“My lady, I realize that you are able to cite numerous and frequent cases of women learned in the sciences and the arts. But I would then ask you whether you know of any women who, through the strength of emotion and of subtlety of mind and comprehension, have themselves discovered any new arts and sciences which are necessary, good, and profitable, and which had hitherto not been discovered or known. For it is not such a great feat of mastery to study and learn some field of knowledge already discovered by someone else as it is to discover by oneself some new and unknown thing.”
She replied, “Rest assured, dear friend, that many noteworthy and great sciences and arts have been discovered through the understanding and subtlety of women, both in cognitive speculation, demonstrated in writing, and in the arts, manifested in manual works of labor.” – Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies.
The old woman chuckled, closed the thick book she’d been reading, and carefully placed it in it’s proper place on the shelf behind the counter of the shop. Lillian Melendy, a tall, thin woman in her sixties, was on her first day of retirement as a Professor of Classical Studies at nearby Coolavin College. Thirty years of teaching, numerous papers and books published, accolades from her peers, and her career had come to a pleasant and much-anticipated close. Today she began a new phase of her life as the proprietress of a cozy little book shop in the heart of the City.
Her eyes moved slowly around the shop, she smiled and flipped the “We’re Open” sign over on the window. Then busied herself making a cup of coffee, trying not to think about what this first day would bring.
“Let it all be a surprise,” she said to no one in particular.
Cup of freshly brewed coffee in hand, Lillian seated herself in front of the computer behind the counter of the bookshop, and flipped the switch. The monitor lit up with the familiar logo, the drive motors whirred, and the machine booted. She smiled.
Possibly she ought not to have studied so hard in the off-hours of her long career. Non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with old world folklore, mythology, and classical studies, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the sylvan wood, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from technology. And she embraced it.
Her peers at Coolavin College, however, were completely unaware of her extra-curricular activities, having fitted their image of her into nice, tidy boxes labelled “Liberal Arts” and “Classical Studies.” She was content to let them keep those images intact. Years of study and reflection had taught her that the known universe of three dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the whole cosmos of substance and energy. In this case, an overwhelming preponderance of evidence from numerous authentic sources pointed to the tenacious existence of certain forces of great power; the probability of there being an infinity of other universes in other dimensions only served to drive her onward in her studies.
Her fingers moved deftly across the keyboard, hundreds of lines of code soon became thousands, and she immersed herself in a world of digits and ancient symbols and formulae. Things seen by the inward sight, like those flashing visions which come as we drift into the blankness of sleep, are more vivid and meaningful to us in that form than when we have sought to weld them with reality, but Lillian Melendy was bent on merging them together in a seamless interconnectedness of transcendental dimensionality.
*Author’s Note : There really is such a thing as transcendental dimensionality outside of the Dr. Who series. See : On Essence for a very detailed analysis. You might find that explanation difficult, yet interesting.
