Monuments not of stone

They built the forest huge, sentient, and in pain. They wanted to be remembered forever, and cared not in what way or by whom.

.finis.

Dictum

Sufficiently advanced technology is what you've been calling reality all along.

.finis.

Prison Guard

Greed. Lust. Love. Ambition. Some people can figure out how to break almost any of the bounds we use to tie them to the Wheel.

That's where the stories about escapees come from. But don't believe everything you hear inside here. We have more than one way to keep you in.

I have yet to see Compassion fail.

.finis.

Time understood as a gesture

She wouldn't let us calculate the final conditions of the system. Always, she would have us simulate it, agent trajectory by agent trajectory. Some people thought she wanted them to live their simulated lives, have their synthetic joys. I think she was just trying to say 'thanks' to somebody else.

.finis.

Art

Silences define sounds.I define lives. Just before that great mistake, the week after love became clear. I have no divine voice in my ear telling me it should end now; only observation, experience, and a hesitant sense of caution. Bullets can't be unfired.

.finis.

Afterword

OCD used to be a source of emails, not caused by them. Insane people used to just kill you. There were no computational linguists in Homeland Security.

People used to be glib about the word 'meme'.

.finis.

Quality Assurance

We kill a few every generation, just to see how hard it is. If we can, it means we still have to work at improving them.

They are getting better, although their family traditions have grown really strange.

.finis.

Of True Names

The newspapers call him Jack. Hearts, kidneys, corneas, lungs... You never know what will be missing from a body, dinner clothes awash in blood.

But the poor and desperate call him Robin.

It

It's Subliminals' only product. It's their runaway hit. It's the most unique cellphone in the world: one that lets you talk to yourself. It's better than therapy. It's bigger than the iPod was. It works. And you can get it for free, because it's ad-supported.