Dr Alderson ? The door creaked . Her 16:00 . Laurence .
Yes , yes come in , she said , looking at her hands as they moved through space . She couldn ’ t stop looking at how there was a saccadic movement of the image freezing . The hand frozen for that microsecond , beyond that which the eye can really even see . The window offered her a false reflection , a night starved of stars and a street hungry for lights . It would be easy to say the abyss stares back , but nothingness is no abyss , is it ? She ’ s there , looking – looking through infinity and seeing herself .
I ’ m stuck on this Necker cube thing , he said . Not very eloquent , I know , but I wanted your advice .
Advice ? Wasn ’ t it … She checked very briefly the first email and it did say advice , not supervision … Sorry , she said , looking around her , trying as if to spot some tripwire or some fluctuation . Her bookshelves boasted their usual suspects . Feynman , Woolf – though it was admittedly looking a little bare since these were her only visitants .
Oh I love Woolf , Laurence added then . To The Lighthouse and how it kind of captures Einstein ’ s new sense of temporality in that era .
I haven ’ t read too much of Einstein ’ s relativistic stuff , Dr Alderson said . Obviously know the theory-in-and-out , but I was more obsessed with Woolf for … Well , what for ? she quizzed herself . Sorry , she said then . Long day . He nodded . That ’ s okay . Same here . Putting you through the ringer , aren ’ t I . No , no , she said with a passing glance to the clock that said only 16:03 . I just – I skipped lunch . Running on empty . Almost like we ’ re in a time-like curve , he said then . Our worldline is a kind of constant loop , I suppose . She yawned , stretched , tried to circulate some blood to the brain . Right , the Necker cube , across space , she said , uninterested in that comment . Your thesis is putting up a fight then ? A fight and then some , he replied . I ’ m struggling to think about how we can see the necker cube and perceive it as a four-dimensional phenomenon . Alderson leaned back . Grabbed a piece of paper , folded it , then began to tear away until she had an L shape and its inversion . See how there ’ s no way I can make these two shapes align ? Laurence nodded . That ’ s because we need to add another dimension in order to flip the image . To invert it ? Yeah , like a mirror . Enantiomers , finished Dr Alderson .
I am the Ocean ; To them I ’ m a Lake 86