The group has parted to allow Carmen access to the computer, which she leans forward to speak into. “I think that’s the distinction he’s leaning on. That’s why he’s bringing up animal selves. The author of the post is saying that even simple organisms like bees might have a phenomenological center to their subjectivity. Consciousness is primitive. Basic. It comes before all that higher-level cognitive stuff. Just pure experiencing.”

There’s a pause.

“Are you saying you agree with him?” Karen’s digital voice rings. All heads turn toward Carmen and her clutched coffee cup. Her mind races, outpacing the room, the earth, light. Sketches of possible worlds are drawn, scrubbed away, redrawn.

“. . . No. No, of course not. He’s um . . . he’s . . . He’s rejecting it out of hand because his main point is just that it doesn’t fit his intuitions about which organisms would be capable of feeling things. But whoever said that a theory of consciousness should fit intuitions? Right? Quantum mechanics doesn’t fit intuitions. There’s your counterpoint.”

“. . . Okay, Carmen, yes, thank you, he’s definitely putting the cart before the horse here.”

Carmen hangs her head knowing how weak her point was. What had Kierk called it? Occam’s broom . . . She listens for a while longer, standing there wondering if all of them really believe in the narrative that Karen has spun up with a few neuroimaging studies that probably weren’t even replicable, if the human capacity for self-preservative delusion is really this powerful, or if they were all enthusiastic liars. Then Carmen pictures Karen sitting on the edge of her hotel bed, her laptop open, making this call, and what Karen is going to do when she hangs up and is left alone in that empty, impersonal room. Everything around her will be an uncaring alien hum, and she will have no shield against a world which takes and takes from you, unsparing even to pet theories. I want a family—Carmen thinks suddenly—I wasn’t sure until right now, but I want a family. If I am making this call in ten years, I want to be able to hang up and make another call.