Permutation City

by Greg Egan

If you think translating human biochemistry into Autoverse terms is difficult, how are you going to map yourself into a six-dimensional world designed solely to support von Neumann machines?’

‘Don’t you find it ironic?’ ‘What?’ ‘Trans-humans taking pleasure by stimulating copies of the neural pathways which used to be responsible for the continuation of the species. Out of all the possibilities, we cling to that.’

The whole idea of a creator tears itself apart. A universe with conscious beings either finds itself in the dust … or it doesn’t. It either makes sense of itself on its own terms, as a self-contained whole … or not at all. There never can, and never will be, Gods.’