The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

“Basically a consciousness meter,” Kierk said.

“Yes, precisely. As per the theory, all conscious experiences are essentially geometrical information shapes. Very simple to represent. Very beautiful.”

Kierk, excitedly—“Yes, like you’ve extracted the conscious experience out of the physical system into a simplified mathematical form.”

“Exactly. Which means that, given my theory, we’ll be able to transmit the quale, the conscious state.”

“Others could reconstruct it.”

“Imagine, Kierk, if one finds a patient with a particular sensory deficit, a neurologist could send the quale, the conscious experience of that patient, to another neurologist. I imagine art exhibits of qualia, large geometric structures. The conscious experience becomes fungible. You could even instantiate it in other brains if you wanted to. Change the connectivity of a particular brain to get the sensation or sensory space that you wanted.” Antonio began to sketch out on a sheet of paper the anatomy of a machine capable of such a procedure, of bending the neural connectivity of a brain to produce heightened sensation, or maybe even transplant another’s experience directly into it.

“Consciousness as a commodity. You’re talking about building and selling experiences,” Kierk said quietly.

“Well, such things are possible, Kierk, when you have a theory of consciousness.”

And maybe, Kierk had thought, leaning back in his chair, one day we’ll have synaptic sewing machines with fine enough fingers to sculpt the delicate neural architectures required to replicate, precisely, the pain of Jesus Christ crucified on the cross. We can sell them at discounts and try to save all our souls, he had thought, watching Antonio continue to draw sketches of his machine.

TUESDAY

Kierk wakes up and collects the rags of himself crumpled about the floor of the apartment, a difficult task now because the cardboard boxes have taken up nearly all available space, as if they were capable of reproduction and had multiplied.

Out on Broadway he can feel the barometric pressure drop that indicates a storm approaching, that tingling feeling on the skin, that wind chime of receptive bone, the way the trash skitters across the pavement as it is swept from one side of the street to the other. The sky begins to gray, becomes a low roof.

Waiting for his simulation of the cortex to run he uses the espresso machine Karen has set up (above it is the sign I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD). Kierk sips his espresso and gazes out at the city from the tenth floor. The bright specks of people cross streets. Cars wait for them under the gathering clouds, points of clothes and handbags and faces mill about—like a great mill we walk around inside of, machines and pistons move, causality and information are transferred, and does anything arise?

The simulation run is at ten percent. He sighs and leaves, making his way through the windowless corridors. As he walks Kierk notices that the air pressure differentials in this building are very weird. There are vents in almost every room but in some corridors the temperature will be drastically different; goose bumps will form on his skin as he enters and he’ll rub at his uncovered arms, while in others he will break into a near flash sweat or lean against the wall and bask like a salamander until someone walks by and he will pretend to check his phone. But the most strange thing about it is that, due to the pressure differentials, often doors will not close all the way but remain propped an inch or two open such that through them will come a strange howl of air, a constant moan whose prosody depends on the temperatures and airflows, which in turn depend on the guts of pipes that wind their way across ceilings and up stairwells, rumbling hot and then rumbling cold in a series of differences making differences, which in turn determines which of the doors at any given time are closed, or are hovering an inch or two off their frames, and how mellow or anguished the wind’s moan is.

He follows a stairwell upward, exploring until he finds a door that leads to the roof. Ignoring the NO—XIT sign with the flaked away E he opens the unlocked door, propping it ajar with a brick lying nearby.

The wind rips at his clothing, then subsides. Beyond the lip of the roof the city is a spun sculpture, an airless and hot mercurial expanse. Due to the wind it’s much cooler up here than down in the streets; he could almost be wearing a jacket. He stares out at the metal dream of teeth and steel and contemplates apostasy. All Kierk wants at that moment is to live a good life, no, a great life, to be a Mozart of living. Should he really be here waiting on his project, which is essentially a Rube Goldberg device for biased random number generation? Of late he feels like all the activity of himself and his peers is just playing the Science Game: varying some variable with infinite degrees of freedom and then throwing statistics at it until you get that reportable p-value and write up a narrative short story around it. The banality of it all is crippling to him, nearly sundering his will for the day, and it is all he can do to keep from hiding up on the roof forever, to ride out the storm like a mad ship captain. Still, there might be an efflorescence in store for him here, maybe, if this thing inside of him that he feels building, whatever it is, can make its way out of his mind and reveal itself as seraphim or golem or stillborn.

Looking down gives him vertigo. In his peripheral vision there is a fluttering at the base of an imbricated tin structure, near a rusted series of pipes that looks like a church organ’s mouth. It’s a feather, the fluffy white smaller tufts of stripped plumage. Kierk crouches down and as it is tussled by the wind and he picks it up,