Moving through the fifth dimension apparently felt like swimming up to the surface of a pool, warmed by the sun on its upper layers. The new plane we had arrived on had a lot more verticality than the ones I’ve previously experienced before. As far as I could tell, we were inside an impossibly large steel ship. We couldn’t even find the walls separating us from the outside, so the only evidence to our theory was the gentle rocking motion and subtle hint of salt in the air. Despite the dark and damp environment however, there was also a noticeable increase in shadows shifting in the edges of my vision, and strange echoes reverberating across the steel caverns and corridors. It wouldn’t have been a problem for me years ago, but after getting used to the complete stillness of this world, every unexpected hiss of steam, flickering bulb, or guttural groan in the uncertain distance felt simultaneously like a threat lurking around the corner and a complete assault on my senses.

I couldn’t remember much of the first weeks of adjusting, other than a very large uptick in rest days, and I could only imagine how annoyed Amanda must have felt, despite her denials. I did my best to get used to it as quickly as I could, and while I couldn’t stop feeling like that lifeless orb in the sky was staring at me through every light source, or startling at things that weren’t there, I at least managed to force myself to at least be minimally functional by the end of the first month.

I felt vastly more hopeful about our current strategy than when I had been wandering by my lonesome, at least. With the help of the HNS device, and the other measurement tools, we were able to roughly calculate the hyperarea in a fixed distance around us, and try to use that to extrapolate where any “weak spots” may appear. We had only been successful once so far, and the unstable space quickly shrank into nothingness, but it was enough to give us hope that we were on the right track and provide evidence to our theory that this whole realm was in a constant state of flux.

Nothing had changed much other than that, routine wise. Small rooms with bunk beds and kitchens filled with barrels or freezers of preserved food could be found intermittently. It was only when Amanda questioned me about it that I realized every area in this dimension contained food and necessities in some way or another. it should have been obvious, but I was too focused on mathematics to notice. God, I hadn’t felt this much like a useless burden in years. Trying to guess the motives of an anomaly was most often an exercise in futility, but I couldn’t help but wonder if this place specifically wanted us to go insane.

I needed something to distract me. Something to decompress this irritable tension in my body. The only issue being, with the lack of any video games or pirated manga I lacked my usual means of doing so. Amanda’s favorite chosen pastime was to dabble in the visual arts. She was quite skilled at it, sometimes sketching out entire murals on the walls and ceiling of the bunk rooms we took shelter in (she always took the top bunk). Most of her drawings were of anime and game characters, half of which I didn’t recognize, all in dynamic poses and surrounded by thematic frames somewhat like what I remembered of the borders of those old European books with large words and art for the uneducated. No matter how well she’d draw on them though, she remained unsatisfied, because she couldn’t remember exactly what the original looked like without references. Sometimes I even had to drag her away so we could get started on our exploring for the day when she got obsessed with making it “just right”.

I wasn’t surprised when she told me she used to be a horrible perfectionist, stressing her out so much that she had dropped the hobby altogether. Now though, there was no pressure, because no one would ever see the drawings anyways. The only sketches in her notebook were doodles and realistic drawing exercises.

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It was during one of those moments of artblock, complaining loudly about her brain while my nose was stuck in my notebook, that I’d found my inspiration. Or rather, my inspiration found me.

“What are you writing there?”

My eyes flicked up to see her dangling upside down from the top bunk, hair hanging down like a heavy red curtain. I hmm’d and handed her my notes in lieu of explaining, if only so she wouldn’t crane her neck down further and hurt herself. She snatched it up like some sort of goblin and her head disappeared to the bed above.

Closing my eyes, I could hear “ooh’s” and “ah’s”, but the moment of rest didn’t last as she quickly spoke up. “Are you worldbuilding?” I opened my mouth, but paused.

“Am I doing what?” I opened my eyes, staring up at the bed above me as if I could see through the mattress and read the woman’s mind if I squint hard enough.

“Worldbuilding, making fictional worlds and magic and culture and all that jazz.”

My lips frowned. “They are only baseless hypotheses, you don’t have to insult them.”

“Oh, it’s real stuff! I didn’t mean it that way. Man though, I’m a little disappointed, you can come up with some real crazy ideas. Seeing a world your mad scientist brain could cook up would be fun.”

I tilted my head. “I don’t understand. What is the purpose of creating fake worlds?”

That question triggered a full hour long rant that made me only slightly regretful that I’d ever asked. The primary purpose of “worldbuilding” was originally a part of the process of creative writing, particularly for fantasy and science fiction, although “alternate history nerds” were apparently a large part of it too. But eventually, the activity became something of a trend in and of itself, combining multiple fields of knowledge such as anthropology, biology, geography, physics, politics, and even linguistics all to create a fictional world of your choosing. Most people choose to hyperfocus on the aspects of the world they care about the most, such as evolution of organisms given Magic’s existence, or the strange civilizations that would develop.

All of it couldn’t help but remind me of an old book I had almost entirely forgotten, despite its impact on me in my childhood. It was the strange, absurd tale of Flatworld I’d found after it was mentioned in one of my favorite shows and I looked it up on the internet. It followed a man in a two dimensional world as he became the “messiah” of the third dimension, only to come to the realization that a fourth dimension must also exist, and many more beyond that, and get dismissed. I remembered being so fascinated by the inner workings of such a civilization; their machines, their politics, and even the way they sensed their surroundings.

I had always been disappointed that they had never actually explored the fourth dimension. I could understand, since it was a very old book, and despite how ahead of their time the author might have been, trying to create a functioning reality and civilization in 4D space when it could barely be comprehended. Even with all the advancements that were made in today's age it would probably be incredibly difficult for anyone other than experts in the field.

“Experts like me” I muttered.

“What was that?” Amanda asked.

“Nothing. Thank you for the inspiration, this will make eternity just a little more bearable.” After all, even if I complete this task, I could just move on to the fifth dimension, and even further beyond that.

Her smile was bright enough that I had to look away.