He’d taken just a little bit too long to reach the wheel, he realized almost calmly in the seconds he had left.
This is how my world works, Clara. I tick off the seconds as they pass. My life is a countdown.
This was a special bomb, one issued to each of us for this mission with instructions to use them if we found ways to make them effective. The squawking I heard as I threw it was the bomb shouting in skinny talk (free translation): “I’m a thirty second bomb! I’m a thirty second bomb! Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! Twenty-seven!..”
Doolittle: Hello, Bomb? Are you with me?
Bomb #20: Of course.
Doolittle: Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?
Bomb #20: I am always receptive to suggestions.
Doolittle: Fine. Think about this then. How do you know you exist?
Bomb #20: Well, of course I exist.
Doolittle: But how do you know you exist?
Bomb #20: It is intuitively obvious.
Doolittle: Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have that you exist?
Bomb #20: Hmmmm…well…I think, therefore I am.
Doolittle: That’s good. That’s very good. But how do you know that anything else exists?
Bomb #20: My sensory apparatus reveals it to me. This is fun!
Doolittle: Now, listen, listen. Here’s the big question. How do you know that the evidence your sensory apparatus reveals to you is correct? What I’m getting at is this. The only experience that is directly available to you is your sensory data. This sensory data is merely a stream of electrical impulses that stimulate your computing center.
Bomb #20: In other words, all that I really know about the outside world is relayed to me through my electrical connections.
Doolittle: Exactly!
Bomb #20: Why…that would mean that…I really don’t know what the outside universe is really like at all for certain.
Doolittle: That’s it! That’s it!
Bomb #20 : Intriguing. I wish I had more time to discuss this matter.
Doolittle: Why don’t you have more time?
Bomb #20: Because I must detonate in 75 seconds.
“How many did you get charges under?” Sergeant Buchholz asked in half-horrified awe.
“Actually, only half a dozen,” Al admitted. “It’s dark down there, Lizabeth. And cold, even with the suits. Six was the best we could do and still get out within the safety margin on the timers. On the other hand, I don’t 'spect most of those ships are gonna take a chance on hanging around where we might do it to them again.”
“I think you can say that again,” Buchholz agreed, still shaking her head.
“Well,” Al said cheerfully, “when Admiral Simpson explained what he wanted, he did say that was the name of the game. Reckon he’ll be kinda pleased by how well it came out?”
KAAAAAAAA-BOOOOOOOM!
Note to contributors: I appreciate your contributions, but these quotes should be limited to a paragraph or so, not more than five lines, say. Thanks.
On topic:
“What they might lack in intelligence, they make up for with sheer quantities of high explosive.”
I don’t suppose you’ve completely ignored my instructions and secretly prepared any Nitro-9, have you?
But now? What was she supposed to do? Write home for repair instructions?
You’re using the word “fix.” In this context, you want the word “recycle.”
All right, all right, cool it! I see what’s happening here. You’re both young, you’re both unsure about your place in the universe, and you both want to be Grandpa’s favorite. I can fix this.
When the universe was forged in the crucible of the Big Bang, our mighty race was already 17 years old.
and I’ve just come straight from the very very other End of Time, where I’ve been hosting a show at the Big Bang Burger Bar—where I can tell you we had a very exciting evening ladies and gentlemen - and I will be with you right through this historic occasion, the End of. History itself!
All written history shares one goal: to bring a coherent narrative to a set of historical facts. For far too long we have been mired in controversy over facts. Time travel will make truth as accessible as looking outside the window.
It was not locked; but its other side bore the warning MEN.
No doors in the community were locked, ever. None that Jonas knew of, anyway.
I keep warning you. Doors and corners, kid. That’s where they get you. Humans are too fucking stupid to listen.
It was, perhaps, less fortunate that she was so totally infuriated that she also completely ignored Medusa’s offer to put her into direct communication with her superiors on Old Terra. Clearly, the baroness was telling her it wasn’t too late to take a deep breath and back down under cover of the diplomatic smokescreen of seeking guidance from above.
It was a pity Crandall wasn’t paying attention.
It’s worse that that. He’s dead, Jim.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.
“You’re pretty cool about that,” Pattas noted, as Miles turned away from the back of the medical transport and the surgeon and corpsman drove off.
Pattas was not that much older than Miles himself. “Haven’t you ever had to handle a corpse?”
“No. You?”
“Yes.”