Into the Fourth Dimension by Ray Cummings

We stepped back from the wall. Brutar led us onward through the twilight. We passed globes translucent with light from within; heard the hum and hiss of work going on -- but Brutar would not let us enter. We passed a dark bowl of enormous size, like a great globe cut in half. We encircled its rim. I stared down into darkness; grey shapes of inert things were ranged there -- things which had been manufactured of the thought-substance, I surmised. But Brutar would not say.

We skirted the misty lake. It seemed a blanket of fog lying there. Within me, at the sight, a vague pang stirred. A desire -- unpleasant in its suggestion of a needed gratification; and with it a premonition of coming pleasure.

I was puzzled. There was no instinct to guide me; or if there was, my puzzled reason subverted it. I described my feeling to Eo.

"It seems physical," I said. "I had forgotten my body -- but there seems a pang there."

"Thirst," he said readily. The word he used, gave me the thought of thirst. And this was water, or its equivalent.

I knelt beside the white layers of mist. Did I inhale it, or drink it? I have no means of knowing; but I know that the pang left me, and that the experience was vaguely pleasant.

We moved on. Came at last to the great field. Behind us the opposite side of the encampment -- the enclosure wherein I had seen the creation of thought-material -- was now almost over our heads. The ground of the field was soft and flaky -- it seemed as though it might have been a black soil lying in flakes. Things were rooted within it -- growing things set in long orderly rows that stretched up the concave surface into the dimness of distance. They appeared to be plants; in height about to my knee. A central stalk; branches bent outward like gesturing arms. A bud, or flower, at the top. It seemed to carry features -- a face. My imagination? Something that had been said or suggested to me? Possibly. But the things bent aside as we advanced upon them. They seemed eyeing us; suddenly I was conscious of a myriad eyes from everywhere fixed upon me.

I said to Brutar, "This black ground -- is that thought-material?"

"Yes," he said. "Made from the same substance you saw created. But many mental processes were necessary to bring it to this final state."

"And then you planted these -- things in it? " I asked. "They look as though they had an intelligence. I don't understand that. Are they growing here -- or what?"

Brutar hesitated. I think that the man's learning was not very great. Eo said:

"I believe I can explain it, Rob. All things in our world are divided into two classes. One -- the inert, material bodies. These we create from nothingness to their final perfected state. The other class -- living organisms -- is very different. The addition of a Creator-Thought is necessary. These plants -- to be specific -- are called lolos. The lolos plant. To create it we must have a spore -- an infinitesimal something already existing. With this spore, others like it may be created by our own mentalities. And nurtured by our mentalities through a period of growth. But that latter process can be simplified by the production of this soil in which the plants are then nourished. It is basically an identical process."

"It is much like our own world," I said. "Except that these plants seem to have a conscious mind."

"Why not? " Brutar demanded. "Every living thing has a mind."

Eo added, "Since the essence of everything is mentality -- naturally the spark of life must bring that mentality to consciousness."

"These things then," I said, "they know that they are alive?"

"Of course. And Rob, what you told Brutar of your Earth-agriculture -- what you called your vegetable kingdom -- seems not so very different from ours."

"But it is different," I said. "Our plants -- our growing things -- are not aware that they are alive."

Eo demanded gently, "How do you know that? Is it not perhaps that your own mentality is lacking, to gauge the power of theirs?"

I smiled. "It may be so. Brutar, these lolos plants -- what is their purpose?"