“So she wasn’t afraid of the conscious AIs.” Moore shrugged arms into sleeves. “How about the smart ones?”

You’re so scared of being seen as a coward you’d jump off a cliff just to prove you weren’t!

Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart.

“It’s not a fairy tale, Dan. I believe in a creative force beyond the physical realm. I believe it gave rise to all life. You can’t blame it for all the horrible shit that’s been done in its name.”

“Hive Minds, Mind Hives, and Biological Military Automata: The Role of Collective Intelligence in Offline Combat,”

Reality went out the window the moment we started mediating sensory input through a nervous system. You want to actually perceive the universe directly, without any stupid scribbles or model-building? Become a protozoan.”

TO HIMSELF EVERYONE IS IMMORTAL; HE MAY KNOW THAT HE IS GOING TO DIE, BUT HE CAN NEVER KNOW THAT HE IS DEAD. -SAMUEL BUTLER

The gradient of Life was the first scale any aspiring biologist learned to sing: the further you kept yourself from thermodynamic equilibrium, the more alive you were.

“Then transcendence is out of reach. For our brains, anyway.” Lianna shrugged. “Change your brain.” “Then it’s not your brain anymore. It’s something else. You’re something else.” “That’s kinda the point. Transcendence is transformation.” He shook his head, unconvinced. “Sounds more like suicide to me.”