"I - can't produce any concrete memory of him acting differently," Edmund says wretchedly. "I don't remember having the impression of my brother as a, a - stimulus-response machine with no intermediate states - but why would I, I fucked you because we both liked butterflies."

"I'm sure our conversation had more subjects than just butterflies," Peter protests weakly. "Like, okay, come on, this makes no sense, right? Me emerging fully formed from the void at your door, us acting like, like—like video game NPCs or something, until just twenty minutes ago?"

"When all that remains is the impossible..."

Edmund makes a deeply unhappy noise.

"When all that remains is the impossible you probably made some mistake in your impossibility proofs," Peter grumbles.

"Well, did you? Clearly one of us is wrong about what's possible. But - do you have any clear evidence, memories of learning the things you know, or just a sourceless conviction they're true? Because I've just had a very salient example of the fact that I can't trust my own preconceptions."

"No, and it's giving me existential anxiety! Why do I even have the phrase 'existential anxiety' in my expressive vocabulary! Anyway I just have the very strong impression that I should be holding onto stuff like, like Camoc's Razor, and evolution, and, and, and like I could rederive the principles here and they'd still make sense, and people appearing fully formed and then acting like video-game NPCs for however long before suddenly acquiring consciousness has a ton of unexplained complexity!"

He's hyperventilating again.

Edmund strokes his back. "I just - I'm scared too."

"I'm not sure—Peter is the best option to help with this," is how he decides to phrase what he's thinking, which is closer to "aaaaaahhhh it is very creepy to have a zombie here right noooooow".

"I will readily admit that his hugs are less comforting than I would otherwise have expected. You can go, brother mine."

"Love you," Peter says, disentangling himself and heading for the door. 

Once he's gone Peter grabs a nearby pillow and screams into it.

"I want," when he's done, "to stop thinking about this. For - at least ten minutes. Is that possible."

"Absolutely," he replies immediately, and tells his brain to shut up about how giving Edmund a blowjob would be a great way to get him to not think about anything, come on, why is he getting horny now of all times oh it's because he's naked and Edmund isn't that's an interesting kink to have.

Edmund observes the physical correlate to these thoughts.

"You really can turn on a simoleon, huh."

"My brain has found very circuitous routes to thinking I ought to give you a blowjob but it is probably not the time."