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     "As long as it is a fair test, Doctor. My knowledge is extensive in many areas, and of course I am an expert in my field, but I won't allow a trick question."

     "I assure you - and your editor - that this is not a trick question. Remember, answer the question in your mind, not out loud. Here it is. One plus one equals ...."

     Two. One plus one equals two.

     "Did you hear it?" Doctor Atum asked with uncivilized elan.

     "Hear what? I assure you I answered correctly, but you said not to answer out loud."

     "Did you hear the answer in your head?"

     "Of course. I heard 'two'."

     "The sound of that thought is a sense-visible proof that thoughts have a physical structure."

     "Of course," said my research assistant.

     "What?" I said. "Of course what?"

     "You're not trying very hard, Professor. Sound is a measurable physical quantity. Your mind created, or forced to be created, a sound. Ergo your mind has a physical quality. You can wend your way through all the alternatives, but all must lead you back to a point where the mind affects - and effects - a physical process. There is no escaping the conclusion."

     "I see it now," said my research assistant. "Reading operates the same way."

     "Yes, but my husband prefers the math demonstration. It is more dramatic," said MakeMake. She shared a pompous smile with Doctor Atum.

     "It is more direct," replied the Doctor, flatly contradicting her.

     I re-assumed control of the situation. "Suppose that what you say is correct," and here I leaned a little closer to my recorder, "just suppose it is correct. So what?"

     "So everything, Professor. Consider my home, Living Spaces. The thousands of rooms here re -create the architecture of every known historical and present civilization; it is a three dimensional map of evolving construction techniques. And Living Spaces naturally contains new architectural designs, extrapolated from designs which already exist; some of these new designs withstand the forces exerted upon them, while others, as you may have noticed, are renovated by the forces or simply fall.

     "Architecture is the imposition of mass on space, of structure on freedom; Living Spaces is the physical reflection of the psychic reality that processes and orders human thoughts. The ideas of architecture - proportion, scale, symmetry, harmony - the equilibrium of merging patterns of weight, light and direction - the recognition of which is the glory of ancient Greece - are reflections of the same structures which created them, the human mind.

     "Follow a simple time line: The Greek post and lintel. The Roman arch. The Byzantine dome - a Roman idea whose circular implications the Byzantines found irresistable. The Gothic tower and flying buttress. All these innovations are distinctive structures reflective of the mind that built them, and each reveals a more advanced knowledge of physical forces - inward, downward, outward thrusts of physical weight - than the mind which preceeded them.

     "For example, the Greeks and Romans relied on interior supports - walls and columns - to keep their buildings - their ideas - standing. Compare that to the Gothics; the invention of the flying buttress shifted emphasis from interior supports and sheer bulk to elaborate exterior supports - exterior contexts - for walls thrust outward by the massive domes sitting atop them. The idea of balance, of competing forces held in check to create a stable building - a stable idea - had graduated from pyramids and rectangles to a complex mix of hemispheres, internal supports, and external supports. The human mind had recognized part of its own construction and mastered the projection of that construction out into the world. Imagination had crystallized into action. The human psychic architecture had expanded, and the expansion was reflected in its creations."

     MakeMake unceremoniously interrupted her husband. "Some buildings are constructed from the outside in - the exterior influences the design of the interior, and some buildings from the inside out - the interior influences the exterior design.

     "Idols - statues of gods - are physical expressions of the idea the god embodies. Religious temples were originally built to protect the idols of ancient gods; the protecting context - the temple - came after the idol. The interior influenced the construction of the exterior."

     "Yes. And if you follow that line further back, then caves preceded temples - caves were protecting contexts for the idea of existence - of survival," my research assistant said stupidly.

     "You are an archeologist in the making, Spirit; an archeologist of ideas, just like my own support context - my MakeMake. Expand the line you are on laterally - form a plane. You will see that ideas are protected not only by walls, but also by rules, rites, secrets; the manifestations of all the structures an idea requires to endure.

     "Windows, multiple rooms, multiple floors and similar singular accretions in the architecture of perception are analogies, are physical manifestations of the psychic structures which created them. And civilization, itself such a creation of mental strutures, is no more that a reflection of the internal physical architecture of human minds. The multiplicity of Living Spaces, of opinions, of personal relationships, of variation itself, of creativity itself, can be traced to small differences in the architectures of individual minds."

     My research assistant surprised everyone by pretending to follow all this. "And variations like biodiversity, molecular forms, musical melodies can be traced to the infinity of power relationships created with the Big Bang." I looked at her with some dissatisfaction, but to make herself more comfortable she had angled her body away from mine and our eyes did not meet.

     The Doctor smiled. " 'Variations' is a very big context, isn't it?"

     MakeMake intruded again, destroying my train of thought. "A context is big because it has many rooms. The biggest context is God, because it contains all the other contexts.

     "In monotheism, God is always the greater thought. In polytheism, thoughts are categorized under different gods. But even in polytheism, there is always one god who rules the others - one greater thought that unites - connects to and organizes the lesser thoughts. The message of religion is that a greater thought exists, a more powerful thought exists, and that as the thought becomes greater, God becomes greater. The awareness of a greater thought has guided human history from its first mating dance to the creation of the Gnomon."

     "My wife has a way of putting everything in perspective, doesn't she?" Doctor Atum narrowed his eyes at MakeMake, who narrowed hers back. "The entire Universe can be considered a matter of architecture. What we do here at Living Spaces is study the building, maintenence, renovation and demolition of contextual architectures. Our purpose is to design and construct an ideal Living Space, efficient in form and flexible in goals, and conscious by its very nature, for the good of all humanity."

     "Hogwash." I said without hesitation.

     "Conscious?" queried my companion. Her good sense was apparently returning.

     "The right question," Doctor Atum said approvingly.

     "Just what do you mean by conscious, Doctor?" I lifted my foot and stamped it down. Immediately the floor monitor awakened, displaying a bottomless fissure; it was as though the earth had divided below me. Before I could fall the fissure closed and the screen went blank again. No one said anything; apparently it had happened so quickly that I was the only one who noticed it.

     I soon continued in a strong, clear voice. "Is it possible to get even one straight answer from you? My companion is completely confused, and although I can easily follow your argument, I can tell you it is seriously flawed."

     "Perhaps we can discuss the flaws later, Professor. For the moment, let me explain what I mean by conscious."

  "I hope your explanation will avoid complexity. My companion is nearing the end of her patience." This last remark elicited a long gaze from Spirit-To-Change, which I returned with pleasure.

     "I promise to be very basic in my definition; I will define it by its structure alone. Step back for a moment and look at psychic structure. The architecture of the mind is an interaction of contexts - an ordering of power relationships in spreading increments; the ordering is both mandated and controlled by the laws of physics. Many power relationships - undiscovered physical laws, undiscovered inventions, or alternate points of view, for example - apparently exist outside the visibility of our senses - in a phrase, they are unconscious."

     "Doctor Atum, if you please. There is a man called Freud, now long dead, whose work I should introduce you to."

     "I'm sure they have already been introduced," Spirit-To-Change said suddenly, and inexplicably.

     "Yes we have, thank you. I acknowledge my debt to him, Professor, but I am not repeating his work. My definition of a conscious idea is one whose architecture is visible to our senses; we can describe the ideas which compose it. If you have a pet cat named 'Kitty' you know the ideas composing the context 'Kitty'; an animal you love with four legs, a tail and a soft meow. By our definition, 'Kitty' is a conscious idea to you, but unconscious to me if I didn't know you had a cat."

     "Then you are saying that a conscious idea is one with exposed architecture," my research assistant said, raising her head as though she smelled something fishy.

     "Yes, it's a simple definition. It follows that consciousness is the state of being conscious - the state of examining the architecture of the psyche."

     Spirit-To-Change's face closed around her nose, and her expression became the very pict of disinterest. "And what is doing the examining, if you know what I mean?"

     "That I cannot answer."

     "AHA!" I almost shouted.

     "You are correct, Professor; you have me. I can speculate for hours, but until I have an answer that can be reduced to structure, I would only be guessing. I have glimpses but no mastery of the truth. My present work involves mapping the revealed design - and looking for the answer."

     "How can you study consciousness when you don't know what it is?" asked my companion. She pulled her legs up under her on the sofa and sat on her iridescent shoes. It was clear that she had lost all confidence in the Doctor.

     "True, I don't know how it works - I cannot design a working model - but I have a defined idea of what I am trying to construct; I have a hypothesis I am trying to prove through observation and experiment. This is the way science works. As you may have noticed, robots are my test subjects. I design power relationships - programs - which when successful embody specific ideas. I then combine the ideas, like DNA combines genes, and wait.

     "You have seen some of the results. The robots have no faces; instead they have monitors picting the robot's thought processes - the interaction of the power relationships we call ideas. Over time, the monitors of some robots display nascent eyes; those robots develop familiar biological components - animal and botanical - as the eyes mature. Unfortunately, as yet I am unable to control the development of those eyes; some interaction between ideas occurs that I cannot identify."

     "What do you think is happening?" asked Spirit-To-Change. She stroked the soft skin of her cheek as she spoke; one finger slightly smudged her vermillion lipstick.

     "I'm not sure, Spirit. I can control the initial ideas I program into the robots, but there may be some flaw in the construction of those ideas; or there may be a process, unknown to me, that occurs hen consciousness expands - when the 'examiner' grows. Ultimately one or more of the ideas breaks down and mutates into another power relationship - another idea. The resulting chain reaction, as the ideas move into new power relationships with each other, sometimes creates an advanced development, and sometimes just cripples or deactivates the robot." Doctor Atum's yellow skin darkened, then brightened. "If you like, I can pict the grand design of my working hypothesis - the model that best fits the facts I have so far uncovered."

     "I've heard enough," I said. At this Spirit-To-Change turned and looked at me, her eyes full of mercy for the Doctor. I responded to her plea. "But go on if you must."

     "I will be brief. Let's delve into the structure of a mental architecture. Imagine a group of contexts; now imagine that each of these contexts contains an identical idea in its construction."

     "And by idea, you mean a unique power relationship."

     "Yes, Spirit. As defined by its composing particles, yes. Ideas are power relationships, contexts are groups of ideas - groups of power relationships. When a group of contexts share an idea - when each context contains an identical idea - an identical power relationship - that identical idea 'organizes' - connects - the contexts together; in effect, they share the architecture of that identical idea, as a door is shared by adjoining rooms. For simplicity, let's name that shared identical idea a Polyvalent Context, or PVC. Then the PVC 'tail' physically organizes all contexts like 'dogs', 'cats' and 'horses', which all contain the idea of 'tail' in their physical psychic structure.

     "The PVC is the functional - architectural - equivalent of what we mean by the words 'Point of View' - a group of contexts united by a single idea, whether large or small. Obviously, since 'head', 'eyes' and 'animal' also apply to dogs, cats and horses the relationships among PVCs - like a window that looks out over many rooms - like the Roman groin vault with four entrances - create a Roshomon of interconnected passageways. Do you see? Following the contexts connected to the architecture of 'eyes' will ultimately lead you to the contexts of heads, animal, tail, dogs, cats and horses."

     "Yes, I see that. And consciousness is that feeling of 'following the contexts'; the phenomenom that is actually doing the examining." Spirit-To-Change was humoring him, a service I was loath to perform.

     "Yes, according to my working hypothesis. Consciousness is the 'context of contexts' that is doing the detective work - finding and putting the pieces of the puzzle together. As I said, I cannot build the actual mechanism, so I cannot pict the thing itself. But I can give you a microscopic view of the detective work, within the limits of my experimental findings."

The Doctor jumped up, completely galvanized by his fantasy. MakeMake giggled and clapped her hands a few times.

     "Psychic architecture is the 'Living Space' of ideas. Raw data from the senses has a physical structure - because a datum is just an idea - and like any other idea, the meaning of any single datum is just the power relationships between its composing primordial particles. The physical shape of this datum - its structure - the spacial design of its composing particles - can be abstractly designated as the datum's Geometric Outline or GO. As the GO passes through the psychic architecture - as an idea passes through a framework of other ideas - it is physically handled, directed, modified and/or destroyed by the 'circuitry' - the physical shape of the architecture it is passing through. The GO is the energy of change that stimulates the building, modification, and deconstruction of existing psychic structures. It is the protagonist to every mental and bodily response.

     "Now imagine a 'context of contexts' composed of essential ideas like survival and death, power and weakness, balance and imbalance, truth and delusion; a context so intertwined in the psychic architecture it is rooted in all the polyvalents." To emphasize this point, the Doctor knotted his fingers into different combinations.

     "The polyvalents - PVCs - are each one a Point of View - a contextual place to stand and evaluate incoming GOs from the senses. Consciousness is then the 'context of contexts' - the parallax view - the mandala of polyvalents - that routes the incoming GOs through multiple PVCs - revealing the structure of the contexts though which the GO passes as it is processed. Consciousness is the feedback system that thus far is beyond my ability to design. This feedback - this 'mirroring' of data between PVCs and consciousness - is a very complex phenomenon. Any group of contexts with this ability can be said to be conscious. And this ability is an essential component in the definition of humanity."

     MakeMake snapped her fingers.

     "Ahhhh," said my research assistant.

     "Of course man is conscious," I said without hostility. Hearing no rebuttal, or any response of any kind, I added "To be alive is to be conscious."

     "And the Gnomon contains all the contexts," Spirit-To-Change said slowly. Suddenly she struck her forehead with the palm of her hand.

     At that moment I nearly rose to comfort her, but my companion unexpectedly turned to me and repeated my last statement - "To be alive is to be conscious."

     I smiled broadly, nodding my head decisively, until a curious thought occurred to me. After a few permutations, I confronted Doctor Atum.

     "Surely you are not suggesting that the Gnomon is alive?"

     "Before I answer that, Professor, why don't we visit the Gnomon. It is some distance away, but I have a barkos."

     I pretended reluctance, and my research assistant agreed for both of us. I decided to use this opportunity to change the course of the interview and commence with my real mission.

     Before we left MakeMake said "Please, I have something to show you. This Living Space has a unique design." Using a remote she turned off the lights in the room, simultaneously closing the telescope opening in the dome. The mirrored interior of the dome now reflected the Gnomon pict now emanating not only from the walls but from the floor as well. In the eerie silence, I felt as though I were trapped in a grotto of brute pandemonium, attacked by an immanent storm of conflicts over which I had no control. An ordinary man would have felt suffocated, but as you know I am no ordinary man. However, as time passed, I found it difficult to breathe, and my heart beat in rhythm with the beat of the Gnomon. I began perspiring, and fearing for the health of my companion, prepared to cry out.

     At that moment the lights came back on and the dome parted, pouring in sunlight. I noted that Spirit-To-Change was safe, and mopped my brow in relief.

     "Exhilarating, isn't it?" said Doctor Atum.

     My companion, though trembling inside, was all smiles. "Doctor Atum, MakeMake, I am so glad that I have met you."

     "And we you, Spirit-To-Change. And we you, Professor Frost. Shall we go?"

                              
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