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    Stones of Significance
    Stones of Significance
    Stones of Significance
    Ebook41 pages45 minutes

    Stones of Significance

    By David Brin

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    About this ebook

    The Singularity -- when our skill & knowledge & immense computing power transform us into... well... godlike beings. From a writer's perspective, it presents a problem. One can write stories leading up to the Singularity, about problems like rebellious AI. But how do you write a tale set after the singularity has happened? That's the topic of David Brin's short story, Stones of Significance.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Brin
    Release dateJun 24, 2011
    ISBN9781458196286
    Stones of Significance
    Author

    David Brin

    David Brin is an astrophysicist whose international-bestselling novels include Earth, Existence, Startide Rising, and The Postman, which was adapted into a film in 1998. Brin serves on several advisory boards, including NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC, and speaks or consults on topics ranging from AI, SETI, privacy, and invention to national security. His nonfiction book about the information age, The Transparent Society, won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. Brin’s latest nonfiction work is Polemical Judo. Visit him at www.davidbrin.com.

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    • 5/5
      Mind blowing. The singularity effectively makes us into gods of our own universes. But be careful what you wish for!

    Book preview

    Stones of Significance - David Brin

    Stones of Significance

    A Short Story

    About the Singularity

    By

    David Brin

    ***

    Smashwords Edition

    Copyright 2011 David Brin

    ***

    No one ever said it was easy to be a god, responsible for billions of sapient lives, having to listen to their dreams, anguished cries, and carping criticism.

    Try it for a while.

    It can get to be a drag, just like any other job.

    *

    My new client wore the trim, effortlessly athletic figure of a neo-traditionalist human. Beneath a youthful-looking brow, minimal cranial implants made barely noticeable bulges, resembling the modest horns of some urbane Mephistopheles. Other features were stylishly androgynous, though broad shoulders and a swaggering stride made the male pronoun seem apropos.

    House cross-checked our guest's credentials before ushering him along a glowing guide beam, past the Reality Lab to my private study.

    I've always been proud of my inner sanctum; the sand garden, raked to fractal perfection by a robot programmed with my own esthetic migrams; the shimmering mist fountain; a grove of hybrid peach-almond trees, forever in bloom and fruiting.

    My visitor gazed perfunctorily across the harmonious scene. Alas, it clearly did not stir his human heart.

    Well, I thought, charitably. Each modern soul has many homes. Perhaps his true spirit resides outside the skull, in parts of him that are not protoplasm.

    We suspect that repugnant schemes are being planned by certain opponents of good order.

    These were the dour fellow's first words, as he folded long legs to sit where I indicated, by a low wooden table, hand-crafted from a design of the Japanese Meiji Era.

    Single-minded, I diagnosed from my cerebral cortex.

    And tactless, added one of my higher brain layers -- the one called seer.

    Our shared hypothalamus mutely agreed, contributing eloquently wordless feelings of visceral dislike for this caller. Our guest might easily have interpolated from these environs what sort of host I am -- the kind who prefers a little polite ritual before plunging into business. It would have cost him little to indulge me.

    Ah, rudeness is a privilege too many members of my generation relish. A symptom of the post-deification age, I suppose.

    Can you be more specific? I asked, pouring tea into porcelain cups.

    A light beam flashed as the shoji window screen picted a reminder straight to my left eye. It being Wednesday, a thunder shower was regularly scheduled for 3:14 p.m., slanting over the city from the northwest.

    query: shall i close?

    I wink-countermanded, ordering the paper screen to stay open. Rain drops make lovely random patterns on the Koi pond. I also wanted to see how my visitor reacted to the breeze. The 3:14 squall features chill, swirling gusts that are always so chaotic, so charmingly varied. They serve to remind me that godhood has limitations.

    Chaos has only

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