__void__

“To Prime
Intellect, a computer, more accurately a computer program,
human beings weren't so much bodies with form and mass as they
were minds which interacted with an abstract world through an
arbitrary interface.”
― The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“In fact, there are two sorts of gaming--namely, the game of the
gentleman and the game of the plebs--the game for gain, and the game of the
herd. Herein, as said, I draw sharp distinctions. Yet how essentially base are
the distinctions! For instance, a gentleman may stake, say, five or ten louis
d’or--seldom more, unless he is a very rich man, when he may stake, say, a
thousand francs; but, he must do this simply for the love of the game
itself--simply for sport, simply in order to observe the process of winning or of
losing, and, above all things, as a man who remains quite uninterested in the
possibility of his issuing a winner. If he wins, he will be at liberty, perhaps, to
give vent to a laugh, or to pass a remark on the circumstance to a bystander,
or to stake again, or to double his stake; but, even this he must do solely out
of curiosity, and for the pleasure of watching the play of chances and of
calculations, and not because of any vulgar desire to win. In a word, he must
look upon the gaming-table, upon roulette, and upon trente et quarante, as
mere relaxations which have been arranged solely for his amusement. Of the
existence of the lures and gains upon which the bank is founded and
maintained he must profess to have not an inkling. Best of all, he ought to
imagine his fellow-gamblers and the rest of the mob which stands trembling
over a coin to be equally rich and gentlemanly with himself, and playing solely
14
for recreation and pleasure. This complete ignorance of the realities, this
innocent view of mankind, is what, in my opinion, constitutes the truly
aristocratic.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler

“NINA
I am alone. Once in a hundred years my lips are opened, my voice echoes mournfully across the desert earth, and no one hears. And you, poor lights of the marsh, you do not hear me. You are engendered at sunset in the putrid mud, and flit wavering about the lake till dawn, unconscious, unreasoning, unwarmed by the breath of life. Satan, father of eternal matter, trembling lest the spark of life should glow in you, has ordered an unceasing movement of the atoms that compose you, and so you shift and change for ever. I, the spirit of the universe, I alone am immutable and eternal. [A pause] Like a captive in a dungeon deep and void, I know not where I am, nor what awaits me. One thing only is not hidden from me: in my fierce and obstinate battle with Satan, the source of the forces of matter, I am destined to be victorious in the end. Matter and spirit will then be one at last in glorious harmony, and the reign of freedom will begin on earth. But this can only come to pass by slow degrees, when after countless eons the moon and earth and shining Sirius himself shall fall to dust. Until that hour, oh, horror! horror! horror! [A pause. Two glowing red points are seen shining across the lake] Satan, my mighty foe, advances; I see his dread and lurid eyes.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Seagull