The Wandering Blind Man
And so the story of Agapios begins... a blind man living in 256 A.D. Chalcis, Greece discovers sight through traveling. Experiencing foreign environments and meeting unique creatures, he identifies the presence of new codes, and discovers a universal language. His travels end at the top of a mountain above An Imperfect City, which pushes him to accept contradiction and embrace the beauty of incompleteness.
Characters
Agapios: Protagonist. Blind man who studies geometry.
Czer: Cyclopes. Ability to disappear into bulk.
The poet: Irrational. Lives in a dream world. Does not believe in the power of knowledge, only experience. Lives without memory, only passion. Every morning is a new morning—a new dream. Lover of the moment.
The painter: Time-deaf. Unable to speak in words. Not concerned with sequence as much as image. Every image is a self-portrait. Lover of reality.
The musician: Looses himself through music. Seeks flow in all actions. Lover of rhythm.
The craftsman: Takes one small step at a time. One good thing becomes another good thing. Lover of making.
The architect: The artist connecting space and time. Lover of structure.
The philosopher: Indifferent to experience. Lover of wisdom.
Man in suit: Rational. Concerned with mass production. Lover of reason.
256 A.D. Chalcis, Greece.
Agapios is a blind man who spends most days wandering. He enjoys studying numbers and geometry. He uses his walking stick to draw lines in the sand connecting stones he has counted. Since he is not concerned with the way things look, he always thinks about the way Nature works. Agapios finds great pleasure in discovering logics and patterns.
One day, he was digging into the earth to study the relationship between the temperature of the sand and the distance to the surface. As Agapios was reaching into the hole he noticed his hand was being pulled until he falls and his whole body spirals down into the earth.
Agapios did not know it at the time, but he was traveling on a gravitational wave—a ripple in space-time. He was transported to a different dimension. Images flashed before his eyes, almost past the speed of experience. He could not make sense of what he was seeing but there seemed to be fragments of logic.
1. Perception
Agapios enters a new environment standing on top of a stony plateau overlooking immense white space. He could see all sides of things. Agapios noticed he was alone with no other creatures around him. Strangest of all, Agapios cannot reconcile if what he is looking at is a building the size of a stick, two steps away, or whether he is looking at a building the size of a mountain in the distance. Either the sizes of objects depend on location or his sense of depth expands and contracts as he moves.
Agapios walks up four steps and realizes the building isn’t so strange. Although he does not know the materials used to construct it, there is rationale in the sequence of construction and fitting of each member. The connections are articulated and aligned. No piece wasted or mandatory—everything is essential.
The walls bend in and out, forming a rhythmic surface extruded and extended across five-foot spaces spanning the facade. On the inside, there is a space that is shaded with tent-like fabric.
Agapios sees a single point in the distance. This point is a compactified dimension—a tiny rolled up dimension that loops back on itself. As Agapios studies closer, he realized this tiny rolled up dimension was everywhere! Countless tiny dimensions—surely one of them would lead him someplace else…
Agapios was not always blind—he lost vision suddenly one morning. Since then, Agapios accepted that mysteries are to remain unsolved and is comfortable with the unknown. He lives on believing in the embedded knowledge of mass—a presence of measurement and materiality—which transcends the divine. He does not have faith, but is consumed by constantly interpreting what surroundings him. Agapios does not learn from his new environment, but becomes a part of it. Although he is unsure of what is beautiful, his constant interest is sufficient to keep him moving.
2. Inspiration
After walking for days on the tiny flat circular dimensions, the density of the circles begins to vary in elevation, slowly building in height. He envisions lines between the shortest segments that will allow him to get to the highest point. He studies their arrangements and is amazed that there is no overlap. Between the circles below, there is nothing but endless space. He is on a thin floating plane.
Agapios encounters his first inhabitant, resembling a Cyclopes. It introduces itself as Czer.
“Welcome,” it says.
“Hello,” Agapios responds, without questioning how Czer could speak his language. “I am amazed by the accuracies of these circles. Can you explain how this plane of circles was first created?”
“Well, my friend, if you knew all of the answers, it wouldn’t be as exciting. I will tell you, though, that this floor is the basis for the entirety of this construction. All forms emerge out of this idea.”
Agapios then pointed to the oval shape tent ahead and said, “This quonset hut does not look like a circle.”
Czer responded without hesitation, “A circle can be an oval, it just depends on one’s perception. Also, and most importantly, the circle inspired it. I do not know where you traveled from, but here all forms are inspired by their unique situation.”
Agapios was half listening as he admired the rippling effects created by the flowing surfaces.
Gazing out toward the plane of packed circles, Agapios noticed he was standing near the edge of a cliff. The fluid that streamed below was the most saturated blue he had ever seen. The coast was built up of thousands of packed spheres, only touching at their tangents. Agapoios appreciated the relatedness amongst the elements in this ecosystem. Czer explained that the boundary adapts to each added circle; like sand on a beach, its shape is transformed overtime in response to the circle that was last added. The change is never-ending.
In this reality, Agapios discerned there are no schedules when the circles are added. He imagines if all events were triggered by other events, schedules would not exist. There are no appointments, no calendars, and no planning. Time is not something measured but a quality defined by the way one follows another.
Czer left Agapios saying, “the time it takes to build is never predictable because its existence is unpredictable. All will transform as soon as I leave.” Czer walked straight off of the cliff, but did not fall. He continued to walk as if in mid air. Like a mirage in the desert, Czer began to evaporate into the flowing waves. The environment, again, was also morphing around him.
Agapios’ body adjusts to the local conditions of space and time because each environment is its own local phenomenon. The closer two environments are, the more similar they seem. Time flows at different rates relative to eachother. Accordingly, scale becomes relative in space and time. This, however, does not account for adjustments to language. He wonders how he was able to communicate with Czer and if he will be able to understand the new creatures to come...
3. Generation
Czer is gone and Agapios is immersed in a growing context. Agapios seems to be in the middle of a village. What appears at first to be underwater, Agapios notices that all of the forms are reaching upwards. They are soft and organic, like biological systems on Earth—interconnected networks, diversity, redundancy, all that seems to self-adapt. Cells, leaves, and branches grow endlessly from the ecological pressures of the site. Moments of growth and decay lead Agapios to believe every piece is alive. Focusing on one detail, he imagines the effects of time. He imagines that in a year, that ornament the size of his fingernail will become the size of a mushroom, then a doorway, until finally, that fingernail-sized ornament will become a full-sized village, enclosed within itself.
As he walks through the village, Agapois continues to observe every member is grown from its immediate context. There is universal aesthetic that lacks any rules, yet there is a sense of emotional coherence. Apertures, arches, and towers mean nothing here. The representation of forms moves between different families of communication and fuses the language of architecture. The inhabitants of this colony appear to have some kind of value that bind them, although Agapios is not sure what they are.
Agapios finds a dweller painting the side of his home. “My name is Agapios. I have just met someone who told me that all structure must adapt to their situation in time. Is that true for this world?”
“Why, of course!,” said that painter. “Look at this image I’ve helped create! It is not my hand creating the figure, but the impulse of the environment flowing through me that directs my hand. My work and I are the product of this environment. It mutates and transforms me, as I shape it with my artistic hand.”
“But where does the material come from?,” Agapios asks.
“Anything that is real is a shadow of the singular divine. All things are generated, through generations! Design is not planned, design is unnatural!”
A craftsman approaches, “Stop with all your nonsense, you painter. Do not preach to our guest about religious values, revealing our secrets.” The craftsman turns to Agapios and introduces himself.
“My painterly friend can only explain so much. His picture is really worth a thousand words. This village was created organically, but it has nothing to do with its image. The real secret of the recipe of how this place was created is simple—it was all built one small step at a time. The secret ingredient, of course, is care.”
Agapios is intrigued by the builder but still questions the source of the matter. He spots a large monastery with a vaulted ceiling ahead. He enters to find a tiling system much more complex than the packed circles before, still without overlap, but now without gaps. All of the tiles are self-similar, meaning their same pattern occurs at smaller and larger scales. Agapios is alone in the monastery and studies the self-similar nature of the forms. In the middle of the courtyard is the form he notices on the tops of all of the buildings. Inhabitants were gathered around praying to it. The church officials told Agapios the forms’ purpose was to take their souls to a new dimension.
Agapios reconsiders what it means for something to be organic. Surely, words themselves cannot be organic because although their meanings change over time, their form does not. This is partly why Agapios finds such pleasure in numbers. Numbers exist in the realm of ideas, in which their meaning never changes; yet their physical form has the capacity to be represented in infinite ways. Would the same be true for ones’ soul?
4. Bulk
Agapios’ soul drifted out into endless dark space. In the distance, Agapios saw something coming toward him. He identifies yellow and blacks strips as a caution. As it got closer, the slower he could breathe. The wind was dying and the temperature was dropping. What appeared in the distance to be a tiny speckle was an entire universe. It consumed Agapios and he was now inside. After a brief moment of calmness, Agapios realized time was standing still.
Agapios does not know if inhabitants can live in this environment, yet through some dark energy, it feels alive and Agapios is bound to it. The forms interlock with one another, leaving no distinction of what is inside or out. Bulk exists in all directions.
There was no difference between the air and the frozen statues in front of him. Every time Agapios thinks he sees a moment of space, he realizes it is nothing but a black mass. Colored forms pack the entire area. Agapios always thought of space as something occupied with ideas and concepts anyway, so it wasn’t that strange.
“Hello, I am the architect. Do you like what I have created?” Agapios could hear a voice but did not know where it was coming from.
“Where are you? I would like to talk to you face to face,” responds Agapios.
“You cannot see me. I am in a higher dimension. You are on a brane with a single dimension and my bulk is warped into your space.”
“So architects do not design buildings where you are from?,” asks Agapios.
“No, we create models—models of space and time. Architecture is a symbolic discipline mediating what one can imagine, and what one can create in reality. People typically think of architects designing for a singular object. Instead, think of that object as the summit of a mountain. As model builders, we are less concerned with the final object. Instead, we are the trailblazers that find ways to connect to the ground below. We are not ones to give instructions, but create new recipes. Here is a model I created to experience a world without gravity. Press the red button on the gray surface and you will see.” At the moment, Agapios saw the red button right in front of him and forcefully pressed it.
The ground dropped from beneath him. Agapios was no longer stuck in the mass but falling in space indefinitely. After the bulk was out of sight, there were no reference points so he could not tell if he was moving fast, slow, up, or down. For all he knew he could be stationary. Eventually Agapios managed to see a small universe spinning in the distance.
5. Ecology
Finally! A clear radial plan—gyroscopic in dimension. As the world spins, Agapios enters a rotating realm. The orientation of forms always points towards a three dimensional center. It was as if the world he once saw was a flat plane, and a sphere had entered it. There was no sense of ground—more freedom for movement. Naturally, Agapios is used to experiencing the world from an upright position so it took some adjusting.
In this ecology, the buildings are moving characters that coexist and cooperate. They do not exist as entities separate from their environment, but coevolve with it. Connected to its infrastructure, the architecture revolves around a central axis, bending and conforming to its rotation. After Agapios’ initial observations, he comes to the conclusion that he and everything around him is freefalling while spinning! The question of time is less clear, but it sees as if it is looping back on itself.
Agapios feels as if he has been here before. Thinking back to his first transported environment... The tiny compactified, rolled-up dimension, on a mega scale! This is it!
Agapios is tempted to configure relationships between the geometries in front of him, but all of his calculations are astronomical! He continues to reflect to the first new realm he had entered and learned that physical laws are determined by their environment. His method could not rationalize the shapes in this realm.
Still, Agapios appreciated the strong sense of variety. Immediately he notices four unique species, working together to fulfill some sort of task, creating a single, open heterogeneous machine. There is no hierarchy, but a heterarchy amongst the individual components.
As a traveler, Agapios realizes he was not the center of his universe, but there are other centers, and those centers have centers, and so on. The true center is a void. With no center or edge, no being is more important than the other.
6. Debris
The gravity brane that Agapios was on began to warp—its three dimensional center was stretching into an ellipsoid. The strength of gravity seems dependent on location. Agapios realizes it would be even more impossible here to measure the geometry, because at different points, he would get different results!
The direction of objects allows Agapios to determine the flow of order. As the time passes, his sense of order increases. All of the small features help Agapios orient himself to his new environment. He first recognizes the red button he used to travel here. His existence is almost nothing in the vastness of this universe. Then, he sees environment’s first local inhabitant writing a poem*.
“We are free!”
“Free from gravity?” Agapios askes.
“No sir, gravity exists in all dimensions. What I am free of is my own thinking.”
“Doesn’t everybody have that freedom?”
“No. Freedom is not something inherited—it can only be discovered.”
“But there are so many ideas out in the world. How can we discover amongst all of the debris?”
“We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world. We must divide the world into parts and build our own structure of what the world is…that is freethinking.”
“But this landscape is so vast and complex, how one bring order out of this chaos?”
“This chaos is a part of all of us. You must not forget that and enjoy the moment. See the figure in the landscape that interests you. Not seeing any figure is not to see the landscape at all. It is especially important to beware the figures in the landscape because this multiverse is prone to invaders known as the black spirits. They are known to take energy and resources from this environment and bring it back to their world.”
Agapios looks up to the sky and sees the invaders. He becomes abducted…
Agapios had always believed himself to be destined for something greater than his time. Although he realizes the world is much larger than he imagined, his self-conviction grows like a tree upward while his roots grow down into the past. As a child, Agapios did not listen to stories because he wanted to learn, but to become a part of them. He did not think that they would actually become true…
7. A Musical City
The black spirits fly Agapios through the clear skies. The main tower opens before them as they enter the city. Agapios sees the same red button, which raises a gate.
The black spirits explain that in this dimension, everything must keep moving and nothing sits still. It is a musical and microscopic environment composed of vibrating strings. All forms retain rhythm to create expectation. Once that expectation is broken, music is created. Agapios is lost in the sound.
One of the musicians in the city stresses to Agapios the important of flow.
“Flow is when one gets lost in something—everything becomes automatic. In any activity, the process of getting to the final goal is always more important than the final goal itself. So you see, you must act in the moment!”
The black spirits return to show Agapios what life would be like without music or variation. The world becomes silent…
8. A Modern City
This is strangest place he has encountered thus far. Agapios arrives inside a blinding white box, devoid of any ornament. He has no idea the purpose of the space he is in. As a student, Agapios could not imagine a worse environment for learning; it lacks any visual information or cognitive nourishment. He looks outside and sees all the exact same rectangles. Three-dimensional grids perfectly and mechanically repeated. The entire world is a black and white grid; nothing but ones and zeros.
Agapios feels every person is trying to conform to be exactly the same one. Agapios stops someone in the street.
“Excuse me, sir, do you consider yourself an individual?” Agapios asks.
The man in a black suite smoking a cigar responds, “the individual is losing significance, his destiny is no longer what interests us.”
Agapios walks along the a new street where every building is exactly the same, except instead of a blank grid, the single repeating form is one of the most beautiful he had ever seen. Agapios contemplates its monotonous repetition and he finds less and less pleasure in it as he moves along, seeing the same thing, day after day…
He learned beautifulness and ugliness were not opposite value, but opposite stimulation. Being a part of a different reality, everything was stimulating, thus he believed everything to be beautiful.
9. An Imperfect city
The black spirits condemned Agapios to a two dimensional world, otherwise known as Flatland, or Two D Land.
Agapios drifted through the flat city and noticed all the lines were crooked and shapes were irregular. This is the most human condition he has experienced. An entire city built off of mistakes. Some forms were left unfinished. Agapios had never seen such perfection from something so incomplete.
Since the world was only along two axes, height could not be experienced, expect for one mountain. Agapios patiently climbed a steep hill to get there only to realize there was a much larger one ahead. The mountain grew. Agapios has never used his walking sticks more purposefully. He remembered his conversation with the architect. He does not expect to find any sense of fulfillment at the top of the mountain. As Agapios travels uphill, the crooked lines become straight. In reality, the lines remained crooked, but Agapios was surrendering. At every summit he reaches, there is a new summit to reach towards, but he is accepting and the effort is what he enjoys.