Scott grabbed a can of dog food out of the cupboard and looked down at his beagle Rusty, who was observing him intently. Scott considered Rusty’s thought process for a moment. Rusty knew food was in the can, and he knew he would soon be eating that food. He could even hear and smell in ways that humans couldn’t imagine. On the other hand, Rusty had no idea how the dog food got into that can because he would never understand how human factories worked. He didn’t know that humans had removed his ancestors from the wild thousands of years ago and turned them into domestic servants. He couldn’t fathom why he was neutered. At the same time, Rusty’s short attention span kept him from dwelling on such issues. His mind didn’t grapple with abstractions, and he didn’t seem to care.

Then Scott shifted his focus to humans, who in less than 200 years had gone from horses and wagons to trains, cars, battleships, nuclear power plants, lunar modules, Stealth Bombers, laptops, smartphones, nanorobots, and quantum computers. He doubted that these accomplishments made people much different than their pets. Like many others, Scott supposed that alternate realities existed well beyond what anyone could imagine, but he didn’t spend much time worrying about how they functioned because it was enough of a challenge to function within his own immediate reality, and unlike Rusty, he didn’t have a big, friendly, obedient owner to take care of his every need. He heard a grumble, apologized to Rusty, and began opening the can of dog food.