Page 585 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"There's a physical phenomenon in the universe, a very common one, that is completely unexplained, and yet everyone takes it for granted and no one has seriously investigated why and how it happens. This is it: None of the ansible connections has ever broken."
"Nonsense," said Jakt. "One of the ansibles on Trondheim was out of service for six months last year-- it doesn't happen often, but it happens."
Again Miro's lips and jaw were motionless; again the image answered immediately. Clearly he was not controlling it now. "I didn't say that the ansibles never break down. I said that the connections-- the philotic twining between the parts of a split meson-- have never broken. The machinery of the ansible can break down, the software can get corrupted, but never has a meson fragment within an ansible made the shift to allow its philotic ray to entwine with another local meson or even with the nearby planet."
"The magnetic field suspends the fragment, of course," said Jakt.
"Split mesons don't endure long enough in nature for us to know how they naturally act," said Valentine.
"I know all the standard answers," said the image. "All nonsense. All the kind of answers parents give their children when they don't know the truth and don't want to bother finding out. People still treat the ansibles like magic. Everybody's glad enough that the ansibles keep on working; if they tried to figure out why, the magic might go out of it and then the ansibles would stop."
"Nobody feels that way," said Valentine.
"They all do," said the image. "Even if it took hundreds of years, or a thousand years, or three thousand years, one of those connections should have broken by now. One of those meson fragments should have shifted its philotic ray-- but they never have."
"Why?" asked Miro.
Valentine assumed at first that Miro was asking a rhetorical question. But no-- he was looking at the image just like the rest of them, asking it to tell him why.
"I thought this program was reporting your speculations," said Valentine.
"It was," said Miro. "But not now."
"What if there's a being who lives among the philotic connections between ansibles?" asked the image.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" asked Miro. Again he was speaking to the image on the screen.