For a long time, the people of the First Country believed that somewhere beyond the hills there was another country.
They could not see it, but the mapmakers insisted that it was there.
On their maps they drew a great pale region beyond the borders of the known land. In it were marked roads not yet travelled, bridges not yet built, gardens not yet planted, cities not yet founded. Some were drawn in dark ink, because the mapmakers thought them likely. Others were drawn faintly, because they seemed less certain.
“This,” they said, pointing to the pale region, “is the Country of Possibilities.”
The King liked the map.
It was comforting to think that the future already had a place.
Whenever anyone asked what might happen next, the mapmakers would unroll the great sheet and point.
“We shall see which road is taken.”
But one autumn morning, the youngest philosopher came upon something that troubled her.
A bridge had been built across the western river.
Before the bridge, there had been only a ferry. The journey to the villages on the other side was long, and few people made it unless they had good reason.
Now people crossed every day.
Merchants came.
Children travelled to the school on the western bank.
People who had never met before began to trade stories.
A small settlement appeared beside the road.
Then another road was built to reach it.
The youngest philosopher returned to the map.
She searched for the bridge.
It was not there.
She searched for the road.
That was not there either.
Nor was the new village.
She found the river, of course.
She found the two banks.
But she could not find what had happened.
So she went to the oldest philosopher.
“The map was wrong,” she said.
The old philosopher looked at the great pale region.
“Perhaps.”
“The bridge was not one of the possibilities.”
The old philosopher smiled.
“Then what do you think it was?”
The young philosopher looked towards the western hills.
“I thought it was something that became possible.”
The old philosopher said nothing.
That afternoon they walked together to the bridge.
On the eastern bank, a road divided.
One branch went towards the fields.
Another led to the new settlement.
A third, which had not existed the year before, climbed towards the hills.
The old philosopher picked up a stone from the roadside.
“Before the bridge was built,” he said, “could this road have been travelled?”
“No.”
“And now?”
“Yes.”
He put down the stone.
“Did the road become possible because it was waiting somewhere?”
The young philosopher shook her head.
“No.”
“What happened?”
She looked at the bridge.
“A new relation came into existence.”
The old philosopher nodded.
But the matter did not end there.
For the bridge had done more than make a road possible.
It had changed the people who used the road.
The merchants began carrying different goods.
The villagers began growing different crops.
The school attracted children from places that had once been too far away.
The settlement became a market.
The market became a town.
And the town required another road.
The young philosopher began to suspect that the mapmakers had made a very strange mistake.
They had imagined possibilities as though they were roads spread across a landscape.
But perhaps the landscape itself was changing.
That winter, something stranger happened in the southern marshes.
A small creature began feeding on a plant that none of the other animals could eat.
At first this seemed unimportant.
But the creature changed.
So did the plant.
Other creatures began to follow.
The marsh changed.
Plants that had once flourished disappeared from some places and appeared in others.
New paths opened through the reeds.
The old philosopher took the young philosopher there.
“Was this marsh the same before?”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
She looked around.
“No.”
“What changed it?”
She thought for a long time.
“Something that happened within it.”
The old philosopher nodded.
“And so?”
The young philosopher looked at the reeds, the creatures, the water.
“The actual can change the possible.”
This time the old philosopher smiled.
Years later, something similar happened in the Hall of Languages.
The grammarians discovered a new way of arranging words.
At first it was merely a strange construction used by a few speakers.
Then others began using it.
It allowed them to distinguish something that had previously been difficult to say.
Once the distinction had become familiar, people began noticing other differences.
Those differences led to new expressions.
The new expressions made new distinctions easier.
The language had not merely acquired another sentence.
It had acquired another way of making meaning.
The young philosopher stood before the old tablets in the Hall.
On one tablet was written:
Relations make differences.
On another:
Differences constrain what can happen.
On another:
What can happen becomes what does happen.
But beneath them, there was now a fourth tablet.
Someone had recently carved it.
What happens changes the relations.
The young philosopher read the four inscriptions again.
Then she understood why the map had troubled her.
The mapmakers had drawn:
Possibilities → choice → actuality.
But the country itself seemed to follow another pattern.
She took a piece of chalk and wrote beneath the tablets:
Relations → possibilities → becoming → changed relations → new possibilities
She stood back.
The old philosopher looked at it.
“Is that a circle?”
“Yes.”
“Where does it begin?”
She opened her mouth.
Then stopped.
She did not know.
The following spring, the King summoned the mapmakers.
“I want a new map,” he told them.
The chief mapmaker bowed.
“Of the Country of Possibilities?”
“No.”
“Then what country?”
The King looked towards the hills.
“Map the country that makes possibilities.”
The mapmakers were silent.
“How shall we draw it?”
The King thought for a moment.
“Perhaps you cannot.”
The chief mapmaker frowned.
“Every country can be mapped.”
“Perhaps,” said the King. “But perhaps this country is different.”
So they tried.
They drew the bridges.
Then the roads that had appeared because of the bridges.
Then the villages that had appeared because of the roads.
Then the roads that had appeared because of the villages.
Soon the map became covered in crossings and loops.
They tried again with the marsh.
Then with the language.
Then with the fields beyond the eastern hills.
Everywhere they looked, the same thing happened.
Something became actual.
Its existence altered the relations around it.
Those altered relations opened some possibilities and closed others.
Some of those possibilities became actual.
And the new actualities changed the relations again.
The mapmakers finally rolled up their parchment.
“We cannot draw the future,” they said.
The King looked disappointed.
“No,” said the youngest philosopher.
“You cannot draw it because it is not waiting.”
The King looked at her.
“Then where is it?”
She looked towards the western bridge.
“Being made.”
After that, the people of the First Country stopped speaking of possibility as though it were a distant land.
They still imagined futures.
They still wondered what might happen.
They still built maps.
But they began to understand that a map of possibilities could never be complete.
For whenever something happened, the country could become differently related.
And when the relations changed, so did what could happen next.
A new form of life could change an ecosystem.
A new tool could change what people could do.
A new road could change where people could go.
A new word could change what people could say.
A new distinction could change what people could notice.
A new concept could change what people could think.
None of these simply filled a vacant place in an already existing Country of Possibilities.
They changed the country.
One evening, the youngest philosopher climbed the hill above the western road.
Below her she could see the bridge, the market, the new village and the paths that had grown around them.
Beyond them lay the marsh.
Beyond the marsh stood the Hall of Languages.
Beyond that were the forests and mountains, where she knew other changes were already taking place.
She thought of the old map.
For the first time, she understood why the pale region beyond its borders had always seemed so strange.
There had never been a Country of Possibilities waiting out there.
There had only been a country capable of becoming otherwise.
And perhaps that was something more mysterious.
For if the world could make new possibilities through what became actual, then becoming was not merely a journey through a landscape already drawn.
The journey could alter the landscape.
The world could discover, through what happened, new ways in which it might happen again.
The youngest philosopher turned towards the setting sun.
And she wondered:
If the world can make new possibilities, what makes a new possibility possible in the first place?
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