Philosophical Dialogues, What is Consciousness?, Hunter and Bain, Jake Jackson

Dialogues | What is Consciousness?

Hunter and Bain sit with their eyes half closed. The coffee in front of them is untouched, but the aroma teases at the early morning silence of a cafe in the 798 district of Beijing on old Earth. They have just returned from a distant asteroid and now wrestle with exhaustion. Bain fiddles abstractedly with his titanium arm, half watching …

Philosophical Dialogues, Who Am I?, Hunter and Bain, Jake Jackson

Dialogues | Should We Fear Death?

On the planet of his ancestors Bain looks out from a simple cafe at the edge of an old forest and wonders at the relentless flow of the seasons. Before him he sees the evidence of Winter’s reluctant departure, its dark corridors of cold, dead, determined days yielding finally to Spring, the blooms of swallows crosshatching the sky, and in …

Philosophical Dialogues, Who Am I?, Hunter and Bain, Jake Jackson

Dialogues | Who Am I?

Hunter and Bain are slumped into a corner at the front of the Thought CafĂ© in Bleecker Street. They have grown to enjoy the anonymity of the large crowds in New Manhattan, where everyone is different, nobody looks at anyone else, and so the subtle judgements of smaller communities are left unsaid. In this Street, barely changed for hundreds of …

Philosophical Dialogues, Why do we need Names?, Hunter and Bain, Jake Jackson

Dialogues | If We Live Forever, Is Life Meaningless?

Safe from the sun, on the edges of the desert, under the canopy of their cafe Hunter and Bain watch Shi Xiu negotiate with a street trader by a cluster of huge, old trees. As he chants prices at her, she simply stares at the packet of spinach rolls in her hands, passing them from palm to palm, weighing, as …