Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was: “Oh no, not again.” Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.
“You love your potted plants more than you love me! Here, I’ll prove it to you.”
He snatched up the pot and pressed the control for the door to the balcony. “Which shall it be to go over the railing? Your precious plant, or me? Choose!”
Every single decision you make creates a parallel existence.
“Starting on my left with one, your number comes up, you go.”
“Just so you know, Jeff, you are now creating six different timelines.”
I warned you not to mess with the timeline.
Time, Dr. Freeman? Is it really that time again? It seems as if you only just arrived. You’ve done a great deal in a small time span. You’ve done so well, in fact, that I’ve received some interesting offers for your services.
I don’t really care for the man myself, but he means a great deal to you.
Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!
Mary laughed. “You wanted facts, Mr. Sherlock Holmes Bean. We’ll toss a couple more at you. Jon, show him your knife. I’ll get the clip.”
“I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven’t seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they’re absolutely stupid.”
Absurd, absurd, I know how absurd the suggestion is even as I voice it.
Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, or talking over the circuit to Earth, he kept the ship’s sound system running at almost painful loudness.
“Get out! Get off my deck! Get out of my sight. Get Out!” Helva roared, pouring on volume with each word, with no regard for the tender structure of the human ear.
On the negative side, the same Friede Butry had an acid tongue that suffered no fools gladly and suffered downright screwballs not at all. As it happened, the com systems on both the yacht and the now-adrift roller coaster cab had been among the few pieces of equipment still functioning almost perfectly. Nor, alas, could the com system in the cab be turned off by the inhabitants. It had been designed, after all, to pass on instructions to idiot tourists. So, the entire rescue was accompanied, from start to finish and with not more than four seconds of continuous silence, with what had gone down into the clan’s extensive legendry as Ganny’s Second-Best Skinning.
He wondered if it had hurt Curley. He wondered if Curley had felt the gas-tipped slugs hitting home or if he had just been alive one second and dead the next. But of course it had hurt. It had hurt before, in the worst, rupturing way, knowing there would be no more you but the universe would roll on just the same, unharmed and unhampered.
Being alive right now is all that counts.
Number Five is alive!
This is Red 5, I’m going in.
Who says I’m not, red-bicycle-when-you-were-twelve?
Being fluently bilingual, he told them all this in both American and Tex-Mex, but, as it turned out, they didn’t speak any civilized languages, and instead pointed their weapons at him. Couldn’t they have taken a few elementary lessons before dropping in on strangers?