The Mountain in the Sea: A Novel

At times, when a cephalopod is resting, its skin will flow through color and textural displays that appear unconscious—as if the electrochemical flux of its thoughts were projected onto its surface. In this state it is truly like a mind floating, unsheathed by flesh, in the open ocean. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

Meaning is not neuronal calculus in the brain, or the careful smudges of ink on a page, or the areas of light and dark on a screen. Meaning has no mass or charge. It occupies no space—and yet meaning makes a difference in the world. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

And then Ha saw it. Yes. This was why the world would never build another humanoid AI. The smile was perfect. Sincere, unaffected. Fully human. And because of that, the smile was like the shadow of your own death.

Because he had no terminal, no pen, no paper, he kept this information in the memory palace he had built in his mind. His memory palace was a Japanese inn. Not just any inn: it was the Minaguchi-ya, on the Tokaido Road, between Tokyo and Kyoto.

We are shaped and limited by our skeletons. Jointed, defined, structured. We create a world of relationships that mirrors that shape: a world of rigid boundaries and binaries. A world of control and response, master and servant. In our world, as in our nervous systems, hierarchy rules. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

Eiko had never visited the Minaguchi-ya, but he had read an ancient book, by a gaijin from the old American States named Oliver Statler. The book had detailed the Minaguchi-ya: every room of the place, over all the generations of its operation.

We came from the ocean, and we only survive by carrying salt water with us all our lives—in our blood, in our cells. The sea is our true home. This is why we find the shore so calming: we stand where the waves break, like exiles returning home. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

There is no silence in the living nervous system. An electrical symphony of communication streams through our neurons every moment we exist. We are built for communication. Only death brings silence. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

The plastic siding of the main building was peeled away like scales torn from a dead fish.