We’ve unraveled across 13.8 billion years from some infinity. And now, look at us! We are an arrangement of atoms with an eye for i, iota, the mathematical expression √-1 … i2 = −1 … x2+ 1 = 0 … that famous imaginary number so useful to meeting our world realistically.
Perpendicular to the Cartesian horizon of real numbers, iota’s vertical vantage surveys the plane of events better than two owls. The animal god, who has followed us here from our time in the forests, steps back, baffled. We’re crossing a frontier where life has never ventured, at an orthogonal distance from reality, alone.
Alone? Really? What is that imaginary eye staring back at us? It’s not like the eye on the back of a dollar bill. A person created that, to signify something about providence. But this eye… An AI-based image generator at Craiyon produced the vision above at my verbal prompt: “An eye in a starry field.”
The starry field, of course, is what unraveled across 13.8 billion years from some infinity. And the eye? You know, in this case, I really do think this is the Eye of i. By which I mean, this is a portrait by an AI of the imagination that is imagining us.