“Mm-hmm.” I don’t understand. “Which is…”

“The raw material of consciousness. Everything is matter these days.”

I poked my hand into the hologram and gave it a stir. “That stuff is… consciousness?”

“As I said, the raw stock from which consciousness arises.”

“And it’s everywhere?”

“Everywhere.”

“Why haven’t we run into it? Why don’t the planets get caught in it?”

“You’re fortunate I’m a conversationalist,” said Aptat. “So. Not all matter works that way – even your scientists understand this. ‘Matter’ is mostly nothingness. There’s more distance between the nucleus of an atom and its orbiting electrons than you think. If your eyeball was a nucleus, then the electrons would be about three kilometers away. With all of that empty space, other types of matter can pass right through and you’d never know. This is the character of Fray. Think of it as a web of fleece from which you would spin a thread, and from that thread you might braid a cord. Your consciousness – what you perceive as your subjective experience, is like a length of that cord.”

Aptat paused to see if I was following. I didn’t say anything as I wasn’t exactly sure if I was or not.⁵⁹

“The universe, while not itself technically aware, does respond to stimuli,” Aptat continued. “There is a point in the development of some beings when the capacity for consciousness emerges. It is at this moment that bits of the Fray coalesce into strands and those strands become threads. A trillion threads twist to become a single cord that will run through your mind for the duration of your life. At death, the cord unravels, the threads come apart, the strands dissolve, and all is absorbed back into the Fray. A new life comes along, another cord is spun. Each length belongs to a single sentient individual.”

“Unless it doesn’t,” I said.

“Unless it doesn’t,” said Aptat with an affirming nod.

“But why does it sometimes fail to unravel?”

“I may have the body of a god,” they said, sweeping a hand over their toned chest, torso and legs, “but alas, I don’t possess the mind of one.”

“So, if a person dies and the cord doesn’t unravel back into the Fray...”

“What is the saying on Earth?” said Aptat. “Nature abhors a vacuum? That rope of twine will eventually find its way into a life capable of hosting sentience. And that individual will continue along the same cord as their predecessors. Like you.”

“But how–”

“Let me try to put it in terms you can better understand. Imagine there was a person – we’ll call him ‘Uncle Jed’ – who discovers oil on his property while shooting at some food–”

“Wait? Uncle Jed? Shooting at some food? Are you talking about The Beverly Hillbillies, that old TV sitcom?”

“I had four days to kill in Earth’s orbit while you foundered into my web. I consumed a great deal of your media at an astronomical framerate, much of which only further confused me about humankind. You have a strange obsession with the geographical orientation of ‘real housewives’. What is it with them? Are they regional magistrates of some sort? Is Earth plagued by imposter housewives?”