Virginia Nicholson
How To Build A House In N-Dimensions
1. Begin with lines, pencil to paper (if they could exist) drawing graphite arrangements, N-space reduced to one, a structure viewed in slices. Imagine the bathroom off the foyer, the den off the dining room, viewable only as inked lines, dit-dit-dah, a contractor’s Morse Code.
2. Progress to carpet squares, linoleum tiles, the coral paint pairs well with the eggshell trim. Dit-dah-dit becomes something useful to the non-contractor, “door” or “Master Bedroom” or “x hundred feet of pipe.” Envision the imagined patterns hidden in the bathroom floor, the kitchen hardwood.
3. Move to volumes, solids, conic sections, height. One story, two stories, a basement, an attic?, take advantage of the introduction of 3D. Upgrade the closet to walk-in, needs more carpet squares. A snapshot of a family barbeque, Charlie’s height 1D penciled in to the 3D door, marring 2D eggshell paint.
4. Adding time, the house is built, ages, gets sold to new families with little Charlies of their own, new markings on the cupboard door, 3-foot-2, 3-foot-5, 4-foot-9. Grass fades from Kelly to sand to Kelly, saturation a cosine function with respect to time. The Zoysia starts in one, breaking ground in two, growing in three, a well-manicured 4D experience.
5-11. Include the things invisible to us, objects on the order of 1 meter, orders of 10E-2 to 10E9 seconds. Five to eleven drip through leaky pipes, seep through porous flooring, get lost in iron-rich soil and oxygenated exhalations. Five to eleven stay hidden, wrapped up in Calabi-Yao manifolds smaller than graphite hills and valleys marking little Charlie’s height, stronger than the 2-by-4s and stone foundation keeping strong in 4D. Five to eleven circulate undetected, seven dimensions shrunk to sub-pinpoint size, keeping seven dimensions of unexplainables covered until their traces are seen in the blades of Zoysia.
