Oceanic

by Greg Egan

She said, ‘You know what they say the modern version of Pascal’s Wager is? Sucking up to as many Transhumanists as possible, just in case one of them turns into God. Perhaps your motto should be “Treat every chatterbot kindly, it might turn out to be the deity’s uncle.”

ChatGPT, anyone?

WiddulHands.com had made him his first billion, and it was still the pre-eminent social networking site for the 0-3 age group.

FoodExcuses.com, a web service that trawled the medical literature to cobble together quasi-scientific justifications for indulging in your favourite culinary vice.

He had the kind of technobabble that could bleed money out of venture capitalists down pat, and though Daniel admired that skill in its proper place, he expected a higher insight-to-bullshit ratio now that Lucien was on his payroll.

‘On Friday. Would you like to go?’ Francine smiled, making no effort now to appear world-weary. ‘Sure. That would be nice.’ I smiled back. I wasn’t giddy, I wasn’t moonstruck, but I felt as if I were standing on the shore of an ocean, contemplating its breadth. I felt the way I felt when I opened a sophisticated monograph in the library, and was reduced to savouring the scent of the print and the crisp symmetry of the notation, understanding only a fraction of what I read: knowing there was something glorious ahead, but knowing too what a daunting task it would be to come to terms with it.

‘Pure karma,’ he announced. ‘I should have guessed.’ ‘Oh, very scientific.’ ‘I’m serious. Forget the Buddhist mystobabble; I’m talking about the real thing. If you stick to your principles, of course things go better for you - assuming you don’t get killed in the process. That’s elementary psychology. People have a highly developed sense of reciprocity, of the appropriateness of the treatment they receive from each other. If things work out too well for them, they can’t help asking, “What did I do to deserve this?” If you don’t have a good answer, you’ll sabotage yourself. Not all the time, but often enough. So if you do something that improves your self-esteem—’

‘I envy you for having come to terms with it so easily.’ ‘I haven’t, really,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve just resolved not to let it worry me, which isn’t quite the same thing.’

if I’d railed against my own mother and father because I’d found fault in the existential conditions with which I’d been lumbered, it wasn’t hard to guess which side would attract the most sympathy from the world at large.

‘Gödel’s theorem proves that the non-computable, non-linear world behind the quantum collapse is a manifest expression of Buddha-nature,’ a neatly dressed youth intoned earnestly, establishing with admirable economy that he had no idea what any of these terms meant.

I’d bought his lifetime purchasing records, and there’d been a steady stream of cyber-fetish porn over a period of two decades. Hardcore and pretentious; half the titles contained the word ‘manifesto

The trouble with giving in to extortion was, it proved that you could be bought.

A public school education did have one great advantage: however miserable you were afterwards, you could always take comfort in the knowledge that life would never be quite as bad again.

‘Are you nervous?’ she asked. ‘Nothing that an hour of throwing up won’t cure.’

The greatest gift of consciousness was the ability to take the patterns of the world inside you,

‘Every human culture had expended vast amounts of intellectual effort on the problem of coming to terms with death. Most religions had constructed elaborate lies about it, making it out to be something other than it was - though a few were dishonest about life, instead.

She skirted inconsolable sadness, then lifted herself above it and went looking for Jasim.

Nonetheless, each individual culture had its roots in a biological heritage that gave rise to behaviour governed more by ancient urges than contemporary realities, and even when they mastered the technology to choose their own nature, the precise set of traits they preserved was up to them. In the worst case, a species still saddled with inappropriate drives but empowered by advanced technology could wreak havoc.

‘Any culture that spent three million years doing mathematics must have something to teach us.’