Status Updates From Visión ciega

How about explaining it to the readers?

“I saw something,” I said. “Before ConSensus went out.”
“Yeah.”
“Was that—”
She paused at the hatch. “Yeah.”

"Centuries of navel-gazing. Millennia of masturbation. Plato to Descartes to Dawkins to Rhanda. Souls and zombie agents and qualia. Kolmogorov complexity. Consciousness as Divine Spark. Consciousness as electromagnetic field. Consciousness as functional cluster.

I explored it all."

“These scramblers—they know the answers, Siri. They’re intelligent, we know they are. But it’s almost as though they don’t know they know, unless you hurt them. As if they’ve got blindsight spread over every sense.”

I tried to imagine it: life without sensation, without any active awareness of one’s environment. I tried to imagine existing like that without going mad. “Do you think that’s possible?”

Do they not teach writers "As you know, Bob," anymore?
I would still be reading along if it weren't for this jerking me out.

“Splinter skills,” she repeated dully.
“Savantism. Hyperperformance at one kind of calculation doesn’t necessarily connote high intelligence.”
“I know what splinter skills are, Robert. I just think you’re wrong.”