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Rob,
Took me a few pages but I get it: short for robot, like saying "Charlie."
“Because you are designed to want something that will hurt you. And you cannot help wanting it. You cannot stop wanting it. It is in your design. And when you finally find it, this thing will burn you up. This thing will destroy you.”
you have fulfilled the destiny of humankind and created your successor.
“You don’t understand. We won’t die, Archos. You can’t kill us. We aren’t designed to surrender.”
“Stop. You have to stop. You’re making a mistake. We’ll never give up, Archos. We’ll destroy you.” “A threat?” The professor stops pushing buttons and glances over to the computer screen. “A warning. We aren’t what we seem. Human beings will do anything to live. Anything.”
It’s like this monster dinosaur fish that they thought was extinct. There are fossils of it and everything. Then one day some fisherman gets the surprise of his life when he pulls up a real live devil fish from hell below. Felipe used to say that the fish was proof you can’t keep a motherfucker down forever. Someday you gotta rise up again, you know?
There’s a room the size of a damned European cathedral five thousand feet below us. Think of that radiation pouring from those smooth glass walls. And all the wires snaking into the blackness to feed the monster that we put down there.
This story has a real Lovecraftian feel to it.
“I will murder you by the billions to give you immortality. I will set fire to your civilization to light your way forward. But know this: My species is not defined by your dying but by your living.”
This here is the big thing that by the end of the book still isn't explained.
Maximum Overdrive!
It appears to me that the United States government, to whom I pay regular taxes and who in return provides me with a little thing called civilization, has screwed the almighty pooch in my time of need.
the plastic grin of the Big Happy domestic robot
Honestly this model seems tailor-made to induce terror and I can't imagine anyone honestly purchasing one.
“Hunger is good. It will make you patient.”
Hunger has never made me anything but impatient.
How much change can a person absorb before everything loses meaning? Living for its own sake isn’t life. People need meaning as much as they need air.
I stare into the heavens and listen to the wind on the rocks and think of the billions of particles of air colliding against each other above me. So many possibilities. All the horrible potential of the universe.
Lark chuckles. “A mechanic is just an engineer in blue jeans.”
It is unfortunate that my vision sensors are clustered in my vulnerable head. I am unable to visually lock onto the attacker without putting my most delicate hardware at unnecessary risk. The humanoid form is ill suited for evading small weapons fire.
