“It’s the same thing, rearranged,” Stephanie said. She touched her glass to Emma’s and drank. Her thumb traced the black skeleton printed onto the glass.

“Spacing out?” Emma asked. Stephanie smiled and looked at the empty plastic fishbowl at the centre of the table. She picked it up.

“No, spacing in. It’s like this fishbowl. If there were fish in it and not just booze. If we were fish, and other fish could make smaller bowls. It’s like… You know how a universe could be born from a black hole?”

“I absolutely do not know about that. You never bring it up in conversation multiple times per day,” Emma quipped.

“Anyway. Well, the fish in the ocean and the fish in the fishbowl have different experiences. But if the bowl was big enough, they would have the same experience.”

“I see,” Emma said.

“But what if the real ocean isn’t fishbowl shaped?”

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“Are you real?” Emma asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m not drunk,” Stephanie announced.

“I know, that’s what worries me.”

“A society in the future might be able to make lots of bowls.”

“Fishbowls?”

“But bigger.” Stephanie’s eyes received the red and yellow beams of light from the corners of the club, and her brain translated these into subtle thuds that felt as if they were generated in the jelly within her eyes. At the same time the cool feeling of the glass in her hand became flashes of white and crackling green.

“But an advanced fish could detect the shape of the water it was swimming inside, from the way it moved and interacted with the fish,” Stephanie explained.

“Are you lecturing me, so I pay for this round?” Emma asked. Stephanie broke eye contact and focused again on the printed skeleton. As she took another sip of the neon green drink, she imagined the skeleton was a real thing bobbing around inside the glass, waiting to be freed.

“I might be. Cherry next time?” Stephanie said.

“That’s pure sugar.”

“Did you think the mango one was real mangoes?”

“Stop talking about what’s real and what isn’t and start mentally preparing yourself for dancing, because there will be dancing,” Emma warned. Stephanie nodded in mock subservience.

“Dancing isn’t real,” she quipped.

“I’ve had enough of you.”

“No you haven’t.”

“I have.”

“Having enough of me is not real.”