"Where's Mildred today?" Hunt inquired.
"Off on travels of her own already. She's meeting with Frenua. A challenging encounter, possibly. But I have no doubt she will handle it well." Frenua Showm was the high-ranking Thurien female who would be Mildred's prime guide in organizing her researches. She had been among the few Thuriens to have suspected Jevlenese motives before the exposure of Broghuilio and his plans, and tended to generalize her reservations into a wary suspicion of humankind in general.
"Chris, about that minor disagreement at dinner last night…"
Danchekker turned from the rail, beaming magnanimously, and made a throwing-away gesture. "Oh, think nothing of it. We all have these lapses from time to time. This kind of travel is disorienting and stressful, even if it is measured in a mere day or two. And such abrupt switching to a totally different social and physical environment can only exacerbate it further."
"Yes, but I don't think it's anything like that. There's-"
Danchekker went on, "But I've been thinking about some of the other things that were talked about last night, that I wanted to bring up. The implications could be quite extraordinary. It goes back to something that Mildred said, again." Danchekker had already dismissed the former matter as a triviality, best forgotten, Hunt realized. He groaned inwardly to himself. It was almost impossible to effect course-change once Danchekker launched off into an idea that had seized him. The professor brought his thumbs up to his lapels in an unconscious mannerism signaling that he was in lecture mode. "You may recall that she refused to countenance the suggestion that literally every reality that's physically capable of existing does exist somewhere in the Multiverse. To be frank, Vic, I have long entertained reservations on that score myself, despite what you physics people tell us the formal mathematics might say. But I was never able to identify where, specifically, the model breaks down. I think Mildred may have put her finger on it."
This was the person who grumbled about how his cousin talked unstoppably, Hunt told himself.
Danchekker went on, "She said there isn't a universe anywhere in which her books are produced and sold with blank pages. And of course she has to be correct. What could be more preposterous? But what does your mathematics have to say about it, eh? How does a purely mechanical process distinguish a reality that's humanly plausible from one that unaided common sense says couldn't exist-ever, no matter how remote a probability is assigned to it? It can't. Therefore, your quantum formalism can't be an adequate description of reality, regardless of how successful it might be at predicting the outcomes, over a limited range, of certain kinds of experiments."
Hunt felt again the same confusion he had when Mildred brought this up. There had to be an answer, but he couldn't bring to mind what. It wasn't something he had been giving much thought to since.
"The implications could be profound indeed," Danchekker continued. "Consider this. Physics asks us to accept that the Multiverse in itself is timeless, yes? The sequence of change that we perceive is created by consciousness navigating a path through its succession of alternative branchings. Precisely how it does so is a mystery-and to dispel any rising hope that you might be entertaining at this juncture, not one that I am about to cast further light on now, I fear." Danchekker showed his teeth briefly at his concession to humor. "But the fact that it is able to do so at all perhaps furnishes us with the essential defining criterion for what consciousness is. In fact, I should go beyond that and say 'life.' For by what I'm proposing, it follows that all life is conscious to some degree. Let's not confuse it with self-awareness, which is a qualitatively different subset of the phenomenon I'm talking about."
"So what are you proposing?" Hunt asked, resigning himself. He was obviously going to have to hear it through in any case.
"This. An inanimate object is subject solely to the laws of chance. The future that it comes to experience-or the particular reality that a given version of it exists in, if one wishes to be pedantic about it-is determined by forces and probabilities external to itself. And that is the world that physics accurately describes. But a conscious entity-and by what I said a moment ago, I mean all living organisms-by altering its behavior, has the ability to change those probabilities. It can steer itself toward a future different from the one that it would otherwise have experienced-presumably one which by some means it evaluates as more desirable. The degree to which it is able to do this is, perhaps, a good indicator of how conscious it is. It's a criterion that could conceivably apply equally well within a sapient species, such as ourselves, as across all of life in general."
"Are you talking about plants as well? Bacteria? Fungi?"
Danchekker waved a hand dismissively. "Yes. They all react to environmental cues to improve their odds for living a better life."
Hunt was losing the thread. "So where does Mildred come in?"
"By pointing out, unarguably in my estimation, that conscious beings like ourselves will act to eliminate whole swathes of futures which, although the mathematics of the purely physical might allow them, will never come remotely close to happening for reasons that are only meaningful in terms that consciousness deals in. At some point along the way from the existence of every possible configuration of matter that quantum physics allows, to the actual realities that make up the Multiverse, some kind of 'plausibility bound' sets in that limits the forms they take. Consciousness intervenes to inhibit the quantum transitions that would lead to the excluded realities. How it does so, I have no idea. But it goes a long way toward explaining the somewhat limited success that has attended our efforts to apply physical theory to biological and social phenomena. Much of what the Thuriens talk about suddenly makes a lot more sense." He looked at Hunt expectantly.
But Hunt was still feeling irritated by the condescending air with which Danchekker had dismissed the subject Hunt had tried to bring up, which had been Hunt's prime reason for coming here. Now Danchekker was telling physicists where they had erred in their own domain and offering unasked-for advice on how to fix it. "Well, thanks, Chris, but physicists really are capable of handling the physics," he heard himself say, more shortly than he had intended. "The main job right now is getting the Multiporter to stay connected to somewhere. I don't see how this kind of metaphysical speculation is going to help much."
Danchekker's mouth clamped shut. He drew a long breath, clearly displeased at this reception. "You've constantly reminded me in the past that I should be more open-minded to some of your own wider-ranging conceptions," he said stiffly. "When I venture precisely that, you tell me to stay in my own field. Well, what do you want, for God's sake?" He produced a handkerchief and proceeded to wipe his spectacles. "At least I've always had the good grace to admit as much when, upon further consideration, I concluded that you may have been correct. I do trust that on this occasion I will be accorded the same courtesy." He replaced his spectacles and looked around. More voices were coming from inside. "And now would appear to be a good time to see how our young colleagues are getting along. I do believe that Josef and Chien have joined them." With that, Danchekker turned away, crossed over the footbridge, and disappeared inside through the doorway.