THE SCIENTIST:
As for the particular we actually observe, it is selected from all the possible generalities and particulars. And if it were changed by just a few percent then stars would not be able to form carbon, for the physical reasons that we observe. This is a necessary condition, and it is obvious and special, a sheen of certainty laid upon the waters of conjecture. It is a fact that we need in order to be present. Now ask yourself the question. Ask it quickly.

THE DANCER:
?

THE SCIENTIST:
No, that’s not quick enough. The speed of the answer would be a condition for your own existence. That is, in order to exist, at least that much time must have passed.

THE DANCER:
What is time?

THE SCIENTIST:
You should be able to intuit the answer, 6.6262 x 10^-34, which is what business analysts refer to as added value.

THE DANCER:
I am in this space called consciousness, which is composed of the elements carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus. These could not have been made; they are necessary consequences of heating. Could a particular exist without any form of consciousness whatever? Are the forms of presence specially designed to allow libido its devices?

THE SCIENTIST:
To answer this, we need to go back to the origin, which is primarily soup.

THE DANCER:
I know it. It’s an alphabet that occupies zero dimensions, a liquid of uncertainty, a dream of becoming lacking only its dreamer.

THE SCIENTIST:
The heavier elements had to wait in the wings, but soon it was their turn in the sun. This resembled a vast furnace, wherein those elements flourished with multiple irridescence, racked as they were by the sudden storms so typical of this time of the year. Their surfaces were carpeted with oxide daisies and vipers bugloss. Around this time, sentient creatures began to appear: a genet hunting amid patches of lavender; the elephant of the Serengeti; the obscure progeny of the mobile phone; a human infant essaying its first smile; the dread form of the basilisk.

THE DANCER:
I remember. I was ready at this point, come to focus from a different flare, overcoming key barriers to communication. I began to leave home, knowing that things would henceforth not be as they had been but, increasingly, as they were. I mean, that things began to resemble themselves more than they had done.

THE SCIENTIST:
Though it wasn’t without regret that we looked back, into the interior of our emergence, the closure of the circle.

THE DANCER:
What is regret?

THE SCIENTIST:
Ask the question. It little matters that value is a necessary condition for your own existence. Ask it. A single voice sounds raw. But still you will not understand the physical reasons for that value to occur. We can deduce the value from the fact that we’re around to ask what it is.

THE DANCER:
I hear that voice! Is it the voice of time? Or is it a voice in time?

THE SCIENTIST:
And after that, up to a few thousand million years of heating is required. “At dusk the sound of church bells from the valley floor” and church bells starts up nearby. Or you’re waiting for the bus opposite the Half Moon and a half moon lurks in the blue sky beside it. You are guest to the world’s host; the result is a ghost. The ghost of physics, located in the sound picture.

THE DANCER:
Is there something special about this?

THE SCIENTIST:
Try to remember.

THE DANCER:
Once, the physical universe was located in a key region containable within the compass of an ordinary dwelling or hut, such as is found today in rural areas and shanty towns of underdeveloped countries. There was no water. There were objects in the sky, but they didn’t count. Too mobile, or something. Then things changed. They changed subtly, by just a few percent, so that we should not have found ourselves present all at once. After that, the stars appeared, and they would be just right, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time.

THE SCIENTIST:
So, unless all these developments had occurred, we couldn’t be here, visible and constant, actually observing the heavier elements, whose interiors, themselves resembling sentient creatures, needed to be present. How important is fusing, or pitch memory, or weird sleep? Are these emergent properties of the mind, or whatever?

THE DANCER:
This box doesn’t deserve to think. I am in this space and the world is out there, or, no it isn’t, it’s in here and I am outside of it, and something happened.

THE SCIENTIST:
The requirements to generate these laws (of motion; of consciousness) necessitated such elements to be specially designed in order for order to exist, at least in the sense of that existence of conscious life such that sufficient time should have passed ... that we should or should not be in a particular location. Something happened. Why was that significant? We don’t know.

THE DANCER:
It was arranged and somehow it all pancaked out like that. The consequences of which may well be compound.

THE SCIENTIST:
We ask ourselves: why is life so rare? To answer that question, we need to be present, creating space by a process of unfolding, in the sound picture, not merely subject to cognitive systems. So whether you are thinking or feeling, or have a sense of having implemented or shared, you would need to come to the topic with your approaches hoovered. Are you present? Please bring any supporting material.

THE DANCER:
Not knowing, you would have come out of nowhere. Proceeding from a blank sheet, you’d be here till further notice. It’s quite unlike the processes associated with prose narrative. From a spiral of fifths, you would quickly withdraw, show up settled and translated, the voice superimposed.

THE SCIENTIST:
Having no framework, you would have created space, which is new and open.

THE DANCER:
But this quickly fades. The logics of line and syntax lapse. There is tidal movement. It’s clean, and without history: a fiction, or a contrivance. The consolations of philosophy are of no consequence in such regard. Is this what we mean by an “alternative tradition”?

THE SCIENTIST:
We can use such techniques to create nucleosynthesis, to generate such elements as are required, to focus on the things that are certain or likely to happen and to determine what we can do. The arguments can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be right for achieving existence at the present time. For if they were not just right, then they would either be too vast in scale, or else significantly smaller than was practicable in any event. Then we should not have found ourselves in our present locations, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time.

THE DANCER:
Therefore is the philosopher’s ladder to be discarded (kicked away)? And do we find ourselves simultaneously immersed in and immune from space, I mean, dangling or afloat? And are we all at once contained within ourselves, yet joined at all points to what is? And for what purpose?

THE SCIENTIST:
It is hard to accept the basis for your reasoning.

THE DANCER:
I don’t reason – I only dance.

THE SCIENTIST:
It is incorrect to assert “We are here because we are meant to be here”; for we could be here while not being meant to be here, or, alternatively, we might not be here though we are meant to be here. In either case, whether we are here or not here, it is impossible to determine whether we are meant. We may be, or we may not. But because of the shared dynamic of the history we lack, the history of existence and non-existence which affects us equally, heats us and bequeathes to us the sense of physicality that is so palpable and quick, because of these and other reasons to do with interiority and exteriority, significance and non-significance, we feel at home here. Now ask the question again.

THE DANCER:
There’s a lot of noise.