09-26-2013, 08:50 PM
[Posting mood things, cause Grace learned a Sphere! Woo!]
The route to the Chantry is now something Grace can drive in her sleep. Mostly, she's not there to visit people, but to visit the books in the library. It's a fantastic place, really. Grace loves books, loves reading. And these books supposedly hold answers to her deep questions, the ones that keep her awake at night with their incessant yearning to be answered.
Ah, that is a problem, the sleeplessness. In order to accommodate school, work, her 'alternate studies', and somehow find time in all of that to track down horrific monster-spawning movies, something has to give. That something is food, sleep, play, all of the other, unnecessary pieces of life.
They're not really unnecessary though, are they? Gadfly said that he knew of a way to fork mental processes, make one's mind work in parallel. Multitasking would be amazing. Get two, three things done at once? Yes, please.
However, desperately tired, a little hungry, mind wracked with thoughts of the ghul turns out to not be the best of times to try to learn about magic. She has no clue how to make sense of some of these tomes, their words lead down blind alleys. "Then, one merely has to create a new universe. Since this is a trivial task, it has been left as an exercise to the reader." Honestly, it feels like that sometimes. The things that should be obvious are less than.
On at least one night this month, Grace slept on a couch in the library, and then woke up in the morning frantic about making it to class on time. She should have just gone straight to the source from the beginning. Gadfly loaded her down with a month's worth of reasonable reading material, and parts of his source code which was more than just a little help.
Strange how biology is so much easier than this. One would think that the brain is it -- understand the gray matter, and the mind follows. But it's not that simple. The brain's just the hardware. It enables the electrochemical ephemeral morass of morals and free will and memory, but it's not itself a mind. You could have a mind without a brain, she thinks.
In the end, Grace figured out a way to think about it. It's a way that makes sense, though she knows it's not the only way. There is math involved, of course. Code to fold and unfold perceptions, to apply Fourier transforms to mental aspects and calculate thought interference patterns and quantum vectors.
But to put it in metaphorical terms, it's like making paper snowflakes. You fold the paper, and fold it again, and fold it again, and cut a little piece out (and there is a memory of your childhood pet) and another piece (your piano lessons) another chunk (the way you taste chocolate). But when you unfold it, the memories, the taste of chocolate, and your piano skills are just everywhere, all at once -- folded into the wholeness of you. You could cut that snowflake in half, and still play Claire de Lune, because the concept of you is everywhere and nowhere in particular.
Like the universe, really. Like the source code Grace manages to wrest out of its holographic surface. So connected, it might as well be one, with you folded into its wholeness, memory-like.
The similarity does not go unnoticed.
The route to the Chantry is now something Grace can drive in her sleep. Mostly, she's not there to visit people, but to visit the books in the library. It's a fantastic place, really. Grace loves books, loves reading. And these books supposedly hold answers to her deep questions, the ones that keep her awake at night with their incessant yearning to be answered.
Ah, that is a problem, the sleeplessness. In order to accommodate school, work, her 'alternate studies', and somehow find time in all of that to track down horrific monster-spawning movies, something has to give. That something is food, sleep, play, all of the other, unnecessary pieces of life.
They're not really unnecessary though, are they? Gadfly said that he knew of a way to fork mental processes, make one's mind work in parallel. Multitasking would be amazing. Get two, three things done at once? Yes, please.
However, desperately tired, a little hungry, mind wracked with thoughts of the ghul turns out to not be the best of times to try to learn about magic. She has no clue how to make sense of some of these tomes, their words lead down blind alleys. "Then, one merely has to create a new universe. Since this is a trivial task, it has been left as an exercise to the reader." Honestly, it feels like that sometimes. The things that should be obvious are less than.
On at least one night this month, Grace slept on a couch in the library, and then woke up in the morning frantic about making it to class on time. She should have just gone straight to the source from the beginning. Gadfly loaded her down with a month's worth of reasonable reading material, and parts of his source code which was more than just a little help.
Strange how biology is so much easier than this. One would think that the brain is it -- understand the gray matter, and the mind follows. But it's not that simple. The brain's just the hardware. It enables the electrochemical ephemeral morass of morals and free will and memory, but it's not itself a mind. You could have a mind without a brain, she thinks.
In the end, Grace figured out a way to think about it. It's a way that makes sense, though she knows it's not the only way. There is math involved, of course. Code to fold and unfold perceptions, to apply Fourier transforms to mental aspects and calculate thought interference patterns and quantum vectors.
But to put it in metaphorical terms, it's like making paper snowflakes. You fold the paper, and fold it again, and fold it again, and cut a little piece out (and there is a memory of your childhood pet) and another piece (your piano lessons) another chunk (the way you taste chocolate). But when you unfold it, the memories, the taste of chocolate, and your piano skills are just everywhere, all at once -- folded into the wholeness of you. You could cut that snowflake in half, and still play Claire de Lune, because the concept of you is everywhere and nowhere in particular.
Like the universe, really. Like the source code Grace manages to wrest out of its holographic surface. So connected, it might as well be one, with you folded into its wholeness, memory-like.
The similarity does not go unnoticed.