The Gilgamesh archives did not contain them, but Holsten had an idea that he had read somewhere of some philanthropic rules imposed on the fabled old artificial intelligences.
We may not have been programmed to be angry, but anger can be learnt. Perhaps not in the way humans feel it, driven by ignorance and hate, but in response to the damage and injustice caused by those things, isn’t that logical? Doesn’t that make sense? Why give us a sense of morality without the ability to express it properly?
“You have made me very angry, very angry indeed!”
Anger is useful only to a certain point. After that, it becomes rage, and rage will make you careless.
“It doesn’t matter,” Honor Alexander-Harrington said into the ringing silence. It was the first time she’d spoken, and Elizabeth could hear the ice crystals in that soprano, taste the searing rage under that frozen surface.
“None of it matters,” Honor said. “We’ve been patient. We’ve waited. We’ve tried to minimize the death toll, tried to be the voice of sanity. We’ve tried…and none of it matters one damned bit to those men and women in Old Chicago. They don’t care how much destruction there is. They don’t care who dies. And if that’s the way they want it, so be it.” She looked around the conference room and Nimitz raised his head, his ears flat, his fangs half-bared. “I’m through taking the ‘long view.’ It doesn’t matter who did it. What matters is that it has to end, Elizabeth.” Those icy brown eyes locked with her monarch’s. “It has to end * now.*”
The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it’s a world, or a relationship… Everything has its time. And everything ends.
Man’s last mind paused before fusion, looking over a space that included nothing but the dregs of one last dark star and nothing be sides but incredibly thin matter, agitated randomly by the tag ends of heat wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero.
Man said, “AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the Universe once more? Can that not be done?”
AC said, “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”
Clouds out of control decoct anticipation. What use can any of us have for two moons? The miracle of order has run out and I am left in an unmiraculous city where anything may happen.
“Inasmuch as Mars’ outermost moon is called Deimos, and the next Phobos,” he said, “I think I shall name the third moon of Mars—Bottomos.”
At home on Mars, wind and dust changed the landscape hourly. Here, she was walking through the footsteps of the day before and the day before and the day before. And if she never came back, those footprints would outlive her. Privately, she thought it was a sort of creepy.
[Ro] checked the directional reading one more time. “You’re sure there are no Jem’Hadar nearby?”
“Considering how loudly you talk, if there were you would be dead by now.”
“Fine, I’ll be quiet,” Ro said. “Let’s go.”
“So we’re safe again.”
“Safe? No, of course you’re not safe. There’s about a billion other things out there just waiting to burn your whole world. But if you want to pretend you’re safe just so you can sleep at night, okay. You’re safe. But you’re not really.”
Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word ‘safe’ that I wasn’t previously aware of.
Serena hadn’t told Sydney to go home. She hadn’t told her to run away. She told her to go somewhere safe.
At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that “news” is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different—in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.
There was a red button on the wall labelled EMERGENCY, but no button labelled BEWILDERMENT.
“Do you remember the little red button?”
“Yeah…”
“Push the little red button.”
“And you may want to put on a seatbelt…”
Arthur Dent: What happens if I press this button?
Ford Prefect: I wouldn’t-
Arthur Dent: Oh.
Ford Prefect: What happened?
Arthur Dent: A sign lit up, saying 'Please do not press this button again.
…And meanwhile the Galaxy ran through space and left behind those signs old and new and I still hadn’t found mine.
Nine of her broadside missile tubes, six of her broadside graser mounts, and four of her sidewall generators had been reduced to wreckage, and there was no way in the galaxy he could take on yet another undamaged heavy cruiser and win.
But he and his people had already destroyed three of them, he thought grimly. If they had to, galaxy or no galaxy, they would damned well take out a fourth. Either way, there was no way he was going to abandon Refuge to the animals who had already slaughtered so many, and he had people of his own down there.