Sex Sphere

  The Sex Sphere

  Rudy Rucker

  For Sylvia

  “If we want to pass on and on till magnitude and dimensions disappear, is it not done for us already? That reality, where magnitudes and dimensions are not, is simple and about us. For passing thus on and on we lose ourselves, but find the clue again in the apprehension of the simplest acts of human goodness, in the most rudimentary recognition of another human soul wherein is neither magnitude nor dimension, and yet all is real.”

  —Charles H. Hinton

  “At first, indeed, I pretended that I was describing the imaginary experiences of a fictitious person; but my enthusiasm soon forced me to throw off all disguise, and finally, in a fervent peroration, I exhorted all my hearers to divest themselves of prejudice and to become believers in the Third Dimension. Need I say that I was at once arrested and taken before the Council?”

  —Edwin A. Abbott

  Introduction

  This is a novel about higher dimensions, and about sexual love. I don’t need to explain much about the sex, which is, as always, a mixture of the erotic, the comic and the surreal.

  But higher dimensions are less familiar. What I’d like to do in this introduction is to sketch some of the basic science ideas that I’ve used. Not that you have to read the introduction right now—you can check it out later, or never. It’s only here an extra. Proceed immediately to Chapter One, if you prefer.

  Anyone left? Initiate professor mode...

  The fourth dimension is a direction perpendicular to all the directions we can point to. Sometimes people say that time is the fourth dimension, and this is in some respects true. But to start with, we just want to get the idea of there being some unknown and higher possibilities of motion.

  Figure 1: A Square

  The best way to begin thinking about higher dimensions is to look at some two-dimensional creatures who have no notion of a third dimension. These creatures were invented by Edwin A. Abbott in his 1884 classic, Flatland. The best-known of the Flatlanders is one A Square (see Figure 1). By thinking about A Square’s difficulties in imagining a third dimension, we become better able to get over our own difficulties in understanding the fourth dimension.

  Figure 2: A Square Looking at A Triangle and A Circle

  The Flatlanders are confined to the surface of what seems to be an endless plane. They can move East/West, North/South, or any combination of these two directions. But it’s impossible for them to jump up out of their world and into the third dimension.

  One minor point needs to be mentioned here. When A Square looks at two of his fellows, say A Triangle and A Circle, the Square’s actual retinal image is of two line segments—just what you would see if you were to lower your eye to the level of a tabletop on which some cardboard shapes were lying . But as the space of Flatland is permeated with a light mist, the edges of the triangle seem to shade off faster than do the edges of the circle. Thus our Square is able to distinguish his fellows’ shapes, and to form good mental images of them (see Figure 2). If you think about it, this is no more surprising than the fact that we’re able to use our two-dimensional retinal images to form three-dimensional mental images of the objects around us.

  OK. Now how does A Square find out about the third dimension? A Sphere from higher-dimensional space takes an interest in A Square and decides to show herself to him. She does this by moving through the plane of Flatland. What does A Square see? A circle of varying size. And if we suppose that the sphere has a valley-like peach cleft, the cross-sectional circles will have little nicks (see Figure 3).

  Figure 3: A Square Meets A Sphere

  One of the main characters in The Sex Sphere is a hypersphere named Babs. When she moves through our space, our hero Alwin sees…what? A hypersphere is the higher-dimensional analogue of a sphere, so just as A Square sees a sphere as a circle of varying size, we can imagine that Alwin will see Babs as a sphere of varying size.

  We can imagine that A Sphere would be able to lift A Square out of his space, and it’s equally possible to suppose that Babs might lift Alwin out of our space. Alwin could either tumble about in this higher space, or he might “slide” on the surface of Babs herself, just as A Square could be thought of as sliding up along Sphere’s swelling flank.

  It’s interesting to realize that hyperspheres are not utterly fictional concepts. As early as 1920, Albert Einstein suggested that the three-dimensional space of our universe is curved back on itself to form a great hypersphere. The important thing about a hyperspherical space is that it is finitely large, yet one never comes to an edge of it. This is, of course, analogous to the fact that our Earth’s spherical surface is finite and without edges.

  Figure 4: A Knot in Sphere’s Tail

  Suppose that A Square became so interested in A Sphere that he wanted to prevent her from leaving his space. What could he do? If we think of the Flatland space as being a sort of soap-film, then there might be some possibility of stretching out a long piece of our space, pulling out a long piece of Sphere, and tying the two together with a square knot (see Figure 4)! A physicist named Lafcadio Caron does something analogous to this in our book. He manages to knot the tail of Babs-the-Hypersphere into our space. Babs doesn’t like this. Much of the book’s action is in fact directed by Babs—her goal is to get some people to carry out a certain act which will free her tail from the knot.

  Towards the end of the book it develops that Babs is more than just a four-dimensional hypersphere. She is really a pattern in infinite-dimensional “Hilbert” space. Why would I want to drag in so many dimensions?

  Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity has taught us to think of gravitational force as being a result of the bending of space. That’s one higher dimension, at least. Yet Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity tells us that the basic reality is not space, but spacetime. So here’s another higher dimension. Three space dimensions, one time dimension, one dimension to curve spacetime in—that’s five already. But any lover of SF knows that there are many parallel curved spacetimes—alternate universes—so we’re going to need a sixth dimension to stack these spacetimes in.

  Before going on to Hilbert Space, let’s just stop a minute and think about how neat spacetime is. If we take “up” to be the same as “future,” then the spacetime of Flatland will be a sort of block, a stack of “nows.” An elementary particle can be thought of as tracing out a line in spacetime, a world-line something like the afterimage of a sparkler’s trail. Insofar as I am made up of elementary particles, I am a sort of braid in spacetime, a macramé pattern in the universal tapestry (see Figure 5).

  Figure 5: People are Spacetime Braids of Particle Worldlines

  What’s particularly interesting here is to realize that the process of breathing particles in and out serves to weave us together; and—which is more important for the story—the concept of “family tree” has a real significance in spacetime. Not to give too much away, when our character Alwin starts tumbling off into the direction of the “future,” he drags his children after him. Note that if someone were able to pull their past selves out of spacetime, then no one would even remember them!

  In modern physics, the fundamental reality is thought of as infinite-dimensional. This fact is not widely known—people just don’t know what to make of it. What you have to do to appreciate the world’s infinite-dimensionality is to realize that our ordinary concepts of space and time are just constructs. What is in fact immediately given to us is an unstructured sea of thoughts and perceptions. We try to impose order by using a four-dimensional spacetime framework.

  But just take an honest look at your thoughts, and you’ll realize that the situation is much more complex. Here is an object—how many questions can I ask about it? Infinitely many: what’s
its longitude, latitude, height above sea level; what does it taste like; how much does it weigh; who does it belong to; is it in some ways reminiscent of my high-school prom; what would William Burroughs say about it? And so on and on. We all know the game of Twenty Questions—our world is a game of Infinity Questions.

  Babs eventually gets her tail unknotted, but somehow she can’t bring herself to leave our universe alone. She manages to appear in many places at once. We can use a simple Flatland analogy to see how many distinct objects can actually be one on some higher level: just think of a hand whose fingers stick down into Square’s space (see Figure 6)!

  Figure 6: Many Are One

  Well, those are the main tools you’ll need to deconstruct the text; more detailed help can be found in my popular-science book, The Fourth Dimension (Houghton Mifflin, 1984). And now—let the weirdness begin!

  —Rudy Rucker,

  Lynchburg, Virginia, 1983

  CHAPTER ONE

  Under the Hill

  Lafcadio Caron hated the physical universe. As a Platonic idealist, he deeply resented any claims that the crass world of matter might have on immortality. So he devised a theory according to which any bit of matter eventually decays into light, and a second theory according to which light eventually gets tired and trickles into the folds of spacetime; and a third theory according to which space and time will die of disuse once all the mass and energy are gone. “Here today, gone in 1040 years,” he would say, twisting his features in desperate, irrelevant laughter. The man had problems.

  But, yes, he was a genius. He spent much of his time slouched in a leather armchair in the University of Rome’s physics library. Graduate students and foreign research fellows would cluster around him as he lolled there, long skinny legs stretched out. The legs were like grasshopper legs; and like a grasshopper, Lafcadio would rub his legs together as he talked, chirping and buzzing about Ultimate Reality.

  His constant companion was a roly-poly Hungarian woman named Zsuzsi Szabo…an exotic name which translates prosaically to Susan Taylor. She had short blond hair, high Tartar cheekbones, huge pillowlike breasts, and a washerwoman’s arms. The State had originally sent Zsuzsi to Rome to learn the latest developments in nuclear-reactor design. But instead she had attended Lafcadio’s lectures, fallen in love and defected…heedless of her Budapest family’s fate.

  Zsuzsi was a wizard at experimental design, and Lafcadio took her into his full confidence. They made a striking team: Fat Lady and Thin Man, Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, Earth and Fire. The graduate students speculated avidly about the pair’s sex-life. It was, indeed, intense.

  “You are my wild exotic particle,” Lafcadio might say, mounting her. “Let me split you into quarks, my darling.”

  “Cling close, svheet one,” she would respond, ardently reversing position. “I am absorber for your titanic energies.”

  Biologically, the union was barren. But Lafcadio impregnated Zsuzsi with the design for a beautiful second-generation proton-decay experiment. It was this experiment that led to the Mont Blanc laboratory’s capture of a speck of degenerate hypermatter. Hearing the news, the proud couple named the particle Babsi (Hungarian for “little bean”), and hurried to see it.

  Aosta, Italy, February 8

  Wet snow is falling. The sky is gray and it looks like there will never be a sun again. From some random crag we watch the slow crawl of lights up the valley…cars and trucks laboring through spaghetti-turns to the Mont Blanc tunnel. There in the distance is the tunnel’s mouth, a small upside-down U, sad and surprised.

  Moving closer, we see the concrete customs shed and tollbooths. Closer. A Fiat stops, the driver shows a pass. The car is colorless with dirt, the driver white with cold. Lafcadio.

  Zsuzsi, for her part, is pink with breakfast, loud with pleasure. “Zo, finally vhe have a little Babsi!”

  “This would seem to be the case. If Signor Hu is to be believed.” Lafcadio holds up a cautious bony finger.

  They pull into the tunnel. 10 Km, reads a sign overhead, indicating the distance to the French end of the tunnel. The Mont Blanc tunnel is filled with an eternal roar, a Hephaestean clangor. Huge trucks labor past, shaking Lafcadio’s tiny car. The light is yellow and smeary. Everything is covered with wet grit. The air itself seems to grow thick. 9 Km.

  Zsuzsi glances up at the car’s ceiling. “I hate it in here. All zat mountain over us. Kilometers and kilometers.”

  Lafcadio laughs his strangled laugh. “All slowly decaying, Zsuzsi. Slowly returning to the One.” 8 Km.

  “I vhish vhe vhere already zere,” frets Zsuzsi. “I don’t trust zat Chimmy Hu to keep za Babsi stable. He doesn’t really understand your zeory.”

  Lafcadio snorts briefly. “Doesn’t believe, is more like it. No one but you, dear Zsuzsi, has really believed in my vacuumless vacuum, my cube of Absolute Nothingness. But only in such an incubator can our little Babsi live.” 7 Km.

  “How much did Hu zay she vheighs?”

  “Variable. Up to a full three grams,” crows Lafcadio. “Can you believe that? Apparently she comes from a cascade of the most energetic proton-decays yet observed. And your mono-field caught her, Zsuzsi, swept her into the vacuumless vacuum. We’ll celebrate with a trip to Venice, you and I.” 6 Km.

  “Svheet dollink! But zlow down. Vhe’re here.”

  They turn off into a sort of underground parking garage. It’s a hard turn to make, and the canvas-shrouded truck behind Lafcadio’s Fiat comes dangerously close to ramming them.

  They’re out of the car as soon as it stops, hurrying across the cold, damp garage to a door in the far wall. Lafcadio has a key. White light streams out, making a brief bright trapezoid on the garage’s rough concrete floor.

  Inside it’s bright and warm. An old guard waves them on. They trot down the hall. At the end is a large room with a lot of machinery. A smiling Chinese man in tan corduroys and dark blue sweater greets them.

  “Lafcadio,” he calls happily, “Zsuzsi! It is still stable!”

  “Zats vhonderful, Jimmy.” Zsuzsi tosses her overcoat onto a chair. “Let me zee.” She wears a tight red sweater, wide skirt and high boots. Pushing Jimmy Hu to one side, she leans possessively over her machine. Lafcadio crowds up behind her, watching over her shoulder.

  The machine looks something like an arcade game, with a dead-black video screen set high in a console. Pipes and cables writhe out of it like tropical lianas, brightly colored root-vines feeding on the satellite machines: vacuum pump, ion drive, gas chromatograph, differential analyzer, macro-processor, monopole accelerator, quantum fluxer, quark scanner, relativity condenser, gravitomagnet, strong/weak force junction, supercooled bloog tank, hyperonic veeble-tweeter, two-tier furglesnatcher, black boxes, boxes, boxes, boxes. Lights blink, needles wag, speakers hum here deep under the mountain, far from the Eye of God.

  Behind it all is something that looks like a huge Beuys sculpture, a four-meter stack of iron plates interleaved with gray felt pads. Tubes and wires snake out of the felt, feeding the machines.

  “Babsi,” croons Zsuzsi, staring into the screen. Looking in with her, we see a pulsing point of light…neither far nor close, just there.

  “It is werbling on a four-millisecond cycle,” whispers Jimmy Hu. “Shall we cut in the resonance drive?”

  “Don’t ask me,” chuckles Lafcadio. “All I know is that I’m right. A particle is the hypersection of a four-space construct.”

  Zsuzsi grunts wetly and lets her hands drop down to a row of knobs. Close shot of her fingers diddling the dials. Her nails are short and bitten, lacquered pink.

  Laboring whine of machinery being pushed to its breaking point.

  “You see,” exclaims Lafcadio. “It is still growing! There is no practical upper limit to the size of a particle.”

  Wunh-wunh-wunh-wunh-wunh-wunh-wunh: an alarm-hooter. Zsuzsi and Lafcadio are staring in at the golfball-size Babsi particle, but Jimmy Hu is worried now. He backs away from them, glancing up at the alarm horn, th
en back at the console.

  “Don’t try to manipulate it,” he warns. “Not at this energy density!”

  “Nonsense!” cries Lafcadio. “Listen to me, Zsuzsi! We must knot Babsi into our space for metastability. Use Hinton double-rotation.”

  Her sensitive, stubby fingers dance across the dials. The object behind, or in front of, the screen begins to spin. Another flick of the dials. Babsi flattens a little and dimples in at the poles. The sound of the hooter is faint and musical, synched to Babsi’s growing buzz. Jimmy Hu’s voice is shouting something, but the sound warps into gabble.

  “Z-axis,” hisses Lafcadio. “Donut.”

  Zsuzsi is playing the console like this year’s high-scorer. Babsi’s polar dimples dig in and meet. The mottled matter flows in one pole and out the other. It’s a torus now, a spinning vortex ring.

  But then…as we stare at the Babsi the…spinning stops and…goes over to the room.

  Babsi, Lafcadio and Zsuzsi: the three are motionless, while all around them the blurred room races. Engine, impresario and operator: poised at the center of a merry-go-round gone mad.

  “Tie the knot,” urges Lafcadio. He is gaunt, gray and wild-eyed. “Use XZ surgery and a W-axis hyperflip.”

  You have the feeling the Babsi particle wants to escape, for the flowy little torus jerks back from Zsuzsi’s touch of ruby laser light. She throws a switch and a glowing blue net of field-mesh holds Babsi fast. The surgical red ray cuts in.

  The alarm’s sound is a dull, repeated scream: aenh-aenh-aenh-aenh-aenh. Look at Zsuzsi’s fingers, slick with sweat.

  Now the Babsi folds in on itself, and two circles link. The shifting outline of a Klein bottle is there, a meaty bag whose neck stretches out and punches in to eat its own bottom: a tortured hairless bird with its head stuck in its navel and out its ass. The world-snake. Klein-bottle Babsi-bean slides in and through itself, tracing impossible curves. Slowly it settles down, smoothing out and shrinking a bit.