“What do you mean your time, and now mine? And why do you need my help?”  Edwin had a way about him of pausing, letting you think to ponder, a slow logical manner that inherently you wanted to trust.  That teachers manner that one develops after years of trying to push knowledge into the vacuous black of holes of young men and woman.

“Edwin I know you, but I don’t know from where.  If this is all a delusion, then you’re one of my memories coming back to haunt me, if it’s real then what or who are you, and why do I know you?”

There was a sigh from the corner; Euclid flickered, his aura dimming at the question.  His outline emerging as my focus went to the noise he had made.  “Tell him Edwin, if we are to make him believe us, who we are and why we need his help is the place to start.”

“Yes Alex, you know me, or rather know of me.  In my day I was considered something of a gifted writer and teacher, even if I do say so myself, but many others have said so then and now, so I don’t think is egotistical or narcissistic to state the truth of my small gifts.”

He said it with something of a smile and a blush, or at least that’s what it seemed.  “My full name is Edwin Abbot, I wrote a number of things, but you probably know of me through the book called ‘Flatland’.”

What he said was unexpected, but I wasn’t surprised either.  One more mark on the wall to validate by delusions.  I had read ‘Flatland’ as a Grad student in Mathematics, I had just started teaching it to my students the day before.  What made it unusual was the setting, a two dimensional world called ‘Flatland’ visited by a being from ‘Spaceland’, another name for our three-dimensional world.  What made me laugh now and prove that I was in a delusional state unconscious in some hospital somewhere, was the simple fact that Edwin Abbott wrote ‘Flatland’ in 1884, Edwin Abbott died in 1926 at the age of eight-seven.  The man in front of me could not have been more than fifty or sixty years old.