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force field or something.” Suddenly a thought hit me. “You’re an alien, aren’t you? From a UFO. You’ve got a dematerializing ray.” I glanced up, almost expecting to see a saucer hovering there. I saw low clouds, a little pink from the lights of San Jose. No saucer, but yes, I was standing out here talking to an alien. The grass damp and springy underfoot. Everything so very real.
    â€œI am indeed a kind of alien,” said Momo. “Your legends do not entirely miss the mark. We do have ray guns and flying saucers. But my homeland is not one of your space’s planets. I’m from the All, Joe Cube. A world of four dimensions. I climbed down through a tunnel to get to Spaceland—to your world. Spaceland lies in an endless cavern like a strange, subterranean sea. Spaceland very nearly lacks a fourth dimension; it extends less than a nanometer in the
direction of your vinn and vout—which actually point in the direction of our up and down. Spaceland appears to us as something like a rug—but unlike a rug, Spaceland is cunningly filled with motion and life. It seems the Creator put Spaceland in place to separate the All in two. My people, the Kluppers, live up above it, and another folk called the Dronners live down below. They are our enemies, hidden below Spaceland.” Momo paused, as if agitated by the thought of the Dronners. “You’ll turn the tide against them, Joe.”
    She had her hand back inside my stomach again. I had no choice but to stand and listen.
    â€œYou’re bewildered,” said Momo. “Try to understand that I didn’t dematerialize your wall. I lifted you over it—lifted you in your voutwards direction, that is. More precisely, I rotated you, lifted you, and carried you to the park, all the while pressing in upon your sides lest your innards should spill out. And then I rotated you back and laid you down again in Spaceland. Didn’t things look odd to you while we were in progress?”
    â€œLike outlines,” I said grudgingly.
    â€œYou were seeing a cross section of your world,” said Momo. “As would the flat gingerbread man looking at his plane from outside it. You must revolve these matters in your intellect until you understand them. Analogies are most useful. Four is to three as three is to two. A flat man would have a small, line-like retina at the back of his eye. If you lifted him up from his plane and turned him to look down upon his world, he would see only along the line where the extended plane of his body crosses the plane of his world. A cross section.”
    â€œI have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    â€œFor the flat man to see properly in three dimensions, he must grow a three-dimensional eye, an eye with a disk-like retina. For you to see properly in the four-dimensional All, you need a four-dimensional
eye with a ball-like retina. A third eye! You’ll have subtle vision. It’s part of the augmentation, Joe. A third eye and higher skin.”
    She released her hand from my stomach then. I seized the moment and took off running across the field in the direction of my house. I didn’t hear or see Momo following me, and for a moment I thought I was free. But then something hit me—a great gush of liquid coming at me from every side. It filled my mouth and nose and lungs, warm and tasting of bitter salt.
    At the same time I felt a staggering pain in the center of my head, something like an electrical shock, powerful enough to knock me flat on the ground. The electrical energy kept on coursing through the salty liquid all around me, spreading out from my head to the rest of my body.
    I lay there twitching, desperate for air. The liquid in my lungs was drowning me. With a supreme effort, I coughed it out and began to breathe.
    As I gasped down air, the electrical tingling continued. My brain felt like there was something writhing around inside it. An uncoiling