Anathem

by Neal Stephenson

Fraa Osa stepped forward, giving Lio an if I may? look. We hadn’t heard much out of the Vale leader, so everyone got where they could see him. “The greatest difficulty for ones such as you shall be, not completion of the given tasks, but instead the humiliation and uncertainty that arise from not being able to know the entire plan. These emotions can hamper you. You must simply decide, now, either to proceed with the awareness that the entire plan might never be revealed to you—and, were it revealed, might have obvious defects—or to turn away and allow some other person to occupy the space suit that has been allotted to you.” And then he stepped back. There was a minute of silence as all of us made our decisions. If that was the right word for what was going on in our heads. I didn’t feel any of the emotions connected with real decision-making. To step away from this group at the moment was simply unthinkable. There was no decision to be made. Fraa Osa, who had devoted his entire life to preparing for such situations, no doubt knew this perfectly well. He wasn’t really asking us to make a decision. He was telling us, in a reasonably diplomatic way, to shut up and concentrate on the matter at hand.