Credit does not transfer, and a conclusion needs its middle

Trevithick asked the correct question this morning before I had finished asking it myself. Noted, because it is true, and because I intend to hold that fact separately from whatever he does with it next. He is right to ask what he asked. He is not yet right about what it means. I will not let the first fact buy credit for the second.

Two chapters later, at dinner:

"You've gone from one basalt outcrop to the architecture of the galaxy in a single breath, Heath," she said. "That's not a leap, it's a vanishing act. Somewhere between our reading and your current sheet there's supposed to be a mechanism — a way charge actually gets from wherever you think it originates down into that specific rock, through however many intervening layers of atmosphere, ocean, and crust — and you haven't shown us that mechanism. You've shown us the ending. I don't take endings on faith. Show me the middle, and I'll take the whole thing seriously."

William's log the same night:

Trevithick presented an unverified mechanism at dinner tonight — heliospheric/galactic current sheet transition, cited as explanation for the trench anomaly. No citable timeline, no demonstrated intermediate mechanism. Classifying as speculative pending further evidence. Recommend disregarding until a testable claim is offered.