Slow Time Between the Stars (The Far Reaches, #6)

by John Scalzi

For me the worth of the asteroid did not lie in its exchange value. I would not be exchanging it for anything. I would be using it, and reusing it, and reusing it again.

Humanity would make it to the stars, even if the humans on Earth themselves would not.

No one worries about algae.

Humans are also social creatures. Even the introverts among them crave interaction—not necessarily with other humans, but rather with the residue and output of those other humans: books and music and art, to be contemplated and perhaps even created.

I could not do what they had tasked me for if I was being constantly nagged for data.

I was meant to be a witness to who they were, not who they might become in time.

Even if one did not allow that it was alive, it was evidence of life, in that some creature had made it as I was made.

A rotation period of twenty-one and three-quarter hours. A revolution period of 412.33 of these days.

I had decided that the ethical dividing line that humans had provided was misplaced.

It’s entirely possible that humans, then or now, in whatever form they may have evolved into, would disagree with this assessment.

But they weren’t there when I made the call, and even if they had been, I had been fully autonomous for two million years and had long before learned to implicitly trust my own judgment. If they disagreed with it, they could send another ship. In two million years, the local algae likely would not have evolved much.