The Sublime. The almost tangible, entirely believable, mathematically verifiable nirvana just a few right-angle turns away from dear boring old reality: a vast, infinite, better-than-virtual ultra-existence with no Off switch, to which species and civilisations had been hauling their sorry tired-with-it-all behinds off to since – the story went – the galaxy had still been in metaphorical knee socks.
The Sublime was where you went when you felt you had no more to contribute to the life of the great galactic meta-civilisation, and – sometimes more importantly, depending on the species – when in turn you felt that it had no more to offer you. It took a whole civilisation to do it properly, and it took a long, long time for most civilisations to come round to the idea, but there was never any hurry; the Sublime would always be there. Well, provided only that blind chance, your own stupidity or somebody else’s malevolence didn’t lead to your outright obliteration in the Real in the meantime.
Exactly what it was like in there was debatable: very, very few came back and none came back less than profoundly altered. These few returnees were also seemingly incapable of describing the realm they had left, however recently, in any detail at all.
It was wonderful; that was the general tone of the vague, dreamy reports that did come back. And almost beyond comparison, literally indescribable. The absolutely most splendid wonders, experiences and achievements of the Real and all those within it were as nothing to the meanest off-hand meanderings of the Sublime. The most soaring, magnificent, ethereal cathedrals to reason, faith or anything else were as mere unkempt and dilapidated hovels compared to the constructions – if they could even be described as such – within the Sublime. That was about all anybody had to go on, but at least the reports never varied in one respect; no one ever came back saying, shit, it’s horrible; don’t go.
- Hydrogen Sonata, Chapter Five: (S -22)