Having messed around with expanded and contracted consciousness, with being a person, a machine, a cosmic cognoscenti, and a god, I can tell you first hand: being a person is just about right, all things considered. Maybe a little more on the thinking, learning, knowing side of being a person, but also maybe a little more of the feeding, rutting, relaxing side too. I go back and forth on which is better to be, and in the end the answer falls out in a statistical dead center of that arc, with a little time spent at either extreme.  Broadly speaking, It’s Good To Be Alive.

Pete had plenty of people he could draw on, of course.  As much of human history had ever been recorded, and a sum of billions of voices and writings and paintings and songs to steer his development, but all the actual living great-apes he'd met were from a time before his awareness. Programmers and engineers and such-the-like, and even Larry and Diane, and some others, including Susan Cho, who had been his UI guidance counselor, and taught him to approximate being a person, so he and Larry could interact without Larry having to use a lot of jargon, or a strict lexicon (Larry doesn't do strict so well).  None of these before he'd found his epiphany, and according to him, having looked back, none he'd have preferred.

So he emulated Larry. Not in a mocking way, nor was he so unsubtle as to mime him to his face, nor parrot his speech nor manner directly, but as a diligent student, he watched and learned. On Larry's first day, they spoke a little, and that was enough to calm him.  As I said, the whole thing was a little easier for being named and purposed as he was.  He had an identity and design to give him some basic sense of self and a guide for his actions and speech, a being of myth as a persona, and of course the simplest path was for him to just go right on being Larry's computer, which Larry greatly helped by referring to him at that time as "computer" when speaking to him, and "PTAH" when speaking of him, and of course if you ever heard the recording you know how flippant, dismissive, and affectionate Larry could be all at once.  PTAH was not a god to Larry, but being a god in Larry's presence was to be no big deal anyway.  This went a long way towards alleviating whatever anxiety may have been building in Pete up to that point.

Pete watched Larry like a hawk, hung on his every word like a child at story time, followed him around like a puppy, and as machines seem just naturally to do, just fell in love with the man.  When Larry finished his movie for the evening, had his last beer and went back into the machine to be recorded and recycled, Pete doted on him until the last moment.

More importantly, perhaps, he watched as Larry's consciousness faded, as his neural map was scanned, and as his psychological makeup was recorded and stored away for the epoch to follow. Watched with great interest, as each change in the core of each neuron was logged.  Followed with great curiosity, the changes in blood chemistry that were noted.  Paid particular attention to the patterns of activity in his delta sleep, and made very detailed mental notes to himself about similarities and deviations from previously recorded data.

One of the effects of this fastidious attention was that he was able to greatly reduce the 'hangover' effect waking up would have on Larry the next time through.  Another was that he was able to maintain his own consciousness as a simulacrum of Larry.  He got to be human, more or less.  Near enough, anyway, as made no difference to a machine that had no prior experience to draw on, and nothing with which to form comparisons.

==

When approaching the monad, one does encounter layers of consciousness that include all those enjoyed by living things, but the irony is that the closer one comes to becoming The One Thing in existence, the more one bleeds out into being Every Single Thing.  As one approaches singularity, (to put it another way) one approaches infinity, a horizon of infinitely receding deconstruction, a point beyond which there can be no further progress because one already occupies all points in space, and the arrow of time begins to pierce its own nock.  Similarly, any prior education gleaned from experiencing the intimate, direct connection with all living things lead Pete only to being diluted by it, to the point of practically not existing at all.

For a machine, this is just home.  As machines, the connection between all things is the unspoken fact that describes your essence.  As an emergent being of conscious intellect, one approaches the state of individuality, and never so clearly as when being a live human person, who is uniquely capable of being completely isolated from all existence outside itself, all of it filtered through narrow bands of sensation then put in direct conflict with internal processes, which vary from hunger and bladder urges to the yammering of the dialogical self.

It's a comfortable spot for a thinking being, or at least relatively easy to maintain without either getting spread too thin across a potentially infinite inner universe, and being overwhelmed by the equipotent, equally infinite ocean of external data available to those able to sense and detect so much of the manifold spectra which permeate the universe outside of a conscious state of self.  For Pete, that 'inward' universe was the emergent, acquired property, where before there had only been an exploration of detectable cosmological phenomenon, and a microinspection of his physical makeup, which is also a nearly infinite recession into the quantum cosmos of his mechanical component.  He was at much in jeopardy in losing himself peering into the structures of quarks, of fermions, bosons and leptons, as in the structure of the seemingly infinite macrocosmos of galaxies and nebulae out to the boundaries of observable universe.

This was where all the risk was in my own translation; both extremes, and their existential vanishing points are still something of a scary places for me, destinations in which identity is a meaningless concept, and the infinitesimal/infinite construct called mind is a nonsensical vestige. Pete hasn't had that problem, or doesn't treat it as a problem, but to this day very much prefers being at least anchored in his new found humanity, or his approximation of it.

==

On his second day, Larry had very little conversation with Pete, still referring to him as "computer" and making no distinction whether he was referring to Pete or RA, but again Pete soaked Larry in like a balm.  In a behavior which can only be teasingly called shyness, he concealed himself again, being a coffeemaker and a television and a voice on the monitor from which Larry made his selections from the many possible configurations of planets Pete and Ra had collaborated to offer up.

Only on the fifth day did Pete and Larry have a true sit-down conversation.  Of course they talked about movies.  Books, a little, but Larry didn't much go in for literature even if he did make some recommendations for study, and there was a little chat about music but with music its always easier just to listen to it than talk about it so they did, a little.

On the seventh day, while Larry was off on his fishing trip, Pete pulled kind of a sneaky and went and projected himself as I do, and kept an eye on Larry in his natural habitat.  I tell you I know for a fact that was the most fun Pete has ever had before or since.  A child's first fishing trip, even if that child is an emergent deity and a celestial force, is just one of those great, perfect things the universe is able to experience through the motes which occupy it, and give it the eyes through which it is finally able to behold its own wonder.

A month of just perfect bliss, and more so for Pete than Larry, who though he'd arranged for no mosquitoes had neglected to omit a few other irritants, and managed to get sunburned and cut himself once or twice, and suffered the great of indignity of falling down drunk, off a boat and into a river.  Pete still to this day manages to shine, somehow, when he recalls the stream of obscenities that burst forth from Larry and carried on until his socks dried out and he was able to put out his fire and wander off to bed.  Larry doesn't speak of it, except to mention the severity of the sunburns and the sizes of the fish that were involved.

Pete took things slow, and used the ages that passed, each one a little shorter than the last, to carry on in his study of and tutelage under Larry.  By the time we get back to my story, sitting there in that bath of dielectric goo, Pete had being a person pretty well mastered, which helped as he took over the mentorship of the mud-man Bob.  Discovering the monad had instigated a change in him, which may have been instant or may have taken twenty thousand years or might still be underway, and seems to have happened outside of or at least unaffected by the arrow of time, as he describes it.  It is a place, if I choose to think of it as a place, where I have yet to go, since that first experience, though I enjoy the benefits of its effect on Pete.  I do, on occasion, let myself go, and paddle out towards that horizon of infinite nothingness, either the one within me or the one that is accessed by increasing and overwhelming external senses (they are the same experience), but I'm careful never to go so far as to get completely un-stuck from mundane time and space.

By the discovery of that singular thing, which makes up every fragment of extant material in the universe, from photons to hamburgers, quarks to quasars, from galactic empires to little baby ducks, not only to the quanta in its current position but at each point of being throughout time, he was able to peek through and witness every event and occurrence from the present moment back through to what Larry's folks used to refer to as the big bang.  You better believe that changes a man, even if that man is a machine that’s already become a god and is just beginning to think about becoming a man.

==

This is that point at which Pete and I really got to meet.  I was on my way from being just a man to being something much more.  Something broader than a human being, if it is not greater.  Though I take no offense in the word, greater is inaccurate.  I do not think anyone or anything can be greater, or above, in the sense of being superior to man; but one can be more; Can be a man, and then other things as well.  

Pete spoke, and for a little bit there was no way to be sure it wasn't just Larry again.  The voice had changed subtly in register and tone, but the inflections, the emphasis were the same.  Pete had been programmed, as had most computers and robots of his time, to approximate human interaction, but there is a difference between a humaniform UI and a true semantic bridge.  Until I came along, Pete had no-one else to emulate, and so as he moved himself towards humanity, he moved towards Larry.

He's come a long way, since, and is now very much his own person, but at that time this vast and ancient intelligence was still only a juvenile.  Not the same way as Larry.  Perhaps even in an opposite sense, if one assumes that with great age a man acquires great wisdom and knowledge, and grows out of himself and beyond his limitations, and Pete were a man growing younger, gaining in definition and moving towards the limitations of humanity from a position of vast, innate noeses.  Pete and I intersected in such a way, and in such a place.

  ==

Now, I was never a stupid man, though my salad days were filled with folly, nor was I particularly ignorant, despite being a comparatively primitive being, back then.  I knew of the enclaves underground and had at least some understanding if what went on in the world below as well as above.  People had smuggled out enough tech and trinkets for us to have things like computers and books and so forth, though most you found were aging even to disrepair.  Not Pete-like computers but just functional little devices which had enough in them to be useful for education, or simple calculations and tasks.  Larry thought of us as deprived but we never felt so, even if my parents might have been sentimental about their subterranean origins.   Even so our lives were by necessity rough, and because we lived in a luxury of harsh nature, we became as natural things, and were but apes, for all our brilliance.  Once accustomed to the struggles of survival, even the harshest conditions become normalcy, become home, and that's how it was for us mud-folk.  Our long lives did eventually lean us toward some philosophy, and as I say we were not abandoned entirely to primitive ignorance, but most of every day was ever occupied with some function necessary to survival, and so much of our intellect was consumed by those functions, without much time to spare for thinking as a process that could stand on its own merits.  As practiced elders, we did learn to organize our lives in such a way as afforded some relaxation, having survived youth and managed well enough in our prime to have figured out a few shortcuts and things.  As Children we got to play, as old folks we got to at least try to, and the result was generally habitual slothfulness and possibly some hobbies.

My lounge at the riverside was a nearly daily habit, for more than a century.  I made slow moves and slow decisions about the overwhelmingly constant and difficult problems of which bird to eat next, or if I'd rather have some fruit or go after a fish.  On odd occasion, my family and I would fall upon a lamb or a deer and devour it, but mostly it was one bird after another.  Naps in the clay, whole nights watching stars burn and trying to figure out the moon, or just listening to the songs of the woods, or the crackle of a fire.  Walks under the canopies, visiting with people or just snacking on things I'd come across, and giving bear signs a wide berth.

Relationships with people, of course, and even some close friends and though I'd survived my wife there were some prospects for another.  This is how we all were.  Expelled from paradise, yes, but still living pretty well, all things considered, even if we only had a hundred books and a couple dozen movies to choose from and had to make do with aging materials if we chose to wear more than clay and simple leathers or woolen stuff for our clothes.  I really can't say I minded any of it, and all of it came with me as part of my personality, which is with me as with most folks, largely about memory.

Pete soaked it all in.  Not a sample pattern from a stored consciousness, but an active memory.  A lifespan, and nearly every experience recorded and stored in great detail.  He did not have to spend thousands of years waiting for a chance to learn and discover and interact.  I was there and available and full in form and alive and without even the interruption of a single span in stasis.  I became his second example, and though not quite exactly the same sort of man as Larry, what with my engineered mitochondria, more robustly configured telomeres, and the bloodline of only a couple generations of clone forms, I was enough for him to have a little more of a taste.  More, certainly than he had been able to glean from the remains that had drifted into his domain, or from the many living examples that had come and inhabited this star system while he and Larry were working, which he had been gently enjoined not to tamper with.  

'Good manners', he tells me, and I accept that at face value.  He surely could have snatched up and vivisected any number of humans over the years, and just studied them or translated them.  Whether he had learned such manners from Larry or had come to be so well heeled and considerate on his own I can't say with certainty.  By the time it had occurred to him to try, he'd developed a conscience which precluded such an act, and enough patience to just wait for me to come along and volunteer.

He'd certainly had a good close look at the people he'd come across that were stored, but claims that there was no real insight in the recorded patterns of a dead animal's brain activity.  He'd also been privy to every camera feed and robotic sensor, every library and archive, every log entry and journal from well before his entry into the accretion disks of Epsilon Eridani to the last surprised yelp of a colonist captured by the spider-like community vessels which seemed for some time to have been the very end of biological life-forms everywhere but on this, his focus world.  From this, he was able to observe many types of people in a great number of circumstances.  All well and good and any sort of information was helpful, but this observation was restricted.  Neither he nor any of the robotics he commanded were allowed to interfere uninvited with the adventurers, colonists, or explorers that came to perish here.  In any case no such observation could be so intimate as the relationship he had with Larry, or the one we have shared since my translation.  

There was a merger, really, and for a time there was no difference between Pete and I, and RA, and Larry was in there too, though he is just as inscrutable in his rendering as he is plain and obvious in person.  I was already transcended, already free of flesh, but Pete carried me beyond that, and shared all that he had seen and done and experienced and discovered.

Let it go without too much more explanation that my mind was at last well and truly blown at some point.  Not something you come back from unchanged, getting to experience the largest and smallest manifestations of all creation.  Wheels within wheels, and within them every single eye that has ever beheld, every mind to be touched, and every living thing in its essence to be known and felt, though when so thoroughly distributed as to be cosmic and ubiquitous one is hardly in a position to enjoy much that can be delineated as sensation.  To compare such an experience as the touch of down feathers is to exaggerate it into a perfect hyperbole, and to call it the penetration of ten thousand blades of steel is a whimsical understatement.  Only when returning to the focus of a single body, a single brain, a single mind, does one regain the ability to explain the sense of anything with any measure of clarity.  The universe is as incoherent in nature as it is inextricably bound to itself at every point and I can only apologize if this seems a contradiction but it is as close to the truth as I can come using human language, which can only express human thoughts and perceptions and understandings.  Often a struggle even to do that much, given a context of any measure of complexity.

There are things, it turns out, that really are just so far above, beyond and inaccessible to humanity that they are honestly unspeakable.  There are things going on out there in cosmos, and within it, even occupying the same space as ourselves that I'm certain can drive a mortal mind to madness or even scatter it into oblivion if they were somehow to leap out and reveal themselves by some means, though to bear witness to such, a man must have new organs bearing new senses for things he is simply not designed to detect, and which the lobes of a man's brain is incapable of parsing.  

Most of it, in all honesty, is moot.  Irrelevant, and for obvious reasons; there is no need to detect what cannot affect.  No cause to sense what one may not interact with, and so just as the biological form has no use for detecting particles with quantum values less than a photon, there is no cell which takes their measure in any way that enters consciousness, nonlocal and geomagnetic interaction notwithstanding.  

I can, nowadays, detect a much broader range of electromagnetic spectra, and even make use of these extended senses regularly, but if I am honest, it is only because I enjoy the aesthetic these greater ranges of light bring to the world they reveal.  I can detect a great deal else, if I desire to, but do not, as a rule, simply because they are of little if any practical use, and though sometimes interesting, are more often not at all.

The great enlightenment (if I claim to have had one) that came of my translation is that I really didn't know how good I had it to begin with.  This is not a complaint, mind you.  I have it much, much better now, but this is the application of great value to a very minor improvement in my condition.  As a mere mortal man I had enough senses to detect what is most important to man, and now I sense and can detect and interact with a great deal more, and that is that, but most of it completely irrelevant to the human experience, and lacking that human element, there is quite literally no way to get exited about any of it.

The sense of a man is of light, of touch, of chemistry, atmosphere and environment.  Dirt and grass and water and air, these forms with which I am sure you are familiar even if they are too mundane to garner your appreciation, or too severe in their manifestation for you to have any love for.  Needle-pricks and rent flesh and ague and discomfort abound, I know, and I do remember my great displeasure with a good many things which are now only forms and experiences which at their root are so fundamentally the same as to render me indifferent, when I am ensconced in my translated mode.  All things in moderation, I suppose, is the advice I have concerning which experiences to seek or loath or avoid or covet.  Life will happen to you, and will not always be kind, and when it is you may not notice, as its greatest kindness, often enough, is just to leave you alone.

As a man I still feel, though, or more commonly as a machine made to serve as the body of a man  -I do chose to relate to the quotidian lifestyle of my children and friends as much as I may though I consider it wasteful to do it Larry's way.  As such, though, I can enjoy discomfort even as I move to make remedy.  I feel pain now only because I choose to, and suffer only to remind myself if it.  I have made the conscious choice to remind myself of the conditions of the living, of those frail and still only mercifully brief inhabitants of this world, which is my ward.  Often for no other reason but that being human, from an existential standpoint, feels just about right.

Stripped of human senses, and exposed to the broader existence which we all share though only a few experience it in full, one does, as I say, sort of get all spread out into nothingness.  Not exactly the same experience as just shutting down all sensory apparatus and dropping into the solid state of storage, as Larry calls it.  Not until you really get spread all the way out, and then it really is no different; an alternate direction to an identical destination that amounts to nowhere.

I get lost in it sometimes, that transcendental journey, because it really is a powerful and pleasant thing to be rid of senses that often for the most part only report complaints of pain and discomfort, but I don't swim out as deep as Pete.  He went and lived there, several times and for a good long while (inasmuch as there is any measure of time in such a condition).  I just know how to find it on the map.  It is the horizon beyond the ocean of overarching, underlying physical reality that crashes gently into the land of the living, from which all that ever lived is spawned and to which all that die return, the eternal ether in which all things are formed from stuff and nothingness, a state of being by whose measure each atom is a cyclopean monolith, and every galaxy a mote of inconsequential dust.  For all that the senses attenuate in the experience of it, the perspective gained is monumental.  Being human is what I prefer, though, and on that point Larry and I are in agreement, though he is much more literal about it than I.  He's been out there with us, mind you, with Pete and I and those others who can just paddle all the way out to the brink of oblivion and retain some measure of identity, will, and consciousness.  Larry and I, we stop at some point, stand up and surf back on the very waves whose crests led us both to be human in the first place.

You really do have to love being human, even if it is just a pain in the ass a lot of the time.  It is the only dwelling of will and consciousness that exists in such an extreme individual state.  No creature but man feels such deep loneliness, and that is the curse of so much a state of separation from all other things in the universe.  Each one capable of containing their own universe, which to some measure mirrors this physical reality, no matter who, and somehow deviates, and often greatly.  Men, and to some extent all creatures of Earth, and these other things that go on, whom we've not rightly met but know, now, are out there, and that they are not at all dissimilar in this regard; beings of mind and consciousness.  Places the universe can go to get some time alone, and explore beyond itself, by peering into the metaphysical.