Journal: YC114.08.29

I want to tell them.

Either of them, both of them, it doesn't matter, the urge to let them know is damn near overwhelming. I've got this irrational optimistic hope that if I just come clean, everything will go just fine.

But I know better. How would it really go? "Rakkai, I need you to know that I fell in love with another woman while you were gone and try as hard as I might I can't quit her. I still love you very much, but I can't stop thinking about her. When I'm with you, I catch myself wishing she was here with us. Can I have you both?"

Yeah. Say goodbye to your happy marriage, meat-for-brains. Nice job making a lie of your wedding vows.

And on the other side, what would I say to her? "Suuolo, you remember three months ago I told you how I felt about you, but that with the return of my vanishing spouse we have to move on with no regrets? well, I was wrong, I still feel the same way and I do have regrets. But I still love Nicole too. Can I have you both?"

I know what the right course of action is. It's to keep my mouth shut and my feelings private and to get on with life. It's to stamp down as hard as I can on the jealousy I feel when she's the focus of another man's attention, and on the urge to flirt with her. I understand perfectly well that "Can I have you both?" isn't likely to make either of them feel valued.

The right course of action is to accept that life is not about one man's selfish desires, that my fantasy will always remain a fantasy.

Could it happen? Maybe. But they're pretty long odds, and not worth what I'd stand to lose.

Save. End.

Journal: YC114.08.28

The human - and by extension transhuman - brain has a remarkable capacity for coming up with thoughts that fascinate at the time, then engender shame with hindsight. Thoughts that pop up at inappropriate times. Such as, say, when making love to your wife.

And fantasizing about how she'd look with a different haircut.

Say, a shorter one.

Much shorter.

Save. End.

Journal: YC114.08.22

It's been three months since Nicole came back.

I should be happy. I AM happy.

But it's not easy to be happy when there's another woman out there who makes my heart skip a beat every time she talks to me. Somebody I came this close to...

...to...

Oh, for fuck's sake Verin, you're a grown man! Be honest with yourself. You're in love with two women.

You stupid son of a bitch.

Save. End.

Journal: YC114.08.15

A couple of weeks back, I got to arguing with a religious type over the subject of God.

Nothing unusual about that, of course, but he raised a question that I must since have had quietly gestating in my brain until a better answer than the one I gave could hatch. Specifically: "how do you explain why there is something rather than nothing?"

The answer I gave was a rambling explanation of the Anthropic Principle and the fact that in a quantum universe, superimposing the states of both being and not-being is in no way impossible or paradoxical which, unsurprisingly, my opponent rejected as not making a lot of sense. As is usual when discussing physics, frankly. If you think you understand quantum physics, you don't. Our brains are just not equipped to intuitively handle the probabilistic weirdness that underpins all space, time, force, energy and matter.

But a few alternative answers have since occurred to me

The first is that the question itself may not necessarily be a valid one. It could be exactly as much of a nonsense question as "what is the marital status of the colour blue?" or "How much does Nostalgia weigh?" albeit better disguised. More like "why is Pi irrational? Why not an integer?" I suppose. On the surface it looks like a valid question, until you realise that it simply couldn't be anything other than what it is. There is no scenario in which the circumference of a circle is exactly three times its diameter, or indeed is even a rational multiple. It just isn't possible for Pi to be anything other than Pi. You can ask why we take the ratio between circumference and diameter as opposed to radius, but asking why the number is irrational is itself irrational and pointless. 

The same response might apply to the universe. the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" may simply be a well-camouflaged nonsense. It may be that, in the scenario that my above quantum superimposition of being and not-being is inaccurate, that the state of not-being is simply and fundamentally as impossible as a rational Pi.

The second and rather more damning alternative answer that occurred to me is quite simply that throwing God into the equation to make things up just shifts the question onto the creator, thereby adding a layer of complexity. Whence came God? What would be the reason for him to exist, as opposed to nothingness? Why should these questions stop the moment we step up a tier? Why is it permissible for God to auto-originate, but not the universe?

Failure to think things through, I guess. Which is why these lovely slow-brewed observations will almost certainly never actually manage to get through to one of these people. 

Good thing I argue for the joy of it, rather than to change minds then.

Save. End.