It cannot be understood."

"Surely we simply lack the means to test-"

"No. We are dealing with something beyond this reality. This object is not part of this universe. It is metaphysical in nature."

"How do you know?"

"Consider a Cartesian plane. Is it possible to represent an object in 3-dimensional space in this 2-dimensional plane?"

"Well if you used specific formulae that allowed you to represent each layer of the object-"

"I apologize. Let me to rephrase - if the only world you knew was a 2-dimensional plane, would you be able to even comprehend a 3-dimensioanl object? What would your senses make of such a thing?"

"It would be completely meaningless to my senses. But surely I could still comprehend such a thing logically? Surely you aren't saying this is just a multidimensional object?"

"No. I rushed my analogy and I apologize for that. When I speak of different planes of existence, I speak of different worlds of logic, not of perception. A 3-dimensional object, while initially unintelligible to a denizen of a lower plane of reality can still be understood by building off the basic underlying rules of that world.
Since we cannot understand this object I assume it must have properties."

"

Footnotes
page revision: 195, last edited: 28 Aug 2016 03:27
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