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61 " Love frays and humans fail, time passes, eras end "
― Karen Thompson Walker , The Age of Miracles
62 " Of my grandfather's eighty-six years on the planet, he had lived two of them in Alaska...But those two years had expanded, sponge-like, in his memory, overtaking much of the rest. Whole decades had passed in California without producing a single worthy anecdote "
63 " From then on, we all had a little more time to decide what not to do. And who knows how fast a second-guess can travel? Who has ever measured the exact speed of regret? "
64 " A single red bucket dangled from a single spoke like the last fruit of summer, or like autumn's final leaf. "
65 " She left her keys in the teeth of the lock where they would dangle all day. "
66 " Todavía me sorprende lo poco que sabíamos en realidad. Teníamos cohetes, satélites y nanotecnología. Teníamos brazos y manos robotizadas, robots para recorrer la superficie de Marte. Nuestros aviones no tripulados, dirigidos por control remoto, podían oír voces a cinco kilómetros de distancia. Podíamos fabricar piel artificial, clonar ovejas. Podíamos hacer que el corazón de un muerto bombeara sangre en el cuerpo de un desconocido. Estábamos dando grandes pasos en el dominio del amor y la tristeza: teníamos medicinas para despertar el deseo y para acallar el dolor. Llevábamos a cabo toda suerte de milagros: podíamos hacer que los ciegos vieran y que los sordos oyesen, y los médicos lograban extraer a diario a bebés del útero de mujeres infértiles. En la época de la ralentización, los investigadores de células madre estaban a punto de curar la parálisis: sin duda los inválidos habrían vuelto a andar.Y sin embargo lo desconocido todavía sobrepasaba a lo conocido. Nunca llegamos a determinar las causas de la ralentización. El motivo de nuestro sufrimiento continuó siendo un misterio. "
67 " This had become a game of ours. We were serious kids made more so by the times. "
68 " Doesn’t big news always leak before it’s meant to? Aren’t secrets usually spilled? "
69 " And as with any harsh journey, not everything survived. "
70 " What went on in that head of his? I would soon come to understand that he gave voice to only a fraction of the thoughts that swam behind his eyes. "
71 " How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible. I like to think about how my parents' lives once shimmered in front of them, half hidden, like buried gold. "
72 " How quaint the old twenty-four-hour clock began to look to our eyes, how impossibly clean-cut, with its twin sets of twelve, as neat as walnut shells. How had we believed, we wondered, in such simplistic things? "
73 " Aquella mañana el ruido de los grillos era ensordecedor, el chirrido de tantos animales nuevos en la oscuridad —se habían multiplicado desde que empezó la ralentización—. Igual que los demás insectos. Ahora que había tan pocos pájaros medraban los organismos más pequeños. Cada vez había más arañas en nuestros techos. En los desagües del baño asomaban escarabajos. Tuvimos que suspender uno de los entrenamientos de fútbol cuando millones de mariquitas se posaron a la vez sobre el campo. Incluso la belleza en abundancia puede ser horripilante. "
74 " A finales de noviembre los días llegaron a tener cuarenta horas. "
75 " Something similar had happened once to the bees. This was only a few years before the slowing began. Millions of honeybees had died. Hives found abandoned, inexplicably empty. Whole colonies had vanished in the breeze. No one ever did conclusively pinpoint the cause of the collapse. "
76 " She looked lonely through the lens of my telescope, like one of those faraway stars, still visible to our eyes but no longer really there. "
77 " Mais tarde, viria a pensar que esses primeiros dias foram a altura em que aprendemos como espécie que andávamos preocupados com as coisas erradas: o buraco na camada de ozono, o degelo das calotes polares, o vírus do Nilo Ocidental, a Gripe Suína e as abelhas assassinas. As verdadeiras catástrofes eram sempre diferentes - inimagináveis, sem aviso, desconhecidas. "
78 " On dark days like that one, the library windows looked lit up like an aquarium, the inhabitants on display for all the other kids to see: here the most exotic fish, the lonely, the unloved, the weird. "
79 " Los días naturales se habían alargado hasta las sesenta horas: casi dos días de oscuridad y luego dos días de luz. "
80 " El sol había desarrollado una nueva y preocupante habilidad: nos había quemado a través de la ropa. "