Home > Work > Machine (White Space, #2)
21 " -We eat our mates if we can catch them. Everybody's got some evolutionary baggage that winds up maladaptive in a sophont setting.-"Valuable protein resource." I shrugged. "And it's not as if your species is designed for coparenting. "
― Elizabeth Bear , Machine (White Space, #2)
22 " Whatever the objects were, there were a lot of them. I did a little quick mental math and figured that there must be a thousand of them in this bay alone. They might be alive. Or at least, aliveable. "
23 " Human brains are excellent pattern makers. They’ll figure out a pattern even if all you’ve got are random data points that don’t actually mean anything, which is why we also have AIs and statisticians. And AI statisticians, who are kind of terrifying. "
24 " Sweet death in a vacuum, why can’t anybody be uncomplicatedly evil in real life? Or uncomplicatedly good? Why are we all such a twist of good and bad decisions, selfishness and self-justification, altruism and desire? "
25 " It’s so easy to be catastrophically wrong. And so difficult to admit it to yourself, internalize it, and act upon the knowledge. "
26 " stations we were near were slightly elevated. Oddly, in my experience, they all had tall chairs shaped for humans. The consoles "
27 " Can you run down whatever’s blocked Sally’s awareness of the event? I… what are the odds that that’s evidence of… that worm, or something that’s still messing with her functionality?” “Working on it.” Loese waved me out of the cubby and sealed the hatch. “Really, really working on it. Now go do your job. "
28 " Christ was a religious prophet from an even earlier era, very popular on Terra for several thousand years. He preached all the usual things the better class of prophets preach, about respecting your fellow beings and treating them as one would like oneself to be treated. He got about the reception you’d expect, and his teachings were widely misinterpreted for millennians "
29 " In reality, there’s nothing quite like staring into the most enormous black hole in the galaxy, then flying down its gullet like a gnat with attitude. "
30 " If she’d had a head, she’d be shaking it. "
31 " I’d believed. And now I couldn’t believe anymore. And I missed that believing so much. This must be what losing your religion feels like. "