Editorial note: the original draft was written in 2012 and first published on the old site in 2018. Only the year of composition survives in the source material, so the creation date is archived as January 1 of that year; this version only tidies the paragraphs and punctuation.
This is a bug resting on a network. It has rested there for a long time.
In the bug’s memory, the world is flat. It does not truly understand the concept of “flat”; that was instilled in it by knowledge from a higher dimension. The knowledge has already shattered its worldview: if it had two eyes, one would see heaven and the other would see hell. A bug living in a two-dimensional network that gains knowledge of a three-dimensional network faces not evolution but collapse.
That knowledge came from an accidental data overflow, decayed further in transmission, and struck this bug. It now possesses knowledge of the three-dimensional network, yet cannot tell the difference between understanding and genuine perception; so it stays motionless, becoming a node in the two-dimensional network.
It is like a monitor, copying the code that flows past its eyes and storing it in its body. At night, another bug comes to take away the data it has recorded. That bug has no three-dimensional knowledge; it is just an ordinary member of the world. Only this one seems to have had a cognition that does not belong to it stuffed inside — awkward, yet it does not know how to operate it.
The bug has wondered: how does two dimensions enter three? To it, living in two dimensions, that sliver of height is infinite. It cannot understand three dimensions as many overlapping two-dimensional networks; instead it imagines that every two-dimensional node can unfold, giving the whole network new spatial coverage.
It also sees that the network it lives on is unstable. Layers of connected, non-intersecting nodes resemble a fragile tree; when one key node breaks, many nodes fall away. A more complete connection might be more stable, but that comes at the cost of distance and efficiency.
The bug cannot think that far, yet cannot stop thinking. It can only watch the packets flow by and the other bugs busying themselves. It knows it is like a black dot on paper, briefly granted the ability to look down from a higher dimension; and this ability has brought no way out.
The network is crawling with bugs. They do not know the direction they walk, nor their own height. It is deeply sad: it does not even know what it itself is.
The bugs crawl along a three-dimensional wall, and their world is flat.