Sixth Dimension Bees

In response to a news article I posted here, my friend Jim Price wrote a humorous piece and sent it to me. I liked it and asked if I could post it here. So, here it is. 

Sixth Dimension Bees

By Jim Price


The day that mathematician Barbara Shipman discovered that the dance of the bees mirrored the geometry of a six dimensional flag manifold, beings in the sixth dimension got very excited.  They had, after all, engineered the whole thing. 

“These bees are dancing the sixth dimension jig!” is a plausible something that Shipman might have said. 

No one has any idea what the sixth dimensional beings said, not even the sixth dimensional beings themselves, as their excitement was so diffuse that individual words were lost in a sea of meaning.  There was a cross sixth dimensional celebration in which their version of champagne, referred to as the Atmospheric Bubbly, was shared in recognition of their achievement.  Only God knew how hard they had worked on this one, focusing the combined intention of an entire race of beings in order to send a message to humankind (bypassing two dimensions in the process, which was thought to be theoretically impossible).

The sixth dimensional beings refer to themselves collectively as “The Unified People,” since they experience both individuality and a shared collective consciousness simultaneously.  God calls them SID, and they’ve no reason to protest.  “Call us whatever you want,” SID once said to God.  “Just so long as you don’t call us late.”  (As in, the late sixth dimension). SID occasionally likes to remind God that the sixth dimension is essential to universal stability, and would not like to be removed on a whim.  Of course, God would never do that, but occasionally SID can be such upstarts that it doesn’t hurt to remind them that ephemeral is a condition that exists in much of the rest of the universe.

SID can communicate directly with God, although God doesn’t always feel obligated to answer. SID and God share another thing in common.  Time does not exist for either.  But God is much more flexible with time than SID.  In the sixth dimension, there’s still a more or less forward motion.  Something like time still persists: effort.  And they had put an equivalent of hundreds of years of effort into the transmission of their message.  First, there were technical difficulties to overcome.  Any message that they would send would need to eventually be compatible at the level of the third dimension.  They knew, to use a third dimension analogy, you could not send radio signals into a primitive hand carved three-hole bone flute.  The communication mediums of the sixth dimension, no matter how scaled back, would always be incompatible with even the most advanced three-dimensional medium.  There were those who insisted on trying, which is rather like using the entire resources of a galaxy to produce a single second of unlimited energy.  Theoretically it seemed possible.  But in the end they had to admit it.  Direct communication with three-dimensional beings in a shared language that produced mutual understanding was not possible. 

So SID opted for practicality.  They decided to send an encoded message.  Even this was monstrously difficult.  The first hurdle involved encoding sixth dimensional subatomic particles that have only a theoretical three-dimensional existence.  They had to be certain that their encoded message would arrive intact.  SID was so proud of their solution that they declared it proprietary under the Universal Patent Act, in which God keeps the process secret, but allows other beings to discover it on their own.

So, a method for sending an encoded message was reliably developed.  The problem was, sending such a message involved such a drain of the sixth dimension equivalent of energy, that only one message could be sent.  Of course they could send all the “psychic” messages they chose, but distortions were typically enormous. 

For example, the following message was sent telepathically from the sixth dimension: “Modify E = MC2 with the metaphoric coefficient of sunlight and, no kidding, you can actually send moonbeams from your eyeballs.”   An overly confident third dimension psychic translated this message as: “Your mother says she misses you, and especially misses your walks in the moonlight.  And I think I see a car being driven at night on an otherwise empty road.  Does that carry any meaning for you?”

Once it was determined that SID could send a reliable message, an encoded but completely objective communication, the next step was to determine what to say.  They realized it would be useless to send technology.  It would be like describing the silicon computer chip to an ant.  Well, maybe not an ant.  More like a pretty smart dog who can infer all kinds of meanings from human body language, but will never send an independent e-mail, let alone construct their own personal computer given instructions and a blueprint.  So they decided to send greetings in all six sixth dimensional languages (which is actually one language in a way humans could not begin to understand).  Then they decided to include one of their favorite speeches.  “Six score, and 600,000 effort units ago, our thought-energy fore-parents conceived a parallel dimension, which confused most of us to the point of chaos.  But we have fought back the fields of chaos, bringing our dimension back into harmony…” Then they included a bunch of songs, which apparently no one realized would be inaudible to the human ear.  Elephants would hear it, and it could cause them to needlessly stampede.  Or not.  At any rate, there was great debate over what songs to include, even though it would turn out to be moot.

Any reasonable being from either the third or sixth dimension could reasonably ask why it was so important for SID to send their onetime encoded message.  The answer is not clear, not even to God.  The sixth dimensional equivalent of philosophers argued that communication with the third dimensional beings would elevate the entire dimension (cleverly omitting which dimension would be elevated, the third or the sixth).  Critics were quick to point out that they weren’t sending anything elevating.  But it was decided that sending greetings was a nice thing to do.  Another compelling reason to communicate with the third dimension was “because it is there”, an argument that holds sway in every conceivable dimension.

So, on the momentous day, after SID performed their equivalent of a 10-second countdown, the message was launched, and celebration ensued when the message was confirmed to have been sent and received successfully.

Then the waiting began, for even though the message was simple, it was, after all, sent from the sixth dimension.  They felt that contact should create quite a stir amongst all the third dimensional beings.  On brief reflection they realized that “all” was a projection on their part, since the third dimension was not simultaneously collective.  The smart ones would pick it up, and transmit it to the others.  But nothing happened.  Not really.  The Matrix of the third dimension intercepted the transmission and did its level best to transmit the encoded message.  But all that the Matrix could do was to randomly imprint the message as a representative manifestation within its physical potential.

That’s where the bees come in.  The bees suddenly began to dance using a six dimensional flag manifold.  A six dimensional flag manifold is a representation in movement of mathematical equations representative of the sixth dimension.  Most people, and all their dogs, would not understand the equations even if they were explained in storybook fashion.  In that sense alone, the mathematics held true resonance with SID. 

One might reasonably ask: why bees?  Why not the mating dance of the blue footed booby. Because the message was imprinted randomly into the matrix, bees were randomly imprinted with the message.  It was a random event, not the kind of thing God or his angels would have gotten involved with. The message could just as easily have been imprinted into the mating dance of the blue footed booby, or in the fractal patterns of the Mandelbrot set.  But bees won the sixth dimension lottery, so to speak.  Therefore, bees everywhere and at all times past and present adopted the sixth dimension dance.  Whatever dance the bees might have previously been performing has been lost to quantum possibility.

The bees didn’t give a hive’s end as to the encoded message.  Because the business of bees is finding pollen, the dance automatically had a separate meaning for the bees, that being, where to find pollen.  In other words, whatever dance the bees might have otherwise been doing was substituted by the six dimensional flag manifold jig.  But the meaning to the bees remained unchanged.  It’s important not to underestimate the importance of pollen to a beehive.

It’s not entirely clear what SID expected would happen.  Maybe they thought three dimension clouds would open up, and something resembling a trumpet would blare out the encoded message, which thousands of humans would record with their cell phones, turning over the results to top scientists for decoding.  They certainly never intended to communicate with bees.  They understood that people are theoretically smarter. 

In an effort to rectify the problem, SID recognized the single opportunity to troubleshoot the problem: mathematics.  Not that SID uses mathematics.  They don’t.  In fact, they barely understand mathematics.  It’s analogous to modern humans not knowing how to light a fire using flint or by rubbing two sticks together.  But SID could resonate with Universal Mathematics, allowing the U.M. to select the proper equation.  Then they merged with the laws of attraction to target their message. 

That’s how SID was able to grab the attention of mathematician Barbara Shipman.  With the dimensional window closing fast, she became the recipient of attraction because she was the common denominator.   Of all the third dimensional beings, she was the only person who knew both the dimensional mathematics and had an interest in the dance of the bees. So, SID theorized, even if the bees were oblivious to the message, humans would recognize what had happened, and would decode the message through their study of the bee dance. 

And it worked.  Again, there was much celebration, because frankly the sixth dimension can be a boring place and they celebrate just about anything.

But the experiment ultimately failed.  The human mathematician concluded that the bees were in contact with the sixth dimension, and not the other way around as was intended. SID was flabbergasted. The following conversation reverberated throughout the sixth dimension.  SID likes to talk to itself.

“Humans must be dumber than our dogs.  How could they possibly miss our manipulation of their matrix through the dance of their bees?”

“We could have made it easier, we could have transmitted the value of pi instead of sending greetings.”

“Where were you in the planning stages?’

“A voice in the wilderness.”

“And anyway, our research indicates they would have ascribed the pi signal to aliens.”

“We are aliens.”

“Not third dimension galactic aliens.”

“All that effort down a black hole.”

Psychologists from either dimension might conclude that SID was just a little angry.  Think of it from their perspective.  They put all that effort into their communication, and all that was perceived were some dancing bees.  No, “I send greetings!” in six interconnected languages.  No vibrational renditions of their famous composer Slzzz, which only elephants within range would have heard in any case.

At this point, SID was sensing a sixth dimensional chaos developing, and decided to bring God into the conversation to help restore harmony.

“You be the judge.  Was our effort misguided or are humans just plain stupid?”

God was tempted to remind SID that a cycle of ephemeral existence might solve their attitude, but decided to be more compassionate.

“Blaming the humans is rather like blaming a dog for the crash of a computer hard drive directly after the dog failed to execute the command “fetch.” ”

Blame was something SID had more or less forgotten existed.  But since God had mentioned it, it did seem like a perfectly legitimate way to cast off their resentment.  But if God wasn’t blaming the humans that meant there was no one to blame but themselves, which was unsettling.  So they decided to argue.

“Were we really asking that much of the humans?  We knew humans weren’t interested in pollen.  The next step should have been to decode the message.”

God listened patiently.

“Okay, decoding the message would have been a stretch.  And sure, it would have taxed their resources. Sure, it would have taken time. Maybe the humans would have needed to send subatomic bee particles through one of their atom smashers.  No one said this would be easy.  But we-all worked the equivalent of hundreds of years to send the message. The least they could do was to give us the courtesy of decoding it.”

God declined to comment, as God often does, secretly wondering why SID weren’t getting on with the task of becoming seventh dimensional beings, as God had supposed they would.

It was times like these that God reflected on the absolute joy of impregnating the universe, and the tremendous difficulty in predicting the outcomes of that ongoing birth.

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