This is a kindness, a thing done to another human being for no reason other than compassion. A private, dignified act of basic human decency, which h… - Alastair Reynolds

For whatever reason, I am now fully conscious. Perhaps all beta-levels are capable of this, or perhaps my sheer connectional complexity ensured that I exceeded some state of critical mass. I have no idea. All I know is that I think, and therefore I’m exceedingly angry.

There were choices to be made, harder choices than I would have liked, and I realised that I had been neglecting them because of their very difficulty.

By and large these attempts to rewrite history were not taken seriously, but it was disconcerting to hear that they had gained even a toehold.