is this paragraph from Greg Egan’s Schild’s Ladder:
In the beginning was a graph, more like diamond than graphite. Every node in this graph was tetravalent: connected by four edges to four other nodes. By a count of edges, the shortest path from any node back to itself was a loop six edges long. Every node belonged to twenty-four such loops, as well as forty-eight loops eight edges long, and four hundred and eighty that were ten edges long. The edges had no length or shape, the nodes no position; the graph consisted only of the fact that some nodes were connected to others. This pattern of connections, repeated endlessly, was all there was.
Got it?
This must be one of the oddest first paragraphs in a novel and certainly illustrates why hard science fiction is hard, but I plan to persist. I think.