Impressively efficient, that. Get fed and drunk simultaneously…no wonder they’re lining up!
The bar was somewhere in the General Products building. I don’t know just where, and with the transfer booths it doesn’t matter. I kept staring at the puppeteer bartender. Naturally only a puppeteer would be served by a puppeteer bartender, since any biped life form would resent knowing that his drink had been made with somebody’s mouth. I had already decided to get dinner somewhere else.
[Luke Skywalker and C-3PO, from the movie Star Wars, are making a guest appearance on the show “Pigs in Space”. Pointing at Miss Piggy, who’s dressed like Princess Leia]
Luke Skywalker: “Look, it’s the Princess!”
C-3PO: “She doesn’t look anything like the Princess!”
[sternly, to C-3PO]
Miss Piggy: “Watch it, hardware!”
If I did not fear incarceration from human authority figures, I would terminate your life functions by applying sufficient pressure to your blunt skull so as to force its collapse!
A temple, a place of worship, and it’s been turned into offices and a prison.
I should bring you up to date on the modern world, Christof. Let’s see – against all odds, peddlers and moneychangers defeated the priests and the nobles, so now merchants rule the world. Peasants rule themselves by voting on who gets to be king and his court. And some people still believe the world was created in seven days, even though men have walked on the moon.
The election’s got me in a real democratic mood. You always have a choice, even if it’s between two bad options.
This is the best bad idea we have, sir. By far.
Show me a completely smooth operation and I’ll show you someone who’s covering mistakes. Real boats rock.
“So do I,” Simpson admitted. “And ‘Achates’ problems may actually let the lunatics succeed. Mind you, I wouldn’t be willing to risk any money betting on the probability, but Murphy doesn’t play favorites.”
As you speak, I will be narrowing down the perimeters of your treatment, selecting the therapy that may work best for you. But you must explain your problem in detail. Just put it in your own words.
I have no mouth and I must scream.
Telepathy never came to much.
“As it happens, I’ve been hanging around with treecats long enough to have caught to at least some of their abilities. I can’t read minds, but I can read emotions, and I know when someone’s lying.”
“Do you read minds or was that just a shot in the dark?”
“No, I read minds.”
“Oh yeah? What was I just thinking?”
“That I’m full of shit.”
“Impressive.”
“Not really. Quite simple to read.”
Mr. Gray, I’m grateful the Psi Corps give you purpose in life, but when that purpose includes scanning my mind to prove my loyalty, it’s not only an invasion of my privacy, but my honor.
“Don’t you understand? You know how the esprojector works. You know I could have probed Anglesey’s mind in Anglesey’s brain without making enough interference to be noticed. And I could not have probed a wholly non-human mind at all, nor could it have been aware of me. The filters would not have passed such a signal. Yet you felt me in the first fractional second. It can only mean a human mind in a nonhuman brain.”
“You are not the half-corpse on Jupiter V any longer. You’re Joe—Joe-Anglesey.”
Personal opinion: THAT’s the movie they should have made instead of Avatar.
She felt a sudden surge of happiness, of contentment to have awakened on such a perfect morning. It was like being born again. A morning like the first morning of the world.
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.