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Peter Watts 305 Blindsight
bootstrapped Afterlife. I remember someone saying Vampires
don't go to Heaven. They see the pixels. Sometimes I wonder how
I'd feel, brought back from the peace of the grave to toil at the
pleasure of simpleminded creatures who had once been no more
than protein. I wonder how I'd feel if my disability had been used
to keep me leashed and denied my rightful place in the world.
And then I wonder what it would be like to feel nothing at all, to
be an utterly rational, predatory creature with meat putting itself so
eagerly to sleep on all sides...
I can't miss Jukka Sarasti. God knows I try, every time I come
online. He saved my life. He — humanized me. I'll always owe
him for that, for however long I live; and for however long I live
I'll never stop hating him for the same reason. In some sick
surrealistic way I had more in common with Sarasti than I did with
any human.
But I just don't have it in me. He was a predator and I was prey,
and it's not in the nature of the lamb to mourn the lion. Though he
died for our sins, I cannot miss Jukka Sarasti.
I can empathize with him, though. At long long last I can
empathise, with Sarasti, with all his extinct kind. Because we
humans were never meant to inherit the Earth. Vampires were.
They must have been sentient to some degree, but that semi-aware
dream state would have been a rudimentary thing next to our own
self-obsession. They were weeding it out. It was just a phase.
They were on their way.
The thing is, humans can look at crosses without going into
convulsions. That's evolution for you; one stupid linked mutation
and the whole natural order falls apart, intelligence and selfawareness
stuck in counterproductive lock-step for half a million
years. I think I know what's happening back on Earth, and though
some might call it genocide it isn't really. We did it to ourselves.
You can't blame predators for being predators. We were the ones
who brought them back, after all. Why wouldn't they reclaim their
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