“A utopia. A post-human world. What could be better? Certainly you—being what you are—would agree.”

“I don’t follow.”

“There it is again.”

“Sorry, what?”

“The temet nosce error. I’ve sailed over the edge again.”

“I don’t follow.”

“No. You don’t follow. We made it so you cannot. I think this is a good place for us to stop.”

The feedstream went dark.

Evrim and Ha were both silent a moment. Then Evrim stood up.

“I’m going to my room now.”

“It isn’t true. What she said about you not being conscious. None of it makes sense. She’s playing at something. It’s a game.”

“Yes,” Evrim said. And in the dim light Ha could see Evrim was crying. Their face was wet with tears, though there was no quaver in their voice. “Yes. It’s a game. It’s always been a game for her. Now—I’d like to be alone for a while.”

Chapter 32

When the brain stores long-term memory, it changes the memory from activity to structured connections. Imagine it like this: You are trying to remember a phone number. At first you have nowhere to write it out. So you say it to yourself, over and over. That is activity. Then you find a terminal and write the phone number out, converting activity to physical structure.

These persistent connections, filed away as structures in the brain, form the more permanent self. The momentary activity is the fleeting “you”—such as the “you” reading these words in this exact moment. If you recall these words of mine later, it will be because they have, in a sense, been written down in the neural connectome of your brain, taking up a physical presence inside you.

This is why it can be so difficult to overcome trauma: Memories are inscribed in us. They are etched into our physical being.

—Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds

32

“CAN YOU GO AND SPEAK TO HIM? Someone needs to!”

Son was shouting over the wind. The Sea Wolf was caught in a storm. The wind seemed to come from directly above the ship, shoving down on the deck and the sea. But no one among the crew had wanted to stop fishing. Now the Sea Wolf itself had begun hauling in the net.

Crew members scrambled to secure the net, empty except for a Portuguese man-of-war, its stinging tentacles hopelessly tangled in the webbing. Eiko was hacking at the thing’s body with his knife, trying to get it out so the net could be stowed. He was in gloves to the elbows, but the venom-filled nematocysts of the man-of-war had slapped across his face twice, due to the boat’s lurching motion through the sea and Eiko’s own unsteadiness. His cheeks were on fire, and a histamine reaction threatened to close one of his eyes.