Trey is feeling very good about having introduced Ariel to the wonders of three dimensions. He is especially pleased to see her grasp this idea that things in his world can have shapes like squares and triangles around the outside. After all, Ariel couldn’t have any experience with a concept like ‘volume’ — something that people who live in a three dimensional world deal with every day.
So it must be strange for Ariel, he muses, to think of a square as being on the “outside” of some higher dimensional shape. “I wonder,” he ponders, “whether I, living here in a three dimensional world, could think of a cube as being on the ‘outside’ of some four dimensional shape.”
Just then he hears an unearthly voice. He can’t quite tell where it is coming from. The voice seems to be from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
He looks around wildly, trying to figure out who is talking to him. Just then an indistinct form appears — something that is right in front of him, and yet somehow not quite there at all. Perhaps, he thinks, trying to stay calm, there are worlds beyond this.
“Hello Trey,” the voice says, “my name is Tera. I hear you’ve been discussing some cool design ideas.”