Post by Radrook Admin on Feb 18, 2024 7:36:32 GMT -5
Bi Directional Infinite Regression?
So I decided to try to reconstruct it from memory. Of course, my version differs from the original in many ways via deletions of parts I cannot recall clearly, and additions of my own parts, such as an elaboration of the scientist's motives and personality along with an elaboration of the final scene.
But I did try my best, and hopefully succeeded or perhaps exceeded in conveying some of the mesmerizing qualities of the original. Only a direct comparison will tell, but I haven't the original.
Of course, and of necessity, it reflects the scientific inaccuracies of the time it was written. Otherwise it could not be written as it was written. But despite those inaccuracies, I still find the original story exceedingly fascinating.
Universes within Universes?
Qualguil, the tall, white-haired, blue-skinned, humanoid astrophysicist, had always been fascinated by how large tiny things appeared under microscopic magnification. He marveled at how their intricate details escaped the attention of the unaided eye. Marveled on how a minute patch of moss seemed like a huge jungle, and how tiny creatures resembled enormous monsters. A vast world so part of his own, and yet unnoticed unless brought into focus.
He also often wondered whether indeed the seemingly-boundless universe, with all its billions of countless stars and planets, was merely a tiny component of a larger universe, and if that larger one was itself merely a tiny component of yet another larger one, ad infinitum. He also wondered whether his own universe was composed of other smaller ones that appeared as atoms and electrons, similar to small star systems.
Eventually, he brought his idea before his elders but had been counseled to drop the matter.
"Certain things are best left unknown because they were meant to remain unknown," he was constantly and sternly advised, but he paid them no mind. Instead, he considered these supposedly venerable wise-ones, obstacles to the attainment of crucial understandings.
The institution of superior learning that he had attended added to his difficulties by refusing to subsidize his experiments.
"Are you insane? That is impossible!" one institution representative shouted after listening to his idea.
Yet, despite the lack of support, Qualguil's intense curiosity impelled him to dedicate his entire life to finding out the truth concerning the nature of the universe, and finally, at the late stage of his life, when all had seemed totally hopeless, he finally found a way to investigate the matter. He invented a miniaturization machine which emitted a beam of energy that initiated an ongoing shrinkage of both animate and inanimate matter.
He'd observed how inanimate matter would quickly disappear from microscope detection, but he didn't know whether it had disintegrated or had continued on its journey intact.
He'd discovered that living things perished long before reaching that enigmatically mysterious vanishing-point. They had suffocated when the air molecules became too large for their circulatory systems. Despite this obstacle, Qualguil decided to personally explore whatever was concealed beyond that vanishing point by going beyond it himself.
Portable air-tanks that would assure a breathable air supply and a pressurized suit would prevent dying from decompression as air pressure would be finally lost in the empty spaces between molecules, and then between atoms, the equivalent to what he imagined was outer space in his own universe.
After having assured his safety, he was finally ready. On that day, he was standing confidently atop a mushroom-shaped elevated platform, directly below his miniaturization machine's nozzle before embarking on his journey, and wondering nervously what exactly he would find.
For just a very brief instant, a compelling urge to abort the mission prevailed. As if some premonition, a fleeting sense of imminent doom, when suddenly, there was the familiar and expected loud rattling hum, followed immediately by the miniaturization machine's narrow, iridescent beam enveloping his body before he could react, and was being gently swathed in its a fulgurating dark aura.
Paralyzed and experiencing vertigo, he struggled to liberate himself, but to no avail. Then, in the next instant, as if unravwelling ion tapestry before him, the laboratory walls and ceiling rapidly recede , and the small platform upon which he had been standing, began spreading in all directions beneath him. Soon, edges which had been just a feet away, receded to distant horizons and what had moments before been mere surface irregularities and scratches, became deep ditches, which gradually deepened into valleys and then steep walled deep canyons. These also began to flattening out as the shrinking continued.
Briefly, he beheld a microscopic creature now dwarfing him and lumbered ponderously across his path an caught sight of his own reflection in its purple compound eye. It also continued to expand and soon, its smooth, jet-black, exoskeleton blotted out everything and the bristles on its head resembled Sequoya tree-trunks.
This also quickly blurred away as he shrank farther until he was adrift in a vast sea of the creature's exo-skeletal molecules. These molecules also expanded inexorably until each one dwarfed him and began disassembling into their constituent atoms which were now emerging like millions of stars in what seemed like a deep infinite darkness.
""So it was true! Another smaller universe!" he silently exclaimed to himself.
He continued to shrink in the direction of one of the stars. Finally, to his distant right, an electron, resembling a planet, was swerving and decelerating in its orbit around the star-like atomic nucleus. Gradually it appeared to slow down, and was finally directly beneath his feet, he felt himself slowly being drawn to its surface. A growing sense of dread almost impelled him to abort the mission, but his urgent need to know goaded him on.
He was beholding mountain ranges, rivers and volcanoes. And once he had shrunken down to its gray-grassed surface, the other atoms above him were glittering like stars in a dark sky exactly how they appeared in his larger home universe. Now, in the far distance, he beheld a vast, red-tinted ocean, and beyond that, a purple sky brimming with white roiling clouds slowly being driven in his direction by a gentle breeze.
What he had always suspected had been true. He celebrated his accomplishment. There was no longer any question about it, his lifelong curiosity had been satisfied. So he needed continue no further. Carefully, he flipped the switch in his suit to halt and reverse the process so he could return to his world. Yet, to his horror, the process continued. Several more times he did so, but to no avail.
Helplessly he watched as the surface of the planet he'd been standing on also began becoming molecular, and microscopic organisms he was totally unfamiliar with briefly coalesced, and then vanished just as the animal in his world had one.. Once more he was adrift amidst molecules as had happened before, they also disassembled themselves into their constituent atoms, and he once again rapidly descended into yet another universe full of nucleus-like suns and electron-like planets.
Finally, as had happened moments before, he was once more descending towards the surface of yet another tiny electron world, a world populated by scarlet-colored, twelve-tentacled, mollusk-like, semi-aquatic denizens, who gazed up fearfully at his form in their sky, and who had finally recognized him for what he really was, a creature from a larger universe.
They had considered him a blasphemy as soon as they had detected him and had classified him to be an intolerable conceptual abomination unfit to exist, a being only worthy of being punished for his unrestricted hubris. So although they had been capable of stopping his shrinkage, they decided that he deserved his fate, and watched dispassionately as he continued his infernal descent forever as punishment, while ignoring his desperate requests for help.
Quickly, these creatures soon also became gargantuan, and quickly faded from view as the inexorable diminution in size continued unabated. This time, a strong swirling and gradually expanding breeze in their electron planet's atmosphere gradually carried him aloft as the swirling and as before, the expanding breeze became an expanding universe with star-like atoms orbited by planet-like electrons. Yet again he found himself shrinking toward a surface of another planet-like electron of this smaller universe.
This time he was descending on its night-side. Below him thousands of city lights announced that it was inhabited by intelligent creatures. As he continued his descent two winged metal flying machines sped by with a thunderous roar tilting their backward-swept wings repeatedly as if in a greeting. Below, his feet, the outline of streets and avenues of a great metropolis gradually took form.
The tallest of its buildings were rectangular and made of metal and glass. The smaller ones of brick and stone. Endless streams of four-wheeled machines with forward lights were all converging on the verdant area onto which he was descending. It was an illuminated area with crowds of four-limbed humanoid creatures gazing up at him wide eyed, and frantically shouting and gesturing with their hands as if greeting him.
He soon found that he had been right. The area had indeed been meticulously-prepared for his reception. Yes, the reasoning creatures on this realm had obviously detected his sudden and inexplicable appearance, and his gradual approach via their telescope. So the exact date of his arrival had been calculated and prepared for. Reservations had been made for his accommodations in the great metropolis. The planet's political dignitaries were ready to officially greet him. Of course, they had assumed that once he was there, his shrinking would stop. But it was not to be.
When he finally reached their size it was but for a few minutes and he was soon gone just as quickly as he had arrived. Naturally, they had desperately wanted to interact with him before he would disappear. Had fervently yearned to know the answers to their many pressing questions. Had wanted answers that would leave them at peace once he was finally gone. The religious among them wanted to know if he was the Creator descending from a heavenly realm as had been promised in the prophesies of their holy book. Atheist and agnostics wanted to know whether their hypothesis of a larger realm, from which he had descended, was accurate.
But to no avail. He had been unable to understand their language, and the miniaturization process had accelerated, and this world too would begin to disassemble into its constituent molecular, atomic and sub-atomic parts as he receded from their view too quickly for a response.
All he had barely heard them utter as he was rapidly distanced from them, was their initial greeting sound of: "Welcome to Earth!"
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A few Films among many others that were made after that story was published were:
The Shrinking Man
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids 1989 The US comedy film, set in suburbia, features kids who accidentally shrink themselves with an inventor's experimental shrink ray to be a quarter-inch tall and must survive the indoors and the outdoors on a different scale.
Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves 1997 A sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), the US comedy film features the inventor accidentally shrinking himself and three others. They have to get the attention of the kids who think they are home alone.
Fantastic Voyage:
The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957 The US science-fiction horror film features a man who is exposed to a radioactive cloud while on a boating trip. Over time, he begins shrinking and tries to find a cure, but at the same time, he becomes a phenomenon throughout the country.
The Incredible Shrinking Woman 1981 The US science-fiction comedy film features a housewife who accidentally ingests experimental household-product chemicals and begins shrinking. She becomes a media sensation and also the target of a company that wants to use her shrinking nature for evil.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_featuring_miniature_people
List of Shrinking people stories
www.wattpad.com/stories/shrinking