Empty

Do I actually have free will?

Determined and open aren't rivals. They're the same thing seen from two sides. And the "you" the question worries about turns out to have nobody home.

Could a machine be conscious? Is anyone else?

Run any test you like on any system. Two of them, built the same but for one hidden coordinate, give you the same reading forever. You can't find out. It's been proved you can't.

Why does time only run forward?

Records get written once and never again. The underlying law can run backward just fine. The arrow lives in the ledger, in what got written down, not in the physics.

Is there a "me," or a soul?

The self is a knot the process keeps tying, never a thing it holds. Push on the "who" and it comes apart. The happening underneath it never does.

Does anything I do actually matter?

The marks you leave are the one layer that's permanent and can't be taken back. That's where this system's ethics decides value actually lives.