Could be worse, as they say." "That's the sum story of human history, isn't it? Could be worse. As if that's the very best that we can manage. - Alastair Reynolds

The virus was not helping. He had hoped that it would, but the feelings it brought were too superficial. When he most needed their succour he could feel them for the paper-thin façades they were. Just because the virus was tickling the parts of his brain that produced feelings of religious experience didn’t mean he was able to turn off the other parts of his mind that recognised these feelings as having been induced artificially. He truly felt himself to be in the presence of something sacred, but he also knew, with total clarity, that this was due to neuroanatomy. Nothing was really with him: the organ music, the stained-glass windows in the sky, the sense of proximity to something huge and timeless and infinitely compassionate were all explicable in terms of neural wiring, firing potentials, synaptic gaps.

It was bad, but it was some other slightly less piquant flavour of bad.

And you do not think that this is possible?" "I'll believe in anything when I see evidence for it.