Charles Fort, he kept saying, and alien beings, and the end of the world, and none of this was blending very well with Maria.
You must be desperate if you’re coming to me for help, but I’ll bite. What is it you need?
No one born with a mouth and a need is “innocent”.
It would be interesting, Captain, to return to that world in 100 years and learn what crop had sprung from the seed you planted today.
“We are surrounded by a Ring of Fire. Well, I’ve fought forest fires before. So have lots of other men in this room. The best way to fight a fire is to start a counterfire. So my position is simple. I say we start the American Revolution—a hundred and fifty years ahead of schedule!”
“It’s too early to sound the trumpet yet,” Tom said scrupulously.
So, yeah, I blew myself up.
So, in the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option. I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.
Why, yes, I’m watching The Martian tonight, thanks for asking.
Look at that program go! Flexible vectors swarming in ten-dimensional hyperspace! String theory simulation! Under those colored gouts of special effects, this, at last, was real science!
The tracks of these networks were just the highest ridges the shapers had built, and the pulses were tiny arrowheads, one and two steps higher. The shapers had worked in four dimensions, so the networks themselves were three-dimensional. The womb breathed life into these conventions, making the pulses race along the tracks like a quadrillion cars shuttling between the trillion junctions of a ten-thousand-tiered monorail.
My entire understanding of physical space has been transformed! Three-dimensional Euclidean geometry has been torn up, thrown in the air and snogged to death! My grasp of the universal constants of physical reality has been changed forever.
“I canna change the laws of physics, Captain, but I’ll find y’ a loophole!”
Perhaps that was a basic human need, he thought, knowing he thought that most times he came down here. A basic human need for the elemental, the uncontrollable.
Yeah, well, I’ve never been with two girls at the same time before. But you can bet, when that day comes, I’ll make it work.
Pull up your pants, Romeo.
“Would you prepared if gravity reversed itself? The only thing I can’t figure out is how to keep the change in my pockets. I’ve got it. Nudity.”
Only Wild-Hair Harold could think of anything so preposterous.
“All things considered,” the captain told the midshipman judiciously, “Her Grace’s plan may not have been the single rashest, most foolhardy, do-or-die, all-or-nothing throw of the dice in the history of the Royal Manticoran—or Grayson—Navy. If it wasn’t, however, I have so far failed to find the plan that was.”
Only an idiot would fight a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts.
Alpha said nothing. The scene’s horror had taken her voice.