I had the most disturbing dreams the other night.
I visited 4 different planets-
Each varying in its configuration and species,
And each next one left the other wanting something...
First I went to this strangest of places
It was like spending all one's life trapped on an infinitely straight enclosed Wall of China
No corners, no roofs and surprisingly no pits!
If you had to move past someone, you'd walk right through them!
The strange citizens of this tube planet could only discern by count and extension
At the bar every night, I'd seek directions from this bad stream
And it would always be the same - like in every bad dream-
Take three feet backwards, two feet in your face, one foot front or back
And never dare make one turn!
Then I got splattered on a flat place- such a complex grid planet
For no matter how real it seemed, everything just seemed real
Everyone born in halves - the part boy the other girl!
And even when they did get married - the part men the other wives!
Some folks did seem real, walking about with phantom partners
But no matter where they walked, everyone knew their turns back home!
The last cross on that face, I was gasping for breath
When I left that draughts and naughts place to navigate some other space...
The third dream was damn real!
With three sides for each scheme and even time for coffee cream!
There were curved embraces from strange flat faces
There were fast spinning dancers and flying cube cancer
I recall meeting that conjurer at the Zero Scale Hotel
Who could multiply one's cake by changing its shape!
It was one delightful but strange curved place,
With different people aging in varying directions!
And before I'd seen my curious Button case, I awoke onto the final space...
There was no one in sight, everything racing fast as light!
It was one immense endless form-
Streets in infinite directions, some emerging where others had just vanished!
It felt like a sojourn of a one Hawking or some other Hilbert shape-shifter!
Then I felt all my limbs vanish as a blanketing uncertainty engulfed all my senses!
In a flash of one moment, I thought I had a glimpse of the one god
And then it became clear - this was the ultimate One Space!
It was a rewarding nightmare, that hypercomplex quantum race!
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This poem is inspired by chapter 3 of Dr. Noel Curran's The philosophy of mathematics and natural laws: another Copernican revolution. I wrote this poem partly to celebrate Noel Curran (1915-2010), whose less celebrated work probably "opens the way to the final unification of physics" - maybe his legacy shall be noticed sometime in the future.
