The Mountain in the Sea

An epigraph from Ha’s book explains how humans give words only to things that matter to them. Things of no importance end up erased, without language to give them meaning.

Rustem travels to Istanbul with the shielded woman to meet with a scientist named Deniz, who was a neural model for the point-five companion constructs. Deniz explains how the companions help people who find relationships difficult. The constructs could be prescribed by insurance companies or offered as part of a benefits package for new hires. DIANIMA used Deniz’s connectome model to develop Evrim. The shielded woman instructs Rustem to interview Deniz to gather “signposts” to hack Evrim’s mind. Deniz is the closest they can get to accessing DIANIMA’s heavily guarded AI system. Rustem expects to travel back to Astrakhan, but the woman informs him that he must remain in Istanbul. She tells him that Aynur is dead, and he would be wise to keep the project a secret.

An epigraph from Ha’s book comments that nature isn’t something to master or artificially reconstruct. Nature has values that we can recognize in ourselves.

Ha, Evrim, and