In another dwelling not far away, the sharing of feelings was almost concluded. A Carpenter and an Instructor of Elevens, by name Lazaro and Marthe respectively, had each expressed their trepidations and unsettlement over the events of the day, along with their son, a Nine named Oliver. It only remained for the quiet Seven at the far end of the dinner table to add her sentiments to the session.
"Well, Ophelia?" said Lazaro.
Ophelia toyed thoughtfully with her spoon for a moment before replying. "I don't know if it's really a feeling, what I've had today," she said. "Mostly, I've been wondering about something."
Her father considered this, and nodded. "Curiosity, then?" he said. "Yes, I would say that counts as a feeling. What were you curious about?"
Ophelia paused to marshal her thoughts; she had become convinced over the course of the afternoon that the question was an important one, and she was anxious to ask it correctly. After a moment, she decided on simplicity, and said merely, "Whose idea am I?"
Her parents exchanged puzzled glances. "How do you mean, Ophelia?" said Lazaro.
"Well, there can't be something unless there's an idea of it first, can there?" said Ophelia. "When you make a set of chairs, Father, or when Mother organizes a new lesson plan, those things are there because first you had the ideas of them; isn't that right?"
"Yes, of course," said Marthe. "But that's not quite the same thing, Ophelia. Nobody made you; you just grew inside your Birthmother until it was time for you to come out."
"Yes, I know that, Mother," said Ophelia. "But how did I get in my Birthmother to begin with? Not just as a person, I don't mean that," she added quickly. "I know there was an Embryonicist who synthesized the material of my body, and then implanted that in my Birthmother. But the Embryonicist didn't make that me; he just made it someone."
"Not just someone," Oliver corrected her, with all the lofty superiority of his two additional years. "Embryonicists don't just synthesize embryos at random; they spend lots of time sifting and adjusting the material before they use it, to make sure that there are equal numbers of males and females every year, and that nobody is born without some important body part. And your Embryonicist could have been a female, you know."
Ophelia gave him an irritated look. "All right, fine," she said. "So the Embryonicist made me a particular kind of someone, then. But, still, if Embryonicists were the ones who made people themselves, then the Elders wouldn't need to observe people to find out what professions they should have, would they? They could just ask the Embryonicists who made them, the same way that they would ask Father if they wanted to know how best to use something he made."
"That's quite right, Ophelia," said Lazaro. "Your Embryonicist didn't make you, and your Birthmother didn't make you. As your mother said, you weren't made at all."
"Then where did the idea of me come from?" Ophelia pressed. "It can't just be nowhere, can it?"
Lazaro glanced helplessly at Marthe, who took a deep breath, folded her hands, and leaned forward. "Well," she said softly, "I know that my own idea of you came from watching you grow from a newchild, and learning what made you different from other children. And I suppose other people's idea of you came about in much the same way: they met you, came to know your individual traits, and, as they thought about those things, found that they had an idea in their minds that they called Ophelia. Isn't that how all ideas come about, from people thinking?"
Ophelia considered this, and frowned with dissatisfaction. "But I'm not just my traits, am I?" she said. "Even if something happened to make me stop being shy or wanting things tidy or disliking loud noises, I would still be me. Isn't that so?"
"Of course it is," said Lazaro.
"Then, if everybody's idea of me just comes from my traits, how can it be the idea of me?" said Ophelia. "I'm sure it's good enough for most things, but it doesn't help me be me in the first place. For that you need someone who knows me exactly, don't you?"
"Just a moment, Ophelia," said Marthe. "Are you saying that a thing can't exist unless there's an idea of it first?"
Ophelia blinked. "Yes," she said; then, hesitantly, "Isn't that right? If things could exist without their ideas, then we couldn't think about them at all, could we? There wouldn't be anything about them for our minds to work on – like how you can't see air, or smell glass, because glass doesn't have any fragrance and air doesn't have any… any of what the eye uses, I don't know what the word is."
"Well, I wouldn't know about that," said Marthe. "But what I don't see is, what about the very first thing of all, whatever that was? If there had to be an idea of it in order for it to exist, then it couldn't have existed, because there was nobody before it to think of it. But it did exist, so clearly it didn't need an idea to do so. Isn't that so?"
Lazaro and Oliver looked at her admiringly, and Ophelia frowned and stared down at her empty supper plate for a long moment. "I don't know," she said softly at last.
Marthe smiled reassuringly. "Well, if you think about it enough, I'm sure you will eventually," she said. "Now, were there any other feelings you wanted to share?"
Ophelia shook her head slowly.
"Then why don't you help me clear the table, and go get ready for bed?" said Marthe. "It's already nearly eight o'clock, and I'm sure we've all had a very tiring day."
Ophelia, ever obedient, did as her mother had proposed; once she was in bed, though, she settled herself with Seven determination to work out the puzzle that had been presented to her. Everything had to have an idea of itself in order to exist, yet there must have been something that existed before anything else that could have had an idea of it. How could those two things be reconciled?
She toyed with the possibility that ideas could exist in some way without minds to have them. After all, she had compared them to fragrances, and fragrances, she knew, were just the nose's way of interpreting gaseous emissions that could exist without being smelt; why, then, shouldn't ideas be the mind's way of interpreting something else, which could exist without being thought of? And that sounded all right at first – but then, when she tried to conceive of what that something else might be, she couldn't make it work, and got more and more frustrated until she realized that what she was trying to do was get an idea of something that, by its own rules, didn't have an idea. Which meant it couldn't be thought of – and therefore couldn't be real, since the one thing Ophelia was sure of was that you could think of anything that was real. So that was no good.
What about the other end of it, then? Was it certain that the first thing existed before anyone had thought of it? Maybe the first thing had thought of itself; maybe it existed because it had thought of itself… but no, that didn't work either. You couldn't start existing because you did something; that was just silly.
Unless… what if the First Thing hadn't ever started existing, but had just always existed? Then it could always have had the idea of itself, so that worked – and maybe it had had the ideas of everything else, too. That actually made a lot of sense, in a strange way…
"But what happened to it, then?" she murmured aloud into her comfort object's fur. "If it always existed, how could anything make it stop existing? And if it hasn't stopped, where is it?"
She racked her memories of all the things her Instructors had taught her about, trying to think of one that might plausibly be the First Thing (or Person, really, if it could have ideas) that ever was. But nothing seemed to fit, and she was left with the uncomfortable sense that there was something supremely important that her Instructors knew nothing about, and maybe had never even realized that they ought to.
Was it in another Community, maybe? In the unexplored parts of Elsewhere? Or could it still be around, but have hidden itself from the people of her Community? Maybe it was unhappy with them for some reason; maybe the Elders of long ago had made it promise not to interfere with the Community's life; maybe… maybe?
Such deep thoughts are tiring for a Seven, and they soon wore out Ophelia's slight frame. After about half an hour's wrestling with them, she sank into a deep, dreamless sleep, from which nothing could have roused her until the following morning's daylight broke through her bedroom window.
In one way, this was good for her; the soundness of her slumber enabled her thoughts to clarify themselves, and, when she finally awoke, her mind was alight with the realization of where she might turn to have her questions answered. But it was some time before she was able to act on this insight – for, when she emerged from her sleeping area, brimming with her new epiphany, she found to her consternation that she had slept right through one of the most cataclysmic events that the Community had ever undergone, and that nobody about her had any time for her abstract speculations.
The nature of this cataclysm will be next related.