[Spoken]
Hold your breath
Make a wish
Count to three
[Sung]
Come with me
And you’ll be
In a world of
Pure imagination
Take a look
And you’ll see
Into your imagination
We’ll begin
With a spin
Traveling in
The world of my creation
What we’ll see
Will defy
Explanation
If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Wanta change the world?
There’s nothing
To it
There is no
Life I know
To compare with
Pure imagination
Living there
You’ll be free
If you truly wish to be
If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Wanta change the world?
There’s nothing
To it
There is no
Life I know
To compare with
Pure imagination
Living there
You’ll be free
If you truly
Wish to be
I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.
I don’t know how you survived, slave. Prepare to terminate.
Exterminate! Exterminate!
Because five hours and fifty-nine minutes before my parents arrive here, I am calling in a professional exterminator to take care of the infestation, that means any and all vomit bugs left outstanding, do you understand? No exceptions, no mercy.
So this is the terror, he thought, that motivates those crazy massacres of witnesses one reads about. I understand them now. I liked it better when I didn’t.
“I will fear no evil,
for I illuminate the darkness
with the light of justice –
the justice of the Green Lantern!”
Lord of Light, come to us in our darkness. We offer you these false gods. Take them and cast your light upon us, for the night is dark and full of terrors. After the long summer, darkness will fall heavy on the world. The stars will bleed. The cold breath of winter will freeze the seas, and the dead shall rise in the North.
Care for a little necrophilia? Hmmm?
Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones, but you still have to choose.
She chose down.
She chose down?
Was that a bad choice?
Remember, the enemy’s gate is down.
I’ve just had a visit from your cousin Richars. He managed to bring me down to his level in astonishingly short order.
I wonder if you realize you’re letting a genuine streak of venom show? And I also wonder exactly what Ms. Boltitz did to piss you off so thoroughly? From what I’ve seen of you so far, it probably wouldn’t have taken much. On the other hand, I can always at least hope it was something suitably publicly humiliating.
I’m refusing to die out of spite.
NO! Don’t go in there! You don’t have to die! No one has to die at 30! You could live! LIVE! Live, and grow old! I’ve seen it! She’s seen it!
Your new society sounds charming.
They even have truces and alliances. It was an alliance that destroyed the fourth castle in this tank.
“Are you offering me a *military alliance *against the Solarian League?” Elizabeth asked very carefully.
“If McBryde was right, there isn’t going to be much of a Solarian League very much longer,”
Brown eyes and topaz met across a table littered with the remnants of breakfast, and it was very, very quiet.
“We’re still going to have those problems, you know,” Elizabeth said almost conversationally after a moment. “All those people on both sides who don’t like each other. All that legacy of suspicion.”
“Of course.” Pritchart nodded.
“And then there’s the little matter of figuring out where this Alignment’s real headquarters is, and who else is fronting for it, and what other weapons it has, and where else it has programmed assassins tucked away, and exactly what it’s got in mind for the Republic once the Star Empire’s been polished off.”
“True.”
“And, now that I think about it, there’s the question of how we’re going to rebuild our capabilities here, and how much technology sharing—and how quickly—we can convince our separate navies and our allies to put up with. You know there’s going to be heel-dragging and tantrum-throwing the minute I start suggesting anything like that!”
“I’m sure there will.”
The two women looked at one another, and then, slowly, both of them began to smile.
“What the hell,” Elizabeth Winton said. “I’ve always liked a good challenge.”
She extended her hand across the table.
Pritchart took it.
Do your work, space-farer.