The Metal Man stands in a dark, dusty corner of the Tyburn College Museum.
I’d like to know what a place is like when I’m not there. I’d like to be sure.
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
He hit, and the Foe burned. The encroaching Night was thrust back by the intensity of the fire.
More color commentary from the space janitor.
“And then we just float away.”
“With the rest of the garbage.”
Well, they’re good with garbage, but what can an emotional transmute, a homemade robot, a Betty and her clone, and a plant do against a Gorgon’s doomsday ship?
Well, look on the bright side. We’ll all have high schools named after us.
Miss Kinnian says maybe they can make me smart. I want to be smart.
[Flowers for Algernon always makes me cry.]
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to take you to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cause I don’t.
(Me too, Professor. Me, too.)
“I can’t stand it!”
“Yes, you can.”
Can’t you understand what it means to me? To get out of this horrible prison in my own head? To be a man again–hearing your voice, smelling smoke? To feel again–to feel my feet on the ground, to feel the air move against my face? Don’t you know what it means?
I want my body back. And I want my freedom and my privacy. And most of all, I’d like to be able to take a leak without being fondled.
“There’s no need for us to anger ourselves,” he said oilily. “I think you are stubborn, but I don’t hold it against you. I know how you feel. You’ll be left alone; you have my promise.”
Let’s just bug out and call it even, mat! What are we even talking about this for?
Every time we killed a thousand Bugs at a cost of one M.I. it was a net victory for the Bugs. We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution; the Bug commisars didn’t care any more about expending soldiers than we cared about expending ammo. Perhaps we could have figured this out about the Bugs by noting the grief the Chinese Hegemony gave the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance; however the trouble with ‘lessons from history’ is that we usually read them best after falling flat on our chins.
Nevertheless he was out of the Tranquil Hegemony’s reach, at least for the time being. Any death was preferable to the one Nick Succorso had intended for him. And according to the screen, he now had nearly six more hours to live.
I didn’t do anything to die for–I didn’t do anything--
New people die everyday.
The newchild stirred slightly in his sleep. Jonas looked over at him. “There could be love,” Jonas whispered.