Antonio, looking just as Kierk remembers him, glances up from closing his bag with huge hands and locks eyes with Kierk. Neither says anything. They are completely alone in the auditorium.

After a silence, Antonio says—“You didn’t come to the talk.”

“I know it by heart.”

“Ah,” Antonio hangs his head, grabs a final cord from the podium, puts it into his bag.

“Where is everyone?” Kierk says. “I assumed there’d be a crowd of questioners.”

“They’ve given me a reprieve. There’s going to be a gala afterwards. Norman Bennett told everyone to wait until then.”

“A gala . . . for you?”

“You’re invited, of course.”

“Of course.”

Antonio is still on the stage by the podium. Kierk takes the two steps up to it slowly. They face each other on the creaky wooden planks and under the bright lights, Antonio tall and looming at center stage.

“Since you stormed out, telling me everything I did was wrong, I had thought to hear—”

“Since I stormed out?”

“—because you left with no degree. They want me to sign something here, you know. For you. To grant you it.”

“You know I deserve it. And you read the paper, you know my ideas.”

“You’d like to have a debate, Kierk,” Antonio chuckles, then gestures to the empty rows of seats. “Now that we have such an audience?”

“Did you read it?”

“Yes, of course I read it.”

“And your response is what? You haven’t issued any. Just going to ignore it, I suppose?”

“I said everything I needed to. Things play out in the literature.”

“You mean in the arena where you have the greatest advantage in terms of time, money, connections, a team.”

“That is the way science works. It’s not perfect, but if you stay in the game, I look forward to many—”

“So you’re just going to ignore it.”

“There are so many different things that are wrong with your thinking that I wouldn’t know where to begin. I wonder if you ever understood me at all.”

“Oh really, and what didn’t I understand? Your theory rests on information theory. Information is frame-variant. So we can just start there, if you really want to do this.” Kierk gestures to the throng of empty seats.

“The theory carves nature at its joint. It finds precisely where consciousness resides in the brain, and reads it out. You know all this. You worked on it. I cannot believe it is you who plays Brutus.”

“You’re not carving nature at its joints, but at your own. You can’t construct a theory of observers that requires there be observers in the first place!”

“You’re too much of a philosopher, you always were. Abstract jabberwocky without any rigor.”

“No! You’re the philosopher! With your calculated metaphysics, with your systems of the world!”

“You claim you are the scientist here?”

“No! I’m not anything anymore.”