Setting: A sunlit study lined with books on relational ontology, physics, and philosophy. Professor Quillibrace sits in a high-backed chair, meticulously arranging his notes. Mr Blottisham paces impatiently, tapping a pocket watch. Miss Elowen Stray reclines on a sofa, legs crossed, notebook in hand, watching the exchange with mild amusement.
Mr Blottisham: (snapping) Professor, I simply cannot accept this. You keep insisting that a body in motion doesn’t resist a change in state. There must be some force, some... inertia! Things do not simply persist out of politeness.
Professor Quillibrace: (dryly) Indeed, Mr Blottisham, persistence is extraordinarily polite. It does not announce itself. That is precisely why it has been so thoroughly misunderstood.
Miss Stray: (smiling) I think he means we’ve been reading inertia backward. Persistence isn’t stubbornness—it’s just... cheap.
Mr Blottisham: (frowning) Cheap? Persistence is not a commodity, Miss Stray! You cannot purchase the continued motion of a planet with mere economy.
Professor Quillibrace: Ah, but that is precisely the error. Inertia is not a commodity in any monetary sense. It is the minimal cost of re-actualisation within a relational architecture. When the relational constraints are flat, patterns reproduce themselves with negligible adjustment. That is all. Nothing pushes, nothing resists; it simply costs less to continue than to change.
Mr Blottisham: (throwing up his hands) So you’re telling me that the universe is lazy? That the planets are merely... frugal?
Miss Stray: (suppressing a laugh) One might say that the universe is exceptionally thrifty. And, as with most thrifty things, it appears inert until a constraint gradient forces an expenditure.
Professor Quillibrace: Precisely. Gravity, for instance, is not a magical attractor. It is a gradient in relational availability. High-mass configurations thicken constraints locally, making certain re-cuts more costly. What appears as attraction is simply the system following the path of least cost within a non-uniform architecture.
Mr Blottisham: (snorting) So planets aren’t attracted—they are… budget-conscious?
Miss Stray: (amused) If you like. And yet, Mr Blottisham, you continue to act as if these patterns must be forced to persist. Observe: they persist effortlessly because the architecture itself prefers it.
Professor Quillibrace: And thus we come full circle. Inertia is not resistance, motion is not a force, and natural states are mythical. Persistence requires no explanation; change demands it. The universe does not labour; it economises.
Mr Blottisham: (pausing, looking slightly deflated) Economises, does it? Well, I suppose that is less tiresome than insisting on a hidden engine behind every orbit.
Miss Stray: (smiling) Less tiresome, certainly. And far more satisfying for anyone with an appreciation for dry humour and minimal re-cutting costs.
Professor Quillibrace: (with a faint smile) Indeed. One might even say that understanding is also cheap—provided you follow the architecture closely enough.
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