Tess and Harry on the Dock
Tess and Harry had dinner alone on a night when a full moon erased the stars from much of the sky.
Marie had traveled east two days earlier for the wedding of an old friend and had missed her return flight, arriving at the gate just moments after the door to the aircraft had been closed.
It would be another day before she returned.
Vivian had driven Marie to Madison and would drive her, and a car full of groceries, back the next day.
In the meantime, Harry and Tess made do with peanut butter crackers and canned soup.
“Why did Marie miss her flight?”
“Even if we assume that infinite causal regression is metaphysically impossible, we can’t know,” said Harry.
“Sometimes I wish you would answer a question without trying to confuse me.”
“I’m not trying to confuse you, Tess. But think about it.
Let’s say that your mother would have made her flight if she’d gotten to the gate two minutes earlier.
What caused that two-minute delay? Maybe someone in the TSA line in front of her got stopped because he had something suspicious in his bag.
Why did that person make it to the line before your mother?
Because he found a parking space right next to the shuttle stop.
Why did he get that parking space? Because someone else had just pulled out.
Why did that person pull out at that precise moment and not two minutes earlier?
Because she stopped to buy a newspaper. Why did she buy a newspaper? Because—”
“Okay, I get it,” said Tess. “You’re saying you can always trace the cause back one step further.”
“If that were true, then the regression would be infinite,” said Harry. “And metaphysics tells us that’s not possible. So theoretically you may always be able to trace it back one step, but practically you can never trace it back to the beginning.”
“But aren’t you assuming that the only reason Marie missed the plane was because of the person in front of her in line? Aren’t there lots of other things that could have delayed her by two minutes?”
“Very good, Tess. Yet another reason that we can never answer the question.”
“So, we can never know why anything happens?”
“In a way that’s true. We can never know the root cause of anything.”
“Why do you think she was late?” asked Tess.
“She dawdles,” said Harry.
“Or maybe it was fate,” said Tess.