FICTION: Lucy’s Pizzeria by Jake Johnson

Lucy’s looked like an ordinary restaurant on the outside, which didn’t help with first impressions. Sarah didn’t realize what was inside, and so she groaned as she saw my choice for lunch.

“Do we have to?” she asked. Sarah was the type of girl who craved the weird when she ate. Together, we’d dined in an infinitely recursive coffee shop (with terrible service, I might add), a steakhouse at the Planck level, and a quantum café which probably doesn’t any more. I understood that Lucy’s did seem a bit mundane from the outside, but I assured her it was one of the strangest places I’d eaten at.

We arrived at the door, and I opened it for her. She stared inside curiously as she entered, and I followed.

“What am I seeing?” Sarah asked.

“You’re seeing the second dimension,” I responded.

“But… it’s just lines,” she said with the same tone she used when fighting a headache.

“Your eyes adjust after a while. Come on, let’s order,” I told her, and we ordered our food. Once I’d helped Sarah navigate to her seat, the waitress brought us some lines shaped vaguely like pizza.

“So, why can I only see lines?” Sarah asked as she bit into the line-pizza, “I thought the second dimension was the flat one.”

“It is,” I assured her, “But you’re looking at it from inside of it.”

“What?” she asked. I paused for a moment.

“It’s like this:” I said, “When you look at something in the third dimension, your eyes are taking little two-dimensional pictures and send them to your brain. You’re really looking at the third dimension through the second dimension. When you’re in the second dimension, you’re looking at it through the first dimension.”

“What’s the first dimension?” she asked as she picked up another slice.

“Lines.”

“Ah,” she said, “What about the fourth dimension?”

“Don’t even get me started there-”

“Ow!” she cried out.

“What?” I asked, suddenly checking to make sure I wasn’t kicking her.

“I just bit into my hand!” she laughed. I laughed with her. Lunch was good.