Marcel had had a fantasy based on concepts from three books he had been reading and an offhand remark that Phillipe didn’t remember.
“The language games of the Martians and the cave dwellers became life-forms that existed primarily in the quivering extra dimensions of the super-string loops. They battled for supremacy over the evolution of other life. Cut a thousand years into the future, and there I was: meeting with one of them (not sure which kind) and discussing network identities….”
Phillipe wished the conversation would move on. He did not understand everything that Marcel was saying, but he knew vaguely of it symbolism. A close reading of the fantasy would illuminate a grand logic to the world both fundamental and all-encompassing. It was the same logic Marcel had been developing since adolescence, and it was wrong.
