“Let me explain . . . hmm . . . Take a book, for instance. Is there actually any meaning within the words themselves, or are they defined, given by, the reader? See, we know that words are just symbols, chicken-scratch. Look at text from a language you don’t know and the problem jumps into clear focus. It’s the consciousness of the reader that gives any meaning, any content, to the chicken-scratch. The problem of consciousness, interestingly, can be described in the same way. When we look at the chicken-scratch of neuronal firing patterns, what are we to read into them? If you see some neurons firing in, say, the medial temporal lobe, what are we to say about what they mean to the brain? Just because something responds reliably to an object or concept, does that mean it represents it? And most neurons in higher cortical areas don’t reliably respond to anything in particular. And if you say that they mean what they do because there is an interpreter of brain activity somewhere in the brain, well, then we are stuck in an infinite regress, because who gives that observer their internal content, and so on? Is there some universal author who draws across all systems in the universe the epistemic boundaries needed to give consciousness definite content? Does God fix consciousness in place? Some invisible author just makes shit up, assigns this here and that there . . .”

“I, umm . . .”

“. . . in other words: was it God who wrote these signs?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“That quote is originally from Goethe, of course, and then, later, that’s Boltzmann quoting Goethe. Boltzmann was already working on the physics of information way before anybody else was. He was quoting Goethe in respect to Maxwell’s meager and elegant four equations, which summarized so much of the physical world with so little that they seemed divine in origin . . . from scientist to writer to scientist . . . The quote is a beautiful analogy to the paradox . . . Was it God who wrote the signs in our skulls . . . Of course that was before he killed himself for his intellectual failures.”

“Who?”

“Boltzmann. Goethe, on the other hand, reconciled his genius with lived life.”

“. . . . . .”

“. . .”

They avoid eye contact. The silence has grown long enough to be uncomfortable. Finally, Kierk, slapping his knees, stands and leans over the desk to shake Williams’ hand, which is returned with a surprisingly strong grip.

“Have we covered everything?” Kierk asks perfunctorily.

“Ah, I guess we have covered some things. Certainly.”

“Good.” Kierk turns to leave, and it is then that he sees the back of the office door, on which hangs, long and in the shape of a man, a tan trench coat crowned by a red baseball cap where the head would be. Kierk freezes.