The rain had returned to St Anselm’s in the manner of a well-established habit.
Professor Quillibrace was already seated by the fire when Mr Blottisham entered, slightly breathless, as though arriving from an ongoing argument he had not yet concluded.
Miss Elowen Stray followed more quietly, closing the door with care rather than finality.
Quillibrace did not look up.
“I trust,” he said, “that the world has continued to improve in our absence.”
Blottisham sat down.
“It has,” he said. “Or at least it claims to have done so. There are graphs.”
“Ah,” said Quillibrace. “Reality has been issued with supporting documentation.”
Stray opened her notebook but did not write.
Blottisham leaned forward.
“I’ve been reading about something called the Universal Efficiency Index.”
Quillibrace finally looked up.
“Sounds uncomfortable.”
“It’s a single number,” Blottisham continued. “Everything reduced to one score. Organisations, departments, even—apparently—households.”
“A civilised ambition,” Quillibrace murmured. “One must admire the restraint involved in compressing the world so economically.”
Blottisham nodded quickly.
“It works extremely well. Apparently. Everything is improving.”
Stray tilted her head slightly.
“Improving relative to what?”
Blottisham paused.
“That wasn’t entirely clear.”
Quillibrace gave a small, precise nod.
“A promising beginning.”
Blottisham frowned.
“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously.”
“I am taking it very seriously,” Quillibrace said. “I am simply not taking it literally.”
A brief silence settled.
Stray spoke gently.
“It seems to assume that what matters most is what can be placed on the same scale.”
“Yes,” said Blottisham. “Exactly. That’s the point. Efficiency.”
Quillibrace folded his hands.
“Efficiency,” he said, “is one of those admirable concepts that becomes less intelligible the longer one looks at it directly.”
Blottisham looked frustrated.
“But surely improving efficiency is just… sensible.”
“Quite,” said Quillibrace. “So is breathing. But one does not build an entire theology around the optimisation of respiration.”
Stray smiled faintly.
“Unless breathing becomes competitive.”
Blottisham looked between them.
“You’re both being unfair. These systems work. They deliver results.”
Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.
“Indeed. The more successfully they deliver results, the less anyone is quite sure what those results are results of.”
Blottisham opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Stray finally wrote something in her notebook.
“What strikes me,” she said, “is that optimisation seems to have become self-sustaining.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“A polite way of saying it no longer depends on its original question.”
Blottisham exhaled.
“That sounds like criticism.”
“It isn’t,” Quillibrace replied. “It’s diagnosis.”
Blottisham leaned back.
“So what you’re saying is that it just keeps improving things without knowing what things are for?”
Quillibrace considered this carefully.
“I am saying,” he replied, “that it has become extremely good at continuing.”
Stray looked into the fire.
“And continuity begins to resemble purpose,” she said.
Quillibrace allowed himself the smallest possible smile.
“Only if one stops asking what purpose is doing there in the first place.”
A pause followed.
Blottisham broke it.
“This feels like the sort of thing that would be solved with a task force.”
Quillibrace nodded approvingly.
“Excellent instinct. One should always respond to uncertainty by producing more structured uncertainty.”
Stray closed her notebook.
“I think,” she said quietly, “the interesting question is not whether the system works.”
Quillibrace looked at her.
“No?”
“It’s what it gradually stops needing in order to count as working.”
Silence returned to the room.
Outside, the rain continued its careful argument with the windows.
Blottisham eventually spoke.
“So… is this good or bad?”
Quillibrace sighed.
“A dangerously Metrician question.”
Blottisham frowned.
“It seems important.”
“It is,” Quillibrace agreed. “But not in a way that improves its measurability.”
Stray looked between them.
“I suspect,” she said, “that we are watching a system learn to answer every question except the one it was built around.”
Quillibrace nodded once.
“A rather efficient development.”
No one spoke for a moment.
Then Blottisham said:
“I still think we should probably benchmark it.”
Quillibrace closed his eyes briefly.
“Of course you do.”
And the fire continued doing what fires do best: producing warmth without ever having been asked to justify it.
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