Setting: The same sunlit study. Books are stacked higher, a faint scent of old ink in the air. Quillibrace is perched in his chair, Blottisham leans against the window frame, and Miss Stray twirls her pen thoughtfully.
Miss Stray: (thoughtful) Professor, I’ve been thinking. You’ve explained inertia as cheap persistence and gravity as gradiented availability. But… are they really separate phenomena?
Professor Quillibrace: (dryly) They are different expressions of the same relational logic, Miss Stray. Inertia occurs where the architecture is flat; gravity where gradients appear. Flat versus gradiented availability — two faces of constraint.
Mr Blottisham: (blustering) That cannot be! Inertia doesn’t pull, it just... persists! Gravity attracts! How can you possibly claim they’re the same?
Professor Quillibrace: (raising an eyebrow) Because the appearance of attraction does not require a pull. High-mass configurations thicken constraints, raising the cost of deviation. Motion appears directed, but only because persistence in those architectures is less costly along certain paths. Same principle; different topology.
Miss Stray: (amused) So, Mr Blottisham, your planets aren’t being pulled by mysterious forces. They’re simply following the paths of minimal cost through a gradiented relational landscape.
Mr Blottisham: (throwing up hands) That’s absurd! Planets are conscious of thrift now?
Professor Quillibrace: (smirking) Only in your imagination. In reality, the universe does not think. It simply economises. Inertia is cheap persistence everywhere constraints are flat. Gravity is the same economy applied to non-uniform architectures.
Miss Stray: (scribbling) I suppose that means we can teach them as two aspects of the same principle: the relational architecture itself, not separate forces.
Mr Blottisham: (grumbling) I still feel I should argue with the cosmos, but perhaps that would be inefficient.
Professor Quillibrace: (dryly) Quite right. Save your energies, Blottisham. The cosmos is already following the path of least resistance — or, if you prefer, minimal re-cutting cost.
Miss Stray: (laughing) Then perhaps we should all take a page from the universe’s book: quiet persistence where it’s cheap, and only expend effort when absolutely necessary.
Professor Quillibrace: (with a faint smile) A maxim worth recording. Especially in dialogue, where the temptation to insert hidden defaults is nearly irresistible.
Mr Blottisham: (sighing, resigning) I suppose I’ll let the planets be, then.
Miss Stray: (smiling) And we can all appreciate the architecture without needing it to push us around.
No comments:
Post a Comment