The Senior Common Room at St Anselm's
The afternoon had acquired the sort of stillness that suggested the college itself was listening.
Miss Stray sat by the window with a notebook open on her lap. Quillibrace was reading. Blottisham was staring at the latest paper with mounting distrust.
At length he said:
"I don't believe in offers anymore."
Quillibrace looked up.
"An unusually broad conclusion."
"They've vanished."
"Vanished?"
"According to this, yes."
Miss Stray glanced over.
"What has vanished?"
"The offer."
Quillibrace removed his spectacles.
"My dear Blottisham, if offers have vanished, why are you talking about them?"
"Because they've been replaced by possibility space."
"Ah," said Quillibrace. "A common symptom."
Blottisham waved the paper.
"I thought an offer was simple. You offer someone something. They either accept it or they don't."
"And now?" asked Miss Stray.
"Now apparently I've spent my life misunderstanding biscuits."
A pause.
Quillibrace considered this.
"That may be true independently of the present discussion."
Blottisham ignored him.
"Take a simple example. 'Would you like a biscuit?'"
"Very well."
"I am offering a biscuit."
"Are you?"
"Yes."
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"Have you transferred the biscuit?"
"No."
"Have they received the biscuit?"
"No."
"Has any biscuit changed ownership?"
"No."
"Has any biscuit moved at all?"
"No."
Quillibrace nodded.
"So the exchange appears remarkably inefficient."
Miss Stray smiled.
Blottisham frowned.
"That's not the point."
"On the contrary," said Quillibrace. "It may be precisely the point."
A brief silence followed.
Miss Stray spoke first.
"What exists before acceptance?"
"The biscuit."
"The relation," said Quillibrace gently.
Blottisham sighed.
"There it is."
"There what is?"
"The relation."
"An indispensable feature of interpersonal meaning."
"A fashionable feature of interpersonal meaning."
Quillibrace looked mildly amused.
Miss Stray turned a page.
"I think the important move is that the offer creates a possibility before anything is actualised."
"Exactly," said Quillibrace.
Blottisham looked unconvinced.
"So it creates a future."
"No."
"A potential future."
"No."
Blottisham groaned.
"What now?"
"It structures the possibility of a future."
Miss Stray nodded.
"That distinction matters."
"It always matters," muttered Blottisham.
Quillibrace resumed.
"If I say, 'I'll drive you to the airport,' what has happened?"
"You've offered transport."
"Have I transported anyone?"
"No."
"Have I driven anywhere?"
"No."
"Has the airport become closer?"
"No."
"Then what exists?"
Blottisham stared at the fire.
"A possibility."
"Good."
Miss Stray looked pleased.
"A structured possibility."
Blottisham closed his eyes briefly.
"There was no need to improve it."
"There was every need," said Quillibrace.
A pause settled over the room.
Then Miss Stray said:
"What I find interesting is that offers seem to occupy a different temporal position."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Very much so."
"They involve commitment."
"Yes."
"But not fully operative commitment."
"Precisely."
Blottisham opened one eye.
"So we're now discussing commitments that aren't committed."
"Conditional commitments," said Quillibrace.
"Which sounds like a contradiction."
"Only if one assumes actuality is the only mode of existence."
Blottisham looked alarmed.
"We've wandered into ontology again."
"We never left."
Miss Stray returned to the paper.
"The offer creates availability."
"An excellent term," said Quillibrace.
Blottisham frowned.
"I dislike it already."
"Naturally."
"What does it mean?"
"It means that one participant positions themselves as a possible resource within a relational field."
Blottisham stared.
"That is the least human description of helping someone I have ever heard."
"Only because you are hearing the abstraction rather than the structure."
Miss Stray smiled faintly.
"The abstraction is describing the structure."
Blottisham looked briefly betrayed.
A long silence followed.
Eventually he said:
"So acceptance isn't receiving something."
"No."
"And refusal isn't rejecting something."
"No."
"What are they then?"
Miss Stray considered.
"Ways of orienting toward a possibility that has been made available."
Blottisham leaned back heavily.
"I preferred biscuits."
Quillibrace nodded sympathetically.
"Most people do."
"But you're saying the biscuit isn't really the point."
"Not analytically."
"The point is that a relation has been made possible."
"Exactly."
Blottisham stared into the fire for some time.
Then he said:
"That's rather strange."
"What is?"
"Questions create answerability."
"Yes."
"Statements create responsibility."
"Yes."
"Offers create possibility."
"Indeed."
Blottisham frowned.
"It sounds less and less like language is exchanging things."
Quillibrace smiled.
"An encouraging sign."
Miss Stray looked thoughtfully out the window.
"Perhaps that's why offers feel different."
"How so?" asked Quillibrace.
"They make visible something that is present everywhere else but easier to miss."
"And what is that?"
She looked back at the paper.
"That interpersonal meaning is always partly about futures that have not yet been actualised."
For a moment nobody spoke.
Then Blottisham said:
"I should like a biscuit."
Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.
"Is that a request?"
"I don't know anymore."
Miss Stray laughed.
And somewhere in the ensuing confusion, a structured field of relational possibility briefly became available to all concerned. 🍷🙂
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