Why waste more words? Suffice it that I am the completion
of your incomplete self. You are a Line, but I am a Line of Lines,
called in my country a Square: and even I, infinitely superior
though I am to you, am of little account among the great nobles
of Flatland, whence I have come to visit you, in the hope of
enlightening your ignorance."
Hearing these words the King advanced towards me with a menacing cry
as if to pierce me through the diagonal; and in that same moment
there arose from myriads of his subjects a multitudinous war-cry,
increasing in vehemence till at last methought it rivalled
the roar of an army of a hundred thousand Isosceles, and the artillery
of a thousand Pentagons. Spell-bound and motionless,
I could neither speak nor move to avert the impending destruction;
and still the noise grew louder, and the King came closer,
when I awoke to find the breakfast-bell recalling me to
the realities of Flatland.
Section 15. Concerning a Stranger from Spaceland
From dreams I proceed to facts.
It was the last day of the 1999th year of our era.
The pattering of the rain had long ago announced nightfall;
and I was sitting in the company of my wife, musing on the events
of the past and the prospects of the coming year, the coming century,
the coming Millennium.
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