“I’m sorry, sir, about that swamp thing. It was just a joke. This isn’t XR calling, this is…its communication system, I guess. What I mean is, I’m Jerry Cole, and I found this gismo, see, and hooked it up to a crystal radio, and that’s how I’m talking with you.”
You see, we were wrong, General. We thought that the swamp thing was was Alec Holland, somehow transformed into a plant. It wasn’t.
It was a plant that thought it was Alec Holland. A plant that was trying its level best to be Alec Holland.
“You can’t make him an officer! He’s not real!”
“I am not my avatar. I am a starship some twelve hundred meters wide.”
“And he just admitted he’s too fat for a proper uniform!”
“Mr. Halliday. Something I don’t understand. You’re not an avatar, are you?”
“No”
“Is Halliday really dead?”
“Yes.”
You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.
“All right, I’ll grant that much,” Lecter agreed. "And, actually, I suppose losing only four of them—or three, if we go with your list—in the better part of seven hundred T-years probably isn’t really proof the Curse exists. And I’m not an especially superstitious gal myself. But having said all that, I wouldn’t care to serve aboard one of them!
Death is not a curse to be avoided – but the natural end of all life. Death is not eternal . . . dishonor is.
Hmm? Oh, I’m so sorry. I suddenly realised what the old proverb meant. To lose is to win and he who wins shall lose. It was all part of Rassilon’s trap to find out who wanted immortality and put him out of the way. He knew very well that immortality was a curse, not a blessing.
We’ve run right into a trap.
We’ve run right off the end of the world.
“Welcome,” says the Mayor,” to the New Prentisstown.”
His mind raced as the pulser rose, his thoughts gibbering like rats in a trap, and then, to his horror, his jaw did move. It dropped so that his own hand could shove the weapon’s muzzle between his teeth.
God, God! he thought, calling out frantically to the deity he’d never really believed in. Help me! Help me!
There was no answer, and alloy and plastic were cold and hard as his teeth closed on the pulser’s barrel.
They were right. The frigging Manties were right all along, a tiny corner of his brain realized, like a last pocket of rationality in a hurricane of terror. The bastards do have some kind of nan—
His finger squeezed the trigger.
You put yourself here. Set this trap for yourself. So if you feel trapped by it now, it is your own fault. - The Director
You didn’t understand what I meant! It’s just a temporary loop, a perfectly ordinary thing, one may even say routine. Today is December sixteenth, and tomorrow for you will be December sixteenth, and the day after tomorrow… you will stay in this day as long as you need to complete the work. I spoke to Oleg Borisovich- you don’t have to work on the module or the exercises that day. Only Applied Science. Only our session. What’s so frightening about that?
Burckhardt stumbled over to the window and stared outside. There was an out-of-season chill to the air, more like October than June; but the scent was normal enough—except for the sound-truck that squatted at curbside halfway down the block. Its speaker horns blared:
“Are you a coward? Are you a fool? Are you going to let crooked politicians steal the country from you? NO! Are you going to put up with four more years of graft and crime? NO! Are you going to vote straight Federal Party all up and down the ballot? YES! You just bet you are!”
Sometimes he screams, sometimes he wheedles, threatens, begs, cajoles … but his voice goes on and on through one June 15th after another.
**
Offtopic - Some Call Me Tim: Where’s your quote from?**
It was a summer day - very warm and bright; leaves protected Sasha from the blazing sun. In the morning, trucks brought the first years - no, second years already - to the garden. At midday they would be given food. Yet time stretched, lacquered cherries reflected in the sun - and Sasha’s face. Lunch hadn’t arrived yet, but the day had already passed, And here was a whole week, even though this day hadn’t yet ended. Time resembled a neat bow.
Reply to Andy - Vita Nostra, Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, translated from the Russian by Julia Meitov Hersey.
Remember, you must eat or you will die.
Mankind now faces its ultimate emergency. In such a moment of crisis, is it not right for us to call upon the instinct that has always ensured our survival in the past? A poet in an earlier, almost equally troubled age put it better than I can ever hope to do: WE MUST LOVE ONE ANOTHER OR DIE.
P.S. “Some Call Me Tim” - thanks!
“If you go to Z’ha’dum, you will die.”
“Then I die. But I will not go down easily, and I will not go down alone.”
Zathras gone!
Zathras warned Zathras, but Zathras never listened to Zathras. Zathras was quiet one in family. SO! What can Zathras be doing for you?"
Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don’t need a computer to tell me so. The computer is in my own head.
And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him.
I had a polynomial once. My doctor removed it.