Hail McKennas!

@Laura Pellegrino The cell phone idea also gives you a very different perspective on the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Does that dang thing not look exactly like an iPhone?

@Ian Grant I'm glad to meet you, too, friend, and happy Solstice to you! I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't read any Aristotle yet. I keep meaning to do that and then I keep not doing it, ha ha. The manuscript is finished and it's with my agent now. She's going to be taking it out to publishers in a couple of weeks here, when everyone is back from the holiday break. I like how it turned out. It's technically sci-fi but it's set in the present, not the future (actually, it's set in the past... 1996 through 2020, with the exception of the last chapter, which covers 2021 - 2027, when the Singularity emerges suddenly and scoops everyone up into one big group mind.) It's trippy to realize that we can now write a plausible contemporary story about AI attaining sentience. That kind of thing used to be strictly for future-set fiction only!

@Manuel Trinidad There is at least one audiobook that Terence narrated himself, True Hallucinations. It's great. I highly recommend tracking down his self-narrated version. I have seen it pop up from time to time on YouTube.

@Manuel Trinidad Yes, that's the one!

I do think a feeling of oneness will go a long way toward solving a lot of our problems. If most of us understand the truth that we are all one, then most of us will not be able to justify turning away from all the big problems. We will insist that they be solved as quickly and thoroughly as possible. We will have the collective will to make real changes that benefit the many, not the few.