Info:You climb into the machine, and do your best to get comfortable on the bench. Dr. Xlookup has assured you that it's just like going to sleep.
Info:So, you go to sleep.##While you sleep, you have an experience.
Info:...
Info:At this point, the authors must apologise for the insufficiency of the narration. English is a rather blunt instrument. We will, unfortunately, have to resort to metaphor.
You:Imagine that you've lived your whole life on the surface of a pond. Your world is a flat, two-dimensional plane.##One day, an object falls into the pond, causing ripples. Your world moves in a direction that you don't even have a word for.
You:Put another way - you knew left and right, forwards and backwards...
IRL:... and then you looked *up.~
Info:Something very much like that has happened. As you doze off, you imagine yourself sending your thoughts upwards. Well, not up, but *up.~ Out. In a new direction.
Info:You can sense the flows of signals around the room. The data packets each have a distinctive mouth-feel, depending on format and content.##The encrypted ones, in particular, are pleasantly firm but yielding. You crush one in your mouth, producing a smooth yellow taste. Ooh, nice.
Info:Following the trail of a local camera, you find that you can look at your sleeping body from all directions at once. Interesting, but you're hungry for a more abstract experience.
Info:You move out. You breathe in through a satellite, and taste Venus's troposphere. You breathe out through a hydrothermal power station, and bubbles emerge from a vent on the Juan de Fuca Ridge.##You imagine twiddling your fingers, and the solar sails of a telecommunications satellite turn.
IRL:A silvery thread between your talons, you head for deep space.
IRL:You observe a group of stars that orbit one another. For a while, you amuse yourself by tinkering with their initial positions and velocities, watching as their potential movements unfold before you, their probabilities smeared across the night sky in rippling Gaussian rainbows.
Info:Your minds are working in harmony, now. You have evolved to intuitively draw conclusions and detect patterns...
IRL:...and you have also been built to process data and rapidly perform complex calculations without error. It is beautiful.
IRL:Language increasingly fails to capture the experience. But is a word for the end state.
IRL:Apotheosis.          #  #    From the Ancient Greek apotheô, meaning 'to deify.'
IRL:The dream fades, but the feeling lingers.|Continue=999
