Page 878 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

two threads instead of just one. A completely unnatural, indirect approach that when it comes right down to it, I still don't understand."
"So we're going to sew our way through space?"
"In a way. The shortest distance between two points isn't necessarily a line. It comes from something Andrew learned from the hive queen. How they call some kind of creature from an alternate spacetime when they create a new hive queen. Grego jumped on that as proof that there was a real non-real space. Don't ask me what he means by that. I make bricks for a living."
"Unreal realspace," said Grego. "You had it backward."
"The dead awake," said Olhado.
"Have a seat, Valentine," said Grego. "My cell isn't much, but it's home. The math on this is still crazy but it seems to fit. I'm going to have to spend some time with Jane on it, to do the really tight calculations and run some simulations, but if the hive queen's right, and there's a space so universally adjacent to our space that philotes can pass into our space from the other space at any point, and if we postulate that the passage can go the other way, and if the hive queen is also right that the other space 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?"