Factoring Humanity

“Shut up!” Heather shocked herself with how sharp her voice was. Becky’s eyes went wide.

“Just shut up,” said Heather again. “You’re making a fool of yourself. Shut up before you say anything else you’ll regret.”

“I don’t have to take this,” said Becky. She began to rise.

“Sit down,” snapped Heather. The few other patrons were now looking at them. Heather locked eyes with the one nearest them, staring him down. He went back to his soup.

“I can prove that your father didn’t molest you,” said Heather. “I can prove it absolutely, beyond any shadow of a doubt, to whatever degree of certainty you require.”

Becky’s mouth hung open. She was staring at her mother, an expression of shock on her face.

The server picked that moment to arrive. “Hello, ladies. Can I get — ”

“Not now,” snapped Heather. The server looked stung, but he quickly disappeared.

Becky blinked. “I’ve never heard you like this.”

“It’s because I’m fed the fuck up.” Becky looked more shocked; something else she’d never heard before was her mother saying “fuck.” “No family should have to go through what ours has.” Heather paused, took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry. But this has to end — it has to. I can’t take any more of it, and neither can your father. You have to come back to my office with me.”

“What are you going to do? Hypnotize me into not believing what I know to be true?”

“Nothing like that.” She signaled the server, and as he somewhat timidly approached, Heather said to her daughter, “Don’t order too much to drink — you’re not going to have an opportunity to easily pee for a few hours after lunch.”

“What in God’s name is that?”

Becky’s expression was one of pure surprise as she entered her mother’s office. Heather couldn’t help grinning at her.

“That, my dear, is what the Centaurs were trying to tell us how to make. See the little tiles making up the bigger panels? Each one of the tiles is a pictorial representation of one of the alien messages.”

Becky loomed in to look at the construct. “So they are,” she said. She straightened up and stared at Heather. “Mom, I know all this has been very hard on you…”

Heather couldn’t help laughing. “You think the pressure’s gotten too much for me? That I couldn’t figure out how to read the messages, so I spent my time just shuffling them around and building things out of them?”

“Well,” said Becky, and she gestured at the construct, as if its very existence made everything plain.

“It’s nothing like that, honey. This really is what the Centaurs intended us to do with their messages. The shape — that’s an unfolded hypercube.”

“A what?”

“The four-dimensional counterpart of a cube. The arms fold up and the ends touch, and the thing becomes a regular geometrical solid in four dimensions.”

“And that accomplishes precisely what?” asked Becky, sounding very dubious.

“It transports you to a four-dimensional realm. It lets you see the four-dimensional reality that surrounds us.”

Becky was silent.

“Look,” said Heather, “all you have to do is get inside it.”

“In there?”

Heather frowned. “I know I should have made it bigger.”

“So you’re saying — you’re saying this is some sort of time machine, and — what? — it’ll let me travel back to see what Daddy did?”

“Time isn’t the fourth dimension,” said Heather. “The fourth dimension is a spatial direction, precisely perpendicular to the other three.”

“Ah,” said Becky.

“And although we all appear to be individuals when viewed in three dimensions, we’re actually all part of a greater whole when viewed in four.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how I know — know to a moral certainty — that your father didn’t molest you. And how you can know, too.”

Becky was silent.

“Look, everything I’m saying is true,” said Heather. “I’ll be announcing it publicly soon… probably, anyway. But I wanted you to know first, before anyone else. I want you to go look inside another human mind.”

“Inside Daddy’s, you mean?”

“No. No, that wouldn’t be right. I want you to go see your therapist. I’ll tell you how to find her mind; I don’t think you should enter your father’s mind, not without his permission. But that damned therapist — we don’t owe that bitch a thing.”

“You don’t even know her, Mom.”

“Oh, yes I do — I went to see her.”

“What? How? Look, you don’t even know her name.”

“Lydia Gurdjieff. Her office is on Lawrence West.”

Becky was visibly stunned.

“You know what she tried to do to me?” asked Heather. “She tried to get me to explore the abuse I had at the hands of my own father.”

“But… but your father… your father…”

“Died before I was born. Exactly. Even though it was categorically impossible for me to have been abused by my father, she said I showed all the classic signs. She talks a good game, believe me. She had me half-believing that someone had abused me, too. Not my father, of course, but some other relative.”

“I — I don’t believe this. You’re making it up.” Becky gestured at the construct. “You’re making it all up.”