un-notes 

If spacetime breaks down, that is, if it's merely a holographic experience, what does that mean for language? -- language as the ability to manipulate the physical world.

There is no oil in Sil's world, only solar, wind and perhaps anti-matter from the http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/08/antimatter-particles-found-in-orbit-held-by-earths-magnetic-field.ars

Sil uses this in civy areas: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/military-bat-hook-sucks-free-power-from-overhead-lines/?

Convent of the Holy Fern as nerf town parody? Set in Zihuatanejo?

Everything always comes back to vibrating strings -- music, the electromagnetic boat engine, the stealth fabric on the hull of the boat, the singing of the ayahusca, the hologram vibration -- life is a dance.

Drugs as AI, time travel and interuptions in the vibrations of space time -- you eat the right drug, your brain experiences a different space time. The mistake we've always made is assuming that time travel would a phyical experience, one where we keep track of our bodies, our current conception of self when in fact, that's not true.