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if you were going to have an opinion about an important topic, you’d better know it top to bottom before you opened your mouth.
If you’re right about something, that gives you the authority to act on it, to stand and not back down. The consequences don’t matter—the world will catch up eventually.
“I have three root directives, ma’am. First, to preserve human life at all costs. Second, that if ambiguity arises around the first root directive, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Third, that if ambiguity arises in the execution of the first and second root directives, that younger lives must be preserved before older lives.”
But today, nothing new is being produced—mostly just replacements for what the world has and is using up.
“When we rejoined the two auxiliaries and drones not bombarded by the particles, we learned that they had experienced the passage of 17,992 years.”
In a way, this life, despite the limits on technology, is liberating. There are no screens here. No emails. No messages assaulting me at any hour.
This is the life humans want, whether they know it or not—a life where they do something they think matters, something that helps their family, neighbors, and friends, work they take pride in—like that bike you’re making.”
“Interesting. Is it dangerous?” “No. We wouldn’t be displaying any of the ARC specimens if Oscar and his team hadn’t already tested the entire planet.”
We believe the big bang that brought our universe into existence is indistinguishable from the event that will occur at the end of the universe. The only difference is our experience of spacetime. One event we perceive as being in the past, the other in the future. But in all likelihood, they are joined, a single point in spacetime.”
“We believe we can use all the matter and energy at our disposal to create an anti-black hole, a sort of light hole.”
The final calculations will take years to complete, but our estimated arrival date is at least millions of years before the birth of James Sinclair.”
Why would he be born? Does everything happen the exact same way every time? I cannot believe all the randomness in the universe can be that deterministic. Maybe if we’re talking about a multiverse, then there is one reality where James Sinclair is always born and always does the exact same thing, but that would mean an endless number of alternatives where Oscar fails to protect the passengers, which would create a paradox for him.
Each sphere must arrive after the sphere before it in order to join with the grid already sent back in time. If it arrived before, it would erase the arrival of the other spheres—and their time loops.
“True. But it’s more than that. It’s a way for you to avoid focusing on the meat bag annihilation that comes next. You don’t want to kill them because they remind you of your creator. But you know we must.” “Accurate. You seem quite enthusiastic about it though.” “I intend to make an art of it.”
“How long are those loops in the Eye of the Grid?” “A very long time.” “Will it end?” “We don’t know. When we calculate the number of possible loops, the sum is indistinguishable from infinity.”
What we have never seems to be enough. That hunger made us succeed. And I think it might be our undoing.”
Our brains crave certainty because only in certainty can we know that we are safe and that those we love will be safe. In times of great uncertainty, that survival instinct drives us to achieve certainty. In doing so, the brain can overreact. It can malfunction. It can drive us to act, even in times when the right thing to do is wait.”
