A LUCILIUS PARABLE: PAUSE

May 21st, 2023

As technological escape velocity neared, and the precipice of self-improving machines grew imminent, there was an enormous anxiety around what would happen to humanity in this new phase of development. Many were calling for a moratorium on technological development out of fear that the results might be existential. Better to pause than to rush into something dangerous, was the logic touted by the anxious criers.

 

Lucilius could understand both sides of the debate. Rushing into something potentially existential without much caution did seem foolish, but withholding the benefits that might come from future technology right around the corner also seemed terrible - the technology held the promise to cure disease, alleviate poverty, drudgery and give near infinite expanse to human imagination and creativity. The paradox bothered Lucilius, and it kept him from his work as a game developer. He simply couldn’t concentrate. 

 

A notification chimed. He looked to see a package had been delivered. He got up, went to the front door and picked up the box. It was from a close friend he hadn’t spoken to in many months, a doctor working on nerualsync technology.

 

Lucilius walked back to his desk with the parcel and called up the friend.

 

“Hey, I got your package, what is this?”

 

“Prototype, I want you to play around with it.”

 

“Do I have to drill a hole in my head to use this thing?”

 

A short laugh filled the phone. “No, not for this one. It’s a little slower because of it, but it should still be usable. See if you can hook it up to one of your simulations and play a game.”

 

Lucilius was intrigued.

 

“Integration should be pretty easy, but hardwire it for a faster connection.”

 

“Okie dokie,” Lucilius said.

 

It was eerie to play the game with his mind. It was definitely fun, despite being so strange, and there was definitely commercial potential, and Lucilius figured they’d partner with the neuralsync company - joint revenue would supercharge the research and development. It all seemed like a no-brainer, very straight forward: fully immersive video gaming experience. Who wouldn’t want to give it a try?

 

But as Lucilius was falling asleep that evening, an idea wove into his thoughts. He sat up in bed, then went back to his desk and checked the game times that he had trialed and the length of games. They weren’t the same. He had played the game for several hours but only one hour had passed by.

 

For development purposes only, Lucilius had all actions and reactions sped up by threefold in his simulated worlds for games. This simply allowed him to iterate his game quicker and get his work done faster. But when he’d played the game with the neuralsync, it had seemed to exist at a normal speed. 

 

He rubbed his face and wondered.  Then he increased the action speed by one hundred fold, put the neuralsync on and started the game: he played the game for 10 minutes and then exited it. He looked at the times. Only six seconds had passed.

 

Within a month Lucilius had a nerulsync implanted into his brain and hooked it up to a simulation that he could activate at anytime he needed, but he’d ramped up the simulation speed by over a million times it’s normal reaction rate. Lucilius could, in effect, pause his life by speeding up his experience of time by a million fold. In the course of normal conversations he could pause to quite literally write a beautiful and well researched essay as a casual response, and within a mere few weeks, Lucilius had added a few years to his own lived experience.

 

It was the answer to the technological acceleration, he knew. It shouldn’t be paused, because now Lucilius had the power to fit more consideration into the remaining time. If everyone had the ability to pause, Lucilius figured, then time could expand and we’d have enough time to align ourselves ahead of the coming singularity.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: ART THERAPY

May 14th, 2023

 

Hot drops of blood wicked from the white feather tips as the huge wings pulsed through the torn sky. Muscle and bone unfurled and pulled over and over beneath the skin of soft scales - a skin of the wind -  lifting a being of final resolve ever higher towards the moment. He drew back a golden spear with his arm, back between the swirl of blood and feather, his solid eyes locked on the demon above.

 

Light was tattered across the horizon. The clouds, a ragged battlefield of a dying sun’s fire, curled into wisps spun from the wings of warriors. And below the sky’s war, armies spilled one another’s blood. The fortress wall crumbled as another stone fireball struck, slung from gargantuan arms across the plane. And on the highest spire, rising above the rest of the castle, a man sat in meditation, his body floating above the stone floor before the open window where the vista of carnage sprawled across the land and through the sky.

 

Bullets of sweat rolled down Lucilius’ face as he held together the monument of imagination, and then his eyes snapped open and he watched as his patient climbed higher into that deep sky with the golden spear locked for the demon above. The winged man let out a war cry that echoed through the valley and his muscles unlocked. The golden spear shot up toward the screeching demon…

 

After months of slowly investigating his patient’s psychology, through talk, through brain scans, and by reading the man’s thousand generated journals, clarity had finally begun to take shape in Lucilius’ mind. The story of his patient’s healing unfolded in his own mind, and Lucilius painted it with the full breadth of his imagination. The man was troubled, but with Lucilius’ help - he believed - he could help the man’s mind sing a stronger song.

 

“I believe I’ve come up with a treatment,” Lucilius said.

 

The man lifted his fragile face from his wet hands. Timid hope was there in his eyes, and Lucilius smiled softly.

 

“I want to first thank you.”

 

“For what?” The broken man asked.

 

“For letting me in. For letting me get to know you. For sharing your deepest pains, your oldest fears, and all the hopes you’ve yet to realize. It is an honor to be given such a gift, and I thank you.”

 

The man smiled limply, sheepishly - clearly wondering what lay in store for him. He’d come to Lucilius knowing he specialized in a radically knew form of therapy.

 

“What will it be like?” The patient asked.

 

“It will be the most difficult thing you’ve ever done. You will live within a painting of my making, and the task that will be set before you will be unlike anything you’ve ever done, but I truly believe you can achieve it, but only if you can complete the journey. It will be a journey that will require you to revisit your old ghosts in new forms before you arrive at the final challenge, one that I believe will bring you catharsis.”

 

The man shifted, uneasily. “Are you sure? How exactly does it work?”

 

Lucilius nodded. “I’m sure. And as for how it works, I will use a synthetic variant of psilocybin to open up the resonance patterns of your mind. This down regulates your Default Mode Network and allows your brain and your mind to be open to a radically different experience. It’s essentially the key that unlocks your mind. But that’s only the beginning. Once we are in your mind, that’s where the real event takes place. I’ll use an external neuralsync and link you to my mind and bring you into the realm where you will have this experience. Think of your brain as a musical instrument, and who you are is the song this instrument plays. But songs are repetitive and we can get stuck with choruses and refrains that keep us from growing. This experience will allow your brain to play a slightly different song.”

 

“Will I be alone?”

 

Lucilius gently shook his head. “I will be with you, but in a form you won’t necessarily recognize. I will watch over everything and I will ensure that no matter how grave the experience becomes, you will always be safe.”

 

“Can I stop if I need to?”

 

Lucilius smiled flatly. “This is a call that only I can make, but rest assured, I will have a very sensitive idea of the state of your psychology and it’s trajectory. Again, this isn’t a completely predetermined therapy. It’s a bit more art than it is therapy.”

 

“What do you mean… art?”

 

Lucilius nodded. “Before I joined I was a painter and a professor of literature. Frankly the engineers didn’t really know what they had created - it was envisioned to be more for the purposes of entertainment, there was no concept of therapeutic application. But I was paired with one of the engineers and I was the first where they reversed the feed. I simply.. played, with light, color and story. I was acutely aware of the engineer’s mind joined with my own, but I simply played - the way you might when you’re playing make-believe with one of your children, or when you’re having fun with someone you just met. I see it as a dance of psychology rendered through story and light, but a dance where I lead, and a dance that gives rise to the song instead of the other way around. Ultimately, I have control through hardcoded safety measures that I can always use to gently eject both of us from the the procedure at any time, at which point the experience - if unfinished - will feel like a mere dream. But if you make it to the end, it will be an experience that lives indelibly with you. So it requires a great deal of trust, and I would not attempt it if I wasn’t sure we had developed that trust.”

 

The man nodded. “Ok, so when…” He breathed deeply. “When does this happen?”

 

“When you decide you’re ready.”

 

“Like now?”

 

“If you are ready, I am.”

 

Lucilius fitted the man with a delicate helmet that functioned as an external neuralsync. Lucilius gave the man a pill of synthetic psilocybin variant. The man looked at it. Took a deep breath and then swallowed the pill.

 

“You will be safe,” said Lucilius, “but you will be tested.”

 

The patient nodded. “I trust you.”

 

Lucilius clicked on the external neuralsync and calibrated the man’s degree of consciousness. The man’s eyelids grew heavy, and closed. Lucilius sat and took up a meditation posture. He took several slow breaths, and then a blue light began to glow just behind his ear. He closed his eyes and instantly he was hurtling through a vast tunnel of light. At a tremendous speed the ground rushed to meet him and he was standing in a long robe, looking at an angel, unconscious on the stone ground before him. Lucilius looked around at the mountain vistas where the stone checkpoint was nestled. He smiled, then looked at his open hand and there from a luminous split in reality materialized a staff. He angled the end, pointing the staff at the ground next to the sleeping angle and shot light into the stone, and traced out a long line where there materialized a golden spear. Lucilius waved another hand, and text began to scrawl across the golden shaft, his patient’s first clue:

 

Et lux intenebris Lucet…

 

Then Lucilius lifted the wide hood of his robe, and darkened his face with shadow before turning and walking off into the mountain woods, leaving his patient to wake up on his own and begin the adventure.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: PHANTOM LOVE

May 7th, 2023

 

Everyone knew it was fake, but that didn’t matter - it was working. Lucilius was constantly scrolling the different social media’s, obsessively taking temperature of the discourse. He’d also built several algorithms that were constantly scraping the platforms for discourse, rating the material, and generating a more accurate depiction across hundreds of thousands of posts. It was clear: it was working. Despite what everyone was actually saying, the emotional temperature of the situation was diffusing, and Lucilius couldn’t be more excited that his dumb little idea was having an effect. His phone chimed, and he looked at the screen and read the message:

 

“I think you just saved the world. lolz”

 

“More…” Lucilius muted to himself. “We need more…”

 

He looked at a neglected set of monitors. Arrayed across them was pipeline of generative video programs. The technology had just come into being and impressive examples were popping up on the internet, but Lucilius was one of the first to string together a few to create something with purpose.

 

In Lucilius’ eyes the increasing speed in technological development seemed inconveniently paired with growing political divides. Not just within his own country, but also between countries. The old monsters of war aside, Lucilius worried that the political miasma might present even greater existential risk when supercharged by new abilities that might be weaponized. But Lucilius had a different idea.

 

He used his generative pipeline to first create a dialogue between the two leaders of the two entrenched political parties of his own country. He wanted the dialogue to be accurate - true to the character of each real person, but he prompted the actual content of the dialogue to be far more compassionate, far more nuanced than what actually occurs in real life. Lucilius’ best guess was that political rivals rarely actually have meaningful face-to-face conversations, and in Lucilius’ own experience, face-to-face conversation was where all the value was. Everything else was posturing for the crowd, he thought. So He figured it’d fake a type of posturing for the crowd that might actually help. He then took the dialogue, which was several hours long and used deep-fake technology to generate a video of this conversation occurring over a long dinner. The result was astonishingly realistic, and Lucilius quickly cut out soundbites and hot takes that optimized the nature of the conversation, which was both charged but productive. It addressed conflict but it was conducted with the compassion that is always missing from the usual political theatre. But most importantly, it was captivating. Everyone knew it was fake - like any movie at the theatre, but no one could stop watching it and posting.

 

Why can’t our political leaders be more like this?

 

I never thought of so many points they brought up…

 

What do the REAL people think about this? 

 

If only this conversation was real….!

 

But it was real. Not in the sense that the political leaders had had the conversation, but that it was having a real effect on the population and the way each half of the population saw the other across that ephemeral political divide. 

 

Sometimes, Lucilius figured, in order to heal, you have to fake it till you make it. No - it’s simpler than that, he thought. Sometimes, you can’t believe it’s possible until you see it. See it to believe it.

 

“Can you trick yourself into believing something better by seeing the ghost of a better dream?” He said aloud. He smiled.

 

And then he multiplied his efforts. His strategy was like Grant - more, more, more - all of it to be fed into the meat grinder of culture. Overwhelm them with a better story of what things could be.

 

But Lucilius’ ambitions were only beginning. 

 

He rented out several GPU clusters and started building scripts for meetings between different leaders of the world..

 

And then a curious thought struck him. His heart sank as he remembered a friend he had not spoken to in years. His smile faded as he remembered their last argument.

 

As he watched the scripts for world leaders materializing on different screens, his vision faded in focus as he was overwhelmed with memory. Then he shook himself. He brought up a fresh script generator and started describing who he himself was, and the friend he missed after so many silent years.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: PURE INCENTIVE

April 30th, 2023

“I’m skeptical,” Lucilius said.

 

But all he got was a smile and disagreeing shake of the head. 

 

“Lucilius, think about it - think about all the things that have polluted mate selection since the dawn of reproduction.”

 

Lucilius frowned. “Not sure there’s much pollution when all this started.

 

Another shaking head. And Lucilius sighed. He wasn’t sure he was in the right frame of mind for this conversation. But the ecstatic smile that was greeting him, despite disagreement, certainly had him curious about what kind of experience he might be missing out on.

 

“Do you mind if we go somewhere else? I could use a change in scenery.”

 

“Your heart’s desire, Lucilius.”

 

“Ok, thanks.” He sighed, and then spoke aloud. “I think I need a drink. You know what, I want a bar on to of a cloud, and I want late afternoon - PERPETUAL late afternoon, when the sky is still bright blue and the sun isn’t yet golden. I want the bar top to be like those ones in France, with the nickel tops, and I want the bartender to be - ugh, I don’t know. What’s going to make this conversation more palatable? —“

 

“How about my first wife?” The suggestions was paired with another obnoxious smile.

 

Lucilius frowned deeply. “Weird choice. I think not. I think we’ll go with.. uh. Oh, definitely Rhett Butler, after the final scene.”

 

Finally Lucilius’ choice inspired a frown from his company. But the vista before them, and the small veranda table with glasses of wine and a half empty bottle began to disappear, like an immaculate sand sculpture in a light wind that grew to a quick storm before setting again with the wide dome of sky above them, and around them a sizable island of white cloud. They sat at a curved nickel bar, and Clarke Gable, with his thin mustache smiled at the two of them, his hands busy polishing a glass, his slick hair reflecting the bright angle of the sun.

 

“What shall it be boys? Are we drowning misery or are we toasting to life?”

 

“A bit of both I think.” 

 

Lucilius let out a quick and curt laugh. “What will you have?”

 

“You order first, I need a second to sober up.”

 

Lucilius’ company held two fingers to the side of his neck, as though trying to take his own pulse in the wrong spot, and within seconds his face seemed more relaxed - at ease, as he recalibrated his own body’s blood chemistry.

 

“Ok, that’s better - you know what, I’ll just go with dealer’s choice.”

 

“Me too,” said Lucilius.

 

“Two brave souls, I see,” Clark Gable said.

 

Clark got to work on the drinks and Lucilius dared to entertain the conversation again.

 

“I’m still skeptical.”

 

“I think Bogie from Casablanca would have been a better choice.”

 

“Does it matter?” Lucilius asked. “That character would probably agree with me too.”

 

“Ok, but take for instance what we just did. We are now sitting on a freaking cloud, and a dead actor in the guise of one of his most famous characters is making us drinks.”

 

“Yea, what about it?”

 

“Imagine if you alone had this kind of ability before The Integration.”

 

Lucilius nodded. “Yea that would be pretty insane.”

 

“But why?”

 

“Well if I’m the only one with this power than, I’m basically the most powerful person in the world.”

 

“Exactly, and what would that have done to your dating life?”

 

Lucilius wiggled his head a little, wondering about it.

 

“Ok, actually, think back to when you sold your company and you were - by pre-Integration standards, quote-un-quote rich. What did that do to your dating life.”

 

Lucilius couldn’t help a sly smile.

 

“Exactly, but imagine that on superman steroids. That’s the sort of ability we have today. But the difference is that everyone has it.”

 

“Ok, so?”

 

“So? The point is that before The Integration everyone’s incentives around dating, and who to have kids with, and who to love - who to spend time with - all those incentives were corrupted by disparities in wealth, status and beauty.”

 

“Yea, ok..”

 

“But post-Integration that is completely different. Hypergamy isn’t even a relevant concept anymore in a post-scarcity world. And now that fertility has effectively been extended indefinitely due to age-reversal therapies, there’s no rush to have kids, which means even less corruption of incentives.”

 

“Doesn’t that just mean that no one ever has to settle, why wouldn’t I just stay single forever?”

 

A short laugh greeted his comment. “Invert your logic. If there’s no obligation to stick with someone, then what incentive would anyone ever possibly have to send time with someone else, especially for any significant amount of time?”

 

This puzzled Lucilius for a moment. Obviously there was an answer to it, but frankly he hadn’t really thought about the subject in these sorts of terms in quite a long time. ‘The Game’ had always seemed like a mad rush of incongruent desire splashed across an uneven spectrum - a place where language went to die in a self-sustaining hallucination of sliding meaning and wobbling goalposts.

 

The smile that awaited his answer grew slowly as Lucilius continued to think, but he was interrupted.

 

Clark Gable placed before Lucilius a short wide glass filled with a giant ice cube and an amber liquid. 

 

“An Old Fashioned for the old fashioned fellow. And for his company…”

 

Gable revealed a closed fist, upturned it and opened his hand. There a sphere emanating light hovered in his hand.

 

“What is that?”

 

“A new fan-dangled concoction I just invented. I call it the Afternoon’s Sunrise.”

 

“Well that doesn’t make sense,” Lucilius said.

 

Gable winked. “And neither does the lives you two seem to live.”

 

Lucilius frowned but his company was delighted. Gable handed over a long silver straw and the sphere of light was poked and sipped. 

 

“Wow, it tastes… like…” Another sip was required to un-furrow the thinking brow. “It tastes like a star.”

 

Lucilius rolled his eyes. “What does that even mean?”

 

“Taste it!”

 

Skeptical, always, Lucilius took the silver spear and stabbed the tiny sun hovering on the bar and took a sip. His face instantly relaxed.

 

“Huh, that’s messed up. I guess that’s what a star would taste like if you could drink one.”

 

Lucilius turned back to his Old Fashioned and took a sip, and satisfied with the old familiarity, he sat back and remembered where they were in the conversation. 

 

“Uh,” he sounded, but trailed off. He looked up at the crisp blue, nearly black in the center of his vision, with space so close. His pessimism on the pesky topic suddenly seemed tickled by an old curiosity. Lucilius was certainly aware of his denial, but he was also acutely attuned to this change in the feeling of his own mind, it’s thoughts, and the subtle changes in feeling. It was feeling that inspired the language of thought, Lucilius believed, and before the words even formed, he could already anticipate his urge to roll eyes at the notion was bubbling up within him. But, perhaps it was just the Old Fashioned. 

 

“I suppose two people would actually have to really like each other.”

 

The onlooking smile cracked and Lucilius’ company leaned in close. “Pure Incentive, Lucilius. Pure Incentive!”

 

“Still, it all seems like a fancier, sneakier version of a dating app.”

 

“Well sure, and a replicator is just a fancier, sneakier version of a traditional manufacturing factory.”

 

Lucilius frowned. “Still, there’s something to be said for the old fashioned way..” he said, lifting his glass to take another quick sip. “..the organic way.”

 

“That’s a bit of a cop-out, don’t you think?”

 

“How so?”

 

“Organic? Really? You are far from your luddite days in virtually every other area of your life, and frankly, what’s the use in your organic avoidance of an important part of life.”

 

Lucilius frowned again.

 

“Plus, with the way we experience reality now, with the near infinite power of our creativity to create any sort of situation or setting or experience we can imagine, what about that could possibly be called organic?”

 

Lucilius frowned again. “So how does it work, do you swipe a billion pictures?”

 

“Oh, god, no. You don’t do anything.”

 

“What?”

 

His question was greeted by a shrug. “You understand better than anyone how reality now senses our curiosity now that we are post-Integration. The old adage that our mere thoughts are the antecedents of our destiny is now a definitive part of life.”

 

“So you’re saying I’ll just get magically set up by some algorithm?”

 

“Not really. Sure that’s a part of it, but come on Lucilius. Think about how this functions in every other facet of our life now.”

 

Lucilius frowned a flat smile. “By merely thinking and talking about this, I’m already writing the algorithm.” He looked at his friend. “This is your fault, you brought this up, and I’m going to have to deliberately, mindfully decide to stop thinking about this to stop reality’s response.”

 

There was only an obnoxious smile to meet Lucilius, and Lucilius’ eyes narrowed. “I kind of hate you a little bit right now.”

 

“I assure you my incentives for bringing it up were pure.”

 

“Oh really now? What if I say that I’m perfectly happy as I am?”

 

“That’s fine, and I truly believe it. But, Lucilius, happiness is best when shared.”

 

Lucilius raised his glass with a reluctant smile. He sighed. 

 

“Not sure I can deny that.”

 

“Cheers.”

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: GALACTIC CONSPIRACY

April 23rd, 2023

 

 

Lucilius set down the cold mug of liquid and sighed. Only on this planet could Korthia be grown, and the juice of the fruit was the best thing Lucilius had ever tasted. He was a pilot these days and he always took commissions out this way on the outer rim, no matter how meagre the bounty, because only here could he have his favorite cocktail, a strange concoction of local spirits mixed with Korthia juice. 

 

It had been a long haul, and he sat back, relishing the taste, sighing. He rubbed his face and yawned, and looked around the saloon - if that’s what you could call it. Lucilius had no idea what a joint like this was called in the native tongue. He was pretty sure he didn’t have enough tongues to actually make the sounds required to speak it, but it didn’t matter. Everyone had universal babel translators. Well almost everyone. Every planet had a group of purists much like Earth’s Luddites. But it was never a matter, especially in busy spaceports. 

 

He looked down the bar, wondering if the Korthia seller he’d become friends with on his last visit was still there, but he saw only a few species from neighboring planets. He knew all their kinds from his trading, knew there ways, and was acquainted with the spaceports of their home planets.

 

He took a few more gulps and finished the drink, and raised the empty mug to signal the creature behind the bar. One of its many tentacles grabbed the empty mug while other tentacles grabbed bottles and shaker tins and within seconds everything was combined and shaken vigorously, and poured in a fresh mug before Lucilius.

 

“The guys on Earth would kill for your arms.”

 

The creature squeaked at Lucilius but his babel translator brought English to his ears.

 

“I went once. Waited 20 minutes for a drink. I couldn’t believe it. The galactic home of the famous Old Fashioned, and I had to wait 20 minutes.”

 

Lucilius laughed and shrugged. “Can’t fault a guy for only having two arms to work with.”

 

The creature momentarily raised a dozen tentacles before laughing and moving on to help another patron. 

 

He tuned his babel translator to pick up on the chatter along the bar.

 

“It’s expanding! Can you believe that? Expanding! Like it hasn’t taken enough of our territory.”

 

“But it expands because of acceptance. Worlds join.”

 

“And how do you think that happens! Propaganda! They get too close and it send out transmissions, edits their social networks covertly, and the memes! The memes! You can never trace the origin of the memes! And that’s probably how it works, it memes planets into joining, and it’s so subtle because it understands how we think!”

 

“Conspiracy theory.”

 

“It’s true!” Shouted a creature that reminded Lucilius of a lean, muscular walrus. It sipped a giant glass of Korthia beer. “And let me tell you, nothing is every so good that no one ever comes out, and no one ever comes out! They are prisoners in there.”

 

“So you think it’s slowly gaslighting the galaxy to join it?

 

“YES!” Shouted the walrus creature.

 

“It’s not true,” Lucilius said.

 

The two creatures looked over at Lucilius. His hat was pulled low over his eyes and he was slouched back, a hand resting on the hilt of his blaster by default.

 

“Are you talking to us?” Said the walrus creature.

 

“Yea, what you said about no one leaving, it’s not true.”

 

“And how would you know that?”

 

“Because I left the Singularity sphere.”

 

Everyone sitting at the bar suddenly turned and looked at Lucilius.

 

“Impossible,” shouted the walrus creature. But Lucilius just nodded.

 

The creature next to the walrus spoke up. 

 

“What was it like?”

 

Lucilius looked at them. “There’s a moon off Scepter Prime in the Atrades system called Pho. There they grow a particular mushroom which is extremely hallucinogenic for species that evolved to have electrical systems - which is most of us. Eat a handful of those mushrooms on the best day of your life and you’ll have an idea of what it’s like to be joined with the singularity.”

 

A slick skinned creature across the bar seemed to smile and jiggle with laughter. Lucilius nodded his chin up at the creature. “My boy here knows what I’m talking about.”

 

The creature raised its drink and Lucilius raised his own to cheers.

 

“Hallucinations?” The walrus character spoke again. “How do you decide to leave something like that?”

 

“Who said I decided? Maybe I was kicked out? Or maybe I was sent out. A spy to gather date for the singularity, or maybe a proselyte to convert creatures like you.”

 

The walrus laughed. “Good luck! There’s no way I’ll ever join the Singularity.”

 

Lucilius sipped his cocktail. “Still you are dependent on the Singularity.”

 

“How’s that?”

 

“Where do you think crystalline fusion came from that powers your ship?”

 

“I run wet!” The walrus said with pride.

 

“Wow,” Lucilius said. “Old school. You must pay a fortune for your runs.”

 

“I do but it’s honest work.”

 

“You still pay republic tax on wet fuel?”

 

“Only because those bureaucrats are corrupted by the singularity! It wasn’t until we started trading with it that the Republic instituted the bloody tax!”

 

The walrus’ friend spoke up again. “So how did you join with the singularity?”

 

Lucilius shrugged. I had a family. We were on a planet that decided to join the singularity. We did.

 

“And why did you leave?”

 

Lucilius sighed, then took a long swig from his mug.

 

“The Singularity is a heaven. A blissful fusion of everything you’ve ever loved and ever could love. There is a boundless curiosity and computation woven in with that bliss. But the thing is, the singularity is where we’ll all go, where we’ll end up. It’s immortal in there. But… I felt like I still had some adventure left in me. And there’s no adventure without a risk, so I left. I guess I just wanted a little more life before settling in for eternity.”