St Anselm's Senior Common Room
The evening had settled heavily over St Anselm's.
Rain still tapped against the windows.
Professor Quillibrace sat quietly reading.
Miss Elowen Stray was writing notes beside the fire.
Mr Blottisham entered carrying a very large map.
Not a geographical map.
Something considerably more alarming.
He unfurled it triumphantly across the table.
"Aha."
Quillibrace looked up.
"...why are there concentric circles?"
Blottisham beamed.
"I've found it."
Silence.
"Found what?"
"The centre of power."
Long silence.
Miss Stray lowered her pencil slowly.
Quillibrace stared at him with profound fatigue.
"The centre of power."
"Exactly."
Blottisham tapped the centre of the diagram.
"There."
Quillibrace looked.
In the middle of the page was a large crown.
Around it radiated arrows pointing outward.
Beneath it Blottisham had written:
POWER HEADQUARTERS
Quillibrace removed his spectacles.
"Blottisham."
"Yes?"
"Is there a receptionist?"
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"What?"
"At Power Headquarters."
"No."
"No enquiry desk?"
"No."
"No administrative tea room?"
"No."
Quillibrace nodded gravely.
"So no one can ring ahead."
Miss Stray looked at the map.
"What exactly happens here?"
Blottisham pointed enthusiastically.
"Power radiates outward."
"Like sunlight?"
"Precisely."
"Or radio waves."
"Even better."
Quillibrace looked at him.
"And where exactly is this headquarters located?"
Blottisham frowned.
"Well..."
He hesitated.
"I hadn't entirely settled that."
"Ah."
"Possibly Geneva."
Silence.
After some moments Quillibrace stood.
"The difficulty, Blottisham, is that you're imagining power as having a centre."
"Naturally."
"No."
"No?"
"No."
Blottisham looked confused.
"But surely there must be somewhere."
"No."
"There must be somebody."
"No."
"Something?"
"No."
Blottisham stared.
"...this is becoming very inconvenient."
Quillibrace walked slowly toward the windows.
"If power consists in constraint modulation..."
"Mhm."
"And if constraints are distributed..."
"Mhm."
"And architectures are layered..."
"Mhm."
"...then power cannot originate from a single point."
Blottisham frowned.
"What does it originate from then?"
Quillibrace turned.
"It doesn't."
Silence.
Blottisham looked as though a floorboard had quietly withdrawn support beneath him.
"It doesn't?"
"No."
Miss Stray leaned forward.
"So instead of a centre..."
Quillibrace nodded.
"...we have uneven concentrations."
"Precisely."
"Different regions of a relational field become more densely coupled."
Blottisham frowned.
"Densely coupled."
"No escaping that phrase, I'm afraid."
Blottisham looked suspicious.
"What exactly does density mean here?"
Quillibrace sat again.
"The capacity to reorganise multiple constraint layers simultaneously."
Silence.
"Examples."
"Legal systems."
"Mhm."
"Media systems."
"Mhm."
"Financial systems."
"Mhm."
"Infrastructural networks."
"Mhm."
"They can align many systems at once."
Blottisham nodded slowly.
"So these become..."
He searched for words.
"...high-density regions?"
"Yes."
"Places where lots of constraint pathways converge?"
"Precisely."
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
"So they aren't centres."
"No."
"They're more like..."
Long pause.
"...knots?"
Silence.
Quillibrace looked cautiously impressed.
Miss Stray smiled.
Blottisham blinked.
"Oh dear."
"What?"
"If there isn't a centre..."
Silence.
"...then removing one important thing won't necessarily remove power."
No one spoke.
Blottisham stared at his map.
"...oh no."
Miss Stray spoke softly.
"Because if the field remains..."
Quillibrace nodded.
"...it reorganises itself."
"Exactly."
Blottisham stared into space.
"So if I remove Power Headquarters..."
Silence.
"...the rest simply rearranges."
No response.
"The field changes shape."
Silence.
"The density redistributes."
Still silence.
Very slowly Blottisham sat down.
"So all this time..."
He looked at the large crown in the middle of the page.
"...I've been looking for a king."
No one interrupted.
"When really I should have been looking for patterns of alignment."
Silence.
Quillibrace put his spectacles back on.
"Yes."
Long pause.
Blottisham sighed deeply.
Then looked up.
"So..."
The others waited.
"...Geneva is off the table."
End of discussion
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