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41 " The thing was, she’d spent so much time focused on what could go wrong, she’d forgotten the possibility of something going right. "
― Becky Chambers , To Be Taught, If Fortunate
42 " I miss the sorts of gatherings that call for coffee. "
43 " I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’. It’s often misused, operating on the false interpretation that fit means physically fit, therefore expressing a dog-eat-dog ethos. The strongest wins the day. But that’s not what Darwin meant, not at all. He meant most suited to, as in, the creatures most suited to – or most fit for – a specific environment are the ones with the best chance of passing on their genes. "
44 " We are ready to live out our lives without ever seeing Earth again. We’re happy to do it. It is the most natural end I can imagine, the best death I could hope for. But we can’t accept that fate if no one is ready to pick up where we left off. If we die out here with your blessing, then we die as your family. If we die without it, we die alone. "
45 " We were no longer riding a spacecraft, but a tiny bird, caught in a vast pit of tar, beating her wings so hard she risked leaving a piece of herself behind. "
46 " It began in a post thread kicked off in 2052, a literal moonshot by a collective of frustrated friends from all corners – former thinkers for big names gone bankrupt, starry-eyed academics who wanted to do more than teach the past, government bureau members whose governments no longer existed. If you want to do good science with clean money and clean hands, they argued, if you want to keep the fire burning even as flags and logos came down, if you understand that space exploration is best when it’s done in the name of the people, then the people are the ones who have to make it happen. And we did. "
47 " I felt childlike glee, like I’d emptied a bunch of craft supplies on myself, "
48 " I miss my father making it in the mornings when I lived at home. Everyone else drank it — my mother, my brothers. I don't miss drinking it. I miss it being around. I miss the sorts of gatherings that call for coffee. "
49 " I’m just bullshit with a big smile. "
50 " This is what a forest is, after all. Don’t believe the lie of individual trees, each a monument to its own self-made success. A forest is an interdependent community. Resources are shared, and life in isolation is a death sentence. "
51 " We were alive on that world. We were kings without enemies, children removed from time. "
52 " Red dwarf systems have a tendency toward tidal locking – a state in which an object’s rotational period is the same length of time as its orbital period. To illustrate this more simply: think about the way our Moon looks from Earth. When looking up at a full Moon on a clear night, you will always see the same friendly arrangement of craters shining back. Some cultures see a face in the Moon; others, a rabbit. Whatever the interpretation, the underlying truth remains the same. One side of the Moon is always facing Earth. The far side never does. "
53 " Where do you want to go? I couldn't answer that. There was nowhere to go. There was nowhere but this. There would never be anything but this. "
54 " I wondered if I’d ever stop feeling shock at a face older than I remembered it. "
55 " A moth was a caterpillar, once, but it no longer is a caterpillar. It cannot break itself back down, cannot metamorphose in reverse. To try to eat leaves again would mean starvation. Crawling back into the husk would provide no shelter. It is a paradox – the impossibility of reclaiming that which lies behind, "
56 " But I’m not a moth. I’m human. And in humans, there are far more stages than just two. I could not have predicted each version of me that I shifted into, but through my history, one constant has always remained true: change itself. I might not be able to return to the other Ariadnes, but I would not always be the Ariadne floating in front of the mirror, either. "
57 " My mind felt quiet, at last. But the feeling was so precious, that I was reluctant to accept it. I had become so accustomed to the cacophony that part of me perversely wished for it, more trusting of unending discord than peace that could be snatched away. "
58 " But I’m not a moth. I’m human. And in humans, there are far more stages than just two. I could not have predicted each version of me that I shifted into, but through my history, one constant has always remained true: change itself. "
59 " I never knew an Earth that was unaware of life elsewhere. "
60 " We’d made a bus-sized battery that could power a city block for ten years. "