He remained silent, utterly still—only the slight tapping of his fingers belied his uneasiness. Park forged on: “It’s a possibility that we’ve been aware of for a long time; but no one’s taken it further. Or others haven’t taken it seriously enough, I suppose. There was an experiment a long time ago, where a group of students shot a wave of electrons at a barrier with little openings in it. When behaving as a wave, the electrons could simultaneously pass through several of the openings in the barrier and then meet again on the other side. But this behavior could only occur when no one was actively watching. When a human observer began to watch the electrons passing through the barrier, suddenly things were drastically different. If one electron passed through one opening, then clearly it didn’t go through another; the electrons now behaved like individual particles, not a wave. In essence, the mere presence of observation—particularly conscious observation, as observation by an electronic detector didn’t produce this effect—forced the electrons to behave like particles, the way a human mind expected them to behave. But when left to their own devices, without the presence of a live observer, the electrons behaved as a wave again. But why? What about observation does that? It’s almost as if we’re defining that particle by observing it, being aware and conscious of it. That is a force that has an observable effect, even if we can’t fully explain it.”

“Then the unity rain—” Sagara began.

“Has been refolding and collapsing consciousness together, just as it has space.”

“And you’re telling me space has been reorganized every time the phenomenon happens?”

“From my understanding, yes,” Park said. “Dimensionality itself undergoes a—a warping, collapsing together, refolding—like an origami—”

“Yes, I understood about the origami crane.”

“Like origami,” she persisted, “it’s rearranged into another shape, using the same continuous material. Only the folds are in different places each time.”

“But why wouldn’t the ship just be folded into outside space, killing us all?”

She had thought of this. “Consciousness,” Park told him. “All the minds aboard, convinced they’re in a ship—a space—that fits together as a whole. They all bend the shape back into existence, or hold it together, each time the unity rain comes. Their utter belief, or intention, or whatever, keeps it all intact—though with some incongruities.”

“I’m not consciously aware of the ship’s geophysical structure at all times, though,” Sagara said. “Are you?”

“No,” Park said, “and in fact I don’t know the ship very well at all, which probably resulted in even more incongruities. But you forget that there are also the androids on board—and the ship’s operating computer. METIS. ARGUS. Their machine consciousnesses may have been enough to supplement ours and buttress the ship’s structural integrity.”

“Machines aren’t conscious.”