The discussion began, as many discussions do, with someone talking before anyone quite knew why.
"I've always enjoyed conversations," announced Mr Blottisham.
Professor Quillibrace looked up from the latest essay.
"I had noticed."
"I find them much more agreeable than monologues."
"In what respect?"
"One is allowed to stop."
Miss Stray smiled.
"Only if someone else begins."
Blottisham looked pleased.
"Exactly."
Quillibrace unfolded the paper.
"Our anonymous author proposes that conversations are invisible machines."
Blottisham nodded with resignation.
"I've learned not to resist these announcements."
"He claims that conversations manufacture possibilities."
"I thought they manufactured opinions."
"Sometimes."
"And occasionally indigestion."
"That too."
The Professor continued.
"But their more interesting achievement is that they produce thoughts which belonged to nobody beforehand."
Blottisham frowned.
"How can a thought belong to nobody?"
"How indeed?"
Miss Stray leaned forward.
"Imagine we each arrive with one idea."
"Very well."
"If we merely announce them..."
"There are still only three."
"But if one idea alters another..."
"Or combines with it..."
"Or suggests something unexpected..."
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
"Then there are four."
"Or forty."
"There is suddenly more than we brought."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Exactly."
Blottisham stirred his tea.
"I've always imagined ideas were rather like luggage."
"In what sense?"
"You carried them in."
"And carried them out again?"
"Yes."
Miss Stray shook her head gently.
"Perhaps they're more like yeast."
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"Yeast?"
"It doesn't merely sit beside the dough."
"It changes it."
He considered this.
"So conversation isn't a cupboard."
"No."
"It's a kitchen."
Quillibrace smiled.
"I think our anonymous author would approve."
There was a short silence.
Then Blottisham asked,
"If conversations make new ideas..."
"Yes?"
"...where do they come from?"
The Professor opened his mouth.
Then closed it again.
Miss Stray looked from one to the other.
"I don't think they come from either person."
"No?"
"They come from the relationship."
Blottisham blinked.
"The relationship thinks?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"The conversation itself begins doing work that neither participant could have done alone."
Another silence followed.
This one was longer.
Quillibrace looked unexpectedly reflective.
"I've just realised something."
"What is it?"
"We have spent several months discussing invisible machines."
"We have."
"And I had imagined that we were applying one."
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"Weren't we?"
"I now suspect..."
"Yes?"
"...that we have been inside one."
Miss Stray laughed softly.
"I was wondering when someone would notice."
Blottisham looked from one to the other.
"You mean..."
"Yes?"
"This isn't merely a discussion about conversation?"
"No."
"It is the conversation."
"And whatever we've just realised..."
"...wasn't present when we sat down."
Blottisham became very quiet.
He looked around the familiar room.
The shelves of books.
The old portraits.
The teapot.
The rain beginning once again against the windows.
"It feels rather odd."
"What does?"
"To think that this room keeps making things that weren't here before."
Quillibrace nodded.
"That is what universities are supposed to do."
"Is it?"
"I rather hope so."
Miss Stray looked into the fire.
"Perhaps not only universities."
"No?"
"A family around a dinner table."
"Friends walking together."
"Two strangers on a train."
"They all possess the same possibility."
Blottisham smiled.
"I've had some surprisingly good conversations on trains."
"I imagine you have."
"I once missed my station."
"Were you annoyed?"
"Not particularly."
"Why not?"
"The conversation turned out to be the more interesting destination."
Nobody spoke for a little while.
Eventually Quillibrace folded the essay.
"I believe our anonymous author is right."
"About conversations?"
"About hope."
Blottisham looked surprised.
"I don't remember hope being mentioned."
"It was."
"Where?"
"In the possibility that no one here knows exactly what will be thought next."
Miss Stray nodded.
"That is why genuine conversation is never merely repetition."
"It always leaves room..."
"...for someone to become slightly wiser."
Blottisham stood to refill the teapot.
"I've just had a rather alarming thought."
"What is it?"
"If conversations really work like this..."
"Yes?"
"...then perhaps none of us has ever had an entirely original idea."
Quillibrace smiled.
"My dear Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"I should regard that not as a disappointment..."
He accepted the freshly poured cup.
"...but as a compliment to everyone who has ever helped us think."
The room fell comfortably silent.
It did not feel like the end of a conversation.
Only the place where, for the moment, it had chosen to pause.
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