The Crow amused everyone, and they laughed.
Alice said, "Madam, do you already know what the fourth dimension is? Can we really see it?"
"If it's really as I think, then we can all see it."
What do you think?
"See it in your dreams."
"In a dream?" Alice asked, puzzled. "How can we see things in a dream? We can't control our dreams."
"We can't, but they can," Mrs. Larry said, pointing to Qingmu, Situ, Duwa, and Su Huilan. "The fourth dimension isn't time, nor is it some gravitational surface, but—spirit!"
Qingmu's heart skipped a beat, and he suddenly felt the Mental Power Field on the island become heavy, and the three Sun in the sky seemed to be distorted.
Alice still didn't understand, "But isn't a dream just a chaotic world made up of our memories? It's three-dimensional, isn't it? Where does the fourth dimension come from?"
Mrs. Larry chuckled, "Since you can't control your dreams, you certainly don't know the wonders of Mental Power. Ludwig and I once researched the independence of consciousness; Ludwig research was quite in-depth. Unfortunately, I don't have the talent for it, so I don't know how to control dreams to expand into four-dimensional space. Besides, I'm not a physicist, so it's better to ask a professional to answer this."
After she finished speaking, she looked at Situ.
Situ said, "We can indeed view dreams as a four-dimensional space—dreams are supported by Mental Power, and the material that constitutes them is human memory. We can also understand them as a projection of the real world onto the mind—that is, the fourth dimension."
The world we live in is three-dimensional. A three-dimensional projection onto a two-dimensional object becomes two-dimensional, and a three-dimensional projection onto a four-dimensional object also becomes four-dimensional. But just like a two-dimensional projection onto a three-dimensional object, it is merely a distorted illusion and cannot change its inherent dimensional properties. Similarly, a three-dimensional projection onto a four-dimensional object is also an illusion. Furthermore, since the human brain can only perceive three-dimensional things, dreams still appear three-dimensional. And because they are illusions, they are not only distorted but also chaotic and ever-changing.
According to the lady, if these characters are projections of three-dimensional text left by four-dimensional beings onto a two-dimensional plane, and their fourth dimension happens to coincide with the dimension we experience in dreams, which is supported by our spirit, then as long as these characters are placed in a dream and their spirit is used to reconstruct them into three-dimensional text, consciousness can perceive the meaning they express.
Alice said, "But how exactly do we recreate it? Aren't our brains unable to perceive four-dimensional things? Even if you can control dreams, in the brain's perception, isn't it still a three-dimensional world?"
Situ laughed and said, "We don't need to see what four dimensions are like. As you said, the information encoding method of civilized language is one dimension lower than the space in which the civilization itself exists. These characters were originally three-dimensional, and we only need to restore them to three dimensions. Isn't it our brain's forte to imagine two-dimensional things as three-dimensional?"
"The brain is good at this too?" Alice asked, puzzled.
"Yes, think about it, isn't what our eyes see essentially two-dimensional?"
"Wait a minute, it's clearly three-dimensional!"
The Crow suddenly interjected, "Caw! Silly woman, have you ever played Super Mario?"
Alice retorted, "You're the dumb one! You idiot!" But curiosity prevailed over her competitive spirit. "Of course I've played Mario, so what?"
The Crow said, " Mario is a two-dimensional being, no doubt about that, you stupid woman?"
Alice said, "No objection, you silly bird, please stop calling me a silly woman!"
The Crow Guagua and nodded. "Okay, okay, silly woman! Now imagine you have a computer in front of you, Mario just stomped on a turtle. There's a green... mailbox? Oh, it's a mailbox, at least that's what you see, right? But from Mario's perspective, what does he see?... Caw, it's a line! Mario can't see the whole shape of the mailbox; what's standing in front of him is just a line, right, silly woman?"
Influenced by the Crow, Alice seemed to truly see that familiar game scene. She nodded unconsciously.
The Crow continued, "Two-dimensional beings can only see one dimension, and one-dimensional beings can only see zero dimension. That's why Mario sees lines and Snake sees points. Humans are three-dimensional beings, so by the same logic, humans can only see a two-dimensional world. What you think you see is three-dimensional is just your imagination, silly woman, do you understand?"
"Ah, it seems that's really true! What the eyes see is the projection of objects onto the retina; it's flat, like a mirror. It's our brain that analyzes the spectrum and reconstructs it into three dimensions."
Alice suddenly realized, completely forgetting that the Crow was still calling her a fool. "What a living being sees is always one dimension lower than the space it inhabits, which is exactly the same as the theory that the information encoding of language is one dimension lower than civilization itself!"
Mrs. Larry said to Qingmu, "What a clever bird!"
Crow stood atop the Qingmu board, raised its head Guagua, and cawed a few times.
Alice said, "But since our brains can automatically convert two-dimensional space into three-dimensional space, why do we need to go into dreams?"
"Because we don't currently know from which direction it was projected into the two-dimensional plane."
Situ explained, "The human brain cannot intuitively perceive and understand four dimensions, so we cannot see its projection direction. Consequently, it is difficult to grasp the direction of dimensional extension when restoring the original dimensions."
In three-dimensional space, unfolding a one-dimensional object into a two-dimensional one has two possible directions; similarly, in four-dimensional space, unfolding a two-dimensional object into a three-dimensional one also has two possible directions. However, given the uncertainty of the projection plane of these texts, it could be projected onto any face, and each face has two possible reconstruction directions. If we consider three-dimensional space as a cube, it has six faces, and each face and the fourth dimension can form a new cube. Including itself and its mirror projection, there could be a total of eight solid spaces and twenty-four planes. The projection direction of three-dimensional text can be any plane; we need to determine its direction, just like with a two-dimensional drawing of an object—you need to know if it's a top view, a bottom view, or a side view—before you can reconstruct its three-dimensional shape. In four-dimensional space, this task is obviously much more difficult.
"This is way too complicated!" Alice exclaimed.
Situ said, "It's not that complicated. As long as the direction is right, it just requires more Mental Power to try."
Qingmu said, "Then let's give it a try."
He always felt that the meaning of those words was jumping around in his mind, like an engineer seeing an incomplete blueprint without any annotations. Now, three copies of the blueprint have been collected, and they have also found a way to restore it. With the combined efforts of him, Situ, Duwa, and Su Huilan, plus the scepter in their hands, their Mental Power is definitely enough to support them.
Of those present, only Alice and Mrs. Larry were not Awakened, and Mrs. Larry was a linguistic authority; they would obviously bring her along if they were to decipher the text. Alice knew they were about to begin and said urgently:
"Hey, can you take me into your dreams too? Let me see something amazing!"