" What replaced feelings when there were none to be had? The absence of something was never as effective as the presence of something, or so Libby had thought then. She suggested they fill the space something; a trap of some kind, or possibly something nightmarish if Callum really wanted to build some sort of existential snare, but he disagreed. To be suspended in nothing, he said, was to lack all motivation, all desire. It was functional paralysis. To want neither to live nor die, but to never exist. Impossible to fight. "

― Olivie Blake , The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)