Permutation City

by Greg Egan

She didn’t mind having been taken in, briefly; what she resented was not being able to be fooled again.

She couldn’t expect to live off the proceeds of insanity, and also take for granted the usual parameters of civilized behavior.

I killed Anna. I killed Anna. That’s who I am.” He reached for the scar which defined him, and stroked it as if it were a talisman.

Immortality would have been meaningless, trapped in a “machine” with a finite number of possible states; in a finite time he would have exhausted the list of every possible thing he could be. Only the promise of eternal growth made sense of eternal life.

But having chosen to make no effort to relieve the pangs of homesickness, she seemed to have forfeited her right to the emotion. How could she claim to long for something which she could so easily possess – while continuing to deny it to herself?