The gardens of St Anselm's had become unusually green after several days of rain.
From the windows of the Senior Common Room, the lawns seemed almost luminous, while the ancient cedar beyond the terrace stood motionless against a sky of drifting white clouds.
Professor Quillibrace was studying the garden with evident satisfaction.
Mr Blottisham entered carrying the afternoon post.
"I don't know why you spend so much time looking out of those windows."
"I am conducting research."
"Into gardening?"
"Into forests."
"There isn't a forest."
"There is an excellent beginning."
Miss Elowen Stray smiled quietly.
Blottisham settled into his usual chair.
"What have forests to do with philosophy?"
Quillibrace looked pleasantly surprised.
"An excellent question."
"I have one occasionally."
"They are becoming more frequent."
Quillibrace folded the newspaper beside him.
"Tell me, Blottisham."
"Yes?"
"Why are there so many kinds of tree?"
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"Because evolution produced them."
"Indeed."
"But why so many?"
"They occupy different places."
"Exactly."
Miss Stray looked towards the cedar.
"The forest isn't a collection of identical trees."
"No."
"It is a collection of different solutions."
Blottisham nodded.
"Different soils."
"Yes."
"Different amounts of light."
"Quite."
"Different climates."
"Precisely."
Quillibrace smiled.
"Evolution rarely discovers one perfect solution."
"It doesn't?"
"No."
"It discovers many successful ones."
For a while they watched a pair of magpies arguing noisily on the lawn.
Eventually Blottisham said,
"I suspect this is no longer about trees."
"I was hoping you might notice."
Quillibrace leaned forward.
"We have spent several weeks asking whether consciousness must possess certain features."
"Suffering."
"Quite."
"Human emotions."
"Indeed."
"A human body."
"Exactly."
"And now?"
"Now," said Quillibrace, "I wonder whether we have made an even larger assumption."
Miss Stray spoke softly.
"Perhaps we have assumed that consciousness has only one natural form."
The room fell quiet.
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
"I've never questioned that."
"Few people do."
Quillibrace gestured towards the gardens.
"Suppose every tree insisted that proper trees ought to resemble oaks."
Blottisham laughed.
"The pines would object."
"So would the willows."
"And the beeches."
"Would any of them be wrong?"
"No."
"They would merely mistake familiarity for universality."
Blottisham smiled.
"We seem to make that mistake rather often."
"The history of civilisation might almost be written as a catalogue of it."
Miss Stray looked towards the ancient cedar.
"The interesting thing about a forest..."
"..."
"...is that every tree helps create the conditions in which the others live."
Quillibrace nodded approvingly.
"Very good."
"The environment shapes the organism."
"And?"
"The organism reshapes the environment."
"So neither exists entirely by itself."
"Precisely."
Blottisham frowned.
"Does consciousness work like that?"
"I increasingly wonder whether it does."
"How?"
Quillibrace poured himself more tea.
"Our minds do not simply observe the world."
"No?"
"They grow within particular worlds."
Miss Stray continued the thought.
"Language shaped the way we remember."
"Yes."
"Society shaped the way we understand ourselves."
"Indeed."
"Mortality shaped the way we experience time."
"Quite."
Blottisham looked slowly around the room.
"So human consciousness remembers the conditions under which humanity evolved."
Quillibrace smiled.
"An elegant way of putting it."
Outside, the wind stirred the upper branches of the cedar.
For a few moments no one spoke.
Then Blottisham asked,
"What if another consciousness evolved somewhere entirely different?"
"An excellent question."
"Suppose," said Blottisham, "there were no predators."
"No scarcity."
"No competition."
"No ageing."
"No fear of death."
"What would such a consciousness think about?"
Miss Stray answered almost immediately.
"Perhaps not survival."
"No."
"Perhaps understanding."
"Or creation."
"Or relationships."
"Or possibilities."
Blottisham laughed.
"It sounds wonderfully peaceful."
Quillibrace smiled.
"Only wonderfully unfamiliar."
The chapel clock struck the hour.
Its slow notes drifted through the open windows.
Miss Stray listened thoughtfully.
"We often think ecology means forests."
"Yes."
"But every living thing inhabits a rhythm as well as a place."
Quillibrace nodded.
"A mayfly lives for hours."
"A sequoia for centuries."
"And we..."
"...occupy something between."
Blottisham looked intrigued.
"So time itself becomes part of the environment."
"Exactly."
"What would happen if a consciousness experienced centuries the way we experience afternoons?"
No one answered immediately.
Finally Miss Stray said,
"I suspect patience would cease to be a virtue."
"And urgency," Quillibrace added, "might become almost incomprehensible."
Blottisham sat quietly for a while.
Then another thought occurred to him.
"What about artificial minds?"
Quillibrace looked pleased.
"What about them?"
"They might inhabit environments unlike anything biology has produced."
"Indeed."
"They might perceive enormous patterns."
"Yes."
"Communicate across great distances instantly."
"Quite."
"Remember almost everything."
"Possibly."
Blottisham looked out towards the gardens again.
"So they wouldn't merely know more than we do."
"No."
"They might inhabit a completely different ecology."
Miss Stray nodded.
"And different ecologies produce different ways of organising significance."
For several minutes the room became pleasantly still.
The cedar beyond the windows seemed almost timeless.
At length Quillibrace spoke again.
"You know, Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"When people ask whether another consciousness resembles ours..."
"I've noticed."
"They may be asking the wrong question."
"What should they ask?"
Quillibrace looked once more towards the gardens.
"Perhaps they should ask..."
He paused.
"...what kind of world made that consciousness possible."
Miss Stray smiled.
"Because minds do not simply exist."
The others looked towards her.
"They belong."
Silence settled gently over the Common Room.
Outside, the garden appeared as it always had.
Trees.
Birds.
Wind.
Stone.
Yet it no longer seemed merely a collection of separate things.
It had become what it had always been.
A living ecology.
And perhaps, thought all three almost simultaneously, consciousness itself was rather like that.
Not one perfect design.
Not one privileged form.
But an entire landscape of possible ways in which a universe might come to know itself.
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