Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

contains philotes just as ours does, only in the other space-- call it Outside-- the philotes aren't organized according to natural law, but are instead just possibilities, then here's what might work--"
    "Those are awfully big ifs ," said Valentine.
    "You forget," said Olhado. "We start from the premise that wishing makes it so."
    "Right, I forgot to mention that," said Grego. "We also assume that the Hive Queen is right that the unorganized philotes respond to patterns in someone's mind, immediately assuming whatever role is available in the pattern. So that things that are comprehended Outside will immediately come to exist there."
    "All this is perfectly clear," said Valentine. "I'm surprised you didn't think of it before."
    "Right," said Grego. "So here's how we do it. Instead of trying to physically move all the particles that compose the starship and its passengers and cargo from Star A to Star B, we simply conceive of them all-- the entire pattern, including all the human contents-- as existing, not Inside, but Outside. At that moment, all the philotes that compose the starship and the people in it disorganize themselves, pop through into the Outside, and reassemble themselves there according to the familiar pattern. Then we do the same thing again, and pop back Inside-- only now we're at Star B. Preferably a safe orbiting distance away."
    "If every point in our space corresponds to a point Outside," said Valentine, "don't we just have to do our traveling there instead of here?"
    "The rules are different there," said Grego. "There's no whereness there. Let's assume that in our space, whereness-- relative location-- is simply an artifact of the order that philotes follow. It's a convention . So is distance, for that matter. We measure distance according to the time it takes to travel it-- but it only takes that amount of time because the philotes of which matter and energy are comprised follow the conventions of natural law. Like the speed of light."
    "They're just obeying the speed limit."
    "Yes. Except for the speed limit, the size of our universe is arbitrary. If you looked at our universe as a sphere, then if you stood outside the sphere, it could as easily be an inch across or a trillion lightyears or a micron."
    "And when we go Outside--"
    "Then the Inside universe is exactly the same size as any of the disorganized philotes there-- no size at all. Furthermore, since there is no whereness there, all philotes in that space are equally close or nonclose to the location of our universe. So we can reenter Inside space at any point."
    "That makes it sound almost easy," said Valentine.
    "Yes, well," said Grego.
    "It's the wishing that's hard," said Olhado.
    "To hold the pattern, you really have to understand it," said Grego. "Each philote that rules a pattern comprehends only its own part of reality. It depends on the philotes within its pattern to do their job and hold their own pattern, and it also depends the philote that controls the pattern that it's a part of to keep it in its proper place. The atom philote has to trust the neutron and proton and electron philotes to hold their own internal structures together, and the molecule philote to hold the atom in its proper place, while the atom philote concentrates on his own job, which is keeping the parts of the atom in place. That's how reality seems to work-- in this model, anyway."
    "So you transplant the whole thing to Outside and back Inside again," said Valentine. "I understood that."
    "Yes, but who ? Because the mechanism for sending requires that the whole pattern for the ship and all its contents be established as a pattern of its own, not just an arbitrary conglomeration. I mean, when you load a cargo on a ship and the passengers embark, you haven't created a living pattern, a philotic organism. It's not like giving birth to a baby-- that's an organism that can hold itself together. The ship and its contents are just a collection. They can break apart at any point. So when you move all the philotes out into disorganized space, lacking whereness or thisness or any organizing principle, how do they reassemble? And even if they reassemble themselves into the structures they know, what do you have? A lot of atoms. Maybe even living cells and organisms-- but without spacesuits or a starship, because those aren't alive. All the atoms and maybe even the molecules are floating around, probably replicating themselves like crazy as the unorganized philotes