Once inhabiting a world experienced through the occupation of three dimensions, humans of planet earth had been subject to living in a new plane of existence for many generations.“Nospace” as it was called, was a very confusing world, a reality divorced from space and compressed into only two dimensions. Histories of Nospace and speculative stories of the third dimension were traditionally passed down through family elders.
As time went on, however, history became mythology, and only one elder continued the ritual of storytelling, invigorating the citizens of Nospace with her words. Her name, Mémé. Mémé spent her youth traveling across Nospace with great ambition, researching and looking for answers to the questions of her world. Her mission was not only to understand these mysteries, but find a way to set the citizens free from the constraints of Nospace.
At some point, age caught up to ambition and Mémé became too weak to explore. Stories became her only way to escape the flatness. Many listened to Mémé’s stories but wrote them off as fiction. Her great granddaughter Terra, however, heard her words as fact. Mémé saw much of herself in Terra, in part because of their striking resemblance, but mostly due to her intense curiosity.
“Things were very different in my time, Terra,” Mémé told her granddaughter, “But it was long before even my existence, that the world began to transition.”
“Everyone was so consumed with screens, they failed to notice the world around them changing. Their faces flattened into these surfaces, until they finally looked up to find...nothing...the space around them had disappeared. It was as if the world had existed between two planes and they suddenly came crashing together, flattening everything. Tourists of the flatness became inhabitants, and the two dimensional quickly lost its charm.”
Listening to Mémé’s stories, Terra was filled with feelings that she could not understand, emotions more powerful than anything she had experienced before. Mémé had ignited a spark in young Terra, one which grew into a burning flame that consumed her. As she grew older, Terra cared for the aging Mémé, listening to her stories with ever-growing interest. Together they visited the city archives, studying drawings and images of a world that no longer existed. Unable to perceive depth, they looked at these artifacts with frustration. The information they needed was right in front of them, but they couldn’t perceive it. Unbeknownst to the archivists, Mémé would secretly trim out small pieces from ancient drawings. These, she said, would help uncover The Behind, a fabled place which Mémé believed could answer all their questions.
“If the world was once three dimensions and flattened into two,” Mémé said, “the surface on which we live would have a back, this is The Behind.”
Terra had difficulty imagining this, as Mémé’s understanding beyond the flatness was far greater than hers. She took her word nonetheless, the passion in Mémé’s voice was all the proof she needed. As they headed back from the archive, Mémé and Terra passed through an area most citizens avoided, “The Blanklands”. These areas caused immense disorientation, the skewing of minds and bodies. Gazing upon The Blanklands, Mémé experienced a sudden jolt of clarity. She pulled out her notebook and made an expressive drawing, labeling it at the top “NOT FLAT”. Once she finished, they were on their way.
That evening Mémé came to Terra’s room, but something was off. She tried to speak, but no words came from her mouth. Terra was confused as Mémé had never struggled to tell a story before. While her grandmother had been steadily weakening, this was indicator of just how little time she had left. The look in Mémé’s eyes was one of urgency, as if she had figured something out but could not describe it. Age had consumed her, and as Terra lay her weak grandmother down to rest, Mémé leaned up to whisper her final, fleeting words.
“Push and you will go through."
Soon after, Mémé passed away. Numb with grief, Terra began the task of archiving her grandmother’s life work. Scrolling through hundreds of pages, one drawing in particular caught her eye. Instantly pulled from her detached state, Terra saw Mémé's archive clippings collaged into a beautiful map. At the top was written “push and you will go through.” Terra still did not understand the message, but looking down at the map, she realized this may be the key to finding The Behind. She vowed in that moment to take Mémé’s mission as her own. She knew traveling to the far reaches of Nospace would, if nothing else, make her feel close to Mémé once again. So, the next morning, she studied the map, packed her bags, and began a great journey.
Within just a few days Terra arrived at the edge of The Blanklands. People avoided these regions because they were so difficult to perceive. When making maps, citizens of Nospace simply kept these areas blank due to a lack of comprehension. Before entering she took a deep breath. Terra’s fear of what lay ahead, while powerful, was no match for her curiosity. Immediately after stepping into The Blanklands, Terra was overwhelmed with confusion. Her mind seemed stretched out, her body skewed across the plane of existence. Terra was disoriented, unable to comprehend her movements. She did as Mémé instructed and followed only her intuition. Comforted by these memories of her last trip here, she remembered her grandmother’s moment of clarity.
“Not flat” Terra said to herself, “Mémé labeled The Blanklands not flat...but why?”
After traversing the landscape for some time, Terra finally emerged from The Blanklands. Able to see clearly again, she stood before a grand city. While Nospace contained many cities isolated by The Blanklands, Terra had a suspicion this was one Mémé had spoken of long ago, a city she visited many times in her youth. As she glided through the streets, people called out to her, “Mémé! Mémé!” Terra’s resemblance to her grandmother was cause for confusion, but she was overjoyed to meet others who knew her grandmother and appreciated her stories.
Continuing across the city, Terra reached the map’s final destination, an old temple she had seen images of in the archives. She had reached the end of the journey as her grandmother intended it, but still had no answers. Thinking back to the disorienting Blanklands, she repeated, “Not flat” over and over again, then something suddenly clicked. She tried to speak again, but was unable to mutter a word. As she stared at the temple front she heard her grandmother’s voice saying “push and you will go through.”
Terra intuitively reached her hands up, placing them on the facade. With steady pressure, she pushed against the fabric of her world, not knowing what to expect. The surface before her gave way, extruding into three dimensions, forming a portal and breaking reality as she knew it. Looking through the residual void, Terra could feel every emotion she had experienced listening to her grandmother’s stories. In that moment she felt Mémé with her, pushing her forward into the unknown.
Terra approached the aperture, and for the first time, she went through.
She was filled with intense joy. Escaping the desensitization of Nospace, Terra danced around objects in the third dimension. She looked back at the world she emerged from to see what the backside of Nospace, The Behind, looked like. To her surprise, she found the flat world laid out before her, resembling the map Mémé had made. The plane on which she had lived her entire life was an infinitely thin surface, 3D space had always existed around it, but those living on the plane were incapable of seeing it. The Blanklands were now revealed to her as the places where the surface warped in three dimensions, people’s bodies being stretched and warped along with it. “Not flat!” she shouted.
While Terra wanted to spend the rest of her life in the ecstasy of space, she knew it was her grandmother’s wish to liberate Nospace citizens from their two dimensional existence. Triumphantly, she returned to the flatness, spreading the word of the third dimension and opening portals throughout the plane, thus starting the migration from Nospace.
The doorways were always there, people had just forgotten how to open them.
