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Perhaps the mission should have gone more smoothly. A return capsule, an envelope, it all seemed like enough protection to get him safely back home. But then, something went wrong: the capsule broke, the envelope opened, and now A Square was falling from thousands of lengths of his own form, high up in the air.
He was gaining velocity. He was spinning in all the dimensions his sight couldn't even reach past. His insides were burning with live fire.
The atmosphere and gravity hated him, they hated the microscopic thickness of his body, the sole existence of such a puny creature among the deities of 3D. A Square couldn't see, but he could still feel. And he felt everything. The way air burned itself on his small frame, the way it lit up with rage against his insides, his stomach, heart, brain. The way it tore at his skin and cilia, making him scream, the rawest, most primal sound he's ever produced. Yet nobody could hear his helpless cries among the gunshots, explosions, the world falling apart. He couldn't even hear himself, only knew that his throat was becoming more and more sore. Gravity tugged at his organs and everything inside him was jumping, thrashing.
A Square then thought that, surely, he would die. There was no other pain threshold to cross, no other part of his body that hadn't yet been targeted. Further in suffering, there had to be only death.
Abruptly, he crashed into something solid. It knocked his breath out of him, made him close his swirling, twisting eye. He let out a prolonged whine.
Everything hurt. Everything hurt and he was powerless to pick himself up. He had no strength left, his body was being mauled by forces beyond his comprehension, and he had crashed into something that touched every single part of him, every organ exposed vulnerable by the fall. If he had any mind to think critically right now, he'd realise that he was laying flat on a higher-dimensional surface. But he couldn't even form a coherent thought at this point.
"Wh's... ts? ar... -eir rubb...? ...stick-?" Someone was saying words, but he couldn't process any of it. The sounds of destruction blared all around and directly into his skull.
Suddenly, all of that quietened. There was a surface hovering above him, up, up, not northward... It deafened the space around him, limiting the noise only to the sounds coming from his own being – the ringing in his brain, and his barely audible sobbing.
Maybe it was death that had finally given him its mercy. Something was holding him, its moves almost soothing, but he didn't have the ability to analyse it. His moves got slower, his crying died out, and shortly after, he lost consciousness.
▩ ▩ ▩
"Maybe he needs water? Have you watered him?"
"He's not one of your pesky plants, for Schläfli's sake."
The voices were close to him... and yet unreachable. They sounded like they were coming from another plane of reality.
A Square groggily moved a little. His body was sore. Even though no otherworldly objects were touching him right now, he could feel the effects of his fall vividly. His skull throbbed, his heart beat with difficulty, and he felt sick.
"Animals need water too, no?"
"Wh- I'm not gonna waterboard him, if that's what you're suggesting!"
A Square winced from the sudden loudness. Pulling his lips together, he tried to open his eye. The world felt dizzy and he had to hold back a pathetic sound that was about to leave him, letting out a sigh instead. At least his eye wasn't spinning in its socket anymore: that much he could deeply appreciate.
"Oh, I think he's awake," one of the voices, feminine, whispered.
The fog in front of him brightened and something materialised in it. It was... He didn't even know what shape it was. Back when A Sphere had come down to Flatland, he had looked like a circle, growing and retracting in size. This? This was that, but squared. With how quick the being was changing, with how many shapes were protruding and separating from it, he truly could not tell what it was.
Noticing his confusion, the higher being stopped its movement, deciding on one fixed position. A Square blinked and deducted that this side of it looked a bit like his glow point, although more light blue in hue.
"Greetings, two-dimensional shape. We rescued you from an aircraft catastrophe. How are you feeling?"
A Square felt his throat tense. "Who... Who are you?" he managed.
The entity moved a bit closer to him. "My name is X Glome. I'm a four-dimensional being, a hypersphere. My friend over here is called B Hexadecachoron, he's a polychoron."
"The fourth dimension..." A Square whispered. "It's real... I knew it."
"We caught you by chance," the second voice, masculine, chimed in. A mesh of shapes appeared besides the point, choosing to stop on the form of a triangle, its colour light green. B Hexadecachoron... oh circle divinity, what a hard name. "We were going to check up on 3-Space, they're engaged in some war yet again. But then you fell onto us, so we've instead taken that time to transport you to your domain. You should be grateful you didn't burn to death in that 3D atmosphere, little one."
"Thank you," he expressed his gratitude obediently, giving it his all to make it sound genuine. "Pardon me if I understand this incorrectly, but... does this mean that you have taken me to my own dimension?"
"Yes. You're on the far side of the plane."
A Square glanced north and south, but he couldn't recognise the location. There was nothing standing out in the deep, navy ether, except for the 4D beings. If he was in his world, then where exactly in it?
"We'll take you back to the center once you're good and ready," X Glome added. "However, we need you to cooperate with us. You didn't answer my question before: how are you feeling?"
"Forgive me," he said again, not wanting to offend them. "To answer truthfully, I'm... not very great. The fall has done a considerable amount of damage to me." He looked down on his front cilia, feeling his body vibrate ever so slightly in an expression of discomfort: something equivalent of a Spacelander's grimace.
Flatlanders usually moved their cilia non-stop, feeling the space around them and always ready to change their position. But now, A Square's cilia floated limp. They felt burned and frail and like they were barely hanging on to his skin.
The 4D beings exchanged some quiet words, though A Square found himself tuning in and out. His head felt thick and tight. A powerful wave of pulsation rolled through his skull and he closed his eye, pained, trembling.
"Square, what's happening?" one of the voices asked him, concerned. "Can we do anything for you?"
The question surprised him, so much that his body stopped its instinctive motion for a moment. They were offering aid for him? They, the higher beings? It felt so strange. Since he'd been plucked out of his world, nobody had asked him about how he was enduring the unfamiliar conditions. He'd been put on trial regardless of the fact that his insides were twisting and bending to the will of gravity. He'd been laughed at when he flopped over, no longer able to hold himself up. He'd been thrown out of a flying vehicle, magnitutes of height above his own world.
These 4D beings offering him help was the first sign of kindness he'd seen outside of Flatland, and it left A Square speechless for a second. However, he knew he couldn't waste their time (and possibly test their patience), so he willed himself to speak.
"Please," he whispered, "if you could get me something to eat... My wounds would recover more quickly."
"Okay- Okay, yeah, of course. What do you usually feed on? What should we look for?"
"Algae would be great," he said. Algae were the standard, basic position in his species' diet – easy to catch, even easier to breed. There were, of course, more fancy foods out there, but he didn't have the courage to ask for anything of that sort. It would be enough if he could just get some chemical energy into his system, no matter the source.
The triangle disappeared from his view. It seemed like B Hex was going to fetch the algae. A Square imagined the 4D entity disappearing into a higher dimension, lifting itself up, or maybe in some other direction, to look over his tiny world.
Up. A Square sighed with sadness and longing after the world of Spaceland, now lost to him. Would he ever see the mysteries of the cosmos with his own eye again? It felt like he had been shown the greater beauty of life only to have it ripped away from him, only to be forced back into his mundane life as if nothing had happened.
Even though his body lay weakened and hurt, the passion for higher dimensions burned intensely within him. His people were missing out on so much, he had to educate them! He had to make this fact known to them... but would they even listen to him?
A Square looked at the light blue point again. Perhaps this was the last occassion to get some answers and some help in his mission.
"If- If I may, great hypersphere... could I inquire you about a certain topic that perplexes me?"
"Oh, ask away," she said.
"Now that I know of the existence of two dimensions above my own... I speculate that there are even more. Is this true? Do you, great beings, possess any knowledge of the fifth dimension... and beyond?"
"Ah, I see," X Glome said, "you're one of their apostles, chosen to spread the gospel of dimensionality."
"...Yes. That I believe I am."
"Well, to answer your question, apostle: none of us in the 4D world know for sure of the fifth dimension. Our scientists say it is theoretically possible, but regular folk don't believe it. There have been individuals who, assumedly, received revelations of some kind... but they're usually called junkies or madmen." She sighed, swaying thoughtfully left-and-right. "It's a hard topic to discuss about, as it's bordering between science and religion."
He took a minute to process all of that. So... most 4D people didn't believe in the fifth dimension... just like Spacelanders didn't believe in the fourth. A Square felt his passion dim a little. If that was the case, if every dimension was so ignorant and unwilling to learn the truth, then what were the chances that his own world would believe him?
"The yellow sphere burdened you with a lot, huh?" the higher being asked suddenly, as if guessing his worries.
"I..." he started, and then trailed off. "Truly, I don't know how I should spread the gospel of 3D to my people. In every world I've been in, and now which I've also heard of, nobody believes prophets." His heart felt heavy as these words left his mouth. "Yet... I can't keep quiet. It is not only the mission I've been assigned, but simply the weight of this knowledge that I can't bear myself, or keep hidden from my kind."
For a few moments, silence hovered over them both. X Glome was supposedly thinking.
"I would advise you to speak to the mathematicians first," she finally said. "If you have any in your world, that is. Anyone who studies something close to the concept should believe you more easily."
That sounded reasonable. He'd have to think about it, of course – particularly, who in his kingdom he could contact – but on the surface, it seemed like a good option.
"Thank you," he said. "You've calmed my heart a bit."
"Pleasure. Now, excuse me for a minute. I'm gonna go and remind B Hex of what he was supposed to do, because I can see from here that he's contemplating the micro plants instead of bringing them to you," she snorted. "You have to forgive him; there's nothing more exciting to him than plant biology." And with that, she must have risen out of his dimension, because the light blue point disappeared from his view.
A Square closed his eye, taking the moment to breathe, trying to relieve the dull, everpresent ache in his body. He'd get better soon, he told himself.
"We're back!" sounded a voice in his mind... or rather from another dimension. "Here," B Hex said, and in the same moment, a cluster of algae appeared before A Square. They looked puffy and well-grown, and smelled fresh. He reached for a few and gingerly tasted them.
The stream of relief and content that flowed through his body could not be described by words. He felt like he hadn't eaten in weeks, when it had only been one day... just a really, really long one, because so much had happened in its span.
After he'd eaten, he muttered another 'thank you' to the 4D entities, meanwhile feeling his eye close. Somnolence pulled him into its warm, gluey embrace, and the ache in his head eased a little.
These strangers, these beings that exceeded him, to whom he was only dust... they took the time to help him, to care for him. A strange sense of peace spread through him, dimming the pain of his injuries, overtaking the existential dread in his mind. Kindness. He felt so lucky.
"Rest," a voice spoke to him from inside his mind. "Rest before your mission, apostle."