“That’s why you can do whatever you please, and create whatever you desire. You can build an empire of a hundred billion people and reign as king, or you could experience a thousand different romances, or fight in ten thousand wars and die a hundred thousand times. Everyone is master of their personal world, and more powerful than a god. You could even create your own universe with billions of galaxies containing billions of planets, each that can be whatever different world you desire, or that you dare not desire. Don’t worry about not having the time to experience it all. At the computer’s speed, centuries pass every second. On the inside, the only limit is your imagination. In the invisible world, imagination and reality are the same thing. When something appears in your imagination, it becomes reality. Of course, as you said, reality in quantum memory is a collection of impulses. The people of this age are gradually transitioning to the invisible world, and more of them now live there than in the visible world. Even though a copy of the brain can be in both worlds, the invisible world is like a drug. No one wants to come back once they’ve experienced life there. Our world with its cares is like hell for them. The invisible world has the upper hand and is gradually assuming control of the whole world.”

As if sleepwalking across a millennium, they stared at the quantum memory mountain and forgot about time, and only when the true sun lit up the east as it had for billions of years did they return to reality.

“What’s going to come next?” the ambassador asked.

“As a program in the invisible world, it’s simple to make lots of copies of yourself, and whatever parts of your personality you dislike—being too tormented by emotions and responsibility, for example—you can get rid of, or off-load for use the next time you need them. And you can split yourself into multiple parts representing various aspects of your personality. And then you can join with someone else to form a new self out of two minds and memories. And then you can join with several or dozens or hundreds of people…. I’ll stop before I drive you mad. Anything can happen at any time in the invisible world.”

“And then?”

“Only conjecture. The clearest signs point to the disappearance of the individual; everyone in the invisible world will combine into a single program.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know. This is a philosophical question, but after so many times thawing out I’m afraid of philosophy.”