“Do you want to go get something to eat?” Ayanna asked. She wanted to make a good choice, not just keep wandering around on a belly full of fruit and beer and too much water.

Over baskets of chicken strips and french fries, Felix said the professor was building the Institute of True Reality. A rich donor had given her a bunch of money to do it. The ideas would include a variety of different disciplines over time. For example, there was a scientist theorizing that aliens were potentially already among us, but because our eyes haven’t evolved enough, we can’t see them. There are many different forms of matter and there are so many things in the universe that are limited by our potential for understanding. It wasn’t publishable yet, this was all speculation, but it was one of the things. There was also some virtual reality stuff too, but Felix found it embarrassing.

“There are also cultural ideas.” Felix paused and considered a waffle fry. “Am I talking too much?”

Ayanna shook her head no, mouth too full of chicken strips to want to say anything. This, too, was exciting. She thought maybe her ideas about education and learning had been deeply childish because she had never considered it was possible to discover or theorize new things just by sitting in a quiet room and having an imagination. She thought he was still avoiding her question, there seemed to be something personal involved here, but Ayanna didn’t want to push. Felix told her one idea of an invisible reality made evident was through art. What some religions might call a soul might actually be the human brain’s ability to develop different ways of seeing. Different realities might have tangles that could be seen or understood by sensitive brains.

“Isn’t that offensive to artists? Doesn’t it discredit their imaginations?” Ayanna asked. She didn’t like that her brain was immediately thinking of an opposing example that there was a possibility people were so powerful—and they weren’t aware of it—they could conjure things that could change reality.