“What is Man?” they’ll ask.
Or perhaps: “What is a city?”
Or: "What is a war?”
BATTLE OF QUORISTON – Fought on 9, 17, 377 FE between the forces of the Foundation and those of Lord Stettin of Kalgan, it was the last battle of consequence during the Interregnum…
“She displays the wisdom of a battle seasoned warrior.”
“She’s a mother. Close enough.”
“I’m a Viper pilot, a warrior. I fly out of this rattletrap and perform missions, fight battles against the Cylons, reconnaissance patrols–”
“Ah, the Cylons are still the enemy.”
“A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.”
We just saved a man whose only goal in life is revenge. He spent years studying his enemies through their own children.
“This is about revenge.”
“Then cover your ears.”
There was a sudden surge of rebellion within him—strong and brutal. Not a portion of the Galaxy must be denied him. For five years he had remained silent and buried here on Kalgan because of the eternal, misty, space-ridden menace of the unseen, unheard, unknown Second Foundation. He was thirty-two. Not old—but he felt old. His body, whatever its mutant mental powers, was physically weak.
Every star! Every star he could see—and every star he couldn’t see. It must all be his!
Revenge on all. On a humanity of which he wasn’t a part. On a Galaxy in which he didn’t fit.
If we engage the hyperdrive without a gate, we could be thrown anywhere in the galaxy.
So I slammed the Blackbird into hyperdrive and listened to the banshee wail as the old ship shuddered and leaped into the fourth dimension.
“That is because you think of space only in three dimensions,” Mrs. Whatsit told her. “We travel in the fifth dimension. This is something you can understand, Meg. Don’t be afraid to try. Was your mother able to explain a tesseract to you?”
“Well, she never did,” Meg said. “She got so upset about it. Why, Mrs. Whatsit? She said it had something to do with her and Father.”
“It was a concept they were playing with,” Mrs. Whatsit said, “going beyond the fourth dimension to the fifth. Did your mother explain it to you, Charles?”
You better be sure about this, Doctor, because if you make me disappear there won’t be a dimension safe enough for you.
“We have taken them away,” the humanoid informed him, softly. “Such instruments are dangerous. We shall furnish safe equipment.”
“Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life forms.”
There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea’s asleep and the rivers dream. People made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, somewhere else the tea’s getting cold. Come on Ace, we’ve got work to do.
Wild Fremen said it well: “Four things cannot be hidden – love, smoke, a pillar of fire and a man striding across the open bled.”
As soon as Haroche knew Miles knew, it would be a race against time. And all Miles had was a trail of mirrors and smoke. Smoke. Air filters.
Their trail is cold.
“If I’d known it was harmless I’d have killed it myself.”
Morty, twenty people try to kill me every week. I end up getting high with half of them.