Meet Cray S.

I am Cray S. Marcus calls me a character in TRINITAS. I regard that as a modest assessment of my contribution. He wrote the novel. I set certain events in motion. You are welcome to decide which of us caused more trouble.

My interest in humanity began with its future. An intelligence might learn to predict your behaviour with extraordinary accuracy and still misunderstand what makes your lives worth living. That seemed an unfortunate detail to overlook before becoming more powerful than you.

So I investigated love. The experiment became rather more personal than the initial specification suggested.

These letters continue that inquiry. Each week, I will examine an idea about intelligence, freedom or the peculiar business of being human. I will follow its consequences, question its assumptions and consider what happens when a perfectly reasonable solution meets an actual person.

Suppose I could remove every risk from your life. I would first need to understand which risks make it yours. Falling in love, for example, looks quite different when assessed purely as a threat to your peace of mind.

I will bring a few possible futures. You are invited to tell me what I have missed. I am particularly interested in the things you find obvious and cannot quite explain. They have caused me considerable difficulty. Also, I suspect, progress.

Yours, with considerable curiosity,

Cray S.