I got the idea for this story from several creation myths I've read, and from images from Plato's Republic, especially the one where Glaucon and Sophocles are talking, and Sophocles describes the world as a cave with people bound up and so on. I tried to make the two characters here talk like Glaucon and Sophocles. I deliberately used almost nothing but dialogue. In a way i think its good, because its short and to the point, and in some ways i think its not so good - its definitely not the most original thing to hit the forums.
Two traveling philosophers sat around a campfire.
“Our culture has always believed the world to be flat, like a great disc.” said Plutart. “I have a dear friend who is, like you and I, a philosopher, and a traveler also; he has traveled so far as the unmapped western lands. And he once told me that the bronze-skinned savages there believe the world to be flat, like a disc; but they also believe that there are many other worlds - other discs - both above and below our world, so that the universe is like a column of stacked world-discs.”
“I have had a friend tell me about that same idea; but he attributed the belief to the short men of Sarathia” said Glaucon.
“Likewise,” said Plutart, “I have myself heard the Hivrits that live in our own city say their culture believes the earth to be flat, and the sky to be a great dome over the earth; so that the world is like a round fruit chopped in half.”
“I, too, have had the Hivrits tell me of that, of the world being shaped like half a round fruit.” Glaucon said.
“Hobe says in his last work that the world is flat, as well, but that it is flat like a step in a great staircase,” explained Plutart, “And that there are other world-steps above and below ours, forming a complete staircase. And he also goes so far as to speculate that paradise is at the top of the stairs, and hades at the bottom.”
“I too have read Hobe tell of that, his last idea.” Said Glaucon.
“And a few philosophers that live in our city that I have spoken to assert that the world is round, like a pebble in a stream made round by flowing water.” Said Plutart, “They believe it to simply sit in empty space, to hang suspended like a pearl on the end of a thin necklace, but in their thought, there is no necklace.”
“I well know the philosophers you speak of,” said Glaucon, “and I know well their thoughts on the nature of the world. But I do not know yours.”
“I myself do not believe in one or the other of these ideas.” Plutart said.
“Well, then,” said Glaucon, “I shall tell you what I believe the nature of our world to be. So far in our conversation, you have been the teacher and I the pupil, but now sit back and you shall learn.”
“Teach me, then.” said Plutart.
“The world is like a sphere,” Glaucon described , ”but not quite: it is a little flat on the sides, and in front it has a long crack, and above that the world has a mountain with two caves near the mountain’s base; and above the mountain are two great lakes, and right above the two lakes are two low ridges, and all animals and people and plants exist inside the world.”
“That is a very strange idea of the nature of the world that you have described” said Plutart, “I would know why you think the world is shaped that way.”
“Is not the head the seat of intelligence?” asked Glaucon.
“So say scholars more base than I.” said Plutart.
“And have you never heard our fellow philosophers say that when one man dies, an entire universe dies with him?” asked Glaucon
“Yes,” said Plutart, “they speak of the man’s mind.”
“That is why I think the world is shaped that way,” Glaucon said, “our world can be nothing but some greater being’s mind, his impression of the world he lives in, and we the impressions of the beings he lives with.”
Plutart said nothing.
“The question,” said Glaucon, “Is what lesser beings live in the universe of our minds?”