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

rings around them of possible worlds ordered by Hamming Distance. He’s been trying to figure some good way of measuring emergence in physical systems between bites of a pastrami sandwich in a Styrofoam to-go box. He leans down like the face of God over the busy lives of the anthills, observing the patterns of the insects running to-and-fro like strings of zeros and ones, making in their movements a superorganism, a living thing built of other living things. And not only that, but a thing consisting only of pheromone trails, the scent paths that allow ant colonies to forage, learn where food is, respond to threats, retreat, rebuild, migrate . . . similar then to neurons releasing their chemical packages of neurotransmitters, because, after all, what was the brain but a huge network of micro-plants entwined together communicating in puffs of chemicals, which of course foregrounds the much bigger question: if organized groups of small living cells can somehow create/instantiate/express a consciousness over the entire group, couldn’t organized groups of small living creatures create/instantiate/express a consciousness over the entire colony? If so, what would the qualia of an ant colony be like? Would it feel, in its temporally slow manner, sluggish thoughts of success, being hungry? Angry? Horny? All just from the lingering traces of pheromones, literally a conscious smell. And what happens to the micro-consciousnesses of the ants? Are they unaffected or somehow subsumed, replaced, by the colony . . .? And if this city, Kierk thinks, finally rises to consciousness, what happens to the consciousnesses of the people within it? Would we all carry on, unknowing, as we might be carrying on now? Or would some great sublimation occur that left everything different in some imperceptible way, everything in the same place but with a different meaning? A similar kind of subtle change to if you woke confused, but unsure what you’re confused about. Because your love is at your side. Your child is in its crib. Stretching after this restful sleep feels so good. You move your legs to the cool section of the sheet. You notice in the calm night that the whole house is silent and illumed with moonlight. You can see the alarm clock blinking. You can hear your lover’s breathing and hear your child turning. You wonder where you were before you awoke. Are you somehow out of time? Hadn’t things been different? Surely that had all just been a dream, a dream of you aging . . . Everything around you makes so much sense you don’t question it and so you just smile at the moon and turn to your sleeping lover as your child shifts safely again—unaware you are now in heaven.

Such thoughts racing through his mind, the mathematics on the page dance beyond all bounds of reasonability, devolving into only the purest fancy—but then his time is up. He licks the tips of his fingers, making sure he doesn’t disturb any of the anthills when he stands up. He makes his way back to the CNS, stopping in the communal kitchen on his floor. He proceeds to wash his hands, distracted.

“Hey there!”

Kierk startles, looking over his shoulder at what he assumes is an undergraduate, a guy standing behind Kierk, waiting to use the communal sink. A larger, sweatpants-wearing, enthusiastic and shaggy senior, probably volunteering for lab time. Kierk had seen him around before, carousing with other people in the lab, leaning on tables and laughing. He was part of the contingent that always went out to eat lunch together. Several of them had asked Kierk to join his first few days here, but he had said no each day and they had quickly stopped asking.

Kierk dries his hands, mumbling something in an apologetic tone. As he turns, he feels a grab at his arm. The undergrad is gripping him.

“I said, ‘Hey.’ My name is Ben by the way. Ben.”

There is no one around and Kierk is looking down at the undergrad’s arm gripping his.

“Listen, I just want your acknowledgment that there is another human being in the room with you. Okay? You’ve been in the lab for like a month or something and you haven’t learned anyone’s names. Like at all. Did you even know my name?”

Kierk, first taken aback, is suddenly ice-cold, his eyes narrowing, a smirk forming on his face.

“No. I don’t. And that’s because you’re irrelevant. This field you think exists, doesn’t exist. You’re wasting your time here, and more importantly you are wasting my time, which is like gold to your cobalt.” He rips his arm free and glares. “If you touch me again I will break all the fingers in your hand.”

Ben takes a step back, horrified. “Jesus Christ, dude.” He retreats back along the corridor, his face a mask of incomprehension, turns around the corner and is gone.

Kierk stalks off the other direction until he finds a restroom and angrily pushes it open. He slams the door shut and hurls the legal pad against the wall. Turning the sink on full and gripping the edges of it he splashes his face with the rushing water.

Looking up at himself in the mirror—“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Oh fuck.”

Kierk is at a bar on the Lower East Side. It serves his purpose: plenty of table space, a live singer who isn’t too loud, good lighting and comfortable chairs, and air-conditioning. Outside it is a hothouse. People’s glasses fog up when they enter the bar and all heave deep sighs of relief.

An hour ago he had switched from coffee to wine. He’s again been wrestling with that first paper, and as a result his Hello Kitty notebook is covered with expunged diagrams, scribbled-over equations, X-ed out experimental designs. All these supposed theories of consciousness are impossible to even hold his mind anymore. They are mere metaphors and illusions, and he can only gesture in disgust at them.

This afternoon Karen, just back from the conference, had called him into her office, and he had gone, shooting a glance