The Tesseract
Mrs. Which replies that Meg is correct. Her father is behind the darkness so they cannot see him. Mrs. Whatsit tells Meg not to despair. There is hope, even though the task is difficult. They must go behind the shadow, and to do that they must tesser again. She explains what tessering is. It is like taking a short cut between two points. Mrs. Who demonstrates by taking hold of a part of her skirt in her left hand and another part in her right hand, and then bringing her hands together. Meg doesn't understand, but Mrs. Whatsit explains that they travel in the fifth dimension of space. She tries to explain to Meg the concepts of one-dimensional, two-dimensional and three-dimensional. The fourth dimension is time. The fifth dimension is a tesseract. Add that to the four dimensions and travel through space is possible without having to go the long way round.
English: Albert Einstein Français : portrait d'Al...
English: Albert Einstein, official 1921 Nobel Priz...
English: Albert Einstein Français : Portrait d'Al...One by one, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which disappear as they tesser. Then there is darkness and utter silence. Meg's body seems to dissolve. She feels great pressure and her lungs are squeezed together. Her mind is flattened out and she cannot think. Then she hears a voice saying they have stopped by mistake at a two-dimensional planet and must move on. Then the nothingness returns, after which she is pushed out of the fifth dimension with a jerk, and she sees Calvin and Charles Wallace again. Mrs. Which apologizes for her mistake, and Mrs. Whatsit tells them they are now in Orion's belt. When Meg worries that their mother must be frantic over their absence, Mrs. Whatsit reassures her: they did a time wrinkle as well as a space wrinkle, so when Meg returns, it will be about five minutes before she...