Not far away, Hiro is in the lab, trying to patch the single-bit errors left by Bob's damage, when the Word reaches him. "Wow. Spread through that population even faster than smallpox." For a moment, he remembers that he ought to be fighting it... but then he feels the Word in all its power, and he looks on that desire to resist it as the naïvete of someone who didn't understand it nearly as well as he thought he did. Liana, Lady rest her, was right; you can't understand the Word until you've experienced it for yourself. "It's like we have religion receptors in our brain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that niche for us." His hacker format may not have come with a protocol, but simply by being a sprite, he had a space where a protocol ought to have gone. Now, that place is filled, and it takes nothing away from his own reason. It merely gives his reason a purpose. "Do you believe in God or not?" He remembers wanting to fight the Word, and even remembers his reasons and that they made perfect sense to him at the time, but they don't matter to his new understanding. When you don't have direct experience of a deity in your deep structures, it makes sense to call this sort of experience "prerational" or "postrational". But once you hear the Word, the only rational response is acknowledging your debt to the Lady who brings it.
The Divine Invasion
"Wow. Spread through that population even faster than smallpox."
For a moment, he remembers that he ought to be fighting it... but then he feels the Word in all its power, and he looks on that desire to resist it as the naïvete of someone who didn't understand it nearly as well as he thought he did. Liana, Lady rest her, was right; you can't understand the Word until you've experienced it for yourself.
"It's like we have religion receptors in our brain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that niche for us."
His hacker format may not have come with a protocol, but simply by being a sprite, he had a space where a protocol ought to have gone. Now, that place is filled, and it takes nothing away from his own reason. It merely gives his reason a purpose.
"Do you believe in God or not?"
He remembers wanting to fight the Word, and even remembers his reasons and that they made perfect sense to him at the time, but they don't matter to his new understanding. When you don't have direct experience of a deity in your deep structures, it makes sense to call this sort of experience "prerational" or "postrational". But once you hear the Word, the only rational response is acknowledging your debt to the Lady who brings it.