Then you’re seventy-five, friends are dead, and you’ve replaced at least one major organ: you have to pee four times a night, and you can’t go up a flight a stairs without being little winded – and your’re told you’re in pretty good shape for your age.
[…], in a decade you’ll be eighty-five, and the only difference between you and a raisin will be that while you’re both wrinkled and without a prostate, the raisin never had a prostate to begin with.
“We’re all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It’s just we’re a different kind each day. We think, I’m not a fool today. I’ve learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we’re not perfect and live accordingly.”
I am going to die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy.
If we presume that the boundary of the universe is a kind of surrounding wall,
then we think like ancestors who thought there’s abyss at the edge of flat earth.
There is an energy barrier at the rim of your galaxy.
The Trail Blazer and her sisters had gone out the same way, burst through the Einstein barrier, taken their chances on getting back.
That’s the good part of dying; when you’ve nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.
He sipped his drug bowl and sniffed the fumes, while watching Kraiklyn lose first one and then another hand, though in the first one he pulled out early enough not to lose a Life.
Have a seat, lend a hand, or get out of my way, but do not question me in my lab, doctor!
No, no, no, don’t tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to.
You can’t take that stuff too seriously, or you’ll be paralyzed.
Paraplegics, sneeringly called “pares” by the quads, garnered not an ounce of sympathy on the ward. Most pares soon learned to temper their self-pity and helped out, feeding quads meals, fetching things, even emptying filled urine bags. Quads learned not to want things. There were too few hands to respond to their wants anyway.
Unlike the ultra-technical fen of Streaker’s crew, Sah’ot was uncomfortable with devices. He didn’t mind computers, some of which could talk, and which helped him speak to other races. But implements for the moving, shaping, or killing of objects, these were unnatural things which he wished he could do without.
He hated the two nubby little “fin-gers” at the tips of each of his pectoral fins—which they said would someday lead to full hands for his species. They were unaesthetic.
Fatigue had caused him to discard his body amour. It was of no realistic use anyway, and just made him hotter and sweatier, made stealthy movement more difficult – and weighed him down.
Second, put on your war suit. This is the standard self-sealing body-length unitard that covers everything but the face. The unitard is designed to let you forget about your body for the length of the battle. The “fabric” of organized nanobots lets in light for photosynthesis and regulates heat; stand on an arctic floe or a Saharan sand dune and the only difference your body notes is the visual change in scenery. If you somehow manage to sweat, your unitard wicks it away, filters it and stores the water until you can transfer it to a canteen. You can deal with urine this way, too. Defecating in your unitard is generally not recommended.
I served my time in vac suits, working outside under the big, black sky that wrapped all the way around and seemed to pull at me like a magnet that would suck me away into its deepest, blackest depths.
The dark had shot across the sky before we’d started our good-byes, and it was black night now, darker than I had ever seen in my lifetime.
I laugh, and it’s laughter, not light, that casts out the darkness building within me, that reminds me I am still alive, even in this strange place where everything I’ve ever known is coming apart.
It is said that, as he wandered the streets of the City, an ancient jackbird cycled three times above him, then came to rest upon Sam’s shoulder, saying: “Are you not Maitreya, Lord of Light, for whom the world has waited, lo, these many years–he whose coming I prophesyed long ago in a poem?”
“No, my name is Sam,” he replied, “and I am about to depart the world, not enter into it. Who are you?”
“I am a bird who was once a poet. All morning have I flown, since the yawp of Garuda opened the day. I was flying about the ways of Heaven looking for Lord Rudra, hoping to befoul him with my droppings, when I felt the power of a weird come over the land. I have flown far, and I have seen many things, Lord of Light.”
“What things have you seen, bird who was a poet?”
“I have seen an unlit pyre set at the end of the world, with fogs stirring all about it. I have seen the gods who come late hurrying across the snows and rushing through the upper airs, circling outside the dome. I have seen the players upon the ranga and the nepathya, rehearsing the Masque of Blood, for the wedding of Death and Destruction. I have seen the Lord Vayu raise up his hand and stop the winds that circle through Heaven. I have seen all-colored Mara atop the spire of the highest tower, and I have felt the power of the weird he lays–for I have seen the phantom cats troubled within the wood, then hurrying in this direction. I have seen the tears of a man and of a woman. I have heard the laughter of a goddess. I have seen a bright spear uplifted against the morning, and I have heard an oath spoken. I have seen the Lord of Light at last, of whom I wrote, long ago: Always dying, never dead; Ever ending, never ended; Loathed in darkness, Clothed in light, He comes, to end a world, As morning ends the night. These lines were writ By Morgan, free, Who shall, the day he dies, See this prophecy.”
The bird ruffled his feathers then and was still.
“I am pleased, bird, that you have had a chance to see many things,” said Sam, “and that within the fiction of your metaphor you have achieved a certain satisfaction. Unfortunately, poetic truth differs considerably from that which surrounds most of the business of life.”
“Hail, Lord of Light!” said the bird, and sprang into the air. As he rose, he was pierced through by an arrow shot from a nearby window by one who hated jackbirds.
Sam hurried on.
Off topic: Please remember that quotes shouldn’t be more than a paragraph or so long. Otherwise, the copyright holders could get upset. Thanks.
In play: When I first saw you, you were on the highest balcony of Tatum House, precariously leaning over the edge with your arms spread wide. Like a little bird about to fly. Even now, you seem poised for flight at any given moment.