“And I am quite unsure,” said the tiny mind, no larger than one pea, maybe two, “whether my blue is the true blue.”

Both sat in tubs, submerged in a clear juice, sloshing and wonderfully gloopy. Cubes of ice bobbed on the surface, lit by small LED lights.

“Don’t you think, though,” said the larger mind, “it has to be that your blue is my blue is the one blue, through and through? Everything you call blue, red, wooden, or soft and light, why we agree on these things, indeed.”

From above came a hand, strapped white and tight by a latex glove. Gripped between its fingers was a Toodle.

“How, though do you answer this: were my reds blue, my blue reds, who would know but me alone? I don’t see how you can prove to me my own concept of blueness,” said the tiny mind.

“Jeremy-8, a good cortical friend of mine, once said: ‘Blue is sombre, heavy laps, it is clarity, it is hydrating – it weights more than yellow but is lighter than grey.’,” said the larger mind.

Klick! the end of the Toodle opened and from it a small protrusion, like a needle extended. Lithe as a feather, the Toodle protrusion explored the top of the larger mind and prodded it in various ways, changed it.

Mind-B, the tiny mind, asked, “Don’t tell me Jeremy-8’s definition of blue, tell me yours.” Nestled in its ice cubes, the tiny mind would have nodded a neck if it had one, so instead it just finished with a humph.

“Oh, well, I have had the most curious sense of transformation just now – perhaps a lapse of nostalgia, no bother – here is how I see blue:” Prodding one last time, the Toodle was finally removed from the larger mind as it said this, the hand given a pencil and put near a clipboard, where it sat ready to write notes.

“Quashy, washy, entirely chocked with specklization, and – yes – I taste apples and cinnamon and tarmac so delicately blended. Radishes, tears, and the sound of an oyster chirping,” spoke the larger mind, called mind-A, quite confidently.

Silence for a moment, only the clink of some ice and the scratch of a pencil to fill the pregnant pause, then the tiny mind spoke, “What. This is your depiction of blue, my engorged friend?”

“Trousers, fresh-pressed – the sent of a kettle’s whistling dreams, moisture licked from a morning window, the scattle-rattle of plant root tearing at the soil. Up-and-down, side-to-side, yes even these motions are so blue its true.”

“Very interesting,” said the tiny mind, and it went on to say how mind-A should stop playing games, for topics of consciousness should only be taken with a two heaped tablespoons of seriousness and severity. “Water,” it concluded by saying, “that’s the bluest of blue.”

“X-B-9’s planetary surface is entirely liquid methane – now that is the bluest of blue!” replied the larger mind.

“You are troubling me for I realize that, of all I say, it has been so long since I have seen the sea, that I just remember it as blue – but what if my memory were old, degraded, incorrect in many ways?”

Zzzt! and the finger of the hand pushed a red button, importantly big and round, the lights in the tubs flicked off, and both minds stopped babbling about blue.