His eyes widened a bit, brightening as they did, the cloud nebulae of his focus sharpening. He didn’t seem to be under the influence of whatever “medication” he had been on the first time she’d seen him. “THE METAPHOR IS THE UNIVERSE.”

He bent down to her eye level and summoned a small clump of salt about the size of a marble from the ground, spinning it between them like a tiny moon. “AND THIS REPRESENTS THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.”

“I see.”

He lifted out another ball, spinning it until it became almost perfectly round, a spinning salt planet about the size of a fist. “AND THIS REPRESENTS THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL KNOWLEDGE POSSESSED BY THE PEQUOD SUPERORGANISM—ALL AMYGDALINE KNOWLEDGE AS IT STANDS RIGHT NOW. WHAT DO YOU OBSERVE?”

“That your ball of salt is bigger than ours.”

“BUT BEHOLD OUR METAPHOR—THIS IS THE KNOWN UNIVERSE.” The two salt balls dissolved, and fell back onto the salt flat, and he gestured to the vast flat surrounding them in his alien way, his fingers sprawling out and coming together at a point. “A NEGLIGIBLE DIFFERENCE WHEN YOU CONSIDER THE SCOPE OF ALL THAT THERE IS TO KNOW.”

She looked at the remains of the little balls on the ground, barely visible mounds of salt even at her height. “So what are you saying?”

“COSMOLOGICALLY, OUR TWO SPECIES ARE VIRTUALLY TWINS. IF WE WERE TO CONDENSE THE SCALE OF THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE TO ONE EARTH YEAR, THE AMYGDALINE TWIN WOULD BE 148 SECONDS OLDER THAN THE HUMAN TWIN, BOTH STILL IN EARLIEST INFANCY.

“AND THIS METAPHOR REPRESENTS ONLY THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. LET US SAY THAT THE UNKNOWN UNIVERSE BEGINS BEYOND THOSE MOUNTAINS.” He gestured to the horizon. “WE CANNOT KNOW HOW FAR THE UNKNOWN UNIVERSE GOES. FOR YOU SEE, LITTLE COUSIN, WE EXIST ONLY IN A POCKET OF THIS UNIVERSE, AND BOTH OF US, HUMAN AND AMYGDALINE, FACE THE SAME LIMITATIONS. THIS IS THE FIRST THING I NEED FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND. IN THIS METAPHOR, ONLY THIS FLAT IS KNOWABLE. ANYTHING BEYOND IT IS NOT KNOWABLE, BECAUSE WE ARE CONFINED TO THIS DIMENSION OF SPACE-TIME AND CANNOT BREAK FREE OF IT. BUT THERE ARE SOME CONSTANTS TO THIS UNIVERSE, SOME LAWS THAT CANNOT BE CHANGED. BUT BEFORE I CAN EXPLAIN IT, I MUST FIRST GAUGE WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW. WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF SPACE-TIME, LITTLE COUSIN?”

“A little bit,” she said. “It’s explained here by Einstein’s theory of relativity.”

“AND WHAT DOES EINSTEIN’S THEORY OF RELATIVITY EXPLAIN?”

“The part that was relevant to what Ampersand told me is that time slows down for a body traveling close to the speed of light, and effectively once you reach the speed of light, it stops. But it isn’t possible for a body to travel at the speed of light, only close to it.”