Consciousness amplifies the weak signals that, like cobwebs spun between trees, web Narratives together. Moreover, it amplifies them selectively and in that way creates feedback loops that steer the Narratives.
The cosmos seems oblivious to time. It only matters to us. Consciousness is time-constituting. We build time up out of instantaneous impressions that flow in through our sensory organs at each moment. Then they recede into the past. What is this thing we call the past? It is a system of records encoded in our nerve tissue – records that tell a consistent story.
Actually, I’ve been thinking about that,” Tristan said, and finally sat down again. “It’s the dog that didn’t bark.
Dr. Turing of Cambridge says that the soul is an illusion and that all that defines us as human beings can be reduced to a series of mechanical operations.
Felt-tip markers, always a scarce resource even on Earth, became objects of great value as people used them to mark directions on the walls of hamster tubes and habitat modules.
If a zombie attack had actually materialized, then they might have had a clue as to how to respond. But a stupendous machine-gun free-for-all in the apartment above them was not an eventuality that they had ever thought of and so it froze them for a time.
No one thought about the big picture for a few thousand years. We were all scrambling to survive.
Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that’s closest to the door. That way, whoever came in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it’s obvious at a glance who’s on the ball in this office and who is – as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms – having problems.
This is a very odd conversation,” Dappa observed. “On an arbitrary numerical scale of conversational oddness, ranging from one to ten, with ten being the oddest conversation I’ve ever had, and seven being the oddest conversation I have in a typical day, this rates no better than five,” Daniel returned.
In Memoriam, Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, finest swordsman in England, beaten to death with a stick by an Irishman.’ ” Teague considered it for a moment, then nodded. “In Connaught,” he added. “In Connaught,” Bob agreed, then eyed the ditch.
Markus’s mind jumped straight to the most obvious explanation: “Is the president nuking people again?
The suit’s got a cervical airbag that blows up when you fall off the board, so you can bounce on your head. Besides, helmets feel weird. They say it doesn’t affect your hearing, but it does.
The expenditure of paper and printer ink had been somewhat lavish. Two generations from now, if any humans survived, they would look on this heap of documents with some combination of disgust and amazement. Because paper was going to be scarce by then, and they would view its use for such purposes in roughly the same way as Americans of the twenty-first century had viewed the use of sperm whale oil to fuel streetlamps.
This is a terrible country for old people. You put them away in horrible buildings that are completely shut off from life, and then do everything possible to keep them alive. It is a very stupid system. You.
I guessed that by pretending to be the leader I could make a few things go my way, at least for a little while, until they figured out I was faking it.
Until he reached thirty, Randy felt bad about the fact that he was not socially deft. Now he doesn’t give a damn. Pretty soon he’ll probably start being proud of it.
Holding one of those things in your hands, cleaning the barrel and shoving the rounds into clips, really brings you face-to-face with what a desperate, last-ditch measure they really are. I mean, if it gets to the point where we are shooting at people and vice versa, then we have completely screwed up. So in the end, they only strengthened my interest in making sure we could do without them.
RESUMES: Just recall the opening reel of The Magnificent Seven and you won’t have to bother with this part; you should crawl to us on hands and knees and beg us for the privilege of paying our salaries.
When later generations come to read about our history they will think they are reading a romance, and not believe a word of it.
The living stayed home, haunting the world of the dead like ghosts.