Re: 25 April 1449

Gazing into my crystal ball, I see that the Modern Era will be the last era of human history; not, to be clear, that humans will cease to exist, but that they will no longer determine their own species destiny. And I have you to thank for this prophecy, for you led me to read Christian Daniel Bolocan, whom I otherwise would never have heard of. There is no going back to the past. Never again boy choirs singing the glory of God whilst the winter light streams through stained glass in cold churches, never again Luperci running naked through the streets of Rome, never again the Gymnopaedia in Sparta. But the simulated lives that witnessed, or participated in, these things can be implanted directly into the cortex over the course of a single night of sleep, so that one wakes to find that one has dreamt an entire life with total lucidity, to have been in those very streets of ancient Rome, to have sung in that choir whilst Alcuin of York gazes on in adoration, to have watched the naked Spartan youths praise Apollo in song and dance. When? Before 200 years are out, at the very latest. That's assuming that the combination of AI and human greed doesn't wipe out civilisation beforehand - an assumption that, it has to be admitted, is looking increasingly shaky.