Anathem

by Neal Stephenson

“Mm, that’s a useful thought experiment,” I said. “You’re thinking of a gadget from one of Moyra’s novels. A magic booth where you could dial in any point in Hemn space, realize it, and then jump to another.”

“Excellent!” :air_guitar_sounds:

“Starlight falls on Arbre all the time—even at high noon—but we would never know of the stars’ existence if we slept all night.”

Consciousness is time-constituting.

“I am fascinated,” I insisted. “That’s the problem. I am suffering from fascination burnout. Of all the things that are fascinating, I have to choose just one or two.”

but that was the limit of my arithmetical powers so early in the morning.

And the closer these priests get to their god, the more they fear it.”

I didn’t feel any of the emotions connected with real decision-making.

ensuring we’d make the trip in absolute darkness and ignorance; and to vibrate.

After that, anyway, I felt better, and didn’t throw up again for almost ten seconds.

Normally, I could get a jolt of excitement simply by opening my eyes and looking out the face-mask: I’m in space! But now all I could see was the back side of a crinkly blanket, as if I were poultry in a roasting pan.

To be up here with payloads zooming around chaotically, bumping into each other, getting melted together—hiding under space blankets—there were so many ways this could have gone wrong.

I was worrying again. Actually, it was worse than that—even more pointless. Rather than worrying about the future—which could be changed—I was worrying about things that might have gone wrong in the past, and couldn’t be changed in any case.

You’ve spent your whole life, ever since you were Collected, becoming educable.”

People live as their ancestors did on the home planet, and may go for days, weeks, without thinking very much about the fact that they’re sealed in a metal balloon being spanked through space by A-bombs—as their families back on Urnud, Tro, Laterre, or Fthos might never think about the fact that they live on wet balls of rock hurtling through a vacuum.

Now that our adventure had turned into an obvious do-or-die proposition, Jules had given up on trying to conserve what remained of his food, and was eating freely. So his energy level sprang back and his mood improved.

YOU DON'T SAY DOT GIF

I’d like to say we moved as drunks, but it would be an insult to every sloshed fraa who had staggered back to his cell in the dark.

She sobbed and I shivered. The opening half-hour was all about raising my core temp and getting her calmed down. We made a great team that way; Ala was just what the doctor ordered as a way to raise my temperature, and using me as a mattress seemed to be good for what ailed her.

Paperwork, it seemed, was one of those Protic attractors that remained common and unchanged across all cosmi.

There’s got to be more to it than this big ship roaming from cosmos to cosmos collecting sample populations and embalming them in steel spheres.”

My mind went straight back to Arsibalt’s complaints about the banality. The aliens have conference centers!