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By the end of this chronicle, you will know that humanity carried the flame of knowledge into the terrible blackness of the unknown, to the very brink of annihilation. And we carried it back.
No matter how much kids beg to be treated like adults, nobody likes to let go of their childhood. You wish for it and dream of it and the second you have it, you wonder what you’ve done. You wonder what it is you’ve become.
People need meaning as much as they need air. Lucky for us, we can give meaning to each other for free. Just by being alive.
After the war is over, the engineer will run five miles a day as long as he is able for the rest of his life. During this run, he will visualize the face of his friend and he will pump his legs again and again until the pain is nearly unbearable. Then he will push harder.
But deep down, I know the truth. I have become like the robots. My reality has been reduced to a series of life-or-death decisions.
I don’t think; I react. My action is divorced from all emotion and logic. It isn’t human or inhuman—it just is. I believe that choices like these, made in absolute crisis, come from our True Selves, bypassing all experience and thought. These kinds of choices are the closest thing to fate that human beings will ever experience.
“It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees.”
“I am my own,” I say.
I trace the contours of her fingers with my eyes and squeeze her hand back and discover that Rob hasn’t taken away my humanity after all. It just got put away for a little while, for safekeeping.
