Prelude: A Framework in Brief

The TV over the bar was tuned to a science documentary. Colorful images of brain scans flickered across the screen while a voiceover droned on about "the neuroscience of consciousness" and "where the self resides in the brain."

Synergos stirred the ice in his drink, half-listening. He hadn’t expected to see Haplous there, slouched at the far end with a beer chaser beside a half-empty glass. Scotch on the rocks, or maybe bourbon – it was hard to tell in the dim light. He was wearing that same threadbare jacket he always had on when he wasn’t in monastery robes.

"Didn’t expect to see you here," Synergos said, sliding onto the stool next to him.

Haplous turned, gave a faint smile. "Me neither. But bars have their uses. Background noise keeps the thoughts from bouncing around inside the noggin walls."

He tossed a peanut into his mouth and nodded at the screen. "Still trying to find the ghost in the machine, I see."

"Didn’t you use to work in that field?"

"In a manner of speaking."

Synergos raised an eyebrow.

"They’re doing their best," Haplous said. "But the real trouble runs deeper than they know. They’re trying to explain something that was misframed from the start. They've built entire theories on shadows."

"Like what?"

"Like thinking memory is replay. That vision is a window to the outside world. That conscious perception is input. Those are just mistaken impressions, and yet since they all feel so true, no one questions them. That’s the trap."

Synergos blinked. "Wait – conscious perception isn’t input?"

"That one always gets people. But no. The brain’s got two lanes – stuff comes in, stuff goes out. And the kind of experience we talk about, remember, feel – it doesn’t come from the inbound lane."

"So where does it come from?"

"The other side," Haplous said, crunching another peanut. "The outbound lane. The brain’s winding up to say something, and that signal flares. You don’t notice the incipient speech, because you're already getting the end meaning. Did you ever notice that the experience of thinking and the experience of catching the gist of someone speaking is the same?"

Synergos narrowed his eyes. "You sure you're up to laying this all out after two beers and a double scotch?"

Unflinching, Haplous touched the rim of his glass. "You mean the JD? Actually, yeah. It chases away the ADHD. Got diagnosed late. Always had it. The ethanol molecule cuts the static just enough to let the thread come through."

Synergos nodded slowly. "I remember when you first showed up at the monastery. The cardinal mentioned something about your background. Philosophy of science, wasn’t it?"

The last phrase got drowned out by some people yelling near the dartboard. "What?"

There was a pause, then a short laugh from Synergos. "I guess those letters are confidential anyway."

"In any case, don't judge a book by its cover," Haplous said. "Don’t judge the ideas by where they came from. Just see if the structure holds. That’s the only thing that counts."

"All right then," Synergos said. "So what have you figured out?"

Haplous turned to face him fully. "Okay. Just the bones. No fluff."

"First, the brain builds a model of the world. Not a snapshot – a whole system. With the geographical maps, cause-and-effect, time – it figures out what things are, how they relate, how to get what it wants. Even lizards do this. Simple versions, but still models."

"It’s not just reacting?"

"Hell no. It’s predicting, adjusting, zeroing in on goals. That’s what survival is. And to do that, it needs internal stand-ins. I call them neuronal proxies."

"Sounds abstract."

"They’re not," Haplous said. "They’re patterns – physical configurations that mean something to the system. Like an acorn, the entrance to a burrow, or a predator. They’re real, just defined by function. Like a fulcrum in a lever. Doesn’t matter what it’s made of. What matters is what it does."

Synergos nodded. "Okay. Go on."

"Now, when it comes to humans, add language," Haplous said. "Evolution throws in this new thing – a way for one brain to transfer parts of its internal models to another brain. That’s the Language Transfer Device. The LTD."

"Let me guess. Doesn’t create meaning. Just transmits it."

"Bingo. It converts internal proxies into sound or gesture, so another brain can light up the same configuration proxy among its proxies. That’s all it is. A signal bridge."

"So how does that lead to... experience?"

"Here’s where it gets clever," Haplous said. "Eventually, the brain figures out it can use that same signal – on itself. Before the words come out, the signal starts ramping up. It starts along its way, in the process of getting worked up toward speech, in the outbound channel of the LTD. The brain learns to detect that – it catches wind of the meaning. It is a sort of functional looping."

"There are no words – the signal never gets that far. But the brain already knows how to grasp the gist of it. And that’s what becomes conscious experience. Not input. Not raw data. But output, caught before it leaves the system."

Synergos leaned back, trying to take it in.

"But why would the brain even evolve a system like that? One that lets meaning bounce back inside?"

Haplous grinned. "It didn’t. That part wasn’t designed. That was a discovery – a glitch, a shortcut, a side alley the brain found on its own."

He leaned in. "See, the brain’s a born recycler. Evolution reuses parts like a mechanic in a junkyard. Vision got hijacked for reading. Tool circuits got repurposed for grammar. The brain doesn’t build from scratch – it remixes."

"So looping was a remix."

"Exactly. The LTD was built to communicate. But once the brain started catching its own signal, even before it got so far as the motor commands to speech, it stumbled onto something new – a sort of alternate world that it can shape without actually running all around and carrying out actions. Or a world that models something that it saw yesterday."

"You’re saying that’s what imagination, thinking, and recollection are?"

"That’s right. Those are not the only kind of brain activity – but the only kind you can talk about. The only kind that becomes memory, introspection, story."

Synergos was quiet, watching the flickering TV. A news segment now – a flood rescue in progress.

"But I can look at things without putting them into words," he said.

"Sure. But what you’re experiencing isn’t raw vision – it’s the stuff you’re gearing up to say about it. It’s what would’ve come out if you spoke." And Haplous added, "And there is proof that it works like this."

"Proof?"

"There’s a famous case – Maury’s dream. He dreams he’s in the French Revolution, dragged to trial, guillotined – just as a piece of his headboard falls and smacks him awake. His mom confirms it hit at the moment he woke."

"Which means the whole dream..."

"Was stitched together in a heartbeat. As he woke. Not during sleep. The brain found the clues and built the backstory."

"Like a detective at the scene?"

"Exactly. And a very good one at that, except for one thing, there was no evolutionary  constraint to tell it not to fill gaps with whatever fits. It makes its best guess. And there are other little quirks that arose due to evolutionary constraints or the lack of them."

Synergos looked down at his drink. "Like what?"

"Okay," Haplous said. "Look at your glass. Now try to focus on the TV at the same time."

Synergos flicked his eyes back and forth.

"See what you’re doing? Switching. Can’t loop both at once. One lane only. You feel like you’re taking it all in, but that’s just the mistaken impression. The brain stitches the timeline."

The bartender came by. Synergos waved him off.

"And what about this thing they're explaining on the TV?" Synergos asked, nodding at the screen, where neuroscientists were talking about the "enigmatic" aspects of split-brain patients.

"Perfect case. Info goes to the non-verbal hemisphere. The brain at large reacts fine, but looping happens on the language side. No loop, no experience – I mean, not the kind you can report."

"Can't say I get it," Synergos said. "Need some time to wrap my head around that."

"Just before this, they were talking about blindsight. Where patients say that a part of their visual field is totally blind, and yet they can react perfectly, as though they were seeing just fine there."

"So this – " Synergos said, gesturing to the bar, the drinks, the conversation. "It's not something I'm looking out at?"

"No, all of that is what you might say – you are looking at your potential expression."

He leaned in. "You see that bowl? Look at it. Now close your eyes and imagine it. Now listen to this phrase, 'There is a bowl of pretzels there.' Did you feel the similarity?"

Synergos laughed. "Of course, I’m really looking at, imagining, or listening to you talk about pretzels."

Haplous nodded. "It takes time for that one to dawn on people. But it's all the same mechanism. It's activation of proxies."

There was a long pause.

A drunk down the bar shouted at the TV.

Haplous glanced at his watch. "I should go. But think about this: what if none of what you’re experiencing right now is 'direct'? What if it’s all your brain’s own echo – its best guess at what’s happening, built out of internal signals?"

He stood, dropped a bill on the bar.

"Start looking for the seams. They’re there. You’ve just been trained not to see them."

He buttoned his coat. "Maybe I’ll see you at the monastery next week."

Synergos nodded, voice quiet. "Yeah. I think you will."

Haplous disappeared into the night.

Synergos sat for a while. He looked at his hand. He closed his eyes. He imagined the hand. He mentally spoke the phrase "There’s a hand there." He tried to feel the difference.

He opened his eyes, and for the first time, he noticed something strange. For an instant he saw the world around him in the same nature as imagination or recollection – something constructed.

"What in the world?" he muttered, and shook his head.

He paid his tab and stepped out into the night.

Same world. Different eyes.

And a week of conversations ahead that would turn everything he thought he knew upside down.

Continue to Dialog 1: Basic Mechanics ...