Opening Quotation
Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden.
He drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden
of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to
keep the way of the tree of life.
The Conclave Bible, Datalinks
Social Psych
If you can discover a better way of life than office-holding
for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility.
For only in such a state will those rule who are truly rich, not
in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness--a good and wise
life.
Plato, "The Republic", Datalinks
Quantum Power
Heaven lasts long, and Earth abides
What is the secret of their durability?
Is it because they do not live for themselves
That they endure so long?
Lao Tzu, Datalinks
Doctrine: Loyalty
Therefore a wise prince will seek means by which his subjects
will always and in every possible condition of things have need
of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him.
Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Prince", Datalinks
Ethical Calculus
Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others
because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue
finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, "Nichomachean Ethics", Datalinks
Secrets of the Human Brain
There are only two ways in which we can account for a necessary
agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects: either
experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make
experience possible.
Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", Datalinks
Cyberethics
The wicked have told me of things that delight them, but not
such things as your law has to tell.
Saint Augustine, "Confessions", Datalinks
Eudaimonia
The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now
an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist
in amusement. If Eudaimonia, or happiness, is activity in
accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should
be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will
be that of the best thing in us.
Aristotle, "Nichomachean Ethics", Datalinks
The Will to Power
Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope
over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way,
a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and
stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and
not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture
and a going under. I love those who do not know how to
live, for they are those who cross over.
Friedrich Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", Datalinks
Threshold of Transcendence
And when he has brought forth and reared this perfect virtue, he
shall be called the friend of god, and if ever it is given to man
to put on immortality, it shall be given to him.
Plato, "The Symposium", Datalinks
Secrets of Creation
And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality,
when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or
ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you
is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every
individual in these millions and millions about only one thing:
whether you have lived in despair or not.
Soren Kierkegaard, "The Sickness Unto Death", Datalinks
Homo Superior
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and
believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks--those who write
new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and
fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the
harvest.
Friedrich Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", Datalinks
The Supercollider
God does not play dice.
Albert Einstein, Datalinkstic Virtues
The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm
If I determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have
no perceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy
is fragmented. The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the
formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot
discern it nor the wise make plans against it.
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War", Datalinks
The Theory of Everything
The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot stay in the
cradle forever.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, The Father of Rocketry, Datalinks
The Universal Translator
And the Lord said, "Behold, the people is one, and
they have all one language; and this they begin to do:
and now nothing will be restrained from them, which
they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and
there confound their language, that they may not
understand one another's speech."
The Conclave Bible, Datalinks
Clinical Immortality
And the Lord God said, "Behold, the man is become as
one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth
his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and
live forever, we must send him forth." Therefore the
Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till
the ground from whence he was taken.
The Conclave Bible, Datalinks
Paradise Garden
That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Datalinks
Robotic Assembly Plant
Captain said to big old John Henry,
That old drill keeps a-coming around.
Take that steam drill out and start it on that job
Let it whop, let it whop that steel on down
Let it whop, let it whop that steel on down.
Traditional, Datalinksicator
Punishment Sphere
It is not uncommon to see patients undergo permanent psychological
trauma in the presence of the Sphere, before the nerve stapler has
even been strapped into position. Its effect on the general
consciousness of the culture is profound: husbands have seen
wives go inside, and mothers their children. Dr. Xynan left the
surface of the sphere semitranslucent for a reason. You can hear
them in there; you can see them. It is a thing of terrible beauty.
Baron Klim, "The Music of the Spheres"
Hab Complex
The chief aim of their constitution and government is that,
whenever public needs permit, all citizens should be free, so far
as possible, to withdraw their time and energy from the service of
the body, and devote themselves to the freedom and culture of the
mind. For that, they think, is the real happiness of life.
Sir Thomas More, "Utopia", Datalinks
Habitation Dome
I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will
put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all
the million ages to come, I will never breathe or laugh or twitch again.
So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity?
The universe has spared us this moment.
Anonymous, Datalinks Dome
Pressure Dome
When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's
skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would
not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a
remorseless fang.
Herman Melville, "Moby Dick", Datalinks
Naval Yard
The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the globe. Its breath
is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert where a man is never
alone, for he can feel life quivering all about him. The sea is only
a receptacle for all the prodigious, supernatural things that exist
inside it; it is only movement and love; it is the living infinite.
Jules Verne, "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea", Datalinks
Nessus Mining Station
Red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste,
and iron smell, and a Babel of iron sounds.
Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Datalinks
Orbital Defense Pod
God, from the mount of Sinai, whose gray top
Shall tremble, he descending, will himself,
In thunder, lightning, and loud trumpets' sound,
Ordain them laws.
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Datalinks
Self-Aware Machines
Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without
understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content
are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", Datalinks
I swear sometimes they're watching me.
Bozon Pete, Shift Foreman, Metagenics Biomachinery Division
The Dream Twister
Mary had a little lamb,
Little lamb little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb,
whose fleece was white as snow.
Assassins' Redoubt, Final Transmission
Matter Compression
Preliminary analysis indicates that our rivals have developed
a safe and reliable method to simulate conditions existing on the
interior of a stellar mass. The fabrication and transmutation
of materials possible in such an environment guarantees significant
industrial and military applications.
Probe Team Operations Directorate, Top Secret Report
Bioenhancement Center
We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled.
But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any
particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in
a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events
of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose
meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?
Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7 Activity Recorded M.Y. 2302.22467; TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED