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6. WeBegintheCreativeProcess We left the jewel of knowledge with an enthusiastic desire to create a complex and interesting universe. There were no rules but that it had to be interesting and complex. Even the number of dimensions to be used was unspecified and therein lay the first and ultimate conflict. It takes time and effort to devise and build an elaborate mockup. And the more dimensions you use, the more time and work is involved. Three dimensions are more complex than two, and four dimensions are even worse, and an entire system of creation had to be built up from scratch. Imitating the 17 dimensions used in the jewel would have been ridiculous for new beings and would have lacked originality besides. And each of the beings was godlike and had been advised to make his own decisions and go his own way as well as being told to keep others in line (a sure recipe for conflict) and so each chose an arbitrary number of dimensions and began working. Soon there were some people working on one dimensional systems and some on two or three or four all the way up to about a dozen dimensions with occasional dabbling in even greater numbers of dimensions. And the distribution of beings was fairly even with a bit more working on the lower numbers of dimensions since it was easier and a gradual petering out up towards the higher numbers. And as each being invested more and more time and effort into mockups using a certain number of dimensions, he developed an attachment for that number of dimensions and a vested interest in it. But fewer dimensions are simpler and the beings who were trying to devise a one dimensional system began to show results early while those who were working on a larger scale were still in the rudimentary stages of invention. Those one dimensional systems of creation are still with us. One of them is music. The one dimensional "object" (e.g. a sound or musical note) can only go up and down. It moves forward in time, but time is not a dimension in the sense that were are discussing here (we are concerned with dimensions of space). The "object" can have a width and shape in the form of a chord (as opposed to a single note) and there are all sorts of interesting aesthetics in the inter-relationship of many notes moving up an down in a complex work, but it is still motion in only one dimension. The notes can also have a quality as in the sound of a piano Vs that of a violin but this also does not change the number of dimensions just as adding color to a three dimensional world doesn't add an extra dimension. The fruits of the two dimensional effort encompassed the basic versions of many of our board games such as chess. As these low dimensioned systems began yielding results, some of the beings working on large numbers of dimensions began to feel that they had too long a runway and switched over to one of the lower groups. But the tendency was to join the 3, 4, or 5 dimensional efforts where there was substantial room for new contributions rather than to join the 1 or 2 dimensional efforts which were already being sewn up so to speak. And it came about that the 3 dimensional group had more members than any of the others with slightly less in the 4 dimensional group. But there were still quite a few working above 4 dimensions. And because 3 dimensions was simpler than 4 and it had more people working on it, it was fast approaching completion at least in its basic architecture. The 3s could see that the remaining people working very high dimensions would eventually drop down and work with the 4s (or possibly the 5s). They wouldn't join the 3s because the 3s were nearly done and also because these were diehards who had already stuck with very complex forms and would probably prefer to at least have 4 or 5 dimensions to work in rather than 3. So their estimate was that although the 3s were currently the largest group, they would eventually be outnumbered by the 4s as more and more beings abandoned the higher dimensional efforts. In a sane society, this would have been fine. There is room for many systems of creation. But they all knew (thanks to the jewel of knowledge) that everyone would have to be beaten into line and settle into one system. And they had a vested interest in continuing with their own mockups in the system that they had devised rather than abandoning it for a 4 dimensional system created by others. Furthermore, they knew that a 4 dimensional system can manipulate and overwhelm a three dimensional system just as someone operating in a 3 dimensional system can crumple up a 2 dimensional painting or sweep a 2 dimensional chess game onto the floor. All the 3 dimensional group had was a temporary numerical advantage combined with a system that was nearly complete in comparison with the 4 dimensional system. They knew that they would be overwhelmed eventually. So they decided to strike first and so began the reality wars.
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