8
This was going to be a challenge.
David was either going to have to concede his argument or else prove that space inside an orange is infinite.
Brian moved ever so slightly towards Helen as he subconsciously distanced himself from the losing side. He had no idea that Helen’s pulse, already making her giddy as a result of her unexpected success in the debate, quickened so that she thought the dining room must have been echoing to the kathump of her heart beating.
“Fibre-optics.” David said the word contemplatively, quietly. The effect was to draw Helen and Brian in closer to him.
“Fibre-optics,” he said again. “Remember the straw, Helen? Where we looked along the straw and could only perceive what was in line with but not parallel to or near to the straw? Well fibre-optics carry pulses of data at the speed of light along miles of transparent tubing. They are used to securely transmit digitised video, audio and raw data where line of sight or outside interference could cause a signal to be corrupted. Fibre-optics provides a continuous reflective completely one-dimensional environment within which we send traffic one way.
“Now, if we lived a one dimensional existence within such a tube, we could easily be fooled into thinking, because there IS no outside and because the inside is reflective and we can only encounter it if we happen to bump into it, we could be fooled into thinking that the tube is in fact without bounds.
“We would only ‘bump’ into a side if the tube were to bend and we, in our travel, didn’t bend with it because we don’t know what sideways or up and down are.
“Within that environment our space would appear to be infinite. It follows, therefore, that if we existed within the orange the same laws of perception would apply and that space within that sphere would appear infinite too. Perhaps if we substituted our orange for a bubble, complete with reflective interior surfaces and fluidic surface area it would more accurately resemble the inside of the fibre-optic tube.”
Brian was speechless.
Helen, after a momentary pause, “You wouldn’t ever bump into the side of the tube because that would apply an alien influence that was inconsistent with the world inside that universe. Similarly, no matter what attempt was made to reach the edge of the bubble, local effects would keep the inside from reaching the outside and that would effectively maintain the illusion of infinity.”
They all looked at the orange.
“So what you’re saying is that we live in a giant bubble within which all of our laws of physics operate but that we are deluding ourselves by thinking that our bubble is infinite and that there is nothing else – nothing outside of our bubble.”
David sat back, folded his arms and nodded. “Yes Brian that is exactly my point. And, Helen, it is from outside the bubble that the next dimension visits in much the same way as our observations of the plates and the straws yesterday and of the orange.”
Late, the three of them stood to return to their work places.
Helen gave Brian a look of appreciation when he gathered the trays together before retiring them to the spent tray stand.