Home > Work > The Vital Abyss (The Expanse, #5.5)
1 " Take a bar of metal and put a single notch in it. The two lengths thus defined have a relationship that can be expressed as the ratio between them. In theory, therefore, any rational number can be expressed with a single mark on a bar of metal. Using a simple alphabetic code, a mark that calculated to a ratio of .1215225 could be read as 12-15-22-5, or “l-o-v-e.” The complete plays of Shakespeare could be written in a single mark, if it were possible to measure accurately enough. "
― James S.A. Corey , The Vital Abyss (The Expanse, #5.5)
2 " What astounded me was that the cutting edge of human knowledge was so close. Before I educated myself, I assumed that there was a great depth of science, that every question of importance had been cataloged, studied, that all the answers were there, if only someone could query the datasets the right way. And for some things, that was true. "
3 " The idea that animal suffering is less important than human suffering is a religious one. It assumes a special creation, and that we—you and I—are different in kind than other animals. We are morally separate from rats or horses or chimps, not based on any particular physical difference between us, but just because we claim that we’re sacred by our nature and have dominion over them. It’s a story we tell that lets us do what we do. Consider the question without that filter, and it looks very different. "
4 " Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but it is the mother of any number of other things as well: sacrifice and monstrosity and metamorphosis. Necessity is the mother of all necessary things, to coin a tautology. "
5 " There is nothing so destructive and also so easy to overlook as a bad idea. "
6 " I have heard it said that how you spend your day is how you spend your life, and my days changed then. "
7 " I want to understand,” I told him. He shrugged only his left shoulder. “Understand what, Paolo? The mind of God? The reason for suffering?” “Just how things work,” I said. "
8 " I had no compunctions, no sense of regret. I’d had it burned out of me. But I believe that even if I’d refused the procedure, I would have done precisely as I did. I’m smart enough to know that this is almost certainly not true, but I believe it. "
9 " when Kibushi used the information without citing her, she snuck into the showers at the gymnasium and beat him to death with a ceramic workbench cap. "
10 " Singh in computational biology held forth on her theory of the protomolecule as a Guzman-style quantum computer one night over dinner, and when Kibushi used the information without citing her, she snuck into the showers at the gymnasium and beat him to death with a ceramic workbench cap. "
11 " At the time I gave more weight to the opinions of others. "
12 " My worth had been determined from without, by how I imagined that I appeared to others. That is what being a social animal is, after all. Emotional and definitional interdependence. "
13 " Differences in status and wealth are always what drives war. "
14 " The metaphor that came to me in the moment was my mother was being run remotely by someone who didn't understand the controls very well. "
15 " I would rather be damned as naive than willfully ignorant. "
16 " If you put me in the room again, he'll kill me." She paused. "Why do you say that?" "He's from the research group." "So are you." It took me long seconds to put words to something so obvious. "It's what I would do. "
17 " I divided myself into three different young men: one a nurse to his failing mother, one a fierce student on a quest to understand the disease that was defining his life, and the last a victim of depression so profound it made bathing or eating food a challenge. "
18 " There is a period of developmental sociopathy in every life, "
19 " how you spend your day is how you spend your life, "
