Autumn

“Can’t see a bloody thing.”

“That’s generally what fog does, Lars.”

“I know what fog does, Anna.”

“Then why announce it?”

“Because we’re hunting reindeer.”

Maja lowered the binoculars.

“What are you looking at?”

“Fog.”

“Anything in it?”

“More fog.”

Lars shifted the rifle on his shoulder.

“Excellent. Successful morning.”

They stood on the vidda with the world reduced to perhaps thirty metres.

Wet lichen, black stone, three people, then white.

Autumn had got into everything.

Anna pulled her hood tighter.

“Klaggy motto.”

“What?”

“Klaggy motto.”

“That isn’t Norwegian.”

“Never said it was.”

“What does it mean?”

“This.”

She waved at the fog.

“You’ve invented a language for bad weather?”

“Someone had to.”

Maja peered through the binoculars again.

“Reindeer.”

“Where?”

“Gone.”

“You sure?”

“No.”

Lars sighed.

“That’s useful.”

“It was something.”

“Everything is something.”

“No. Fog isn’t.”

Anna looked at him.

“Fog is definitely something.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, but continue.”

Lars pointed into the whiteness.

“If there’s a reindeer out there and none of us can see it, for us there’s no reindeer.”

“There’s still a reindeer.”

“Probably.”

“Definitely, if there’s a reindeer.”

“That sentence achieved nothing.”

Maja laughed.

“Bit like hunting with you.”

They walked another twenty metres.

The previous landscape disappeared behind them.

Anna stopped.

“Interesting.”

“What?”

“We’ve moved zero.”

“We’ve moved twenty metres.”

“No. Zero moved twenty metres.”

Lars stared at her.

“Have you started drinking?”

“Not yet.”

“Then I’m worried.”

She planted the butt of her rifle on the ground.

“Look. Where does visibility start?”

“Here.”

“Exactly.”

Maja lowered the binoculars.

“Oh no.”

“What?”

“She’s doing philosophy.”

“On a reindeer hunt?”

“Apparently.”

Anna ignored them.

“We’re zero.”

“I’m Lars.”

“You can be Lars at zero.”

“Generous.”

“The observable interval starts here and ends where the fog stops us distinguishing things.”

Maja looked around.

“Thirty metres, maybe.”

“Right. So say zero to one.”

“Why is the fog one?”

“It isn’t. One is whatever becomes distinguishable as the other condition.”

“That sounds suspiciously invented.”

“All coordinates are invented.”

“Fair.”

Anna pointed toward a rock barely visible ahead.

“That rock is one.”

“And we’re zero.”

“Yep.”

“And between us and the rock?”

“Infinity.”

Lars looked at the rock.

“It’s twenty metres.”

“Also true.”

“You can’t have infinity in twenty metres.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I’d never get to the rock.”

“You’re confusing mathematical division with movement.”

Maja grinned.

“He does that constantly.”

“I have literally never done that.”

“You did it Tuesday.”

“What happened Tuesday?”

“No idea.”

“Hah,” Anna said, “how many bad puns are there between us and that rock?”

Lars considered it.

“A lot.”

“Last pun before the rock?”

He frowned.

“Well—”

“Show me.”

“I can’t show you a pun.”

“Exactly.”

“That proves nothing.”

“It proves you can’t terminate the interval observationally by finding the final distinction.”

Maja looked into the fog.

“So infinity isn’t beyond the fog.”

Anna smiled.

“Exactly.”

Lars pointed outward.

“Surely infinity is all that shit out there.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t observe it.”

“I know it’s there.”

“You infer something is there.”

“Mountains are there.”

“Probably.”

“They were there yesterday.”

“Yesterday was also an observation.”

Lars shook his head.

“This is why normal people shoot things.”

Maja was still staring into the white.

“So what’s outside one?”

“Wrong question.”

“Why?”

“Because one isn’t a wall, the fog is temporary.”

Anna scraped a line through wet lichen with her boot.

“It’s a condition of the interval.”

Maja nodded slowly.

“So the fog doesn’t divide reality into here and some mysterious metaphysical place.”

“Right.”

“It just determines what can currently be distinguished.”

“Right.”

Lars pointed at himself.

“And I’m still Lars.”

“Provisionally.”

“Fuck off.”

A shape moved in the whiteness.

All three froze.

“Reindeer.”

“Bird?”

“Rock.”

“The same rock?”

“Different rock.”

The fog thickened.

Even the rock vanished.

Lars said, “So now one disappeared.”

“No. The observational distinction, the rock is still there, but it is not here.”

“And we’re still zero?”

Anna nodded.

“Always.”

“That seems suspiciously convenient.”

“It has to be. Observation has an origin.”

“Why us?”

“Not us personally. An observer.”

Maja said, “So wherever an observation occurs, that’s zero.”

“Yes.”

“And everything observed is relational to that zero.”

“Yes.”

“And infinity is inside that relationship.”

“Yes.”

Lars looked genuinely irritated now.

“Then where did everything come from?”

Anna shrugged.

“It didn’t come from somewhere.”

“Oh, brilliant.”

“Think about the question. Where is already a spatial relation.”

“So?”

“So you’re asking where space came from.”

“Yeah.”

“Using space.”

Maja laughed.

“He’s got you there.”

“She.”

“She’s got you there.”

Lars kicked at the lichen.

“Fine. When did it start?”

“Same problem.”

“Fuck.”

“‘When’ already assumes time.”

“So you can’t ask anything?”

“You can ask what earlier observable conditions produced later observable conditions.”

“Big Bang.”

“Potentially.”

“But not where existence came from.”

“Because you’ve smuggled where into the question.”

Maja said, “And not what happened before time.”

“Because you’ve smuggled before into it.”

Lars stared into the fog.

“This is deeply annoying.”

“Good philosophy often is.”

“Good philosophy should locate reindeer.”

“That’s geography.”

“Geography currently isn’t doing much either.”

The condensation made small wet sounds.

And the entire universe remained thirty metres wide.

Maja said, “So origin isn’t back there.”

“Back where?”

“Thirteen billion years ago or whatever.”

“That can be an earlier physical condition.”

“But not origin.”

“Not in this sense.”

“What is origin then?”

Anna stopped.

“Information.”

Lars groaned.

“Of course it is.”

“No, think about it. Before you can say where, when, distance, movement, cause—anything—you need distinction.”

“Information.”

“Exactly.”

Maja pointed to herself.

“And zero?”

“The observational origin.”

“And the Planck scale?”

“The point where our distinctions stop resolving in the usual physical description.”

Lars brightened.

“Finally, physics.”

“Don’t get excited.”

“So below Planck is nothing?”

“No.”

“Smaller things?”

“Don’t know.”

“Finite?”

“Can’t say.”

“Infinite?”

“Can’t say.”

“That’s not very satisfying.”

“That’s the point.”

Maja said, “Because those are properties we’re trying to carry outside the conditions under which we can distinguish them.”

Anna nodded.

The fog shifted.

For several seconds an enormous slope appeared ahead of them, brown and grey and streaked with old snow.

Then it vanished again.

Nobody spoke.

Finally Lars said, “That was there.”

“Yep.”

“Even when we couldn’t see it.”

“Probably.”

“You’re impossible.”

“No. I’m saying observation isn’t what creates the mountain.”

“Good.”

“It creates the distinction available to us.”

Maja said, “So reality doesn’t depend on us. Observable reality does.”

“Exactly.”

Lars considered this.

“And what we observe is basically movement above the point where movement can be distinguished.”

“Relations and changes, yes.”

“And we reconstruct backwards.”

“Yep.”

“Until we reach the earliest thing our model can reconstruct.”

“Yep.”

“And then some physicist says, ‘therefore everything came from this.’”

Anna smiled.

“That’s the temptation.”

“But really they’ve reached the edge of their reconstruction.”

“Exactly.”

Maja said, “History isn’t origin.”

Anna looked at her.

“That’s it.”

They stood silently again.

Somewhere beyond visibility came the faint click of stone.

All three turned.

Nothing.

Lars whispered, “Reindeer?”

“Shhhhh.”

“Rock?”

“Could be.”

“God?”

Anna looked at him.

“Outside model parameters.”

Maja nearly choked trying not to laugh.

The sound came again.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

“Forward.”

Lars followed.

“Toward what?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Anna fell in beside them.

Behind them, their tracks dissolved into wet grey.

Ahead, the fog opened only as quickly as they entered it.

Lars looked sideways at Anna.

“So what’s outside the interval?”

She shrugged.

“Klaggy motto.”

“That still doesn’t mean anything.”

“Exactly.”