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Vijay Fafat
- Published on
Prof. Newell “had a reputation for his profound researches into the realm of theoretical physics; a great mathematician in the thin heights where few could follow him. His lectures on the fourth dimension, in which he specialized, had always been fascinating”. His young daughter was killed by a speeding automobile a couple of years ago, an incident which left him a broken man. But he recovers from the trauma, determined to implement some social engineering by taking on a secret identity of “Utopian Reformer”. As he explains to the stereotypical story-prop, the newspaper-man,
“after years of intense research into unknown fields of mathematical physics, to discover a plane of existence which the science of the higher mathematics has long pointed to, although never materialized, and which, for want of a better name, has been called the fourth dimension. I have evolved a practical means of entering this hitherto closed fourth-dimensional plane or sphere of existence through a powerful process of manipulating and bending the space-time relationship, or Einsteinean Interval.”
With this ability to utilize the higher dimension to achieve invisibility, he starts issuing public-service dictats to regulate social behavior, beginning with enforcement of road speed limits and meteing out punishments for violations by causing destruction of vehicles through the fourth dimension. This is followed by a few other adventures, including beating up the town mayor, forcing a few government officials to resign, and so on. Till he suffers some equipment failure and gets discovered.
The story ends with standard passages explaining higher dimensions, analogy with flatlanders, etc.