User:Fasten/Book/Quarantine
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-
- It came into being as a whole, in an instant - but because the Earth
- was eight light-minutes from its center, the time lag before
- the last starlight reached us varied across the sky, giving rise
- to the growing circle of darkness. Stars vanished first from the
- direction in which The Bubble was closest, and last where it was furthest
- away - precisely behind the sun.
Quarantine-18
The novel Quarantine contains some far reaching analogies for the universe.
The exploitation of previously impossible quantum mechanical effects to enhance personal luck is an obvious metaphor for the reduction of personal options by the application of advanced ethics, which is causally related to the disappearance of the stars in the novel.
People in the novel show a strong tendency to accept black boxes.
- Many people have brain modifications (mods) that alter the function of parts of their brain to implement neurological software.
- People accept jobs / contracts from anonymous clients.
- A reseller of brain mods accepts a highly unusual contract (which is later revealed to have the potential to threaten life on earth) that is delivered to him explicitly in a little black box.
The eigenstate mod allows the user to perform tasks he cannot accomplish or which would, at least, be extremly unlikely. The protagonist is not aware how he did what he did, he only suspects that he somehow has learned to pick eigenstates of his personal preference as if by intuition.
The miraculous appearance of the eigenstate mod could be interpreted as a reply to brain modifications, as it is the very opposite of restricting your possibilities this would be the statement: "You really need to restrain yourself now".
The eigenstate mod effectively turns the protagonist into an observer of his own successful actions without a reliable understanding for his own actions, when he chooses to perform unlikely tasks, a skill which increases dramatically when challenged with more improbable challenges.
The eigenstate mod promotes the evolution of neural patterns which are only functional in a state of superposition and, with growing complexity, have the potential to be a consciousness (the smeared self) on their own. The neuronal patterns function only in a multiverse that is only allowed to exist when the user of the eigenstate mod inhibits the collapse of the wave functions and stops being an observer in the sense of quantum mechanics.
The smeared self chooses, or promotes, the desirable eigenstates for the solution of a problem but the act of collapsing the wave function, which is presumed to destroy the existance of alternatives, immediately leads to the termination of its own existance, at least until it is recreated by the eigenstate mod.
Through the act of collapsing the protagonist kills (versions of) himself, which could be interpreted as "Can't you teach yourself to be an adult?". He also destroys a more advanced version of himself, which could be interpreted as the statement: "You are hampering your own advancement (with your lack of ethics)".
The super-consciousness appears to follow the choices of the protagonist but on the critical decision whether to infect all of humanity with the eigenstate mod or not it suddenly takes the opposite point of view and renders the protagonist helpless, who was previously convinced that the decisions where his.
The Bubble Maker Laura claims that she neither wishes to prevent the spread of the eigenstate mod nor does she wish to promote it. She informs the protagonist apparently unbiased as to what the results of using the eigenstate mod are. The conclusion is that the eigenstate mod must be destroyed or every single user who is ever allowed to access it must willingly restrict the use to a given maximum of time. She also informs the protagonist that his own smeared self is like a young child and acting childish.
The general widespread use of the eigenstate mod by people who are even unaware of its existence leads to general chaos which suddenly ends with the disappearance of The Bubble.
The protagonist hypothesizes that the end of chaos means earth has branched out into a multiverse itself (or merged into a superspace) and he is merely experiencing a more likely position within this multiverse, which is close to indistinguishable from life before The Bubble. An alternate hypothesis could be that, as the protagonist has previously learned, the more experienced smeared selfs easily determine the outcome for the less experienced and that the species of the Bubble Makers has choosen to determine what normality means for humanity , after an inexperienced human species failed miserably at doing so.
- ↑ The users of brain modifications are messing up their own brains (with something most of them don't even begin to understand). This is probably a metaphor for precedents: "You are doing it to yourself."
- ↑ A very fast response to the unethical precedent (You get what you give). This would probably translate to "You people really need to understand the Categorical Imperative quickly now".
- ↑ Probably a metaphor for intuitions and for trust in communication that makes no claim to trustworthiness.
- ↑ see Appropriate to the Species
- ↑ see forestalling human thought processes
