"Axiomatic" is a science-fiction short story by Australian writer Greg Egan,[1] first published in Interzone 41 in November 1990.
This does not contradict free will, as an axiomatic can be added or removed by choice and people can freely chose how to live with their new belief.
While doing so, he is overwhelmed by the pure certainty having replaced all his conflicting emotions, and later seeks to gain it again by using another axiomatic to convince himself that the deaths of Amy and Anderson were totally meaningless.
Karen Burnham, writing in the New York Review of Science Fiction, concludes after a discussion of the short stories "Axiomatic", "Mister Volition" and "Singleton", that "not everyone is as sanguine about the continuity of consciousness when making the transition to substances other than our organic brains nor so worried about the moral implications of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics."
She claims that "Egan’s stories show a continuity of concern about these subjects that refuses superficial answers and instead examines them in depth.“[4] Writing in Strange Horizons, Burnham says that "the ending is tragically just, in a twisted way.“[5] The short story was nominated for the British SF Association Award in 1991 (as was "Learning to Be Me", another of Egan's short stories).