Anathem

"But isn't everything in the universe so linked?" "Depends on how their light cones are arranged. We can't affect things in our past. Some things are too far away to affect us in any way that matters."

boredom is a mask that frustration wears).

which led naturally enough to the last of the great chambers in the Hylaean Way, which was all about the glory that was Baz,

Boredom is a mask that frustration wears.

"And three months later Baz is on fire. But how are you going to do all of that with weeds?"

I'd made the error of admitting that I didn't know exactly where it was. Inside the concent it was fine to admit ignorance, because that was the first step on the road to truth. Out here, it just gave people like Crade an opening to seize power.

I stayed up late and finished my letter to Ala by firelight. Which was a good way to do it; the seventh draft was short and simple. I just kept asking myself: if fate had it that we'd never see each other again, what would I need to say to her?

I tried to sit in a position where there wasn't a speely directly in front of me. Still, every time the feed popped from one image to another, my eye jumped to it. I was like an ape in a tree, looking at whatever moved fastest in my environment.

that's not what fly-bat-worm says," said Orolo. "It says only that pure thought alone doesn't enable us to draw any conclusions one way or another about things that are non-spatiotemporal—such as God."

"No theor who attends to these matters can long escape the conclusion that the cnoöns exist independently of what may or may not be going on in peoples' brains at any given moment," Paphlagon said. "It is a simple application of the Steelyard. What is the simplest way of explaining the fact that theors working independently in different eras, different sub-disciplines, different cosmi even, time and time again prove the same results—results that do not contradict each other, even though reached by different proof-chains—results, some of which can be turned into theories that perfectly describe the behavior of the physical universe? The simplest answer is that the cnoöns really exist, and are not of this causal domain."

A stowaway hit me in the spine with a pipe. No, wait a second, that was the engine exploding. No, actually it had been the explosive charges blowing off the fairing.

I was worrying again. Actually, it was worse than that—even more pointless. Rather than worrying about the future—which could be changed—I was worrying about things that might have gone wrong in the past, and couldn't be changed in any case.