The Hydrogen Sonata Quotes
"It took something as complex and self-referentially perfect as a high-level AI to have the cohesion to stand up to the Sublime alone; no normal biological individual could."
"The goal was what it had always been; a successful Sublime, his reputation and place in history assured."
"The anomaly... looked like it was centred quite precisely on the artificially maintained planetary fragment called Ablate, where the Gzilt had some sort of ceremonial facility."
"It would seem more like a challenge, without peer. As music, without merit."
"This was something so small, in a set of substrates so vast, it was possible for it to hide."
"The Presence hadn’t come as a surprise – these things always appeared when a people, a civilisation, was preparing for and committed to Subliming – but, somehow, actually seeing it there had still come as a shock."
"The great world-circling Girdlecity. Many Gzilt looked upon it as something they could be proud to leave behind when they Sublimed – a monument to their genius, vision and power."
"It was not utter annihilation – all the information you brought with you remained – but the persona, the individual as a functioning, identifiable and distinctive entity – that was gone."
"Life was life, consciousness was consciousness, and mere classical matter, inanimate – no matter how long-lasting – was just ineffably boring and in a sense pointless compared to almost any sort of life."
"The Mistake Not … found knowing this – while Admiral Tyun did not – quite agreeable."
"I understand that the aftermath of battle, even a one-sided one, is not generally considered to constitute the most favourable condition for the instigation of Sublimation."
"Nothing more has been heard of it since so either it has already gone or it is still preparing to."
"All we know is they haven’t tried to share this so far, to the best of our knowledge."
"It involves a fast, powerful ship, a single surgical strike with full end-operator tactical-choice freedom."
"It would be circumstantial, but in the event of something going wrong and a subsequent investigation…"
"The Subliming. It has to happen now, and completely, or not…"
"I imagine I’m meant to be flattered, being so invited, but why don’t these few fellow Minds of yours perform this function?"
"Yeah, that’s us: first amongst the Altruists; the emperors of nice. We’re not competitive about it, but – if we were – by fuck we’d be the best."
"I’ve looked at the statistics, the sims. For a species like ours, if there’s a stall, it’s likely to take another three to five generations before it actually happens."
"Good. Let’s leave that as the default, for now."
"You had to be careful engaging engines so far within a gravity well as pronounced as that around a sun."
"And – precisely because it was so important – there was also the possibility that even somebody he’d normally have trusted, somebody from the rarefied upper echelons, would blab."
"To enter the Sublime was to become near-as-dammit immortal."
"One should never mistake pattern … for meaning."
"That is what it is to return from the Sublime to the Real."
"We pass the time to pass the time, and stay involved to stay involved."
"No end save itself: I pass the time to pass the time, and stay involved to stay involved."
"I will see if there’s anything I can do, regarding this. If there is, I’ll be in touch."
"Every Totalling into hyperspace was a kind of tiny, trivial Subliming."
"We strip off our importance with our clothes."
"Only a man asks this of you, my Virisse, not a politician."
"Everything is licensed. Like this, and this, and this."
"How true to life was it morally justified to be?"
"Once you’d created your population of realistically reacting individuals, you had created life."
"You couldn’t just turn off your virtual environment; that amounted to genocide."
"The first simulations happened in the heads of proto-sentient creatures."
"You never made any significant societal decision without running simulations."
"Sometimes, there really was no alternative to modelling the individuals themselves."
"By this reasoning, you couldn’t just turn off the living, thinking creatures it contained."
"Most people were uncomfortable with such moral brusqueness."
"They either avoided creating virtual populations of genuinely living beings or used sims sustainably."
"Whether these simulated beings were really alive was best left to philosophers."
"How do we know we’re not in a simulation?"
"It’s just that according to the logs of the ship here, she doesn’t seem to visit very oft."
"Not by themselves. The gentleman in possession of what we assume are Mr QiRia’s eyes, which we assume are genuinely where his memories are, appears to have non-trivial resources to command in the field of surveillance and remote presences."
"Words are just one language, Virisse. Just one way of expression."
"We all think we’re special, and in a way we are, but, at the same time, that feeling of being special is one of the things that’s common to us all."
"Everything has been put in place, everything planned, everything set up and aimed, focused on the one single day of Instigation."
"The Culture machine dipped its front portion in what was supposed to be taken as a respectful bow, then the whole machine was enveloped by a silvery sphere of fields."
"We have big guns at Xown," the captain announced. "A capital ship, also reporting to Marshal Chekwri, so on our side no matter how narrowly that’s defined."
"Knowing that there was another iteration of himself elsewhere was mildly comforting, like having another layer of protection wrapped around him."
"It would help to know the intended location of any such attempted disloc, to help confirm the nature of enemy intentions."
"We carry four sixty-four-unit platoons of marine combat arbites, the 8*Churkun’s captain told him. ~They are at your disposal, Colonel."
"One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve."
"Sex should be about spontaneous fun, don’t you think?"
"It’s just the usual stuff up there: comfy furniture, drink, drugs and lots of images and music – and dancing, and fucking, you’d imagine – but all a bit more quiet and contemplative, I guess."
"In the heat of the moment. We tried to get to the maximum, of fifty-three, obviously, but even in effective zero-G, all oiled up and most people just sticking their hands in from the outside of this heaving mass of bodies, we just couldn’t make it."
"I’m not a person, Vyr; I’m the walking, talking figurehead of a ship."
"I feel more naked now than I do when I’m naked."
"Communication with the ship is not possible within this shielded environment."
"I think, to put it in the vernacular idiom, our cover is blown."
"Traditionally, people tell each other secrets at this point."
"You are, perhaps, the only Gzilt who will ever hear this."
"I’d tell them. I’d swamp their airways with it."
"The truth is the truth. You tell it even when it hurts."
"We can’t tell them. Those that would most care already know."
"Technically I agree with that. In practice I agree we say and do nothing."
"So, shall we vote? And/or open it up to others so that more may vote?"
"My full name is the Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath."
"We know how this works. If we do nothing then any disaster that befalls the Gzilt over the next few hours is entirely theirs."
"In the end, though, it was not all about him."
"Off you went, just folding out of existence as though turning through a crease in the air that nobody had noticed was there before."
"In the end she didn’t go, not there and then. She knew what this meant."
"While she played, and the sun sank beyond the distant, hulking line of the dark, near-totally deserted Girdlecity, a lone Liseiden freighter took off."
"First she would go home. After that, she had no idea what she might do."