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101 " Time entered the small and tightly bounded universe and gave all things a past out of which they had come, a present through which they were passing, and a future toward which they were progressing. All things. Except himself. "
― Ian McDonald , Out on Blue Six
102 " All things. Except himself. He had only present. There was no past to direct him toward a future. There was no remembering of a time before. Before? "
103 " only one man was left in Neu Ulmsbad Square to watch the black and silver pantycars come tunneling out of the clouds. “Is this part of it?” asked the man called Kilimanjaro West. "
104 " Why then had he no past before he found the word cold in his mouth? He squatted down on the poor warped floorboards, shivering, rubbing himself for warmth, trying to remember. For a long time he squatted like a bird, for birds have no past or future but only an eternal present. "
105 " A bird-of-paradise woman paused in her flight to be astounded. “Yah, you stupid or something? That’s the Love Police, you know?” “The what?” “Fug! You are stupid! Never heard of West One? "
106 " Voices. —You will lose everything. Everything. Everything. —Is this what you really wish? To lose everything you have ever been? —The choice is yours. “And I took it!” he cried to the streaming walls. “I took it!” But he could not remember what it was he had chosen. —He has chosen. "
107 " He remembered questions swarming like flocks of birds, voices filled with consternation, some soft, some sibilant, some somber, some shrill. He remembered that all the questions had been directed at him and that he had answered each and every questioning voice. But he did not know what he had answered. —You will forget, was his final memory. There his history ended, without a future, without a name. "
108 " He remembered that all the questions had been directed at him and that he had answered each and every questioning voice. But he did not know what he had answered. —You will forget, was his final memory. There his history ended, without a future, without a name. "
109 " Perhaps not without a future. His future would be a future of questions, of remembering all that he had forgotten. And perhaps that was all the future he needed, the act of asking was an end in itself. "
110 " Hold on, I won’t have to read anything, will I? I’m not allowed to look at words, reading’s sinful. "
111 " Back to the world at the time of the Break. Don’t be afraid, it won’t hurt you, "
112 " imagine the chimneys billowing smoke. Concentrate on those chimneys, can you see them? STUDENT: I can see them. "
113 " Imagine the beams of the Panversal Radiance striking the earth as you’ve been taught in Contemplation and Presence Class. "
114 " rains failed, there were crop failures, people starved. STUDENT: What’s that? CLIMATOS: It means that people died because they had no food. STUDENT: What? CLIMATOS: Yes, incredible as it may seem, they had nothing to eat, "
115 " So, what happened? CLIMATOS: We happened. The Compassionate Society happened. It took all the big, selfish corporations and monopolies and transformed them into the Seven Servants so that instead of serving themselves, from then on they served everyone by making sure that everyone had what they needed to make them completely happy. "
116 " wondering when the Environmental Maintenance Unit would get round to patching up the hole the Love Police had blasted in her apartment wall. "
117 " She wished she had Benji Dog back. At least he would have been something to talk to. No famulus. She felt very naked, as if she had slipped through the sustaining fingers of the Compassionate Society and had not been missed. "
118 " In this dream she dreamed the sixteen-o’clock dream once more, but in this heightened state of awareness all those images and symbols that had so far evaded her now came flocking to her fingers like singing birds, and they lifted her, by her fingertips, and she flew with them. "
119 " In the sixteen-o’clock dream it was an impossible mongrel of bicycle and ornithopter, but it flew, oh, yes, it flew, banking and swooping between the thunderous gray monoliths of the arcologies and co-habs; oh, it flew. Huge, slow-beating wings feathered the air as she looked down into the rain-washed streets aswarm with faces. "
120 " And in the sixteen-o’clock dream the faces looked up as she bicycled overhead, looked up from their rained-on lives to say, look, oh look, look at her, isn’t it wonderful, magical, marvelous "