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He had always distrusted people who asked to speak freely or who vowed to speak candidly or who used the expression “frankly.”
“He reminded me that the patron will always agree to pay twice what the bid was if you send along the extra expenses bit by bit once construction has started and the structure is taking shape. He said that was beyond the point of no return, so the client was hooked like a trout on a six-pound line.”
the walls were about a meter high and thick enough to hold out the desert heat in the daytime and hold in the inner heat at night.
walls a meter high? short people? must of been the exterior wall. The interior wall which was, in part underground I would think would have at least 2 meters tall.
twisting, descending vestibule
The “main room” was only three meters across and five long,
“Remember, the economy wasn’t really global then, and it depended upon private money institutions called banks, gold reserves, and the value of physical money—actual coins and pieces of paper that were supposed to be worth something. It was all a consensual hallucination, of course,
I don’t see the future,” she said. “I remember parts of it.” “What’s the difference?”
“The difference is,” she said, “that seeing is a form of clarity, remembering is … something else.”
If our god’s work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves.”
“Never mind. It will make sense when it comes about. All improbabilities do when probability waves collapse into event.”
distances between the combatants were absurdly short—hundreds of thousands of klicks, often tens of thousands, frequently less than that—given the light-years and parsecs traveled by the warring parties.
even one AU—seven minutes for light to crawl the distance between would-be killer and target,
because no one wanted to live on the rusty sphere of permafrost when the galaxy offered a near-infinite number of prettier, healthier, more viable worlds.
“It’s often the smallest things in life that cause us the greatest pain.”
“Superstition has taken a terrible toll on our species. Wars … pogroms … resistance to logic and science and medicine … not to mention gathering power in the hands of people like those who run the Pax.”
“Is all religion superstition then, Raul? All faith then folly?”
“If you had faith in me, would that be folly?”
“Faith in a friend is … friendship,” I said. “Loyalty.” I hesitated. “Love.”
You risked torture, excommunication, real execution, and the loss of your parking privileges
“Good plan, Colonel. If the glaciers don’t arrive first and cover the village before the warrant is issued.”
I did not forget that there was a panic button. The problem is simple—when there is real panic, one does not immediately think of buttons.
“All ship’s systems are functional, M. Endymion. Awaiting your command.” “Command is given,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“The Commission for Justice and Peace,
the Buddha refused to speculate with his disciples on whether there was such a thing as life after death. ‘Such questions,’ he said, ‘are not relevant to the practice of the Path and cannot be answered while bound by the restraints of human existence.’ Most of Buddhism, you see, gentlemen, can be explored, appreciated, and utilized as a tool toward enlightenment without descending into the supernatural.”
“The morning dew Flees away, And is no more; Who may remain In this world of ours?”
“More frail and illusory Than numbers written on water, Our seeking from the Buddha Felicity in the afterworld.”
“I think that he meant two things, Your Eminence. First that the Buddha will not help us. It isn’t in his job definition, so to speak. Secondly, that planning for the afterworld is foolish because we are, by nature, timeless, eternal, unborn, undying, and omnipotent.”
“We come into this world alone, We depart alone, This also is illusion. I will teach you the way Not to come, not to go!”
mu is an elegant Zen concept that might translate as—“Unask the question.”
“First, no dependence on words and letters.
“All these holy books lie not from intention or failure of expression, but by their very nature of being reduced to words; all the images, precepts, laws, canons, quotations, parables, commandments, koans, zazen, and sermons in these beautiful books ultimately fail by adding only more words between the human being who is seeking and the perception of the Void Which Binds.
“Death is never preferable to life, Raul, but sometimes it’s necessary.”
The problem with being passionately in love, I thought, is that it deprives you of too much sleep.
This the Church cannot abide. And so we are engaged in this terrible war, deciding whether humankind must remain one species forever, or whether our celebration of diversity in the universe can be allowed to continue.
When one realizes that this demands information storage capabilities in excess of 6 × 1023 bytes for each human resurrected,
6 x 10 ^23
“You know I’m no leader, kiddo. I haven’t done anything except follow in all the years we’ve known each other. Hell … I spend most of my time just trying to catch up.”
“Yeah,” I said, not knowing what I was agreeing to. “I’ll come along.” At the time I was feeling surly enough to think that this response was a wonderful metaphor for my entire ten-year Odyssey: yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing or getting into, but count me in.
Dem Loa showed her teeth. “You rule over monks? Over men?” “I … instruct them,” said the Dorje Phamo. The wind ruffled her steel-gray hair. “Just as good as ruling them.” Dem Loa laughed.
“Kale pe a,” repeated my friend. “It is an ancient Tibetan farewell when a caravan sets out to climb the high peaks. It means—go slowly if you wish to return.”
“I know what you mean,” whispered Aenea. “I like planets too. And I like being human … just being a woman. It’s not for some Utopian evolution of humankind into Ouster angels or Seneschai empaths that I’m doing … what I have to do.” “What then?” I whispered into her hair. “Just for the chance to choose,” she said softly. “Just for the opportunity to continue being human, whatever that means to each person who chooses.” “To choose again?” I said. “Yes,” said Aenea. “Even if that means choosing what one has had before. Even if it means choosing the Pax, the cruciform, and alliance with the
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I hate predestination. I hate love stories with sad endings.”
How they must have thought their efforts and adventures over, only to have to pick up their burdens again. How often, I realized now as an adult in my standard thirties, how often that is the case in all of our lives.
I could not do this, I realized, if I were immortal. This degree of love of life and of one another is granted, I saw for once and for ever, not to immortals, but to those who live briefly and always under the shadow of death and loss.
“I haven’t just stayed Catholic, Raul. I’ve rediscovered what it means to be Catholic. To be a Christian. To be a believer.”
As is always the case when you are with the actual human being behind the celebrity or legend, there is something human about the man or woman that makes things less than myth.
“No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives.
