I Sing the Body Electric

Polly was quite drunk. She held the small blue pyramid by the hand and walked him up and down. She did not see the helicopter land, nor did she pay much attention as Horn came running up.

One of the neighbors turned. “Oh, Mr. Horn, it’s the cutest thing. Where’d you find it?”

One of the others cried, “Hey, you’re quite the traveler, Horn. Pick it up in South America?”

Polly held the pyramid up. “Say Father!” she cried, trying to focus on her husband.

“Wheel!” cried the pyramid.

“Polly!” Peter Horn said.

“He’s friendly as a dog or a cat,” said Polly moving the child with her. “Oh, no, he’s not dangerous. He’s friendly as a baby. My husband brought him from Afghanistan.”

The neighbors began to move off.

“Come back!” Polly waved at them. “Don’t you want to see my baby? Isn’t he simply beautiful!”

He slapped her face.

“My baby,” she said, brokenly.

He slapped her again and again until she quit saying it and collapsed. He picked her up and took her into the house. Then he came out and took Py in and then he sat down and phoned the Institute.

“Dr. Wolcott, this is Horn. You’d better have your stuff ready. It’s tonight or not at all.”

There was a hesitation. Finally Wolcott sighed. “All right. Bring your wife and the child. We’ll try to have things in shape.”

They hung up.

Horn sat there studying the pyramid.

“The neighbors thought he was grand,” said his wife, lying on the couch, her eyes shut, her lips trembling…

The Institute hall smelled clean, neat, sterile. Dr. Wolcott walked along it, followed by Peter Horn and his wife Polly, who was holding Py in her arms. They turned in at a doorway and stood in a large room. In the center of the room were two tables with large black hoods suspended over them.

Behind the tables were a number of machines with dials and levers on them. There was the faintest perceptible hum in the room. Pete Horn looked at Polly for a moment.

Wolcott gave her a glass of liquid. “Drink this.” She drank it. “Now. Sit down.” They both sat. The doctor put his hands together and looked at them for a moment.

“I want to tell you what I’ve been doing in the last few months,” he said. “I’ve tried to bring the baby out of whatever hell dimension, fourth, fifth, or sixth, that it is in. Each time you left the baby for a checkup we worked on the problem. Now, we have a solution, but it has nothing to do with bringing the baby out of the dimension in which it exists.”

Polly sank back. Horn simply watched the doctor carefully for anything he might say. Wolcott leaned forward.

“I can’t bring Py out, but I can put you people in. That’s it.” He spread his hands.

Horn looked at the machine in the corner. “You mean you can send us into Py’s dimension?”

“If you want to go badly enough.”

Polly said nothing. She held Py quietly and looked at him.

Dr. Wolcott explained. “We know what series of malfunctions, mechanical and electrical, forced Py into his present state. We can reproduce those accidents and stresses. But bringing him back is something else. It might take a million trials and failures before we got the combination. The combination that jammed him into another space was an accident, but luckily we saw, observed, and recorded it. There are no records for bringing one back. We have to work in the dark. Therefore, it will be easier to put you in the fourth dimension than to bring Py into ours.”

Polly asked, simply and earnestly, “Will I see my baby as he really is, if I go into his dimension?”

Wolcott nodded.

Polly said, “Then, I want to go.”

“Hold on,” said Peter Horn. “We’ve only been in this office five minutes and already you’re promising away the rest of your life.”

“I’ll be with my real baby. I won’t care.”

“Dr. Wolcott, what will it be like, in that dimension on the other side?”

“There will be no change that you will notice. You will both seem the same size and shape to one another. The pyramid will become a baby, however. You will have added an extra sense, you will be able to interpret what you see differently.”

“But won’t we turn into oblongs or pyramids ourselves? And won’t you, doctor, look like some geometrical form instead of a human?”

“Does a blind man who sees for the first time give up his ability to hear or taste?”

“No.”

“All right, then. Stop thinking in terms of subtraction. Think in terms of addition. You’re gaining something. You lose nothing. You know what a human looks like, which is an advantage Py doesn’t have, looking out from his dimension. When you arrive ‘over there’ you can see Dr. Wolcott as both things, a geometrical abstract or a human, as you choose. It will probably make quite a philosopher out of you. There’s one other thing, however.”

“And that?”

“To everyone else in the world you, your wife and the child will look like abstract forms. The baby a triangle. Your wife an oblong perhaps. Yourself a hexagonal solid. The world will be shocked, not you.”

“We’ll be freaks.”

“You’ll be freaks. But you won’t know it. You’ll have to lead a secluded life.”

“Until you find a way to bring all three of us out together.”

“That’s right. It may be ten years, twenty. I won’t recommend it to you, you may both go quite mad as a result of feeling apart, different. If there’s a grain of paranoia in you, it’ll come out. It’s up to you, naturally.”

Peter Horn looked at his wife, she looked back gravely.

“We’ll go,” said Peter Horn.

“Into Py’s dimension?” said Wolcott.

“Into Py’s dimension.”

They stood up from their chairs. “We’ll lose no other sense, you’re certain, doctor? Will you be able to understand us when we talk to you? Py’s talk is incomprehensible.”

“Py talks that way because that’s what he thinks we sound like when our talk comes through the dimensions to him. He imitates the sound. When you are over there and talk to me, you’ll be talking perfect English, because you know how. Dimensions have to do with senses and time and knowledge.”