Welcome to a high-tech utopiaListen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.Your browser does not support the <audio> element.In “Permutation City”, a novel by Greg Egan, the character Peer, having achieved immortality within a virtual reality over which he has total control, finds himself terribly bored. So he engineers himself to have new passions. One moment he is pushing the boundaries of higher mathematics; the next he is writing operas. “He’d even been interested in ...