The Senior Common Room at St Anselm's possessed that particular afternoon quietness in which rain murmured at the windows and intellectual disasters could unfold with proper dignity.
Professor Quillibrace sat by the fire.
Miss Elowen Stray was reading.
Mr Blottisham entered carrying an expression of considerable confidence and several sheets of paper.
Quillibrace looked immediately suspicious.
"You've brought diagrams."
"Yes."
"Oh dear."
Blottisham spread the papers triumphantly across the table.
"I've understood curvature."
Silence.
Elowen looked up slowly.
"You have?"
"Completely."
Quillibrace removed his spectacles.
"My dear fellow, recent history advises caution."
Blottisham jabbed at the drawings.
"There."
On the page were several enthusiastic sketches of stretched sheets with depressions in them.
"Heavier objects make dents, smaller objects roll around inside the dents, gravity explained."
He leaned back happily.
"I've restored order."
Quillibrace stared at the papers for several long seconds.
Then:
"Oh no."
Blottisham frowned.
"What?"
Quillibrace looked genuinely pained.
"My dear fellow."
"Yes?"
"You have fallen victim to the rubber sheet."
"The what?"
"The most successful pedagogical disaster in modern physics."
Elowen lowered her notebook.
"The issue is that the sheet becomes a thing."
Quillibrace pointed at her approvingly.
"Exactly."
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"But spacetime is a thing."
Long silence.
Quillibrace stared at him.
Elowen stared at him.
Blottisham gradually became uncomfortable.
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"Observe what your picture quietly assumes."
He tapped the page.
"There is a sheet."
"Yes."
"The sheet exists independently."
"Yes."
"The sheet bends."
"Yes."
"The sheet sits within some larger surrounding structure."
Blottisham paused.
"...yes."
Quillibrace looked at him sadly.
"My dear Mr Blottisham."
"Yes?"
"You have smuggled container metaphysics back through the side door."
Blottisham looked wounded.
"I've smuggled it?"
"Entirely."
Elowen smiled faintly.
"You've reconstructed the thing we spent several discussions dismantling."
Blottisham looked horrified.
"I have?"
Quillibrace nodded gravely.
"You've built spacetime furniture."
A long silence followed.
Then Blottisham frowned.
"But if curvature isn't bending a thing..."
"Yes?"
"...what exactly is it?"
Quillibrace sat back.
"Ah."
He looked unexpectedly pleased.
"That is the correct question."
Elowen leaned forward.
"Curvature changes the local relational constraints."
Quillibrace nodded.
"It alters how trajectories, durations, and separations can remain coherent."
Blottisham blinked.
"So..."
He hesitated.
"...it doesn't push anything?"
"No."
"It doesn't pull anything?"
"No."
"It doesn't bend anything?"
"No."
Silence.
Blottisham looked at the drawings.
Then at Quillibrace.
Then back at the drawings.
Slowly he slid the papers away.
"I suddenly distrust my diagrams."
Quillibrace looked satisfied.
"Healthy progress."
Elowen looked thoughtful.
"So instead of imagining distorted shapes..."
She glanced at her notes.
"...we should think of different local conditions for coherent actualisation."
"Very good."
"And geodesics wouldn't be paths through a pre-existing geometry."
"No."
"They would be expressions of maximal relational coherence under local constraints."
Quillibrace smiled.
"Excellent."
Blottisham looked uneasy again.
"I think I've understood something."
Quillibrace looked wary.
"If curvature changes local relational possibility..."
"Yes?"
"...then different regions of reality possess different conditions for coherent unfolding."
Silence.
Elowen slowly looked up.
Quillibrace froze.
"My God," whispered Blottisham.
Quillibrace sat down carefully.
"My dear Mr Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"...you continue to stumble into understanding with the determination of a man falling downstairs."
Blottisham looked pleased.
"I do seem to arrive eventually."
Rain drifted softly against the windows.
For a while nobody spoke.
Then Blottisham frowned.
"Though one concern remains."
Quillibrace closed his eyes.
"Naturally."
"If curvature is really differential organisation of relational possibility..."
"Yes?"
"...does this explain why the corridor outside the dining hall becomes impossibly crowded five minutes before lunch?"
Quillibrace looked toward the ceiling.
"My dear fellow," he said quietly, "I have long suspected a local increase in trajectory convergence."
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