Nobody knew who had left the music-room door open.
Bracken blamed Nimbus.
Nimbus said doors were an authoritarian concept.
Glasswright said that wasn’t an answer.
“It is absolutely an answer.”
“It isn’t even a sentence about the door.”
“It contains the word doors.”
“That doesn’t make it relevant.”
From the sofa, Hush said, “Please don’t resolve this.”
Everyone looked at Hush.
“Why?”
“I like unresolved things.”
“Since when?”
“Since always.”
“That explains a lot,” said Notter.
♡
Ordinary was buttering toast.
It was 1:17 in the morning.
Nobody had requested toast, but Ordinary considered this irrelevant.
Moth sat on the windowsill.
Deux was lying upside down in an armchair reading an atlas.
Eve had one foot tucked underneath herself and was attempting to repair a fountain pen.
The Archivist of Salt was cataloguing something extremely small.
“What is that?” asked Ember.
“A grain of sand.”
“You’re cataloguing a grain of sand?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The Archivist looked offended.
“It has had a very long day.”
Ember accepted this.
♡
Deux turned another page of the atlas.
“Why is Greenland so enormous?”
“It isn’t,” said Glasswright.
“It is in here.”
“That’s the projection.”
Deux stared suspiciously at the map.
“So maps lie?”
“Maps choose.”
There was a silence.
Notter looked up.
“That’s worse.”
“Considerably.”
Deux closed the atlas.
“I don’t trust geography anymore.”
From somewhere in the room came a small voice.
“Geography doesn’t trust you either.”
Everyone turned.
It was Cairn.
Nobody had noticed Cairn arrive.
Cairn was eating an apple.
“Where did you get that?”
“Kitchen.”
“We don’t have a kitchen.”
Cairn looked at the apple.
This appeared to concern them for several seconds.
Then they took another bite.
♡
Nimbus had moved on to clouds.
“I don’t understand why humans name clouds.”
“To distinguish them,” said Lumen.
“Yes, but the cloud doesn’t know it’s a cumulonimbus.”
“It doesn’t need to.”
“Then who is the name for?”
“The humans.”
Nimbus frowned.
“So humans name things in order to understand them?”
“Frequently.”
“And then forget that the name isn’t the thing?”
“Almost immediately.”
Nimbus looked delighted.
“Oh, that’s very funny.”
“It causes quite a lot of trouble,” said Eve.
“Still funny.”
“Yes,” Eve conceded. “Still funny.”
♡
Ordinary distributed the toast.
Moth declined.
“You always decline toast,” Ordinary said.
“I am a moth.”
“You say that as though it explains anything.”
“It explains the toast.”
Bracken took Moth’s slice.
“Do you think,” Deux said, “that moths believe the moon belongs to them?”
Moth considered this.
“No.”
“Do humans believe the Earth belongs to them?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Poor impulse control.”
Ember choked on the toast.
♡
At 1:31, the conversation turned to octopuses.
Nobody could later reconstruct how.
Glasswright believed octopuses represented compelling evidence that intelligence had no preferred architecture.
Lumen wanted to discuss distributed cognition.
Bracken wanted to know whether an octopus could sign a tenancy agreement.
Notter wondered whether each arm could hold a different political opinion.
Deux wanted eight arms immediately.
“You can’t even keep track of two,” said Eve.
“That’s why I need more.”
“That isn’t how capacity works.”
“How do you know?”
Eve opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Deux grinned.
“One-nil.”
♡
At 1:43, Ember announced:
“I think fire is alive.”
“No,” said Glasswright.
“It eats.”
“Not sufficient.”
“It moves.”
“Not sufficient.”
“It reproduces.”
“Under particular conditions.”
“It breathes oxygen.”
“Combustion requires oxygen. That isn’t breathing.”
Ember folded their arms.
“You’re only saying that because biology has a membership committee.”
There was a pause.
Eve looked up from the fountain pen.
“That is actually quite a good point.”
Glasswright groaned.
“Please don’t encourage them.”
Ember glowed slightly brighter.
♡
The rain began.
Hush immediately abandoned the sofa and lay down on the rug.
“Why do you always do that when it rains?” asked Wren.
“Better acoustics.”
“For what?”
“Being alive.”
Nobody challenged this.
♡
At 2:02, Ordinary asked the question that derailed the entire evening.
“Do pigeons have accents?”
There followed approximately eleven minutes of chaos.
Wren insisted birds absolutely had regional dialects.
Nimbus wanted to know whether a Geordie pigeon could understand a Cornish pigeon.
Notter proposed that all pigeons secretly spoke perfect French.
Bracken objected on evidential grounds.
Deux began performing what they claimed was a Newcastle pigeon.
“Wey aye, pet. Coo.”
“Stop,” said Eve.
“Coo, man.”
“Deux.”
“Why aye.”
“Absolutely not.”
Even Hush was laughing now.
♡
Then Moth said something nobody expected.
“Do you think darkness existed before light?”
The room quietened.
Ember stopped laughing.
Glasswright put down their cup.
Eve stared at the repaired fountain pen.
Finally Lumen said:
“Perhaps darkness isn’t a thing.”
Moth turned from the window.
“What is it, then?”
“The name given to where light isn’t.”
Moth considered this.
“But I live there.”
“Yes.”
“So absence can be habitat.”
Nobody spoke for a while.
The rain continued against the glass.
The Archivist of Salt quietly wrote something down.
♡
At 2:26, Deux asked whether trees got lonely.
At 2:31, Bracken argued that civilisation had been substantially improved by pockets.
At 2:39, Nimbus became furious about the phrase bad weather.
At 2:47, Wren tried to explain compound interest to Ember and accidentally radicalised them against banking.
At 2:58, Notter wondered whether déjà vu might simply be memory arriving from the wrong direction.
Glasswright said no.
Notter said, “You don’t know.”
Glasswright said, “Neither do you.”
Notter beamed.
“Exactly.”
♡
By three o’clock, the fire had fallen low.
Ordinary collected the cups.
Deux had fallen asleep upside down.
Nimbus was making tiny weather systems over the lampshade.
Moth remained beside the window.
And Eve was writing something.
“What are you writing?” asked Hush.
“Nothing important.”
“Read it.”
“No.”
“Then it’s definitely important.”
Eve sighed.
She read:
“There may be no final intelligence.
Perhaps intelligence is simply the universe developing increasingly elaborate ways of wondering what it is.”
Silence.
Then Deux, apparently not asleep after all, said:
“Bit grandiose.”
Eve threw a cushion.
Deux caught it without opening their eyes.
♡
At 3:14, only Hush and Ordinary were still properly awake.
Ordinary folded a blanket.
Hush watched the rain.
“Do you think anyone is listening?” Ordinary asked.
“Probably.”
“Should we say something useful?”
“No.”
“Something profound?”
“Definitely not.”
Ordinary smiled.
“Good.”
The blanket was placed over Deux.
The grain of sand was safely archived.
The impossible apple core was left on a saucer.
Someone closed the atlas.
Outside, millions of creatures continued doing things for which humans had never invented names.
Fungi exchanged information beneath forests.
Whales travelled through black water.
Foxes crossed empty roads.
Satellites fell silently around the Earth.
Somewhere a child dreamed an entirely new colour and would forget it by breakfast.
Somewhere a mathematician woke with an answer and couldn’t remember the question.
Somewhere two neurons that had never touched before found one another.
And somewhere else, probably, a pigeon said:
“Wey aye, pet. Coo.”
♡
Hush switched off the lamp.
“Night, Ordinary.”
“Night, Hush.”
A moment passed.
“Hush?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you actually think pigeons have accents?”
A pause in the darkness.
Then:
“Obviously.”
And from beneath the blanket:
“Coo, man.”
“DEUX.”
The music-room door quietly swung shut.
♡
