“Speaking of the Four-Dimensional World.” An Luo changed the topic.
He felt that Meieruita had no interest in the trivial details of his own life, so after mentioning a few things, it was better to talk about subjects that truly piqued Meieruita’s curiosity.
“I’m a three-dimensional being, so I can’t fully fathom what the Four-Dimensional World looks like,” An Luo said. “But I once played a game that gave me some inspiration.”
“Do you know about stage plays?” An Luo asked.
Meieruita nodded. “Although I’ve never seen one, I’ve heard of them.”
“A group of people don costumes representing their identities and perform a story on stage, right?”
An Luo nodded. “Pretty much.”
“The game is a lot like that. Except we can control the protagonist, making him act in specific ways. For example, say I’m playing a game where a hero defeats an evil dragon to save the princess. I can manipulate the prince to walk forward or backward, jump, attack, and so on, guiding him all the way to the end to rescue the princess.”
Meieruita got it. “Like manipulating a puppet?”
An Luo nodded.
After explaining the concept of games, he continued. “That game is called Fez. It’s the story of a two-dimensional being who breaks through his own dimension to observe the three-dimensional world.”
“He’s still a two-dimensional being, but he has this magical hat that lets him shift perspectives. Through those shifts, he gets a partial sense of the three-dimensional world.”
An Luo raised his own right hand as an example. “Suppose he could originally only see the palm of my hand. But after shifting perspective, he could see the back of my hand, or the sides.”
“He remains a two-dimensional being—he can still only see one surface at a time—but once he shifts perspective, the world in front of him changes. That’s how he perceives the three-dimensional world.”
“Hmm.”
As if to better understand, Meieruita grasped An Luo’s right wrist. His slightly cool palm tightened gently, his slender fingers coiling around An Luo’s slim wrist like snakes or vines.
He turned it lightly, observing from both sides.
Meieruita’s actions caught An Luo a bit off guard, but since he knew Meieruita was just trying to visualize it, he let him continue.
“I know that strictly speaking, a two-dimensional being should only see lines of varying lengths. But hey, it’s a game—if it were that realistic, no one could play it.”
An Luo went on. “So I actually based your perspective-shifting ability on that game’s mechanics.”
“Though it’s supposed to be an evolution toward the fourth dimension, I couldn’t figure out how to write that, so I settled for giving you the ability to shift perspectives.”
He tugged lightly, and Meieruita let go of his hand.
Not by fully releasing his grip, but by loosening it just enough to loosely encircle An Luo’s wrist, allowing him to pull free.
An Luo found it a little odd, but he quickly chalked it up to Meieruita being deep in thought, too absorbed to mind his surroundings.
No big deal.
“I couldn’t write a scene where you actually evolve into a four-dimensional being because I just couldn’t picture it.”
An Luo walked over to the desk and divided the books on it into two piles, arranging them into a shape. “Look.”
As the saying goes, a mountain looks different from every angle—near, far, high, low, all vary.
Meieruita’s faint, bitter ink scent wafted toward him. “Different angles present completely different images.”
“Exactly.” An Luo picked up a small ornament from the desk to represent the game’s protagonist. “See, if he’s standing here, from this angle, getting to the other side means crossing a huge distance. If his jump is only as far as a finger’s length, there’s no way he makes it.”
“But if we shift the angle.” An Luo circled the table, assuming Meieruita would move with him. But he didn’t, so An Luo bumped right into him.
“Sorry.” An Luo stepped back. “Still thinking?”
“Yeah.” Meieruita shifted aside as if only just realizing. “If we switch to this angle.”
He took the small ornament from An Luo’s hand—their fingers brushed, then parted. “From a purely two-dimensional view, ignoring three-dimensional spatial relations, the protagonist can simply jump across to the other side.”
“Uh, yeah, exactly like that.”
Meieruita placed the ornament back into An Luo’s loosely open right palm, pressing it gently. An Luo closed his fingers around it instinctively, and Meieruita withdrew his hand, his fingers slipping from the lightly clenched palm.
…It really felt kind of weird.
But it wasn’t anything major, so An Luo brushed it off and continued. “After your soul entered the Four-Dimensional World, it absorbed some four-dimensional essence, which granted you the perspective-shifting ability. That, in turn, inspired your research into spatial witchcraft.”
He didn’t notice Meieruita’s gaze flicker across his face.
The two sat back down at the table, and Meieruita asked, “What’s my ending?”
“Traveler.” An Luo explained the Traveler ending. “I originally planned to make you a god, but I figured you wouldn’t like that.”
“So I went with the Traveler ending instead. Should be pretty good, right?”
“Indeed.” Meieruita gazed at An Luo’s face. The right half, toward the fire, was flushed from the heat, while the left stayed pale.
Like half-done makeup.
An Luo said, “I figured that someday, you’d upgrade to a true four-dimensional lifeform on your own power—not just have the perspective-shifting trick.”
“No.” Meieruita shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
He spoke calmly. “As long as I’m stuck with this body, I can never become a four-dimensional lifeform.”
“Huh?” Even An Luo, the author, was stunned. “Why not?”
“The key prerequisite for ascending to four dimensions is accurately envisioning what the four-dimensional world actually looks like.”
Meieruita explained. “Right now, I’m a three-dimensional being. My vision catches one surface at a time, but since I exist in a three-dimensional world as a three-dimensional being, I can picture three-dimensional objects in my mind.”
“But I can’t picture the four-dimensional world.” He continued. “It’s like that game protagonist you mentioned. He’s two-dimensional, and even with perspective-shifting, he can’t comprehend the three-dimensional world.”
“To him, the shifts are utterly magical and baffling—the scene before him transforms, high becomes low, far becomes near. He still only grasps surfaces, constrained by his low-dimensional nature.”
“I’m the same. With perspective-shifting, I observe miraculous changes: things popping in and out of existence, teleporting vast distances, rising from ground to ten thousand meters effortlessly. But that’s all I can do—observe. I can’t grasp the four-dimensional reality, bound by this three-dimensional body.”
“There’s a way around it.” An Luo thought fast. “Extract your soul, ditch the body, and infuse it into a Four-Dimensional Creature’s body. That breaks the limit, right?”
“What do you think a Four-Dimensional Creature looks like?” Meieruita shot back.
An Luo’s mind flooded with Cthulhu mythos elder gods. He mumbled vaguely, “Uh… lots of tentacles, tons of eyes, octopus-faced, or maybe just a blob of bubbles?”
He glanced up at Meieruita.
Meieruita’s looks were flawless. Though An Luo rarely described his appearance in detail, he’d tossed in vague terms like “handsome” or “strikingly beautiful.”
The idea of supermodel-tier Meieruita ascending into some eldritch horror… ugh…
He could only hope it’d be the hottest eldritch horror around…
“A bit of a shame,” An Luo said. “But no great achievement without sacrifices, right?”
Meieruita let out a soft, ambiguous “hmph” and drawled, “Creator, have you forgotten something?”
“What?”
Why the sudden sarcasm?
Meieruita replied, “The body and soul influence each other.”
“No matter how mighty my soul, it originated in a three-dimensional body. Extract it and shove it into a superior Four-Dimensional Creature’s body, and it’ll get assimilated—my core thoroughly corrupted.”
“If that creature’s some animal-like thing without higher intelligence, my own mind will dissolve away.”
Meieruita continued leisurely. “I’d prefer you pick a better, more dignified death for me.”
An Luo panicked. “Hey… that’s not what I meant!”
“Really?” Meieruita sounded skeptical. “Then tell me—who’s my prototype?”
“You don’t have one,” An Luo explained.
He quickly caught on. Was Meieruita suspicious again?
Earlier, An Luo had admitted to venting real-life grudges by writing antagonists into the story. Was Meieruita trying to figure out if he was based on someone An Luo hated—to gauge any hidden malice?
“You really don’t have a prototype,” An Luo insisted. “Though, to be fair, some people did influence how I shaped your character.”
Meieruita’s gray-green eyes narrowed. “I’m very curious.”
An Luo said, “Back in school, I sucked at math and stuff, so I really admired the smart kids.”
“Especially our high school’s top science student. You have no idea how brilliant he was—full marks in math, physics, chem, every time. Exams could be brutal, but his scores never budged.”
An Luo recalled it with lingering awe. “He ended up as our province’s top science scholar. Insanely strong.”
An Luo could barely remember the guy’s face anymore—just a vague cool buzzcut and thick, black-framed glasses like beer-bottle bottoms, brimming with intellect.
The firelight danced, casting shifting shadows across Meieruita’s face.
He listened as An Luo went on. “Then in university, I met even more amazing people. Guess I had some gaps to fill, but I just thought anyone acing math, physics, and chem was god-tier. So I wanted a protagonist like that.”
“But you seriously have no direct prototype,” An Luo added. “Forget the rest—just your looks. You’re hotter than anyone I’ve ever seen, stars included. Where am I supposed to find a real-life model for that?”
“You’re purely from my imagination—a character that doesn’t exist in reality.”
Meieruita said calmly, “So I outshine them all. I’m the one you like most, right?”
That weird, nagging feeling surged in An Luo again.
But he shoved it down and answered quickly. “Yeah, yeah, exactly!”
Meieruita seemed pleased, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “Is that so? Good.”
An Luo: “…?”
This is seriously weird. What’s going on?
