4. Milti Symeonoglou | Pioneers of Survival 4
In the year 2058, humanity decided that it no longer had a need for death. Some
people got together and decided that humans have died for as long as there have been
humans, and that needed to change. Biologists warned us that our already stagnating
evolution would completely dissipate. Theologians warned us that the afterlife did, in fact,
exist and that God would be pretty pissed when people stopped coming up to see Him or
Her. Philosophers warned us that life would lose meaning without an end. Some
responded by saying that even given infinite time, they would still never practice
philosophy.
They were all correct.
Evolution has been described to me like rising dough. It keeps going without an
agenda, and when the environment interferes, the shape of it changes. Natural selection is
taking a cookie cutter and saying, “here are the things that we want here.” But what if the
dough is tougher than the cookie cutter? It just keeps going. With nothing to curb the
dough rising, we get all sorts of mutations, from chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin, to dirt
and pebbles. Some evolutions are pretty darn tasty and enjoyable. Others crack your teeth.
One biologist, who opposed humanity get rid of death was quoted as saying: “We are
nothing more than pebbles, painted brown like chocolate chips, hidden in the dough that
the Earth must consume.”
Just as he exclaimed his sentence, which, without context confused present
onlookers, he leapt out of a window only to find that he could not die. He also discovered
that nearly dying can be very painful, on occasion.
5. Milti Symeonoglou | Pioneers of Survival 5
A theologian, shortly after the biologist’s self-defenestration, drank some tasty
arsenic,1
saying “God, I will be with you soon.”
The first being she saw upon waking up was her cat, who meowed in her face.
Humanity had given up on dying, but cats had mastered it, and were not so keen to give
up eight lives. The cat, named Bismarck, after Otto von Bismarck, was hungry and his
devoutly suicidal owner’s existential crisis meant nothing to him.
A philosopher, deciding that living eternally, while depressing as hell, didn’t mean
jokes had to get old, started rolling a boulder up a hill. I guess they find that funny.
She started doing it as a joke. Then it became fun. Then it became frustrating. She
hasn’t gotten it to balance yet. She is my existentialist hero, not Sisyphus, though.
Sisyphus is remarkable because he finds a reason to push a rock up a hill. But pushing a
rock up a hill was his punishment. He had to do it. This philosopher could have done
anything else. She could have done philosophy! She could have counted the number of
bananas in the supermarket before and after lunchtime! She decided, however to give
herself the punishment that a bunch of angry gods gave to a guy for outsmarting them that
one time. Well… those few times.
While the Sisyphean philosopher was busy not killing herself, and the theologian
and biologist were both busy failing to kill themselves, I was being born. I was the first
baby born that didn’t have to worry about dying, not that babies worry too much about
dying. The time has passed now, but back before humans gave up mortality, babies
probably should have been a little more cautious. They’re one of nature’s more useless
1
Don’t drink arsenic.
6. Milti Symeonoglou | Pioneers of Survival 6
things. They’re not even the productive kind of useless like sloths.2
They’re detrimentally
useless. That’s the worst kind! I’ve asked biologists why we need children to be so stupid
and danger-prone. Their responses have been both overwhelmingly against me calling
children dumb and useless, and devoid of any scientific answer. Interestingly enough,
normal people who don’t study biology also oppose my view on children. They didn’t
need to attend higher education to reach this conclusion though. But if you have an
eternity to do things, why not do everything.
I’ve been interviewed on the topic of “being the pioneer of survival.” I said it then,
and I’ll repeat it to you now: I am no pioneer. Calling me “the pioneer of survival” is
stupid for a number of reasons. Here they are.
1. Pioneers: The pioneers are the ones who first decided that we shouldn’t die.
I had no choice in the matter and the difference between me and the other
babies who share my exact birthday comes down to a few hours. I didn’t
pioneer anything.
2. Survival: Survival? What are we surviving? We can’t die!
3. Other: The biologists, philosophers, and theologians were right. They
argued with each other about which group was most right, but they were all
right.
Admittedly, the third reason isn’t really aimed at the pioneer thing. That’s why I
labeled it “other.” I think it’s okay though.
The last question the interviewer asked me was “Given the opportunity, would you
commit suicide? If death became a possibility again, would you take your own life?” I
2
Sloths evolved to be so useless that they became evolutionarily viable. They aren’t worth predators’ time
to eat, because they’re covered in their own waste, in addition to mold and other fungus that lives in their
fur, and they have little protein at that.
7. Milti Symeonoglou | Pioneers of Survival 7
said “no” but not for the reason she was hoping. If death is a possibility, then I don’t need
to kill myself and I can just live my life knowing I’ll die, and knowing that if I die young
I’m helping some natural order. The time I spend will have meaning because it is finite.
The time after I’ve died, even if that doesn’t exist for me, matters now.
But she didn’t press me on my answer. I don’t think she would kill herself either.
In the same piece where they interviewed me, they interviewed the man who
initially proposed the idea. He was short and pudgy, although slim. He mostly just had a
lot of skin. He was balding, with pink cheeks that always looked a bit too warm. His nose
bent back and forth, the product, he told the interviewer, of an unfortunate car accident
when he was young.
The accident orphaned him, and he was still sad about that. So he decided to make
it so people couldn’t die anymore. Now when parents are driving irresponsibly, or some
jerk is drunk or something, the worst that can happen when an accident occurs is a coma.3
At the end of his interview he said something to discourage people from doing reckless
things, or aggressive things, or most things that the average person felt would be fun to do,
knowing that dying was no longer an option.
“Look at it like this,” he said in his high, raspy voice. “People are still as mortal as
ever, just without the whole ‘mortality’ thing.”
I got to meet him. When the documentary was done, I got to talk to him. Mr. Red
Brown. I introduced myself as Green Cyan.4
He wasn’t amused.
I asked him how he spent his time, now that he had so damn much of it. He said he
spent it at the cemetery, looking at the graves of Mr. and Mrs. Brown. I said that that was
3
Or two or more comas!
4
Not my real name, if that was unclear.
8. Milti Symeonoglou | Pioneers of Survival 8
horribly depressing and that if I had his life I would have probably just killed myself,
rather than deciding no one should die. He still wasn’t amused.
The other day I approached the biologist who leapt to his pain. The fall left his
face scarred, and had broken some bones right after. Other than that he was fine, I guess.
He may have had other scars, but I didn’t ask. I did ask him what he had done with his
life. Apparently he and the theologian who drank that tasty arsenic5
became good friends
and, in addition to learning each other’s reasons for hating existence, they’d both taken up
philosophy. As I’ve said, all three were correct in their reasoning. The biologist was the
one who told me that. He and the theologian decided that they wanted to get married and
start a family, except they didn’t want to bring kids into this world. It had been bad
enough for just the two of them and they didn’t want to risk their kids being miserable.
That’s some of the most responsible parenting I’ve ever seen. They aren’t even parents!
They invited me to their wedding. I didn’t go.
They did inspire me to do something, though.
They inspired me to do everything, in fact. I found out that everything is hard to
do. Science is difficult. Science comes from the Latin verb scio, which means, “to know”.
Science actually “knows” very little. We have laws that tell us that every time I drop my
hat off of my building, it will fall. Even then though, we don’t know for certain. The best
we can say is “when we drop hats off of buildings, they tend to fall.” We know that.
Philosophy comes from two Ancient Greek words: philo- and sophy. They mean “lover
of” and “knowledge” respectively. It’s especially hard to know things when your practice
isn’t based in observation. I’m not knocking philosophy, but for people who love
5
See the first footnote... or do whatever you want. What’s the worst that’s going to happen to you from
drinking a lethal chemical? Certainly not death anymore!
9. Milti Symeonoglou | Pioneers of Survival 9
knowledge, they seem to do a bit less “knowing” than the guys who just seem to be in the
“knowing” business. Theologian comes from the Ancient Greek words: theo and logian.
The first one means “God” but I’m not sure I picked the correct root word for the second,
because I think “logian” means nothing. It has a root and I don’t know it. Knowing is
hard.
Beyond those 3 there is, quite surprisingly, much more. There’s feminism, golf,
economics, linguistics, engineering, and Rube Goldberg Machines,6
to name a few. How
am I supposed to do everything? Once I have done everything, what am I supposed to do
next? If someone can figure out that question and never have to ask it again, I’ll give her
or him a cookie, and not one with pebbles in it, a real, honest to goodness, chocolate chip
cookie. I’m not sure if that’s what they want, but I’ll sure as hell give it to her or him.
Tomorrow I’m going to go visit that philosopher, who has been pushing the
boulder up a hill for twenty years straight now, and who probably has the most defined
calves in the entire human existence, start to finish. I’ve been told that she is happy with
her decision, and that she wouldn’t change it. It’s not even that she’s not disappointed in
her decision. She’s happy. She’s happy, and the biologist is happy, and the theologian is
happy and all of them effectively attempted suicide twenty years ago. Maybe I’ll be happy
in twenty years too.
6
Side note-Reason #1 why Rube Goldberg was cooler than Red Brown: Ole Rube achieved immortality
through doing something, rather than ruining things for a bunch of people. Reason #2 why Rube Goldberg
was cooler than Red Brown: Rube Goldberg Machines.
11. Milti Symeonoglou | Passion 11
The first time you struck a match, you felt pure power, magic. From the glowing
heat, growing steadily, to the smoke that rolled, a black river flowing to the ceiling, to the
smell of sulfur, sweeter than perfume. Ten matches later, your father had sat you down on
the couch, scolding you for wasting, scolding you because “Matches are dangerous. You
might get burned.”
The smell of sulfur lingered for minutes, weeks, years after that first match
charred in your tiny hand; it existed in your nostrils’ memory above all other smells,
divine. A usurper came along, wanting the throne. Her name? Kerosene. Where
matchbooks and sticks were direct, businessmen, Kerosene was the flirtatious first crush.
Your desire for her roared not at what she said or did, not how she looked or sounded, but
at the potential she offered, the sensual whispers in your ear of what she could do for you.
Soon, when mom became aware of your secret relationship, she warned you of the
dangers, tried to get you to experiment with tamer pleasures. You knew better than to
settle.
You had brief fling with Tobacco, a distant third place to your past loves in smell
alone. The two of you had some common ground, but ultimately, Tobacco couldn’t meet
your needs, so you ended it.
Marijuana popped up briefly, but your recent failure with Tobacco tainted the
relationship and you couldn’t distance the two… you cheated on Mary Jane.
You ran back into the open arms of Tobacco, a novel passion discovered in her
smoky arms. Marijuana smelled Tobacco’s perfume on your clothes, and you made the
tough call.
12. Milti Symeonoglou | Passion 12
Passion for Tobacco gave way to Kerosene, your passion for her defeating your
previous loves. Little fires became large, fireplace flames slowly became campfires,
became roaring bonfires. Soon enough Kerosene slipped from the picture, the husk of
your passion burned away, leaving the well done core of your true desire bare. You stared
into the burning wood, feeling a familiar rising feeling in your chest, the heat against
your cheek causing your skin to tighten ever so slightly.
The fire began to burn down, and you looked around for more wood, finding
none. With a sigh, you sat cross-legged, extending your hand to feel the dying warmth.
Too soon for your preferences, only embers remained, heated coals grasping for fuel that
wasn’t there, fighting for their waning lives. You grabbed a fistful of sand and cast it
behind your back to the cinders as you left, sparing your love a humiliating final hour.
Your cheek craved a tear, something to moisten it, something to let it know that it was a
human cheek; your tear ducts had dried up that night, and would not see use in your life
until much later.
As if your very heart had been the last log to burn, you felt empty, void of
something essential, something that had been burned away by an imperceptive paramour.
More sparks, more kindling. More.
Bonfires were too little, nothing more than a struck match for your desire. Their
heat barely warmed you then, and for too few minutes. As each one burned into darkness,
as each light faded, as the heat crept from your skin, you realized you could not find your
way. The cold darkness left you lost and afraid.
It took two decades for you to think bigger than petty campfires.
Click
13. Milti Symeonoglou | Passion 13
Divine inspiration, a light bulb above your head, whatever you’d like to call it,
struck you. You bought gallons of gasoline, pounds of matchbooks, an axe, and the
kindling.
They made certain you wanted to purchase ten acres, because, as they assured, it
was quite a hefty sum of money. You removed a twenty-dollar bill from your wallet and
a lighter from your pocket. You lit it in front of them, right there. As green became black,
and ashes glided through currents running through the room.
Here you stand, months, years of desire coming to fruition, a single book of
matches, and the scent of your ex, Kerosene, wafting through the air. Your ten acres. You
strike the first match but do not wait for it to burn down. It lands on the ground over your
shoulder. You strike the second, third, tenth, twentieth. Heat is getting more intense, and
the void is filling.
A moving painting of orange, red, and yellow rises up around you, taking over
your vision. You throw your head back, watching smoke creep into the sky. You truly
embrace the love of your life for the first time. It hurts at first, though you can’t help but
smile. You drop to your knees in reverence and pain as the world burns for you.
15. Milti Symeonoglou | Sir the third, Esquire 15
I’ll bet your wondering why this piece has such an odd title. I personally don’t
think it’s an odd title at all. Many titles, in fact consist of one of those three elements.
One of my first English teachers explained to me the importance of always having a title
for your work, as if every work deserves a title. That’s almost as ridiculous as saying that
every human should have a title. What’s so special about this piece that it deserves to be
called Sir the third, Esquire? Nothing. That title doesn’t even make sense.
Have you ever decided on the title for a piece of work, written it, and decided that
you need a new title because the actual piece of work doesn’t live up to your expectations
in the slightest? I did once, it was called Sir the third, Esquire. If we’re being honest, that
was a lie, that last sentence. I didn’t really have great expectations for this piece, so when
it didn’t stand up to the high bar I never set I wasn’t particularly disappointed.
I mean, we’re already about half of a page in, for those of you who can’t see the
page, or can’t estimate, and the plot for this piece hasn’t even picked up. Perhaps the
name should’ve been Sir Plotless the first, Esquire. It would add some regality to an
otherwise uninteresting piece. It also might be too self-referential. That teacher I talked
about a few paragraphs ago, the one that told me to always have a title, he also told me
not to be too self-referential in my work. He said that if a piece referred to itself too much
it would tread the line of being bad writing and being bad entertainment.
But what does he know? He’s not even real. Yep, I made up that teacher who told
me all of these bits of advice that I’m ignoring. That’s not to say that I haven’t been given
that advice, they just didn’t come from the teacher that I just admitted to making up. I
mean, he was fake after all. Since we’re already putting words into the mouth of this
16. Milti Symeonoglou | Sir the third, Esquire 16
fictional character, let’s also say that he said that I was particularly bad at ending my
stories.
18. Milti Symeonoglou | Excerpt from: A Pawn’s Journey 18
The following is an excerpt, focusing on Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov and his
history as a chess player, taken from a larger piece about the Chess Hall of Fame.
I move down the photos, going back and forth, until a much sterner man catches
my attention. A thick nose, circular, but oddly thin face, and large forehead under short,
groomed hair surround two grave eyes. This is Garry Kasparov. Known for his
aggressive play style, he would often gain material over his opponents by focusing one
side of the board, drawing their attention in that direction, before hitting them hard on
their weak flank. From there, many opponents just crumble. Chess is undoubtedly a game
of wits, but Kasparov’s style conquers in a way that employs his opponents’ emotions. A
single pawn lost against this master sometimes means nothing, but can also act as a
harbinger of complete and one-sided destruction. The fear of the latter causes safer play,
while Kasparov’s forces decimate unprotected pieces.
He, however, is best known for two matches, one in 1996 and the other in the
following year against the IBM chess computer, Deep Blue. Deep Blue was a black,
massive goliath, standing nearly as tall as the men who built it. Built by a team of
programmers who deeply admired and respected chess and chess masters, the computer’s
job was simple: beat a grandmaster. In place of a human brain, whose raw power still
exceeds that of even our strongest computer by a wide margin, Deep Blue sported 256
processors, capable of viewing 200,000,0001
positions per second, and with programming
1
It is worth noting that, while 200 million is quite a large number, and a second is quite short, the number
of positions possible on a chess board is something like 6.33x1049
. Or
63,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Many of these “positions,”
however, aren’t worth considering, but the computer doesn’t know that. Even at such an amazing speed, in
order to perfectly analyze every possible position on a chessboard, it would take the computer 1x1034
years.
Or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!
19. Milti Symeonoglou | Excerpt from: A Pawn’s Journey 19
from people coached by grandmasters themselves, the task seemed easy enough.
Learning from the classic openings, Deep Blue went into each game without analyzing
the openings, playing strategies that were manually input before hand. Once the board
opened up a bit, however, the computer went into what was lovingly called the “brute
force method.”2
In 1996, for a six game match, Kasparov won two, Deep Blue won one, and they
drew three of the games. Science fiction occasionally deals with the problem of man vs.
machine, and the inevitable conflict that will one day occur when robots and computers
contest the human mind. This exact worry pinged at the forefront of the minds of those
following the event. Would this computer be able to truly match human intellect? Or
worse, would it be able to surpass us? Kasparov eased all of the worried minds, picking
up a single game more than his opponent.3
The next year, 1997, Deep Blue got a rematch. Kasparov took game 1, but Deep
Blue made an interesting move on the 44th
turn. A bug in the coding caused the computer
to resort to a failsafe: a random move. Kasparov did take the victory that game, but,
unaware of the bug, assumed that the computer had seen something he hadn’t, had
possessed some higher level of thought that he hadn’t respected. Speculators have
concluded that this random move likely caused Kasparov to go on tilt,4
causing him to
lose the second game, bringing the match to a tie with 4 games left. The next 3 games
were draws, and on the final game, Kasparov resigned on the 19th
move, giving the match
2
In other words, it used the fact that it couldn’t “think,” but could instead analyze better than a human, to
just pick whatever good move was available.
3
The frequency of draws is huge. In anything with 6 games, we would expect a clear winner, or a 3-3 tie.
Nope. 6 matches to get a 2-1 (traditionally the score we shoot for with a best of 3) is a crazy thing. And
these games are by no means short.
4
“Tilting” is a poker term when a player’s negative emotions, usually at an unexpected loss on a hand
snowball and seriously impact her ability to play.
20. Milti Symeonoglou | Excerpt from: A Pawn’s Journey 20
to the computer program. Kasparov had been defeated by the might of Deep Blue and the
weight of his own emotions. While this victory, nearly twenty years ago, didn’t have
nearly as many negative implications as some expected from it, it did pose a scary truth:
computers could beat humans at chess.5
And not just any human. The Human.6
Garry
Kasparov earned a shameful title on May 11, 1997: first world champion to lose to a
computer. Kasparov had accused IBM of cheating during the match, saying that the
computer made moves that only a human could have made.7
The programmers were
ecstatic. They had created something that had been able to beat Garry Kasparov, the
world champion at chess. They had created something that could beat a human at a game
of wits. Kasparov, however, was understandably upset, demanding to see the logs from
the game, which IBM denied at the time.8
Deep Blue, its purpose completed, was
dismantled. One rack of the two that held the computer’s brain sits in the National
Museum of American History. The other sits in the Computer History Museum.9
Years
after his defeat, Kasparov was offered the chance to replay a computer on the same
caliber as Deep Blue by another programmer. He declined.10
At the age of 52, Kasparov
still plays chess, though since 2005 he’s stayed away from tournaments, having officially
retired from the scene to focus on other parts of his life.
5
They were and still are unable to match our brain’s activity, so they can’t outthink us. Though they can
beat us at our “smart person’s game.”
6
Perhaps Kasparov’s loss, especially the circumstances (him becoming afraid of Deep Blue’s immense
intellect) are indicative of us as humans. There’s definitely something poetic about man losing to machine,
betrayed by his emotions in what would have been an otherwise equal match.
7
Maybe Deep Blue had a special “soul” while playing, a style that impressed the grandmaster to the point
that he couldn’t believe a computer made the moves. Maybe Kasparov was mad at a computer with as
much skill as Deep Blue.
8
They released them later. Deep Blue won fair and square.
9
Neither of which are in the Chess Hall of Fame.
10
It is worth noting that while the computer he could have played was roughly the same skill level as Deep
Blue, computers have come a long way since then. Apparently beating one grandmaster wasn’t enough, or
it was too close for the programmers. Now it’s accepted that we can’t beat computers at chess.
22. Milti Symeonoglou | Nothingness 22
This night is unnatural. There are no voices of crickets; there is no whisper of the
wind. The light that once was has waned, engulfed by the void in which I exist, alone. Is
this my punishment? I see nothing, hear nothing, smell nothing. I can feel the soft grass
beneath my feet tickling my ankles as it reaches towards the dark, abyssal heavens. I can
taste the freshness of the air around me. It would be easier if I could not. Where does this
place exist, so far from reality that three senses are absent?
Or does it exist at all? I feel no passage of time, though it seems I have been here
for eons. I kneel to the ground, plucking a single blade of grass between my fingers. I
bring it up to my nose and inhale its essence. I can smell once again. I rustle my hand
through the grass. I can hear once again. Now all that is left is to regain my sight and
perhaps I will be able to escape this prison.
“You will not see for quite a while.” A man’s voice tells me.
“Who are you?”
“No one you would know. I am an agent of chaos.”
“Why are you here? Why am I here?”
“Do you mean to ask where we are? Or is this a more existentialist question?”
“I guess I mean to ask where we are? What kind of place is this? How are we
here? But also why? What is the purpose of us being here?”
“Does everything need a purpose?”
“No, although I figured that there would be a reason.”
“It is dangerous indeed when the blind search for meaning.”
“I’m not blind though.”
“Are you not?”
23. Milti Symeonoglou | Nothingness 23
“Can you see? I thought it was a state of this place, rather than my own
condition.”
“I cannot. But is it too ridiculous to assume that two strangers interacting with one
another are blind?”
“No. Have you seen before though?”
“Yes.”
“Haven’t you questioned why you can’t see anymore then?”
“I have been here for a while now. I have questioned everything.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“What have you found?"
“Only that I know nothing. The answers have not yet come to me.”
“You know you cannot see.”
“If I see that I cannot see, then I cannot see anything at all, can I?”
“If you observe that you can’t see, you still know that you can’t.”
“True I suppose.”
“Have you tried to escape?”
“Escape this place?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There is no guarantee that escape would take me anywhere better. Why spend so
much time when there is no reason to think that I would be better off?”
24. Milti Symeonoglou | Nothingness 24
“Do you not think that our world before this one was better?”
“I do.”
“Then why not try to get back to it?”
“What makes you think that we can go back? There is no trace of how we got
here, no path on which to walk the opposite direction.”
“But we know that it did exist.”
“Why does that mean that it does?”
“It doesn’t, but if the only thing that has existed before this was better, then we
only know of circumstances better than our current ones existing.”
“Or that circumstances are going to deteriorate even further. We have two points
in time, one better, one worse. We can definitely say that as time has elapsed on this path
it has gotten worse. If we keep the same course of action it will infinitely worsen.”
His words fade into the darkness, hovering for an extra half second on my ears.
“What path is it exactly that has led us here?”
“We don’t know.” He murmurs. “If we did, half of our conversation would be
moot.”
“Then why sit around philosophizing about it? Why not figure out what led us
here and try to find a way to better our situation?”
“You are thinking about this quite logically.”
“Is that a problem?”
“What if a logical path led us here?”
“Then it will figure itself out. Logic accepts that it can make mistakes. It grows
from them.”
25. Milti Symeonoglou | Nothingness 25
“And if it’s something inherent to the logical structure? Suppose logic can only
move downward, into the abyss.”
“Then we ought to do the illogical thing, if the assumption is true.”
“Correct.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Wait. If we do the illogical thing because the logical one isn’t working, isn’t that
a logical assumption?”
“True, but remember that if we are committing ourselves to the rejection of logic,
even if we are to reject the illogical, we must still reject the logical.”
“So what do we do?”
“What we’ve been doing.”
“And what is that?”
“Nothing. We have performed no action, we have only talked about our
circumstances, with no real execution.”
“But that doesn’t make sense.”
“Exactly!”
“This answer isn’t satisfying. We have to assume that logic is what got us here in
order to reject it.”
“Logic, order, rules. These things all are structural and flawed. You can still
follow them if you choose, but I am an agent of chaos.”
“You said that earlier.”
Silence.
26. Milti Symeonoglou | Nothingness 26
“Oh right. Yes.”
“What?”
“I nodded and was waiting for you to continue, but I realized that we are blind
together.”
“Where do we go from here?”
“Who says we go anywhere? I sat here, bound between two impossible doctrines
of action, forced into inaction by the only thing that makes sense as a system.”
“Your system makes the least sense of them all.”
“Of course. But if we take the most sensible system we would have to be using
logic and rules to do so. With nothingness, inaction is the best action because it commits
us to nothing.”
“Do you mean nothing as a thing or as the absence of one?”
“Yes.”
“Alright… humor me then.”
“With what?”
“Pretend to be logical. Let us find the best system.”
“Best within the realm of reason?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. If we are going to sit here for eternity, wasting time that can’t be wasted,
we might as well have fun…”
